ONE THING
Ikstein played harpsichord music on the phonograph and opened a bottle of wine. I said, “Let’s be frank, Ikstein. There’s too much crap in this world.” He said, “Sure.” The harpsichord was raving ravished Bach. Windows were open. The breeze smelled of reasons to live. I told him I didn’t care for love. Only women, only their bodies. Talk, dance, conversation — I could do it — but I cared about one thing only. When it was finished, I had to go. Anyhow, I said, generally speaking, women can’t stand themselves. Generally speaking, I thought they were right. “How about you, Ikstein?” He made a pleased mouth and said, “I love women, the way they look, talk, dress, and think. I love their hips, necks, breasts, and ankles. But I hate cunts.” He stamped the floor. I raised my glass. He raised his. “To life,” I said.
MALE
She was asleep. I wondered if I ought to read a newspaper. Nobody phoned. I wanted to run around the block until I dropped dead, but I was afraid of the muggers. I picked up the phone, dialed Ikstein, decided to hang up, but he answered: “This is Ikstein.” I said, “Can I come up?” He said nothing. I said, “Ikstein, it’s very late, but I can hear your TV.” He said, “When I turn it off, I’ll throw you out.” I grabbed my cigarettes. His door was open. He didn’t say hello. We watched a movie, drank beer, smoked. Side by side, hissing gases, insular and simpatico. It was male. I farted. He scratched his scalp, belched, tipped back in his chair with his legs forked out. His bathrobe fell apart, showing the vascular stump. It became a shivering mushroom, then a moon tree waving in the milky flicker. He said, “Well, look who wants to watch the movie.” I said, “Hang a shoe on it.” He refolded his robe and flicked off the TV. “If you decide to come out,” he said, “let me be the first to know. Now go away.” I went downstairs, sat on the bed, and put my hand on her belly. She whimpered, belly falling under my palm. She was asleep. I felt like a crazy man.
DIXIE
“Richard Ikstein” was printed on his mailbox. His nighttime visitors called him “Dixie.” In every accent, American and foreign, sometimes laughing, sometimes grim. When he fell our ceiling shuddered. Flakes of paint drifted down onto our bed. She hugged me and tried to make conversation: “They’re the last romantics.” He was pleading for help. “If you like romance so much,” I said, “why don’t you become a whore.” I twisted away, snapped on the radio, found a voice, and made it loud enough to interfere with his pleading. We couldn’t hear his words, only sobs and whimpers. By the time he stopped falling, our bed was gritty with paint and plaster dust. We were too tired to get up and slap the sheets clean. In the morning I saw blood on our pillows. “It’s on your face, too,” she said. “You slept on your back.” I was for liberation of every kind, but I dressed in silent, tight-ass fury and ran upstairs. “Look at my face, Ikstein,” I shouted, banging at his door. It opened. The police were dragging him to a stretcher. I showed them my stained ceiling and bloody pillows. Obvious, but I had to explain. I told them about Ikstein’s visitors, how he pleaded and sobbed. The police took notes. She cried when they left. She cried all morning. “The state is the greatest human achievement,” I said. “Hegel is right. The state is the only human achievement.” She said, “If you like the state so much, why don’t you become a cop.”
CRABS
My mother didn’t mention the way things looked and said there was going to be a bar mitzvah. If I came to it, the relatives “could see” and I could meet her old friends from Miami. Their daughter was a college graduate, beautiful, money up the sunny gazoo. Moreover, it was a double-rabbi affair, one for the Hebrew, one for English. “Very classy,” she said. I had been to such affairs. A paragraph of Hebrew is followed by a paragraph of English. The Hebrew sounds like an interruption. Like jungle talk. I hated the organ music, the hidden choirs, the opulent halls. Besides, I had the crabs. I wasn’t in the mood for a Miami bitch who probably had gonorrhea. I said, “No.” She said, “Where are your values?”
SMILE
In memoriam I recalled his smile, speedy and horizontal, the corners fleeing one another as if to meet in the back of his head. It suggested pain, great difficulties, failure, gleaming life rot. A smile of “Nevertheless.” Sometimes we met on the stairs. He’d smile, yet seem to want to dash the other way, slide into the wall, creep by with no hello. But he smiled. “Nevertheless,” he smiled. I would try to seem calm, innocuous, nearly dead. That made him more nevertheless. I would tell him something unfortunate about myself — how I’d overdrawn my checking account, lost my wallet, discovered a boil on my balls — and I would laugh at his selfconsciously self-conscious, funny remarks. He nodded gratefully, but he didn’t believe I thought he was funny. He didn’t believe he was funny. I thought about the murder of complex persons. I thought about his smile, bleeding, beaten to death.
RIGHT NUMBER
A girl lived in the apartment below. We became friends. I’d go there any time, early or late. She opened the door and didn’t turn on the light. I undressed in darkness, slid in beside her, made a spoon, and she slid into my spoon. She had no work, nothing she had to do, no one expected her to be anyplace. Money came to her in the mail. She had a body like Goya’s whore and a Botticelli face. She was tall, pale, blond, and wavy. I knocked, she let me in. No questions. We talked fast and moved about from bed to chairs to floor. Sometimes I’d pinch her thigh. Once she knocked a coffee cup into my lap. Finally we had sexual intercourse. We made a lot of jokes and she was on her back. I tried to be gentle. She thrashed in a complimentary way and moaned. Later she said to guess how many men she’d had. I said ten. She said fifteen. How does that sound? It sounds more depraved than I feel. After the Turk, she understood the Ottoman Empire. She said people thought of her as manic-depressive. But it wasn’t true. She had good reasons for what she feels. Germans are friskier than you’d imagine. The right number is seven or eight. It sounds like a lot, yet it isn’t depraved. It’s believable. A girl shouldn’t say seven or eight, then describe twenty. What if I said more than ten, less than twenty? How does that sound? Six came in one weekend. They count as one. How old do you think I am? Twenty-eight? I’m only twenty-two. With A, it is a way of making something out of nothing. With B, it is a form of conversation. With C, it is letting him believe something about himself. With D, it is a mistake. I’ve had seventeen. People think I’ve had fifty or a hundred. Do I want fifty or a hundred? No. I want twenty-five. Twenty-five or thirty. Do you remember what my face is like? I think it looks sluttish. Indians are the nicest. Blacks don’t talk to you afterward. I was raped when I was a kid. Then I rode my bicycle around and around the block and talked to myself in a loud voice. All my life I’ve tried to keep things from getting out of hand, but I get out of hand. Nothing works. Nothing works. I like you very very much, I said, let’s try again. I was gentle. She thrashed in a complimentary way and moaned. The next day she knocked at my door, wearing a handsome gray wool suit and high heels. Her hair had been washed and combed into a style. She looked neat, intelligent, and extremely beautiful. She said she was going to a job interview to have something to do. We hugged for good luck and kissed. Somehow she was on her back. We had sexual intercourse. I wasn’t gentle. She whipped in the pelvis and screamed murder. Me, too.