‘YOU TWO WILL EXCUSE ME,’ said Lettie. ‘I’m going home to bed.’
He didn’t like the tinge of amusement in her voice. ‘Are you actually abandoning me with her?’
‘Max, come over here.’ She led him by the arm into the kitchen. ‘Let her go to sleep,’ she whispered. ‘She’s exhausted and upset. Tomorrow’s Saturday anyway. In the morning we’ll reason with her and send her home. Believe me, everything will be all right.’
‘But what about her parents? They could probably lock me up for that.’
She shrugged it off. ‘They’ve heard from her. Who knows, maybe that’s as much as they deserve.’
‘What you are,’ he accused, ‘is irresponsible and sentimental.’
‘She’s just one child who feels miserable, and you’re acting like your life is at stake. And also, Max, please don’t call me fancy names.’
He grunted. ‘I was under the impression that my residence here was for repose, with no undue stress. I call this undue stress.’
‘We’ll repose in the grave,’ said Lettie, and left.
Alison was curled up sullenly on the couch. Her face and hands were dirty. Her monotonously rhythmic sniffling was intolerable; he could never bear sniffling. He went to get a clean handkerchief. ‘Here. Blow your nose.’ Sinking into the armchair, he put his feet up and closed his eyes.
The way she sat, wrapped tight in her suffering, was just like Tania, the ballerina, who used to give way to spells of self-indulgent heartache. After a blow-up with her current man she would come to cry on Susie’s shoulder. The two women talked in the tiny kitchen, Tania straddled backwards on the wooden chair, now and then flexing her ankles and pointing her toes absentmindedly. Susie would bring out a bottle of Scotch and a bowl of ice cubes, and they could sit for hours, drinking and murmuring. The bursts of weeping were followed by heavy silences: Tania wound a lock of long dark hair around her finger till she was ready to resume her account of grief, in a throaty voice. Since he hadn’t the patience to wallow in anyone’s misery, he went to bed, but through the thin partition he could still hear voices, phrases. Susie wouldn’t talk about him, he trusted, although with women drinking you could never tell. After a while Susie could have Tania laughing. The two of them would giggle, borderline drunk in that way women have, a fit of abandoned gaiety. If he called out to shut them up it made them giggle even more. So if he was in the mood and sure that the whining was finished, he would join them in the kitchen in his pajamas and robe, pour himself a drink, and encourage Tania, because with enough Scotch in her she could draw from a huge repertoire the most distinctive dirty jokes he had ever heard, and tell them in her thick Slavic accent. Only she never went home. They would all grow sleepy. Susie would put Tania in a soft chair and cover her with a blanket, then come to bed with Max to make love. The first few minutes, every move he made tickled her. ‘Oh, no, please, no!’ She laughed wildly, and squirmed away. Suddenly, he never knew precisely what did it, she would stop laughing and come into his arms and softly moan. Once after a drunken session with Tania she fell asleep, impervious to all his lures. Horror-struck, Max woke her instantly. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she muttered. ‘Were you in the middle of something?’ But it felt like making love to a corpse. When it was all over she unexpectedly came to life, demanding. ‘Oh, sorry,’ he echoed nastily. ‘Louse,’ she said. ‘Why did you even bother waking me, then?’ And she rolled far away from him. He followed her across the bed and fell asleep with a knee between her grudging but warm thighs. Even the bad was not so bad. Even if he could have her back for one bad night, he would die peacefully.
When he opened his eyes Alison was in the same curled position, dull-eyed and defiant. She accepted the milk and the brownie he brought her in silence, avoiding his glance. While she ate he made up his bed for her. She was nearly asleep—he had to half-carry her in and deposit her on it.
‘Don’t you want to get undressed?’
