by Sol Stein
Gardikian thought about the time when he had hit on his first real story. “Listen, kid,” he said. “I think you’ll make Monday.”
Jerry Samuelson’s head was full of bells. He knew that first jobs, full-time jobs, were out in the sticks somewhere, but maybe now…
Gardikian stuck a piece of blank paper in the typewriter and zipped the carriage to the right. Headlines were written by headline writers when pages were made up. But he had to signal the rewrite man, so he typed: STUDENT MAGICIAN BEATEN UNCONSCIOUS BY CLASSMATES. He lit a cigarette. Jerry Samuelson ought to be one happy kid tonight.
*
Lila had gone back to the dance floor. He wouldn’t have told her how a trick was done even if she was his wife, which she wasn’t. She’d get over it.
He left his suitcases in the faculty room and checked the mirror in the adjacent washroom. His hair needed combing.
He used his fingers first, as always, then fished out the broken-toothed comb to finish the job, cursing himself for having forgotten to bring his brush. Combed hair looked combed, brushed hair looked brushed. Damn!
The dance floor was crowded. As he edged around the perimeter, bouncing up on his toes once in a while to see better, he noticed some of the kids stopping to look at him as he looked for Lila. The magician in street clothes, like everybody else, but they were staring; to those he knew, he waved casually. He saw five or six kids clustered around Roberta Cardick. Fan-club stuff. Then he spotted Lila dancing with the geek.
Why some of the girls thought the geek was cute was a mystery to Ed. He had red hair and freckles, but six feet, three inches was too tall for a kid with a face like a kid, and look how clumsy he was, kicking his legs and moving his elbows like the things that connected train wheels.
Ed caught Lila’s eye. It would only be a minute till the number ended. When it stopped, he ambled over, letting one shoulder droop a little. The geek was snowing away a mile a minute at Lila, polysyllabic like Danny Kaye.
“Hello, Lila,” Ed said, cool.
The geek ground his nonstop to a stop and looked at Ed sideways.
He’ll get the message in a minute, thought Ed. Be patient.
“The magician,” said the geek. “Nice show.”
“Thanks.”
“Hello, Ed,” said Lila’s soft voice.
“Hello, Lila,” said Ed.
The message came through.
“This your girl?” asked the geek.
Lila, the bitch, didn’t say a thing.
“Well, I brought her.”
“Okay,” said the geek. “No hard feelings.” Then to Lila, “Remember what I said.” He sauntered off.
“What’d he say?” asked Ed.
“Oh, you know, he talks a blue streak.”
“I mean, what was he referring to?”
“He said I looked beautiful.”
“Well,” said Ed, “I guess you do.”
Nothing wrong with Lila dancing while she was waiting for him; it wasn’t as if he owned her. Even married women don’t always dance with their husbands, do they?
“The show went off very well,” said Lila.
“I guess it did,” he said. There they go, some of the other kids staring again. He hoped they wouldn’t when the music started up. Dancing was not his thing. He felt stupid squirming around and snapping his fingers.
Lila was leading him out by the hand to a comparatively open space on the floor when he noticed four or five greasers bunched up, chewing away, staring at him. I should have used an American flag in a trick, Ed thought, that would have got to them.
Lila noticed him noticing, and took his elbow to move him away. “Don’t look for trouble.”
“I’m not looking for trouble,” he said, following her lead, but taking a last glance over his shoulder and seeing that there were now eight or nine of them.
Chapter 5
As soon as the last dance was over, Ed took Lila by the hand and hurried to the faculty room to make sure no one had walked off with his two suitcases. They were untouched.
The pay phone in the hall had a line of seven or eight kids. Several nodded to him. Nobody offered to let him go to the front of the line. Why should they?
The kids cooperated with each other by keeping their calls short, but it still seemed to take forever until his turn came. Most of the kids had left. Some dutiful parents had arrived early. Some kids had their own cars; others picked up rides from friends. The school was practically deserted by the time he got his father on the phone.
“Give me fifteen minutes,” said Mr. Japhet. “Snow’s been steady all evening, and the roads are worse.”
