Balls (18 page)

Feeling this was the right choice, and with his head lifting before the computer, he typed:

Dear Paula,

I miss you. Please call me. Love, Henry
.

And he hit
send.

TWELVE

W
ord didn't come from Paula, not a call, nor email, or handwritten post. Henry treated his despair with painkillers, sleeping for sometimes twenty hours straight. He got up to use the bathroom and to drink water. He didn't eat. But first things first, each time, when his eyes opened, he checked to see if she'd tried to contact him. He'd find nothing. He called her father, careful not to sound as if he were after details which he himself could not attain from Paula with ease. Marcel appeared glad to hear from Henry.

Can you believe the success she's having over there?

With her recitals, you mean?

That's it, he told Henry. In Berlin, Vienna, Paris, she was the toast of the town.

Bitch, said Henry, to himself. And to Marcel, It certainly is amazing. Would you believe it, there's been good progress with
Miss Scandinavia?

The company realized they'd made a mistake and called you back? he asked.

No. Not that.

A demo had been sent by Walbaum to Bobby Jacques in Paris. Taken with the concept of a
Ms. Scandinavia
, she'd recorded a cover of the track for her new record.

Good for you, son.

Henry thanked him. But at once, he felt embarrassed for having spoken to Marcel about
Ms. Scandinavia
. Really, what did he have to prove to the chemist? His daughter was no longer his.

The pain of romantic calamity overshadowed the significance of his pathology report. At the oncologist's office on East 68th Street days later, Doctor Voges, an elderly man, with hooded eyelids, a protruding stomach, and liver-spotted hands which pressed a clipboard to his chest, brought his patient through the results. As previously thought, Henry had testicular cancer. But the cancer had been contained in his scrotum. Unless he preferred to diminish the likelihood of a reoccurrence by some few percentage points, Henry would not have to undergo radiation treatment. X-rays and blood work would serve his purpose fine. They could begin next month, following up every month for two years. After which, Henry should be cleared to go on without further observation.

Henry, in a medical office, like any other he'd visited on the doctor-go-round, bright, with an antiseptic odor, the white linoleum floor tiles speckled black, blue and red, the doors metal and the air cold, was only half-paying attention. He couldn't consider his own health. Murderous thoughts about Paula consumed him. He had written again, but had heard nothing from her. He didn't understand. Why had she cut him off? The question ravaged him.

On his first night back at the Beekman, lofted over midtown, in a cool blue evening, old regulars filled the room. Where had Henry been? they asked. On vacation? Where to? He said he couldn't explain his absence. He excused himself, saying:

My break is over.

He started up with
My Funny Valentine
. The lounge was more than half-full. Henry hadn't the faintest idea that he was botching the song. His eyes were looking out through the window at a group of skyscrapers whose highest floors caught light from the westward falling sun. To himself, he was saying, Move on. Move on. You must move on. To the next thing. Please. Forget her. Get on to the important part.

From the bar now came John Grover in a gray pin-striped suit. Henry hadn't seen him come in and so he couldn't estimate how many old-fashioneds the U.N.
rapporteur
had already imbibed. The two men hadn't been in the same room since Henry had put Grover on his back over a year and a half earlier. But a running-joke played among the employees, from Edgar, to the bartenders and dishwasher. Before Henry left at night, someone would call out:

I hear Grover's downstairs on the corner waiting for you. He's got that deranged look in his eyes. You want someone to walk you home?

No, Henry would respond. I think I can handle him myself.

But are you sure?

Yes. Positive.

Grover came to lean on the piano, taking the pose which was once common for him here, with his frail but durable upper-body propped up on bent elbows. He stared at Henry with his lips drawn back and his gray, wasting teeth exposed. For a while, in the Deco lounge, he neither said or did anything. Henry, finished with
My Funny Valentine
, decided to come at Grover with Basie's
One O'Clock Jump
. The song's great rhythm and feel would disarm the ill-tempered man. But Grover didn't relent. Not even after Henry played
Honeysuckle Rose
, with its light and skipping humor, Grover moved only to drink from his glass. Sometimes his lips did form a scowl. Nothing more.

Until finally, Grover placed his glass on the piano. His dour face lurked above the highest of the treble keys. He said, You got a problem?

Henry, as if to sum up his defense, said, I'm just the piano player.

