The Collected Stories

by Leonard Michaels

  He thought of Adele smooching on Fairfax Avenue as he trudged back to his car and drove to Santa Monica and then to his house. When he opened the door, Nachman heard the phone ringing. It continued to ring while he looked through the mail he had collected from the box attached to the front of his house. He entered his study and sat down at his rolltop desk. The phone continued ringing.

  Nachman put the bills in one pile and dropped junk mail, unopened, into a wastebasket. Then he opened his personal mail. He found a request: Would Professor Nachman read the manuscript of a proposed mathematics textbook? It was being considered for publication by a major East Coast firm. The job would take many hours. Nachman would be paid five hundred dollars for his opinion and suggestions. It wasn’t much money, but he supposed he should feel honored by the request. He then found two invitations. One was to a conference on mathematical physics, in Indiana. Why had they invited Nachman? It wasn’t his specialty. The appropriate mathematicians had probably turned them down. The second invitation was for a defense job. It had to do with antiballistic-missile systems and would pay ten times what Nachman was making at the Institute of Mathematics. It was a job, Nachman supposed, that was held only by third-rate mathematicians and spies. Antiballistic missiles, indeed. Nachman felt insulted. What a terrible day. The phone was ringing. Nachman went to the bathroom and swallowed an aspirin. He then went to the bedroom and sat on the edge of his bed and took off his shoes and socks. The phone on his night table was ringing.

  Late-afternoon light, filtered by the leaves of an avocado tree outside his bedroom window, glowed on the pine floor and trembled like the surface of a pond. It was a beautiful and deeply pleasing light, but the roots of the magnificent avocado tree had been undermining the concrete foundation of Nachman’s house for years. He thought about that almost every day. Sooner or later, he would have to choose between the tree and the resale value of the house.

  There was sand in his shoes and socks, and sand between his toes. On the night table beside the bed, the phone was ringing. Nachman lay down on his back and placed his right forearm across his eyes.

  Let the foundation be torn apart. Let the house fall down. Let the phone ring. Nachman would sleep. Let the phone ring … It was impossible to sleep. Nachman sat up on the edge of his bed and lifted the receiver. He didn’t say hello.

  “It’s me,” she said.

  “Goodbye,” said Nachman.

  “Don’t you dare hang up. You knew it was me. You could hear the ringing. You’re the only person in California who doesn’t have an answering machine. You heard the phone. Why didn’t you pick it up?”

  “Between you and me, Adele, a certain subject does not exist.”

  “If any subject doesn’t exist, no subject exists.”

  “So we have no subjects.”

  “I caused you pain. Is that it?”

  “I live a simple life. Like a peasant. I go to work. After dinner I go to sleep. I have no interest in adventures.”

  “We have different needs. I’m not you, Nachman. And you are not me. I couldn’t live without an answering machine or a television set.”

  “O.K., leave it at that and let’s not plunge into a discussion of electronics. I have a headache.”

  “I don’t want to leave it at that. I want to understand. I have great respect for your opinions.”

  “Adele, I am not in the mood for a confessional orgy. I will say only this — I don’t believe that experience, for its own sake, is the highest value. Kissing in the street, in the middle of Los Angeles … For God’s sake. How could you?”

  “You saw me kissing a guy. Was it a threat to your peasant simplicity?”

  “In the middle of the afternoon, on Fairfax Avenue, with the bubees and zeydes walking home with grocery bags. There are limits.”

  “I think you mean morals.”

  “O.K., morals. Yes, morals. You have something against morals?” Nachman heard himself shouting and felt his breath coming faster.

  “Morals-shmorals. It sounds to me like you think I did something to you personally.

  “I saw you kissing some guy who isn’t Norbert, my best friend, who happens to be your husband. It was a spectacle of irresponsible lust performed in public, in my face — Norbert’s best friend.”

  “Nachman, get ahold of yourself! How the fuck would I know that Norbert’s best friend was stopped in traffic, twenty feet away.”

