Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

“What a pity.”

“I’m sorry I told you about it.”

“You make me a little sick, Fein.”

“I make myself sick. I can’t stand the sound of my voice. I’m disgusting.”

He went to the bathroom, stuck three fingers into his mouth, vomited, then slept all night in his clothes. Came morning, he opened eyes full of prayer. For what, he didn’t ask himself. He dragged to the kitchen, sat down at the table. It was the first time since they had been living together Slotsky hadn’t gotten up ahead of him to make breakfast. Finn looked toward the next room where Slotsky slept, then looked at his hand. It lay on a pile of paper. Eighteen pages, in fact: stapled, nicely typed with double spaces, wide margins, signed Bruce J. Fein under the title “The New Deal: Good and Bad.” How could he not have felt contempt? In the next room Slotsky snored with miserable exhaustion, like a man scratching at the sides of his grave. He felt contempt bloom into hatred, bloat, blur into pity, and then, on his way to poly sci, he gradually felt something different, something new, in regard to Slotsky. He stopped for coffee. While reading through the paper, he coiled inward to catch it. He caught it in a word: he and Slotsky had “relationship.” As for the paper, not bad. Not bad at all. Worth a B, maybe B+. He scratched out one phrase and scrawled his own above it. However brilliant, it was true, after all, Slotsky had never taken a course in poly sci. The correction made Finn feel as if the paper were a little bit his own. Two days later it was returned with an A++. Beneath the grade the professor had written: “Please, Fein, become a political science major, as a favor to the world.” Beside his correction, Finn saw: “I will accept this because of the rest of the paper, but it is badly expressed and adds nothing to your argument.” In a daze of gratitude so thrilling it reminded him of fear, Finn rushed back to the apartment, pulled a jacket out of his closet, and hung it in Slotsky’s. Thus, among dull, shapeless gabardines, glowed a smoky tweed, a sensuous texture, a weight of life. Simply to have said, “Thank you, Slotsky, for saving my life,” seemed impossible. Not that it wasn’t sufficient return, but he couldn’t say those words to Slotsky. Some element in their relationship would become too obvious, even grotesquely sentimental. Nevertheless, relationship, reciprocity: Finn was big, rich, good-looking, and he had girls; Slotsky, in relation and return, was his roommate — he wasn’t living alone with himself and the walls; Finn had the paper; Slotsky, the jacket; Finn, Slotsky; Slotsky, Finn.

On his one date that year Slotsky wore the jacket. He also wore it at a president’s tea for honor students, and at an address before a learned society, he appeared in the jacket. Big on him, but, if one knew nothing else about Slotsky, one knew he owned a fine jacket. Finer than anything else he owned. One knew that because he wore it with creaseless, flapping trousers that piled at the cuffs over patent-leather, busboy shoes. He didn’t seem to think the owner of such a jacket might want to wear it with trousers a bit snappier. But Finn knew Slotsky wore no jacket at all. Only an idea of a jacket — Finn’s jacket — beautiful in the eyes of mankind, spilling a superflux of beauty over anything Slotsky wore with it, even those trousers and shoes. Over Slotsky himself, wallowing in it. Finn was gratified. The paper, the jacket, the vision of Slotsky standing and walking in it — reciprocity, relationship. Until this moment.

Naked before the open door of his closet, where a harem of fifteen jackets languished — mute, lovely receptacles of his arms and torso — Finn was struck by the powerful idea: His. Then the powerful corollary: he hadn’t given any jacket to Slotsky forever. When they split up he should have taken that jacket back, but he had thought Slotsky was already too disturbed by the loss of his roommate. He had been very foolish: no jacket in his closet had the drape, cut at the wrist, lapel, and haunch, or texture, tone, and quality of material that that particular jacket had. The one he loaned to Slotsky. Half an hour later, sitting on the bed in Slotsky’s one room, in an odor of socks, underwear, and Slotsky, Finn had the feeling his seat would stick to the army blanket when he stood up. Slotsky said for the third time, “You want one of my jackets? Help yourself, roomie. I’ve got a dozen classy numbers.”

“ My jacket, Slotsky.”

“Take a jacket.”

“I didn’t give it to you forever.”

“There’s the closet.”

“You’re being difficult. You don’t have the right attitude. Not about anything.”

“Toward anything. You think I stole your jacket.”

“Never mind what I think. I want it back.”

“Take, take, Fein.”

“Finn.”

Slotsky smacked his forehead, then adjusted his glasses. “That’s right. How could I forget? You’re Finn.”

“This is very disappointing. I expected more from you.”

“I’ve got a lot of work to do, roomie.”

Finn walked to the closet. “This one.”

“That one?”

“Mine!”

“I wouldn’t use it for toilet paper.”

“Ha, ha.”

“I used to wear it because I pitied you.”

“Ha, ha.”

Finn was out the door.

Millicent Coyle had brown hair, blue eyes, a slender body, and she made an impression of cleanliness and optimism. Finn talked most of the evening about Slotsky. He told her about his filthy habits, his obnoxious political beliefs, and, striking at the essential man, told her Slotsky was neurotically sensitive about being a Jew and yet never went to all-campus Yom Kippur services or any others held at the Concert and Dance Theater or the Hillel Center, which had been designed by Miyoshi and cost several million dollars. Not once. He explained that Yom Kippur was an important holy day for Jewish people; at least that was Finn’s understanding. They were parked in the lot outside the Kappa house. When Millicent didn’t seem about to say anything in regard to Slotsky, he began to suspect she was waiting for a chance to scramble out of the car and just say good night. Suddenly she said, “I’ll bet you think we’re all alike at the Kappas’.”

“Of course I don’t think that. Everyone is different.”

“I’ll bet you do. I’ll bet, for instance, you think we’re all prudes.”

Finn sighed. He would have found some answer to her accusation, but she didn’t quite seem to be talking to him; to have sensed, that is, a particular subject in the air between them for the past several hours.

“Do you like to ski?” she asked.

“I’ve never skied, but I’ve thought about it. Up the mountain, down the mountain. Groovy.”

She grinned. She knew he was making a joke. “Well it also gives you a chance to wear your après-ski outfits, you know. You could learn in a minute. I know a guy who has a car like this.”

“Pontiac? I rented it for the evening.”

“I love Pontiacs. His is a Mercedes.”

Almost impetuously, Finn said, “You know when I called you last week I was afraid …”

“My roommate took the message.”

“Really?” It seemed relevant. Finn considered. Nothing relevant occurred to him. He plunged on. “I’d been thinking about calling you for a long time.”

The confession made silence. He felt sweat blossom in his palms and armpits.

“For months I’ve wanted you to call,” she whispered, leaving the silence intact. “Months.”

Finn’s heart pumped into the silence. His hand, like an independent caterpillar, pushed softly down the top of the seat and touched her cashmere. He looked at her eyes. Her eyes looked. He held his breath, bent toward her, and her eyes shut. Their lips touched. On her breast he felt murmur. They kissed, slowly drawing closer, pressing more and more of themselves against one another. Beneath her skirt, along smooth tubes, he felt white, touched silky. “I wanted you to call months and months an’ muns-ago.” She crumbled in his ear. “Millicent,” he whispered, shoving against her hand, her hard, fused tubes.