Lala (Mrs. Harold) Ferne, still wearing her pink robe, crossed the street to Mr. Brown’s house, carrying a frozen pie in a bakery tin. The route she walked was the route Brown had walked in the earliest hour of this day, after releasing Paprika from the garden. Today, for the first time in his life (and twice at that). Brown had entered Lala’s house, and now she was about to enter his.
But although Lala had posted or planted in the frozen pie, like the flag of explorers upon a new land, a small note reading “Fresh from our home oven for our hero Mr. Brown from Paprika’s whole grateful family” the pie remained a bakery pie, frozen en masse with thousands of others. It was no “home oven” pie. True, it had reposed for weeks in Lala’s home freezer. Allow to cool, she thought. (Allow to thaw, she meant.)
She had her plan. She’d place this frozen pie on the Browns’ kitchen table, where they’d find it when they came home tonight, and they would say, “Oh, how lovely of that lovely Lala Ferne, leaving her homemade pie here to cool for us. She went to so much trouble! We should invite her over.” They would invite her over, and invite Harold, too, and Lala’s mother, Iris, whom Mr. Brown had met at lunch, and that nice young man from the Classified Advertising Department of the Chronicle. Six: two couples, two spare parts. They’d all say, “Isn’t it wonderful of that adorable, thin Lala to have brought us all together!” Oh yeah, can’t you just imagine Harold saying such a thing? Gruff Harold, she thought. Where was Harold now? Brown would say to Mrs. Brown (Lala assumed, of course, that they were man and wife), “Lala Ferne is so attractive, thin, and thoughtful we must constantly invite her to dinner.” He was nice. “Mrs. Brown,” was rather prim. But since Harold hated dinner parties, let Harold stay home. “Harold has a previous engagement,” Lala said, entering the dinner party on the arm of the young man from the Classified Advertising Department of the Chronicle, horny but nice, she felt, whatever his name was. Five: two couples and one spare part. Her mother was the spare part. Mother and Harold.
Down the Yukon hill at high speed came Christopher on his singing bicycle wheels. His nose was streaming, his hands were red and raw, and his left knee was freely bleeding. The wind had come up, chilling him. He parked his bicycle in Brown’s driveway. “Don’t you have anywhere to go?” she asked. “Why aren’t you dressed warmer? Why aren’t you in school?” Aware of how many crimes her questions accused him, she struggled to change her tone from accusing to inquiring or loving, and she said, “I want to take care of that knee for you.”
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he said.
“I’m stopping in here a minute,” Lala said.
“Mr. Brown went to work,” Christopher said. “There’s nobody home.”
She wished he hadn’t told her that. Therefore she pretended not to have heard him. At the door she remembered having been here once before, and with a frozen pie, too, on a warm summer day after Paprika had stolen Mrs. Brown’s muffins from a window ledge. “There’s not supposed to be anybody home,” she said, “because I have a surprise for them.” Christopher followed her into the house, and she set the pie upon the kitchen table. It was part of her plan. She had a further plan, however. Up to something again, aren’t you, Lala? You always were.
“They sent me home from school,” said Christopher. “I have to get a note from my mother, but I don’t know if I’ll see my mother.”
“I’ll be very happy to write you a note,” said Lala, speaking in a voice unnaturally loud, as advance notice to anyone who might be, unknown to her, somewhere in the house. “Why did they send you home?” she asked.
“You’re talking so loud,” said Christopher. “You’re a funny person. They keep sending me home because I don’t have the note.”
“Why were you supposed to have a note in the first place?”
“I can’t remember,” he said.
“You poor thing,” she said. Nobody wanted him. His teacher and his principal sent him home for “a note.” Lala had written notes for him in the past, signing herself “C’s mother.” It was true in a way. C stood for Catherine, too. His parents were always gone. They worked for “danger pay” at the Welton plant, manufacturing bombs. In a manner of speaking, Christopher and his parents were not on speaking terms.
“This isn’t your house,” said the boy. “What are you doing here?”
“You’re definitely correct,” said Lala. “I’m bringing them this pie for finding Paprika. Is that all right with you?”
Christopher hadn’t really cared. He had gone to the television set to watch the crisis of the astronauts, who had been neither seen nor heard from since being “wiped from the screen” four hours before.
“I don’t think you should be roaming through the house,” Lala called, although she herself had begun to roam through the house in search of Brown’s typewriter, if any. She would compare the style of his machine with the style of the anonymous letter she had received.
“I’m not roaming,” Christopher said, standing before the television set with his arms folded. He favored his injured knee. “The astronauts lost radio contact,” he said.
“They shouldn’t be listening to the radio anyhow,” Lala said. “They should be tending to business. Let’s be little elves and help clean things up around here.” Swiftly she opened and closed every closet door she saw, standing on tiptoe, looking on all high shelves for Mr. Brown’s typewriter. Evidence!
“What are you looking for?” Christopher asked.
“Do you see a typewriter anywhere?” she asked.
“Are you going to write a letter?” the boy asked.
“Does Mr. Brown write many letters?” Lala asked. “Do your mother and father ever complain about Paprika’s barking by any chance? Do you have a typewriter in your house?”
“No,” said Christopher.
“Are your mother and father day sleepers?” she asked. “Like are they sleeping now?”
“No,” he said, “they’re at work now. If they were home I could go in.”
“Why can’t they leave you a key?” Lala asked.
“Because if I had a key I’d go in,” he said, his eyes always upon the television screen. “I’d track dirt in the house and bring friends in and get in a lot of mischief.”
“We really shouldn’t be here,” said Lala. “We’ve been little elves and picked things up, haven’t we?”
“Maybe you have,” he said.
“This isn’t our house,” she said. “I just wonder if they have an attic, but it would look awfully funny if they found me in the attic.”
“Let’s go to your house,” Christopher suggested.
“Where would you go if you didn’t have somebody’s house to be in?”
“On the street,” he said. “Ride my bike. Or stay here and watch the astros croak. I know they will. This guy on Noe Street predicts the future.”
“Tomorrow I’ll go to school with you and make sure you get back in,” said Lala, “and if we run into any problem we’ll get in touch with some proper agency.”
“I’d really and truly appreciate that,” he said. He raised his eyes to hers, and she saw that he was grateful. “They won’t be home tonight,” he said.
“They won’t be home all night?” asked Lala. “Where are they? You’re not getting proper care. Don’t you think there’s something very irregular about your parents’ not coming home all night?”
“There’s always somebody to stay with,” he said. “I sleep here a lot. I sleep with friends. I can sleep at your house with Catherine and Louisa.”
