Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

He laughs, unable to contain his excitement. Then he slaps my arm, surprised by how entertaining I am, though I’ve been very dull. I laugh, too, but I won’t ever give him another cent, I think. That’s what I always think. Then one night the phone rings and he says, “Hey, man,” his voice low and personal, like there’s nobody in the world but him and me.

Boris drove past me in his new car, speeding down Euclid Avenue, picking his nose. He didn’t see me. He was watching the road, driving fast, obsessed with his nose. Each life, says Ortega, is a perspective on reality.

Boris laughs at his unexpressed jokes, then gives me a compassionate look for having missed the point known only to himself.

I found a modest place with only three main dishes on the menu, none over ten bucks. Not good; not terrible. In Oakland near the courthouse. Nobody I know is likely to walk in. I don’t remember the name of the place, I never noticed. I was eating dinner and reading the legal papers, telling myself they’re written in English, they will have a great effect on my life, so I should try to understand them, I must be calm and read slowly, when the door opens and lets in a draft with street noise and perfume. The noise hits me like a personal criticism, the perfume cuts through the steam coming off my plate. I look toward the door. I see a white linen blouse, pearls, and a face heavily made up, correct for the pearls but not for dinner in this place. Maybe the pearls are to suggest that she’s meeting somebody here, but something tells me she is alone. Her green eye shadow is a touch sloppy, as if she wants to be beautiful, but she has troubles, agonies, who knows. Maybe she’s a lawyer, works too hard, and wishes she’d had a child instead of a career. The green eye shadow, part of a mask, tells more than it hides. I look away to avoid her feelings. I don’t know her. I’m eating dinner. I’ll soon finish, smoke a cigarette, and then go home to sleep without a body against whose heat to press my complications. The food tastes like pork or chicken, but not enough like either to create anxieties. I don’t remember what I ordered, but it’s boring. I like it.

I’m trying to eat and read, not to look at her, though she is garishly depressed and sits five feet away. The waiter goes to her. It’s his job. She tells him she wants the fish, but without sauce, and she would like it grilled, not poached. I look. He starts to ask what else she wants. She interrupts, asks if the wine is dry. He says, “Yes.” She says, “Very dry?” He says,“I’ll ask,” and hustles away to the kitchen. I hear him consult the chef in a foreign language, maybe Arabic. She calls from the table,“I don’t want it if it isn’t very dry.” He comes back, whispers, “It’s very dry.” She then says that she’ll have soup and salad, but no cream in the soup, and bring the salad dressing on the side, then adds “Please” with a too strong voice and a frightened stare, like a person who is basically shy, struggling to be forthright. Instead of forthright, a kind of begging enters her tone, almost sexual. She smiles, amused at having betrayed herself, and also as if the waiter must be grateful for such a gift, which has now established a bond between them. He smiles politely and hurries away, confused by messages. She sits alone. As the waiter goes about his business at other tables, a light inside her grows dim. She feels abandoned. I want to rise and go hug her, or at least mess up her clothes, but you can’t do anything for anybody. “Oh, waiter,” she cries, “could you please bring the bread now?” He starts for the bread. “And I’d like a little water.” He hurries to her with bread and water, as if that’s what she wants.

Every wildness plays with death. Washing your hands is a ritual to protect against death, and so are all the small correct things you do every day. Aren’t there people who do nothing else? They pay their bills on time and go to the doctor once a year. They have proper sentiments and beliefs. They are nice people. I wanted to do dull ordinary chores all day. I wanted to be like nice people only to forget death, only to feel how I’m still alive.

The waiter does everything quick, everything right — no sauce on the fish, dry wine, salad dressing on the side. Then he bends over her and whispers, “Why are you angry?”

She says, “I’m not angry.”

He says, “I can see that you’re angry.”

“I’m not angry.”

“Didn’t I bring you everything you asked for?” His voice becomes bigger, self-pitying. “Fish, soup, bread, wine. Everything you asked for.”

She says, “I shouldn’t have to ask.”

The waiter walks away rolling his eyes. He doesn’t understand American women. I rise, go to her table, and say, “Do you mind if I join you?”

She says, “What took you so long?”

She pressed my leg with hers under the table. Conversation stopped. She continued pressing, then pulled away abruptly. Conversation resumed. She did it to excite herself, that’s all. Her makeup was sloppy, her clothes were stylish. She’d start to say something, then laugh and say, “No.” I’d never seen anyone more depressed. She said, “Driving to work I brush my teeth. I’m the invisible woman.”

I said, “I locked myself out of my office and my car. I don’t even exist.”

She said, “I lost my checkbook and sunglasses. Nobody needs them.”

“I forgot my appointment. Nobody wants to meet me.”

She frowned. “You’re trying and that’s sweet. But I don’t care.”

Billy says, “Why don’t you let me do it? Afraid you might like it?”

Billy phones, says, “Want to play?” I think about it, then say, “The traffic is heavy. It will take forever to get to your place. I can’t stay long. I’d feel I’m using you. It’s not right. I don’t want to use you.” She says, “But I want to be used.” I drive to Billy’s place. She opens the door naked, on her knees. We fuck. “Do you think I’m sick?” she says. I say, “No.” “Good,” she says, “I don’t think you’re sick either.”

You know your feelings, so you mistrust them, as if they belonged to an unreliable stranger. He behaved badly in the past and is likely to do so again. But you can’t believe that. You believe you’ve changed. Then it happens again and the same feelings surprise you. Now you’re fearful of yourself because of what you can’t not do.

If there are things I’d never tell a psychotherapist, I would waste time and money talking to one. It would feel like a lie. I need a priest.

Sex in one place. Feeling in another.

Afterward, afterward, it is more desolating than when a good movie ends or you finish a marvelous book. We should say “going,” not “coming.” Anyhow, the man should say, “Oh God, I’m going, I’m going.”

Schiller says, “When the soul speaks, then — alas — it is no longer the soul that speaks.” William Blake says, “Never seek to tell thy love/Love that never told can be.” They mean the same as Miles Davis’s version of “My Funny Valentine,” so slowly played, excruciating, broken, tortured.

She wore baggy pants, a man’s sweater, no makeup, and had strong opinions about everything, as if to show, despite her exceedingly beautiful face and body, she damn well had a mind. I felt sick with regret at having met her, ready to forgive every fault, half in love with a woman I won’t ever see again.

The soul is known through intuitions, or forms without meaning — like fish, flowers, music … Certainly not a face.

“Do you think it’s possible to have fifteen sincere relationships?”

“Not even one,” says Billy. “Let me tie you to the bed.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want you to.”