Spread

by Malzberg, Barry

  “I’ll kill the bitch,” I find myself saying. “I’ll kill the lousy bitch for this when I find her.” But I realize that I do not know which bitch I am talking about; Virginia as well has not been very nice to me recently. “Both of them,” I say, appeasing the mad, logical inner voice, “if that’s the way it has to be, I’ll kill them all.” But reason intervenes to point out that this would be difficult, would demand planning and execution and, in the bargain, happens to be illegal at the present time. “The hell with it then,” I add. I want to wreck the apartment but wrecking is not quite my gig; I would have no idea of exactly where to start or how to do so in the most spectacular fashion and, anyway, I would only have to come back and clean it up later, which is discouraging.

  There seems to be little enough that I can do. I pour myself a drink which is not satisfying since I am not a drinker, try to feel melodramatic as I sip it but this rather fails to work as well, and finally I decide to leave the apartment and strike out in the best way known to me. If she betrays me, I will betray her. (I have forgotten in this pose, my adulteries.) I will go to midtown and pick up a prostitute.

  So I lock up the apartment and go to midtown and pick up a prostitute easily enough from one of the streets, but in the hotel it turns out that she recognizes my face; has, in fact, been reading the newspaper for years and years and for some reason this fills her with shrieks of whorish laughter. “They’ll never believe this,” she says underneath me, her breasts moving all over her abdominal wall as she giggles, as I try to pump her, “they’ll never believe this if I ever tell them; isn’t this the craziest thing? I mean, I was just so surprised when I recognized who you were; maybe I shouldn’t have said anything but I was just so surprised.” I huff and puff and try to discharge within her a mean, boiling load but there is absolutely nothing, and I slide off. “They won’t believe this,” she says again in a different tone of voice and then pats my prick and tells me not to worry, don’t feel bad about it, she knows how these things are, she’s been through it hundreds of times. I wouldn’t believe the stories she could tell me and anyway this one time she will remit the fee. The hotel I will still have to pay; she has nothing to do with that part of it. They gave us the room space and anyway they give her protection and shield her from the cops.

  XXXIX

  We hire a new secretary, a blond machine from Northwestern University who says that she wants a job in publishing and is willing to break in any way she can, but if I get any ideas about her just because she is willing to work for me, I will find myself in a lot of difficulty. She is engaged to a physics graduate student who took physical education courses at New York University and can kill people with bare hands if necessary. She will do the work but she owes nothing beyond that single obligation and if I do not like her attitude, I am free not to hire her or, for that matter, to fire her at any time, take it or leave it. Oddly, I find that her approach excites me, and I tell her that she can have the job, no questions asked. Her first day of employment I make a desultory attempt to take her out for a drink after work but she says no, she will have none of that at all; she is meeting her fiancé right after work for drinks and then going to his apartment where she is half-shacked-up anyway and if I do not like this I am perfectly free to fire, etc. I tell her that this is perfectly all right. In fact, I feel a perverse sense of relief. It seems that for the moment at any rate, I am finished with involvements.

  XL

  Our lawyers report that matters are settled with the District Attorney who has decided to drop all charges against us and remove from wholesalers and distributors any covert sanctions heretofore imposed. This means that for the first time since we began, we are completely free of legal harassment, free of the threat of court-and-imprisonment, free to do our thing as it were, but rather than feeling elation there is a peculiar letdown which I communicate to the lawyers, a couple of bumbling bald men in the Wall Street district who have great contacts in the Municipal Courthouse and a ferociously prompt billing system. “I should think you’d be very pleased,” they say. (They seem to talk in chorus.) “This is what we’ve been struggling for all this time.”

  “I suppose so. It’s just a feeling of letdown. And you begin to wonder why he took the pressure off at this time. What does he have up his sleeve?”

  “Oh, nothing,” they say, “nothing at all. I just don’t think he wants to fight it anymore, he knows that he’d lose on appeal.”

  “That never worried him before. Maybe they feel there’s nothing to fight anymore. That we’re no longer a menace.”

