The Collected Stories

by Leonard Michaels

  We left the apartment with Dr. and Mrs. Swoon. Stanger walked us out to the elevator. Dr. Swoon was in his clothes again. Mrs. Swoon, it turned out, was the lady with the bulging eyes and violent neck. Swoon’s face was splotched with pimiento color and torn. Somewhere behind it he seemed to have withdrawn into a severe dignity. Mrs. Swoon chattered as if it had been she who’d done the fighting and could find no way of containing its momentum. “You should have gone for the eyes, Jack. Your plan was no good. It never is when you don’t listen to people. I mean, you use diagnosticians, don’t you, before you operate?” She turned to me. “Two of them. Jack has two young doctors who see the patient and tell Jack what to do. Awfully clever, but their hands are made of shit, you know what I mean? Jack operates. Of course, without them, he couldn’t tell the difference between an asshole and an elbow. I mean, he’d have to consult the nurses to find out which was which. But once he knows, look out, look out, that’s Jack Swoon, king of fingers. Never uses a knife on nose jobs. Do you, Jack?” He shook his head no. “Does them with fingers and the heels of his palms. This is the heel. See, this part. Gets it smack up against the nares and grinds. Makes nice little ski jumps every time. ‘I make the whole world Gentile,’ says Jack. Personally, I think it leaves the holes too big, but that’s what folks want.” Stanger chuckled and raised a voice to obscure hers, and also the screaming, which followed us out to the elevator. “Didn’t somehow find a chance to talk to you, Phillip, and get to know you. But I haven’t forgotten our interview.” His thumb ground the elevator button as if it were an eyeball. “We’ll get together soon. You must promise me that.” Sufficient, I thought. Enough said. He had dark, penetrating eyes and a feeble mouth. His expression was overbred, full of difficulties, as if something in his chemical history wasn’t finished. An animal, perhaps, still to shoot. His handshake was tentative, trying to close on a good-humored assurance. Mine was a quick, updown fuck — you. “I promise. Good night. Thanks.” He nodded to Mildred and they said good night as the elevator door opened. Then he shook hands with the Swoons. We stepped into the elevator. As the door slid shut he turned away. The door stuck, by the grace of deus ex machina, just for an instant, to show Stanger with the right buttock in his fist, pulled away from its brother. An abstracted, habitual gesture, expressing long familiarity with pressures of his body. He released slow, thoughtful gas, a final good night to his guests in the elevator. The door shut. Mrs. Swoon stared at it. Dr. Swoon’s fiery face ripped into a great smile. I glanced at Mildred. She pinched her nose. Even thus, beautiful. The door opened, we said good night to the Swoons. She took my arm. We walked wildly, bumping hips. “I was bored, bored, bored,” she cried. “Do you hear me? Bored. The screaming was worth it, maybe, but I was bored. I hope you’re happy about the job. You’d have gotten it even if we stayed home. Probably a better salary, too. Did you know a man was almost beaten to death and another had a stroke while looking at a picture? I wish I’d seen that picture. Must have been very dirty, don’t you think?”

  “He named a figure?”

  “You imagine I asked?”

  “Of course you asked.”

  “Eleven and a half to start.”

  “Bullshit. How much?”

  “He said his daughter, Naomi, wants to be an actress. He calls her Nimi. Maybe it was Ninny screaming, rehearsing some part.”

  “How much? Don’t prattle.”

  “He said she has a neurological problem. Theater is so good for her. ‘So good for Nimi,’ he said. He meant she’s a crazy loony, right?”

  “Who cares? How much?”

  “The wife is very good-looking, but sort of a dopey slut, wouldn’t you say? Wouldn’t you say that, Phillip? He’s a weakling. I’m sure you’ll like the job, Phillip. You know what he told me?”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He told me he hates the sound of eating, even the sound he makes. So he has these big dinner parties, see? Are you limping, Phillip?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And he’s got a scheme for buying property on the moon. Because of the blacks, not to make money. He’s in lumber and publishing. He doesn’t need money. There’s a family place in Connecticut, to which we’ve been invited, and another one in California. But the moon, man, is where it’s really at. ‘Nowhere else to go,’ he said. ‘What do you think NASA is all about? Space agency? No, sir. Surreal estate agency’ No blacks on the moon, Phillip. He thinks New York is finished. Phones don’t work. Blacks everywhere. But he hires black servants. What do you think that means, Phillip? He wants to keep an eye on them? Please stop that limping and walk more quickly.”

  “What the hell does he mean by eleven and a half? I’m no typist.”

  “Stop crying. I can’t stand the sight of you crying.”

  “I’m not crying.”

  “Yes, you are. I’m tired. Let’s take a cab all the way home. We can afford it. He said twenty-five. With his paw on my ass, he says twenty-five. ‘Twenty-five, dear.’ Jealous? Mrs. Stanger digs you. You should fuck her or something, if you haven’t already. I hate you.”

  “You acted badly.”

  “I’m sorry I acted badly. There’s a cab. Kiss me. Tomorrow I’ll buy three pairs of shoes.”

  I kissed her in the cab, then asked, “Did you like Stanger’s paw on your ass?”

