A Fan's Notes (37 page)

One of the prettier girls (her legs were straight and there was something like intelligence in the way her eyes were set in and complemented her fine brow) did speak to me one day. Winking as lasciviously as ever any of the men had, she nodded in the direction of Lolita, clutched open and cover face up against my chest, and with a great sigh remarked to me the book
’
s alarming sexuality. That sigh was wrought with heavy sensuality, as though merely calling back the huge and lustful appetites of the book
’
s characters all but prostrated her with fatigue. She was the only one who had so far spoken to me, I liked her intelligent looks and fine legs, I pitied her the fake sophistication of her predicament, and I should have accepted her pleasantry for what it was. But I was by then drunk on Nabokov
’
s prose and loathed her facile misreading of the author
’
s intentions.

“
Quite the contrary,
”
I said.
“
Lolita is about as sexy as Little Women.
”

My tone was tendentious and abrupt, and though she came often afterward, she never spoke again. Her
mon-cher
barrister, a black-tied, horn-rimmed, hairy-nosed, and towering old fraud (as might be expected, he was, I later learned, very good at The Law), continued to speak, invariably remarking his wonder that I was still
“
on Lolita.
”
He
’
d wag his horn rimmed head, smile secretively, wink, and proclaim his astonishment:
“
Still on Lolita?
”
Then he
’
d issue a past master
’
s chuckle by way of letting me know that he and I were joined in some scatological conspiracy. It never occurred to him that I might be reading the book for the fourth or fifth time, and as the days passed I know he came to regard me as either depraved or the most moronic reader in Christendom.
“
Still on Lolita!
”
became a recurring din, like a daily summons to waken. In response, I gave up nodding my moronic assent and to please him came after a time to feign utter cretin ism. He
’
d shout, and prior to answering I
’
d knit my brow into a painful knot and fake a tortured reading, zealously and gropingly forming
“
all them hard words
”
with my mouth.
“
It
’
s kinda hard reading,
”
I
’
d say.
“
It is, huh?
”
he
’
d shout, solicitously steering his paramour toward the boudoir. Eventually they both came to view me with that compassion one reserves for burlapped monks and homely girls.
“
Really hard reading!
”
I
’
d exclaim as the door was closing in preparation to their erotic play. Then I would hear them giggle and had a grand time envisioning them wagging their superior heads in sympathy with my driveling addle-headedness.

With both his money and his time, the Counselor was easy. He had an open face, suggesting timidly gregarious possibilities, as though, were he approached, he would be willing to be drawn into discussions of the relative merits of best-sellers or the batting averages of baseball players. Beneath that blond brush cut, behind those clear blue eyes and even white teeth, though, there resided the intelligence of an authentic cynic. The Counselor possessed this Ishmael-like quality, this thing ungroomable, this cowlick in his psyche; and watching him listen to one tale of woe or another, I was never sure whether he listened in sympathy or with scarcely contained amusement. Watching him listen, I was never at ease. After hearing and seeing them through their troubles during office hours, he had no heart for ridding himself of his clients during nocturnal hours; and all sorts of them, wringing their hands, mad with grief, and outraged at a million injustices, gamboled in and out of the apartment, more often than not chanting hurts that could not be remedied by law, man or God
’
s.

Ham-handed, enormous-muscled, and great-shouldered Studs—the plural always summoned up for me visions of multiple penises—had sleek black hair, a sleek black mustache, a matching leather jacket, and hip-hugging dungarees that ex posed both his bowed legs and his
virilia
. By profession Studs was a plaintiff. Or the Counselor suspected he was and for that reason refused to take any more of his cases.
“
What do

you mean?
”
I said. Studs, the Counselor explained, had been in a series of one-car accidents, cars that had missed turns and careened into virginal trees, cars that had hurtled headlong into solid bridge abutments, cars that had somehow and rather miraculously gone out of control, smashed up, and whose passenger roster had invariably been made up of four or five of Studs
’
s black-jacketed and adoring disciples. There was, besides, the Counselor continued, something somewhat peculiar in that only the owner-driver, who couldn
’
t sue himself, who was always heavily insured and who was of course to be sued by the others, and Studs, the ubiquitous passenger, were the only ones left unscathed by these mishaps. Or rather, as the Counselor explained,
“
The only things Studs hurt were his fists.
”
His motley and unfortunate followers came up with a superb collection of swollen lips, cracked teeth, broken ribs, squashed noses, and hideously outsized purple-yellow shiners.
“
In fairness to Studs,
”
the Counselor said with mock solemnity,
“
he might have strained himself when they were pushing the car into the tree.
”
Then I had this vision of this black-jacketed mob selecting some innocent maple, shoving the Chevrolet down some incline and into it, and broke up laughing as I saw the goons solemnly lining up before the bemuscled Studs to have their injuries administered. In both their duncedom and their wickedness there was something touching, and the thought that Studs was beating the rapacious auto insurance companies out of dollars made me admire him immensely.

