Up, Down and Sideways

by Patton, Robert;

  “I’ll walk you up,” Gershom said. “Wouldn’t want you to get mugged.” He assisted me upstairs. On the way, I asked him Jill’s last name. “MacDougal,” he said.

  “A Scot! Begorrah. So am I.”

  “I thought you said you were Jewish.”

  “I lied. I’m nothing, remember?” I bent to my doorknob and sighted the key to the keyhole. “Scottish,” I marveled. “A comely bitch, too.”

  Gershom kicked me. Soccer style, swinging up from my right rear quarter into my solar plexus. I dropped like a laundry sack and went fetal and silent until my breathing resumed with farm animal sounds, moos and bleats and finally dry heaves, my poor belly with nothing to offer but traces of bile and beer nuts. I studied the boot that had felled me, a Timberland. It launched at my sternum. More moans, more mating calls. I spoke to the boot: “No fair.”

  Gershom’s voice sounded stern and unwelcome far above me, like God’s in the ears of Adam. “I’ve wanted to do that all day, you son of a bitch. I’m sure I’ll regret it later.”

  “Why wait?”

  “You’re disgusting.”

  “You’re short.”

  “With you, my wife has outdone herself.”

  I rolled on my back. “There were others?”

  He laughed. “Disgusting and vain. Yes, there were others—you are but one in a sorry progression.” Shaking his head, he started away.

  Clearly we’d come to a crossroads in our acquaintance, an opportunity for a fresh start. I could have begged him to think better of me, groveled before him in pathetic apology and maudlin self-laceration. I stuck with my original plan instead, a plan originating perhaps three years, not three hours, ago, of digging myself an interesting grave. “Don’t forget your history,” I called after him. “You couldn’t keep your wife, old sport. You didn’t have the stuff!”

  Gershom returned, stood now over me. I touched my finger to my tongue and scored one for the bad guys. He nodded his head jerkily, answering inner voices. I saw what was coming. Observing Frank Bakes six days earlier, I’d become familiar with one way love transmogrifies, when lovers revert to their essential form as tyrants of dependency or as glacial, unreachable brats. So when Gershom spat on me I didn’t flinch. As with Frank Bakes, Gershom’s imitation of biblical scorn was the last resort of a beaten man. Unlike Frank, however, Gershom didn’t let fly in exuberant loathing, but rather oozed a long looey that dropped from its strand like a slow forlorn teardrop and splatted below my eye, sliding silkenly into my ear. Many witticisms occurred to me. I said nothing. I felt sad for him. The guy had nothing left.

  Conversation was pretty much killed between us. My last sight of him was the back of his head, his yarmulke sinking down the drab stairwell like a sunset seen through smog.

  The linoleum floor of the hallway was comfortable to lie on. I fell asleep. A stranger woke me, a Ho Chi Minh look-alike with gray wisps on his chin and teeth like little black pearls. He helped me to my feet, wiping saliva and grime from my face with his handkerchief. Those black teeth identified him as an opium user. I wondered if he could spare me some to ease my aches and pains. “Got smackee?” I asked. But junkies never share.

  How I hurt! Belly and breastbone for starters, a mouth that felt sandblasted and a nose that felt bigger. The Chinese man unlocked my door for me, then shuffled down the hall. Outside his apartment he turned and waved jauntily. I waved back. It’s good to know one’s neighbors.

  I showered, put on my bathrobe, somehow wound up on the floor again, passed out on my back. I opened my eyes to see Carrie Donley standing upside down in my doorway. “Surprise! You left your key in the lock.”

  From the floor I said, “I thought our arrangement was to always phone ahead.”

  “Timmy surprised me by bringing me to this restaurant.” She was swaying, a bit sauced herself.

  “Timmy is here, you say?” My head pounded.

  “Downstairs. With his mom and my folks. It’s patch-up-the-marriage time, four against one. They ambushed me.”

  “I advise surrender. I could never honestly care for you.” This candor passed my lips like the eager recitation of abject repentence I expect to speak on my deathbed.

  Her response was unfazed. “Except I want you, kid. They think I’m in the ladies’ room.”

  “You’re mad at them, so you want to fuck me.”

  “Don’t analyze, Philly. Do.” She loomed above me, straddling my hips.

