Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

“Has it been five years?” asked Liebowitz, figuring seven. “You sound wonderful, Joyce.” She said he sounded “good.” He regretted “wonderful,” but noticed no other reserve in her voice, and just as he remembered, she seemed still to love the telephone, coming at him right through the machine, much the thing, no later than this minute. When his other phone range he didn’t reach for it, thus letting her hear and understand how complete was his attention. She understood. She went on directly about some restaurant, insisting let’s eat there. He didn’t even consider not. She’d said, almost immediately, she was getting married to Mandell, a professor.

Did Liebowitz feel jealousy? He didn’t ask professor of what or where does he teach. Perhaps he felt jealousy; but, listening to her and nodding compliments at the wall, he listened less to what she said than to how she spoke in echoes. Not of former times, but approximately these things, in approximately the same way, he felt, had been said in grand rooms, by wonderful people. Joyce brought him the authority of echoes. And she delivered herself, too, a hundred thirty-five pounds of shank and dazzle, even in her questions: “Have you seen …?” “Have you heard …?” About plays, movies, restaurants, Jacqueline Kennedy. Nothing about his wife, child, job. Was she indifferent? embarrassed? hostile? In any case, he liked her impetuosity; she poked, checked his senses. He liked her. Joyce Wolf, on the telephone. He remembered that cabbies and waiters liked her. She could make fast personal jokes with policemen and bellhops. She tipped big. A hundred nobodies knew her name, her style. Always en passant , very much here and not here at all. He liked her tremendously, he felt revived. Not reliving a memory, but right now, on the telephone, living again a moment of his former life. For the first time, as it were, that he didn’t have to live it. She has magic, he thought; art. Merely in her voice, she was an event. She called him back, through time, to herself. Despite his grip on the phone, knees under the desk, feet on the floor, he felt like a man slipping from a height, deliciously. He said he would meet her uptown in forty minutes. Did he once live this way? Liebowitz shook his head; smirked. He was a wild kid once.

On his desk lay a manuscript that had to be edited, and a contract he had to work on. There was also an appointment with an author … but, in the toilet with electric razor and toothbrush, Liebowitz purged his face of the working day and, shortly thereafter, walked into a chic Hungarian restaurant on the Upper East Side. She arrived twenty minutes later; late; but in a black sleeveless dress. Very smart. It gave her a look that seized the day, the feeling and idea of it. She hadn’t just come to meet him; she described their moment and meaning, in a garment. She appeared. Late; but who, granted such knowledge, could complain? Liebowitz felt flattered and grateful. He took her hands. She squeezed his hands. He kissed her cheek. “Joyce.” The hair, white smile, hips — he remembered, he looked, looked. “It was good of you to call me.” He looked at her. He looked into his head. She was there, too, this minute’s Joyce Wolf, who once got them to the front of lines, to seats when the show was sold out, to tables, tables near windows, to parties. Sold out, you say? At the box office, in her name, two tickets were waiting. Then Liebowitz remembered, once, for a ballet, she had failed to do better than standing room. He hadn’t wanted to go. He certainly hadn’t wanted to stand. Neither had she. But tickets had been sold out to this ballet. Thousands wanted to go. Liebowitz remembered how she began making phone calls, scratching at the numbers till her fingernail tore. That evening, pelvises pressed to a velvet rope, they stood amid hundreds of ballet lovers jammed into a narrow aisle. The effluvia of alimentary canals hung about their heads. Blindfolded, required to guess, Liebowitz would have said they were in a delicatessen. Lights dimmed. There was a thrilling hush. Joyce whispered, “How in God’s name can anyone live outside New York?” She nudged him and pointed at a figure seated in the audience. Liebowitz looked, thrusting his head forward to show appreciation of her excitement, her talent for recognizing anyone in New York in almost total darkness. “See! See!” Liebowitz nodded greedily. His soul poured toward a glint of skull floating amid a thousand skulls. He begged, “Who? Who is it?” He wasn’t sure that he looked at the correct glint of skull, yet he felt on the verge of extraordinary illumination. Then a voice wailed into his back, “I can’t see.” Liebowitz twisted about, glanced down. A short lady, staring up at him, pleaded with her whole face. “I can’t see.” He twisted forward and said, “Move a little, Joyce. Let her up against the rope.” Joyce whispered, “This is the jungle, schmuck. Tell her to grow another head.” He was impressed. During the ballet he stood with the velvet rope in his fists, the woman’s face between his shoulder blades, and now, as he went uptown in the cab, his mouth was so dry he couldn’t smoke. After all these years, still impressed. Joyce got them tickets. She knew. She got. Him, for example — virtually a bum in those days, but nice-looking, moody, a complement to her, he supposed. Perhaps a girl with so much needed someone like him — a misery. Not that she was without misery. She worked as private secretary to an investment broker, a shrewd, ugly Russian with a hunchback and a limp. “Hey, collich girl, make me a phone call.” After work she used to meet Liebowitz, hunching, dragging a foot, and she would shout, “Hey, collich. Hey, collich girl, kiss my ass.” They’d laugh with relief and malice; but sometimes she met Liebowitz in tears. Once the Russian even hit her. “In a Longchamps, during lunch hour,” she said. “He knocked me on the floor in front of all those people eating lunch.” Liebowitz remembered her screaming at him: “Even if there had been a reason.” He stopped trying to justify the horror. It got to him. “Gratuitous sadism!” Liebowitz raged. He’d go next morning and punch the Russian in the mouth. The next morning, in Italian sunglasses, Joyce left for the office. Alone. Five foot seven, she walked seven foot five, a Jewish girl passing for Jewish in tough financial circles. Liebowitz smoked a cigarette, punched his hand. Liebowitz remembered:

