by Max Shulman
VIRGIL: Where was I?
POLLY: You were about to tell me something nice.
VIRGIL: Oh, yes … Polly, you ask whether I think of you as a woman, whether I find you desirable. Yes. Yes to both questions. I have thought of you as a woman and I have found you desirable since I first laid eyes on you twenty years ago. I am now a middle-aged gentleman and the president of a university, and, you will agree, it is hardly fitting for a man of my age and attainments to indulge in sex fantasies. However, I still recall, as though it were yesterday, an afternoon during the war when we all went out to the beach.… In fact, I recall it so vividly that I’m going to shut up right now.
POLLY: Come on, Virgil, that’s not fair. You started something. Now finish it.
VIRGIL: I better not.
POLLY: If you’ve got any kind words for me, please, I beg you, don’t hold back. Never in my life have I needed so desperately to hear some kind words.
VIRGIL: Well, these are pretty sexy words.
POLLY: What kind of kind words could be kinder?
VIRGIL: Well, if you insist—
POLLY: I do.… All right, it was wartime and we were all at the beach one afternoon. Go on, and and don’t skip anything.
VIRGIL: There were a lot of us out there that day—Ira, Boo, several of the Owenses—but it’s only you I remember. You were wearing a white two-piece bathing suit with tiny blue fleur-de-lis printed on it. I remember every detail. I can still see your breasts when you came out of the water—the thrust of them, the round perfection of them. Your halter had slipped a bit while you were swimming, and I saw your nipples, how the cold water had made them rise like two happy, eager things, ready for fun and play.
POLLY: Twenty years have passed, Virgil.
VIRGIL: The years have been kind. I look now at your breasts and I see the same vitality. I see more. I see tenderness, womanliness, passion come to full maturity.
POLLY: You startle me. I’m not sure I know what to say.
VIRGIL: Say nothing. Listen. I want to tell you about your legs now. They’re beautiful, Polly, not just because they’re so faultlessly proportioned, but because they dare, they venture. I have thought of those brave legs around me, arching and striving. I have wished to be embraced by such courage.… May I continue?
POLLY: For God’s love, yes!
VIRGIL: Your buttocks.
POLLY: You like them?
VIRGIL: You have, without question, the most defiant behind in North America. Did you ever get a look at your backside while you were engaged in an argument?
POLLY: A little difficult, isn’t it? I mean, have you ever seen yours?
VIRGIL: Good point … But I have seen yours. Many times. Do you know that your butt absolutely bristles? It leaps with conviction. It launches you!
POLLY: Like a rocket, you mean?
VIRGIL: Like a comet! Dear Polly, you in bed are the combination poets dream about—those eager breasts, those feisty legs, that brazen ass.… Oh, excuse me.
POLLY: Not at all, not at all!
VIRGIL: And I haven’t even mentioned your face, the gorgeous honesty of it. And those creamy shoulders and supple arms. And the deft hands, the strong, nimble fingers that know where to touch a man.…
This much Gabriel, breathing hard, heard. Then he heard this: “Gabriel,” came a voice like thunder, “what the hell do you think you’re doing here?”
The boy leaped up in terror, tangling his feet in the wire, kicking it loose from the tape recorder, making the spools stop turning. Looming over him was the fearful scowl of Jefferson Tatum. And behind Jefferson stood two broad-beamed women in their mid-forties, each with the same slack, placid, inbred face—Esther and Millie McCabe, the pushovers from packaging.
“Oh, hi, Uncle Jefferson,” stammered Gabriel. “I was just leaving.”
“Wait a minute! Isn’t that one of them tape recorders?”
“Leaving. That’s what I was doing—leaving.” Gabriel ducked under the old man’s arm, snatched up his tape recorder and started away.
“Why are you hanging around a place like this? Don’t you know what kind of place this is? Wait till I tell your mother!” yelled Jefferson, but Gabriel was already gunning his sports car out of the woods.
“Crazy, mixed-up kid!” muttered Jefferson, darkly. Then, remembering the McCabe twins, he gallantly offered an arm to each. “Shall we go in, ladies?” he said with a debonair toss of his head.
“Sure, mister,” they said and started walking with him toward Big Eddie’s.
And meanwhile in Room No. 6 Polly was asking hopefully, “Is there more, Virgil? Have you finished or is there more? Huh? Huh?”
