Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

She put her hand out to the side a little. The smaller hand touched hers and took it. “You made a deal.”

She tugged him through the doorway into the tight, square lobby. The hand snapped free and he swung by, twisting to face her as if to meet a blow. He put his back against the second door, crouched a little. His hands pressed the sides of his legs. The front door shut slowly and the shadows deepened in the lobby. He crouched lower, his eyes level with her breasts, as she took a step toward him. The hat appeared, a black rock in the door window. Green eyes saw it, straightened up, one hand moving quickly toward his pants pocket. The second and third head, thick dark bulbs, lifted beside the hat in the window. Bodies piled against the door behind her. Green eyes held up the glove. “Here you lousy glove.”

She smiled and put out her hand. The hat screamed, “Hey, you made a deal, baby. Hey, you got no manners.”

“Don’t be scared,” she whispered, stepping closer.

The glove lifted toward her and hung in the air between them, gray, languid as smoke. She took it and bent toward his face. “I won’t kiss you. Run.” The window went black behind her, the lobby solid in darkness, silent but for his breathing, the door breathing against the pressure of the bodies, and the scraping of fingers spread about them like rats in the walls. She felt his shoulder, touched the side of his neck, bent the last inch, and kissed him. White light cut the walls. They tumbled behind it, screams and bright teeth. Spinning to face them she was struck, pitched against green eyes and the second door. He twisted hard, shoved away from her as the faces piled forward popping eyes and lights, their fingers accumulating in the air, coming at her. She raised the bag, brought it down swishing into the faces, and wrenched and twisted to get free of the fingers, screaming against their shrieks, “Stop it, stop it, stop it.” The bag sprayed papers and coins, and the sunglasses flew over their heads and cracked against the brass mailboxes. She dropped amid shrieks, “Gimme a kiss, gimme a kiss,” squirming down the door onto her knees to get fingers out from under her and she thrust up with the bag into bellies and thighs until a fist banged her mouth. She cursed, flailed at nothing.

There was light in the lobby and leather scraping on concrete as they crashed out the door into the street. She shut her eyes instantly as the fist came again, big as her face. Then she heard running in the street. The lobby was silent. The door shut slowly, the shadows deepened. She could feel the darkness getting thicker. She opened her eyes. Standing in front of her was the hat.

He bowed slightly. “I get those guys for you. They got no manners.” The hat shook amid the shadows, slowly, sadly.

She pressed the smooth leather of her bag against her cheek where the mouths had kissed it. Then she tested the clasp, snapping it open and shut. The hat shifted his posture and waited. “You hit me,” she whispered, and did not look up at him. The hat bent and picked up her keys and the papers. He handed the keys to her, then the papers, and bent again for the coins. She dropped the papers into her bag and stuffed them together in the bottom. “Help me up!” She took his hands and got to her feet without looking at him. As she put the key against the lock of the second door she began to shiver. The key rattled against the slot. “Help me!” The hat leaned over the lock, his long thin fingers squeezing the key. It caught, angled with a click. She pushed him aside. “You give me something? Hey, you give me something?” The door shut on his voice.

MAMMA WAS COMING. SARAH WAS STIFF AND PALE.Myron walked circles saying chicken chow mein. If Mamma asks say chicken chow mein. There was a knock. Sarah said chicken chow mein, opened the door. Mamma. Stockings rolled in rubber bands just below the knees. She had something for them in a shopping bag: lox, rye bread, salami, chocolate cake … Then it was 5:00 a.m. Light hung about their heads like iron. Naked, staring at Myron, Sarah was poignant with the need to pee. Myron talked about pain, Sarah, and the need we must feel, Sarah, to accept pain. Yet he had suffered doubts. He had been less than cool. Indeed, shiksa blonde or purple eggplant, she was his wife and had made a delicious dinner. Mistake or not, Sarah. Yet he’d been doubtful when he said, if Mamma asks — which she did — say chicken chow mein — which they did. He’d been doubtful when Mamma was eating it, pork casserole, but he babbled distractions and filled the wineglass from which she drank nothing, Sarah, because she was eating misgivings away — hers and theirs, Sarah. And yet in the loving momentum of Mamma’s teeth didn’t everything seem fine, Sarah, hugging goodbye, gimme-a-call, Sarah. Then the door was locked, Sarah, and Mamma was in the subway tunneling out of mind and he took Sarah, Sarah, and stripped her like a twig and came trip hammers and sprawled all bones until the phone rang weirdly oh God, Sarah. And a hideous bird voice said Mamma had had a trichinol seizure and he screamed filthyfucking-middlewesternswinepeddlers, Sarah, waking, to stare at Sarah’s gray eyes staring at him out of sleep and nightmare. I’m talking about pain, Sarah. How the old must suffer, Sarah, because we grow, we change, and we honor them, Sarah, by acknowledging and making clear to ourselves that we accept life’s inexorable sophistication and cruel, natural, inevitable growing away from primitive intimations of kindness, Sarah, and the phone rang. From the bathroom she yelled acknowledge it, Myron. And it rang, Myron.

THE HALL WAS CLOGGED WITH BODIES;none of them hers, but who could be sure? The light was bad, there was too much noise, too much movement. Too many people had been invited. More kept arriving. I liked it, but it was hard to get from one room to another. Conversation was impossible. People had to lean close and shriek. It killed the effect of wit, looking into nostrils, shrieking, “What? What?” But it was a New York scene. I liked it. Except she was missing; virtually torn out of my hands. Cecily. I would have asked people if they had seen her, but I was ashamed to admit I had lost her. I was afraid she was someone’s date or inextricably into something. I was afraid she was copulating. She had been dressed, but it was a New York scene. Minutes had passed. I shoved through the hall — hot, dark, squealing with bodies — and looked for her. I shoved into the kitchen and saw just one couple, a lady in a brown tweed suit talking to a short dapper man in spats. She was stout, fiftyish, had fierce eyes. Flat, black as nailheads. Her voice flew around like pots and pans. The man glanced at me, then down as if embarrassed. The lady ignored me. I ignored her and busied around the wet, sloppy counter looking for an unused glass and a bottle of something, as if I wanted a drink. The lady was saying, slam, clang:

“Sexual enlightenment, the keystone of modernity, I dare say, can hardly be considered an atavistic intellectual debauch, Cosmo.”

“But the perversions …”

“To be sure, the perversions of which we are so richly conscious are the natural inclination, indeed the style, of civilized beings.”

I found a paper cup. It was gnawed about the rim, but no cigarettes were shredding on the bottom. I sloshed in bourbon and started to leave, afraid she was pervulating.

“Wait there, you.”

I stopped.

“What sort of pervert are you?”

I shrugged, mumbled, hoping she’d forgo.

“What sort of pervert are you?”

I shrugged, mumbled.

“Speak up, fellow.”

“I mug yaks.”