Other people

by Sol Stein

  "Too bad," I said to no one in particular.

  The yeller was trying to say something to me in the midst of the bedlam. There had to be a reason for an important failure, and the yeller had seized on mankind's oldest nightmare. He couldn't get it up was what he was saying.

  I knew why I remembered that incident. With two cases coming to trial, I wished I had a law partner I could pass at least one of them to, or that I had a goddamn associate I could rely on for help. My head was not with either trial. It was remembering the baseball game and the yeller's conclusion. It was remembering Francine and the night of Thomassy's floppola.

  I tried to get the judge to give me a week's postponement on the Connolly case. When things are bad, they usually get worse. Judge Bracton, who had never refused me before, refused me now the way my own organ had refused me.

  Connolly was charged with holding up a gas station at gunpoint. He denied it. He had a record. They picked him up, put him in a lineup, and Wilson, the gas station operator, identified him. Fortunately I had been able to question two of the detectives who had been present at the lineup. I studied up on Wilson. I was ready to pulverize him on cross-examination. Maybe because he was a gas station owner like Koslak. Maybe because Koslak had gotten into Francine and I couldn't.

  It was a short trial. The D.A. put Wilson on the stand and had him recite the facts of the robbery, the usual stuff. He had closed up, switched on the night light, locked the door, was getting into his own car when a guy comes out of the shadows, puts something hard in his ribs, and says "Gimme the paper bag." I don't know why gas station owners put their day's cash in paper bags, but a lot of them do.

  To elicit sympathy for Wilson, the D.A. tried to get in testimony from him to the effect that he had been robbed twice before in the same year, but I objected, and the objection was sustained. Then I had my go at him.

  "Mr. Wilson," I asked, "how tall are you?"

  Up popped the D.A. muttering "irrelevant" and Judge Bracton told him to sit down. I said I would show it was a material line of questioning.

  Wilson said he was six feet tall.

  "Is that the height given on your driver's license?"

  "Yes, it is."

  "Mr. Wilson," I said, my eyes checking the judge to make sure he'd go along, "would you mind stepping off the stand and coming over here." I motioned him over to where I'd had a doctor's scale brought in, the kind that has an L-shaped measuring rod for height, too. Wilson was reluctant. He looked at the D.A., the D.A. looked at the judge, the judge nodded. Wilson stepped on the scale as if it was covered with broken glass and he had bare feet. I lowered the measuring rod till it brushed his skull.

  "According to this," I said, "you're five feet ten inches. Does that mean your license application was false?"

  Well, there was a flurry at the bench, but I had gotten my point across.

  "Mr. Wilson," I said when he had returned to the stand, "you testified that the person who robbed you came out of the shadows near where your car was parked. Could you tell whether the robber had a moustache?"

  "He didn't have no moustache."

  "I see. Was he close enough for you to tell whether he was clean shaven, whether he had shaved that day or had a few days' growth?"

  "I didn't notice that close."

  "Could you tell if he had pimples or not?"

  The judge had to quiet a titter among the spectators.

  "I don't know. I didn't notice."

  "What did you notice?"

  "You know, a general impression of what he looked like."

  "In the dark?" I shot a disbelieving look at the spectators. "Did you notice his height?"

  "He was the same height as me."

  "Is that six feet or five feet ten?"

  I had gone for the laugh and gotten it.

  "Mr. Wilson," I continued, "when you were taken to the lineup, how many men were in it?"

  "Seven or eight."

  "You sure it was seven or eight?"

  Wilson was getting nervous. Actually, there were six people in the lineup, but I was saving that piece of information.

  "Mr. Wilson, is it true that when you were asked if you saw the man who robbed you in the lineup, you said and I quote 'It was either him or him' and when a second later you learned that one of the hims was a police officer you settled for the other one, namely the defendant?"

  Wilson looked at the D.A.

  The judge told him to answer.

  "That's the way it was," he said.

  "No more questions."

  They don't teach it to you in law school, but you'd damn well better latch on quick to the Rules of Human Tolerance. If someone exaggerates his height by a quarter or half an inch, people think what the hell. But two inches, that's more than vanity, it's perverse. And if you say you recognize somebody, you have to notice not Just the general configuration of a face, but some specific details.

  My summation was brief. Wilson was held up in relative darkness, he hadn't really gotten a good look at the robber. In the station house, he hadn't been sure, he had guessed. You don't guess when people are accused of serious crimes. Wilson filled out a license application not erroneously, he had been willfully false. He was an unreliable witness, and there were no other witnesses. Connolly had been picked up not because there was anything linking him to this crime but because he'd been in trouble in the past. When arrested he had no paper bag full of money, no gun. I didn't blame the arresting officer for his zeal, I just pointed out that you can't go picking up suspects willy-nilly on the street. I said there were more reasonable doubts in this case than there were hard facts, the only hard fact was the one we stipulated, that Wilson had been robbed and hadn't merely hidden it somewhere to collect on the insurance. The jury was back in fifteen minutes with a not guilty verdict, which was no surprise to me or Wilson or the D.A. Only Connolly breathed a sigh of relief, probably because he did it.