  “I’m really not able. I’ve been drinking.”

  Carrie’s expression turned thoughtful. Brightening, she raised her skirt and knelt over my head, her open thighs veiling me like moist nightfall in a tropical jungle. I’d already trekked many miles today. No rest for the weary, however.

  15

  She called the next morning to apologize for her behavior.

  “You used me,” I said.

  “Was it awful?”

  “Only if photographed.”

  Carrie giggled. “Aw Philly, I’m gonna miss you.” The way she then ended our affair was a model of candor and clarity. Doing it on the phone was a masterstroke, especially after last night’s encounter, a sex act so archetypal it summed us up like an epilogue. I would have liked to dismiss Susan likewise, on the phone with fond regret. But just as I hung up on Carrie, Susan telephoned me, ruining my timing.

  “How did it go with Gershom yesterday?”

  “Oh swell.”

  “He said so, too. He had a message for you, about Jill Somebody and a coin you gave her?”

  “Go on.”

  “He made me write it down. ‘1943 copper penny. Copper shortage during war, most pennies steel. Copper rare, very’—underlined—‘valuable. Jill says thanks.’ You gave her this coin?”

  “The details are hazy.”

  “It’s really rare, apparently. You should get it back.”

  “And be an Indian giver?”

  “Why is that funny?” When I quit laughing, she asked me to come to her office tomorrow. “It’s time to talk.”

  “About our relationship? The phone is fine, I’m used to it.”

  “The phone is bullshit! See you tomorrow.”

  Neil was with her when I entered Gray Realtors. I recalled Gershom’s suspicions about his father’s infatuation with Susan, but seeing them together now, it didn’t fit. Still, they seemed allied in something by the way they glowered at me. I took the offensive. “You screwed me, Neil. I got ledge under my property.” That morning, my foreman had told me four days’ blasting should clear it. I’d brought up the pilfered top-soil. Okay, two days.

  Neil said, “I didn’t know. And if I did, so what? I don’t run a charity.”

  “Did you or didn’t you? I’m curious.”

  “Number one, I don’t like you. Number two, no. Ask me if I care.”

  “Both of you shut up,” Susan said.

  “Why doesn’t he like me?” I asked. “What did I do to him?”

  “Not to me,” Neil said. “Her.”

  I paused to assess. Her I’d done things to.

  “I’m pregnant,” Susan said.

  “By me?”

  “I’ll ignore that.”

  “We’re gonna have a baby,” Neil said.

  “We?”

  “Yeah. Me and Susie. She’s not alone in this.” He put his arm around her and hugged her to him, hugged her. Gershom was right! The man was a monster! I yanked her away from him.

  “That’s my lady friend, pal!”

  “Oh, get off it! You don’t want a baby. You know you don’t.”

  “Hah! I do not know I don’t.”

  Susan said, “Do you, Philip? I thought no way.”

  Neil was ranting, “He don’t phone, he don’t stop by—”

  “Hush.” She awaited my answer. I stalled:

  “Do I want it? The baby, you mean.”

  “Yes, the baby. Our baby.”

  “Sure I do. Absolutely.”

  “The truth, Philip. It’s all right.”

 
; “I want the goddamn baby!” And I didn’t want Neil to get it, the filthy lech.

  “I’d have it regardless. But if you want to take part …”

  “What about Gershom? He matters here.”

  “We’re getting divorced. That’s why he phoned me yesterday, to tell me he’s filing. I’m surprised he took the step. Did you encourage him?”

  Words failed me. On Neil’s desk a letter opener looked right for hari-kari. “It’s for the best,” Neil was saying. “He needs to grow up.”

  “If you think you’re moving in, forget it. Stay away from my fiancé!”

  Susan laughed. “I’m not marrying you.”

  “Our child a bastard?”

  “Don’t be a fool. I barely know you. I barely like you.”

  “In time.”

  “What’d I tell you?” Neil said to her. “If we’d kept quiet, he woulda taken himself outta the picture. I know his type.”

  “And I know yours! Disgusting you are, and a newly wed to boot!”

  “What is he saying? I don’t understand what he’s saying. He’s worse than Gerald.”

  “Your son’s name is Gershom,” I shouted. “Get it right!”

