What Comes Next

by Jonathan Baumbach

  I call the Selective Service Board. The woman there says she gives no information over the phone, that it is against the law.

  “Whose law? God’s?”

  She says she just does what she’s told.

  I hear him through the door: “He wants to put me in my grave, Mary. That’s what he wants. I’ll see him in hell first, the bastard.”

  “Don’t yell,” she says. “Please. He wants nothing more than to please you.”

  “You know what he can do that would please me?”

  “Shh. Behave yourself.”

  Something happened on the subway. Some man bumped into me from behind, trying to get a seat. I pushed back, my elbow catching him in the neck. His head against the metal of the door, bleeding. His glasses cracked. An old guy. Holding a dirty handkerchief to his forehead. I said I was sorry. The guy crying. An accident, I told him. A woman kept saying she was going to get the police. I got off at the next stop and, without looking back, got away.

  He brought her a white rose he had taken from someone’s garden. She kissed him timidly, held him away, then fell against him, holding on as if she were drowning. “How lovely,” she said. He was watching himself, distrustful of the man he was watching, jealous. While Rosemary seemed without a sense of danger. They embraced violently on the couch, contesting their affection, Christopher worried about the aunt walking in—other fears like shadows behind cellar doors, Rosemary assuring him that her aunt wouldn’t be back until late and even so, even if she walked in, she wouldn’t mind.

  So that’s how it had been with Parks—it was a revelation to him. Despite her assurances, he listened for footsteps in the hall. It was possible that he had been followed or that Parks himself would, out of habit, appear.

  He suggested that they go into her room, feeling numb, a man about to parachute out of a plane for the first time. Wanting to stay where he was. Not to fall.

  Rosemary hesitated, her head cocked, as though reading his intentions. “I’d rather stay here,” she said in a tremulous voice. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”

  He persisted, distrustful of her affection, in pursuit (fleeing her claim on him) of knowledge. He had only to mention Parks to break her down, drag the corpse of his name between them. Her silence pleaded with him. To be kind. To be brutal and kind.

  Rosemary started to speak, her lips moving, tasting the possibility of words, without words. A tension of wills between them.

  And when he had lost her, even temporarily, he would pursue her again—his need determined by the pains of failure—nagged by his own secrets, suspicious of hers.

  And so it went, accumulating commitments and vengeances.

  He felt reprieved at first and then, wanting her, sick with regret. She was leaning away from him, self-absorbed, silent. He wanted to have her—it seemed necessary—to break her down. She looked as remote and cool as the first time he saw her. He was not asking for anything, wouldn’t ask, his need apart from what he wanted.

  Then, without explanation, she got up and was gone. Lonely, he paced the living room, drawn to the window to see if anyone was there he knew. For a moment, he thought he saw Parks, but it was someone else. That there were no policemen within view worried him. It was better to know where they were, safer. Two boys were fighting, one holding a knife behind his back. He thought to warn the other, to yell from the window, then Rosemary returned, distracting him.

  “We can go into my room now if you want to,” she said, her face half turned away as if in hiding.

  He said it was late, he had to go. In his imagination he dashed out and, getting nowhere he wanted to be—wanting to be where he wasn’t—came back.

  “I hate you,” she said in a hoarse, fierce whisper, and flung the flower, the white rose, in his face. It burned like a slap.

  She felt released, unburdened. He turned away.

  He turned back older, or feeling older, ruined, defeated, hated. His boyhood gone, smashed. He closed his eyes to recall the time that had passed, to bring himself back to where, feeling himself immortal—that sanctuary of his fear—he had been. And he discovered, the present revising his vision of the past, that he had never been invulnerable, that he had never, outside of thinking himself so, outside of self-delusion, been safe. There was no place to turn back to. There never had been a place or a time. He was born a dying man.

  When she tried to comfort him he pushed her away. Later, grabbing her by the hair, he kissed her forcibly, holding her face against his. “I want to see your room,” he muttered.

  She smiled as if she had known in advance what was going to happen.

  Once in the room, the door closed, he hardly had a chance to look around. Proudly, as if unveiling a statue, Rosemary lifted her dress over her head and stood before him, naked, her hands on her hips, like a model or a dancer. One thing surprised him; she was wearing a crucifix on a chain, the cross like a snake between her breasts.

  He tumbled her to the bed, still in his clothes, expecting to be pushed away. She kissed his face until, unable to bear it, he cried. Choked with shame, wave after wave rising and falling, he couldn’t stop. Buried his face in her breasts, the crucifix pressing against his eye. She stroked his hair, said not to worry about anything, not to worry. Planning his rage, hating her, he pretended to be comforted.

  They were in bed lying together like children when the aunt came home. She called Rosemary’s name a few times while under one thin blanket Christopher sweated his fear. “We’re in my room,” Rosemary called to her, getting out of bed, latching the door from the inside. “Chris is here with me.

  “Hello, Christopher,” the aunt called—she had met him once. “How are you?”

  “OK,” he mumbled, amused, his rage like smoke. In some way its unreality made it easier for him, made it finally possible.

