Making Love

by Norman Bogner

  She eased out of the water to soap herself and looked at his animated face. He sat convulsed with laughter that he couldn't hope to share.

  “Do you think Pudge could ever cut your throat?”

  “Never! We was asshole buddies....!” He caught himself, ill at ease, tricked into a sucker play. “Hey, Jane, I thought we had that out once. Why's it so important I should believe you? What's it matter? My personal life wasn't like a saint's, neither. Fact is I couldn't care less one way or the other. He promised me a job. It dint work out, so what. I'm not gonna lay down an’ die.”

  He picked up a washcloth and soaped her back. Small atonements were unquestionably called for.

  “You give me a bath, I give you one.” He laughed, hoping it would be infectious.

  “Is it better with me or Joy-Sue?”

  “What a question! Man, I'll never understand women. It's like bookkeeping. Numbers in columns which add up to nothin'.”

  “I mean in the old days.”

  “Shit, I was a kid on a good time. Dint know my ass from my elbow. No responsibility, just plowin’ through a hole when I got the ball, or pickin’ up my blockin’ assignment. That ain't life. It's a game ... only a game.”

  “Don't you want to answer?” she persisted.

  “Lookit, what do you want me to say? She was my wife. I dint know she was along for the ride till I tapped out. What am I, a mind reader? You share somethin’ with a woman, an’ it's good, so I'm supposed to tell her she's a liar an’ it's all phony. I can't look at things that way. She put up with a few things herself. All that travelin', strangers pawin’ her, yours truly supposed to be at the baths an’ drunk in some dump, the whores thicker than flies givin’ me the romance. An athlete's got to grab what he can. I'm thirty-two, an old man. Finished four years ago. Spoke to a boxing champion a few years ago ... one of the greats, Rocky Graziano. You know what he tole me: How soon they forget. I want it on my tombstone. A man my age should be beginnin’ his prime.”

  “Was it good with your wife?”

  “Damnit, ‘course it was.” He angrily threw the washcloth in the tub. "Who do you believe, Sonny? Me or him? This is gettin’ to be a real slow track. I'm goin’ out for a Christmas tree. I see the fruit store aroun’ the corner's sellin’ them. Believe you....” he spat the words out like a bit of dirt.

  “Nobody ever has,” she said regretfully. She had a moral obligation to save him from herself.

  She packed a bag hurriedly, rooted around for her boots, then realized that she was wearing them. He'd taken her keys, so he could let himself in. She didn't believe in notes or good-byes. Against her will she cried in the taxi, and the driver who'd refused to let her put her suitcase in the front stopped and apologized. Christmas was here. He didn't want to be responsible for grief. The mortified cabbie refused a tip, which made them both feel worse. He carried the bag to the vestibule of Luckmunn's building and waited while the doorman rang the apartment.

  Luckmunn greeted her by the elevator, wearing a maroon-velvet smoking jacket, although he'd given up Kools way before the scare. Maybe he used the jacket for reading.

  “Hello. I saved you the prepaid answer. You'll get a refund.”

  “Jane, you've got a fine sense of economy. But really it wasn't necessary. Just a convenience.”

  She gave him a sullen look. Self-sacrifice had been an incredibly difficult decision and she couldn't be gracious about it.

  “Don't bother taking your coat off, I'm ready to leave.”

  “Were you waiting for me?”

  He took her hand, kissed it reverently, and said:

  “Yes, yes, I was. I didn't think you'd come. I was hopeful but not optimistic.”

  “If I didn't come ...?”

  “I wouldn't have gone. I'd have pestered you until I could see you again. I have a simple philosophy. Perseverance always wins. I have one small vice I think I ought to tell you about. I don't like losing.”

  On the drive up—home in chains, she thought—she couldn't bring herself to say a word to him. After a while he got the message, spent his time reading Barron's. Passing through Southport, he dropped the review and put his arm around her.

