Vic seemed a little embarrassed. He spoke sotto voce. “Uh, how legal do we want to play this thing?”
“Don’t you know the rules?” Schaeffer demanded.
“Yes, Mr. Schaeffer, I know the rules, but a lot of times guests don’t...stuff like no finger spin on serves and things like that, and they resent it if you try to tell them. So we can do this nice and easy, where I just call did it hit the net or what, or I can enforce everything.”
“The rules are what make the game,” I said. “Enforce them.”
Schaeffer glared at me, as if angry to hear me saying something he agreed with. “That’s fine with me,” he said.
Now Vic was really embarrassed. “Well, in that case, Mr. Schaeffer, I don’t know if that baseball cap is strictly G.I., if you know what I mean.”
I suppressed laughter. No sense psyching Schaeffer up with anger this close to the match. “Let him wear it,” I said. “I’ll be wearing a sweatband, if I can turn one up. “I had brought one, but it was white. Jan and Kenni were seeing if they had one. It occurred to me that Schaeffer needed the baseball cap for more than just keeping sweat out of his eyes. His coiffure, carefully constructed of hairs and hair spray, and blow dried into submission to cover a bald spot, would not survive the rigors of the match.
Vic asked us if we wanted to rally a little to warm up. Schaeffer said he was willing to, if I needed it, but I said no, thank you. Why show him anything before the match? Vic clasped us by the shoulders and told us to shake hands. We did, because everybody was looking. Then he spoke to the crowd, introducing us, saying it was a special challenge match, best two out of three. (I had tried to get three out of five, but had lost out in pre-match negotiations.) “And may the more proficient gladiator,” Vic concluded, “emerge victorious.”
Vic then flipped a Davidian fifty-cent piece. Schaeffer called heads and won. He chose first serve. I took the end of the table with the door behind me, figuring that a broken background might prove a slight distraction for him.
Vic said we’d start in two minutes. I went over to talk to Jan and Kenni, who were just taking their seats. Kenni looked distraught.
“We couldent find a sweatband. Well, only a little pink one.”
“I’m confident enough in my manhood to wear a pink one,” I said.
“I diddent bring it.”
I was about to say there was no harm done but Jan got in first. “I’ve got a scarf. A cotton railroad bandana, you know. You can roll it up and tie it around your head just like a sweatband.”
What the hell, I thought, if Schaeffer could wear a baseball cap, I could look like Cochise. Jan pulled a flaming red railroad bandana from her pocket (already rolled up—this was a confident woman), told me to turn around, and tied it at the back of my head.
“Time, gentlemen,” Vic said.
Jan and Kenni insisted on giving me kisses for luck; just a couple of quick pecks, but I figured it might bubble Schaeffer’s blood a little.
I turned to go. Jan said, “Matt?”
I turned back.
“Before you go out there, Kenni and I want you to know we think you have great legs.” She grinned. Kenni was grinning and blushing at the same time. I was still smiling when I reached the table. Good, I thought, give Schaeffer something else to wonder about.
He took the ball and served. Nothing fancy, just sounding me out. I tapped it back to him. I could tell by his stance, by his grip, by everything about him, that Schaeffer was a smasher—someone for whom the game consisted of hitting a little white ball four hundred miles an hour and watching people try to hit it back.
I love playing against that sort of player, the kind with the Chinese penholder grip, and the tendency to run around their backhands, being careful not to slip on their drool whenever you put a high one across.
Because my game is to return everything and beat these guys with their own impatience. The longer you play, the better it works. Schaeffer hit a forehand drive, I chopped it back. He hit a backhand drive, I chopped it back. Eventually, he had me fifteen feet back from the table, chopping back his drives six inches off the floor, but he still wouldn’t put a change-up on me. This was a man who probably knew a macho way to put on his socks.
I have to admit, he was good. He won the first game 21-16, and practically all my points came on shots he sent long, or dribblers off the net.
After the game, we switched ends, and I served first. I lost the first two points, and started to get mad at myself. Just to change my luck, I gave him a backhand serve. It didn’t travel as fast as a forehand, or skim the net as low, but it had a tricky bit of sidespin on it.
Schaeffer hit it back over my head. The crowd, which had been politely silent up till then, made a little noise. Schaeffer slammed the edge of his paddle down against the table. Vic looked alarmed, but Schaeffer got hold of himself. I gave him another backhand, which he whiffed on completely. This upset him so much that when I came back with a standard serve on the fifth point, he hit it straight into the net. The service changed with me up 3-2.
I was up 8-5 when I decided it was time. He put down a forehand drive with just a little less topspin on it than usual, and I got my left hip and right shoulder into it, and shot it by him.
By world standards, it wasn’t much of a smash. It wasn’t as good as his. But we’d been playing for over a half hour now, and he hadn’t seen one from me, and he had undoubtedly decided I couldn’t do it at all. He looked hatred at me, a hatred that intensified when I did it again on the next point. This time, he hit the ball wild. One of the spectators got the ball and gave it to me. I bounced it casually across the table to him.
“Your serve,” I said mildly.
