The Collected Stories

by Leonard Michaels

  A Green Thought

  I YELLED; SHE RAN IN; I POINTED. “WHY IS IT GREEN?” She clapped her mouth; I shrieked, “Why is it green?” She answered … I shrieked, “Vatchinol infection!” She whispered … “Green medicine!” I wouldn’t let her mitigate; shoved her aside. “No mitigations!” She picked up a washcloth. I wouldn’t let her wash it. “No washing it!” I lunged into my clothes, laughed ironically, slammed out … Subway steps, downtown express, eighty miles an hour. Hot, cold, nauseated. Nevertheless, nevertheless, nevertheless. Not like the last time, fighting, fighting, collapse: leetlekissywissysuckyfucky. I checked my fly. Light tight. But I sensed the green, looked away. No one noticed. Good fly. Develop photos inside. A lady sucked her teeth. Suck. Suck. The man beside me did a crossword puzzle, picked his nose. Suck. Pick. Everyone busy. New Yorkers in the raging underground. Sensuous. Insular. Discreet. All buried in noise. I vomited. Quick. No one noticed. Used my shoe; slipped foot back in; looked up coolly at the ads: have a lot of fun; worry about communism; smoke; drink. They made a sense of community. Lot of fun all around. The lady sucked her teeth, the man did his puzzle, picked his nose. Train full of pleasure. Involvement. I liked the mood. I philosophized: What does this mean to ride downtown? eighty miles an hour? three o’clock in the morning? shoe full of vomit? I noticed a girl leaning against her date. A marine. She had frog eyes; motionless, dreaming of flies. Looked something like a moron. It all meant nothing. I had slammed, certain it meant something. I’d laughed ironically. She opened the door. I waited ironically for the elevator. I felt her stare, gray, foggy, rotten with guilt. She said, “Your face, Phillip.” I whirled. “Gimme carfare.” A flash of white ass, of blond. She vanished, returned, wrist-deep-crap clicking in her purse. She struggled, naked, shameless. I was cool. She pulled out a dollar. Green. I was sick, getting sicker. Rocking, banging, rocking, banging. But this was the last time. I sang it to the mambo of the wheels: “The last time, the last time. Chunga cha-chunga. Green green.” I’d soon have to walk. Deserted buildings, warehouses, alleys, cats, rats, drunks, unpredictable figments of the municipal dark. City at night, full of wonders, mysteries. Like a god. I could hardly wait to get home, lock the door, lie down, sleep. But I might run into neighborhood kids, get robbed, chopped up, set on fire, pissed on, stuck in a garbage can. That would mean the city hated me. I appreciated its hatred, shared it, wanted to fling out to the speeding tunnel. But I looked at the marine and his girl: both pale, tight in the face, yet healthy. I’d seen him before. On toilet walls. Her, too, waiting for him, cock and balls. It might have been us: Mr. and Miss Subway. No such luck. Cecily had a high I.Q., degree from Barnard. I giggled a lot. The moron leaned on the marine. I looked for a moral. They swayed against the rocking iron tumultuous rush as … they would sway against the buffets of life. I was envious; felt ashamed: my insularity, my self-pitying. I wanted to shove them off the train. I wanted to go back, pound on her door. She would open it. I’d giggle. But I knew the rules. It was her move. Love is not enough. Hell with her. Blond hair, gray eyes, white skin, green crotch. Every conceivable virtue. Happens to be festering in the vagina. Take good with bad. I giggled ironically. The man covered his puzzle. Inched away, erasing. Made me self-conscious, creepy feeling. I wanted to strangle him. I yelled, “No one can solve the puzzle!” He gave me a look as if that hadn’t occurred to him before. I shrugged. He changed his seat. I sprawled like a vulgar swine, yawned, scratched my ass, studied the marine and his girl, objects, paragons. My mother used to say, “Why don’t you be like Kenneth? … like Bernard? … like Schmuckhead? Why don’t you do the right thing, Phillip?” Why don’t I be like that marine? No sideburns to catch filth, unbalance his head. Just a haze of needles prickling at the top. And her hair: thick, red, bulging around her ears like meat. Such radical difference: Mr. Prickles and Miss Meat. What could their relationship consist in? “None of that rooting in my horn, Marie. Try it, I’ll kick your twat off.” She melts. He upchucks like a tilted jug. Take that, that. Spilling marines. Moral. But I was moral, too. I had slammed out. Exquisite dinner, wines, dessert in bed. Naked, satisfied, peeing hard into the roaring center and the whole toilet echoing to a tinkling consonant with the force that through the green fuse drives beyond right things, wrong things, and “CECILY,” I yelled, the train retching past Bloomingdale’s. She did it on purpose. The train stopped. A man entered carrying a newspaper. PLANE CRASH. Green crotch strikes again. I didn’t read another word. It all just came to me: fifteen hundred returning from a soccer game, team, coaches, cheering squad. Usual bunch. People shake their heads, tsk, tsk, but oneself isn’t dead. Ten cents to find out one isn’t dead. Cost me nothing, a glance, a second of subway lucubration. I was alive, aware of it, more than alive. I wanted to do kneebends, pushups, jog a couple of laps. Maybe the marine would join me. “Hey, schmuck, how about a little P.T. before the next stop?” He would really grin. So would his moron. But it was the next stop. Mine. I was up, striding out, step, splash, step, splash, hut-hut! I was alone. Now I could think. I shut my eyes, squeezed. I thought: Think! I couldn’t think. It proved I was social. No lonely thinker, no Thoreau, this Phillip. Which way to the pond? Let me see; I remember that pile of bird shit from yesterday. Take years just to get from shack to pond. “Simplify,” said Thoreau. Really see what life is about. Indeed, just come back, that’s all: here’s old Phillip, schmutz and fleas; no book; maybe a little map. “See, X is the shack. Dig? The circle is the pond.” What do you mean open the door, fall into the pond? I was nervous. I needed another voice. All right. “Say something.” What? “Say an important, sober, meaningful phrase.” I said, “Ludwig Wittgenstein,” snapped double, rolled, screeched, “What a dingleberry,” rolled into a phone booth. Numbers scratched into the walls. Names. Recommendations. The city was social; how could I ever live anywhere else? “Call Carla for a first-rate toe job.” I wiggled my toes. Seemed all right. I memorized her number, left the booth, ran. What I expected: deserted buildings, alleys, cats. My apartment. I had to phone someone. Green crotch was out. I grabbed the phone, dialed Henry. It was very late, but he was my friend. Marjorie answered: “Your name first, wise ass.”