  “Oh, my, indeed,” the lawyers say, “you simply do not understand. The pressures of the District Attorney’s office. The turnover in personnel all the lime. The political intervention, the harassment, the difficult line they have to walk, the newspapers. They have enormous problems. They simply don’t choose to fight what they know they can’t beat. When you’ve been around as long as we have you’ll understand this. By the way, we’re withdrawing from the case.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We’re withdrawing from the case. The case is closed and our services are no longer needed. So we won’t be representing you anymore. Our bills are due immediately upon being rendered; we’ll get a final settlement.”

  “Now I really don’t understand. Why are you dropping us?”

  “It’s not that we’re dropping you,” the lawyers say with a nervous giggle. “How could we do that? We’ve fought the good fight through the end and received, ah, a most satisfactory settlement. A total resolution as a matter of fact. Now we feel it’s time to get into other areas, areas where our competence is, ah, more needed at the present time. Our bills are due when rendered and the final bill — ”

  “So if the case is won, there’s nothing more to worry about. We aren’t a problem anymore. Representing us would be easy. So why drop us?”

  “It’s a corporate decision,” the lawyers say rather primly and fold their hands. “Internal pressures, a question of work load. You wouldn’t be able to understand; it’s not your field. I’m afraid this decision is final. The partners concur.”

  “You mean the partners ordered it.”

  “The partners concur. I’m afraid that this appointment is running somewhat, uh, overlong; if you’d be good enough — ”

  “You’re dropping us,” I say, “that’s what you’re doing. First the District Attorney and now you. No one cares about us anymore, is that it!”

  “Why, I thought,” our lawyers say, rubbing their palms and looking wisely at one another as the secretary comes in to usher me out, “why, I really thought that that was your prime objective from the beginning, wasn’t it?”

  XLI

  A letter arrives registered mail from an attorney in the midwest. He represents one Norman Boggess of Joliet, Illinois, who incurred severe damages to a personal area of his body through the use of a product advertised in our pages. Mr. Boggess is now receiving competent medical treatment, but it is the opinion of the physicians that he sought and received said treatment too late. Mr. Norman Boggess and his wife have been irretrievably denied the pleasures and obligations of the marital act and in addition have been denied children. Accordingly he is instructing us that he is filing suit against us and the B&E Corporation of Santa Barbara, California, for five million dollars plus exemplary damages as of the date of the letter. If we wish to avoid legal action and its subsequent penalties and unpleasantness, we and B&E may jointly send a certified check in the amount of five million dollars to the attorney in full settlement of all claims; the attorney will then make disposition of the check to his clients. He will assume that if he does not hear from us within forty-eight hours of the date of receipt, we are uninterested in seeking a settlement and civil action will then continue.

  I close the doors of my office and phone B&E. After some time the information operator tells me that there is no listing for such a company in California. I point out to her that I have been through this once before and that th
ere must, simply must be a listing for the company whether filed or unlisted, and I will thank her to produce this information immediately. She connects me with her supervisor with whom I become exceedingly abusive, but there is no listing for a company such as B&E or any of their other listed names, and the supervisor is incapable of helping me further.

  I send B&E a copy of the letter registered mail, special delivery, and tell them in a brief covering letter that the matter is entirely out of my hands. Two days later, I receive a phone call from my friend, the conveyor of information from the company.

  “They told me to tell you,” he says, “that they are canceling all advertising as of this minute. Every single bit. You pull out all the mechanicals, they ain’t paying for no goddamned thing as of this minute.”

  “Did they receive my letter?”

  “They didn’t tell me nothing about no letter. They gave no messages about no letter. They just me to tell you that all the ads come out and they ain’t never going in again. That’s all.”

  “They had to receive my letter. I sent it registered mail. I have a receipt.”

  “They don’t tell me nothing. I just work for them, I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t want to know. You tell them about the letter.”

  “All right. I’ll tell them about the letter. Connect me with someone.”

  “They’re all out to lunch. They’ll be out to lunch for a long time; it’s a sales conference.”

  “Have one of them call me.”

