Everything Happened to Susan

by Malzberg, Barry

  CHAPTER XII

  After the filming she has coffee with Phil in a small, dismal restaurant near the loft. Phil seems to be on excellent terms with the manager and the staff because they are given the one decent booth in the place. “You did very good,” Phil says, looking between his watch and the kitchen doors, peering around the screens, “very good; I hear excellent reports about your work. I think that you very definitely have a future in this place if you want it. Very few people can come in like you, cold off the street, and act worth a damn. But you showed heart and real conviction. For you this is not just a way to turn a few bucks; you’re a pro. I can always tell the difference.”

  “But I don’t know if I want to do it any more,” Susan says. “I did need the money very badly, but it just isn’t the kind of thing that I think I could do again although I have nothing against it on moral grounds.” In her handbag, over her arm, she has the check for the day’s work, seventy-five dollars instead of a hundred because casting, and direction fees have been deducted as well as a small amount per capita for the use of the loft. This is not what she had been promised but, it is not a bad sum for eight hour’s work and it is, although she will never admit this to Phil, the first money she has made as a professional actress. “I have to go home soon, you know,” she says. “This man I’m living with … I’m living with a man you know … I have to make dinner for him. We have an agreement to share the household tasks and this is my week.”

  “Oh don’t be concerned about that,” Phil says with a shake of his bald head, looking at her intently, “I get the drift; I don’t mean to put the make on you or anything like that at all. It’s strictly business; I never get involved with the help. That’s the first thing you’ve got to learn in show business. This other stuff never, the make isn’t on my mind; I’m a married man and I just wanted to talk. Not that you aren’t very attractive, you understand.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “I just wanted to talk about a project,” Phil says. “They’ve got something coming up, what you might call an epic, and I’d like to see you try out for it if you’d be interested in some serious work. They couldn’t pay a hundred a day on this one because that’s only the rate for one-shots and specials. It would have to be maybe half of that — like fifty, say, but it would be steady and you’d have yourself a secure income.”

  Susan thinks abstractedly about the epic. “What kind of movie is this? Is it a straight part?”

  “Something like that,” Phil says. “The sex emphasis would only be there to keep the viewer’s attention but actually it’s a very serious idea. You want to go up to my place with me and maybe discuss a little bit what this project will be?”

  “I don’t — ”

  “Yeah, I know about dinner and so on but the thing is I don’t like to do business in public places because you never know who might be listening in. But if we can go to my apartment where I know it’s confidential, I’ll be able to fill you in very quickly. Of course it’s up to you to say yes or no about that, but, unless I have a chance to talk to you very soon, I have no way of knowing if you’ll be right for the part, and there are lots of others I could ask. You saw them all around you. Kids coming into that loft are desperate for work; they’d grab any part. I don’t really have much to do with the production but I’m like a liaison in case you want to know my basis of authority.”

  He extends his hand. He is a heavy, short, man, not unlike her father physically although her father has what Susan has come to think of as a suburban veneer or maybe only a kind of resignation which has turned him expressionless. Phil has vigor or at least a certain attitude of positiveness and hope which she finds rather attractive by contrast, not that she ever had much use for him because he had felt that she was wasting time in a dramatics major and should have done something practical like teaching which would have made her very much like her mother. She and her mother have nothing to do with one another at present. Her mother would hardly be sitting across a table from the New York producer who is now patting her gently across the table, his eyes fixed upon her with concentration. She feels the touch, cold as guilt, harsh as memory, and her fingers curl against his palm. She realizes she is being suggestive, that not to follow through would be unfair to him. “All right,” she says. “I’ll go to your apartment and discuss it if you really want me to.”

  Susan imagines herself in bed with him. This is one of her oldest traits; she can always picture herself having sex with any man, no matter how repellent he may be. In her mind she lies spent against his necessity, the feel of him rushing into her again and again and finds that, despite what has happened to her already today, she can apprehend him as she never could Timothy … or even the German Shepherd.

