ALL WEEK HE spent his evenings in the office, figuring his position in terms of dollars and cents; it seemed the only way to chart his personal latitude and longitude. Suddenly lost in a forest of lives, he yearned for a tabulator, longed for it as a mariner, adrift in a night without stars, might long for a sextant. By Saturday night, however, he had made a makeshift instrument from a week of plumber and electrician estimates.
He sat in bad light, picking bits of a bad supper from his teeth with a toothpick and staring at the black shine of the night-backed window. “Moonbloom” had become “Moonbloon” and a leg of the remaining n was chipping away, would soon become—what? “Moonbloor”? Above, his brother’s name was, stolidly, permanently, still “MOONBLOOM.” He sensed people passing, occasionally saw the mirror-like window briefly transparent in the light of a passing car. Mostly, though, there was just the image of himself, cadaverous in the overhead light, a sort of grotesque portrait of an executive, based by the desk. The building creaked, and he remembered that people lived over his office too. And what were they like? Could they all be as horrible and dangerous as his own tenants? For a moment he shivered at the thought of the infinitely long list of complaints of all the millions. Good God, he thought, what would the advancement that Irwin had once promised entail for him? Longer lists, more complicated charts of tormenting complexity? It occurred to him that he really didn’t want the “opportunity” Irwin had promised (or threatened?). Why, then, was he laboring so mightily to do something? Because he now seemed to have no choice, because he was not like that mariner setting out from a port, but, rather, one adrift in an empty ocean, his movement no longer dictated by ambition, but by a need to survive. Somehow he had been cast into the inferno of people; at this point it didn’t matter whose hand had done the casting.
Pipes ran, a hissing came from the radiator, a buckling sound from the hair-colored linoleum. He scanned the spread-out papers covered with figures and notations and telephone numbers. On a clean sheet he accumulated what seemed to be the facts.
The total cost for what he considered to be the minimal repairs came to five thousand three hundred and eighty-seven dollars and twenty-two cents; the owed rent, counting what Sheryl Beeler had cheated him out of, came to a hundred and seventy-three fifty. Irwin expected, on or about the first of the year, a total of seven weeks’ rental, roughly thirty-five hundred, out of which he would deposit some five hundred for maintenance. This meant that Norman would be in the red for approximately . . .
He began to laugh, caught himself, and shivered the mirth to a stop. He picked up the pen and tried all over again, conscious that he was floating in a stream of lunacy, yet unable to stop paddling. And was he including what needed to be repaired in the tenants? Suppose he made a list of those things too, tried to find the cost of those breaks and chippings? Three hundred dollars for the Hausers for new hearts; six hundred and fifty for Kram’s new body; eight hundred and twenty dollars and sixty-six cents for refurbishing Basellecci’s dignity; a thousand for a new dignity for Leni Cass; nine hundred for a retread of Ilse’s soul; five thousand for a brand-new one for Katz (souls must come high) . . . He began to laugh again, but stopped, chilled, when it turned to screaming. He looked around wildly, ready for collapse. Then he remembered that he had a date with Sheryl Beeler for that evening, and numbed with amazement, he was able to collect himself, even to the towering fedora, and he got up, put his coat on with mechanical motions, and went to his rendezvous.
•
He knocked softly at the door and was almost bowled over by its sudden opening. Sheryl stood before him in low-cut splendor, as bright as a poster in a red dress and gleaming lipstick and a silvered jewelry sword pointing toward her awesome décolletage.
“Well hi, sweety, I just this minute got in. Come on in and make yourself at home.” She smelled powerfully of some unnaturally sweet flower, and Norman, partly dazed, partly incredulous, came blinking out of the dark hallway. “Lemme just slip into something more comfy,” she said.
Norman couldn’t believe that she had actually said that, and he slumped onto the couch and stared at the depression in Beeler’s empty chair. He heard the water running in the bathroom, the feeble sound of the faulty toilet flushing, and, from another room, the sound of snoring, very loud and emphatic. He wondered whether, at this late date, he might lose his virginity; the thought didn’t excite him, because there seemed to be nothing that was real about his presence there.
Sheryl came back in the dragon kimono and swished by him to the television set. Hypnotized, he looked past her broad, silken back to watch the small square burst open into a scene of a smily band leader waving his hand. The sound came like a spilling of hot fudge on hollow metal pans. “Music to dance to,” Sheryl said, holding her arms out in invitation.
Beyond fear, Norman went to her, grasped the warm resiliency of her torso, and began earnestly to do the two-step. For a few minutes he was able to concentrate on the unfamiliar fact of his dancing. He looked down past his arm to the imitation Persian rug, guiding himself in the pattern that made an invisible checkerboard of the floor. One, two, slide, then sideways, one, two, slide. The music oozed over him as he navigated the boxes. Dancing, and this step so appropriate for him, his dance of life. Beeler snored, the toilet tank drained feebly. One, two, slide, one, two, slide. They passed the lamp, and Sheryl deftly switched it off without breaking the rigid form of his dance. One, two, slide. He could barely see the floor, which was now lit only by the cold flicker of the television screen. One, two, slide, one, two, slide. There was a warm trembling against his body as Sheryl laughed silently. One, two, slide, he emphasized, the roots of his hair planted in sweat, so that his head felt like a rice paddy. One, two, slide. Her large breasts made big blunt concavities in him. One, two, slide, one, two, slide. Belly, thighs, the jut of her buttocks just below his hand like a cliff edge. One, two, slide. He was making square holes in the floor and expected momentarily to fall through one of them. One, two, slide, one, two . . . Something was reaching out of him for the warmth. He danced bent over, his body held away at the middle, his head resting in the hollow of her neck. She began to giggle softly and move after his escaping groin. He bent over more and more, and her giggle grew more violent, Beeler’s snoring grew louder, the candy violins of the orchestra rose in sappy crescendo. Suddenly his back reached an extremity of discomfort, and reflexively he snapped erect, plunging like a rivet into Sheryl’s kimonoed loins.
