At six-thirty in the morning, while Brown was still sleeping very well in his house on Yukon Street, looking down Eagle Street, Harold Ferne raised his garage door with his electric beam and backed out his long black Lincoln Continental without even looking. We will remain with Harold briefly only.
He’d say he was looking, thought his wife, Lala, who was watching him surreptitiously through the little square window of their front door, but he wasn’t truly looking, for he was overwhelmed by distraction. He owned sixty-three long black Lincoln Continentals or chocolate-brown Fleetwood Cadillacs. Harold’s his name, fleet rental’s his game. In her hands Lala held his blue bowling shoes. Tonight was his bowling night, or so he claimed, and yet he appeared to be forgetting his bowling shoes. He had forgotten them last Tuesday, too, and returned home late at night (after bowling, so he said) and mentioned every little obscure event of the day, and who went bowling where, and everybody’s score, and the various remarks the “boys” made among themselves, but he failed to mention having forgotten his bowling shoes, and now here he was, forgetting them again. Peculiar, eh what? Well, Harold was peculiar.
On the other hand, how peculiar could a man be who owned sixty-three long cars and couldn’t read his native English or any other language? Harold could so cleverly fake reading that one might wonder why he didn’t divert his energies from faking to straight learning. Well, Harold had “hang-ups.” He had obsessions and fixations. For example, one of his obsessions or fixations involved the matter of his wife’s having emerged from his mother-in-law’s womb. “I was smaller then,” Lala said. Even so, it didn’t seem possible, and it was driving him dizzy when he thought about it, which he tried to do as little as possible. Yet how could a man avoid his own thoughts?
He left his car to raise his flag. Too bad he couldn’t raise his flag by electric beam. His flag size was “extra large,” and his flag flew above his barbecue pit, the smoke of his sizzling meats drifting up into the stars and stripes. Returning to his car, he closed his garage door with his electric beam. But what was he hearing? Something was wrong.
Ah, thought Lala at the little square window, he remembered he forgot his bowling shoes. But apparently it wasn’t, after all, his shoes he forgot, for he walked to the garden fence. A sound was wrong, or the absence of a sound. Where was the sound of Paprika’s barking? Where was Paprika himself? Paprika was nowhere in the yard, nor, as far as Harold could see, in the doghouse, either, although he might have slipped into the garage, and be there now. Harold, who could have opened the door manually, preferred to return to his automobile and open the garage door with his electric beam, but regardless of how he opened the garage door he would not have found Paprika within. He called, “Paprika, Paprika, I’ll smash you if you hide on me,” but Paprika did not reply, and Harold strode quickly, in a kind of panic, to the front door of his house, where Lala had been standing, and rapped several times upon the door in some alarm (his keys were in his car), bringing Lala quickly to the door in her pink robe. She pretended to be arriving from another part of the house. “Where’s Paprika?” Harold asked. “Don’t tell me he’s in the house.”
“Paprika’s never in the house,” she said. “Certainly not,” for Harold absolutely prohibited Paprika from entering the house. This was another mild “hang-up” of Harold, who, though he feared above all the rape of his wife and daughters, he feared Paprika too. How would Paprika be useful in the event of rape? Rape in the house, Paprika locked in the garden. It was hard to see.
“Then where is he?” Harold demanded.
“He must be out there,” said Lala.
“He’s not,” said Harold.
“He can’t not,” said Lala, hurrying out the side door and into the garden to verify the fact she knew would be true if Harold said so: she knew which things in life Harold could be mistaken about, and which he could not. She knew what she knew and what she didn’t know. She was one of the most extremely intelligent people you will meet anywhere, but deceptively so, for her voice was girlishly high and her step was girlishly brisk — always on the verge of running — and her color was pink.
Harold consulted his watch. He had many appointments today (or so he said), and he knew that to keep abreast of things, today or any day, it was well to be gone from the house no later than “both hands at the bottom.” His mother-in-law was teaching him numbers and letters and reading in general. “He couldn’t have got out,” said Harold. “There’s dirty work somewhere. You tell them. They’re girls.”
“Somebody let him out,” said Lala, “because somebody couldn’t stand the barking. We can’t say we weren’t warned.”
“He didn’t bark,” said Harold. “The gate’s still latched.”
“He couldn’t have jumped over,” Lala said. She held Harold’s bowling shoes, but he did not notice them.
“Damn it,” said Harold, “don’t be so stupid.” Even so, he contemplated the fence, assessing its height against the possibility of Paprika’s having actually decided, upon some impulse, to leap over the fence, to sail into the night like Santa’s reindeer. “He’ll come back,” said Harold, once more consulting his watch. “Phone in if he comes back.”
Phone in! thought Lala, bomb his ass, the bastard. His office was “in.” The house was “out.” She was his prisoner; he came and went while she was stuck, and he wouldn’t be there if she did phone “in.” He never was on Tuesday especially — he was all over town; she couldn’t keep track of him although it was easy enough for him to keep track of her. Imagine if he called home and she was gone! “We should have kept him in the house,” she said.
“It wasn’t my fault,” said Harold, behind his wheel now, his voice inaudible to her, but his mouth moving against the sound of his motor. He was unaware that he could not be heard except by himself. “He didn’t bark. He was alert. Nobody warned us of nothing. A dog in the house goes soft.” He drove down Eagle Street, left on Yukon, out of Lala’s sight in his sleek vehicle, and out of our sight, too, forever, although we will hear his voice this afternoon under unusual circumstances.
He had promised to vote before leaving for work, but now he wouldn’t vote, he was gone, although he’d tell her tonight he had voted; he’d throw voting in with bowling in the big lie that was Tuesday. And how would she break the news to the girls? You tell them. They’re girls. There would be tears, a scene, and awkward questions about God — why does God let such things happen? — although thank God Louisa had somewhat outgrown God, and Catherine soon would, and after God came horses, and after horses came boys, whom Lala herself believed in, for she could survive quite well without God or horses, and here came Christopher on his bicycle, having been expelled from his house. He was on his own now for fourteen hours. Presumably, after some years of “danger pay,” his parents would have achieved a sufficient fortune to reopen their house to their child.
“Paprika’s gone,” Lala said to Christopher, greeting him in the driveway.
“Where?” he asked. He leaped from his bicycle to stoop for her morning Chronicle.
“We don’t know,” she said.
“He escaped?” he asked.
“It looks like that,” said Lala. “If you find him I’ll give you a big reward.”
“I wouldn’t take a reward,” said Christopher. “Not from you I wouldn’t. Finding him would be enough of a reward from you,” by which he meant she was reward enough, this kind lady in her pink robe. He was thirteen years old.
“Could he be crouching in a corner?” she asked. She went again to the garden fence, but Paprika was gone, no doubt of that; but how or why she didn’t know and might never know, for life was filled with mysteries never answered. She had received another barking telephone call last night, and she had received an anonymous letter regarding Paprika some time ago, and with newspaper enclosures, too, one from Oregon, another from Saugus in California.
Cherry A Horsman, of 3303 N. Vancouver Avenue, has pleaded innocent to killing a small poodle May 12.
Mrs. Horsman is accused of slitting the throat of the dog during a feud with a neighbor woman which ended with Mrs. Horsman being shot in the face.
