Leonard Michaels - The Men's Club

Kramer said, “Anybody want some coffee?”

Berliner said, “Your pants around your ankles. I see it. I see it, man. You’re sitting in the car with your pants around your ankles. That’s a scream.”

“Yeah,” said Paul, looking at Berliner with a dim light of pleasure, sharing the scream.

“But why is your story like mine?”

“The cars.”

“The cars?”

“She was sad. We went to her car. Then she was happy.”

Berliner said nothing. Paul glanced at me. “No?”

“Maybe it is,” I said, not knowing what is or isn’t.

Berliner muttered, “She used you.”

“Yeah. You’re right. That’s what I mean.”

Cavanaugh said, “You shouldn’t tell that story. There are stories nobody should tell.”

“It’s what happened. It’s not a story. My wife left town and this woman laid me.”

“Cavanaugh is kidding you,” said Terry. “I’m glad you told it. What happened when your wife got home?”

“Your pants around your ankles,” said Berliner, laughing. “It’s a scream.”

“I was happy when my wife got home. She said, ‘You horny or something?’ She expected me to be mad at her. She said, ‘You horny? It’s only been two weeks.’ I said, ‘Let’s go to bed.’ She said, ‘It’s the middle of the day. The house is a mess.’ I said, ‘Please.’ She said, ‘I have too much to do.’ We spent the afternoon in bed. I was happy she was home and that’s the truth.”

“You weren’t lonely anymore,” I said.

Paul began fixing himself another marijuana. “When she’s around, I don’t have to try to live.”

“Well, I don’t know about you guys,” said Cavanaugh, smiling and surly, as if Berliner and Paul, in their stories, had reproached him. “But I love to do it. I’ve driven to other cities, my pickup loaded with camping equipment. Sarah thinks I’m going to the Snake River to fish. I’m driving to Denver to fuck.”

Paul said, “You know how to live. Drive to Denver … That’s cool. If I tried it, I’d have an accident, go off a cliff or something.”

Terry, looking at Cavanaugh, said, “They used to call a person like you oversexed. You’d drive to Denver? Must be twenty hours. More.”

“It’s fun.”

“Driving to Denver?”

“The sex.”

Terry scowled. “It makes you laugh?”

Cavanaugh laughed. Berliner laughed at him.

Terry said, “Sex is serious, but I’m sure it could be other things. For imbeciles it could be fun. Not for a man like you, Cavanaugh.”

“It’s fun,” said Cavanaugh.

Berliner shouted, “Paul got his dick crushed. That’s fun.” Laughing teeth and gums, his head snapped on a whiplike spine.

Cavanaugh, lifting his wineglass, talked to it. “Life,” he said. Then said, “Life is thirst.” Nobody was listening. He drank his thirst.

Terry frowned and smiled. Big head; big face, like the map of a nation. Room for antithetical feelings. The eyelids fluttering, as if assailed by gnats, suggested embarrassment, uncertainty. The spill of his lower lip was amusement. A loosening — submission to Berliner’s raucous, licentious laughter — checked by small clutches of muscle, like tiny fists, at the corners of his mouth. Fluttering above, clutching below. What to call this expression? Maybe every combination in a face doesn’t have a name. But he’d name it himself. He was gathering toward speech, like a man about to rumba, waiting to feel the beat. From Terry — round, square, bulky — I expected definitive matter. Truth pressed by flesh. He looked only at Berliner. Berliner quit laughing. Terry was a doctor. People listen to them.

“I married young. I didn’t know much about women.”

He’d said this earlier, when Berliner left the room. Terry wanted him to hear it now, his motto. In his medical office, I supposed, diplomas hung on the walls. Like the silk shirt on his back. Credentials. Manifestations of his presence in the world, as distinguished from your own. More to the point, he was changing the mood in Kramer’s dining room. He wouldn’t begin amid the brainless residue of Berliner’s laughter. Too much self-respect.

“I also met a woman like yours, Berliner. I was married then, working in an emergency room, thirty-six-hour shifts, twice a week. Nicki wanted me to do something else, maybe private practice. But the money was good and I had plenty of free time. The emergency room wasn’t in a nice neighborhood. I saw knife wounds. Men came in with things stuck up their assholes. Cucumbers. Coke bottles. An armed guard was always at the door.”

