Other people

by Sol Stein

  "I am trying to," I said. "I'm not sure."

  "To say one likes all trees is less meaningful than to recognize that one likes this or that tree better than some others. We are differentiating. We are expressing preferences. And so with people. We cannot commune with all people. We will never know enough of them in a lifetime. We select from among those offered to us those few whose chemistry interests us, whose looks please us, and finally whose minds and character are such that they will continue to satisfy one's emotions, even eros, when the decline begins. This is not an argument for monogamy or exclusivity or morality, it is an assessment of experience. We prefer. If we have no preferences, we are mindless idiots. You do not prefer your Bill, or your father, or me. And so we come by theoretical circumlocution to George Thomassy, a man I have just begun to know. A Maccabee. Does that mean anything to you?"

  "I hate him!"

  "All right, you love him, but what I want to know—"

  "I said I hate him!"

  He sighed as if to a misbehaving child. "You are not listening."

  I listened.

  "Your Maccabee is defending me also. I trust him because he does his work so well. He is reliable. I wish my work with you was as skilled. Your friends who are revolutionaries might—"

  "What revolutionaries?"

  "The ones you went to college with. The ones who talk brimstone where you work. They should prize a man like Thomassy."

  "He's just a damn lawyer."

  "Can you see him kowtowing to brownshirts?"

  "No."

  "To anyone?"

  "No. Not if he can help it."

  "We could have used a few of him in Europe not so long ago. Have you wondered, Francine, why so many of the young public defenders are Jews here?"

  Was Thomassy a reaction to the Armenian massacres? Not wanting to be in anyone's power?

  "You are quiet," said Dr. Koch.

  "I was thinking."

  "That can be an advantage in life, surprisingly." He waited a moment. "Were you thinking about this Maccabee you hate?"

  "I don't hate him."

  My sentence hung in the air awaiting execution. I could feel it coming. Finally, Koch spoke again.

  "Francine, you know this is not an analysis any more. We are just talking now."

  "Anything wrong with that?"

  "No. But I cannot charge for tutorials. We must discontinue these sessions. If you need me again, you can come again. Life is better. Go."

  "What should I do?"

  "What do you think you should do?"

  "I should telephone him."

  "Then telephone him."

  It was quite possibly the most difficult telephone call I ever made in my life.

  "This is Francine," I said.

  "Who?"

  He must have known my voice.

  "Francine," I said.

  "Well," he said, and was silent.

  "Reasonably well," I said. "How are you?"

  "I'm okay. How are you?"

  "I'm alive," I said.

  "I'm sure your young man will be pleased."

  "Don't be stupid, George."

  "Did you call me up to call me stupid?"

  "I called you up to say I enjoyed the extremely brief period in which we ostensibly lived together sort of."

  "I didn't move out."

  "Where are we, George?"

  "At opposite ends of a telephone line."

  Could I not fight back just for the sake of peace?

  "I owe you money," I said.

  "I'll look into it."

  "Maybe it would have been better to have gone through with the trial."

  He didn't say one fucking word.

  "If there'd been a trial, we would have had some excuse to see each other," I said, hanging up, hoping that he would call me back.

  Forty-nine

  Koch

  Before the arraignment, Thomassy tells me that I should not talk except when the judge asks me a direct question, and then I am to answer in the fewest words. He makes a joke of it: I am an analyst, an experienced listener. Listen, he says, and do not talk. But it is self-defense, I insist, I must make my case. No, Thomassy cautions me, he must make my case. I am not being charged with self-defense, but with manslaughter. Marta, come back from whatever heaven you're in just this once, I trust this lawyer but I do not love him, I need someone at my side whom I love.

  In the courtroom I feel alone. Here and there people buzz with each other, ignoring this ritual of justice. I am asked to stand, then to sit, I find myself nibbling at a cuticle. Finally, Thomassy is to speak and I strain to listen.

  "Your Honor," he says, "this court is not the proper forum for me to express myself on a constitutional issue. I do not want to mind-read the drafters as to what precisely they had in mind when they gave the people the right to bear arms. A militiaman's rifle or a Saturday-night special? A homemade nuclear device to use against a tyrannical government? I find myself on both sides of that argument. But we are dealing with something far simpler. If an intruder has illegally entered our home to steal something and we catch him at it, and the intruder then threatens us with a loaded weapon, where are we? If we had previously been threatened and applied for a gun permit and kept a loaded gun in, say, our desk in the event of a recurrence, that would be thought of as perfectly normal. But if this was a first occurrence, we cannot reach for the gun we do not have. Our fists can't reach a gunman ten or fifteen feet away. Do we throw a rock? An ashtray? Do we throw ourselves at the intruder and become a certain victim? Dr. Koch…"

  Thomassy looked over at me. I did not know whether I could stand. I start to rise. He motions me down.

