Two nights later he woke up in the small hours and lay there coldly. “Shtib,” he grunted. Tod’s been doing this quite a bit lately—grunting: Shtib. Shtib. I thought it might be a cough, or a half-stoppered eructation, or just some unalluring new vagary. Then I caught on to what it was the guy was saying. He climbed out of bed and opened the window. And it began. In waves, in subtle gusts, the room began to fill with the warmth and spoor of another being. Most noticeably, and surprisingly, cigarette smoke!—which Tod has a big thing about, for all his periodic perfectos. Something pastelike and candyish, too, something sweet and old. These were the smells she was sending across the city.… Unhurriedly Tod slipped out of his pajamas and donned his fibrous dressing gown. He then discomposed the bedding with an inconvenienced air. Still, he prepared her cigarettes for her at least, filling a saucer with a few butts and plenty of ash. We closed the window and went downstairs and waited.
It showed good form—and was, I ventured to imagine, rather romantic of Tod—to go outside like that and stand in his slippers on the wet sidewalk. Though his mood at this stage, I admit, seemed, if anything, to be one of exhaustive disenchantment. Very soon we heard her car, its slithery approach, and saw the twin red lights at the end of the street. She parked, and opened the car door loudly, and squeezed out. I was slightly taken aback when she walked forward across the road, shaking her head in sorrow or denial. A really big old broad. Irene. That’s right.
“Tod?” she said. “This is it. Happy now?”
Happy or not, Tod preceded her through the front door. She wrenched off her coat while Tod trudged on up, and she came pounding after him. I was discouraged, I confess. I was hurt. Because this was my first time. Call me a fool, call me a dreamer—I was hoping it would all be beautiful. But no. I have to go and catch her on a really bad day. She wasn’t what she wanted to be either. Oh, can’t we work this out? Tod and I reclined on the wrung bedding as Irene advanced into the room, holding a tightly gripped paper tissue to her eyes and calling us a piece of shit.
Then she started taking her clothes off. Women!
“Irene,” Tod reasoned. “Irene. Irene.”
She undressed quickly, as if against time; but the speed of her movements had nothing to do with desire. She talked quickly too, and wept, and shook her head. A big old broad, in big white sweater, big white pants. Her breasts formed a bluff beneath her chin, sharply triangular and aerodynamic, and kept aloft, ultimately, by some kind of G.I. Joe backpack of hawsers and winches. Off came the carapace of her corset. Then that big white tush was ambling toward me. And I thought her clothes were white. What was she saying, Irene, what was she going on about, in words half-saved, half-drowned—in gasps and whispers? In summary, this: that men were either too dull or too pointed with nothing in between. Too dumb or too smart. Too innocent, too guilty.
“Bad joke,” said Tod as she turned and looked down on us. “You know I didn’t mean that.”
Irene seemed to relent. Her shape descended and she settled herself beside me, in awkward abundance, and my hand reached out to the white pulp of her shoulder. Astounding proximity. Never, never before … She was tense and tight (as I was); but skin is soft. Touch it. It gives. It gives to the touch.
“Great,” said Tod. “Then you can get the hell out of here.”
These words, I’m glad to say, had a relaxing effect on her. But her voice still sounded frightened when she said, “I promise.”
“You promise?”
“Never,” she said.
“You wouldn’t?”
“But I’d never tell.”
“Oh what nonsense,” said Tod. “Who would believe you anyway? You just don’t know enough.”
“Sometimes I think that’s the only reason you go on with this. You’re scared I’m going to tell.”
There was a silence. Irene moved even closer as the conversation took another turn.
“Life,” said Tod.
“What?” said Irene.
“Christ, who cares. It’s all shit anyway.”
“Why? I just don’t rate, huh?”
“That’s something you don’t ever talk about.”
“Were you this nice to your wife and kid?”
“We wouldn’t know about that, would we, Irene.”
“Except to your friends. And family. Your loved ones.”
“You have no obligation to be healthy.”
“Also fatal,” said Irene.
“Do you really have to do that? It’s a disgusting habit.”