“Take your time,” said Ed, hanging up.
Only the custodian was left, and he headed immediately for the basement “to turn the heat down,” but Ed and Lila knew, as did all the kids, that it was to settle himself near the boiler with a pint of Thunderbird, having been denied his evening’s comfort because of the festivities.
It was a peculiar feeling looking down the empty hallway, seeing the school suddenly desolate, as if he and Lila had been the hosts of a large party whose guests had left and now they had this huge house to themselves.
“We’ve got eleven minutes,” he said, glancing at the school clock above Lila’s head.
He shut the door of the faculty room. They stood in the center of the silent rectangle. The huge overhead bulb seemed much too bright. Ed turned the switch off at the door and found Lila’s hand in the darkness. The windows were laced with snow. His heart seemed louder in the dark.
He touched her beads and lifted them, his fingers brushing for an instant the nakedness above her breasts. He let the beads drop gently back into place as he put his hands to the sides of her face and kissed her, closed lips barely touching closed lips.
She took his hands away from her face, and he thought for a moment she was stopping him, but that was not the case at all, because she had merely spread his arms apart so that she could step closer to him, and when they kissed the second time her body was touching his.
They were both out of breath and laughing about it out of embarrassment, and Ed said, “It sounds ridiculous, but that felt swoony—it’s the only word.”
As they kissed again, he felt the beat. A pulse was what the doctor felt in your wrist, or what you saw in someone’s temple when they were agitated, but the pulse he felt now was elsewhere, and he could tell from the expression on her face that she knew.
“God,” he said.
“I know,” she said.
He felt her breasts against his chest and let one hand slip to her buttocks, something he had not dared before.
“We’d better stop,” Lila said. “It’s almost time.”
And so it was. Where had the minutes gone?
Very close to her ear he said, “I love you.” He meant it, and hated that it sounded so corny. And then, impulsively, he kissed her hand, and in a second’s breath he was hugging her, kissing her lovely neck and then her mouth again, which was now open a little, and he could—oh, suddenly—feel her tongue on his lips and in his mouth and, at the same time, the fierce hanging ache in his testicles.
It was Lila who turned the light back on.
He let her adjust her hair in the mirror first, and then, when she was through, he combed his hair, and looked at the high color in his face. He straightened his suit a bit.
Just in time. As they went out of the faculty room, he could see the outside door at the far end of the hall open and the small figure of his father enter amidst a whirl of snow, white on his hat and overcoat shoulders, and as he came closer one could even see the snow on his eyebrows. Strange how he expected his father might have known what was going on inside the faculty room.
Ed waved awkwardly. Mr. Japhet blew into his frozen hands. “Forgot my gloves. That steering wheel’s cold. Where are the bags?”
Ed gestured toward the faculty room.
Mr. Japhet insisted on taking the heavier bag. “How’d it go?”
“Oh, the prom was okay. You know.” He knew his father hadn’t meant the prom.
“The show went beautifully,” said Lila. “It was really great. You ought to have seen it.”
Outside, the snow was gusting in a directionless swirl of flakes, large and dry, sticking where they fell. Mr. Japhet pointed at the car, which, though only fifty feet away, was barely visible in the wild whirl.
They trooped off single file, Mr. Japhet first, then Ed, then Lila trailing behind, trying to walk in their new footsteps. They nearly collided when Mr. Japhet stopped without warning.
There were four figures sitting inside his car.
“What the hell,” said Mr. Japhet. He put the case down in the snow and slogged to the car. He opened the door on the driver’s side before recognizing the greaser behind the wheel.
Mr. Japhet tried to keep his voice level. “What’s up, boys?”
Ed had come up behind his father.
“That’s Urek, Dad. And his friends.”
The four boys let loose a gang laugh, arrogating confidence from each other.
Urek said, “That’s some special kid you got.”
“Yeah,” said one of the others, “a magician.”
Mr. Japhet saw the chain wrapped around Urek’s fist.
Urek had a strange face: gnarled, it looked older than his years. It was acne-pitted, and an uneven scar marred the right cheek.
“I think you boys better be getting home,” said Mr. Japhet. “It’s cold out here. Out of the car, now.”
