Fall and Rise (29 page)

“You, the original anti-analysis man?”

“Dot didn't tell you? Strange. And she says, my analyst, to be as open as I can when I can and the situation legitimizes it, not when it's pure self-obsessive talk. So I'm going to tell you something which I hope won't kill it for us tonight. Drink up.”

I sip.

“More, more—take a big gulp. And probably we should sit on the couch for this one—not the bed yet.”

“Maybe you shouldn't say it. You might be ready but I might not be to hear it.”

“It's important you do. I might let this go with someone else—a pickup, if there's ever another one—or maybe I wouldn't. I might be less egotistical and unstable than I was—my analyst thinks so—but I don't know if I'm any more self-sacrificing and well-intentioned, except to someone I respect as much as you.”

“You have crabs.”

“Herpes. Good guess. It's dormant now, but let's not chance it flaring up overnight. If we use a condom it's impossible for you to get it. And before, you said—”

“Hold it, hold it, hold it.”

“You don't like them, or didn't used to, and how could you?—but unlike some women, you don't refuse to make love if I put one on.”

“Would you really even think twice about not telling a pickup you have herpes?”

“Yes. No. Wait, let me get your syntax straight. Would I really not? Would I really think twice? Be aboveboard, Peter. Since analysis—it's actually been since analysis that I got herpes, but not from my analyst. Maybe from Yatsuko.

She swears she doesn't have it and there's nothing I can do but believe her, since she's back in Japan. Doreen perhaps, but I'd never approach her about it because of what it could start. She'd claim she got it from me, if she doesn't already know she has it. Or even if she doesn't have it she'd then think she did and say I gave it to her to cripple her. Wasn't the pickup because she made me wear a condom that night and the few times after. She was afraid that every man she knew, except for her regular boyfriend, had herpes. As for some others—it's difficult to pinpoint whom and sometimes to locate them again, and what will I gain by it? A lesson's been learned from my screwing around. And it would be sheer magnanimity on my part to help the woman know she has it, something I don't feel inclined to being to the person who gave it to me. But if we use a condom—”

“Still too risky. There's this cesarean business if you get pregnant no matter how many years after—”

“I know about that. I can't get rid of it. I'll have to hang around for the rest of my life with it unless some genius comes up with a cure. It's a pain in the ass.”

“So, since we're not going to sleep together—”

“We could still fool around. You don't get herpes through the hand, though I wouldn't want you to do it with your mouth unless you—”

“I'll talk to my gynecologist to see what I can do in the future with a carrier. Now I better go,” and I start for the living room.

“Then just sleep over. I'm telling you, you can't get it unless I stick my dick in you. I'll wear pajamas. I'll wear my bathrobe in bed and keep my underpants on or change into a fresh pair.”

“I'm going home. All I'm asking from you now is to help me get a cab.”

“Damn. Fuck it! Piss! Oh hell, I'll drive you home.”

“You have a good parking spot. Is it good for tomorrow?”

“I think so.”

“Don't lose it. Just put me in a cab.”

“And if I hadn't told you I had herpes?”

“And if you hadn't?”

“I would have felt lousy. Worse. Suicidal to the point of kicking myself. Okay, get dressed. But take all the books I gave you. My one condition, or no cab.”

I change in the bathroom. He has his coat on when I come out and is holding my coat and bag and a shopping bag with the books in it.

“My umbrella!” I say. “I left it at the reception.”

“Want to phone them from here?”

“No, and I'm sure I'll never get it back.” I look inside the shopping bag. “Looks like more books than before.”

“It was supposed to be a surprise when you got home. I found some other Japanese books—beauties, one only on cats in Japanese art. Nobody loves cats more than you and maybe no people but the Chinese painted them better than the Japanese. You even have two Siamese. Sammy and Sue. How are they? I miss them. Getting off your couch with my pants plastered with their hair. Fish. I remember those long white sausages of slightly digested fish I'd step in early in the morning on my way to your john. And your temperament is practically Japanese. Soft—I'm talking about stereotypically Japanese—and your voice mostly softspoken and your attitude so polite and deferential in company, so it's perfect these gifts.”

