I called it boiler room fever, this thing that happened when people were thrown in together eight hours a day, five days a week and turned familiarity into lust. Most affairs, and plenty of marriages, had nothing to do with storybook love, as much as the fact that you were here and she was here. Maybe I had a bit of an ego, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think that my looks and my charms lured all these women to me. My greatest asset was that I was here and another guy wasn’t.
So it was no terrific compliment when they’d get that washy look in the eyes and find excuses to hang around your desk and come in early and stay late and suddenly wear tight sweaters and short skirts. They’d show leg, flash smiles, stare dreamily into your eyes, just as Sonja started doing more and more.
“Are you sure you want me to call Avondale?” Sonja asked. “I mean it’s mostly black.”
The girls worked from a Criss-Cross Directory off a new-fangled computer database, which differed from a regular phone book in that it provided complete addresses, too, and by neighborhood, which was valuable information in the world of telephone soliciting as it more or less told you who was rich and who was poor, who was carpet and who was linoleum, who was area rug and who was wall-to-wall.
“I mean it’s such a waste of time and I’m getting tired of all these rejections.”
Which I could sympathize with since rejection was the name of this game. Fifty percent of the people said no even before the girls had a chance to start their pitch and 49 percent simply hung up. Not much slack. That’s the carpet business, at least from the phone soliciting end, and that’s show business. Heck, it’s all the same. New York and Cincinnati are not that far apart.
It was the end of the day and the others had already left except for Mona who had seen this coming.
She was trying to outstay Sonja.
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” I said to Sonja.
But Sonja didn’t move. Only her skirt did, upwards.
“Well,” said Mona, “guess I’d better be moving along and make dinner. Got three starving sons.”
Her fourth son, of course, was in the Marines. Mona came in each day with the same smile and the same dress, one of those dresses full of flowers – but always freshly washed and pressed. Her husband was on Railroad disability. He’d choked on some food while on the job, had to be rushed to the hospital where they had to cut open his throat. Even then she came in smiling and cheerful and now it was odd how she talked about having four sons, when in fact she only had two still at home. What she meant (unintentionally) was her husband.
“But before I go,” she said, “can I have a word with you Eli?”
Out in the hallway she said, “I know what’s going on.”
“So do I, Mona. Don’t worry.”
“Don’t let her get started on you. She’s like syrup.”
Back at my desk I asked Sonja what I could do for her, it was time to close up shop. She asked if I had seen the latest Woody Allen movie. I said I thought Woody Allen was vastly overrated and that that was the trouble with this country, people were either vastly overrated or vastly underrated.
“I guess you consider yourself among the latter,” she said.
“I didn’t mean it that way. It was a general observation.”
“But you are underrated. I know you have talent. They tell me you’re really an actor.”
“Yeah, like everybody else.”
“You really don’t belong here, do you?”
“Yes I do. Where we are is where we belong.”
“You know what I mean.”
I sighed an actor’s sigh and said, “Well, time to go home.”
“Have you ever read Oscar Wilde?”
“I guess.”
“What about The Picture of Dorian Gray?”
“What about it?” I asked.
“You know, how people aren’t the same inside as they appear on the outside? Outside he was beautiful. Inside he was a monster. Like that picture showed him to be. Remember?”
“I suppose.”
“Doesn’t that fascinate you?” she said.
“Not really.”
“I mean how people, even beautiful people, really are inside. Some people need a picture to show them the truth.”
“What are you getting at here, Sonja?”
“Nothing. Except that some people you know may not be as beautiful as you think. Maybe you need a picture.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Not right now.”
I faked a yawn. “Time to go home.”
She sprung it like a loaded pistol. “Can I go home with you?”
I said no.
“Why not?”
I explained that I lived in Mount Adams, which might not be her style. My apartment was a dump.
“I don’t care. I want to see how you live.”
“Some other time.”
“You’re afraid of me.”
“No I’m not.”
“Mona. She’s talking against me. I know what she’s been saying to you.”
“Really, I have to go.”
“I’m going with you.”
I shrugged. I’ve got to stop shrugging.
* * *
She said my place wasn’t so bad, like I needed this review. She checked out the kitchen and the kitchen table that I never used; so much easier to eat over the counter. She eyed the box spring and mattress in the living room, which served as my bed and my bedroom. This wouldn’t get that far, that was a promise. I owed it to myself to pass up at least one triumph.
She boiled us tea. She said: “I guess I’m just one of those girls trying to get your mind off Stephanie. Seems nobody can replace her in your heart, but boy how they try!”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said lazily.
“You know, of course, that all the girls are crazy for you.”
“It’s a living,” I said, quoting Clark Gable.
“Was Stephanie that good in bed?”
“I never took her to bed.”
That sent her laughing, a strange, deep, husky, masculine, unholy laugh.
“You mean all a girl has to do is NOT go to bed with you?”
“Maybe so.”
