Making Love

by Norman Bogner

  The impoverished charm of figures had no effect whatever on her, and Pudge soon realized that the girl was either accustomed to men like himself or hopelessly dumb. She was unimpressed and it worried him. Since she had been accepted at Saranac, he concluded unhappily that she could hardly be stupid. Irony and contempt for the accomplishments of others was an Eastern weapon he'd been exposed to before. He didn't like it. Money had done nothing to temper his skin, it was still thin. Through his Wild Turkey and branch water, he detected a small weakness: Sonny Jackson. Incomprehensible though it might seem, he noticed it, and drove small darts in an opening that became larger with every passing minute. Her face became tense, nervous, whenever he mentioned him. A clumsy bridge player at best, he recognized a finesse when he saw one. He hit on the magic word: contract.

  “Sonny'd be most valuable to the ball club an’ I know it. His enthusiasm is somefin’ we all could use. Never too mucha tha'.”

  “He knows the game.” Since she didn't, she felt like a fool. “He's got an eye for young players.”

  “No denyin’ tha'.” What was this buildup leading to, a loan? “Ever seen him, durin’ his playin’ days?” She shook her head, then mentioned filmed highlights. “Inspirational ball player, I call ‘em. They don’ have the real stuff ‘at makes great ones, but they plug, an’ grind out theah two yards when we need that fust down. Go right at the defensive line, an’ they finish up on the suicide squad, cose they don't know when to quit.”

  “Is that what happened to Sonny?”

  “A real tryer, but thud rate.”

  He saw her wince and squeezed his hands in anticipation. No woman Pudge couldn't quarterback. When money and power failed, guile brought them into sack. He had developed such qualities as he possessed into an art, the flexibility of his game plan always the key. The lobby of the Americana had all of the charm of wax flowers in a funeral parlor, and suitcase snatchers hungrily eyed the bellhops.

  “It's in mah attaché case in the suite ... Sonny's contract,” Pudge said.

  “Why don't you mail it or give it to him yourself?” she said, regaining her presence of mind.

  “When're you goin’ to see him?”

  “Tonight, I guess.”

  “Wount it be nice if you could hand it to him?”

  An incontrovertible argument, she thought, looking into the horny green porcine eyes, deep set in his head, the skull an abutment. Pay-off time was at hand. His nineteenth-floor suite overlooked forty-one loitering prostitutes, the graveyard of Broadway at its cusp of the abandoned Lindy's, and ran eye-level to other structures of shapeless gray stone, enough to give even a hardened New Yorker glaucoma of the soul.

  He excused himself to attend to telephone messages in the adjoining room and, she hoped, to ferret out Sonny's passport to respectability from the folds of a red-lined Samsonite case. A man's destiny seemed worth more to her than the ambiguous fine print on a scrap of paper, and Sonny's should be handed to him by an angel. He stuck his head out for a moment and said:

  “Joy-Sue give him a real tough time o’ it. Known to consort with nigras at the end. Tell yuh one thin', Sonny could really pick ‘em. Private stock, not to be believed. Teammates called him king of the cheerleaders. Ever gal ever twirled a baton or rode a pinto south of Virginia come into his stable at one time or ‘nother. I usta git the overflow. Can't complain. But compared to yuh, Joy-Sue was nuffin'.”

  She ignored the heady compliment, familiar with the good old-fashioned needle.

  “I thought you were going to give me a contract.”

  “Don’ rush me. Hate to be rushed.” He handed her a photograph of a young blond girl with a silver baton in her hand, snub nose, and hippy enough to satisfy any man. “Joy-Sue in huh prime.”

  She glanced at the snapshot. Cuckolding she was convinced had long ceased to be a cause for tragedy. The previous Mrs. Jackson—not exactly a sight for sore eyes, Baby Doll in aspic, caught in the throes of a touchdown leap—had the fanatical, rapturous expression of a four-year-old who truly believes that Santa is alive and well at the North Pole.

  “Had the hots foh huh foh years.”

