A Man to Conjure With

by Jonathan Baumbach

  “What? I don’t want any of your girls.”

  “Don’t bug me. Come on.” Herbie took a few swipes at his hair with a pocket comb, a man of habitual, unselfconscious vanity; then he grabbed Peter’s ticket from the table and was off. At the register he substituted an unused ticket and paid both bills, which totaled ten cents. In honor of his triumph, he winked at the cashier.

  Peter went along under silent protest. He didn’t want to go; he went. Since it was not his decision, it had nothing to do with him, which was fine; he had enough problems of his own. And at the same time, if something good came from it—some pleasure—it was something for nothing, a bargain. A man who didn’t gamble, Peter couldn’t help but like the odds.

  On the way to Herbie’s apartment (a shift in the odds), he borrowed ten dollars from Peter, to be repaid as soon as he laid his hands on a little cash. Peter consoled himself that it was only money he had given away and that brothers were flesh of the same flesh, and how could he deny his own flesh? But he worried anyway about the loss, because it was his nature to worry.

  Surprise? There were two blowzy women at home in Herbie’s living room, sitting apart on the Goodwill couch as though they were strangers at a bus terminal, both puffing earnestly on cigarettes, the ashtrays running over.

  “Well,” Herbie announced, “look what I found. My brother Pete. Huh?”

  “lo,” the girls said in one nasal voice. They scanned him briefly, then went about their business; they were serious smokers. Peter recognized one of them, the heavier of the two, as the girl Herbie had been with at his wedding. The other, a small-town Betty Grable, was more conventionally pretty, but neither, in Peter’s opinion, was in Lois’s league.

  Herbie introduced them. The one at the wedding was Gloria, the other Doreen. “They’re both modern dancers,” he said and laughed out loud at a joke no one else seemed to get. Doreen snickered as an afterthought. Gloria scowled.

  Peter thought to run, but said hello. He made up his mind not to stay very long.

  “Is he really your brother?” Doreen said. “You don’t look like brothers.”

  Gloria sulked. “They’re brothers,” she said. “God, I’ve never been so bored in my life.”

  Herbie ignored her and addressed his remarks to Doreen. “Sure,” he said, “we’re brothers just like you two are sisters.” He winked at Peter, through him, over him, at no one.

  “Oh,” Doreen said, pouting, “you’re a tease. You know I’m Gloria’s cousin. I really am,” she said to Peter in case he thought she was also teasing; she was, but not about that.

  “C’mon, Glory,” Herbie said, “get off your butt, honey, and make us something to drink. Hey, sit down, Pete, huh?” Herbie collapsed into an oversized red velvet armchair and closed his eyes. Relaxed, his gnarled face softened into momentary anguish as if a plaster cast had just been removed. “God,” he said, inhaling the stale room, “this is death.”

  Doreen smiled brightly. If sulks could kill, Gloria would have been a mass murderer. A hostess despite her mood, she prepared and served Bloody Marys, spiked mostly with the quick-lime of her smile. “We’re out of gin,” she announced. Herbie and Doreen were dancing in a corner, his hand on her ass, to “Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of the Week.” It was Tuesday morning, Peter kept thinking, keeping his hold on reality.

  Gloria guzzled between puffs. “We don’t usually drink this early,” she said to no one in particular, “but today’s some kind of occasion. Isn’t that right?” Peter nodded. No one else answered. “Today,” she continued, glaring at the couple, dancing now to unheard music, “is the four-day anniversary of Cousin Doreen’s arrival in the city. Up Doreen! Up us all!” She finished her drink with a vengeance, then stared blearily through the mist of smoke surrounding her face like a torn veil. “You dance?” she said to Peter.

  “Yeah,” Herbie said, “dance with her, Pete.”

  “Thanks, but I’m not in the mood,” Gloria said.

  Peter stood up, sat down.

  “We need some more gin, Herbie,” Gloria said, acting the hostess again.

  Herbie, holding Doreen, swaying to the music, held out Peter’s ten dollars behind his back with magnanimous contempt. “Get two quarts of Fleischmann’s,” he said. “Okay?”

  Gloria wasn’t having any. She sat down, her arms crossed in front of her. “I don’t want to go alone,” she said.

  “Pete will go with you. Will you go with her, Pete?”

