Leonard Michaels: The Men's Club

Berliner dragged, coughed. “It’s where he lives.”

He passed the cigarette to me. I took a short drag, passed it to Cavanaugh. He did the same, passing it next to Terry. He studied it for a moment, started to pass it away, but then committed it to his lips. He took in a little smoke, fired it out quickly, passing the cigarette to Canterbury. He made the tip sizzle in a long suck, held the smoke as if he’d done this often before, and forced a smile. His creamy slacks billowed at the cuff. He looked antiseptic, chipper, cheery, frightened — the man didn’t have one way to be.

Paul, with the cigarette again, held it close to his lips, looking shrewd, but when he spoke his voice was entirely innocent. “You know what I think? I think that was great. It was like an experience.”

Cavanaugh said, “For Kramer.”

“For all of us. I’m glad I saw it. I’m glad.”

He was massively sincere. Nobody tried to qualify his comment.

Terry said, “I’ve got to work tomorrow.”

“Me, too,” I said.

Then Berliner began quietly humming. I looked at him and saw that he’d shut his eyes. His humming flowed into words: “For he’s a jolly good fellow …”

I know I would have laughed, but Cavanaugh stopped me by joining Berliner, singing in slow, quiet tones, “For he’s a jolly good fellow.” Together they were irresistible and all of us began doing it, singing in the flowery piney dark outside Kramer’s house. When we reached the last line, fourth or fifth time around, “Which nobody can deny,” it seemed awesomely true, maybe because of the trees, parked cars, hedges, and houses. These dumb ministers of the street denied nothing and there was no denial even from Kramer’s house, though I expected it very much, a shout, a scream, or something worse. We stopped singing. A sudden deep drop to silence. The earth pressed up against my feet.

Cavanaugh looked at Kramer’s house, as if for the effect of our voices, but quietude had resumed, cool dark air resumed. “I’ve got to go,” he whispered, not going, and then he raised his voice, “But I’m not sleepy. Man, I don’t even want to sleep. I’m going for a drive.”

Terry said, “I’m not sleepy either.”

Berliner, tentatively, almost shyly, said, “Me neither. I know a breakfast place in San Francisco.”

Canterbury said, “Let me buy breakfast for you fellows.” He tried to restrain himself, not show us how much he wanted to buy us breakfast, but his voice jumped with enthusiasm and hope, spoiling the idea a little.

I said, “Well, I don’t know.”

Paul dragged on his marijuana, finishing it, building toward action, and then said, “Let’s go in Cavanaugh’s pickup,” as if the decision to go had been made.

Nobody moved. Berliner checked our faces for objections. Nobody said no. Terry moaned, “I’ve got to work tomorrow,” but that wasn’t no. In fact, it was a sort of yes. Berliner nudged Cavanaugh and they took off together, as if with the same place in mind, a great big man and a man with white hair striding together up the street. I lingered, but only until Paul grabbed my arm, pulling me after him. I didn’t resist. Terry and Canterbury followed, everyone walking quickly.

The bed of Cavanaugh’s pickup was hard on my ass. Also cold to the touch. It rumbled and jounced. Terry and Paul huddled against the back of the cab, talking and laughing. I heard Terry shout, against the noise of the pickup, “I said to her ‘I love you,’” and Paul laughed and looked at me. Though I’d missed the story, I laughed, and then, with the pickup building speed along the avenue to the freeway, I couldn’t hear a word they were saying. But I laughed and the wind ripped my face; numbing, loud. First light lay along the shore and out along the mud flats of the bay, a cottony glow gathering against black resistance in the morning sky. Cavanaugh pushed hard, ninety or better, going through Emeryville. I could feel his happiness in the speed. Like the new day, despite resistance, being born. “Where are we going?” I screamed. Not for answer; just to scream. The wind ate my question. Terry’s bald head dipped toward me. Pale ceramic bulb; it must have been freezing in the wind. He winked. Canterbury’s face popped up in the back window of the cab and I noticed, in the exaggerated motion of his lips, he was singing, nodding his head to the beat. As we approached the toll booth to the Bay Bridge, Cavanaugh had to slow down. I could hear them singing inside the cab. Paul and Terry joined in and so did I. We pulled away from the toll booth toward high steel pylons and great sweeping loops of cable, all of us singing of Kramer, jolly good fellow we’d left in his dining room, peering after us, waving goodbye. Jolly good fellow. Which nobody should deny.