  “I liked the way you told me to get my coat in front of everybody. But if you ever do that when we’re with human beings, Phillip, I’ll do something you won’t forget. Twenty-five. Hee-hee.”

  “Yeah.”

  The cab went west to Third Avenue, then north, then west through Central Park. The trees, lacerated by lights, seemed to fly into the cab and about our heads. Mildred leaned back, giving herself to the trees and to me. Her pants tangled at the ankle, but I couldn’t get it out of mind and up again for naked traffic until she whispered, sliding down to the floor, whispering “Twenty-five” into my crotch. “Kootchie-kootchie.” At our place the driver waited, a head on a leather jacket, smoke sliding and twining up like hair from his invisible cigarette, and the whole cab shuddering in idle. His photo looked down at us in the back, smiling; Nunzio Salazar, machismo-fascismo mustache, number 999327, approves of it. Mildred’s legs seemed to lift from my ribs like wings. She said, “Oh,” and came. I was satisfied. A sentimental man prefers happiness to truth. I did prefer it. Her dear, lovely cheek on my shoulder as I fingered sticky leaves, peeling away singles for the fare, twice as many for the tip. Mildred jerked. “Don’t be a fool. We live in this town.” Half as many for the tip.

  From SHUFFLE (1990)

  Journal

  THE WOMAN SAID THAT HER HUSBAND phoned her at her lover’s apartment. She had to ask him to repeat himself.

  “I want you to come home and collect your clothes.”

  She’d been conscious of his pain before then, but in a general way. She’d have said, if you asked, “He doesn’t feel good. He cries.” He was sobbing like a child on the telephone. To her lover, she’d confessed, “I feel guilty for not feeling guilty.” She could virtually see her dresses and shoes in the bedroom closet. She hurried home. Her husband locked the door and beat her up. “Did you do it with him in the toilet?” he said, and forced her to do it there with him, too. The same for every room in the house. “It really happened,” she said, laughing at herself. “Saved my marriage. You’d think I could write about that. Not moral. Just a story.”

  We reviewed the events. “You told your husband about the other man and named him?” Already, to my mind, a failed marriage. Her husband should have known her body, guessed there was another man. Smells change. Besides, her love affair should have reached him in how she gave herself. “Where did you learn to do that?” He never asked.

  He made nothing of her luminous moods or impatience with him. “How many times have I told you to put the cap back on the toothpaste tube?” Even her revulsion at the shape of his feet didn’t strike him as a curious development. She imitated him muttering, shaking his head: “That�
�s how they always looked.” He made nothing of his own malaise. Simply didn’t know why he’d become that way. Never supposed it was because his wife had a lover. He’d had to be told about him. The poor man’s suffering exceeded his understanding. He beat her up. He didn’t know what else to do. He couldn’t do nothing.

  “But it really happened,” she said again, laughing moronically at herself. “Maybe I’ll try to write it as a poem.”

  Another woman at the literary conference, drawn forth by the story, said her husband accused her of sleeping with his best friend. The accusations began at breakfast and resumed at night when he returned from work. He ruined her nicest dinners. He ruined her sleep. All her efforts to make them happy — she “really tried”—were turned ugly by his suspiciousness. She insisted on seeing a marriage counselor. He didn’t want to, but she said the marriage was over if he didn’t agree to counseling. Marriage counseling did no good. Her husband wouldn’t discuss “real problems.”

  “Were you?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “You know. Were you fucking his friend?”

  “Yes, but that’s not the point.”

  She lifted her hands, fingers bent to suggest hard labor.

  “I cleaned. I cooked. I washed his filthy hairs out of the bathtub.”

  There was nothing anyone could say. The point was she cleaned and cooked. She washed the bathtub.

  In the emptiness, I remembered how I used to meet a woman, on Sunday mornings, behind her church. I waited in my car, in the shade of a low-hanging willow, until the service was over. Then she would appear, striking across the steamy asphalt of the parking lot in her high heels and dark blue churchgoing suit, a white flower in the lapel. She looked magnificent, yet my car was good enough; all we needed. When she talked of God, her cloud of hair floated in a blonder light. Once, she surprised me, her voice reproachful, “Same damn thing all the time,” as if I’d done something bad. But it was her fiance, not me. She said he’d made a gruesome scene, shrieking at her in a crowded oyster bar, “You sucked another man’s cock.”

  I started to kiss her. She thrust me back, making me see how pity mixed with pain in her eyes. “Can you believe he said that to me? All those people sitting there eating oysters. Can you imagine how I felt?” I nodded yes, yes, needing to kiss her, but she wanted me to wait, to let the sacred fullness of her sorrow sink into me. She wanted me to feed on her immensely beseeching stare, prim blue suit, little flower in the lapel. I pressed her backward. She tucked up her skirt and her thighs flashed in the shady car. The pretty church danced beyond the willow. Her fiance, far away, suffering … It should matter, but in the pitch of things there is no should.

  “You’re greedy,” she said.

  I asked her to marry me.