He's
just
the piano player. The old man's mouth narrowed with contempt. He said, If that's
true
, why is it every time I look at you, I want to give you a good sock in the face? Huh?

Henry could feel the swift beating of his heart. His hands were cool and sweating. Do not engage, he told himself.

I see my answer's right there in that look, said Grover. Yeah, whenever I see it—and that's every time I see
you
—I get the
urge
.

Henry said nothing.

Smug bullshit, said Grover. Pussy smartass. Come on. Don't think you can take on an old-timer like myself, eh?

I'm not going to fight you.

You're not, are you?

No, said Henry, still going on the piano, even smiling for the small audience gathered in the room.

Don't bullshit me. Outside. Come on. You and me.

But now Edgar Diaz came from his office. When he saw Grover, he quickly took him by the arm and led him to the elevator. He said he was no longer welcome here. However, Grover's ban from the Beekman didn't stop the employees' jokes from coming at the end of each night:

Yep, that's right, I hear Grover's outside on First Avenue for two hours. He looks angry, Henry. Well, don't worry, we'll get someone to walk you home.

THIRTEEN

N
ight after night in his apartment, Henry did battle his sinking heart at the piano. But he would transform his pain into music. He had no choice. He went to J. Van Gundy's and used the piano there. Orion, the man with the bourbon-wet mustache, and the two from the neighboring villages in Italy, could tell by the hostile look of him that he hadn't come to socialize, and they let him work on his songs undisturbed. (He had many new ones.) He was home by dawn, and slept till noon. His days were spent looking for Marshall Fleming. He often had nightmares about that poor man, ones in which he saw Fleming starving in doorways or being robbed of his last dollars by a band of kids from inside an empty train car in the small hours of the night, and another in which a horse, pulling tourists in a carriage through Central Park, trampled Fleming underfoot. After this last dream, he considered ringing Fleming at his apartment. He got all the way to his street. But fearful, he retreated.

Still, he checked for Fleming in Riverside Park. He went there today. A storm was hitting New York. Henry didn't own boots, and water came through holes in his black shoes making his feet wet. Trees swung mad in the wind. On none of the benches did he see Fleming. He stopped in at the tavern on Amsterdam. He wasn't here, either. But Henry thought he'd take a seat at the bar and have a beer until the rain passed. Maybe Fleming would show between now and then. He did hope so.

The tavern was filthy, and for that reason kept dark. Pink insulation hung down through crevices in the ceiling. It smelled of grease. Five rain-soaked men just off a nightshift sat quietly at the bar. Henry kept checking the door for Fleming. He prayed he'd come in looking clean and rested. For some reason Henry had linked his own welfare to this outcome.

Raising his pint glass to his mouth, he looked up, the sound of the bathroom door snapping closed had caught his attention. He saw a woman step from the back of the room. A phone behind the bar was ringing, and the woman, whose every move Henry watched with great intrigue, signaled for the bartender to answer. This clearly irked the bartender. But he picked up. When it turned out the caller wasn't looking for this woman, she moaned in frustration. Which caused the bartender to shout:

I told you you can't take phone calls here.

Blah, blah, blah, she said. She turned to Henry, and without pausing, went, It's that my phone isn't working. I live just upstairs. She pointed towards the ceiling.

Henry noticed her hands showed more years than her face. She stood close to him, her tall healthy body leant on the bar, her left leg pumping up and down, in agitation. She was saying:

There was a time when to use any phone at all you
had
to come down to the bar. A time when there was one phone in the whole town and everyone shared it. And
now
what? You ask a bartender if you can use his phone…and…and…it's, We don't allow freeloaders, which is what he said to me. I've used his phone
twice.
So what? I happen to have
just
a landline, and it's broken, and it's about as much fun trying to get the telephone company over to your house to fix anything as it is to sit in a shit-hole like this, surrounded by so many winners.

She paused, drinking. Tell me your name.

It's Henry…Henry Schiller.

Henry Schiller, she repeated, giving her head a quick shake.

She was in her late thirties or early forties. She wasn't so attractive, but she was in good physical shape. She wore tight blue jeans tucked into a pair of leather boots and her chest was large. A long piece of white ribbon was tied into her blond hair, the satin of which was made thin by the kind of nervous rubbing that she was doing to it at present. Keeping her eyes on Henry, she said, I'm Mallory. And if your phone ever goes out, Henry, and you need to call someone, you can come over to my house. I mean that. You live in the neighborhood?

