Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

RIGHT NUMBER

A girl lived in the apartment below. We became friends. I’d go there any time, early or late. She opened the door and didn’t turn on the light. I undressed in darkness, slid in beside her, made a spoon, and she slid into my spoon. She had no work, nothing she had to do, no one expected her to be anyplace. Money came to her in the mail. She had a body like Goya’s whore and a Botticelli face. She was tall, pale, blond, and wavy. I knocked, she let me in. No questions. We talked fast and moved about from bed to chairs to floor. Sometimes I’d pinch her thigh. Once she knocked a coffee cup into my lap. Finally we had sexual intercourse. We made a lot of jokes and she was on her back. I tried to be gentle. She thrashed in a complimentary way and moaned. Later she said to guess how many men she’d had. I said ten. She said fifteen. How does that sound? It sounds more depraved than I feel. After the Turk, she understood the Ottoman Empire. She said people thought of her as manic-depressive. But it wasn’t true. She had good reasons for what she feels. Germans are friskier than you’d imagine. The right number is seven or eight. It sounds like a lot, yet it isn’t depraved. It’s believable. A girl shouldn’t say seven or eight, then describe twenty. What if I said more than ten, less than twenty? How does that sound? Six came in one weekend. They count as one. How old do you think I am? Twenty-eight? I’m only twenty-two. With A, it is a way of making something out of nothing. With B, it is a form of conversation. With C, it is letting him believe something about himself. With D, it is a mistake. I’ve had seventeen. People think I’ve had fifty or a hundred. Do I want fifty or a hundred? No. I want twenty-five. Twenty-five or thirty. Do you remember what my face is like? I think it looks sluttish. Indians are the nicest. Blacks don’t talk to you afterward. I was raped when I was a kid. Then I rode my bicycle around and around the block and talked to myself in a loud voice. All my life I’ve tried to keep things from getting out of hand, but I get out of hand. Nothing works. Nothing works. I like you very very much, I said, let’s try again. I was gentle. She thrashed in a complimentary way and moaned. The next day she knocked at my door, wearing a handsome gray wool suit and high heels. Her hair had been washed and combed into a style. She looked neat, intelligent, and extremely beautiful. She said she was going to a job interview to have something to do. We hugged for good luck and kissed. Somehow she was on her back. We had sexual intercourse. I wasn’t gentle. She whipped in the pelvis and screamed murder. Me, too.

ANIMALS

Her skin was made of animals, exceedingly tiny, compressed like a billion paps in a breathing sponge. Caressing her, my palm was caressed by the smooth resilient motion in her skin. Awake or asleep, angry, bored, loving, made no difference. Her skin was superior to attitudes or words. It implied the most beautiful girl. And the core of my pleasure ached for her, the one she implied.

GOD

My mother said, “What’s new?” I said, “Nothing.” She said, “What? You can tell me. Tell me what’s new.” I said, “Something happened.” She said, “I had a feeling. I could tell. What happened?” I said, “Nothing happened.” She said, “Thank God.”

HIS CERTAIN WAY

Ikstein had a certain way of picking up a spoon, asking for the time, getting down the street from here to there. He would pick up his spoon in his certain way, stick it in the soup, lift it to his mouth, stop, then whisper, “Eat, eat, little Ikily.” Everything he did was in his certain way. He made an impression of making an impression. I remembered it. I remembered Ikstein. It was no different to remember than to see the living Ikstein, in his certain little ways. For me, he never died. He lived where he always lived, in my impression of Ikstein. I could bring him back any time, essentially, for me. “Eat, eat, little Ikily.” When he did his work — he was a book and movie reviewer — he always made himself a “nice” bowl of soup. It sat beside his typewriter. He typed a sentence, stopped, said, “Now I’ll have a tasty sip of soup.” Essentially, for me, Ikstein had no other life. If he had in fact another life, it was never available for me. I could not pretend to regret it was no longer available for him. “Oh, poor Ikstein” would mean “Oh, poor me, what I have lost. The sights and sound of Ikstein.” I lost nothing. His loss, I couldn’t appreciate. Neither could he. So I remembered Ikstein and felt no sorrow. I mentioned somebody who had married for the second time. “His second wife looks like the first,” I said. “As if he were pursuing something.” In his certain way, Ikstein said, “Or as if it were pursuing him.” Thus, even his mind lived. I said, “My intention was modest, a bit of chitchat, a germ of sense. I wasn’t hoping, when I have a headache and feel sick and unable to think, to illuminate the depths. Must you be such a prick, Ikstein?”

MOURNFUL GIRLS

Busy naked heels, a rush of silky things, elastic snaps, clicks, a rattle of beads, hangers clinking, humming, her quick consistent breathing as the mattress dipped. Lips touched mine. Paper cracked flat near my head. Wooden heel shafts knocked in the hallway. I opened my eyes. A ten-dollar bill lay on the pillow. I got up, dressed, stuck the bill in my pocket, went to the apartment below, and asked, “Do you want anything?” She said no. She lay on the bed. On the way back I picked up her mail. “Some letters,” I said, and dropped them beside her. She lay on the bed, skirt twisted about her hips and belly, blouse open, bra unhooked to ease the spill. Her blanket was smooth. I whispered, “Mona, Melanie, Mildred, Sarah, Nora, Dora, Sadie.” She whispered, “Mournful girls.” I lost the beginning of the next sentence before I heard the end. She heard as much, glanced at me, quit talking. We undressed. I tugged her off the bed to the mirror. I looked at her. She looked at me. Our arms slipped around them. All had sexual intercourse. I was upstairs when she returned from work. She asked, “Why didn’t you go to the grocery?” I said, “It will take five minutes,” and dashed out. The street was dark, figures appeared and jerked by. In the grocery I couldn’t find the ten-dollar bill. It wasn’t in my pockets. It wasn’t on the floor. I ran back along the street, neck bent like a dog’s, inspecting the flux of cigarette butts, candy wrappers, spittle plops, dog piss, beer cans, broken glass, granular pavement — then remembered — and ran upstairs quietly. She lay on the bed. The milk and meat were warm, butter loose and greasy. Everything except the cream cheese was in the bag beside her bed. She lay on the bed, gnawing cream cheese through the foil. “You should have put the bag in the refrigerator,” I said. She gnawed. “It would have been simple to put the bag in the refrigerator,” I said. “Shut your hole,” she said. I shoved her hand. Cream cheese smeared her nostrils. She lay in the bed, slack, still, breathing through her mouth, as if she wouldn’t cry and was not crying. I took the bag of groceries and went upstairs. The table was set. She was sweeping the kitchen floor, crying.

THE HAND

I smacked my little boy. My anger was powerful. Like justice. Then I discovered no feeling in the hand. I said, “Listen, I want to explain the complexities to you.” I spoke with seriousness and care, particularly of fathers. He asked, when I finished, if I wanted him to forgive me. I said yes. He said no. Like trumps.

ALL RIGHT

“I don’t mind variations,” she said, “but this feels wrong.” I said,“It feels all right to me.” She said, “To you, wrong is right.” I said, “I didn’t say right, I said all right.” “Big difference,” she said. I said, “Yes, I’m critical. My mind never stops. To me almost everything is always wrong. My standard is pleasure. To me, this is all right.” She said, “To me it stinks.” I said, “What do you like?” She said, “Like I don’t like. I’m not interested in being superior to my sensations. I won’t live long enough for all right.”