Indecent Proposal

by Jack Engelhard

  She didn’t know. Some comfort.

  “Only for half an hour or so,” he said.

  “You have such contempt for me, for Joan, for yourself?”

  “There is nothing wrong in preserving a moment--the most beautiful moment of my life, if you must know. No, not contempt. Precisely the opposite is true. I cherish Joan and I must keep her, and I can keep her by no other means.”

  “So you made a movie.”

  “Would you care to see it?” he asked.

  This offer, as far as I could tell, was not made in a spirit of derision. No, he wanted me to share this film with him out of kindness. The film was his prize, the most valuable prize he owned. He had found a way of preserving Joan, of owning Joan.

  So he saw nothing inelegant in all this. He had achieved something lasting with her, even more lasting, more binding than the vows of marriage. A film was always there, always faithful, always true. In his film he could have Joan over and over again as even I could not have her. So we were partners, as he saw it, and he wanted to share his bounty, partner to partner--and it was almost pathetic.

  Not quite, because there had to be an edge of contemptuousness in this scheme. This meeting was his confrontation more than it was mine. This was his final satisfaction. I had no vengeance to return. Nothing that I could think of at the moment. But I would have to come up with something. Oh yes, I would.

  From beginning to end--if this was the end--he had me ensnared. He seemed unbeatable. He seemed incapable of error. A chess player he was all right, who saw ten moves ahead of my one.

  How, I wondered--how do I beat this man? How do I defeat this undefeatable man? I could not go on with Joan or continue my life until I beat this man. There must be an opening, I thought. Somewhere in this calculation of his there must be a miscalculation.

  “I did not come here to see a movie,” I said.

  “Aren’t you curious?”

  “About watching my wife make love to another man?”

  “I don’t see it quite that way. I see us as two men joined by something extraordinary, if you agree that Joan is extraordinary, as of course you do. We both belong to her and she belongs to both of us.”

  “You are wrong, Mr. Hassan. Joan belongs to me.”

  “You forfeited her, Mr. Kane.”

  “For a single night.”

  “Oh no. Forever, my friend. Forever.”

  The same was true for Joan, I thought. She had no movie, but the memory would be there, could be there, forever. Memory was stronger than a movie. Memory could also be true and faithful, and it could also embellish and make a moment more powerful than anything in reality or anything on film. The film in Joan’s mind, that was where I had forfeited her.

  But Ibrahim’s film was tangible. He was not enough of a romantic to rely on memory. He needed something actual to bring her to mind and revive his sensations. He needed the film to love her and have her love him. The film was worth more than a million dollars. Yes, the film was worth his billions.

  “On the other hand,” I said, “yes, I would like to see the movie.”

  “I’ll get everything ready,” he said.

  He rushed out and I heard voices, his in particular, loud and tremulous. This cool gambler, this impervious manipulator, was now as excited as a schoolboy. I was serene. I knew something that he did not know. I saw a move he did not see.

  The limits had already been reached, even surpassed. The unimaginable had already come to pass. The unspeakable had become speakable. There was nothing but to save what was left to save. Joan--I could still save her. Somehow, I could still rescue her from Ibrahim. I had been given a second chance.

  There was an answer to Ibrahim. Joan was the answer. His foil was now my foil. His trap was now my trap. His weakness was now my strength. Mighty Ibrahim could be toppled by a woman, my woman, as I had been cut down by money, his money.

  All I needed now was luck. For once, I thought, let my good luck be for me. I had given him enough. My turn. For once, I thought, let the winner be the loser and the loser be the winner.

  I was not seeking revenge, only balance. Life had so tilted me that up was down and down was up. I was spinning in a world where right had become wrong and wrong had become right. Balance was all I was after. Perhaps, after all, the name for that was revenge.

  Ibrahim returned with a servant who brought in a tray of soft drinks and nuts and left. No popcorn? Another servant brought in and set up the VCR machine and left. Ibrahim held the cassette in his left hand, the cassette worth his entire fortune.

