A Man to Conjure With

by Jonathan Baumbach

  Then, choking on soft-stale pretzels, he dozed. And in Herbie’s tumorous red velvet armchair, he dreamed of Lois. She had returned to him, five months pregnant, lovely in a white maternity dress. “I’ll stay with you,” she said, “if you promise to wash your feet.” “Ask me anything else,” he pleaded. “I was born with that dirt. That dirt is me.”

  Gloria woke him. “It’s time to go to sleep,” she said.

  “What time?” He followed her into the bedroom to look at her clock.

  “Where are you going?” she said, her thousand-year-old eyes amused at his presumption. “For your information, I’m going to bed now.”

  “Sorry.” He retreated to his couch, horny as a church steeple (as the Empire State Building). He vowed to leave the next day, to move back into his own room, to do something.

  Sleeping fitfully, he had the dreamlike awareness that Gloria was calling to him. “What do you want?” he yelled, his own voice waking him. “I’m sleeping.”

  “What did you say?” she called, her voice indistinct, only the “say” coming through to him.

  He climbed off the couch, irritated at being disturbed. The door to her room opened. They met, almost bumped, in the doorway, surprised to see each other.

  “What do you want?” Gloria said—they both said—Peter half a word behind, Gloria laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” he wanted to know, breathing her perfume; Gloria in a lacy black nightgown, a coy pink rose, a fallen flower, stationed between her legs like a guardian—the flower of her flower.

  “Great minds run in the same track,” she said, patting his arm to make her point. They embraced to commemorate coincidence.

  “Good night,” Gloria said, holding him genially at arm’s length.

  His spirit offered only token resistance to the rages of the flesh. In heat, Peter thrust her into the bedroom, tumbling her onto the bed.

  “No, Peter,” she said. “Behave. No! No! No! No!” She fought for her honor—her fury more than he had reckoned on, a reckoning in itself—scratching, biting, pulling his short hair. “Don’t mess with me,” she kept saying. “Who do you think you’re messing with?”

  In pain from her assault he accounted his losses, deciding, against the vanity of his instincts, that she had meant her resistance. His spirit counseled retreat. But when he moved away and tried to climb out of bed, Gloria held on to him, her nails pinned to his back. “Don’t think you’re so tough,” she said.

  He punched her in the mouth, just to get free, using his left hand so as not to hurt her any more than he had to. He landed with more force than he had intended—intending merely gesture—her face squashed momentarily, then settled back into shape. What had he done now?

  “Oh,” she moaned, her tongue prodding the wound of her lip. “Oh.” Her shocked eyes wet, running. “Oh, my … lover,” she crooned.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, kissing her wet face. “I didn’t mean it.”

  “Brute,” she whispered, her blood between them, her salt.

  Though he didn’t know why—desire its own knowledge—he found himself on the mountain of Gloria, lover and explorer, a little giddy from the height. It was less pleasure than he remembered, his feelings barely there. And afterward he felt used, taken advantage of, the gull of her whims, his mouth caked with regret.

  And afterward she asked him about Lois. “What was your marriage like?”

  “That’s none of your business,” he said.

  “Louse.” She slapped him. “Dumb, ugly brute.”

  “Go to sleep,” he said, seeking refuge in a corner of the bed.

  She came after him. “You really are a brute,” she said, “a dumb brute,” punching him in the back. “You know, you’re a dumb brute.” He had to hold her hands down to protect himself.

  “Cut it out,” he ordered.

  She kicked him savagely in the chest, sparks of pain in the rage of his eyes. He swallowed a curse. They wrestled.

  “Come on, tiger,” she said, her mouth breathing his.

  What could he do? He came on, an old bird, flying. They were one tiger then, all flames and teeth. She bit his lip bloody, tore his back, devoured his tongue.

  Reckless, he flew toward the sun, soaring through impenetrable terrain, through the fine scars of habit and nerve, the flames of deep wound, his wings catching fire, his chest burning. His chest. He flew higher, all of him aflame, his chest—the sun a dream out of reach. He burned to death.

