Sexus (22 page)

“None of your lip,” said he. “Better get that dame out of here before I run you in.”

“She's my wife.”

“So . . .
your wife,
is it? Well now, ain't that nice? Just doing a little billing and cooing, eh? Washing your private parts in public too—I'll be damned if I ever saw the likes of it. Now don't be in too great a hurry. You're guilty of a grave offense, me lad, and if this
is
your wife she's in for it too.”

“Look here, you don't mean to say. . .”

“What's your name?” he demanded cutting me short, and making to reach for his little notebook.

I told him.

“And where do you live?”

I told him.

“And
her
name?”

“The same as mine—she's my wife, I told you.”

“So you did,” he said, with a dirty leer. “All right. Now then, what do you do for a living?
Are you working?”

I pulled out my wallet and showed him the Cosmodemonic pass which I always carried and which entitled me to ride free of charge on all subway, elevated and streetcar lines of the city of Greater New York. He scratched his head at this and tilted his cap back on his head. “So you're the employment manager, are you? That's a pretty responsible position for a young man like you.” Heavy pause. “I suppose you'd like to keep your job a little longer, wouldn't you?”

Suddenly I had visions of seeing my name plastered in headlines over the morning papers. A fine story the reporters could make of it if they wanted to. It was time to do something.

“Look here, Officer,” says I, “let's talk the thing over quietly. I live nearby—why don't you walk over to the house
with me? Maybe my wife and I were a little reckless—we're not married very long. We shouldn't have carried on like that in a public place, but it was dark and there was nobody around. . .”

“Well, there might be a way of fixing it,” says he. “You don't want to lose your job, do you?”

“No, I don't,” says I, wondering at the same time how much I had in my pocket and whether he would sneeze at it or not.

Mara was fumbling in her bag.

“Now don't be in such a hurry, lady. You know you can't bribe an officer of the law. By the way, what church do you go to, if I'm not too inquisitive?”

I answered quickly, giving the name of the Catholic church on our corner.

“Then you're one of Father O'Malley's boys! Well, why didn't you tell me that in the first place? Shure, you wouldn't want to disgrace the parish now, would you?”

I told him it would kill me were Father O'Malley to hear of it.

“And you were married in Father O'Malley's church?”

“Yes, Fath—I mean Officer. We were married last April.”

I was trying to count the bills in my pocket without extracting them. It seemed as if there were only three or four bucks. I was wondering how much Mara might have. The cop had started walking and we fell in with him. Presently he stopped short. He pointed ahead with his club. And with his club in the air and his head slightly averted, he began a slow monologue about a coming novena to Our Lady of the Flying Buttress or something of the sort, saying as he held out his left hand that the shortest way out of the park was straight ahead and mind you, be on your good behavior and so forth.

Mara and I hastily stuffed a few bills in his hand and, thanking him for his kindness, we lit out like a bolt.

“I think you'd better come home with me,” I said. “If it wasn't enough we gave him he may be coming to pay us a visit. I don't trust these dirty bastards. . . . Father O'Malley,
shit!”

We hurried home and locked ourselves in. Mara was still
trembling. I dug up a little port wine which was hidden away in a cupboard.

“The thing to happen now,” I said, as I downed a glassful, “is for Maude to come back and surprise us.”

“She wouldn't do that, would she?”

“Christ only knows what she might do.”

“I think we'd better sleep down here,” said Mara. “I wouldn't like to sleep in her bed.”

We finished the wine and got undressed. Mara came out of the bathroom in Maude's silk kimono. It gave me a start to see her in Maude's outfit. “I'm your wife, am I not?” she said, putting her arms around me. It gave me a thrill to hear her say that. She walked about the room examining the things.

“Where do you write?” she asked. “At that little table?”

I nodded.

“You ought to have a big table and a room of your own. How can you write here?”

“I have a big desk upstairs.”

“Where? In the bedroom?”

“No, in the parlor. It's wonderfully lugubrious up there—would you like to see it?”