  “Charles Luckmunn, builder,” he said, “and mender of broken hearts. Cry your head off, Jane darling. I'm taking the job voluntarily. A task force of one. I'll make you better, I promise I will.”

  He kept quiet after that, which required enormous self-control. His emotional balance sheet revealed incontrovertibly that he was in love. Like the beginning of any new C. Benjamin Luckmunn development, it had started off in the red. Since he was the only stockholder he had to account to, he made a few estimates, asked himself the right questions. Would unstinting time, energy, investment, eventually produce a profit in the ledger of his life? Inclined to rush, remove obstacles, he reluctantly counseled patience and forbearance.

  He was making a market in himself, underwriting the entire thing, another Luckmunn shit-or-bust operation. A bankruptcy here could not be profitable, might prove fatal. He couldn't quite picture her as mother to as yet unissued Luckmunn heirs, nor for that matter himself as a father. How could he plan? They hadn't made love. His partner might have a collapsed uterus, damaged tubes, uncontrollable ovulation, a chest hernia. Menopause she was too young for, but he'd heard of strange cases, statistical freaks. To be on the safe side, he'd get himself a list of adoption societies, investigate procedures. He put his foot down on Vietnam orphans and other foundlings of misadventure, although the idea might appeal to Lee. Sexual tax loss, a hell of a way to start a business. He cast the thought out of his mind, exiled it to the contingency department. He jotted down a note and handed it to Bob, a message from García, the Luckmunn version of the Zimmerman Telegram. Attack!

  First drop us off, then go into Fairfield to record store and buy all Bert Bacharach and/or Dionne Warwick records available. Charge to my account. Bring back bill!

  He developed a solitary tolerance for this recording team. He meant business. Romance swelled his pupils, lust glowed in the irises, his capital turned over merrily. She hadn't accepted his generous offer of a cry on his beige cashmere shoulder. A holdout. Sooner or later they all came to terms. In the meantime, delicacy, he told himself, diplomacy, deliberateness, the Luckmunn 3-D trinity. He'd experienced brooders for years—his mother was still alive, a study in ambiguous hostility, always angry, never certain about what. She disapproved of his personal life (too many women), his business she didn't understand, so it had to be illegal, and his relations with members of his family, selfish. When he asked her what was wrong, she invariably replied, “Everything.” Pressed to be specific, she would whine that she couldn't put her finger on it.

  He couldn't take her seriously. He'd financed his two brothers in a small furniture factory which ticked over profitably, sprung his sister to a boutique, Hilda's of Manhasset, and his mother was clipping coupons, getting three hundred a week and living the life of Riley in a condominium in Mill Basin with a view of the Bay and within walking distance of the floating Canasta game. Winters she repaired to Miami Beach, Hotel Tides on Ocean Drive. He'd given his whole family solvency. His mother wanted his soul, or failing that, for him to keep a kosher home, referring to Lee as “that Jap who should've been at Pearl Harbor.”

  Complainers, brooders, women with secret sorrows, he knew them well and was perfectly prepared for Jane. Planning ahead like a lunatic—the Jane business had been open for about three minutes, not even enough time to have bought a good-luck plant—he realized that marrying Jane might enhance his mother's lyrical predilection for the death which waited for her with outstretched hands, reuniting her for that final twirl with her favorite rumba partner, his late father. The two had studied the dance for nine years; a hobby had become an obsession, finally a business. They worked old-age homes for twenty-five dollars a night plus dinner, rhumbaing their way into the hearts of the infirm and diabetic. Repeats of Ben Casey had killed the act and his father.

  Best to kee
p Jane away from his family, his mother, practically separate categories in his mind. On to society and golf clubs. No one could mistake Jane for a Jewess. A simple ceremony in the JP's chambers, a classy reception at Sea-Beech, his spread. A church wedding she could forget about. Contributions to Boys’ Town were one thing, kissing Cardinal Cooke's hand another. A terrific honor, but not for a Litvak. He wanted to strike an ideal balance: He wouldn't allow chopped liver or stuffed derma into the house and no one would make the cross over him. He mused, lost.

