Among Lala’s “private papers in the attic, thousands of items of various sorts,” were receipts for paid bills for ten years past, Louisa’s and Catherine’s schoolwork from the beginning of their careers, souvenirs relating to Lala’s own short life of outside work (as a fat hostess for Pacific Southwest), and letters from friends, acquaintances, and relatives, such as her mother. Iris, who was beside Lala in the attic now, searching with her through these masses of paper accumulated and preserved through the years. “What for?” asked Iris.
“So I’d have them when I wanted them,” said Lala.
“You’ll never find it,” Iris said, who never expressed confidence in anything Lala undertook.
“I’ve found other things,” said Lala. “Sometimes you don’t find what you’re looking for, but you find something else.”
“Who sent it to you?” Iris asked.
“That’s what I don’t know,” Lala said. “It was anonymous. That’s the meaning of anonymous, mother.”
“I know what anonymous means,” said Iris. “Do you think I’m an idiot? We might send an anonymous letter up the street to Christopher’s parents. There’s an idea for you.”
“No, I don’t think you’re an idiot,” said Lala, sitting cross-legged on the floor surrounded by thousands of pieces of paper shaken from boxes. “I’ll know it if I see it,” she said. “It was white. The envelope was addressed to Harold. It’s really frightening to get an anonymous letter. Did you ever get one?”
“That’s why we should send one to Christopher’s parents,” said Iris. “To frighten them to death. To make them take care of him,” Officer Phelps’s whitened neck, freshly shaved, persisted in her mind. “No, I never received an anonymous letter,” she said, although she had; it was years ago, a very brief message, hardly a letter, in the small city where she was raised, and she remembered the sensation with perfect recall, deploring the memory, offended even to this day not by the letter itself but by the memory of the sensation it had produced in her. The letter was this:
FAT WHORE
screaming at her from the page, leaping out. Instantly she had lit a match to the page without ever truly destroying it or the memory of its sensation. The message had been written in True Blue ink, but its description of her was inaccurate. She was no whore. True, she was “running around,” as one might say; always had; but a whore failed of love, whereas Iris, as far as she knew, loved every boy or man she ran with; and a whore was promiscuous, whereas Iris ran only with one boy or one man at one time.
“Then you’re lucky,” Lala said.
“I never did anything to provoke one,” said Iris virtuously. “I behaved myself.” For a moment her mind dwelled on Harold’s bowling shoes on the television set in the living room. “You’re sweating,” she said.
“I always sweat when I sit on the floor,” said Lala.
“All that paper is a fire hazard,” said Iris.
“That’s why I keep it up here,” said Lala, who was under the impression that fire burned upward only — an attic fire might burn itself up, but spare the house below.
“That’s wise,” her mother said, for it was Iris who had told Lala years and years ago that things burn upward only. Only the roof would burn. They believed it.
“Here it is!” said Lala. She found the letter at last, in a white envelope addressed to Harold, and she handed it to her mother, who read it:
My Very Dear German Shepherd Dog Owner:
Your dog barks continuously and keeps us awake. You had better muzzle him and keep him quiet or we will come around with a handful of sleeping pills and he’ll be still forever.
DAY SLEEPER
“Then what’s poor Mr. Brown doing running around trying to find him for?” Iris asked. “He’ll only find a poisoned dog.”
“Notice how he signs off,” said Lala. “Day sleeper. Does that ring any bells in your head?”
“What bells should it ring?”
“Mr. Brown bells,” said Lala.
“I don’t get you. He seems very nice.”
“He is,” said Lala, as she began to gather the papers lying about the floor of the attic, squatting and gathering up all the papers within the radius of her arms, then waddling along like a frog to the vicinity of another mass of papers.
Iris smiled, for this was how Lala had always cleared a floor, waddling like a frog from one pile of work to the next. “I only said seems very nice,” said Iris. “They always seem very nice until they get what they’re after.”
“You know, mother,” said Lala, rising with effort to her feet (her legs were stiff from having squatted so long on the floor), “men aren’t always after you the way you always told me they were.”
“I suppose it depends on the person,” Iris proudly said.
“Not after me, anyhow,” said Lala meekly. “He saw the police car out of his window and came across the street and got trapped in the whole business against his will, I’m sure. Unless I’m wrong and he wrote the letter.”
“A man doesn’t run around looking for a woman’s dog without some attitude toward the woman,” said Iris. “If he’s poisoned maybe he’ll find the body somewhere.”
“They gather them up awfully fast,” Lala said. “I’d like to know if he’s dead or alive, that’s all. If he’s dead I’d like to know it and not keep going around thinking he might turn up any minute. Of course, if he was poisoned, why take him away? They could have poisoned him in the middle of the night. That’d be ghastly to wake up to.”
“What’s his wife like?” Iris asked.
“She’s very sweet,” said Lala. “I don’t see her much. I voted right in back of her this morning. She’s in real estate. I wonder if you have to go down and identify a dog’s body.”
“I don’t think you want to look at a whole bunch of dead dogs,” her mother said. “I can’t make out the postmark. When did this come?”
“Before the phone calls started,” Lala said. “Paprika was a lot more trouble than he was worth, God love him.”
“He’s handsome,” Iris said.
“He has a rugged look,” said Lala.
“Because he wasn’t shaved,” Iris replied. If Lala appeared to admire a man, Iris denounced him. It was a mother’s habit.
“How old would you guess he is?” Lala inquired. Her mother was expert at guessing ages.
“Don’t go getting ideas,” Iris replied.
“About what?” Lala asked. It was true that she often had “ideas” about gentlemen, especially in the morning at the height of her rippling. They passed with the day, unless they increased. As for Mr. Brown, until today she had hardly noticed him. He was a quiet sort, slightly distinguished in her eyes since she had learned that he worked for the Chronicle: she was a sucker for artists. In the presence of her mother, however, she always denied having “ideas,” for Lala, in her mother’s presence, always reverted, so to speak, to her childhood, her girlhood, speaking only as a “good girl” should, to please her mother. Lala had yet to entertain her first suspicion that her mother was less than a “good girl” — that her mother was a very “bad girl” indeed.
Beneath Iris the sturdy ladder groaned. She descended carefully from the attic, lecturing as she came. “You’d better not be getting any ideas about a neighbor, though, or you’re in real trouble. If you get any ideas about anybody you’d better take them out of the neighborhood. People gossip like mad.”
“Since I never get out of the neighborhood much,” said Lala, tripping up the ladder again to switch off the light, “I don’t get many ideas except ideas I might see passing by the window. And this is a quiet neighborhood. Some big ideas I get in Safeway. There’s a very attractive checker at the cash register, lovely arms. One of the tellers at the Hibernia Bank turns me on.”