  “Marjorie, this is Phillip. Tell Henry I’m sick.”

  “O.K.”

  She hung up.

  I sat on the bed, chuckling. How silly of her to have done that. Now she had the rest of her life to wonder about what form my revenge would take. I chuckled, “Kill, kill, kill.” The phone rang. I grabbed it. Henry’s voice said, “Phillip? Phillip?”

  “Phillip. Phillip.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re sick.”

  “Of course not.”

  I cracked the receiver against the wall, let it crash to the floor.

  He piped: “Pheeleep, Pheeleep … Sometheen hapeen tee Pheeleep, Marjoreep.”

  I pushed over a chest of drawers.

  “Pheeeep, Pheeeep.”

  I sang, “La, la,” and vomited on the receiver.

  “Pheeweep, wa dee mawee? … dee oo ha fie wee Ceceeweep?”

  I felt better, hung up, undressed. I lay down, shut my eyes, began screwing Ceceeweep, but everyone was jumping, shouting, except the marine and me. There had been a crash. He nodded in my direction. I nodded back, very pleased to have been recognized by a person like him, with his moral haircut. The man dropped his crossword puzzle, yelled, “Breakdown. There’s been a serious breakdown.” He started to masturbate, but the train wouldn’t move and suddenly, pop, he ripped his prick off. I screamed and a girl said, “Phillip, what’s wrong?”

  “Who?”

  “A succubus.”

  I tried to smile. “You come back later, baby. I’m a tad indisposed.”

  She stood beside the bed, didn’t move. I heard her breathing.

  “Don’t stand in the vomit, sweets.”

  “Shit!”

  “You stood in it, eh?”

  “Never mind. I see you’re wearing a shoe, Phillip. Do you always sleep with a shoe?”

&nb
sp; “Get up to leak, hop right to the bowl. Saves fuss.”

  “Phillip, don’t you want to look at me?”

  “I’m sick.”

  “A man is the sum of his actions.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “I believe you, Phillip, though some would say I’m mad.”

  “You good succubus, baby.”

  “Open your eyes. I’ll take my clothes off, too.”

  “It’s cold.”

  A coat and trousers dropped on me. A hat, shirts, ties, laundry bag, suitcase, something heavy. I smelled it.