She shook her head once and was out. He might as well, she was settled in for the night. He took off the sweaty white tube socks and dropped them to the floor. He slid off the jeans, bending her legs with care. There was almost nothing to her: tiny white underpants over a concave stomach. Her long thin legs stretched out, rough-skinned at the knees. Her shirt had an enormous red sun on it, and the words ‘Solar Power.’ She even had the beginnings of breasts. Fancy that. He had never noticed. He stopped for a moment, his hands poised, then left the shirt on her. As he tucked her in she gave a breathy sigh. Startling himself, Max bent over and kissed her lips lightly, briefly. They were soft and cool and smelled sweetly of chocolate. He lingered but half a second, then went to undress in the bathroom. He found an extra blanket, and after a last swig of Scotch from the bottle, put himself to sleep on the living room couch.
It couldn’t have been for long. The phone roused him with a nightmarish jangle. His skin leaped. He jumped up to get it, seeing fireworks in the blackness. His heart was clattering like a drum. A gush of words cascaded into his ear.
‘Mr Fried, there’s a man on his way up to you. I couldn’t stop him, he was wild! He said he’s looking for that girl. Should I come up or—’
‘It’s okay, Vicky, don’t come up.’ He ran a hand over his tingling face. Alison in his bed! Already, fast heavy footsteps sounded in the hall outside. He turned on the lights and threw on his bathrobe before opening the door.
‘If you’ve touched my kid I’ll break every bone—’
When his eyes registered Max in the bathrobe, the stranger quieted and lowered his fist. So quickly that it was almost an insult. Did he look altogether played out, a mere old joke of a man?
‘How do you do?’ He extended his hand. ‘Max Fried. You are no doubt the father of Alison, my unexpected overnight guest. Please come in. I’m sorry I can’t address you by name. Indeed that’s the source of—’
But by that speech he had outdone himself. Undone. The wild-eyed man didn’t shake his hand. Shoving him aside, he pushed into the room.
‘Where the hell is she? What do you think you’re doing, keeping her here?’
Max indicated the bedroom door. The man burst through it.
‘Alison,’ he cried, his voice breaking, ‘are you all right, baby?’
Max got out two glasses and poured Scotch into both. He patted down his hair and secured the belt of his robe before appraising his face in the mirror above the cabinet. Benign enough? Grandfatherly, perhaps?
He could hear him in the other room: ‘Are you all right, are you all right?’ he kept asking her. Carrying his glass, Max went to the bedroom door. Her father had uncovered her and was looking her up and down, touching her on the cheek, the shoulder, the knee. She sat up with her eyes wide and blank, simply a kid awakened in the middle of the night.
‘I came here by myself,’ she said, ‘after you left. We played cards. I wanted to stay so they let me.’
Good girl. Max took another swallow. Her father turned and saw him standing in the doorway. ‘Put on your pants,’ he told Alison. Max went back to the couch, from which he could hear the man trying to calm his wife on the bedroom phone. ‘I don’t know yet, but don’t worry, I’ll find out,’ he was saying. ‘I wanted to let you know first. Take it easy, she’s all right.’
So this was one half of the impossible parents. Well, there was a certain density, he had to agree. Yet the fellow seemed decent enough. He was approaching now, unbuttoning his suede jacket with shaking hands, while behind him, Alison crossed into the bathroom.
‘Sorry about pushing in here like that. I came under the wrong impression. But still, what’s the idea of keeping her so long without—’
‘Have some Scotch.’ He waved at the ready glass on the coffee table.
‘Thanks, I will. Look here, Mr Fried, it’s after one in the morning! Don’t you think you might at least have—’
Max explained.
‘Shit!’ He pounded the back of a chair with his fist. ‘Markman’s the name. Josh Markman. I’m sorry for the trouble. She’s such a difficult kid. One hell of a kid to bring up, I’ll tell you. I guess I should thank you for—uh—having her.’
‘Hm.’ Max poured some more Scotch.
Alison returned, dressed but still unwashed.
‘Do you realize what you did?’ her father asked her. ‘This was a terrible thing to do. To everyone concerned.’
