Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker

by Finder, Henry

  As I stood there, I sensed a footfall in the passage along which I had just come. Looking up the stairs, I saw my mother-in-law approaching, in velvet slippers and with the aid of her stout cane. Slightly indisposed, she had had a tray in her room, the door of which she had left open, as is her wont, so as not to isolate herself entirely from the life of the house. She paused at the head of the stairs and from under her white lace mobcap fixed me with a bright eye.

  “I could not help overhearing,” she said, “and with all due apologies, I should like to remind you of one person you have overlooked in your list of creditors, as you put it. Someone to whom you also owe something.”

  “Who might that be, Mother Bunshaft?” I asked.

  “Yourself,” she answered, smiling.

  “Ah, Mother Bunshaft,” I said, “the longer you live with us the more your wisdom—”

  “Correction—I think you mean the longer you live with me.” The house is in her name for legal reasons (she owns it). “The longer you live with me, the more I find I have to tell you, it seems. Now I suggest you owe it to yourself to pause a moment and count the cost. Of a second establishment, which I assume is in your mind—especially if we increase the cost of this one by starting to ask for rent again. The upkeep of two cars, the many other possessions bought on time. I expect we’re quite the ticket out there in the big city”—here she humorously cocked the tip of her stick at me and sighted along its length as along the barrel of a rifle, at the same time making that chucking noise out of the side of her mouth that once was used to make horses giddyap but now conveys the idea of hot stuff—“but it might just pay us to take a good hard look at our bank balance, if any, our arrears with the loan company— Just a minute, I’m not finished,” she called as I hurried out the front door without the bags.

  Well, that’s how the cookie crumbles. It took very little probing to make clear the scale of living the other woman had in mind—a single phone call from a public booth, in fact. Her response to my suggestion that we meet at some convenient Schrafft’s or Stouffer’s, instead of the Four Seasons, with all that nonsense about flaming skewers and telephones brought to the tables, alone did the trick.

  So that seems to be the point of this whole incident in a nutshell, its moral, you might say, which I pass along to any man contemplating the same course of action I was. Before you start declaring moral bankruptcy, make damn sure you’re in good shape financially.

  1963

  WOODY ALLEN

  THE KUGELMASS EPISODE

  KUGELMASS, a professor of humanities at City College, was unhappily married for the second time. Daphne Kugelmass was an oaf. He also had two dull sons by his first wife, Flo, and was up to his neck in alimony and child support.

  “Did I know it would turn out so badly?” Kugelmass whined to his analyst one day. “Daphne had promise. Who suspected she’d let herself go and swell up like a beach ball? Plus she had a few bucks, which is not in itself a healthy reason to marry a person, but it doesn’t hurt, with the kind of operating nut I have. You see my point?”

  Kugelmass was bald and as hairy as a bear, but he had soul.

  “I need to meet a new woman,” he went on. “I need to have an affair. I may not look the part, but I’m a man who needs romance. I need softness, I need flirtation. I’m not getting younger, so before it’s too late I want to make love in Venice, trade quips at ‘21,’ and exchange coy glances over red wine and candlelight. You see what I’m saying?”

  Dr. Mandel shifted in his chair and said, “An affair will solve nothing. You’re so unrealistic. Your problems run much deeper.”

  “And also this affair must be discreet,” Kugelmass continued. “I can’t afford a second divorce. Daphne would really sock it to me.”

  “Mr. Kugelmass—”

  “But it can’t be anyone at City College, because Daphne also works there. Not that anyone on the faculty at C.C.N.Y. is any great shakes, but some of those coeds . . .”

  “Mr. Kugelmass—”

  “Help me. I had a dream last night. I was skipping through a meadow holding a picnic basket and the basket was marked ‘Options.’ And then I saw there was a hole in the basket.”

  “Mr. Kugelmass, the worst thing you could do is act out. You must simply express your feelings here, and together we’ll analyze them. You have been in treatment long enough to know there is no overnight cure. After all, I’m an analyst, not a magician.”

  “Then perhaps what I need is a magician,” Kugelmass said, rising from his chair. And with that he terminated his therapy.

  A couple of weeks later, while Kugelmass and Daphne were moping around in their apartment one night like two pieces of old furniture, the phone rang.