“I guess that just about covers it,” he replied.
“Not quite. There’s one last thing I have to know. And please, please, Virgil,” she entreated, “be honest. These pretty words you’ve been saying—are they true? Really and truly true?”
“On my oath as a Southern gentleman,” he said solemnly.
“Then why have you never let me know? I don’t mean you had to make a pass at me. Why didn’t you somehow let me know?”
“I’ve just answered that,” he said with a wry smile. “The Southern gentleman syndrome. I’m afraid I’ve got it bad. Another man’s wife is strictly out of bounds.”
“I’ll accept that,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s the whole answer.”
“You mean Boo?”
“Yes.”
“A most curious thing is happening here,” said Virgil. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be drunk, but it’s me who’s spilling my innermost secrets. Well, okay, I might as well finish the job.… Yes, I love Boo. I have loved her more than twenty long, unrequieted years. In fact, I love her right this minute, and, frankly, looking ahead, I see no relief in sight. All the same—please try to understand this—I am not a masochist, and I’m thoroughly tired of playing on the losing side. Polly, I tell you plainly that if you were not married and if you would have me, I’d leap at the chance. And don’t get any wrong ideas: I wouldn’t be taking you as a consolation prize. You, my beauty, are clearly, definitely, and spectacularly a first prize. You are bingo. You are the laurel wreath, the winner’s circle, and the Medal of Honor, and any man lucky enough to have you should drop to his knees and give thanks several hundred times a day.”
“Virgil, that funny look you see on my face is the happiest smile I have smiled since I don’t know when. Would you mind if I kissed you?”
“I’d be proud, only first you must put the top of your dress back on. I may be a Southern gentleman, but let’s not push it too far.”
He held up the jacket she had thrown on the floor. She slipped into it, fastened the buttons, and gave Virgil an honest kiss on the mouth.
“Now then,” said Virgil, “shall we order the rabbit or finish the vodka?”
“Neither,” she said. “You’ve got a deans’ meeting, and as for me, I don’t want food, and I don’t need liquor. Take me back to the hotel. I am going to stand naked in front of a mirror all afternoon.”
Laughing, arm in arm, they walked out of Room No. 6—just as Jefferson was entering the bar with the McCabe twins.
Jefferson stared at his son, stared at Polly, stared back at his son. The old man’s eyes popped with admiration bordering on awe. “Why, you dog!” he said proudly to Virgil. “You peter-pussing hound!”
“Howdy, stranger,” replied Virgil, deadpan, to Jefferson. He tossed a ten-dollar bill on the bar and, looking neither right nor left, escorted Polly outdoors.
Chapter 18
Gabriel drove rapidly but not recklessly away from Big Eddie’s; he did not want to endanger the precious cargo he carried in his sports car—the reel of tape with which he would dissolve the marriage of Polly and Ira Shapian, thus making Polly free to become his wife.
His hunch, Gabriel told himself with grim satisfaction as he speeded toward Acanthus College, had not been wrong: Polly was out of love with Ira. That is why she had been spending s
o much time with Virgil: her feeling for Ira was dead. Only habit and inertia kept the union together; love was gone. Gabriel had proof of it now—this spool of tape, this incontrovertible recording, testimony beyond refuting.
But Gabriel took no pleasure in what he had to do next—play the tape for Ira Shapian. It was a devastating blow to inflict on a man so sensitive. And yet, thought Gabriel, he must be cruel only to be kind. Certainly Mr. Shapian deserved better than a wife who had stopped loving him. When the initial shock had passed, he would probably thank Gabriel.
And even if he did not, even if he hated Gabriel ever afterward, the fact would remain that a mockery of a marriage had been terminated. As long as Polly and Ira stayed together, neither had a chance for happiness. Once asunder, the prospects for both were immeasurably brighter. Mr. Shapian, in spite of his advanced years, was still a colorful figure and surely he would somewhere, sometime, find a woman who would love him truly. As for Polly, she already had Gabriel.
Yes, thought Gabriel as he drove through the gate of Acanthus, he was doing the right thing, the only thing, the human thing.
