Baloney, he should have ordered. Baloney on seeded rye with a combination of horseradish and catsup. Or bacon and peanut butter. Or a wiener, split and covered with melted cheese and chili sauce. You had to make your favorite sandwiches, you could never buy them. But once or twice in a lifetime you might by chance, in a strange section of town, have an unprecedented taste thrill, a hamburger on a toasted English muffin, anointed with some vermilion relish you would afterwards try to reproduce, or look for in the stores, and fail. A unique experience. Neither could you ever find the lunch counter again, or if you did, they had gone back to buns and mustard and denied all memory of their former practice, angrily if you insisted.
In sex it was much the same: the memorable moments could neither be forecast nor repeated. Reinhart was about to relive certain of the happier memories—he had two weeks in which his life could pass leisurely before his eyes; it was not like jumping off the Bloor Tower and having to pack it all into a few seconds’ descent—when the telephone jangled.
He answered. It was Dr. Wilhelm.
“I’d like to come see you tomorrow,” Reinhart said. “Referral is by Dr. Barker Munsing.”
“Munsing is on vacation now at Swan Lake,” said Wilhelm. “I’m afraid I don’t have an open appointment for three weeks, and then I’m going to Valparaiso, Chile, where their winter is in progress.”
“You ain’t going nowhere, noplace, notime,” Reinhart said in Hollywood gangster style.
Wilhelm had a dispassionate, professional voice, the kind that issued from beneath a graying moustache.
“Why don’t you check that out with Captain Reynolds of the Fifth Precinct?” he asked.
“All right,” said Reinhart, “so like everybody else you pay off the police. What does that prove? I know a black militant whom the city bribes not to start a riot, but he might do it anyway. Munsing is a transvestite, behind the mask of his profession. I know a man who raises money on cocoa beans that are actually gravel, and my son is talking of assassinating the Democratic Presidential nominee. I couldn’t care less.”
“I am afraid I do not offer the sort of treatment you seem to need,” responded Wilhelm. Yet he did not hang up.
“You are speaking to a robust man,” Reinhart said. “Yet I expect to die suddenly. I am toying with the idea that life is the disease, and death the cure. This is in accord with Christian theory.”
“Dr. Munsing must have given you a number to call if you needed help while he was away.’
“Yes, yours. But you still don’t understand. I am not a patient of his, but a colleague.”
“A physician?” asked Dr. Wilhelm. “Why didn’t you say so? I’m a busy man, Dr. Reinhart, and it is one thirty in the morning. We G.P.’s don’t keep the banker’s hours of you fellows.”
“And we can’t cure a soul with an aspirin,” said Reinhart. “But I suppose you have had your failures too, and buried them. I’d like to consult with you on a professional matter tomorrow.”
“How would eleven o’clock be, at my office?” He gave Reinhart the address.
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“And,” said Reinhart, “I don’t want to split the fee. It’s all yours.” He put down the funny prick-phone, which action, depressing a button underneath, broke the connection.
He went into the bedroom where Eisenhower had slept in ’56. It was furnished with twin king-sized beds, the blue counterpanes of which were embroidered with five stars in a circle. Gilded eagles surmounted the posts, claws sunk in the finial balls. A colored, framed blowup hung on the pale blue wall above the near bed: Herd of Black Angus Cattle, Gettysburg, Penna. Reinhart fell onto the spread and stared at the Presidential seal in the middle of the ceiling. Suddenly and unaccountably he was horny, after all, as if in reaction against the decor, which managed to recapture that certain je ne sais quoi that had made the Fifties so deadly.
Reinhart pawed for the telephone, a Princess model this time, atop a white-and-gilt night table made in the form of a military trap drum, and asked for the bellhop who had earlier fetched the writing paper.
Since it was even later now, the operator was even more impudent. She said: “Bellman.” Though of course it made sense.
“Hi,” said the servitor when he appeared. “Change your mind, guy?”
