Leonard Michaels - The Men's Club

“A nightmare,” said Terry.

“Once — before the dream — I came for my morning paper and stood reading the front page. I was going to buy the paper, but I was just standing there reading the front page. She says, ‘Hey you. This is no library.’ There were some other people around and they looked at me like I was trying to cheat the paper lady. I got so pissed, I said, ‘I buy a paper from you every morning. You lost a good customer.’ I walked away.”

Smiling at himself, Berliner continued. “But I was back the next morning. Like, it was more trouble to buy the paper somewhere else, and I wasn’t going to let her do this to me. So I went back and stood a minute reading the front page. Not reading. Looking at it, waiting for her to say something. She didn’t. So I bought the paper. I don’t know who was the winner, but in the dream she was sitting on her stool and I was on my knees, reaching up her dress. On my knees, man, reaching up to the heat. She was letting me. Like not noticing. The most exciting dream I ever had.”

As Berliner talked, his eyes seemed to bloat and throb, becoming wet, about to cry. Kramer put his arm around Berliner’s shoulders and said, “Yeah, it’s weird. Weird.”

“I’ll tell you what’s weird,” said Berliner. “What’s weird is fucking Terry kills Deborah. Fucking Cavanaugh is turned on by his wife screaming in a blanket. And you, man, you’re the weirdest. You lick your table.”

“So what, Solly? What’s it to you? I get off licking my table.”

“Makes me jealous.”

Berliner was joking, but also annoyed, maybe miserable. Something in him was difficult to show. Difficult also not to show. Paul, between Terry and Canterbury, the table tipped over in front of them, said, “Hey, since we’re talking about tables, I’ll tell you about my mother-in-law.” His face seemed to hurry, pushing words. “When she eats, you have to wonder if it’s a human thing. I stare at her. I lose my appetite. Last night during dinner she was like abolishing a bowl of soup. The noise was revolting. I was staring. She noticed. She stops. ‘Paul,’ she says. ‘Let me live.’”

“Why did you think of that?” asked Terry.

“Your story about Deborah. I think she liked you.”

“She stuck her fork in my dessert.”

“It was a message. She didn’t want to say anything in front of the other doctors. It was a hint.”

“Have you been watching me eat?”

“No, man. Hey, Terry, you know about bodies. Tell me something. Could my mother-in-law have extra nerves in her mouth?”

“I’m not a nerve specialist. What did you say to your mother-in-law?”

“I said I was sorry. She lives with us. She’s happy when she slobs down a meal. I don’t want to inhibit her or anything.”

“You know what gets me,” said Berliner. “Not important, but I want to say it. Quentin’s wife didn’t phone. Didn’t write a note. Nothing. She doesn’t like me, but what the hell. It’s not hard to pick up the phone. Quentin was my friend. He would have phoned me if she dropped dead. Men play by the rules, you dig. He was my friend. I lost him and she didn’t even tell me.”

“I’m sorry, man,” said Kramer, squeezing Berliner’s shoulder, then withdrawing his arm from around him. “I understand what you feel.”

I said, “I have a colleague named Shulman who says that. He interrupts my sentences to name what I feel. Always nodding yes, yes, like he sees a feeling coming. Wants to welcome it, give it a name.”

Kramer giggled and said, “I hear you, man.”

“I don’t think Shulman really resembles you. It’s only that he says ‘I understand what you feel.’ One day he comes up to me outside my office and says, ‘Could I have a moment with you? Could I ask you a question?’ I said, ‘Of course.’ He says, ‘I heard something you said about me.’ I was surprised. Shulman is colorless. There’s not much to say about him. To mention his name is to kill conversation. Once I dropped in on him to return a book I’d borrowed. He lives alone near the freeway, two-bedroom house with a dead lawn out front and a sick plum tree in the middle of it. He’d just put dinner on the table. The smell was thick and moist, as if I’d walked into his bathroom while he was taking a shower. Liver and boiled potatoes were steaming on the table. It made me feel sick. Beside the plate was a glass of milk. That also sickened me. What’s to say about Shulman? He is a thin man who looks like he has heavy organs; his intestines were shipped to him from Mars, where the gravitational pull is stronger. I said, ‘What did you hear I said about you?’ He says, ‘It isn’t important. I was hurt.’ I said, ‘Shulman, tell me what you heard.’ He says, ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’ He walked away. I told my wife about the incident. She said, ‘Take him to lunch. Talk it over with him.’ I said, ‘You think I want to have lunch with that jerk?’ She says, ‘See? You called him a jerk. I don’t blame him for feeling hurt.’ After that, Shulman began passing me in the hall without saying hello. You know how it feels when a colorless jerk begins ignoring you? I began peeking out of my office before I left it, to make sure he wasn’t in the hall. I never before even thought about Shulman and now I was worried that I might meet him in the men’s room, have to stand beside him at the urinals. I slipped in and out of my office like a thief. Then one day I saw him on campus, same path I was walking, his back to me. I thought of giving him a chance to get far ahead, out of sight. He was hunched, tired-looking. Shorter than I remembered. He was walking slowly, going home to eat liver. As he passed a grove of eucalyptus trees, I saw how tall and healthy the trees looked, as if they didn’t give a damn about Shulman. I had to do something. Put an end to this. I called out his name. With enthusiasm. He stops, turns. I was only fifty feet away, but he squints, reaches for his glasses, and his foot catches in the pavement where there is no crack or depression, and he stumbles, loses his glasses. They smashed. I came up to him stammering, ‘I’m, I’m …’ He looks at me and says, ‘I understand what you feel.’”

Kramer, giggling again, said, “That’s a real funny story, man.” Then he got up from the floor, saying, “I have an idea. You’ll love this. I’m a genius for thinking of it.”

He was heading for the living room, then crossing the orange rug toward a low table, heavily lacquered wood, shaped like a pumpkin. He bent at the table, slid open a drawer. “Here it is.”

He turned with a long flat box in his hands, holding it toward us, opening it as he came back. He was smiling hard, as if to demonstrate the only possible reaction to this box. It contained knives, about a dozen slender knives, lying side by side. A narrow elastic belt held them against black plush. Blue handles. Silver blades. They also seemed to smile.

“I won them in Okinawa playing poker with some Marines. Handmade throwing knives. Perfect balance. Feel them. Let’s move a little.”

“It’s nighttime,” I said.

“So?”

“Dark outside.”

“Fuck that. We’ll throw in here. At the kitchen door. Stand up, Harold.”

Canterbury leaped from his chair. Ready. Not to throw knives, maybe, but ready to oblige. Berliner was on his feet, too, rolling up his sleeves. He wanted to throw knives. Then Paul and Terry rose. Cavanaugh, last to move, groaned, pressed himself upward. Paul took this moment to retrieve his bag of grass. It had been flung when the table tipped, landing against the wall where Berliner was sitting. Paul looked at it while Berliner spoke and then while I spoke, but he didn’t move to get it. I watched him now as he picked up the clear plastic bag, blackened with wine, dripping. He shook it, then cleaned it with a napkin. There was wine inside, too, coagulating lumps of grass. He put the bag with his jacket on the chair he’d been sitting in. Important to him, this good grass, but he hadn’t gone after it until the talk was suspended. He didn’t now complain about its condition. He’d told us how he apologized to his mother-in-law. It was late and I was a little drunk, feeling a sloppiness of the heart. For whatever it’s worth, it struck me that Paul was the nicest man in the room. Kramer, handing out knives, said, “You first, Cavanaugh.”