  In the act of love, Rosemary stiffened suddenly, froze, her nails digging into his back. “I know who you are,” she said. “I’ve known.”

  Hanging from a ledge, he let go. (Everything.) His life went out, went out, went out. Went out.

  July 10

  When I came home my mother said some man, who wouldn’t leave his name, had been looking for me. Said he would be back without fail tomorrow. A man in a gray suit with a hat. About thirty, she thought, maybe forty.

  I set my alarm for five o’clock.

  FOUR

  THE MAN in the hat is making love to an old lady, her bones snapping under his weight. When he is done he cuts off her bombs and tacks them on the wall. Puts the rest of her in the bathtub. (I was watching from under the couch.) Then rode away, whistling to himself, on a bicycle.

  He had the mask on, which made him dangerous. Standing in front of the bike, I told him it would be best for everyone if he stopped. No one would help me—the others hiding behind windows. “One of these days, schmuck,” he said, “you’re going to die.” He had friends, he said, assassins in high places. I stood my ground but the bicycle turned into a plane and he got away.

  I woke five minutes before the alarm. Left him a note: “Have to move out. Don’t worry about me.” Then, two blocks away, decided he didn’t need to know. I couldn’t trust him. They were talking in their room, a dull buzz, the door closed. The idea to get out without facing them. I had the feeling someone was in my room so I went back to look.

  No one was there. Only pieces of me. Accumulations like mold. Stamp collection, chess set, box of records, player, three speakers, comics, slide rules, gun models, Monopoly set, investigation files. The room like a corpse hugging me. I wanted to burn it. The dead should be burned. Saw myself in the mirror, The Human Torch, turning on. Burning whoever got in my way. The clock had twenty after six. Move your ass, Christopher. Took a briefcase from the closet, one that used to belong to my father, and packed some stuff in it. It would serve as cover. A man with a briefcase has business to do. What is my business? My business is to go about my business until I find out what it is I have to do. What I’m here to do. Your larger purpose, as
Parks says.

  Who do you think you are, Christopher, not knowing who you are?

  Police cars roaming the streets looking for something, anything. I took the subway to pass the time, read the News and Times. Nothing in either on the Cripple Killer.

  SOLDIER SMOTHERS MINE WITH OWN BODY

  TO RECEIVE COUNTRY’S HIGHEST AWARD

  A graduation picture of this baby-faced Negro in a black gown.

  A family in Brooklyn was found murdered, two adults, two children, the house looted. They were dead two days, said the police, who broke into the house after neighbors complained of the silence. The President says he values constructive dissent as much as any American but those who protest the war are giving aid and comfort to the enemy. “How would you like to be a soldier in battle, giving your life for your country, and people back home saying you have no business being there?”

  The teller at the bank kept me waiting twenty minutes. Came back empty-handed. His mouth like a buttonhole.

  “I can’t do anything for you until you talk to Mr. Hedges. Please do as you’re told.” His nervous eyes prodding at something over my shoulder. A guard behind me, a large, angry-looking Negro, his hand alongside his gun.

  “Henry,” the teller said, “will you take this young man to Mr. Hedges.”

  I went with the guard to the office of the vice president, T. M. Hedges, Jr., a pink-faced fat man. My passbook and a yellow card, alone on his fat desk except for a glass paperweight (with snow in it) on the right corner. And a red telephone.

  “Will you have a seat, sir,” he said, peeking at me. “This will only take a few minutes.” “What will?”

  “Sit down, please.” He adjusted his glasses, his face smiling like a mask.

  The guard standing by the door, his hands behind him.

  “Do you have any identification with you, Mr.—uh—Steinwall? A driver’s license. Something like that.”

  I said I didn’t drive, and the name was Steiner, neither of us drives.

  “Uh huh.” He took off his glasses and, as if I weren’t there, concentrated on cleaning them. “Where did you get this passbook, son?”

  “From this bank, sir. When I opened my account they gave it to me.”

  “I see,” he said. “I’d like to show you something that’s very interesting. Will you look at the signature on the withdrawal slip? Compare it with the signature on this yellow card. I’d like to know your opinion. Were these made by the same person?”

  “It’s a fact. They were made by the same person.”

  Him inside the paperweight, it snowing on him.

  “I’ll tell you how I know they weren’t. It happens that I’m something of an expert on handwriting. A hobby of mine. A signature is made distinctive by its characteristics. The characteristics of these two signatures, the slants of certain letters, are to my eyes absolutely different.” He tapped his fingers together. “What do you think I ought to do about it?”

  I glanced behind. The guard, leaning against the door, was thinking of what it would be like to shoot us both, dreaming the opportunity. Hedges’ death an accident.

  “I think we better get the police.” His pink hand on the phone.

  “No.”

  “Well, what’s your story? Is the passbook yours or isn’t it?”

  When I didn’t answer he said it was a great truth that he who hesitates is lost.

  I asked him, still polite, if I could write my signature again for him.