  CHAPTER XIII

  Susan lies underneath Phil in his bachelor apartment. It was very simple really; he wanted to discuss business but, first he must have a drink and, as long as he is having a drink, she might as well too and then the shades in the apartment were drawn and they went into the bedroom and Phil began to tell her how really attractive she was and Susan felt the old mixture of reluctance and fascination coming over her. The tensions of sex emerged from the contradictions between the two of them and it became very easy, in fact inevitable to undress. She took off all of her clothes and lay beside him. In the dark she could hardly see him and imagined his body as it came down to drape her, as the flesh of many lovers. A multitude of scenes pass through her mind, recollections from college through Timothy. Then somewhere in the middle she has a twitch of feeling, a small explosion and an uncoiling. “That was good,” Phil says, getting off her, instantly talkative, instantly efficient, “that was very good; you’re really very good.” And, putting on the lights, he begins to dress hurriedly, tossing Susan’s clothes over to her at the same time to indicate that she should dress as well. He seems to be one of those men who make a complete distinction between sex and their ordinary lives, no flow between them. But she can hardly credit herself with being very experienced. Being sexually experienced for a girl is not something to be aimed for, or at least Susan still believes this. Phil, dressing, seems to move further and further from her and in the act of dressing herself she suppresses all knowledge of what had happened between them. It had been as mechanical and limited as a transaction in a store; a little bit of seed had passed from one of them to the other but that was no reason to get personally involved. Vaguely, she wonders if everybody in the pornographic films business approaches sex in this fashion or whether her relationship with Phil has been unusual. It hardly seems worth being concerned about, in the fading light of the room with her clothes back on, sitting comfortably in one of the easy chairs flanking the bed, a cigarette in her hand while Phil puts the final touches to his appearance and sits down facing her. “This really isn’t where I live.” he says. “I wouldn’t want you to think that I live this way because it wouldn’t be fair to you. I just use this place for business. I don’t want to have you think that I make a habit of going to bed with girls either: I’m strictly business, strictly, but I found you very attractive and just lost control of myself.”

  Susan wonders if this lapse of control to which Phil refers is really true and wonders what he would be like if he was really detached sexually; she decides not to follow this line of thought through. She is not experienced, she is willing to admit this (sexual experience being the kind of thing which girls from her background cannot concede to) and she may, just possibly, be in a little bit over her head. “It’s all right,” she says, trying to sound matter of fact and holding her cigarette uncomfortably. “It doesn’t matter at all. You don’t have to apologize for anything.”

  “I’m not apologizing. Where did you get the idea I was apologizing?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t mean anything by it. Please,” Susan says, beginning to feel really uneasy: what would Timothy say?, “you were going to tell me about the picture.”

  “Oh yes,” Phil says, “the picture. I have to fill y
ou in on that, don’t I? I don’t really know that much about it; I’m just kind of a liaison man for them and really don’t know what they have in mind most of the time.” He looks vaguely at his fingernails, shrugs, examines the ceiling. He seems to have lost all interest in her, at least for the moment. His eyes perfectly blank and dull as he stares at the smoke coming from her cigarette and says, “Why don’t you drop by early tomorrow morning and I’ll discuss it in the office? I really don’t have the time now; I got another appointment. If you want the job you can have it, that’s what I said, but after the day you’ve had you must be tired. I know I am.” He stands heavily, ponderously, even with a gesture not unlike her father’s, and goes to the window, pulling aside a curtain to look at some unknown aspect of New York for a few minutes and then wander back to the center of the room. “If that’s okay,” he says.

  “All right,” Susan says. She stands, finds her balance slightly uneven; wonders if there is a slope to this room as there is supposed to be in all buildings in New York, but decides that it is only the aftermath of compound sex; she has, after all, had intercourse or simulated intercourse at least ten times today, the last instance being a social relationship and she has the right to feel tired. “Do you want me to come down tomorrow?”

