The Collected Stories

by Leonard Michaels

  “I want to sleep.”

  “Miller, I see something. Quick. Please.”

  “A flower.”

  “You see a flower?”

  “It’s red.”

  “What kind of flower? I was sending a parachute.”

  “That’s it, Mildred. A parachute flower.”

  “Fuck you, Miller.”

  “You, too. Let me sleep.”

  “Miller, I still see something. Hurry. Try again.”

  I lay still, eyes shut. Nothing came to me except a knock at the door, so quiet I imagined I hadn’t heard it. She said, “Was that a knock?”

  I sat up and listened, then got out of bed and went to the door. It was Max and Sleek. Max nodded hello. Sleek stepped backward, but a smile moved in his pallor. I said, “Hi.” I heard Mildred rushing to the kitchen sink and held them at the door. “Only one room and a kitchen,” I said. Max nodded again. The smile faded slowly in Sleek’s pale, flat face. Water crashed, then she was shooting to the closet, jamming into heels, scrambling a blouse on her back. A light went on. She slashed her mouth with lipstick. “Come in, come in.”

  They came in.

  “Please sit down.”

  Max sat down in his coat, looked into the folds across his lap, and began to roll a cigarette. Sleek sat down in his coat, too, watching Max. Both of them glanced once at Mildred, then at each other. I said, then Max said. Sleek laughed feebly as if suppressing a cough. Then they both stared at her. Max offered her the first drag on the cigarette. She said quickly, but in a soft voice, cool, shy. They looked at one another, Max and Sleek, and agreed with their eyes: she was a smart little girl. I sat down. I told them she might be pregnant. We were thinking about getting married, I said. I was going to look for a new job. Everyone laughed at something. Max said, Sleek said. They took off their coats. She was now shining awake, feeling herself, being looked at.

  “Do you want some coffee?” She tossed her hair slightly with the question.

  Max said, “Do you have milk?”

  Sleek said, “Coffee.”

  She curled tightly in her chair, legs underneath, making knees, shins, ankles to look at. They looked. I stood up and went into the kitchen for the coffee and milk. Max was saying and Sleek added. She was quick again, laughing, doing all right for herself. I took my time, then came back in with the coffee and milk. I asked what they were into lately, imports, exports, hustlers, what. Sleek sucked the cigarette. Max rolled another and was looking at Mildred. He asked if she had considered an abortion. She smiled. Sleek said I was an old friend. He would get us a discount. They wouldn’t take their cut until I had a new job. They shook their heads. No cut. Max mentioned a doctor in Jersey, a chiropractor on Seventy-second Street. He said his own girl had had an abortion and died. Almost drove him nuts. He drank like a pleeb. You have to get a clean doctor. Otherwise it can be discouraging. His stable was clean. Sleek nodded shrewdly, something tight in his face, as if he knew. “Of course,” he said. “Of course.” He opened his hand and showed Mildred some pills. She raised an eyebrow, shrugged, looked at me. I was grinning, almost blind.

  “Do what you like.”

  She took a pill. I took a pill, too. Max talked about the eggbeater they use and what comes out, little fingers, little feet. Mildred squirmed, showed a line of thigh, feel of hip, ankles shaped like fire.

  “Abortions are safe,” I said, and waved a hand.

  “Right,” said Max. He tossed a pill into his mouth.

  Sleek said he had a new kind of pill. Mildred asked shyly with her eyes. He offered immediately. She took it. “The whole country shoves pills up itself,” he said. “My mother takes stoppies at night and goies in the morning.” He gleamed, sucked the cigarette, and sat back as if something had been achieved.

  Max frowned, mentioned his dead girl, and said it hadn’t been his baby. He shook his head, grinding pity, and said, “Discouraging.”

  “Your mother?” asked Mildred.

  Sleek said she lived in Brooklyn. I nodded as if to confirm that he had a mother. He whispered, “The womb is resilient. Always recovers.” Max said, “Made of steel.” “Of course,” said Sleek, “chicks are tough.” Mildred agreed, sat up, showed us her womb. Max took it, squeezed, passed it to Sleek. He suppressed a laugh, then glanced at me.

  “Squeeze, squeeze,” I said.

  He said, “Tough number. Like steel.”

