The Sunset Gang

by Warren Adler

  She parked the car in front of Mrs. Klugerman's condominium and searched in her pocketbook for a ring of keys. Then perching her glasses on her nose, she observed the numbers on the keys, singled one out, knocked and waited, then inserted the key in the lock. Max felt his heart beating. Could he explain to anyone what he was feeling? The door opened and the woman flicked a switch, lighting up the interior.

  The odor was heavy, but it was the familiar one of musty dampness. The bedroom was sparsely furnished, a narrow sagging bed with an embroidered foreign-looking bedspread. In the living room, was an upholstered chair, with starched doilies pinned to the backrest and arms, and a little formica table. There were no pictures on the walls, no books, no television set, no radio, no photographs. There was a battered unpainted chest, a few sparse articles of clothing, but no visible make-up tubes or vials, or medicines. In the closet there was, however, a large cardboard box filled with little cellophane bags of candy. In the kitchen, the refrigerator was empty. There was no sign of food and the shelves of the cabinets contained only a few chipped dishes and cups.

  "Well, that's a relief," the woman said, after he had inspected the premises. "She's probably gone on a trip. It's quite obvious that she's not living here now."

  "Yes," he said, "that's quite obvious." But he dared not explore the thought further. He needed time, he told himself.

  The woman went through the door before him and as he moved the door back, he unlatched the lock in the doorknob. He closed the door after him and fiddled with it to illustrate that he was checking it.

  "Make sure it's locked," the woman said as she got into her car.

  "I'll walk," he said, waving her on, watching her drive to the main road. When she had turned the corner, he opened the door of the condominium again and slipped into the darkened living room. He did not turn on the lights. Sitting down on the chair, he put his head back and let his eyes become accustomed to the darkness. He sat there for a long time, calm, not frightened.

  "Mrs. Klugerman," he whispered, listening. "Mrs. Klugerman," he repeated, feeling the first faint bursts of elation. "I know you're here, Mrs. Klugerman." He sat there for a long time, until he could see through the thin strips of the closed blinds that darkness had come. Then he got up from the chair, walked to the door, and let himself out.

  "Thank you, Mrs. Klugerman," he said as he closed the door. He was certain that she had heard his voice.

  Poor Herman

  She had first noticed him from across the huge cardroom of the main clubhouse, a side view, faintly familiar, but it did not cross her mind again until she had sat at the little poudreuse in the bedroom of her condominium rubbing off her make-up. She had always mused, daydreamed, fantasized in front of the mirror while putting on her make-up or taking it off.

  Sometimes she would suddenly make a wrong dab and this would recall her to herself. Which was what she had done that evening, as she rubbed the cleanser a little too vigorously and had gotten some into her eye. It was then that she realized the connection between the profile in the cardroom and her memory of Heshy Feinstein. The shock of recognition made her hands shake briefly and she found she could not continue efficiently with the removal of her make-up.

  She looked at her face, ravaged by age. By living, she told herself. But she could not identify it at all with the vivid image of Heshy Feinstein in her mind. For this memory of Heshy was not at all lost in the mist of more than fifty years. It had been retrieved so often, an oasis of joy in the arid desert of what her life had become, that it still had retained its shimmering intensity. Heshy Feinstein! He had been the one unalterable condition of her inner life, her secret life--although once she had confided to her daughter, Helen, that there had been a man, a boy really, who had made her body ache with longing for him.

  She could remember exactly since at the time they were sitting shiva for Herman, only seven years before. Herman with whom she had spent forty-five faithful years of marriage, of coldness, too, although her children would never ever know that. Only Herman knew, because he had suffered from her indifference since the first night of their marriage, from the moment of her hysterical exaggeration of her simulated virginity. What an act it had been. "It took me three days to get married." Herman had always told their friends with a laugh, although she had known in her heart that they were never really married, not in that way at least.

  "I have always been a good and unfaithful wife, Helen," she had told her daughter, who by then was impatient to get back to Chicago and her life there.