The sunglasses — tough, tragic, fantastically clever — looked terrific. She knew what to wear, precisely the item that said it. Those sunglasses were twenty punches in the mouth. She’d wear them all day, even at the typewriter. The Russian would feel, between himself and the college girl, an immensity. He’d know what he was, compared to her in those black, estranging glasses. Liebowitz felt an intellectual pang; his reflections had gone schmuckway. Beginning again:

Joyce made two hundred and fifty dollars a week. With insults and slaps, the Russian gave tips on the market. The year she lived with Liebowitz, Joyce made over a hundred thousand dollars. Liebowitz, then a salesman in a shoe store, made eighty dollars a week hunkering over corns. He had rotten moods, no tips on anything; he had a lapsed candidacy for the Ph.D. in philosophy and a girl with access to the pleasures of Manhattan. Her chief pleasure — moody Liebowitz. In truth, he never hated the Russian. He pitied Joyce; for a hundred thousand dollars she ate shit. The sunglasses symbolized shame. Liebowitz remembered:

Twenty-four years old, a virgin when she met Liebowitz, who took her on their first date. “I don’t know how it happened,” she said. “Two minutes ago I had some idea of myself.” Liebowitz replied, “Normal.” She’d been surprised, overwhelmed by his intensity. She’d never met a man so hungry. Now he was cool, like a hoodlum. “Where’s your shower?” He wondered if he hadn’t been worse to her than the Russian. Hidden in the bedroom, crouched in pain, Liebowitz made big eyes and held out his hands, palms up, like a man begging for apples. He’d had certain needs. She’d been good to him — the tickets, the parties, and calling now to announce her forthcoming marriage; invite him to dinner. It was touching. Liebowitz had to piss. He remembered that, walking into the restaurant, he’d had an erection. Perhaps that explained the past; also the present, running to meet her as if today were yesterday. Then they strolled in the park. Then they went to her apartment for a drink. Life is mystery, thought Liebowitz. He wondered if he dared, after all these years, after she’d just told him she was getting married, put his hand on her knee; her thigh; under the black dress where time, surrendering to truth, ceased to be itself. The doorbell.