Elbowing the Seducer

by T. Gertler

  He jostled Maris, whose mouth was exploring Howard’s neck. Howard said, “This is like the BMT,” and she told him, “Your Adam’s apple tickles.”

  Newman bent down and bit into her behind. She shrieked, laughed, shrieked. He didn’t let go. Her shrieks grew louder. He held on calmly. His teeth imprinted flesh. He had no intention of tearing flesh, but he had no intention of releasing it. If she kept on wriggling, she’d cut herself. He steadied her with his hands on her buttocks, projecting marvels that Howard balanced. “Jesus,” she wailed, and Howard grunted. It must be a struggle to keep her aloft, Newman thought. Bent in an attitude of prayer, he had captured something. Ass on the wing. He dreamed of blue and a harpsichord’s voice spiraling. Led by his teeth, his head followed each squirm of her body. Sometimes he made her wriggle, sometimes Howard did, sometimes she wriggled on her own, chirruping. He and Howard were joined in that fragile spirit of sharing common to audiences, travelers, castaways. Should he regard Maris as a lifeboat? Her anal sphincter winked at him. He touched a wet finger to it, pushed. “Ahhhhhh,” someone said. “Ahhhhhh.” The shower went on.

  —

  Katharine was gone when he and Howard and Maris emerged from the bathroom. Howard didn’t seem to notice. Maris said, “Jesus, look at the time.” The expression made Newman want to smile.

  —

  He sat in a blue upholstered armchair and mentally connected the mildew spots on the title page. He produced a picture of a cow’s udder or a man with a beard. The book, a first English edition of Tolstoy’s What I Believe, had a dejected brown binding. “Where’d you get it?” he asked.

  “The Strand,” Steve, his psychiatrist, answered from another blue armchair.

  “There was a dreadful song years ago, late fifties, called ‘I Believe.’ ”

  “I remember.” Steve was decent; he made Newman feel they were having a conversation.

  “A credo by the unimaginative for the unimaginable. Yet we remember it. Will sings ad jingles, Burger King, Coke. Why’d you buy this?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Sometimes, you know, I’d be sitting in my study, reading, and up it would come. I wouldn’t be reading anything arousing, but there it was, pressing up, so I’d unzip and let it stretch, all very friendly, very…reassuring. I miss that. I suppose I got in the shower with Howard and Maris because I hoped something different would have an effect. But it wasn’t the sort of thing a decent man does. I’m glad it didn’t work.” He replaced the book on a shelf near his chair. “How forbearing of you. Don’t you want to ask me my definition of a decent man?”

  “You’ll get to it.”

  “A decent man takes pride in his responsibilities, a decent man accepts them, welcomes them.”

  “Responsibilities?”

  “Work. Wife, children. Aging parents.”

  “Duties.”

  “If you like.”

  “Imposed by…?”

  “Self-imposed.”

  “I’d like to know where joy and love fit in.”

  “Perhaps you’re suffering from overlarge expectations.”

  “I don’t pay for this. You do. That’s my definition of who’s suffering here.”

  “Is that what’s called being cocksure?” There was a long, not entirely uncomfortable pause before Newman said, “I can’t stand it when you’re imperturbable.”

  “Maybe you’re getting an idea of how some people may respond to you.”

  “I know how I am. How I seem. I haven’t done so badly with it.”

  “Then stay that way.”

  “Maybe it’s all physical. Arterial blockage.”

  “Have you gone for the tests yet?”

  “No. What if it turns out there’s no physical cause?”

  “You’d have to confront the problems you’ve merely acknowledged by coming here.”

  “I am confronting them.”

  “By getting in the shower with Howard and, um—”

  “Maris. No, that was an excursion. An experiment.”

  “What did you find out?”

  For the first time in the session, Newman’s voice faltered. “That I’m sad.”

  The room smelled of furniture polish. Steve swiped at cigarette ash on his gray polo shirt, ample-bellied. They both were fifty-four, but he was in rotten shape. Maybe Steve couldn’t get it up either. “I’m not unaware of the homosexual implications,” Newman said.