Tod started coughing and flapping his thick right hand about. After a while Irene quenched her cigarette of its fire and restored it to the pack. She turned toward us meaningfully. There followed about ten minutes of what I guess you’d call foreplay. Snuggling, grunting, sighing—that kind of thing. Then he moved, and loomed above her. And as she opened her legs I was flooded by thoughts and feelings I’d never had before. To do with power.
“Oh baby,” she said, and kissed my cheek. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I’m sorry,” said Tod. “I’m so sorry.”
Well, they made it up, anyway. Afterward, it was very much easier. Yes, the atmosphere was outstanding as we put our clothes on and went downstairs to have something to eat. There we sat, at the dinette feature, side by side, equably untwirling yard after yard of the pale pasta. Then—another first—off to the movies, if you please. And arm in arm. I felt I was moving through a strange land, on tiptoe, with the woman I was allowed to touch—was allowed to do anything I wanted to, or at least anything I was capable of doing. What’s the limit? As we walked a siren sounded, like a wolf-whistle caught on a scratched record.… The movie passed off fine also. I was worried at first, when Irene started crying again before we had even taken our seats. And I suppose the film was pretty depressing. All about love. The on-screen couple, quietly glowing with beauty and amusement—they seemed made for each other; but after various misunderstandings and adventures they ended up going their separate ways. By this time Irene was emitting a steady gurgle of contentment, when she wasn’t laughing her head off. Everyone was laughing. But not Tod. Not Tod. To be fair, I didn’t think it was funny either. We ended up at a bar near the theater. She had stingers. Tod with his steins. And although Tod walked home in a filthy temper (he was thoroughly out of sorts), our parting with Irene was marked by its cordiality and warmth. I know I’m going to be seeing a lot more of her. On top of which we came out twenty-eight dollars to the good. Make that thirty-one with the popcorn. It doesn’t sound like much but you’ve got to watch out these days, with everything constantly getting cheaper and Tod grimly counting his money the whole time.
Me, I’m head over heels. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. The forgiveness offered by her young blue eyes, which peep out in mortal embarrassment from the old sneaker of her face, so puffed, so pinched, so parched. Mmm—people! It seems to me that you need a lot of courage, or a lot of something, to enter into others, into other people. We all think that everyone else lives in fortresses, in fastnesses: behind moats, behind sheer walls studded with spikes and broken glass. But in fact we inhabit much punier structures. We are, it turns out, all jerry-built. Or not even. You can just stick your head under the flap of the tent and crawl right in. If you get the okay.
So perhaps escape is possible. Escape from the—from the indecipherable monad. As for her journey into him, well, that’s tougher. She tells us things about ourself. But how much does she really know? Tod’s playing it cool, of course, as always. I still don’t know if he’ll ever come across.
It’s quite exciting, I suppose—the news about my wife and child. The wife and child that Tod and I will one day have. But babies worry me. We do know, naturally, that babies are always causing worry and concern. They are very worrying little creatures.
Where do they go, the little creatures who disappear: the vanished? I have an intractable presentiment that I will soon start seeing them in Tod’s dream.
Every sixth or seventh d
ay or so, in the morning, as we prepare to sack out, and go through the stunned routines of miring, of mussing (we derange each eyebrow with a fingerstroke against the grain), Tod and I can feel the dream just waiting to happen, gathering its energies from somewhere on the other side. We’re fatalistic. We lie there, with the lamp burning, while dawn fades. Tepid sweats form, and shine, and instantly evaporate. Then our heart rate climbs, steadily, until our ears are gulping on the new blood. Now we don’t know who we are. I have to be ready for when Tod makes his lunge for the light switch. And then in darkness with a shout that gives a fierce twist to his jaw—we’re in it. The enormous figure in the white coat, his black boots straddling many acres. Somewhere down there, between his legs, the line of souls. I wish I had power, just power enough to avert my eyes. Please, don’t show me the babies.… Where does the dream come from? He hasn’t done it yet. So the dream must be about what Tod will eventually do.
