Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

EATING OUT

Four men were at the table next to mine. Their collars were open, their ties loose, and their jackets hung on the wall. One man poured dressing on the salad, another tossed the leaves. Another filled the plates and served. One tore bread, another poured wine, another ladled soup. The table was small and square. The men were cramped, but efficient nonetheless, apparently practiced at eating here, this way, hunched over food, heads striking to suck at spoons, tear at forks, then pulling back into studious, invincible mastication. Their lower faces slid and chopped; they didn’t talk once. All their eyes, like birds on a wire, perched on a horizontal line above the action. Swallowing muscles flickered in jaws and necks. Had I touched a shoulder and asked for the time, there would have been snarling, a flash of teeth.

WHAT’S NEW

My mother said, “So? What’s new?” I said, “Something happened.” She said, “I knew it. I had a feeling. I could tell. Why did I ask? Sure, something happened. Why couldn’t I sit still? Did I have to ask? I had a feeling. I knew, I knew. What happened?”

THE BURGLAR

I dialed. The burglar answered and said Ikstein wasn’t home. I said tell him I called. The burglar laughed. I said, “What’s funny?” The burglar said, “This is a coincidence. When you called I was reading a passage in Ikstein’s diary which is about you.” I said, “Tell me what it says.” The burglar snorted: “Your request is compromising. Just hearing it is compromising.” I said, “I’m in the apartment below Ikstein’s. We can easily meet and have a little talk about my request. I’ll bring something to drink. Do you like marijuana? I know where Ikstein hides his marijuana. I have money with me, also a TV set and a Japanese camera. It’s no trouble for me to carry everything up there. One trip.” He said if I came upstairs he would kill me.

LIKE IRONY

He pried me open and disappeared inside, made me urinate, defecate, and screech, then slapped my dossier shut, stuck it in his cabinet, slammed drawer, swallowed key. “Well,” he said, “how have you been?” I said, “Actually, that’s what I’m here to find out.” He said,“People have feelings. They do their best. Some of us say things to people — such as you — in a way that is like irony, but it isn’t irony. It’s good breeding, manners, tact — we have delicate intentions.” I apologized. “So,” he said, “tell me your plans.” I said, “Now that I know?” “That’s right,” he said, “I’m delighted that you aren’t very stupid.”

ONE THING

Ikstein played harpsichord music on the phonograph and opened a bottle of wine. I said, “Let’s be frank, Ikstein. There’s too much crap in this world.” He said, “Sure.” The harpsichord was raving ravished Bach. Windows were open. The breeze smelled of reasons to live. I told him I didn’t care for love. Only women, only their bodies. Talk, dance, conversation — I could do it — but I cared about one thing only. When it was finished, I had to go. Anyhow, I said, generally speaking, women can’t stand themselves. Generally speaking, I thought they were right. “How about you, Ikstein?” He made a pleased mouth and said, “I love women, the way they look, talk, dress, and think. I love their hips, necks, breasts, and ankles. But I hate cunts.” He stamped the floor. I raised my glass. He raised his. “To life,” I said.

MALE

She was asleep. I wondered if I ought to read a newspaper. Nobody phoned. I wanted to run around the block until I dropped dead, but I was afraid of the muggers. I picked up the phone, dialed Ikstein, decided to hang up, but he answered: “This is Ikstein.” I said, “Can I come up?” He said nothing. I said, “Ikstein, it’s very late, but I can hear your TV.” He said, “When I turn it off, I’ll throw you out.” I grabbed my cigarettes. His door was open. He didn’t say hello. We watched a movie, drank beer, smoked. Side by side, hissing gases, insular and simpatico. It was male. I farted. He scratched his scalp, belched, tipped back in his chair with his legs forked out. His bathrobe fell apart, showing the vascular stump. It became a shivering mushroom, then a moon tree waving in the milky flicker. He said, “Well, look who wants to watch the movie.” I said, “Hang a shoe on it.” He refolded his robe and flicked off the TV. “If you decide to come out,” he said, “let me be the first to know. Now go away.” I went downstairs, sat on the bed, and put my hand on her belly. She whimpered, belly falling under my palm. She was asleep. I felt like a crazy man.

DIXIE

“Richard Ikstein” was printed on his mailbox. His nighttime visitors called him “Dixie.” In every accent, American and foreign, sometimes laughing, sometimes grim. When he fell our ceiling shuddered. Flakes of paint drifted down onto our bed. She hugged me and tried to make conversation: “They’re the last romantics.” He was pleading for help. “If you like romance so much,” I said, “why don’t you become a whore.” I twisted away, snapped on the radio, found a voice, and made it loud enough to interfere with his pleading. We couldn’t hear his words, only sobs and whimpers. By the time he stopped falling, our bed was gritty with paint and plaster dust. We were too tired to get up and slap the sheets clean. In the morning I saw blood on our pillows. “It’s on your face, too,” she said. “You slept on your back.” I was for liberation of every kind, but I dressed in silent, tight-ass fury and ran upstairs. “Look at my face, Ikstein,” I shouted, banging at his door. It opened. The police were dragging him to a stretcher. I showed them my stained ceiling and bloody pillows. Obvious, but I had to explain. I told them about Ikstein’s visitors, how he pleaded and sobbed. The police took notes. She cried when they left. She cried all morning. “The state is the greatest human achievement,” I said. “Hegel is right. The state is the only human achievement.” She said, “If you like the state so much, why don’t you become a cop.”

CRABS

My mother didn’t mention the way things looked and said there was going to be a bar mitzvah. If I came to it, the relatives “could see” and I could meet her old friends from Miami. Their daughter was a college graduate, beautiful, money up the sunny gazoo. Moreover, it was a double-rabbi affair, one for the Hebrew, one for English. “Very classy,” she said. I had been to such affairs. A paragraph of Hebrew is followed by a paragraph of English. The Hebrew sounds like an interruption. Like jungle talk. I hated the organ music, the hidden choirs, the opulent halls. Besides, I had the crabs. I wasn’t in the mood for a Miami bitch who probably had gonorrhea. I said, “No.” She said, “Where are your values?”

SMILE

In memoriam I recalled his smile, speedy and horizontal, the corners fleeing one another as if to meet in the back of his head. It suggested pain, great difficulties, failure, gleaming life rot. A smile of “Nevertheless.” Sometimes we met on the stairs. He’d smile, yet seem to want to dash the other way, slide into the wall, creep by with no hello. But he smiled. “Nevertheless,” he smiled. I would try to seem calm, innocuous, nearly dead. That made him more nevertheless. I would tell him something unfortunate about myself — how I’d overdrawn my checking account, lost my wallet, discovered a boil on my balls — and I would laugh at his selfconsciously self-conscious, funny remarks. He nodded gratefully, but he didn’t believe I thought he was funny. He didn’t believe he was funny. I thought about the murder of complex persons. I thought about his smile, bleeding, beaten to death.