Nine Stories
Page 11
he said, exhaling smoke through his nostrils, «how’d you make out today?»
«What?»
«How’d you make out today?» the gray‑haired man repeated. «How’d the case go?»
«Oh, Christ! I don’t know. Lousy. About two minutes before I’m all set to start my summation, the attorney for the plaintiff, Lissberg, trots in this crazy chambermaid with a bunch of bedsheets as evidence—bedbug stains all over them. Christ!»
«So what happened? You lose?» asked the grayhaired man, taking another drag on his cigarette.
«You know who was on the bench? Mother Vittorio. What the hell that guy has against me, I’ll never know. I can’t even open my mouth and he jumps all over me. You can’t reason with a guy like that. It’s impossible.»
The gray‑haired man turned his head to see what the girl was doing. She had picked up the ashtray and was putting it between them. «You lose, then, or what?» he said into the phone.
«What?»
«I said, Did you lose?»
«Yeah. I was gonna tell you about it. I didn’t get a chance at the party, with all the ruckus. You think Junior’ll hit the ceiling? Not that I give a good goddam, but what do you think? Think he will?»
With his left hand, the gray‑haired man shaped the ash of his cigarette on the rim of the ashtray. «I don’t think he’ll necessarily hit the ceiling, Arthur,” he said quietly.
«Chances are very much in favor, though, that he’s not going to be overjoyed about it.
You know how long we’ve handled those three bloody hotels? Old man Shanley himself started the whole—»
«I know, I know. Junior’s told me about it at least fifty times. It’s one of the most beautiful stories I ever heard in my life. All right, so I lost the goddam case. In the first place, it wasn’t my fault. First, this lunatic Vittorio baits me all through the trial. Then this moron chambermaid starts passing out sheets full of bedbug—»
«Nobody’s saying it’s your fault, Arthur,” the grayhaired man said. «You asked me if I thought Junior would hit the ceiling. I simply gave you an honest—»
«I know—I know that…. I don’t know. What the hell. I may go back in the Army anyway. I tell you about that?»
The gray‑haired man turned his head again toward the girl, perhaps to show her how forbearing, even stoic, his countenance was. But the girl missed seeing it. She had just overturned the ashtray with her knee and was rapidly, with her fingers, brushing the spilled ashes into a little pick‑up pile; her eyes looked up at him a second too late. «No, you didn’t, Arthur,” he said into the phone.
«Yeah. I may. I don’t know yet. I’m not crazy about the idea, naturally, and I won’t go if I can possibly avoid it. But I may have to. I don’t know. At least, it’s oblivion. If they gimme back my little helmet and my big, fat desk and my nice, big mosquito net it might not—»
«I’d like to beat some sense into that head of yours, boy, that’s what I’d like to do,” the gray‑haired man said. «For a helluvan—For a supposedly intelligent guy, you talk like an absolute child. And I say that in all sincerity. You let a bunch of minor little things snowball to an extent that they get so bloody paramount in your mind that you’re absolutely unfit for any—»
«I shoulda left her. You know that? I should’ve gone through with it last summer, when I really had the ball rolling—you know that? You know why I didn’t? You want to know why I didn’t?»
«Arthur. For Chrissake. This is getting us exactly nowhere.»
«Wait a second. Lemme tellya why! You want to know why I didn’t? I can tellya exactly why. Because I felt sorry for her. That’s the whole simple truth. I felt sorry for her.»
«Well, I don’t know. I mean that’s out of my jurisdiction,” the gray‑haired man said. «It seems to me, though, that the one thing you seem to forget is that Joanie’s a grown woman. I don’t know, but it seems to me—»
«Grown woman! You crazy? She’s a grown child, for Chrissake! Listen, I’ll be shaving—listen to this—I’ll be shaving, and all of a sudden she’ll call me from way the hell the other end of the apartment. I’ll go see what’s the matter—right in the middle of shaving, lather all over my goddam face. You know what she’ll want? She’ll want to ask me if I think she has a good mind. I swear to God. She’s pathetic, I tellya. I watch her when she’s asleep, and I know what I’m talkin’ about. Believe me.»
«Well, that’s something you know better than—I mean that’s out of my jurisdiction,”
the gray‑haired man said. «The point is, God damn it, you don’t do anything at all constructive to—»
«We’re mismated, that’s all. That’s the whole simple story. We’re just mismated as hell. You know what she needs? She needs some big silent bastard to just walk over once in a while and knock her out cold—then go back and finish reading his paper.