  Now I became as alert as a detective. I knew there were guards outside. So making a run was out of the question. The windows in here were sealed. But--there was a balcony. The handle to the door of the balcony needed nothing more than a twist. The ocean was not far off; it could be reached by a good throw, the kind of throw I had used in a previous conflict between Arab and Jew, when I pitched hand grenades against the Jordanian Army as Israel fought to regain Jerusalem.

  Correct, this was not an Arab-Jewish thing. This was man against man. I finally knew that--knew that he was no god. I had thought he was. That had been my mistake. I had made him a god by virtue of his money. But I no longer feared his money.

  There was only one big question, and I could not ask it now. It would give me away.

  Now he drew the curtains for proper dimness, inserted the cassette into the slot and it was showtime. I shut my eyes but this was a talkie and the sounds were the worst of it.

  So I opened my eyes and beheld Joan--as I had tried all this night not to imagine her--kissing him from head to toe, stopping in between, her head bobbing as she sucked his hard, blood-filled penis. He was groaning and shouting her name. She was nude and on her knees.

  Now she gazed up at him, panting and smiling. He tried to lift her up but she wanted more. He cupped and squeezed her breasts and she reinserted his penis into her mouth and suckled.

  Finally she let him lift her up. He grabbed her by the ass, stuck a hand in her ass, and placed her on top of him on the bed--and she slammed herself into him. Now she shouted--“Oh!” She began working herself in and out of him. The sounds, yes, the sounds were the worst of it--the gasps of ecstasy from her.

  The view was from the rear. All I could see was her motoring ass, wide as the screen, wide as my entire world. Then he raised her and turned her around and as she pumped from a sitting position his left hand palmed her left breast and the fingers of his right hand were jammed inside her cunt along with his upright penis.

  Now her face came into sharp focus. Her face now filled the screen expressing something animal. The secret he had seen in her, that secret was out. The passion he had suspected, the surrender, here it all was in a single female explosion.

  She was glancing down to watch his penis move in and out of her, to watch herself being fucked.

  This, I thought, was what they dreamed of on the Main Line, in their pink bedrooms.

  Now she shut her eyes and grimaced, as though he had reached a new depth inside her, reached her heart. Her breathing grew hoarse. Now she helped him. She stuck one of her own fingers in her cunt and her cunt was as full and as busy as any cunt could ever be.

  He lifted her off him and drew himself under her and licked her cunt. But she would not let go of his penis. She stroked it with her hand. He even licked her ass. His tongue moved from ass to cunt. Then it was time to come and he sat her onto his penis again and again her face was in sharp focus. Her eyes were lined up with mine. I could sense contact, as though my presence were before her. Look at me, she seemed to be saying. Look at me.

  But that was a presumption based on conceit. She was coming not for me, but for him. Her lover. Her screams were not for me, but for her lover. This was all for Ibrahim. None for me. Not even in spirit, not even in mind.

  The climax was violent. She yelled out his name, as if for mercy. She yelled out his name.

  I glanced over at Ibrahim. This final moment was his perfection. />
  “Enough,” I said.

  He clicked off the machine. He was quaking. His eyes had turned menacingly black, void of the spark that separated the human from the beast. He was silent. He seemed to be containing the savage in him. But he could kill. Now I knew that he could kill.

  As for me, no, it had not been pleasant. But I was beyond hurt. I had girded myself for this. I knew there were times in life when there were no choices, and that this was such a time. I had had no choice but to sit through this outrage. I had had no choice but to witness the finale. The sin had been mine and this was the punishment. The ultimate punishment. This--this was midda keneged-midda, measure for measure.

  But I had had enough of sin, enough of punishment.

  “Do you have copies of the film?” I asked.

  “You want one?”

  “I might.”

  He thought this over. It seemed logical to him that I should want a copy. After all, we were partners.

