The Kiss of the Prison Dancer

by Jerome Richard

  Then he believed he saw the boy, Harold, in the room. “What do you want from me?” Max asked him. “Go pick on someone else.” He stood up to confront the boy, but when he did the boy vanished. Max looked around the room. He was not sure why he had stood up, but he got dressed and drank the coffee, leaving the egg in the pan, but remembering to turn off the stove. He knew there was someone else he should think of and with a tremendous concentration he remembered Holtz. “But what is Holtz to me?” he asked the fading flowers on the wallpaper of his room.

  He stood on his feet until his insides were back where they belonged and he knew what day it was. He could feel the bones settle into place, the blood beginning to flow again. Dizzy from the change, he went downstairs and found the Thompsons waiting for him.

  “Are you all right?” the old woman asked.

  Max looked puzzled. “Yes,” he said. He started to nod, but this stirred up the headache so he only added, “I’m fine.”

  The Thompsons looked at each other. “We heard your alarm ring for a long time. I thought something might have happened.”

  “I told her not to meddle,” the old man said. “A fine thing if she burst into your room and you were getting dressed or something.” Mr. Thompson looked triumphantly at his wife.

  “You do look a little pale,” Mrs. Thompson said.

  Max felt he would faint if he did not get out of there, but the old man had the stairs blocked. “I’m all right I tell you,” he said, coming down another step.

  “Well,” Mr. Thompson said, moving aside, “looks like you will be late to work.” Max looked at his watch, but it had stopped again. “Yes,” he said. He came down to the landing and went all the way to the front door before he looked back and said: “Thank you.”

  “You just let us know if we can do anything for you,” Mrs. Thompson called.

  Max tried to hurry, but when he ran for the bus the headache joggled around like some palpable, weighty thing, so he walked lightly and as fast as he could on just the balls of his feet. He reached the office almost half an hour late, but the receptionist didn’t take any notice of it. Shmuel, however, dropped a basket full of mail. “What’s the matter with you?” he cried.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Max replied, easing himself into his chair.

  “You look terrible. You’re white like a ghost.”

  “Pick up your mail, Shmuel.” He began to arrange the day’s folders, but when he looked up and saw Shmuel on the floor, gathering up the mail, he said, “I was late so I was running.”

  This was the week before Shmuel’s vacation. Max had forgotten that, but Shmuel reminded him later that day, saying, “I was thinking this year of going to Carmel-by-the-Sea. You know any good restaurants there?” Max groaned; with everything else he had to worry about, he would have to do Shmuel’s job for two weeks. He always found this work degrading. Max felt his own job was bad enough; he could not understand anyone like Shmuel who was content to spend his days opening envelopes and mailing other peoples’ letters. When Shmuel first came to the Agency Max almost resigned. Shmuel took over for a college student who held the job for the summer. Max discussed books and philosophy with the student and it was almost like being back in the university. In those days Max brought his lunch to work and they played chess during the lunch hour and again during the afternoon break, sometimes calling moves to each other while they worked in games that might last all week and have the social workers coming in to check every once in a while to see who was winning. Then the student went back to school and Shmuel came and held the job ever since. Shmuel read nothing but newspapers and though he claimed to be a chess player, Max beat him every game and soon the social workers in the next office lost interest and Max did also, sweeping the pieces to the floor one day and telling Shmuel he was a lousy player. He refused to play with him again. He even stopped bringing his lunch to work because Shmuel insisted on bringing jars of foul-smelling pickled herring which he ate in the office, mopping up the juice with slices of challah. During Passover Shmuel sometimes brought cream cheese or egg salad sandwiches on matzoh, grinning and shrugging his shoulders as the matzoh crumbled noisily and settled on his shirt and lap. And Shmuel wanted to talk Yiddish until Max had to pretend he didn’t understand it in order to make Shmuel speak English. It was for his own good, Max said. How else would Shmuel learn the language? One day Max went to Dr. Resnick and asked him to get someone else. “It’s him or me,” Max said, but Dr. Resnick made him promise to give Shmuel a chance. Since then they worked together, but they never saw each other outside the office, so no one could have been more surprised than Max when Shmuel came to visit him.

  It was Friday night. Max had spent the week thinking alternately about Holtz and Harold, trying to find a way out, until exhausted and feeling as if he had spent the week with the innocent Nazi and the guilty boy on his back, he lay down early praying he would fall asleep. There was a knock on the door and Max jumped. The knock sounded again, timid, hesitant, one knock and then two more. Max looked wildly about the room. It could not be the Thompsons because they always rapped on the door and called his name so his first thought was the boy. Perhaps he has come to say he will surrender to the police after all. But halfway to the door Max thought, What if Holtz has escaped and come looking for him? Then he remembered that Holtz had never heard of him. The knock sounded once more. “Who’s there?” Max asked the door.

  “Just me,” Shmuel said.

  “What do you want, Shmuel?” Max opened the door a crack. Shmuel was standing not outside the door but one step down so that Max looked right over him at first and, thinking it had been his imagination, was about to close the door when Shmuel climbed back to the top step and said, “Good evening.”

