“Ha!”
Only she could say Ha quite like that...a rich girl’s Ha, like a rich girl’s shoulders and a rich girl’s legs and a rich girl’s hair and a rich girl’s...
In unto her. Oh yes definitely. In unto her.
Like this? she is saying.
Like this?
Then in the struggle reversing the Ha to Ah...ah...ah...ah...ah...ah...ah...ah...
“I mean,” said Maxie, “you think they’re actually sleeping? Jesus Christ, Josh. They’re fucking.”
Chapter 19
SO TO GET OUT of the room and kill time--yes, almost literally every fucking minute--I took the elevator down, and in the lobby were four hundred million people from some kind of convention, all gabbing and laughing and wearing the same clothes, corpie suits even here in Atlantic City; and on each lapel and breast was pasted a sticker that said Visitor, and for some reason I found that hilarious.
I said to one guy, “Is this a philosophical statement?”
“A what? We’re with the convention.”
“I mean we’re all visitors on this planet, is this what you’re saying?”
“You must be crazy.”
Maybe I was. I was feeling crazy. The casino itself was half empty, blackjack dealers standing alone and bored before their outstretched cards waiting to be shuffled. There were even two-dollar tables.
But I could not zero in because of this crazy feeling. So what if I won? So what if I lost?
So what? So what? So what?
For crying out loud, we’re just fucking visitors.
In making my rounds, in and among the blackjack, the roulette, the craps, the baccarat, the Big Wheel, around and around, back and forth, speeding past faces and faces, and faces all so tough and joyless, I was like a swimmer who had gone in too far, too deep and once too often, and was now madly stroking for life.
Make sense of something, I warned myself. Quickly. Insanity is next.
Think of something nice. Like what? Your wife? That hurt. Your father, your mother, your children? That also hurt. Think of the money. That hurt the most. So think of Jerusalem. Okay. That was nice.
Next year in Jerusalem--with Joan.
Are you all right? I asked myself. Now are you all right? You’re not going to die now, are you?
Are you all right?
Is he all right?
Don’t touch him, somebody said.
I don’t think he’s all right.
I was not flat on my back. I was in a sitting position. So I had not fainted. Only collapsed. My legs--they were so weak. Could not support me. Just like that they gave--and I sat down. I had not fallen, just sort of came to a stop.
I had been walking too fast, around and around. I had gotten dizzy. That was what this was, a dizzy spell. Another dizzy spell. Big whoop, as Joan would have said. If she were here. But she was not here, of course. No, Joan was not here.
Joan was busy at the moment.
“Are you all right?” voices said.
“Is he all right?”
Men and women in uniform were ringed around me. The same thing had happened to me in Jerusalem on day six of the Six Day War. I pitched hand grenades as we charged the Wall. Then something hit me and I was carried into an ambulance. A bearded man asked me my name. “Joshua,” I said. “Aha,” he said. “Do you know the story of Joshua?” Yes I did. “Then you know about the twelve stones.” Yes, God had ordered Joshua to place twelve stones in Jordan as a memorial for the deliverance to the promised land. “So what we must do,” said the bearded man, “is place twelve stones by the Wall.”
I had taken a bullet right through my kneecap and spent six weeks in the hospital. When I got out I could not find the bearded man. I asked about him. I described him. Was he a doctor? A chaplain? Nobody knew who he was. So I did it myself. I gathered twelve stones from Mount Zion and placed them by the Western Wall. They had to be gone by now, but in my mind they were still there.
Now the man who seemed to be the leader of the group said, “Can you get up?”
He stretched out a hand. I reached for it and pulled myself up, but when he let go I was down on my ass again. My legs seemed to have forgotten what they were intended to do.
“That does it,” the leader said, and in my blurred condition I had no idea what he meant.
Were they going to line me up and shoot me?
Is that what they do when you can’t stand up to gamble anymore?
To collapse in public had always been my big fear--next to being confined. The shame of it, more than anything. But there was no shame here. No, everything continued. I had collapsed beside a craps table where the action was loud and furious and on it went--“Come on seven...come on seven...bring it in, sweet baby!”
People from the casino’s Emergency Care Unit now arrived and they were alarmed. Very concerned about me. Loosened my tie, took my pulse as they moved me along in a wheelchair. What was I doing in a wheelchair? I did not remember them seating me in. This is awful, I thought. I’d seen the crippled come here as if to Lourdes to be healed, but never the other way around, like me, walking in and being wheeled out. Sort of the opposite of being healed.
Still, there was dignity in all this. This was like a presidential procession, sentries at attention along my route, information being passed about my condition by walkie-talkie--and even an elevator held just for me. All because I could not stand upright anymore.
Why could I not stand anymore? Because I had heard the voice of God.
This was what He said: “Joshua?”
Already I knew that was bad.
When He loves you He calls your name twice: “Moses...Moses,” He had said.
But I just got one, “Joshua?”
“Here I am,” I said.
“I am cutting you off from your people, Joshua.”
That was when my legs gave.
Now I was never one of those who claimed to hear from God, and I still wasn’t. That was my father talking to me--my father, since he died, had become God. That was how I imagined God, as my father. Quick to anger, slow to forgive. That was how I saw my father. That was how I saw God. My father’s face, harsh but loving, loving but harsh, became God’s face.