She looked up from tying her rainbow sneakers. ‘I don’t even want to go home. I’d rather stay here with Max and Lettie.’
‘Lettie?’
‘Never mind that,’ said Max. ‘Look here, my dear fellow, she’s all yours: remove her, and allow me to get some sleep.’
‘Oh, Max!’ She ran over and grabbed his arm. ‘Why do you talk like that! You know we’re friends, you told me. You know there’s a—a connection.’
Max disengaged her. On her father’s face he glimpsed shock, followed by an array of confused suspicions, sliding over the handsome, bland features like a series of shadows. It reminded him of the stages of bewilderment John Todd and the other clowns used to practice in front of the mirror, refining the delicate shifts of muscle around eyes and mouth. The liquor churned in his gut.
Markman gripped the edge of a chair clumsily, with one hand. His tone was uncertain. ‘I don’t like this business at all. The more I look at it, the more I don’t like it. She’s mentioned you at home—first it was a supermarket, then you turn up in school with magic, oranges, whatnot.’ He began to pace in circles, his hand aimlessly thrashing the air. ‘That’s how we located you. My wife remembered something she said tonight—about cutting classes and being interested in older people...Finally we called Ted Collins, from the school, and he thought of you. He gave us your address, but he said he couldn’t possibly believe you’d—’ Markman gulped down the last of his whiskey and made a wide sweep with the empty glass. His voice rose. ‘There’s something funny going on here! What are you up to—hypnotism, mind control? If I find out you’ve so much as touched her—’
Mind control! Max had to act. He opened his apartment door, stepped into the hallway, and bellowed: ‘Lettie!’ Like Marlon Brando, he thought, yelling for Stella with drunken, demented passion. Invaluable woman, Lettie, fast on her feet: almost immediately she appeared, running towards him.
‘What is it? What happened, Max? Are you all right?’
‘Uh-huh.’ He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her into the living room, slamming the door behind them. In her royal-blue satin robe and her gray-blond hair mussed from sleep, she was splendid. Sexy, but a solid citizen. She would do perfectly. He spoke with forced calm, trying to send signals through her fingers. ‘Sorry to disturb you, darling, but there’s someone here I wanted you to meet.’
‘Max, for God’s sake—’
‘It’s all right!’ He put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. ‘Let me introduce Mr Markman, Alison’s father. Mr Markman, Lettie Blumenthal, my neighbor and—uh—paramour.’
The cigarette between Markman’s teeth dropped into his palm. ‘How do you do.’ The lit match burned close to his fingers; he winced and shook it out.
‘Pleased to meet you.’ Lettie extracted herself from Max’s hold. ‘What’s that you called me?’
‘Later,’ he answered stiffly. He turned to Markman. ‘We elderly folks are trying to lead a quiet life here in our...twilight years, mine anyway, doing what we can to serve the community. Now, your daughter, a willful young person, if I may be so bold, has ventured past the line of acceptable behavior. So, if you will kindly...’ He linked an arm through Lettie’s.
With exquisite timing, the telephone rang again. ‘Yes, Vicky, dear, everything is under control...You’ve had complaints? I’m very sorry—I guess I was a bit loud out there just now...They’ll be leaving shortly. And, Vicky, no more visitors tonight, please! These young people, what can we do? Good night now.’
‘Max!’ From Alison, a shriek of betrayal.
‘I’ll see you in school Monday, dear. Meanwhile, get some rest and practice your tumbling.’
‘Sorry again,’ Markman said wearily. ‘I guess I was way off base. Come on, Alison. Disturbing these kind people. Awful.’ He shook his head helplessly and steered her towards the door.
‘You haven’t seen the last of me,’ Alison muttered.
Max inclined his head towards Markman. ‘I’m sure you’ll have the courtesy to call Mr Collins and restore my reputation.’
‘Oh, righto. Sure. Good night, ma’am.’
Max closed the door on them and poured more Scotch.
‘Here, Lettie. You look like you need it.’
