Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

“Don’t answer,” said Liebowitz.

“Maybe it’s someone else,” she said, her voice as frightened as his.

It wasn’t somebody else. Liebowitz opted for the bedroom. Then he was tearing at the window, wild to piss.

“Didn’t you say you were going to work this evening?”

“Did I say that?”

Mandell had had a whimsy impulse. Here he was, body freak, father of Joyce’s unborn children. She could have done better, thought Liebowitz. Consider himself, Liebowitz. But seven years had passed since he’d put his hand on her thigh. A woman begins to feel desperate. Still — Joyce Wolf, her style, her hips — she could have done better than Mandell, thought Liebowitz, despite her conviction — her boast — that Mandell wasn’t just any professor of rhetoric and communication art. “He loves teaching — speech, creative writing, anything — and every summer at Fire Island he writes a novel of ideas. None are published yet, but he doesn’t care about publication. People say his novels are very good. I couldn’t say, but he talks about his writing all the time. He really cares.”

Liebowitz could see Mandell curled over his typewriter. Forehead presses the keys. Sweat fills his bathing-suit jock. It’s summertime on Fire Island. Mandell is having an idea to stick in one of his novels. “You know, of course, my firm only does textbooks.” Joyce said she knew, yet looked surprised, changed the subject. Liebowitz felt ashamed. Of course she knew. Why had he been crude? Did he suppose that she hadn’t really wanted to telephone him, that she was using him as a source of tickets? What difference? He had an erection, a purpose; she had Mandell, novelist of ideas, celebrated for his body.“He is terribly jealous of you,” she said. “It was long ago, I was a kid, and he wasn’t even in the picture. But he’s jealous. He’s the kind who wonders about a girl’s former lovers. Not that he’s weird or anything, just social. He’s terrific in bed. I’ll bet you two could be friends.”

“Does he know I’m seeing you tonight?” Liebowitz’s hand had ached for her knee. Her voice had begun to cause brain damage and had to be stopped. It was getting late, there was nothing more to say. She laughed again. Marvelous sound, thought Liebowitz, almost like laughter. He was nearly convinced now that she deserved Mandell. But why didn’t she send him away or suggest they go out? Was it because Liebowitz’s firm didn’t do novels? Was he supposed to listen? burn with jealousy? He burned to piss.

“Is something wrong, Joycie?”

Mandell didn’t understand. Did she seem slightly cool, too polite? Did she laugh too much?

“I wanted to talk to you about my writing, but really, Joycie, is something, like, wrong?”

“What do you mean? There’s nothing wrong. I just thought you’d be working tonight.”

Mandell was embarrassed, a little hurt, unable to leave. Of course. How could he leave with her behaving that polite way? Mandell was just as trapped as Liebowitz, who, bent and drooling, gaped at a shoe, a dressing table, combs, brushes, cosmetics, a roll of insulation tape … and, before he knew what he had in mind, Liebowitz seized the tape. He laid two strips, in an X, across a windowpane, punched the nail file into the heart of the X, and gently pulled away the tape with sections of broken glass. Like Robinson Crusoe. Trapped, isolated — yet he could make himself comfortable. Liebowitz felt proud. Mainly, he felt searing release. Liebowitz pissed.

Through the hole in the windowpane, across an echoing air shaft, a long shining line — burning, arcing, resonant — as he listened to Mandell. “I have a friend who says my novels are like writing, but not real writing, you get it?” Liebowitz shook his head, thinking, Some friend, as he splashed brick wall and a window on the other side of the air shaft and, though he heard yelling, heard nothing relevant to Robinson Crusoe and, though he saw a man’s face, continued pissing on that face, yelling from the window, on the other side of the air shaft.

A good neighborhood, thought Liebowitz. The police won’t take long. He wondered what to say, how to say it, and zipped up hurriedly. In the dressing-table mirror he saw another face, his own, bloated by pressure, trying not to cry. According to that face, he thought, a life is at stake. His life was at stake and he couldn’t grab a cab. Mandell was still there, whining about his writing. Joyce couldn’t interrupt and say go home. Writers are touchy. He might get mad and call off the marriage. Liebowitz had no choice but to prepare a statement. “My name, Officers, is Liebowitz.” Thus he planned to begin. Not brilliant. Appropriate. He’d chuckle in a jolly, personable way. A regular fellow, not a drunk or a maniac. Mandell was shrill and peevish: “Look here, look here. My name is Mandell. I’m a professor of rhetoric and communication art at a college. And a novelist. This is ironic, but it is only a matter of circumstances and I have no idea what it means.”