  “You trivialize my feelings.”

  “What is it that you feel? Tell me exactly.”

  “This minute, talking to you, I feel exactly as if I were betraying Norbert.”

  “Oh please. Every time you look at me, you betray Norbert. When I stroll down Wilshire Boulevard, Norbert is betrayed sixty times a minute. I answer the door to the postman, Norbert has horns. This is California, not Saudi Arabia. I’m a woman on display, front and back. Do you know it’s been said that a modern woman can neither dress nor undress.”

  “Who said it?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s true. Look, all that matters is you and me, Nachman — we’re friends. Our conversation is not a betrayal of anybody. Aren’t we friends? I thought we were friends.”

  Adele was crying.

  “Of course,” said Nachman, his voice hoarse, on the verge of failure.

  “Nachman, are you in love with me?” said Adele. “Is that the real problem?”

  “I love many people.”

  “Liar. You love your mother in San Diego, and you never talk about your father or your colleagues or the women you date. Anyhow, I said ‘in love with me.’”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “It has to do with everything. Norbert is the injured party, not you. Don’t you hear yourself?”

  “What should I hear?”

  “Don’t be a mystery to yourself, Nachman. Maybe we all walk in darkness, shadows, mystery — I wouldn’t deny it — but you must try to understand. Of mystery there is no end. Of clarity, there is precious little.”

  “Adele, you’re raving. Stop it.”

  She now spoke in a rush, sniffling and sobbing, “O.K., I’ll stop, but I want to make things clear to you. The telephone is no damn good. Let’s meet at Calendar’s, near the La Brea Tar Pits. It’s a few blocks from my office. I go there for lunch. One o’clock tomorrow. If you don’t show up, Nachman, I’ll understand that you didn’t want to betray Norbert. But please do show up.”

  After the phone call, Nachman felt better. Nothing had actually changed, and yet he could think more liberally about what hadn’t changed.

  He continued to sit on the edge of his bed. He didn’t want to move. It seemed he could still hear Adele’s unmelodious voice, made ragged by cigarettes. Adele had urged him to examine his feelings, but he didn’t care to know too much about what he felt. After all, as soon as you know what you feel, you feel something else. No. There would be no such examination. It would end in confusion. It was enough that he felt cheered by Adele’s phone call. He admired her daring. He liked her sluggish, heavy carriage. She walked as if she had large breasts, though they were average, proportionate to her height, which was about five feet five inches. Her hips seemed to lock slowly, and then reluctantly to unlock as she walked, toes pointed outward. Nachman wanted, mindlessly, to hug her.

  O.K., he thought, energized, returning to himself, the moral being. Look at the issue analytically, from Adele’s point of view. As Adele had said, people have different needs. So let’s be fair to Adele, a green-eyed Hungarian woman of considerable intelligence and nice hips. God knows why she married Norbert Novgorad.

  It was obvious, Nachman suddenly realized, that the unrelenting repetitiousness of domestic life was destroying Adele. So the poor woman had been unfaithful. What was infidelity, anyhow? What was it precisely that Adele might have done? Let’s get that straight. She kissed a man? Big deal. Perhaps she had sexual intercourse? Oh, who cares? It was an imaginative experience, a mental tonic, like a trip to Paris, except of course you don
’t bring back photographs of yourself in a motel room performing fellatio to show your friends. But who cares? With stunning visionary force, a picture burst into Nachman’s mind. Adele was naked, lying on her back with her wrists tied to bedposts. She smiled with vague, soporific satisfaction at Nachman, her green eyes glazed by a delirium of pleasure as she said, in her cigarette voice, “Morals-shmorals.”

  The picture vanished. Nachman looked down at his shoes, which he had dropped beside the bed. He felt an extraordinary need for ordinariness. His shoes were British. Hand-sewn, soft reddish-brown leather. He’d worn them for years and he’d had them resoled and reheeled at least three times. He kept them oiled. They were molded perfectly to the shape of his feet and so pliant they felt buttery. It occurred to Nachman, though he hadn’t been thinking about it, that maybe Norbert knew about Adele’s lover.