  “They don’t make no outgoing calls on sales conference days. They can’t.

  “So let them call me tomorrow.”

  “It’s a sales conference week. The whole week, they’re tied up with sales conferences.”

  “So they can call me next Monday.”

  “The week just started today. It don’t end until next Thursday.”

  “So tell them to call me Friday. I’ll hold off until Friday.”

  “They don’t make no plans that far ahead. I’m sorry but that’s the way they run the shop. Sometimes they got to go right into a sales conference week again. Then there’s the matter of the conventions. They go to lots of conventions, these guys.”

  “We’re being sued for five million dollars!”

  “I don’t know nothing about that. They didn’t tell me about no five million dollars. I just deliver the messages.”

  “Tell them to forget it.”

  “I don’t tell them nothing. I just take messages. You tell them what you want to tell them.”

  “Get me them.”

  “They’re out to lunch.”

  “All right,” I say. “All right. I get the picture by now. Forget it.”

  “The ads come out, you remember that now. They were very explicit about that; the ads, every single one of them, come out. If they don’t come out they will be very unhappy and they are not going to pay you anyway.”

  “Good-bye,” I say and hang up.

  I go to the cabinet and remove another B&E product, a plastic inflatable doll with the female features of a cartoon character, the rubbery mass of it now odorous and clinging together. With gasping, arching breasts, I blow up the inflatable doll to its full expanse, four and a half feet of stiff rubber that has the warm, sticky feeling of a balloon. Painted on the balloon are nipples. The mouth, expanded, smiles down at me, the eyes wink. Armless, the balloon totters on an uneasy base, bangs against me as I touch it.

  I put my arms around Lindy the Inflatable Companion, wonderful for home or trips, and think about many things for the remainder of the afternoon.

  XLII

  “Marry me,” I said to my wife, three weeks before she said she would, already, she would. “Marry me and let this be the second chance in our lives. Everybody is entitled to another chance, that’s America, that’s fate; that’s what the whole country believes in and I believe in it, too. I know that whatever we have suffered, whatever we have lost, whatever we feel has been denied us we can reach for again. Just say this: say that between the two of us we can make another beginning and what our history has denied us, we can make again.” I was an extremely melodramatic young man, perhaps more melodramatic than is the style nowadays but this was the late 1950’s, of course, and I had just become a college sophomore after two years in the army investigating the interior of northern Germany, and I was rather desperate. My wife — this is hard to believe — was a freshman who painted pictures and who wanted, at least once to sing art songs in a concert house in Europe. This is not ridiculous, it is the way that many people thought back in the 1950’s, and for that matter I wanted to write novels.

  “I don’t know,” she said, “it’s too fast. The whole thing is too fast. I’ve just been on the campus for three months, the first time I’ve ever been away from home, the first time I’ve had to discover that there’s a person there outside of my parents, and before I even have a chance to discover that person, I find that you want to get married. I mean, it isn’t as if I’m not flattered and I do like you very much but I am only 18 — ”

  “Marry me,” I said, “it’s not a question of support; I have the assistance from the government for the tuition and I can get a job. And my parents have a little money for me anytime I want it. And somehow we can manage. We can live more cheaply than the two of us could separately. It will be like saving money. And you’ll have a chance to do everything.”

  “I don’t know, Walter,” she said, “I don’t know.” And she kissed me langorously, even then she knew how to kiss, oh, God how she could kiss! and we began to neck, and in due course in my old car parked up at the cliffs, we began to pet and one thing led to another although of course that was the year when “nothing went on below the waist” unless you were engaged and we were not engaged until three weeks later when something did “go on below the waist” and she decided that this would be the best thing to do.

  “Marry me and change my life,” I said and so we were married and so my life was changed and so we lived happily ever after. For a time. For quite a time. It is surprising to realize how much time we had. More than we could have understood then. If not enough. But nothing is ever quite enough, to be sure, in the long run.