The neighbor and poodle owner, Othella M. Etheridge, 55, of 3722 NE Cleveland Avenue, is charged with assault with intent to kill.
Police reports said Mrs. Horsman entered Mrs. Etheridge’s home May 12 while Mrs. Etheridge was away and killed the animal with a kitchen knife.
Mrs. Etheridge, who has pleaded innocent, is charged with shooting Mrs. Horsman the next day after discovering the dog’s death.
From Saugus the news was this:
Dogs may be man’s best friend, but do not always foster friendship, as two women in Canyon Breeze Mobile Home Park learned Monday.
When Frances A. Anderson, 53, of 28504 Sand Canyon Rd., asked her neighbor, Shirley Reiner, 34, to quiet her barking dog, Mrs. Reiner allegedly became irate and struck Mrs. Anderson in the face with her fist.
Mrs. Anderson then went into her trailer and called Sheriff’s deputies. She returned to her porch when Mrs. Reiner reportedly approached her and hit her in the head with a sandal-type shoe.
Mrs. Anderson was taken to Inter-Valley Hospital for treatment of a one-inch wound on her head.
Mrs. Reiner was arrested by deputies and charged with assault with a deadly weapon.
“I’ll look for him and come back for breakfast,” Christopher said.
“I’m sure,” said Lala, but softly, for she never mocked a child. She took hope. Maybe Christopher would find him, and she’d give him a reward. A kiss. He’d settle for that. Two kisses. She’d thrust her finger inside his shirt against his skin. Suddenly his whole body appeared to her mind’s eye, and she tried to dismiss it by thinking serious thoughts: maybe Paprika would just stroll back in; how had he left in the first place? Certainly he didn’t unlatch the gate himself and stroll out (latching it behind him, too). If Paprika was gone for good, Harold would only get another dog to protect his women from mad rapists wandering the neighborhood, prowlers and peepers whom Harold feared, although he was somewhat of a peeper himself with his binoculars up there in the drawer with his socks and his handkerchiefs. He thought she didn’t know. But her question was, “Why doesn’t he take me in on it, why don’t we peep together if it’s fun (which it is) or if it sets you up for thrills of your own?” He’d get another dog louder than Paprika. “I’d rather be raped,” she said to herself, entering the house again, dropping Harold’s bowling shoes on the floor, first one, then the other, and then the newspaper.
She turned on the television in the living room and disconnected the electric coffee-maker in the kitchen. Disconnecting the coffee-maker was a bit like disconnecting Harold himself. Her symbolic mind was growing. When the barking person telephoned, all Harold could say was “Who’s this? . . . Who’s this?” but the voice simply barked, and Lala tried to explain to Harold that it didn’t matter who it was, it was the message that mattered, it was the symbolic meaning of it, but Harold didn’t believe it, or couldn’t, or wouldn’t. “Who’s this? Who’s this? I’ll call the police,” Harold kept saying, and when he telephoned the police and described the anonymous annoying call the policeman said, “You probably have a barking dog in your possession that somebody wants you to make stop barking,” but Harold couldn’t believe the policeman any more than he could believe Lala. “They can be bought off,” he said.
Having unplugged Harold in the kitchen she returned to the television in the living room, keeping the volume low, not to wake the girls. She liked to watch the gentleman exercise. It was as if he were fucking, lacking only a partner to fuck with. Suppose she could fuck someone on national television! Would she accept the unusual opportunity? She’d need to think it over — she couldn’t give a prompt answer. It depends on whom with, she thought. “With me,” said the exercising gentleman on the television, although nobody could hear him but Lala. “With you, yes,” she replied. “On prime time?” he asked.
“You bet,” she replied, rising from her chair almost before she had settled into it, having forgotten to prepare the girls’ lunches. “That’s not like me,” she said, “but then it’s not like me to fuck on prime time on national television, either.” Where could Paprika have gone? Once upon a time she had thought that everything had an explanation, that all our acts or deeds were found out by the proper authorities, but lately she had begun to realize that the authorities don’t really find everything out, that the authorities may scarcely exist, or exist without power, like a powerless king. “The King of Bavaria is actually only a figurehead.” She learned such sentences at James Lick Junior High School, not far away. Look at those people down the street, neglecting Christopher. When Lala was a girl she had certainly heard from her own mother and from everyone else she respected that mothers simply took care of their children, and that was all there was to it. You protected your child. You defended your child. If someone threatened your child you fought back. No doubt under certain circumstances you killed for your child. Thank God Lala had no boys to be taken away and slaughtered by the military-industrial complex, she just wouldn’t let them, that’s all, running upstairs now, hiking her pink robe a little, to awaken her daughters, up and down these stairs all day on numberless errands, thinking now how she could break the awful news to them that Paprika was gone without implying, on the one hand, that he was gone forever, and yet without raising the hope, on the other, that he had merely strolled down the street and would soon return. You might as well get used to the certain end of certain things, certain people. Some people cease to exist. A year ago her father ceased to exist, and so it must be with dogs, too, now you saw them, now you didn’t, all dogs were mortal.
Her daughters were Louisa and Catherine. If Lala named them aloud she named them in the order of their arrival, to show no partiality; Louisa the older. The name Louisa was Lala’s own. People were sometimes confused, expecting that the name Lala would belong to the child, Louisa to the mother, or else Louisa and Lala to the children, Catherine to the mother, for Catherine had dignity, whereas Lala and Louisa ended girlishly, jinglingly. Well then, people shouldn’t go around seeking consistency, they were wasting their time, they’d never find it.
Catherine lay awake looking at the ceiling and smiling slightly, reflecting upon a pleasant dream. Her hands were folded upon her breast. Her mother, sitting on the bed and kissing Catherine, seized the child’s hands, unfolded them and held them, as if holding them had been her intention, although actually her intention was to alter the posture of death Catherine’s folded hands suggested. Across her left cheek, from her ear to her mouth, she was scarred by a bite of her beloved pet dog, Paprika. “You had another nice dream,” said Lala.
“I always have nice dreams,” said Catherine, who had been praised by her grandmother Iris McCoy for having nice dreams, as opposed to sad or dismal dreams.
“You don’t always have to say you had a nice dream,” said Lala, “because sometimes you might have bad dreams. There’s nothing wrong with having bad dreams. I personally dream very wicked dreams.”
“Such as what?” asked Catherine.
“We haven’t time to talk about it now,” said Lala, “but you’ll probably dream the same dreams as you grow older.”
“I dreamed about Paprika,” said Catherine, who hadn’t at all. No. But she had been awake for an hour, she knew that Paprika was gone, and she wished to give her mother an easy opening into the subject.
“I see,” said her mother. “What did you dream about Paprika?”
“I dreamed that he wrote a poem,” said Catherine. “Is that all right?”
“Certainly it’s all right,” said Lala, watching Louisa awaken in the other bed. “Don’t worry too much about what your father says.” Harold had recently ordered Catherine not to dream unrealistic dreams, and he would certainly have condemned a dream about a poetry-writing dog. “Did we wake you?” Lala asked Louisa.
“You meant to wake me,” Louisa said. “I could have gone on sleeping for hours. I wish you’d stop pretending.” Louisa was less agreeable than her sister, sometimes slightly surly or contrary. “One thing I hate is loud jabbering in the morning.” Louisa was eleven years old. Catherine was nine. Louisa was also, in an accepted sense, prettier than her sister.