  Her lips moved against my cheek, as if I were a deaf child, each word a touching pressure. “You know,” she whispered, “I’ve never gotten a speeding ticket. The cop looks at me and can’t seem to write it. When they start writing me tickets, ask again.”

  She saved me from myself, but why did I want her? She was only ten years older than my son. He’d have started smoking dope; run away.

  “Can you believe my fiance said that to me?”

  Her question passed like the shadow of a bird through my heart.

  Beard wrote to me saying he’d heard there was “bad blood” between us. We’d met only two or three times. As far as I knew, there was hardly anything between us. But I answered his letter, impelled by guilt, though I could imagine nothing to feel guilty about. I didn’t dislike the man. I felt nothing, had no opinions, yet I was now going about mysteriously oppressed, concerned for his feelings and also burdened by weird apprehensions. You couldn’t simply live your life in society. No, others noticed you. Others demanded that you notice them, welcome them in your life somehow. Simply to breathe incurred responsibilities. Then, after my letter arrived, came the phone calls. We tried to make a date for lunch. Beard didn’t want to come to Berkeley. I didn’t want to go to San Francisco. He said if he came to Berkeley, I’d pay for lunch. If I came to San Francisco, he’d pay. Again guilt. Which did he prefer? Which do I prefer? I said I’d go to him. It was difficult to find a place to park, then I had to walk five blocks to his apartment house. I felt I was surely paying for something, though I didn’t know what. He answered the door with a letter in his hand. For an instant, I supposed it was a letter for me. He asked if I’d like something to drink. I said, “No, let’s go to lunch.” On our way out to lunch, he said that he’d written a letter of condolence to the wife of a friend, a famous writer who had just died. He said it was easy for him to write the letter, having had to write so many of them lately. He flipped it into a mailbox. We ate in a local restaurant. Since he was paying, I ordered only soup, salad, and a glass of wine. That would seem enough like lunch without seeming expensive. He left the table several times before and after the food arrived to talk to women at other tables and the bar. Walking back to his apartment, he told me about a time when he didn’t write a letter of condolence to a certain wife. He didn’t like her, he said. This woman’s husband had been a good friend and also a famous writer. She’d been sexually unfaithful to him with his friends. She taunted him with it, made him feel despised and lonely. Finally he died. Beard didn’t write to her. Soon afterward, she phoned Beard and asked why he hadn’t writen her a letter, or at least called her. It was the middle of the night. She was drunk. She raved about the many letters of condolence she had received. Everybody of importance in the literary world, publishers, editors, writers, had written her. Why not Beard? I thought it was a good story and asked if I could have it. He looked puzzled. He hadn’t thought the story was anything special. Now he wondered. He was reluctant to say I could have it. Again guilt: I had enjoyed the story too much, I felt I understood something more than he intended. As he spoke, I’d seen the woman raving drunkenly into the phone at Beard. I could almost hear her voice. I supposed Beard had fucked her, but that wasn’t interesting. I was seeing her pain. At his apartment, he asked if I’d like coffee or wine. I chose wine. I noticed, as he poured the wine, that the glass was caked at the bottom with black dregs and there was a smear of lipstick on the rim. I supposed, when he handed me the wine in the filthy glass, he intended nothing hostile, because the whole apartment seemed never to have been cleaned. The fabric of his couch and chairs carried a greasy film, the windows were dull and blurry with greasiness, and the air smelled of dust mixed with the sweetness of decaying fruit. Something else, a faint yet penetrating sour smell, like what rises from the neglected litter box of cats. I saw no cats, but there was cat hair on the rug. Later, as we stood together in the narrow hallway to his door, saying goodbye, assuring each other there was no bad blood, he farted. The tight space became noxiously suffocating. Eager to get out, I said for perhaps the third time, “There is no bad blood,” which was the thing “between us” we’d not once mentioned, though it was the reason for my visit. He said, as though it hadn’t ever really mattered, “A puff of smoke.”

  Jimmy sits at his typewriter high on cocaine, smiling, shaking his head. He says, “I’m so good I don’t even have to write.” He’s six foot three and charcoal brown, the color of a Burmese cat. His chest is high and wide. From neck to belt he is a hard, flat wall. No hips. Apple ass. Long legs. Long hands and feet. He looks as good in clothes as he looks naked. In two senses, clothes become his body. A woman said he is so clearly a man he could wear a dress. He sits at his typewriter, smiling, shaking his head, his long, beautiful hands turned up, lying open and loose in his lap. There is nothing wrong with him. He doesn’t even have to write.

  Evelyn had something to tell me, needed my opinion, I must come right away. She said she had met a famous writer. “He got the Pulitzer Prize.” I say that’s nice, so what? She says he asked her to do something. I say what? She can’t say. Oh, come on. Really, what? I know you want to tell me, so tell me. “Please,” she begs. “Please don’t do this to me. You’re my friend.
I feel soiled. It was so disgusting.” She drops her head, takes her hair in her fists. I say what? what? what? She just can’t say it. Suddenly she screams, “I mean I was flattered, but he’s over seventy. He told me to phone him when I go East this Christmas, he’s in the National Academy, the Hall of Fame, everything, but what should I do? How can I phone him? I can’t.”