Ladies' Man

by Richard Price

  Something was pissing me off. I felt this mood of time being wasted. An enraged sadness.

  I sauntered under the basket, took one of Melvin’s rebounds, flipped it up in a half-assed hook shot which went in and passed it back to him. He gazed at me with that serious face, accepted my presence because to tell me to split would require talking and took a jumper which missed. I snagged his rebound, finger-whistled to the Porto kid and threw the basketball at his radio. He caught it, started to throw it back, but I waved him in. He took two steps toward us, thought better of it and lobbed the ball at me. I threw it right back at him. Melvin looked away, stood by the pole frowning.

  “C’mon!” I waved him toward us.

  He shook his head and tossed the ball to me. I bounced it to Melvin under the basket and he hunched, twisted and jumped. No basket.

  I walked toward the playground exit, passing the kid on the bench.

  “Why don’t you play, man?”

  “Nah.” He smiled and shrugged, embarrassed.

  “C’mon, it’s Saturday.”

  “Nah, man leg is fucked up.” He looked away and went through the motions of rubbing his calf.

  “That black dude says you can’t play for shit.”

  He half-laughed and waved me away.

  “You gonna let him get away with that?”

  He began fiddling with his radio, wishing I was somewhere else. I felt like I was torturing him, but I also felt like he was torturing me. Both of them. I left the playground.

  Upstairs, I peeled off my turtleneck and sweat shirt and did my hundred and fifty. For the first time in months my sit-ups were an exertion. That was from the running. If you’re running and doing exercises always do the running first because that makes the exercises more difficult, and one rule of thumb around physical development is “No gain without pain.”

  After a shower I sat down with the Post and forced myself to scan the classifieds. The Post wasn’t the right paper for that but they had a few pages full of positions for accountants, typists, IBM operators—all crap I wouldn’t do for full pay pension at thirty-five.

  I was feeling really shitty and depressed and a little bit in trouble.

  I skimmed other parts of the paper. Thirty-two villagers in Yemen were killed by a marauding pack of wild dogs over a period of ten days; that rated four inches in a corner column on page 32 bordering a three-quarter-page Lane Bryant ad. The President’s wife delivered a speech at the University of Akron. A scientist discovered a new cure for hemorrhoids in rats. I was reading with a mixture of despair and boredom, listlessly turning pages with the same energy someone would swish a hand fan with while sitting on a porch in 95-degree weather.

  On the page preceding the sports section, I spotted a small heavily bordered notice:

  Fordham University’s two-year-old’ Pinnacle Program is now accepting applications for the Summer term, which begins May 1. All H.S. grad. adults 21 or over are eligible for candidacy. Credit given for previous college work. B.S. and B.A. degrees granted in all areas of the Humanities, Business ‘Administration and Health Sciences. Students eligible for NYHEAC loans and TAP grants. For more information, call Roberta Lacey at 222-9831, 9:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M.

  My first though was scoring coeds. Then I flashed on sitting in a classroom and learning something. Discussing something. Reading a good book. Shopping for school clothes. September. The fall. Scoring coeds. A diploma. Being a kid again. Dobie Gillis in college. Doing something with myself.

  “Pinnacle.”

  “Yeah. Is Roberta Lacey there?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Yeah. I just read your ad in the Post for Pinnacle and I’m interested in applying. What’s the story on admission? What’s the procedure?”

  “Well, you fill out an application, mail it to us, and we’ll send you a date to take an exam. Exams are given every Saturday in March.”

  “Whoa, whoa, what exam?”

  “It’s a three-hour exam every applicant has to take. It’s all reading comprehension—vocabulary skills, written skills. There’s no math whatsoever.”

  “That’s no problem. I was Dean’s List at Baruch.” I felt like a jerk saying that, but I wanted to impress her, inform her that she was talking to a special person, no schlub. “And that’s another thing, I already got three years done. Can I get full credit for that?”

  “Well, in order to get a degree you have to take at least forty-five credits at Pinnacle, but we give life credits, credits for whatever work you’re involved in outside of school.”