  "Sure, Ma."

  "Your father was a good man, a wonderful person."

  "You think I don't know that, Ma? He was lucky to have such a terrific woman."

  "I feel so bad for him," she said, but her meaning, she knew, was lost to her daughter. Their marriage bed had been as cold as ice. She hadn't even done her duty by him and she hoped in her heart that he had found someone to relieve his needs, some woman somewhere who could get rid of his tensions and send him back to her.

  "I was not a good wife, Helen," she had said. Her daughter had only nodded. They had been sitting shiva for four days and it was boring Helen, she was sure, hearing all those reminiscences of a long marriage. What else was there to do, but talk about the dead father, the dead husband, and their memories of him? She dared not say to her daughter that Herman was quickly slipping from her memory, and if it wasn't for the picture of him on the piano to remind her of his features, she might not have been able to assemble them in her mind.

  "Once there was another man," she had said.

  "You had another boy friend?" Helen seemed interested as they sipped coffee.

  "He was absolutely gorgeous--a marvelous, brilliant boy."

  "You're kidding, Ma."

  "Heshy Feinstein."

  "Heshy?"

  "In Brownsville, in those days, the Yiddish and English was totally mixed up. His name was Harvey but no one called him Harvey except the teachers at school. He wore knickers and he was six feet tall when he was seventeen years old and I was sixteen. He was going to Boys' High School and I was going to Girls' High School and we both used to take the subway together. He lived behind us on Douglas Street and, I knew him since we were eight or nine. But it wasn't until I was sixteen that we discovered each other."

  "My God. My name could have been Feinstein," her daughter said.

  She ignored the remark. Her own name had been Goldberg. Frieda Goldberg. At least Herman had brought her the name Smith, though God knew where that came from.

  "His father wanted him to be a doctor. He was excellent in science, always doing experiments on his back porch."

  "Did he become one?"

  "I never found out."

  "You haven't seen him since?"

  "Not once. We moved to Eastern Parkway. It was only a few miles away, maybe four five subway stops. But I never saw him again."

  "Weird," Helen said.

  "Heshy's father owned a grocery store and he wanted him to be a doctor."

  "Do you ever wonder about him?"

  "Not often," she lied, knowing that it had been the single obsession of her life.

  Naturally she had left out all of the important parts, although she would have loved to confide in her daughter. But she worried that her daughter would hate her for what she had done to her father. I feel so sorry for Herman, she told herself often. Even now, before the mirror, as her mind searched its secret screen for pictures of Frieda Goldberg and Heshy Feinstein.

  He had been shaking the pear tree in his father's yard and gathering the pears in a bucket for Mrs. Feinstein to make stewed dessert. She had watched him from the little rusty swing in her own yard, making fun of his efforts, especially when one of the pears hit him on the head.

  "It's not funny. It hurts like the blazes."

  "Poor Heshy."

  He walked over to her and nodded his head and she had looked into the shiny curly sweet-smelling hair. He took her hand and put it on the lump that was growing there a
nd she felt it gently.

  "That doesn't tickle," he said. Yet she knew, at that moment, as her finger touched the hard nub of that lump that something had passed between them and nothing was ever the same from that time on. She opened the fingers of her hand and moved them like fish in the bulrushes of his curly hair, feeling goose flesh rise on her hands and legs and a strange feeling deep inside her and in that place between her legs. It was odd how that memory had never dimmed the first signal that something was happening between them, and yet there were things that happened only yesterday that she had trouble remembering.

  Was it really Heshy Feinstein she had seen in the cardroom, or some apparition? It would not have been the first time that a stranger's face would loom out at her suddenly in a crowd and she would wonder if it was Heshy's face. Sometimes she would hide. Other times she had actually followed the person, until she discovered her error.