“Oh you can, can you?” said Lala. “Maybe we should turn off the television because this isn’t our house. We just tidied up a bit out of gratefulness to Mr. Brown for finding Paprika, and left this frozen pie to cool as a little gift.” She had placed the pie on the kitchen table beside a copy of Life bearing on its cover a photograph of Walter Cronkite steering a boat.
“I slept in bed with Melissa Wakefield,” he said.
“When was that?” Lala asked, distracted, fascinated by the view from the window: her own house. It was a view she had never had before. Sometimes, late at night, she saw Mr. Brown sitting here at the kitchen table, just before he went upstairs to bed. Yes, Mrs. Brown was prim. I can tell, she thought. He never looked toward her house. He was a shy man, and very sweet, very gentle, although if it was actually he who wrote such letters as the letter beginning “My Very Dear German Shepherd Dog Owner” then he wasn’t so sweet as you might believe from the evidence of the surface was he? No. “I’m talking to myself,” she said to Christopher, “and don’t require an answer.”
“I talk to myself too,” he said.
“So I have your permission,” she said. “I suppose you’re fond of Mr. and Mrs. Brown, aren’t you?”
“They’re all right,” he said. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell them.”
“Tell them what?” Lala asked. “I’m not doing anything wrong. I just brought the pie.”
“And snooped all over the house,” he said.
“What room is this?” she asked, pausing at the door of Junie’s room — that is to say, the room which had been Junie’s, where he had slept all the nights of his boyhood and young manhood.
“That’s Junie’s room,” Christopher said. “I’ve slept in there.”
“Junie’s in Asia,” Lala said.
“Junie is dead,” said Christopher.
“No,” said Lala, “I met his mother this morning voting, she said he was in Asia.”
“Dead in Asia,” said Christopher. “Right in the middle of these astros croaking they give you commercials.”
Something troubled Lala. Something nagged. Yes, Paprika. Paprika was barking across the street. Something must be wrong! But when Lala went to the kitchen window to see what was wrong she saw Paprika barking at nobody, at nothing, at a fallen leaf, a rock, a pebble, a blowing shred of paper, a noisy cloud in the sky, simply standing there by the gate barking in the most outrageously persistent way; here in the Browns’ house she could hear him in a more direct way than she could hear him in her own — this ceaseless, incessant barking. It was the sound waves. They crossed the street directly. They didn’t turn corners. Hearing Paprika in this direct way she understood for the first time how irritating he could become to other people; one could bravely endure the barking of one’s own dog as one could never endure the barking of someone else’s, just as one found charming in one’s own children traits and characteristics merely boring or even disgusting and repulsive in someone else’s. Christopher’s bloody knee, for example, caused Lala to squint with displeasure, whereas Louisa’s or Catherine’s injuries aroused Lala’s tenderness. Or think, for example, of that young horny Classified man whatever his name was, who told how his own stink, so repugnant to other people, was easily acceptable to himself, clinging to his nostrils like a precious scent. Where’s Harold? she thought. She’d rather not think. Yes, Christopher was beginning to irritate her, beginning to get on her nerves trailing along behind her like this with his bloody mess of a disgusting knee. “Listen to that damn dog barking,” she said.
“He’s your damn dog,” said Christopher, mystified to see hatred in Lala’s eyes.
“Your knee is disgusting,” she blurted. But then she was instantly overcome by revulsion for herself for having hurt the boy, swooping in upon him, seizing him, holding him close to her. It was a man’s hard body She hadn’t anticipated that, and she trembled with her own stirring Christopher, recoiling from her hatred, forgave her instantly, too, in the moment of her repentance, permitting himself to be held by her for as long as she wished, melting in her embrace, and feeling himself filling with warmth. He had been cold She said, “I don’t understand what’s the matter with your mother.”
“Nothing,” he replied, resting his head upon her bosom, his arms encircling her now, he seizing her now, clinging to her, his hands at her back, his fingers in her flesh.
“You need a hairwash,” she said, inhaling the top of his head and releasing him from her embrace.
“Don’t forget tomorrow,” he said.
“Where does your mother work?” Lala asked.
“Same place as my father,” he said.
“But where?” she asked.
“At the Welton plant,” the boy said.
“What do they do there?” Lala asked.
“They work there,” Christopher said.
“But what kind of work? Do you know? Are they in the office or in the machines if you know what I mean?”
“I was never there,” Christopher said. “I never saw him.”
“Like does he wear overalls or a necktie when he goes to work?”
“I never see him go,” said Christopher.
“You see him come home,” Lala said. Such people should be shot, she thought. Bombed with their own bombs. She hoped the whole plant blew up, breaking windows for miles around. I’ll bomb your asses, you bitches and bastards, she thought. It’s a poem, she thought. It had rhythm, and it almost rhymed. “We should be getting along now,” said Lala. “We’ve tidied up enough.” She released him from her embrace.
Reluctantly, he released her, too. “You didn’t see Junie’s room,” the boy said.
“All right,” she said, “we’ll see if it needs tidying up.” Maybe she’d find her evidence there. But why would Mr. Brown have retrieved such an annoying dog? “Paprika’s barking is driving me wild,” she said. Yes, she could understand very well now why the Browns (as she thought of them) might not want such a dog living across the street, and why Mr. Brown might have written Harold an anonymous letter, and why it might have been Mr. Brown who telephoned late at night and barked anonymously. Once you saw yourself from another point of view . . . once you hear your dog bark as others hear him . . . well. She followed Christopher into Junie’s room.
Junie’s room contained a bed, two chairs, and a boy’s roll-top desk. The desk had once been decorated with stickers expressing slogans, mottoes, and convictions, but these had been scraped away. The walls were punctured with hollow nail-holes, where photographs once had hung. The room was airless — both windows tight shut. Lala opened the closet door, thinking she might see evidence within, but the closet was empty except for coathooks and clothespoles at two levels, as if the closet had been shared by two people: in fact, however, Junie had shared the closet only with himself. He had outgrown the lower level, and risen to the upper.
On the wooden slats of the roll-top desk many Match-box vehicles were lined in colorful rows — trucks, trailers, bulldozers, fire engines, racing cars, campers, tractors, motorcars, Cadillac ambulance, police cars, Greyhound buses, doubledecker London buses, and other vehicles of various descriptions, sometimes with wheels missing, all worn smooth from Junie’s touch, all purchased by the boy, sometimes in the company of his “father,” Brown, sometimes in the company of both Brown and Luella, always at Mordecai’s Toys at Larkin & McAllister, combines, tractors, kennel trucks, dumper trucks, tipper trucks, container trucks, girder trucks, pipe-carrying trucks, crane trucks, street-cleaning equipment, jeeps, pony trailers, hay trailers, refrigerator trucks, cattle trucks, and others. “Shall we open the desk?” Lala asked.