  “Good idea.”

  “Do you have another rug?”

  “That’s the only rug.”

  “May I get under it with you?”

  “Gimme a cigarette.”

  I tried to sit, but there was too much weight on my chest. She put a cigarette against my lips. I dragged.

  “Light it.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Light it.”

  “The answer is nopey nopey.”

  “Get under.”

  I smoked. She put a leg across mine, a hand on my belly. She said, “I want to ask you something.”

  “Ask.”

  “When a man is as sick as you, inhibitions vanish, right? He’ll say anything, right?”

  Her lips were in my ear.

  “Ask, ask.”

  “What do you think … I can’t. See that. Ha, ha. I’ll never get another chance like this.”

  “Oh, Cecily, ask, ask.”

  I crushed the cigarette against the wall.

  “I want to ask what you think of me. What do you think of me, Phillip?”

  She seized my prick.

  “I like your style,” I screamed.

  “What else?”

  “There’s nothing else.”

  She flung my prick down.

  “I didn’t have to come here, Phillip. I didn’t have to chase out screaming for a taxi. You talk to me, you. I asked a question. What do you think of me, Phillip?”

  “There’s general agreement.”

  “That so?”

  “Pretty general fucking agreement.”

  “What, what do people say?”

  “They say you’re an asshole.”

  “Is that what you feel? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “I’m too sick to make qualifications.”

  “Goodbye, Phillip. This is the last time.”

  I grabbed her wrist. Things hit the floor. The rug scratched everywhere. She twisted, kicked, thrashed.

  “Bastard. Take a shower. You wanted to infect me.”

  “No one else.”

  “You don’t love me. Say it. I want to hear you say it.”

  “No one else.”

  “You swear?”

  She kissed me. I pushed down on her head.

  “I’m tired, Phillip.”

  I pushed, pushed.

  “Say you love me, Phillip.”

  I pushed, pushed.

  “Merm,” she said.

  “No teeth,” I yelled. “Watch the teeth.”

  “Mumumu.”

  “All right,” I said.

  I felt all right. All right.

  Finn

  FINN, LATELY FEIN, RAN INTO SLOTSKY and mentioned the change.

  “By the way?”

  “I agree. It goes without saying. Changing one’s name isn’t by the way. Neither are the harsh realities. The business world. You know what I mean, Slotsky? I was a little cavalier in my announcement. Nevertheless …”

  “Call me Slot.”

  A smile wormed in Finn’s lips. “That’s very amusing, Snotsky.”

  To show Finn his smile, a smile wormed in Slotsky’s lips. Reinforced by his speedy, ugly face, it was particularly revolting. But Finn, thumb hooked to alligator belt, stood six two, two hundred fifteen pounds. Imperturbable. Besides, against the big sharkskin curve of his can, he had a letter admitting him to graduate school in business administration. He also had a date that evening with Millicent Coyle at the Kappa house; darkish girl, but in manner and sisterhood fished out of the right gene pool. Black Slotsky, now, was chancy matter in the street; dog flop. Brilliant student, but pale, skinny, cross-eyed, irascible, contentious, a walking criticism of life, and a left-wing communist. In every way he seemed to beg for death. One felt his begging; also his contempt for one’s reluctance to kill him on the spot. He sneered, “I thought your old name was fine.”

  Finn repeated, “That’s very amusing, Snotsky.”

  “I’m still doing business under the same name.”

  Finn answered gently, sailing toward the Kappa house and business administration. “Granted, Slotsky. Your name is Slotsky. Mine is Finn. All right?” And he made concessions in a shrug. Two shrugs.

  “Didn’t it used to be Flynn?”

  Finn waved bye-bye.

  “Flynn, Finley … didn’t you used to be Flanagan the rabbi?”

  Finn was three, four, five steps into the evening, the life. Just up ahead there, Finn beckoned. To him, Finn.

  “So long, Ferguson.”

