Leonard Michaels - The Men's Club

Berliner, half-smiling — a little disappointed, not disapproving — said, “All right, man,” as if conceding the world. “What was her name?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Bullshit.”

Terry smiled and conceded: “Mango.”

“That’s her name?”

“But the point is—”

“Mango,” screamed Berliner, a vehement, exotic bird.

Taking yet another slice of pie, Terry said, “My compliments to your wife, Kramer. She baked this with her hips. Give her my applause.”

The courtesy, grossly extended, was cruel. Maybe Berliner’s laughter had annoyed Terry; hence he punished Kramer. Or he was embarrassed by his own incontinence. In his story and at this table. Nobody else was still eating. In the bones of the bald head was a need to chew. The more he talked, the more they needed to churn, crush, savor. Kramer seemed to enjoy watching him, even to be grateful for the sight, as if he recognized something in Terry he particularly liked.

“Nancy will be delighted to hear what you said. I’m positive she made this pie. There is more if you want.”

Each word, like a vessel of liquid, was evenly and distinctly uttered not to spill. He struggled thus to contain his pride in Nancy’s pie. A good generous host. His furniture, paintings, plants, ceramics, and tattoos bespoke a lust for accumulation, but he lusted also to give. He’d slept with hundreds of women. His generosity was oceanic, lusciously abundant, like his black hair. Styled precisely, too.

Paul, from an abyss of reflection, said, “Women like doctors.”

Terry stopped chewing. “You mean my Latino?”

“Yeah.”

“I had something she wanted. Prescriptions.”

“Oh, come on.”

“The truth. She bought drugs and sold them at a higher price. She’d done this for years, on and off. Ever since high school. She needed the money.”

“Yeah, yeah. But you’re a doctor. Women like doctors because they’re real. Most men are losers.”

“You think doctors can’t be losers?”

“I’m saying only what that chick was after. It wasn’t scrips, it was you. There are other ways of making money.” He sounded resentful. Logic wasn’t a nice way to talk to him.

“I saw her again. The rest was repetitions, complications. The meeting I like to remember. Pleasure is in the beginning.”

“Courtship,” I said, “in the emergency room.”

“Indeed, courtship. Wooing.” Terry grinned. “Mango and I became friends, or what you could call friends. I even loaned her money. Sometimes twice a week I’d drive to Martinez. She lived near an oil refinery. Farmhouse with a couple of acres. She grew chard, peas, tomatoes, artichokes — a talented gardener, can you believe it? She had chickens and rabbits, too.”

“She wasn’t a hooker?” said Berliner.

“Too original. She was an entrepreneur. Her name was Felicia Mango. She worked in a factory. No education. Her handwriting was moronic. Balloons instead of dots over the i’s. Also heavy loops under the g’s and y’s, like testicles. But she could name all the local wild flowers. Fantastic memory. I’d recite a list of thirty numbers and she could repeat it with no mistakes, backwards. She made me swear I wouldn’t tell anybody she could do this. She thought something was wrong with her. I said, ‘You’re a talented woman.’ She pointed at me and laughed: ‘You’re a big nut.’ I said she was gorgeous. She said, ‘You’re gorgeous, too. You don’t have pimples. I got pimples.”

“What do you mean ‘friends’?” said Berliner. “You were fucking.”

“Doctors or losers. Friends or fucking. Is there no other way to think? You know, I used to believe the wheel was the basis of Western civilization. Then I read, in a book about the history of machines, it was the principle of reciprocating motion. Not the wheel. Yes; no. Right; wrong. That’s how we think, build a bridge, talk, walk. I was her friend. Sometimes we’d go for a drive, Berliner, and not fuck. I loaned her money and she paid it back. Once I helped change an elbow pipe in her toilet. I’m good with my hands. I was showing off. Pails of rusty water. Black nasty grease. I loved it. What bothered me was the sentiment. The idea. Me doing this for her. Afterwards in bed she was more affectionate than sexual. She asked questions about my wife. She wanted to know what Nicki looks like. Also does Nicki care if I see other women. Cavanaugh says he doesn’t like kissing. Me, it was talking about my wife. I’d get depressed. She’d say, ‘Tell me some numbers.’ She knew it amused me, impressed me that she could repeat thirty numbers. After a while, it only broke my heart a little.”

“But she was a friend,” said Berliner. “To me—”

Cavanaugh interrupted. “Solly, it’s not hard to understand. I was making it with a woman who always wanted to take pictures of me. Like I’d be on the crapper and the door flies open. Click. I’d be in the shower and the curtain rips away. Click, click. She has a hundred pictures of me washing my ass. I was her friend.”

“Yes. Something like that,” said Terry, looking doubtful even as he nodded yes, yes. “But I know Felicia was my friend because she stopped asking me for prescriptions. I offered. She got mad. She said she only takes from pigs. Others have less trouble in these situations than I do. She was a friend. But the truth is I don’t go down on my friends. You see what I’m getting at?” He laughed heavily, as if the idea were funnier than the fact. “I used to be a political person, a lefty. I signed petitions, gave to good causes. Now, all of a sudden, I understood the meaning of alienation. A body lying next to me in bed was asking questions about my wife.”

“A friend,” said Berliner, as if repeating the word restored meaning. “Man, you are weird.”

“He believes in the principle of reciprocating motion,” I said.

“I’m a scientist. I don’t like to kid myself too much. She was a body.”

“Did she see other men?” I asked.

“She once phoned me at the emergency room. I was knee-deep in blood and shit, but it was Felicia, so I ran to the phone. She asked if it’s all right for her to have dinner with a jerk at the factory. Would I mind? Of course I didn’t mind. I wanted her to see other men, though it worried me. If I carried bugs it would be a disaster.”

“Your wife was a body, too,” I said.

“Marriage should be monogamous. I believe this with all my heart.”

“To prevent bacteria,” said Paul. “I can dig that.”

“To prevent the wife from becoming a body. It isn’t a question of bacteria — though, naturally, I worried plenty about infections. I took precautions. Still, I worried. Sure enough, I got an infection. Don’t ask me how. Maybe I wanted it. I had to phone Nicki’s gynecologist. He’d been my professor in medical school and we both moved to California at the same time. It didn’t make things easier. Nicki was seeing him for a problem with cysts. Which was convenient, but I had to go to his office, tell him the whole story. He was interested from a medical point of view. How did I get the infection? Was it a new, hybrid strain? It was plain clap. He was also sympathetic. The way he listened made me pity myself. He encouraged me to talk. I nearly cried, I felt so disgraced. I told him Nicki was on the verge of nervous collape, which was crazy. Nobody who plays tennis, who jogs, who sleeps nine hours a night, is nervous. I must have meant myself, but I went on about poor Nicki. I told him how she rushed out of the house in the middle of an argument and drove away like a madwoman. How once she didn’t see the neighbor’s dog sleeping in our drive. She ran him over. I made her sound homicidal. If she discovered she had clap, would she suppose it came from her tennis racket? No; she’d do something dramatic. He knew her, but he believed every word. He asked if we shouldn’t consult a psychiatrist. Think about having her committed. For her own good. I had a horrible picture of myself. A doctor gives his wife clap and has her committed for her own good. I wouldn’t discuss it further. I could treat her myself, I said, maybe slip drugs into her yogurt. But I had to leave town for about ten days. I was helpless. He promised to help me, to be discreet. We shook hands. He patted me on the back. When I next phoned him, he said, ‘She’s clean,’ and hung up. No bill for services, only a sock in the ear. Maybe he was disappointed in me, but why he wanted to hurt my feelings I’ll never know. Thank God Nicki didn’t have clap.”