They removed the Match-box vehicles from the roll-top desk, and rolled it open. Lala expected to see a typewriter. Instead, she saw several drafts of letters in progress or abandoned, some handwritten, some typewritten, saluting various persons by name or by title or by occupation, as for example, “My Very Dear Reverend.” Here lay also several old Chronicle clippings. One was this:
Police were hunting Tuesday for a killer who has hanged two dogs from trees in the quiet Forest Hills residential neighborhood.
Officers said the first dog, a 3-month-old German shepherd belonging to a college student, was found strung over a tree branch last Friday by two policemen.
A teen-ager discovered a spaniel strung in a tree Monday about a block away. Its owner was not located.
Another was this:
A Santa Monica Superior Court jury Tuesday awarded $125,000 damages to Eugene K. Friedman 44, for the traffic death of his 10-year old son.
On April 13, after conducting his own investigation of the accident, Friedman shot and killed Lou T. Watts, 31, driver of the van which struck and killed the boy, Ethan.
Friedman was convicted of voluntary manslaughter by a Superior Court jury Aug. 22 for the slaying of Watts. The prosecution had demanded the death penalty. Judge Adolph Alexander placed Friedman on three years’ probation Friedman acted as his own attorney at the proceedings.
Friedman shot Watts in a parking lot across the street from the Beverly Hills City Hall after both had attended a hearing on the revocation of Watts’ driver’s license. A policeman was wounded. Friedman said he had the delusion that his dead son was standing beside him and needed protection.
These letters and newspaper clippings were safely concealed from Luella, who seldom entered Junie’s room, or who, when she did never touched the Match-box vehicles on the roll-top desk, the very sight of which depressed her unspeakably. Among the letters one attracted Lala especially.
My Very Dear Mr. Stanley Krannick:
We have been receiving reports from many sources concerning your alleged mistreatment of your infant child, “Junie.” . . .
So it began, this letter to the father of Junie, true husband to Luella composed by Brown upon stolen stationery, above the signature of one nonexistent McCracken Black. Upon a separate page accompanying the letter its author had practiced writing the signature, and upon yet another page Lala read a second copy of the letter — apparently the draft from which the final version was copied.
Supervisor who? What Federation? What Saturday? Junie who? Ah yes, the Child Welfare Federation. But Junie was dead, or in Asia, or both. Then perhaps this letter had been written some time ago. At any rate, thought Lala, Brown was definitely her man. The author of “My Very Dear Mr. Stanley Krannick” was undeniably also the author of “My Very Dear German Shepherd Dog Owner,” and the author of numerous other works besides, no doubt, such as “My Very Dear . . .” whatever his name was, the smelly fellow from Classified. “This is perfect,” she said.
“Let’s see,” said Christopher.
“No,” she said, “let’s put the cars back on the desk where we found them. We mustn’t be snooping around.”
“Are you taking that letter with you?” he asked.
“I’m borrowing it,” Lala replied.
“Without permission?” Christopher asked.
“I’ll ask his permission when I see him,” she said. “I know you won’t mention it to him in the meantime.”
“Not if I can sleep at your house,” said Christopher.
She’d send Christopher’s parents this little letter. She’d slightly revise it, bring it up-to-date. No, not send, she’d carry it, deliver it herself, drop it into their very mailbox. My Very Dear Parents of Christopher, she thought, writing forward in her mind, although these reports are scattered and incomplete it seems certain that your child has been running the streets in the wind minus all supervision. Our representative case worker will visit you if we can ever find you home. What are you doing that’s so urgent that you even abandon your child to do it? You are manufacturing bombs, we hear, at the Welton plant, you’re bombing the children of Asia — you who neglect your own child. But was that the business of the Federation? She supposed that the letter as she had cast it lacked authenticity. She’d work at it. Would he never stop barking? She’d have sent an anonymous letter to those people across the street, no doubt about it, now that she had the hang of it. Mr. Brown had put a good idea into her head. But her letter would be much stronger than that meek little letter Mr. Brown sent her, you may be sure of that, saying Shut that goddam dog up or I’ll bomb your asses, you bitches and bastards. Now where had she heard those poetic phrases before? Oh yes, she’d said them herself. She was quoting herself. She was a famous author quoting herself on the telephone this morning to the poor defenseless girl at the Chronicle switchboard. “Yes,” she said to Christopher, “you may sleep at my house, but in the guest room, not in the girls’ room.”
“That’s O.K.,” said Christopher.
“It better be,” she said, leaving the Brown’s house. The wind, which was truly raw now, with venom to it, almost snatched the letter from her hand. And whom should she see coming in with the wind but James Berberick in his green BMW, bringing with him, of course, latest up-to-the-minute information concerning the classified advertisement Lala had placed in the Chronicle, seeking, as we know, recovery of her lost German Shepherd thoroughbred barking, biting dog, Paprika.
“Hey, Lala,” he called, leaping athletically from his car, “I canceled the ad.”
All the way out here to tell her that! The peak of altruism! The telephone wasn’t invented, was it? Have fun, she thought. Make it last. “You must be mad,” she said to James.
“I truly believe I am,” he said. “For a minute I thought I had the wrong house. That’s not like me. I didn’t know you had a boy. I thought you only had girls.”
“I was tidying up for a neighbor,” she said. “You met him — Mr. Brown.”
“Where’s your mother? I meant to get her address,” James said, taking a pencil from his pocket. He asked, “Did I leave a pencil in your house this morning?”
“Why are you here?” she asked. “You shouldn’t be here. Men are fantastic, they’re so persistent. Come in out of the wind.”
“Yes,” he said, “I have a little time.”
“Are you off work?” she asked. “Isn’t it early?”
“I didn’t go back,” he said. “I took the afternoon off because I deserved it. I was consulting with somebody regarding a possible business deal. Listen, something I need.”
“Such as what?”
“A good tire,” he said.
“Are you coming in?” she asked.
“I was hoping to,” he said. What did she mean by that? Coming! In! Was she aware of the provocative way she said things? Her voice on the telephone alone would sell a thousand massages a day. Of course, not all men responded in the same way to a voice; one man’s goose was another man’s sauce. Bitch, she had got him into all this, stroking her dog on the living-room floor, forcing him to go roaring off to Luella’s. Lately he had tried so hard to become free of Luella, but now he’d fallen back into her net forever. “What time does it get dark these nights?” he asked. But he did not wait for an answer. He said, “This noon when I came here I saw this lady walking a dog in a fur coat. I wonder who she was.”
“I saw her too. I don’t know who,” she said. “Christopher, if you’ll run upstairs I’ll do your knee.”
“What did he do to his knee? James asked.