“Ask nicely,” said Urek.
“Come on before I lose my temper.”
“That’s not nice, Mr. Japhet.” Urek signaled the three others with a rough gesture of his head. They got out of all four doors simultaneously. “We were just going to help the magician with the bags—right, fellas?”
Ed put both hands on the handle of his bag as Urek approached. Urek made a feint toward the bag, laughed at Ed’s instinctive flinch, and then with a grunt picked up the suitcase Mr. Japhet had left standing in the snow.
“Leave that alone!” said Ed.
“Put that bag down,” said Mr. Japhet. He crunched through the snow after Urek. “Give it to me.”
“You don’t want me to help?” said Urek.
“No,” said Mr. Japhet. “Put that bag down.”
“I’m gonna show you what kind of magician your son is,” said Urek, lifting the bag with tremendous strength; and then, as Lila, and Ed, and Mr. Japhet watched, he smashed the case against the side of the automobile again and again and again. Ed recognized the sound of breaking glass. The milk pitcher, he thought.
“Hey, Mr. Japhet, I bet your boy can put all the pieces back together,” said Urek.
Mr. Japhet, losing control of his voice, as if he were suddenly in a world out of the grasp of his mind and conscience, said, “What satisfaction does that give you? What kind of human being are you?”
“Some magician!” screamed Urek.
“What harm did he ever do to you?”
Ed, afraid of the chain around Urek’s fist, tried to take his father’s arm. “Let’s get out of here, Dad.”
“Let’s go home, Mr. Japhet.” It was Lila, ten feet back, silhouetted against the light from the school building. The minute the words were out of her mouth she was sorry she had spoken, for Urek was bounding over to her, leaving new holes in the snow. “This your girl, magician?”
Mr. Japhet, who was not as slow to grasp the shifting reality of a situation as most sons think their fathers are, knew a line had just been crossed. “Come on, Lila, Ed, get in the car.”
Ed, both hands still on the handle of the safe suitcase, started to drag it toward the automobile.
Lila screamed as Urek twisted her arm behind her back, and with his other hand yanked her hair.
Ed, unthinking, blind, let the case drop into the snow and rushed at Urek, grabbing at the arm that was twisting Lila’s behind her back.
“Watch out!” said Mr. Japhet.
Ed punched at Urek’s arm.
“Watch out!” said Mr. Japhet again, but Ed in his rage did not see that Urek, still holding the girl’s arm behind her back with his left hand, had let several loops of chain unwind from around his right fist. Suddenly Urek pushed the girl forward on her face, and letting go, swung the chain. Ed tried to hold his hands up in front of him, but not fast enough to thwart the full force of the end of the chain against his cheek, a blinding impossible pain, and blood from somewhere; then Urek was crashing into him, knocking him onto the snow, and Urek’s hands, one of them still with the chain around his knuckles, were around Ed’s throat, choking him.
Urek was yelling, “You think you’re something, huh?” as Mr. Japhet pounded on his back, then pulled at his shoulders, trying to drag him off his son, and Lila screamed and screamed. Mr. Japhet got a grip on Urek’s hair, and pulling with a strength he didn’t know he had, actually tore hair out of Urek’s head. Urek was now up, off Ed, yelling at the other three to get the bag. “Smash it, smash it!” Urek yelled, and they smashed the second bag against the bumper of the car, and stomped on it, though Ed was now beyond caring about the crushed contents.
It was a miracle that the school door opened and the half-soused custodian appeared with his huge flashlight, stabbing its beam at them. “What you! Stop, stop, what you do?”
“I’m Mr. Japhet. Get help! Quickly!”
He didn’t seem to have gotten through to the custodian, who stood in the doorway looking out into the snow. Could he see? Thus distracted, Mr. Japhet did not see Urek bring Ed down to the ground again until his ear caught the gurgling sound and he turned to see Urek with his hands around Ed’s throat, squeezing, squeezing. Mr. Japhet pulled the back of Urek’s coat collar without effect, then drummed his fists fruitlessly on Urek’s hunched back, wishing he had a gun to blow the boy’s head off.
