Other people

by Sol Stein

  "I don't feel threatened."

  "Then please."

  "Please what?"

  "Take me home with you. Let's try again."

  "No."

  "I don't care if you get it up or not. You will when you sort out the marbles in your head. Please."

  "I've got a better idea. Can I pick you up Saturday morning? I want to take us on a trip."

  "If a change in environment will make a difference, sure. Where to?"

  "LaGuardia."

  "I hate to fly."

  "Driving to where we're going takes too long."

  "Where?"

  "Trust me."

  "Can you trust me in turn, George?"

  He paused a second too long. "Sure," he said.

  "There's a letter in the mail, from me to you. When it arrives, tear it up without reading it. Think you can do that?"

  Twenty-four

  Haig Thomassian

  Every day except God's day I am already up at five, working the horses. Every day my hands hurt from holding leather at the other end of which is a big-eye horse what don't want to do what I want him to do. This game I win every day. I stop with horses when five is on my watch again. My neck aches. My worse tiredness is in the bottoms of my feet. When I was young man, never tired, not morning, not night. Now sometimes tired in morning, bad. Anyway, five in evening is good time. I sit with my tea, staring into the fire, dreaming good parts my life long ago. I call this my "little sleep."

  So this day I am having my little sleep I hear a car stop. My shotgun is on wall. The door is safely locked. I go to window, pull curtain, see George.

  I unlock door, pull open, yell at him, "Who died?"

  "Hello, Pop," he says. "There's no one left to die, just you and me."

  "You drive five hours without telephone first? You crazy?"

  "You don't answer the telephone."

  "Why should I answer?" I say to him. "Who is there I want to talk to?"

  "People will think you died."

  "That's why you come? To pack up my things for yourself?"

  George shakes his head. I let him in. "Have some tea," I say, "five hours is long drive."

  "I rented the car at the airport," he says, "I didn't drive all the way to Oswego."

  "Then what you want?"

  George says, "I wanted to be sure you were all right."

  "Why?" I say. "You think if I die I stink too much. Nobody here to smell."

  Well, we talk lots of things, I tell him I got a man comes three times a week help with the horses, if I'm dead, the man knows where to look for George's telephone number on the first page of my little book that says Police, Fire, Vet, Undertaker, George.

  George kids me, why don't I take a woman into the house since Marya died, I tell him I take care of myself, cook, clean house, little sex, everything. He tells me I am married to the horses. I yell at him who he married to, criminals? Judges? Floozies? Forty-four years a bachelor, everybody must think he's a you-know-what or a eunuch.

  "You never bring me a woman to inspect so I know you are serious!"

  That's when he tells me there's a woman in the car. "Why you not bring her in, stupid!" I yell at him. I go outside, pull open car door, say "Come in, come in."

  Inside, I look at her better. She's a baby, compared to George.

  I give her my hand. I give her my name. I ask her if she is a woman lawyer.

  "No," she says.

  I am surprised.

  Well, we talk a lot that evening. I apologize for the franks and beans, it's all I got that's enough for three, they say never mind, we drink beer, it's almost like the old days when George was a boy. This girl smart. This girl has a lot of class. I ask her if she is an Armenian, knowing what the answer will be. I tell her it's okay anyway. After two hours I ask her to write down her telephone number. She looks at George. George says it's okay. I take my little book and after Police Fire Vet Undertaker I cross out George's number and write her number in. George laughs so hard I think he'll die. He understands I approve.

  They have to drive back to airport. I don't kiss her cheek or anything, I haven't shaved. I pull George aside, tell him he's a lousy son but maybe I can have a nice daughter.

  "Don't jump to conclusions," he tells me. "We hardly know each other."

  "Liar," I say.

  They get in the car. I wave. I say something. He doesn't hear me. He rolls the window down. I say again, "Tell her about the Armenians."

  The next morning, 5:00 A.M., I go to my horses a new man.

  Twenty-five

  Francine

  I suggested that we might stay in a motel near Oswego and not head straight home.