  “Hey all! Lookit what I bought!” A woman flounced through the office door and hurtled toward us, bearing boxes and bags before her like a cannonball shot through a clothing store. Red of lip, impossibly blond, when she set down her packages there were fewer than I’d thought, for much of what she carried was her, gifts upon gifts, you could say. She kissed Neil, “Hey lover,” kissed Susan, “Hey mom,” and gave me a knowing wink. “Hey stud.”

  Neil sighed. “Philip. My wife Dominique.”

  Oh, that first impression! She was a weatherfront raising the temperature, a ship’s figurehead sailing tits first. She dispelled with one stroke all of my suspicions about Neil. For no man, leastwise none as clever as he, could be unhappy with a wench like Dominique. Because no man marries such an awesome stereotype intending to be happy. Happy is a long shot, happy takes work. He marries her to become merely happier.

  Gershom, I thought—you lied!

  In her packages were receiving blankets and assorted infant outfits. “There’s the neatest baby shop right down the street. They have nursery furniture, Italian. The best. Christ, Susie,” Dominique beamed. “I’m walking on air. If you don’t name me godmother, I swear I’ll strangle you. And I babysit for free.”

  “It’s too soon to buy stuff. I don’t want to jinx it.”

  “Fooey. Let’s have fun with it. Let’s get fat together.”

  “You’ll move into our house,” Neil said to Susan. “We’ll give you the guest wing.”

  “Separate entrance,” Dominique said. “Your own space. Gentleman callers out by ten. Just kidding,” she said to me.

  I was confused. Susan took my hand and led me toward the privacy of the conference room. Dominique stepped up:

  “Phil. I wanna say something. People been telling me you’re the biggest butthole going. I don’t listen. When I married Neil, I brought some hurt on this family, but thanks to you we’re gonna come out of it. I just know we are, I can feel it.” She kissed me. Not as young as Susan had implied, she was maybe forty-five, an age along with fourteen or fifteen that is surely a woman’s prime.

  “I’m confused,” I said.

  In the conference room Susan explained, though I’d guessed as much, that Gershom and Dominique didn’t get along. Dominique’s offense, in Gershom’s mind, was being Neil’s first serious love since the death of Neil’s wife, Gershom’s mother. Ostensibly, however, it was Dominique’s telling of a joke about Jews and avarice that Gershom wouldn’t forgive—the family had fractured subsequently. Susan explained to me that she and Gershom had been unable to conceive a child; and that Neil, resentful of Gershom’s snub of Dominique, had made harsh reference to his son’s somewhat meager sperm count. In fact the fertility problem lay with Susan, the result of an ectopic pregnancy years earlier that had cost her one Fallopian tube. “My chances of getting pregnant again were almost nil. Don’t ask me how,” she said, fiddling with my shirt buttons, “but somehow you broke through.”

  “My miracle seed.”

  She laid her head on my chest; a gesture that was, despite countless comminglings of psyches and body fluids, a first in our relationship. “You said it,” she said.

  I asked her to marry me.

  She raised her head and stepped away, not panicked or angry but sadly stern. “No.”

  “How bad could it be?”

  “I’d rather be friends. For the baby’s sake.”

  “No making love?”

  “Was that what it was? It felt like war.”

  “Whatever works.”

  She shook her head. “Just friends.”

  Friends? With Susan? No more little lady down on all fours to tongue my fingers and fly? It was too strange. “A question,” I said. “Did you have affairs during your marriage, before me?” She looked at me sidelong, tightly coiling under the blow of my comment like a snake reacting to danger. “Not because of the baby,” I said quickly. “I’m asking for myself.”

  She hesitated only an instant. “You’re it.”

  “Why me?”

  “Right time, right place.” Her face softened. “Right guy.”

  She may have been lying, but in truth I didn’t really care to know other intimate facts of her marriage. I needed a reason, even one soiled with condescension, to believe I wasn’t all bad.

  So Susan and I were lovers no more. It was the escape I’d wanted, and yet, now that it had come to pass, kind of what I didn’t want. I looked at the bright side. It was early, she was new with child—I had time to persuade her to snuff it. Then we could scrap the friend baloney and get back to whatever works.

