Killing Everybody

by Mark Harris

  “I’m on my way,” he said. He was unable to resist. He sometimes said to her, “You’re irresistible,” but he did not say it now, for he hoped it might cease to be true. Fat chance. She was leading him on and on, no good could come of it, he had never been able to resist her. From the first odors of his first entrance into her parlor — her soaps, her salves, her oils, her lotions, her powders, her sprays, her shampoos, her creams, her colognes, her deodorants — he had been her happy captive. At the first sight of her crisp white linens he had sunk in bliss to her table; she’d circulate his blood, she said upon that first day, she’d increase his bodily vigor, soothe his muscles, relax his nerves, ease his psychological tensions (which he certainly had and no denying). She bade him lie upon her table, just for the moment, till someone else arrived because he hadn’t enough cash in his pocket that day, and she loosened his shoes and removed them, and removed his socks, and snapped his socks like whips in the air, and with one sock polished up one shoe, and with the other sock polished up the other shoe, and shaved his face and shampooed his hair and sang a little song as she worked, and massaged about his heart upon his bare chest, for by now with trembling fingers he had managed to unbutton his shirt; he had had, when he was done, “shit, shine, shave, shower, and shampoo,” as they said when he was a boy in the vicinity of Eureka & Twenty-Second, and his body massaged, too, and all that free of charge upon that first occasion, though never thereafter. Thus was he captured. But it would be free of charge forever now, from this day forward, if he were obedient to her. The world would be his.

  “You’re on your way from where?” she asked.

  “West Portal,” he said.

  “Don’t tarry,” she said.

  He’d turn her in to the pigs, that’s what he’d do. How was she better than a dope peddler? She had trapped him, exploited him, used him. It was white slavery. “Maybe I shouldn’t come today,” he said.

  “Today or never,” she said, and she hung up abruptly. She had never done such a thing to him before. What right has she to be rude to me? he asked himself, leaving the Portalwood Pharmacy and humming the little tune she’d sung when he first went to her, and listening to his own humming until he could identify the song, and singing that old song —

  “Once in a while Will you try to give one little thought to me Though someone else may be Nearer your heart”

  on his way to his car, whose right front tire was soft. Definitely soft. He was certain of it now. It’s too bad, he thought, that his tire wasn’t hard and his prick soft, he’d be back on the job by this hour. Election Day. He hadn’t voted, and he doubted that he’d get to it. Wouldn’t that be something. Well, murder was a vote against. Killing a man was a form of opinion. When he entered the massage business, James reflected, he’d need lawyers and accountants. No minors. No ma’am, that way lay trouble. And yet suppose the most perfect girl just slightly under age came to James Berberick, Masseur, Lic. 876345, pleading, pleading, pleading, poor child, for just the slightest massage to tide her over her lunch hour. He’d break the law. He’d be humane. After all, there was a higher law. “Show me your I.D.,” he said aloud, entering his car, flying backward out of his diagonal space, and forward along West Portal in a reckless manner. Did the world know that at the end of the rainbow was a massage parlor? God, she was sweet, Luella, and her magic hands were the most magic in all the world.

  He and Mrs. Lala Ferne would earn pots of money, James reckoned, violating traffic laws on his passage through St. Francis Circle, down Sloat now in his green rocket to the massage, turning right on red into Nineteenth Avenue, and groaning at the view of the tedious drive ahead.

  SIGNALS

  SET FOR

  30

  M.P.H.

  Of course. Very nice. But who drove 30 M.P.H.? Not James Berberick en route to Alleu’s Bath & Massage (Alleu was Luella spelled almost backward), not today and not ever in his life, streaking along Nineteenth Avenue, down the alphabet as fast as he could go, Wawona, Vicente, Ulloa, Taraval, Santiago, Rivera, Quintara, Pacheco. He sang that old song as he drove —

  “Once in a while Will you try to give one little thought to me . . .”