  “I’ll have to make some copies,” he said. “This is my only one.”

  That was it! The big answer.

  Damn, I had wanted to hear that!

  I edged toward the VCR machine. He did not seem to notice me. He was depleted, his mind distant. The contents of the film still had him gripped. He was lost in a state of sublime amazement.

  “I’m happy that you understand,” he said.

  “I do. I understand.”

  “You are a witness.”

  That he needed. A witness. A witness to validate this and make the film true.

  “This is holy,” he said.

  Holy, I thought. If this is holy what then is depraved?

  “Yes, this is holy,” he said.

  I kept inching closer to the machine.

  “Tell me,” he said, “was she ever like this with you?”

  Yes she was, I thought. Yes she was.

  “No,” I said. “Never.”

  Humor him, I thought.

  “Are you sure?”

  He wanted proof. Maybe a film. That was important to him, to know that he had reached her as I never had, as no man ever had.

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “I asked her to stay with me, you know.”

  “Oh?”

  I had been afraid of that, of course, afraid she would stay with him. I had counted that as the worst outcome, never figuring on a film. I had not been prepared for an eventuality just as bad, or even worse. In effect, she was staying with him.

  “She refused,” Ibrahim said. “But I have the film. You see--I have the film.”

  “Yes, the film.”

  “The film is everything. But only you can understand. You do understand?”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “The film is a memorial. No, come to think of it--I cannot make copies. There must be only one.”

  “Fitting,” I said, “for a memorial.”

  “Yes, there must be only one.”

  Now I was within arm’s reach of the cassette, the memorial…the one and only! I swung my arm out just to test the distance. When the moment was correct, I thought, I should be able to snatch it in one motion. A single movement would be all I’d get. If I fumbled he’d be on top of me.

  “Joan knows nothing of this.”

  “So you told me.”

  “Do you think me cruel?”

  We were beyond cruel, I thought. We were talking perversion.

  “No,” I said. “Everything makes sense.”

  “Yes, everything is as it must be. Everything is right.”

  He turned to the window, his back to me.

  I thought of making a lunge for it now, but he was between me and the balcony. He would have time to stop me. There would be a struggle. Maybe I would win. Maybe I would lose. An even shot. I did not like the odds, especially with the guards out there ready to pounce.

  No, I would have to proceed swiftly and suddenly when all was perfect.

  But I had to move while he was still in this melancholy.

  “Only a woman,” he said, “could do this to a man.”

  Now the other side, the hatefulness.

  “Do what?”

  Keep him talking, I thought. Keep him talking.

  “Hold such power!”

  He sat down and lit a cigarette; not a cigar, a cigarette. For once he was not posturing. His inner self was his outer self. The mystique was gone. The prince was earthly.

  “Look what she’s done to you,” he said.

  He wants my pain, I thought. He wants to see my pain. He requires my assent and my pain for his satisfaction. To be a true witness I had to rejoice for him, despair for myself.

  Be smart, I thought, and give it to him. Give him anything. He is yours anyway. All yours.

  “Yes,” I said, “look what she’s done to me.”

  Never mind what I had done to her.

  “Man’s blessing and man’s curse, that’s what they are,” he said.

  Like money, I thought.

  “But you’ve been blessed,” I said.

  “Yes, there is only one Joan.”

  Yes, I thought, and there is only one film. I drew it from the machine--gracefully and perfectly I reached out and made it mine. I clutched it against my belly, then slipped it in my side pocket.

  Ibrahim snapped to life. “What!”

  “Now it’s time,” I said.

  He knew the stakes. This was for everything. As I had gambled once too often, so had he. In the end every gambler was a loser and he, Ibrahim Hassan, had finally extended his luck too far, spread it too thin. This one last wager had been for all or nothing and he had come up busted. The movie, that wretched, putrid movie, had delivered him to me.

  He stretched out his arms to block my path to the balcony. He was now completely back to his senses, and now was the moment to yell to his people--but pride muted him. He was a black belt, after all.