“No,” she said quickly, “I'd rather not go up there. I'll always think of you as sitting here in this corner by the window. . . . Is this where you wrote me all those letters?”

“No,” I said, “I wrote you from the kitchen.”

“Show me,” she said. “Show me just where you sat. I want to see how you looked.”

I took her by the hand and led her back to the kitchen. I sat down and pretended I was writing her a letter. She bent over me and putting her lips to the table she kissed the spot encircled by my arms.

“I never dreamt I would see your home,” she said. “It's strange to see the place which is to have such an effect upon your life. It's a holy place. I wish we could take this table with us and this chair—everything—even the stove. I wish we could move the whole room and build it into our own home. It belongs to us, this room.”

We went to bed on the divan in the basement. It was a warm night and we went to sleep in the raw. About seven in
the morning, as we lay entwined in each other's arms, the rolling doors were violently pushed open and there stood my darling wife, the landlord who lived upstairs, and his daughter. In flagrant delectation we were caught. I sprang out of bed stark naked. Snatching a towel which was on the chair beside the couch I flung it around me and waited for the verdict. Maude motioned to her witnesses to step in and take a look at Mara, who was lying there holding a sheet over her bosom.

“I'll ask you to please get this woman out of here as quickly as possible,” said Maude, and with that she turned on her heel and went upstairs with her witnesses.

Had she been sleeping upstairs in our own bed all night? If so, why had she waited until morning?

“Take it easy, Mara. The goose is cooked now. We may as well stay and have breakfast.”

I dressed hurriedly and ran out to get some bacon and eggs.

“God, I don't see how you can take it so calmly,” she said, sitting at the table with a cigarette to her lips, watching me prepare the breakfast. “Haven't you any feelings?”

“Sure I have. My feeling is that everything has worked out splendidly.
I'm free,
do you realize that?”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I'm going to work, for one thing. This evening I'll go to Ulric's place—you might meet me there. I have an idea my friend Stanley is behind all this. We'll see.”

At the office I sent a telegram to Stanley to meet me at Ulric's that evening. During the day I had a telephone call from Maude suggesting that I find myself a room. She said she would get the divorce as soon as possible. No comments upon the situation, just a pure businesslike statement. I was to let her know when I wished to call for my things.

Ulric took it rather gravely. It meant a change of life and all changes were serious to him. Mara on the other hand was thoroughly in possession of herself and already looking forward to the new life. It remained to see how Stanley would take it.

Presently the bell rang and there he was, sinister-looking
as usual and drunk as a pope. I hadn't seen him that way for years. He had decided that it was an event of the first importance and that it should be celebrated. As far as getting any details from him was concerned it was absolutely impossible. “I told you I'd fix it for you,” he said. “You walked into it like a fly into a web. I had it figured out to a T. I didn't ask you any questions, did I? I knew just what you'd do.”

He took a swig from a flask which he was carrying in his inside coat pocket. He didn't even bother to remove his hat. I could see him now as he must have looked when at Fort Oglethorpe. He was the sort of fellow I would have given a wide berth, seeing him in that state.

The telephone rang. It was Dr. Kronski asking for
Mister
Miller. “Congratulations!” he shouted. “I'm coming over there to see you in a few minutes. I have something to tell you.”

“By the way,” I said, “do you know anybody who has an extra room to let?”

“That's just what I was going to talk to you about. I've got a place all picked out for you—up in the Bronx. It's a friend of mine—he's a doctor. You can have a whole wing of the house to yourself. Why don't you take Mara with you? You'll like it there. He's got a billiard room on the ground floor, and a good library, and . . .”

“Is he Jewish?” I asked.

“Is he?
He's a Zionist, an anarchist, a Talmudist and an abortionist. A damned fine chap—and if you're in need of help he'll give you his shirt. I was just around to your house—that's how I found out. Your wife seems to be tickled to death. She'll live pretty comfortably on the alimony you'll have to pay her.”