“You’re mad,” said Iris, but not with conviction, for she herself received all kinds of tormenting ideas in strange places where one was supposed to be attending to business: at Safeway as well as anywhere else, at Star Pharmacy, in the doctor’s office, at the gas station, in the beauty parlor. These young men with their hands in your hair! There ought to be places where young men put their hands elsewhere, too.
“Now that I found it what can I do with it?” Lala asked. She read the letter again, hearing it in Brown’s voice, especially the final phrase, “Day Sleeper.”
“Don’t tell me we climbed all the way up there for nothing,” said Iris, as if the attic were a mountain. “Show it to Officer Phelps.”
“Is he supposed to come back?”
“Call him back,” said Iris. “You’re a taxpayer.”
“Do they send the one you ask for?” Lala asked.
“One’s as good as another,” her mother said. “Here comes somebody,” she added, noticing through the window a gentleman advancing up the walk, pausing, however, to watch a lady pass by with her dog on a leash. The lady wore a squirrel coat. Since the lady’s hair was in curlers Iris imagined that she had dashed from the house for the dog’s sake mainly. The lady and the gentleman smiled at one another, the gentleman smiling first, the lady responding. The dog tugged at his leash. “He’s some sort of salesman,” Iris said. “Go get the door.”
Lala walked to the door.
“Don’t just fling it open,” her mother said, her eyes upon Harold’s bowling shoes on the television set. One shoe pointed north, the other south. Nobody could walk that way. She questioned whether they’d fit in her purse, considering the binoculars. A paper bag would help, but she had no paper bag and dared not ask for one. Well then, which would he prefer, shoes or binoculars? “Both,” he’d say, for Harold’s appetite was grand — he wanted it all, peeping and bowling and learning to read all in one day.
“How can anybody come in if I don’t fling it open?” Lala asked.
“If you were alone in the house, would you fling it open?”
“I’d ask through the glass,” Lala lied. She never feared to open the door. But now she asked through the glass, as if it were her normal procedure. Upon the glass a small sign read We Are A Girl Scout Family. “Who are you?” she asked.
He could not hear her, but he had certainly read her lips, and he had seen the steam of her tonsils imprint itself on the glass, so she was warm, anyhow, and plenty good-looking through the glass, and so was the lady in the squirrel coat, too, receding down the street. Now to see the rest of Mrs. Ferne!
GIRL WANTED. Warm preferred, steaming tonsils desireable, must love fucking at all hours with sophisticated well-smelling man age 27, near winner of Medal of Honor. Call Jim night or day 365 days.
“I brought it,” he called through the glass.
Brought what? Lala flung open the door. “Brought what?” she asked.
“The way you fling open that door,” her mother said, “not even knowing who it is . . . that’s how those eight nurses were murdered in Chicago.”
“Brought the letter,” he said. “It’s me. How are you? Any news on your dog?”
Who could this be? Lala had no idea. Perhaps he was a neighbor. Else how did he know about the dog? Word gets around. He wore a McGinley button, and she began, therefore, by disliking him. “Not a word,” she said. “What letter?”
“The letter I mentioned on the phone,” he said. “We like to follow up and see that the customer is satisfied. That’s why I’m here.”
“What did you get suckered into buying now?” Iris asked Lala.
“May I ask who you are?” Lala asked Jim.
“Berberick, Chronicle Classified,” he said.
Of course, of course. “Come in and meet my mother,” she said.
“You bet,” he said, stepping in. Now he’d never step out again, either. He was in her life forever.
“You certainly follow up fast,” said Lala to this fragrant fellow.
“What did you buy?” Iris asked.
“We advertised for Paprika,” said Lala.
“And now he’s here in person,” Iris sarcastically said. “You sure get the service.” She smiled at James Berberick’s transparency.
He knew that Iris knew him for whatever he might be up to. All right, he preferred it that way, all intention open, you needn’t go “beating about the bush” pretending you were somebody you weren’t, pretending you were selling something, pretending you came to retrieve a lost object — “Did I drop my pencil on your lawn?” “No, you didn’t drop your pencil on my lawn, and don’t stand so close to me.” “I’m not standing close to you.” “You certainly are standing close to me.” “What is close? Define the word close.” “Close is when you’re standing so close to me some part of your body is touching some part of mine.” Oh, those childhood conversations! Years later he realized it must have been his smell that caused people to encourage distance upon him. For his smell, for his pressing eagerness, his closeness, his snapping little girls’ elastics he’d always been in trouble with somebody’s big brother, always in a fright over some incident or other, always ducking down certain streets to avoid other streets, always striding quickly past the houses of known or possible enemies, or running . . . These gals are detectives, he thought. He was sure of that. If they weren’t detectives why were there two of them? Now Berberick, he warned himself, you better be as cagey as you can. You better make it plausible, convincing, and credible. They had a tape-recorder concealed somewhere, he was sure of that. Think fast. “I’ll tell you why she’s getting the service,” he said. “I’m running my own little check. I want to be a big man in Classified some day, so I want to give you the best service I can. Is that credible?”
“No,” said Iris.
Speak right up into their concealed recorder, James thought. “I want the good things of life,” he said. “I’m ambitious. That’s free enterprise.”
“What are the good things of life?” Iris asked.
“Mother,” said Lala, “this man didn’t come here to be cross-examined. This isn’t a trial.” He was attractive, Lala thought, and she tentatively rippled again, though it was late in the morning for rippling. “Did you put the word thoroughbred in?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said.
“Is it because of what I said to the operator?” Lala asked.
“Is what because?” Jim asked, a bit confused.
“What did you say to what operator?” Iris asked.
“Therefore if you’ll just help me by answering a few routine questions,” James said, “I’ll be mighty appreciative and on my way.”
“What’s the gimmick?” Iris asked.
No, they weren’t detectives. They were mother and daughter, and mother was a big one, too. “No gimmick,” he said, adding truly, “nobody was ever more sincere than I.”
“Mother’s always suspicious,” Lala said.
“Mother’s a suspicious character,” Jim said. He enjoyed word-play. The day they hanged him for rape and mass murder he’d say, “Give a fellow enough rope, I always say.” He took a pad from his pocket. “No gimmick, no selling, I’m only making a little survey of things to improve the quality of our service. I really am. I see you look doubtful.”
“You must think you’re talking to a couple of idiots,” said Iris.
“Why don’t we just watch and see?” said Lala to her mother. “Let him talk.” Yes, his voice affected her, as before, resuming its journey, its skating upon her skin, circling and winding, tracing its course downward from her shoulders, crossing her belly, spinning around her waist, circling her thighs, climbing her other side.
