Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

“Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“The new clutch was five hundred and seventeen bucks. We paid. The car is sitting outside your place. Your landlady will drive it around the block every couple of days. Your other bills are also paid. As for your girlfriend’s birthday present …”

“Oh God.”

“You forgot, didn’t you? Don’t even know your own fucking life. Lawyers, accountants, and car mechanics — total strangers — are living your life. We bought your girlfriend a pair of earrings at Gump’s. Antique jade. They go with her eyes. She’ll be pleased. There is nothing left for you to forget. You’re a free man.”

“What about my new glasses? They’re waiting for me this week in Berkeley at Dr. Schletter’s office.”

Sam shoved a brown leather glasses case across the table. I took out the glasses, tried them on. They seemed correct. He called for the check.

A free man, I never felt more helpless except in dreams where I’d want to scream or run and couldn’t. I followed him to his car.

“A million bucks to spend traveling around the world with a beautiful girl, and he worries about his glasses. What a putz. Wait till Zev hears this. He’ll change his mind about Chester.”

“No, he won’t.”

Sam laughed. “He thinks you’re perfect.”

Zev’s plane was a silver twin-engined jet with two pilots. The first to emerge was a light-skinned black woman. For an instant I thought she was Zeva. The same size as Zeva with her dancer’s legs, strict posture, aristocratic neck. She wore a one-button jacket and short tight skirt. High heels forced emphasis into her calves. The power and shape of her thighs were evident in the skirt, green-gray cotton, same as the jacket. Her blouse was lavender, like her shoes. She stood in the door and looked about the tarmac. Spotting Sam’s car, she called into the plane, no doubt telling Zev we were here.

“Zev’s pilot?”

“Also driver, bodyguard, business manager,” said Sam. “You want my opinion, she’s his sickness. Penelope de Assis. Reminds you of someone?”

“Except for the eyes.”

They were mounted on the flared branches of her cheekbones, birds fashioned by a diamond cutter. Fifty feet away, I could tell they were blue.

“Where did Zev find her?”

“In Rio, dancing in the street for tourists. She was eight years old, shaking her ass to a conga drum. She’s been with him fifteen years. She signs his checks, kid, so be polite. Her name, let me repeat, is Penelope. Don’t call her Penny. Don’t suppose any other familiarity is allowed. She’s the one who fixed your life in Berkeley.”

“Nobody knew about the glasses except me and Dr. Schletter.”

“She saw a photo in a writer’s magazine. You’re at the typewriter working on a screenplay, but she could tell you weren’t reading the type, so she phoned every optometrist within a mile of your house, to ask if your glasses were ready. Your girlfriend was easier. Penelope needed only her license plate number.”

“How does she feel being a surrogate daughter?”

“She feels that Penelope de Assis — nobody else — is the daughter of the yid from Odessa, Zev Golenpolsky Lurie. That’s how Zev once wanted it. Now he wants a little distance — room for the other women, you know what I mean? Is it too much to want? Penelope says no, no, no. She’d love to have a sister. She’d love to kill her.”

“Let’s push Penelope into the bay.”

“Try it. I’ve seen her kick out a man’s teeth. There’s Zev.”

He was coming down the steps from the plane, Penelope, at the bottom, watching. I saw his age in Penelope’s tension — as if braced to save him should he lose his balance — and also in his slowness and caution. He glared at her, despising her concern or his dependency. The cossack-yellow hair was still yellow, straight, thick as honey and brushed back flat in the old fashion, appropriate to a dancing dandy. When he looked toward us and grinned, terrific peasant teeth appeared in the square, heavily structured Russky head, built for hard blows. He wore a black linen suit, pink shirt, gray tie. He carried nothing. I hadn’t seen him for over twenty years — our dealings were by phone, me asking for favors until he asked — not that I’d understood — for my life. He looked much as I remembered. Sam and I got out of the car. Zev came toward us. Then I could see more indications of age — seams in his neck and a downward pull about the wide, heavy mouth — but still, in his sixties, Zev could pass for a younger man, even here in the Miami sunlight through which he approached with a strong step, the blue-eyed Penelope de Assis at his side.

He embraced me, then shoved me back, arm’s length, his hands lingering on my shoulders.

I said, “You betrayed me, Uncle Zev.”

He shook his head, sighing. His words came slowly, with the weariness of ancient disappointment.

“You did me a favor unknowingly. Is that what you call betrayal?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry that’s how you feel, but I can understand. I won’t ask more of you. Say ‘No, Uncle Zev. You ask for too much,’ and I will walk right back into that airplane and there will be no hard feelings.”

His green-and-yellow flecked eyes stayed strictly on mine as he extended his left hand toward Penelope, palm upward. “You have a reservation on the next flight to San Francisco. It leaves in two hours and forty-five minutes.”

Penelope put an air-ticket envelope into his palm. He rattled it in my face.

“Say no. Use this ticket. You fly first class. Say it—‘No, Uncle Zev. I feel deeply how much this means to you, but my answer is no.’ A chauffeured car will meet you in San Francisco and drive you home. Phone your girlfriend. Take her to dinner at Jack’s. It’s on me.”

“Uncle Zev, give me a chance to—”

“I’m still talking. Should you say yes, I have also made a reservation for you at my hotel in Key Biscayne. They’re holding a bay-view suite. A speedboat is at your disposal. It’s got a thousand horses. Penelope will drive you to the hotel and buy you decent clothes in the shop. To these old eyes, the way you’re dressed, you look like a piece of shit.”

“Uncle Zev, please, this isn’t about clothes and speedboats.”

“You got something better in your miserable life? What? Writing a screenplay? It’s digging a ditch. They make a movie, the ditch becomes a sewer.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Soft as a fairy.”

“All right, enough.” I snatched the ticket out of his hand and tore it in half. My freedom had been compromised by neediness and favors, but the trouble was deeper — in the chemistry. I stared at the epicanthic folds that lay on his tigerish, Genghis Khan eyes, the grainy texture of his heavy skin, the yellow hair — each of the billion strands an expression of his soul — and I was hypnotized by the force, the mystery of his particular being, which I couldn’t reconcile with the idea that he was a son of a bitch. Penelope took the torn ticket from me and slipped it into her jacket pocket. Frugal.

“All right, what?”

“Introduce me to your daughter.”

Having said “daughter,” I glanced at her. There was no gratitude in her face. If she felt anything, it looked like anger. Maybe Sam hadn’t told me enough. Zev’s voice, now low and harsh, as if I’d kicked him in the groin, said, “Penelope de Assis, meet my nephew.”

We shook hands. She said, “I’d like to talk to you.”

“Listen to her,” said Zev. “She knows more about you than you. Sam and I must have a short conference in the plane. We’ll meet you later at the hotel and go to dinner. You’ll be there. I like a Spanish restaurant on Calle Ocho. You know it, Sam?”

“The Malaga.”