  I said it looked edible. Sleek stared at Mildred. She got up and took her womb to the stove. I had a bite. Max munched and let his eyelids fall to show his pleasure. Sleek took a sharp little bite and made a smacking noise in his mouth. I felt embarrassed, happy. Mildred seemed happy, seeing us eat. I noticed her grope furtively for something else to eat. But it was late now. Rain banged like hammers, no traffic moved in the street. They waited for a few more minutes, then Max yawned, belched, stood up. “We’ll get a cab on Sixth Avenue,” he said to Sleek. I said we would decide, then get in touch with him right away. We thanked them for the visit. I apologized for not being more definite. Max shrugged. They were in the neighborhood, anyway. Sleek said take a couple of days to think about it. Gay things were said at the door. Max said, Sleek said, Mildred laughed goodbye. Their voices and feet went down the stairs.

  Mildred kicked off her shoes. I turned out the light. We kissed. I put my hand between her legs. She began to cry.

  “You may not love me, Miller, but you’ll cry when I’m gone.”

  “Stop it,” I said.

  She cried. I made fists and pummeled my head. She cried. I pummeled until my head slipped into my neck. She stopped crying. I smashed my mouth with my knee. She smiled a little.

  “Do it again.”

  I started eating my face. She watched, then her eyes grew lazy, lids like gulls, sailing down. She lay back and spread underneath like a parachute. I lay beside her and looked at the window. It was black and shining with rain. I said, “I like your hair, Mildred, your eyes, your nose, your legs. I love your voice.” She breathed plateaus and shallow, ragged gullies. She slept on her back, mouth open, hands at her sides, turned up. Rain drilled the window. Thunder burdened the air.

  Fingers and Toes

  I SCRIBBLED A HASTY NOTE, REGRETFUL, TO THE POINT. Fourteen pages, sharp as knives. I refuse. I don’t feel good. The date is inconvenient. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Then I stopped and sat rigid as a sphinx. Henry was my dearest friend. It was brutal not to mitigate such severity. Not many people count in one’s life. A fool slams doors. Who knows, given the vicissitudes, where a man has to grovel tomorrow? I sprang forward and said as much. I told him his company was more precious to me than my own. I’d love to come to your dinner party, I said. Nothing short of atomic holocaust can prevent it. You’re a man of genius and personality. You give life to my life. But refuse I must. To be frank, Henry, it’s impossible for me to come. You are a person who doesn’t like me. Why? I could say this or that, but who knows his own deficiencies? Who? We know each other too well these days, but who, who among us knows what the others know? The mystery of self lies here, Henry. There in the hearts of others. Consider how often we’ve laughed at a mutual friend and said, That’s just like him, or, You know Ahab would do that sort of thing. Yet the man himself, Henry, does he say these things? No. He goes his way, grinning, tipping his hat, waving to friends on every side. He goes ass out in the eyes of the world. I flew to the mirror, ripped down my pants. I flew back and said, Henry, I read books, I go to the movies, I look constantly in mirrors both literal and figurative. But do I see anything? How could I? I’m not my friend. I’m not Henry. I’m Phillip, Henry. Your friend. I could say things about you that would make your nipples pucker. As for your invitation let me say I am delighted to accept it. I reread the note, chucked up laughs like the clap of big buttocks, and flushed it down the bowl. The one I sent was a stream of polite, innocuous drivel. Twenty-five pages. Pleasing to hear from him, I said. I confessed that I loved to get letters, especially invitations. For just that alone I was grateful to
him. I wished so much I could come to his dinner party. Nothing I’d rather, but I had stomach cancer and had to pass it up. Some future date perhaps when they cut out my stomach, etc., etc. I was sitting beside the phone nibbling Dexedrine when he called.

  “I just read your letter, Phillip. Woo, what a letter. I’m sorry you’re sick.”

  “My feet are like seashells, Henry.”

  “No.”

  “Seashells. Curled, hard, I walk bonky, bonky.”

  “Phillip, you’re not the only one. Every time I lose touch with a friend something terrible happens to him. I could go on and on. I hate letters.”

  “Mine was impulsive. I’ll never write you again.”