  "Dr. Koch," he continues, "has a dartboard in his office that he uses to unwind with. He keeps three darts in a holder on his desk. In the circumstances I have described, he reaches not for an ashtray, or a nonexistent rock, nor does he hopelessly lunge against the intruder. He throws a dart. Had he missed, he would have been shot dead. We know the intruder's gun was loaded. He fired it. He fired it at Dr. Koch. It was heaven-sent luck that Dr. Koch's dart hit the intruder in a vital area, the eye, and as a result Dr. Koch is alive and with us in this courtroom today. But what a miscarriage of justice it would be if the District Attorney's charge against Dr. Koch is carried any further. He has been a law-abiding citizen all his life, not even a traffic ticket to his name, and he has bravely continued his practice of helping people in a neighborhood where anarchy encroaches on lawful citizens day by day. If Dr. Koch is to be tried — and I have no doubt that he would be exonerated on grounds of self-defense — the trial would itself be a cruel and unusual punishment."

  The young man who was, I suppose, my antagonist, interrupted with vehemence and anger in his voice. "This man, Your Honor," he said, pointing at me, "hit another human being in the eye with a dart."

  "Your Honor," said Thomassy, "would the people rather that the doctor defended himself with a good clean pistol shot in the heart? Are we discussing the odd, perhaps even grotesque nature of the only available means of defense, or whether the doctor committed a crime in defending himself while threatened with a deadly weapon? Are the people claiming this was not self-defense?"

  "The issue should be tried," said the young man. "A jury should determine whether the doctor used excessive force for the circumstances."

  On what precise scale do we measure force? Should I have aimed for the chest? The dart would not have penetrated bone. The truth is I didn't think, I threw it at the center of the threat, his scornful face.

  The judge, a huge-headed man with bristling eyebrows, motioned Thomassy toward him a bit. I heard him say, "Is your client all right?"

  Thomassy came over to me. "Anything the matter?"

  "I am drinking a glass of water," I said.

  "Your face is covered with sweat."

  I felt my face. I took my handkerchief and wiped my forehead, my cheeks, my neck.

  "All right," said the judge. He motioned both attorneys forwa
rd for something he called a conference at the bench. He didn't want me to hear what was being said. Was I not allowed to hear at my own trial?

  I watched Thomassy reply to whatever it was the judge said. I watched the young man's rebuttal. It was as if at this trial of my life I had lost my hearing. What was going on?

  Then suddenly Thomassy came striding over to me and whispered, "The judge wants to be sure that you would make yourself available as a witness for the government when the man you hit recovers enough to be tried."

  "Do I have to?" I asked. "Can't they just work from the police records?"

  "No."

  "Can I give them an affidavit?"

  "They want you to testify. Please. I am trying to strike a bargain."

  "The law is a bargain?"

  Thomassy laughed. "Dr. Koch," he said, "you are a marvelous innocent."

  Thomassy returned to the conference at the bench. After a few minutes of mumbling, he and the young man returned to their respective places looking as if they were colleagues and not enemies. Then the judge said, "The case is dismissed."

  Thomassy nodded his approval, then turned to shake my hand.

  "You should be happy," he said.

  "I cannot be happy."

  "We won," said Thomassy.

  "We have not yet won. The case is not dismissed. That man is recovering, you said. He will be tried."

  "He'll go to jail," Thomassy said.

  "For how long?"

  "I don't know. Some years."

  "And be paroled sooner?"

  "Probably."

  "And I must lie in wait for his revenge."

  I should not have betrayed my alarm. In a world where truth is a frequent danger, I should not have spoiled the gratitude he expected. I should not have told him that all he had won was a delay of my sentence. We cannot cure the world, we can only be prepared to defend ourselves again and again and again.

  "Mr. Thomassy," I said, "it would give me a great deal of pleasure if you would allow me to buy you a drink. I don't usually drink, but today I will join you, if you will join me."

  "Sure."

  In the bar, we clinked glasses.

  "Once more, thank you," I said.

  He nodded.

  "How much do I owe you?"

  "I'll send a bill. It won't be much. Just the time."

  "I am not a very good client for you, Mr. Thomassy," I said. "It took me sixty years to go before the law once. Another sixty years I do not have."

  "Just keep out of trouble."

  "I do, I do, I just have to keep the trouble from seeking me out. But I tell you, Francine Widmer, she will make up for me."

  His face changed.

  "You see," I said, "I know her probably better than anyone alive from our long hours together, and I tell you this. She is determined to confront the hypocrisy of the world not only when it intrudes on her life. She will seek it out like a ferret. That, I think, is her vocation, a female grand inquisitor. And so you see, she will be in frequent trouble, and will need a Maccabee at her side."

  "Dr. Koch," he said, "you have the instincts of a matchmaker."

  I had to laugh.

  "Having a client like her," he said, "is too preoccupying."

  "Forgive me," I said, risking all, "I am old enough to be a Dutch uncle to you, yes? It is one of the great joys of life to have a preoccupation as beautiful and intelligent as Marta."

  He looked at me.

  "You said Marta."

  "I meant Francine," I said laughing to the point of tears, "I meant Francine."

  Fifty

  Thomassy

  It takes a fool to be honest with other people all the time, and something higher than a saint to be altogether honest with yourself. I wasn't about to trust myself on the phone with Francine's disembodied voice. Not now.

  My secretary has a way of standing in front of my desk when she figures I'm not doing something I'm supposed to be doing.