“I appreciate that,” he said to Lala. “Let’s just go along and see what I’m up to, if anything.”
“You’re up to no good,” said Iris.
“Mother, let’s see.”
“O.K.,” said James, “it was a lost dog, right? Then what made you think of advertising in the Chronicle, like who suggested it or did it naturally suggest itself?”
“How did it?” Lala asked. “It’s hard to remember how your mind works. Let me think. I guess it just suggested itself. I had to get an O.K. from Harold, though.”
“Harold meaning your husband,” said Jim.
“Right-o,” she said.
“Have you received any response to the ad?” he asked.
“The paper isn’t out yet,” said Lala. “Is it?”
“You’re a phony if I ever saw one,” said Iris to Jim.
“You don’t believe in me, do you?” Jim inquired.
“You’re as phony as a three-dollar bill,” said Iris. “Sooner or later somebody’s going to find out what you’re up to. Don’t you know that? We don’t care, do we, Lala? But somebody will.”
“Lala,” he said. “That’s a fantastic name.” Girls’ names were magic to him, and often he spoke them over and over, especially the names of girls or women he had had “love affairs” with. He preferred the sounds of the names of girls to the sweetest music in the world. Whereas some people, for example, sang fine songs in the shower, James Berberick in his shower recited the names of girls, and their names summoned to his sight visions of their bodies. “Lala,” he said again, feeling his tongue upon his teeth as he said it.
“Call me Iris,” Iris said.
“Lala and Iris,” he said. “Are you really her mother? I can’t believe it. You don’t look it.” He jotted words upon his pad. “Will you keep me informed of any response you do receive to your ad?”
“Why not?” Lala asked.
“Do you consider the rate reasonable?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“Does not consider rate reasonable,” James said, writing those words on his pad, and asking, “Why is it unreasonable?”
“It’s too much,” Lala said.
Iris laughed. She turned on the television. “Let’s see how the moon men are coming,” she said. “Lala, may I ask what Harold’s bowling shoes are doing on the TV?”
“That bitch,” said Lala. “That astronaut’s wife. That’s what got me so mad. When she answered the phone I just blurted out everything that was in me. I don’t even remember what I said.”
“To whom?” her mother asked.
“The Chronicle operator,” Lala explained to her mother. Then she asked Jim, “If I apologize to her can’t you drop the charges?”
“For what?” he asked.
“For whatever I said,” said Lala. “It was obscene.”
“What in the world for?” her mother asked. “Obscene to the Chronicle operator? What did she do to you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with a little obscenity,” Jim said.
“It’s illegal on the telephone,” said Lala.
“You should hear what I hear,” Jim said, “especially when I quote the rates.”
“Lala has a short temper,” her mother said.
“Exactly what did you say?” James asked. This was getting good. If only he could get her to say the obscenity she had said his lunch hour would be made. Obscenities on the tongues of lovely women excited him, filled him with enthusiasm, for there was no telling where obscenity might lead; obscenity was a hint that a woman’s mind was open, that not all things were propriety with her, and open minds led to open actions, as he had learned; the imagination of things led to their accomplishment, the contemplation of possibilities led to the possibilities themselves. None of the adventurous things he had done in his life had ever occurred without his having imagined them first, or dreamed about them, or read about them, or heard them discussed among his fellows. He was open to suggestion from every quarter, including the quarters of his own mind, he was his own tempter. They’re luring me, he thought, they’re trapping me. They knew his weakness, and they were turning him on, they were detectives. This bitch was pretending to confess something, and when she was done confessing she’d expect him to do a little confessing, too. Bang went that trap. Why did she turn the television on? Because it was a recording device, that’s what, taking down all he was saying, and off he’d go to jail for lewd behavior, leaving their smiles behind. He’d have a lot of time to sit in a cell thinking about these two.
“I’d prefer to not say what I said,” said Lala. “How do I know who you are?”
“Say it,” said James. It would be music. The names of girls were music, obscenities on the tongues of beautiful women were music. Imagine a worldwide concert — James Berberick, international singer, reciting the names of girls in the principal auditoriums of the world! Imagine a duet, a trio —
James (Allegro): Alice, Barbara.
Lala (Andante): Cock and cunt.
James (Presto Moderate): Doris and Enid.
Iris (Tenderly): Fuck.
If only he had a stage to stage such a concert on! Brass bands and symphony orchestras or a lone violin! A capella if necessary. It didn’t matter to him, just so long as thousands of people assembled to hear him. Why not St. Peter’s in Rome? Two stages! The Pope on one, James on the other. They were both Catholics. James, Lala, and Iris would travel about from city to city singing to thousands of persons all over the globe and elsewhere, to reduce his tension. He had a lively mind, this James Berberick, and in his best moments he was fit for “better things” than his job as Classified clerk for the Chronicle. But from his point of view “better things” were hard to find. Not many jobs offered better contact with ladies with problems. Ladies called, James secured their names and addresses, and if the situation sounded promising he “followed up,” as he was doing now. If there had been money in it he’d have been rich, for he was persistent, effective, perseverant, prompt, well-organized and relentlessly aggressive. His strong point was determination, almost to the point of fury.
“I called her a bitch, I remember that much,” said Lala.
“Terrific,” James Berberick said.
“I feel like doing the same thing myself,” Iris said. “But I never do.”
“I lost my temper,” Lala said.
“You felt better,” Jim said. “It’s perfectly healthy.”
“I said, ‘I’ll bomb your ass, you bitch.’ That’s what I said. Go ahead, arrest me.”
“Lala,” her mother calmly said, “I think something’s got into you today. What are you saying? Who’s this man? What kind of language are you using in front of a perfect stranger?”
Take her to jail, that’s what he’d do. James thought for a moment he’d play policeman. He’d played it before, in his mind, leading ladies off to his home-made jail and keeping them prisoners there awhile. They’d never know the difference. He’d be cop and jailer and treat them very well, and there’d be nothing illegal about it apart from a slight case of unconstitutional violation of habeas corpus: illegally detaining people in an illegal jail. He’d carry their food to them, spiced with a little love potion in the jailhouse kitchen. He’d comfort and console them. He’d hear their confessions and their prayers. He’d exercise them at exercise hour, shower them at shower hour. “I’m not perfect,” he said.
“It’s because I’m so upset about Paprika,” Lala said.
“It was a nice phrase,” James mused.
“She’s full of phrases,” Iris said.
“Do you say things like that on the telephone often?” James inquired.