  XLIII

  There were almost no slush submissions all last week and more than half of the personal advertisers have pulled out. The loss of the B&E business has left a terrific hole in the paper, of course, and we have had to cut back to a sixteen-page format, something we have not been at since our fourth issue. I do not know if the personal advertisements have all made their connections or whether they have simply given up hope. In any event no one seems particularly interested.

  I have made it a matter of pride from the first never to check the competition — the lousy parasites and thieves who jumped in when I had the courage to show the way was clear — but I broke policy to the extent of picking up a few issues yesterday, and they all seem to be having similar difficulties. B&E has moved over to one of them but the others are back at twelve pages and the B&E ads printed are not the lusty ones I remember.

  Something seems to be terribly wrong but I do not know what it is and I lack the energy to investigate. Some terrible events are occurring in the public domain — I try to shut it out as much as possible but now and then it intrudes — having to do with the invasion of yet another country and the near-assassination of a powerful conservative congressional figure — and perhaps when these ease off and things return to “normal” sales will improve. On the other hand, perhaps they will not. It is difficult to say. In other times I would have been more interested, but a peculiar apathy seems to have overtaken me; a physical weakness in the limbs and joints which moves placidly enough throughout the body and which leaves me weak and submissive, feeling like a limb which has gone to sleep and knows too well the agony of being joggled awake, so remains crouched under the other limb, the arteries pressed tight, denying the pressure of the living heart.

  XLIV

  I have left the apartment and now live in
a furnished room in a large, odorous rooming house near the offices. Subletting the apartment was easy enough, I threw in the funiture, kitchen equipment and a large sheaf of pornography spread over three closets in the bedroom which will be a pleasant and unexpected bonus to the young couple who rented it should they ever stumble across the goodies. Giving each other yearning looks across the coffee tables, accepting every figure I quoted with quick, mumbling nods of the head, I doubt that they will stumble across the pornography for a long time even though the spirit is known eventually to flag, one’s true love to turn pale and the embers of desire to ash.

  I live in this furnished room; it is far more convenient, contiguous with the offices, and having as it does only a bed, desk and chair, it imposes no housekeeping problems. Once a week the landlord, for a fee, sends up a chambermaid to clean out the refuse and put on fresh sheets; every third night or so a hasty bump and thump from the adjoining room, a cry of sheer passion, remind me that the tenants here, no less than anywhere else, are possessed by common desires. My wife’s lawyer contacted me shortly before I left our apartment and worked out a rather equitable, generous settlement which provides that she get no settlement fee and nothing weekly in alimony for the rest of her life. I understand that a quick, uncontested divorce has been worked out somewhere or the other and this is for the best. My wife was always a highly moral type; it would be expected that she would seek a divorce to sever a marriage as quickly as a marriage to cement a relationship; there is something surgical and merciless about her, for all her talk of living flexibly toward the inconsonant future.

  My single companion is Lindy the Inflatable Companion whom I took home from the offices last week and who now keeps me company in the room when I am home and not engaged in professional tasks. I can perch her atop the desk to witness me while I lie on the bed; I can place her on the bed to see me while I struggle with an article at the desk; I can put her between the bed and the desk to see me pace as I work out the details in my head. She is not lovable, but she makes few demands; she is hardly attractive either but there is something to be said about the solidity and sheer sanity of her presence: she engages in no dialogues, makes no arguments, has no sting to relationships, has no questions about the future. I still feel her faintly horrid to the touch and pity those men to whom she has been sold as a masturbatory object (and at the same time am perversely jealous of those men, thousands of them possessing copies of my Lindy in small rooms dotted throughout this and the other nations), but my interests go far beyond the blatantly sexual: I have not attempted sex since the night my wife left me. Desire seems to have been excised surgically too; something else burns within me in exchange but it is nothing which has to do with human beings or the huffings and heavings of ejaculation. Lindy knows of this and the other things quite well; she regards me with a smile as I work and sleep, she may, for all I know, be making up a set of observations for her memoirs. She has all the time in the world. Built to last at a rugged fifty-two inches out of solid latex with a tough inflatable base, Lindy will undoubtedly survive me and all of those who made her. In that sense alone, she is not to be dismissed out of hand.