That’s what she needs. I’m too goddam weak for her. I knew it when we got married—I swear to God I did. I mean you’re a smart bastard, you’ve never been married, but every now and then, before anybody gets married, they get these flashes of what it’s going to be like after they’re married. I ignored ‘em. I ignored all my goddam flashes. I’m weak.
That’s the whole thing in a nutshell.»
«You’re not weak. You just don’t use your head,” the gray‑haired man said, accepting a freshly lighted cigarette from the girl.
«Certainly I’m weak! Certainly I’m weak! God damn it, I know whether I’m weak or not! If I weren’t weak, you don’t think I’d’ve let everything get all—Aah, what’s the usea talking? Certainly I’m weak… God, I’m keeping you awake all night. Why don’t you hang the hell up on me? I mean it. Hang up on me.»
«I’m not going to hang up on you, Arthur. I’d like to help you, if it’s humanly possible,”
the gray‑haired man said. «Actually, you’re your own worst—»
«She doesn’t respect me. She doesn’t even love me, for God’s sake. Basically—in the last analysis—I don’t love her any more, either. I don’t know. I do and I don’t. It varies. It fluctuates. Christ! Every time I get all set to put my foot down, we have dinner out, for some reason, and I meet her somewhere and she comes in with these goddam white gloves on or something. I don’t know. Or I start thinking about the first time we drove up to New Haven for the Princeton game. We had a flat right after we got off the Parkway, and it was cold as hell, and she held the flashlight while I fixed the goddam thing—You know what I mean. I don’t know. Or I start thinking about—Christ, it’s embarrassing—I start thinking about this goddam poem I sent her when we first started goin’ around together. `Rose my color is. and white, Pretty mouth and green my eyes.’ Christ, it’s embarrassing—it used to remind me of her. She doesn’t have green eyes—she has eyes like goddam sea shells, for Chrissake—but it reminded me anyway… I don’t know. What’s the usea talking? I’m losing my mind. Hang up on me, why don’t you? I mean it.»
The gray‑haired man cleared his throat and said, «I have no intention of hanging up on you, Arthur. There’s just one—»
«She bought me a suit once. With her own money. I tell you about that?»
«No, I—»
«She just went into I think Tripler’s and bought it. I didn’t even go with her. I mean she has some goddam nice traits. The funny thing was it wasn’t a bad fit. I just had to have it taken in a little bit around the seat—the pants—and the length. I mean she has some goddam nice traits.»
The gray‑haired man listened another moment.
Then, abruptly, he turned toward the girl. The look he gave her, though only glancing, fully informed her what was suddenly going on at the other end of the phone. «Now, Arthur. Listen. That isn’t going to do any good,” he said into the phone. «That isn’t going to do any good. I mean it. Now, listen. I say this in all sincerity. Willya get undressed and get in bed, like a good guy? And relax? Joanie’ll probably be there in about two minutes. You don’t want her to see you like that, do ya? The
bloody Ellenbogens’ll probably barge in with her. You don’t want the whole bunch of ‘em to see you like that, do ya?» He listened. «Arthur? You hear me?»
«God, I’m keeping you awake all night. Everything I do, I—»
«You’re not keeping me awake all night,” the grayhaired man said. «Don’t even think of that. I’ve already told you, I’ve been averaging about four hours’ sleep a night. What I would like to do, though, if it’s at all humanly possible, I’d like to help you, boy.» He listened. «Arthur? You there?»
«Yeah. I’m here. Listen. I’ve kept you awake all night anyway. Could I come over to your place for a drink? Wouldja mind?»
The gray‑haired man straightened his back and placed the flat of his free hand on the top of his head, and said, «Now, do you mean?»
«Yeah. I mean if it’s all right with you. I’ll only stay a minute. I’d just like to sit down somewhere and—I don’t know. Would it be all right?»
«Yeah, but the point is I don’t think you should, Arthur,” the gray‑haired man said, lowering his hand from his head. «I mean you’re more than welcome to come, but I honestly think you should just sit tight and relax till Joanie waltzes in. I honestly do.
What you want to be, you want to be right there on the spot when she waltzes in. Am I right, or not?»
«Yeah. I don’t know. I swear to God, I don’t know.»