  Since Nancy's confinement at the clinic, the house had been closed and the servants discharged. Two neighbors had snapped them up. Jane didn't even know their names, had vague recollections of having met them. Who? What? Where? Adverbs. They passed by. She had memories. Luckmunn's voice in the background had the quality of Muzak in an elevator.

  I had my first period over there....

  Her lips hadn't moved. Luckmunn was talking about tennis, the backhand that never existed.

  I kissed Tub Feeney over behind the maple tree and had my first experience....

  “Pity it's falling apart.” Luckmunn mused.

  A time of firsts, a time to forget....

  “We're here, Mr. Luckmunn.”

  “Well done. Get us settled, then pick up the things in town. A bill, Bob,” he said ominously.

  He helped Jane out of the car.

  “Welcome to Sea-Beech.” His own singles weekend amid Connecticut gloaming.

  It was gracious enough. Graystone and squat as a frog, a note of merriment struck by yellow awnings. A concealed drive with both traffic and vagrant lovers out of earshot. He'd plowed Nancy there once, when she couldn't make it from the car. About four acres well laid out; it looked like more. Jane had grown up on a hundred acres, one of the last of the unsubdivided estates. She never knew about Sea-Beech in spite of the fact that home was less than two miles away. Fairfield was like that. He took command as usual. Tour time. She followed him along the path through neat conical snow drifts. He pointed to a massive snow blanket.

  “I'm building a tennis court here with an all-weather surface. I play a pretty fair game. But the trouble is, I'm not vicious enough. I beat your mother once. Actually I don't believe she was trying very hard.” He paused, examined a tree and she turned away. “I've got two brothers, a sister, and a mother. They've never been up here. I want to invite them but I sense they'll be uncomfortable. You see, I'm the youngest and we've got a small problem. We don't talk. Two years now. Pity. But that's show business.”

  He playfully hooked his head over her shoulder.

  “No air pollution here.”

  She was crying now, hard, bitter, her face racked and twisted.

  “What have I said?” He shrugged it off. “I knew you couldn't hold out forever. Come on now, I'll show you where you're going to live.”

  * * * *

  There were two in staff besides Bob and Lee, but Luckmunn made the martinis himself, lovingly measuring, stirring with a precise movement, as if it were cobalt and not vodka.

  “Anybody ever tell you, Jane, that you're not exactly a fraternity sweetheart?”

  She was staring into a healthy birch-log fire. He approved, a man of his word, a fireplace in every room. He handed her the cocktail and she sipped it, removing the threat of a toast. This made him uncomfortable, since he was anxious to recite fine sentiments, even worked on the syntax while shaving. Robbed of his poetic moment, he sat at her feet, resting his chin on her kneecap for a short glissando passage.

  “Those logs really can burn.”

  At long last she noticed him and said:

  “I wonder what the hell I'm doing here.”

  “You'll find out. Take my word for it.”

  Nobody had to draw Luckmunn a picture to tell him that he was witnessing the other-guy syndrome. Fighting terms. Sympathy became his combat shield. Yet she seemed so virginal. He couldn't believe she'd been intimate with a man. Heavy petting, yes. It was a little difficult to reconcile this impression with the fact that she was Nancy's daughter. Another life, he reflected. He was on the verge of canceling the marriage arrangements when he realized that he was threatening himself, a lonely practice, leading perhaps to insanity.

  “Do you want to talk about it, Jane?”

  “Not with you.”

  “Why not?” He put on a Bacharach medley; the composer himself sounded in fine voice. He took the tray of canapes from the top of the bar, recoiled when he saw that the caviar had been done in his initials. Luxury of course was a little new, but this was disgusting. He dropped them in a basket behind the bar. She wasn't watching. Fortunately the herring tabs had resisted the stencil, and nobody could work with a rolled anchovy. He offered her a choice and she took one. Progress. He excused himself, returning shortly after with a jar of Sevruga on a silver tray. This was the way it should have been done in the first place.

