Other people

by Sol Stein

  "You know very well I'm not, my dear. The priest has the church's formulas for absolution. I have only yourself to offer yourself."

  "Very prettily put."

  "You are entitled to your sarcasm. Now may I ask you to please leave or please lie back down."

  "You're ordering me!"

  "I am suggesting."

  These are the risks we take. Like governments practicing brinksman-ship. I watch Francine sit down on the edge of the couch. I say nothing. She looks at me. I say, "We have locked antlers. One of us cannot leave."

  Finally she lay back down. I waited a few moments, then I said, "Can you define vocation for me? Think a minute."

  "It's not just making a living."

  "Correct."

  "It's a whole scene that gets you excited. It's your thing."

  "What about your father's vocation?"

  "My father counsels his clients. He's a friend to a lot of them. He does contracts for them. He's sort of a general consultant in the guise of a lawyer."

  "Guise?"

  "His work doesn't excite him."

  "What does then?" Besides you, I thought.

  "I don't know," she said. "Perhaps nothing does. He could do lots of things."

  "Such as?"

  "He could have been a businessman or an ambassador, something like that."

  "Listen carefully. What would he enjoy being?"

  "Someone else."

  She knew she had said something terrible. I gave her a moment to reflect, then said, "The other lawyer. Thomassy. Do you think he wants to be somebody else?"

  "You've gotta be crazy, he loves doing what he does so much he doesn't want to have anything to do with anyone else!"

  "Meaning you?"

  "Anyone."

  "Do you feel he is a competent lawyer?"

  "He's a fucking genius. He's a fanatic about manipulating people, cases, laws."

  "To what end?"

  "It's an end in itself, he loves it!"

  "He has a vocation."

  "It's an obsession with him."

  "Yes."

  Then she said, "You don't like George."

  "I wouldn't say that."

  "I'll say it. You don't like George."

  "My likes are not relevant. It happens I am not a policeman or a criminal. I live outside those things that obsess Mr. Thomassy. I do not need him in my life. Do you?"

  "You're giving me the willies."

  "How?"

  "You make me think maybe I'm not like George."

  "You want to be more like George?"

  "It's his vitality."

  "You have vitality. Don't you like your work?"

  "I like some of the things I do at the job."

  "Would Mr. Thomassy say that about his work?"

  "No. He's a zealot about the whole lot."

  "He has a vocation."

  "All right! I don't! And I am about to fuck up my life by attaching it to his, living off the excitement of his drive. I don't want to do that. I want to be my own man."

  We lingered in the silence that followed. Finally, she said, "I meant my own woman."

  "There is nothing to be embarrassed about. Saying 'your own man' doesn't make you homosexual. The terms of our language are male. That is the only significance of your remark."

  "You mean I'm not suddenly turning queer."

  "Not suddenly."

  "Now what the hell do you mean by that?"

  "You spoke of yourself once or twice as having a crazy side. Tell me about that."

  Experience has taught me to expect a long silence before she answers.

  "Ever since I was a kid, every once in a while I just let all my crazy thoughts and words hang out, like I was letting some other nature out of me, some…"

  "Uncontrolled?"

  "My mother and father never let any crazy side of them show."

  "Concealment?"

  "Yes. To be decorous. Proper. Unexcitable. It's the essence of Waspdom."

  "You were saying before that excitement was part of vocation."

  "Yes," she said. "My vocation is not to be a Wasp. Like needling people, shocking the bourgeoisie, fucking blacks, you know."

  "Or Turks?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "I meant Armenians."

  "But they were enemies."

  "Of whom?"

  "Of each other."

  "And?"

  "My parents. They don't want to know people who are emotional, who dance wildly, who kill, who…"

  "Say it."

  "Who rape. They think the ethnics, all of them, are raping our world."

  "Whose world?"

  "My parents' fucking world!"

  "Not yours?"

  "I want out of that world. Look, Dr. Koch, there was a world of people before my mother and father and me, before any Wasps. It's a temporary stage. Their time is up."

  "You fled from your parents into Cambridge, you befriended all sorts of types, talents, eccentrics, lunatics."

