Jacob Rubin - The Poser

I did what I could to make my answer sound flat and rote, like a kid who’s heard the same lecture too many times. “Because it makes him feel like less of a customer.”

His smile vanished. “I know how it is. You were born, cursed , with that urge. To peek behind the curtain. No, the stage can’t hold you for long.” He added, “I was pleased to see you finally got it right, by the way.”

“What’s that?”

“Your impression of Lucy backstage. It was finally whole .” His smile erupted again. And it was then I realized. The way he acted when he saw me in his office — I was sure he was taken aback, ambushed, but it wasn’t that at all. He had been excited .

“I don’t know how much longer I need to be here,” I said, even as I was feeling all the more bolted to my chair and the second chair of my knees and arms. I was back in it. Such a subtle thing, such an infinite difference. The lift of the chin, the tap of a finger. A centimeter between happening and tumbling, between having and being had.

“What is it you want?” I asked. But I already knew, it had already started. He was going to make me a spy.

Once inside the bedroom Bernard with bearlike swipes chased her from the dresser to the mantel to the four-poster bed, at the edge of which the broad-shouldered woman squealed in delight, the belt of her fur-trimmed negligee still somehow staying tied. Earlier she’d performed a perfect B-girl curtsy, turning on white slippers when offering her hand, even doing that thing where she stuck her index finger in her dimple and screwed it in. I understood. It didn’t matter how well she pretended, what mattered is that she would never stop.

On all fours on top of the bed she made eyes at me in the armchair as Bernard kissed her neck.

“Am I gonna know your friend, too?” she asked.

“Shut up.” He began to insult her body. Each time she emitted gasps as round as quarter notes. It went on like that. Not like he was playing an instrument so much as moving his hands over one of those pianos that play themselves. Buttoning up his shirt, he nodded to me. “You want this?”

“Please,” she pleaded as I rose. “Help.”

Sauntering toward the bed, I produced a high, whimpering laugh. Around the sheets hung the stench of bad fruit. “Please.” Her shoulders were warm and pressed, her hair like steel wool. I pulled it. “Shut up,” I told her.

Laughter arose from the beaten armchair the moment it was over. The woman slapped me loosely on the back, her hands slick and warm. “Where’d you find this one, Bernie?”

She had gotten up and was fixing her hair in the mirror. As she did, she bit her lower lip self-consciously and sprayed a lavender bottle around, shaking her head into the mist of it. “Sweet of you to come see us at the Jade House.” When she turned to me, her eyes bruised with makeup, I turned away.

She led us back down the dark hallway, holding my hand. In the room lined with green drapes the women positioned themselves not any one too close to another. On the widely opened laps of gap-toothed men. By the bar. Their legs like unsheathed swords. “Come back soon, won’t you?” she said. A host of women in negligees joined her in ushering us to the door. In their languid movements only their hips seemed tightly wound. “Thank you,” I said again as the door shut. In the canyon below, the lights of the city shimmered a ghostly blue. A hot wind ratted out the palm trees, which were darker, wilder lengths of darkness. My hands trembled as I lit the cig.

“Don’t thank them,” Bernard said.

• • •

Often I didn’t know where we were going. “Remember to compliment the teacups,” Bernard would say, or, “I hope he doesn’t go on and on about that boat,” and Frankie or Lou would snicker in the town car’s backseat as the pinks of the city oozed down their suits.

Ever since our meeting in his office, my days at the Communiqué felt numbered. For three weeks I continued to perform on Saturday night, a run of awkward and transitional shows during which I appeared in Bernard’s getup and, between volunteers, acted in his manner. Max hated it, and I suppose I did, too, but for different reasons. Every facet of the routine bored me, but the ubiquity of touch seemed worst of all. At the bar, after shows, they passed me around like a wind-up toy.

Mostly I kept to the back room with Bernard and his people. I liked to slide the cards to the edge of the table and peek at an inside straight draw. By then I’d gone back to the tailor and had all the duds straightened out — the suit and later the boots, several pairs. One afternoon Frankie found me in the office and, without a word, handed me a heavy crumpled paper bag. A.22, which I kept holstered out of view, like Bernard’s. I never once used it. But its heft was crucial, like a sandbag.

All of this helped, of course, with Lucy, the few times I saw her darting around the Communiqué. As Bernard, I viewed her in her totality, like an animal at the zoo, the way everything it does inadvertently contributes to a definition of what it is. The few times we found ourselves alone in a hallway, she made a general show of exasperation, muttering, “Excuuuuse me,” as she shouldered past me.

Except it did happen one more time, backstage. Bernard was right: She liked to make people naked. Our bodies started it without us. And once it was happening, it was like staying in a house you used to live in, you know where they keep the gin. She thought it would be like it was. She thought we would frolic and lounge, that I would risk it all to entertain her in that unventilated room. But I got my clothes on quick as I could. “You two fuuucking now?” she shouted, and I walked thirty blocks home trying not to shake.

Mama had written me after the incident with Lucy. Someone had tipped her off. Maybe Max.

MAY 5

Oh, my Giovanni has the heartache. It is a terrible feeling, isn’t it? I think you ought to come home at once, away from those show-business types. I’ve got half a mind to go down there myself and scoop you up, put you in my pouch like a kangaroo. I liked Lucy all right, Giovanni, but for her to do this? And don’t get me started on Bernard. Really! I have a very bad feeling about that man. Come home. We’ll eat fancy foods and see movies and even do some of our old shows, just you and me.

M

She left messages at the Ambassador Hotel. I ignored them. When I wrote, I made it as short as I could.

Mom—

Bernard’s not half as bad as you think, and it’s all swell, really. As you said, it’s done with Lucy, and that’s good.

When she wrote and called after that, I didn’t respond. At first this made me nervous, but Bernard insisted. He had theories. I don’t know if I believed them, but I liked to hear them delivered that way, with the certainty of the vicious. His father also left around the time he was born. “I was deprived all that,” he told me once. As I soon discovered, he was as capable of lengthy speech as he was of silence, the latter like a holster from which the former was drawn. “Not the father exactly, but his long decline. Daddy’s looking a little stooped going up the porch stairs. Daddy forgot Aunt Donna’s name today. Decline is the real inheritance,” he said. “A man with a father who’s present has seen him age and weaken and throughout the process feels himself edging closer and closer to manhood. But our fathers are always of immaculate age and strength, and so we are always boys. It’s the principal job of the father to show his son how to die. You had Max, and he’s a serviceable model, but I think it’s time you became your own man.”