“It’s time to get up anyhow,” her mother said.
“I’m not getting up for anybody,” Louisa said.
“That’s up to you, see if I care,” said Lala, rising from Catherine’s bed, drawing apart the drapes at the window, remarking upon the beauty of the day, and looking thoughtfully down upon Paprika’s deserted space in the yard. “People are voting in Mr. Maxim’s garage,” she said, wondering if she ought to blurt it out and get it over with — dog’s gone, girls, don’t be surprised if he’s dead, face the music, dogs do die — get all the crying and all the God-hating done and over with. She could kill Harold. “You tell them. They’re girls.” She said to her girls now, “Daddy took Paprika to work with him.”
Both girls were astonished. Catherine knew that her mother was lying, and Louisa wondered if her mother was telling the truth. “You’ll be all alone,” Louisa said. “Who’ll guard the house? I wonder if you’re telling the truth. Did you have a fight? He’s punishing you. He’s depriving you, leaving you alone all day without protection,” knowing her father’s passion for depriving people of this, depriving people of that, depriving you of privileges, depriving you of pleasures, depriving you of sweets, and now depriving Lala of Paprika because of some displeasing thing Lala had done.
Lala glanced once more into the yard to see if by chance Paprika had returned. How could he? Could he have jumped back over a fence he couldn’t have jumped forward? “I’m going to leave the gate open so he can walk in if he comes back,” she said.
“Then you were lying,” Louisa said.
“I was lying, yes,” said Lala. “I often lie.” It would be interesting to know where he is, she thought. If only she knew where he was she’d be satisfied: she’d settle for the knowledge of it, never mind the dog himself. This is the direction in which her mind was lately going. She no longer cared so much about the possession of things as the knowledge of things. She had become careless of mere having, mere title, mere safety, of peace-keeping, self-containment, and little white lies. This was a strange thing to be happening to a mother of two, wife of one, soon filling her daughters’ breakfast bowls with cereal and creamy milk and raisins and brown sugar, and packing their lunch-pails with goodies of every sort. She was the victim of a quest for knowledge. So she felt. Perhaps she should see a psychiatrist. Was she being fair to her daughters? Pour on sugar. Heap it up. There went her symbolic mind again.
“I don’t see him anywhere,” said Christopher, who had entered in time for breakfast, and so Lala gave him, too, cereal, raisins, brown sugar, milk so rich it was almost cream, and a sack lunch filled “with goodies of every sort,” just as the girls demanded.
“He’ll be back by the time you’re all home,” said Lala.
“You have no way of knowing that,” said Louisa coolly.
“Was he in love?” Catherine asked, for she had heard that love produced restlessness in animals.
“We don’t know,” said Lala.
“You can tell easy,” said Christopher.
“Well, we haven’t time to talk about that now,” said Lala.
“He’s lost,” said Louisa. “He’s gone forever,” and she began to cry, and Catherine cried, too.
Somewhere was a person who had made Lala’s daughters cry. She’d kill him if she could. In time to come her daughters would cry a good deal, for girls do cry, and persons make them, and that was to be expected; but for someone to have begun so soon to trouble her daughters by stealing their dog — that was hateful, despicable, unspeakable, and Lala clenched her teeth, grinding her enemy to pieces, and her daughters cried into their cereal, and Lala said to Christopher, “I bet you never saw so much crying,” to which he replied, “My mother and father cry all the time,” thus presenting Lala with a picture of his parents not heretofore developed in her mind. She had thought of them as bestial and neglectful, greedy for “danger pay” at the expense of their son, only to hear now that they “cry all the time.”
“I can be in the middle of crying and not pay any attention to it,” said Christopher.
“I see that you can,” said Lala, watching him eating, and once more imagining his body naked, flashing upon him crying naked into his cereal, then shaking such a vision from her mind, trying to dismiss it by thinking pleasant thoughts: how happy they had all been only last night! No, not last night but the night before, because last night they received the anonymous barking telephone call again, and that had upset them all. Whoever barked on the phone is the one who stole Paprika, she felt. Fortune swerved madly back and forth! How happy they had been only the night before last! No, that was Sunday night. How happy they had all been Saturday night. At any rate, they had not been unhappy, as far as she could recall.
“Telephone Lost Dog,” Christopher suggested.
Believe it or not, such a number existed. People were insane for dogs. Not only did L-O-S-T-D-O-G exist, but the telephone number L-O-S-T-S-O-U-L-S existed, too, although a recent tabulation by the Telephone Company showed that Lost Souls received only a fraction of the inquiries received by Lost Dog. As Lala’s mother said, “The city is covered with five inches of dog shit.”
Christopher dialed L-O-S-T-D-O-G on the kitchen telephone, receiving a reply from a recorded voice. Lala could see by the boy’s face that no dog resembling Paprika had been found. Possibly a miracle would occur. The case of lost Paprika would arouse the indignation of the nation. It would become a cause célèbre. They would all be photographed, her daughters especially, and be seen, too, by important persons, and offered contracts — to do what? At the end of all of Lala’s old paths of imagination lay a new skepticism. To be beautiful? But beauty vanishes. Then where were you? For their keen minds? Yes, that was more like it, although it was clear at this moment that in Louisa’s mind her body was uppermost, for she was emptying her Campus Queen lunch-pail and repacking her lunch in a brown paper sack, to be like Christopher and to distinguish herself from her sister, whispering in Christopher’s ear, saying certainly, “Let’s run away from Catherine.” Bitch! The two of you. Bastard! So Lala ruminated. If that boy caused trouble between her girls she wouldn’t have him around, that’s all. To settle the problem, thought Lala’s vagrant mind, she’d keep him for herself. To pay for his board he’d be her personal servant; her body servant — now, in this instant, she understood all slavery from Greece to Carolina. Ladies loved having boys around. Thus far it had certainly been an educational morning. Study at home. She called to her daughters, who were departing the house with Christopher, “Walk together, girls, wait for your sister,” but this had no effect upon Louisa, who continued at a swift pace to remain abreast of Christopher. Now Catherine hurried to overtake her sister, but now Louisa increased her pace and seemed to be gaining on Christopher, who was throwing his sack-lunch high into the air and catching it when it came down. Now he began to run. Now Louisa began to run. Now poor little Catherine stopped at the corner and called after them, “Wait for me, I hate you,” swinging her Campus Queen lunch-pail, but Louisa and Christopher ran forward down Yukon until they were gone from Lala’s sight.
In her pink robe Mrs. Harold Ferne crossed the street to Mr. Maxim’s garage to vote, standing in the short line behind Luella, who turned to greet her, saying “How do you do, I haven’t seen you for some time.” Lala in her polite turn said “How do you do, how is Mr. Brown these days, and how is your son?” To which Luella replied in a firm voice which invited no further conversation, “He’s over in Asia at the moment,” and signed her name upon the designated line and enclosed herself in the booth and voted. Lala, too, signed her name and voted. She voted against McGinley. She hated his face. She crossed the street again to her own side and entered her house, unfolding her newspaper:
CITY VOTES FOR CONGRESS SEAT
MOON MEN MYSTERY PROBLEM
Oh fuck, who cared about moon men? Earth men for her. She’d divorce Harold. She’d get the girls. Harold wouldn’t want them anyway. She had simply switched from her mother to Harold, doing whatever Harold said — buckled up her seatbelt, locked up all doors at all times, admitted no man to the house unless she knew who he was, washed out Louisa’s mouth with soap when she said bad words within the hearing of neighbors and kept a careful track of every penny spent for whatever purpose like the goddam fool she was — first her mother’s slave, now Harold’s slave. When would she have a slave of her own, or at least be her own slave, or else let everyone be free?
