Stanley Elkin - Boswell

Nothing happened. The movie was almost over, and soon the lights would go up and we would all shuffle out to our cars, our houses, our buses, our hotel rooms. Surely it was too much to expect that Sabu and Elizabeth would go across the street to the ice cream parlor.

Act, I thought. Act!

I looked to my right. I was on the aisle. I looked to my left. Sabu. Elizabeth. A filled row. I made my decision. I stood up.

I turned to Sabu, the Elephant Boy. “Excuse me,” I said gravely.

He looked up at me, confused.

“I have to get by,” I explained.

Instinctively he pulled in his legs, but then, glancing significantly toward the aisle to my right, he frowned. I moved against his legs heavily.

“Ouch,” he said softly.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

“Oh, wait a minute,” he said, and stood to let me pass.

I halted in front of Elizabeth Languor. She glanced up at me and stood without a word. I moved quickly past the rest of the people in the row and out into the aisle. I went to the lobby and put a dime in the Coca-Cola machine.

“They stood up for me,” I croaked. “They stood up for me. Sabu and Elizabeth Languor.”

I threw the Coke away untasted and rushed back into the theater. I haven’t been gone long enough, I thought. It’ll look funny.

The big production number was on the screen. Edward Arnold and Eugene Pallette and S. G. “Cuddles” Sackell had their arms around each other. They had just merged their three department stores. Sabu was on one elephant and Margaret O’Brien was on the other. They all seemed to be coming through the big Manhattan apartment right into the audience. José Iturbi’s piano was following them. Everybody was singing Sabu’s concerto. I was coming down the aisle while they seemed to be coming up it. It was thrilling.

I moved into my row. Already people were getting up to leave, but I pushed past them to get to my seat. They looked at me, annoyed, but made timid by my size.

When I got to Sabu’s and Elizabeth’s seats, they were unoccupied.

Boswell, I thought, mover of men!

The journal entry closes there. I was up most of the night writing it, and Felix Bush, the Schenectady Stalwart, beat me the next evening in a match I was supposed to win. Bogolub came into the locker room afterwards while I was still in the shower.

“Boswell!” I pretended not to hear him.

“Boswell?”

“Boswell, you in there? You hear me? You in there? Well, I hope you’re in there because that’s where you wash up and that’s what you are, you understand? Washed up! No more in LA do you wrestle for me in my gardens with the television and the hook-ups to San Francisco and all the way up to Portland, Oregon. That’s all finished, tanker. A guy that can’t win a fixed fight! Wash up good, you hear me? I’m paying for the soap and I say to you you are welcome because you are washed up in Los Angeles, do you understand me?”

“Yes. Beat it.”

“Beat it? Beat it? Do you threaten me, phony? I better not understand you to threaten me because I got guys who sell popcorn for me in this place who can whip your ass. You’re finished.”

I came out of the shower and went over to my locker. Bogolub followed and stared at me while I dried myself. It always makes me nervous when people look at me when I’m naked. Even girls. I turned my back.

“Dry up good, do you understand me?” Bogolub said.

“Please,” I said wearily. “Mr. Bogolub.”

“No no, my boy,” Bogolub said gently, “you miss my meaning. You shouldn’t catch cold. You missed a spot on your back. Where the yellow streak is, that’s still wet!”

I turned to face him. “Look,” I said.

“Show me your ass again. I can’t stand to look at your face,” Bogolub said.

I shrugged.

“Why did Felix Bush beat you?” Bogolub demanded.

“I guess I was just bushed,” I said.

“Schmuck,” he said. “Pig-fart.”

“Get out of here, Mr. Bogolub.”

“Get out of here, Mr. Bogolub,” he mimicked. “Get out of here, Mr. Bogolub.” And then, in his own voice, “No tanker tells me to get out of my own place. You get out. You get dressed and get out. And that reminds me, I meant to tell you before. Why do you wear those crummy clothes? You look like something in a playground. I pay you. Wrestlers make good money. Ain’t you proud of your profession?”

“Wrestling is not my profession,” I yelled.

“That’s right. Not no more. Not in Los Angeles it ain’t.”

“Okay.”

“Okay! You bet okay! A tanker who can’t win a fight that I go to the trouble to fix it for him. With rehearsals yet. Let me tell you something, Mr. America, let me tell you something about the economics of this profession.”

I looked up at once. There was fixing beyond fixing, and I was going to hear about it. It was all I could do to keep from putting my arm around Bogolub, from offering him a swallow of the mineral water that was in all locker rooms.

“You don’t know yet the damage you done tonight, do you, tanker?”

Better remain sullen, I thought. He explains because he thinks you’re sullen. Even in retreat, I thought, even in retreat I pursue. Even when I avoid them I embrace insiders, their silly trade secrets, their lousy shop talk.

“Contracts have been made, do you understand that? How am I going to juggle all those contracts? Bush was supposed to fight Fat Smith here next month. Maybe he won’t. Maybe you ruined it for him, too. It’s something I got to figure it out. How can Smith go up against him now? He was on the card right here last week and lost to the Chink. Maybe you don’t remember the terrific beating you give to the Chink yourself last time you was here, but the public remembers. So right away, it’s an overmatch. A winner against a loser. It’s inconsistent. Where’s the interest? A guy like Bush is supposed to lose in Los Angeles. All of a sudden he beats a contender.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. In the long-range geometry I had plans for you. Clean-cut. A Mr. Universe type.”

“I didn’t know about that,” I said.

“Big shot. Vigilante. Takes things into his own hands and doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“What difference does it make? So Bush wins one fight. Who’s going to think about it that way?”

“Think about it? Think about it? Who said anything about anyone thinking about it? It’s the feeling of the thing. The balance. That’s what makes a good card. You queered that. Now I’ll have to readjust outcomes all the way up the line to get the balance back. And who pays for all that? I pay for it. It means new routines, new choreography, new identities, new costumes.”

“I’m sorry.”

Bogolub wasn’t listening. He wasn’t even mad any more; he was just thinking out loud. “Maybe I could mask somebody. Maybe some old tanker could come in masked. A new personality. That might fix things.”

“I could go against Fat Smith if I wore a mask,” I said. “Bush could fight my man.”

Bogolub was silent.

“That would restore the balance,” I said.

“Who you supposed to be fighting?” he asked finally. “The Grim Reaper, ain’t it?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll see. I won’t make promises. You’re still on my shit list.”

“I’m really sorry about tonight,” I said. “I was sick.”

He looked at me. He didn’t believe my excuse, but was grateful that I made one. “You’d have to change your style,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “I’d have to change my style.”

It was because of Sandusky that I was wrestling. After our interview I returned to the only home I had: the gym. I stayed there, working out desultorily in the afternoons, sleeping there in the evenings. For about a week I simply drifted like that, knowing, I think, that sooner or later I would have to go back to my Uncle Myles. I was running out of money, I was getting bored. But mostly I was running out of money, since there is always something vaguely exciting about being on the bum. There wasn’t much I could do to make money. I couldn’t continue to throw cars into the snow and then pull them out — the work was seasonal. I stayed away from Uncle Myles because I believed, as I still do, that things happen. But lying on the tumblers’ mats at night, my only covers a half dozen volley ball nets (so that I felt oddly like a captured fish and dreamt of the sea), I knew that whatever was going to happen had better happen soon.