  At least I could still get it up in the courtroom.

  I was standing at the urinal shaking the last drops out and thinking You bastard, you let me down, you ought to be cut off, when a voice from the next urinal says to me, "That was an easy one."

  "Yeah," I said to the D.A., "that was an easy one."

  Widmer bills his clients. You think I'd collect from guys like Connolly if I billed them?

  "I'm very grateful to you," he said when I came out of the John.

  His wife, a mouse he probably beat up on regularly, said, "I can't tell you how grateful we all are, Mr. Thomassy. It would be awful for the children if Charles went to jail again."

  Charles. The formality was for my sake.

  "What do I owe you?" he asked.

  Your freedom, you jerk.

  "The retainer covered all but five hundred," I said. The five thousand retainer was intended to cover all of it in case he got socked away. The five hundred extra was my tip for getting him off.

  "I have it right here," he said. He peeled off ten fifties. I wondered if it was gas station money.

  "You shouldn't carry that much cash with you," I said. "You might get robbed."

  His wife laughed, but he shut her up with one look.

  "Connolly," I said, motioning him away so his wife wouldn't hear. "You better stick to your job, period. Know what I mean?"

  He nodded.

  "I won't take you on for another armed robbery, understand."

  "You won't have to. I'm staying clean. You were terrific."

  That's my consolation. The threat of not defending him again might be more effective than any jail term. He'd have to make an honest living. Like me.

  I wasn't used to self-hatred. I had my pecker to blame.

  Can you imagine yourself famished, looking at a table laden with ripe fruit, and you can't get your mouth to work. I mean you actually bring a peach up to your mouth and it won't open, won't move, won't cooperate. You can't eat a peach intravenously, you need your mouth. I mean there's no other part of the body that behaves like a pecker with a mind of i
ts own, an uncooperative, stubborn, unpersuadable prick. What is it telling me?

  Comment by Francine Widmer

  In high school and college I thought the trouble with men was that they were an army of erect penises marching around all day long looking for a home. You danced with a fellow and soon there was that stiffening coming between you and the idiot would look at you with a kind of how-can-I-help-it expression. They perform on signal like jumping dogs, touch it with a hand and it curves up like a banana head ready to take a bow. But when you need one, when you want one, not for its own sake but as the best last step in bringing you together with someone you want to be together with, and what do you get, a pathetic lump of overcooked pasta looking like it's ready to fall off its owner's body.

  Now I appreciate the great advantage of a really skilled performance, the faked orgasm done so perfectly even you begin to believe it was more than an act. God was extra good to women, if it isn't working, you don't have to advertise failure, you just make believe, hypocrisy to the rescue, like in every other avenue of life a bit of fraud will see you through. I remember once I was faking it, and suddenly the real thing caught me by surprise. Poor men, an inborn lie detector hanging off each of them, ready to rat. To be betrayed by a friend is terrible, but to be betrayed by the organ you feel most protective about, treason!