  “I’ll get it,” Kugelmass said. “Hello.”

  “Kugelmass?” a voice said. “Kugelmass, this is Persky.”

  “Who?”

  “Persky. Or should I say The Great Persky?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I hear you’re looking all over town for a magician to bring a little exotica into your life? Yes or no?”

  “Sh-h-h,” Kugelmass whispered. “Don’t hang up. Where are you calling from, Persky?”

  Early the following afternoon, Kugelmass climbed three flights of stairs in a broken-down apartment house in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. Peering through the darkness of the hall, he found the door he was looking for and pressed the bell. I’m going to regret this, he thought to himself.

  Seconds later, he was greeted by a short, thin, waxy-looking man.

  “You’re Persky the Great?” Kugelmass said.

  “The Great Persky. You want a tea?”

  “No, I want romance. I want music. I want love and beauty.”

  “But not tea, eh? Amazing. O.K., sit down.”

  Persky went to the back room, and Kugelmass heard the sounds of boxes and furniture being moved around. Persky reappeared, pushing before him a large object on squeaky roller-skate wheels. He removed some old silk handkerchiefs that were lying on its top and blew away a bit of dust. It was a cheap-looking Chinese cabinet, badly lacquered.

  “Persky,” Kugelmass said, “what’s your scam?”

  “Pay attention,” Persky said. “This is some beautiful effect. I developed it for a Knights of Pythias date last year, but the booking fell through. Get into the cabinet.”

  “Why, so you can stick it full of swords or something?”

  “You see any swords?”

  Kugelmass made a face and, grunting, climbed into the cabinet. He couldn’t help noticing a couple of ugly rhinestones glued onto the raw plywood just in front of his face. “If this is a joke,” he said.

  “Some joke. Now, here’s the point. If I throw any novel into this cabinet with you, shut the doors, and tap it three times, you will find yourself projected into that book.”

  Kugelmass made a grimace of disbelief.

  “It’s the emess,” Persky said. “My hand to God. Not just a novel, either. A short story, a play, a poem. You can meet any of the women created by the world’s best writers. Whoever you dreamed of. You could carry on all you like with a real winner. Then when you’ve had enough you give a yell, and I’ll see you’re back here in a split second.”

  “Persky, are you some kind of outpatient?”

  “I’m telling you it’s on the level,” Persky said.

  Kugelmass remained skeptical. “What are you telling me—that this cheesy homemade box can take me on a ride like you’re describing?”

  “For a double sawbuck.”

  Kugelmass reached for his wallet. “I’ll believe this when I see it,” he said.

  Persky tucked the bills in his pants pocket and turned toward his bookcase. “So who do you want to meet? Sister Carrie? Hester Prynne? Ophelia? Maybe someone by Saul Bellow? Hey, what about Temple Drake? Although for a man your age she’d be a workout.”

  “French. I want to have an affair with a French lover.”

  “Nana?”

  “I don�
�t want to have to pay for it.”

  “What about Natasha in ‘War and Peace’?”

  “I said French. I know! What about Emma Bovary? That sounds to me perfect.”

  “You got it, Kugelmass. Give me a holler when you’ve had enough.” Persky tossed in a paperback copy of Flaubert’s novel.

  “You sure this is safe?” Kugelmass asked as Persky began shutting the cabinet doors.

  “Safe. Is anything safe in this crazy world?” Persky rapped three times on the cabinet and then flung open the doors.

  Kugelmass was gone. At the same moment, he appeared in the bedroom of Charles and Emma Bovary’s house at Yonville. Before him was a beautiful woman, standing alone with her back turned to him as she folded some linen. I can’t believe this, thought Kugelmass, staring at the doctor’s ravishing wife. This is uncanny. I’m here. It’s her.

  Emma turned in surprise. “Goodness, you startled me,” she said. “Who are you?” She spoke in the same fine English translation as the paperback.

  It’s simply devastating, he thought. Then, realizing that it was he whom she had addressed, he said, “Excuse me. I’m Sidney Kugelmass. I’m from City College. A professor of humanities. C.C.N.Y.? Uptown. I—oh, boy!”

