A Fan's Notes (38 page)

“
What for?
”
I said.

To beat him up, to knock him down, to kick his teeth in, to rip his intestines out. For what else? He sat there sneering at me, his frail and empty hand clutching fiercely at his imagined eviscerated parts. He left me no doubt that he considered me simple-minded.

“
I see,
”
I said, nodding knowingly, much as a few months before I had acquiesced to the Negro with the little man inside him.

After that I just kept pouring drinks for Oscar until, in no time at all, he got drunk and passed out. Removing his tweed jacket, his black-rimmed glasses, his Scotch grained loafers, I tenderly (I was as solicitous as a maiden aunt) laid the

poor bastard out on the davenport, put a wool blanket over him, and lovingly tucked him in. While doing so I could feel his skeletal ribs through both blanket and shirt, and it occurred to me that Oscar was so distraught he hadn
’
t eaten properly in weeks. For two hours I sat in a chair across from him and took pleasure in his heavy, contented sleep, punctuated only now and again by a startling and heart-breaking groan. When the Counselor came in that night, he looked at Oscar, rolled his eyes up to his brows, wagged his head in feigned and weary exasperation, and proceeded into the kitchen. Following him there and cornering him, I came as close as I would ever come to expressing my concerns about
the behavior of the apartment
’
s habitués.

“
Of course, you know,
”
I said,
“
that this Oscar, or whatever the fuck his name is, is sick. I mean, nuttier than a fruitcake.
”

The Counselor laughed.
“
He
’
s all right,
”
he said.
“
Been through hell. He
’
ll pull out of it.
”
Then, by way of an after thought and as kind of consummate explanation, he said,
“
We
’
re all sick, Freddy.
”

The Counselor rolled his eyes again, let his tongue sag out over his chin, and put on his most cretinous facade. He, too, was sick, he was saying. He was also testing my nihilism.

I met that test.

“
Actually,
”
I offered in mock protest,
“
I
’
m sicker than Oscar is, and all I
’
m really worried about is your figuring he needs the davenport more than me.
”

“
No sweat,
”
the Counselor assured me. Still he played the slobbering idiot. Rapping me gingerly on the pate, as though fearful a heavier blow would unleash unimaginable demons, he repeated,
“
No sweat at all. There ain
’
t nobody sicker than you, Freddy.
”

I smiled my agreement.

Many girls came to the apartment. The Counselor, bless his black and insatiable heart, often had one going out the back door as another came in the front. He was most magnanimous with his castoffs. One arrived one azure and sunny Saturday and departed the following gray and rainy Friday, leaving then only because she was the next day being married. She had pale, heartless eyes; high, prominent, and lovely cheekbones; and the nostrils of her pert nose dilated constantly with an incandescent and disarming contempt for all humanity. At the end of the second day she took me, and for the final five of her prenuptial days we lay naked about the apartment, drinking and making love till we went limp with exhaustion. She did not talk at all, and because I had my own pain I did not attempt to draw her out. At one undetected point the alarmingly hostile dilations of her nostrils abated, and twice each day she made phone calls, to her mother and to her fiancé, calls both to ac count for her whereabouts (presumably a resort hotel in the Catskills) and to explain that she was thinking things through and that everything was going to be okie-dokie. Often during the calls we engaged, at her perverse insistence, in that cruelly cynical sex (so that her conversations were punctuated with the laborious breathing of love and brought solicitous queries from the other end), afterward slumbering heavily in each other
’
s arms. It was through her I discovered my animal nature. Then it was Friday, and as arbitrarily as she had come she went. Two, three weeks later I saw her on the street with her husband. Oscar, whose wallet always contained, along with that soiled print, plenty of green, had taken to buying me beers during the long afternoons; and walking down the main drag toward a favored saloon, I heard Oscar, his voice tremulous, say,
“
Isn
’
t that—?
”
and looked up to see them.

Both were handsome and elegantly dressed; they were laughing and chatting at a furious clip; they were in love. In the moment of our passage I studied them as well as I could. The man was prettily handsome, but not without a rough gaiety that lent him virility; his suit was dark and beautifully cut. But it was she who astonished me. All pink and bounce she was. Her mute apathy had led me to believe that she was moronic or so repressed as to be unredeemable; but now, with her cheeks fierce pink with bliss, dressed in her pink and white checkered dress, bouncing along on her pink pumps, she appeared the unqualified vision of the health-exuding, intelligent, and attractive
“
young married.
”
Passing me, and with a barely perceptible withdrawal of attention from her husband, she all but shouted,
“
Hi, Fred!
”
In her voice was conquest, and that conquest forced the blood to my face. This, she seemed to announce, is ever so much better than that. At first I was furious, but the ire instantly subsided and, grabbing hold of Oscar
’
s arm, my body broke and bent under the weight of sudden and unrestrained laughter. Why take it out on me? It was that week of degradation that had provided the contrast by which her marriage now seemed so pink, pure, and thrilling to her. After all, unsolicited, that pert and dilating nose had spent a good part of the week buried in my genitals; and she seemed now not able to grasp that her animality had been not a lapse but as much a part of her as the marrow in her bones. Still clutching Oscar, I stopped, pivoted, taking Oscar with me, and, laughing, watched them bounce up the street.
“
She sure acts different,
”
Oscar said in solemn amazement.
“
She sure does,
”
I agreed.