I don't, no.

Doesn't matter. You come over. I live upstairs. I'm not in-town all the time. I'm an actress. I travel for work. But if I'm in town and you need to use the phone, you just come. You can use my phone. While you're at it, drink a cup of coffee, have some tea. I'm not going to make you a martini—she drew her glass close to her mouth—but who knows, maybe I will. If I'm in the mood. And maybe you really need a martini and—

Maybe, said Henry.

Right. Maybe you
have to have
a martini. Her energy seemed to leave her all at once. She sat pensively with her head sunk between her strong tan shoulders. Looking straight ahead, she said, I've been drinking martinis, Henry. I've been
drinking
, so don't mind me.

Henry didn't mind her in the least.

My phone was working forty-eight hours ago, she told him. I hadn't pulled it out of the socket yet. But I get this call…a call, Henry—and it's from Charles. Charles and I, we've been in a relationship five years. We live here in New York, and over there—she pointed towards the shadowed entrance—in Los Angeles, where we do a lot of work. The
funny
thing about Charles's call, Henry, is that that morning, before leaving the apartment, he tells me I'll see him later. He said
that
and now he's calling from our home in Los Angeles. He's calling from Los Angeles because he's flown there that morning, instead of going to a business meeting, which is where he told me he was going when he left the house seven hours earlier. So, I say, What are you doing in Los Angeles, Charles? And what does he say? he says, I'm not coming home. Very calmly, like nothing's wrong…like nothing's happened. You know when people do that, Henry…when they know they've fucked up royally and they take that
everything's normal
voice? I'm not coming home, that's what he says. Because Mallory…I think it's over.
Think
it's
over
? I say. What do you mean? And he says, I mean, it's over. And I say to him, Do you want to tell me what you mean, Charles? I mean, really…tell me what you
mean
. And he says, If you want to know the truth…I'm disappointed in our sex life and…and…and I don't feel like…get this, Henry…you won't believe what he says, he says, I don't feel like a man because I'm not
free
to go around
fucking
as many women as I want. Okay? So that's what he tells me, Henry. And this was two days back when my phone still worked, before I'd ripped it out of the wall.

Henry watched her dark lips move and her long pale throat tense and un-tense while this speech poured from her. Her brow was knitted over light eyes, and her chin slightly trembling. A strand of her hair, long and blond and damp from the rain, was being twisted in her left hand next to her ear.

She said, Charles went up the West Coast six months ago to visit an old college friend who's been living in a sex-commune growing fruits and vegetables and fucking for hours every day for
six years.
And get this, Henry, at this mental ward they call a commune, they've got philosophies about
life
and how we're meant to live it, and living up to your
sexual potential
is one of their main tenets. They believe you have to be out there
fucking fucking fucking
all the time, Henry, and that all mental and physical illness result from the sexual limitations men
and
women put on themselves by having just one partner.

Mallory explained to him how at the commune monogamy was believed to be the cause of cancer, heart disease, even schizophrenia. Because a man's
brain
always leads him to the next woman. But most men are telling themselves,
No,
I can't do that. I can't fuck her…I
cannot
fuck
her
…just this one here, my wife, my one and only, because these are the rules and I like my life enough not to break them. I have a home, a bed and comfort…And so my sex life begs for more, begs for change…
begs
…so what. So life isn't perfect. I don't need perfection. In other words he creates barriers in his head—
walls
, Henry,
walls
—doesn't let himself think about what he
really
wants…and what he
really
needs…and this process is devastating to men, they say, because they're built to want to fuck everything that moves.

Her hands came down flat on the bar, her tense fingers spread wide apart.

In the commune, she told him, one of the rules is that if you're walking along and feel like having sex, man
or
woman, you can ask someone to do it and they have to consent. Deny the privilege, you're kicked off the premises. That's the rule, Henry.

The rule?

It gets worse. Three sessions a day…
three
…every day, each one forty-minutes long, you and an assigned partner just go at it…you
fuck
, Henry, according to a schedule. Repulsive, right? I mean, just disgusting.