  I held my arms loose to the sides and did not take up the forward outlet stance. As he swayed and shadowboxed around me, he put on the meanest face he had but his breathing came fast and loud. I had reverted to battlefield demeanor, which dictates that they cannot kill you since you are already dead.

  I wondered which way he’d be coming so I faked left-right and we began to circle and stalk. He tried a shuffle straight kick to the groin and I simply rocked back, unscathed. It had been a halfhearted effort on his part, merely to test my reflexes.

  I knew I was rusty and that I’d have to trust the credits that had accumulated in my brain. To Imi and the other professionals, Krav Maga was religion. Trust it, always. Can a simple lifting and rotating of the arm really block any roundhouse? Always, if you do it right and study it and study it as the others study the Torah. Can the system really make you sublime? Why yes, so long as you carry it humbly within yourself, as any wisdom. “So a man may walk in peace,” was Imi’s proverb. We had had a mild disagreement when he proclaimed that Krav Maga should be open to all. “Share the secret with our enemies?” I said. He thought by sharing it our enemies would become our friends…a charming naïveté, so typically Israeli.

  Ibrahim continued to stalk and withdraw without landing or taking a punch or a kick, staying safe, playing the menace, setting up combinations that were supposed to terrify me.

  I had been in these things maybe five thousand times, mostly in drills on my way up from white to yellow to orange to green to blue and then to brown belt. In these spars the other guy was not your opponent. He was your partner. Over and over again you practiced the same moves, different moves, hundreds of them, until they became instinctive. A few times in my life, of course, it was for real, and these were different. You never knew what the other man had.

  In a flash Ibrahim stepped in, flared left-right whipping blows--karate chops--wheeled and connected with a spinning roundhouse kick that grazed my chin. Terrific speed, and I paid for being lax. I was staggered but unhurt.

  Now I brought my arms together, crossed, for an outside def
ense, to lure him wide. He bought it, stepped in, faked a left hook and swung a right-arm roundhouse. I rolled the punch over my curling left arm, ducked swiftly at the same time, torqued and planted a fist to the ribs. He flew back, prancing.

  I had had him doubled for an instant and was in position to finish him off with a hammer-blow between the shoulder blades, and it vexed me that I had not gone in for the score. It occurred to me that the opponent I was facing was me. I lacked killer instinct. Even now. Damn this thing compassion. So Jewish! The Israelis had solved it, to a degree, by constantly showing and reminding the boys what the goyim had done to their ancestors throughout the ages, and it helped, but after turning the other cheek for two thousand years it was something new to be learned, and what is learned is never the same as what comes naturally. But it was also true that once they got going they were ferocious. Menachem Begin was right when he said, “They want a holy war? We’ll give them a holy war.”

  I had the same thing in mind now when Ibrahim came leaping with a scissor kick. I remembered my back roll and when I straightened up I was against the wall. I lifted a knee and got him flush in the groin. He was hurt but still quick, falling back, recovering and taking up his attack stance.

  I was still reluctant to attack. I preferred to get him on his mistakes. From a safe distance now, he resumed shadowboxing and it was comical. I had to laugh.

  “Come,” he said. “Come.”

  Never laugh, I thought, at an able-bodied man.

  “Come,” he said. “Come. Teach me.”

  Must have a big move in mind.

  I sped in, finally, with a crossover side kick, which he blocked. I spun and wheeled a back kick, connecting heel to chin after faking low. He switched to boxing combinations, two straight lefts and a hook followed by two straight rights and a hook, six times. I was counting. None landed but he was impressive.

  Good form, I thought. Good style. The seventh time I exploded in, both arms high, left blocking his right hook, right smashing his nose. This was good. Exactly by the book. He also had a book. As I was moving in, my momentum carried me too far and he caught the back of my head with a horizontal elbow blow. Now I knew this was a fight. Never mind judo and karate. He knew Krav Maga.