Berliner nodded, as if hammered lightly behind the head, to show his appreciation of real life. His mouth was slightly open, waiting for the woman, not laughing.

“It was another medical education. Good for me, I thought. Then, late one night, a gorgeous Latino appears in high heels and a tight short skirt. Also jewelry — rings, glass baubles — like this emergency room is her place for dancing. Her hair is black black. Moistlooking; gleaming like hot tar. She is young, confident, daring. She is the boss. I heard that already in her heels coming toward me. Hard linoleum floor. Bare halls. She walked like drumsticks. She made a racket.”

Berliner smiled. This drama tickled him. Bare halls, hard floor, gorgeous Latino making her entrance, and here is Terry, young doctor, healing affictions of the night. I looked at Terry’s shirt. Could anyone in that shirt — subtle mauve expensive silk — care much for other people? It occurred to me I wanted his shirt.

“She sits, crosses her legs. Superior legs. Then she takes out a cigarette and offers me one. I didn’t accept. The nurse might have noticed. It wouldn’t look right, I thought, smoking with a patient. Her in particular. I said, ‘What’s your problem?’ Now it makes me laugh.”

His voice lifted; didn’t laugh. This was life. You laugh at it theoretically.

“She says the doctors in the emergency room make arrangements with her for prescriptions. I say, ‘Yes?’ Not an appropriate response, but I didn’t know what she was talking about. She’s cool, matter-of-fact, as if I do know in a general way. ‘It’s the tradition,’ she says. I say, ‘Yes? What’s your problem?’ She repeats herself about arrangements, negotiations. Tells me this is not uncommon. Then asks would I mind if she shuts the door. Nobody was out there except the nurse. I said, ‘If you’ll feel more comfortable, shut the door.’ She does. Then she assures me I can phone doctors in L.A. who will vouch for her. Names names and specialties. Urology. Radiology. I begin to understand. She hasn’t come for a diagnosis. Nothing is the matter. She wants to make an exchange. Do business. The door is shut, but she is whispering.”

“She’s like the woman I met?” said Berliner.

“Yes. She had an effect on me. I learned from her about myself.”

“But the one I met liked me.”

“May I go on?”

“Go on.”

“She wants to do business. For certain prescriptions, she’ll do whatever I want, at my convenience, in a regular way. ‘Anything,’ she says. She takes a date book from her purse. As if it’s all settled, she asks, ‘What are your hours?’”

“Man, she’s nothing like the one I met.”

Cavanaugh said, “Shut up, Solly.”

Terry said, “Yes, she is. Listen to me. This was a difficult moment. They don’t teach this in medical school. It is overlooked, ignored, never mentioned.”

“What’s this, this, this?” said Berliner.

“What she called the tradition. What she said is ‘not uncommon.’ You know what I said? I said, ‘Go away.’ She gave me a look I still feel. Like I’m a sick nut from the street. She says, ‘You need a doctor, Doctor.’ She turns, walks to the door, then looks back. To make sure she isn’t dreaming. I say, ‘Go away or I’ll call the cops.’ She opens the door, walks out. I’m standing there in my doctor outfit, my little office, by myself. She was going away. I myself chased her out. I felt grief. For this grief I was wearing a plastic name tag. For this grief they gave me instrument trays, prescription pads, and people called me Doctor. I cried out, ‘Wait, you forgot something.’ She kept on walking. She didn’t hear me. I didn’t cry out again. I’d done enough; too much. I was trembling. Then the nurse says, ‘Wait. Doctor wants you. You forgot something.’ She stopped. I was standing at my desk, looking down the hall at her. She looked back, waiting for me to speak. I had to say something, tell her what she forgot. The nurse was listening. I said, ‘Your prescription. ’ Like a fool. I didn’t mean it. But too late. She starts back, heels knocking, jewelry bouncing. She is putting on an act for the nurse with her whole body, laughing, shaking her head. Oh, it’s so funny that she forgot her prescription. She came back inside the office and, without asking me, shut the door. You don’t have to shut the door to write a prescription. It must have looked bad. I was locked in, and if the truth were known, I loved it. Now she wasn’t so damned gorgeous. Now there was something at stake. I could see flaws. She was arrogant, hot, suffocating meat. I couldn’t even talk.”