“Oh sure. I’m sure you never use that word when you’re with the GUYS.”
“We never do.”
“Oh I’m so sure.”
“Right.”
“Well I’ve heard guys talk…”
“Where? In California?”
She leaned back, straightened up and smiled.
“Let’s drop the subject,” she said.
Obviously California was going to be another sore between us. I hadn’t intended it that way, I didn’t know it bothered me that much, but whenever she came up with something new, something CALIFORNIA, it made me wonder, that’s all. Made me wonder about this, that and a lot of other things. Never mind California. I knew what it was like when people left town, period.
“Maybe,” she said tenderly, “we also need time to find OUR rhythm. The rhythm between us.”
We finished off the night with some heavy breathing on her living room couch.
“Like old times,” she whispered.
Chapter 17
When I drove to work on Monday I was still in that Stephanie glow – like living in a fairytale. Until…
Behold, there was a SALE!
The windows of Harry’s Carpet City were plastered with signs proclaiming a 50 percent reduction on everything.
FABULOUS SAVINGS, the signs read.
Signs all over the place; the Second Coming could never be like this.
Fat Jack grabbed me by the lapels, shook me, and ordered me to change the telephone pitch to reflect the new gospel.
“But we’re already saying FABULOUS savings,” I said.
“Then say something else!” Fat Jack hollered.
“Like what?”
“You’re the college graduate.”
I pondered. “TERRIFIC savings?”
“EVERYBODY and his uncle uses TERRIFIC,” Fat Jack sneered.
“Everybody uses FABULOUS,” I sneered back.
“How about GIGANTIC savings?” Fat Jack offered.
“Why not MONUMENTAL?”
“Why not EXTRAORDINARY?” Fat Jack said.
“We’ve used them all,” I said, “with about the same amount of luck.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Well find some new words, Eli. You’re an ACTOR. Actors are supposed to know words.”
“There are only so many superlatives in the English language, Fat Jack, and most of them have been used up.”
“What did you say?”
“I said…”
“No, I mean superlative. Is that what you said?”
“I said…”
He smacked me across the head. I smacked him back.
“You’re so dumb, Eli, you don’t even know when you’re smart. SUPERLATIVE. That’s the word. For the new pitch.”
“Brilliant.”
“Speaking of dumb, what do you take me for, Eli? I’m talking about Old Lou. Where’s he getting those million dollar leads?”
“What leads?”
“You know damn well what I’m talking about, Eli. Those QUALITY leads.”
“Oh.”
“Since when does a cripple like Lou Emmett close six thousand dollar sales? Not from YOUR leads. I’m not that stupid.”
“He’s getting them on his own.”
“How?”
“Ask Lou.”
“Fair enough. But be advised, his next wall-to-wall job could be his last.”
“I know.”
“In his physical condition he shouldn’t be measuring a LOG CABIN, never mind those palaces in Kenwood. He’s killing himself. He’s half dead as it is.”
“Goodbye.”
“Yutz.”
When I went upstairs Mona and the rest of the girls were busy dialing and Old Lou was waiting for me at my desk.
“I’ll be rewriting the pitch,” I said to Mona.
“Again?” she said.
“The new word is SUPERLATIVE.”
She looked at me. “That’s a big word.”
“Aren’t you tired of the old pitch?”
She shrugged. “Whatever works.”
Just like Mona to protest, and then let go. Was that a Cincinnati thing? I often wondered, or was it something that came from being a wife and mother – or was it something that came with age? Was it a good thing or a bad thing, this tendency to retreat? Was it healthy compromise or defeatism? Maybe it was all that, or maybe it was just Mona.
Lou had a cigar tucked between his fingers. “Did you know I used to smoke cigars?”
“I heard you used to be one mean son of a bitch.”
“I used to smoke cigars. Always lit one up after a sale.”
“Been lighting them up lately?”
He chuckled. “Know what else I used to go for after a sale?”
“Let me guess.”
“A lay.”
“One good screw deserves another.”
“I had more women than you could shake a stick at.”
“I’ll bet.”
I was trying to change the copy on the pitch. Writing in SUPERLATIVE wasn’t easy. Mona was right. Getting the girls to pronounce it would be the rough part. Only certain girls, for example, were meant for soliciting the better neighborhoods, like Hyde Park; those, let’s say, who didn’t come on with yiz or youz, or alls I know. Even the good ones, though, I couldn’t get out of the habit of “axing” a question.
“I could go sometimes, five, six times a night.”
I nodded.
“Did you hear me? Five, six times a night.”
“I believe you, Lou.”
“I had them knocking down my door.”
“To get in or out?”
He flared. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s a joke, Lou. An old joke.”
But Lou was steaming. “I had more women than YOU – and that’s no joke.”
“I thought I could joke with you, Lou. Thought we were pals.”
“Not about women.”
“Then about what?”
“Anything but women.”
According to the story, Lou’s wife had caused his heart attack. Also the stroke. Lou kept mum on the subject.
“Would you like it if I joked about Stephanie?”