  Peter, dozing, grinned foggily. Where?

  “Why don’t you go?” Gloria said. “This is your party.” Some party.

  Herbie agreed that it was his party and left for the gin, taking Doreen with him.

  “I don’t have to take this from him,” Gloria said as soon as they were out of earshot.

  Peter nodded uneasily. Gloria scowled balefully, held him responsible in his brother’s absence. “He’ll be back,” she said doubtfully, picking up cigarette butts from the rug. “Anyhow, I’ve had it,” she said. “I mean it.”

  Yawning, Peter got out of his chair, stretched, his arms almost brushing the low ceiling. It struck him—a pang of nostalgia, a betrayal of the demands of grief—that for the past hour he hadn’t been worrying about Lois. “Herbie’ll be back,” he assured her.

  “Who needs him?” she said ruefully. “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” replaced “Route 66” on the phonograph.

  “Would you like to dance?” he asked.

  Gloria half smiled, shrugged, sat down, not to be bought off by kindness.

  Peter wandered the room, lost. He was reminded of the times at dance halls where girls, like Gloria, had refused his overpolite, anxious advances. Worse-looking men had less trouble. Was it the uncertainty in him, the nervous desire not to fail, that repelled them? Whatever it was, he had gotten over it, had learned through Herbie’s training to cover up his feelings, yet the recollection of his humiliation still haunted him. Thinking about it, a compromise with the past, his hands sweated.

  “What a dump!” Gloria was saying. She put a stack of records on the changer. A big girl, Gloria wore her age in the generosity of her size. She had expanded begrudgingly, as a kindness to her nature. Peter could well imagine that at twenty-five she was a cold-eyed, huge-breasted beauty, admired by men on street corners, unapproachable at least to him. But at thirty, more likely thirty-five, she was blowzy; the stays of her will had split, and everything had come loose. Fading? She was all but out of the picture. Her brownish shoulder-length hair, from having been too many colors in its lifetime, had lost all sense of its own. A revision of his first opinion, Peter found himself liking her. “What do you do?” he asked.

  Out of his world, Gloria was tapping her foot to the music, snapping her fingers, swaying to the singer’s love words, loved. She glanced at him shrewdly, scowled, no answer.

  He tried again.

  “You don’t have to talk,” she said. “Listen to the music, huh?”

  He listened a moment—it was “Stardust”—then put on his coat. “Tell Herbie I had to leave,” he said.

  “Herbie’s coming back,” she said as though part of the song.

  “I have things to do,” he said. In his imagination, priming himself, he was talking to Lois on the phone, asking for her forgiveness; but she was adamant, unmoved by the generosity of his appeal. “I can’t trust myself to you,” she said, to which he had no answer.

  “Don’t go, huh?” Gloria said, coming to life, no longer possessed by the song.

  It was the nicest thing anyone had said to him in days.

  “Well …” He investigated other alternatives. What other alternatives? He could think of a Forty-second Street movie, a White Rose Bar, the Automat, the park, several parks. Why not? Killing time, he remembered, was death itself.

  “Come on. We’ll dance awhile if you want.” She held her arms out. He came on.

  She talked about herself while they danced; Peter listened studiously, but her words—what a barrage of blanks!—kept
getting in the way of her meaning. It was like True Confessions with the sex left out; she had a gift for exotic complaint.

  Still, he enjoyed holding her, embarrassed at his pleasure—small pleasure! At the same time, he couldn’t help wondering what Lois was doing at the same time.

  “I may have lost a lot of things,” Gloria said, “but I still have my pride.”

  “You’re also a good dancer,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I mean, I used to dance a little. Professionally.”

  “I’m impressed. Would I have seen you anywhere?”

  “I don’t know. How should I know? Come on. Are you kidding me?” She stopped dancing to look at him, a sly child’s look, her mouth like a skirt hiked up at the corner. Under her microscope, he smiled amoebically.

  They continued dancing. She clutched him tighter now, as though he might be valuable. He knew better of course, but he admired her opinion of him—a generous girl. Mistreated by his brother.

  “You’re a lot like Herbie,” she said, “you know?”

  If he didn’t know, hadn’t known before she had pointed it out, he knew now. It hardly mattered to him that it wasn’t true.

