Ladies' Man (26 page)

I woke up Saturday late, close to ten-thirty. I remembered two dreams: one a nightmare, one a comedy skit The nightmare was a one-scene deal. I was standing in an arena with two other guys; we were slaves in ancient Rome. Across the arena big-horned bulls snorted and pawed. Between us and the bulls was a wriggling clump of fanged snakes. The bulls were supposed to charge across the snakes to get us. If the snakes killed the bulls we would be granted our freedom. If not, we would be gored to death. The nightmare ended with the sensation of snake fangs flying into my face. The snakes had attacked us before the bulls did.

The comedy was a little easier to take.

I was standing outside a big modern house. It was nighttime and there was a party going on inside. It was all women. A dwarf left the house and came up to me. He told me the party was shit because all the women were frigid. It was impossible for a guy to pick up a girl. I stood there thinking it might have less to do with the women's frigidity and more to do with the fact that this dude was a dwarf. As if he read my mind, he said, "I know what you're thinking, and it's not because I'm a dwarf. My friend had the same goddamn problem in there:" Then this friend of his comes out to join us. He's also a dwarf. The end.

I noticed the clock and panicked. It was my weekend and I felt like I'd lost precious hours by sleeping. It was my "leisure" time and I was blowing it.
What
leisure time? That's all I
had
was leisure time. I knew I should read the classifieds again, but I couldn't even think about it.

I lay in bed fingering my stomach muscles. I was supposed to do something that day but I couldn't remember what. I wanted to take a shot at jogging, but there was something else. Montauk. That was it. La Donna and I had planned to rent a car and drive out to Montauk. We had' meant it to be a mood piece, a romantic, poetic thing like going to Coney Island in the winter, but even at the time we made those plans it seemed ludicrous to me. The romantic sentiment was totally out of sync with the anger and tension we felt around each other. It was her idea so I didn't sly no, but I knew it would be a bummer. If you're not happy with each other and you plan a thing like that, all you wind up thinking about is how goddamn cold it would be, what a long son-of-a-bitch ride it would be and the absurdity and irony of the whole gesture itself.

Outside my window, the sun shone colorlessly. It was a bright whitish day devoid of blue, or even gray. I thought of Montauk, that long rocky deserted point at the tip of Long Island whipped by winter wind and bloodless bleached sunlight. In a way the whole trip would be appropriate. Just her and me standing in the deserted cold bleakness right on the edge, the end. Suddenly I felt great relief that she wasn't around anymore. It was over. It really sucked, the last few months. It used to be good, it used to be real… in the beginning. There used to be some real emotional feelings, loving feelings, whether we were always fucked up or not; the good feelings were there, the pleasure was there, but now it was really like February Montauk Point and it was over.
That
was over. But people could change. Maybe someday we'd do it up right. Me teaching her singing. She was right, we weren't helping each other just now. We both had a lot of moves to make and they required elbow room. Yup yup.

I fantasized about La Donna coming back. It was very possible. She still had her boots and her sheet music in the closet. As a matter of fact, I would have laid even money on her coining back; those were brand-new boots. She would at least have to make a guest appearance to get her boots.

I turned on the TV and watched
Soul Train
. I still couldn't get out of bed. I didn't know what to do with the day. It was after eleven. I wasn't going out to Montauk but I wasn't getting up, either. It was almost noon. I whimpered in frustration. The fifty dancing kids on the box seemed to be making fun of my paralysis. I leapt put of bed and turned off the TV. Love and ache keep you strong and handsome. I decided to jog. Jogging, swimming and biking were the three best exercises for your heart because the motion and exertion were constant and rhythmic. When I opened my door, the
Post
fell from the jamb and lay headline up on the hall floor.

I trotted down to Riverside Park in sweat pants, long Johns, a turtleneck and a hooded sweat shirt. I hadn't run since Basic Training. The day remained colorless. The wind pummeled everything with sudden jerky gusts.

