Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

What Morris and Sheila had said to each other can’t be known, but I imagined fifty conversations, how Sheila called Morris after Larry told her to stay out of his life, how she cried. It was inconceivable that she had asked Morris to help her with Larry, but I knew she had. Morris must have loved her a lot. In his pain and disappointment, he drove up from the city to talk to Larry and heard about the game. Afterward, he and Larry walked away together. Morris’s round, youthful face was turned toward Larry. Larry stared at the ground. Their conversation was brief. Morris extended his hand. Larry extended his. I didn’t want to watch them and walked away to the bunkhouse, carrying Larry’s T-shirt bunched up in my fist with the watch.

A few days later, the season ended, and the dining-room staff went home. I didn’t go out on any double dates with Larry. I didn’t see him again until three summers later. I’d been promoted to waiter at the honeymoon resort. Larry appeared in the casino bar one night, drinking alone. He wore a dark blue suit, white-on-white shirt with sapphire-studded cuff links, and a yellow silk tie. He looked elegant as a gangster. In his chest and face, he was slightly heavier. “Larry Starker,” I said. He looked at me without a word as he shook my hand, offering only a little smile, as if he were remembering his opinion of me.

“Sigmund Freud, right?”

The hotel tummler , master of ceremonies at the resort, thrust between us before we could talk, slapping Larry on the shoulder, saying, “Let’s go, Doctor. Where’s the wife?” Walking away, Larry glanced at me and said, “Hang around. Come backstage later.” Then the tummler was onstage, introducing a dance team. They had won a Latin dance contest in Brooklyn and were touring the Catskills. “Larry, the dentist, and beautiful Sheila. Give these kids a hand.”

The first number, a triple mambo, was wild with congas, bongos, and timbales . Cowbells were clanging, gidong-gidong-gidong-dong. The beat could make dancers look frantic, but Larry and Sheila were smooth and cool. Him in his dark suit and yellow tie. She in spike heels and a black, supremely elegant cocktail dress. A moment ago, she might have been sipping an exquisitely dry martini. In the stage light, in this music, they were king and queen. I ached with admiration and primitive envy, and applauded madly. Afterward in a room backstage, I shook hands with Larry again, told him he and Sheila were fantastic, and reminded him that I’d once been his busboy.

He said, “I know.”

“I’m waiting table now. Our old station.”

To my own ears, I sounded a little false, pressing our connection too happily. My feelings were impure. I’d never actually been able to love him as a friend. He introduced me to Sheila, his wife, and said she was almost four months pregnant. It didn’t show. She sat in a folding chair, legs crossed, smoking a cigarette.

I said, “Hi.”

She said, “Hi.”

I didn’t feel invited to step closer and shake her hand, but she nodded to me with an empty smile, then looked at Larry. The moment was strangely awkward, nobody saying anything. I felt intrusive. Then Larry said he had his dental degree.

“Not everyone in my class made it. You need hand-eye coordination. Like a fighter pilot. You’re always looking in a tiny mirror to see what your hands are doing — in reverse — inside somebody’s mouth.”

“Are you still playing handball?”

Sheila’s father had bought him into an office in Brighton Beach, he said, walking distance to the handball courts, but he didn’t play much. He was too busy, too tired at the end of the day. Then he talked about their dance routine.

“We’re working a story into it. The man dances in place. He is almost motionless. The woman dances for his pleasure, like she is exhibiting herself. He watches, but still dancing in place. Suspense is building, building, until the woman can’t hold back, can’t stay away. She goes to him. It’s a chase, but different.”

He worked himself up as he talked, and began to clap out the clave rhythm—1, 2, 3–1, 2—doing the steps in place, carrying himself like a tall, smooth, arrogant seducer. Sheila, sitting in her chair, watched with no expression until she realized he was seriously involved in the routine and expected her to join him. She said, “Aw, Larry. Enough already. I just finished dancing my ass off.”

Larry looked good, even when almost motionless; he had the music inside him. He ignored her protest, and kept dancing in place, clapping out the clave sharp and loud, and he raised an eyebrow the least degree, and faintly, he curled his lip. Barbarian lights flashed in his teeth. He said, “Dance, bitch.”

Sheila sighed, dropped her cigarette on the floor, looked down, and stepped on it. She looked back up at him with the face of a sweet, pathetic dummy and whimpered, “No.”

Larry kept on dancing, clapping out the beat, staring at her. The tension was unbearable. I wanted to say, “I’ll see you two do it another time,” or, “Leave her alone,” but I didn’t know if I was looking at a dance routine or real life. As if in a trance, Sheila was then rising from her chair, beginning to move toward Larry, tentatively, moving to the beat in a deliberately broken, mechanical way. She said, “No,” once more, but was now very close to him, face to face, then leaning into him, pressing against his chest. He had stopped clapping, and they were pressed flat together from chest to thigh, dancing. There was silence in the room, except for the rhythm of their feet sliding along the floor, perfectly together.

As I watched, gooseflesh swept along my arms, like a breeze across the surface of a Catskill lake. At the bottom of the lake, in the shimmering murk, I made out Larry Starker, ankles chained to cinder blocks, straight blond hair streaming up, wavy in the water, slow as smoke. His arms were flailing at his sides. There was a bullet hole in his forehead.

IN THE SPRINGof the year following his divorce, while traveling alone in Germany, Beard fell in love with a young prostitute named Inger and canceled his plans for further travel. They spent two days together, mainly in Beard’s room. He took her to restaurants for lunch and dinner. The third day Inger told Beard she needed a break. She had a life before Beard arrived. Now she had only Beard. She reminded him that the city was famous for its cathedral and zoo. “You should go look. There is more to see than Inger Stutz.” Besides, she’d neglected her chores, and missed a dental appointment as well as classes in paper restoration at the local museum.

When she mentioned the classes, Beard thought to express interest, ask questions about paper restoration, but he wasn’t interested. He said, “You could miss a few more.” His tone was glum. He regretted it, but felt justified because she’d hurt his feelings. He’d spent a lot of money on Inger. He deserved better. He wasn’t her life, but he’d canceled his plans, and he wouldn’t be staying forever. She didn’t have to remind him of the cathedral and zoo. Such things had been noted in his travel itinerary by the agent in San Francisco. He also had a travel guide.

Beard had in fact planned to do a lot of sightseeing, but moments after he checked into his hotel there was a knock at the door and he supposed it was a bellhop or chambermaid, and he saw the girl. She was very apologetic and apparently distressed. She’d come to the wrong room. Beard was charmed, not deceived. He invited her in.

Now, the evening of the third day, Beard said, “I don’t want to hear about your chores or classes.” He would double her fee.

Beard wasn’t rich, but he’d inherited money and the court excluded his inheritance from the divorce settlement. It was enough money to let him be expansive, if not extravagant. He’d quit his job in television production in San Francisco and gone to the travel agent. The trip cost plenty, but having met Inger and fallen in love, he was certainly getting value for his money until she said, “Please don’t tell me what I could do or could not do. And it isn’t a question of money.”