  Max opened the door wider and stared at Shmuel whose wrinkled face looked not at Max but past him into the room. “Come in already,” Max said.

  Inside the room, Max hurried to take his shirt off the straight-backed chair, but he was too late. Shmuel was already seating himself in the easy chair by the bed and Max had to take the straight back chair himself and watch Shmuel sink into his favorite chair like a bird settling into its nest.

  “It’s a nice little place you got here,” Shmuel said.

  “How did you know where I live?”

  “It’s a secret?” Shmuel said, continuing to examine the room as if he were thinking of buying it. “Near the Park too,” he said, nodding toward the window, though the Park was not in that direction.

  Max wondered what he was getting at. “Is that what you came to tell me?” he asked.

  Shmuel sank back farther in the chair and placed his hands on his thighs. “I was thinking today,” he said, looking at the ceiling, “what do I need with two weeks vacation?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t know even what to do with one week.”

  “So?”

  “So I was thinking, why don’t you take one of my weeks?” Shmuel slapped his hands on his thighs as if he had just concluded a big deal.

  Max got up and came to take a closer look at him. “What, are you crazy, Shmuel?” But he went to the kitchen and started water boiling for coffee. “Why do you want to do such a thing?” he asked.

  “Well, you look like you can use a little more vacation,” Shmuel said. “All week your face has been white as a sheet.”

  “I feel fine.” Max was about to sit down again, but instead he stretched his arms wide and took a deep breath. It made him dizzy.

  “Anyway,” Shmuel said, “you’re younger than I am. Take another week. Enjoy it.”

  Max did not know what to say. For one moment he saw himself in England but he quickly dismissed that, knowing he could not accept such a thing from Shmuel. No, he told himself, Shmuel is after something. He busied himself preparing the coffee, waiting for Shmuel to speak. When he could no longer bear the silence, Max asked, “What do you want, Shmuel?”

  Shmuel put his finger tips together and then pulled them
apart. “You don’t know what I want, Max?” he said, leaning forward in the chair and raising a finger. Max waited, but then Shmuel sat back again without saying anything, pushing himself all the way into the chair so that only the tips of his shoes touched the floor. Shmuel is wiser than he looks, Max thought. He wondered if Shmuel knew anything about the park. He would have to be careful. The water whistled in the kettle and interrupted his thoughts, but as he finished preparing the coffee he kept an eye on Shmuel. He brought a cup of coffee to him.

  “No, thank you,” Shmuel said.

  “You don’t want coffee?”

  “I never drink it.”

  “Why did you let me make it?”

  “I didn’t see what you were doing.”

  Max took the cup back and poured the coffee in the sink. “You want tea?” he asked, angrily.

  “No, thanks.”

  “What do you want then?” Max yelled, brandishing his own cup and spilling the hot coffee on his hand. He would have cried if it weren’t for Shmuel sitting across the room and watching him like a rabbi.

  “Max, how many years have we worked together?”

  “What?” Max yelled, struggling to make sense of Shmuel’s question. “What difference does it make?”

  “Just that it’s time you treated me like I was human. I never said anything before, but it hurts, Max, believe me. Maybe you don’t realize.” He spoke so quietly that Max had to come close to hear him and when he understood he cried, “What? What?” in a voice that echoed faintly off the walls.

  Shmuel went on talking. “I didn’t want to say anything at the office with Resnick and everybody around, but tonight I made up my mind to tell you.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Max looked about the room, trying to find a way to escape. For a moment he considered going out and leaving the room to Shmuel, perhaps never returning.

  “I don’t say you have to go to parties with me,” Shmuel said, his eyes following Max, “just you should say hello sometimes in the morning when you come to work, or maybe ask if I had a good lunch when you come back from the restaurant you go to so you shouldn’t have to eat with me.”

  “You’re crazy,” Max told him, holding his hands over his ears.

  Shmuel rolled back his sleeve and stood up to show Max the blue numbers tattooed on his forearm. Max turned away. “Look!” Shmuel said, shouting for the first time. “I was inside the wire not outside. Why do you treat me like I was a Nazi?”

  Max went to the window and stared at the empty street. “I don’t treat you like you were a—. You’re being ridiculous, Shmuel. You hear?” He tried to wipe the tears from his eyes without Shmuel seeing. He didn’t know how they got there. “Get out!” he yelled over his shoulder. “Get out!”

  “Insider!” Shmuel yelled. “We were both inside!”

  “Get out, Shmuel. I don’t want to hear anymore.” He heard Shmuel get up. For more than a minute there was no sound in the room. His entire body trembling, Max turned around. Shmuel was gone.

  Later, while his milk warmed on the stove and he was getting undressed, he thought: As if I didn’t have enough troubles. First a murderer and now that lousy Polack.

  10

  Max stared at the pile of mail sitting unfamiliarly on his own desk. He filed and refiled the last of Friday’s folders before taking the first envelope from the pile and shaking it so he would not slice the letter in two as Shmuel sometimes did. He wondered if he should tell Dr. Resnick about Shmuel’s visit. What if Shmuel never came back? Max measured the envelope against the letter opener and made a quick, clean slit, extracting the letter and pressing out its creases. Across the room Shmuel’s vacant desk seemed to accuse him of something and Max remembered Shmuel asking Why do you treat me like I was a Nazi? He resisted the temptation to roll back his sleeve and look at the numbers on his own arm.

