Джозеф Хеллер - Something Happened

I called Ben Zack again yesterday.

She was still not there.

"I asked for number four.

She said she wanted more."

"Although I remember her very well, of course, of course. Then you don't know what happened to her, do you?"

I told Ben Zack my name was Horace White. He didn't think he remembered me.

"I asked for number five."

I asked for Mrs. Yerger and was so glad when he said he didn't think he remembered her either.

"I felt it come alive."

"She was that very big, broad woman who was put in charge of the file room from someplace else and said she was going to fire all of us if we didn't shape up soon."

"Perhaps she didn't stay long, Horace," Ben Zack apologized. "It was all so long ago. Somebody else called up a few weeks ago to ask about Virginia Markowitz also. Isn't it odd? Isn't it odd that there are still people who call up for her after so many years?"

I asked for Tom.

"Tom who?"

"Thumb."

"Thumb?"

"Johnson. He worked in the file room too when Virginia and Mr. Lewis and you were there. He left to go into the army."

"He isn't here now. There's hardly anybody here now."

Tom Terrific, of course, who had given me the handwriting I use and who was able to stick it to Marie Jencks whenever she wanted him to in a way I wished I could and knew I could not. I couldn't even do it to Virginia, and I wasn't really afraid of her.

I asked for me.

I was not there either. (I had never done that before.)

It made me mad to hear that.

"But I'm pretty sure I remember who you mean, Horace," he said. "He was that nice-looking, polite boy with a good sense of humor, wasn't he? No, I don't know what ever became of him."

Neither do I. (I don't feel even distantly connected to him.)

It would have made me glad to hear I was still working there in the file room as a nice-looking, polite, seventeen-year-old boy with a good sense of humor (at least I'd know where that part of me was while I scrounge around looking for the others), cracking jokes as I carried my incident folders back and forth past Virginia's desk, humming "Take it in your hand, Mrs. Murphy," or whistling:

"Johnny, come tickle me.

You know just where.

Under my petticoat,

You'll find a bush of hair.

If you don't tickle me.

In the right place,

I'll lift up my petticoat.

And pee right in your face."

We had other dirty songs we loved too.

I could find that right place now and wish I had a chance to prove it. I wish I had her on her back right now (and that I was the one who was older. She is twenty-one. I am twenty-eight). There'd be more than just bone with her. I wouldn't be afraid. (I don't think I'd be afraid.) There is just bone with so many of them now. (I get black and blue marks instead of ecstasy. I might still be afraid of Marie Jencks. I was enamored of her size and flashy good looks. After I found out about her and Tom, I was afraid. Her yellow hair seemed cold and crackly, her skin looked rough, and I often dreamed of the things growing in the cluttered junctures of her thighs as mossy crustacean claws, dark and barnacled as uncooked lobsters, if indeed they were hers. The smeared rectangular smile of vivid lipstick on the face they bore along beyond them was hers as the pincers advanced to seize, engulf, and consume me. Poor Tom. I often feared for him in that cavernous burlap wilderness that fascinated and repelled me. Maybe that's what happened to him. I envied him.) Virginia, at least, was soft and kind. More and more often lately I find myself wishing I had remained on closer terms with my sister and her family, and with my brother's wife and her children and even with her second husband. She married again and had at least one more child. She sent a card. They are nieces and nephews and might even enjoy a visit from me for a few minutes. Some people don't mind their uncles. I wish I were part of a large family circle and enjoyed it. I would like to fit in. I wish I believed in God. I liked shelled walnuts and raisins at home when I was a child and cracked the walnuts and mixed them all up with the raisins in a dish before I began eating. My mother sent out for ice cream often in the spring and summer. In the fall we had good charlotte russes. I would spin tops. I remember the faces of street cleaners.

I was so distracted to hear from Ben Zack that I was not in the file room anymore that I left work early to drink alone in Red Parker's apartment. I began making phone calls.

I called an airline stewardess I'd met who was out of town. Her roommate had a date. I tried a model I met at a photographer's party last week who said she was desperate for help in finding some kind of temporary work, but I wasn't sure of her last name or even that she was really a model, and I was unable to locate her in the phone book or obtain a number on what I thought was her street from directory assistance. (Telephone companies are putting more and more announcements on records that are no more efficient than people.) I called an actress I've known for several years and got her answering service. I called a woman I know who's divorced from a man I knew; her son told me she had driven to the shore that day to try to sell their summer house. I called a soft hooker I know who's always glad of the chance to pick up a dinner and fifty dollars, but she was already busy for dinner (or said she was) and was leaving the next morning for a week in Barbados with a man who was older than I was and had much more money. (By then I should have gone home and fucked my wife — I thought of that. She would have been a pushover, unless she hadn't sobered up graciously from the day's imbibing. Wine gives her headaches. Whiskey makes her sick. I have my problems.

"I don't feel well," I could hear her bleat. "Can't you understand?")

So I called a widow with two children in private school instead who sounded doomed: she told me in a flat, barren voice that she was going to try getting by alone from now on rather than waste any more time going out with men like me who had no intention of ever marrying her. (She didn't enjoy sex anyway.) It was getting her nowhere. I called Jane. She was out (I was relieved). Her roommate sounded younger than my daughter and dumber than my secretary and seemed squeaky and disappointed, as though I had interrupted her timetable for putting her hair up in large pink rollers. I didn't leave my name. (I would have been ashamed to.)

"Did I interrupt you? I'm sorry."

"I thought you were somebody else."

"Were you very busy?"

"I was doing something."

"Were you putting your hair up in pink rollers?"

"That's for me to know and you to find out."

I called Penny, who had just come in from another one of her singing lessons and exercise classes and begged me to give her an hour and a half to wash up and straighten the apartment. I was there in fifty minutes. She was still damp and fragrant from her bath.

"Please, baby," she requested gently. I had opened her robe. "Go a little slow. I still get scared when I see you start so fast."

Penny has an alabaster body that never fails to astonish me with its sturdy beauty every time I see it again. I think I must gasp loudly and glare voraciously. Her white neck flushes. I came three times with her (and think I could have gone four. It was just like the army again) and was back in Red Parker's apartment with the newspapers before midnight. (It was an unqualified success.)

I really don't like spending the whole night with anybody but my wife, not even Penny. (That's one reason I never take girls with me on overnight business trips and am surprised by men that do.) I guess I'm used to my wife. I like waking up with her. I like it better than waking alone. I had to use Red Parker's apartment again because I had nowhere else to go. I did not want to go home. I may have to get a small apartment of my own. I will have to lie to my wife about it. I lied to Penny, who thought I was on the last train back to Connecticut. I made her come once, the second time (when I could take my time and work on her as scientifically as she likes — it is work), and that is all she wants. Her neck and pale face flushed. The third one was all for me. She made me coffee afterward and hinted I could stay the night. (I felt so much at home I didn't want to.) Someone like Amazonian Marie Jencks would have suctioned me right back up into the womb with a single siphoning contraction, and then puffed me out on a flat trajectory into the spongy, red catacombs of a testicle belonging to a man riding the subway trains in search of a curvy backside to splash me back out against. That's what I call dismemberment. That's regression. (It wasn't so bad living in my old man's scrotum, as far as I can recall. It was warm and humid, and there was lots of companionship. I had a ball.)