But I could separate them. I knew when my father spoke to me as my earthly father, and when He spoke to me as my heavenly father. This time He had descended on me as my heavenly father. This time He had descended on me through a whirlwind in a blazing chariot.
I am cutting you off from your people.
They had me down on a bed now, in a room full of lights, a nurse taking my temperature. She asked me if I was cold. I said yes. She spread a blanket over me. I said the wool itched. She did not hear me. They seemed to choose when and when not to hear me.
She asked me what was wrong.
The thing was, I wanted to tell her! Everything. I wanted to tell her about Joan, what Joan was doing right now--and what I was doing. I wanted to tell her what I had done.
What have I done? How could I have done this? Where do we go from here? This is the beginning of something and it is the end.
I wanted to tell her that I was being cut off from my people. I was no longer under the protection of the covenant.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Anything hurt?”
“No.”
“You have a fever. But your heart is racing like a child’s.”
Was I on drugs?
“I take Valium occasionally. Fiorinol for migraines.”
“Do you have a migraine now?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Why can’t you walk?”
“I think I can walk now.”
“No, you stay here and rest.”
“How long?”
“We’ll see. I’d like the doctor to take a look at you.”
I shut my eyes against the light. Think good thoughts I told myself. Bad thoughts are what kill you. But--what was Joan doing now? I saw her nake
d, down on her knees...
I threw the blanket off me.
The nurse rushed over. “I thought you were cold.”
“I’m hot.”
Hot and cold was what I was.
“The doctor will be right over.”
“Can I have something to put me to sleep? All I want is sleep.”
“The doctor can give you something.”
I waited. So where was this doctor? Everything, I thought--everything is taking so long. Things are happening in the world and here I am, wasting, my flesh devouring my soul. A malady of the spirit this was.
The doctor was a skeptical old man. He had the blithe attitude of a professional who had already seen everything, seen so much that nothing could surprise him. He had people categorized by type. His name was Moore, Dr. Horace Moore.
As he examined me he kept up a chatter.
“I hear you want a sleeping pill. Just one, I hope. I have people come in here wanting more, if you know what I mean.”
“Just one,” I said.
“I get them after they’ve dropped their entire life’s savings. Gambling is not for the fainthearted.”
“I didn’t lose,” I said. “I won.”
“Hmm. I get those, too. They can’t handle that, either. What did you win? A million dollars?”
How did he know? Of course he didn’t know. A million dollars was the magic number.
The American dream. The American jackpot.
“You’re a sick man,” he said after he checked my eyes.
“How sick?”
“I don’t know. But you have the symptoms of shell shock. Were you in a war or something?”
“Many years ago, yes.”
“No, I mean today, yesterday. Now there is nothing physically wrong with you, but...”
But, he said, he saw something, something he did not like.
“You need rest,” he said.
“Can I have a sleeping pill?”
“You really want that sleeping pill, don’t you? That’s also a symptom.”
“You just said I need rest.”
“Rest doesn’t mean sleep. Rest means...you know what rest means. You’re fighting something. What are you fighting?”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“I’m sure you do understand.”
“You want a confession of some sort?”
“No, I’m only a doctor. My stethoscope can only reach your heart. Your heart of hearts, that’s something you know. You and God. Anyway, I’ll give you that sleeping pill. But that won’t be the answer.”
“Thank you,” I said. “That’s all I want.”
“Yes, the sleeping pill.” He paused to look me over, human to human. That was something he obviously did not do too often. “I’m worried about you,” he said. “You know, I was in a war myself. World War Two. I saw what people do to other people. That’s sad. Now I’m here and I see what people do to themselves. Guess what? That’s even sadder.”
A confession, that was what this man wanted from me.
“You’re one of those,” he said.
“One of those?”
“You know what I mean. Here...here’s your pill, just remember, it’s not the answer.”
Chapter 20
WHEN I GOT BACK to my room I took the pill with water and waited for it to work. Sleep was so important to me now. More important than life. I gazed out the window and even from this distance, in the dark of night, I could see a bearded man on the beach walking his dog.
I dropped myself on the bed and finally drifted off to sleep. I slept for about an hour. When I awoke my eyes were burning. My throat felt hot. It was two in the morning and not a good time to be up.
I had had a dream. In this dream Joan and Ibrahim were at the foot of the bed laughing, mocking me. I knew it was a dream but I also knew that they had been here. I was sure of it.
In his final days, living alone in Philadelphia, my father used to say that people visited him in the night. He wrestled these people. I did not believe him, of course, but the furniture all over the house was overturned.
My father even showed me the bruises of his nocturnal combats. I chose not to believe him because to believe him would have opened up the lower world, and I chose not to believe in a lower world.
Now I glanced around and I sensed the special emptiness of a room that had just been vacated. People had been here, been here and left. In one form or another, Joan had been here. I could smell the fragrance of her perfumes and could see the shadow of her smile. Ibrahim had been here.
Chairs were out of place. The phone was off the hook. Blankets were scattered on the floor. There had been a struggle. Between me and Ibrahim or between me and myself?
