“No. I don’t know.”
“Fellas then. I could put you on to some swingers. My personal physician treats them for the biggest families.”
“Not interested.”
“You drive? There’s this guy needs a wheelman for a bank job he’s planning.”
“I’m no crook.”
“Say, you don’t know what you want, do you?”
“Sure don’t.” The fellow sat spraddle-legged.
“All right,” Feldman said finally, “I’ve got it. I’ve been waiting for someone to try it out on. It’s new, an experiment. Not a bit risky, but very unusual and a lot of kicks.”
“Yeah?”
“Guaranteed, but it would cost you seven hundred bucks.”
“That’s a little more than I’d planned—”
“Okay, then it’s not for you. Forget it.”
“What is it?”
“Forget it. It’s not for you.”
“Well, you can tell me what it is.”
“No, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t want to cut corners on this project. We’ll think of something else.”
“Well, just tell me what it is. If it sounds worthwhile—”
“You’d do it?”
“Well, if I thought it was okay—”
“All right,” Feldman said. “You’ve got to go to Cleveland. You wear disguises.”
“What?”
“You wear disguises in Cleveland. I’ll send you to a place where they rent costumes.”
“Jesus.”
“You stay in a hotel, and every day you put on a different costume: fireman, baseball player, intern—that sort of thing.”
“Well, what’s so hot about that?”
“Sure. Forget it.”
“Well, what’s so hot about it?”
“Have you tried it?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then how do you know? Habit—everything’s habit. Tell me, what do you do when you hear a funny story?”
“Well, I laugh.”
“Exactly. That’s what I mean. Why not hold your right arm up instead? Look, do me a favor. Go to Cleveland. See what you think.”
He went, and a week later Feldman got a postcard saying it was the best seven hundred dollars he’d ever spent and that next year the man thought he would try it in Worcester, Mass.
Now things ran smoothly. Each day brought new challenges, and he derived a certain joy from the balanced schizophrenic nature of his store: the aboveboard floors, with their conventional commerce, and the queer open secret of his basement. He was even able to take more interest in the main store, discovering, now that he could again pay attention to it, that in the last months it had prospered. He reconsidered his plans for building a suburban branch, and while he had not actually made his mind up to go ahead with the project, he deemed it a serious future possibility. Though he still believed in the lean years to come, he wondered whether he might not have exaggerated their imminence.
At home his relations with his family had entered a new phase. He neither tormented Lilly nor avoided her with his neutrality. Billy, who was out of school for the summer, was by the grace of his vacation able to obscure some of his intellectual clumsiness. Lean years would come for Billy, Feldman knew, but for now he was perfectly willing to pretend that there was not much wrong with his son. Though everyday he pursued Billy with questions about why he was the last kid chosen for a team, sometimes he allowed a tone of joking to give a good-natured dimension to his scorn.
It was against this background that he found himself one night on Lilly’s side of the bed. They had been watching television together, and Feldman, who always determined which programs they would watch, permitted her a movie. The grateful Lilly couldn’t do enough for him.
“Play with my back,” he murmured. He lay on his side and pulled his pajama tops up around his shoulders. “Use your other hand,” he said. “I feel your callus.” It was pleasant to lie there in the dark with his eyes closed, listening to the movie. “Lower,” he said, “a little lower. Yes. There.” Lilly didn’t have any idea when she had overworked an area. “Keep moving around,” he told her. “Try to remember where you’ve been. That’s it.” For a few minutes it was much better, but every so often she would become engrossed in the movie. Then her hand would falter and stop, and he would have to shake his shoulders to get her attention again. During commercials, however, the hand came alive by itself and fluttered hither and yon with an almost geisha attention. During the next commercial Feldman removed his bottoms, and even after the movie came on Lilly’s fingers still moved expertly.
“I’m going to turn the set off, Leo,” she said in a few minutes. In the dark she groped her way back to the bed. “Play with the backs of my legs,” he said. “Play with my kneecaps. Play with the nape of my neck.”