“That was the first time,” said Lala.
“You’re certainly not policewomen,” James said.
“We never said we were,” said Iris.
“Unless you’re trapping me into something,” he said.
“You came here,” said Iris. “Nobody asked you.”
“He brought me the letter,” Lala said, handing James the anonymous letter she had once received, addressed to “My Very Dear German Shepherd Dog Owner,” its full text produced herein at page 136. James, in turn, revealed his own anonymous letter, addressed to “My Very Dear James Berberick,” its full text produced herein at page 102.
“I’m going to have it framed at Manasek’s first chance I get,” he said. He read Lala’s letter, and she read his, and Iris read his letter, too.
“You don’t smell,” said Lala, sitting beside him at the coffee table.
“I used to,” he said. “You better believe it.”
“People who write letters like this should be shot,” said Iris.
“No,” said James, “on the contrary, I feel that whoever wrote me that letter did me one of the great services of my life. I heeded him. You notice where he said that — ‘Heed me.’ It stuck in my mind. I hear it all the time, and I heeded him.”
“I would have burnt it on the spot,” said Iris.
“No, not at all,” he said. “Why? Notice that I still have the job, right? He helped me keep it. Who’d I have been spiting by burning the letter?”
“I’ve been thinking of writing such a letter to certain people up the street,” said Iris. “They neglect their child.”
“Get at it,” James said. “It’ll do good. I know it. Frankly . . .” But he did not “frankly” proceed, checking himself. He had confessed enough for one day. He had been about to tell “frankly” how he had achieved certain ends with anonymous letters to city officials, reporting police officers who attempted to extort money from masseuses. But no . . .
“It looks to me like the same person definitely wrote both these letters,” Iris said, holding in her left hand the letter from “Day Sleeper” and in her right hand the letter from “An Acquaintance.”
“Cancel the ad,” cried Lala, for she saw Brown arriving in her mother’s car. He opened the car door, and Paprika leaped out, running to the house, crashing against the front door, admitted now, and licking Lala’s face, climbing upon Iris, and climbing upon James Berberick, too, for any friend of the house was a friend of Paprika’s, and he was caked with the mud of Mount Davidson, prickly with burrs, and overjoyed to be home after his night beneath the stars.
“I told you he’d come back,” said James. “But it’s too late to cancel the ad now.”
Brown, too, entered Lala’s house. He had lived for twenty years in the neighborhood without entering this house, but now, in one day, he had entered it twice. Something must be in the wind. “Come in, come in,” said Lala, ignoring his protests, taking him by the hand, leading him, pulling him into the house, where they were greeted again by Paprika, tall on his hind legs. Paprika, however, thought of the girls at that moment, returned to all fours, and raced upstairs, around and around from room to room. “He’s looking for the girls,” said Lala.
“So am I,” James Berberick said, and to Brown he said, “That was a quick recovery, you’re a genius at finding dogs.”
“Where was he?” Iris asked.
“Just down the street,” said Brown. He had prepared this little lie. “I didn’t notice exactly. Maybe Nineteenth and Diamond. Yes, the school, I heard the children singing. He jumped in the car when he saw me.”
“Of course, the school, I should have known,” said Lala.
“Paprika knows a Fleetwood when he sees one,” said Iris.
“He looks all right,” said Lala. “He wasn’t poisoned.”
“Somebody simply let him out of the yard,” said Iris.
“Somebody who didn’t like his barking,” Brown amplified.
“This is Mr. Brown, my neighbor from across the street,” said Lala to James Berberick, and to Brown she said, “This is James Berberick of the Chronicle Classified. You both work at the Chronicle.”
“I think we’ve met,” said Brown. He couldn’t be sure. “Why do you wear a McGinley pin?”
“I’ll take it off if it offends you,” said James.
“It offends me,” Brown said, not joking, ominous in voice.
“I’ll try my very best to cancel the ad,” James said to Lala, “but I think it’s too late.” He prepared to depart. He didn’t like this at all — this Chronicle man here — and the idea returned to him that he’d been caught in a management trap. Yes, it was a trap to catch him pursuing his hobby on company time. This Brown was familiar, he was some sort of big shot at the Chronicle, and the women were in on it, too, the dog was a plant, a ruse, he should have known better than to come running out to some sexy voice on the telephone. Now I am in trouble, he thought, cursing his compulsions. How often he had done this, dashing out on his lunch hour because a lady sounded fetching! Racing out like this! Now he’d miss his lunch, too. He’d go hungry all afternoon, insult on top of injury. Which was which? He’d be lucky to keep his job, never mind lunch. “May I have a glass of water?” he asked, thinking that if he could get into the kitchen he might see a snippet of food about, a slice of bread, a rusty half of an apple, but nobody heard him. “I’ll help myself,” he said, but nobody heard that, either, for Paprika was running upstairs and down, knocking things about with his wildly wagging tail.
And then when he arrived here the fetching lady was chaperoned by her fat mother — mother and daughter detectives, that’s what they were. He should have known there’d be a catch to it. The odds were all against him. It wasn’t that James Berberick wouldn’t “take on” a mother and a daughter together, and take on a granddaughter too if she was about and big enough. Lordy, in Saigon he’d taken on whole families (on the feminine side), for he was a pleasure-seeker seeking mothers and their daughters for purposes of pleasure, nothing less. But it was a waste of his lunch hour. Once more he cursed his compulsions, as he tended to do when projects failed. He should have been castrated at the first sign of these uncontrollable desires, they led him astray. Less drastic was a new drug, cyproterone acetate, said to have no bad side effects, which appeared successfully to dampen sexual urges, according to a report presented to the Royal Medico-Psychological Association of Edinburgh. A man who had assaulted several girls, including his own daughter, had lately been treated with the drug with beneficial effects. Of what use had James Berberick’s vast energies ever been? The world was no better for his having been here chasing about, exercising his life force. What good had he ever done? Had he ever been constructive? No, he was as mindless as this romping dog. “This dog needs a bath,” he said.
Look who’s talking, thought Brown, quickly remembering “Smelly Jim,” of whom he had been rather fond in their brief acquaintance at the Chronicle in spite of the young man’s bad smell. To think of him now as a McGinley voter was distressing. He’d seemed to have more spunk than that, humor, flair, a zest for life, whereas McGinley was gloom, repression, ill will, and death. My Very Dear James Berberick (he’d write), Your smell stunk, but your politics is even worse. I’d like to tear that McGinley pin right off your chest, and pull your heart out with it . . . guns . . . war . . . killing . . . that’s McGinley for you. . . . The letter petered out in Brown’s mind. McGinley this moment was on his way to Congress. The votes were being cast across the street in Mr. Maxim’s garage, and elsewhere.