There is a thing out there called fashion. Fashion is for youth and all its volatility, but Tod and I occasionally dabble. For example, we went to the thrift store not so long ago and picked up two pairs of flared pants. I wanted to try them on right there but for months he let them dangle in the closet upstairs, growing the wrinkles and air pockets that would finally fit his shape, the peculiar wishbone of his shanks. Then, one night, he unceremoniously slipped into them. Later, after work, I got a pretty good look at these new pants of ours, as Tod stood before the full-length mirror unknotting the plump Windsor of his tie. Well, they weren’t actually outrageous, Tod’s flares, nothing like the twin-ball-gown effect we would soon start seeing on the street. But I found them thoroughly disgraceful, all the same: aesthetically, they worked on me like violence. This substantial citizen, this old doctor—and his slobbering calves. Where have his feet gone, for Christ’s sake? I knew then, I think, that Tod’s cruelty, his secret, had to do with a central mistake about human bodies. Or maybe I just discovered something to do with the style or the line of his cruelty. Tod’s cruelty would be trashy, shitty, errant, bassackward: flared.… Still, the pants caught on and now everyone is into them. They move down the street like yachts: the landlocked sailors of the city. Next thing you know, women’s hemlines go up by about three feet. The sudden candor and power of female haunch. They’re already coming down again, slowly, but Jesus.
Probably human cruelty is fixed and eternal. Only styles change. A few years ago, the pedophile, strolling through the shopping mall, or sitting at a quiet table in Salad Binge or Just Desserts, might have coordinated his assignations—his intergenerational trysts—by mobile telephone. Now you never see mobile telephones, and malls and restaurants are different, so the pedophile must manage things in some other way, in some other style.
A war is coming. Just a little one, for now. Several times, in bars, glancing up from our Bud or our Molson or our Miller, we have seen that same shot on the mounted TV: like a eugenic cross between swordfish and stingray, the helicopter twirls upward from the ocean and crouches grimly on the deck of the aircraft carrier, ready to fight.
You’d think it might be quite relaxing, having (effectively) no will, and no body anyway through which to exercise it. Many administrative and executive matters, it’s true, are taken right out of your hands. Yet there is always the countervailing desire to put yourself forward, to take your stand as the valuable exception. Don’t just go along. Never just go along. Small may not be beautiful. But big is crazy.
I don’t want to sound too flame-eyed and low-blink-rate about it—and, all right, I know I’m a real simp in many areas—but I’d say I was way ahead of Tod on this basic question of human difference. Tod has a sensing mechanism that guides his responses to all identifiable subspecies. His feeling tone jolts into specialized attitudes and readinesses: one for Hispanics, one for Asians, one for Arabs, one for Amerindians, one for blacks, one for Jews. And he has a secondary repertoire of alerted hostility toward pimps, hookers, junkies, the insane, the clubfooted, the hairlipped, the homosexual male, and the very old. (Here, incidentally, is my take on the homosexual male. It may be relevant. The homosexual male is fine—is pretty good news, in fact, on the whole—so long as be knows he’s homosexual. It’s when he is, and thinks he isn’t: then there’s confusion. Then there’s danger. The way Tod feels about men, about women, about children: there is confusion. There is danger. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not fingering Tod for a fruit, not exactly. I’m just saying that things might be less confused, and less dangerous, if he could soberly entertain the idea of being homosexual. That’s what I’m saying.)
All these distinctions I’ve had to learn up on. Originally at least I had no preselected feelings about anybody, one way or the other (except about doctors: now where did that come from?). When I meet people, I wait for a pulse from their inner being, which tells me things like—how much fear, how much hate, how much peace, how much forgiveness. I suppose I really am the soulful type. Visualize the body I don’t have, and see this: a sentimentalized fetus, with faithful smile.
There’s a graduate student at AMS who’s Japanese, over from Osaka on a six-month exchange deal, companionable enough at first, of course, but becoming increasingly glazed and remote. He’s lucky he wasn’t here a few years ago, when we really hated the Japanese. His name is Mikio, funny-looking kid, with his heavy cargo of otherness: his light-holding hair, his coated eyeballs and their meniscus of severe understanding. During his lunch break, in the AMS commissary, Mikio will sit buckled over a book. I’ve watched him, from a distance. He reads the way I read—or would read, if I ever got the chance. He turns the pages from right to left. He begins at the beginning and ends at the end. This makes a quirky sense to me—but Mikio and I are definitely in the minority here. And how can we two be right? It would make so many others wrong. Water moves upward. It seeks the highest level. What did you expect? Smoke falls. Things are created in the violence of fire. But that’s all right. Gravity still pins us to the planet.