After that it was easy. Schaeffer suspected he was being made to look like a fool, and so made a bigger fool of himself than I ever could have. He sprayed balls around worse than Gerald Ford on a golf course. He kept cursing under his breath, fouler and louder as the match went on. The people watching, most of whom had started out as fans of his, and undoubtedly knew me as the cheater of the mystery game, wound up rooting for me.
I won the second game 21-17, and the third 21-6. The last point had to be especially maddening, since it was a bad shot on my part that hit the top of the net and dribbled over.
Schaeffer smashed the paddle into the table so hard, he broke it. He didn’t wait around to shake hands. He didn’t even wait around for Vic to announce the final score. He was striding for the door, practically sprinting.
“Just a minute,” I said. “We had a bet.”
Schaeffer paused at the top of a stride. I could see the back of his neck turn brick red as he remembered what the bet was. Then he started walking again.
“That’s all right,” I told his back. “You don’t have to say it. You’re demonstrating it.”
He stopped again. This time he turned around. There was anger in his face, but there was anguish, too. I had gotten Mr. Sensitive Macho where he lived. He knew he was an asshole, and he knew that everyone in the room knew it, too. And there was nothing in his “code” to tell him what to do about it.
He turned away and hurried from the room. I think it was to get away from everybody before the tears I saw welling in his eyes had a chance to spill.
Jan and Kenni had joined me by this time. The looks on their faces told me they’d seen the tears, too.
“God,” I said. “Almost makes me feel sorry I beat him.”
“But not quite,” Jan said. She was smiling. In my experience, women have a much healthier attitude toward a triumph over an asshole; i.e., if he deserved compassion, he wouldn’t be an asshole.
“No,” I said, “not quite. Let me take a shower, and we’ll hit the late-night buffet. I’m starving.”
8
“This is true stuff. One hundred percent true.”
—Bob Saget
“The Morning Program” (CBS)
I KNOCKED ON THE door. Kenni asked who it was.
“Just me,” I said. “Ma
tt.”
“Oh. Just a second.” The cruise line was very security minded. It took a good half minute before she could undo all the locks and latches. “Hi,” she said. She had taken her makeup off—I could tell only because her lips and eyebrows were a little bit lighter than I was used to seeing. She still looked terrific.
“Jan went to the disco,” she said.
“Not you?”
“She went to meet guys. I’m not interested in the kind of guy you meet in a disco.”
She had a paperback book in her hand, marking her place with a finger. I asked her what she was reading.
She showed me. It was Bloodwhip, Number Six in Mike Ryerson’s Flagellator series. I asked her how she liked it.
“It’s good. It’s funny. I never would have—I mean, even though I won it, I probably never would have looked at it if he haddent been so nice. Also, I wondered why Althea Nell Furst was so calm about her grandson’s reading his books.”
“Satire.”
“Exactly. Even when it’s raw, it’s not pandering.”
“You should read Number Fifteen.”
“I probably will, now. Why?”
“He trashes the Stephen Shears books. It’s funnier now that I’ve met Schaeffer.”
“You trashed him tonight.” “I wonder, though.”
“What about?”
“Is this going to make him more or less obnoxious over the days we’ve got left?”
“He couldent possibly be more obnoxious,” Kenni declared. “It’s silly standing in the doorway like this. Come in.”
Kenni and Jan’s room was a mirror image of mine. I took the chair at the desk; Kenni sat on the edge of her bed. Her back was very straight.
“I just came by,” I said, “to ask you how to wash the scarf. I mean, I would have done it in the sink with a bar of soap, but I didn’t want to ruin it.”
“You don’t have to wash it.”
“I am not,” I told her, “Elvis Presley, that I should give people my sweat as a gift.”
She giggled. “Just throw it overboard, then. Jan’s got a dozen of those things.”
Then we ran out of conversation for a while. It happens when you’re getting to know someone. It’s always awkward. To break the silence, I said, “I’m going to take Spot around the deck. Care to come along? The book will be here when you get back. It’s not like you have to bring it back to the library or anything.”
She laughed and said, “Sure. Just let me get my jacket.”
Since she was back in this morning’s beachcomber outfit, with an impressive length of leg showing, I didn’t know what good a jacket would do, but I just said, of course. Judging from what I see in New York, women train their legs to be impervious to cold.
We got Spot, who was delighted to see Kenni again, then went up to the boat deck, figuring that would be the quietest, and walked around.
There was a breeze, now, and peaks of white foam were visible as far as the lights of the ship could reach. If you thought about it, you could feel the ship rocking slightly.
“I wonder how long it’s been since we’ve left calm waters. Schaeffer will undoubtedly claim the rocking of the waves put him off.”
“Let’s not talk about Schaeffer. Since I set foot on this ship, he’s been making life miserable.”
“Good point. Now that you mention it, I’m sick of him myself. What do you want to talk about?”
Kenni went to the rail and looked at the water. Rock and forties pop from different dance floors inside fought for possession of the Atlantic night air. “I have to confess something,” she said.