  "I don't like motels," said Thomassy.

  "I don't think anyone likes motels. I thought, just on the spur of the moment, for the night, it might be fun."

  He looked at me as if the word "fun" were repulsive to him.

  On the flight back I asked him why we had gone to Oswego. To visit his father, he said. I meant why did we go to visit his father. Why do you think? he said. I said I didn't know. He said he didn't know either.

  The flight took under fifty minutes. We got a clear view of the city as we came in to LaGuardia over the sound. In his car, I asked if he had planned to whip up a dinner for us. He hadn't. I volunteered to cook one with whatever I could find in his place.

  "There isn't much."

  "I'll try."

  While he was slouched on the sofa, his legs sticking straight out, coddling Jack Daniels on ice, I asked, "What would you normally be doing on a Saturday evening?"

  "Recovering from flying," he said.

  "You don't usually fly around on Saturdays, do you?"

  "I fly all week."

  You couldn't call it a conversation. I did the best I could with eggs and cheese. I found a bottle of Chateau Giscours '66, but there wasn't time to air it.

  After dinner, I sat three feet away from him on the couch. "What are you thinking?" I finally dared.

  "Nothing."

  "Are you in a bad mood?" I asked.

  "No."

  "I was thinking of Beckett. Those two people in ash cans on opposite sides of the stage."

  "Nothing compared to Heloise and Abelard," he said. He wasn't smiling. Wasn't it better getting lost with Bill on a date, anything, than this sitting around with nothing happening? Except that I felt something was happening.

  Comment by Thomassy

  Of course she took it for granted you'd spend the night together, idiot. You don't take other women to Oswego. You take her to Oswego. Where do you take her next? The head bone's connected to the neck bone. You take an option on a woman. The thigh bone's connected to the ham bone. The binder connects to the contract. Joint tenancy. Great. Either or the survivor. Terrific. Stop thinking like a lawyer, Thomassy. A lover doesn't think.

  I have to acquaint this woman with who I am. Look here, Francine, I have to say, I was brought up in a certain period. I am a period piece. Any fellow brought up in my period had to know the rules of four games: baseball, basketball, football, and mating. Francine, here's how mating was played, not just by me and my crowd but by everybody. You were supposed to go around the broad as if she was some kind of Monopoly game. Player One, male, is supposed to move from lips to tits to you-know-where and get as much as he could without making the big commitment. Player Number Two, female, has to lead him on, step by step, toward the contract, the steps consisting of One: fraternity pin or reasonable facsimile; Two: engagement ring; Three: you're out, game called permanently on account of marriage.

  Moreover, I ought to tell her in those days you had to play or pretend to play or Player Number Two, female, and all her friends would say you were not a man. I don't want to was not a male election. Francine, in my hung-up generation, that was the highest form of social coercion, just a hairline away from rape without a weapon: you play or you forfeit. You can fuck bad girls all you want to. But if you go steady with a good girl and fuck, you better be prepared to v
isit a jeweler.

  You kids live in cloud-cuckoo land, no past, no worries about the future, just have a piece of now, pass it around, have a drag, use my body it doesn't wear out. Save it for a rainy day? Suppose it never rains, you say. Think of the future. What future — oxygen, plutonium, hydrogen? I never knew whether it was Armenian or Thomassian but my father used to say What would you do six years from now? Apply that idea to almost anything and it changes what you're thinking of doing. Six years from now I'd be bumping the half-century mark. What if you got pregnant now — oh yes, pregnancy was always around the comer — you'd end up with a kid that in six years would have a fifty-year-old father, and what kid wants that?

  I have got to sit ye down, Francine, and give you a lecture on a minor, temporary affliction of mankind more prevalent than the common cold. It's called loin-tingle. It doesn't require a relationship, it requires scratching and it goes away. You need a man of thirty. I know all that garbage, mommas' boys, deep-freeze neurotics, or if not, two youngsters fumbling around for experience, it doesn't have to be permanent, first marriages are for experience-gathering.

