The Game Player (20 page)

The previous year I had gone to bed with a number of women in a month, the cause of this dramatic upsurge simply being that I was willing to fuck beneath my normal standards of beauty and intelligence. Other people, especially girls, perceived me as that classic Jew—Mama's boy, not having hit his thirty-year-old stride of compulsive fucking; emotionally open and serious, too bewildered and nice not to have fears of performance and doubts about the emotional value of promiscuity. Brian had told me that unless I tried to fuck every girl in sight I would always believe this caricature and think my not having a lover was due to some physical or life-style lack. “Studs screw everything in sight, kid,” Brian said. “People act as if they're robbing a museum when they fuck a girl. As if it isn't a pleasure for her. Do it and you'll know whether you like it. I bet you won't.” How could one like it? This choice between neither of you feeling any love, or her feeling it and you not? He was right, I preferred to wait and fall in love, even if that meant spending a fortune on pornography to aid masturbation, yes, even if that meant waiting only to be rejected in the end.

So I ran through that speech while another part of my mind decided between anchovies or mushrooms. “What a ghastly thing to do to a human being,” I said
to
them. “It's like a civil war. Why not
both
mushrooms and anchovies?”

They laughed and Joan said, “Pick off a few from one and put it on the other.”

“A fantastic idea!” More laughter. “I can't believe I didn't think of it.”

“It's really good,” Frank said, meaning the pizza.

“Fritz's special,” Joan said, laughing. “I love it. Pizza made by a German.”

There followed a typical conversation: the wonderment of there being so many great pizza places in New Haven. Frank always flourished on this topic; he had amassed several ersatz sociological explanations which he would recite word for word. I stopped him by asking if anyone knew whether there was a good movie on television and, when we discovered there wasn't, Karen, with surprising boldness, suggested we have a dancing party. “I haven't danced in four months,” she explained.

“God, you're deprived,” I said in the voice I used for droll comments. I have to explain to the reader that, though this may seem to be misguided or exaggerated politeness, my friends have always laughed enthusiastically at what I say, and that's left me with the impression that, in large gatherings, I'm supposed to follow witticism with yet more witticism.

“Howard hates dancing,” Brian said, his voice without energy.

“Really?” Joan asked with a disappointed look.

I smiled and pointed to Brian.
“He
hates parties. I like 'em but I don't dance. I find those repressed sexual rituals disgusting. But I like to watch,” I finished in a naughty child's voice. Karen had kept her eyes on me while I spoke, first confused, and then laughing suddenly at the end. Her laughter was a confession that I had guessed why she liked to dance and she kicked me playfully with her foot so I was awarded a thrill of adulation, no matter how pathetically small a token it was. She was bored by her dapper, moody lawyer, I thought. I knew it well, the shock of recognition that Wasp girls from the West are treated to in the city: acquisitive, solid boys are orgasmless fucks.

“Come on,” B.B. said to Brian. “You guys have the perfect place for it.” I laughed at him because of my thought about Karen, but B.B. misunderstood. “You do,” he insisted. “No one's got a stereo like yours.”

“Ain't we just the cat's meow,” I said, giggling.

Brian, his eyes lidded, nodded solemnly at me. “Yeah, we should never feel depressed, we can always sell everything when the bozos graduate.” Frank, whose moral indignation about people like B.B. was corrupted by the political self-righteousness only the children of Communist Party members can muster, and fearful, because his desire for pretty women, good clothes, and efficient technology was restrained only by poverty, really laughed at our remarks, doubling over so that his plate fell to the floor. There was a flurry of comments on his excess and Joan hurried over to pick up the food. “Get on the phone,” Brian said meanwhile to B.B. “Invite anyone you want. Just buy the food and drinks and you can party here until the A-bomb drops.”

Those seemed to be the last words Brian ever wished to speak. His face settled into an inactive, unsmiling frown, and along with his dependent posture—his head leaning in against Joan's shoulder and breast—he reminded me of the five- and six-year-old children of the religious and political communes I had seen pictures of. They grudgingly held on to their mothers, their faces sullen and bored, restraining even the tears of petulant love.