  Emma Bovary smiled flirtatiously and said, “Would you like a drink? A glass of wine, perhaps?”

  She is beautiful, Kugelmass thought. What a contrast with the troglodyte who shared his bed! He felt a sudden impulse to take this vision into his arms and tell her she was the kind of woman he had dreamed of all his life.

  “Yes, some wine,” he said hoarsely. “White. No, red. No, white. Make it white.”

  “Charles is out for the day,” Emma said, her voice full of playful implication.

  After the wine, they went for a stroll in the lovely French countryside. “I’ve always dreamed that some mysterious stranger would appear and rescue me from the monotony of this crass rural existence,” Emma said, clasping his hand. They passed a small church. “I love what you have on,” she murmured. “I’ve never seen anything like it around here. It’s so . . . so modern.”

  “It’s called a leisure suit,” he said romantically. “It was marked down.” Suddenly he kissed her. For the next hour they reclined under a tree and whispered together and told each other deeply meaningful things with their eyes. Then Kugelmass sat up. He had just remembered he had to meet Daphne at Bloomingdale’s. “I must go,” he told her. “But don’t worry, I’ll be back.”

  “I hope so,” Emma said.

  He embraced her passionately, and the two walked back to the house. He held Emma’s face cupped in his palms, kissed her again, and yelled, “O.K., Persky! I got to be at Bloomingdale’s by three-thirty.”

  There was an audible pop, and Kugelmass was back in Brooklyn.

  “So? Did I lie?” Persky asked triumphantly.

  “Look, Persky, I’m right now late to meet the ball and chain at Lexington Avenue, but when can I go again? Tomorrow?”

  “My pleasure. Just bring a twenty. And don’t mention this to anybody.”

  “Yeah. I’m going to call Rupert Murdoch.”

  Kugelmass hailed a cab and sped off to the city. His heart danced on point. I am in love, he thought, I am the possessor of a wonderful secret. What he didn’t realize was that at this very moment students in various classrooms across the country were saying to their teachers, “Who is this character on page 100? A bald Jew is kissing Madame Bovary?” A teacher in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, sighed and thought, Jesus, these kids, with their pot and acid. What goes through their minds!

  Daphne Kugelmass was in the bathroom-accessories department at Bloomingdale’s when Kugelmass arrived breathlessly. “Where’ve you been?” she snapped. “It’s four-thirty.”

  “I got held up in traffic,” Kugelmass said.

  KUGELMASS visited Persky the next day, and in a few minutes was again passed magically to Yonville. Emma couldn’t hide her excitement at seeing him. The two spent hours together, laughing and talking about their different backgrounds. Before Kugelmass left, they made love. “My God, I’m doing it with Madame Bovary!” Kugelmass whispered to himself. “Me, who failed freshman English.”

  As the months passed, Kugelmass saw Persky many times and developed a close and passionate relationship with Emma Bovary. “Make sure and always get me into the book before page 120,” Kugelmass said to the magician one day. “I always have to meet her before she hooks up with this Rodolphe character.”

  “Why?” Persky asked. “You can’t beat his time?”

  “Beat his time. He’s landed gentry. Those guys have nothing better to do than flirt and ride horses. To me, he’s one of those faces you see in the pages of Women’s Wear Daily. With the Helmut Berger hairdo. But to her he’s hot stuff.”

  “And her husband suspects nothing?”

  “He’s out of his depth. He’s a lack-lustre little paramedic who’s thrown in his lot with a jitterbug. He’s ready to go to sleep by ten, and she’s putting on her dancing shoes. Oh, well . . . See you later.”

  And once again Kugelmass entered the cabinet and passed instantly to the Bovary estate at Yonville. “How you doing, cupcake?” he said to Emma.

  “Oh, Kugelmass,” Emma sighed. “What I have to put up with. Last night at dinner, Mr. Personality dropped off to sleep in the middle of the dessert course. I’m pouring my heart out about Maxim’s and the ballet, and out of the blue I hear snoring.”

