Leonard Michaels: The Collected Stories

“An idiot,” I said.

“A pig.”

“Intolerable neurotic.”

“Nauseating … psychotic.”

Then silence. Then he might start, “You know, his face, those weirdly colored eyes …”

“Yes,” I would say. They were the color of mine. I yawned and scratched at my cheek, though I wasn’t sleepy and felt no itch. Our eyes slipped to the corners of the squalid world. Life seemed merely miserable.

Afterward, alone in my apartment, I had accidents. A glass slipped out of my hand one night, smashed on the floor, and cut my shin. When I lifted my pants leg to see the cut, my other leg kicked it. I collapsed on the floor. My legs fought with kicks and scrapes till both lay bleeding, jerky, broken, and jointless.

Lose a job, you will find another; break an arm, it soon will heal; ditched by a woman, well,

I don’t care if my baby leaves me flat,

I got forty ’leven others if it come to that.

But a friend! My own felt face. An aspect of my mind. He and I. Me and him. There were no others. I smoked cigarettes and stayed up late staring at a wall. Trying to think, I ran the streets at night. My lungs were thrilled by darkness. Occasionally, I saw Henry and he, too, was running. With so much on our minds, we never stopped to chat, but merely waved and ran on. Now and then we ran side by side for a couple of hundred miles, both of us silent except for the gasping and hissing of our mouths and the cluttered thumping of our feet. He ran as fast as I. Neither of us thought to race, but we might break silence after some wonderful show of the other’s speed and call, “Hey, all right.” Or, after one of us had executed a brilliant swerve and leap, the other might exclaim, “Bitching good.”

Alone, going at high moderate speed one night, I caught a glimpse of Henry walking with a girl. She seemed to limp. I slowed and followed them, keeping well back and low to the ground. They went to a movie theater. I slipped in after they did and took a seat behind theirs. When the girl spoke, I leaned close. She stuttered. It was Marjorie. They kissed. She coiled slow ringlets in the back of his head. I left my seat and paced in the glassy lobby. My heart knocked to get free of my chest and glide up amid the chandeliers. They seemed much in love, childish and animal. He chittered little monkey things to her. There was a coy note in her stutter. They passed without noticing me and stopped under the marquee. Henry lighted a cigarette. She watched as if it were a spectacle for kings. As the fire took life in his eyes, and smoke sifted backward to membranes of his throat, she asked, “What did you think of the m-m-movie, Hen Hen?” His glance became fine, blue as the filament of smoke sliding upward and swaying to breezes no more visible, and vastly less subtle, than the myriad, shifting discriminations that gave sense and value to his answer. “A movie is a complex thing. Images. Actors. I can’t quite say.” He stared at her without a word. She clucked helplessly. All was light between them. It rose out of warmth. They kissed.

Now I understood and felt much relieved. Henry cared a great deal about movies and he had found someone to whom he could talk about them. Though he hadn’t asked me to, I told my story again one evening in company. My voice was soft, but enthusiastic:

“This fellow, ordinary chap with the usual worries about life, had a date to go to the movies with a girl who was quite sweet and pretty and a wonderful conversationalist. She wore a faded gingham blouse, a flowery print skirt, and sandals. She limped a bit and had a vague stutter. Her nails were bitten to the neural sheath in finger and toe. She had a faint but regular tic in her left cheek. Throughout the movie she scratched her knees.

“It was a foreign movie about wealthy Italians, mainly a statuesque blonde and a dark, speedy little man who circled about her like a housefly. At last, weary of his constant buzz, she reclined on a bed in his mother’s apartment and he did something to her. Afterward she laughed a great deal, and near the end of the movie, she discovered an interlocking wire fence. Taking hold with both hands, she clung there while the camera moved away and looked about the city. The movie ended with a study of a street lamp. It had a powerful effect on this fellow and his date. They fell in love before it was half over, and left the theater drunk on the images of the blonde and the speedy little man. He felt the special pertinence of the movie and was speechless. She honored his silence and was speechless, too. Both of them being consciously modern types, they did the thing as soon as they got to her apartment. An act of recognition. A testimony, he thought, to their respect for one another and an agreement to believe their love was more than physical. Any belief needs ritual; so this one. Ergo, the beastly act. Unless it’s done, you know, ‘a great Prince in prison lies.’ Now they could know one another. No longer drunk, they sat disheveled and gloomy on her living-room floor. Neither looked at the other’s face, and she, for the sake of motion, scratched her knees. At last, she rose and went to take a shower. When the door shut behind her, he imagined he heard a sob. He crushed his cigarette, went to the window, and flung himself out to the mercy of the night. He has these awful headaches now and constant back pains.”

People thought it was a grand story. Henry looked at me till his eyes went click and his mouth resolved into a sneer.

“Ever get a headache in this spot?” he asked, tapping the back of his head.

“Sometimes,” I answered, leaning toward him and smiling.

“Then look out. It’s a bad sign. It means you’ve got a slipped disc and probably need an operation. They might have to cut your head off.”

Everyone laughed, though no one more than I. Then I got a headache and trembled for an hour. Henry wanted me to have a slipped disc.

Such a man was a threat to the world, and public denunciation was in order. I considered beginning work on a small tract about evil, personified by Henry. But I really had nothing to say. He had done me no injury. My dream, however, was obviously the truth: he wanted to kill me. Perhaps, inadvertently, I had said or done something to insult him. A gentleman, says Lord Chesterfield, never unintentionally insults anyone. But I didn’t fancy myself a gentleman. Perhaps there was some aspect of my character he thought ghastly. After all, you may know a person for centuries before discovering a hideous peculiarity in him. I considered changing my character, but I didn’t know how or what to change. It was perplexing. Henry’s character was vile, so I would change mine. I hadn’t ever thought his character was vile before. Now, all I had to do was think: Henry. Vile, oh vile, vile. It would require a revolution in me. Better that than lose a friend. No; better to be yourself and proud. Tell Henry to go to hell. But a real friend goes to hell himself. One afternoon, on my way to hell, I turned a corner and was face to face with Marjorie. She stopped and smiled. Behind her I could see flames. Fluttering down the wind came the sound of prayer.

There was no reason to run. I stood absolutely rigid. She blushed, looked down, and said hello. My right hand whispered the same, then twitched and spun around. It slipped from the end of my arm like a leaf from a bough. She asked how I had been. My feet clattered off in opposite directions. I smiled and asked her how she had been. Before she might answer anything social and ordinary, a groan flew up my throat. My teeth couldn’t resist its force and it was suddenly in the air. Both of us marveled, though I more than she. She was too polite to make anything of it and suggested we stroll. The groan hovered behind us, growing smaller and more contorted. While she talked of the last few months, I nodded at things I approved of. I approved of everything and nodded without cease until my head fell off. She looked away as I groped for it on the ground and put it back on, shouting hello, hello.