‘Thanks. Jesus, that yell you gave could wake the dead. My heart is still pounding.’ She sipped her drink. ‘You’re outrageous, you know? And the amount you’ve been drinking lately is bad for your heart, besides.’
‘I know, I know it all.’ He lay down on the couch with his eyes shut, balancing the glass on his chest.
‘So what’s that word you called me?’
‘You mean paramour? Girlfriend. My mistress. My woman.’
‘I’m no such thing.’ She was indignant. ‘You’ve never laid a hand on me.’
‘Alas.’
‘Alas? You mean you wish you had?’
Max raised his eyebrows, and slowly opened his eyes. Lettie sat down on the small space of couch left next to him. The warmth sank into his thigh and seeped up and down his side.
‘So do it, then. It’ll do you good. If it doesn’t kill you.’
‘You’re serious?’ He removed the glass from his chest.
Lettie leaned over to kiss him. She whispered, ‘Take a chance.’ She was still warm from bed, with the scent of sleep and whiskey on her. Something ancient moved inside and ached badly, a familiar ache whose return nearly brought tears to his eyes.
He swallowed hard. ‘I’m not used to sleeping around.’
‘I’ll help you.’
‘In there.’ He nodded towards the bedroom. ‘I need room.’
‘Certainly.’ She rose, statuesque.
He was reluctant to come alive. And afraid. Not of any mechanical failure, God knows it had been stored up long enough, only afraid that the closeness might kill him, reminding him. He couldn’t survive that. Afraid, too, because alive, now with her marvelous hands all over him, was so much more strenuous, pleasure so rich to the famished senses. He put his hand between her thighs and felt his fingers might flame up. His barricades were collapsing; he wanted to hide under the pillow, not to confront himself so bare and unshielded. ‘I’m scared,’ he said to the dark. She said nothing, but leaned over him, overwhelmingly present as no one had been for him in years. Her presence, a benevolent shadow in that dark, comforted him, quickened him. He moved into it. And oh, how he had lost the sense of what it was all about! No memory or fantasy was remotely like the real thing, like this real body beneath him and surrounding him. Who did not remind. Oh, no. In every way different, lavish and newly enchanting. His old grievances slid away; only the pounding heat remained, ageless.
‘Oh Max, oh Max,’ she kept saving, heaving. When it was over she even cried. He licked her tears.
‘We should have done this before, Max.’
‘Never mind that, we’ll do it again. Sleep now, sweetheart. Stay right here.’
He slept late. Waking to the warm body, he felt his heart race in astonishment, and for an instant it was Susie, the years in between a bad dream. When he saw the fair hair and plump shoulder he remembered. Not disappointed, though. Other. And for once, a night with no revivals of the past; no need, for once, to scale dim canyons up to present daylight. That alone a great gift. As he watched her back rise and fall with even breaths, she stirred and turned around.
‘Hello, Max.’ She was smiling.
‘Good morning. This is awfully strange, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t see anything strange about it.’
She could look good and even smile, first thing in the morning. He was more fortunate than he deserved. Tentative March sunlight seeping through the blinds made pale stripes on her arms. He touched.
‘I’ve been watching you,’ he said.
‘Is that so?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Well, if you’ve seen enough I could get up and make us some breakfast.’
He put his arm around her. ‘Not yet. Stay awhile.’
‘And how do you feel now?’ she asked. ‘Hung over?’
‘No, peculiar.’ He touched her cheek, wanting, in a heat of embarrassment, to thank her, but he couldn’t speak those words. He held her a long time.
She kissed his lips. ‘It was...what can I say, Max? Beautiful.’ She got out of bed. In broad daylight her size and smoothness were intimidating. Incredible that he had been there a few hours ago. And could return. The very prospect generated a mild vertigo.
