The Last Collection

by Seymour Blicker

  “That’s a sign of nervousness, Mr. Kerner. When a man holds his nuts, it’s a sign that he’s nervous about something,” the doctor said, smiling.

  “It could also be a sign that his nuts hurt,” Kerner replied quickly with a pleased smirk.

  “Yes, and if a man’s balls are hurting, that’s a sign that he’s nervous,” Dr. Lehman countered with a wicked leer.

  “Or a sign that he’s been kicked in the balls?” Kerner replied, wishing almost before the words were out that he had not said them.

  “Oh, did someone kick you in the balls?” the doctor asked snidely.

  “No,” Kerner muttered, feeling suddenly angry.

  “To tell you the truth, Mr. Kerner, I’d like to kick you there, but I didn’t, did I?”

  “No,” Kerner replied sullenly.

  “So why are you holding them?”

  “I’m not holding them,” Kerner said, raising his hands.

  “So why were you holding them?”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Kerner, I’m not blind. I know a ball-holder when I see one.”

  “Okay, so maybe I had my hand there. So what does that mean?”

  “Like I said, it showed nervousness on your part. Your hand went to your nuts just as I asked you if you ever considered getting married. Your answer was, ‘Not really.’ That’s not a very definite answer and makes me think you perhaps did at one time consider marriage.”

  “No, I never did. Like I said, I was enjoying myself too much fucking a different girl every other night.”

  “I’m not impressed with your cockmanship, Mr. Kerner. Just for the record, I want you to know that I could personally make it with almost every one of my women patients if I was so inclined. Okay? That means I could be scoring as much as ten times a day if I wanted to. Okay? They all want to fuck me, Mr. Kerner. I just want you to know that.” The doctor ran his fingers through his hair. “So don’t try and impress me.”

  “I wasn’t trying to impress you. I was just telling you why I never considered marriage.”

  “Okay, okay,” Dr. Lehman said, sighing with exasperation.

  Suddenly the phone rang.

  “Excuse me,” Dr. Lehman said and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello. . . . Oh yes, how are you, Mrs. Glintz . . . uh huh . . . yes . . . yes . . . I see . . . He does, eh? . . . Well, no Mrs. Glintz. I wouldn’t say that it means he’s a homosexual, maybe a pervert but not necessarily a homo; after all, he wants to do it with you not with a man, right? . . . Uh huh . . . uh huh . . . yes . . . Hurt? I can’t really say . . . no, I don’t think I can make that decision for you. It’s strictly up to you and your husband . . . He wants to use butter? . . . You’re allergic to butter? . . . That’s a problem . . . I understand. Well, what about cream cheese? . . . He wants it only with butter. . . . I see, you’re allergic to cream cheese as well. . . . Hmm. Will he accept any substitute? . . . Well, like margarine, for instance? . . . Well, explain to him that margarine is healthier than butter. It’s much less harmful. . . . Sure. . . . Of course. . . . Sure, I think he’ll go for that. . . .”

  As the doctor continued to speak on the phone, Kerner suddenly thought of Estelle Bercowitz. The memory which he recalled almost in spite of himself was of the day she had said goodbye to him. He saw her in his mind as she stood framed in the doorway of his apartment. He could see the tears in her eyes. He could hear the inflection in her voice. “Goodbye, Arthur,” she had said, then turned and went away.

  Kerner’s thought came back to the present. He glanced up at Dr. Lehman who was still on the phone. As he did so, he suddenly realized that he had lied to the doctor when he said he’d never thought about marriage. He hadn’t lied intentionally. For some reason, he had blocked the idea out of his mind.

  It had been a while ago. Over six months. At that moment it hit him. He heard Dr. Lehman’s question in his mind. Something must have happened around that time to make you act crazy, wouldn’t you say? Kerner could feel his legs suddenly grow cold. He felt angry. He looked at his watch. He had twenty minutes left. Why was Dr. Lehman wasting his time talking on the phone? He tried to catch the doctor’s eye, but he ignored Kerner and continued talking.