Yes, Henry said. That's—

And at night…the worst of all…they come together to discuss something they call
sexual blocking
. It's what I was describing before: the act of refusing oneself permission to have a thought or desire for reasons of guilt or disgust or fear. And these psychotics out West, they spend their time getting it all out, telling their tales, trying to cure themselves of internal wounds
incurred
, they say, in these moments of denial. Fucking creepy, isn't it? I mean,
fucking…creepy
. So, anyway, Charles wants to move into this commune. He's acting like it's a medical emergency…like he's dying and this is the only way he can save himself. I even said to him, I said, So what, you're dropping out? And he said, I'm getting help.
Help
? Help, Mallory. I have to take care of my body, and so do you. Maybe you want to consider visiting a place like this one day. Not this one,
per se
, because I'm here and it wouldn't be good for either of us to be together here. But another commune, someplace else. You could live in a community that helps you to truly fulfill your
sexual potential
. And this was when I pulled the phone out of the fucking wall, Henry. I just yanked it out. And I haven't spoken to Charles since. I'm trying to get over him.

Henry watched her finish more than half her martini in one sip. But he was wrong to think alcohol was her sole means of forgetting. For, the next thing he knew, she was dragging him up to her apartment, biting and pulling at him, tearing at his clothes, in a dark hallway. She took her shirt over her head and pushed Henry's face into her large, supple breasts, and said, Like ‘em, Henry? Do ya?

Oh, yes, he said. Yes!

She pushed him through a door which led into her apartment. Another shove sent him straight back into the bedroom, and onto her bed. With her hands behind Henry's neck, she pushed his face down into her stomach and said, Take off my pants and fuck me.

However, she didn't give him the chance to remove her clothes, but started pulling on Henry's belt-buckle, undid it and slipped him out of his
pants. Mallory, seemingly in a great hurry, said, I'm on the pill. You can go right in. She then put him
inside her.

This full-bodied woman was now on top of him, moving to and fro. Henry feared for the place above his groin where he'd been stitched up. (This was purely mental. It had long since healed.). So he flipped her over onto her back. She seemed to like being taken so firmly around the waist. Going at it still, he began singing in his head:

You're making it.
You are making it.
You're making it.
You are making it.
You're making it.
You are making it.
You're making it.
You are making it.

Then he let these lyrics go, and lost himself in the act.

When they were finished, Mallory went to the bathroom. Henry saw that her room was in great disorder. There were clothes and half-filled water-glasses and newspapers and magazines everywhere. He stretched out on the bed, his mind still, his body tranquil. It occurred to him that he had seen a piano when entering the apartment. Hadn't he? He could have sworn he had. He put on underwear and went out of the bedroom. And there it was, a white standup piano wedged between over-stacked bookcases. Without sitting at the instrument, Henry's fingers came down on the keyboard. His right hand did a little trill. He played a verse of
Don't Fence Me In
. Before he knew it, though, the first chord of
Castrated New York
had rung out. He began to sing. In the middle of his playing, Mallory came from the bathroom. Naked, and with her blond hair tangled, her body fell heavily on the piano bench. In the slight movement of her shoulders was something flirtatious. Her eyes glimmered warmth. She asked him what it was she was hearing. He named the song. She made him play on, and on.

This is really good. You wrote it?

I did, he told her.

I'm impressed.

Are you? he said.

Very.

By nightfall, they were eating Italian on a side-street in the East 60s. Mallory couldn't get over his talents. She said he
had
something. Something undeniable.

But give me the chorus one more time.

He laughed, and began to sing for her.

They started dating. Henry told her he'd never been happier, a falsehood. Paula wasn't gone from his mind. He couldn't help feeling the occasional burst of rage, or the kind of hot sting which makes you grab the edge of the bathroom sink and curl your toes to regain control when you're brushing your teeth at night. He couldn't believe that he had never heard from her. The same with Dr. Andrews. He thought there must be something about himself which made it impossible for these women to give him an explanation before ending communication. Something in his character. He would get to the bottom of it, perhaps in a song. From various people he came by different stories about Paula. One, that she'd never come home from Europe. Or that she'd started up a relationship with a wealthy South African businessman and moved to Johannesburg. Henry preferred to know nothing about her. He was sure she was fine wherever she was. Perhaps playing violin. Perhaps not. Virtuosos were notorious for burning out fast.