  Steve stretched the ashy spot on his shirt.

  “Burned?” Newman asked.

  “I don’t think so. My wife would have a fit.” Steve patted his belly. “Biting the behind of a woman who’s having intercourse with another man doesn’t qualify as a gay experience.”

  “The woman could be an excuse, a cover-up. She could be a metaphor for a connection between the two men.”

  “A woman isn’t a metaphor, a woman is a woman.”

  “Shouldn’t I be stumbling onto these timeless truths myself, not have them lectured at me?”

  “A direct or indirect homosexual encounter doesn’t mean you’re gay; it means you’re curious or adventurous or drunk or a number of other things. We can talk about bisexuality for months. If you want us to spend time and your money speculating on what gender you prefer at what hour of the day with what brand of beer, it’s fine with me.”

  “You’re rushing me.”

  “You have problems. Wouldn’t you like to discover what to do about them?”

  “I’d like to find…grace in whatever I’m doing.”

  “Therapy isn’t graceful. Analysis is. You want to lie down and talk for eight years?”

  —

  He piled the books on the counter. Dan went through them, punching prices on a pocket calculator. A young girl beside Dan watched what he did. Her eyes seemed enormous in her small face. She reminded Newman of pictures of children in wartime. She was lost and she was a survivor. He wanted to offer her a loaf of bread. In return she might offer him something. She didn’t need delousing.

  “I see you’ve got new help, Dan.”

  Dan nodded. “This is Dina. Dina, this is Mr. Sykes.”

  “Are you the critic?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Her lips disappeared between her teeth. She put his books on a cart and wheeled them away.

  The cash register sang. Dan said, “Thirty-eight.”

  On his way out, a richer Newman told the girl goodbye. Arranging his books on a sale table, she ignored him.

  —

  He called her to say good night when he was away in the city. He sat on the closed toilet seat, the phone in his lap, and dialed. The bathroom door couldn’t shut completely because of the telephone cord reaching from the room. He heard the air conditioner barking and someone moving in the room, a drawer opening, a sheet slapping the air before settling over the mattress.

  “Hello?” Her voice had a hoarseness he liked.

  “Hi.”

  “You’re home early.”

  “I’m tired. Lots of running around. Got to get enough sleep. Can’t disappoint my public tomorrow. I saw Steve, then took some books to sell. Are you okay?”

  “Don’t you want to hear how it went today?”

  “I was getting to that.”

  “I was nervous. Naturally. The photographer—her name’s Bea—she’s tough but okay. She’s teaching me what to do.”

  “What about the doctor?”

  “He wasn’t there except for an hour. There are four doctors altogether, with a lot of patients, lots of face-lifts and nose jobs. There are clinic patients too—people with terrible things wrong with them, but they don’t have any money, so the doctors operate on them for nothing—”

  “So you enjoyed yourself. You did well.”

  “Newman, there was this man who came in. He had no face. He was shot in the face, and he had no—”

  “Was he a clinic patient?”

  “I don’t know. His wife was crying and holding on to him. I felt so sorry for—”

/>   “If this upsets you, maybe you shouldn’t—”

  “I’m not upset. It’s just you’re not letting me—”

  “I’m not stopping you.”

  “If you’ll just listen.”

  “Now, Clare, don’t I listen to you?” He listened to silence. “Clare?” A sigh from upstate reached him. Silence again. “Clare.” He heard crying. “You’re not all right,” he said.

  A sobbed “I am” came through.

  “Clare, I know how important a job is to you, but not if it’s going to—”

  “I’m fine.” Still crying.

  “—upset you. We don’t need the money, it’s not much money. Is it too late to call Linker?”

  “I don’t need Dr. Linker.”

  “Is Leslie there?”

  “Yes. They’re both home.”

  “Maybe he’ll play gin rummy with you.” He heard sniffling. Her voice arrived steadied by anger.