I felt myself sink with him into silence, partially attentive to the television, and listening, with disgust, to the collection of achievers B.B. was summoning to our apartment. After he had made twelve calls, I motioned Frank to my side and told him, “Listen, do us both a favor. Get on that phone and get somebody here who would know what I meant if I asked him to join the Society of the Thirteen.”

While Frank made it clear that he enjoyed this distinction, I noticed that Karen had heard me. She looked at me, her eyes busy calculating, with the open stare only an audience allows itself.

“Hi,” I said to remind her I wasn't a television program.

“You'll have to forgive me,” she said immediately. “But what is the Society of the Thirteen?”

“Oh,” I said, embarrassed to have my silly arrogance examined. “It's just a story by Balzac.”

She nodded and got up from her seat to join me on the couch across the way from Brian and Joan. She settled herself so close to me that our bodies touched along the length of the right side of my body. Her confidence about the movement made it seem natural. “I'm afraid,” she said, her face turned to me and only an inch or two away, “that I have never done enough reading. What is the society?”

“It was just a stupid comment,” I pleaded. “I knew that Frank would think it was funny. I can't resist giving people what they want.”

She smiled slowly. “That's a nice quality,” she said with unmistakable deliberateness. I stared to check on her meaning and she held my examination, her eyes mischievous. “So,” she said, with a quick glance at my lips, “tell me what it is.”

“I can't resist, I guess. Balzac tried, in real life, to convince other writers, poets, critics, you know, all the important literary people—and publishing people—to join a Society of Thirteen, that would review each other's books favorably. And pan their enemies.”

“A kind of literary Mafia, is that it?”

“Well, there always is a literary Mafia. He was trying to organize one in which the major requirement was talent. He did get Hugo and a couple of others to agree but he wanted them to do more than just that. He wanted them to help protect the government, rouse France's pride, help out young artists with money—there was no limit on what he wanted them to do. And he wrote a novel extrapolating this fantasy. The group appears in a novel called
Louis Lambert,
and in a few others.”

“I'll read it,” she said seriously.

“Don't. I don't think it's a good novel.” She laughed but I was occupied by B.B.'s reappearance. I thought our positions on the couch were too cosy to please him, but he seemed oblivious, walking in quickly, and bouncing onto the couch. “It's all set,” he said, and put a hand on her denim-covered thigh. She turned slightly, twisting her neck so that she faced him. But she left me her breasts: round, large, steady in their bra, tightly covered by her wine-red sweater. Knowing I could look unobserved, I did, barely hearing B.B.'s childishly happy recounting of whom he had invited. I was entranced by her breasts and looked away only to watch the amazing red mottling that would flush the fair skin exposed by the slight V of her sweater. When I heard Joan explode with laughter, I looked up hastily towards her and Brian. Brian saw me, glanced quickly at B.B. (who was explaining which people he had assigned the food and drink to), put out his hand and, with a leer, squeezed an invisible breast.

This set off Joan again and got me to sit up more so that my natural field of vision was away from Karen. I stayed in this position, as did Brian across from me, while the arrivals began and the others set out refreshments, cleared the living room for dancing, and selected a stack of records to play. Brian managed not to say a word while greeting each of the twenty or so people who came to our apartment that night. He would nod with a smile, or wave excitedly to someone across the room, and I'm sure they all had the impression he had said hello. Joan would bounce up and down to arrange a detail, but she would always return immediately to Brian to take him into her arms, a hand stealthily reaching down the back of his pants, and then she would shift to the front so that after an hour, his shirt was completely pulled out of his pants. He submitted to these caresses with the languid patience of a cat: he closed his eyes every few seconds as if to absorb the pleasure, and then opened them wide, curious about the activity of the others.