Many coworkers—Tod included—razz him about it and everything, but Mikio is free to do this, to read in his own way. Observant Jews, I’ve noticed, read this way too. People are free, then, they are generally free, then, are they? Well they don’t look free. Tipping, staggering, with croaked or choking voices, blundering backward along lines seemingly already crossed, already mapped. Oh, the disgusted look on women’s faces as they step backward through a doorway, out of the rain. Never watching where they are going, the people move through something prearranged, armed with lies. They’re always looking forward to going places they’ve just come back from, or regretting doing things they haven’t yet done. They say hello when they mean goodbye. Lords of lies and trash—all kings of crap and trash. Signs say No Littering—but who to? We wouldn’t dream of it. Government does that, at night, with trucks; or uniformed men come sadly at morning with their trolleys, dispensing our rubbish, and shit for the dogs.
I mustn’t become a bore on the subject, but I have to say that in physical terms Tod and I are now feeling absolutely terrific. Corporeal life is not without its minor indignities. We still take it in the ass every morning, along with everybody else—but the whole thing’s over in a trice these days. Tod, I salute you: what bowl know-how, what can can-do. I was more or less resigned to a lifetime of the tearful half hour. But now we’re out of there after a tearful twenty minutes.
Each day, before the mirror, as I inspect Tod’s humanity—he shows no sign of noticing the improvement. It’s almost as if he has no point of comparison. I want to click my heels, I want to clench my fist: Yes. Why aren’t people happier about how great they’re feeling, relatively? Why don’t we hug each other all the time, saying, “How about this?”
Accordingly, after many false starts, after many hours in the sunless sea of bafflement, apology, and flopsweat, Tod and I have finally cut it with Irene. She was impeccably tactful, and drew no extra attention to the breakthrough. Tod also played it cool: all in a day’s work. But I was ecstatic. I was beside myself with pride
. Almost certainly I was overreacting, as usual. I’ve calmed down a little. Now I’m just gorgeously smug. This is love. This is life. The knack, the trick: there turns out to be nothing to it. Life and love go together. It comes natural.
High romance brings with it, or seems to bring with it (I’m getting more and more tentative about cause and effect), an expansion of my role here at AMS. I say role because doctoring involves you in a kind of cultural performance, the gestures, the lilts, the motions of decent power. It’s all okay. Society humors it. I have vacated that nice little office in back there, making way for an older man, and am now more often to be found in the consulting rooms. I don’t just do old men anymore. I do women and children too. Even babies. It’s as if we can’t leave the babies alone. In fact Tod tends to be more upbeat with them here than he is at home (at home, in slippers and dressing gown, longsufferingly shuffling). The babies get wheeled or carried in here, and they’re well enough, and you look them over and say something like “This little fella’s just fine.” And you’re always dead wrong. Always. A day or two later the baby will be back, crimson-eared, or whoofing with croup. And you never do a damn thing for them. The challenge, I suppose, is to keep at it while somehow remaining decent.
Then there are the cases that actually entail the strange meeting of man-made glass or metal and human flesh. And human blood. Now this I dependably find a real throw-up number but there’s never anything too horrendous because, as my colleagues are always saying, we’re at the darning-and-patching level of the biomedical business: the serious cases we bring in direct, and at speed, from the city hospitals, and we in our turn get rid of them as quickly as we can. So you can say this for the maimed and the mangled. They’re out of here. Yes, it’s quite a deal, at AMS, on Route 6. No wonder people sometimes start right off with an official complaint or even a writ. As for home calls, we refuse over the phone even before we’re asked—before we can hear the mother’s panic, the baby’s cries. We say it’s not our policy. If you want to get fucked up, you’ve got to come on over to our place. The money’s reasonable. And it doesn’t take that long.