  “I hope you didn't fail where many succeeded.”

  “Real sharp tongue in yoh mouf foh sucha young lady.” The folksy drivel was giving her heartburn, but he seemed a tireless commentator.

  “She had the hots foh me, too, if you want to know the truf o’ it.”

  “Your a real salesman,” she said flatly, noticing his color rise to the hue of a Harvard beet. “I'm sure you moved lots of girls in your time.”

  He nodded approvingly, a visitant to many foreign camp beds.

  “Nevah married. Soonah o’ latah, I'll need a kid, but I kin wait.”

  “The world waits with you.”

  “Din’ catch...”

  “Not important.”

  “Yuh evah been married, Jane?”

  “No,” she said wearily, “I can wait, too.”

  “Two of a kind we are.”

  He left the room again, and she saw the phone button light up. She curled in a chair, the booze headache had reentered without knocking. A bottle of Möet appeared as if by magic with a waiter shoving along a wagon through the room.

  “Jane, sign it an’ give the boy a dollah.”

  The waiter was not a happy man.

  Pudge reappeared in a dizzying green paisley robe with matching neck scarf. Trouserless, his unsupported stomach sagged forward. He had a sheaf of stapled papers in his right hand which caught Jane's eye, and she became incredibly almost irrationally angry. It seemed ridiculous that Sonny's future should ride on an afternoon hump, and moreover her sacrifice was not even to be dignified by cover of darkness during which such things, she imagined, would be less painful. Bitterly she regained her composure, forced a smile.

  “I'm getting the treatment, I see.”

  “Nuffin’ but the best,” replied Pudge, searching for lofty expressions but failing.

  “This is a true existential predicament. Either/or.”

  “Don't give me any of th’ Supreme Coat she-it.”

  “Either I go to bed with you and Sonny gets his contract, or I don't and he winds up a scout without a team.”

  “Man without a country,” Pudge said at last, catching the drift. “They teach yuh all tha’ stuff in college.” She said they had. “Ain't missed a thing, then. Left school—”

  “If this is another success story, please spare me. My head's exploding.”

  He popped the champagne cork deftly, catching the first flow of bubbly on his lower lip. He poured two glasses, handed her one and sank into a firm foam-rubber club chair; he resembled, she thought, one of those Pabst Blue Ribbon beer kegs, draped in bunting and lugged by smart gray horses in old-time beer commercials stressing flavor. He exposed the fact that he had abandoned his jockey shorts during his last wardrobe change.

  He wagged a finger, beckoning her to his side.

  “Come on ovah, little sister, an git down on it. Ain't gonnah bite yuh.”

  “Anyone ever tell you, you've got a real subtlety going for you?”

  “None o’ tha’ smart-ass, now. I want it real bad.”

  He waved the contract at her like a distress signal.

  “Won’ even haggle ovah money with yuh. Hundid to show yuh I'm a gen'man.”

  She came over to him and spilt her champagne on his member, which unfortunately excited him even more.

  “This a new thin’ in New York ‘fore you gobble it?” he asked sincerely, convinced that the city led the nation in perversion innovations, the home of sex inventors, eventually employed by groundbreakers like himself in the hinterlands.

  “Gobble it yourself.”

  He jumped up from the chair, made a grab for her dress; her nails, never before used for this purpose, peeled the skin of his cheek like a potato. He lowered his head, a spunky little contender, and butted her in the chest, momentarily knocking the wind out of her; but then with the advantage all his way he crumb
led to the floor, aghast and horrified by the presence of his own blood.

  “Sonny doesn't need your job,” she shouted hoarsely, “and when you look at yourself in the mirror, ask yourself why anybody would want to go to bed with a pig like you.”

  “Always cheated me, tha son-of-bitch. I'd nevah hire him.”

  “And that's the truth. You shit,” she muttered, grabbing her coat and bag.

