Stanley Elkin - Searches & Seizures

“His lawyer says we’ve got to get him out, that there’s too great a presumption of guilt if he stays in before the trial.”

“That’s true.”

“Well, what do you say? Have you made up your mind?”

“I have to give you a test.”

“A test.”

“It’s routine.”

“What do I have to do? Hey, wait a minute, I’m not looking for a part in your picture. Don’t get any funny ideas.”

“What, the crap you eat? You’d blow me out of bed.”

“Okay, I just wanted that understood. I’ll give you a cashier’s check. We’ll go to the bank and have it drawn up.”

“You have to pass the test.”

“I have to pass the test.”

“It’s a very stupid test.”

“All right. Let’s get it over with.”

“It’s not scientific. It isn’t for an educated person like yourself.”

“Go ahead.”

“Actually it’s an insult to your intelligence.”

“ Try me, for God’s sake.”

“How much do you love Mr. Hunsicker?”

“What?”

“How much do you love him? Do you love him a bunch?”

“Certainly. Of course I do.”

“A whole bunch?”

“Yes. What is this?”

“Oodles and oodles?”

“This is crazy.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Show me with your hands.”

“With my hands? ”

“Just spread them out real wide and show me.”

She opens her arms. She might be a fisherman demonstrating the length of a large bass.

“That’s all? ”

“No. More. Much more.”

“Show me.”

She opens her arms so wide Alexander can hear her shoulder blades crack. Her tits come forward into her food.

“That’s not so much,” he says.

“You’re making a fool of me. There isn’t any test.”

“I can’t do it. He’s a marked man. Your boyfriend’s ruined. You shouldn’t think badly of him. Innocent men are sometimes lousier risks than guilty. How do I know if he sets fires? I like the prosecution’s case, but that doesn’t mean anything; they could still lose. The thing is, in your boyfriend’s state of mind he doesn’t think they will. I saw him. He’s very depressed that this has happened to him. I don’t think he’ll go the course. Too much money is involved; it’s too big a risk.”

“Why did you put me through all this?”

“You got a good lunch, what are you kicking? What did the other bondsmen’s food taste like? You want dessert?”

“I want to get out of here.”

“I’ll get the check in a minute. No, you were thinking a little earlier I was trying to put the make on you. I ask you, what chance would a person like myself have with a girl like you?”

“None. Thanks for the lovely lunch. See you.”

“Yeah. My wife is dead, did you know that?”

“I’m sorry to hear that. That’s like, you know, tough shit.”

“Right. That’s just what I told her when we learned she was dying.”

“You really are one dreadful son of a bitch.”

“No. What are you saying? What do you know about it? You want dessert? How about some of that creamy shit with the nuts?”

“You actually think you can get me to go to bed with you.”

“One lunch? You set some value on yourself. I never remarried.” She makes no move to leave. Perhaps she thinks he will still do a deal with her. “I play the field, go with the whores now and again to get my rocks off. Cincinnati has some lulus. Do anything for money, some of those girls. Now if one of my whores died, I’d put money in the jukebox and sit at the bar with my hat on my head like Walter Winchell.”

“You must have loved her very much, your wife,” Miss Krementz says levelly.

“Yes, well, she was very ordinary, very plain. We married each other in our middle years. You know what I couldn’t stand about being married? The picnics. All those trips to the damn beach. With the blankets and the towels and the sandwiches in wax paper. Warm Coca-Cola. Wearing swim trunks. Being barefoot on the pebbles, or the sand in my shoes if I kept them on. It wasn’t any better in the backyard. Stretched out in Bermudas on the folding lawn furniture. I come from a desert people, a hot culture, sand in my blood like lymph, but it’s as if I was running a temperature the whole time I was married, as if your Mr. Hunsicker did a job on me with the oily rags. Sweat on my belly like the fat on soup. My jockstrap was grimy, it gave me a rash. Sundays. We were together four years but all I remember are the fucking Sundays. Lounging around. Trying to figure out things to do, bored at the barbecue and settled at the fence like a lost ball.

“Not only Bermudas — pajamas. Do you know how much I hated pajamas by the time it was over? I like pajamas, I always did. Who wants to lie with his great red balls over the place, with his cock drifting like a weather vane or the needle on a compass? No, I’m a pajama guy. In motels, hotels, I love a pair of pajamas. But they have to be starched, they have to be fresh. I like a crease in them like the morning paper. But when my wife was living I wore them for a week, a guy who never slept in the same pajamas two nights running, soiled as handkerchiefs and smelly as socks.

“I don’t know, a year is supposed to have four seasons. I only recall the heat waves, being uncomfortable, doing stuff I never wanted to do, that she never wanted to do. Nobody could want to do that crap. People need to be comfortable, but you get two people together and all of a sudden there’s got to be plans, activities, you bust your ass figuring new ways to get stuck in the traffic. Her leukemia went my bail. Now I jerk off or go to the whores, specialists like the one man in Boston who can do this terrific operation. Or I give myself a treat and get one of those pricey call girls from the university. The ordinary is out forever.

“I see guys like me in restaurants — like the two of us here — old goats with tall blond bimbos with bangs on their foreheads like a cornice and terrific tans. You wonder, father and daughter? Uncle and niece? Never. They’re guys from out of town with the nerve actually to ask bellboys where the action is. Why am I telling you all this?”

“Why are you telling me all this? What makes you think I’m interested in your life?”

“You’re not? Don’t you want to know how people live? What’s the matter with you? What are you, twenty-five years old? How much can a kid like you have seen? You got a fever too? Did Mr. Hunsicker shove wadded newspaper up your ass and spritz it with charcoal lighter? All right, we’ll skip the love life. This is how I feel on this fine spring day: like I could only recover with drugs the sense of my possibilities. Like I’ve never been to the laundry in my life. You eat like a horse and I’m full. This is the reason I asked you to lunch and turned down your buddy’s bond. To lay this on you. Now you know some of how I feel. It isn’t privileged information; a lot know this much about me. There’s more, but I’ll spare you. Say, you got any pictures of yourself? You’re a beautiful girl. I’d like to have your snapshot. I’ll give you four dollars for it.”

“You’re crazy.”

“The hell I am. Crazy people are excited. You think I’m excited? Then I can’t have been making myself clear. Listen, I’ll tell you something. If we had this conversation yesterday I might have made the bond. Maybe not, maybe yes. Something came up. I crossed a scary man today. I was slipshod. My altiloquent style takes too much energy. I’m the best in the business, but I’m seven thousand years old and slowing down. Also I missed an important meeting with my colleagues. They’re planning ways to beat history, natural selection, doing in progress over a suggestion box and London broil in Covington, Kentucky. They think I’m against them. I’m not against them; I’m ahead of them. London broil! Those damn fools. They’re chewing extinction and don’t know it. London broil. A half-hour ride all the way to Kentucky and they eat London broil. And you know why? You want a sign of the fucking times? Because Kentucky fried chicken ain’t been on the menu for years! ”