  She could also recall, dredge up from her memories, the first sensations, the feelings, the kisses, the delicious gropings, and, of course, that first time on the old couch on her own back porch in the middle of that summer of the big polio scare. It was the great mystery of her life why she could never, after Heshy, experience such sensations, that joyous release of feelings that came from somewhere deep within her. Why had it disappeared so completely when she left Brownsville? It was as if a dark curtain had come down on her life and she had experienced all the physical joy of a lifetime in a single year.

  She could even remember the tension of their subterfuge, the ruses and, as they became more intimate, the agony of worry over the coming of her period. Heshy was as paranoid as herself, even though he would be sure to always carry protection in his wallet. But even these anxieties would never interfere with the greed for each other, the joy-giving of their lovemaking. It was, of course, more than just the physical thing, and they could not hide their love from their parents, to whom it became a terrible source of concern and alienation. The harassment was open, bitterly frank, opening deep animosities between the families.

  "My Heshy's too young," his father would remonstrate as Frieda's parents sat together watching the man's growing anger and his wife's less articulate bitterness.

  "So is Frieda."

  "It's ridiculous. It makes no sense. It will ruin my son's medical career if he has to worry about supporting a wife and maybe children. There has got to be an end to this."

  They could hear their parents clearly through the vents in the cellar, where they had fitted themselves out a place among a suite of cast-off furniture. The cellar had a back door that led to the yard, and above them they could hear every movement and sound, every creak of danger in the house.

  "At it again," he had said, but she was not listening. Instead, she was concentrating on the joy that was spilling over and trying to be silent as she bit her fist and felt the suffusion of her inner pleasure and his own climactic movement. Even in the afterglow they could not escape the sounds of their parents' bitterness.

  "Somebody has to move away," Heshy's father shouted. "I can't. I have a business."

  "Well, I like it here," her father yelled.

  "Just keep your son away from my daughter," her mother screamed. "She's too good for him anyway."

  Whereupon they would shut out the sounds with the palms of their hands and proceed again to reach out for this mysterious thing that had brought them together.

  They were, of course, being young, hardly interested in consequences. They felt they could continue to be clever in their subterfuge and even her mother's hesitant probings about the state of her virginity were deflected, leaving her mother in little doubt that she was still intact.

  "Surely you trust your own daughter. You think I'm going to jeopardize my life?" In those days an unwanted pregnancy was a stigma from which there was little recovery. Not even a lifetime could erase the damages it would cause, and this scared them the most, especially when they knew they had tempted fate.

  "I want you as close to me as is humanly possible," she had cried more than once, slipping off his condom.

  "My sweet beautiful wonderful darling love."

  But what might have not been seen was sensed and it was soon announced by her father that they were moving to Crown Heights, a neighborhood about ten miles away.

  "It just can't go on like this, Frieda. You're too young. He's too young. Mr. Feinstein might be a horrible person, but he's right. Maybe if we moved away and you saw him less often. Maybe then."

  "I won't go!" she had cried.

  "You'll go."

  "I'll run away. We'll elope. I'll get pregnant."

  She could see her father's face flush a deep red which frightened her because she truly loved him, a gentle man who when risen to anger could be irrational and sometimes violent.

  "I don't really mean that, Papa. Don't think what you're thinking." That calmed him. Heshy was far harder to placate.

  "When are you moving?"

  "Tomorrow."

  "The bastards. They wouldn't even give us time to prepare."

  "Prepare what?"

  "To get the hell away from them. To get married. You think I can possibly live without you?"

  "And me without you?" She remembered her shoulders suddenly shaking hysterically and his valiant efforts to soothe her until he too was crying, their tears mingling. Even now she could taste the salt in them, a taste never to be duplicated in her lifetime. In the cellar they clung to each other. They had gone so far to risk exposure that that night miraculously, or so she believed, they stayed together without discovery and were back in their respective rooms by morning. It was a night whose pain was to remain with her, a kind of symbol of the highlight of her life. In the aridity of her later years she had marveled at the sheer physical wonder of it, those hours together, intertwined, never uncoupling, as if a moment apart would destroy them both. They had long since explored the mysteries of themselves. No secrets of their bodies or minds escaped their mutual probings.