“Let me tell you something,” said Reinhart, sitting up in bed. “If you are a bellman, I am ‘sir.’ If I am ‘guy,’ you are back to bellboy. I am spending my money for luxury accommodations. I don’t expect obsequiousness, but I do demand courtesy.”
“I got my rights, too. I am human, you know.”
“That’s exactly what I am saying, am I not? This is the Age of Science. For every action there is an equivalent reaction.”
The individual grimaced. “You’re the boss. You got the money.”
“By living fifteen years or so longer than you have, and by dying sooner.”
The man’s collar was open, and his hair as long as that of Reinhart’s wig. He whined: “We got to pay income tax on our estimated tips.”
“I doubt you report the kickbacks you get from hookers.”
The guy smiled and twiddled a loose uniform button with two dirty fingernails. “I thought you’d come around. I can always tell. You learn a lot about people, in this job.”
“I doubt it,” said Reinhart.
“Listen, I could tell you—”
“Yeah, what apparently respectable and even distinguished personages do behind closed doors, and what male singer, famous for his virility, is privately a roaring faggot, and which venerable actress, who plays Mother Superiors and Queens of England, was stinking drunk in this suite and tore your fly open.”
The bellman grinned. “Oh, I told you already?”
“No,” said Reinhart. “I can see through the deceptive veil men call reality.”
“She’ll be here sometime during the next half hour.” He put his hand out.
“Blonde, brunette, or carrot-topped?” asked Reinhart.
“Whoever they send. It’s an answer service. But they’re all women, and they’ll do anything you want, so you won’t have no beef. Just relax, and leave it to me.”
“No, I won’t,” said Reinhart. “If I get no choice, I’d rather play with myself. Is this the way it’s always worked?”
“Brother, if you got to pay for it, then you can’t call your shots. Me, I never have to buy it. I don’t even have to ask for it. I get it ladled to me on a silver spoon. There is this rich cunt, see—”
“I am aware that many superior women go for greasy, rude, arrogant, ruthless cretins,” said Reinhart, who was not surprised to see the sneer of self-approval survive this statement: the bellhop’s egocentric glaze was impermeable. “Not that wealth implies superiority, either. Gloria has several rich clients who, according to her, have trouble getting one up.”
He took a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet and ripped it in two. “Here. You get the other half when you get me what I want.”
The bellboy took it with his habitual confidence, but then looked doubtful.
Reinhart said: “Dark meat.”
The bellboy shook his unkempt head. “The house dick won’t let a spade in the elevator at this hour. See, if it was earlier she might be a guest, and you can’t keep ’em out nowadays. But this late it would have to be a hooker, and the police have got a cleanup campaign on because of the Presbyterian convention next week—”
“Bullshit,” Reinhart said. “You know fucking well that you always pay off the house detective every time you get a girl for anybody, and he goes around and collects from guys who bring in underage girls and from people who have orgies and smoke pot and from anybody who does anything he suspects of being illegal and is always right about.”
“Hey,” asked the hop. “You a bull?”
“I always get asked that. You can use my phone.”
“And show you the number? In a pig’s ass.”
“All rig
ht,” said Reinhart. “I’ll go shake the dew off my water lily.” He went into the bathroom.
When he emerged the bellboy said: “All set. One dark cloud on her way.” He looked as if he were going to add some coarse irony, but Reinhart gave him the remainder of the twenty and pointed to the door.
Reinhart had never had a woman of another race. It seemed a good time to fill in this gap. He had lived through several eras, cultural levels, and whatnot, each with a different attitude towards Negro sexuality. They were hotter-blooded than Caucasians, to begin with. Then you became literate and were apprised of the great universal truth of the sameness of people the world around: a Jew also bleeds, a Chinese vulva does not run crosswise, colored people do it just like you and me. But when he reached middle age the best authorities, namely his son and other black-power propagandists, who, admiring or being Negroes, should know, had gone back to where he started. Blaine had displayed to him an underground newspaper with a story entitled: “Honkies Don’t Know How to Fuck.”