  “I was a door to door salesman.” I laughed. “How many credits for that?”

  “We would have to discuss it.”

  I wondered if I could get credits for breathing. “Also… I don’t have to take Corrective English or Citizenship, do I?”

  “It’s not that type of program.”

  I was almost ashamed to be interested in Pinnacle. I was afraid I’d wind up sitting in a classroom with a lot of pencil-heads, dishwashers, beautician majors, “America! America!” jerks. I felt like I would be degraded, would appear weak and unhip.

  “It’s coed, right?”

  “It’s open to everyone.”

  “Yeah? And look, I’m thirty, I’m not gonna be sitting with kids…”

  “The median age over the last two years was twenty-nine point four. Is that close enough?”

  “Hey look, I’m not trying to grill you, you know, but this is very heavy for me.”

  “Why don’t you come in, pick up an application and we’ll talk about it, okay?”

  “Sure.” She had the power to change my life, save my life. “Can I make an appointment?”

  “The first time I have open is Monday at two.”

  “I’ll be there. My name is Kenneth Becker.”

  She slowly repeated my name as she wrote it down.

  “Also, I’m gonna be pretty strapped for money. I can get these loans?”

  “Eighty-six percent of our students are on loans and grants.”

  “Yeah? Also, I think I’m interested in English and teaching or something like that. What kind of courses…”

  “Look, why don’t you come in. We’ll talk Monday.”

  “Sure, sure. Thanks a lot. See you then.”

  I felt like a million bucks. This was gonna be great. I wanted to call somebody, tell somebody. I still needed a job, but I felt like I could move now, really make some heavy moves now. I got up and aimlessly wandered around my apartment. Maybe I would meet some dynamite people. I imagined hanging out in the cafeteria with some guys—all of us unemployed but bright, hungry, going places. Nice-looking women, intelligent, aggressive. Classmates. Classmates.

  My phone rang. Pinnacle calling back?

  “Hello?”

  “Hi.” It was a girl.

  “Hello?”

  “Boy, how quickly we forget.”

  It was Kristin. Shit. I didn’t want to deal with her.

  “Oh, hey! How you doin’?”

  “Good, and you?”

  “Fine. What can I do for you?” I didn’t want to tell her about Pinnacle and get involved in a long thing on the phone.

  “Nothing, I was just calling to say hello.”

  “Oh yeah!” I said with false brightness. I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Actually, I was feeling a little down.”

  “Huh. What’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing.”

  “Huh… Something with your sister?”

  “Yeah, I guess, no, I don’t know,” she whined.

  There was silence for a long, long thirty seconds.

  “I dunno, I just feel lonely,” she said.

  “There’s nobody to hang out with?”

  “No.”

  “Huh.”

  Another pause.

  “I feel like you’re dying to get off the phone.”

  “No! No! I just woke up. I’m still in dreamland.”

  “Do you wanna get together?” />
  “Uh, I can’t today. I got to go downtown.”

  “Do you wanna make a time to get together?”

  “Yeah, yeah sure.”

  “You don’t really want to.”

  “No. I do! I do!”

  “I don’t feel it I feel like I’m forcing you.”

  “No. No, look, I told you I just woke up.”

  “I feel like you’re fucking with my head.”

  “How am I fucking with your head?” Like I didn’t know. Dear God, get me off the phone.

  “I don’t understand why you don’t wanna see me.”

  “I do wanna see you,” I complained. “When do you wanna get together?”

  “I’m not stupid, Kenny. Are you afraid I’m gonna hurt you?”

  That was a laugh. “It’s not that.”

  “But it’s something else?”

  “I dunno. Look, I’m fucked up. I’m, I dunno, I can’t…”

  “I feel head-fucked.”

  I was squirming so much I felt like I needed another shower.

  “I feel teased. All you talked about last night was how you need people and how you were lonely and how the answers are here and now. What was that, a come-on?”