  At ten o’clock Dr. Resnick looked in, glancing first at Shmuel’s desk and then at Max still opening the mail. “Anything for me?” he asked.

  Max looked through the stack of opened letters and handed one to him. He started to look through the unopened mail and the psychiatrist said, “I didn’t mean to rush you.”

  Max found another letter for him. Didn’t mean to rush me, Max thought as the psychiatrist left. He doesn’t have to sit here opening letters like a trained ape. In a few minutes Resnick was back. He smoked a pipe and when he talked he held the pipe in his hand like a begging bowl. “I hate to rush you,” he said, “but is there anything new for the Goldman file? He’s in my office now.”

  Max went through the letters again and found one to give him. He had not had time to read it and now he would probably not find out if Goldman’s missing wife had been found until the case was completed and the folder came back to him. It was the most interesting case that had developed since Max returned from Los Angeles and he felt cheated. If Shmuel had been there he would have opened the letter and brought it over, saying, “Here’s a letter from the police in New Orleans. It must be about Goldman’s wife.”

  The next day the secretary asked him if he wanted the mail put on his desk or on Shmuel’s. “Put it on Shmuel’s desk,” he said, and when she left he gathered it up and brought it to his own desk. But the next week he found himself opening the mail at Shmuel’s desk and thinking, Here I am in Shmuel’s place. Then he wondered, What would Shmuel do if he were in my place? The idea fascinated him. He hunched down in the chair and tried to imagine that he was Shmuel. “Here’s a letter from Mr. Schneider,” Max said, stroking his chin until he remembered that Shmuel did not have a beard. Then he closed his eyes and tried to imagine that he was Shmuel in the park that night when the boy jumped out of the bushes. He knew what Shmuel would have done. He would have run away and there would have been no dilemma. But suppose he hadn’t? Suppose he remembered the boy’s face and knew that the man they arrested wasn’t guilty, what then? Max stood up and tried to walk like Shmuel. Probably he would do nothing, Max decided. He wouldn’t want to get involved. Or else he would come to me for advice. Max minced over to his own desk and imitated Shmuel’s confidential voice. “Help me, Max,” he whispered to the empty chair. “I got a problem.” And I would tell him … I would say, “Look here, Shmuel.”

  Dr. Resnick came in and stared at Max crouched before his own desk. Max quickly bent the rest of the way to the floor and tied his shoelace.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Dr. Resnick said, lighting his pipe. “I just came in to see if you could spare some empty folders. I’m fresh out in there.”

  Max got the folders out of the supply cabinet. He knew his face was red and he could feel the psychiatrist’s eyes at his back. Why doesn’t he knock before he comes in?

  “Would you miss Shmuel if he didn’t come back?” the psychiatrist asked, accepting the folders.

  “Has anything happened to him?”

  “Not that I know of,” Dr. Resnick said, fixing his gaze on Shmuel’s empty desk. “What makes you think something happened to him?”

  Feeling that he had been trapped into some kind of game, Max said loudly, “Because of the way you ask if I would miss him, like you just heard he had been killed or something.”

  “Oh no,” Dr. Resnick laughed. He examined the bowl of his pipe and in his soft monotone said, “I was just remembering that you once wanted me to fire him. I’m glad the two of you get along now.” He saluted with his pipe and returned to his own office. The sweet smell of the psychiatrist’s pipe tobacco hung in the air. Max opened a window and angrily fanned the last wisps of smoke that Dr. Resnick had left behind.

  When Shmuel returned to work the following Monday, Max asked him if he enjoyed his vacation. “It was all right,” Shmuel said. He looked tanned and relaxed in a new tweed suit and a bright green tie with oranges painted on it that hung long and wide like a sick and displaced tongue. Max could not bring himself to mention the new outfit. He did not know they made ties like that anymore.

  “I went to Carmel for a few days,” Shmuel was sayin
g while Max’s eyes wrestled with the tie, “but I didn’t like it. Too pink and fancy for my tastes, so I came back and treated myself to a new suit instead. You like it? Then I spent the rest of the time at Aquatic Park getting a little sun when it was out. I told you, I don’t know what to do with vacations.”

  As Shmuel talked, a strange idea crept through Max’s mind: if he could not let Holtz die, and he could not turn the boy in, then maybe he could find a substitute-Shmuel, for instance!

  Just then Dr. Resnick came in to welcome Shmuel back to work. “I see you got a new suit,” he said.

  Shmuel got up to show off the suit.

  “Very nice,” the psychiatrist said, turning to smile at Max.

  Or Dr. Resnick, Max thought, slowly returning the psychiatrist’s smile. As soon as Dr. Resnick left, the idea collapsed like a punctured balloon and Max wondered if he were going crazy. But all day, whenever he looked up and saw Shmuel sitting behind his desk, Max pictured him strapped to the chair in the gas chamber at San Quentin and he had to shake his head to dismiss the picture.

  “Is something wrong?” Shmuel asked once.