The straight-legged girl and her hairy-nosed attorney continued to come to the apartment; he continued to wink lasciviously and remark his wonder that I was still on Lolita. Studs came daily and, like a caged animal, skimmed his bowed legs up and down the carpeting, intently seeking the names of people I wanted
“
done in.
”
Oscar was always there. He liked to mix the drinks and light everyone
’
s cigarette. But as jovial as he tried to be, he could muster no interest in the girls, and those girls who became interested in him were quickly discouraged. At a moment during the course of the evening, he invariably produced from his wallet the soiled print of the six kids and showed it about to the uninterested company, in his drunkenness taking particular care to point out the woman whom he called
“
wife,
”
who was not his wife and who sat stolidly behind the handsome children. She was a horn rimmed, stout, pale, severe-looking old cow, but Oscar loved her and one knew that it would be a long time before another woman moved his manhood to desire. Oscar was largehearted and beautiful to be with. Some days he was very good and coherent, but as the days passed he got very bad and seemed to be getting worse. The last I heard of him—some months ago—was that he was confined in a madhouse and expected to be there a long time. I think of Oscar quite a bit; on those infrequent occasions when I wonder about the efficacy of prayer, I think I would like to ask God in His infinite mercy to restore Oscar to life.

By the time the man called Mr. Blue arrived at the apartment I had come to expect anything and hence did not know that in the end he would be the cause of my getting off the davenport and moving on yet again. Mr. Blue claimed to be fifty, but I suspect he was closer to sixty, perhaps older. He stood five feet, three in his shiny black shoes, elevated and made of alligator. He had thin, snow-white hair splotched with an aging, uncomfortable yellow, and crinkly, sad, great-sized eyes of so penetrating a blue that when he looked directly at me I found myself fingering my face for food particles or nose phlegm: his eyes seemed a constant reproach that one did not live up to his expectations. Around his knifelike mouth were many deep wrinkles, giving his face a feline quality; when he talked I stared at his lips apprehensively, as though I expected vibrissa to sprout there. Tiny and slender, Mr. Blue weighed no more than a hundred and fifteen. Still, his strength and agility were incredible. From a stand-still position he could do either a front or back flip, in machine-gun-like succession twenty hand springs without even winding himself; and on anyone
’
s suggestion he would drop proudly to the floor and oblige the apartment
’
s stunned occupants with a hundred push ups. It was wondrous to watch the old codger go at these feats.

There was a period of three weeks when Mr. Blue came daily to the apartment and passed the afternoon hours with me. During these visits we talked about professional football, about which Mr. Blue knew nothing, and about the two things which interested Mr. Blue most: aluminum siding, which he sold, and cunnilingus, on which he suspected I was an authority.

In the aluminum siding racket Mr. Blue was a
“
closer.
”
He traveled about with two or three fuzzy-cheeked, comely, spirited Ivy League types who were
“
canvassers
”
and whose job it was to get Mr. Blue into a house so that he could get the buyer
’
s signature on a contract, thus
“
closing
”
the sale. Mr. Blue would park his powder-blue Cadillac in a neighborhood ripe for sales; the canvassers, leaving Mr. Blue in the car with a copy of True Detective, would fan out in various directions, ringing doorbells. If a canvasser got into a house, he was at some point in his pitch to explain to the housewife that her luck was indeed running hot as a
“
factory representative
”
from
“
Alcoa
”
was in town that day, that the man was distressed, oh, heartsick, at the absence of aluminum in her neighborhood, and that if, as a sales inducement to her neighbors, she would apply siding to her house, the canvasser was certain the
“
Alcoa
”
man would do the job for nothing—well, practically nothing. If the gullible Hausfrau agreed to hear more, Mr. Blue was hastily lured from reading
“
The Rape of the Vassar Girls
”
and all five feet, three of him, carrying a great portfolio case loaded with siding samples, color samples, and contracts, attempted an entrance spectacular enough to cow the housewife before the talks even began.

Mr. Blue sighed. The canvassers had no class or style today. They did not even know how to make an introduction properly; nowadays most of them expected Mr. Blue to carry his own portfolio case, which was, it seems, undignified for the
“
factory representative.
”
When Mr. Blue had started in the business as a canvasser years before, they had used a chauffeur-driven black Cadillac
“
about a goddam mile long.
”
Their favorite driver had been a very dignified
“
nigger
”
named Seedy who stood six feet, six and who had a
“
jawful
”
of marvelous gold teeth. The Cadillac had pulled up in front of the customer
’
s domicile, Seedy had jumped out, opened the back door to discharge the great man, grabbed the portfolio case and the roll of carpeting, and had begun running up the side walk toward the house.
“
And he ran his black ass off,
”
Mr. Blue said.

Here Mr. Blue paused, wondering whether what he had to say would find sympathy with me. He took a chance.
“
Not like these independent black bastards today,
”
he said. He gave his words the semi-humorous and cowardly twist men do when they aren
’
t sure they can enlist one on the side of their melancholy ignorance. I
’
m certain my rum expression showed neither sympathy nor disapproval. This bewildered Mr. Blue into a qualification, a grudging one to be sure.
“
What a guy Seedy was!
”