  “No! No! I meant it, but…”

  “But you just woke up, right?”

  I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Like I couldn’t open my eyes wide enough. I got up with the phone and started pacing, itching.

  “I felt like we made a real connection last night.”

  “We did! We did!”

  “Then why don’t you want to see me?”

  “I do! I do!” I wanted her dead.

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid of anything. I just… Look, I’m really fucked up. I gotta go.” I winced. Please let me hang up. “I’m fucked up.”

  “Maybe you should think a little about how you fuck other people up.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry. I gotta go.” I couldn’t hang up. We listened to each other’s breathing.

  “You really suck, you bastard.” She hung up. I felt like a bug exposed by someone lifting my rock. I also felt relieved. I didn’t want to think about what she said. I didn’t want to think about anything. It was one-thirty.

  By two o’clock I was in Times Square again. I felt like going down there was the act of a bad boy. It was wrong but I wasn’t down there because I loved it, I just didn’t know where else to go.

  I walked down Seventh Avenue scanning the marquees. I took a massage parlor flyer from some big shivering spade with yellow eyes and huge fossilized fingernails. He wore a stocking hat pulled down almost over his eyes and a green beat-to-shit corduroy jacket that wasn’t doing dick about the cold. His lips were the color and thickness of cocktail franks. He kept slapping his fistful of orange flyers against the thumb of his opposite hand and shoving one in front of every guy that crossed his path.

  SOPHISTICATED SISTER

  The flyer had a photo of a chick with long hair and big tits standing nude next to a globe. She was holding an open copy of Civilisation by Kenneth Clark. She had a Barbara Streisand beak, nipples as big as tops. She was winking at me.

  LUXURY FOR LESS $10 SATISFACTION COMPLETE

  NO RIP-OFFS GIRLS OF ALL NATIONS

  Within the next two blocks I collected flyers from four other places: My Aunt’s Crib, Lady Godiva, Taras Bulba, and Casa Bio-Jo, each handed out by a desperado scarier-looking than the last.

  There were no good movies to see.

  The wind was kicking ass. I hunched down trying for a no-neck take against the cold and trotted into an Orange Julius. It was a narrow corner stand with a Formica counter and a glass-walled view of Times Square. I did up some coffee and a Drake’s Cake, one elbow on the counter, not really hungry, not really anything. No movies, not hungry. I just needed some kind of release. I wanted something to happen, to get off. I was on the lam again. Reaching into my pocket to pay for my coffee I pulled out Sophisticated Sister. Girls of All Nations. No rip-offs. Ten dollars, complete satisfaction.

  There you go. But I didn’t think I could swing it. That scene might be pretty freaky and who the hell knew what color dick you woke up with next morning. Just to check out what I would be saving myself from I started walking to the address on the flyer, three blocks away off Sixth Avenue. It was a narrow office building jammed between a coffee shop and a Thorn McAn shoe store. In front on the sidewalk was a stand-up sandwich board like a Danger sign for an open manhole, SOPHISTICATED SISTER—a silhouette of, a nude chick with crossed legs lounging in the crescent of a moon. Now I thought that was pretty classy; but still, you never knew; you didn’t fuck graphics and the neighborhood was pretty dead.

  I stood across the street. I had two choices. I could go home, call Kristin and make like a human being or I could sink from hip deep to chin deep in the bullshit. An angel sat on one shoulder, a devil on the other. Two crew-cut guys walked in together. They were probably sailors because they walked like tough penguins with a side-to-side bowlegged step, elbows out, arms dangling as if they were in shoulder casts. Sailors were the lowest anyhow when it came to that kind of shit. The coffee shop was closed. I pretended I was on stake-out, hidden mike taped to my finger. That was bullshit. The dead nuts was that I felt like a creep because I knew there was no way I wasn’t going to go upstairs for a slice of moon pie, and the longer I stood in the cold like a re-tard the harder it was going to be to head on in, so I hung out the Gone Fishing sign in my brain and walked across the street. Kristin never had a chance. Or, more to the point, I never had a chance.