  "Weirdos."

  "You want to be like them?"

  "I want to be like myself. Only…"

  "Yes?"

  "I want to be obsessed like George."

  "Vocation. Yes. Well, I think that's all for today."

  "Jesus, it's like coitus interruptus, right when I'm getting somewhere, you stop."

  "Yes."

  "It's part of the technique, right?"

  She was sitting up, looking at me. I nodded.

  "There aren't a lot of Wasps in your profession, are there?"

  "Some," I said.

  "Not many, I'll bet. Too embarrassing."

  "Is your car parked nearby?"

  "Just a couple of blocks away."

  "I need some exercise after sitting all day. I will walk downstairs with you."

  She looked at me, a slight smile subverting her countenance for the first time that day.

  "Our antlers aren't locked any more?" she said.

  I shook my head.

  In the street she said, "It's like coming out of a movie into real life." She turned left. I went with her.

  "Were there Spanish-speaking people in the area when you moved here?"

  "It was a very long time ago. Maybe a few. I never noticed. Now it is the lingua franca."

  "Lingua hispanica," she said, laughing.

  "Yes."

  So soon the tables turn. Before me, I think, came generations of refugees whose children wanted only to look and act and feel more like the ruling Wasps than their parents. Now the Francines are slithering out of the Wasp compound, finding their way out into the world, looking for the other inhabitants of the planet. She is becoming a European. She has been raped by a Slovak. We are two refugees in this West Side mini-ghetto of mine that shrinks every day like a grape drying. All around we hear the language of Torquemada. Look at those three young toughs eyeing us, sucking machismo from cigarettes, laughing. I feel the fibrillating panic: the bars on the cages are being lifted, the animals are being let loose, the holocaust is coming again.

  "Are you all right. Dr. Koch?"

  "Fine, fine." Dear God, I have lived in this neighborhood for twenty-six years, with Marta and after Marta, will I have to move, become a refugee once more?

  As she reaches her car, she says, "It's a very colorful neighborhood you live in."

  "Yes. Full of life." And death.

  She shakes my hand. "Thank you for accompanying me."

  "De nada," I say in the language of the enemy, as she gets in and I close the door. She ignites the engine, backs up turning the wheel, then pulls away from the curb with a roar, my Francine, waving with one hand. I walk to the corner newsstand, and amidst the Spanish magazines, I find the evening paper, and walk warily back across no man's land to where, I suppose, I live.

  Twenty-seven

  Thomassy

  Making love to Francine isn't a commitment! I don't want to get on an emotional roller coaster, or get trapped in those phone calls, hanging on to each other like
spider spit. I need to get this over with by getting the case closed my way quick.

  The excuse for a lot of her phone calls to me was what was happening at the Grand Jury. I phoned Lefkowitz to volunteer some help to whoever was presenting the case, and all I could get was his secretary saying he had left a message that if I wanted any information I had to call Mr. Cunham directly. So I called Gary and all I could get was his secretary saying her beloved Mr. Cunham could not speak to me at the present time. Of course the runaround was deliberate. I kept checking the Daily News, which is a more reliable place than the Times to get the first flash of a rape indictment, especially white on white. Could Cunham be stalling? Was he testing to see if I would do what I said I would? Was he setting a trap for me?

  I searched the grand jurors list for a familiar name. Luckily, Muscreve was still sitting. God how a man can waste his life between playing Republican potsy and public service. He remembered me.

  "Mr. Muscreve," I said, "I'd heard that the Widmer rape case might be coming before the jury along about now, but I haven't seen anything in the papers."

  "Well, Mr. Thomassy, we sent down the true bill on that only today."

  I tried to keep my voice light. "No wonder I haven't seen it in the papers."

  "You won't," he said. "The D.A. ordered it sealed."

  "What the hell for?"

  "I don't recall anybody went into detail about that. You know how it is on the Grand Jury. The D.A. wants something, no reason not to cooperate. He's serving the people."

  "Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Muscreve."

  "Any time, Mr. Thomassy. My friends and I have a lot of respect for you in this county."