  If Norbert knew, and if Nachman told Norbert what he had seen, it might be grotesquely embarrassing. Boundaries are crucial to the integrity of relationships. That settled it. He wouldn’t tell Norbert and he wouldn’t meet Adele for lunch. It was an enormous relief to have arrived at this understanding of his situation.

  Traffic moved normally the next afternoon, so Nachman was on time when he parked his car in the lot near the La Brea Tar Pits. Calendar’s was crowded. Waiters rushed down the aisles, with expressions of intense concentration, as if solving puzzles. There was ubiquitous chatter and laughter. Nachman looked about for Adele. When he saw her, he took a breath and started toward her table. She was wearing sandals, jeans, a celadon-green tank top, and a thin beaded necklace of primary colors. Beside her wineglass was a newspaper, which she pressed down with her hand as she read it. She glanced up as Nachman approached. She smiled, folded the newspaper, and dropped it beneath her chair. She continued smiling as Nachman sat down opposite her. He looked at her tank top and necklace. He looked at her wedding ring, a barrel of dull yellow, and then at her watch. It had a large face, etched with black numerals, and a clear plastic band. Adele continued smiling. Nachman shook his head ruefully as he finally looked directly at her face.

  Her black shining hair was pulled back severely, and tied with a red ribbon. She wore assertive poppy-red lipstick. In gold-framed glasses, her eyes, related to the color of her tank top though much brighter, accepted Nachman’s attention, but he could see their uncertainty. Her smile became tentative. Quizzical.

  “Order something,” she said, unable to bear Nachman’s silence.

  “I don’t want anything.”

  “Won’t you have a glass of wine?” she implored, as if it would do her good if Nachman had a glass of wine. Her smile was weak.

  “All right.”

  Adele raised her hand. A passing waiter stopped. Adele said, “Two more,” pointing to her wineglass. The waiter nodded.

  “I shouldn’t have another,” said Adele. “I have to work on a difficult case this afternoon. I hired a new assistant. A gay kid named Geoffrey Horley Harms. He has two degrees. Three names and two doctorates, can you believe it?” She paused, then said, “What are you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t thinking.”

  “You’ve never been married. You don’t know what it’s like.”

  Nachman looked around at the action in the restaurant and sighed.

  Adele said, “This is going nowhere. Look at me, please. I want to talk to you. I wasn’t raised by Protestants. I’m not a nice person. Do you follow me? I’m a very direct person.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I want your full attention.”

  “O.K.”

  “I’m glad you saw me outside the motel.”

  “I was stuck in traffic. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I’m grateful. What you saw has been going on for a long time, but I could never tell anybody. If I told my girlfriends it would be unfair to Norbert. I’m bad, but not evil. The guy you saw me with — Ivan — is from another life. I was in high school when we met. I was a kid. Ivan was already out of college, working. His mustache got to me. I don’t know why. It made his face so fierce. But Ivan is very kind. He is in the insurance business, a claims adjuster. He doesn’t live in Los Angeles. Sometimes he disappears for two or three years, then he phones me as if we were still together. As if I had never married. People stare at him because of his mustache. When he wears dark glasses he has no face, just a nose.”

  “Adele, what did you want to talk about?”

  “I’m talking about it.”

  Nachman shut his eyes for a second, as if things would be different when he opened them. Nothing was different.

  “Ivan phoned again a few days ago. Believe me, I was very clear and firm. I said I wouldn’t meet him. I said that I felt bad about having done so in the past. I told him exactly how I felt. He started begging. I said no, no, no. The next day, he walked into my office. I almost fainted. He looked worse than shit. But the mustache was there, and old feelings were stirred. I was transported. What could I do? Even if I were a happily married woman, the old feelings would be there. I was helpless.”

  “Helpless? You?”

  “Give me a break, Nachman.”