“There are twenty-five million dogs in the United States,” James said.
“Who counted them?” Iris asked. “In round numbers,” James Berberick said. “Oh, Paprika, your father will be so glad to see you,” Lala sang, hugging and kissing the dirty, bad-smelling dog. “And the girls,” she said, loving the dog because his existence made her daughters happy, speaking to Paprika now, saying, “Lie down, he down, stop running,” calming him, until at length he lay upon the deep rug of the living room, permitting Lala to stroke him.
This action excited James Berberick, enabling him for the moment to forget his hunger, as Lala’s hands stroked the dog’s sides and stomach, down one side, up the stomach, down the side, up the side, under the neck, up, down, under, and with each downward stroke upon Paprika’s body Lala approached closer and closer the dog’s penis — or, at any rate, the sheath of the dog’s penis — appearing with every stroke to be planning this time actually to stroke the penis itself but never reaching that place, returning upward each time, to the dog’s head, and beginning again, gliding again with her lovely hands down the length of the dog’s body toward the organs of the dog — almost, almost — then pausing, but not before James’s being had been suffused, overspread, by excruciating sensations of pleasure, hope, anticipation, and fantasy. He said to himself, within himself, so clearly and so fervently that for an instant he feared that he had spoken aloud, “O my God, this lady is jerking off a dog.” Why not? Wouldn’t it be reward for homecoming? Think of Ulysses. At the ends of long journeys famous men of life and literature were rewarded for their homecoming with the pleasures of their houses, with bathing and loving, oil and anointment. Then in this modern, enlightened age, why not a dog? New powers were lately awarded new classes of citizens. Dogs had rights, among them the right to luxury.
“You’ll get his hair all over the rug,” said Iris. “Harold will know he’s been indoors.”
“I should phone Harold and tell him we found him,” Lala said.
“Mr. Brown found him,” Iris said, correcting her daughter.
Don’t phone Harold, James Berberick thought, just stay there like that and stroke that dog, don’t quit, never quit. I could spend the rest of my life sitting here watching you stroking that dog.
“I never see you down at the paper any more,” said Brown to Berberick.
“I’m in Classified,” said James. “Good old Chronicle, it’s a wonderful joint to work at.”
“It’s a cesspool,” said Brown.
“Every place is,” said James, pleased to be agreeable.
“You change your mind fast,” said Brown.
“I don’t know where you stand,” James frankly said. “I don’t want to pick an argument with anybody. I’m just here for pleasure.”
“I thought you were here on business,” Iris said.
“Mr. Brown writes headlines,” Lala said.
“I mix business with pleasure when I can,” said James.
“Lala,” said Iris sharply, “really, I’m just wondering . . .”
“Wondering what, mother?” Lala asked, although she knew perfectly well her mother’s meaning: her mother was wondering whether Lala’s being down on the floor like that, massaging the dog, wasn’t somehow “suggestive,” wasn’t somehow just a little “vulgar.” Lala rose from the floor, brushing from her thighs the hair of the dog blown about in his joy.
Her stopping was fortunate for James. Her stroking the dog had transfixed him. Now he could depart. Hunger made him ferocious. Starving, he had freely killed: it seemed to ease his discomfort. Now he’d spend the afternoon munching candy bars and Nabisco butter crackers from the Chronicle newsstand. Some meal! “I’ve got to rush back to the job,” he said, for Brown’s ears especially, since James wished to make it clear that he was here on business; that there was no frivolity about him. How could he know exactly who Brown was? Disguised as a workaday headlines writer. Brown might actually be a security officer for the Chronicle, for it was sometimes said among employees that security officers were stationed among them disguised as actual workers.
“I’ll phone Harold,” Lala said.
Yes, phone Harold, what a relief! thought James.
“But he won’t be there,” said Lala. “God knows where he goes on Tuesday.”
“Look at these that somebody sent,” said Iris to Brown, passing along the anonymous letters she, Lala, and James had been examining — one letter addressed to “My Very Dear German Shepherd Dog Owner,” the other addressed to “My Very Dear James Berberick.” Thus she produced within Brown a most powerful sense of confusion. What was going on here? Things were closing in. Last night Luella had given her anonymous letter to Phelps to examine, and now here two more appeared, and all his. Stars were crossing. Were these people who they said they were, or were they perhaps a sleuthing team which had tracked him down and exposed him, and having exposed this much would soon expose all the rest, and his telephone calls besides. Thank God Junie never lived to see this.
Anonymous Author Prolific
Headlines Writer Confesses
Writing Hundreds of Letters
— Anonymous Calls Told
And yet his confusion was also relief. Relief, yes. From the day of his letter on the stationery of the Child Welfare Federation to last night’s barking telephone call from McGinley headquarters — a solid twenty years — the burden of stealth had been heavy. Now he would be free, his work done, his rage complete; with apprehension and revelation his rage would pass outward from himself, flow gently away. Be wary, Brown thought. Think clearly. “So you were formerly known as ‘Smelly Jim’ were you?” he asked James, glancing up from the letter. “Yes, I remember good old Lifebuoy Soap, it was salmon-colored and it had an antiseptic smell. Who wrote this letter?”
“I’d be grateful if I knew,” James said, “because I owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude actually.”
“He’s not there,” said Lala, returning from the telephone. “I knew he wouldn’t be, and his girl lies, too, she’s nothing but a bundle of lies.”
But why today? thought Brown. “My wife received an anonymous letter awhile ago. It was a comfort to her.” To this he added inaudibly, “Not my wife exactly.”
“Anyhow,” said James, “I’ve absolutely got to dash back to the office.” Another idea had entered his mind, struggling for power over him in a familiar manner, weakening him, directing his day now into a path not precisely of his own choosing: a massage. The sight of Paprika lying on the floor, and Lala above him massaging him, rubbing his belly up, down, head to tail, all flesh quivering, and all those soothing words she had delivered, if only for a dog’s ear, had excited him, compelling him to reconsider the course of his day, his path, his way, not back to his duties at the Chronicle but toward that periodic relief he so urgently needed or desired and which he could achieve with maximum speed and safety only at one or another of those massage parlors or studios abounding in his enlightened city.
“Don’t rush off,” said Lala, “now that you’re here.”
“Did you get the information you came for?” Iris sarcastically asked.
James Berberick adroitly replied to her. “The information is invalidated because the dog came back.” He tore the page from his pad. “It’s not like we have the chance to see the ad work since the dog was found,” he explained.