“No I wouldn’t, Lou,” I said solemnly.
“So there you are.”
Back in his day, he said, women were a challenge. Today they took their clothes off just for the asking.
There used to be virgins.
“A kiss was a big deal back then,” he said. “Kissing wasn’t what you call FOREPLAY. Kissing was IT.”
“It’s getting back to that,” I said.
“Naw. There’s no sincerity between men and women.”
“What’s the matter, Lou?”
“What do you mean what’s the matter?”
“Something’s eating you.”
“Nothing’s eating me. I’ll tell you what’s eating me. This guy. Out in Northwood. A new development. I got him from my QUALITY leads. I measured his house. Three floors. Plus basement.” He started to cough, hacking. I thought this was the end of it right here for Lou. “I spent a whole day measuring. Now he wants me back. Says I measured wrong. I never measure wrong. Never.”
“I think that’s telling you something, Lou.”
“That’s telling me nothing.”
“So you’re going back?”
“Of course I’m going back. I do a job, I do it right.”
“Who is this guy?”
“Out in Northwood.”
“Who is the guy?”
“What’s the difference?”
“I want to know who he is.”
“Never mind.”
“Want me to go with you?”
“What for? I’m a big boy.” Then: “Sorry, Eli. It’s been a bad day. Fat Jack.” (Every place had a guy you could blame for everything. Just mention the name and everybody understood.) “Fat Jack’s been on my back. He calls me a CRIPPLE in front of everybody, even in front of the custom
ers downstairs. A joke’s a joke, but enough’s enough. He can be a real animal, Fat Jack.”
“Believe it or not, Lou, he means well.”
“They’re the worst kind.”
Chapter 18
Across the street at Ben’s News and Smoke Shop, Ben was in a lousy mood and I had hoped he wouldn’t be. I had a headache myself, probably from the heat, one reason I thought I’d get out of the boiler room for a while and visit Ben on the pretense of buying a Racing Form, though taking the afternoon off and going to the races was not such a bad idea if there was the money and the time. I needed a distraction, any distraction, but Ben had his own world to live in.
“They keep on coming.”
A councilman, right here in river city, was proposing a ban on smoking in the sanctity of your home and automobile.
“What’s next?”
This! A health food shop was “coming soon” up the street strictly for people, according to Ben, who cared everything about themselves and nothing for anybody else. Where’s the no boozing frenzy to accompany the no smoking crusade sweeping the land, and who ever got run over by a smokin’ driver as opposed to a drunken driver? The mobsters (that’s what he called politicians and corporate CEOs) keep making new rules for everyone except themselves. We’ve all got a rap sheet. We’re bar-coded from cradle to grave. There’s a dossier on all of us. Orwell only got the date wrong.
Now it got personal. The racetrack turned down Ben’s request for season’s passes on the grounds that he had once been arrested for bookmaking. “That was 20 years ago,” Ben said. “There hasn’t been a book in this place since that time. They closed me down for a year. Chances are they’ll close me down again, now that they’ve got me in their computers. You can’t hide from their computers. But what’s the difference. The wrecking crews are coming anyway.”
“Here?”
“Haven’t you heard? A new office building’s going up. We’re being torn down.”
“No I hadn’t heard.”
“Well there it is. Everything comes to an end, right?”
* * *
Sonja failed to show up for work and never called in sick, not the first day, second day, third day… I was relieved. I was also troubled. Relieved that she was gone. Troubled that she really wasn’t gone. Not this type. They don’t just disappear. They come back. They always come back. I know this type. People like this shoot up kids in their classrooms.
But perhaps, I thought, she fell off a cliff. Even if she died, I wouldn’t care. I’d care about the waste of a life. But not HER life. I was sick of LOONIES. When I was a kid the son of the people who lived downstairs was a loony, a schizophrenic who, of course, had his good days and his bad days, and always tipped you off when it would be a bad day, as when he’d bring in his own morning newspaper and not bring in ours. That was the signal. That meant whatever medications he was taking to regulate him weren’t working, or he’d stopped taking them, and was liable to beat his mother and father. On such days he’d be waiting for Dad to leave for work, block his path and just glare at him. That left Mom alone upstairs and sometimes, in school, that’s all I thought about, Mom home alone with this loony downstairs, and though I knew all about feeling sorry for the mentally ill, I couldn’t help but despise this individual and whatever chemical, or hand, it was that that had created such a monster. Who NEEDS them? Who asked for them? Dad would call Mom every hour on the hour and warn her not to go down to the basement to do the wash. We lived in terror. We’d hear him bang his head against the walls. We’d hear the wailing of his elderly mother and father. They’d commit him – ambulances were on our street more often than the ice cream truck – only to have him sign himself out, as was allowed by the new, stupid law. I wished he’d go on banging his head. One day he banged and banged and banged, and then it stopped. The ambulance came. When they left with him his mother said he was dead. She said, “Now we’ll have some peace.” I didn’t know if she was being realistic or sarcastic. Either way, I should have felt some remorse. But the only thing I felt was that it was OVER.
