Indecent Proposal

by Jack Engelhard

  And the view from heaven? What was the view of earth from up above? With all his doings, his comings and goings, could man be distinguished from the mole? For all his motion, where was he going?

  If anything motivated me this was it--the need to escape futility. But how?

  Chapter 17

  IBRAHIM! Now here was more than a man. This was a force that controlled lives--could not revive the dead, make the lame walk or the blind see, but could make the poor rich. That power alone made him supernal.

  We were being watched by him; of that I had no doubt. This was the same Ibrahim who had counted how many times I had let the phone ring in response to his dinner invitation. So of course he knew the turmoil now shattering our home. Miles away as he was, he even knew the dialogue.

  But there really was not much more to say. There was no need to pronounce it or announce it--it would be done. By Joan, for her reasons. By me, for mine. There was no particular moment when we both arrived at the same thought and concluded it by word. That would have been too gruesome. Rather, we jointly surrendered to the inevitable and allowed ourselves to drift along.

  But what was the protocol?

  “Do I give you away like a father of the bride?”

  No, said Joan. A limo would be here to pick her up.

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Better to just get it done, don’t you think?”

  She had already settled the details with Ibrahim. That was how inevitable it was. The limo would pick her up and deliver her to his suite at the Versailles, she’d spend the night with him and in the morning collect the cash. One million dollars!

  Meanwhile--what does the husband do?

  “Get drunk,” said Joan as she packed her things.

  How did it come to this? From where did she win the indignation over me?

  “If you’re going to be angry with me there’s really no point to this.”

  “Please,” she said. “Let’s just survive this night. We’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”

  I sat there on the bed, watching her, loving her, hating her, and searching for precedent--trying to find precedent for all this. But there was no precedent. This was the precedent.

  “I think we should talk some more.”

  “All the talking has been done,” she said.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Josh, Josh, Josh. You’d love a dramatic scene right about now. But you’re not going to get it, so relax.”

  “Relax.”

  “Yes relax. I am not being raped, or even sold, really I’m simply doing what has to be done. You know it and I know it--and he knows it. This has to be done. That’s final. Even up in heaven they know it, Josh. Yes, we’re making a bad angel.”

  She had read in Adin Steinsaltz that every good deed created a corresponding angel. So did every bad deed. A bad angel came to life for every sin and these later testified and so you were judged, your good angels against your bad angels, and though Joan believed none of this mysticism she thought it such beautiful poetry that for that reason alone it had a right to be true.

  She laughed, “Can you imagine the angel we’re about to create? Talk about grotesque!”

  This was sick and frightening, this thought, farfetched as it might be, that we were actually giving birth to something, a being, a being that would live forever in our name.

  “Think of all the good deeds we’ll have to do to get even,” I said.

  “Oh no. This is irreversible.”

  “So why are we doing this, Joan?”

  “Oh, because life is funny, Josh. Life is funny.”

  “You do sound bitter.”

  “Uh-uh. Determined. I won’t be swayed from this because this is it, our chance.”

  “You always said wait for my talent.”

  “Yes I know I said that but I’ve begun to agree with you that life isn’t always so fair. It isn’t right, Josh, what they’ve done to you, keeping you down, unrecognized and underpaid, and I know what it does to you going to work like that each day. You die every morning when you go to the office and I’ve begun to die with you--okay? So that’s why we’re doing this, Josh, because we don’t want to die, not while we’re still alive.”

  “This thing we’re doing, Joan, it’s bound to have repercussions. It could still be a death.”

  “Well...we’ll find out.”

  Questions I could not ask: Was it all for money? Was there no lust? No adventure? No “once?”

  She said, “Let’s just do this night and get it out, out of our lives!”

  Right she was. Do this night. Survive this night. Get it out, out of our lives.

  “What did you mean by irreversible?”

  “Only that it will always be something we did and we’ll never totally forget it, but we’re strong, Josh, we’re both very very strong and we’ll overcome it and be as happy as we once were.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well I do. Nothing will change between us.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Time for me to say something corny, Josh. There’s nothing stronger than love.”

  “I’m not so sure, Joan.”

  “Well if there is we’ve all got troubles, Josh. I’ll always be yours. But if you ever decide to leave me, just tell me where you’re going and I’ll come get you. Yes I will.”

  “Me leave you?”

  “It happens,” she said.

  “You will come back,” I said.

  “Not only will I come back, I’ll love you more than ever. Will you still love me? That’s the question.”

  “I’ll love you more than ever.”

  “I’m not so sure,” she said.

  “Nothing you can do can make me stop loving you.”

  “So, there we are. It’s perfect. Something ventured, something gained. We’ll be as we always were. That’s all I want, Josh. For us to be as we always were. That was good.”

  Yes it was, and the past few days had been torture between us. This thing, yes, it had to be done.

  “Why are you packing a negligee?” I asked.

  “It’s a nightgown,” she said. “Not a negligee.”

  “But it’s see-through.”

  “What are you doing, Josh?”

  “I don’t want you putting your heart into this.”

  “I’m not. Just my body. I told you.”