She reached across his body and drew her fingers up his thighs. “Let’s make love,” she whispered.
“No. Play with my back again.”
“Please, Leo.”
“I can’t.”
“I’ll make you. Shall I try to make you, Leo?”
“All right,” he said, “try to make me.” He lay on his back, and she took his penis in her left hand. The callus irritated him. She rubbed him this way for a few minutes and then began to thrash about against him.
She put her breast on his nose. “Do you have a hard-on, Leo?” she asked sweetly.
“I have a soft-off.”
She put her hand back on his penis. “Take my ear in your mouth,” he said. She took his ear in her mouth. “Don’t suck it, for Christ’s sake—you’ll break the eardrum.” She became gentler.
“Can you now, Leo?” she asked in a little while. “Will you try?”
“All right,” he said, “I’ll try.” He rolled on top of her. “It doesn’t fit.”
“Here,” she said.
“I’m not in.”
“Sure you are.”
He moved back and forth a few times. “I’m slipping out.”
“Ahh. Ahh. Oh, Leo.”
“You’re too dry.”
“Ahhgghhrr,” she shuddered.
“Play with my back,” he said.
“Leo, come back. Leo? All right,” she said, “I know. Let’s stand up.” They stood up.
“Stop. You’re breaking it off.”
“Let’s sit on the side of the bed.”
“No. The color television.”
“Leo, we’ll break it—and the tubes get too hot. Let’s stand on the dresser.”
“Let’s sit in the chest of drawers.”
“Leo, what are you doing?”
“Where’s the air-conditioning vent?”
“The air-conditioning vent?”
“Where is it?”
“There, on the floor. Near the chair. What are you doing?”
“I’m sitting down. Ohh,” he said. “Oh boy, Arghhrr.”
“Let me try.”
“Wait till I’m through. Ahhghh. Wow.”
“Leo, you’ll catch cold. Nothing’s worse than a summer cold. Leo?”
“Oh boy.”
“Leo, please, let’s get in bed.” She pulled him up and they got into bed. Feldman turned onto his stomach. “Leo,” she said after playing with his back for a few minutes, “try to catch me.”
“All right.”
“Close your eyes.” He heard her get out of the bed. “Count to fifty.”
“All right.”
“Don’t start counting until I tell you.” Her voice came from across the room; she was sitting on the air conditioning. “You can start counting now, Leo. Leo? Are you counting?”
“What?”
“Are you counting?”
“You woke me up.”
“Oh, Leo!”
She got back into bed. “You’re hard now, Leo. Come in me.”
“All right.”
“Oh, Leo, you’re so hard now.”
“I have to pee.”
“Oh, Leo. Oh.
Oh. Oh, that’s wonderful, Leo. Oh.”
“Where’s the Kleenex?”
“Oh. Oh.”
“There’s only three left. How can you let the Kleenex get so low?”
“Oh, I love you, Leo. I love you.”
“All right.”
“I did something, Leo. It’s the first time. It was wonderful.”
“Been quite a night for you. First your own program on the TV and now this.”
“You do something too, Leo. You do something now too.”
He flipped out of her and rolled off. “Can’t cut the mustard,” he said philosophically, putting his hands behind his head.
“I’m sorry, dear,” Lilly said. “It’s been wonderful these last months. You’ve been marvelous to us. To Billy and me. So relaxed.”
“Yes.”
“Things must be going well at the store.”
“Very nicely.”
“See? It doesn’t do any good to worry.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Leo?”
“Yes?”
“Did you know that I’ve been worried lately?”
“No. I didn’t know that.”
“I tried not to show it.”
“Well, it worked.”
“But it’s all right. I found out today it’s all right.”
“That’s good.”
“It’s my callus. I went to see Freedman about it.”
“Best not to play around with these things—Freedman?”