“He fell off his bike,” said Lala.
“Boys will be boys,” James replied.
“What kind of a dog did she have?” Lala inquired.
“I don’t know dog types,” said James. “It was just some kind of a screechy little dog, nothing like yours. I canceled your ad, you know. I’ll tell you what I need, I need one tire. I thought I’d exchange a tire with you.”
“Then what kind of a fur coat was she wearing?” Lala asked. “Sometimes I know a person by their coat.”
“I don’t know coats, either,” he said.
Just ladies, Lala thought. She was tempted to seize him by the nose. She’d do it, too, and let thing lead to thing, if only the girls weren’t on their way home, and if only she knew Harold’s plans; and if only she could remember this fellow’s name, too. Where were Harold’s bowling shoes? They’d been standing on the television. Then she’d thrown them into the front closet. Suppose she flung open the door of the front closet and Harold were hanging there dead, or all slumped over with an ice pick in his back. She flung open the closet door. There they were. She picked up the shoes, closed the closet door, and dropped the shoes at the base of the coatrack.
“He’s a big fellow,” James Berberick observed.
“I’m everybody’s prisoner,” she said. If Harold came home for his shoes and found her gone he’d be furious. And her mother would phone, too. Lala couldn’t move. In the early days, when her mother called, Lala enjoyed taking the call in bed with Harold, or best of all with Harold in her, and talking to her mother in that advantageous position — let her mother rave on and on telling Lala what a bad match she’d made with stupid Harold, and Harold all the time right in her there right snug. Nowadays it wasn’t that Iris didn’t call, it was only that Harold was never in her any more. He’d quit. Something had gone wrong, she didn’t know what — well, yes she did, she’d taken off eighty-five pounds, to Harold’s dismay, who loved women to be fat. “More bounce to the ounce,” said Harold.
Lala’s encounter with Christopher over there in Mr. Brown’s house had oddly stimulated her. She’d seize this smelly Mr. Classified, she’d clamp him like a vise between her thighs, except it would never stop there, fun was fun but that was more than fun, it had implications, and the girls coming home and all, and possibly Harold for his bowling shoes. She had overheated herself, and she was sweating, unless it was he who was sweating: one of them was smelling bad, let’s put it that way. “Was her dog on a leash?” she asked. “I’ll ask Christopher if he knows who she was; he knows everything that goes on in the neighborhood. You wait here,” and she fled up the stairs, overtaking Christopher on the landing, steering him hastily before her into the children’s bathroom, and closing and locking the door behind them. “I’m exhausted,” she said. Her face alarmed the boy. “I’ve got to catch my breath,” she said.
“I’ll go out and wait,” Christopher said, longing for the door.
“Don’t be frightened,” she said.
“I’m not frightened,” he said.
“It’s not your fault,” she said.
“I know it.”
“My heart is beating very fast and I’m awfully confused,” she said.
“My heart does that,” he said, “but I’m not confused.”
“We should put something on your knee,” she said. “We should scrub it up first. When did you have a bath last?” She supposed she’d learn about boys in time. Christopher’s parents enraged her. She couldn’t wait to get to that letter. Every day she assumed some new aspect of Christopher’s care. Pretty soon she and Harold would be expected to start saving for Christopher’s college education. Can’t you just see Harold doing that, tightwad that he was? “One good thing about girls,” Harold said, “you don’t have to send them to college.” Some people abandoned their children until they were raised, and then reclaimed them. Lala’s rage grew. My Very Dear Neglectful Parents of Christopher, she wrote in her mind, if you don’t start paying some attention to your boy you’ll wake up some night soon . . . no, that wasn’t right. Good idea, wrong direction, and she felt again a large measure of gratitude to Mr. Brown for making this good idea available to her. All a person needed was a suggestion. It was a wonder she hadn’t thought it up herself, though she must have been on the verge of it, according to an article she recently read. “Just put your leg up here,” she said to Christopher.
“It’ll sting,” he said.
“That’s what makes it do the work,” said Lala. “Be brave. Think of the astronauts. Roll up your pants more so I can get at it.”
“That’s as far as they go,” he said.
“Then take them off,” she said.
He was doubtful about that. He thought of his underpants, ripped to ribbons. Parts of him would stick out.
“Don’t be shy,” said Lala, “I’m a mother, and mothers have seen everything. Wait a minute, I’ll go ask . . .” but she had forgotten James Berberick’s name. She unlocked the bathroom door and left, standing at the railing of the landing and calling down to — damn, she couldn’t just shout out “Hey you” in her own house. “I’m going to put Christopher in the tub,” she called.
James was standing with his arms folded, at the window, observing his own car, and watchful, too, for the lady in fur walking her dog. He was singing in a low voice, “Once in a while, will you try to give one little thought to me,” which he had carried with him from Luella’s. He turned to Lala. “Sure,” he said, “fine, put the kid in two tubs for all I care.” Why was she telling him this? Luella never gave baths any more. Until recently she gave good baths, but now she kept linen in the tub. “Take a shower,” she’d say, but that wasn’t the point, as she well knew — the point wasn’t the bath but Luella’s giving it. She had her rules. He’d have very strict rules himself once he set up in business, no fooling around, no self-indulgence. A rich masseuse once told him, “Keep it legal, that’s the secret of profits,” and he said upward to Lala, “Listen, after I change that tire I want to talk over a business proposition with you.”
“I want to ask your advice,” she replied. “This boy needs a bath.”
“Give him a bath,” said James.
“He’s thirteen years old,” Lala said.
“It’s never too soon to begin,” said James.
“I need your help,” she said.
“I’ll help,” he eagerly said. He certainly would. He’d love to help a lady bathe a boy; he’d never quite done that before, though he’d bathed around in various combinations in various parlors of massage in various cities of the United States, and Saigon in Asia.
“I just want advice,” she said. “Don’t come up. Oh my dumb husband, he’ll be back for his bowling shoes.”
“What advice do you want?” James asked, restrained by her calling to his attention Harold’s bowling shoes. “This is how we’ll work when we’re in business together,” he said. “We’ll give each other advice. We’ll consult, we’ll confer. You’ll ask me and I’ll ask you.”
“I don’t know the state of mind of a boy thirteen,” she said. And this fellow, too, was a mystery. What in the world was he talking about — in business together, consulting, conferring? Talk about wild!
“A boy thirteen is filthy-minded,” said James.
“You’re not helping,” Lala said, and she turned away.
