Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

The picture vanished. Nachman looked down at his shoes, which he had dropped beside the bed. He felt an extraordinary need for ordinariness. His shoes were British. Hand-sewn, soft reddish-brown leather. He’d worn them for years and he’d had them resoled and reheeled at least three times. He kept them oiled. They were molded perfectly to the shape of his feet and so pliant they felt buttery. It occurred to Nachman, though he hadn’t been thinking about it, that maybe Norbert knew about Adele’s lover.

If Norbert knew, and if Nachman told Norbert what he had seen, it might be grotesquely embarrassing. Boundaries are crucial to the integrity of relationships. That settled it. He wouldn’t tell Norbert and he wouldn’t meet Adele for lunch. It was an enormous relief to have arrived at this understanding of his situation.

Traffic moved normally the next afternoon, so Nachman was on time when he parked his car in the lot near the La Brea Tar Pits. Calendar’s was crowded. Waiters rushed down the aisles, with expressions of intense concentration, as if solving puzzles. There was ubiquitous chatter and laughter. Nachman looked about for Adele. When he saw her, he took a breath and started toward her table. She was wearing sandals, jeans, a celadon-green tank top, and a thin beaded necklace of primary colors. Beside her wineglass was a newspaper, which she pressed down with her hand as she read it. She glanced up as Nachman approached. She smiled, folded the newspaper, and dropped it beneath her chair. She continued smiling as Nachman sat down opposite her. He looked at her tank top and necklace. He looked at her wedding ring, a barrel of dull yellow, and then at her watch. It had a large face, etched with black numerals, and a clear plastic band. Adele continued smiling. Nachman shook his head ruefully as he finally looked directly at her face.

Her black shining hair was pulled back severely, and tied with a red ribbon. She wore assertive poppy-red lipstick. In gold-framed glasses, her eyes, related to the color of her tank top though much brighter, accepted Nachman’s attention, but he could see their uncertainty. Her smile became tentative. Quizzical.

“Order something,” she said, unable to bear Nachman’s silence.

“I don’t want anything.”

“Won’t you have a glass of wine?” she implored, as if it would do her good if Nachman had a glass of wine. Her smile was weak.

“All right.”

Adele raised her hand. A passing waiter stopped. Adele said, “Two more,” pointing to her wineglass. The waiter nodded.

“I shouldn’t have another,” said Adele. “I have to work on a difficult case this afternoon. I hired a new assistant. A gay kid named Geoffrey Horley Harms. He has two degrees. Three names and two doctorates, can you believe it?” She paused, then said, “What are you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

“You’ve never been married. You don’t know what it’s like.”

Nachman looked around at the action in the restaurant and sighed.

Adele said, “This is going nowhere. Look at me, please. I want to talk to you. I wasn’t raised by Protestants. I’m not a nice person. Do you follow me? I’m a very direct person.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I want your full attention.”

“O.K.”

“I’m glad you saw me outside the motel.”

“I was stuck in traffic. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I’m grateful. What you saw has been going on for a long time, but I could never tell anybody. If I told my girlfriends it would be unfair to Norbert. I’m bad, but not evil. The guy you saw me with — Ivan — is from another life. I was in high school when we met. I was a kid. Ivan was already out of college, working. His mustache got to me. I don’t know why. It made his face so fierce. But Ivan is very kind. He is in the insurance business, a claims adjuster. He doesn’t live in Los Angeles. Sometimes he disappears for two or three years, then he phones me as if we were still together. As if I had never married. People stare at him because of his mustache. When he wears dark glasses he has no face, just a nose.”

“Adele, what did you want to talk about?”

“I’m talking about it.”

Nachman shut his eyes for a second, as if things would be different when he opened them. Nothing was different.

“Ivan phoned again a few days ago. Believe me, I was very clear and firm. I said I wouldn’t meet him. I said that I felt bad about having done so in the past. I told him exactly how I felt. He started begging. I said no, no, no. The next day, he walked into my office. I almost fainted. He looked worse than shit. But the mustache was there, and old feelings were stirred. I was transported. What could I do? Even if I were a happily married woman, the old feelings would be there. I was helpless.”

“Helpless? You?”

“Give me a break, Nachman.”

“All right, you were helpless.”

“So we went to a motel … Try to understand, Nachman. It’s been going on for years, and I never told anyone. Motels. You wouldn’t believe how many motels I’ve been in. Did you know that a lot of Indians are in the motel business?”

“I can’t begin to tell you how interesting that is to me. Hindus or Muslims?”

“That’s enough. I don’t like being teased. So we went to the motel, a squalid dump at the edge of a trailer park.”

A picture came. A motel room. The walls are water-stained and the paint is peeling away. Adele is standing beside a bed where a man lies. His eyes peer over a huge mustache, gazing at Adele as she steps into her panties. She pulls them up, then plucks the material free of the crease in her behind. At that instant Nachman’s wineglass was set before him. He reached too quickly and knocked the glass over. Wine splattered Adele.

Nachman said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Adele’s tank top bore dark splotches like the shadows of maple leaves.

“They once threw stones,” Adele said. “I’m getting off easy.”

“What can I say?”

“I wanted you to listen. You don’t have to say anything.”

Adele swept her tongue across the front of her teeth. A tiny dark green shape, perhaps a piece of arugula, was plastered against Adele’s front tooth. Nachman ordered another glass of wine.

“If I hadn’t seen you yesterday,” he said, “nobody would ever have known.”

“These things often come out. I told Ivan it was over. I think he heard me this time. Why don’t you order a sandwich or something? I already had a salad.”

Nachman didn’t want anything.

Outside the restaurant, they stopped for a moment in the sunlight and looked up the avenue toward the County Museum.

“We should go there someday,” said Nachman. “See the show and then go somewhere and have lunch.”

“I’d like that.”

Nachman kissed Adele on the cheek. She said, “Do you think I should … now that I’ve told you.”

“Yes. Tell Norbert.”

Nachman sounded principled, but he was already worried about whether Adele would invite him to dinner again. It would be a great loss if she decided that she had said too much and would prefer not to have Nachman around at the same time as her husband.

She had said she was bad, but not evil. Nachman wasn’t sure what she meant. He supposed it had to do with Norbert’s integrity. How he lived, consciously or not, in the eyes of other people. That was important to Adele. She wanted to protect Norbert. It was an aesthetic as well as a moral consideration. She’d had a long affair with Ivan, the mustache, but everything had ended in the motel. Nachman decided that bad Adele remained lovable.

A week later, Norbert phoned. It was late evening. Nachman heard fatigue and displeasure in Norbert’s voice. It sounded like anger or controlled pain. All that had troubled Nachman earlier rushed into mind. He felt regret and shame. He braced internally, expecting to hear Norbert say, “You’re a rat, Nachman. I’m furious at you.”