  Ortega, Noriega, Moraga, Lawton. She’d hung up on him. Damn her! She knew he liked to talk a bit on the telephone first. It was these damn wiretappers she feared, and rightly so, the F.B.I. and the Secret Service and such who’d done him out of his Medal of Honor. It would have been worth a good deal of money to him, too, if he had received his Medal of Honor, but he cheered up instantly, thinking once more of the pots of money he and Mrs. Lala Ferne would earn in partnership at massage. Pots and lots, Ferne and earn, he was a poet. Luella sold real estate lots. So she pretended. It was her front. James and Lala together, Luella their guide and patroness. James had ideas for expanding his business. Of course, some days would be dull and humdrum. He expected that. He was a realist. But then there’d be days when he’d hit the heights of pleasure and glory and “thrills galore,” as they said at amusement parks. Every amusement park ought to have a massage parlor. The Whole Family Massage. There ought to be massage parlors scattered all over Disneyland. Children from the cradle would appreciate massage. Children cry for it, and adults don’t know what the children are crying for; adults think children need milk when what children need is contact love, flesh against flesh. “Kiss me,” he spoke to the air at Kirkham Street. Now Judah Street. Now Irving. Now he entered the park.

  To get your license you appeased the Department of Health. You took a course. But even the course would be fun. He and Lala Ferne would work on their homework together. Luella would be their teacher. James Berberick, Student of Massage. On graduation day you wore a cap and towel. A diploma hung on Luella’s wall, but James had never read it. He’d always meant to, but then he never had. He read instead the dirty magazines, which she kept beneath the linen in the bathtub. He stank. He really did. She’d squirt him with his Lorlé Lodorante, punctuating things finally with one short squirt in his bellybutton — “one short squirt for mankind,” she’d say, smiling whenever she said it, as if she thought he’d be amused. He’d been amused the first time. Those bastards up to the moon and back, they were coming down now, but they were having some trouble, unless the trouble was with Mrs. Ferne’s television set. Good, while the world was watching the astronauts James Berberick could sneak an hour from work. It was nothing but habit with her, she squirted all the boys like that with “one short squirt for mankind.” “You’re not all the boys. Jimmy, you’re somebody special with me.”

  So she said. He didn’t know whether to believe her. He knew what she was up to. But it was his desire, too, to kill, because it was in a right cause. “It’s only what a right-minded mother should do,” Luella said, and he believed her: mothers should. Mothers, you can stop the wars! Mothers, carry little bombs in your purses and blow up the draft boards! She was right. “You killed a lot of people, Jimmy, you can kill one more,” she said. First masseuse on the moon! Who would she be? First orgasm in a lunar crater! Who’d be the lucky contestant? Soon he departed the park, veering from Nineteenth Avenue.

  At the red light at Twenty-Fifth & Balboa a beautiful black girl in a tangerine Volkswagen seized the opportunity to comb her hair, and he called across to her, “Let it fly in the wind, it was beautiful,” and she smiled and put away her comb, but whether she put away her comb upon his advice he didn’t know and never would, darting forward when the light became green, toward Geary, toward Luella’s magic hands Think Snow. Dirty Old Men Need Love Too Eat. Cheese McGinley for Congress. Honk If You Love Jesus. Yes, James honked for fun, screaming north from Anza to Geary, but it wasn’t Jesus he loved, he thought, it was Jesus’s sister. Fuck for Jesus — now there’d be a bumper sticker to go with Kill for Christ Another Mother for Peace. Another Student for Peace. As for James — did he dare? — he wasn’t a mother, he wasn’t a student, wasn’t he entitled to be who he was — therefore Another Fucker for Pe
ace? Yes, he’d be a living advertisement for himself and tell his fellow-motorists just exactly who he was, and win a few glances from the girls, too, he’d bet, and a blush or two, and a sweet smile at many an intersection. Another Fucker for Jesus Honk If You Love Fucking Jesus’s Sister. Turista Mejico. It was a narrow space, and he had too much to say in too small a space, too limited for the clearest message, too confined, like a classified advertisement He parked his car near Narrow Alley.

  Now watch. Now she’d delay. She’d not come hurrying to open her door, although she was expecting him, and surely she’d heard the fencegate slam behind him The fencegate was connected to a mighty spring. Tonight I’ll listen for the fencegate, James thought.