James, too, turned, resuming his song and watching the voting go forward in Mr. Maxim’s garage. Suppose that lady came to vote without her dog or coat! Would he recognize her? How many times a day did a lady walk her dog? It depended on the lady and the dog. Dogs and children tied people up. That’s why he’d never marry, he believed, although this was tedious, too, and expensive as well, this chasing around, this struggling against the odds, hoping against hope that all factors came together — ladies at the ready, husbands at the office, children at their dreams, and he himself at the right place at the right time, and then of course it would be just his luck that having calculated all factors to perfection he’d be interrupted by this huge joker Harold sauntering home for his bowling shoes.
He was dismayed to see how far down his tire really was. The slow leak had accelerated. Now here came two little chicks, one with a lunch-pail, turning up the walk, too, rejoicing at the sight of Paprika, recovered, running to the garden gate and kissing Paprika through the gate, and Paprika kissing them, too, in a love-fest of wet tongues; oh, for Christ’s sake, this was the rest of the brood, a thousand children live here, but at least the brood was girls by a margin of two to one, and that was something — little girls were certainly preferable to little boys. He often thought he’d capture several girls and start a farm, raise up prize girls, breed them, teach them the art of massage, raise more, breed more (to show his earnestness, he himself would sire the stock), and soon become the world’s primary masseuse-producing center; you’d go to Africa for your diamonds, China for your rice, France for your wine, Mexico for your jumping-beans, and James Berberick’s farm for your masseuses.
Louisa and Catherine entered the house. Catherine carried, in addition to her lunch-pail, several poems she had written, covered with silver stars. For a moment, as they entered, they doubtfully halted at the sight of James, but not for long. “I’m James Berberick of the Chronicle,” he said. “I located your dog.”
“Does my mother know you’re here?” Louisa asked.
“She’s upstairs bathing your dirty brother,” said James.
This amused the girls, and they smiled at each other, but they did not correct him. Their secret smiling slightly puzzled James. What was the state of mind of little girls? What did they know? What did they care about? What were their sensations? If you petted them you depended upon their guilt to keep them silent. They retreated from James, walking politely backward, their eyes upon his face, for he was handsome, heroic, and exceptional to them, for he stared intently at them in a way no man had ever stared before. It was a new feeling for them, and they cautiously savored it. “What grade are you all in in school?” he asked.
They began to tell him. How boring he found it! But they had the most marvelous white teeth when they talked. “What are your names?” he asked, to change the boring subject, and then he asked, “What time do you all go to bed at night?” Ah, they went to bed at nine o’clock on “school nights.” Was tonight a “school night”? Yes. They smiled again at one another, having met a man who didn’t know the meaning of “school night,” “What time does it get dark these nights?” he asked, and Catherine replied, “I remember last year it was dark when the polls closed, so what time do the polls close?” A logical girl she was, James thought. Go to bed right now, he thought, and leave the world to your mother and me. Catherine’s cheek was scarred by dog-bite, and she held her face averted. She’d be shy about her scarred face for years, thought James, though ultimately it wouldn’t matter, some gentlemen would love her all the same, she’d find a very nice husband, he was sure. Everybody bore a cross. He knew a girl with hair on her chest. It was charming, really. “Do your friends have dogs, too?” he asked, and the girls named several friends who owned dogs. “Do their mothers wear fur coats?” he asked.
“Here’s a riddle,” said Catherine. “What animals give fur coats?”
“I’m lousy at riddles,” said James. “I give up.”
“Rich fathers,” Catherine said.
“Fathers aren’t animals,” said James, pretending indignation.
“Men are mammals,” said Louisa, supporting her sister, “and mammals are animals.”
“Women are mammals, too,” Catherine shyly said.
“We’re all mammals together,” said James. “Make love, not war.”
When Lala opened the bathroom door the steam rolled forth, and Christopher called after her, “Close the door, close it, close it,” in panic, and yet with excitement, too, leaping from hiding to close the door, but in the process, perhaps by intention, standing full shining naked at the door, for the audience below to see. The girls smiled condescendingly. Together they looked at James to see if he had been looking, and, if so, whether he knew what he had seen.
Only Lala had not seen. She descended the stairs. “It was a hard fight but I won,” she said. “Have you met our gentleman visitor from the Chronicle?”
“Your daughters are certainly beautiful,” said James in a businesslike voice, although he had not yet decided which business to introduce — whether to explore with Lala the question of their entering the massage business, or whether to continue in the Classified vein.
“You girls are free to go about your business,” Lala said. To James she said, “I found your man.”
“I wasn’t looking for a man,” he said.
“I want to show you something I came across,” she said, showing James the letter from McCracken Black, so-called, of the Child Welfare Federation, addressing “My Very Dear Mr. Stanley Krannick,” and she added, “Let’s use first names; just call me Lala and I’ll call you . . .” but this ruse was of no assistance, he did not complete the sentence for her. “I’m going to ask you to keep this in strictest confidence because I’m going to copy it over and take it up the street and put it in Christopher’s family’s mailbox. Sit down and be comfortable.”
“I sure will,” said James, sitting on a straight chair to read the letter. “Much obliged. This is supposed to remind me of the letter I got, right?”
“Doesn’t it sound to you like my dog letter, too?” she asked. “Threatening to poison Paprika?”
“Now that you mention it it does,” he said.
“Mr. Brown wrote them all,” she said.
“How do you know?” James inquired.
“I found them in his house,” she said. “I stumbled on them accidentally.”
“Housebreaking,” said James. “That’s a crime. But why would he have cared if I smelled or not?”
“Because he’s a kind man,” she said.
“I was grateful ever since,” said James. “If somebody hadn’t tipped me off about my stink I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
“I feel indebted to him too,” she said. “At first I was angry, but now I understand. The barking is really awful. I don’t blame him for the telephone calls, either. He’d telephone us in the middle of the night, barking at us.”
James smiled. “Maybe it was a real smart dog telephoning,” he said. “Just kidding, because I can understand it, too, because I’ve done the same thing myself once in a while to get back at somebody, like you yourself did this morning — it’s been going through my head all day” — and here he lowered his voice so that the children, wherever they were, wouldn’t hear: “Bomb your ass, you bitch,” he said with intensity, with strong feeling, leaning forward on two legs of his chair and staring into Lala’s eyes with an anger irrelevant to the moment. His anger confused Lala. Perhaps it arose from accumulated anger of his past.
“I guess I’ll never hear the end of that,” she said.
“Housebreaking and obscene phone calls,” he said, returning the letter to her.
“I’ll make a few changes,” she said.
“Update it,” he said. “Put in the true facts about the Welton plant; they’re planning to blow up the world. They claim they keep their explosives separate from their ignitions, but they don’t. I’d blow them up if I cared to be a human torch. It’s easy. You just drench yourself in gasoline, set yourself on fire, and run through the plant like your life depended on it. But suicide’s not my line. I already risked enough. For what? For who? I murdered by the dozen, and they made millions while I was supposed to die for my draft board. No sir, let the draft board die for me.”