He watched her enfold herself languidly in the royal-blue robe—ah, she might have been an elegant stripper—then lay back listening to the jiggling of the coffeepot. The click of cabinet doors opening and closing. He did feel peculiar. His body was spent, drained of energy. Not used to it, that was all. He reached out and touched her side of the bed, still warm. Maybe he really hadn’t the strength. Maybe, just now, she had expected...again. Maybe already disappointed? Ah, shit! Why did he always doubt and destroy? He never used to be that way. Since Susie he had forgotten what a friend was, lost all touch. He had made her happy, for Chrissake! Grumbling at himself, he rose and dressed, to go and be in the same room with her.
Lettie was making pancakes, flipping them expertly and aligning them on the griddle in neat rows of three. Her austere concentration was seductive. Her coffee smelled strong, the way he liked it.
‘I wonder how Alison is,’ she said. ‘After all, she was the one who wanted to spend the night with you.’
‘But not like that!’ He stroked her rear.
‘Max, how much do you know about little girls?’ She laughed. ‘Not much.’
‘Okay I’ll be nicer to her in school Monday. You think I was too tough, don’t you?’
‘Can she help it if she goes for older men? Here, would you take in the syrup and butter, please?’
‘You ought to know.’
‘Well! There’s a difference. And these cups too, if you-don’t mind.’
He liked her taking possession of his kitchen and giving orders. He had always admired an enterprising woman.
After her second cup of coffee she said, ‘I have to go back to my place and do a few things. I didn’t come prepared to stay so long. Do you think I can make it to my door without anyone seeing me? They’ll call me the whore of Pleasure Knolls.’
‘Pleasure Knolls is right, for once. That’s exactly what’s needed here. They say full services provided, don’t they? The staff should provide it for everyone. Oh, but Vicky. Forget it.’
‘Don’t underestimate her. Vicky happens to be married to a very sexy-looking man.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘Listen, Max, I’m going to get dressed. Should I come back, or maybe you’d rather be alone? I know you like your privacy.’
He was contemplating his nearly empty coffee cup while lighting a cigar. He paused to blow out the match, and planted the cigar between his lips. Lettie stood with her and on the doorknob, waiting. ‘Of course,’ he answered, ‘come back.’
‘Oh,’ she sighed, ‘that I should feel this way again, at my age.’ She peered down the hall and darted away.
He sat amid the remains of the breakfast, smoking. Only twice while he lived with Susie had he had another woman. It hadn’t made him feel guilty, only strange, like a traveler in an alien place. The time she went off to John Todd’s trailer for a week he was furious, and in revenge set out to seduce a new girl helping in a dog act. He disliked dogs, especially the small cute kind, and he disliked hearing them yelp as she smacked them around and gave commands in a thin, brittle voice. But she was available as hell, a jittery, hot-eyed kid, so he hung around for a couple of days; it was not hard to impress her. In bed she was angular and bounced around, with a patter of phrases he had a hunch were ready-made to be recited in that brittle, eager tone. At the crucial moment she faked it, he was sure, as if she had learned what to do from a book. It was so unlike making love with Susie that he didn’t think of it as making love at all. A screw. He could forgive himself the first time, but when he went back for more it was with self-disgust. At least John was a real person; he envied Susie her good time.
And Lydia. He relit the dead cigar. After all these years, he still grinned when he thought of it. He used to believe it happened only in books, till it happened to him. Largeboned, dark, and sultry, she rode horses with a group of Bulgarians who, rumor had it, kept her happy. He had never paid much attention. He was close to forty and had enough on his mind. His parents had recently died, one soon after the other, without having seen him in five years. He had sent his brothers money to save the delicatessen, money down the drain but he felt he owed it to them. And there were twinges in muscles that used to obey without complaint. Brandon, sick in bed, asked him one night as a personal favor to go around with a message; the boy who usually did that had influenza too. The illness was devastating the show, making each day a struggle to improvise. When he got to Lydia’s he found her in bed under the covers, bright-eyed with fever.