  He took a yellow card and a pen from his top drawer. “Put your name where it says ‘Signature.’” He pointed his finger at the spot in case I couldn’t read. I wrote:

  Christopher Steiner

  He studied the two yellow cards and the slip, rotating the order. Then he took a magnifying glass from the breast pocket of his jacket and studied them again. “Hmm,” he said. “Hmm.”

  I signed another card for him and, with a magnifying glass, the ring on his finger glistening, he compared the four. “If someone found your passbook and tried to empty your account, you wouldn’t want us to give your money to someone else.”

  He said that he wanted to study the signatures at greater length and if no one with my name had reported a missing passbook—ha ha—he would let me close the account tomorrow.

  When I left, I knew I would never get it. A police car parked in front of the bank.

  The sky heavy, glistening—a lifeless sky. The temperature in the nineties. “Is God dead?” someone had written on the wall. “I’m just not well,” it said underneath.

  “I’ll take the daughter, you take the mother,” Parks said.

  Two women silting on the next bench, neither mother nor daughter.

  “Where do you want to take them?”

  At lunch—we went to a German place on Eighty-sixth Street—he asked how “our friend Rosemary Byrd” was getting along.

  I said I didn’t know how she was.

  “I’m glad there are no hard feelings, Chris. On my part, I want you to know I bear you no ill will. I want you to know that.”

  “I’m thinking about getting married,” I said.

  “To whom?” Pinpoints of sweat on his forehead.

  “Just thinking about it as an idea. What would be your advice on something like that?”

  “If you’re asking seriously—I think you’re putting me on—under the best of circumstances marriage is a difficult proposition. How can you be thinking about it without someone in mind?” His mind on something else. “Living with another person is one of the hardest things there is.”

  “Is it hard with your wife?”

  He pretended not to hear me. “How did you make out?”

  “Make out?”

  “In school. You said you were worried that you might not have enough credits to graduate.”

  I said it didn’t matter since I was going in the Army anyway. He said if there was something he could do to convince me not to go, if it was in his power, he would do it.

  “Is true,” a man in a black suit at the next table was saying, “that in nineteen thirty-six eighty percent of Jews in Germany was Communists. Is true.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t true, Hans,” the other said. “I just said it was a mistake to try to kill them all. A matter of faulty calculation. Don’t make enemies you don’t need to make. A first rule of good business practice is not to make enemies.”

  “A matter of faulty calculation. Never start a job you can’t finish.”

  “Best to kill people you can trust.”

  Parks was staring at my briefcase, saying that the war would go on and on, getting larger and larger, unless something was done to stop it.

  I told him about having moved out. He stopped his lecture about the war, said he was interested to know my reasons.

  I said I couldn’t stay there anymore.

  A policeman, sitting at the bar, was watching us.

  He said what I had done was a necessary stage of development. I wanted to keep him talking until the cop left so I asked him if he thought it was worth acting queer to stay out of the Army.

  He looked at his watch. “We’ll talk about it another time, Christopher. There are better ways. I have to take off.” Smoothing his hair with his hand, his eyes burning. “Look, if you don’t have a place to stay, I can put you up in the spare room until you find something.”

  I said maybe I would come. The cop talking to the bartender, staring, pointing at us.

  He paid the check and returned. “I’ll tell Carolyn to make up a bed for you. OK?”

  I said it depended on certain other things.

  “Whatever you decide,” he said, waving.

  I got up to see where he was going, when the cop at the bar grabbed my arm. “What’s his name, the guy you were with? I could swear I’ve seen him somewhere. Isn’t he on television? I have a bet with Happy here. Isn’t he the one that plays the double agent on that new combat series?”

  I said I didn’t have to answer his questions and got out in time
to see Parks getting into a cab.

  I followed him to her aunt’s place. Like old times. Thought of ringing the bell, saying “Surprise” when she answered the door, my fly open. “He thinks, your friend, he’s above it all,” Parks was saying. “There are no atheists in my foxhole,” she said. They were arguing. Parks down in an hour, looking grim, went directly to the subway. I had the idea that he had killed her but when I phoned she answered.

  “Curt,” she said. “Curt?” I didn’t talk.

  I called a guy who was on the math team with me. Asked him if he could put me up. He said he wouldn’t mind normally but since last week he was living with a girl. He had a key to another place, he said, if I was interested. He couldn’t talk now. She was coming in. To call him back.

  A woman in the park accused me of following her, said she was going to call a cop. I knocked her down, ran. Went to a movie to get away. The feature: What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? The place full of queers.

  I counted nine of them. They were standing in a row, a vertical column in black uniforms, at motionless attention. A command was given. The first soldier in the line took two running steps to the right and then, pivoting in the air, flung himself face down to the ground. The second soldier took three steps to the right and then executed, with the same remarkable precision, the same complicated movement as the first. The third soldier took four steps to the right … And the fourth. And the fifth. I thought I was watching some kind of exhibition—the bodies about to arrange themselves into words—but I discovered, a bullet knocking off my hat, that they were firing live ammunition at some enemy behind me. “Hey,” I called, “cut it out. I’m a civilian.” Holding up my draft card. The firing continued.