Carrying the tape, he went looking for Ira and found him in the gymnasium which had been converted into a television studio. Ira was directing a camera rehearsal. To Gabriel’s inexperienced eyes, it seemed like an outbreak in a violent ward. Technicians screamed, cursed, dashed, spun, and jittered. Only Ira was undisturbed. Calmly, softly, steadily, he issued orders.
“Move No. 3 in closer, Mr. Harris,” said Ira.
“I’m getting effing mike shadow,” cried the operator of Camera No. 3.
“Raise your boom, Mr. Santini,” said Ira to the sound man.
“It’s on the effing ceiling right now!” yelled the sound man.
“Dolly him back, Mr. Cohen,” said Ira to the laborer who pushed the boom carriage.
“He’ll knock over my effing brute!” roared the electrician who held a huge arc light behind the boom.
“All right, Mr. Cohen, crab,” said Ira to the boom pusher. The man crimped the wheels, moved the boom backward at such an angle that he missed the arc light by a clean inch. “Now, move No. 3, Mr. Harris,” said Ira, and the camera rolled closer. “Still got mike shadow?” asked Ira.
“No,” admitted the camera operator.
“Mark it, Mr. Dooley,” said Ira, and a laborer slapped ribbons of adhesive tape on the floor to indicate the precise spots where the camera and microphone must stop rolling.
“Next setup, Mr. Schultz?” said Ira to the script clerk.
The script clerk consulted his notebook and said, “Lab No. 4. Cameras 1, 2, and 6. Two booms.”
An overlapping chorus of howls erupted immediately.
“That’s the smallest effing set on the stage,” said the cameraman. “I can’t get three effing machines in there.”
“Where the hell am I gonna put two effing booms?” asked the sound man.
“How do I get lights into this effing mishmash?” demanded the electrician.
“Kill Camera 2, Mr. Harris,” said Ira placidly to the cameraman. “Mr. Santini, use one boom and two lavaliere mikes,” was his soft answer to the sound man. “Stick obies on the cameras, Mr. Keefe,” he said in an unruffled voice to the electrician. “All right, gentlemen, let’s move to Set No. 4.”
Ira, followed by the technical director, the script clerk, and the assistant director, started toward Set No. 4, a replica of one of Dr. Silenko’s laboratories. Meanwhile crewmen fixed tiny, bright spotlights to the bottoms of the cameras and got ready to wheel equipment into position.
Gabriel chose this moment of relative quiet to seize Ira. “Hi, Mr. Shapian,” he said.
“Hello, Gabriel,” said Ira. “Good-bye, Gabriel.”
“Please, sir,” insisted Gabriel, touching Ira’s sleeve, “I have to talk to you.”
“Talk?” Ira regarded the boy in popeyed disbelief. “Are you crazy or what? I’ve got to get this mess on the air in less than four hours and you want to sit and talk?”
“Just a couple of minutes,” said Gabriel supplicatingly, earnestly, urgently. “That’s all I want, two minutes. I promise you, sir, they’ll be the two most important minutes of your entire life.”
Ira looked and was impressed. “All right. Talk.”
“Privately.”
“Now, listen, son—”
“Please?”
Ira met Gabriel’s eyes—passionate, black plagiarisms of his own. How could he refuse his very flesh and blood? And, moreover, this very night Ira was going to Boo’s beach house where—who could tell?—he might at last reach the decision that would make him Gabriel’s legal as well as actual father.
“Back in two minutes,” said Ira to his assistants. “Come on,” he said to Gabriel and led him across the quadrangle to his office. “What is it, boy? And fast.”
“Have you got a tape recorder?”
Ira pointed to a machine on a table beside his desk. Gabriel put on the spool of tape he was carrying, threaded it, switched on the recorder and sat.
The machine talked and Ira listened. For ninety seconds the tape unreeled and Ira, quite still, listened. With each passing second his face grew more blank. He did not pale; he did not redden. It was as though all his powers of feeling, thought, and motion had suddenly, quietly ceased.
“Shall I play it again?” asked Gabriel.
“No,” said Ira. His voice was steady, but not much like his.
Gabriel peered at him curiously. “Sir, did you understand what you just heard?”
“Yes.”
“That was Mrs. Shapian speaking. The man was Virgil Tatum.”
“Yes.”
“I think you are in shock, sir,” said Gabriel.
“Maybe.”
“Can I get you some water?”