  Some more questions I could not ask: How many times this night would they mate? Would she climax? Scream from ecstasy? That was mine! That was supposed to be mine, the whimpering and the screaming. Would she get down on her knees and perform fellatio? That was also supposed to be mine.

  Plain old sexual intercourse--for some reason that did not bother me so much. Not now. After all, it was so universal. It did not belong to me or to Joan and we could not patent it for ourselves. But the whimpering and the screaming--that was territory. The act of lovemaking I had already given up for this night. But the sounds--if she gave him the sounds, that would be clear betrayal.

  * * *

  The long black limo pulled into our driveway at eight. We said no goodbyes. The doorbell rang and out she marched, briefcase in hand. I watched her slide into the car, the chauffeur standing at attention until she was seated and then getting in on the driver’s side. I tried for a parting glance but the windows of the limo were heavily tinted. I could not see her but she could see me--which was about right for this entire business.

  I galloped down the stairs and drove off in our Malibu and caught up with them on Roosevelt Boulevard and Harbison, followed them over the Tacony Palmyra Bridge to the North-South Freeway and onto the Atlantic City Expressway. I had no idea why I was doing this.

  The limo was doing seventy with imperial ease and my car was clattering and complaining. The urgency I felt was that of a soldier rushing to battle, and I had to agree that it was easier being a hero in war than in peace.

  Chapter 18

  AS I KEPT the limo
in sight I thought, Do I want to watch? Is this what I want? No, of course not. I did not want to see her in her night with Ibrahim. But I did want to be near her. Proximity, for some reason, became important, as though by being nearby I was not relinquishing her fully.

  But damn how I loved her!

  The limo drove up to the Pacific Avenue entrance of the Versailles, and one of Ibrahim’s men opened the door, helping her out and taking her valise. There was nothing hesitant about her movements. She was going at this boldly, as was her style once she had her mind made up.

  There was still time for me to rush out and rescue her. But there was nothing to rescue.

  I thought of all the times she used to say to me, “Do something!” Plenty of times I did much but not enough to please her. Do something, she said when we were on Seventeenth and Market in Philadelphia and a bum was shivering on the pavement and I--along with everybody else--had stepped around them so many times it never occurred to me to do something. But do something, she said, so I gave him a dollar and she added ten.

  Do something, she said on Callowhill when two big kids had jumped a small kid in a parking lot. And I went over and did something.

  Those were the days when she thought all the world’s problems could be solved by doing something, when she resisted the big-city acquiescence of leaving it alone, the surrender that said if that’s how it is, that’s how it has to be. Not for Joan.

  But now, do what? This was according to plan, the plan moving along act by act. Roles had been assigned and this was mine, to watch her disappear.

  I drove to the Galaxy, had them park my car and asked for a room. The registration lady was named Margaret Mailer. I said, “That’s a famous name.” She said for sure. She’d been here from day one.

  She made me fill out the forms and when it came to how I was going to pay I handed her my MasterCard. She punched it up in the computer and then made a phone call and gave me the bad news. I was past limit.

  She tried to be nice, Margaret Mailer. She asked if I had other credit cards. Sure I did. I had plenty of credit cards. But the rest were also past limit.

  This was like the time Joan and I went furniture shopping at Gimbel’s a month after we were married. We spent five hours choosing this and that, and then that and this--the salesman skipping his break and even his dinner for the fat commission he saw coming.

  In the end, after we had bought virtually the entire floor, he made the phone call and came back to report that our credit was no good. It ruined his day, poor man.

  But there was more. He ordered us up to the credit department. A very angry lady was already prepared for us. She asked to see my credit card. I handed it over. She lifted a pair of scissors and cut it to pieces in an act of public disgrace. An auto-da-fé, this was.

  Someday, I later told Joan, we would get even. We would have so much money that they’d be sorry--and wasn’t that the whole purpose behind this night, this night with Ibrahim? To get even with Gimbel’s, Strawbridge’s, Wanamaker’s, the phone company, the gas company, the electric company, Visa and now MasterCard? That’s why she was up there, to end the humiliation of being middle-class poor. Once and forever.

  After tomorrow there would be no more of this. We’d go cash all the way. That was no fantasy. Not anymore. That was how it would be, starting tomorrow.

  Meanwhile, though, there was today. The big now.

  I used Sy Rodrigo to get a room. After all, he certainly had used me to gain much more--Ibrahim’s business. For that he had given away my name and identified Joan, which was not really much of a crime. What it was, as Ibrahim said, was an understanding. That was how the world was run from the top, by understandings.

  So I mentioned Sy Rodrigo to Margaret Mailer. She made another phone call and this time I was approved. In fact, the room would be comped, but only for one night. That was fine.

  “By the way,” I said, “you’re not related to the real Mailer, are you?”

  “I am the real Mailer,” she said.

  By golly she was.

  I had no luggage so I did not need a bellboy to escort me to my room, and that saved me a few dollars. I had sixty-two dollars on me. I could have had more but I had left the house in a hurry!

  Now in the room I fell back on the bed. Sleep would be the best thing. If only I could sleep this through. Wake up and it would be over. Then it would begin, the mending and the forgetting. The money would not take care of that.