  “You brute,” she sang. “Oh, you …” She caught him as he fell, put out his fire, called him by name—Herbie, Peter, lover, bastard, brute—her finest, most winning, most sleep-making song. (He sang a little himself.)

  He awoke in the morning, charred to an ember, in love with Gloria, in love with Lois again, in wonder at himself. And jealous of everyone. He decided he would stay a few more days if Gloria had no objections, and even if she had.

  When over a breakfast of Nescafé he told her of his best intentions (love, marriage, children), Gloria sulked, explained the facts of sufferance to him. “Dontcha ever say anything to Herbie about this. I mean it.”

  He had forgotten about Herbie. “When is he coming back?” he asked, hoping never (though he missed Herbie in away).

  Gloria had a way of ignoring questions she didn’t want to answer. “And if Ira Whimple comes over—”

  “Ira Whimple?”

  “You know him. He’s a business associate of Herbie’s. Why are you making that kind of face?”

  “Ira Whimple is some kind of crook, isn’t he?”

  “Well,” Gloria said, raising her penciled eyebrows, patting her mouth daintily with a napkin, “none of us is perfect.”

  Peter snorted, spewing coffee from his nose. “I don’t like his face and I don’t want him around here.”

  Gloria turned her head in a theatrical gesture of disdain. “Peter, you remember this is Herbie’s place and any friend of Herbie’s is welcome here. So don’t start giving orders here.”

  Peter thought of punching her, but he had been through that already—no need of repeating the obvious. He collected his books and put a pair of dirty socks in his pocket.

  “Where are you going?” she asked softly.

  No friend of Herbie’s, only a brother (masquerading as a friend), Peter left.

  Gloria called after him, “You didn’t finish your coffee. If you think I need you, you’re crazy.”

  He went to his room on 113th Street to think things over, and thinking, on the precipice of an idea, fell boldly asleep. Gloria was leading him by the hand to her bedroom through a den of Ira Whimple-like rats—the rats biting his ankles, Gloria dancing seductively—when a knock on the door woke him.

  “You have a phone call,” he was told by the small dark-haired witch, who had the room next to his, and who, against the rules of the house, kept a cat, a black cat.

  She winked at him as he went by. Peter, aware to his embarrassment, his eyes averted, of having an erection—he pretended it had nothing to do with him.

  “You might at least say thanks,” she whispered.

  He rushed to the phone, expecting Gloria.

  “Who is that girl who answers your phone?” A girl’s tremulous voice, unaccountably familiar to him. He had the feeling that if he moved his head just a little, he would suddenly see who it was, but he didn’t dare.

  “Who is this?” He knew—ashamed of not knowing—the moment he asked.

  “Don’t you know me, Peter?”

  “Are you all right?” he said, afraid—a strange premonition—that something had happened to her. “Lois …”

  “I want to talk to you,” she said softly. “I have to talk to you.”

  They arranged to meet at noon at Riverside Drive and 110th. “Please don’t forget,” she said. Forget? Had he ever forgotten anything that had to do with her? It was the wrong question. A moment ago, he reminded himself, he had managed to forget, in the quirk of the moment, the very sound of her voice.

  When
he hung up he discovered his neighbor standing nosily in the doorway of the kitchen, smiling at him. “You look as if a sheep bit you,” she said.

  “Yeah?” he said, full of repartee. He thought if he leered at her—grinding his mouth into what he thought was a leer—she would go away.

  “You know, that’s the first time I’ve seen you actually smile,” she said. “You look less mean when you smile. My name’s Helena.” She puffed out her chest, in case he hadn’t noticed.

  He went to his room in a great hurry. What did she mean, bit by a sheep? When he had the time he would ask her.

  Peter awoke in a sweat at five after twelve, and unsure whether he had dreamed the phone call or not, ran heavy-footed from Broadway to Riverside Drive—nearly hit by a cab determined on its way—and down Riverside Drive to 110th Street, muttering to himself, “Wait, wait, wait,” as he ran. When he got to the place of their appointment, his chest in pain from running, Lois was nowhere in sight. Had he dreamed it? Was he dreaming now? He sat down on a cement bench overlooking the river. A toddler chased birds at his feet. Sweating, he waited. A warm breeze washed his face. A lovely day for July—the trees danced. The “There’s a Ford in Your Future” sign across the Hudson shone briefly, faded in the sun’s glare into the past. Had Lois already been and gone?