  “I guess so,” Phil says vaguely. He is informed by vagueness, everything about him is vague; even his figure seems to have a blurred outline in the half-light of the room. He paces abstractedly and goes to the door. “I got a lot of things to think about so if you don’t mind, maybe I’ll run along right now. You don’t have to leave this second. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “I’m going,” Susan says, “I’m going,” but, before she can even rise to follow, Phil is gone, the door swinging vacantly behind him; she sees its absent sway on the hinge, hears the diminution of his footsteps, hears the clatter of traffic outside.

  She has had a full day in New York. She has participated in the making of a pornographic film, she has had intercourse with the agent of the film’s producers, she has been offered a leading role in a forthcoming production by the same company, she has come to terms with herself in, perhaps, ways that she was not accustomed. At the end of all of this she stands in a hotel room fully dressed somewhere between retention and flight; she has a delicate feeling of being poised at some critical instant and she senses that if she could only investigate this feeling, if she could allow it to come over her fully, she might find out something about herself that she never knew before. Even as she understands this a spotlight whips through the window, traversing toward the other side of the street and she decides that she had better go. Timothy is waiting for her (or she hopes Timothy is waiting for her) and, at the end of all of this, perhaps in sleep, will come another accommodation. She leaves the room slowly, quite a pretty girl really, only a certain high tension moving from her cheekbones to her eyes indicating that anything at all has touched her. She senses that if she were to tell the men in the street who stare at her what she had been doing that day, they would be amazed but, then, they might be perfectly matter of fact. People in New York accept all sorts of things as matter of fact.

  CHAPTER XIV

  At home she finds Timothy asleep over his typewriter, a half-page of his novel still in the machine. He is incredibly dedicated to his work but his job in the Welfare Department gets him down; constant demands are being made upon his compassion and sense of balance, he says, and he finds it impossible to maintain toward his work the kind of polished detachment intrinsic to the creation of great art. Nevertheless he cannot leave the Welfare Department, having tenure and needing the income too badly to be able to take time off to finish his book or look for another job. His face looks astonished in repose; his pores open, his nerves twitch under the mask of impassivity, and he groans heavily, adjusting himself more comfortably in the chair, allowing his head to sink fully into his cupped hands. Susan pats him on the neck and reads what is in the typewriter which seems to have to do with the reaction of a welfare investigator to a particularly aggressive client. “I CAN’T STAND THIS ANY MORE,” MR. MORALES SCREAMED, the page reads, “MY WIFE AND CHILDREN ARE STARVING FOR LACK OF BREAD AND YOU STAND THERE IN YOUR BUSINESS SUIT AND TELL ME ABOUT RULES AND REGULATIONS. I TELL YOU THAT THIS IS NO TIME FOR RULES AND REGULATIONS. EVERYTHING IS BURNING. THE WORLD IS BURNING. THE FIRE IS COMING UPON ALL OF US, EVEN UPON WELFARE INVESTIGATORS, AND YOUR OLD SIMPLE RIGIDITIES WILL NO LONGER HOLD US BACK.” HENDERSON FELT THE WAVES OF TERROR MOVING UP HIS PORCINE BACK, WAVES OF TERROR INTERMINGLED WITH COMPASSION BECAUSE HE COULD PLACE HIMSELF IN THE MIND AND HEART OF THE MAN MORALES, THIS SIMPLE DISPLACED PERSON. TORN FREE FROM HIS HISTORY, WHO COULD EXPRESS HIS LOVE NOW ONLY THROUGH HATRED. THROUGH THE VENTINGS OF HIS TERRIBLE FEELINGS. HENDERSON COULD FEEL A TWITCH OF COMPASSION BUT THEN, WHEN MORALES REVEALED HIS KNIFE, THIS COMPASSION TURNED TO ASHES AND HE WAS AFRAID. TERRIBLY AFRAID. IN THE NEXT ROOM HE KNEW THAT THE TEN MORALES CHILDREN HUDDLED, EARS TO THE THIN WALL LISTENING FOR THE SOUNDS OF DESTRUCTION, AND WHAT HAPPENED THEN SEEMED TO OCCUR UNDER THE EYES OF MANY WITNESSES, WITNESSES UNREACHABLE THROUGH PLASTER. “WE ARE BURNING,” MORALES SHOUTED, “BURNING FOR YOUR SINS,” AND HE ADVANCED UPON HENDERSON WITH THE KNIFE. THE CLEANNESS OF THE FEAR JOLTED HENDERSON, HE … and at this point the page, 261, ends. It is the first part of Timothy’s novel which Susan has read since the time, some weeks ago at the beginning of their relationship, he handed her the opening chapter, saying this was what he was doing and perhaps she would like to see it, not that he particularly cared what she thought because no serious writer could bend and sway to another’s opinion. Susan had found that first chapter, which seemed to be about Henderson’s initial sexual experience in Bedford-Stuyvesant with a fat welfare client many years older than himself, vague and somewhat confusing, but it did have color (as did this section) and it convinced her that Timothy was certainly a novelist. Now she turns away from the typewriter already disinterested, already feeling herself turned inward toward abstraction, having very little to do with any of this, just for the moment a visitor in the room, someone extrinsic to the entire situation. Timothy could be a stranger, this apartment a museum preserved frozen in time, for all her responses; she wanders idly off to the kitchen and, deciding to let him sleep for the time being, makes herself a cup of coffee and allows the events of the day to work through her. The mail is in, scattered on the kitchen table, and among the envelopes is a letter from an old college girlfriend, forwarded from her last address. She is interested in reading the letter but her curiosity is mixed with a good deal of trepidation and she decides to let it wait for a moment. Just for a moment; she hears Timothy groaning and stirring in the other room and knows that he will come in shortly in a foul mood and she will have to tell him what her day has been like. She already knows the composition of his; it has come out of the typewriter.