  “Well, anyways, Mrs. Glintz, those are your options. . . . Right. . . . Sure, no problem. . . . Any time. Just remember to send me a cheque for $25.00 for this consultation. Very good. Goodbye.”

  Dr. Lehman hung up. “Sorry, Mr. Kerner, it was urgent business.”

  “It’s okay, I didn’t mind.”

  “Don’t lie, Mr. Kerner. Of course you minded. You probably felt like telling me to get off the fucking phone, didn’t you?”

  Kerner shrugged to let the doctor know that he was right.

  “Okay. Now let’s get back. You were saying?”

  Kerner hesitated. He knew exactly what he wanted to talk about but he again felt reluctant to speak.

  “You’re holding your balls again, Mr. Kerner,” the doctor said in a light, lilting voice.

  “I was just thinking . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “You asked me before if I’d ever thought about getting married.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, actually, I did once think about it . . . very briefly. I mean, there was a girl I liked. . . . I met her about a year ago. I remember it very clearly because it was just the day after I’d landed a big contract and I was out celebrating. Anyway, I took her out a few times and I liked her, so I started seeing her quite regularly. But, as I said, I liked variety so even though I was seeing her, I was also seeing several other girls. You know . . . three, four, sometimes five others at the same time. But for some reason, I really liked her. There was something about her that appealed to me.”

  Kerner glanced up at the doctor whose eyes were now closed.

  “Anyway, after a few weeks, she told me she wanted me to spend more time with her. I agreed and so instead of sharing my time with her and the other four or five girls, I cut down to seeing her and only two other girls. I mean, the two others varied. They weren’t the same all the time. I changed these two others almost every week. Well, this went on for a while, maybe a month or so. Then Estelle, the girl I liked, told me that she wasn’t prepared to share my time with any other woman. She told me I would have to concentrate entirely on my relationship with her or she wouldn’t see me anymore.

  “Well, I thought about it and I said okay. I really liked her. She was the first woman I ever missed if I didn’t see her for a few days. But I wasn’t really honest with her because I kept seeing at least one other girl at the same time. I couldn’t help it. Everything went all right for a while, until I began to feel sort of confined. Trapped. Pretty soon I was seeing two other girls on the side and then three and sometimes four. Estelle started giving me flack again, so I cut down again. I guess I didn’t want to lose her, but after a while I started getting angry at her. I started playing around again.

  “Estelle told me she wanted to get married. She figured that’s what I needed to straighten me out. She said she couldn’t take the kind of relationship I was offering her. Either I loved her or I didn’t. If I did, I would stop fucking around and marry her. Anyway, I thought about it and finally I said no. I wasn’t ready to get married. She said goodbye. I remember when she left I was sure she’d be back, ready to accept me on my terms. But she never came back.”

  Kerner stopped talking. The doctor was making soft snoring sounds as though he were in a deep sleep.

  Kerner now recalled the depression into which he had fallen. A few months after their parting he heard that she had married an accountant from New Jersey. Now, as he sat thinking in Dr. Lehman’s office, he realized with startling clarity that it was not long after Estelle left him, perhaps only weeks, that his sickness started.

  The doctor stirred in his seat. “Are you leading up to something, Mr. Kerner?”

  “Yes. I don’t know how important it is, but I just realized that it was right after our break-up that I started
this crazy buying thing.”

  “Ah ha!” the doctor said exultantly. “So you see the connection?”

  “Yes, I think I do,” Kerner replied.

  “You think you do? Either you do or you don’t. Now which is it?”

  “Yes, I do. Yes, there is a connection.”

  “Are you saying that just to appease me? I don’t like suckholes, Kerner.”

  “I’m not a suckhole. I really believe there must be a connection.”

  “Why? Why do you believe that? . . . Because I said so?”

  “No, I just sort of feel it!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “How sure?”