Which might be true enough, for all he knew in his limited experience. “A black woman wants to satisfy her man,” the article had said. “Whitey, dead himself, rubs bellies with another corpse.” How a man could be certain of this without changing his own race was puzzling, but then Reinhart’s idea of the privacy of sexual relations, his old delight in the then unquestionable fact that nobody, except your partner, could possibly be privy to what you did between the sheets, was obsolete. No doubt everyone shared comparisons nowadays. Gang shags, once the abhorred sport of criminal motorcycle clubs, were the routine pleasure of the now generation.
She was a chocolate doll—what else, without being cloying, could you say of a package ordered by phone?—a brown bonbon, sepia sweetmeat, wearing a summerweight white jersey dress, white shoes, white brassiere and underpants. When this apparel had been doffed, shaken, smoothed, and folded over the winged chairback or quilted seat, Reinhart was led to the bathroom, where quick, efficient, but never rough or painful hands invaded his privacy, soaped, rinsed, and, in a fleecy white Shade-Milton towel, tumbled it dry.
He followed the high, burnished buttocks to the bed he had rumpled earlier. She lifted the superior margins of five-star spread, underlying blanket and sheet, drew them to the footboard, and, with a supple sleight of wrist, made them ripple and fall folded upon themselves like a closing accordion. She stepped into the bed as an athlete walks upon the field, and was much darker against the blanch of sheet than within the half-lighted air of room.
She asked Reinhart what he wished, naming the usual options.
He posed on the axis of shoulder, hip, side of knee, blade-edge of foot, and addressed the amber hub of her wheel-eye, which radiated spokes of lashes.
“I would like to kiss you.”
A large brown lid descended serenely, then slowly opened on a bluish white glazed with moisture. But like a Caucasian whore she would put her mouth anywhere but on a client’s lips.
“May I ask why?” said Reinhart.
“I save that for my boyfriend.” She sat up, and her breasts, with nipples and aureolas of purple-black, regained their fullness. Her hair was in a bouffant stiff and coarse as Gloria’s though glossier of lacquer. Her lips were deep, yet not as full as he would have thought. She wore a scent reminiscent of Genevieve’s.
“Roll over, and I will rub your back.”
“No,” Reinhart said. “I don’t like that.”
“You want me to dominate?”
“No.”
“You want me to kiss it?”
“No thanks,” he said. “And you don’t have to say anything else, if you don’t want to. I know the dialogue by heart.” He ran through some of it: “Have you got protection? … Leave a little slack at the end or it’ll break. … Higher. … Wait a minute, I’ll put a pillow under me.” Etc.
Expressionless, she asked: “You want to make or have fun?”
“For me it has always been an obligation,” Reinhart said, “to prove something. Or a treatment to relieve a kind of strain, like going to the toilet. That’s it, fun. I guess I never had any in this way. You people do it for fun, don’t you?”
His fears that this might be taken the wrong way—as racial patronization—were allayed when she indeed misinterpreted it, but as applying to prostitutes.
“We do it for money,” she said.
“You too are supporting a child or putting yourself through night school.”
“No, I am buying a Lincoln Continental and a closetful of clothes for my boyfriend.”
“You like to do that?”
“No question of liking,” she said firmly. “I love him. It is my life, and I can do as I please with it. Now if you want to do something, I have to get to work. That’s what I’m getting paid for, I think.”
So they had fun, or anyway, he did.
Afterward, as they exchanged quizzical but friendly looks, she said: “A penny for your thoughts.”
“Do you believe your whole life passes before your eyes when you are dying?”
“I hope not.”
“Maybe if it does, it appears as a series of jokes,” he said, “which are not necessarily funny-haha. I remember another one: What would you order if it was your last meal on earth?”
Mention of food reminded him of his weight, and rolling aside, he took it off her.
“That’s not funny, either. I had a brother who went to the electric chair.”
