by Lorin Stein
Harlow walked through the crowd, and Xannie hung onto his jacket, which pulled him along until they came to the rail. Harlow jumped over and began running across the soft, loamy soil of the track, which was deep and made the long run seem dream-like and difficult. Harlow crossed the infield grass, and as he went, the people from the stands came behind him, the crowd of them spreading into a large V.
Laue was standing and looking at the horse when Harlow arrived, and for a moment, while the horse pawed the ground and tried to get up, falling each time it put weight on the broken leg, its head rising and sinking with the effort and the pain, Harlow and Laue looked at each other until Laue said, “It’ll have to be killed.” And as Xannie came running ahead of the crowd which streamed across the infield, as the stewards drove in a Chevrolet pick-up truck from the side of the track where the grandstand was, Harlow took the .45 pistol from under his coat and stood before the horse and shot it between the eyes, once, and then again, and the horse gently and slowly put its nose onto the soft loam of the track. As the horse lay still, the crowd arrived, Xannie at its head.
Xannie stood on the side of the horse opposite Harlow and wailed, throwing his arms into the air, crying openly. Harlow stood with blood on his dress whites, still holding the pistol. People crowded around him, looked at the horse and then were pushed aside by others, who were talking quickly and screeching, gesticulating, showing with their hands how the horse had gone straight and then turned end over end. Xannie screamed at Harlow, now speaking not English but a Chinese or Malaysian dialect Harlow understood not at all. A young man in a blue work shirt with a tie said to Harlow, “He wants the gun.”
“Why?” said Harlow.
The young man spoke so quickly that his cheeks seemed to flutter.
“He wants to shoot himself,” said the man in the work shirt.
Xannie stood on the other side of the horse, one hand out, the other making gestures toward his open palm. The crowd around the horse made a sea-like muttering, a slight, endless babble. Harlow put the pistol into the holster and said, “No. Tell him to come along.”
Xannie stood on the other side of the horse, palm still out, his cheeks marked with tears.
“All right,” said Harlow. “Tell him I’ll take him to America.”
The man in the work shirt shouted, opening his mouth so wide as to make a web of his cheek when he spoke. Xannie stared at Harlow. Then he spoke in the language Harlow didn’t understand.
“What’s that?” said Harlow.
“He wants to know if it will be by boat or airplane,” said the man in the work shirt.
Xannie and Harlow stared at one another, and as they did so, with the crowd around them, it began to rain. The sky was purplish, dark. The clouds had no texture. Instead they came in one piece, only marked by the perfect, silver lines of rain. Harlow and Xannie both stared at the horse, and in the heavy rain they saw that the water running from it was getting a little dark, and that when it streamed into the red soil of the track, it left black marks that reminded Harlow of a woman’s cheeks when her mascara began to run. The stewards began to look at it, too. Then Xannie climbed over the horse and said, in his crisp, accented English, “It’s all right. I’ll take the boat.”
They turned and pushed through the crowd and walked through the heavy mud of the track, their feet becoming large and misshapen with it, their fingers and knees still trembling as they went toward the greyish grandstand with its web-like supports, and as they went by the rail there was a man standing against it. He was bald, heavy, wore a dark suit made in England, and his skin was an olive-brown. His eyes were green. He was a little drunk and he had been crying, but now he said, his voice watery and sibilant, while looking at Xannie, “Carrés d’agneau, Truites de rivière de grillées, Homard à la crème. L’argent pour les femmes.”
Roast young lamb, grilled trout, lobsters in cream. Money for the women.
They continued walking, and the crowd closed in around them, obscuring the track, the grass of it, the white rail, and making a sound like running water, but as they went, there still came over the noise of the crowd the steady, half drunk voice of Pierre, as he shouted, “Salmon glacé à la Parisienne!”
Glazed salmon!
“Wait a minute,” said Xannie, and then he went to the rail where Pierre stood. Xannie said, “I’ll tell you if there is a Malaysian pediatrician in Chicago.”
Pierre nodded, and put his arms around Xannie, hugged him, and then gave Xannie a polite, Gallic kiss on each cheek.
“Who’s he?” said Harlow.
“Another drunk gambler,” said Xannie.