“You murdered?” she inquired. “Housebreaking’s not much compared to murder.”
“They’re trying to murder us,” said James, “because they don’t love living enough. They’re afraid of it. They can’t enjoy themselves, so they kill people who do. No wonder that bucko’s at his wit’s end over something or other” — indicating here the chair on which Brown had sat for lunch — “barking dogs or smelling people or neglecting children or maybe those aren’t the only letters he wrote, either. He may have written others you and I never even saw. He’s riding around warning the whole world like Paul Revere.”
“Barking on the telephone?” Lala inquired.
“They were planning on bombing the underground heating pipes in Washington, D.C.,” James said, speaking of furious people. “Then another bunch was planning on bombing Radio City on Mother’s Day. That would have been a blast. But why do they move around in bunches? He travels fastest who travels alone.”
“I see where they bombed the capitol of Louisiana,” Lala said.
“I noticed the headline,” James replied. He noticed, too, the steam pouring from the bathroom. “I love steam,” he said. “Our studio will always be full of steam.” Steam was a part of any good massage parlor. Lately he had been vaguely angry at Luella for discontinuing the baths. The steam half-hid you, making the studio more like a bathhouse in Saigon. Those Asians had really perfected the industry there. He saw his neon sign atop their studio:
Lala & James, Saigon Massage
or perhaps
James and Lala, Bath & Massage
or perhaps she’d prefer some variation on her name, of the sort Luella had cleverly discovered:
Jim & El, Tropical Massage
or perhaps
James. Masseur
Lala. Masseuse
That had dignity.
“What studio?” Lala inquired.
“We want a dignified name,” he said.
“I know this sounds peculiar,” Lala said, “but for the moment your first name slips my mind.”
He smiled. “Why, James,” he said.
Now Lala, too, noticed the steam pouring from the bathroom. “Christopher,” she called, “turn the water off.”
“Your teacher will be the best in the business,” James said.
“My teacher of what?” she asked.
“Get out of this house. Be free of this daily slavery,” he said. “Learn massage.”
Her face brightened, but then it darkened. “Oh sure,” she said, “I’ve heard that one before. Learn it on you, I suppose.”
“No, no,” he said, “way beyond that. I’m not just handing you some kind of a line, believe me, although I’m capable of handing a woman a line occasionally. I’m talking about a regular partnership. I thought you wanted to be free of this house. You’re in a prison here. You’re everybody’s prisoner. You’re throwing your life away because you think it’s your duty. I’m talking about making a great deal of money in a friendly environment. I’m talking about mixing maximum pleasure with maximum earnings. There’s a wonderful lady I know in the massage industry. An old friend. I just happened to run into her today. She’ll get us started, she’ll put up the cash, she’ll locate us, she’ll get us past all the Health Department shit, and after that it’s fun and profit while the money rolls in; you’re as free as a bird in the air. Psychiatrists recommend it. We’re going to close the deal tonight.”
“I don’t think Harold would go for it,” Lala said.
“Harold wouldn’t know,” said James. “For example, my friend has a real-estate office, a perfect situation, nothing could look more legitimate to her friends and acquaintances.”
“Her husband doesn’t know?” asked Lala.
“I don’t know,” said James. “I never met him. It’s a girl’s dream.”
“I know,” she wistfully said. “I realize that. Massage, massage, just the very words are rather beautiful.” Her eyes glowed. Perspiration glistened on her forehead.
James saw her eyes dwelling on some distant vision. She was breaking through; catch a lady on her breakthrough — that’s the time, when she’s just daring to be free of mother, husband, house, and yet not jaded, either, when she has just begun to confess to herself her own true nature, when excitement has not yet declined into mere habit . . . Then! Strike then when the blood is hot!
“Harold would go for the maximum money-making all right,” she said.
“Look at the steam pouring out of the bathroom,” said James.
Lala called: “Christopher, turn off the water or close the door.” To James she wittily said, “I’ll tell Harold I’m an organist. I’m just wondering, though — is it really legal? It doesn’t sound legal. It sounds too good to be true. They always make good things illegal. Oh, the damn bathroom. Excuse me,” and she hiked the skirt of her robe, which she had worn all day for housekeeping, for voting, for talking on the telephone, for riding on dog safari in Officer Phelps’s police car, for serving lunch for four, for visiting somewhat unauthorized the house of her neighbor Brown, and for running upstairs now to the source of the billowing steam, calling ahead of her, “Christopher turn the water off, Christopher turn the water off,” thinking Polly put the kettle on, Polly put the kettle on, Polly put the kettle on, we’ll all have tea. Oh, all those verses she had read to the girls until they were too big to be read to, and she had read to Harold in bed in the early days, but when she asked Harold to read to her he wouldn’t. She’d bet James would read to her, holding a book in one hand and caressing her with the other. We’ll have tea, she thought. She sensed his following her up the stairs; here was a strange fellow she’d never heard of until this morning offering her a business deal, borrowing an automobile tire, following her up her staircase to these intimate rooms of her house, running as if pursuing her, though no doubt he meant to be helpful somehow with the steam pouring out like smoke. Suppose Harold walked in this minute for his bowling shoes! Explain it. And there stood Christopher naked upon the toilet seat, his head shrouded in the steam above, exhibiting his penis erect to Lala’s daughter, Louisa. “Goddam you,” said Lala. “Where’s Catherine?”
“This is disgusting,” said James to Christopher. “What kind of a kid are you?”
“Louisa, you get out of here,” said Lala. “I’ll speak to you later.”
“It was a boner,” said Christopher.
“I know what it is,” said Lala.
“It’s like a massage parlor in here,” said James, “with all this steam.”
“I’m awfully embarrassed,” said Lala, and she asked James then, “Is this normal?” rather fascinated, actually, by Christopher’s penis, for, although the boy was only thirteen years old, still a penis erect was a penis erect, and Lala had led a life limited to Harold. Certainly she had never before found herself in such a situation as this — this triangle, this one penis more provocative and certainly more enlarged than she could have imagined it would be, and on the other hand this grown man playing whatever game he was up to, whether classified-advertising or looking-for-the-lady-walking-the-dog-in-furs or setting-up-in-the-massage-business or relocating-his-lost-pencil or borrowing-a-BMW-tire. If only life could be like this every day! She was lightened, relieved, free, floating, overcome by her awareness of herself, her flesh, this man, this naked boy, this intimacy, this steam, this heat, this roaring water, this clinging moisture. My God, see his boner, it was swelling, swell, advancing upon the boy now and seeing in his eyes his mingled confusion or fear or question, his eyes asking, “Have I done a bad thing or a good thing?” He must have seen the answer to his question in Lala’s eyes even before she knew she had answered, for he smiled at her as if he had at some time in the past given himself to her, which could never have occurred, actually, and which therefore must have been only a memory of an occasion unknown to him but known to men, man, erect, in time before the boy, and Lala seized him with her lips, her tongue, her whole mouth, and her robe flew high, James behind her bombing her, she was never so delighted.