In his old situation Reinhart would have thrilled right down to the tailbone at his proximity to a person with such news.
Now he asked calmly: “What did he eat?”
“It’s a lie that they give you anything you want,” she said. “You get what they want, same as always. Fish, which he hated all the time. Baked apple for dessert. He never ate a bite.”
“He was a murderer?”
“I don’t know about that. All I can remember is he was black.”
“Well,” said Reinhart. “How about you? What would you have?”
“I’m going to tell you!” she cried, turning to look into his face. “Lobster. Cold, boiled lobster with mayonnaise, and potato chips, and sliced tomatoes-and-onions on the side.”
“You got it,” Reinhart said as he reached for the phone on the trap-drum table.
“Why, you going to kill me?” She had a pretty smile, was definitely a pretty girl.
He put his right hand on her warm brown belly. “You drop a peeled peach into a glass of champagne. You drink the champagne with your meal, and eat the peach for dessert. I read that in a story once.”
He asked the operator for the night manager again, and getting him, began to lay down the law.
After the feast, which was light and did not weigh one down, they had some more fun, and by dawn Reinhart found himself owing her, at the established piece rate of fifty per, two hundred dollars. Another thing he had never done, a staple of the licentious novel, was taking-a-shower-with-a-girl, mutual soaping and so on. The white foam did look well against her skin, which seemed flawless. Bruises and blemishes, if such there were, enjoyed protective coloration, like the green insect sitting on a leaf. And do you get pimples and how do they look? he did not ask, but wondered about, as well as sunburn, dandruff, and scabs.
She was careful to keep her hair out of the spray, because otherwise he would be liable for beauty-shop costs, but sportively he pulled her under and they mock-tusseled and squirted the cake of Cashmere Bouquet back and forth.
The towelwork also amused. Her hair was now a cap of gleaming licorice.
“Leave it like that a while. It’s pretty,” said Reinhart, though of course refunding the price of the hairset.
But, grimacing, she found a blue scarf in her purse and with it covered her damp head in a sort of African tie.
“My jungle princess,” Reinhart said affectionately. But never had he had such a luxurious, sophisticated revel. And with, taking her all in all, such an overcivilized companion.
Reinhart took her to the do
or. With the turning of the knob he saw come down over her features the same mask she had worn on entry, hours earlier. Through the eyeholes she looked disinterestedly at him.
“If you want to see me again next time you come to town, tell Larry—you know, the bellboy? Ask for Sybil. Now, take care.”
He watched her white-clad behind dance to the turn of the corridor. He was glad she had come, but not sorry to see her go. A human relationship is successful if confined between these brackets.
To keep up a front, Dr. Wilhelm apparently found it necessary to accept patients with the usual run of maladies. Either that, or the old man, staring rheumily at his spotted knuckles capped upon a cane, and the twelve-year-old with his ankle in plaster, and the shriveled spinster who climbed up the opposite sofa arm as Reinhart sat down at the other end—all these unfortunates required help with their illegal pregnancies or represented someone who did. Or having contracted to be frozen by an unlicensed fanatic, needed an unscrupulous member of the AMA for certification of death.
The magazines strewn upon a table against the windows also were a surprise: Wine & Food, The American Rifleman, Black Belt, and Mad. Reinhart also found a copy of Road & Track, containing a road-test report on the Jaguar XKE. Standing at the table he perused it. He was conscious he had not got all he could have out of his model before discard.
He dropped the magazine, gazed idly out the window, saw a fat girl deboarding from a bus, and was reminded of Winona. After Sybil’s departure he had slept only three hours. He was among the earlycomers at the Veterans Administration downtown: ex-servicemen of many conflicts, one wheelchaired codger, bald and dessicated, might have charged up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt. Others had been maimed at twenty in seek-and-destroy missions, just last year. Escalation, defoliation, and body counts. Wretched jargon, whereas that of World War II had been popular with everybody: Kilroy, short-snorter bills, flak, dive-bombing.
Vital Parts Page 43