  I didn't lose much time wondering when I'd get a call for a return favor. I called Francine.

  "News," I said.

  "The indictment?"

  "Yep."

  "When?"

  "Yesterday. Sealed. That means it won't appear in the papers."

  "Is that good?"

  "It'll save your father some sleep. I don't know what Cunham's up to. Anyway, I expect your friend Koslak's been picked up."

  Twenty-eight

  Koslak

  Shit if I was going to get up this early just because some boob pushed our doorbell by mistake. I could feel Mary getting out of bed. Then she's shaking me saying it's the police, and I look past her and there is this cop standing in the doorway of the bedroom. I shook my head to wake up faster. "Don't tell me, I left my car by a fire hydrant," I said.

  "I wouldn't know," said the cop. No smile. He had a piece of paper in his hand.

  "What's the problem?" I said, and got my feet on the floor. "My station get hit?"

  "You're under arrest," says this cop, and looks at Mary.

  "What for?" she says.

  "Nothing," I said. "I didn't do anything."

  "Get your clothes on, Mr. Koslak," said the cop.

  "What'd he do?" Mary says.

  "You going to watch me getting dressed?" I says to the cop.

  "I'll turn around," he says, standing in the doorway.

  I'm getting into my clothes, and Mary is at the cop, badgering him. The cop says, "I've got to take him down to the station and get him booked."

  "For what, for Christ's sake!" I yelled, and that did it.

  "Rape," he says. "You've been indicted by the Grand Jury."

  Comment by Mary Koslak

  All my life I've imagined hearing certain things that change everything. I hear a doctor telling me one of the kids has leukemia, and it's like an explosion in my brain. Everything stops. No doctor ever said that to me. None of the kids been sick serious, but I think leukemia — blam! Hearing rape was like that. Look, I'm no stupid thinks her husband never dips his wick somewhere else, they all do, don't they? But rape? What for?! I give it to him whenever he wants it, even when I don't want it, what the fuck does he have to go out and rape somebody?

  It was like I answered my own question. He didn't need to do it, that's why he didn't do it, he's being framed, it's a mistake, something like that. I wouldn't put a frame past some of the people he mixes with. Next thing I hear the kids and I go in to shush them, only it's too late, and Mike, he sees the cop, I hope he didn't hear nothing. I pat his head and tell him to get back in bed, it's too early, I'll be back in soon, and I shut the door. By this time, Harry's dressed, he's brushing his teeth, and I say to him he doesn't want to go down to the station house without a shave. The cop says hurry up.

  He's getting ready to go and I give him a glass of orange juice. He says he can't go nowhere without a cup of coffee, but the cop says come on, and they go. The door closes and I feel like I'm going to go out of my mind waiting to hear what happens. I open the window and when I see them I yell, "Call a lawyer!"