Above the tea she asked, “Are you sure the door was closed?”
“Pretty sure,” said James. “I kicked it closed.” He doubted that he had kicked it closed (he’d been too preoccupied) but he said so to comfort her. She worried about Louisa’s having seen those goings-on.
“Did you hear it click?” she asked.
“I wasn’t listening for clickings,” he said. “This is marvelous tea.”
“It’s nothing but Safeway teabags,” she said. “It’s not as marvelous as something else I can think of.”
“You’ll make a terrific masseuse,” he said. “You’re a natural cooperator.”
She asked in a whisper, “How did you get it out so fast?” Her lips were wet with tea. She admired the marvelous thing James Berberick had done — a whole new world awaited her — and she was passionate about details.
“Practice,” he said.
“There’s certainly no danger of pregnancy that way,” said Lala.
“You and I are compatible,” said James.
“Here’s my letter,” she said. “I added a little to it.” To the basic letter, originally addressed to one Stanley Krannick, apparently the former husband of “Mrs. Brown,” she had added the following, which she read softly to her partner, James Berberick, and which he pronounced “excellent, perfectly right.”
If these facts are true you are guilty of a violation of your sacred responsibility to that child. There is no telling what things he will encounter running around unsupervised in that way, or what sights he will see, or what paths of danger he will be led into.
But she was at a loss how to sign it — what name to give to the Supervisor. “Think up a name for the Supervisor,” she said.
“I write a lot of letters in my head I never mail,” said James.
“I do too,” said Lala. “To my mother.”
“I’ll think up a name while changing the tire,” he said, and he left the house, driving his BMW into Lala’s garage, whose door she raised by electric eye, and closed again behind him. There stood two green BMWs side by side, like an optical illusion. He examined her tires, seeking the newest, but they appeared equal all around. “It’s hard changing a tire,” he said, “so soon after an orgasm.” In spite of that difficulty, however, he worked ably, jacking up her car, jacking up his, and switching right front tires. Lala stood watching him, her arms folded, holding in one hand the transmitter which controlled the electric-eye door, and breathing the rising odor of his working sweat. He lowered each car to the floor again, Lala reopened the garage door, and James backed out. He parked his car on the street again, and reentered the house for a second cup of tea. “This is a great neighborhood,” he said, moving his chair around the table from his side to hers and punctuating their conversation with little kisses for her upon her lovely neck.
“We always thought so,” she said, “though I guess worse things go on than you realize behind closed doors. Let me recommend that you appear more businesslike because Harold’s on his way home for his bowling shoes.”
“How do you know?” he asked.
“I don’t know where the girls are, either,” she confessed.
“Maybe he’ll phone,” said James.
“No,” she said, “because he’s left the office by now, if he was there in the first place. He can’t phone if he’s not in the office because he doesn’t like to use a dial phone.”
“They’re the best kind,” said James, confused.
“He doesn’t feel confident,” she said. “He’s not a good reader. In the office he makes the girl dial.” She held James’s hand to her breast. “Oh, your voice,” she said, her flesh rippling. Her flesh seldom rippled so late in the day, and she was astonished, and she released his hand suddenly, nervously rising and touring the living room and dining room, looking out all the windows for her girls, and she stood, too, at the little square window of the front door, through which she had greeted James this morning upon the occasion of his first arrival, which had not been his last, seeking not only her girls now, but her husband, and Christopher, too, feeling upon her the weight of many lives: all would topple, fall, and be crushed if she were incautious, if she surrendered to extreme temptation. Why am I this way? she thought. Why can’t I be like other women? “Just because I’m walking doesn’t mean I’m not listening,” she said.
“James James,” he said. “There’d be a name to sign to your letter, they’d figure it must be real because nobody’d make it up. Put an initial in the middle.”
“Bryan M. Winters,” she said, “stands for BMW.”
“There’s a girl at the Chronicle named Opel Ford,” he said.
“There he is,” said Lala.
“Harold!” said James, alarmed, restoring his chair to its proper place, and straightening his necktie.
“No, Christopher,” she said, “riding his bike like nothing happened, in the same old dirty clothes he’s worn for days.”
“He’s showing off for you,” said James. “You’re somebody special to him now. He’ll never forget you. Nobody ever forgets the first person they shared a sexual experience with. I don’t. Do you remember the first person?”
“Yes,” she bitterly said. “Harold.”
“Why would he phone you to tell you he’s coming for his shoes? I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t he just come home directly?”
“Because that’s how he is,” said Lala.
“Because maybe he wants to warn you he’s coming,” said James. “Maybe he really wants you to be doing — well, things slightly off-color.”
“If I put back on my eighty-five pounds I’d have him in the palm of my hand again,” she said.
“Let’s take a chance,” he said.
“Where are the girls?” she asked.
“Lock them out of the house,” suggested James.
“My own girls!”
“Just lock them out of the bedroom,” said James.
“Never,” she said.
“It reminds me of a true story that happened to a friend of mine,” said James. “It’s really a filthy incident.”
“The filthier the better,” she said, “but keep it a little low because I’m not sure where anybody is.”
“Well,” said James, “there was this fellow, a friend of mine, that was hired by Vaseline to make a survey of the various uses of their product.”
“Was his name Dick Richards?” she asked.
“No,” said James, “his name was Bob Roberts. He went around from house to house asking people how they used Vaseline, and they told him how they used it like for burns, greasing things up, irritations, chapped lips, raw knuckles, skin irritation, between the toes, there’s just a million uses for Vaseline and he thought he’d heard them all when one day he meets this lady that says sure, she uses it, they use it around the house sexually. ‘O.K.,’ he says, ‘that’s a common use for it, madam, speak right up into the microphone, does your husband apply it to his person or to your person or perhaps you apply it to both of you mutually?’“
“What microphone?” Lala asked.
“The interview microphone,” said James. “It was a TV interview.”
“You said it was a house-to-house survey,” said Lala.
“You must be mad,” said James. “The lady said, ‘Neither. We don’t apply it to ourselves. We have six children.’ ‘O.K.,’ he says, ‘six children, super-terrific, the company is very interested in any sort of development and this one sounds unusual. It sounds like a breakthrough. You’re telling me you apply it in some way to the children?’ He was trying to look cool like he heard of any number of people recently that Vaselined their children sexually. I do the same in Classified. You get some strange requests.”
