Let Me Count the Ways: A Novel

by De Vries, Peter

  “Are the locations they find you in Chi?” I asked, locking the office vault. “Would you have to move out of town?”

  “They might be anywhere. They’re a nation-wide outfit, expanding in the big cities in every state. They could find you something around here or a thousand miles away. Yes, we might be transferred.”

  The shock this gave me made me realize how my recent indifference about the Lena affair was based on the assumption that she’d always be around, always there for me to go back to. That dream was shattered—so rudely that I had her on the phone before Art was two minutes out of the office.

  “What’s all this about vending machines?” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought it was better this way. Art didn’t want me to say anything till something seemed to be jelling. Even despite that, I had half a mind to tell you anyway the other night when we went to the movie, but you didn’t seem to know I was alive, so I skipped it. It really is better this way in the long run.”

  “Better! Long run! Do you realize how I feel about you? Oh, what fools two people are not to seize every moment they possibly can while there’s time.”

  “Yes. Yes. Of course,” she said, suddenly catching the same urgency that was seizing me. “The wine of life keeps oozing drop by drop. The leaves of life keep falling one by one.”

  “My sentiments exactly. Lena, how you can put things.”

  “Stan.”

  “When can I see you?”

  “Anytime. I mean any time you can arrange it—you know, safely.”

  “I’ve got four rooms going to Fort Wayne tomorrow. McGurk and Art can handle it nicely. It won’t be overnight, but it’ll be all day.”

  I slipped into her house about one o’clock, taking the risk of not even going home for lunch and having that as an excuse for being in the neighborhood if seen. I carried two broiled lobsters which I got from a fish store near the office where they cooked them, and a bottle of cologne as a present. I was determined this time to do it with all the flourish and style at my command. All the graces. It was a real occasion, a real love feast. Not being animals, before going to bed we first polished off a whole lobster each, together with a quart of potato salad and half a huckleberry pie. Lena had made the potato salad and even baked the pie. She was quite a dish herself today, too. She had on a whole nother pair of lounging pajamas, scarlet silk edged with gold, with a gold sash tied tight like a cummerbund to hold her bulging middle in. I thought the whole rig was going to bust when she sat down on the floor to eat like we did, off the coffee table, just explode somewhere or other with a report you could hear across the street. I wouldn’t of minded, and didn’t mind the spectacle that made me afraid it might. I like a full meal in bed as well as at table. You can have your Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar two-dimensional spooks Lena calls them. Which she’s right—not just rationalizing her own heft. Give a man something he can get his mitts on, not some scarecrow you can see the Plaza fountain through that she’s posing by.

  But Lena has her spiritual side, and so when the meal was over and I had given her the cologne and was casing the place to decide how I could steer her toward the workshop on her own steam this time, no more hernias please, that’ll be quite enough for now, thanks just the same, she says, “I have something for you too.”

  With that she hands me an envelope, in which was folded a sheet of paper with a poem written out in violet ink, in her own handwriting.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, even before reading it. “Lena. You wrote a poem to me?”

  “It’s a sonnet. To remember me by. Because—well I might as well tell you. The vending machine people called this morning to say Art’s definitely in, and they want him to move out west. They’re booming in the Pacific states.”

  “Oh, my God. What’ll we do, Lena?”

  “No. No tears, Stan. No regrets. Let’s not spoil this moment. Read the poem.”

  I smoothed the paper out and read it. It went:

  How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

  My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

  For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

  I love thee to the level of every day’s

  Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

  I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

  I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

  I love thee with the passion put to use

  In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

  I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

  With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,

  Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,

  I shall but love thee better after death.

  “It’s beautiful, Lena,” I said when I finished. “But I’m surprised at you.”

  “Why? What do you mean?” I thought she looked away a little guilty.

  “This last part, about loving better after death. I didn’t know you believed in an after life.”

  She twisted a cigarette into a holder and we were once again on the march, snorting smoke.

  “You can really be the most—” she said, not finishing the sentence, but I suppose the next word would be exasperating or infuriating, judging from her look. She grit her teeth and rolled her eyes to the ceiling as she paced. In one hand she angrily twirled a tawsel on the end of her sash. “You always have to foul things up with this—this compulsion to bring up some totally irrelevant thing. The last time we had a rendezvous you came barging in here complaining about your damn Bible belt, not even noticing me, let alone remembering what you’re suppose to come for. Now I give you a poem—hand it to you personally, in my own handwriting—and instead of responding to it romantically for what it’s intended to be, you pick on some little detail and make an issue of that, thereby screwing up another precious hour.”

  “Lena, I’m sorry,” I said, getting up off the floor where I had all this while stayed squatting tailor-wise. My napkin was still hooked into my waist, as I didn’t realize till later. “It just struck my attention because I always thought of you and me as seeing eye to eye on things. That we were kindred spirits, and that’s how all this got started. The poem is very well worded. It’s beautiful. I could never write anything like that in a thousand years. I don’t know how you do it. Forgive me and let’s—”

  “No. It’s too late. You’ve spoiled everything again. I’m out of the mood.”