  Anxious, Peter asked the thin-legged, very pregnant woman on the next bench if she knew the time.

  She looked up in surprise, a bird noise squeaking in her throat. “Were you talking to me?” She seemed very young, tired, a gray of fear in her hazel eyes. “I don’t have any money.”

  “Do you know what time it is?” he repeated softly.

  She clutched her purse against her belly (which seemed another, larger purse), smiled. “I don’t.” Her eyes fretted.

  She was wearing a tiny wrist watch, like the eye of a bird, which he tried to read but couldn’t. “Is your watch broken?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer, looked up and down the street as though he wasn’t there. When he continued to hover, she snapped in a piercing voice, “Will you please go away?” He turned nervously to see if anyone had overheard. A woman was coming toward them. He stepped back, something crunching under his foot—a child’s miniature plastic tank. “I’m sorry,” he said, reaching in his pocket for money to pay for the toy, finding only three pennies—also a pair of dirty socks. Someone laughed. A child was crying. He was ready to flee—what else to do?—when it struck him that the woman coming toward him, only a few steps away now, was Lois.

  “What were you doing to that woman?” she asked, a child’s smile at the corner of her mouth.

  He looked at the woman on the bench, eight months or so pregnant, consoling a child of a little over a year. He nodded his sympathy. The woman turned her face away.

  “It was a misunderstanding,” he said.

  “Poor Peter,” Lois said, not looking at him. “Everyone misunderstands you.”

  They picnicked in Riverside Park—Lois had brought sandwiches—on a grassy slope overlooking the playground, between a litter basket and a “No Picnicking” sign.

  “You look better,” he said when they had finished lunch, her face gray but intact, a secret fever in her eyes.

  She laughed without sound. “Better than what? Than when?”

  “You look well, a little thin,” he said, his voice hoarse, strange to him, as if it hadn’t been used for a long time.

  He thought of taking her hand, oppressed with the need to touch her, but was unable to communicate this dim sense of urgency from mind to body. As if seeing into his thoughts, Lois lit a cigarette, kept her hands busy.

  For a long time nothing was said.

  When he asked about Mildred and Will, she came alive momentarily, the passion of grief reviving her. “It’s impossible living at home,” she said, her eyes intent on some distant point on the horizon. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Peter.” She scraped tobacco from the corner of her lip with a yellowish finger, her nails beggars, tattered beyond recognition. “Mildred’s her old pain-in-the-ass self. Every time I go to the bathroom she wants to know how I feel. Last week I decided to get it over with, but when I started thinking how I was going to do it, I lost my nerve. Finally, so it wouldn’t be a total loss, I cut my wrists”—she held up her left hand to show him the fragile scar—“it wasn’t even really a try; I knew they would get to me before anything happened. I don’t even know why I did it.”

  He nodded. “You’re all right now?”

  “I’m great.” A broken laugh. She squinted at him, the sun between them. “When was the last time you shaved?”

  “Two, three days ago,” he guessed, rubbing the back of his hand across his beard.

  “I want you to take care of yourself,” she said. “One of us should.”

  He wanted to carry her off with him, fly over the city, go somewhere, but even if it were possible, he realized, it would make no difference. “I’ll make a deal with you,” he said, “I’ll shave if you promise not to try to hurt yourself any more.”

  Lois played with her hair, curling the ends around an index finger. “Let’s talk about something else,” she said.

  At the moment there was nothing else. The silence a deception of intimacy. In the will of the imagination, the dream of love survives its loss.

  Directly in front of them, a teen-age couple love-fought in the grass, elbows and knees, a game of inadvertence. Lois smiled wistfully.

  Peter was impatient. “I wish to God there was something I could do,” he said.

  “There isn’t,” she said, glancing up at him as if to make an identification. “You really think you can do anything, don’t you? Give up, Peter.” She touched his hand. “Don’t listen to me. I can never say what I mean.”