“Ohhh-hh,” he gasped fearfully.
“Ahhh-hh,” she responded cheerfully.
“I didn’t mean . . .”
Sheryl, lovely in the blue-white television light, chucked him under the chin and said, “Let’s sit on the couch, hon.” She took his hand and led him there, grinning at his stiff, aching walk.
They sat down, and she leaned away from him, studying his face with amusement. The dragon seemed to wink in the wavering light, and Norman addressed his apology to it. “I hope you don’t think . . . that is, I don’t know what happened to me, I mean, I know, but I don’t know why. No, of course, I know why, but I really wasn’t thinking of . . . I haven’t danced in years, and it just, the blood seemed to rush into . . . What I mean is, sometimes when a man gets close to a . . . girl, there’s a nervous response that forces the blood into his . . .”
“Why, honey, all that happened was you got a hard on.”
Norman smiled feebly, hearing the crackle of fire consuming him. From his stomach to his knees a cooking process rolled his organs around, and the steam reddened his face. “Sheryl,” he said weakly.
Sheryl came close, her face blurring. He felt her lips fasten hotly on his. With a moan he tried to climb her, his hands clutching air. “Easy, easy, hon,” she said with soft laughter. “Here, there, ahh, yeah, sweety, yeah . . .”
His gratitude knew no bounds when her warm, naked breasts fell into his hands. “I love you, I love you,” he groaned. He was tossed like a chip by the sensation of skin against skin. “Sheryl, Sheryl, Sheryl,” he cried through his teeth. “I love . . .”
“The toilet,” she whispered from below, holding him up in the air like a child. He nodded wildly. “And a rent cut?” He tossed his head, trying to shake it loose from his body, and her demands did nothing to reduce his feelings. Distended, breaking, he agreed to carte blanche. For a long moment he observed and passed through many things. Sheryl’s face expressed profound affection and bliss; he knew an instant’s mortification as he noticed the band leader’s face sweetly smiling at them; he worried about her father, whose snoring began to caricature itself; and, finally, he felt himself on an eminence he had never achieved before and he looked out with wonder upon the vast valley of the world, dizzied by the height, astounded by the immensity of the view. Sheryl raised him higher, her arms extended full length, her face full of savage and delighted mischief. And then she plunged him down, hara-kari fashion, immolating herself with a great sigh. There was a splat of impact, Norman rolled his eyes back into his head, held on to unimaginable pleasure for a short while, rearing and bucking to the tune of the string section playing “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen,” and then exploded frighteningly.
He never noticed when Sheryl removed his body from her but only lay for some time muttering into the dusty cushions, “I love, love, love. . ..” Strengthless, his skin charged with sensitivity, he felt the warm flickers of the television light over his buttocks. The bathroom sounded busy with water and movement. He heard footsteps on the ceiling. Something profound had changed in him, and he sought to recognize it. Like a dusty bug, the image of a small man in a large hat walked across his brain, and he felt deep pity for the figure. He felt no peace, though, but, rather, a great shapeless ambition that saddened him. For a while he lay there, wondering what he really could do with the impossible situation. Something began to occur to him, and he cupped it, patiently gave it time to mature.
But there was no more snoring! He sat up quickly and drew his pants on, stepped into his shoes barefooted, and slipped on his shirt. When he was all dressed, he shoved his underpants into one pocket, his socks into another.
“Okay?” Sheryl asked, coming back into the room.
“I can’t begin . . .”
“Gimme a kiss and then go home, huh?” she said, sleepily. “I’m just bushed.”
He kissed her tenderly and wasn’t in the least disillusioned when she said at the door, “Now don’t forget what you promised.”
“I’ll never forget,” Norman said with a strange lilting note in his voice.
And then he went out, heading for his office with the wind cold on his sockless ankles, feeling reckless with its tricky insinuation up his trouser legs to his loins free of underwear. And the thing that had occurred to him as he lay exhausted on Sheryl’s couch, now, in the clear dark, formed unmistakably. He would do all the work himself, he decided, his face seeming to sparkle, as at the idea of a holy war. But, what was more important, he would do it with laughter for it occurred to him that joy resembled mourning and was, if anything, just as powerful and profound.
He was not upset, or surprised either, to recognize the presence of pain in him as the tenants filed through his mind, stepping brutally on the tender places in his heart. He thought of the dead child, the trampled dignity of Basellecci, the constant hell of the Lublins, the erupting of Del Rio, the desperate defiance of Karloff, and all the rest of them in their agonies; and where he had the choice of crying, he chose irrevocably its opposite. He laughed loudly in a tone Norman Moonbloom would never have dared. And then, for the first time in his life, he sang aloud without shame.
A sophisticated policeman just studied him wearily as he sang out of tune, “Bei mir bist du schoen, again I’ll explain . . .”