Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

Desire returned in a rush.

I looked away with a cry, looked back, kissed her, and — to my embarrassment — she merely said, “What’s that noise?”

I let her go instantly and listened.

There was a bumping like my heart against the boat, though duller and trailing hollow reverberations along the bottom, irregular and persistent. We leaned over the side, peering into the water. “Must be a flashlight in the console,” she whispered, as if someone were around to hear us. We didn’t need the light. Sliding into view from beneath the boat, bobbing and bumping against the side, came the head and the gaping, glossy, moon-foiled eyes of White Trash, mouth open as if to suck the world. His right arm was gone, the stump stringy and red.

Penelope groaned, “Sharks,” as a smooth gray snout, tiny eyes and undershot maw, burst from below and took White Trash’s head away in a quick shake and a noise like tearing silk, then a slither, an arcing plunge into oblivion. I grabbed my neck, gagging as if it had happened to me. Penelope staggered to the wheel.

Engines coughed, grumbled, propellers took purchase on the bay. We lurched between white plumes lifting on either side like wings, as we raced toward the lights of Key Biscayne, me yelling against the rage of engines. “I know him, I know him. That’s White Trash,” I yelled, as if it were a great boast, my claim to a life of action. I yelled the whole story, how he followed me from the airport, how he ended in the bay, and then, having spent myself, I said, “I make trouble for everybody, don’t I?”

She laughed. “Not the sharks.” In a sweetly bemused tone, she added, “I hope you haven’t made us late for dinner.”

It occurred to me she was joking. I answered seriously, “You’re going too fast and I don’t want dinner. I don’t want new clothes. I don’t want speedboats. Zev can go to hell with his property. I don’t want any of it — not even you. Tell him that. No, I’ll tell him myself. I see what you’re all doing and I don’t want any of it. NOT EVEN YOU.”

“Don’t say that.” Her voice was low, faintly reproachful. She slowed the boat. “I was only teasing, because I’m turned on. Aren’t you? Don’t bullshit me about your fine character. Tell me the truth.”

What I felt of exhilarating horror diffused into a generalized vibrancy. “I could fuck a seagull,” I said with eerie tenderness, never more depraved or truthful.

“It’s nothing personal?”

The speedboat drifted. Her eyes were strange diamonds, their authority not to be denied.

That night, sharks feasted in the fateful bay, and I loved her and loved the loving of her, which seemed very obvious, perhaps too obvious. She said, “What keeps you from loving me?”

Occasional clouds crossed the moon and were bleached to a glow.

Did she expect an answer?

I thought of Zev and Sam. The desk clerk would say I had gone for a speedboat ride with Penelope and never returned. Zev would be alarmed.

The enveloping night came down like a swirl of black camellias, except for stars and moon and the electric syllables of the Miami skyline singing cheerily against the blackness.

Penelope lay in my arms.

I hadn’t forgotten what she said.

Gradually and gradually, it came to me that Zev wasn’t alarmed. Not at all. My providential uncle hadn’t gone to the hotel. If he’d bothered to phone the hotel desk, it was to confirm what he supposed.

However my life swerved, it answered to his remote determinations even as the fragrant waters of Penelope opened to me in widening circles like the Red Sea for Moses.

She said, “Do you like my body?”

“Can’t you tell?”

“Why don’t you say it?”

“I see that you aren’t a monster.”

“How sweet of you. But what if I were?”

“It would be a hard test.”

“Then you don’t love me.”

“Not like that. You aren’t my child.”

“I’m young.”

“Make me young.”

It was better the second time. I was better, less eager, and her body spoke to mine in easy dreamy pleasure that seemed to rise from the very navel of the cosmos, flowing through her into me.

Holding my face, looking into my eyes, she said, “Your turn.”

“No.”

“Didn’t you say that you wanted everything?”

“No.”

“Can I give you something? How about a building?”

“No.”

“Then take them all.”

“That’s nice of you, but I’m not a landlord.”

“Not one little building? Tell you what, I’ll give you five percent of one. You claim depreciation and never pay taxes again in your life. Spend the money on me.”

“Who are you?”

“You’re being cruel.”

Labor and spin, yet everything returns from whence it came in the night. I found myself thinking, yeah yeah, in the manner of Uncle Zev — so who was I falling in love with? A mulatto from Rio — arms, legs — who? Aside from the delicate sweetness of her breathing, who?

The ogling moon hung upon my question. I kissed her neck, which answered me little.

Zev found her dancing in the street.

Now he had visions of a lonely deathbed in Brooklyn, wanting flesh of his flesh beside him.

“It’s nothing personal?” she’d wittily said.

I licked her ears, then she put her tongue in my mouth. Dark, delicate scholarship.

I wondered if there would be another time. There wouldn’t ever be everything, or enough, but there could be more. She lay on her back, eyes shut. She didn’t have to see. I was there, like the night, completely given to her. I sat up and looked around.

A white star burned on the water, as if it were the more I had in mind. It was far away, growing bigger and brighter, an immense dazzling. Then it came toward us, shooting lights, searching the bay. I realized it was no star but some kind of ship, brighter than the stars, too bright to see in detail. Penelope sensed my tension, and sat up, too. We watched it approach.

“Good or bad?” she whispered.

I made out a high sharp prow and three tall masts strung with lights, a great steaming funnel among them, everything blazing white, beautiful as the Taj Mahal. Then I heard the doon-doon throb of conga drums and the sinuous elegance of a Latin flute. With the schooner almost upon us, I read, painted on the side, El Señor .

Two men at the stern leaned over a rail. One was Sam. The other was Zev. Zev shouted, “We’ve been looking for you two all over the bay. Come aboard. We’re going to Cuba.” He said it the Spanish way, “Cooba,” shouting again, “Cooba.” He and Sam laughed as powerful lights spun around our speedboat in crazily hilarious blinding celebration.

Penelope stood up and waved and laughed with them, marveling at the schooner, long and high and glacial, shining on the black water. “Isn’t Zev certifiably insane?” she said, an awestruck child in her voice, very plaintive and adoring. She didn’t care, but I covered her with my shirt anyway.

IN 1982, RAPHAEL NACHMAN, visiting lecturer in mathematics at the university in Cracow, declined the tour of Auschwitz, where his grandparents had died, and asked instead to visit the ghetto where they had lived. The American consul, Dirk Sullivan, was surprised. Didn’t everyone want to tour Auschwitz? He probably thought Nachman was a contrary type, peculiar, too full of himself. As for Nachman, he thought Sullivan was officious and presuming. Sullivan said he would call the university and arrange for a guide to meet Nachman at his hotel.

At eight o’clock the next morning, Nachman left his room and passed through the small lobby on his way to the still smaller dining room for coffee. He noticed a girl standing alone beside the desk. Her posture and impassive expression suggested she was waiting for somebody. She didn’t glance at Nachman as he approached, so he assumed the girl wasn’t his guide, but he asked anyway, “Are you waiting for me, miss? I’m Nachman.”