  “All right, you were helpless.”

  “So we went to a motel … Try to understand, Nachman. It’s been going on for years, and I never told anyone. Motels. You wouldn’t believe how many motels I’ve been in. Did you know that a lot of Indians are in the motel business?”

  “I can’t begin to tell you how interesting that is to me. Hindus or Muslims?”

  “That’s enough. I don’t like being teased. So we went to the motel, a squalid dump at the edge of a trailer park.”

  A picture came. A motel room. The walls are water-stained and the paint is peeling away. Adele is standing beside a bed where a man lies. His eyes peer over a huge mustache, gazing at Adele as she steps into her panties. She pulls them up, then plucks the material free of the crease in her behind. At that instant Nachman’s wineglass was set before him. He reached too quickly and knocked the glass over. Wine splattered Adele.

  Nachman said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  Adele’s tank top bore dark splotches like the shadows of maple leaves.

  “They once threw stones,” Adele said. “I’m getting off easy.”

  “What can I say?”

  “I wanted you to listen. You don’t have to say anything.”

  Adele swept her tongue across the front of her teeth. A tiny dark green shape, perhaps a piece of arugula, was plastered against Adele’s front tooth. Nachman ordered another glass of wine.

  “If I hadn’t seen you yesterday,” he said, “nobody would ever have known.”

  “These things often come out. I told Ivan it was over. I think he heard me this time. Why don’t you order a sandwich or something? I already had a salad.”

  Nachman didn’t want anything.

  Outside the restaurant, they stopped for a moment in the sunlight and looked up the avenue toward the County Museum.

  “We should go there someday,” said Nachman. “See the show and then go somewhere and have lunch.”

  “I’d like that.”

  Nachman kissed Adele on the cheek. She said, “Do you think I should … now that I’ve told you.”

  “Yes. Tell Norbert.”

  Nachman sounded principled, but he was already worried about whether Adele would invite him to dinner again. It would be a great loss if she decided that she had said too much and would prefer not to have Nachman around at the same time as her husband.

  She had said she was bad, but not evil. Nachman wasn’t sure what she meant. He supposed it had to do with Norbert’s integrity. How he lived, consciously or not, in the eyes of other people. That was important to Adele. She wanted to protect Norbert. It was an aesthetic as well as a moral consideration. She’d had a long affair with Ivan, the mustache, but everything had ended in the motel. Nachman decided that bad Adele remained lovable.

  A week later, Norbert phoned. It was late evening. Nach
man heard fatigue and displeasure in Norbert’s voice. It sounded like anger or controlled pain. All that had troubled Nachman earlier rushed into mind. He felt regret and shame. He braced internally, expecting to hear Norbert say, “You’re a rat, Nachman. I’m furious at you.”

  Nachman hadn’t told Norbert what he’d seen on Fairfax Avenue, and he’d met Adele for lunch, thereby making himself complicitous. Nachman had agonized over those things, but to know what you’re doing is not the same as fully appreciating the terribleness of it. Nachman pressed the receiver hard against his ear. He’d never felt worse. If punishment were available to people the moment they deserved it, Nachman would have been punished days before. He could then show Norbert the receipt. Nachman suddenly realized that every move a person made was to one degree or another criminal, and that there was a great shortage of punishment. These thoughts occurred in the instant before Norbert said, “Would you like to go for a drive? I bought a new car.”

  Norbert hadn’t denounced him, thank God, but Nachman didn’t look forward to the drive. Who knows what might be said? Who knows what lies Nachman might be obliged to tell? Nachman put down the receiver. He had been holding it in a sweaty clutch. His heart was beating quickly and heavily.

  Fifteen minutes later, Norbert came by in his new car. It had a big engine and a dashboard like the flight panel of an airliner. Nachman had no idea what company made the car, and he wasn’t curious. If the car nourished Norbert’s spirit with fantasies of power, that was good.

  “I like your new car,” said Nachman. “Really great. Beautiful.”