I told Mara what he had said. We decided to have a look at the place immediately. Stanley had disappeared. Ulric thought he might have gone to the bathroom.

I went to the bathroom and knocked. No answer. I pushed the door open. Stanley was lying in the tub fully dressed, his hat over his eye, the empty bottle in his hand. I left him lying there.

“He's gone, I guess,” I shouted to Ulric as we sailed out.

The Bronx! We had been promised a whole wing of the house—a turkey wing, with feathers and goose pimples thrown in. Kronski's idea of a haven.

It was a suicidal period which began with cockroaches and hot pastrami sandwiches and ended à la Newburg in a cubbyhole on Riverside Drive where Mrs. Kronski the Second began her thankless task of illustrating a vast cycloramic appendix to the insanities.

It was under Kronski's influence that Mara decided to change her name again—from Mara to Mona. There were other, more significant changes which also had their origin here in the purlieus of the Bronx.

We had come in the night to Dr. Onirifick's hide-out. A light snow had fallen and the colored panes of glass in the front door were covered with a mantle of pure white. It was just the sort of place I had imagined Kronski
would
select for our “honeymoon.” Even the cockroaches, which began scurrying up and down the walls as soon as we turned on the lights, seemed familiar—and ordained. The billiard table, which stood in a corner of the room, was at first disconcerting, but when Dr. Onirifick's little boy casually opened his fly and began to make peepee against the leg of the table everything seemed quite as it should be.

The front door opened directly on to our room, which was equipped with a billiard table, as I say, a large brass bedstead with eiderdown quilts, a writing desk, a grand piano, a hobbyhorse, a fireplace, a cracked mirror covered with fly-specks, two cuspidors and a settee. There were in all no less than eight windows in our room. Two of them had shades which could be pulled down about two-thirds of the way; the others were absolutely bare and festooned with cobwebs. It was very jolly. No one ever rang the bell or knocked first; everyone walked in unannounced and found his way about as
best he could. It was “a room with a view” both inside and out.

Here we began our life together. A most auspicious debut! The only thing lacking was a sink in which we could urinate to the sound of running water. A harp might have come in handy, too, especially on those droll occasions when the members of Dr. Onirifick's family, tired of sitting in the laundry downstairs, would waddle up to our room like auks and penguins and watch us in complete silence as we ate or bathed or made love or combed the lice out of one another's hair. What language they spoke we never knew. They were as mute as the reindeer and nothing could frighten or astound them, not even the sight of a mangy fetus.

Dr. Onirifick was always very busy. Children's diseases were his specialty, but the only children we ever noticed during our stay were embryonic ones which he chopped into fine pieces and threw down the drains. He had three children of his own. They were all three supernormal, and on this account were allowed to behave as they pleased. The youngest, about five years of age and already a wizard at algebra, was definitely on his way to becoming a pyromaniac as well as a supermathematician Twice he had set fire to the house. His latest exploit revealed a more ingenious turn of mind: it was to set fire to a perambulator containing a tender infant and then push the perambulator downhill towards a congested traffic lane.

Yes, a jolly place to begin life anew. There was Ghompal, an ex-messenger whom Kronski had salvaged from the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company when that institution began to weed out its non-Caucasian employees. Ghompal, being of Dravidian stock and dark as sin, had been one of the first to get the gate. He was a tender soul, extremely modest, humble, loyal and self-sacrificing—almost painfully so. Dr. Onirifick cheerfully made a place for him in his vast household—as a glorified chimney sweep. Where Ghompal ate and slept was a mystery. He moved about noiselessly in the performance of his duties, effacing himself, when he deemed it necessary, with the celerity of a ghost. Kronski prided himself on having rescued in the person of this outcast a scholar of the first
water. “He's writing a history of the world,” he told us impressively. He omitted mentioning that, in addition to his duties as secretary, nurse, chambermaid, dishwasher and errand boy, Ghompal also stoked the furnace, hauled the ashes, shoveled the snow, papered the walls and painted the spare rooms.