She really shouldn’t be reading the newspaper. She had so much to do. She should pick up Harold’s bowling shoes from the floor. Was that an all-day job? She read only the headlines and a few lines down; you needn’t read the whole article to get its drift. The headlines were all you needed to know, and the rest was the same thing over again anyhow, large (medium, small) election turnout expected, Republicans predict strong showing, Democrats attack Republicans, two killed in fiery crash, three die in spectacular fire, nation overrun, famine in India, executive retires, although Lala did rather enjoy certain features such as the letters to Dear Abby and the classified advertisements. People had problems.
MORT, for the Lord’s sake come home. LEAH.
She dialed Lost Dog. I’m stuck with Christopher, she thought. She could embarrass his mother and father with a little ad in the Personals:
CHRISTOPHER’S PARENTS, take care of your son. A FRIEND
but in her mind’s eye she saw them now as constantly crying, and she supposed them to be victims rather than oppressors. Besides, the presence of Christopher was agreeable. The recorded voice reported finding no dog even remotely resembling Paprika. The recorded voice caused rippling here and there upon her skin. The voice added, however, that the listing was in a constant state of change, the lost were found, the newly lost entered the lists, and Lala listened to the announcement several times to see if the rippling upon her skin developed, but it faded. What of lost cats? Even this moment Lala saw from the window a cat walking the ledge above Paprika’s runway. The cat wouldn’t do that if Paprika were there. No sir, when a cat came near, Paprika set up a howl or revived and renewed a howl already in progress — cat, squirrel, man, mouse, no matter what, Paprika howled. In a way, she thought, it was rather nice to have a little quiet around the house this morning, hardly a sound in the kitchen above the humming of the fluorescent lights. She turned them off, sitting still beside the telephone watching the cat walk the ledge. Dogs barked at a distance — other people’s dogs, not hers, let somebody else receive anonymous barking telephone calls in the night, letters, clippings, let somebody else wash out the dog’s pans and hose his runway, not she. Dumb Paprika kept even himself awake, scrambling up from sleep, feeling that he should be barking, and the reason for that was that from the beginning Harold praised Paprika (he praised no one else) for barking, regardless of what he barked at, upon the right principle enunciated by Harold in a wrong instance that if you praise a dog he will repeat the act he was praised for, which was also true, Lala believed, of human beings, of whom she was one.
But Harold’s best voice was saved for the dog. He talked “pudding and pie” to the dog. “What do you need praise for?” Harold asked Lala. “You’ve got everything except some flesh on your bones you could use. You’re a skinny marink. Look up and down the street. What has anybody got that you haven’t got? How many women own a foreign BMW made by German Huns?” He said the same, in effect, to his daughters: “Count your things. What haven’t you got, if anything? Don’t tell me how I talk to the dog, he’s an animal and he don’t understand, whereas you’re supposed to be human beings.” True, if he did not love them he lavished them, except when he was scolding them, or warning them, or depriving them.
He telephoned. “Did he come back?” he asked.
“No he didn’t,” said Lala. “Not yet. I telephoned Lost Dog.”
“You what?”
Had she done something wrong? She amended herself. “Christopher telephoned Lost Dog.”
“Is that kid there again? Throw him out.”
“He’s gone to school,” said Lala.
“Throw him out when he comes back,” said Harold.
“I can’t throw him out,” said Lala.
“I could throw him out if I was there,” said Harold. “Put an ad in the paper.”
“You’re never here,” said Lala.
“Find out how much an ad costs and I’ll call you back,” said Harold.
Oh yes, he’d call her, wouldn’t he? She might wait all day for him to call her, tied to the telephone, locked in the house, not daring to step outdoors because any moment Harold might call and she didn’t dare to be gone when he did. Or if it wasn’t Harold it was her mother. Lala was obliged to guard the hot line all day long. “I’ll call you,” she dared to say.
“No, I’ll call you,” he calmly said, and hung up in her ear.
Instantly she called him back. That is to say, she telephoned his office and asked for his secretary, who told her that Harold had “just stepped out for a moment.” Of course. Always. He stepped out in elevated shoes. Did you know that? Very few people knew that Harold wore elevated shoes, and Lala was yearning to tell someone, too. Now, at last, it’s out: Harold wears elevated shoes, he isn’t as big as he seems. Lala didn’t know it until after they were married, and even then she found out only by accident. Where was he right now, the lying bastard? She telephoned the newspaper and found out the rates for classified advertisements seeking lost dogs, jotting down all this information, and hanging up the telephone. It rang. Could it be Harold? Yes, to inquire about the dog he’d phone back. For a sick or broken-hearted daughter he might call back late in the afternoon, or forget altogether, but for the dog he’d call back pronto; unless, thought Lala, it’s mother, and she answered the telephone, and it was Harold.
She reported the rates to him, and he deliberated. He wished her to know that all this expense was going to cost somebody something (probably her, she reasoned), although it was he, not she, who considered the dog a necessity, and it was she, now, who could very well get along entirely without that dog or any other, as she plainly said. “Harold, I don’t have to advertise in the newspaper if you’re going to take all this out on me. I don’t care a fig for the dog.”
“Care a what?” he asked.
“Care a fig,” she said.
“That stuff,” he said.
“Where are you?” Lala asked. “I feel reasonably sure you’re not in your office.”
“Where would I be?” he asked in reply. “Of course I’m at the office. Maybe not this moment. I’m around town. I’m in and out all day.”
“I can hear the lie in your voice,” she said.
“That’s a hell of a way to talk when I’m so busy,” Harold said. Then his tone changed. Lala guessed that someone had entered his presence, wherever he was, whom Harold wished to impress. Could it be a woman? His voice assumed command — notice that Harold’s the boss around here. He wasn’t talking for Lala’s ear but for someone else’s ear. “Do everything,” he said, “turn every stone. Advertise. Never mind the rates. I don’t give a damn what they say. I’ll take it all the way up the line. Get him back.”
“What kind of a life is this we lead?” she blurted.
“What?” he asked.
“Then you want me to go ahead,” she said.
“Move on it full steam,” he commanded. “Ignore all costs, saturate the media.”
Yes, wouldn’t that sound good to somebody listening, somebody who had just walked in on Harold wherever he was? Wow, powerful Harold, what a man, ignoring costs, barking commands, turning every stone, saturating the media, and as Lala hung up the telephone her eye fell upon a statement in the newspaper by the wife of one of the astronauts, who said, “This space business is the most exciting thing going on in the world.”