‘Oh, you too?’ he said. ‘Sorry to bother you. There’s a change for tomorrow. The run-through’s at ten instead of nine. Do you think you’ll be able to make it?’
She flung back the sheets and got up, stark naked. Her skin was dark, her fingernails and toenails painted forest green. He gaped like a boy. She was the most stupendous body he had ever seen. ‘How would you like a drink?’ she offered.
He was crazy to accept, but how could a man walk out on that? Just a quick drink. He had never been given a drink by a naked woman before. It made all the difference: every common movement, from fetching the bottle and ice to raising her glass and saying, ‘Cheers,’ took oh a halo of fascination. She began to ramble about things she liked to have done to her in bed—Susie was modest in speech; he had never heard a woman talk that way—and then she lay on the bed, opened her legs, put her hands beneath her breasts, and said, ‘Give it to me, Max. Come on and give it to me.’ So he gave it to her. It didn’t take more than a few moments. Closing the door behind him, he blinked in the darkness outside and continued his rounds. He felt oddly renewed, as if he had had a vacation from real life.
A few days later, recovered from his own case of flu, he told Susie, thinking she would find it as droll as he did. How profoundly mistaken he was. ‘But can’t you see, it would have been cruel to say no.’ For that feeble crack she hurled a full ashtray at his head. The sheer needlessness was what got her. Not like her and John Todd years ago, she pointed out, when Max told her she was a spoiled bitch and could pack her bags anytime. He practically sent her over there. And had she ever said a word about that skinny adolescent with the dogs? Okay! But what inspired him this time? Was he nothing more than an animal? she wanted to know. What was he, anyway? Was this—this creature so irresistible? She hadn’t a brain, everyone knew that. Just a...Susie wouldn’t stoop to say it. Max couldn’t justify the sudden need, but there had been something, he tried to explain. Some...need. That bad a need? Susie shouted. There must be something wrong with her, then; she didn’t know about such overpowering needs. When at last—weeks!—she was friendly again, he teased her. ‘Why don’t you ever say, “Give it to me, Max, please,” in a hoarse voice?’ ‘I’m not so desperate,’ she replied with her best regal air. Oh, but God almighty, she was, for him. Without the words.
He sighed and reached for his cup, but the coffee was bitter on his tongue. The cigar tasted rotten too; he stubbed it out. He didn’t feel like the man who had done those things. Perhaps he wasn’t—the memories endured while the body’s cells were sloughed away. Lettie’s breakfast, like Lettie herself, had been delicious, but it lay dead on his chest like a stone. He was worn out from that business last night with Alison and her father. Foolish to have let her keep coming around—she was really none of his affair. He would go and lie down. But as he moved to rise, a pain like a knife blade ripped across his chest and out toward his shoulder. Heartburn tenfold—the strong black coffee could do that. Dr Small had said not to. It passed, though. He tried once again to get up, but his legs wouldn’t support him; he dropped back in the chair, holding his breath. Something was coming. Ah, there: another slice, up and down his arm; he winced, and then no more pain, just all the juice drained out and his vision fading. Gray clots over everything. So, there it was. What he had wanted, but now he wanted to fight it off. Only his body was useless, stiff with fear. Pills in the bedroom, oceans away, forget it. How ignoble, this dying in a hard kitchen chair in front of a knocked-over coffee cup. And unfair: he wanted to do it with her one more time. Just one more time, Lord—was that asking so much? But already he could feel life ebbing. Ah, now he knew what it was like. Quite simple, really. Cut loose and drifting. No touch. Out of reach...His mind scattered, bits of colored glass at the end of a tube. Blue spangles far up, if he could only reach...Amid the debris, faintly, a knocking at the door. Oh if you love me hurry.
‘Max! Oh, my God!’ Clutched at him and let go in fright. On the phone. Hurry, sweetheart, was all the mind he had left. The white light was racing out of him, and he aching to call after it and demand it back—but as in dreams, from his mouth opened wide to scream, no sound would come.