  The elevator opened right into the reception area. A chick about forty, in crucifix earrings and with long dark hair, sat at a counter in front of me. Behind her was a sitting room. Three girls in cheap pastel: night-gowns sat chatting on chairs and couches. A Danish modern coffee table centered the room. The walls were wood paneled. It looked like the waiting room of a ghetto dentist I had been fingering a ten spot for the last half-hour.

  “You been here before?” She glanced up from the Post and a take-out coffee.

  “Uh-uh.” I held out the ten, blowing air softly through my cheeks to slow down my guts.

  “It’s twelve forty the first time, ten forty after that This is a private club and the extra two dollars is your membership fee.” She talked nice and calm and she had the Post open to the editorial page. I felt a little safer. I wanted to tell her about Pinnacle. Maybe she was going to be in my class.

  “Hey, no problem.” I dug out my wallet and forked over fifteen, I got change, a hot-pink membership card and a ticket off a roll like I was going on a ride. I went into the waiting room, my ticket in hand, and sat across the room from an old guy with a humongous belly, his hat on his knee. He scowled, his face red and beetle-browed. He reminded me of Brezhnev. Across from him, a guy about fifty, small and pleasant looking, was smiling his ass off, trying to catch my eye and exchange winks. I walked back to the lady at the desk. “What am I supposed to do with the ticket?”

  “Just give it to the girl you want.”

  I took a seat on a vinyl-back chair and casually checked out what was. A big broad-shouldered blonde with a Frankenstein forehead sitting in a red nightie; a tall skinny, black broad trudged across the room in a full-length wrinkled white nightgown, one hand on the small of her back and the other clutching cigarettes and a lighter. She had bags under her eyes as if she just woke up and was about to get that first cup of coffee. And then there was number three, tan, with frizzy orange hair combed out from the brown root center into a halo of corkscrew curls. She had double the beak of the girl in the flyer and it was broken to boot. She wore a pale blue baby doll, which clashed with her hair, and was scarfing down a cheeseburger laid out on greasy wax paper in her lap. A Daily News was open on the coffee table in front of her. That was for me. That was real. A fourth girl walked out of a bathroom carefully carrying a plastic washbasin filled with water and vanished around a corner.

  From suspended speakers a
n FM radio station softly played Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me.” Two more girls walked into the waiting room and slouched into chairs. “Donna, how was Miami?” the broad-shouldered blonde asked one of the new arrivals, a chubby girl wearing pom poms and an open housecoat over a plain white nightie. They didn’t seem like hookers to me.

  They looked more like ambulatory patients lounging in the common room of a woman’s hospital and us guys sitting there were waiting for visiting hours so we could see our wives.

  “Miami was nice.” Donna did her nails with an emery board.

  “What were you down there for, two weeks?”

  “Ten days. I just laid on the beach and read. It was nice.”

  “You look good. You got tan.”

  “Hey look…” My girl tapped the News in front of her. “They got a Star Trek store now.”

  The old smiling guy turned his head from girl to girl as they talked, like he was watching a tennis match. The fat beetle-browed guy didn’t move.

  “You can buy Mister Spock ears there—aw God my son would love that He’s into Mister Spock.”

  The girls and the old guy laughed.

  “You know, he’s got this Mister Spock haircut now. He looks so cute… oh, I should take him to this store.”

  I waited for her to finish her lunch. I yawned as I stood up and wandered over like I was going for a Sports Illustrated to kill time. I stuck out my ticket. She wiped her hands, looked at it like it was a parking viola-tion, wiped her lips on a paper napkin and thumbed her nose like a boxer.

  Tearing the ticket in half, she put the stub in her purse and rose, motioning for me to follow.

  We entered a small room around the corner from the front desk. A double bed was covered with a black drop cloth as slick and shiny as sealskin. A small night table held a dish of foil-wrapped condoms, a jar of Vaseline, Kleenex, a hot comb, a curling iron, Right Guard, baby powder and K-Y jelly.