“You don't know what you're saying about me, but you win.”

I have my coat on and he hands me the two bags. “My apologies, Helene. It's been a bad night for us and my library but not Japan. You might even think of changing fields after several close thumb-throughs of these books, so maybe also a bad night for American literature but Japan's gain.”

“You never know. But there are plenty of things Japanese I've always liked. Music, food—movies, other than for the ones where dogs walk around with human hands in their mouths.”

“With Yatsuko—talking about food—I never walked out of those restaurants the way most people say they have—hungry. She ate sparingly. I used to have my plateful and then half of hers. But one last time.” Before I can stop him he has his arms around me and is kissing my neck, working his way up diagonally to the jaw. I try to squirm free, bag of books drops to the floor. “What are you doing? You can't get herpes from kissing or hugging either, unless I've sores on my lips or open wounds on my fingertips which I've kissed with my herpes-infested lips. But I don't. Just on my dick.”

“God, was coming up here ever the mistake. What's next on your list, rape? Get off me?”

“After I leave you downstairs,” letting me go, “I'm going to whack off. Put vaseline on it, which I do only in extreme cases when I need a walloping release,” and he grabs his penis through the pants, “and jerk the thing till it hurts,” and demonstrates.

“Why do you have to elaborate so much? Don't answer.”

“I don't have to elaborate. I do have to answer. I'm disappointed, so I'm trying to be nasty as shit to you, which includes being graphic. But in the end, to myself, well—”

“Let's go.” I unlock the door and leave.

“Don't forget the bag of Japanese.” He gives it to me, “No, it's too heavy,” takes it back, and we wait for the elevator, standing several feet apart, and take it down, two of us against opposite walls watching the floor numbers light up. I say goodnight to Russell, who says “Don't be a stranger.” Peter whistles for a cab and says “You have enough money?”

“You don't think it's a little late to whistle so loudly for a cab?”

“Don't worry, they're my neighbors. And listen, Helene. Maybe in a few weeks—”

“Got ya.”

“Lunch I'm talking about. Only lunch. It's clear to me now that anything but that would never work.”

“We'll see.” He opens the door, leans forward to kiss my cheek and I pull back my head. “As I said, let me check with my doctor first to see if it's safe,” and I get in the cab.

He puts the bag of books on my lap. “You cunt.”

“Bull. You brought it on and have always brought it on and will continue to bring it on yourself,” and I slam the door.

“What?” he says through the window, and raps on it. “I didn't quite hear that. What, you cunt?”

The cabby's laughing.

“Don't you laugh, you moron,” Peter yells, and slams the cab roof with his hand.

“Hey,” the cabby says. “Hey! Hey!”

“Hundred-tenth off Riverside,” I say, “and don't get out, don't fight—please.”

“Okay,” and he drives away.

“I'm sorry about what happened back there. Any damage done to your cab, not that much could have been—”

“Is nothing. Not my cab. Forget, forget,” still angry.

He has an accent, kind of a high Russian voice, I look at his hack license: Jascha Papinsky. “
Vy
—excuse me—
vy Russki, da?
”

“
Da,
” smiling, “you speak?”

“Just those few words I learned at a party tonight, which I think are the same few words I learned at this same person's party last year. There were a number of
novy Amerikanets
there. You the same? New?”

“No understand.”

“The Soviet Union. Have you recently come from there?”

“
Novy
. Here. Yes. One year. Engineer. Too bad you not speak. I want to speak Russian for hours, but all Russian émigrés in New York is drivers of taxi, no riders. And old Russians many years here no more take taxi or look my name and to me not speak. Ah, my English very bad. A big problem.
Adres
. Take.”