Squatting on my hunches I bounced up and down on the balls of my feet. I spread my legs and stretched right and left, my hands on my thighs. I rested one foot against a car hood and pushed my chest against my knee, then switched feet. I sat on the asphalt running path, held the soles of my feet together in a modified lotus position and jiggled my knees for, three minutes. I was stretched, ready. I headed uptown to Eighty-sixth Street. There I would turn around and run down to Seventy-second, a total distance of one mile and one block. I did the nine blocks up to Eighty-sixth without too much trouble,, then headed downtown. It was easier than I'd imagined. La Donna kept me going. I felt like a 1930s Olympic Nazi with bulging tendons running for the sun, the snowcaps. Love, heart, pride and youth. New breed. Blond, with visions. La Donna watching and glowing. By the time I got back down to Seventy-seventh Street where I'd started I was dead.
The wind was sucking out my lungs, my knees were exploding from pain. Five more blocks. I staggered more than ran to Seventy-second Street. Seventy-second was the end of the path, the end of the park, became a mass of construction equipment, wooden barricades and beyond that the entrance to the West Side Highway.

I was huffing, hands on hips, circling slowly, staring down at the octagonal asphalt tiles.

There was a playground at Seventy-seventh Street and I figured maybe I'd watch some kids play basketball for a while.

It was deserted except for two kids. The wind was too bitter and gusty for ball. One was playing alone. He was black, about twelve years old, a tall stringbean dressed in an apple green warm-up suit with white pip-ing on the legs and arms. He looked serious as he hunkered down the court, gave a slight jump, pumped the ball with bent elbows behind his ears and missed his shot. He missed most of his shots and never smiled. When he pivoted toward the basket I saw the name MELVIN stitched on the back of his jacket. The other kid was a chubby, teen-age Puerto Rican lounging on a bench nearby. Next to his leg was a titanic portable radio. He wore a stadium coat, cuffed dungarees, heavy horn-rimmed glasses and sported the beginnings of a mustache. On his sneakers he'd inked a power fist. He sat there picking his nose and watching Melvin play. The radio was blaring a Joni Mitchell song, and I couldn't think of a more inappropriate sound to hook up with that kid.

Something was pissing me off. I felt this mood of time being wasted. An enraged sadness.

I sauntered under the basket, took one of Melvin's rebounds, flipped it up in a half-assed hook shot which went in and passed it back to him. He gazed at me with that serious face, accepted my presence because to tell me to split would require talking and took a jumper which missed. I snagged his rebound, finger-whistled to the Porto kid and threw the basketball at his radio. He caught it, started to throw it back, but I waved him in. He took two steps toward us, thought better of it and lobbed the ball at me. I threw it right back at him. Melvin looked away, stood by the pole frowning.

"C'mon!" I waved him toward us.

He shook his head and tossed the ball to me. I
bounced it to Melvin under the basket and he hunched, twisted and jumped. No basket.

I walked toward the playground exit, passing the kid on the bench.

"Why don't you play, man?"

"Nah." He smiled and shrugged, embarrassed.

"C'mon, it's Saturday."

"Nah, man leg is fucked up." He looked away and went through the motions of rubbing his calf.

"That black dude says you can't play for shit."

He half-laughed and waved me away.

"You gonna let him get away with that?"

He began fiddling with his radio, wishing I was somewhere else. I felt like I was torturing him, but I also felt like he was torturing me. Both of them. I left the playground.

Upstairs, I peeled off my turtleneck and sweat shirt and did my hundred and fifty. For the first time in months my sit-ups were an exertion. That was from the running. If you're running and doing exercises always do the running first because that makes the exercises more difficult, and one rule of thumb around physical development is "No gain without pain."

After a shower I sat down with the
Post
and forced myself to scan the classifieds. The
Post
wasn't the right paper for that but they had a few pages full of positions for accountants, typists, IBM operators—all crap I wouldn't do for full pay pension at thirty-five.

I was feeling really shitty and depressed and a little bit in trouble.

