Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

She seemed to be having a good time. I always had a good time, being cruder stuff. Later in the car, still high, I’d say something like “Well, didn’t you have a good time?” She’d say,“No. Neither did anyone else.”All the people laughing and talking, they’d been miserable. They didn’t know it, but they’d had a truly lousy time. I’d want to scream and pummel the steering wheel, but I just drove more quickly. She’d say, “You’ll hit a dog. Then you’ll be sorry.” I never hit anything, but I’d feel as if I hit a dog. It was lying in the street behind me, blood sliding from its mouth like an endless tongue. I was a good driver, fifty times better than she, but I slowed down. She slowed me down.

I was having a splendid time, drinking and eating like a king, feeling free to enjoy myself. A completely bullshit feeling, but it refused to be questioned. She seemed to be doing better than all right, sitting obliquely opposite me at the dinner table between a lawyer and a gay stockbroker, new friends of Danny’s. I was his only old friend in the room. He wanted me to see his crowd, enjoy his new life. I was proud of him, happy for him. She turned to the lawyer, then to the stockbroker, whom I could see she preferred. No sexual tension. They could talk easily. She was a column of rose silk rising toward gray eyes. I’d have made a pass at her, the girl at the party, the one I was still dying to meet.

After coffee and dessert, somebody lit a marijuana. I was surprised, then figured it was the right touch. There was a Republican judge from San Diego at the table. A marijuana couldn’t be more inappropriate, more licentious, but this was Berkeley. We were The People, finishing off a two-thousand-dollar dinner party with a joint. Danny knew how to make a statement.

The marijuana was moving around the table, everyone taking a drag, even the judge, consolidating our little community in crime. It would soon reach her. What would she do? She didn’t even smoke. I tried not to stare, make her nervous. She took it with no sense of the thing in her fingers, as if it were a pencil, and tried to pass it straight on to the stockbroker. He urged her to take a drag. She looked from him to the lawyer. He, too, offered friendly encouragement. She lifted it to her lips and sipped a little, not to any effect, not really taking a drag. The ash was long and needed to be tapped off, or it might fall of its own, which it did. She jumped up, slapped at her lap. There was a black hole, the size of a penny, in the rose silk. The ash had burned through instantly, ruined her dress. Now the drive home, my speeding car, the bleeding dog.

That quick efficient feeling in the hands, plucking the shaft free of the pack, dashing a match head to perfection. Fat, seething fire. You pull the point of heat against tobacco leaf and a globe of gas rolls into the tongue’s valley, like a personal planet. Then the consummation, the slithering hairy smoke. Its danger meets the danger we live with in the average street, our lethal food, poisoned air, imminent bomb. In Morocco and Berlin, in Honolulu’s sunshine or the black Siberian night, in the cruel salons of urban literati, in the phantasmagoria of brothels, in rain forests full of orchids and wild pigs where women bleed to phases of the moon and men hunt what they eat, in the excremental reek of prison cells, or crouched beside a window with a gun in your lap, or sitting in your car studying a map, or listening to a lecture at the Sorbonne, or waiting for a bus or a phone call, or just trying to be reasonable, or staying up late, or after a meal in some classy restaurant, hands repeat their ceremony. The shock of fire. The pungent smoke. Disconnection slides across the yellowing eye. True, it’s very like but morally superior to masturbation; and you look better, more dignified. We need this pleasing gas. Some of us can claim no possession the way a cigarette is claimed. What wonderful exclusiveness. In company a cigarette strikes the individual note. If it’s also public suicide, it’s yours. Or in the intenser moment after sexual disintegration, when the old regret, like a carrion bird, finds you naked, leaking into the night, a cigarette redeems the deep being, reintegrates a person’s privacy. White wine goes with lobster. What goes with bad news so well as a cigarette? Imagine a common deprivation — say, a long spell of no sex — without a cigarette. Life isn’t good enough for no cigarette. It doesn’t make you godlike, only a little priest of fire and smoke. All those sensations yours, like mystical money. Such a shame they kill. With no regard for who it is.

Boris said that his first wife was a virgin. She came the first time they had sex. Worse, he says, she came every time after that. He watches my eyes to see if I understand why he had to divorce her.

The pain you inflict merely trying to get through the day. Pavese talks about this great problem. He had a woman in mind. Pavese does his work he kills her … Pavese reads a newspaper he kills her … Pavese makes an appointment to see an old friend … Finally, he killed himself. Sartre says to kill another is to kill yourself. He spent hours in coffee shops and bars. He liked to carry money in his pocket, lots of money. He compared it to his glasses and cigarette lighter. So many companions. He’d never have killed himself.

Self-pity is a corrupt version of honesty.

I tell Boris my grief. He says, “I know I’m supposed to have a human response, but I’m hungry.”

Annette claimed Dr. Feller “worked hard” during their sessions. “I trusted him,” she says. “So many therapists sleep with their patients.” As if it were entirely up to him. That hurt my feelings. Later we met his girlfriend at a party. I was friendly, as usual, but Annette was furious, confused, depressed. I asked, “What’s the matter?” She wouldn’t answer, but then, in bed, unable to sleep, she announced, “I will confront him, tell him off.” I ask, “Why?” She hisses, “I trusted him.” I begin to wonder if I’m crazy. Dr. Feller took a fifth of my income. I feel a spasm of anger, but fall asleep anyway, imagining myself taking a three-point shot from the sideline with no time on the clock. The ball feels good as it leaves my hand.

I meet Eddie for lunch. He wants to talk, but is too agitated, doesn’t know how to begin. We order this and that. He starts, tells me that his wife came to his office and made a scene. There were patients in the waiting room. He had to beg her to shut up till they got out in the street. It wasn’t better in the street. She berated him, threatened to ruin his life. His eyes begin to glisten and now I can’t eat. I imagine her yelling at him in front of his patients. I hear myself groan with sympathy. Then he says, “I bought a radio car. It’s about this big.” He raises his hands, holding them a foot and a half apart. “It’s fast, too.”

I was talking to Eddie about difficulties with my wife’s lawyer. He cuts me off, very excited, nearly manic, shouting about difficulties with his wife’s lawyer. “She snarls at me in legal letters, like I might forget this is war. I get very upset. I write back long angry letters. I tear them up, then write angrier letters and tear them up, too. Today I decided I can’t write. I must phone and tell her what I think of her fucking letters. So I phoned. Soon as I say my name, her voice becomes high and warm. Like she is delighted to hear from me. I thought maybe I dialed the wrong number, reached her cunt. But you know what? I responded very warmly. Like a prick.”

Women are tough. They know what they want. Men know more or less what they need, which is only what they like, not even what they need. King Lear wails, “But, for true need …” then can’t define it. That’s a real man.

My neighbor is building his patio, laying bricks meticulously. The sun beats on him. Heat rises off the bricks into his face. I’m in here writing. He’ll have built a patio. I’ll be punished.