  This got my cork, wrong as I may of been in not complimenting her first and then bringing up the other matter later. She always made a federal case out of everything—as I now bluntly told her. Passions were being roused of one kind anyway. “Lena,” I said, “if you’re going to converge on me again with this kind of talk, then I don’t know why I came here.”

  “Well don’t look at me, because I wouldn’t know. Why did you? Why do you bother, if you can’t behave like a lover?”

  “Things are just like usual. I come here in good faith, and all I keep is getting criticism.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that you deserve it? You invite it. Cordially! Why? Because you can’t think in terms of Us—only of Me. You can only see the elements of a given situation, relationship, that affect you personally, and these you select as your picture of it. The rest is unimportant. It bespeaks a self-centered and very unadaptable mind. One incapable of the fine give-and-take of human relations.”

  “I suppose you’ve got loads of personality.”

  “That’s typical of you too—changing the subject. Switching things around to suit your convenience. I’m beginning to see there might be Elsie’s side of the story. That the grievance is far, far from all yours. She might a tale unfold too, if she was the type to come complaining. But she keeps things to herself. She suffers in silence.”

  “It’s a lesson you might learn from her! What have you been doing just now but complaining. And it’s not the first time. What you want is a wai
ling wall yourself, not a lover. You’ve never been treated right by any man, to hear you tell it.”

  “You’re all alike!”

  “In a minute I may never come back.”

  “It’s what I suspected right from the first. You’re not a man!”

  She shot this at me with such violence, wheeling away, that I stood stunned. Motionless between fury and desire. I watched her squash the cigarette out and throw the holder down on the coffee table we had a moment ago been happily tucking in lobsters at. It bounced to the floor. She kicked at it, but missed. Something in the scene checked the anger inside me, this 2-way traffic of rage and desire, giving desire the right away. What a tumultuous bedful this woman would make, if you could only shut her up and get her into it. Get her off of theory and into practice. Hunger rolled like a breaker, sweeping me to her side.

  “Oh Lena, what are we doing?” I said. “Our last chance and this is what we do with it. We could have so much. Let’s not squander this hour in another squabble that we might as well be married. Let’s take our happiness while we can.”

  I lunged out to take her with every indication that I intended to act on this advice, but she sidestepped me so neatly that I charged right past her, like a bull past a toreador. I turned around.

  “Look baby,” I said, “I’ve had just about enough of this. This time I’m going to gore you.” I got her around the waist and held her in a vice-like grip. I suddenly felt capable of rape, which I think she sensed. Because there was a stinging blow on my jaw, dealt with the sharp edge of her elbow. I don’t know whether she intended it or whether it was a result of her general thrashing around to get free of my grasp, but the surprise made me let go, and then, seizing the advantage, she shoved me back against the wall with a thud that knocked a picture askew.

  I stood there glaring at her, like an animal pawing the ground preparatory to charging again.

  “Stan, Stan,” she said, “control yourself for God’s sake. There are prison terms for this.”

  I came back in slowly, like a wrestler. “And prison sentences there ought to be for a lot of other things too. You’ve teased this man long enough, baby. Now you’re going to lay it on the line. So if you don’t take those slacks off, and now, I’ll be glad to save you the trouble.”

  With that I reached out to tear them off, but my hand was arrested in midair by a development that saved me the trouble. It was the embarrassment you had all along feared. Under the strain of her defensive contortions they gave way at last with a loud rip, opening a gash that exposed a good twelve inches of the divine flank. It was the climax of our affair. Lena had burst her seams at last. She gave a little gasp of surprise, looked down to confirm what had happened, and then put her hands to her face and with a loud wail of humiliated fury threw herself on the couch.

  I came over to try to console her, to express a tenderness I had not hitherto felt, but it was no use. “Go away! Oh go away! What’s the use! Everything is so awful! Everything is so absolutely and utterly hopeless!”

  No exaggeration, at least of the present situation. She was really hysterical. She laid on her back with her hands over her face and kicked and thrashed around on the couch, carrying on like a Crazy Woman with a stream of incoherent jabberings punctuated by shrieks I was sure could be heard in the street.

  “Lena I … Let me just … You’re a big beautiful bundle of … You really are you know, and I would like nothing better than … I’ll always,” I said, making several starts, but they were all futile.

  I murmured some parting sentiment that I knew wasn’t heard above the uproar either, and it was looking down at her there that I noticed the napkin still tucked in my Bible belt, and yanked it off. I said goodbye and started toward the door. Then I remembered the poem and went back for it. I folded it into the envelope, put it slowly into the breast pocket of my coat and went out. I hated like hell to see me go, I can tell you, because she was the only mistress I ever had.

  seven

  SO THE STINKING summer wore away, and fall came, bringing with it not the clear sharp days that brace the spirit, but long weeks of the kind of drizzle old country Poles call “korsniak,” or cabbage soup. It began to rain like that as I hurried back to the office, a foretaste of what was to come when autumn really settled in. Good thing I had to get back to the office that afternoon or I’d gone on a binge right then. What I hurried back to now was an office girl who was beginning to get on my nerves, probably in part because others were wearing them thin.