Lala could scratch that girl’s eyes out! Undoubtedly “this space business” was “the most exciting thing going on” in the house of that particular astronaut (the interview occurred before the mechanical crisis), but in the world? — no, never, Lala would never consent to such a slovenly, selfish, egocentric idea. “Egocentric bitch,” she muttered to the photograph of the astronaut’s wife, dialing the Chronicle. “The most exciting thing in the world is me and my girls,” she announced to a large group of newspapermen (and newspaperwomen) and radio men and women holding microphones before her face, and television men and women grinding out film showing Mrs. Harold Ferne, the former Louisa McCoy, commenting on the sensational event which Fate had devised for her — the loss of one German Shepherd dog christened Paprika, and all that was yet to follow this day, beginning with Lala on the microphone (i.e., telephone). Who was that egocentric bitch, wife of that astronaut, who dared to think that her life was “the most exciting thing going on?” Lala deeply resented her. Was that bitch sitting home waiting for a phone call from her mother? Did that bitch wonder where her husband was? No, she knew (not knowing, however, if he were alive or dead), he was landing in the ocean if his radio tuned in again. Why should all the world watch him? She’d scratch out that bitch’s eyes — here scratching the newspaper photograph with her fingernails while waiting for the Chronicle to answer the telephone, which it did, the lady saying at the other end, “Chronicle, good morning,” whereupon Lala screamed, cried, shrieked into the telephone: “Chronicle, you bitch, you bitch, I’ll scratch out your eyes. I’ll bomb your ass, you bitch,” but before Lala could add to those remarks the Chronicle operator disconnected herself.
Of all things, she thought. Consider what you’ve done at the expense of your darling daughters, for you cannot now call the newspaper and place the advertisement seeking Paprika; indulging some sudden impulse of your own, you have sacrificed the happiness of your beloved daughters. If you’ve done it once you’ll do it again. You are a wicked woman. These things she told herself.
And yet, having done what she had done, she didn’t feel wicked. In the past she had contemplated such an act, and she had read about such things, and she had even been on the point of doing such a thing, but she had never done it. And now she had done it impulsively — “impulse buying,” Harold called it. Sometimes Harold rented a fleet of cars to a man who had only stopped by to check prices. Where was Harold now? He wasn’t at the office — he practically admitted that. She’d call the Chronicle right back. That would be clever. The Chronicle operator would never suspect her, for surely she’d never think a person with such an obscene tongue would be so brazen as to call right back to place an advertisement. Therefore Lala called back, and the lady said at the other end, “Chronicle, good morning,” quite as if nothing had happened. Of course it might not even be the same operator. Harold’s bowling shoes were lying there.
“Classified ads,” said Lala.
“Classified,” said the operator. “Thank you,” and presumably the operator was transferring the call to the classified advertising department, although Lala, as she waited, became slightly uneasy. Why were they taking so long? Were they tracking her down? And what would they do if they discovered that the perpetrator of the previous obscene impulsive call was none other than the formerly respected Mrs. Harold Ferne, and made an example of her, as the Chronicle “made an example” of anyone caught stealing coins from the street-corner Chronicle cashboxes — a crime the Chronicle appeared to consider more heinous than any other kind or type of crime committed anywhere in the world by anyone. Might the Chronicle not therefore consider a crime against its lady at the switchboard equally serious, and pursue and prosecute the criminal, and spread the criminal’s name and photograph across their newspaper time after time, day after day, for the information and delight of all the former friends of the formerly respected former Miss Louisa (Lala) McCoy of St. Rose Academy? Wouldn’t that just kill her mother? And what if she were sent to jail, “made an example” of, given a stiff term in a maximum security penitentiary where every sort of unpleasant behavior occurred among criminal women? Who would care for her daughters?
Were the guards male or female? Who fixed things? Lady plumbers? Not likely. Therefore gentlemen plumbers would be coming around to her cell now and then to fix her toilet, which perhaps she would have deliberately (knowing Lala) sabotaged to gain the attention of the gentleman plumber. Perhaps by the time she was sentenced and remanded a law would be passed permitting conjugal visits by spouses. Such a thing was rather too scheduled for Lala’s taste, although in some ways it would be a better way of having Harold than having him here at home on his schedule, at his convenience, at his damn whim, which meant in the main not having Harold at all: he was depleted most of the time. He talked a great fuck down at Harold’s Fleet Rental, no doubt. Listen, all she wanted was a kind of service, never mind love; she had a gardener, a plumber, an electrician, a mechanic for her BMW, they didn’t expect her to love them and she didn’t expect them to love her, and she wouldn’t ask anything in the way of love, either, from her regular neighborhood fucking service, just come around promptly when the order was placed and do the job and send the bill.
Harold’s Penis Rental
No. - 1
Terms - cash
Remarks
Salesman - Jim
“Classified,” said a voice, but this was the voice of a man.
“Classified?” asked Lala.
“Yes I am,” said the man’s voice with humor.
“I was expecting a woman’s voice,” said Lala.
“Most people do,” said the man. “May I help you?”
Was he a detective? Was this a plot to trap the voice of the lady who telephoned obscenely to the switchboard? “I want to place an advertisement for a lost dog,” Lala said.
“Did you lose it or find it?” the man asked, whose name was James Berberick. His name is already familiar to us. You don’t remember? Oh yes, we espied him last night at the hour of the bomb scare — “Oh yes, by the way, notice there, among the shuffling crowd, another James — James Berberick — known in one way to Luella, known in another to Brown, unknown to Officer James Phelps, whose first name he shares. . . .”
“Lost,” said Lala.
“Let me ask you a second question,” said James Berberick. “How long has it been missing?”
“We noticed him gone this morning.”
“Then let me make still an additional suggestion,” James Berberick said. “If it’s only since this morning that it’s been gone just wait awhile before you put an ad in the paper. It might come back. It might be on the way back right this minute, trotting up the street without a care in the world.”
“Might,” said Lala, “but I want to put an ad in right now.”
“As you wish,” Berberick said. “Don’t think I don’t love having your ad. But if the ad appears you must be charged for it even though.”
“Even though what?” Lala inquired.
“Even though your cat comes back,” Berberick said.
“Dog,” she said.
“Try not to be in a super-hurry,” he said, “because you might wish to cancel.”
“I don’t wish to cancel,” she said. “I want to put an ad in right now” — trying to sound a little bit like Harold, for when Harold said right now people knew he meant right now. “Right now,” she said, “today’s paper.”
“Tomorrow’s paper,” Berberick said. “Today’s paper is already out.”
Of course, yes, she had today’s paper right there on her lap with the eyes of the astronaut’s wife scratched out. “That’s what I meant.”
“I am James Berberick,” he said. Knowing himself definitely to be about to do business he formally announced himself.
“Can you take down the wording of the ad now?” she asked.
“To whom shall we bill this?” he asked.
“I am Mrs. Harold Ferne,” she said, matching his formality.
“Spelling it how?” he inquired “F-e-r-n like the plant?”
“Pronounced like the plant,” she said, “but with an e on the end.”
“You are Mrs. Harold Ferne with an e on the end,” he amusingly said, “you live at Number Five Eagle Street, your telephone number is 431-9949, and your accurate weight is four hundred and seventeen pounds.”
“Marvelous, all but the weight,” she said. “How did you do it?”
“We have our little undercover agents down here,” he said. “It’s a trade secret.”
“Maybe you can find my husband,” she softly said.