Meanwhile, excited by Karen's persistence in remaining near me and by her exaggerated enjoyment of even the silliest jokes I made about law students, I bantered from a sitting position with each of the arrivals. Her eyes looked steadily into mine and my sense of the ridiculous multiplied rapidly as my private calculations on how to get her into my bed became more frantic.

The dancing didn't begin to dominate until everyone had arrived. Then the pockets of people that formed according to similarities in studies, dissolved into one mass, obscuring my view of Brian. The room filled with smoke—cigarette and marijuana—its perimeters littered with clear plastic cups filled with wine. The drugs seeped into the room like a mist and it swayed, the talk disconnected and punctuated by high giggles, the movements slower, with people falling onto each other inoffensively, the whole scene like a storm-tossed ship occupied by reckless passengers. So it was nothing for Karen, after finishing a particularly vigorous dance, to collapse on top of me, her face red and laughing as she buried it in my chest.

“Whoa,” I said at first, trying to free myself so that I could return to my aloof and isolated posture of observation. But when she lifted her head and looked up into my eyes with a little girl's playfulness, saying, “Hi, Howie,” I relaxed and let her body settle onto mine. I put my hands on her ass and pressed her towards me. She closed her eyes: “Mmm, that's good.”

“One way or another,” I said, “you're gonna have to let me make love to you tonight.”

Her round, innocent face flushed. But it was the embarrassment of pride. “I never would have guessed,” she said softly, “that you were so emotional.”

“Come on.” I was erect and it pressed against her pelvis. “You know you're beautiful. You know I can't stand an evening of your flirting with me. If you're playing with me, I'll go the route, I'll puff up B.B.'s pride to the skies. I'll stand in the middle of the room and beg for you.”

She laughed. “I'm not playing.” She rolled off and let her free arm (the other was pinned behind my back) flail across the body of someone else on the couch. “I don't give a fuck about B.B.,” she said to the ceiling.

I glanced at the poor unloved fellow, dancing near the windows, and then lifted myself up to look down on her. Her eyes were closed but they opened in a moment, their sarcastic gleam replaced by the limpid solemnity of honesty. “Good,” I said at last.

“I've read your
Times
article, did you know that?”

I lost my bravado and said weakly, “Really? No.”

She smiled. “You look scared. I liked it. I was really impressed that you could think about us, about our lives, so, you know, in general terms.”

“Thank you.”

She hit me with the hand I had had pinned. “Don't say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Thank
you.” She said with an effeminate emphasis on “Thank.” She frowned. “It's so fake.”

“I'm sorry. I get embarrassed by how much I enjoy being complimented.”

“So enjoy it. That's why I said it.”

“Oh, so you're just flattering me,” I said, not being serious.

“No, you know I meant it. It's the last time I'll do it. You're such a creep about it.”

“I am not! I'm just a fool. There's a big difference. I've got another one coming out, so please do it again, and I won't be bad about it.”

“Really?” She lifted herself up warily and let her head rest against the wall. “A sequel?”

Sequel was a sensitive word for me about my second article. I had the idea that I was a developing writer who had to be careful not to repeat himself. My pride and concern over the breadth of my total output was wildly out of proportion to reality. In fact, the
Times
had accepted my second article with the idea of presenting it as a follow-up piece (that was my concept while working on it) but I couldn't stand anyone saying so. I had said nothing but she noticed my discomfort. “I'm sorry,” she said, touching me quickly with her hand. “That was a stupid thing to say, wasn't it?”

“No, no. It is a sequel. It's just that I'm upset about that. You know, that I can only get published on that subject.”

“Oh, you had other articles turned down?”

“Turn—no! I haven't written any other articles.”

She laughed. “Well, then how do you know you'd be turned down?”

“I don't.” She looked at me expectantly but I wanted this to go no further. There was no reason for me to trust this bubbly Wasp girl with my terrors.

“Then why,” she said hesitantly, aware that this was hazardous ground, “be upset? The fact that the only two articles you've written have been taken probably means that they all would.”