Sol Stein - Other people

He pretended not to notice! He just said to me, "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking you are one first class son of a bitch. I came here for help. What does all that garbage have to do with the way I feel?"

"Everything." He stooped to pick up the pieces of ashtray.

"I'll pay for it," I said.

He dismissed that with a wave of his hand.

"What happened today," he said, "is a transitory matter. A wound that will heal."

I felt as if I were dissolving. "I haven't even told you what that man did to me today."

"Please tell me," he said.

I bit my lip. Suddenly I didn't want to talk.

"Please," he said. "You must talk it out."

I shook my head.

"I'm trying to help you."

You're not helping me.

"Say it."

"You're not helping me."

"Tell me what happened. How did it start?"

"A knock on the door." My voice sounded like an automaton to me.

"Then?"

I told him about the cup of sugar. About the broom, for banging on the ceiling. Then about when Koslak exposed himself.

"What did you think about that?" asked Koch.

I didn't want to hear my automaton voice. I didn't want to talk any more.

"What did you think?"

I forced my dry throat to speak. "He wanted me to be frightened. I knew that."

"Were you frightened?"

"Of course I was."

I exhausted myself in the telling of the rest of it. Finally, he said, "Do you feel better now?"

"I don't know."

"You will feel better when you come to grips with one thing. Your rootless brilliance."

What the fuck was wrong with this man? "Are you talking about my job again?"

"I thought tonight it might distract you. We can talk about it some other time."

You started it, finish it. "Talk about it now."

Koch sighed. "You are young."

You are old.

"There is time. A job," he said, "is not a vocation. A vocation is like an engine that burns out only when you burn out. You desperately need roots for your brilliance. And the handicap you have is that you are a second generation vocational foundling."

"Now what does that horseshit mean."

Koch stared in surprise.

"You said I could talk as uninhibited as I wanted to in these sessions. I said horseshit because that's what it is. I don't understand what you're talking about."

"Don't get so worked up. Your father is a vocational foundling."

"He's a lawyer."

"He has no vocation as a lawyer. He is filling a role out of strange reasons. I have heard him. He has the same problem as you have."

I was standing now. "I was raped today."

"Yes."

"Rape is a crime. It's my body was violated. I was tied up. I could have been killed."

He did not get up. It was as if by remaining seated, he was forcing me to sit back down.

"But you were not killed. You must deal with reality."

"I am! For Christ's sake, I went to the hospital, I went to the police, I thought at least here I would find some sympathy, some understanding."

"Please sit down."

"I feel like I'm in enemy territory. Just like in the police station. Don't any of you men understand?"

"What have you against men?"

"Oh shit, let's not start that kind of thing. Let's talk like normal human beings. If I'd been robbed, if I'd been burglarized, you'd be sympathetic!"

"I am sympathetic."

"Like hell you are. You started criticizing my whole way of life. Tonight. When I came for help."

"I was trying to direct your attention to your deepest problem now that we have found the source of your insomnia. You will not have it again, I promise. Please sit down."

"I'm not going to sit down. I'm going to get the hell out of here."

"Please, please." He was standing now. "You've never done this before."

"You've never been this obtuse and cruel before."

"I think you should come back tomorrow when you are feeling calmer."

"I hope—"

"Yes?"

"Something happens."

"To me?"

"Yes to you. So you'll understand what I feel like."

"You mean I should be raped."

"Something like that. Something that takes you out of this padded cell you live in."

"I hurt you because I talked of you being a vocational foundling."

"You hurt me because you are not helping me to understand what happened to me today!"

"If you feel such injustice, perhaps you should see a lawyer."

"I don't know any lawyers."

"Your father might help you."

"You said he wasn't a lawyer."

"He might know somebody."

"Thanks a lot."

I tried very hard not to slam the front door.

"Where to?" said Bill.

"I'm not going back to my apartment. Not in that building. Not with that man still there."

"Want to stay at my place?" Bill asked.

"No," I said.

"I'd sleep in the living room."

I shook my head.

"Where to?"

"My parents' house."

He released the parking brake, and we were off. In a moment we were on the West Side Highway, headed for the county to the north.

People refer to our home as the Widmer House, we've been in it so long. It's in the village of Briarcliff Manor in the western part of central Westchester. If you're driving up from the city on any of the parkways, you'll eventually end up on 9A, a four-lane, poorly engineered, twisting road that has been host to countless fatal accidents. Over the years, the State Department of Transportation, corrupted no more than most government bureaucracies, eventually responded to the clamor about fatalities by erecting median barriers here and there. When guests come up the first time, I suggest they take 9A in order to avoid getting lost, but until they arrive I feel that I have consigned them to danger and I worry until the doorbell rings.

That night I was expecting no one. After dinner, Priscilla and I played cribbage in front of the living room fireplace, not that we needed its heat. As the winter season draws to a close, we know that soon the damper will be shut for half a year, and the logs will be carried back to the lean-to behind the garage where they are protected from the rain. The fireplace, when it splutters from green wood, has an aphrodisiac effect on Priscilla, and that evening I had mischievously put a branch from a recently fallen pine in with the seasoned hardwood. I had offered, and she had accepted, some port, and Priscilla won the first time around the cribbage board, all of which contributed to her confidence, and when she feels confident, she radiates the sexuality that had first attracted me to her many years ago.

And so we were in the bedroom in each other's arms when I heard the clear sound of a car leaving Elm Road and heading up our driveway. It stopped far too soon. In the countryside you become attuned to interruptions of the familiar outdoor sounds, and when, distracted, I said to Priscilla I thought the engine of the car had been turned off, she and I both thought of the burglary at the Watsons just a week ago. We listened. I went to the window. I could see nothing in the driveway at the front of the house and the trees obscured the rest of it. Whatever car had come halfway up the drive no longer had its lights on. Were we now to wait for the tinkle of broken glass?

I keep my rifle in the closet in the dressing room behind my row of suits. I put it against the foot of the bed and then put my dressing gown on. Priscilla got out of the opposite side of the bed. Her nakedness, which had held my attention just a minute earlier, seemed so inappropriate now. I was glad when she drew her robe around herself.

When I opened the window a crack, I felt like an animal perking its ears to catch sounds humans do not ordinarily hear. Priscilla and I both heard a male voice. Quickly I went to the bedroom phone and dialed the police. The desk sergeant said he'd send a car right away, and I went down with the rifle, to sit on the last turn of the stairs from which vantage I had a view of the front windows and the door but would not be seen immediately by anyone who did not look up. I make it a rule to leave one small table lamp lit the night long, and this night I was grateful for it. Priscilla sat down just behind me.