  “I don’t need a fifteen-year-old boy as a baby-sitter.”

  “I’m concerned about you. And I’m not there to take care of you.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I can’t be. Let’s calm down. You’ve had a strenuous day.”

  “It was mostly good, except for that man—”

  “Yes, the one with no face.”

  “And his wife. Bea told me—”

  “Who’s Bea?”

  “The medical photographer. She told me the wife was the one who shot him.”

  “Why isn’t she in jail?”

  “He wouldn’t press charges.”

  “You know, we’re going to end up with a phone bill like last month’s. Why did she shoot him?”

  “Bea said it was in all the papers. He stabbed her and she shot him.”

  “I wonder what papers Bea reads.” He heard her give a small giggle. “There, that’s what I wanted to hear. You can call me anytime.”

  “I know.”

  “Sleep well, darling.”

  “You too. Good night, Newman.”

  “Good night.”

  He carried the phone back into the room. His ear felt red. “Sorry to be so long,” he said. “Clare was a bit upset.”

  “Is she okay now?” Sheila Dunne asked. She was lying on the made bed, flipping through a book he had to review, Anxiety in the Narrator.

  “Yes.” He bent down and kissed her.

  As he was taking off his shirt, she said, “I don’t see how you can read this. Every other word is ‘semiotics.’ ”

  “It’s actually a quite provocative book.”

  “There’s no sex in it. I don’t like books that don’t have sex.”

  He hung up his shirt. “Then you wouldn’t like this one.”

  —

  Steering Sheila’s heavily perfumed body through acts of precipitation, he imagined himself at home with Clare. He sat on the chintz sofa in his living room, with Biscuit’s head resting on his knee. The gray muzzle left a wet imprint on his chinos. Adored by the dog’s large mournful eyes, he stroked the silky head, scratched behind unalert ears. In the ladderback chair, Clare sewed a white button on red fabric. She was using black thread. Clare, he said, stop it. The sewing had turned into a shotgun, the same one Harry Dunne displayed on a wall in his den. Harry had made it himself, producing a stock of exotic and well-rubbed glossy wood better attended to than Sheila and perhaps more dangerous. Clare, stop it, Newman said calmly. I’d like to, she answered, but I don’t know how. Also calm. She must have taken a pill earlier. The gun pointed at him, and he worried that Biscuit might get hurt, but Biscuit had turned into an axe. It should be a knife, for stabbing, he thought, but it was already an axe, his wood axe, in his hands, resting across his knees. He didn’t know where to cut her, nobody had told him where. He understood she’d be shooting him in the face as soon as he hacked at her. He was holding up the event. I don’t know where this goes, I need more information, he said. She said, You should have listened when you had the chance. Now you’ll have to improvise. Slowly he got up and went to her and raised the axe. Where? Should he slice into her shoulder, against her chestbone, or into the blond hair piled on her head? Should he shut his eyes against flying bone chips? Hurry, she said, because it’s my turn next.

  Sheila trilled a note of pleasure. Her thighs closed on his hand. Her grip on his unemphatic sex tightened; he hoped she’d removed her engagement solitaire. The day had started in bed with Clare and was ending in bed with Sheila. It wasn’t improving.

  2

  Squatting, she opened the canvas bag on the white floor. She had packed a cotton skirt, a pair of jeans, a belt, the silk blouse, the camisole, three cotton blouses, four tee shirts, a cardigan, underwear and socks, a nightgown, a pair of winter boots, her rolled-up winter coat, a plastic sandwich bag each of toiletries and cosmetics, a box of tissues, several story manuscripts, Bandaged Moments, a notebook, an address book, two pens, two hard-boiled eggs and two pieces of French bread wrapped in cellophane, a picture of a dog she’d had that died, Howard’s letter, a love letter from Larry, and four paperbacks: Farewell, My Lovely, the Selected Poems of George Herbert, a dictionary, and Pride and Prejudice.