«Well, I do, I honestly do,” the gray‑haired man said. «Look. Why don’t you hop in bed now, and relax, and then later, if you feel like it, give me a ring. I mean if you feel like talking. And don’t worry. That’s the main thing. Hear me? Willya do that now?»
«All right.»
The gray‑haired man continued for a moment to hold the phone to his ear, then lowered it into its cradle.
«What did he say?» the girl immediately asked him. He picked his cigarette out of the ashtray—that is, selected it from an accumulation of smoked and halfsmoked cigarettes.
He dragged on it and said, «He wanted to come over here for a drink.»
«God! What’d you say?» said the girl.
«You heard me,” the gray‑haired man said, and looked at her. «You could hear me.
Couldn’t you?» He squashed out his cigarette.
«You were wonderful. Absolutely marvellous,” the girl said, watching him. «God, I feel like a dog!»
«Well,” the gray‑haired man said, «it’s a tough situation. I don’t know how marvellous I was.»
«You were. You were wonderful,” the girl said. «I’m limp. I’m absolutely limp. Look at me!»
The gray‑haired man looked at her. «Well, actually, it’s an impossible situation,” he said. «I mean the whole thing’s so fantastic it isn’t even—»
«Darling-Excuse me,” the girl said quickly, and leaned forward. «I think you’re on fire.» She gave the back of his hand a short, brisk, brushing stroke with the flats of her fingers. «No. It was just an ash.» She leaned back. «No, you were marvellous,” she said.
«God, I feel like an absolute dog!»
«Well, it’s a very, very tough situation. The guy’s obviously going through absolute—»
The phone suddenly rang.
The gray‑haired man said «Christ!» but picked it up before the second ring. «Hello?» he said into it.
«Lee? Were you asleep?»
«No, no.»
«Listen, I just thought you’d want to know. Joanie just barged in.»
«What?» said the gray‑haired man, and bridged his left hand over his eyes, though the light was behind him.
«Yeah. She just barged in. About ten seconds after I spoke to you. I just thought I’d give you a ring while she’s in the john. Listen, thanks a million, Lee. I mean it—you know what I mean. You weren’t asleep, were ya?»
«No, no. I was just—No, no,” the gray‑haired man said, leaving his fingers bridged over his eyes. He cleared his throat.
«Yeah. What happened was, apparently Leona got stinking and then had a goddam crying jag, and Bob wanted Joanie to go out and grab a drink with them somewhere and iron the thing out. I don’t know. You know. Very involved. Anyway, so she’s home.
What a rat race. Honest to God, I think it’s this goddam New York. What I think maybe we’ll do, if everything goes along all right, we’ll get ourselves a little place in Connecticut maybe. Not too far out, necessarily, but far enough that we can lead a normal goddam life. I mean she’s crazy about plants and all that stuff. She’d probably go mad if she had her own goddam garden and stuff. Know what I mean? I mean—except you—who do we know in New York except a bunch of neurotics? It’s bound to undermine even a normal person sooner or later. Know what I mean?»
The gray‑haired man didn’t give an answer. His eyes, behind the bridge of his hand, were closed. «Anyway, I’m gonna talk to her about it tonight. Or tomorrow, maybe. She’s still a little under the weather. I mean she’s a helluva good kid basically, and if we have a chance to straighten ourselves out a little bit, we’d be goddam stupid not to at least have a go at it. While I’m at it, I’m also gonna try to straighten out this lousy bedbug mess, too. I’ve been thinking. I was just wondering, Lee. You think if I went in and talked to Junior personally, I could—»
«Arthur, if you don’t mind, I’d appreciate—»
«I mean I don’t want you to think I just called you back or anything because I’m worried about my goddam job or anything. I’m not. I mean basically, for Chrissake, I couldn’t care less. I just thought if I could straighten Junior out without beating my brains out, I’d be a goddam fool—»
«Listen, Arthur,” the gray‑haired man interrupted, taking his hand away from his face, «I have a helluva headache all of a sudden. I don’t know where I got the bloody thing from. You mind if we cut this short? I’ll talk to you in the morning—all right?» He listened for another moment, then hung up.
Again the girl immediately spoke to him, but he didn’t answer her. He picked a burning cigarette—the girl’s—out of the ashtray and started to bring it to his mouth, but it slipped out of his fingers. The girl tried to help him retrieve it before anything was burned, but he told her to just sit still, for Chrissake, and she pulled back her hand.