  By this time, I thought, the preliminaries were being done. Drinks, music, getting acquainted. Ibrahim was not the sort to rush in. Or was he? As soon as she walked in--maybe it started as soon as she walked in.

  So by now it was done--at least the first one, and there was still a long night ahead. There would be no sleeping for Ibrahim. This was his night. There were a million dollars to be used up in Joan. No, there would be no sleeping for Joan, either.

  Or for me.

  Maybe, I thought, it would be best to go down to the casino floor and use up some of my money. I would not care about winning, not when I had a million dollars coming to me. I only needed the action. Something to keep me busy. The slots would do, and wouldn’t it be something if I won the million-dollar jackpot? Then I’d know there was a God, but not a nice one.

  No, the best thing to do was sleep to kill these hours between Joan and Ibrahim, so I flicked on the TV, picture without the sound, got in under the covers and--sleep? Are you kidding? I thought. She certainly is not sleeping.

  I remembered back then when the Sabbath-school teacher said, “and he slept with her,” and me--age ten at the time--wondering, so? What’s wrong with a man and woman sleeping together; unless, of course, you mean...you mean they weren’t actually sleeping.

  Walking with our hockey sticks to join the others on Esplanade, Maxie, much older and wiser at twelve, said, “You’re crazy. You actually think when it says they’re sleeping, they’re sleeping? They’re not sleeping, Josh. They’re fucking. Where you been all your life?”

  “So why doesn’t it just say that?”

  “You’re an impossible kid, Josh. You actually want the Bible to say fucking?”

  “No, but the rabbi...”

  “You actually want the rabbi to say fucking?”

  “No, I mean...it’s not clear.”

  “It’s clear, Josh. It’s clear. To the whole world it’s plenty clear. You? I don’t know.”

  “But sometimes it does say he went in unto her.”

  “Where did he go in, Josh? In her ear?”

  “I’m not that dumb.”

  “Yes you are. If you ever grow up you’ll learn.”

  “Learn what?”

  “That everybody fucks.”

  Of course this was nonsense. Only bad people did this, like the guys outside the poolroom and the guys in those shiny suits and Wildroot hair twirling their key chains outside Herm’s Candy News and Soda Shop on Fairmount Street. They were hoods, so it figured.

  But who were the girls they did this with? I couldn’t think of one girl who would do such a thing. Even Maria, the girl behind the counter at Herm’s who wore those tight white sweaters and always whispered to the guys, she was only teasing. That’s all girls do. They just tease. They never actually do this. I mean fucking is not for girls.

  Later, however, I had to admit that people actually did this--but only glamorous people. Like movie stars. Marilyn Monroe probably did this and maybe Errol Flynn, though not Jeff Chandler. He was Jewish. Therefore not Lauren Bacall either. She was only teasing Humphrey Bogart.

  Maxie insisted ugly people did it too. You put a bag over her head. But suppose he’s also ugly? There were plenty of those guys around. Put a bag over both their heads?

  As for beautiful Joan, I was now thinking, she was only teasing. I even pictured her, up in his suite there now suddenly confronted, suddenly aware, throwing her hands up to her face, gasping as in those silent movies, saying, “Oh my! You didn’t really think...You don’t really expect me...” Then: �
��I was only teasing.”

  But this Ibrahim, he would not know from teasing. This was not your basic Uncle Harry from the Bronx getting his jollies from a pat to the tush. This was Ibrahim! Sultan or something from Mahareen or someplace. Your genuine full-blooded billionaire. Teasing was not this man’s style and, come to think of it--it wasn’t Joan’s style either.

  Once she decided on something...once she decided on doing her “once”... it was as good as done. Oh yes.

  Like the time before we were married and I was feeling so guilty about everything and called her to break the date, to break the whole thing off, even saying I didn’t love her and going on and on; and after all this, the whole speech, as if she hadn’t heard a word, she said, “I expect you here in twenty minutes. Goodbye.”

  But now...imagine this! Ibrahim, going in unto her.

  I had no rightful claim to these thoughts since I had willfully abdicated her for this night, had given her away, and was much, much to blame. In fact, it was entirely my fault. Imagining what they were doing--this was an intrusion. Yes, cheating. To be feeling sorry for myself was a solace I did not deserve.

  But still… going in unto her...

  Escape this room, I thought, or you’ll start tripping downhill like that night at the Marriott in Dayton, Ohio, when you realized there’s nobody in the whole world. Every man, you decided, is an island.

  Damn her and her “once” and damn me and my craving to be rich. What a collision!

  Would there be scars, I wondered...were we, yes...were we creating an angel?

  “Watching?” she had said way back when we were just getting familiar and talking in general. “Nobody’s watching. You’re a mystic.”

  “If nobody’s watching, why do people do good things?”

  “Because people are good.”

  “Oh no. Because somebody’s watching. At least that’s what people think. Good Christians cross themselves in private, don’t they? They think somebody’s watching. Good Jews whisper when they pray. They think somebody’s listening and watching. So somebody must be watching and taking notes and writing down license plate numbers.”