  Let me throw cold water on it. Just turn the sexes around. Young man, older woman, and what do you get? Fag hags? Young woman, older man, you're just catering to the society-for-the-admiration-of-tight-bellies. The experienced lover with the child needing guidance, care, money, a parental substitute?

  Oh yes, I can hear your answer all right, you are the magnificent age of twenty-seven, you've skipped the first marriage, and so have I. You have an answer for everything. Maybe that's why I'm having this conversation with you safely inside my head. I don't like back talk from opposing counsel. My court is my court and your court is my court.

  All of this noodling is probably just a cover-up for my own disinclination to hook up with another person. It's hard enough living with yourself. You learn your own likes and dislikes, you take shortcuts, you convince yourself. And there's no one to blame. How often can you fight with yourself over something trivial? Married people fight all the time over trivial things.

  Look at her, she's fallen asleep with her clothes on.

  ~~~

  Oh yes it's sinful to pretend I'm still asleep while he turns me over gently and unhooks the one link at the top of the dress, then slides the zipper open. There's no way he can get this off me without cooperation. I am a stone. Catatonic.

  He's managed it. I ought to wake up and applaud. Don't spoil it. He's managing. Aren't you glad there's no bra to fuss with, counselor? He is kissing my back between the shoulder blades, not exactly kissing, I can feel the rough surface of his tongue as he moves down each vertebra, to the left side, then the right, he knows I'm awake, he knows I'm feeling it.

  His mouth is now at the indentation of my waist, on the right, and if I didn't have an erogenous area there before I do now, God do I feel it, and his hands are cueing me to turn over, and I turn slowly, and he is at my belly, one side, his tongue moving teasingly down, I was glad he turned me over, I thought he was going to kiss my butt, now his tongue is on the other side of my belly sort of sliding down, saying something to me like a promise, but stopping and moving up again, the anticipation is exquisite. No one ever did anything like this, I guess it's experience I'm experiencing. He moved up to kiss my lips softly, gently, and I admit I felt alarm he wasn't going down any farther any more! His hand went down there, just a touch past the mound, and I could feel, barely, a finger circling, not touching it, just on the hood and then to the side and the other side, just as a woman would do it, I mean a person who'd felt it herself. Men, boys really, sometimes just go with the finger like it was a hacksaw till you could scream idiot that hurts, but George was doing it so right I thought the top of my head was coming off, he was down there and I could feel it in my nipples, and he knew it, I don't know how he knew it, but his hands were up to my breasts, just teasing around the nipples, then flicking fingers over them, over them, over them, and suddenly his mouth was moving down again, fast this time, to where his finger'd been and I felt the first flickers of his tongue on my centerpiece, my breath was choking me, my own breath from my chest heaving, and everything just pointing beautiful arrows down there, the epicenter of everything getting ready, I could feel it, my hips were rising to meet his tongue, and then my hips were into a rhythm, and he was cupping his hands under me, helping, and I was thrusting as if everything, my whole body, was coming together in one place, meeting where his tongue was now circling it, and for a second I thought he was going to stop but he was only moving his mouth down where I felt so excruciatingly sensitive, and he moved just a bit, circling the epicenter again, and I heard myself saying, "George, come up here," and in an instant he was kissing me and entering me and then plunging again and again, and it was if every beautiful nerve ending was singing, and I said, "Don't stop, oh God, don't" and I let go in unbearable waves of joy, and he said, "Hey," because I was moaning so loud, and I never felt so good as when I pulled his head to mine so I could kiss him again, and hold him, and love him. without end into eternity amen.

  Twenty-six

  Koch

  Last night when I went down for the newspaper, a boy of seventeen, eighteen, dark, bumped into me on purpose. In a Spanish accent he says to me so that everyone can hear, "Watch where you're going, mister!" I look right and left. No policeman anywhere. Not a friendly face. Just other Spanish-speaking people, young, old, waiting to see if a fight will start.

