Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

He moved an inch closer and seemed to be restraining himself, with terrific difficulty, from moving closer.

“Shut up, Henry,” I said. “I have no intention of killing you and I never wanted to do such a thing.”

“Ha! I see now.”

“You don’t see a thing, Henry.”

“I see,” he shouted, and slapped his head. “I see why you refuse to do it, why you pretend you don’t even want to do it.”

He slapped his head again very hard.

“I see, Phillip, you’re a moral genius. By not killing me you administer cruel, perfect justice.”

“Henry, get a hold of yourself. Be fair to both of us, will you.”

“Don’t hand me that liberal crap, Phillip. Don’t talk to me about fair. You be fair. Do the right thing, the merciful thing. Kill me, Phillip.”

I started backing toward the door, my hands stuffed deep between my lowest ribs. Henry shuffled after me, his little eyes wild with fury and appreciation. “No use. I will follow you until you show mercy. I will bring you guns and knives and ropes, vats of poison, acids, gasoline and matches. I will leap in front of your car. I will …”

Whirling suddenly, I was out the door. Henry gasped and followed, tearing for a grip on the back of my head. We went down the night, Henry ripping out fists of my flying hair and jamming them into his mouth so he might choke. The night became day, and day night. These a week, the week a month. My hair was soon gone from the back of my head. When it grew in he ripped it out again. The wind lacerated our faces and tore the clothes off our bodies. Occasionally, I heard him scream, “I have a gun. Shoot me.” Or, “A rope, Phillip. Strangle me.” I had a step on him always and I ran on powerful legs. Over the running years, they grew more powerful. They stretched and swelled to the size of trees while my body shrank and my head descended. At last my arms disappeared and I was a head on legs. Running.

TWENTY WERE JAMMED TOGETHER ON THE STOOP;tiers of heads made one central head, and the wings rested along the banisters: a raggedy monster of boys studying her approach. Her white face and legs. She passed without looking, poked her sunglasses against the bridge of her nose, and tucked her bag between her arm and ribs. She carried it at her hip like a rifle stock. On her spine forty eyes hung like poison berries. Bone dissolved beneath her lank beige silk, and the damp circle of her belt cut her in half. Independent legs struck toward the points of her shoes. Her breasts lifted and rode the air like porpoises. She would cross to the grocery as usual, buy cigarettes, then cross back despite their eyes. As if the neighborhood hadn’t changed one bit. She slipped the bag forward to crack it against her belly and pluck out keys and change. In the gesture she was home from work. Her keys jangled in the sun as if they opened everything and the air received her. The monster, watching, saw the glove fall away.

Pigeons looped down to whirl between buildings, and a ten-wheel truck came slowly up the street. As it passed she emerged from the grocery, then stood at the curb opposite the faces. She glanced along the street where she had crossed it. No glove. Tar reticulated between the cobbles. A braid of murky water ran against the curb, twisting bits of flotsam toward the drain. She took off her sunglasses, dropped them with her keys into the bag, then stepped off the curb toward the faces. Addressing them with a high, friendly voice, she said, “Did you guys see a glove? I dropped it a moment ago.”

The small ones squinted up at her from the bottom step. On the middle steps sat boys fourteen or fifteen years old. The oldest ones made the wings. Dandies and introverts, they sprawled, as if with a common corruption in their bones. In the center, his eyes level with hers, a boy waited for her attention in the matter of gloves. To his right sat a very thin boy with a pocked face. A narrow-brimmed hat tipped toward his nose and shaded the continuous activity of his eyes. She spoke to the green eyes of the boy in the center and held up the glove she had: “Like this.”

Teeth appeared below the hat, then everywhere as the boys laughed. Did she hold up a fish? Green eyes said, “Hello, Miss Calile.”

She looked around at the faces, then laughed with them at her surprise. “You know my name?”

“I see it on the mailbox,” said the hat. “He can’t read. I see it.”

“My name is Duke Francisco,” said the illiterate.

“My name is Abbe Carlyle,” she said to him.

The hat smirked. “His name Francisco Lopez.”

Green eyes turned to the hat. “Shut you mouth, baby. I tell her my name, not you.”

“His name Francisco Lopez,” the hat repeated.

She saw pocks and teeth, the thin oily face, and the hat, as he spoke again, nicely to her: “My name Francisco Pacheco, the Prince. I seen you name on the mailbox.”

“Did either of you …”

“You name is shit,” said green eyes to the hat.

“My name is Tito.” A small one on the bottom step looked up for the effect of his name. She looked down at him. “I am Tito,” he said.

“Did you see my glove, Tito?”

“This is Tomato,” he answered, unable to bear her attention. He nudged the boy to his left. Tomato nudged back, stared at the ground.

“I am happy to know you, Tito,” she said, “and you, Tomato. Both of you.” She looked back up to green eyes and the hat. The hat acknowledged her courtesy. He tilted back to show her his eyes, narrow and black except for bits of white reflected in the corners. His face was thin, highboned, and fragile. She pitied the riddled skin.

“This guy,” he said, pointing his thumb to the right, “is Monkey,” and then to the left beyond green eyes, “and this guy is Beans.” She nodded to the hat, then Monkey, then Beans, measuring the respect she offered, doling it out in split seconds. Only one of them had the glove.

“Well, did any of you guys see my glove?”

Every tier grew still, like birds in a tree waiting for a sign that would move them all at once.

Tito’s small dark head snapped forward. She heard the slap an instant late. The body lurched after the head and pitched off the stoop at her feet. She saw green eyes sitting back slowly. Tito gaped up at her from the concrete. A sacrifice to the lady. She stepped back as if rejecting it and frowned at green eyes. He gazed indifferently at Tito, who was up, facing him with coffee-bean fists. Tito screamed, “I tell her you got it, dickhead.”

The green eyes swelled in themselves like a light blooming in the ocean. Tito’s fists opened, he turned, folded quickly, and sat back into the mass. He began to rub his knees.

“May I have my glove, Francisco?” Her voice was still pleasant and high. She now held her purse in the crook of her arm and pressed it against her side.

Some fop had a thought and giggled in the wings. She glanced up at him immediately. He produced a toothpick. With great delicacy he stuck it into his ear. She looked away. Green eyes again waited for her. A cup of darkness formed in the hollow that crowned his chestbone. His soiled gray polo shirt hooked below it. “You think I have you glove?” She didn’t answer. He stared between his knees, between heads and shoulders to the top of Tito’s head. “Hey, Tito, you tell her I got the glove?”

“I didn’t tell nothing,” muttered Tito, rubbing his knees harder as if they were still bitter from his fall.

“He’s full of shit, Miss Calile. I break his head later. What kind of glove you want?”

“This kind,” she said wearily, “a white glove like this.”

“Too hot.” He grinned.

“Yes, too hot, but I need it.”

“What for? Too hot.” He gave her full green concern.