  But today, even before he rang her bell, she opened the door Alleu’s Bath & Massage, said the script upon her door James received from within the divine odors he had come to associate with her, and from the lady herself, once she had closed the door again, a motherly kiss upon the cheek. “Won’t you come in?” she asked, as if at this point the question could remain open. But she was always formal to begin.

  “I might,” he said, stepping within, and seeking to embrace her, yet anticipating her resistance, for at the doorway she was always professional, medical. Today she was forlorn as well, badly requiring help, and her eyes inquired — not of his eyes but of his body — whether help was here now in the person of James Berberick. Her eyes upon his body delighted him.

  “Step along,” she said, her hand upon his back, clinical merely, moving the customer along, merely, out of long habit.

  “You’re looking awful,” James said.

  “I’m sick at heart,” she said.

  “But I’m on top of the world,” he said. “You should see this chick I found, she was jerking off a dog.”

  “That’s not nice talk,” Luella said indignantly.

  “A German Shepherd,” he said.

  “You’re making it up,” she said. Jimmy invented women, and now he was inventing dogs as well. He had a lively imagination.

  “This is no invention this time,” he said. “Nothing was ever more real than this. We’ll be going in the massage business together.”

  “It’s not a business,” she said.

  “I was petting her dog, see,” he said, here embellishing the truth. “She kept saying to me, ‘Hey man, do that to me, pet me, I’m a dog,’ and her big old fat mother right there in the room, too, and a fellow I know from across the street. What would you have done if you were me?”

  “I wouldn’t have got myself in such a predicament in the first place,” Luella virtuously said. “I’m sure I don’t associate with those kind of people.” Not associate? One was her husband, one was her barking neighbor, one was her fellow voter, and the fourth was the voter’s mother.

  “I couldn’t help myself,” James said. “It was in the line of business.”

  “Well, I see, that’s different,” Luella said. “If it was in the line of business there was no way you could help yourself.”

  “Will you help us set up in massage?” he asked.

  “You know I will,” she replied.

  “Teach us so we can get licenses?” James inquired.

  “I don’t see why not,” she said. “Do you?”

  “You’re agreeable today,” he said.

  “He’ll be here at seven tonight,” Luella said.

  “I was afraid that’s what it was,” said James.

  “Well, that’s what it is,” she said. “Tonight or never.”

  “Will it be dark at seven?” he asked, but he did not await a reply. He said, “I have a soft tire,” and he asked then, “Why are you so depressed today?”

  “Junie’s father’s back in town,” she said.

  Now James boldly said, “We’ll see how this works out, and if this works out perfectly maybe we’ll do something about him, too.”

  “I have a friend that might do something about him,” Luella said.

  “A patient?” James asked.

  “Not yet,” she said. “A policeman.”

  “For money?” James asked. “Or what’s in it for him?”

  “The same thing that’s in it for you,” she said. “Why don’t you pay me now, Jimmy?”

  He paid her twenty-five dollars. Perhaps he would never again pay her. She kept her money in her stocking. It was all he had ever seen of her most intimate flesh — her thigh when she lifted her skirt to deposit her money in her stocking. Her green money showed through her sheer stocking until she dropped her skirt, and that was all of Luella he had ever intimately seen. He wished for more. Perhaps after today, when they were on their new basis, he would be gratified further. He expected so. They kept their money in various places. They were shrewdies these masseusies. Pots and lots, Ferne and earn, he was a poet and didn’t know it, his feet show it, they’re Longfellows.

  Soon he lay naked upon his back upon her massage table staring above as if to Heaven at the naked angels floating across her blue ceiling, and among them James mirrored, decorously and legally draped with a towel, for this was how it had come to be with Luella — that James was the patient and she was the healer, her face severe, concerned, like a mother’s face above her sick child. Later, irresistibly, as if unplanned, as if surrendering only to her patient’s unquenchable pain, the most urgent plea for mercy, would she, healer, lady of medicine, administer in the nature of vaccination, immunization, inoculation, relief against desire; and that only to permit him of course to return to his job — a mere workman’s case, you see, medicine apart from all pleasure; only keeping up the Gross National Product. “You must drape a towel about your private parts,” she said now in her legal voice.

  “Shit,” he said.