He heard her, but he did not respond. He stored this information for possible subsequent retrieval. “Now about the wording of the ad,” he said, “if you give me the information I’ll compose the ad. Tell me the name of the beast. Dog, wasn’t it? Lady or gentleman dog? Answers to the name of what?”
“Answers to anything and everything,” she said. “Paprika. Male thoroughbred German Shepherd. He’s two years old and has bad breath,” she added, caught up in James Berberick’s rhythm.
“In what vicinity was he lost?”
“Say Eagle and Yukon,” she said.
“What’s a big cross street near there?”
“Maybe Eighteenth,” she said.
“Vicinity Eighteenth and Yukon?” he asked.
“Yukon doesn’t go through,” she said. “Say Market and Short, that’s better.”
“Terrific,” he said. “Lost. German Shepherd. Male. Vicinity Market and Eighteenth, I’ve decided. Answers to Paprika. Reward. Phone 431-9949.”
“Thoroughbred,” said Lala. This man’s voice produced ripples upon her skin. It was a far more genuine rippling than the rippling of the recorded voice of Lost Dog, and she was eager to test its staying power. Let it develop. She hoped it would not fade or fail. If it were promising she’d hold him on the line as long as possible.
“You didn’t say reward but I’m saying it. O.K.?”
“Say thoroughbred,” she said.
“Yes,” he evasively said.
“Will you put thoroughbred in?” she asked.
“Put thoroughbred in?” he inquired. “It’s redundant. Don’t you hate redundancy really? It will cost more, too, it’ll probably push you over on another line.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “Put it in.” Talk more and ripple me, she thought.
“I really deplore doing so,” he said. He was a bit impatient with her, and he was firm, too, as if he had a right to say how the wording of an advertisement must be handled. He was something of an artist — not averse to pleasing the customer, but filled also with the desire to live according to his own best standards. This little corner of the world he could control. If the newspaper as a whole was slovenly, so be it, everybody knew it, but in that way it was only like the whole world itself, of which he had seen more than serenity required, which had corrupted him, caused him to lose his own control, caused him to destroy, kill, be man-killer, woman-killer, child-killer, and finally remorseful. Here at least he reigned, and he would therefore eliminate the word thoroughbred altogether. That’s what he’d do. Let her beef later. Often he changed the wording of things slightly to suit his idea of perfection, and he very rarely heard of any customer’s complaining; people tended to lose interest in an advertisement once it had worked its purpose. She was debating this thing overlong, he felt.
“Explain why,” she insisted. Make me ripple, she thought.
“Either an ad works or it doesn’t work. I don’t see why we’re talking all this super-much about it,” he said. “If you say that your dog is a German Shepherd then he already is a thoroughbred, so you don’t need to add to it.”
“You’re a perfectionist,” she said.
“You’re stuck with my perfectionism,” he cheerfully said, who was a mass-murderer, too, perhaps not “the greatest mass murderer of recent time,” but nevertheless a man with a score. On that side of himself he was less than perfection. “All right, I’ll put it in, but very reluctantly.”
“Read it back to me,” she said.
In the form he read it back to her it contained the word thoroughbred. But he’d not keep it there. “How’s that?” he asked.
“Then we’re set to go ahead?” she asked.
“All set,” he firmly said.
Fearing that their business together was done she hurriedly said, “Explain to me about rewards. How much is an appropriate reward?”
“How big is your dog?” he asked.
“Do you know a lot about rewards?” she asked.
“I know a lot about a lot of things,” he replied, hearing in her voice a touch of desperation.
“Aren’t you just a little bit conceited?” she asked, but she asked it with a smile in her voice which he could easily see (so to speak) at his end of the line; and he, after all, claiming to “know a lot about a lot of things” (which was true, for he lived intensely, fiercely, and fast), had been smiling, too, and being very sweet to her, and meanwhile with a dark pencil scratching out the word thoroughbred and rehearsing to himself his courtroom reply, “Your Honor, I had thought we agreed to delete the redundancy. Sir, I saved the lady money. . . .”
“I’ve been called conceited,” he said, “but I’d rather be called ‘James.’”
“James what?” she asked. Certain men’s voices did this to her, causing her skin to ripple — certain men’s voices pitched at just the perfect level, the absolute timbre. Of course they didn’t know that they were doing it, and she didn’t dare tell them, but when they did it — ah, what rippling! all up and down her back and around between her thighs, it was a regular figure eight you might say if you remember your ice-skating days; some men’s voices just had that perfect touch, and this man was one, and Lala rippled all up and down and around in a figure eight, thinking as fast as she could of some way to induce this man to talk further. “Tell me more,” she said. “Recite the Gettysburg Address.”
He laughed. “I can see that you’re in a good humor this morning.”
“I’m not really,” she said. “I’m in a miserable humor. The dog . . . my daughters . . . my husband’s unlocatable on Tuesday . . . anonymous calls in the night . . . and we have a homeless waif on the street locked out of his house.”
“We become personally fond of our pets,” said James. “Maybe your husband ran off with your dog.”
“Expand,” she said. Let it ripple. “Do you have any pets?”
“I don’t have any pets to speak of,” he said by way of expansion, “because I’m away from my apartment all day and I think it’s wrong to keep an animal cooped up. That’s why they bark all day. Have I expanded enough?” She was an odd one, this one, just plain lonely out there at Number Five Eagle Street, just killing the morning on the telephone, that’s how they do, these ladies, machines do all the work.
“Where is your apartment?” she asked. A kind of tingling deliciously joined the rippling. “Go on, go on.”
“You’re a great listener,” he said, searching the streets for an apartment house he’d like to live in. “I have a nice little set-up, nothing grand, in the Fox Plaza.”
“There’s a certain time of day,” she said.
“When what?”
“When I love to listen,” she said.
“Love?” he asked.
“Love to listen to certain people’s voices,” she confessed.
“If it does all this for you,” said James, “I ought to make you an album so you can hear my voice over and over.”
“It does do something for me,” she said.
“Such as what?” he asked, very assiduously writing words of no consequence on his order pad so that he might appear to his associates to be accepting classified advertising over the telephone. “In what way does it do anything for you?”
“It soothes me,” Lala said.
“In what way does it soothe you?” James asked.
“Don’t you think you’re getting rather personal?” Lala asked, but this displeased her, it sounded virtuous, girlish, it reminded her of her fat childhood; she wanted to get him “talking a blue streak” as her mother might say, get him really off on some long harangue, and soon, too, for in a few minutes it would all have passed because her special sensitivity to certain voices was often of short duration: she believed it was related to sleep and arising, bloodstream, blood sugar, and metabolism. Breakfast killed it. Harold in the house killed it. Fright or distraction killed it. “Read something to me,” she said. “I sneaked out to a protest one day and a minister read the names of the dead. It took several hours.”
“That must have been soothing,” James said. “These are the war dead? I’m glad my name wasn’t on it. Luckily I didn’t die. I killed instead.”
“Were you there?” she asked. “Soothing is the word, I’ll say. Tell me about your war experiences from beginning to end.”
“You must be kidding,” he said.
“Read something to me,” she said. “Read me the speeches of Senator Fulbright, talking about soothing voices. Were you over in the battle zone?”
“I almost won the Medal of Honor,” he said.