  "What's bothering you, George?" she says. She never calls me George in front of people.

  I looked up at her and had to smile. "You're being a pest, Grace," I said.

  "Right," she said. "How can I help?"

  "All right. I want to wrap up this damn Widmer case."

  "I thought you liked Miss Widmer."

  "Mind your own business, Grace."

  "My job is to mind your business, George."

  I suppose Grace's spunk was part of her attraction for me.

  "I need the landlord's name off one of her rent receipts. Will you call her?"

  "Sure."

  Grace is as mischievous as a Persian cat. The next thing I knew she was buzzing me on the intercom, saying, "Miss Widmer's on the line."

  I didn't want to talk to her, idiot. You were supposed to…

  "Hello."

  "Hello, George," she said. Her voice exuded pheromones. It was like hearing from another time of my own life.

  "I need to meet with your landlord and see if I can't get you out of that lease."

  "I'd be grateful if you could."

  "I don't need any more gratitude."

  "You mean I haven't paid your bill yet," she said.

  "I haven't sent it yet," I said. Some conversation. "I don't have his name or address. Got a rent receipt handy?"

  "I'll have to look around. Don't want to keep you on the line. I'll phone it in."

  "No rush. You can mail it." Thomassy the Chicken-Hearted avoiding another zombie telephone call like this one.

  When the receipt arrived, Grace brought it in ahead of the rest of the mail, held it in front of me, and said, "It's here. I'll leave you alone with it." The bitch.

  I sat staring at it between my hands as if it was a relic of the crucifixion. Francine had held it. Now I held it. Contact. Ridiculous! I've got to concentrate on getting this last bit over with period.

  The landlord was the Miltmac Corporation in Manhattan, Eighth Avenue midtown, obviously two guys' names, Milton and Mac-something. No phone. Don't want calls from idiot tenants. I had my secretary try information. Can you believe an unlisted number? How do people get in touch with them? I suppose anybody they want a call from gets the number. Or gets them under another corporate name. I tell my secretary to get Fat Tarbell. His line is busy. Christ!

  I sat staring through the rent receipt, paying attention to what was inside my own head.

  Sometimes I doodle thoughts over and over like a broken record. On the legal pad before me I had written A wife is a weakness. Well, a friend is a weakness, too, male or female. Where in my life did I see a friend? My father could use a friend up in Oswego. Or a wife. I am alone therefore I am strong. I don't have people to compromise with, cater to, work things out with. I decide, I do. My bachelorhood hadn't bothered me up till now. Up to Francine. It's not up to Francine, it's up to me.

  Grace buzzed that Fat Tarbell was on the line.

  "Miltmac Corporation. Real Estate. Manhattan."

  "I don't do much in Manhattan, George."

  "You did Anna Banana."

  "That's because Brady works up here. Let me look. Call you back."

  I had written Other people make life difficult. I crossed out "difficult" and wrote "interesting." I crossed out "interesting." Both were true.

  "Mr. Tarbell calling back."

  "That was fast."

  "Nothing on Miltmac, George, sorry."

  "Can you at least get me their unlisted telephone number?"

  "No problem."

  He called back in three minutes flat and gave me the number. "No charge," he said. "Any time."

  "Thanks."

  No point in making a cold call. I needed the name of a person at Miltmac. I noodled a bit and remembered Arthur had a book on his desk that showed all the principals in real estate, cross-indexed by corporation and name.

  I apologized for bothering him. He said it was a privilege. Miltmac's principal, as it turned out, was neither Milton nor Macsomething. His name was listed as H. Hoover. I'll bet the H stands f
or Herbert. He must have loved his parents for doing that.

  "Mr. Hoover," I said on the phone, "my name is George Thomassy. I'm a lawyer in Westchester. I understand your firm has property in this county."

  "How'd you get this phone?"

  "I dialed information."

  "It's unlisted. They're not supposed to give it out."

  "I guess someone slipped. Anyway, do the following addresses jibe with your records?" I gave him the addresses of Francine's apartment house and the two similar houses next door.

  "What's up, mister, I'm a busy man."

  "Are you aware that a felony was committed on your premises by someone who is a leaseholder with you?"

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "I thought you might be aware that an employee of yours was also involved?"

  "Now wait a minute."

  "His name is Jason McCabe."

  "That's the super."

  "Right, Mr. Hoover. I was the lawyer that filed the trespass charges against him."

  "What are you making trouble for? You looking for a payoff, what?"

  "I'm working for my client, Mr. Hoover."

  "Don't fuck me over, mister. What do you want?"

  "I want to come and see you."

  "I don't go in for payoffs."

  "Would tomorrow at ten at your office be convenient?"

  "I'll have Luigi here. He weighs three hundred pounds and can beat the shit out of a gorilla."

  "I look forward to meeting you, Mr. Hoover."

  There are moments in life I call high risk, high gain. You're tempted to do something that could either backfire or hit paydirt. I said to Grace that I was seeing Mr. Hoover at Miltmac the following morning at ten about Miss Widmer's lease, and it might be helpful if Miss Widmer brought the lease itself to the meeting.