  She turned her back. “I’ll leave,” she said. “Remember where you are.”

  “Sing me a song,” he said, sitting suddenly and seizing Luella and kissing her neck, and instantly apologizing, saying, “I know, I know, I went out of control there,” and he lay down again with his hands behind his head, as if the weight of his head might imprison his errant hands. “How are my naked girls today?” he asked of the angels.

  “They’re not naked,” Luella said, glancing at the ceiling to see how anyone could possibly mistake a religious subject for naked girls.

  “I love you,” he said, freeing his hands from the weight of his head. He touched her face. To his surprise she neither resisted his touch nor withdrew, but permitted his hand to rest sympathetically upon her cheek.

  “Did you hear about the bomb last night?” she asked. She sprayed James with his Lorlé Lodorante. Upon a strip of tape adhering to the can his name was printed, J. BERBERICK. Later she would remove all tapes bearing his name from all the cans and bottles upon which they appeared, and his name, too, from all her records.

  “I was there,” he said. “It wasn’t a bomb, it was only a scare.”

  “I thought maybe you were the one that phoned it in,” she said, squirting him once in the bellybutton. “One short squirt for mankind,” she said, smiling.

  “Why would I do that?” he asked.

  “I thought maybe you had a plan up your sleeve,” she said.

  “I have,” he said, “but that’s not it.”

  “You’re sure you didn’t?” she asked.

  “There were too many people there,” he said. “I’d hurt somebody.”

  She readjusted the towel about James’s private parts, saying to him, “You must obey the law or I can’t treat you,” for he was fond of causing the towel to slip, to slide, and so expose his private parts to Luella for whom, as a matter of fact (and she had told him as much), James’s private parts were neither thrilling nor novel nor exciting nor unique. She powdered him now with Mennen Bath Talc, also bearing his name, sending down upon him a fragrant snowfall from a can, and he slightly relaxed, and his penis began to stir beneath the to
wel.

  “Is your future partner married?” Luella asked.

  “You bet,” he said.

  “What does her husband say?” she asked.

  “About what?”

  “About her going into massage.”

  “We didn’t ask him,” James said. Haven’t really asked her, either, he reflected. “You’ll teach us. Wow. We’ll learn on each other, that’s the way.”

  “We’ll only do what’s proper,” Luella said.

  “Naturally,” he said. “Can you teach us here on these premises?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Will you advance some capital?” he asked.

  “As much as you need,” she said.

  “There’s nothing you won’t do,” he said.

  “Not if you do your part,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “Then afterward we’ll set up somewhere of our own.”

  “You’ll be my competitor?” she asked.

  “We’ll send you referrals,” he said. “We’ll have a mutual courtesy service like Hertz and Avis.”

  “Jimmy,” she said, “you and your dreams.”

  “You massage us and we’ll massage you,” he said. “For months I’ve dreamed of nothing night and day but massaging you.”

  “Time flies,” she said.

  “Well, Vietnam interrupted,” he said. He regretted having said it. She didn’t care to hear anything about Vietnam. Junie was killed there. Had James ever known Junie there? He sometimes wondered. Perhaps he had. But the fact of the matter was that he hadn’t known anybody much, neither man nor boy nor soldier nor officer, chiefly and mainly almost himself alone (apart from the masseuses of Saigon), determined from the beginning to depart that land alive and settle up at home with whoever had sent him there, whoever had trapped him into it, exploited his youth, deceived him, betrayed him, laid his life on the line in the interest of a politics back home, offered promises, until he knew at last that he’d been the victim of a deathly trick, whereupon his determination centered upon himself — he’d save himself, caring nothing then for mates and friends or enemies or blacks or whites or yellows or men or women or soldiers or peasants, only firing his way through to his own safety against anything that moved whether man or machine or animal, and may have known Junie at some moment, but could not be certain, or may have passed Junie dead upon the road, or may have seen him fall, or may have killed Junie himself if Junie had crossed his path at a wrong moment, since James Berberick had ceased to discriminate. “You don’t know if it’ll be dark at seven,” he said, and added, “I’ll listen for the fencegate,” and said beyond that, still to himself essentially, “I have a soft tire.”