“Mr. Brown, you’re so good at finding lost animals,” said Lala, “you can find my husband for me.”
“Do you mind letting me have my letter back?” James Berberick asked. He had heard Lala. These difficulties with her husband elevated his hopes. “I couldn’t think of going away without my lucky letter. I’m going to take it right in and have it framed at Manasek’s.”
“If that letter made you stop smelling you’re in luck,” said Brown, “though I never noticed it myself when you were there.” He had recovered confidence, and he added, “I wish it could do something for your politics.”
“I realize you don’t like my McGinley pin,” said James.
“I don’t like McGinley,” Brown said.
“I can’t believe you could have smelled as bad as all that,” said Lala politely.
“Listen,” said James, “I stank up the joint something awful. Maybe Mr. Brown doesn’t remember, but some other people do. It was awful. Once I became aware of it I was embarrassed. But thanks to this letter . . .”
Berberick sounded a little like a self-help testimonial, and for this reason Brown’s mistrust returned. He was being conned. They were finding him out, they were bluffing him. Yet how could that be, for they had not lured or attracted him into their presence — he had come of his own will. He, after all, had set events into motion by liberating Paprika.
“Your wife received a letter?” Lala asked. “Then we should think whom we all know in common and there we have it.”
“To express our gratitude to him,” said James, “once we know who it was.”
“Dear old Lifebuoy,” said Iris. “Body odor. Then there was a fellow named B. O. Plenty in Dick Tracy in the funnies.” Here she emitted the sound of a foghorn, in imitation of the old Lifebuoy radio commercial.
“B.O. is right,” said James. “If anybody ever had it I had it.” He restored his letter to his pocket. “It brought me luck. Listen, look at me, I’m footloose and fancy-free if you’ll pardon the cornball figure of speech. I’m reasonably handsome. I have a good job. True, the place may be a cesspool” — here honoring Brown — “but my job inside the cesspool is convenient and sometimes even terrific. I wish I’d had it sooner. If I’d had it sooner I’d have won a Medal of Honor.”
“A Medal of Honor for what?” Brown asked.
“For slaughtering people,” James Berberick replied.
“President Johnson wouldn’t give the medal to an unemployed man,” said Lala.
“That’s my thinking,” James said.
“Anyhow, you’re not reasonably handsome,” Lala said. “You’re very handsome.”
“I appreciate your thinking so,” said James. “You’re handsome, too.”
“My daughter’s a bit forward,” said Iris to Brown, but her eyes were on the bowling shoes on the television set. “They’re reentering the atmosphere. They’ll be splashing down soon.”
“I’m not particularly interested in the moon men,” said Brown, down on one knee in the Florida swamps, near the launch pads, firing his rifle in the tall grass; there went the little bullet smacking the rocket in its vulnerable place. A leak! Here came the air all leaking out, p-sss p-sss p-sss p-ssssssss.
“Three guys cooped up alone together all that time!” said James.
“My husband forgot his bowling shoes,” said Lala, taking the shoes from the top of the set. “Don’t you want the sound turned up? Not that I care, frankly, whether they find anybody on the moon or not.” She turned up the sound, and they heard the voice of Cronkite, and she carried the shoes to the hall closet and threw them in.
Anyhow, thought Iris, I have the binoculars. When Harold wanted things he wanted things, that’s all. If Lala would only put weight back on she’d solve all her problems with Harold, for Harold loved them fat, “more bounce to the ounce,” none of your “skinny marinks,” as he called thin or slender girls, your bag of bones, your featherweights; not for Harold. With his binoculars he’d go scouting up and down the sides of vast apartment houses in search of fat women. It was good peeping weather today, perfectly clear, windless and warm, people threw open their windows to the sun and the air. “Jim is very handsome,” she said, “but Mr. Brown is more handsome.”
“I’ll buy that,” said Jim agreeably, rising to leave. Studios of massage danced in his head. He sorted them out. Where was he? Say Market near Castro. Action required plan. Time and again he vowed to himself never to submit to these sudden seizures, but he was submitting again today, he could feel it, and with submission came all the old problems of logistics, budget, time, and space, which plagued him, punishing him for his improvidence, his impulsiveness, his inability to resist himself. Why couldn’t he wait? If only he’d wait he’d see that he could. He knew that. If only he’d wait a few hours he could pay his respects to his compulsions at leisure — take his time, go slow, pick his place, bargain for a rate. His mouth was stuffed with cotton. Recently he had heard of scientific studies of sexual activity — how the various actions of the body were affected by prospects of love, how the pulse sped, how the breath raced, how the sweat rolled, the hands trembled. His was a case in extremis. All these things happened to him, and more, his control was off, he was a menace to himself, he drove like a madman to a parlor of massage. Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead. What red light? He was lately convinced that his death would occur in an automobile accident en route. He had formerly been convinced that he would die in the war, but he had survived that by quick thinking and relentless slaughter. Exactly when he would die he now did not know, but the odds against him grew by quantum leaps, he supposed; or if not die become incapacitated, de-balled; no, not de-balled, for then he’d be without desire, pacific; worse than de-balled, immobilized but yet desirous, a passionate vegetable lying abed for years and years clothed in ropes and pulleys. No doubt they’d put something in his diet to quell his desire. Yes, please, heap up the tranquilizer to calm my fantasies, a whole bottleful, please, pour it down me, bathe me in it, hose me, bombard me, dump it all over me, especially on my penis which has been standing up straight these bedridden years. Call the nurse. Nurse! But when in his fantasies the nurse arrived James Berberick rose up from his vegetable state and took her, whoever she was, consoling himself that his life force would finally overwhelm all handicap, all incapacitation, that he so far desired his pleasure that nothing this side of death would restrain him, nothing keep him down, that he would go wild before submission, as he had gone wild over there in Asia, and killed and killed and killed and killed, and not got the Medal of Honor, either, as he should have got, not because (as he had told Lala this morning on the telephone on page 101) he had been unemployed but because everyone had suddenly become uptight about mass murder. Well, you couldn’t blame them.
“Who’d like some lunch?” Lala asked.
“I would,” said Jim. His hand was on the knob of the door, but now he reentered the room. Food might pacify him, preserve him from a journey to a massage parlor. “Although I should be getting back,” he said, glancing at Brown.
“Don’t be glancing at me,” said Brown. “You seem to think I care. I don’t care whether you go back or not. I have no loyalty to that newspaper. I am a man of tremendous loyalty, I’ll go to the end of the earth to be loyal, but that newspaper is not one of the things I’m loyal to.”
“I see what you mean,” said Jim.
“Maybe you do and maybe you don’t,” said Brown.