“Tell me the story of your life,” she said.
“I was born,” he began . . . but at this point a cautionary idea came to him, a fear overtook him, really: he oughtn’t to be doing this, you know. He was supposed to be taking advertisements on the telephone, not speaking with ladies irrelevantly by way of soothing them. Let them go get a massage for that. That wasn’t what he was paid for — to soothe the lonesome ladies — although he might start getting paid for it soon, if things went right. He had a few grand fantastic immediate prospects, or at any rate one grand fantastic immediate prospect. Berberick, he thought, your fortune is made with your magical telephone voice, or else (he thought) you have simply run into an exceptionally horny, hard-up, and desperate lady. For as long as James could remember girls had been reticent, but now they seemed to be “coming out of their shells,” so to speak. Times were changing. Religion was declining. Or perhaps it was these powerful colognes he wore. “I really shouldn’t be talking to you like this,” he said, abruptly assuming a most businesslike voice. “I shall insert your advertisement, madam. I hope that will be satisfactory. This is a company telephone, you know. Thank you for calling the Chronicle.”
“Don’t hang up,” she said. “Keep going.”
“Yes, they’ll keep me going right out of this office in a minute,” he said. “My supervisor is watching me right now. He’s looking at me suspiciously.”
“Who’s your supervisor?” Lala inquired. “What kind of man is he?”
“He’s very decent,” said James, “but he keeps us working hard, and we’re not supposed to chat with customers socially like this, we’re supposed to take their ads and get off.”
“Then I have another ad to put in,” said Lala.
“Keen,” he said. “That’s different. In what classification?”
“Suggest a classification,” she said.
“You’re mad,” he said.
“Don’t hang up,” she said.
“We never do,” he said. “We’re supposed to let the customer hang up first.”
“Suppose I never hang up.”
“I never encountered that problem,” he said.
“You’re encountering it now,” she said.
“It’s a new experience,” he said. “I never had this happen before and I don’t know what to do about it. I could call my supervisor.”
“Don’t do that,” she said.
“I won’t,” he said.
“Tell me about your supervisor,” she said. “Describe him for me.”
“He’s got sort of straight hair, slightly wavy,” said James, even now, as he talked, passing his hand through his own hair for a sense of it. This lady wanted to hear a voice. All right, he’d supply that little thing for her. “He’s a very neat-looking person and he always smells terrific. He has a smooth but rugged skin. He used to shave with an electric razor but now he finishes up with a blade followed by the best after-shave lotion he can afford, going as far as Caswell-Massey if he’s in the mood. Jade East Coral? Why not? You only live once. Squirt a little on your handkerchief, too. Ask the woman who kisses your cheek. He used to have . . .” but here he checked himself.
“Used to have what?” Lala inquired.
James Berberick deeply hesitated. “He used to have a somewhat bad odor,” he timidly said. “I realize that now,” touching here upon an experience he had never related to anyone before, for it had been mean, shattering, exhausting. In the end, of course, he emerged better for it — that is to say, James emerged better for it; no “supervisor” existed. “I was out of a job for a year right after the military, not that I looked awfully hard for one. I didn’t mind taking it easy for a while. But after a while you yearn for more money. If I had a job I’d have had the Medal of Honor, too, by the way, but old President Johnson at that time, before he’d give me the Medal of Honor he sent out a little expedition to check up on me to see if I’d embarrass him in any way, and they ended up refusing to give me the Medal of Honor because I was unemployed at the time.” Was this narrative soothing to her? At her end of the line she was silent. “Are you there?” he asked.
“You bet I am,” said Lala.
“Anyhow,” he said, “I went to the newspaper and got a job in the city room, and it was a good job, too, as copy boy, work your way up, be a reporter one of these days, editor, advertising executive, magnate, own an international chain, but for some reason or other I just wasn’t doing well, and they were about to fire me. You can guess how they felt about that — about to fire a war hero, virtually a winner of the Medal of Honor, right? But they just couldn’t keep me there, and I’ll tell you why.” He spoke softly now, intimately with the mouthpiece of the telephone. “Because I smelled bad,” he said.
“You’re making it up,” she said.
“I wish I were,” he said, “but it must have been true. My smell was acceptable to myself, but repugnant to others. Instead of firing me they sent me to Classified. Classified’s in another building altogether, that’s how bad I smelled; at Fifth and Mission they preferred I work at Third and Market, Medal of Honor candidate or not. A bad smell is a bad smell. Well, I wouldn’t have lasted long here, either, I’d have been bounced upstairs and down except one day I received a letter in the mail.”
“This is all you?” Lala asked. “Or your supervisor?” She wasn’t inquiring, really, she was only punctuating him, stimulating him, keeping him going, for his voice was marvelously affecting her, soothing her, producing wave upon wave of rippling around and around and around in figure eights.
“My supervisor,” he said. “Smelly Leo we called him, when all of a sudden one day the crisis was over. He found out about himself when he received the letter in the mail.”
“What letter?” she naturally asked.
“Telling him he smelled bad.”
“From whom?” Lala asked.
“I never found out,” said James.
“What did it say?” she asked.
“I have it home,” he said. “I live in your neighborhood, I’ll drop around and show it to you.” He lived three houses from the house where he was born, at Eureka & Twenty-Second Streets.
“I thought you lived in the Fox Plaza,” she said.
“You’d have to see it to believe it,” he said.
My Very Dear James Berberick:
I noticed that you’ve been transferred down to Classified. I don’t know if you know why, but I like you very much so I’ll tell you something about yourself. You smell bad. People call you “Smelly Jim.” You are having on-the-job trouble now, getting bounced around from department to department, and you will have such troubles forever unless you take some precautions against your bad B.O. (Body Odor.) In the old days Lifebuoy Soap was recommended. I don’t know what they recommend now. Heed me. This letter may save you many years of personal frustration.
AN ACQUAINTANCE
“Just summarize it,” she said.
“It simply said, ‘Jim old boy, stop smelling, take precautions, or you’ll never hold a job,’ and I began to realize that that was what the trouble was, and why I was getting bounced around from floor to floor and building to building.”
“You were?” Lala asked. “Or your supervisor?”
“I were,” he said. His error twisted his tongue. “I mean he decided — my supervisor decided — if he wanted the job he’d better start smelling better. The job requires a lot of talking to the public, and you better start smelling decent when you do.”
“How can they smell you over the telephone?” she asked.
“It isn’t all telephone,” he explained. “It’s at the counter, too. People come in. It doesn’t matter if they smell bad. After all, they’re the customer, right? The customer can smell bad if he wants to. Some of them, though, you wonder, you really do, how in hell are they going to find a job, smelling as bad as they do. You want to tell them, ‘Don’t take an ad, take a bath,’ and once in a while I do because somebody was kind enough to tell me once. But it hurt. It really did hurt. I’ll never forget the day I got that letter. I still can’t open up that mailbox without thinking, ‘Save me from another bombshell like that, because if it’s in there, never mind, I don’t want it, I don’t need it, right?’ One of the most significant sentences in that letter — it just floored me when I came to it: ‘You smell bad.’ You know, that’s not exactly a flattering thing to read about yourself when you get home from work and open up your mail.”
“You?” she asked.
“Supervisor,” he said.
“I keep getting mixed up,” Lala said.