Then they walked along the track, passing the high, dark stands, the supports of them, the umbrella-like gussets at the top of each post, the almost gloomy space under the roof, where people sat, wearing dark glasses and waiting for the next race to begin, and they passed, too, the blind children who played with the features of one another’s face.
*
I first heard this story years ago, when I was having dinner at Harlow’s house. Xannie hadn’t been in the country long, and Harlow had moved into his father’s house and brought Xannie to live there. Harlow was already inviting to dinner some local political … allies, and one of them asked Xannie what he would have done if Harlow had passed over the pistol, but Xannie only blinked at the man and then said, “Don’t you think it’s nice here in America?”
After a while I was able to find a time to be alone with Xannie and then I asked him in a mild, friendly, and sympathetic tone, how long he had waited in the warehouse for Harlow to come along.
Xannie stared at me full in the face and said, “Have you ever been to Malaysia?”
It came out slowly. Every now and then, when I saw Xannie, he’d mention Pierre Bouteille, the stables, the X-rays of the horse, the papers. He knew that once he had the horse, all he had to do was sit tight: the right American would come along. There were a lot of us in Ipoh at the time. I don’t know why. And, of course, no American can resist fixing a horse race. We’re fascinated by these things. In Asia, Xannie said, things are more ordinary. He once had a ticket for a horse winning a race in Malaysia, and when he went to cash it the clerk slammed the window shut, saying that although Xannie had the winning ticket, the horse wasn’t supposed to win. Xannie had almost formed a partnership with an enlisted man from Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, but at the last moment he backed out, since the enlisted man didn’t look like he had the money for a trip to America. Xannie waited for Harlow to put his head in the door.
Xannie had been certain, too, that no American in the world would let him use the pistol on himself. He had been waiting for the moment when an American would stop him. Xannie had banked on it. If you figured this out, he became your friend.
Issue 99, 1986
David Bezmozgis
on
Leonard Michaels’s City Boy
“For God’s sake, Morris, don’t be banal,” snaps the shrewish Mrs. Cohen at her husband moments before he makes the discovery that sets Leonard Michaels’s “City Boy” into its headlong, syncopated motion. In the context of the story, the line has a specific meaning, but it also served as a guiding principle for Leonard Michaels over the course of his career. “City Boy,” one of the first stories he published, already involves the subject that most fascinated him, and that he once described as “the way men and women seem unable to live with and without each other.” But because this subject is so common, so familiar, to write about it one perpetually risks falling into the trap of the banal. After all, what hasn’t been written about erotic love? What transpires between lovers that doesn’t conform to some archetype? “City Boy” is no exception. At root, it’s a stock tale about young lovers who get caught in flagrante by the girl’s father. In Michaels’s account, the story is essentially comic, but convincingly strange and sinister too.
With that in mind, what is the form of “City Boy?” How does Michaels create a story that manages to be both comic and sinister—lik
e a smile with sharp teeth? He does so by moving the story from realism to absurdity and back again. “City Boy” begins in a realistic mode with Veronica’s line: “Phillip, this is crazy.” The lines that follow are essentially objective. “I bit her neck. She kissed my ear. It was nearly three in the morning. We had just returned. The apartment was dark and quiet.” Soon, however, the sentences grow more subjective. As Phillip and Veronica have sex in the dark room, Phillip observes: “The chairs smirked and spit between their feet. The chandelier clicked giddy teeth. The clock ticked as if to split its glass.” Once Phillip, now a naked fugitive, decides to walk on his hands, we undeniably depart from reality until Phillip reaches the street and drops to his feet. From here Michaels gradually brings the story back to its origins in something like objective reality. This movement from realism to absurdity and back gives the story a substantial and provocative power.
Leonard Michaels
City Boy
“Phillip,” she said, “this is crazy.”