  * * * *

  With the five o'clock rush hour in full flower, she pulled off the dazzling trick of snaring a cab, slumped in the seat, so speechless with rage that the driver had to ask three times where she wanted to be taken. Her headache had vanished mysteriously and her body throbbed from a rich intake of adrenaline. She'd plead her case to Sonny, allow him to do anything he wished, except discard his dignity, without which they'd both be lost.

  She managed to collect herself by the time she reached Riverside Drive. No plan for the future jumped into focus, but she felt secure and lucid, capable of reasoning with her disappointed child.

  When she saw him, sitting on a chair, looking out of the window, he was still wearing his brown business suit, both trouser knees pulled up to avoid creases. The ironing board, a towel, and the iron were out, all ready for an instant pressing job he'd undertake before going out into the evanescent limelight always tantalizingly out of reach. A ritual quest for an object that did not exist. Idealism in its purest form.

  “How ... could you do this to me?” he asked quietly.

  She decided not to answer, letting him cast the blame until he realized that he himself must be held responsible, and he'd point the finger eventually at himself. She had faith in him.

  “I just got off the phone. He was hysterical, said you ripped up his face an’ he'll be scarred for life. Why, Jane? He was gonna give you the contract....”

  “He never had any intention of hiring you and he wanted me to go to bed with him after I blew him for a warm-up.”

  “I don’ believe you. Pudge give me his word. Swore on his life that he never come near you. You started in attackin’ him the minute you met.”

  “He took his clothes off, Sonny, ordered champagne and laid it on the line. Screw or else.”

  “You're a goddamn liar. You dint want me to have the job. Admit it.”

  “I think the job stinks, but I wanted you to get it. The man's a pig. He hates your guts and he used to sleep with Joy-Sue behind your back.”

  “Christ, I think you're nuts. I've never heard of such filth from anyone. He was my friend.”

  “Hated you, and told me you were third rate.”

  “Pudge! Never. You ruined my chances ... broke up the only friendship I got. He was Wesley's godfather. You think every guy wants to jump into bed with you, which is a sickness.”

  He turned away from her and she was too disgusted to cry.

  “You cheated me,” he said, “just so I could stay your stud. That's all you want. How could you be so selfish ... vicious broad?”

  “Sonny, you're making all this up. I love you and if this lousy job would make you happy, I wanted you to have it. I couldn't go to bed with the man, could I? Would that have been all right? If that's what I had to do to get it, then it wasn't worth it.”

  “To you, you, that's all that counts, isn't it, Jane? An’ I don’ believe a word you're sayin'. Pudge can get all the girls he wants. Who needs you?”

  “Look, I'm through talking. If you don't want to face the truth, then I'm sorry for you.”

  “Called me third-rate?”

  He swung around suddenly with animalistic grace.

  “I did you a favor,” she protested.

  “Them kinda favors is murder.”

  Once as a child on a visit to the zoo she had witnessed the tortured, imprisoned rage of a gorilla, taunted by small boys. It seemed to her perfect art in its revelation, a marriage of intention and execution in its effect and the pleasure it had brought to the knee-high spectators. She saw it again in his eyes, an indelible record of human suffering, frozen in her mind. Sonny's anger, speechless and demented, complete with saliva gathering at the corners of his mouth, revealed a depth of emotion she could never have conceived him possessing. She held up her arms to embrace him in a fervor of longing that only his wound could inspire. Then he struck her.

  “You laid your professor ... that Alan, and had an abortion. I know all about you,” he said fiercely. “What are you, anyway? Just another piece.”

  The monstrous complicity of his scheme went through her head for an instant and her mind went blank.

  Spangles of crisscrossing light waves, a child's sparkler burning down, mystical, lambent, exciting, and lost before she knew it ... the glory of light in undiscovered galaxies of the endless night of the mind. Falling, it was gorgeous.

  His face was something gnarled, twisted out of recognition. He had yielded more than any man could ever hope to, but God, couldn't she see that he could no longer bend, that he was incapable of acts of impossible grace? At times she knew there was no kindness kinder than cruelty. Beat her he must, destroy her if his idealism could sustain him. Then, looking at her motionless on the floor, his anger vanished and something deep inside him like an animal's yelp of pain escaped from his body, and he was in another place at another time.