  “I hate to walk in the street, Phillip. I might meet some friend about to kill himself. I sneak everywhere. I wanted to talk to you, by the way, about our dinner party. And now look. I intended to say a few words to make you change your mind. This is what I get.”

  “Months of silence, Henry. Things happen.”

  “I couldn’t leave well enough alone. Besides, Marjorie insisted. ‘Call Phillip. Call Phillip,’ she said. Such a trivial matter, one night, a dinner party. The truth is, Phillip, there aren’t many people in one’s life who count. I could ask seventy or eighty people for that night, but how many of them would be you?”

  “I was going to kill myself that night.”

  “Are you saying you won’t come?”

  “But I’ll come.”

  “I knew you would. I know you so well, Phillip. You have no convictions.”

  I laughed. He did, too. Nee, nee, nee. Behind him somewhere Marjorie clapped her mouth. Nee, nee filtered through, female, insidious. Henry snarled. I did, too. Footsteps hurried away and I knew there was going to be trouble. From a distance Marjorie screamed, “I laugh, I pee, and I don’t care who knows it.” Henry said, “I’ll call you back, Phillip.” “Just tell him to come,” she screamed.

  I quivered all over. It was excruciating to bear such knowledge. The private life of a friend is to be dreamed about, never known. I went to the bathroom and stepped under a hot shower. Wax coiled out of my ears like snakes. The phone rang again. “Henry,” I said, “didn’t you call earlier?” I picked up the phone. “Henry,” I said, and he said, “Then we’ll expect you, Phillip.”

  “Of course.”

  “It wasn’t of course a little while ago.”

  His voice was hard and mean. I remembered he could be that way and shook my head.

  “You know me, Henry.”

  “Of course, of course, but I’d as soon you stayed in your rathole downtown if you don’t feel like coming.”

  “Just tell me when.”

  “Next Wednesday. Six-thirty. Perhaps you can’t make it at such a wild hour?”

  “It’s perfect. One of the best times. It gives me pleasure just to think about it.”

  “You ought to hang up the phone and masturbate.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’ll just open the window.”

  Nee, nee, we laughed. I grinned and shook my head. I remembered how witty he could be.

  “And another thing, Phillip. It’s not crucial, but I want to say it.”

  “Please.”

  “I know about you and Marjorie, Phillip.”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “Makes no difference. We’re civilized people, not Victorians. What’s finished is finished, no more, void. What remains is friendship. Our friendship. Even stronger than before. I hope you feel the same way. That’s how Marjorie feels.”

  “That’s how I feel, too, Henry.”

  “Then there isn’t anything more to be said about that. Am I right?”

  “You’re right.”

  “Are you absolutely sure? I don’t like to leave things unsaid, Phillip. They always come out one way or another.”

  “I know, I know. Henry, I get boils on my neck when I leave things unsaid.”

  “Good, then you understand me. Next Wednesday, Phillip. Six-thirty.”

  “Right.”

  Nee, nee we laughed and said goodbye.

  Dinner with them was out. Furthermore I wouldn’t eat a thing. Not that night and not until that night. The idea just came to me. I didn’t struggle to establish thesis and antithesis. It came BOOMBA. Real ideas strike like eagles. A man who loves premises and conclusions loves a whore. I wouldn’t eat that night and not until that night. That’s how well he knew me. Not at all.

  I ran about my room until I got sleepy and then spent the night whirling in bed shrieking curses. At dawn I was sitting up with two fists of hair, cool as a Buddha. Dinner with them was out. The idea gave me shivers. Fat ran off. Bones lifted under the skin. I went and leaned against the refrigerator door. Hours passed, the day, the night. I leaned with the insouciance of a hoodlum or a whore. I gazed down at my feet. Gaunt, sharp as chicken feet. The objective principles on which I stood. The first line of a poem came to me: “Bitter, proud metatarsals.” I smelled chicken salad and cream cheese, but didn’t move until I ripped open the refrigerator door, grabbed handfuls of salad and cheese, and flung them out the window. “Ya, ya,” I shouted, “food is out.” My hand seized a frozen steak and flung it into my mouth. I swallowed. Instantly, I became depressed. The steak was in. Like a virgin deflowering I sank to the floor. The steak worked grimly inside. I wanted to make it stop. My stomach churned like the back of a garbage truck. Arteries sucked. I had the steak in my neck, thighs, fingers, toes. But all right, I thought. I’ll journey to the end of the night like Saint Augustine and the Marquis de Sade. The more things are different the more they are the same. Immoral is moral.