  I walk back to my house without my newspaper. I go upstairs, double-lock my door, imprisoning myself in my apartment. I cannot talk about the change in the streets to Marta. Can I call a friend like Allan-berg and tell him what happened? He will think me crazy to worry about a teen-ager who bumps me in the street. Do I call 911? The police will think I'm crazy too. I go to sleep thinking what is the matter with me, a small thing happens and I make some apocalypse out of it.

  In the morning, my mood is still somber, but soon I have a phone call from my angel Francine and I am suddenly manic like a child. She says she has an unexpected conference at work, she will have to miss the regular hour, could she make it late in the day. I seize the opportunity like a gift. How late in the day, the last appointment? She says yes, that will be all right, is it convenient, and I say oh yes, and immediately put myself to calling the Murkoff boy's mother and say can he be brought right after school, I need his regular hour for an emergency patient (lie! lie!), and I am all set, Francine will be lago's last patient of the day. With my heart high, I hope that once the hour is over she will be led by me from the study to the living room where we will sit and drink tea as friends while my eyes see her from a more direct angle than I enjoy on the couch. Or do I hope that from the couch of my study I can lead her to the bed of the bedroom once she sees the enormity of my need? How many fantasies I collect in the wastebasket of my head, what she does, what I do, what we do together. I begin to believe that it may come true. Is that the supreme fantasy?

  She greets me, as usual we shake hands, a concession to my being European. In Vienna I would brush the back of her delicate hand with my lips. Here it is mine to hold for a second, feel its warmth, and the softness of its skin. I think of the skin I have never seen, at the small of her back, at the back of her knees.

  On her face she has a certain expression we analysts have come to recognize: today I am going to give you a present. What this means is she will tell me something she thinks I have been waiting to hear. I gesture at the couch, I wait for the ceremony of her lying down, the placement of her body, sitting first, then swinging her legs up, then lying back supported by one elbow, then flat, the line of her unconstricted bosom rising with each breath. There is the prolonged silence that sometimes means I refuse to talk but today I am certain means that the mind's podium is being dusted in preparation for a declaration. Ah, here it comes.

  "That time, right after I was raped, when I came here for help, you told me I had no vocation."

  "Yes."

  "That I didn't know what
to do with my life."

  "Yes."

  "Isn't it dangerous telling someone something like that when they're in a state of distress?"

  "I would be a poor analyst if I did not sometimes take a chance."

  "Take chances with your own life, not mine."

  "Now, Francine, listen. You were under great stress. But your anger at my lack of tact helped keep the thought about vocation in your mind so that now, perhaps when you are prepared to deal with it, it is waiting."

  Suddenly, Francine is sitting up, swinging her legs off the couch, facing me.

  "I could have killed myself," she said.

  "Francine, there are people who can kill themselves, and people who cannot. You are among the latter."

  "You were playing with my life."

  "I was not playing."

  "How could you be sure I wouldn't do something drastic?"

  "Oh one is never sure," I said, "but experience is a good guide."

  Her face reddened with anger. "The risk wasn't yours!"

  "Please lie back down."

  "No. You're supposed to be a doctor. If I come in with a broken arm, I want it set."

  "If you come in with the flu and demand a useless shot of penicillin, I will not give it to you just to make my lot easier. This is not instant therapy. Now please lie back down."

  Instead, she stood up. "This is an impossible relationship, Dr. Koch. I talk, you listen. I'm supposed to be candid, but you're not candid with me. It isn't give and take, it isn't normal."

  I remained seated. "My dear Francine," I said. "If I say something at the wrong time, you condemn me. If I say nothing, you condemn me equally. I am not a magician. Psychoanalysis is a learning process. Did you hear process? I am the backboard. You are the player with the ball."

  "Why can't we talk like two people?"

  "Please lie back down. One does not talk to the priest in the confessional as if he is a friend who talks back."

  "Oh so that's what you think you are!"