  Green Bay.... Fingers frostbitten in twenty below, the field of ice, running away from cannibals. A shoulder separation the least of his pain; slipping, losing ground, always losing, the record holder for defeats, slithering in immovable frozen mud so tight a duck's ass couldn't get through; but he pounded away on the one-, two-, three-yard plunges, bringing to the game his pride and the league-leading average for ground gaining. Afterwards he wound up third, while some rookie cooling his heels on the bench with a ham-string pull came out first. First. First. First. He deserved the marbles. This time, not just first, but Most Valuable Player. He struck her motionless body again. Nobody complained about that forearm, the elbow on the cheekbone. He always got up, no matter how bad he was hurting, simply to deprive the spectators of the thrill of injury.

  “Mother! Get up,” he shouted. “Blue twelve on three.... Hupp, Hupp, Hupp.” Off count, no cadence. Automatic because there was too much noise. Missing the call and then the sweet sound of bone-crunching contact.

  He grabbed hold of one of his trophies and shoved it into his stomach.

  “Way to carry, man,” a voice said.

  He'd always dreamed of coming at the line backer, banging him, breaking through the secondary and heading for daylight.

  He lugged the miniature brass man out ahead of him, his usual style of carrying, rushed breathlessly down the stairs, humped into somebody blocking his way, knocking him down. On the first floor he slammed the statue down to the ground, smashing it into jagged lumps. Glass shattered.

  A young black kid, his teeth big as coconut hunks, smiled and said:

  “You, Son-ney, now youse owe me foh six bottlus. Man tug it into the endzone oncet in a while.”

  The kid picked up the pieces, a collector of small amulets in empty hallways, then gathered the bits in his box while Sonny stared through frozen eyes, a terrible wordless sound creeping like fog from his lips.

  “Tuck it in you gut,” the kid said softly. He carried boxes and good advice was his stock trade. He handed Sonny a broken arm. “You kin always stick it up you ass if you kint fart.”

  Sonny rushed outside into the cold night air, his tolerance level dropping to zero. He hoped he'd get lucky as he zigzagged in the gutter, and a car would find him, ending all conflicts. But the street was deserted and despite his shrieks for assistance, no window opened and no passerby stopped.

  In the celestial emptiness of the big city, he shouted the finite challenge:

  “Who gives a fuck? I don't. I don't. I don't. Number twenty Wesley C. Jackson don't give a fuck.”

  A Month of Sundays

  Hello, Jane. It's Charles Luckmunn.” The voice paused, waiting for an effect that never came. She switched the receive
r to her right hand away from her cheek. She'd been lucky, escaping with a simple hairline fracture. Originally the color of burnt steak, it was now in the overripe plum stage. “You don't return calls,” he said.

  “I took a vacation from myself.”

  “Well, you missed Coco and the last Jet game. I called you on both occasions.”

  “What an exciting life you lead.”

  “Where did you say you'd been?”

  “I didn't. Palm Beach.”

  “Oh,” he said with a suggestion of disappointment. “I don't go there. They're not very pleasant to Jews. I had an experience once.”

  Clever strategist, she thought. Refusing to see him made her anti-Semitic—the worst kind, one who didn't admit it.

  “When can we have dinner?” he asked placidly.

  “I don't know. I've become a militant lesbian.”

  He chuckled softly, instantly disabusing her of the idea that he could be conned. She heard a strange mechanical hissing sound at the other end.

  “Excuse me. I had to spray my throat. I had a polyp removed from my vocal cords last week, and it tickles. I said to the doctor, Maybe you'll make me a singer. Because when I sing, people start running away.”

  “Oh, is that the reason?”

  In the background she heard other phones frantically tolling for his attention.

  “You're wanted,” she said.

  “They can wait. May I suggest the Bemelman's Bar at the Hotel Carlyle. Eight o'clock?”

  “Why not?”

  “You'll be there?”