“That’s an interesting thought,” said Jim. “I guess I was just assuming that the older people get the more loyal they get to the corporation.”
“People don’t get older,” said Iris.
“That’s an interesting thought,” said Brown.
“We’re all full of interesting thoughts today,” said Lala, leaving for the kitchen.
“Let me help you,” said James Berberick, following her.
“Don’t be silly,” Lala said, “I don’t need any help.” She hoped he’d follow her, and he did.
Iris’s eyes followed, too. Try as she might to listen to Mr. Brown or to concentrate upon the moon men falling back to earth, Lala’s being in the kitchen with James Berberick preoccupied her. What did she think could happen there? She lowered the sound of Cronkite’s voice. “It was wonderful of you to find Paprika,” she said.
“They shouldn’t really let him bark as he does,” said Brown.
“Dumb dog, who needs him? I agree with your letter,” she ventured. “Why don’t you solve the problem with a handful of sleeping pills?”
“I wrote no letter,” lied Brown.
“Then excuse me,” said Iris. “I misunderstood something.”
“But I do find the dog’s barking troublesome,” he confessed. “It’s not very considerate of other people in the neighborhood when you let a dog go on barking night and day.”
“He protects the house,” Iris said.
“How?”
“He keeps away rapists and burglars,” she said.
“What’s in the house so valuable to steal?” Brown asked. “Everything looks so heavy to me.”
“Color TV,” said Iris.
For a moment Brown inhaled the familiar odor of James Berberick. Although the odor was faint, the boy still smelled whether he knew it or not. If it wasn’t the intense smell Brown remembered from days past it was nevertheless recognizable as Berberick’s, and it was produced, no doubt, by the particular strain he was under today — of having found here another Chronicle man, who might or might not report James Berberick’s prolonged lunch hour to someone in high authority.
“They’re taking a long time,” said Iris. “In the time they’re taking to make lunch these jokers have flown thousands of miles through the atmosphere.”
“Are they in the atmosphere now?” Brown inquired.
“I have no idea,” Iris said. “They’re cuddled up in their little cocoon. I’ll turn up Cronkite; he’ll tell us. I guess there wouldn’t be any room in that capsule for fatso me, would there?”
“They’re having some sort of trouble,” said Brown. Brown could see, as a student of Cronkite’s motions and gestures, that his eyes spoke of trouble. It was the gaze of controlled distraction Cronkite achieved whenever Brown shot him on the seventeenth floor, On the Air, Off the Air, here comes Eric Sevareid, don’t fall, watch your step, walk casually on Madison Avenue, slip off your flesh-colored gloves. Indeed, it was true: Cronkite was speaking of trouble. The capsule had become overheated. The astronauts complained of discomfort. “It’s getting to feel like a Turkish bath in here,” one of them was saying to Mission Control, when suddenly the astronauts, capsule and all, picture and voice, were wiped from the screen. “What happened?” Iris asked. “Durn if I know,” said Brown. “What are you doing in there?” Iris called. “Making lunch,” said Jim Berberick, emerging from the kitchen with a serving tray in his hands. His mouth was stuffed with crackers, and for the moment he was pacified, cooled, relieved, set at his ease, calmed by Lala, with whom he had had a most pleasant conversation climaxed by an amusing story. Lala had some need of him not yet clear to him, but its effect was clear enough — to distract him from himself. On his tray were slices of roast beef, Camembert cheese, and superb rye bread from Carl’s Bakery, Eighteenth & Guerrero. A separate serving platter was arranged in green olives, sweet pickles, and stalks of celery.
“What’s my daughter doing in there?” Iris asked James. If only she could see through walls! If binoculars existed to conquer distance, why not X-rayoculars to conquer walls?
“She’s making tea,” said James.
Lala followed with a second tray. “Now you see what we were doing in there,” she said to her mother in a sarcastic tone.
But was that all they had done in the kitchen? Only put together this little lunch? No, something more than that had occurred, although even had Iris been able to see through the wall with her X-rayoculars she would have seen very little, for to the eye it had been nothing. To the nose, to the ears, and to Lala’s invisibly rippling flesh, however, it was something else. How delightful to have a man in the kitchen! “Harold never comes in the kitchen,” Lala said factually to James. “He won’t carry a dish. He won’t pick up a dishtowel if it falls on the floor — a dishtowel is a woman’s tool, that’s what he’ll say.” The last man who’d been in the kitchen was the plumber.
“It reminds me of a story,” said James to Lala in the kitchen. “I mean a true story, it happened to a friend of mine, two people in a kitchen is what makes me think of it.”
“Talk while I slice the beef,” she said, submerged in the rippling of her flesh produced by the sound of his voice. The effects of some men’s voices were different on the telephone from the effects they had on her when she met them in person, but James’s voice caused her to ripple either way, and she was receiving not only his voice now, but his smell, too, sound and smell, cologne and sweat, all mixed and mingled. She breathed deep to receive his smell at its best — a smell such as she often smelled upon busy workmen when she passed them on the street, or as she smelled upon repairmen, such as plumbers, in the house, but more persuasive now, powerful, pungent, not the sweat of labor but the sweat of person, the odor arising not from exertion but from mental passion.
“It’s not a terribly long story,” said James.
“Make it as long as you can,” she said. Oh, his voice!
“This fellow — this friend of mine — he went to an office party where he managed to get himself in conversation with this fantastically beautiful chick that he’d had his eye on in the office for a year only never had the nerve to sidle up to her before, you know. But at this office party she responded to him with super-enthusiasm. He was a handsome fellow, clean in attire, no bad smells about him, served his time in the military and one thing and another, until as the party wore on she said to him, ‘I just remembered I happen to have a couple of steaks in the refrigerator so why don’t you and I split and drop over to my apartment and eat them up?’”
“He consented. They went to her apartment which it turned out was in one of those vast high-rises like Fox Plaza . . .”
“Where you live,” Lala said.
“Me?”
“You said this morning you lived in Fox Plaza,” she said, and in fact she was correct: we heard him say so on page 97, and we suspected five pages later that he had not told the truth.
“. . . rows and rows of apartments, and they all looked like the rest, so up they went in the elevator and down this immense corridor and inside her apartment, and inside her kitchen which is what made me think of this story because here we are in your kitchen, right? Out of booze! ‘Oh Christ,’ she said, ‘I’m out of booze, whatever your name is.’“
“I thought this was a friend of yours,” said Lala.
“Dick Richards,” he said.
“I won’t interrupt any more,” she said.