  Harry gives me a dirty look, and I realize people in the street can hear me. They watch him getting into the cop car. Whatever I do is wrong!

  ~~~

  Mary should've kept her big mouth shut. I don't need the neighbors knowing nothing. This'll all get cleared up. When you fuck some broads, they'll squawk to hurt you. I just need to think my way out of this.

  The cop has a buddy in the car. The buddy sits with me in the back. He don't need to put cuffs on. I hold my hands in my lap and concentrate on thinking. Mary is right. I got to think lawyer. They know how to fuck the law before this kind of thing gets out of hand.

  So I'm riding along thinking this here friend of mine Tony Ludo once got into real trouble over what started out like nothing. You know how you get to talking to a woman in a bar, she says something to you, you answer, you talk some more, and somewhere along the line she puts her hand not too accidentally on your leg, some sign like that, and you ask to take her home. So Tony takes this woman, Angie was her name, something like that, to her place, and they do the normal, you know, couple more drinks, a feel, and pretty soon he's throwing it to her on the bed.

  The way Tony tells it this Angie was real hungry. Tony's got this thing he does, he works out on the parallel bars and all that and he's got strong arms, and he just positions his whole body forward so his head's past the woman's head. He explained it, this is so her clit gets the action, and this woman Angie, she likes what Tony's doing so much she comes like a maniac, yelling and all, and Tony, he's just about to let go when he hears the door. I tell you he's got ears like a dog to hear like that. He says what's that, and Angie slides out from under, leaving Tony hung up, and there's this guy standing there with keys in his hand. Tony knows he's gotta be Angie's husband, right, and this guy says to Angie why doesn't she finish him off as if he's used to finding her screwing somebody. Tony figures to get out of there fast, pulls his clothes on while this guy's making cracks at him, and Tony tells him to shut up, and that gets the guy mad. Listen how crazy this is, the guy isn't mad at Tony for screwing his wife, he's mad because Tony told him to shut up! Well, according to Tony, this guy shoves him, and anybody knows Tony'll tell you you don't shove Tony Ludo, he smashes his fist into the guy's face, the guy reaches for something on the table, and Tony don't want to get hurt so he smashes the guy again, remember he's got these arms from the parallel bars, right, and the guy crumples up out cold. The woman is crying, it's a mess, and Tony splits. It's all right to go to a little bit of trouble to get laid, but that was too much. Tony goes back to the bar, and he's not there half an hour when the cops come in and arrest him and take him down to the station house and book him for murder cause Angie's husband is dead.

  Dead? Jesus, you can imagine how Tony reacted. He's been in a hundred fights like that, somebody gets hurt, but dead? And wait'll his wife finds out what the fight was about, how's he gonna explain? I mean Tony was just collecting a piece of ass that was offered him, no big thing, right?

  The cops, they let Tony call a lawyer and he calls Brady. Brady's the one who keeps Tony's Shylock friends out of the cooler and he works for Teamsters and the garbage people, he's gotta be good. He gets Tony sprung on bail, gets the charge reduced to manslaughter two, it goes
to trial. Brady goes to see the widow, commiserates with her, sees what kind of animal she is, hints that Tony wouldn't mind coming around once in a while to do his parallel bars trick, but he couldn't do it if he was in jail, could he? Besides, he finds out that her husband reached for a screwdriver after he got hit the first time, and a screwdriver can be one lethal weapon, right? So he goes to trial with the guy's widow as the chief defense witness, I mean he's a genius, and Tony gets off innocent. I figure Brady's my man.

  Meanwhile they're taking my picture and fingerprinting me just like in the movies, so I say how about a lawyer.

  "Make it fast," they tell me, just to be tough. I tell this cop, he's a sergeant, "I'm innocent till proved guilty, right? Well, I'm innocent, so don't hustle me. I got to look up the number." Brady's number is in the book all right, but that cockamamie secretary of his tells me he's busy. Busy? I'm gonna end up in the can unless I get Brady. So I says to the cop the sergeant left with me, "I got a right to talk to my lawyer privately," and he moves to the other side of the room, but watches me like I'm a crook going to steal something, and I cover the mouthpiece some and turn my back to the cop and I say to Brady's secretary, "Look, pussy, I'm gonna come up there and spread your legs unless you let me talk to him," and in a minute he's on the phone saying, "Were you threatening my secretary?" and I say, "Nah, nah, it was just my way of getting to talk to you." He starts to dish me that real busy crap and I say I was referenced by Tony Ludo. "Okay," he says, "you come up and we'll talk and I'll recommend somebody for you."

  "Are you kidding?" I say. "I been arrested. I'm calling from the station. I been mugged and printed and all."

  "What's the charge?" he asks.

  I look to see if the cop can hear me. "Rape," I whisper.

  I could hear Brady say, "Jesus!" He talks to someone in his office, I don't know what, and then he comes back on the line and says, "Koslak, I'll have to get you before a judge so we can get you bailed. What police station are you at?"

  I tell him and say "Hurry," and he hangs up. "We wait here for the lawyer?" I ask the cop. The cop says, "Follow me," and would you know he puts me in the slammer to wait?

  It must have been hours before someone shows, a fellow who looks so young I figure he can't be Brady. I say, "Are you Brady?" and he says "I'm an associate."