  Stella Kovacs was the soul of efficiency, but she had a habit of conducting a conversation almost exclusively by repeating what you had just said in question form. “Stella, I’m going to lunch.” “You’re going to lunch?” “Yes. If McGurk’s crew get in before I do, tell them to load that lot of furniture that’s going out of storage. It’s on the elevator.” “It’s on the elevator?” “Yes, it goes out next.” “It goes out next?”

  The guys called her Echo Lake, but it didn’t amuse me no more. Stella was a thin, giggly girl who was saving up to get married. I could imagine what domestic life was going to be like for her swain. It was going to be like those vaudeville routines where the straight man repeats what the comedian said, on and on, till the payoff comes. I knew that when I got back to the office I was going to take my mood out on her, for years of living have given me a low opinion of this species.

  She was sitting at her desk, which was front-to-front with mine so that we faced each other, stamping tags for a new lot which the other crew was bringing in later in the afternoon. Every lot going into storage gets a number, and every article of furniture is tagged with it. Stella had a couple dozen of these tags laid out in rows on her desk and was stamping them with the adjustable rubber stamp used to number them. I sat across from her with my hat still on my head, watching her bring the stamp down on the ink pad, then the tag, alternately, thud, thud, thud. She gathered the batch together like a deck of cards and laid out a new one, and then again, thud, thud, thud.

  “Stella,” I said at last, “this lot has only two rooms.”

  “This lot has only two rooms?”

  “Yes. A kitchenette. Really only a room and a half. You saw it on the bill you gave the crew. You made the bill out yourself. Now you’ve already got enough tags there for five, six rooms, but away you still tag, knowing we will again have to throw the surplus away. You overtag.”

  “I overtag?” She giggled, as though I had complimented her on some erotic tendency or other. It made no sense, yet now it suited my mood to pursue the needling along sexual lines.

  “Do you realize how many kitchenette jobs we’re getting in lately?” I says, tipping back in my swivel chair and putting my feet on a corner of the desk. “Does it suggest anything to you?”

  “Does it suggest anything to me?” Christ! I thought, she even repeats questions into new questions.

  “Yes. Think. Kitchenettes are what people first rent, so households of that size splitting up means that divorce is on the increase among younger and younger couples. Kids in the first stages of marriages, not the last. They don’t wait ten, fifteen years any longer. Life is too short. Seize the moment! Get divorced while you’re young. Well besides divorce and separation, there’s death, sickness, poverty and husbands running away never to be seen again among some of the other reasons why stuff goes into storage. The bulk of our business is human misery. Have you ever stopped to think about that? That we’re vultures?”

  “We’re vultures?” She giggled again, positively shimmering at the enlarged scope I had given her life. I was opening vistas for her. I sat there gorging myself on irritation and annoyance. I wanted her to annoy me. I looked for it, I cultivated it, I fed on it. I decided to toy with her a little more.

  “How long is your marriage going to last?”

  “It’s going to be permanent,” she replied with spirit. “I’m not going to get divorced.”

  “At last a direct answer!” I said, banging the desk with my fist.

&
nbsp; “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  She had now stopped stamping tags and was doing something else. I glanced over at the office safe.

  We needed a walk-in vault, not only for our own records but to store things of special value in for customers, such as silver. It stood open much of the day, and it had more than once crossed my mind what a convenient place it would be for holdup men to shove you if you were ever robbed. I had often thought of having a phone extension installed in it so you could call for help. I didn’t want to rouse any fears needlessly in Stella, who might get scared and leave me without a bookkeeper. But now I said to her, “Stella, have you ever stopped to think how much of human life is based on trust? We have to trust people we don’t know a single thing about. We trust restaurant chefs not to poison our food, service station attendants to give us full measure. You trust a boy friend enough to marry him without really knowing anything about him, and you trust a boss who, for all you know, might be criminally insane. It happens every day, people nobody would dream suddenly going berserk with their family or pedestrians out walking. How do you know I won’t attack you and drag you into that vault and lock you up inside it. My prisoner.”

  “Your prisoner?” she said, drawing her shoulder up in a titter.

  “Yes, my prisoner.” I rose slowly and stood over her, giving my belt a menasing hitch. “The fact is, that’s just what I’m going to do. Not kill you. Oh no, I have better plans than that. I’ve secretly dug out another room that communicates with the back wall of the vault. I’ve been working on it nights, and in it are all the necessities of life to keep a nice luscious young girl alive for a purpose.” I chuckled like a maniac. “It’s furnished with a couch, air conditioning, a refrigerator for food and champagne, all the comforts of life. Even a telephone. But you can’t call out with it. I can only call in. To keep in touch with you.” I laughed like a fiend again, “Mbwaahahaha,” then added: “Needless to say, it’s an unlisted number.”