  To old favorites, songs of love lost and yearned for, paper moons, animated dolls, they danced dreamily, dream sharers, in the languid sweetness of nostalgia. When the music stopped they were still together, dreaming of loss. Nothing else to do: he kissed the down on her neck. “Damn Herbie!” she muttered. Damn Lois! he thought.

  They kissed briefly; she seemed distracted, tolerant, as though he would do for the time until something better—something really valuable—came along. It was an old story with him, but what could he do? Ashamed, his balls in business for themselves, he wanted her. “The music’s stopped,” he said, still holding her.

  “Don’t get all hot and bothered,” she said. “Herbie’ll be back soon.”

  In a fool’s rage, Peter retreated to the iodine-colored sofa, stumbling in his haste on a bulge in the rug; he sat before he meant to.

  Gloria howled. “You’re funny,” she said. He was.

  Peter tried to smile, but, his feelings wounded, a victim of self-outrage, he couldn’t quite bring it off; he sulked. Gloria approached, formidable as a lion, her canny half-smile promising … what?

  Herbie and Doreen burst in the door. “Back from the front—two casualties.” Ha ha! Peter grabbed his coat and left.

  He called home just in case Lois had returned, letting the phone ring twenty, twenty-five times—maybe she was asleep—before he gave up. What to do at eleven o’clock in the morning? He went to a movie on Forty-second Street—The Best Years of Our Lives—and fell asleep during the coming attractions. “National Security Files presents the Shocking Truth behind Yesterday’s Headlines. Shocking Secrets Bared.” Gloria, the star of the film, was beckoning to him coyly from behind a tree. As he came closer, she seemed to move backward, away from him, still smiling, still beckoning to him. He followed her, out of breath, enchanted by his prospects. His chest sobbed with pain but he kept going, kept after her. Finally they arrived at a small enclosure, apparently cut off from the rest of the park. The grass thick and green, the weather like spring. She was swaying in place to the music—the song, “Stardust,” coming from somewhere. He came toward her, his erection like a divining rod.

  “Wait,” she said. And he waited. Then in one graceful unbroken gesture she pulled her orange dress up over her head, spreading it like a blanket on the grass at her feet. He nearly cried at her nakedness; so magnificent a gift it was that he looked behind him to see if it was meant for someone else. For him. He approached cautiously, then (what the hell!) flung himself headlong at her. Smiling, she eluded his grasp. “No,” she said. “I don’t want that.”

  A sigh escaped. “What’s the matter?” he cried. “I mean, you took off all your clothes. You beckoned to me, didn’t you? Don’t be mean, huh?”

  “You’re not the kind of man I thought you were.”

  “What do you mean?” He was sweating. “I’m only human.”

  “You don’t respect me.”

  “What do you mean? Sure I do.” He inched toward her, hoping to take her by surprise.

  “I want to be loved,” she said softly.

  “Sure. Sure.” Another step forward. “Love is something I’ve got plenty of,” he said.

  “Unh unh.” She wagged her finger at him. “I know your type,” she said. “You’re only interested in your own pleasure—a quick lay, then you run home to your wife and tell her about it.”

  “You got me wrong,” he said, withholding his rage. “It’s not pleasure I want but …” He grabbed her, tumbling her to the ground. A cracking sound. Her body weightless under him, he kissed her veined eyelids as fragile as petals. “You see,” he whispered, “I only wanted to give you love, honey. I’m not like my brother Herbie.”

  There was no indication that she heard him. Panic broke loose in his head, sweat bursting from his eyes. Her luxuriant breasts shriveled, froze. “Love you,” he whispered, hoping to wake her. Her body freezing, adamant. He was up on his feet, suffocated, backing away. She was still there, impassive, an old woman now, the orange dress in repose at her feet. He could see now that it was another girl, not Gloria, but someone familiar, someone he knew …

  You!

  “Quiet!” An old crone nudged him with her umbrella.

  He awoke with a cry and rushed from the theater without his coat.

  When he got back to his place, he took a hot bath—the place stank enough without his smell added to it—had a double Scotch for luck, and called Lois. Her mother answered. Lois didn’t ever want to speak to him again, she said. “Fuck you,” he bellowed, smashing the phone against the wall. Afterward he had regrets.

  The next day, in the evening, when it hardly mattered to him any more—who needed her? he kept telling himself—Lois came back.

