Stanley Elkin - Boswell

They were smiling, already prepared to like my story, but I ignored them and looked directly at Morty. “There was this Jewish lady,” I began, “whose husband died and left her a lot of money. So one day she got into this huge Cadillac convertible and drove down to Miami Beach to the biggest, flashiest hotel they had there.”

Morty glowered at me and put out his tongue to receive another pill.

“When she pulled up in front of the hotel she leaned on the horn until a bellboy came around to open the door for her.”

The color had begun to drain from his face. “‘Look here,’ she says in a loud voice, ‘I’m Mrs. Ginsberg, and I’ve reserved the biggest suite in the hotel. You’ll carry up my bags to it, yeah? And you shouldn’t forget the MINK COAT in dee t-r-ronk!’”

Watching me, Morty was now desperately putting one pill after another into his mouth.

“So the woman rides up in the elevator to her penthouse suite and waits for the bellboy to come up with her bags.”

Now Morty’s was the only face that was not red. He had taken the bottle of pills from his pocket and unscrewed the cap. Raising the bottle to his mouth he began to pour the pills directly onto his tongue. He chewed obscenely, his pale jaws working automatically, rapid and clumsy as an infant seeking a breast.

“In a little while the bellboy comes up loaded down with so many suitcases you can’t even see his face. He puts them down and the woman starts to take a dime out of her purse to give it to him, but all of a sudden she stops. ‘Vere’s de boy?’ she asks.

“Well, the guy looks at her, not understanding. 1 beg your pardon,’ he pants. ‘Where’s what boy?’ “‘De boy,’ she says, ’de boy.’

“‘Do you mean that grown man I saw in the back seat?’ he asks.

“‘Yeah, him,’ she says. ‘My son, in de beck. Vat’s de matter you didn’ carry him up too?’

“‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ the bellboy says, ‘I didn’t realize he couldn’t walk.’

“‘He cen valk, he cen valk,’ she says. ‘Tenk God he doesn’t have to.’”

Morty was gasping for breath. He had run out of pills and was clutching at his chest as if to stop blood that might be flowing from it. The rest of the people in the room hadn’t seen him and were still laughing. I pointed to Morty, who was on his knees now, pulling in terror at his collar.

“Dr. Perlmutter doesn’t get it,” I said calmly.

They stared at him and one by one raised their hands to their faces, to stop their laughter as they would a sneeze. They spread away from him evenly, creating around him an island of space.

On his back now, Morty looked up at me helplessly. Already his death had settled and he had begun to shrink. It was very interesting. His white face was a stain in the room. Gradually, as it had when I had cut myself off from my son, my body began to strengthen. Morty’s vitality flowed into me. I felt myself grow taller. My vision cleared. As he continued to shrink I continued to grow. I was becoming a giant. I filled the room, forcing the others to flee into corners, pressing them hopelessly against the walls, jamming them with my expanding body into tiny cul-de-sacs of space, smashed shards of dimension. As they suffocated and died they began to shrink also and so made more room. Others rushed into the space they made only to crash against my irresistible growth, nudged murderously by my expanding shins and enlarging thighs. They too died and shrank, feeding me freedom, precious room, which I needed now as others need air. I was filling out like a balloon — only not hollow. Solid, with a beautiful, felt solidity. I was greater than the room now and expanding into the street itself, where the crowds fell back from me as they would from a tidal wave. There was no place for them to go, and soon I had taken their space as I had taken the others’ before. And still I continued to grow. Whole populations were plunged into a stifling darkness in the shadow of my calves. Races divided into my pockets and no sooner had found room there than my thighs, swelling, smothered them against the lining. Gradually the cries of the stricken began to subside, their great grief silent only when there were no more mourners.

“Ah,” I said, my voice like thunder in the surrounding silence, “a way had to be found, and a way was found.!”

Roger brought up the tuxedo I had rented, and waited while I dressed.

“Do you like a cummerbund, sir?” he asked.

He had started to call me sir again when he found out I was involved with The Club. The columnists had been talking about it for weeks, publishing the names of everyone who would be there and somehow making it sound like a journey of Magi. Some papers, taking note in their editorial columns of the diversity of the guests, had indicated a possible conspiracy of the important, a first move of the famous toward some still unstated end. Reading as news of something which had originated with me (though I was mentioned only as someone who would be there), I sometimes found it difficult to believe that I had had anything to do with The Club at all. I was very nervous.

Roger went to the window again and looked out

“Still raining?”

“Very nasty, sir. A cloudburst.”

I struggled with my tie.

“I’d better go down and get you a taxi, sir. Do you have money?”

“Yes.”

“Better not take too long, sir. They won’t wait on a night like this.”

It was almost eight o’clock. The people had probably been arriving for an hour now.

“Roger, can you fix this damn thing?”

He made a deft bow, a knot hard and round as a black button. “Don’t forget your raincoat, sir, or you’ll be drenched just getting into your taxi.”

He left me and I went to the closet. I felt terrible. After a month I was still troubled by my dream. My raincoat was the one I had used when I had been with Lano in the mountains, a great stiff brown canvas coat from some earlier war. I put it on over my evening clothes and shoved the hinged, rusted fasteners through the holes. Going out, I saw myself in the mirror. Years ago in a school play, just before the curtain had gone up, I had felt like this. I had asked myself what the hell I was doing there and had wanted to run.

The phone rang.

“Yes?”

“It’s me,” Margaret said.

“Yes, Margaret?”

“I’ve been staying in a hotel.”

“Yes, Margaret?”

“Well, how are you?”

“I’ve been sick,” I said. “I’m still quite weak.”

“David told me. I called him.”

“I see.”

“He was beaten up very badly by a queer. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“Yes, well he was. He’s better, but I gather he’s living alone now.”

“We all are, aren’t we?”

In the mirror, in the enormous baggage of the rough coat, I looked like a defector, someone running for his life.

“Boswell? Are you still there?”

“Yes. I’m here.”

“Do you want me to come back?”

“Nah,” I said, and hung up.

Roger had not found a cab for me. “It’s the rain,” he said. “If you’ll wait here, sir, I’ll go around to the avenue again and try to get one.”

“I’m late,” I said. “I’d better start walking.”

“You’ll ruin your clothes.”

“No, it’s letting up.” When I walked out from under the striped canopy, the rain had let up. Even if I saw a cab I would not want it now.

I walked toward Nate’s. I was a little calmer but still depressed. I came out on Broadway into the light, within easy range of the exploding signs, the excitement of neon like a kind of war. As I continued toward Nate’s I became aware of the crowds almost congealing round me, seemingly increased at every side street and doorway. We moved slowly, thickly, in a single direction. I had caused this, I thought; I had invented The Club and caused this.