Joseph Heller - Closing Time

"Bring your friend around and I'll tell him it's true. What's he in here for?"

"Some kind of checkup."

"By Teemer?" Yossarian was shaking his head.

"They know each other," said Singer, "a long time."

"Yeah," said Yossarian, with a sarcastic doubt that left Singer knowing he was unconvinced. "Well, Sammy, where do we go from here? I never could navigate, but I seem to have more direction. I know many women. I may want to marry again."

"I know some too, but mostly old friends."

"Don't get married unless you feel you have to. Unless you need to, you won't be good at it."

"I may travel more," said Singer. "Friends tell me to take a trip around the world. I know people from my days in Time. I've got a good friend in Australia who was hit with a disease called Guillain-Barre a long time ago. He's not young either and doesn't get around too easily on his crutches anymore. I'd like to see him again. There's another in England, who's retired, and one in Hong Kong."

"I think I'd go if I were you. It's something to do. What about the one that's here? Teemer's patient."

"He'll probably be going home soon. He was a prisoner in Dresden with Kurt Vonnegut and another one nimed Schweik. Can you imagine?"

"I stood on line in Naples once with a soldier named Schweik and met a guy named Joseph Kaye. I never even heard about Dresden until I read about it in Vonnegut's novel. Send your friend up. I'd like to hear about Vonnegut."

"He doesn't know him."

"Ask him to drop by anyway if he wants to. I'll be here through the weekend. Well, Sammy, want to gamble? Do you think we might see each other again outside the hospital?"

Singer was taken by surprise. "Yossarian, that's up to you. I've got the time."

"I'll take your number if you're willing to give it. It may be worth a try. I'd like to talk to you again about William Saroyan. You used to try to write stories like his."

"So did you. What happened?"

"I stopped, after a while."

"I gave up too. Ever try The New Yorker?"

"I struck out there every time."

"So did I."

"Sammy tells me you saved his life," said the big-boned man in a dressing gown and his own pajamas, introducing himself as Rabinowitz in a lusty, lighthearted manner, with a hoarse, unfaltering voice. "Tell me how you did it."

"Let him give you the details. You were in Dresden?"

"He'll give you those details." Rabinowitz let his eyes linger again on Angela. "Young lady, you look like someone I met once and can't remember where. She was a knockout too. Did we ever meet? I used to look younger."

"I'm not sure I know. This is my friend Anthony."

"Hello, Anthony. Listen to me good, Anthony. I'm not joshing. Treat her real fine tonight, because if you don't treat her good I will find out about it, and I will start sending her flowers and you will be out in the cold. Right, darling? Good night, my dear. You'll have a good time. Anthony, my name is Lew. Go have some fun.

"I will, Lew," said Anthony.

"I'm retired now, do a little real estate, some building with my son-in-law. What about you?"

"I'm retired too," said Yossarian.

"You're with Milo Minderbinder."

"Part time."

"I've got a friend who'd like to meet him. I'll bring him around. I'm in here with a weight problem. I have to keep it low because of a minor heart condition, and sometimes I take off too much. I like to check that out."

"With Dennis Teemer?"

"I know Teemer long. That lovely blonde lady looks like something special. I know I've seen her."

"I think you'd remember."

"That's why I know."

"Hodgkin's disease," confided Dennis Teemer.

"Shit," said Yossarian. "He doesn't want me to know."

"He doesn't want anybody to know. Not even me. And I know him almost thirty years. He sets records."

"Was he always that way? He likes to flirt."

"So do you. With everybody. You want everybody here to be crazy about you. He's just more open. You're sly."

"You're cunning and know too much."

In Rabinowitz, Yossarian saw a tall, direct man with a large frame who had lost heavy amounts of flesh. He was almost bald on top and wore a gold and graying brush mustache, and he was aggressively attentive to Angela, with an indestructible sexual self-confidence that overrode and reduced her own. Yossarian was amused to see her bend herself forward to take down her bosom, lay her hands in her lap to hold down her skirt, tuck back her legs primly. She was faced with an excess of overbearing friskiness, of a kind she did not take to but could not defeat.

"And he's not even Italian," Yossarian chided.

"You're not Italian, and I don't mind you. The trouble is I do know him from somewhere."

"Aha, Miss Moore, I think I may have it," said Rabinowitz with a probing smile, when he sauntered in and saw her again. "You remind me of a lovely little lady with good personality I met one time with a builder I was doing business with out in Brooklyn, near Sheepshead Bay. An Italian named Benny Salmeri, I think. You liked to dance."

"Really?" answered Angela, looking at him with eye-shadowed eyelids half lowered. "I used to know a builder named Salmeri. I'm not sure it's the same."

"Did you ever have a roommate who was a nurse?"

"I still do," answered Angela, now more flippant. "The one on duty here before. That's my partner, Melissa."

"That nice-looking thing with that good personality?"

"She takes care of our friend here. That's why he's in. She fucks old men and gives them strokes."

"I wish you wouldn't say that to people," Yossarian reproved her mildly, after Rabinowitz had gone. "You'll destroy her prospects. And it wasn't a stroke. You'll ruin mine too."

"And I wish," said Angela, "you wouldn't tell people my name is Moorecock."

Thty studied each other. "Who've I told?"

"Michael. That doctor Shumacher." Angela Moore hesitated, for intentional effect. "Patrick."

"Patrick?" Surprised, Yossarian sensed the reply before he put the question. "Which Patrick? Patrick Beach?"

"Patrick Beach."

"Oh shit," he said, after his jolt of surprise. "You're seeing Patrick?"

"He's called."

"You'll have to go sailing. You'll probably hate it."

"I've already been. I didn't mind."

"Doesn't he have trouble with his prostate?"

"Not right now. It's why he isn't coming by here anymore. You were close with his wife. Do you think she'll know?"

"Frances Beach knows everything, Angela."

"I'm not the first."

"She knows that already. She'll be able to guess."

"There really is something going on between you and that nurse, isn't there?" guessed Frances Beach. "I can almost smell coitus in this rancid air."

"Am I letting it show?"

"No, darling, she is. She watches over you more protectively than she should. And she's much too correct when others are here. Advise her not to be so tense."

"That will make her more tense."

"And you still have that vulgar compulsion I never could abide. You look down at a woman's bottom whenever she turns around, at all women, and with so much pride at hers. It's that pride of possession. You eye mine too, don't you?"

"I know I always do that. It doesn't make me proud. You still look pretty good."

"You would not think that if you didn't have memories."

"I've got another bad habit you'll find even worse."

"I'll bet I can guess. Because I do it too."

"Then tell me."

"Have you also arrived at that wretched stage when you can't look seriously into a human face without already picturing what it will look like when old?"

"I can't see how you knew."

"We've been too much alike."

"I do it only with women. It helps me lose interest."

"I do it with every face already giving clues. It's evil and morbid. This one will wear well."