Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

Ali interrupted: “I told Sweeny about your extraordinary grasp of metaphysics.”

Nachman hesitated. Ali raised an eyebrow and smiled. His expression intimated that, speaking man to man, Sweeny was relevant to metaphysics.

“She said she would love to meet you.”

“Me?” A sensation of heat suffused Nachman, filling him with a confusion of hurt and rage.

“It isn’t inconceivable that you would enjoy her company.”

The remark had a provocative thrust.

“I don’t object to meeting Sweeny.”

“You sound reluctant, Nachman.” Ali was teasingly ironic, with an edge of contempt.

“I wasn’t thinking about meeting anyone.”

“Sweeny would be the first to admit that she isn’t an intellectual. Don’t imagine otherwise. She has no pretensions of that sort. Perhaps you object to wasting time with people who aren’t intellectuals.”

“I know plenty of people who aren’t intellectuals.”

“Sweeny has other virtues. There is more to life than intellect.”

“I’m not crazy about intellectuals. Norbert is my best friend and he is an idiot. What are Sweeny’s other virtues?”

“She is a woman who exists for the eyes. Some things shouldn’t be described in words; among them are women like Sweeny. It cannot be done without desecration. That’s the reason for the chador. A man shouldn’t share his woman with other men, but I will make an exception for you. The three of us will go out some evening. Do you like to dance?”

“I can’t dance.”

“Perhaps it isn’t intellectual enough.”

“I also can’t swim. These things are related.”

“How are they related?”

“I’m deficient in buoyancy, you know what I mean? To dance you must be light on your feet. Buoyant, as in water.”

“There is something heavy in your nature, Nachman.”

“I can’t even float, Ali. If I lie down in the water, I sink.”

“Well, Nachman, you don’t have to dance. It would be enough to talk to Sweeny about metaphysics. She has never met a man who could tell her about metaphysics.”

The conversation was more like Ping-Pong than a fight with knives, and yet the hostility was obvious. Ali didn’t want to hear about the paper. Ali didn’t want to hear about Bergson or metaphysics. He was flaunting Sweeny, even giving her to Nachman, though not quite as he had given him the superb dinner. Ali’s generosity had been reduced to an insulting message. Nachman could have wine and port and a Cuban cigar. Some night he could dance with Sweeny. But with all the metaphysics in the world, he could never have a girlfriend like her.

There was no business with the check. There was no check. Ali simply stood and walked away from the table. Nachman followed him. The limousine was waiting. They climbed inside. It slipped away from the building and gained a dreamlike speed. Nachman felt an impulse to lean over the seat in front of him and look at the driver’s face. But what if there were no face, only another back of a head?

He wondered how much Ali had paid for the dinner. The room at Chez Monsieur must have cost at least a few thousand dollars. And the dinner itself? Another two thousand? A bottle of wine could be five hundred. Nachman was guessing, but he couldn’t be far off. Two bottles of wine, and then the port. There was also the tip.

“Ali, do you mind if I ask a question? How much did you tip the headwaiter and the others?”

“One doesn’t tip servants.”

Nachman should have known that waiters were servants. He was embarrassed, but he was also high, and he continued blithely thinking about the cost of dinner. Even if Ali didn’t tip servants, he’d probably spent five thousand dollars, and not even the faintest shadow of a thought related to the cost of anything had appeared in his eyes. Nachman suddenly felt illuminated by a truth. Why not spend five thousand dollars on dinner? They had eaten well. The service had been magical. They had sipped port and puffed on their cigars, which must have cost a fortune, perhaps even the lives of Cubans who smuggled them past the Coast Guard. Nachman felt that he was on the verge of grasping the complexities at the highest levels of the universe.

Ali looked splendid and triumphant. He had allowed Nachman to see him as a man who knows how to live and how to include a person like Nachman in the experience of living. He hadn’t listened to anything about the paper. He’d made Nachman feel meaningless. The idea of himself as meaningless compared with Ali made Nachman chuckle.

Ali said, “What’s funny?” He was smiling, ready to enjoy Nachman’s funny thought.

“I’ve never had an evening like this. Thanks, Ali.”

“We must do it again soon. With Sweeny.”

Nachman was awakened the following day by the telephone. He slid out of bed and stood naked with the phone in his hand.

“I wish you had been there, Norbert,” he crowed. “You wouldn’t believe how much Ali spent on dinner.”

“How much?”

“Eleven, maybe twelve.”

“Twelve hundred. Wow.”

“Thousand.”

There was silence.

Nachman continued, “As for the paper, by the end of the week it will be in the mail to Ali.”

“That’s fantastic, Nachman, but don’t bother mailing it. I’ll come pick it up. You’ve done enough.”

Nachman detected a strain of reservation in Norbert’s voice. What a person says isn’t always what a person means. If Norbert said what he was thinking, fully and precisely, he might have to talk for an hour. And yet Nachman heard everything in that tiny reservation. Norbert was jealous. Ali had spent thousands on a dinner for Nachman. Norbert wanted to be the one to give the paper to Ali. Personally.

“No trouble, Norbert. Besides, I’m going out of town on Friday. My mother moved to San Diego. I have to see her new house. I’ll stick the paper in the mail. When I return, say late Monday, Ali will have read the paper, and you’ll have a thousand bucks.”

“A percentage.”

“Fifty percent.”

“Too generous.”

“I wouldn’t have met Ali, if not for you. What’s money? It’s soon spent. A friendship never. What a dinner.”

“Nachman, I don’t know what Ali spent, but it wasn’t eleven thousand dollars, so don’t jerk me off. I’m not stupid. I’ll accept an agent’s percentage. Say twenty-five percent.”

“Are we in business, Norbert? If we’re in business, we’re partners.”

Nachman enjoyed the heat of his feeling long after he said goodbye.

On Friday, he didn’t leave town. He hadn’t finished writing the paper, but that was only because he hadn’t begun.

Ali phoned on Monday.

“It didn’t arrive?” Nachman said.“I mailed it from my mother’s house in San Diego. She had a nice house in Northridge, but decided to sell it because real estate in her neighborhood went way up in value. She said to sleep in Northridge was like snoring money away. I used the address on your card. Is it correct?”

“Why would I put the wrong address on my card?”

“You sound angry.”

“I am not a person who feels anger. Do you think the postal service is reliable?”

“We will go to the post office and initiate a search.”

“The paper is lost?”

“Ali, if the paper doesn’t arrive tomorrow, we will go to the post office and you will see a man who feels anger.”

“I appreciate your sincerity.”

Nachman stayed home the next day waiting for the phone to ring. The phone didn’t ring. Nachman began to wonder why not. He was tempted to phone Ali and ask whether the paper had arrived. He glanced at the phone repeatedly, but didn’t touch it.

Late in the afternoon, there was a soft knock at the door. Nachman hurried to open it. It was a girl. She was average height, blond, very pretty. If Nachman had had to describe her to the police ten minutes from then, he could have said only that. Average height, blond, very pretty. She wore a blue cardigan the color of her eyes. She had left the cardigan open, revealing a skimpy, bright yellow cheerleader’s outfit.