Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

“Don’t tell me.”

“I’ve gone too far now to stop.”

“No more about the breast.”

“If I stop I’ll be like Satan floating in space or Macbeth on his way to stab Duncan. Imagine if they had stopped. They would have felt like creeps. It’s the kind of thing, Phillip, you have to get over with.”

“Get it over with. You trembled, she trembled.”

“I was a hand. She was a breast. One day, not much later, I touched her you know where and said, ‘You tremble.’ I told her I noticed and wondered if she noticed. More than that, I wondered if she noticed that I noticed. Never in my life was I so sincerely concerned about anything. It was a feeling. Do you follow me, Phillip? I knew immediately it was a feeling. Clear, authentic, like you standing here this minute. You’re standing here, right? Nothing less. That’s how this was. Nothing less.”

“I see. What happened?”

“Phillip, I could spring up on her like an Irish setter and she wouldn’t notice unless I called it to her attention.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Say what you think. Say whatever you think.”

“You lost your connection with the elemental life, is that it?”

“You could say that.”

“At least you have dialogue, Henry. Where’s Marjorie, by the way? I don’t see her anywhere.”

“Do you see that door? Go through it, you’ll find her.”

I looked at the door. It had a quality of shutness. I looked at Henry’s face. It had the same quality, something vertical and shut, like the face of a mountain. Impassive, forbidding, beckoning, irresistible. Susceptibilities in my hands and feet became agitated.

“I won’t go through any doors, Henry.”

“I wouldn’t have talked about this with anyone but you, Phillip.”

“I’m flattered, but not another word, please.”

“In that room, Phillip, in the dark, in a corner …”

“I’m leaving now.”

I glanced away. He glanced after me. He arrived, I was gone. I turned back and looked him directly around the eyes, a swimming look. He tried to pierce it but wallowed. His eyes flailed for a grip but I widened my focus. “Phillip,” he cried, “go speak to her. Tell her my love.”

“Ech,” I said. “I knew it would come to this. Tell her yourself. I’m going.”

“Go. You have no right to go, but go. I’ve told you everything. Take it. Throw it in a sewer someplace.”

“Be reasonable. What can I say to her?”

“Don’t play stupid. You and she had plenty to say to each other before I came along. Say anything, just make her come out or let me come in.”

“Henry.”

“You owe me this. I’ll never feel it’s over between you unless you do it. Make her call me in there.”

“What if I can’t?”

“Then I’ll know what it means and I’ll kill you. To me the connection between love and death is very close.”

“Henry.”

His hand clutched my elbow like the claw of an angry bird. He walked me to the door.

“Henry, what can I do?”

“You know what.”

He opened the door and shoved me through it. The door shut and I was in such darkness that I staggered and swayed. The sound of clinking glasses and talking trickled in after me, but I felt no relation to it. I was steeped, immobilized, wrapped up tight as a mummy. I was without head or arms or feet and my brain was suspended like a cloud. “Marjorie,” I said. My voice whooshed away. No answer came. I crooned, “Marjorie, it’s Phillip.” A hiss cut the dark and there was a rough scratching like scales on rocks. “Marjorie,” I crooned again, bending slowly until my hands touched the floor. “It’s Phillip. I know you’re there.” I was on my hands and knees, whispering, urgent and conspiratorial. I leaned forward and put out my hand, letting it drift into the blackness like a little boat. I heard breathing. My hand drifted into it. My eyes bulged. I leaned after my hand, saw nothing, but smelled her very close and felt her heat on my face. The hiss came again. My hand drifted farther into the darkness, my fingertips quivering, quickening to the shape, the texture, the person of Marjorie. There was a slash. My hand snapped back.

“Don’t try that again, jackass,” she said.

“My hand is bleeding.”

“Good.”

“Henry has a lot of friends out there, Marjorie. Why don’t you step outside for a moment and slash them up?”

“Give me your hand.”

“Fat chance.”

“Give it to me. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

My hand drifted forward. She took it in both of hers and licked it.

“Better?”

“Feels all right.”

I started to draw my hand back again. She hissed, clutched it tightly. I dragged. She wrapped herself around it, shimmied up my arm and hung from my shoulder like a bunch of bananas. She whimpered in my ear, “Phillip, I’m miserable.”

I patted her knee with my free hand. She tightened her grip with her legs and pressed her face into my neck.

“It’s not me they’ll meet if I go out there. Not the me I am.”

I felt sexual irritation and started patting her harder.

“I know what you mean.”

“Phillip, when I woke up this morning there was something lying right beside me. You know what?”

“What?” I said, patting, patting. “Henry?”

“Me. Stretched out right beside me and staring at me in such a sad way.”

“It’s the Zeitgeist , Marjorie.”

Blood stopped flowing in my arm. I tried to move it. She squeezed.

“Me,” she said. “I want me, me, me.”

I tried to shrug her off but it was like trying to shrug off a big wart. I smeared her against the floor, got up, and smeared her against a wall. She clung like my head on my neck, my foot on my leg. I rolled, rammed into tables and chairs. She clung. I leaped up and came down on her. She clung. She gnawed my neck, nibbled, licked, squeezed. I stopped and lay still. I tried to think, but darkness seeped into my ideas, clogged the parts and connections with heavy, impenetrable scum. Her fingers and toes worked into me like worms, coiling around tendons and bones. I could tell she was nervous and said, “Marjorie, as long as I’m here why don’t you tell me what’s wrong. I’ll listen. Something wrong between you and Henry, for example?”

“There’s nothing wrong.”

“Is it this party? Don’t you like this party?”

“I love it.”

“But there is something wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Instinctively, I wanted to punch her in the head. I said, “Marjorie, for all I care you can fester in here. Let me go.”

She licked and squeezed.

“If you don’t let go I’ll punch you in the head.”

She plunged her tongue into my ear. I breathed hard. Glaciers streamed down my face. Suddenly we heard footsteps approach the door and both of us lay still.

“You ask me what’s modern,” said a man. “No one feels anymore. That’s modern.”

Earrings tinkled as if a head were being shaken violently. A necklace rattled. “But I feel you can’t say that,” cried a girl. “I feel there are a lot of feelings today, feelings we feel deeply and that’s why it feels as if we don’t. I couldn’t dance otherwise. How could I dance if I didn’t? Answer that.”

For a moment there was silence. Then the man spoke again, his voice dismal and pinched as if he had a finger in one nostril.

“Feel shmeel.”

Marjorie whispered, “You feel, don’t you?”

“I feel,” I said, “but this is life. Who feels?” I thrashed. She clutched and bit. I collapsed and lay still. There was a bump against the door, hard rubbing, then a kick.

“Don’t touch me,” said a girl. “Look what you did to my dress. I think you suffer from jugular peacocks.”