He drives me to my building. For the whole ride from a tape deck beside him is some slow old jazz which I sit back and listen to and get to like. “Please wait till I'm in my building,” I say, paying him. “And if you could also be so nice. Since this neighborhood sometimes isn't safe. Wait till I wave to you from inside my building before you go? Understand?”

“Sure thing. Glad to.”

I have my keys out and leave the cab, unlock the lobby door, go in, look around, let the door close, ring for the elevator, and when it comes, look at the convex mirror on its wall to make sure no one's hiding inside. I wave to the driver, who beeps once, and take the elevator to my floor.

Sammy is speaking to me from behind the door second I step off the elevator. Sue had to be put to sleep because the pain from her terminal cancer was getting too great. I didn't tell Peter because he knew how close I was to my cats and how close they were to each other and by that time I didn't want his sympathy, genuine or false. “Okay, Sams, I'm coming—don't fly out the door.” Elevator closes, so even if he does run past me he can't get into the elevator, which he did once and it took me a while to find what floor he ended up on. I open the door, he's scratching the floor that he wants to jump up. I put down the bags, wiggle my fingers for him to come and he stares at my stomach while he hums and then jumps at the spot he stared at and making squealing sounds runs up my chest till he's lying across my shoulder, purring, head against my cheek. I walk into the kitchen with him, set him down, he's finished his food and is pushing the plate with his forehead for more. I open a jar of strained-veal baby food and spoon two globs of it onto his plate, leave the spoon on the plate because he likes to lick it, drink a glass of seltzer, undress, shower, take two aspirins, brush my teeth and floss them and massage the gums with the brush's rubber tip and get into bed. That's it with parties for me, at least for a month, even if it is the season. Write that down. I jump out of bed—Sammy, sleeping next to me, gets startled and jumps off the bed and runs out of the room—get my appointment calendar and write on December's four pages a letter a day with “onth” on the 31st: “No more parties for me at least for a month.” And at the bottom of the last page: “Meet people instead for breakfast or lunch, read for and outline spring term, finish 30pp of the book, just finish the book! try not to even see a man after 5 except maybe new year's eve, and even there, but who'll that be?—Oh, no woes if you stay home alone that night and on great wine and black forest ham and poached salmon fillets get high.”

I'm reading a student's paper on “Postconstructionism and Morphology in the Postmodern American Novel”—I'm sure he has the first term wrong, if he's not sending up that critical school, and even if he is, the entire department by now, students and teachers both, has to know how I hate those words and themes, even parodies of them, since there's rarely anything in them for me except material and writing to help put me to sleep when I can't sleep—when the phone rings. Answering service closed more than two hours ago. I don't like answering it, as at this hour there's a good chance it's a crank. “Yes?”

“Then you got home okay. Good. I was worrying.”

“Who is this?”

“Excuse me, because why should I have thought you'd recognize my voice? Arthur Rosenthal. And excuse me too for calling so late.”

“Thanks for your concern, Arthur, but it's too late to even talk about it being too late.”

“Now I'm very sorry I called. I didn't think it'd be that late—late italicized I mean. Because I called only fifteen minutes ago—”

“You couldn't have. I've been home more than half an hour.”

“I did. And a half-hour before that, and a half-hour before that too. Maybe I just missed you the second half-hour ago and you were someplace else the last half-hour—in another room, am I wrong?”

“It's possible I was in the shower then and didn't hear it, so all right. Still—”

“Anyway, I certainly called, but that's not to say I couldn't have dialed the wrong number and that number didn't answer. But I don't often dial the wrong number no matter how late at night. Maybe five hundred to one. I can't even recall the last time. A year ago—two.”

“But you do often call late at night.”

“No. I only called you to see if you got home okay, and when you didn't answer, half-hour after that and then this call. When you didn't answer the first two times I called, I assumed you weren't home yet and that it'd be safe to call now.”

“Did you ever assume I might not have answered deliberately and that each time you rang you were disturbing me more and more, waking me up each time?”

“I should have assumed that. But it wasn't what happened, was it? Because you said that a half-hour ago—”