  “It’s O.K., darling. I’m here now,” Kugelmass said, embracing her. I’ve earned this, he thought, smelling Emma’s French perfume and burying his nose in her hair. I’ve suffered enough. I’ve paid enough analysts. I’ve searched till I’m weary. She’s young and nubile, and I’m here a few pages after Léon and just before Rodolphe. By showing up during the correct chapters, I’ve got the situation knocked.

  Emma, to be sure, was just as happy as Kugelmass. She had been starved for excitement, and his tales of Broadway night life, of fast cars and Hollywood and TV stars, enthralled the young French beauty.

  “Tell me again about O. J. Simpson,” she implored that evening, as she and Kugelmass strolled past Abbé Bournisien’s church.

  “What can I say? The man is great. He sets all kinds of rushing records. Such moves. They can’t touch him.”

  “And the Academy Awards?” Emma said wistfully. “I’d give anything to win one.”

  “First you’ve got to be nominated.”

  “I know. You explained it. But I’m convinced I can act. Of course, I’d want to take a class or two. With Strasberg maybe. Then, if I had the right agent—”

  “We’ll see, we’ll see. I’ll speak to Persky.”

  That night, safely returned to Persky’s flat, Kugelmass brought up the idea of having Emma visit him in the big city.

  “Let me think about it,” Persky said. “Maybe I could work it. Stranger things have happened.” Of course, neither of them could think of one.

  “WHERE the hell do you go all the time?” Daphne Kugelmass barked at her husband as he returned home late that evening. “You got a chippie stashed somewhere?”

  “Yeah, sure, I’m just the type,” Kugelmass said wearily. “I was with Leonard Popkin. We were discussing Socialist agriculture in Poland. You know Popkin. He’s a freak on the subject.”

  “Well, you’ve been very odd lately,” Daphne said. “Distant. Just don’t forget about my father’s birthday. On Saturday?”

  “Oh, sure, sure,” Kugelmass said, heading for the bathroom.

  “My whole family will be there. We can see the twins. And Cousin Hamish. You should be more polite to Cousin Hamish—he likes you.”

  “Right, the twins,” Kugelmass said, closing the bathroom door and shutting out the sound of his wife’s voice. He leaned against it and took a deep breath. In a few hours, he told himself, he would be back in Yonville again, back with his beloved. And this time, if all went well, he would bring Emma back with him.

  At three-fifteen the following afternoon, Per
sky worked his wizardry again. Kugelmass appeared before Emma, smiling and eager. The two spent a few hours at Yonville with Binet and then remounted the Bovary carriage. Following Persky’s instructions, they held each other tightly, closed their eyes, and counted to ten. When they opened them, the carriage was just drawing up at the side door of the Plaza Hotel, where Kugelmass had optimistically reserved a suite earlier in the day.

  “I love it! It’s everything I dreamed it would be,” Emma said as she swirled joyously around the bedroom, surveying the city from their window. “There’s F.A.O. Schwarz. And there’s Central Park, and the Sherry is which one? Oh, there—I see. It’s too divine.”

  On the bed there were boxes from Halston and Saint Laurent. Emma unwrapped a package and held up a pair of black velvet pants against her perfect body.

  “The slacks suit is by Ralph Lauren,” Kugelmass said. “You’ll look like a million bucks in it. Come on, sugar, give us a kiss.”

  “I’ve never been so happy!” Emma squealed as she stood before the mirror. “Let’s go out on the town. I want to see ‘Chorus Line’ and the Guggenheim and this Jack Nicholson character you always talk about. Are any of his flicks showing?”

  “I cannot get my mind around this,” a Stanford professor said. “First a strange character named Kugelmass, and now she’s gone from the book. Well, I guess the mark of a classic is that you can reread it a thousand times and always find something new.”

  THE lovers passed a blissful weekend. Kugelmass had told Daphne he would be away at a symposium in Boston and would return Monday. Savoring each moment, he and Emma went to the movies, had dinner in Chinatown, passed two hours at a discothèque, and went to bed with a TV movie. They slept till noon on Sunday, visited SoHo, and ogled celebrities at Elaine’s. They had caviar and champagne in their suite on Sunday night and talked until dawn. That morning, in the cab taking them to Persky’s apartment, Kugelmass thought, It was hectic, but worth it. I can’t bring her here too often, but now and then it will be a charming contrast with Yonville.