“Yes, and do you know, Leo, that man looked at me in the queerest way.”
“You took your callus to Freedman?”
“It was absolutely embarrassing, Leo. He tested me for syphilis.”
“He tested you for—oh no—he t-test—tee hee—tested you for syph-ha-ha-lis?”
“You’d think he never saw a callus before.”
“She saw Freedman. She took her callus to Freedman.” Feldman laughed. He roared. He threw his right hand up in the air and laughed harder.
“Leo, what is it?”
“F-F-Freedman,” he sputtered. “Freedman,” he guffawed. “Freeeeeedman,” he sniggered. He tittered and giggled and snickered and chuckled and cackled and chortled. “F-F-Freeeedman!” He couldn’t stop laughing, and as he laughed his erection grew. It became enormous. It was the biggest hard-on he had ever had. Lilly, astonished, pulled him on top of her greedily. Laughing, he rocked and shook himself into an orgasm.
The next morning he still had to laugh every time he thought about it. His eyes teared and his nose ran. Once, during a sales conference, he actually slapped his knee in his mirth like a vaudeville farmer. It was the best laugh of his life, persistent as the symptom of a cold. When he tried to work, the thought of Freedman and Lilly kept getting in the way and he had to lay aside whatever he was doing. The people around him, Miss Lane and some of the executives and buyers, had never seen him this way, but his laughter was so infectious that they had to join him, laughing the harder because they didn’t know the joke. Possessed by his laughter, he made a decision—he would remember this laughter and try always to be happy.
Then, riding the escalator up to the third floor when he returned from lunch, he saw something that made him stop laughing. A girl he had sent to the abortionist was mulling over some handkerchiefs at a counter. And as he peered through the crowd he recognized others he had seen in his basement.
“Oh, hi,” a young man said to him on the fourth floor. It was the lad for whom he had obtained the prescription.
On a sofa in the furniture department, sitting there as if the thing already belonged to her, was a lady for whom he had obtained a black-market baby. She nodded to him as he went by and fumbled with her pocketbook as if she meant to show him a picture of the child. He hurried to an elevator to take him the rest of the way up to his regular office. How had they come up? He wondered. Why weren’t they in the basement? What were they doing this high in his store?
Sure enough, when he stepped into the elevator, there was the man he had sent to the queers.
17
What would you do if a hole opened up in that wall?” Bisch asked.
“That couldn’t happen,” Feldman said warily. “How could that happen?”
“No, I mean it. Suppose a hole, big enough for a man to go through, suddenly opened up in our cell wall. What would you do?”
“The exercise yard’s right outside, Bisch.”
“Yes, but suppose it wasn’t? Suppose the cell wall was the only thing between you and the outside. Suppose it was light shift and all the guards had rushed to the other side of the prison to put out a fire, and the heat traveling in waves along the wall made this cell so hot you couldn’t stand it, so hot in fact that a hole was melted in the wall. What would you do?”
“What would you do, Bisch?”
“I’d try to save my life.”
“You’d go through the hole?”
“Self-defense,” Bisch said.
“Then what would you do?”
“I’d go around to the other side of the prison and turn myself in,” Bisch said. “And you?”
“So would I.”
“Yes, but suppose the guards are so busy fighting the fire that no one can get to the main gate to let you back in? And suppose it turns cold, below freezing, and you know that all you have to do to get warm is just go down the mountain a few thousand feet? What would you do?”
“I’d go down the few thousand feet,” Feldman said.
“You would?”
“To the first house.”
“Ain’t no houses down there.”
“To the first house. Sooner or later I’d come to one. Now then, what would you do?”
“I’d do the same.”
“What would you do when you got to the house?”
“I’d go inside and wait until I thought the fire was out. Then I’d come back.”
“You wouldn’t turn yourself over to the owner and demand that he make a citizen’s arrest?”
“Goddamnit,” Bisch said angrily, “you wouldn’t either. You made that up.”