I hate when people do that. “I have to confess something” or “There’s something I have to tell you.” While they wait for the invitation to go ahead, I’m always busy imagining all sorts of horrible possibilities. Right now I was thinking she was about to tell me she was in fact a spy from the New York Public Library, sent to collect twenty-seven thousand dollars in overdue fines for some book I had taken out as a kid and forgotten.
That’s not what it was.
“I looked you up,” she said.
“What do you mean, you looked me up?”
“In the New York Times Index. Then on the microfilms of the papers. When I found out you were going to be escorting us instead of that disk jockey.”
“Joe Jenkins,” I said. Maybe there was something to this cruise stuff—I hadn’t thought of Joe Jenkins all day. I wondered how the search for him was going.
“Whatever. Anyway, I thought your name sounded familiar, so I looked you up. I couldent help myself. I’m an awful snoop.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Spot, bite her.”
She stepped back. “What?”
“A joke, Kenni, relax. My stupid way of trying to tell you I am not offended by snoops. Considering what I do for a living, I wouldn’t dare.”
She smiled. We started walking again. Walking was now something we had to think about some; the deck was likely to be closer or farther away than you thought when you tried to step on it. I was impressed with Spot. He had twice as many feet as we did, and it didn’t faze him in the slightest.
“I’m sorry I jumped. I should have known Spot wouldent bite anybody.”
“Oh, he’ll bite people. On the throat, even. He’s been well trained. It’s just that ‘bite’ is not the magic word.”
“What is the magic word?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Oh,” she said. “I guess I understand.”
“No, you don’t,” I assured her. “I can’t tell you because Spot is here. If I say it, he’ll do it, and you wouldn’t like that.”
“Great, now even your dog intimidates me.”
“He’s not exactly my dog, and what do you mean ‘even’? Are you trying to say I intimidate you?”
“Of course you do. My God, Matt. You’ve caught actual murderers! I lied before when I said I diddent know that.”
“That’s Schaeffer’s hang-up.”
“You’re vice president of a giant corporation!”
“Me and, at last count, a hundred and sixty-eight others.”
“You were Monica Teobaldi’s boyfriend!”
“Me,” I conceded, “and, at last count, a hundred and sixty-eight others.”
“Matt!”
“Another joke. Sorry. I can get bitter at Monica; she broke my heart, twice. And she wasn’t even a big star, then.”
“Then there was Wendy Ichimi, last year.”
“When I was sixteen, I necked with Lorraine Federico in the balcony of Loews 86th Street.”
“Is she famous?”
“She was in my neighborhood.”
“Matt! I’m serious!”
“Okay. I’ll be serious, too. I’m just a guy, okay? I happen to work in television, and I meet people who have to do with television. Why the hell should any of that intimidate you?”
“I liked you. I liked your picture, and I liked what I read about you, and when you showed up this morning, and I was so stupid over the intercom, and you were so nice about it, I liked you right away.”
“So?”
“So, I’m just a librarian.”
“Just a librarian! Just a librarian? It’s only the most important job in the city. The library is the escape hatch from the neighborhood, or it’s the place you go to learn how to fix the neighborhood up.”
“I know that. It’s just so...unglamorous.”
“Kenni, believe me, vital is better than glamorous. And let me tell you something. Since I saw you this morning, I’ve wanted to, how shall I put this, check you out.”
“I thought those were the signals I was getting,” she said. “I just couldent believe it.”
I took hold of her and kissed her. “Believe it now?”
“Starting to,” she said, and went back for further evidence. It seemed she was an awful snoop.
Eventually, we went back to my cabin to discuss it, then after a while, we stopped talking. Later, the Atlantic rocked us to sl
eep.
9
“You are about to witness a crime.”
—Karl Maiden
American Express Travelers’ Checques commercials
“MATT,” SHE SAID, NUDGING me. “Wake up.”
I opened one eye. Kenni was looming over me, peering through a curtain of soft, thick hair. I’ve noticed that women almost always allude with shudders to the way they look first thing in the morning, but all the ones I have been privileged to see under those circumstances have looked just swell.
“Again?” I said. “I’m willing to try, but don’t expect too much. What kind of books do you keep in that library, anyway?”
She kissed me on the nose. She was very uninhibited for a librarian. For anybody. “I don’t want to do it again.”
“Oh,” I said.
Kenni flushed. “I mean, I do, but not now.”
“Just as well. I can rest up.”
She got up from the bunk we’d shared, making it less crowded, but also less interesting. She started tugging on my arm. “It’s time to go to breakfast.”
“So call the steward and have him bring breakfast.”
“I can’t.”
I rubbed my eyes. I was beginning to wake up in spite of myself. “No,” I said around a yawn, “I suppose that would be less than discreet, wouldn’t it? Okay, I’ll call the steward, and order a great, big breakfast, and you hide in the bathroom when he brings it. Or I’ll order two of everything, and say half of it’s for Spot. Although Jan undoubtedly knows you didn’t get to your cabin last night, she’s not going to think you suddenly got an urge to hit the casino room. I think...”
“Are you always like this in the morning?”
“You’ve got the rest of the trip to find out,” I said, and she blushed.
“We’ve got to go to breakfast in the dining room. Remember what Billy Palmer said last night?”
“No,” I lied.
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