  I went to the nearest restaurant, a fish house. It made no difference. I ate a cow, I’d eat a fish. I ordered lobster Leningrad and a plate of mixed crawlers, flung everything inside, and chewed in a deliberate way. In my mind I said, “Yum.” The waiter refilled my bread basket. I grunted, “Thanks.” People like me, he said, made his job meaningful. I told him I understood food. He nodded.

  “May I watch?”

  “Please,” I said.

  He stood beside my chair and put his hand discreetly on my shoulder. His mouth moved with mine. When I finished he smiled and asked if I enjoyed the meal. I rubbed my stomach and winked. He nodded in an appreciative way. I leaped from my chair. We embraced. “My name is Phillip,” I said. He said he could tell. I squeezed money into his hand. He protested. I refused to listen, squeezed more, snapped up the menu and shoved it down into my crotch.

  Days passed. The dinner party was only hours away. As it drew closer I couldn’t repress what Henry had said. He knew I was going to come. He knew me so well. “But you were very wrong,” I said. However wrong I could indulge the idea that he was right. I indulged it: “You were right.” The idea gave me pleasure. The pleasure of an infant. Something turned, poked, smelled, very known. I bobbled out into the street and walked among strangers to intensify the pleasure. None of them knew me. I went to a liquor store and bought wine, red and white, to express my contempt for Henry’s dinner. A bottle of Armenian raki was on sale. I bought it, too, then left and bought flowers. Around midnight I stood outside Henry’s door. It was open, welcoming the night. There were seventy or eighty people in the house. I knocked. Henry came running. “Someone’s at the door,” he yelled. “Phillip. What a surprise.”

  I leaped backward into the darkness. He leaped after me and caught my arm. “Come in, come in.” He took my wine and flowers and flung them into a closet. “We had a little dinner party.”

  “I already had dinner. Thanks for inviting me in, Henry. I can’t stay.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it. It’s nothing personal.”

  “But, Phillip, I want to talk to you.”

  “Let me continue for a moment. Then I’m going back to my rathole. I appreciate your invitation more than I can tell you. You believe me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Don’t say of course. I really mean it.”

 
“I do, too, of course.”

  “Don’t say of course, Henry. You mean a great deal to me. You’re my dearest friend, the only one I have. It kills me not to come to your dinner party. But I can’t. Let’s not talk about it, all right? I don’t ask a lot of favors of you.”

  “Will you have a drink?”

  “Bourbon.”

  “Ice? Water?”

  “No. In fact, look, don’t even pour it into the glass.”

  I snapped up the bottle and swallowed. People were everywhere, standing, sitting, talking, smoking, drinking. It was a brilliant crowd. The women had nice legs. The men looked as if it didn’t matter. I felt a bit out of place because I didn’t know any of them. Henry touched my elbow. He spoke very quietly, very slowly, and as if we were the only ones there.

  “Phillip, I do want to talk to you.”

  I was thrilled by the intensity of his voice.

  “There’s nothing to talk about at a party,” I said.

  He shrugged. “You’re right, Phillip.”

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  He shrugged again. It was very like him to do that when he had a lot on his mind. “About? You’re hungry for topics? I want more than to talk about. I want dialogue, Phillip, not topics. I don’t want to talk about a thing. Things crap up talk.”

  “I agree. Now I’m going, Henry.”

  “Go.”

  “But I’ll listen for a minute if you like.”

  “Can you listen for a minute? Don’t say yes if you can’t.”

  “I’ll listen for a minute.”

  “Phillip, I’m going out of my mind.”

  “Why?”

  “I couldn’t tell you in a million years.”

  “It’s been good talking to you, Henry.”

  “Wait, Phillip. I want to tell you a story. Not a story, a parable.”

  “Oh.”

  “It represents my connection with the elemental life. Nothing else. Not art, not politics, not history, not anything but the elemental life. The truth is, Phillip, I don’t give a damn about anything else. I’m talking about love.”