A strange voice said, “Don’t worry, Professor, we’ll explain later.”

Joyce said, “This is a silly mistake. I’m sure you chaps have a lot to do—”

Mandell cut in: “Take your hands off me. And you shut up, Joyce. I’ve had enough of this crap. Like, show me the lousy warrant or, like, get the hell out. No Nazi cops push me around. Joyce, call someone. I’m not without friends. Call someone.”

The strange voice said, “Hold the creep.”

With hatred Mandell was screaming, “No, no, don’t come with me. I don’t want you to come with me, you stupid bitch. Call someone. Get help.” The hall door shut. The bedroom door opened. Joyce was staring at Liebowitz. “You hear what happened? How can you sit there and stare at me? I’ve never felt this way in my life. Look at you. Lepers could be screwing at your feet. Do you realize what happened?”

Liebowitz shrugged yes mixed a little with no.

“I see,” she said. “I see. You’re furious because you had to sit in here. What could I do? What could I say? You’re furious as hell, aren’t you?”

Liebowitz didn’t answer. He felt a bitter strength in his position. Joyce began pinching her thighs to express suffering. Unable to deal with herself across the room from him, she came closer to where he sat on the bed. Liebowitz said, “The cops took the putz away.” His tone revealed no anger and let her sit down beside him. “It’s horrible. It’s humiliating,” she said. “They think he pissed out the window. He called me a stupid bitch.” Liebowitz said, “You might be a stupid bitch, but you look as good to me now as years ago. In some ways, better.” His hand was on her knee. It seemed to him a big hand, full of genius and power. He felt proud to consider how these qualities converged in himself. Joyce’s mouth and eyes grew slow, as if the girl behind them had stopped jumping. She glanced at his hand. “I must make a phone call,” she said softly, a little urgently, and started to rise. Liebowitz pressed down. She sat. “It wouldn’t be right,” she said, and then, imploringly, “Would you like to smoke a joint?”

“No.”

She has middle-class habits, he thought.

“It wouldn’t be right,” she said, as if to remind him of something, not to insist on it. But what’s right, what’s wrong to a genius? Liebowitz, forty years old, screwed her like a nineteen-year-old genius.

BEYOND ORGASM

She didn’t like me. So I phoned her every day. I announced the new movies, concerts, art exhibits. I talked them up, excitements out there, claiming them in my voice. Not to like me was not to like the world. Then I asked her out. Impossible to say no. I appeared at her door in a witty hat, a crazy tie. Sometimes I changed my hairstyle. I was various, talking, dancing, waving my arms. I was the world. But she didn’t like me. If she weren’t so sweet, if she had will power, if she didn’t miss the other guy so much, she’d have said, “Beat it, you’re irrelevant.” But she was in pain, confused about herself. The other guy had dumped her. I owed him a debt. It took the form of hatred, although, if not for him, she wouldn’t have needed me. Not that she did. She needed my effort, not me. Me, she didn’t like. Discouraged, sad, thinking I’d overdone this bad act and maybe I didn’t like her all that much, I said, “Let’s go to the restaurant next door, have dinner, say goodbye.” She seemed reluctant, even frightened. I wondered if, in such decisive gestures, there was hope. She said, “Not there.” I wondered if it was his hangout, or a restaurant she used to enjoy with him. I insisted. “Please,” she said, “any other restaurant.” But I needed this concession. She’d never given me anything else. For two men I’d talked and danced, even in bed. I insisted. Adamant. Shaking. “Only that restaurant.” She took my arm. We walked briskly in appreciation of my feelings. As we entered the restaurant, she pulled back. I recognized him — alone, sitting at a table. Him. The other guy. My soul flew into the shape of his face. He yawned. Nothing justifies hate like animal simplicity. “Look. He’s yawning. What a swine.” Was it a show of casual vulnerability? Contempt? She pulled my arm. I didn’t budge. I stared. His eyes squeezed to dashes. I heard the mock whimper of yawns. He began scratching the tablecloth. Two waiters ran to his side with questions of concern. His yawn was half his face. Batlike whimpers issued from it. Jawbones had locked, fiercely, absolutely. He needed help. My fist was ready. She cried, begging, dragging me away. I let her. That night was our beginning. Whenever I yawned at her, she’d laugh and plead, “Stop it.” Her admiration of me extended to orgasm. Even beyond. It was not unmixed with fear.