  He tossed harbingers of love on his bed — trousers, shirt, tie, socks — but couldn’t decide on a jacket to wear that evening. He wandered naked in his indecision, lit a cigar, then considered less the jacket than his indecision. Immediately, he discovered Slotsky in it, shimmering like fumes. Two years ago they had been roommates. People used to say, “You room with Slotsky?” Because Slotsky was famous. He wrote a column in the school paper, noticing films, plays, any little change in the campus ambience — Muzak in the administration building, yellow plastic chairs in the library, new pom-poms adopted by the basketball cheering squad. He was famous for screaming revulsion and his column’s title, “Foaming at the Mouth,” was a description of himself in the throes of a criticism. Otherwise he restricted his humor to sneering irony, never directed at himself, never humorous. Finn explained him to the world by saying, “He wants love. Anyhow, he has brain cancer.” It would have been easy to be more cruel, but Slotsky helped him with chemistry and French — Finn’s reason for rooming with him in the first place. Finn never said anything more about Slotsky. Anything more might have suggested there was more than an apartment between them. There was. It started one night before end terms. Finn heard himself pleading: “I read the books, Slotsky. I took notes in class. But I can’t write it. I tried all week, but I’ve got nothing to say about the New Deal. Do I think it was good? Bad? I think I hate poly sci, that’s all. It isn’t fair not to be able to drop a course in the last week. Sometimes you can’t tell until the last week that you want to drop it. What am I going to do? I need the B.A. I don’t want to fail. My average won’t support a failure in poly sci. I’ll be thrown out of here. That’ll be the end of everything for Bruce J. Fein. Everything.”

  “What a pity.”

  “I’m sorry I told you about it.”

  “You make me a little sick, Fein.”

  “I make myself sick. I can’t stand the sound of my voice. I’m disgusting.”

  He went to the bathroom, stuck three fingers into his mouth, vomited, then slept all night in his clothes. Came morning, he opened eyes full of prayer. For what, he didn’t ask himself. He dragged to the kitchen, sat down at the table. It was the first time since they had been living together Slotsky hadn’t gotten up ahead of him to make breakfast. Finn looked toward the next room where Slotsky slept, then looked at his hand. It lay on a pile of paper. Eighteen pages, in fact: stapled, nicely typed with double spaces, wide margins, signed Bruce J. Fein under the title “The New Deal: Good and Bad.” How could he not have felt contempt? In the next room Slotsky snored with miserable exhaustion, like a man scratching at the sides of his grave. He felt contempt bloom into hatred, bloat, blur into pity, and then, on his way to poly sci, he gradually felt something different, something new, in regard to Slotsky. He stopped for coffee. While reading through the paper, he coiled inward to catch it. He caught it in a word: he and Slotsky had “rel
ationship.” As for the paper, not bad. Not bad at all. Worth a B, maybe B+. He scratched out one phrase and scrawled his own above it. However brilliant, it was true, after all, Slotsky had never taken a course in poly sci. The correction made Finn feel as if the paper were a little bit his own. Two days later it was returned with an A++. Beneath the grade the professor had written: “Please, Fein, become a political science major, as a favor to the world.” Beside his correction, Finn saw: “I will accept this because of the rest of the paper, but it is badly expressed and adds nothing to your argument.” In a daze of gratitude so thrilling it reminded him of fear, Finn rushed back to the apartment, pulled a jacket out of his closet, and hung it in Slotsky’s. Thus, among dull, shapeless gabardines, glowed a smoky tweed, a sensuous texture, a weight of life. Simply to have said, “Thank you, Slotsky, for saving my life,” seemed impossible. Not that it wasn’t sufficient return, but he couldn’t say those words to Slotsky. Some element in their relationship would become too obvious, even grotesquely sentimental. Nevertheless, relationship, reciprocity: Finn was big, rich, good-looking, and he had girls; Slotsky, in relation and return, was his roommate — he wasn’t living alone with himself and the walls; Finn had the paper; Slotsky, the jacket; Finn, Slotsky; Slotsky, Finn.

  On his one date that year Slotsky wore the jacket. He also wore it at a president’s tea for honor students, and at an address before a learned society, he appeared in the jacket. Big on him, but, if one knew nothing else about Slotsky, one knew he owned a fine jacket. Finer than anything else he owned. One knew that because he wore it with creaseless, flapping trousers that piled at the cuffs over patent-leather, busboy shoes. He didn’t seem to think the owner of such a jacket might want to wear it with trousers a bit snappier. But Finn knew Slotsky wore no jacket at all. Only an idea of a jacket — Finn’s jacket — beautiful in the eyes of mankind, spilling a superflux of beauty over anything Slotsky wore with it, even those trousers and shoes. Over Slotsky himself, wallowing in it. Finn was gratified. The paper, the jacket, the vision of Slotsky standing and walking in it — reciprocity, relationship. Until this moment.