Possibly I had rioted in my sleep. But I was tucked in under the covers. I had fallen asleep on top of the covers--or so I remembered. I was in my shorts. I had no recollection of undressing. The second pillow--I knew I had not touched that--was indented from what appeared to be two heads.
I was sure of it--they had been here, been here and made love in my bed as I slumbered. What a perfect touch! The bonus. For the contribution of a million dollars Ibrahim was not about to deny himself this added satisfaction.
But Joan--how could she have taken part? Did she despise me that much? Maybe so. This, this thing that I had done was so low that God Himself had never even thought of it for His ten or even His 613 commandments. He had made provisions against murder, robbery and adultery--but this?--never.
Yes, right here on this bed they had made love. Right here Joan had been vibrating under the cover of another man, the sexual pleasure made doubly intense by the fact of my sleeping presence.
As for Ibrahim--why? I had never done him harm. This was supposed to be a straight deal. Why the mean vengeance? Maybe this was an Arab-Jewish thing after all.
No, I thought, this was no grudge. Kicks, that’s what this was. A billionaire--how does a billionaire get kicks? Since everything is his to begin with, he must be desperate for new pleasures. He must improvise new sensations.
Nothing could be more perfect than to bring Joan here, to my bed.
But how did he know I was here? Well stupid, I said to myself, think! You had them call Sy Rodrigo to get you the room. There’s your connection. To further ingratiate himself, wouldn’t Sy pass the word to Ibrahim that I was here? Of course he would. Sy would have no misgivings. He was part of the deal. In fact, he was the first conspirator.
But Joan--what a reversal of form! What a transformation of character for her to consent to something so utterly debased. Consent? Maybe it had been her idea in the first place. Who knows where passion ends once it begins? Kicks, she was also one for kicks. Once--she believed in trying anything once.
There was only one thing for me to do. Reject the thought. Otherwise I was cut off not only from my people but also from Joan, and Joan was all I had. Joan was my sanity in all this chaos and I had to trust her, trust her goodness, trust her love in the face of this sordid adventure.
There was nothing else to do. To delve further into this conjecture, to believe that Joan was capable of such scorn would leave me with nothing but madness. This time for real. No false alarm, as before. Before had been a warning. Maybe a beginning. Joan was good. Joan was beautiful. Joan, whom I had betrayed, Joan, who had betrayed me--Joan would have to be my savior. Joan would have to restore my soul. She alone could raise me back up--both of us together. Up, up, back to the land of the living. For this was sheol. This was the valley of the shadow of death.
So I had to dismiss the evidence as fantasy, imaginings provoked by guilt.
But somebody had been in this room besides me. I knew that. The eyes were still here. I lunged out of bed. Got dressed. Went to the bathroom. Did not even wash my hands. Did not check myself in the mirror for fear another face would stare back at me.
I dashed for the door, thinking it might be bolted to everlasting. Thinking I might be trapped here for life to spend my days in confrontation
against myself.
Then I ran for the elevator. I had to get down to the casino to prove to myself that it was real, that it had not been another set-up to confound me. The corridor was empty. The elevator was empty. Was the entire world a set-up?
But finally--now I knew what I had to do. I had to rush over to Joan and tear her from Ibrahim. That was what I had to do. Now. This was enough. I had to cheat him out of one more screw and deprive myself of my million dollars--for the deal would be broken if I cut him from his full night. That would make it almost right, almost fair, almost bearable, almost forgivable.
I was on the eleventh floor. I pressed the “casino” button. The doors closed and down I went. Then the elevator stopped between floors. I waited. I pushed the “casino” button again. Then I pressed the “emergency” button. Then I picked up the emergency phone and dialed the emergency operator but there was no response. Now I pressed all the buttons and I was on the move again, but upwards.
The elevator stopped at twenty-two, or between twenty-one and twenty-two, and so this was it, I was finally stuck in an elevator and it was like that business in Nineteen Eighty-Four where they find out your worst fear and do it to you.
For Orwell’s guy it was rats, and for me it was this, and I was sure I’d never get out and that Ibrahim was behind all this, and Sy, too, and paranoid was I? Of course.
Worse than stuck, the elevator began to bounce, zooming up and down, changing speeds as if someone, some human, were at the controls and as if the elevator itself were human or had a brain.
For some reason I was not as frightened as I should have been, though I was flustered when the two doors parted an inch or two and clamped shut just as I tried to power them apart, and here I was, here I was, like that time in the Pyrenees, bound by straps inside the tiny rucksack my father carried me in on his back. I was even gagged, some kind of cotton stuffed in my mouth to keep me from crying and alerting the Germans, who were all over the place with their dogs.
Even when I retched nobody knew, they were so busy fighting the wild, almost sixty of them, terrified men and women and their young, branches and twigs snapping in their faces. They had to keep a fast pace behind the guides, who only now and then let them stop to rest. And then it happened, just as I knew it would. My father put me down and when it was time to move on again in the dark, he picked up the two valises he’d been carrying. But in the haste and confusion and panic he forgot the rucksack, he forgot me, and here I was and couldn’t even scream. I watched them disappear.
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