“Wait till I pass that word around.”
“I wish you would.”
“Well I think the only way you can really get to know another person is to go to bed with them.”
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s the only way to get to know me.”
“Come on, Sonja. I’m taking you home.”
“No you’re not.”
“Yes I am.”
“Naked?”
Off came her sweater, skirt, bra, panties and indeed she was naked. Another naked woman. She slipped under the covers as if she belonged there and that I resented most of all, the proprietorship of her actions. I lit up a cigarette. Then I got up and walked out, out of the house. If she wanted my bed she could have it but without me in it, but she was right behind me, still naked but now screaming to the high heavens, here in the open street, hysterical.
Now Cincinnati is a most conservative town, meaning relatively upright and uptight, the Queen City in many respects, utterly GERMAN it its adherence to propriety – but this is Mount Adams where I live, a section of town the rest of the dowdy population tolerates as the accepted (Bohemian) delinquent in the family. Mount Adams was our Greenwich Village, except for the yuppies who had begun taking over.
So this woman running naked and screaming down the street drew only this rebuke: “Keep it down, please.”
Even, “Fuck you, please.”
I finally wrestled her back in and got her dressed. She grew calm. Maybe too calm.
Even when she was hysterical she was in control.
“You’re too good for me? Is that it?” she said.
“I’m just not in the mood.”
“You’d be in the mood with Stephanie, wouldn’t you?”
“Please keep Stephanie out of this.”
“I’m afraid that’s too late.”
“I wish you wouldn’t bring up her name. She’s nothing to you.”
“She’s everything to me, and yes, I know how you hate it when I use her name. I defile her name, don’t I?”
Entirely correct.
“Well listen to this. Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie…”
I felt like punching her in the mouth.
“I’m taking you home.”
“Coward.”
When I dropped her off, she said, “We’re not finished, you and me.”
“Good night.”
“Sweet dreams,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“Keep dreaming of Stephanie. While you can.”
When I got back home I sprayed Lysol all over my bed but some odors just don’t go away.
* * *
She said she didn’t know what got into her.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
We were in the hallway outside the boiler room and she was crying and it seemed sincere; it sure was vehement, tears and everything; more than ready for her close-up. “Please forgive me,” she kept saying. “Please. I didn’t mean a word I said. I don’t know what got into me. Please don’t fire me. Please. I have no money. I really, really, really need this job.”
I had already made up my mind to fire her, but that wouldn’t necessarily be the same as getting rid of her, which was what I was really, really, really after. Getting people out of your life wasn’t as simple as getting them in. All I asked from most people was hello and goodbye. Who needed that stuff in between?
“Just let me get back to my desk. I’ll be a good girl. I’ll never bother you again. One more chance.”
I nodded.
I’ve got to stop nodding.
* * *
Denise, one of my best girls, and spunky as a pup, said: “Eli, are you aware that you talk to yourself?”
Mona laughed.
“You do,” said Denise. “Don’t he?”
“Yes you do,” said Mona in between making her calls.
I had been sitting at my desk half asleep. I had just finished reading the paper, The Cincinnati Enquirer, which always depressed me, not the Enquirer, but finishing it, as reading the paper was something to do, something to hide in, and once it was done, once you were finished reading about other people’s troubles, you had to face your own.
I said, “I do not talk to myself.”
“Yes you do,” said Denise in the kind of mock agitation familiar down home. “You pace and you talk to yourself.”
“What do I say?”
“You say, nobody cares.”
“No that’s not what I say. I say, I don’t care.”
“No. That’s not what you say. Ain’t that right, Mona?”
“Keep me out of this.”
All that may be true after all, about how I talk to myself and keep saying nobody cares. Faith, in people, in God, is a skill I’ve never mastered. I know how to curse but don’t know how to pray. From birth to death, it’s all random. If there is a plan, I wish someone would hurry up and tell me what it is. This sure can’t be it. Why even our doctors of divinity tell us that we’re cursed from birth, so what salvation can we count on except a decent paycheck?
Denise had just gotten married to a guy who did phone soliciting for a company that sold recliners on Vine Street, a sleazy operation known as Seats Galore. The guy who ran the place, Stone Kiley, was a shady character who also pitched siding and other useless furnishings from the same boiler room. Mona’s mother-in-law worked for him. Before her marriage, Denise and I carried on for a good three months, before I found out that she was jail bait. She made me swear to keep the secret, and of course I would, since she had an even bigger secret on me – more than once I had transported her home, across state lines, into Newport, Kentucky, and how many years was that worth!
The sad thing was that Denise had an overturned something or other in her vagina, so she could never have regular intercourse. But I was happy that she had found herself a husband and that they were working something out to get themselves some children. There was so much to learn about women. They were so much more complicated than the rest of us. They all had their own stories, so many of them sad. In fact I never met a woman with a happy story to tell. Once you got to know them.
Everybody’s got a story.