“Slips of the tongue,” said James. He had never told anyone of this amazing event in his life, and he was stunned that he had told it now. She had said, “Tell me the story of your life,” and this was it, he supposed. Not long ago he had killed many people, wandered through the jungle, suffered hunger, kept his wits about him, and narrowly survived, but the really big thing about him, in his own estimation, was his one-time bad smell. “All right, you wanted it,” he said.
“It’s your voice,” she said.
“I really do turn you on,” he said, laughing in a pleased way.
“Then you got the letter from the company,” she said.
“Not from the company,” he said. “I don’t know who it was from. Whom. I don’t know whom it was from to this day. That’s the agony of it. If I knew whom it was from I wouldn’t know whether to kill him or kiss him.”
“Or her,” she said.
“Possibly,” he said. “From internal evidence it sounded like somebody that knew how things were arranged at the paper, but you can’t tell.”
“Somebody who works at the Chronicle possibly,” she said. “I’m beginning to think I’d like to see the complete text. Do you have the original?”
“I’ve got it home,” he said. “It really changed my life, I believe, and when something changes your life you save the original. It certainly saved my job. I’m going to take it and have it framed one of these days and hang it on the wall like a picture.”
“You or your supervisor?” she inquired.
“Well,” he said, “frankly, me.”
“I suspected so,” said Lala. “You were telling about yourself in the guise of telling about someone else.”
“It’s a defense mechanism,” he said.
“I do it myself sometimes, so I guess it’s all right,” she said.
“I’ll bring it and show it to you,” he said.
“Just drop it in the mail,” she replied.
“I’m going out that way anyway to a framing place on Market Street. Manasek. They’re in the next block from the Finnish Baths. They do excellent work and very artistically.”
“But you don’t dare come here,” she said.
“I can’t go on like this,” said James, his friendliness and his cordiality instantly vanishing. “I gave you all this time on the telephone, don’t you think the next step is a logical meeting face to face? This is a house of business. This is a company telephone. Thank you for phoning the Chronicle.”
“My mother is trying to get me anyhow,” said Lala.
“You expressed an interest in the text of the letter, madam. I’d rather show it to you than mail it.”
“Mail it,” she said.
“It’s too bad we don’t have Vista-Phone 150,” he said. “Then I could show it to you over the phone.”
“They’ll have it soon,” said Lala.
“Then you can see whom you’re talking to,” he said.
“It could be an awful disappointment,” she said, remembering from her girlhood the problem of sounding one way on the telephone and being another way in actuality — “in the flesh,” you might say — back in those dead (but not forgotten) days when she had been a fat girl with a beautiful voice, and on the telephone charged boys with the most intense desire to see her, who, when they came at last and saw her, found her to be a serious disappointment — not the fattest of the fat; not gross; not obese; but much too fat nevertheless, no “getting around it” (so to speak), no disguising it; and there was always that awful moment when disappointment made itself evident upon the faces of hopeful boys who only the night before clutched their pillows, calling them “Lala.”
Then along came Harold Ferne, for whom all this beef was a welcome eyeful — it could have been more, more, more, more for all of Harold; he loved weight, he loved things you could really smash up against. Why, for God’s sake, at twenty she was already as big and as fat as her mother, whereas a lot of girls didn’t even begin to pack on the poundage until they were thirty-five or forty.
“Of course it could,” said James, “that’s why this Vista-Phone 150 is going to prevent a great many false alarms, if you know what I mean. Did you ever see one in action? I saw a demonstration a couple months ago.”
“My mother is probably calling,” said Lala, rippling divinely, she couldn’t go on. “I’ve got so much to do. No sense torturing myself. I’ve got to pick up my husband’s bowling shoes.”
“My other lines are all ringing anyhow,” said James.
These simple lies they told! Somehow they needed to do so. Such are the ways of love. Why did Lala insist that her mother was calling, when in fact her mother’s schedule was erratic on Tuesday? Maybe your husband ran off with your dog. Maybe she ought to ignore her mother once in a while, just once in a while be gone or let the telephone ring and ring, and cry to the madly ringing instrument, “Ring on, mother, I’ll not answer you today.” Oh, but you can imagine how she’d hear from her mother next time: “Lala, I know you were there because you couldn’t have been anywhere else. . . .”
“Couldn’t have been anywhere else? Why couldn’t I have been anywhere else? I’m widely wanted, mother. I’m not fat any more.”
“You must have heard it ring. Why didn’t you answer it, Lala? What were you doing, may I ask?”
“Masturbating,” said Lala in her daydream. Oh, wouldn’t that be a little report for mother! Wouldn’t that stop mother from asking so damn many questions once in a while!
“Are you big on bowling?” James Berberick asked.
“I’d like to see a demonstration,” she said. This Vista-Phone 150 gave her ideas. If you had one in your bathtub you could really expose yourself in a big way. She had a kind of yearning for that. You could dial and dial and dial and if a woman answered hang up, but if a man answered, and if he was reasonably good-looking, you could just lie there and expose yourself by Vista-Phone 150. Don’t make the bath too sudsy. The trouble was, she never carried out such things. It was idealistic only. She was an awful idealist, she supposed, but she never had the courage of her convictions. True, this morning she directed a mild obscenity to the Chronicle operator, but that was as far as Lala had ever gone in the way of social action. You know, with Vista-Phone 150 they would need to add to the material up front in the telephone book:
Annoyance Calls. The laws of the State provide that whoever telephones another person and addresses to or about such other person any lewd, lascivious, or indecent words or language, or whoever telephones another person repeatedly for the purpose of exposing her body in any lewd, lascivious, indecent, and dirty manner such as showing off her breasts into the telephone or turning around and exposing her ass to the telephone shall be fined in any sum not exceeding $500, to which may be added imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding six months. . . .
Can’t you see Harold paying out that five hundred dollars? “You skinny bitch, you’re nuts,” he’d say, for he thought you should avoid being caught at nutty things. “You’re a mother of two little girls for Christ’s sake,” he’d say. “Do you expect them to grow up in that kind of illegal atmosphere?”
“Are you there?” James Berberick asked.
“You better take your other lines,” she said.
“It’s O.K., my assistants will take them,” he said, although he had no other lines, precisely. All lines were his, but none was his own. In Classified all ad-takers took all lines as the calls came in, or ran to the counter when the faces of customers appeared there — mythical lines, mythical assistants, mythical supervisor.
“I guess I wouldn’t mind Vista-Phone,” said Lala.
“You can dim it down if you want to,” said James, “in case for example you’re not quite presentable and don’t want to be seen.”
“It could be,” she said.
“I’ll bring you that letter,” he said.
“Mail it,” said Lala, “don’t bring it.”
“I’ll bring it or send it,” he said.
“All right,” she said.
“Your ad’s in,” he said, for even as they talked he completed the order form and dropped it in the box, and saw the boy clear the box, and dropped the first carbon copy into the proper box for first carbon copies, and James himself retained the second carbon copy, which bore Mrs. Ferne’s name, address, and telephone number, rolling it loosely into the shape of a tube and placing it carelessly in the breast pocket of his shirt, somewhat precariously, as a matter of fact, as if he were unconcerned whether it flew from his pocket and was lost. Let Fate decide, he felt.