* * *
Sonja finally showed up, ho-hum, as if nothing were amiss, marched straight to her desk, studied the new SUPERLATIVE script, chuckled, and started dialing. She was back to being a blonde and this, dishwater tint, only illuminated the severity of her features. Mona looked at me, as did Marie, Denise and the others. I didn’t know what to do, which was exactly what she told me when the rest of them broke for lunch. “You don’t know what to do with me,” she said. “Do you?”
“I thought you had left us for good.”
“Wishful thinking?” she said with a trace of humor.
I asked her how she knew about the paintings, as mentioned in the note she had left on my door.
“You told me,” she said.
So I had. I had actually told Mona, but loud enough for everybody to hear.
She answered the next question before I had a chance to ask.
“Those parole people have been making my life miserable,” she said. “I was in jail for something I didn’t do.
I shrugged.
“Do you believe me?”
I shrugged again.
“I DIDN’T DO IT!” she said.
“Okay.”
Then, in a much softer tone, “You of all people should understand what happened.”
Something was being said here – like what I did in New York?
But she couldn’t know about that unless she were truly psychic, which I didn’t believe. About anybody.
“Things happen,” she said.
“Aha.”
“You know how something can just HAPPEN!”
I spotted the bandage around her left wrist.
“Like that?” I said.
“I had an accident.” Then: “Sorry about the note I left on your door.”
“So am I.”
“You have every right to be furious at me. That isn’t really ME, this side you’re seeing. I’m really not like this. No I’m not. I don’t care what people say. They’re wrong. You have no idea how much love I have to give, if only someone would give me half a chance.” Tears were in order right about here but she didn’t cry. “But it’s not your fault. In fact I feel sorry for you.”
“I think you’ve said enough. There’s no need to get personal. This is only a JOB, Sonja!”
“You’re right, and when I thought about it, how rotten I was to write you that note, is when I had the accident.”
“You slit your wrist.”
“It was an accident. I’ve done it before. Death isn’t the worst thing, you know.”
“It isn’t?”
“There’s something even worse.”
“Like what?”
Now she smiled. She always smiled at the wrong places.
“Oh – things.”
“Like what things?”
“Like finding out the truth. Do you forgive me?”
There really was no choice because once they started pulling the suicide routine on you – real or faked – the game was out of your hands. They OWNED you then. I’d had another one like that, years before, who committed suicide every Monday and Thursday. You knew they were using it, but you could never be sure.
“Please forgive me,” she said. “I’ll be a good girl. I didn’t mean to complicate your life. You can see why I can’t keep a boyfriend. I scare them all away.”
“Bette Davis, right?”
“Please?”
I said nothing.
“I promise never to mention Stephanie again. I hope you both live happily ever after.
“Okay?”
I said okay.
“You won’t regret this,” she said.
Chapter 19
“I regret this,” I said to Maishe that night over drinks at the Hilltop Bar in Mount Adams.
“Women,” he said.
“People.”
“Give us our daily temptation,” he said, about a religious experience he’d had the other
night; he’d been seduced by a preacher’s wife. Maishe said he noticed something about us. We seldom had dates, regular dates with regular girls, and here we were, supposed to be the two greatest Romeos Cincinnati had ever seen – which was by itself a clue as to why we didn’t have girls of our own. We usually had somebody else’s.
That’s why when holidays came around, even New Year’s, we were usually home watching Dick Clark.
Or stuffing ourselves with chili dogs at White Castle next to a drunk singing My Melancholy Baby.
“Ironic,” Maishe said.
“So the question is, why don’t you have a woman of your own? Because the right one hasn’t come along?”
“No. Because the right one has, every other night.”
Maishe had something going with Demona Karenina, yes, Demona Karenina, a Russian-Israeli lady who’d passed through our territory, from Los Angeles, to promote her new novel. She was a writer, of course, and gorgeous, and very much in love with Maishe and Maishe was in love with her, probably, but could not muster the enthusiasm to go chasing after her. Demona Karenina was roundly intellectual and hotly political and Maishe, if he wanted to, could match her smarts for smarts, politics for politics, but he didn’t want to upon the proposition that, as to world events especially, it’s all reruns. We’re only repeating ourselves. He was tuned out and had dropped out some time ago when all that happened to him – whatever it was. Keep it simple and bring on the girls.
So it came to this – a preacher’s wife. That hurt Maishe.
I asked him what denomination the preacher was. He didn’t know. He said it wasn’t the preacher he had in bed.
I asked him if he had ever made love to a rabbi’s wife. He said yes.
“I’ve got to stop this,” he said.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said about the preacher’s wife. Or maybe about the rabbi’s wife, too.
“Of course it was my fault.”
“You said she seduced you.”
“But it still takes two.”
“What denomination was the rabbi?”
“What do you mean?”
“Orthodox, conservative, reform?”
“What difference does it make, Eli?”
“Big difference. A reform rabbi, or even conservative wouldn’t be so bad. But orthodox…”
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