Sol Stein - Other people

"Don't do that," he said.

"What?" I took another sip. He leaned over and licked my lower lip. No one had ever done that. He slid onto the bed, holding his glass upright as if it were a gyroscope. Then he tipped it slightly and let a few drops splash onto my breasts.

"Don't move," he said, and gave me his glass to hold. There I was, helplessly holding one glass in each hand, unable to move, and he licked the Madeira from each breast and from the valley between.

He borrowed his glass back, tipped it lower down, then handed it back, my handcuff. I looked at the two glasses, at the ceiling, then at the soft hair of his head as he licked the drops of Madeira from below my navel and from the inside of my thighs. I concentrated on the two glasses, trying not to think of the tongue that was now moving in a way that I felt down the stems of my legs and upwards to my chest, as my breathing gasped again and again until I felt a sudden thick shudder of release, eros flooding, I clasped his head with my thighs like a vise, hoping I wasn't hurting him, and then he was suddenly alongside me, taking the glasses away, putting them on the floor, and clasping me with the full length of his body as the waves slowly waned and I was at peace.

"Was the Madeira good?" I asked.

"Delicious," he said.

I turned my attentions to him, hoping I could make love to him with half the skill he had, and when we both seemed ready for our first joining, I turned him over onto me, and saw the surprise in his eyes as he was suddenly, terribly impotent.

"It's because I was raped," I said.

"No, no," he said. "I swear. It makes no difference."

"Then what is it?"

"I don't know."

I felt at fault and desperate. I tried to arouse him in every way I remembered. The harder I tried, the less his response. It was no use. Finally, I collapsed back in defeat.

I took his offer of a lit cigarette.

"I thought you have a lot of women," I said.

"I have had."

"This happen often?"

"Not for years."

"Why single me out?" Then quickly, "I didn't mean it to sound that way." I kissed him, but he was not there to receive it.

Finally he said, "We can come up with a lot of suppositions, but we'd never know if we were right, so let's not."

"Next time," I said.

"We don't know," he said.

We must have both slept for a bit. At least I did. When I opened my eyes, he was propped up against two pillows, staring into space.

He had seemed to me a man who could do anything.

A professional is someone you can count on to deliver. Up in Oswego you don't get to see much in the way of real baseball. When I was growing up, we had radio not television, and baseball is something you have to see. So when I finally emigrated south to the suburbs of New York City, I made up for all those years in Oswego by going to Yankee Stadium two, three times a month. Box seats weren't expensive, and you could bloat yourself and a woman on hot dogs and beer without going broke.

One day — I think the Yanks were up against Minnesota, but I wouldn't swear to it — we sat next to a yeller. You know, one of those guys who screams encouragement and instructions to the side he's rooting for and abuse at the other players and the umpires. The yeller was popping up and down in his seat, "Show 'em, Joe," "We need a hit," "You're blind as a bat!" It was the rookie year of a young slugger who'd just come up from the minors. The Yanks had used him as a pinch hitter and on account of somebody or other's injury this particular game was the first that he was on the starting lineup, in fifth place. The first two batters struck out and then one of those things happened, the third popped one up to center field, an easy one, but the sun must have blinded the center fielder one crucial second because he reached for the ball like a blind man. It actually hit leather, but he couldn't hold on to it, and so with twenty or thirty thousand people watching him, he chased the ball, got it, hobbled it, and by the time he threw it, it had to go to short because the runner was on second. The yeller went crazy, popped a paper bag, screamed as if he'd been knifed. The Yanks had a man on with two out.

For a minute, I thought they were going to walk the fourth batter, which didn't make sense, but it was just the Minnesota pitcher being nervous. The third pitch went right down the middle, no curve, no chance at the corners, and the batter, served up this piece of insurance, put his back and shoulders into his swing and clouted a line drive past the infield that put himself on second and the runner on third. I thought I'd go deaf before the yeller lost his voice.

My heart went out to the rookie as he stepped up to the plate. Men on second and third, two away. He had yet to hit his first home run in the majors. A single would do it. I felt myself inside his head, eyeing the ball as it came in. It cut the outside corner low for a called strike. You could feel the tension in the park. The kid sort of backed out of the batter's box, calling time, and played around with the bat, glanced toward the Yankee dugout as if he expected a miracle in the form of instruction, blew on his left hand, then his right, then stepped back into the box and took his stance.

The second pitch was a change of pace, and the rookie watched it as if he were just hoping it wouldn't cross the plate, which it did for a second called strike. The yeller leaned into my ear and said to me, "That fucker better hit that ball."

The third pitch was wild and I could feel the rookie's relief as the catcher collected it quickly and the runners returned to their bases. I wanted that rookie to hit that ball more than I had wanted anything ever at a ball game.

The fourth pitch was a fast ball, perfect for a slugger, and he stepped into it, swung. Instead of the crack of bat against a ball headed for the outfield, the sound was barely audible, the ball hitting the bat near the handle, rolling just in front of the plate, a perfect bunt — who needed it? — and the catcher was on top of it at once. The rookie, like a trooper, ran like hell for first. The catcher threw the ball to first with disdain, and the side was retired. What an ignominious moment for the rookie! The yeller was joined by half the ball park crying its derision.

"Too bad," I said to no one in particular.

The yeller was trying to say something to me in the midst of the bedlam. There had to be a reason for an important failure, and the yeller had seized on mankind's oldest nightmare. He couldn't get it up was what he was saying.

I knew why I remembered that incident. With two cases coming to trial, I wished I had a law partner I could pass at least one of them to, or that I had a goddamn associate I could rely on for help. My head was not with either trial. It was remembering the baseball game and the yeller's conclusion. It was remembering Francine and the night of Thomassy's floppola.

I tried to get the judge to give me a week's postponement on the Connolly case. When things are bad, they usually get worse. Judge Bracton, who had never refused me before, refused me now the way my own organ had refused me.

Connolly was charged with holding up a gas station at gunpoint. He denied it. He had a record. They picked him up, put him in a lineup, and Wilson, the gas station operator, identified him. Fortunately I had been able to question two of the detectives who had been present at the lineup. I studied up on Wilson. I was ready to pulverize him on cross-examination. Maybe because he was a gas station owner like Koslak. Maybe because Koslak had gotten into Francine and I couldn't.

It was a short trial. The D.A. put Wilson on the stand and had him recite the facts of the robbery, the usual stuff. He had closed up, switched on the night light, locked the door, was getting into his own car when a guy comes out of the shadows, puts something hard in his ribs, and says "Gimme the paper bag." I don't know why gas station owners put their day's cash in paper bags, but a lot of them do.