Just then the old custodian at the door yelled, “I call the police!”
That did it. Though it would take the police forever to get there in the snow, Urek let go of Ed’s throat and suddenly got up, knocking Mr. Japhet backward.
Urek bellowed at the other three, who circled around the car and started to lope down the road away from the school.
Mr. Japhet felt a surge of relief seeing them retreat. He got his snow-soaked body upright and stepped toward Ed, lying, it seemed, unconscious, when in the periphery of his vision he thought he saw—he did see—Urek, not yet finished, lift his chain on high and swing it against the windshield of the car, shattering the huge curving pane to smithereens.
Ed had been unconscious only for seconds. As his father raised his head from the snow, he could see the three boys off in the distance, Urek still some distance behind them, swinging the chain.
Ed could not manage on his feet, and Mr. Japhet couldn’t carry his weight alone, but with Lila’s help, somehow, with one of Ed’s arms around each of their shoulders, they were able to get him onto the back seat of the car.
Ed gestured toward the forgotten suitcases.
“They’re both smashed, son. Might as well leave them till morning.”
Ed shook his head. He tried to speak, to say he didn’t want people finding out how the tricks were done, but the pain in his throat was excruciating, and the words weren’t clear. He gestured toward the bags again.
Mr. Japhet got the two cases into the trunk of the car. He saw Lila had gotten into the back seat, was holding Ed’s head in her lap, the blood from his face where the chain had first hit him staining her dress.
Mr. Japhet put the key into the ignition, stepped down on the pedal twice, turned the key, and after a few seconds of churning, the engine caught, and he put the car into gear and headed slowly downhill toward the highway. With the windshield gone, the snow whipped through at his face. He held on to the wheel with both hands, his eyes grim against the white night as he headed the vehicle toward the hospital.
Chapter 6
STUDENT MAGICIAN BEATEN UNCONSCIOUS BY CLASSMATES. The N
ew York Times’s story was picked up by many other newspapers in the country.
The Washington Post angled its story differently: HIGH-SCHOOL HOOLIGANS ATTACK STUDENT, WRECK TEACHER’S CAR AFTER TERM-END PROM, SITUATION IN NEW YORK SCHOOLS WORSENS.
In the Post story one learned that racial tension was not the cause of the incident inasmuch as the attackers and the victims were all white. “The student who was severely beaten had just performed a magic show at a school dance. He was attacked after refusing to explain how his magic tricks were done.”
The centerspread of the New York Sunday News carried a large photo of the Japhet car seen from just in front of the shattered windshield. The caption read, “Teacher’s car smashed by students’ chains after Friday-night prom. (See story, p. 6).” On page 6 there was no story because its nine inches had been dropped for a late-breaking subway-station rape that had produced no picture to substitute for the smashed Japhet car. The headline on the Associated Press story said: GANG FIGHTS TEEN TRICKSTER, which, at least, had the virtue of brevity.
*
Mr. Japhet drove in the night through the swirling snow, pumping the brake carefully, sensing the inadequate traction of the snow tires on the slick patches where the snow hadn’t held. The snow streamed past the jagged edges of the open windshield, the flakes landing on his face, eyelashes, eyes, dissolving his vision, causing him to blink and blink to keep seeing the road ahead until finally he swung right on the turnoff and followed the signs to the emergency room around the back of Phelps Memorial. Though his speed had slowed, when he applied the brakes and held, the car skidded somewhat, stopping at a crazy angle to the curb. He looked back at Lila holding Ed’s head in her lap. “Is he sleeping?”
“I think he’s unconscious. It must be hurting terribly.”
Mr. Japhet stumbled out into the snow, and in a minute returned with two attendants and a stretcher. They removed Ed clumsily from the car. He was awake now, his face gray-green, his voice a low rasp, then groaning. They got him inside, Mr. Japhet and Lila trailing, suddenly feeling the warmth of the indoors, and with it, now that the mad ride was over, a jolt of fear as the intern in the emergency room touched Ed’s forehead, took his pulse, quickly looked up and down the body, asked, “Accident?”