“Of course I would, Bisch.”
“You wouldn’t. That’s unrealistic.”
“Oh, it is, is it?” Feldman said. “But it’s not unrealistic I suppose when you tell me you’d go around to the main gate and turn yourself in to a guard. That’s not unrealistic. The only difference is one’s a paid enforcer and the other isn’t. Why, your notion of justice is that it’s of concern only to the professional. You don’t care a fig about law and order for its own sake, do you?”
“Wait a minute. I didn’t say that.”
“You as good as said it.”
Bisch was silent. Then, in a low voice, he asked what Feldman meant to do about it. It was a trap: if he said he was going to report him, Bisch would lean on him, but if he told him to forget it, he would be admitting to exactly the sort of indifference Bisch was trying to maneuver him into confessing.
“I haven’t got enough to go on yet,” he told him finally, “but a few more slips like that last one, Bisch, and I’ll have you dead to rights.”
Bisch ground his teeth and glared. It had been a trap, Feldman saw, though Bisch returned to his bunk, accepting defeat.
It was the sort of conversation that was sweeping the prison. For three months—since, in fact, the strange assembly in which Warden Fisher had first articulated his vigilante policy—the talk in the exercise yards, in the shops, in the discussion groups, everywhere the men gathered, had exactly this quality of probing hypothetical situations, fussy as boys challenging each other to spend a billion dollars. Most of it was just “making warden’s mouths,” as even the most pious convicts conceded. The warden himself, overhearing one of their voices raised in virtue when he passed, would respond with a wry smile, knowing as the expression of a parent come into a noisy bedroom now peaceful with the counterfeit deep breathing of sleep. (Assumed zealousness became a source for certain wicked jokes daringly told by one conv
ict to another. One story—Feldman had had to read it in the warden’s column of the prison newspaper—was about a convict serving a short sentence, caught stealing food from the kitchen. Asked what he was up to, he replied, “The cook’s a lifer. I don’t trust him.” He was caught again some months later in the visiting room, making love to the cook’s wife. “How many times do I have to tell you?” he said. “I just don’t trust that damn cook.”)
Hypocrisy flourished and became a sort of virtue, but warden’s mouths or no, the prison rules had never operated so efficiently. It was almost impossible, for example, to find a Fink who would still help you through the loopholes for a few cigarettes, although the new policy had created in effect another loophole. Because the legitimacy of permission slips and passes was seldom questioned now, one began to feel a positive virtue for being grounded in details and honorably fulfilling the small procedures of prison function. Feldman sometimes wondered if this, rather than the announced object of rooting out the bad men, might not actually be in the back of “Warden’s Mind” (a branch of a sort of speculative philosophy among certain prisoners). Despite himself, even Feldman felt a certain pride in knowing the guards knew he was where he was supposed to be. But if the atmosphere was now a little freer and the prisoners had less to fear from the warden and the guards, they had more to fear from each other. The new policy had shifted the tensions from between prisoners and keepers to between kept and kept.
More than once Feldman had tried to get Bisch to suggest that they drop their pursuit of each other, but the man treated these moves as further maneuvers, and always they had to return to their silly game. Feldman had even told Bisch some overzealous convict jokes that he made up himself, but while Bisch laughed, he never offered to tell Feldman any stories of his own, and Feldman, suspecting Bisch might use these jokes against him, decided he couldn’t risk telling him others. Their strategies spiraled.
Only one time, and that to his cost, had Feldman, weary of their duel, spoken forthrightly. Bisch, obviously trying to tempt him into an open declaration of his feelings, had told him that he personally knew of a conspiracy to break jail. “Oh, come on, Bisch,” Feldman had said. “Grow up. If you know about a jailbreak, either blow the whistle on the guys who are planning it or keep it to yourself. Don’t tell me about it. I’ve only got four months before I get out of here. Why would I get involved in something like that?”
A Bad Man Page 32