Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

“I must be out of my mind, feeling depressed in Miami.”

Sam’s house, a stucco box with a flat roof, had a red tile floor in the living room and very little furniture — rattan couch, rattan chairs, a coffee table, and a dining-room table. No curtains, no rugs. A bachelor’s house. Some full-page cartoons, cut from magazines, were pasted to a wall in the living room, perhaps hiding cracks in the Sheetrock. There was a kitchen, dining room, and two bedrooms.

He showed me into one of the bedrooms. I dropped my shoulder bag, took off my clothes, and lay down on a thick foam mat on a plywood base. It felt good, but I could have slept on the ground. I didn’t wash, didn’t want to move. I sprawled on my back beneath a light wool cover, in my underwear, and shut my eyes.

Sam began making phone calls in the living room, beyond the wall, door shut, but I heard every word. It was early, too early for phone calls. He talked to an international operator, then people overseas, in different time zones, making hotel reservations. Somebody was going to travel “overseas.” Beautiful word. It named a feeling. Sorrow at not going home. I missed Sonny and thought again of the man’s face, drowning.

Sorrow attached to the face more strongly than would a feeling in waking life; weepy pressure, as if I were about to cry, but I was tired and slid into dreaminess. I never act out in dreams. Doing nothing, I’ve come, not even touching the woman. Sonny once said she’d come during a lecture, toppling out of her chair, moaning. I teased her. She said men have impoverished lives. So much they don’t feel. How much did a man need? My feelings reduced to her. She was wearing her black leather miniskirt, sitting in the front row, naked legs crossed. She leaned over the armrest where it expanded into a table for her notebook and uncrossed her legs. The flash of her underpants shocked the professor, made him brilliant, made her go toppling out of her chair. Seeing her taken like that, we came together, she on the floor, me in South Miami, loving her feelings, but, in the bowels of sleep, Sonny on the floor, ravished, unconscious, it wasn’t her. It was Zeva. How an innocent moment becomes another, which is depraved, I don’t know. Sam’s voice returned to me, saying, “Don’t worry, kid, you’ll see her again.”

I felt light without opening my eyes — the way an amoeba sees — through skin. I knew it was afternoon.

“Was I talking in my sleep?”

He stood beside the bed. Sam. No dream. I hadn’t yet seen him in natural light — tall with dark little close-together eyes and the sloping shoulders of an athlete, holding a glass of orange juice in a long hand. “I never met Zev’s kid,” he said. “She got to you. Have some orange juice from my trees. Zev calls her ‘it.’ The poor bastard doesn’t even let himself call her a her. He’s been dying twenty years, telling nobody. Did you fuck her?”

“I didn’t hear you say that.” I sat up and took the juice from his hand. “I told her what I was supposed to, that’s all. About the money. Then we just talked. I liked her a lot and felt very happy for Zev. I didn’t know what’s what. I still don’t.”

“This has nothing to do with money. Let’s go eat. I’ll tell you what’s what.” He put my bag in his car. Apparently I wasn’t coming back.

I recognized neighborhoods we’d driven through earlier in the semidarkness. Then we were near the center of town and out of Sam’s car, walking through the funereal lobby of a hotel. Somebody was shoving a vacuum cleaner across the rug. It droned, abdominal and despairing in the shadowy cave of the lobby. A buffet had been set up in the dining room. We loaded trays, took a table in a corner beside a long window, light filtering through gauzy white curtains, bathing us in a smoky glow; its quality came to me, as had odors in the night air, mixtures of perfumed decay, but the light wasn’t as palpable. It stirred different nerves, like desert light, with holy intimations. Sam and I ate in silence, soldiers on a lonely mission. Coffee was served.

Sam looked to see if I was ready to listen. I avoided his look, but felt its pressure. He would talk, tell me what’s what, whether or not I was receptive. There was no forgetting what had happened, trying to enjoy sensations of light, as if I had time for the mere luxury of being alive.

He said, “This is about women and power, kid. They need each other, like Samson and Delilah, or Zeus and Leda. In Cuba, Fidel is known as the Bull. A force of nature, you know what I mean? Like he told Khrushchev to grow balls — bomb New York, vaporize Washington? What a guy.”

Sam had shoved a man into Miami Bay and been indifferent. Now he leaned toward me, grinning, glee in his eyes, loving the great destroyer. He expected me to relish the idea of Fidel. I could only nod, which wasn’t enough for him, but he continued to lean toward me, grinning, urging me to feel something in myself that wasn’t there.

“When Fidel was in the mountains, there was a shortage of women. What did he do? He didn’t do anything. They came to him.”

“They came to him?”

“Naturally. But some didn’t go because they wanted to fuck a god. They were sent. You think this is incredible? See it. The afternoon is hot. You can hardly breathe. Mosquitos cover your skin like hair. Fidel and the others have just returned from patrol. They squat in a clearing in the woods, too tired to worry about Batista’s police. A woman steps out of the woods. She doesn’t say a word. She’s gorgeous. The men wait for Fidel to acknowledge her. What does he do? He does nothing. He’s Fidel. So she goes to him and stands until he feels that her claim on his cojones is not inconsistent with his revolutionary principles. ‘Are you the only one?’ he asks, thinking of his men. She says her colleagues wait in the woods. He nods to his men. They go into the woods. Listen, kid, it is the common practice. The shah of Iran had high-class whores sent to him from Paris, and he couldn’t always get it on, let alone up. Fidel never paid a cent. Women wanted to go. Their motivation was basic to the universe, like the law of gravity. Every woman wants to fuck a god. No exceptions. Here is where Zev comes in.”

“I can guess.”

“You’re a quick study.” He looked pleased and disappointed at once. “Go ahead. Guess.”

“Zev was already in the business.”

“You and me will have conversations at a high level, but you look like you tasted something distasteful, not familiar to your mind.”

“I thought Zev’s business had to do with gambling. I never asked what else.”

Sam shook his head, then blinked and rubbed his eyes, as if he’d developed a tic. He was trying too hard. This wasn’t exactly the conversation he’d expected. I felt dim regret. He was doing his job. He wanted to come through for Zev, but I wasn’t listening to him in the right spirit.

“Your uncle was in the business,” he said quietly, no longer working on me. “Gambling, drugs, whores — so what? He’s diversified since Cuba, but he’s still in the business. You see in the newspapers how a cabinet official is getting off a plane in Berlin with fifteen advisers wearing suits and ties. To you they look important. Compared to Zev, they are errand boys. You will never see Zev stepping off a plane in Berlin, Beijing, Dakar, or Teheran on anybody’s business but his own. Before the government types get on their planes, they phone Zev, ask if he’s free for lunch. Maybe he’ll give them some phone numbers in Helsinki. Sure, they’re going to talk about arms control, but there’s talk and there’s talk, and nobody ever talks to anybody except in bed. Departments of the CIA and KGB are run by whores, many of them supplied by Cherchez La, Zev’s international information service. For you, he got on a plane. He’ll be at the airport in a little while.”