  “Very sure.”

  “How sure is very sure?”

  “As sure as I can be.”

  “How sure is that?”

  “That’s very sure,” Kerner replied, taking a deep breath.

  “I’m not so sure. How do you know that’s very, very sure?”

  “I just know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know!”

  “But I don’t know.”

  “I know you don’t know, but I know.”

  “So what if you know. I have to know too, Mr. Kerner.”

  “Why?” Kerner asked.

  ”No, no,” the doctor said, smirking sardonically, “I ask the questions, not you.”

  “That’s fine with me. I’m just trying to make you believe me.”

  “Okay, okay, I believe you. Yes, I really do, Mr. Kerner. We’ve made some good progress here today. There’s just one other thing I’d like to know before we finish.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s about this great pussy addiction of yours.”

  “Pussy addiction?” Kerner asked, confused.

  “Your great sex drive which you were bragging about a minute ago.”

  “I wasn’t bragging,” Kerner protested.

  “Just answer the question,” Dr. Lehman snapped. “Has your present buying addiction affected your craze for cunt?”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, I haven’t thought about it very much. I am . . . well . . . I haven’t really been very interested in it lately. But, you know, until now I didn’t even give it a second thought. I just haven’t been very interested.”

  “Don’t you think that’s strange, hm?”

  “Yes, I do,” Kerner said. It was very strange.

  The doctor looked at his watch, then turning towards the door, he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “I’ll be with you in two minutes, Mrs. Griff!”

  Then, turning back to Kerner, he said, “Well, why don’t we end on that note for today, huh?”

  Kerner nodded and stood up. The doctor got up as well and walked over to Kerner. He patted him on the back. “Don’t worry, Mr. Kerner. You’re completely fucked up but I’ll cure you.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I said so, didn’t I?” Dr. Lehman said angrily. “So why are you questioning me?”

  “I wasn’t questioning you. I just wanted some assurance. I just wanted to hear you say it again.”

  “Okay, okay. Don’t start,” Dr. Lehman said with a sullen look on his face. He opened the door to the waiting room and walked out, followed by Kerner. “Hello, Mrs. Griff,” the doctor said.

  She returned the doctor’s greetings as Kerner slipped out into the corridor. Inside he could hear the doctor saying in an angry voice, “That shmuck Kerner. He always argues!”

  Kerner walked quickly away.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was after eight in the morning when the Hawk left his home, got into his car and began heading for Artie Kerner’s apartment. As he drove he tried to draw a mental picture of the man he would soon be confronting but he was unsuccessful.

  The file which Morrie Hankleman had sent over the previous evening had listed only the essential facts about the debt itself and nothing about Kerner. It contained nothing about his appearance, his habits, or anything that might have given Solly even a slight insight into Artie Kerner’s personality.

  In the very early days of his career, when the Hawk was still a novice in the field, everything had been done on sheer nerve. Solly would be given a name. He would immediately go and visit the person and do what had to be done. It was only later that he had begun to be more sophisticated in his operations in an attempt to make things easier and safer for himself.

  He realized that it was often useful to find out something concrete about the person he was going to see, and he always tried to do so, even if it meant putting a tail on the individual for a day or two.

  One never knew what might turn up through a little prior investigation. Sometimes it was a piece of information which would provide the Hawk with an extra edge and give him the necessary leverage to turn a job over quickly and painlessly.

  Along with this procedure of prior investigation, Solly had also begun to use various other methods to help him in his work. The idea of using visual aids to facilitate collections had come to the Hawk after watching an audio-visual demonstration given by a cousin who was in the real estate business. This cousin used a film strip to help sell orange grove acreage in Florida.

  “A picture is sometimes worth a thousand words,” the cousin had said and Solly had agreed with him.

  It was then that he had decided to have his own visual demonstration made up. This consisted of five 8″ x 12″ photographs which Solly carried around in a leather-bound folder. The photo on the first page showed a man sitting behind a desk with a smile on his face. The caption below the photo read Before.