“Everything is natural and normal,” said Lala.
“That’s the spirit,” said James.
At this moment, however, the telephone rang, and Lala ran to it, saying, “Did she use it on her children?”
“No,” replied James.
“Then how?” she said. “It’s my mother, I’m sure, she doesn’t like it to ring too many times, she worries.”
“I’ll tell you later,” said James.
“Now,” she said. “Quick.”
“She smeared it on the doorknob to keep the children out,” he said.
“Mother,” said Lala, answering the phone, “I’m trying to keep the line clear for Harold.” The lady smearing Vaseline on the doorknob came into focus in her mind, and she laughed, and her mother asked her why she laughed, and how the children were.
“Harold won’t be home,” said Iris. “He’s going directly bowling.”
“He forgot his shoes,” said Lala.
“He’ll borrow shoes,” said Iris.
“Did he phone you?” Lala asked.
“Your line was busy,” said Iris.
“It wasn’t busy at all,” said Lala. “You’re sure? You’re absolutely sure he’s not coming here?” An idea was forming in her head: she’d take a chance, she thought.
“Absolutely sure,” her mother said.
“Mother,” said Lala, “hold the phone a minute while I turn the stove down,” and she pointed upstairs for James to see, flashing signals to him, but he appeared to be confused by the signals she was flashing, whereupon she clapped her hand over the mouthpiece instead and said plainly to James Berberick, “I’m going upstairs. Hang this up when I get on upstairs. Then follow me,” handing him the telephone, which he eagerly received, following her with his eyes as she ran happily up the stairs.
She hurled herself across her bed to the farther side, and seized the telephone. “All right, mother, I’m back from the stove,” lying tangled in her pink robe. But where were the girls? When James swiftly entered her bedroom she signaled to him with her free hand, indicating to him, first pointing, then twisting her wrist as if locking a door — but once more he appeared to be foiled by her signals, confused, unable to apprehend them, and she therefore clapped her hand over the mouthpiece instead and said plainly to James in high excitement, “Lock the fuckass door,” which he understood easily.
“What have you got on the stove?” Iris asked.
“The girls’ dinner,” Lala responded, thinking of the food she’d say she was cooking if her mother asked. “Only eggs,” she said, “because I didn’t think Harold would come for his shoes, I thought why bother with anything much.”
“I don’t blame you,” Iris said. “Did you put anything on your bite?”
“It wasn’t a bite,” said Lala, “there’s no break in the skin. Maybe I’ll put some Vaseline on it” — holding her arm high in the air so that James might remove her pink robe and find her beneath, which was his first sight of Lala naked, and about what he’d expected, and he offered by signs and signals of his own to assist her with the other sleeve so that she might for the sake of comfort be divested altogether of her robe, but she demurred — half was enough for now — go slow, she thought, make it last, as in the old days when she and Harold so much enjoyed lovemaking at this end of the line with her mother at the other, before Lala lost weight and Harold therefore lost interest, and she said into the phone, “I’ll put his shoes back in the closet then.”
“Have you been watching the astronauts?” Iris inquired. “Everything is knocked off the air for them. It’s getting interesting now. It’s very dramatic. They might die. They might already be dead.” Faintly Iris moaned, as with pleasure, at Harold’s entering into her, for although it was true that he could barely read well enough to dial the telephone he had found his way well enough to Iris’s heart. No need for bowling shoes here! There he was now, inside Iris, in the place where Lala had begun. Only here was pleasure possible for him. His own wife inhibited him — inside his own wife he was overcome by the fearful sensation that he was suffocating his unborn daughters. He had lost all power to love his wife, and he had replaced her in his affections with her mother, taking special enjoyment now, as he had taken special enjoyment in the past, at the sensation of simultaneous intercourse: he with Iris, and Iris on the phone with Lala. It was the old connection, but the ladies were reversed.
“Did they land yet?” Lala asked.
“Nobody knows much,” said Iris. “We don’t even know if their thing is on target. They might land in the wrong ocean. Even Walter Cronkite doesn’t know.”
James whispered into Lala’s ear, “It’s a good thing we don’t have Vista-Phone 150 yet.”
“I want to stay on the phone,” Lala whispered to James in reply. “I love it like this. We used to do it.”
“You’re really queer,” he said into her ear.
“You must have been on the phone,” said Iris, “because Harold said he tried and tried.”
“He mustn’t have tried very hard,” said Lala, “because I was here all afternoon except I stepped across the street for a minute.”
“What was across the street?” her mother asked. “Oh, to vote.”
“No, I voted this morning. To take a pie to Mr. Brown.”
“Who’s Mr. Brown?”
“Who found Paprika,” said Lala.
“Oh yes, he’s an awfully nice man,” said Iris. “And is that the extent of your gratitude? You dragged a pie out of the freezer, and that’s all the gratitude you show the man who found Paprika?”
“I’m going to invite him over here again,” said Lala. “But Harold doesn’t like mingling with the neighbors.”
“Harold will mingle,” Iris said. “Invite me too.”
“And I’ll invite that nice young man from the Chronicle because we really are indebted to him, too,” said Lala, taking into herself now “that nice young man from the Chronicle” to whom she had spoken for the first time this morning, met for the first time at midday, to whom she had served lunch, whose voice excited her skin at every rippling pore, who had twice pursued her up the stairs, once by impulse, once by command, and who had entered her twice, formerly there, now here, and all this upon a single day, whereas for several years between Harold and her nothing had happened good, no love, no excitement, whereas James Berberick made things happen, and Lala said into the telephone breathlessly, “Harold never tried and tried anything, mother. Harold doesn’t try hard enough,” speaking, she thought, to her mother, but of course to Harold, too, who lay with Iris. “I don’t think Harold and I are going to make it, mother. I have only one life to give and I’m not going to spend it in this house. I have a business offer. I’m going into real estate.”
“If the deal goes through tonight,” James whispered.
“If the deal goes through,” she said, weeping into the telephone, not in sadness, really, but in joy, in pleasure, sounding much to Harold at the nether end as she had sounded in the earlier days, crying for pleasure in his arms in their house on Eagle Street before the girls were born; and the sound of her crying excited Harold anew, and he whispered to Iris at the height of his pleasure, “Tell her to invite Brown over tonight after bowling.”
“If you invite Mr. Brown tonight Harold will come, too,” said Iris. “He mentioned that he’s as grateful as he can be.”
Harold whispered again to Iris, “Tell her to buy a big gift for Brown.”
“Buy something nice for Mr. Brown,” said Iris to her daughter. “Run right out and buy him a nice big gift.”
“I will later,” said Lala. “Right now I’m occupied.”