  "I will love you forever and forever and forever." She could still hear the sound, the rhythm and timbre of his voice, strong and assured, as it thrilled her, promised her.

  And she also had said, "They will never tear us apart. No one will ever tear us apart."

  And in a way they hadn't since the memory had never disappeared nor lost its magic, even now, as she looked into the mirror detesting the sagging lines of her face, the drooping skin around her eyes, the jowls, though she liked to think that she looked ten years younger than her sixty-eight years.

  She got into her nightgown without a glance at her body, which also had run to sag and flesh, but since it was of little interest, except for the state of its basic health, she didn't care. She flicked on the "Johnny Carson Show" and when she grew drowsy she flicked it off again and slipped into a heavy dreamless sleep.

  But the next morning, after she had dressed, made her breakfast, and cleared away the dishes she remembered her brief recognition. When the telephone rang, she knew it was Minnie, who was wondering when she would be ready to go to the pool, their daily ritual.

  "Not today, Minnie," Frieda said.

  "You don't feel good?"

  "I have a headache." Poor Herman, she suddenly thought, remembering the thousand times she had used that excuse.

  "You always have a headache," he had said angrily as he tossed in the bed, turning his back to her.

  You give me a headache, she had wanted to say, but to her credit, she agreed, she had never said it. Not out loud, at least.

  When she was sure Minnie had left for the pool, she went outside and, taking her tricycle, pedaled to the management office to make the inquiry which she knew was inevitable. Might as well get it over with.

  "There are three Harvey Feinsteins," the middle-aged shiksa clerk with the blue-gray hair said. Her harlequin glasses hung on a jeweled chain around her neck.

  There were always more than a dozen Harvey Feinsteins whenever in weak moments she was tempted to find him again. But she had neve
r wished to intrude on that vast forest of Harvey Feinsteins. She jotted down the addresses and cycled over to the nearest one, where she had a card-playing friend, Toby Schwartzman, another widow. The widows held the clear majority and were a constant source of humor among the marrieds and themselves, which they bore, but privately resented. She knocked at Toby's door, three doors down from the first Mr. Feinstein. Toby was eating pistachio nuts and listening to Dinah Shore.

  "You didn't go to the pool?"

  "I had a little headache."

  They gossiped a little, talked about last night's canasta and Johnny Carson.

  Then Frieda asked: "You know the Feinsteins?" She paused. "The ones in number six?"

  "I know them to say hello. Why?"

  It was always the "why" that she waited for, planning a strategy to deflect the skillful yenta probings.

  "My daughter's cousin by marriage, Phyllis, is named Feinstein and she says they're in Sunset Village."

  "She's from Chicago?"

  "No. Phyllis is from Boston."

  "These Feinsteins are from Pittsburgh. He's eighty years old, in a wheelchair."

  After some more small talk, she left, satisfied that she had made only the most casual inquiry, an important consideration in a world of yentas that had to know even the minutest detail of every personal transaction.

  It took her three hours to track down the second Feinstein, who lived in the fancy four-story elevator condominium. She had actually parked herself on a bench in front of the elevator shaft watching for movement from number twelve, which was on the third floor just off the corner and clearly visible on the open balcony-corridor. She had, of course, checked the name plates on the mailboxes. "Harvey Feinstein" was clearly marked. Seeing it caused her heart to lurch. A widower, she thought, hoping that perhaps today was the day her horoscope had predicted something of value in her life. The sun was hot and soon she could not bear it on the bench, nor could she bear the curiosity. She had noticed a magazine addressed to H. Feinstein on the shelf for publications above the mailbox. Scooping it up, she proceeded to go up in the elevator and, without giving it much thought, pressed the buzzer of number twelve. She put her ear against the door, heard stirrings, and then her anxieties began because she had not really figured out a cover story. She heard the door click, then open, and a small man in bathing trunks stood before her. She towered over him and looked at him, perhaps with contempt for his smallness and his not being the Harvey Feinstein.