  Standing in the shadow of the doorway, her straight black hair hanging loose to her waist, her sallow face without makeup, she looked like a little girl, a child of twelve.

  “My mother will never forgive you,” she said, grinning, her head half turned away from him. “Will you take me back?” she asked softly.

  He said yes.

  She approached tentatively. They embraced like strangers, the thickness of her coat between them.

  “Did you miss me?” she said, surveying the room, the bed unmade, swollen by sleepless dreams. He was glad that he had at least picked her clothes up from the floor.

  He nodded.

  She took off her coat, pirouetted. “It’s good to be back,” she said. “My mother was really a pain in the ass, Peter, nagging at me as if I was ten years old. ‘Tell me what he did to you,’ she asked me every day, smacking her lips in anticipation. ‘Tell me, Lois, what did that brute do to you? I promise I won’t tell your father if you tell me.’ Babble, babble, babble. What a pain in the ass she is.”

  Peter sat down on the bed (like a tooth with the root dead, the pain from somewhere else), numb, unloving.

  She sat next to him, shy of his strangeness. “Did you really miss me?” she said.

  He did. He was sorry she had returned.

  She took possession of his hand, intruded her head against his arm. “I’m hungry,” she said. “Is there anything to eat?”

  He couldn’t recall. He shook his head.

  “Why don’t we go out to eat?” she said, coiling her arms around his neck. “As a celebration, let’s go to the Village and, like, have a drink and a good meal for a change.” She hugged him. “Would you like that?”

  The room stank from the death of having been unlived in alone too long, the sallow-green walls stale with the sweat of terror. She held him, suffocated, a patient in a sickroom, deconvalescing.

  “I don’t care,” he said. He removed her arms and got up.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Where do you want to go?” he said, panicked. “I have no money.”

  “Is th
at your problem?” she said playfully, taking some money from her wallet, holding it out to him. “I can let you have twenty dollars, on account of we’re married.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “I robbed a bank,” she said.

  “Your father gave it to you, didn’t he?”

  “What difference does it make? You never have any money, anyway … I’m sorry, Peter. I don’t want to fight with you. Let’s not fight. Okay?”

  He shrugged. “How long do you plan to stay?” he said.

  “Oh, Peter!” She glared at him, for a moment exasperated beyond speech, her fists clenched, her eyes clouded over, burning. “I’m sorry,” she said grudgingly—her hands raised in a gesture of frustration. “I really am. Is it so hard to forgive me?”

  He wanted to forgive her—who was he not to?—but something in his chest, heavy and murderous, was unrelenting. “Do you see any point in continuing?” he asked, an old question.

  “I came back, didn’t I? Do you want me to go away? I will if you want me to.”

  He thought about it, unable to answer.

  “All right,” she said. “You won’t see me again.” She started toward the closet for her coat, then turned back, bent as if something had broken in her, and, her dignity a matter of withholding tears, walked by him into the kitchen, closing the door between them.

  “Lois,” he called. “I’m sorry.” When she didn’t answer he lay down on the bed and closed his eyes, exhausted by the confusion of his feelings. He could hear her crying in the kitchen, softly, choking on her sobs. Numb, he was unmoved by her grief. Love was dead; pity was expensive; Peter was tired. He had spent most of the past two days in bed and had gotten out of the habit of being awake.

  It was always a problem to comprehend after the fact how he had gotten—across what tightrope of impossibility?—from one point in his life to another. Without the prospect of a career—after six years in college he still had no clear idea of what it was he wanted to do—Peter had to be aware that marriage was an insanity for him. Yet he had married Lois in the teeth of that awareness. Frank with himself, aware of his own shortcomings (who better aware?), he had been confident at the time that Lois had no real interest in him; she was also—an insurance policy—engaged to someone else. So he pursued her without a sense of danger and paid the price for his courage: unexpected victory. About this, at least, he had no large regrets. If he thought he knew why he had married Lois—a failure of restraint, he had wanted her too much—he found it difficult to understand why she had married him. For what? Love? It was not impossible, nothing’s impossible, but he knew himself too well to believe it for more than a few minutes at a time. Security? A joke. He had nothing, would likely never have anything. Illusion? It was as good an answer as any. But what was it she had seen in him that he had not seen in himself? That was her secret, she would get over it.