  “No thanks,” she said.

  He himself preferred salmon roe but showed good faith by helping himself to some. Now that he had her, he didn't know quite what to do about it.

  “Is your room comfortable?”

  “Fine. Can I have another drink?”

  He sprang to his feet, grateful that she'd finally responded.

  “We can have dinner any time you're ready.” It was past eight, and his stomach was growling.

  “I'll just have the drink.”

  “I wish you'd tell me a little about yourself. I'm genuinely interested. Your mother was a little secretive about you. But she raved about your marks in school.”

  She switched off, and took herself and the drink upstairs. He followed about five feet behind. The room she had overlooked the front garden. She stood by the window. In the lightless night she could discern only dimly outlined silhouettes. She threw off her shoes and curled on the bed, ignoring the light tapping on the door. Luckmunn used only one knuckle. He felt like a tenant, there on the landlord's sufferance, timorously about to ask for more beat. She'd overwhelmed him. He stood outside quaking, martini glass in hand. Downstairs he heard the staff at table discussing the weather and snow tires.

  “Jane?” he said in a whisper. “There's a switch on the table. If you turn it, you can get the music.” He let himself in. A dressing-table light was on. She lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He inclined his head. Just eggshell paint. He sat down at the foot of the bed.

  “Look, can't I possibly help? I care about you. But you know that.”

  “I'm back where I started from.”

  “In what sense? Couldn't you trust me?”

  “What makes you such a nice guy?”

  “Isn't it obvious?”

  “I started out disliking you.”

  “Why? You didn't even know me. Jane, I'm not such a fool as to be unable to see that you've been badly hurt,”

  “The truth is that I've done the hurting....”

  “That's true pain. What did the young man do for a living?” Luckmunn inquired. He wanted to find out if he was up against big money or Peter Fonda, so that he could make his battle plan.

  “Unemployed.”

  This was serious. Nobody could compete with a young bum, no doubt inexhaustible. In his favor was the admission that she'd caused the grief and he was up against secondary sorrows, rather than irreparable loss. He could accommodate passion and impulsively pressed his lips against her forehead. She tapped his head with her empty glass, breaking the spell. This called for drunken revelry and he was low on vodka. Only half a bottle remained and it appeared that she was just getting warmed up. His luck, he'd probably pass out when she was ripe for action. He'd switch to ice water—she wouldn't be able to tell the difference. To a man who sold invisible homes, this was child's play.

  “I'll get the drinks. Just wait, be comfortable.”

  He stopped off in the kitchen and canceled dinner, instructing Lee to leave coldcuts on a tray and stuff the egg-rolls up his ass. He'd serve himself. He reached the vodka and rejoiced. It was a Connecticut double-qua
rt bottle. He could have sent Bob to town, but the chauffeur was dressed to kill and off to see his girlfriend in Bridgeport. An errand at this time of night and he might be looking for a new driver tomorrow. He loved his staff, they didn't gossip or get personal. He paid them well, slipped a little under the table every now and then to keep them sweet and away from the employment-wanted section.

  He made a vain attempt to probe his motives about Jane, but found himself humming along with Bacharach. He thrived on logic, but was lost when he came up against self-analysis. Searching his past for a precedent, he found only a string of hit-or-miss sexual alliances, none lasting more than a week. His demands had been simple, cash on the line for a “trip,” without jeopardizing his liberty.

  First thing on Monday he'd call his friend Bernie Hammerman for a ring, getting true wholesale value and maybe a Van Cleef box thrown in. He put down the bottle, and shook his own hand, the first on the receiving line to congratulate himself. Bob came in to say good night and caught his employer in the act, practicing dynamic tension on himself.

  Luckmunn expansively said:

  “Isn't she terrific, Bob?”

  “Yes, she is, Mr. Luckmunn.”

  “Bob, we've been together now for quite a while.”

  “Almost two years.”