“He goes to a liquor store. He’s in seventh heaven. He sees it all before him: booze, a good steak, she had a hi-fi there, he’d spin some music very low, he’d probably dim down the lights a little bit to save electricity, like I’m going to get one of those bumper stickers once this damn election’s over and take the damn McGinley stickers off and put on Conserve Water. Shower With a Friend. It breaks me up. All right, he gets waited on in the liquor store and off he goes with his bottle of booze and a specialty liqueur he bought, whistling and singing up the street and smelling that steak in his nose and dimming down the lights in his mind afterward when . . . bang . . . smash. Guess what?”
“He dropped the bottle,” Lala said. “Don’t make me guess. Go on. Talk. Tell me the rest, I’m dying of suspense. He got hit by a car. He met his wife.”
“Wrong on all counts,” said James. “You’re a terrific listener but a lousy guesser. This fellow, what’s his name?”
“Dick Richards,” she said.
“. . . approaches the building when he realizes he doesn’t know her apartment number. Doesn’t know what floor it’s on. Doesn’t know which way it even faces. Doesn’t know her last name, and doesn’t know her first name, either, and doesn’t know anybody back at the office party that would. He looks up at the Fox Plaza. Windows, windows, windows, and somewhere in one of those windows a chick is broiling a steak for him and panting for the booze he’s bringing under his arm, and he hasn’t got one tiny little faintest chance in the world of finding out which is her window.”
“Did he ever find her?”
“Never.”
“What did he do?” Lala asked.
“Killed himself,” said James. “Ran right out in Market Street and let himself get hit by a trolley.”
“Jim told me a funny story,” said Lala to her mother, setting the tea tray on the coffee table.
“Why aren’t you laughing?” Iris asked.
“I smiled,” said Lala.
“It wasn’t exactly funny,” said James. “It was a story of monumental frustration.” He felt Iris’s eyes accusingly upon him. This fat dame knew plenty. Well, it was only experience; she had a few kitchen memories herself, of that you may be sure. But James was guiltless, and he looked her square in the eye. He was in command of himself. He had recovered control. His body, his pulse, his breath had slowed, his hands were steady, his mouth had regained its proper moist climate. But his sweat was dry and smelled a bit; at his first opportunity he’d be lavish with himself, break open a new cologne, Royall Lyme or Royall Spice today, that’s the sort of mood he was in.
At this point Paprika thought to join the group at luncheon. He bathed the cheese and the beef with his tongue, and then he rested his jaws on the edge of the coffee table, waiting for either rebuke or sanction. He had forgotten the rules. But Iris remembered them, and she said, “Scram, dog, make yourself scarce,” rapping his nose with a celery stalk.
“The whole day began with Paprika,” said Lala, clutching him by the skin of his neck and pointing his head away from the table, shooing him off, she hoped, in another direction. But Paprika was hungry, and he shook himself loose from her grasp, plunging back to the table against Lala’s resistance, his jaws wide. It was a contest, and in the melee he seized the flesh of Lala’s right forearm, perhaps by accident, for he was instantly contrite, remembering with certainty that this was a rule — not biting people (he had once bitten Catherine in the face) — running with sunken tail to the corner of the room, where he lay against the base of the wall, as if to merge himself with it, and disappear. “He bit me,” cried Lala. “My arm.”
“Kill that dog,” her mother said.
“It’s only a scratch,” said Lala. “He didn’t mean it.”
“Didn’t mean it,” Iris said. “It doesn’t matter if he meant it or not. How do we know what a dog means? You’ll get hydrophobia.”
“The skin’s not broken,” Lala said.
“Call the police,” said Iris.
“Everything’s the police with you,” said Lala.
“That’s what they’re for,” said Iris, examining Lala’s arm from wrist to elbow, and then, for some strange reason, examining Lala’s other arm; if Lala had two of anything Iris examined them both. Her skin was unbroken, although a white scratch extended six inches along her forearm. “That dog has got to go,” said Iris. “Poison him,” she said, looking to Brown for support. “Mercury is good. Tell Harold somebody dropped some mercury and he lapped it up. The next thing you know you’ll be paying two hundred dollars for dog surgery so some doctor can open up the dog’s stomach and find your ear. Did you read about that in your newspaper, Mr. Brown?”
“I wrote the headline,” Brown said.
“Have him put to sleep. Shoot him. I don’t care what you do, but do something before somebody really gets hurt.” She was red with fury, agitated beyond her ability to contain herself without motion. Therefore she rose and strode back and forth across the room, her heart laboring hard beneath the triple burden of fear, fury, and weight. Her breath came short, and she sat down again.
The astronauts, too, were breathing with difficulty. For several seconds they returned to the screen. Apparently, however, the television monitor had admitted them by mistake, for they were shortly taken away again, and Cronkite appeared upon the screen. Although, to Brown’s view, the astronauts seemed to have been suffering, Cronkite’s report was reassuring. “Cronkite’s looking grave,” Brown said. “There’s a certain look he gets when he’s scared, when something’s going wrong. Something is going wrong. Today is going to be the end of something.”
“I hope you’ll all pardon me,” said James Berberick, “but I must be racing back to the office. That was a very good lunch, Lala, I feel a million times better.” This was true. He was restored. His passion had diminished. He had never seen reported in the studies of sexual activity the phenomenon he observed in himself — that hunger increased desire. He had noticed in his military career, too, that he had killed most thoroughly on an empty stomach. “I hope I see you all soon again,” he said, confident now that he was superior to his compulsions, that he could drive swiftly and directly from here to the Chronicle without distraction. He’d easily see the afternoon through. And then, tonight, on his own time, without jeopardizing his good job, he’d prowl if he must, or indulge himself in a beautiful massage somewhere, or perhaps return here (his heart fluttered at the thought) and swap yarns again with Lala, keep her company in view of her husband’s being off to the bowling wars; get together here with the gang at Yukon & Eagle, Lala and her mother, her husband, Brown, and Brown’s wife. “This is a great neighborhood,” he said.
Lala joined him at the front door. On the doorknob their hands by accident met, and she inhaled him one final time. “I appreciate the super-service the Chronicle is giving me,” she said.
“I’ll cancel the ad,” he said, “but it’ll run in tomorrow’s paper, so you’ll get billed anyhow. That’s the breaks.”
Tomorrow’s paper! It would be historic indeed, banner headline by Brown, McGinley dead, astronauts dead, and one small obsolete classified advertisement for Paprika, already found.
“Can’t be helped,” said Lala. “Will you bring me the bill personally? Just give me a little jingle first.”
“I might do that,” he said, but actually he felt above it; he was subdued, he was calm, he was cool, he had triumphed over the wild beast within him. Watch him now return straight to his desk!