  His hand burned where her touch had lingered. A sudden rush of wind came in from the river, playing havoc with everything, sending the wax paper from their sandwiches aloft like kites. Lois put her face in her hands to protect her eyes from the dust. The wind passed through him, exhausting him, leaving him stronger than before. “Why don’t we try again?” he said.

  She lifted her head, her face suffused with an extraordinary tenderness. “What?” she asked softly.

  “Try again,” he whispered.

  “No,” she said immediately. Then, thinking about it: “I don’t know.” She moved closer to him.

  “Why not?”

  She whipped her head from side to side, dislodging tears. “I wasn’t going to cry today. I was going to be very good.” She averted her face, crying.

  He held her hand, which was inanimate, told her a few jokes he had heard.

  “You’re very funny,” she said, though she didn’t laugh. “The reason I called was this. I …” She read his face, which was very grim. “I want to ask your advice about something.” She laughed, suddenly giddy, cutting herself off before she lost control.

  He waited, out of touch, expectant. (He imagined himself explaining the latest discovery of his feelings to Cantor. “I’m over her, Doctor,” he was saying. “I mean it. My only remaining concern is that I want her to be all right. That’s all.” The doctor appeared to nod. “That’s fine,” he said, “but why are you bleeding on my couch?”)

  “I’ve been thinking of moving out of my parents’ house,” she said, “and taking some kind of apartment of my own or sharing a place with another girl, but I haven’t had the nerve to tell them, Peter. I’m afraid to tell them.” She pulled up a handful of grass from the ground and let it filter absently through her fingers. “I have to get out of there.”

  “If you have to get out, get out,” he said. She could have gotten the same advice from anyone, he thought, if advice was really what she wanted. If not advice, what did she want? He turned to see: the sun was in his eyes, a scarf of light blinding him. For a moment, distracted, he had the feeling that someone had taken his picture. He smiled for the invisible camera.

  “I suppose you’re right,” she said, “but I don’t want t
o hurt them if I can possibly avoid it. They’ve been good in their way, especially Will. They have,” she insisted. “Even Mildred, in her way, means well.”

  “Okay.”

  “Everyone means well,” she said ruefully. “Sort of. You can’t dislike anybody without feeling guilty afterward. Every morning Mildred nags me about eating breakfast; I tell her I don’t want any—I’ve never in my life eaten breakfast. You know that. Young lady,’ Mildred says, ‘while you’re living in this house, you’ll have a good breakfast.’ When I threaten to move out she clutches her throat and moans. Everything I do hurts them.”

  He had the sense that all of what she was saying, the whole spectrum of her grievances, was in some indefinable way directed at him. “I see what you mean,” he said noncommittally.

  “You can’t really,” she said, her body rigid as if braced against the anticipation of pain. “You don’t love them.” Her glance an accusation. “They don’t have anything in the world but me to live for. Will will become an alcoholic if I leave. You see, anything I do, whatever I do is wrong.” She started to cry, then as suddenly and mysteriously as she started, her eyes cleared. “Do you really think I should move out?”

  He didn’t know what to say, he nodded.

  She gave him her hand, unasked for, offered it to him as a gift (to be returned). “If you think I should, Peter, I will. I trust your advice.”

  Impatient, giving up her hand, he stood up, walked away, came back. “Do you really want my advice?” he said, withholding his annoyance, his suspicions, willing to grant her (her prerogative) the right to use him in any way, in all ways. He owed her that, he was willing to believe. He owed her himself.

  “Whatever you say I’ll do, old Peter. If you think I ought to stay with them, I will.” She closed her eyes, awaiting his decision. What decision?

  He stood in a puddle of sun, burning, caught like a leaf in the sun’s eye. Then, on impulse, he squatted next to her on the grass, almost embracing her, almost. “I think you ought to move out,” he said, meaning other things as well.

  “I will.” Her eyes opened, met his unexpectedly, lingered out of a curiosity of love, then fled. It was better not seeing than seeing not enough. (The incompleteness of her knowledge was her terror.)