Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

Zev snapped his fingers. “Correct.” Turning to me, he said, “Afterward, we’ll go dancing. What do you say?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Truer words were never spoken. Buy clothes. Look good. Take a ride in the speedboat. Penelope, show my nephew how to live.” Sam handed Penelope the keys to his car.

Driving to Key Biscayne, Penelope concentrated on the road and, it seemed, didn’t want to speak. I figured I knew why. She’d witnessed my confrontation with Zev and decided she had nothing, after all, to say to me. With an apologetic and resentful tone — coming out of an irrational need to be polite and make her approve of me — I began to apologize for causing her trouble, though I was more sinned against than sinning—“I had no idea of the complications in my Cuba trip. I didn’t even know you existed until a few minutes ago”—when she grunted and swung her arm, like a backstroke in tennis, banging my jaw with the heel of her fist. Blindly, reflexively, my hands flew up, catching the next blow on my wrists. The car swerved left and right as she overcorrected, hitting the brakes, tearing gravel. We stopped. A fiend with searing cold blue eyes screamed at me:

“Why didn’t you just say no and get the fuck out of here?”

Then she stiffened, pressing herself back against the seat, and breathed deeply. A hundred cars and trucks passed before she restarted the engine, reentered traffic. We sped on to Key Biscayne.

My jaw was hot. I wanted to touch it, but I sat like a dummy, not looking at her legs, the skirt awry, pulled up to her crotch. Dummy or not, I was alert and feverish. Only she and I existed in Miami. Pray, I told myself, for patience. Be silent, strong, clean of heart. You don’t know what’s going on. A wrong word and she might drive into a palm tree.

As we pulled into the hotel grounds, she said she would go to the shop, buy some clothes, bring them to me. “You will keep whatever you like. I’ll return the rest.” She would choose the clothes alone. Her tone was cold and curt. No talk of styles, colors, materials. She didn’t ask for my sizes. Go to my suite, sit in the bar, take a walk about the grounds, look at the trees, flowers, shorebirds, or ride in the speedboat. If I preferred, she would ride with me later. “I assume you’ll want me,” she said matter-offactly, without the coyness or arrogance of a good-looking woman, or any apparent suspicion that I might prefer to strangle her. The boat ride didn’t matter to her one way or the other. Please myself. She’d see me in an hour.

I went to my suite, lay down on a couch, got right up and looked out the window. Looked, didn’t see, lay down again, shut my eyes, waited, waited, waited. There was a knock at the door. Penelope came in with jackets, shirts, pants, socks, shoes, and bathing trunks. She dropped everything on the couch, smiling faintly, as if amused by the colors and variety. I was glad to see this other face. It was possible almost to like her. But, far more important, despite her volatile personality, I was oppressed by desire. “Try this on,” she said, holding up a jacket. I took it from her.

With Penelope looking, I stood before a mirror staring at my reflection. The clothes were horrible and exciting, too gorgeous, flashy, expensive-looking, designed. Penelope said, “That looks good. Return these shirts. Keep the two jackets. I like those shoes.” She tossed clothes onto the couch, one pile to return, the other to keep. I was proud when she liked something, embarrassed when she didn’t. Putting clothes on, taking them off, I began to sweat. It was hard work; her eyes on me. I said, “I can’t stand this anymore.”

“Let’s go for the boat ride. I’ll meet you at the dock in fifteen minutes.” She snapped up the clothes to be returned. The door shut behind her. I waited ten minutes, opened the door, and walked out to the dock.

She was at the wheel of a speedboat, standing barefoot, in a black bikini and black sunglasses, not watching for me, just standing there, waiting. I climbed in and stood beside her, holding on to a rail. She turned on the engines and maneuvered slowly into the bay.

The Miami skyline was suspended in the enormous trance of late afternoon as we picked up speed heading into the heart of space. Then she cut the motor and the choppy, pummeling flight gave way to stillness and silence. Stillness and silence, deep and abrupt as when passing through the door of a cathedral into sanctified vacancy, but this was towering air above vast waters.

I wondered, as I often had, why falling in love is so important to everybody — since the invention of the feeling — but, in the ambient grandeur, sense became sensation, and I entered a zone of blood, exceedingly alert, no thoughts. An airliner, lifting slowly above the city, seemed motionless, like our drifting boat in the quiet afternoon. Penelope wasn’t in any hurry to talk. Neither was I. I waited as if for a degree of darkness to descend and make words. Lights went on here and there among faraway buildings, and a moon appeared. Penelope removed her sunglasses. “Please forgive me for what happened earlier. I know what you think of me,” she said.

“I’ve forgotten the business in the car.”

“That’s good of you, but I would do it again. What I’m thinking about, really, is that Sam told you I’m jealous and afraid I’ll be shoved out in the cold, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t say that.”

“Yes, he did. I know the man. He had to say it. Perhaps you don’t listen carefully. He takes the simplest view of everything. That’s what makes him useful to Zev and also dangerous. Well, he’s wrong about me. I’ve no reason to be jealous or afraid. See that one and that one.” She pointed to a cluster of tall buildings. “I own them. I own buildings in New York and Los Angeles, too, and a ranch in New Mexico and a chain of car washes. Except for my brains and my ass, everything I own cometh from Zev Lurie. But I am the owner. And there is always more, more, more. Zev puts a paper in front of me and says, ‘Sign.’ I sign.”

“Why does he do that?”

“So he won’t be responsible for anything. Nobody can sue him, he says, and take his property. But I believe he wants only to feel young. Like a baby. Irresponsible. Property makes you age. So he’s still a baby and I’m five hundred years old — I own so much. Do you know why I’m telling you this?”

“No.”

“Guess.”

“Your heart is broken.”

“You’re less stupid than I thought. What’s she like?”

“You could be friends.”

“What makes you think so?”

“She’s very, very nice, but what’s wonderful is …”

Penelope was wrong. I’m very stupid. I’ve said very stupid things. I’ve lost sleep thinking about them. In a rush of pity — sympathy, affection, hope — I said the most stupid thing ever. Her hands whitened on the wheel. Tendons stood forth in her neck. Her eyes were huge, shining with pain.

“What do you mean, she looks exactly like me?”

“I don’t mean anything. I am too enthusiastic. I exaggerated a trivial coincidence.” I was almost shouting, as if to crush her anger before it gained momentum.

“What do you mean, coincidence? What the hell do you mean? This face? This neck? These arms and legs? What? She has these breasts?” She tore off the top of her bikini and pulled down the pants, flung the pieces at her feet, screaming, “This is me. This is me, not her.”

There wasn’t a lot more to see, seeing her naked. She was less modest than a three-year-old. Desire fled.

“I’m sorry,” I said, stooping to pick up the bikini pieces at her lovely narrow feet; from there on up, trembling stone flesh. I slipped the bikini top over her head. She didn’t do the rest, just let it hang like a rag necklace. Down on one knee, I held the bottom for her to step into it. She did. I drew it up her legs. We stood face to face.