  CHAPTER XV

  For a while the sheer magnitude of pornography on the newsstands of New York had dazzled Susan; she passed newsstands and magazine stores with the slightly averted and astonished eyes that she had once turned on the boxes of sanitary napkins displayed in local drugstores; later she had gotten used to the pornography along with the rest of New York and finally, in fear and caution, had actually begun to buy the newspapers, only to get a lead, she told herself, on the kind of environment she lived in. The models who posed for the pictures were easy enough to understand; they looked like almost anyone who you might see in the street who had elected to pose nude in sexual positions for the money, but the advertisements were a different matter altogether, and, in the reading of the personal ads, Susan’s comprehension began to buckle. There was simply no attitude with which to properly handle them. Pleas for partners were published by fetishists, lesbians, homosexuals, heterosexuals, urinary-oriented males and females, coprophiliacs, and animal-lovers. They were placed by leather devotees, young men interested in massage, and people seeking various kinds of anal intercourse. They were written by stocking fetishists, ear fetishists, breas
t-feeding fetishists, and old men only interested in conversation and companionship. Women were looking for mixed sex and mixed groups were looking for women. Old men sought young boys and young boys sought older women. It was the need, the desperation, the insistence of the advertisements and above all the mad sense of certainty that their needs were somehow justified and justifiable which informed all of them left Susan feeling slack and empty. She had read about such people. She supposed that at one time or other she had seen them, but the idea that they actually existed, that they were as serious as she and were willing to publicize the fact was something with which she could not deal. It would be easy to believe that the ads were not real and that they were being printed by the owners of the newspapers themselves as a kind of satire. But the advertisements had a mad patterning and consistency which no publishers could possibly simulate and they repeated — she began to become familiar with certain quirks of phraseology — shades of meaning which were peculiar to the authors. The same blurbs would recur over a span of weeks. Not long before she met Timothy, when she was very much in between all kinds of things, she had had to struggle against an urge to make contact with some of the advertisers, simply to see if they existed and then, at the moment of actual connection, to flee but she had resisted this impulse. It was cheap and she also feared getting into very dangerous waters. The people who published these advertisements were a fraternity, a conspiracy in fact; they were humorless, passionate, and devoted and they would not suffer outsiders easily. Besides, Susan was simply not prepared to deal with the kind of people who found water sports interesting. It had taken her long enough to find out what water sports were (one of the personals columns in the newspapers had filled her in finally) and that was as far as she wanted to go with the matter.