“No.”
“Look, sir, if you want to cry or scream or anything, please feel free.”
“Thank you.”
“Would you care to hit me? I mean hard.”
“No, thank you.”
“I’ve got it coming, Mr. Shapian. That was a lousy, sneaky thing I did—following your wife, making that tape. That was the lowest thing I ever did in my life, and I want you to know I’ll never stop being ashamed of it. Never!”
“Fine.”
“And I knew you’d get all shook up when I played you the tape—not this shook up, maybe, but shook up.… Still, what’s right is right. Who is more entitled to this information than you?”
“What?”
“I’m saying, sir, that I didn’t have any choice. I had to play the tape for you because the next move is yours.”
“Move?”
“Are you sure you don’t want any water, Mr. Shapian?”
“Yes.”
“Can I feel your pulse?”
“No.”
“I wish you’d let me because there’s no other way I can tell how bad off you are. I mean just looking at you, your color is okay and you’re not shaking or anything. Give me your pulse, please, sir?”
“No.”
“I’m watching the vein in your neck, which is also a pulse. It seems to be beating normally, so I’m going to assume you’re not in dangerous trauma, even though you just had this terrible shock. Believe me, sir, I wish I could wait a few days to tell you what I’m about to tell you now, because I’m well aware this is the wrong time and place for conversation, especially since your attention-span is so short and the things I have to say are real deep and philosophical. But consider this: chances are you’ll never let me anywhere near you for the rest of your life, so I’ve got to speak right away, even if the circumstances aren’t what you’d call ideal.… Sir, I hope someday you’ll forgive me for what I’ve done, but that’s not important. What’s important is that you should forgive Mrs. Shapian. Remember, sir, the nature of love is still a mystery after all these thousands and thousands of years. Nobody can explain why love hits you; nobody can explain why love dies. What’s the profit in trying to find out? It’s not a sci
ence; there are no rules. Mrs. Shapian loved you, and then she stopped. Why ask why? It happened, that’s all. Don’t blame her; don’t blame yourself. Just keep this in mind: life goes on, and you are still a fairly vigorous man and there is every reason to hope that you will find another wife, maybe even a permanent one, after you divorce Mrs. Shapian.”
“I—” said Ira.
“Yes?” said Gabriel, leaning forward. “You what?”
“I have just come to a decision,” said Ira.
“Yes?” said Gabriel.
“The most important decision of my life,” said Ira.
“Yes,” said Gabriel.
“After I do what I am going to do tonight, I will never again be able to work in commercial television,” said Ira.
“Yes?” said Gabriel.
“Like Samson, I am going to tear down the temple,” said Ira.
“Sir, I don’t quite understand,” said Gabriel. “Could we get back to the tape recording?”
“Go home, Gabriel,” said Ira. “I am needed onstage.”
He rose resolutely to his feet and dashed out of the office.
Chapter 19
The clock on the wall of the gymnasium showed twenty-five seconds before eight P.M.—air time for the Acanthus telecast. Ira Shapian sat on a swivel-topped stool in a simple little set with Camera No. 1 focused on him and a microphone boom hanging over his head. In this set Ira would open the show when the clock’s second hand reached air time.
The catatonia which had gripped Ira upon hearing Gabriel’s tape recording some hours earlier had lifted, but only in patches. He had returned to the stage after the session with Gabriel, made all preparations, improvised, invented, soothed raw nerves, repaired bruised egos, and, without sweat, accomplished prodigies of work.
To the mob of people onstage—the crew, the sponsor’s minions, the ad agency men, Clendennon, the various participants in the telecast—Ira had seemed the very model of an unflappable professional. But deep inside his soul squatted a numbness, a chill, undislodgeable blankness that was not pain but simple unbeing.
There was no hysteria. He could speak rationally, listen intelligently, move purposefully, and act decisively; what he could not do was bring himself to think about his fateful decision to use tonight’s telecast as the means to bar himself forever from commercial television. He knew precisely how he would conduct this evening’s program; he even knew, to the last detail, how he would accomplish his ostracism from commercial tv. But whenever he attempted to think of the consequences of this irrevocable act, he could summon up only nothingness. Not panic and not elation, just nothingness. His mind flatly refused to function. It was as though a door had slammed shut, blocking out all awareness.