Leonard Michaels: The Men's Club

Terry said, “I must be slow tonight. I don’t seem to understand things. You say, after five years he shows up, takes your tie and shoes, and he disappears.”

“It’s just shoes. Just shoes. A tie. It’s clothes, you dig?”

“If you hit him in the face, I would dig.”

“You should see his face. Long skinny face with snaggle teeth. He looks like a broken stork. When they cashed my check, the money was for Mitch. If it was for me, the guard would have blown my head off. Everybody loves Mitch. The bank didn’t know the money was for him, but if it was for me they would have looked at my account. They would have said, ‘Only forty-two bucks in your account, mister. Get your ass out of here.’ You think I could hit him in the face? Man, I was walking home broke after waiting three hours in the cold to give him fifty bucks, and I didn’t even feel angry. I couldn’t hit Mitch.”

“I hear you,” shouted Berliner, his footsteps coming downstairs, turning into the hall to the kitchen. Paul grinned and shut up. Through the kitchen wall, Berliner said, “Shortly after my divorce, I screwed Deborah Zeller.”

Poor Deborah Zeller, I thought, compared to Mitch.

The kitchen’s swinging door jolted, shoved wide. Berliner stood in it, reborn. “Go on, baby. You were saying ‘shortly.’ I like that word. I’m going to use it, too, shortly.”

Cavanaugh said, “Sit down, man, or I’ll kill you.”

Paul was still grinning, delighted by Berliner’s return. His grin made him look sort of stupid, but he was merely loyal. He’d die for a buddy.

Not sitting, Berliner said, “I’ve been thinking about your sleep trouble.” He leered at Cavanaugh, the expression magnifying his features, freeing light in his eyes, making long, evil teeth. “A marriage bed has benefits. You fart in it and nobody is offended.”

Cavanaugh’s voice was weary and severe as he said, “A marriage bed has benefits. I appreciate what you’re saying. When I do it with another woman I have to wash afterwards.”

Berliner sat. Again triumphant. White hairs coiled in his nostrils, like incandescent wires, seething.

“What are you talking about, Cavanaugh?” I asked the question exactly as if I didn’t know what he was talking about. My face was hot.

“I wash and check my clothes for hairs. I chew gum, worry about sex stinks, marks on my body. You know. Not worth it, man. The time. The phony conversation. I hate the kissing in particular. It makes me think of Sarah. How many ways can you kiss a woman? Then having to be charming for two or three hours in the afternoon. I drive home thinking I’ll never do this again. But I do it again.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I do things I don’t like to think of myself doing. I don’t like being the kind of man who likes doing it. Except I like it. Man, what am I talking about?”

“Making it with another woman,” said Kramer. “You lie to Sarah?”

“I talk with half my head. The other half doesn’t exist. I don’t lie to her, I lie to myself. I come home after doing it. I can’t get there fast enough. Dinner is ready, table is set, kids are cleaned up and waiting for me. A jar of daisies is in the center of the table. Milk is set out for the kids. Like nothing happened. This is it, the way it is and it should be. White, yellow, clean. Even the cat looks happy. I lift the fork to my mouth and catch a whiff of cunt, because twenty minutes ago I was fucking my brains out down the road. I scrubbed good, but there it is. The kids are laughing. They knock over a glass of milk. Sarah says to me, ‘You have to make them behave. I can’t be the only one who does that.’ I yell, ‘Behave, or I’ll rip your heads off.’ They giggle and Sarah wants to kill me. I tell her to get the daisies off the table. They take up too much room. We don’t need daisies when we’re trying to eat dinner. Man, I like those daisies and I’m telling her to get rid of them.”

Kramer grinned.

Cavanaugh grinned back at him. “That’s not how it is for you?”

“No.”

“No kids. For you, bullshit is a way of life. How come you never turned gay?”

“I’ve got bleeding piles. Don’t get personal, Cavanaugh.”

“My wife is pretty,” I said, a maudlin slide in my voice.

“So?” Cavanaugh glanced at me with irritation.

“She moves pretty. She sits cross-legged in the middle of the quilt and brushes her hair. I see her do this every night. Her head tips against the stroke and I hear a fiery rush as the brush goes down. She finishes. Removes her glasses. She sticks them into one of her slippers, then goes to sleep.”

“So?”

“If I made it with another woman, it would degrade my wife.”

“If she didn’t know?”

“She’d get sick.”

“Right,” said Paul. “Right, right. She’d get very sick. She’d need an operation. The doctors would cut out her machinery. You like the way she brushes her hair?”

“I depend on it.”

“My wife does yoga before she goes to bed,” said Paul, looking at his reflection in me. “That’s eloquent, man. The way she brushes her hair.”

“Hey,” said Berliner, sitting up sharply, staring toward the horizon of his mind. “Every night I see this dog. Legs like pins. Every night. Old Japanese man comes down the street, the dog bouncing in front of him, sniffing bushes, cutting his eyes back to see if the man is coming. It goes bouncing out onto the asphalt. Tiny dog. Nails like rats scratching the asphalt. The man stays at the curb and the dog makes circles, tiny scratchy steps. Million to the inch, tighter and tighter circles, sniffing, trembling. The man lights a cigarette to show the dog he is being patient. The dog keeps circling, looking for the exact spot. Toothpick tail sticks up straight. He is about to squat and crap. But he has to do one more circle, then one more, then one more. He never craps.”

“No?” said Paul, his voice all charity. “How come?”

“It isn’t in his nature anymore. He does the circles for the man.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Cavanaugh.

“Freedom, baby. I’m talking about freedom.” Berliner’s eyes were big with vision, with desire to share it. Cavanaugh delivered us. He said, “I see what you’re getting at, Solly. But I’m not a little dog. I’m a pinball machine. One woman makes another necessary. I used to show up at parties with Miss Beautiful and I’d be looking at every other woman in the room. I’d feel trapped for the evening. You know what I used to do on the road?”

“What?” I said.

“I told Sarah about it.”

“What did you do on the road?”

“I told her I was sorry. It was our anniversary. The kids were staying with my mother. We went camping up north. High pine woods. River. Burning yellow moon. Suddenly I had to tell her everything and I felt it would be okay. I told her about Kansas City, El Paso, New York — the women. You wouldn’t believe what she said. She said, ‘I want a divorce.’ I told her it wouldn’t happen again. I wanted her to forgive me. She said, ‘I want a divorce.’ Like I had one in my pocket. I was getting irritated. I promised her it would never happen again. She says she wants a fucking divorce. Then she says, ‘Okay. Me or basketball.’”

“You picked her,” said Paul.

“Damn right.”

Paul grinned, looking very pleased.

“And it still happens,” said Cavanaugh, “every chance I get. But I don’t move on the wives of friends. Never. I absolutely draw the line there. Except sometimes.”

“You lack inner resources,” said Terry. “It’s not serious.”

“I love to fuck. That’s serious. It’s going to be my epitaph. Cavanaugh loved to fuck.”