  The photo on the second page showed the same man standing beside his desk. It could be clearly observed that the man had only one ear, whereas in the Before picture he’d had two. If there were any doubts in the mind of the observer, these were quickly eliminated by picture three which showed Solly and Big Moishie standing next to the desk. Both were grinning and Big Moishie was pointing down at the desk top. A solitary ear on the desk surface was the object of their attention.

  On the fourth page was a picture of the same man as seen on page one. This time he was shown to have no ears. The caption below the picture read After second visit.

  On page five was a photo in which the earless man was seen handing a fistful of currency to Solly the Hawk, who at the same time could be seen handing the man back two ears. The caption below the picture read Final visit.

  The Hawk smiled to himself as he recalled the effectiveness of these photographs. They had certainly saved him a lot of unnecessary words over the last few years, but, in the final analysis, if the dice were rolling against him, nothing would help him. Neither prior investigation nor pictures nor anything else. A person could never have all the angles figured and an element of uncertainty always existed in the collection business, as it did in life in general.

  The Russel Royt collection was a case in point. The Hawk had done a great deal of research prior to making contact. He had found out all about Russel Royt’s habits and idiosyncracies. His likes, his dislikes. However, what the Hawk did not know at the time was that Russel Royt owned a trained orang-utan.

  During their discussion Royt had suddenly shouted a command which brought the ape bounding out of the kitchen to attack Solly who had then been forced to knock the creature out and to beat up Russel Royt as well.

  Yes, the potential for unexpected danger always existed no matter how careful a person was.

  Once he had gone to collect from a man who, upon seeing Solly for the first time, immediately began accusing him of having seduced his wife and attacked the Hawk with a two-foot-long electric vibrator. There again, as in the case with the orang-utan, Solly had been forced to knock the man out. All his prior checking had been useless. No matter what a person did, the possibility of violence always existed.

  The fact that he had been attacked only seven times in twenty years in the business was sheer luck, Solly thought. What was even more amazing was that in all t
hese years he had never had to initiate the laying on of muscle.

  He often wondered what he would have done had he met up with someone who refused to meet his commitment in spite of all threats. Would he have been able to really injure that person without being attacked in advance? Maybe or maybe not. It didn’t really matter. The Hawk did not pride himself on being callous or ruthless. The one thing he had always prided himself on was his nerve. He had never been afraid to go up against anyone or anything. That’s why he had succeeded in this business.

  Now as he pulled his car into the parking area beside the McGregor House, the Hawk realized that he was looking forward to meeting with Artie Kerner, and the fact that he was going in cold like in the early days made it even more exciting.

  He could feel the nervousness in his stomach as he got out of the car. He turned and headed for the front entrance of the McGregor House. He could feel the old excitement rising in his belly. He hadn’t felt it that strongly in years and he enjoyed it. It was better this way. It had to be done this way. Just a name and an address. Like in the old days.

  The job would be done on sheer nerve. That’s the way he had done the first collection and that’s the way he would do the last collection.

  He pulled open the door and walked into the foyer of the McGregor House.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Kerner had slept fitfully. Some time around eight in the morning he awoke. He tried to doze off but was unable to. A great feeling of emptiness was threatening to overwhelm him. He sat up in bed and threw a few switches on the console next to him. The room was illuminated.

  He let his eyes travel slowly around the room. He got out of bed, aware that his body was rigid. He took a deep breath but he couldn’t fill his lungs. He walked over to the wall where he had hung the new lithograph and stared at it. He could feel his body begin to shake and he tried to steady himself. An image of the girl he had been with during the night came into his mind. He winced and tried to push the empty feeling out of his body. He began to shiver.

  He looked at the bare section of wall directly beside the lithograph. As he stared at it, he could feel the beginnings of nausea stirring in his stomach and chest. His head began to throb. Again he thought of the girl and winced painfully.