  She unwrapped the eggs and sat on the floor to peel one. She had left behind a glass paperweight, a shoebox of snapshots, her velvet jacket and other clothes, the unwearable new shoes, the rainbow afghan she’d crocheted one winter when she’d given up writing, her red pencils, the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and, because he’d written his name in it, Lolita. It was her book, but his name was in it and she didn’t want to take his name with her. She checked the George Herbert book to make sure his name wasn’t there. She took off her wedding ring and dropped it into the bag.

  “Is that dinner?” Dan stood in the doorway, holding money.

  “I’m not very hungry.”

  “May I come in?”

  She nodded. In the white room, his slightness and brownness intensified; he shriveled into a smaller, darker man. He might have been her age or twice it. The short beard had gray in it.

  “This is for today,” he said and gave her twenty dollars. “That’s five hours at four each.”

  “I was working to pay you back for letting me stay here.”

  “A separate issue. When you work here, you get paid. Not much, but the fringe benefits are incredible.” His voice, soft and unaccented, lulled her. “First, you can take any book to read at night after we close. You have to put it back in the morning. If you’re not finished with it and somebody buys it, you’re out of luck. You learn to read fast. I still don’t know what happened to Little Eva. Second, you can stay until somebody else needs the room.”

  The bleached haven, warmed by evening sun through the skylight, receded. The white walls lifted away like stage scenery, and she sat in the lightless blank of the future. “You mean if somebody needs it tomorrow, I have to go?”

  “Not tomorrow.”

  “Then when?”

  “There’s no point in worrying about it now.”

  She disagreed, but how could he know that worrying about things was her hobby? “Is this your room?”

  “No. My apartment’s down the hall. This room and the bathroom next door are yours.”

  “What did Howard tell you about me?”

  Without pausing, he said, “That you need a place to stay.”

  “I was here before with him.”

  “A few times, yes. But who counts?”

  “You’re a good friend to him, letting me stay here.”

  “He isn’t my friend. There are keys downstairs on a shelf under the register. Use both locks if you go out. There’s a laundromat on Ninth Street. And there’s a deli that stays open till twelve. Sometimes the heroes are stale. Good night.”

  She hurried to stand up and follow him. Down the dim hall she saw his faded blue work shirt before she saw him. The peeled egg in her hand felt clammy and alive. “Then why are you letting me stay here?” she asked. “If he’s not your friend?”

  “I have the room.
You need it. Sometimes the bagels are stale too.” He opened a door to a flood of light.

  “Thank you,” she called before the door closed.

  —

  “Hello?”

  “I have a collect call to anyone from Dina. Will you accept the charges?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go ahead, New York.”

  “Mother? Hi.”

  “Dina?”

  “How are you?”

  “Well, it’s raining here. How are you, darling?”

  “I’m at a pay phone. I left Larry today.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At a pay—”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “I thought you might try to reach me at the apartment or Larry might decide to frighten you by saying I’d disappeared, so I want you to know I’m okay.”

  “But where—”

  “I’ll call you again soon.”

  “What’s your number?”

  “I’m moving around for now. I don’t have one.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. We can help you. Daddy and I can help you. I’ll send you money.”

  “I have money.”

  “Come home. I’ll send you money to come home.”

  “I don’t want to go to California now. But thanks.”

  “There’s nothing to keep you in New York. Hold on a minute.”

  Leaning against a scratched acrylic divider, she held on. Cars bolted under the yellow light. A maroon van with mirrored windows pulled up at the corner and parked. Twilight silvered the mirrors. The driver, a shirtless, barefoot man about twenty-five, got out and with a scowl indicated that he was waiting for the phone. Through the divider she saw the other phone. Its receiver had been torn off. Wire hung down, carrying phantom sounds from the amputated mouthpiece. The man had tanned arms and a reddened torso. The elastic of his underpants showed above his unbelted jeans.

  A male voice asked, “Dina?”

  “Dad,” she said, turning back to the acrylic divider for privacy. “Hi.”

  “Your mother just told me and all I can say is, Right on. You should have left that bastard—”

  “Dad—”