When I got to know Studs better, I suggested that he invite me on one of his accident parties; but he explained that I had no income to have
“
loss of
”
and hence wouldn
’
t be worth much in the eyes of the companies. He laughed as though he were joking, and at the first opportunity I told the Counselor what he had said to me.
“
That
’
s the worst of it,
”
the Counselor said, and went on to explain that over his accident-prone career Studs had become altogether too conversant with such legal jargon as
“
loss of income,
”
“
pain and suffering,
”
and
“
contributory negligence,
”
those determining factors in whether or not and how much one collects from the companies. The Counselor suspected it only a matter of time before Studs began bringing him negligence cases before they occurred and seeking his judgment as to whether slipped discs or the absence of upper teeth would be held dearer by a jury.
“
You, Studs,
”
the Counselor would say, his voice chilling with menace,
“
are going to find your black Wop of an ass right in Sing Sing and I
’
ll be goddammed if I
’
ll go with you.
”

Immediately be it said in the Counselor
’
s ethical defense that Studs never admitted a knowledge of what the Counselor was intimating and always in a histrionic way proclaimed his innocence of any such collusion. His bowed legs skimming up and down the carpeted living room, he would feign hurt at the Counselor
’
s implications, almost sagging to the floor under the awful weight of such immoderate and unjust accusations. Like most Italians he was a consummate, if not superb, actor, and at such accusations he was marvelous at blessing himself, raising his hands in protest to the heavens, or, both hands slammed and forming a rood across his chest, swearing on his mother
’
s grave or saying,
“
Couns, as the holy Virgin was the mother of the infant Jesus—
”
“
Is all that really necessary?
”
the Counselor would say.

Studs admired the Counselor greatly. He dwelt in that dim-witted world of roadhouses, western music, brawling, Genesee-Horse Ale, aborted girls, and B-class movies; and he de rived vast pleasure that a man of the Counselor
’
s tweedy refinement could speak his language and refer to him as a black-assed Wop.
“
The Counselor,
”
he told me in breathless admiration on our first meeting,
“
has got a lot of savvy—I mean, savvy.
”

Because I was the Counselor
’
s friend, Studs soon developed a crush on me, too, and within the dimensions of his B-class milieu began to romanticize about me. Detecting that I seldom left the apartment, that I lay there unshaven and morose, he at one point got it into his head that I was
“
on the lam
”
from something (as indeed I was) and
“
holed up
”
in the Counselor
’
s apartment until the latter determined it a propitious time to surrender me to the authorities (I
’
d volunteer to
“
turn state
’
s evidence
”
). In whatever manner, my paranoia presently seeped through to him, and he became convinced that the forces of authority were hotly pursuing me. Anybody you want me to take care of? became Studs
’
s daily query to me. It was always put with such snarling sincerity that there were times I wished I could summon out of my past an image of someone I loathed enough to have his jaw broken, undoubtedly one of Studs
’
s specialties. Like most Americans, though, I had led that numbingly chaste and uncommitted existence in which one forms neither sympathies nor antipathies of any

enduring consequence. Hence, sighing, I was invariably forced
to respond,
“
No, not today, Studs.
”

“
Well, baby,
”
he
’
d say, flexing his enormous biceps,
“
if you ever think of anybody, you just let Studs know.
”

“
A deal,
”
I always responded. The two new friends would beam boundless admiration on one another.

Still another of these
“
clients
”
was Oscar. The son of a wealthy New York realtor, he was Ivy League from his molded haircut to his grained, expensive loafers, bespectacled, and so gaunt he listed. Though a
“
high
”
Episcopalian, his wife had obtained from him a civil divorce and until the Counselor had rectified the matter had refused to let him see his six remarkably handsome children. Removing a photo of the latter from his wallet, he was utterly mad (which he was, it turned out, anyway) on showing it about the apartment, and there were days when, for approbation, he thrust it at me a half-dozen times. The print was much soiled and tattered from intense and loving care.

On the grim morning I met Oscar, he crept stealthily into the apartment and without acknowledging me slumped furiously down at the end of the davenport, almost atop my malodorous and stockinged feet. Though it was a cool day, he was sweating heavily, and in the forehead harbors of his receding hairline were globs of perspiration as full-bodied and shiny as Vaseline. Where the perspiration had seeped into the hair, there were dark wet splotches, giving his head a sad-comic checkered effect. It was the first time I had seen an Ivy League cut so ill-kempt (one brushes and brushes to achieve this farcical composure and still grief comes!). Sitting there, totally oblivious of me, Oscar once, twice, three times emitted the groan of a man in terrible agony. Hardened to agony, I ignored him. Then he broke down and began to weep uncontrollably, the racking sobs hideously contorting his spindly frame. As much in annoyance as in sympathy, I rose, walked to the kitchen, poured a stiff drink of whisky, returned, and handed it to him. Ten minutes had elapsed and that proffered drink was the first acknowledgment either of us had made of the other
’
s presence. Sipping, he began to talk, often weeping as he did so. The police, cab drivers, Mafia types, mystery men—men, all sorts of men, were searching for him.