  16

  Fathers-to-be often speak of pregnancy’s unreality—certainly in the beginning, but sometimes even in the last trimester when the swallowed pumpkin swells and spins with such alarming verity it seems surely fabricated, a movie special effect. Most befuddled is the man who from week one steadies his spouse on the slightest inclines, fetches her plate at picnics, hassles her obstetrician and obsesses about layette. I refrained from such displays. Nor did I go the other way and behave as if nothing was changed, say, blowing smoke in my woman’s face and teasing her with fat jokes. Susan’s pregnancy was real to me, neither thrilling nor intimidating. I took it in stride.

  We were friends now, and as friends do, we lunched together once a week. Sometimes in the restaurant she’d press my hand to her belly and let me feel the curve; I’d picture the lurid sex we shared as around us restaurant patrons nudged each other at the sight of such a darling couple. Regarding sex, I was back to getting none. Susan was completely uninterested. She kept our conversation to matters of her health, the baby’s, her ongoing divorce. I listened and smiled and drowned my irritation in many midday cocktails. Even early in her pregnancy her breasts seemed bigger to me, her features more sensual. When the drinks took hold I invariably offered her money for doctor bills, maternity clothes, which she invariably refused. She was still working at the realty office, she said, and Neil offered an insurance plan that covered maternity costs. In fact, the plan’s benefits came mostly out Neil’s wallet—he was wedging himself between Susan and me by playing the big provider. But I was in no position to compete. For the first time ever, more money was flowing out of my accounts than flowed in.

  With the new building and girl trouble and a baby on the way, I’d taken my eye off the stock market. Incredibly, it had become unreal to me. The numbers on my Quotron screen confused and mocked me, like babble in the ears of a linguist. Good news meant nothing; bad news I received with punch-drunken numbness, feeling the blows only later. To regain lost poise I pared my life of distraction. I cut down on lunches with Susan. Seeing her every few weeks gave her pregnancy a time-lapse vividness. But rather than make me want to get closer to her, her burgeoning condition encouraged my disinterest. So changed was she ea
ch time we met, I scarcely recognized her. She was eclipsed somehow, a functionary of the fetus she carried. Her complaints of weight-gain and discomfort seemed less characteristically bitchy than a glad lending of her voice to the whining choir of young mothers everywhere. Even remembering and wanting the sex we’d had began to bring me waves of nausea such as a pervert might feel at home on Mother’s Day. Our common ground had been rezoned. She was as strange to me as the thing inside her.

  Meanwhile, work proceeded slowly on the building. It stayed empty, unleased. Nick’s Pizza had vacated before construction began, and Melina’s Little Bud Shop couldn’t take occupancy until a million code violations were rectified. I was operating at a deficit, which I carried only by borrowing against my stocks at an interest rate that had recently risen. The stocks themselves were no joy either. I’d got caught in a technology correction and in the infamous video game crash of 1983. Apple, Coleco, Warner Communications all tumbled as one; to cover margin calls I sold my Ellis and my Pervis-Glastrop, stocks dear to me since childhood. To save money I discontinued my Quotron service. I’d increasingly been using the brokerage’s facilities; still it was a wrenching moment when they carted my unit away.

  I looked good, however. The clothing I’d bought as part of my makeover was high quality. I did make the mistake of buying all-cotton shirts, thus couldn’t use the laundromat. Dry cleaning bills were thorns in my budget; I minimized these by recycling my shirts through several wearings, smothering any unfortunate odors with a hefty splash of Polo cologne. Macaroni and cheese was my usual fare. My Chinese neighbor sometimes ordered takeout from the restaurant downstairs; the food cartons he left outside his door provided me decent pickings. I pawned my old earring. To save on razors I grew a goatee, which made a dapper match with my Italian suits. I sold my car and rode city buses thereafter, me with my cashmere topcoat and alligator briefcase heading downtown with black maids and janitors. My assets were in the hundreds of thousands, but that niggling negative cash flow was a sword above my head. If not an absolute necessity, my austere lifestyle was prudent. A similar argument applies to my partnership with Peter Rice, the office manager at the brokerage. His proposal of an insider trading scheme was distasteful yet tempting. My head said no but my heart said yes, a new kind of conflict for me.