I skimmed other parts of the paper. Thirty-two villagers in Yemen were killed by a marauding pack of wild dogs over a period of ten days; that rated four inches in a corner column on page 32 bordering a three-quarter-page Lane Bryant ad. The President's wife delivered a speech at the University of Akron. A scientist discovered a new cure for hemorrhoids in rats. I was reading with a mixture of despair and boredom, listlessly turning pages with the same energy someone would swish a hand fan with while sitting on a porch in 95-degree weather.

On the page preceding the sports section, I spotted a small heavily bordered notice:

My first though was scoring coeds. Then I flashed on sitting in a classroom and learning something. Discussing something. Reading a good book. Shopping for school clothes. September. The fall. Scoring coeds. A diploma. Being a kid again. Dobie Gillis in college. Doing something with myself.

"Pinnacle."

"Yeah. Is Roberta Lacey there?"

"Speaking."

"Yeah. I just read your ad in the
Post
for Pinnacle and I'm interested in applying. What's the story on admission? What's the procedure?"

"Well, you fill out an application, mail it to us, and we'll send you a date to take an exam. Exams are given every Saturday in March."

"Whoa, whoa, what exam?"

"It's a three-hour exam every applicant has to take. It's all reading comprehension—vocabulary skills, written skills. There's no math whatsoever."

"That's no problem. I was Dean's List at Baruch." I felt like a jerk saying that, but I wanted to impress her, inform her that she was talking to a special person, no schlub. "And that's another thing, I already got three years done. Can I get full credit for that?"

"Well, in order to get a degree you have to take at least forty-five credits at Pinnacle, but we give life credits, credits for whatever work you're involved in outside of school."

"I was a door to door salesman." I laughed. "How many credits for that?"

"We would have to discuss it."

I wondered if I could get credits for breathing. "Also… I don't have to take Corrective English or Citizenship, do I?"

"It's not that type of program."

I was almost ashamed to be interested in Pinnacle. I was afraid I'd wind up sitting in a classroom with a lot of pencil-heads, dishwashers, beautician majors, "America! America!" jerks. I felt like I would be degraded, would appear weak and unhip.

"It's coed, right?"

"It's open to everyone."

"Yeah? And look, I'm thirty, I'm not gonna be sitting with kids…"

"The median age over the last two years was twenty-nine point four. Is that close enough?"

"Hey look, I'm not trying to grill you, you know, but this is very heavy for me."

"Why don't you come in, pick up an application and we'll talk about it, okay?"

"Sure." She had the power to change my life, save my life. "Can I make an appointment?"

"The first time I have open is Monday at two."

"I'll be there. My name is Kenneth Becker."

She slowly repeated my name as she wrote it down.

"Also, I'm gonna be pretty strapped for money. I can get these loans?"

"Eighty-six percent of our students are on loans and grants."

"Yeah? Also, I think I'm interested in English and teaching or something like that. What kind of courses…"

"Look, why don't you come in. We'll talk Monday."

"Sure, sure. Thanks a lot. See you then."

I felt like a million bucks. This was gonna be great. I
wanted to call somebody, tell somebody. I still needed a job, but I felt like I could move now, really make some heavy moves now. I got up and aimlessly wandered around my apartment. Maybe I would meet some dynamite people. I imagined hanging out in the cafeteria with some guys—all of us unemployed but bright, hungry, going places. Nice-looking women, intelligent, aggressive. Classmates. Classmates.

My phone rang. Pinnacle calling back?

"Hello?"

"Hi." It was a girl.

"Hello?"

"Boy, how quickly we forget."

It was Kristin. Shit. I didn't want to deal with her.

"Oh, hey! How you doin'?"

"Good, and you?"

"Fine. What can I do for you?" I didn't want to tell her about Pinnacle and get involved in a long thing on the phone.

"Nothing, I was just calling to say hello."

"Oh yeah!" I said with false brightness. I didn't know what else to say.

"Actually, I was feeling a little down."

"Huh. What's the problem?"

"I don't know. Nothing."

"Huh… Something with your sister?"

"Yeah, I guess, no, I don't know," she whined.