  The truth is: some part of him doesn't want me. Not that part of him, some other part. That part is just the message carrier. Jane yes. Rosemary yes. Edna yes. Francine no.

  ~~~

  I stared at the telephone. Then I dialed Jane.

  "Hello, stranger," she said.

  "Don't be coy, Jane. It's only been a few days."

  "You left me something to think about."

  "Your husband on the road tonight?"

  "Wait, I'll ask him."

  "Don't be stu-…" I heard her laughing.

  Then she said, "What time?"

  "Seven all right?"

  "See you at seven."

  It was damn near seven-thirty when I got to Jane's. Oh I had left my office on time all right, it's just that I found every nondirect street in that part of the county to keep me from getting there. I built up a head of steam that should have warned me to call her and call it off.

  "Sorry, I'm late," I said.

  She made drinks. Not a word.

  "I'm sorry about the way that other evening worked out," I said.

  "Did you see her again?"

  "Yes."

  "How did it work out?"

  "Well, as a matter of fact not too good."

  "Oh?"

  "Would you believe old Thomassy just couldn't get it up?"

  She put her drink down.

  "You never had that kind of trouble with me."

  "No I haven't."

  "And you're here to try it out again to see if it's a permanent malfunction or just the other broad who puts you off."

  I like directness in women only to a degree.

  Affecting calm, I said in my best judicial voice, "Now Jane, your relationship, I mean yours with me, preceded my knowing the other lady by—"

  "Francine, in case you've forgotten her name."

  "You sound angry."

  "Me? Angry?"

  "Well, bitter?"

  "Me? Bitter? I've just been waiting here for my favorite lawyer, knowing he would turn up sooner or later for a quick bang. I just hadn't expected it to be a litmus paper test to find if the fire'd gone out."

  "You keeping talking that way," I said, "and it will stay out."

  "That'd be an interesting revenge. For me. And for several others."

  "I thought you liked my company."

  "I did. But I felt like a Martian when that other woman was here. You had special all over your face. You falling in love, George, at your age?"

  "Don't be silly."

  "If falling in love is silly, I'm not silly. I haven't been in love in twenty-two years. It doesn't interfere."

  "Jane, you're a smart woman."

  "I thought I was a good lay."

  "A good lay and a smart woman. Can I move over to where you are?"

  "You never asked for permission before. That's a bad sign."

  Twenty

  Koch

  She is back, back, back, twice a week Francine will be coming after work, a reunion, I welcome her, how well she appears (Aphrodite, Venus, Helen!) wafting into my study, at a gesture from me lying down, smoothing her skirt over her mound as if to level it into insignificance, but I know it is there, fur over flesh over bone guarding the inviolate — violated — lips over lips. I sit behind her head where I can steal with my eyes the configuration of her unbound breasts as she lies there spilling words from which I must pluck the clues to feed back to her so that she will understand herself. How will she understand that I am in violation of everything except honesty in my feelings for her?

  Talk.

  I will listen.

  Of course I want her to talk about me, and if not, about herself. But how many women over the years have lain on that couch and talked to the air about how their lovers talk to them about their wives, and the men, caught in the vortex of two women, who cannot keep from telling each about the other under the disguise of news or gossip. And now what does Francine tell me, who lusts to hear almost anything else except what she now says.

  Thomassy, she says, is not particularly good looking, not in the way a Robert Redford or a Paul Newman seems attractive to so many women, he has a face that is his, she says, dark without the sun, intent features focusing all business one moment, laughing the next, it is his vitality, his command, he has the law in his hands because he understands how minds work!

  The mind, I want to interrupt her, is my province, not Thomassy's!

  Other men, she says, drift like boys drift.

  Perhaps Thomassy drifts, I suggest. If he is such a great courtroom performer, such a skilled people-manipulator, should he not be on a bigger stage, fighting front-page cases, making a fortune like other lawyers?

  He is not interested in publicity, she says. She is giving him a medal. An award. The award is herself.

  Has she thought about the discrepancy in their backgrounds?

  Yes, she says, he's not like Bill, not like her father and her father's friends, isn't it wonderful?

  Has she thought about the difference in their ages? I ask.

  Yes, it would be better if there were not so many years between.

  Why does she think so?

  Because he will die too soon.

  Can you understand how I am near to going out of my mind listening to my sweet Francine in love?

  I must take risks.

  Why did you return to therapy? I ask.

  He was impotent with me, she says.

  I am ready to scream Look at me behind you a man of sixty with a thick bulge in his pants from watching and wanting you, there is no justice in this world!

  I only speak the last words: "no justice in this world."

  That, she says, is why Thomassy attracts her so, he has long ago recognized there is no justice in the justice system, and he fills the void with his manipulative skills. He is not like the hypocrites she works with, she says, or the people in Washington, Paris, London, Moscow, Peking, in the throne rooms and in the streets, there isn't a shred of false idealism left in his bones.

  Why does he not fill me? she says.

  I am silent.

  Why is a man sometimes impotent?

  I am silent.

  It can't be guilt, he has no obligation to any other. It can't be shame, he has been a lover of others for decades, women who come and go.

  Perhaps, I say, he thinks you won't go.

  Now she is silent.

  Perhaps, I say, he is afraid of permanence.

  I don't want to be a quick fuck, she says angrily.

  No one wants to be, I say. If you admire realism so much, why are you not a realist? Perhaps you threaten him.

  With what? she says, up on an elbow, tur
ning to face me. I motion her back to a lying position. Am I protecting the anguish on my own face?

  With what am I threatening him? she repeats.

  With love.

  We are both silent. Then I say, love disarms. It is impervious to reason and to control. If both love, there is nothing to win.

  The aim of Thomassy's existence, I say, is to win. Just as mine is to cure. You cannot always win.

  You cannot always cure, she says.

  Ah, I say, but in love something happens. Do you know the form of glue that is called epoxy, made of two substances which when melded become another? The process is called curing. Love always cures, changes from heart-thumping, irrational, wild cacophony to something different, also called love, a peace with each other.

  That is beautiful, she says.

  I have had a lifetime to think about it, I say. Then I add: epoxy, when cured, is hard. In all the years of my practice I have never heard of a case of impotence that did not change if circumstances changed enough. Sometimes merely habit is enough.

  She is quiet. I watch her body breathe. I have turned her over to my rival not because I am a good man but because I am a weak man, accustomed to helping others be strong. It is time to go, I tell her. The hour is up. I will see you Thursday.

  She gets up, brushes down her skirt over her hips as if I am invisible, then leaves, a flurry of hips and buttocks and legs through the door, going to find Thomassy, pushed by me.

  Twenty-one

  Francine

  Koch is a saint. I left without saying goodbye. I had to get to a phone.

  The West Side streets were full of lolling people who watched me as if I were hurrying too fast. One of four stoop poker players whistled. Steeled, I headed for my car, key in hand, saw the street-corner phone booth empty, searched through my bag for a dime, called. Answering service. Of course, it was after hours! I fussed through the bag for the pack of matches on which I had scribbled his home phone, found a second dime, dialed. It took him a long time to answer.

  "It's me, Francine," I said.

  "What's up?"

  You could kill a man who talked that way.

  "Can I come on up?"