I didn’t agree or disagree. She wanted some answer. I bit her neck. She kissed my ear. It was almost three in the morning. We had just returned. The apartment was dark and quiet. We were on the living room floor and she repeated, “Phillip, this is crazy.” Her crinoline broke under us like cinders. Furniture loomed all around in the darkness—settee, chairs, a table with a lamp. Pictures were cloudy blotches drifting above. But no lights, no things to look at, no eyes in her head. She was underneath me and warm. The rug was warm, soft as mud, deep. Her crinoline cracked like sticks. Our naked bellies clapped together. Air fired out like farts. I took it as applause. The chairs smirked and spit between their feet. The chandelier clicked giddy teeth. The clock ticked as if to split its glass. “Phillip,” she said, “this is crazy.” A little voice against the grain and power. Not enough to stop me. Yet once I had been a man of feeling. We went to concerts, walked in the park, trembled in the maid’s room. Now in the foyer, a flash of hair and claws. We stumbled to the living room floor. She said, “Phillip, this is crazy.” Then silence, except in my head where a conference table was set up, ashtrays scattered about. Priests, ministers and rabbis were rushing to take seats. I wanted their opinion, but came. They vanished. A voice lingered, faintly crying, “You could mess up the rug, Phillip, break something…” Her fingers pinched my back like ants. I expected a remark to kill good death. She said nothing. The breath in her nostrils whipped mucus. It cracked in my ear like flags. I dreamed we were in her mother’s Cadillac, trailing flags. I heard her voice before I heard the words. “Phillip, this is crazy. My parents are in the next room.” Her cheek jerked against mine, her breasts were knuckles in my nipples. I burned. Good death was killed. I burned with hate. A rabbi shook his finger, “You shouldn’t hate.” I lifted on my elbows, sneering in pain. She wrenched her hips, tightened muscles in belly and neck. She said, “Move.” It was imperative to move. Her parents were thirty feet away. Down the hall between Utrillos and Vlamincks, through the door, flick the light and I’d see them. Maybe like us, Mr. Cohen adrift on the missus. Hair sifted down my cheek. “Let’s go to the maid’s room,” she whispered. I was reassured. She tried to move. I kissed her mouth. Her crinoline smashed like sugar. Pig that I was, I couldn’t move. The clock ticked hysterically. Ticks piled up like insects. Muscled lapsed in her thighs. Her fingers scratched on my neck as if looking for buttons. She slept. I sprawled like a bludgeoned pig, eyes open, loose lips. I flopped into sleep, in her, in the rug, in our scattered clothes.
Dawn hadn’t showed between the slats and the blinds. Her breathing sissed in my ear. I wanted to sleep more, but needed a cigarette. I thought of the cold avenue, the lonely subway ride. Where could I buy a newspaper, a cup of coffee? This was crazy, dangerous, a waste of time. The maid might arrive, her parents might wake. I had to get started. My hand pushed along the rug to find my shirt, touched a brass lion’s paw, then a lamp cord.
A naked heel bumped wood.
She woke, her nails in my neck. “Phillip, did you hear?” I whispered, “Quiet.” My eyes rolled like Milton’s. Furniture loomed, whirled. “Dear God,” I prayed, “save my ass.” The steps ceased. Neither of us breathed. The clock ticked. She trembled. I pressed my cheek against her mouth to keep her from talking. We heard pajamas rustle, phlegmy breathing, fingernails scratching hair. A voice, “Veronica, don’t you think it’s time you sent Phillip home?”
A murmur of assent started in her throat, swept to my cheek, fell back like a drowned child in a well. Mr. Cohen had spoken. He stood ten inches from our legs. Maybe less. It was impossible to tell. His fingernails grated through hair. His voice hung in the dark with the quintessential question. Mr. Cohen, scratching his crotch, stood now as never in the light. Considerable. No tool of his wife, whose energy in business kept him eating, sleeping, overlooking the park. Pinochle change in his pockets four nights a week. But were they his words? Or was he the oracle of Mrs. Cohen, lying sleepless, irritated, waiting for him to get me out? I didn’t breathe. I didn’t move. If he had come on his own he would leave without an answer. His eyes weren’t adjusted to the dark. He couldn’t see. We lay at his feet like worms. He scratched, made smacking noises with his mouth.
The question of authority is always with us. Who is responsible for the triggers pulled, buttons pressed, the gas, the fire? Doubt banged my brain. My heart lay in the fist of intellect, which squeezed out feeling like piss out of kidneys. Mrs. Cohen’s voice demolished doubt, feeling, intellect. It ripped from the bedroom.