De Daumier‑Smith’s Blue Period
IF IT MADE any real sense—and it doesn’t even begin to—I think I might be inclined to dedicate this account, for whatever it’s worth, especially if it’s the least bit ribald in parts, to the memory of my late, ribald stepfather, Robert Agadganian, Jr. Bobby—as everyone, even I, called him—died in 1947, surely with a few regrets, but without a single gripe, of thrombosis. He was an adventurous, extremely magnetic, and generous man. (After having spent so many years laboriously begrudging him those picaresque adjectives, I feel it’s a matter of life and death to get them in here.) My mother and father were divorced during the winter of 1928, when I was eight, and mother married Bobby Agadganian late that spring. A year later, in the Wall Street Crash, Bobby lost everything he and mother had, with the exception, apparently, of a magic wand. In any case, practically overnight, Bobby turned himself from a dead stockbroker and incapacitated bon vivant into a live, if somewhat unqualified, agentappraiser for a society of independent American art galleries and fine arts museums. A few weeks later, early in 1930, our rather mixed threesome moved from New York to Paris, the better for Bobby to ply his new trade. Being a cool, not to say an ice‑cold, ten at the time, I took the big move, so far as I know, untraumatically. It was the move back to New York, nine years later, three months after my mother died, that threw me, and threw me terribly.
I remember a significant incident that occurred just a day or two after Bobby and I arrived in New York. I was standing up in a very crowded Lexington Avenue bus, holding on to the enamel pole near the driver’s seat, buttocks to buttocks with the chap behind me. For a number of blocks the driver had repeatedly given those of us bunched up near the front door a curt order to «step to the rear of the vehicle.» Some of us had tried to oblige him. So
me of us hadn’t. At length, with a red light in his favor, the harassed man swung around in his seat and looked up at me, just behind him. At nineteen, I was a hatless type, with a flat, black, not particularly clean, Continentaltype pompadour over a badly broken‑out inch of forehead. He addressed me in a lowered, an almost prudent tone of voice. «All right, buddy,” he said, «let’s move that ass.» It was the «buddy,” I think, that did it. Without even bothering to bend over a little—that is, to keep the conversation at least as private, as de bon gout, as he’d kept it—I informed him, in French, that he was a rude, stupid, overbearing imbecile, and that he’d never know how much I detested him. Then, rather elated, I stepped to the rear of the vehicle.
Things got much worse. One afternoon, a week or so later, as I was coming out of the Ritz Hotel, where Bobby and I were indefinitely stopping, it seemed to me that all the seats from all the buses in New York had been unscrewed and taken out and set up in the street, where a monstrous game of Musical Chairs was in full swing. I think I might have been willing to join the game if I had been granted a special dispensation from the Church of Manhattan guaranteeing that all the other players would remain respectfully standing till I was seated. When it became clear that nothing of the kind was forthcoming, I took more direct action. I prayed for the city to be cleared of people, for the gift of being alone—a‑l-o‑n-e: which is the one New York prayer that rarely gets lost or delayed in channels, and in no time at all everything I touched turned to solid loneliness. Mornings and early afternoons, I attended—bodily—an art school on Fortyeighth and Lexington Avenue, which I loathed. (The week before Bobby and I had left Paris, I had won three first‑prize awards at the National Junior Exhibition, held at the Freiburg Galleries. Throughout the voyage to America, I used our stateroom mirror to note my uncanny physical resemblance to El Greco.) Three late afternoons a week I spent in a dentist’s chair, where, within a period of a few months, I had eight teeth extracted, three of them front ones. The other two afternoons I usually spent wandering through art galleries, mostly on Fifty‑seventh Street, where I did all but hiss at the American entries. Evenings, I generally read. I bought a complete set of the Harvard Classics—chiefly because Bobby said we didn’t have room for them in our suite—and [56] rather perversely read all fifty volumes. Nights, I almost invariably set up my easel between the twin beds in the room I shared with Bobby, and painted. In one month alone, according to my diary for 1939, I completed eighteen oil paintings. Noteworthily enough, seventeen of them were self‑portraits. Sometimes, however, possibly when my Muse was being capricious, I set aside my paints and drew cartoons. One of them I still have. It shows a cavernous view of the mouth of a man being attended by his dentist.