“For God’s sake, Morris, don’t be banal. Tell the schmuck to go home and keep his own parents awake all night, if he has any.”
Veronica’s tears slipped down my cheeks. Mr. Cohen sighed, shuffled, made a strong voice. “Veronica, tell Phillip…” His foot came down on my ass. He drove me into his daughter. I drove her into his rug.
“I don’t believe it,” he said.
He walked like an antelope, lifting hoof from knee, but stepped down hard. Sensitive to the danger of movement, yet finally impulsive, flinging his pot at the earth in order to cross it. His foot brought me his weight and character, a hundred fifty-five pounds of stomping schlemiel, in a mode of apprehension so primal we must share it with bugs. Let armies stomp me to insensate pulp—I’ll yell “Cohen” when he arrives.
Veronica squealed, had a contraction, fluttered, gagged a shriek, squeezed, and up like a frog out of the hand of a child I stood spread-legged, bolt naked, great with eyes. Mr. Cohen’s face was eyes in my eyes. A secret sharer. We faced each other like men accidentally met in hell. He retreated flapping, moaning, “I will not believe it one bit.”
Veronica said, “Daddy?”
“Who else you no good bum?”
The rug raced. I smacked against blinds, glass broke and I whirled. Veronica said, “Phillip,” and I went off in streaks, a sparrow in the room, here, there, early American, baroque and rococo. Veronica wailed, “Phillip.” Mr. Cohen screamed, “I’ll kill him.” I stopped at the door, seized the knob. Mrs. Cohen yelled from the bedroom, “Morris, did something break? Answer me.”
“I’ll kill that bastid.”
“Morris, if something broke you’ll rot for a month.”
“Mother, stop it,” said Veronica. “Phillip, come back.”
The door slammed. I was outside, naked as a wolf.
I needed poise. Without poise the street was impossible. Blood shot to my brain, thought blossomed. I’d walk on my hands. Beards were fashionable. I kicked up my feet, kicked the elevator button, faced the door and waited. I bent one elbow like a knee. The posture of a clothes model, easy, poised. Blood coiled down to my brain, weeds bourgeoned. I had made a bad impression. There was no other way to see it. But all right. We needed a new beginning. Everyone does. Yet how few of us know when it arrives. Mr. Cohen had never spoken to me before; this was a breakthrough. There had been a false element in our relationship. It was wiped out. I wouldn’t kid myself with the idea that he had nothing to say. I’d had enough of his s
ilent treatment. It was worth being naked to see how mercilessly I could think. I had his number. Mrs. Cohen’s, too. I was learning every second. I was a city boy. No innocent shitkicker from Jersey. I was the A train, the Fifth Avenue bus. I could be a cop. My name was Phillip, my style New York City. I poked the elevator button with my toe. It rang in the lobby, waking Ludwig. He’d come for me, rotten with sleep. Not the first time. He always took me down, walked me through the lobby and let me out on the avenue. Wires began tugging him up the shaft. I moved back, conscious of my genitals hanging upside down. Absurd consideration; we were both men one way or another. There were social distinctions enforced by his uniform, but they would vanish at the sight of me. “The unaccommodated thing itself.” “Off ye lendings!” The greatest play is about a naked man. A picture of Lear came to me, naked, racing through the wheat. I could be cool. I thought of Ludwig’s uniform, hat, whip-cord collar. It signified his authority. Perhaps he would be annoyed, in his authority, at the sight of me naked. Few people woke him at such hours. Worse, I never tipped him. Could I have been so indifferent month after month? In a crisis you discover everything. Then it’s too late. Know yourself, indeed. You need a crisis every day. I refused to think about it. I sent my mind after objects. It returned with the chairs, settee, table and chandelier. Where were my clothes? I sent it along the rug. It found buttons, eagles stamped in brass. I recognized them as the buttons on Ludwig’s coat. Eagles, beaks like knives, shrieking for tips. Fuck’m, I thought. Who’s Ludwig? A big coat, a whistle, white gloves and a General MacArthur hat. I could understand him completely. He couldn’t begin to understand me. A naked man is mysterious. But aside from that, what did he know? I dated Veronica Cohen and went home late. Did he know I was out of work? That I lived in a slum downtown? Of course not.
