Authors: Robert Ward
“I suppose I am,” Lauren said. “It’s just that I am so lonely … you know it is
terribly lonely
at the top.” She batted her eyes like Bankhead.
“Give me a break,” Beauregard said.
Lauren smiled and snuggled up next to him.
“I hope you’ll come in, Doctor,” she said. “I’m beginning to feel faint again.”
Beauregard looked down at her, smelled her perfume. Silently he damned himself for being old-fashioned.
“Heather,” Lauren said.
“Well? I mean …”
“I feel so faint,” Lauren said, snuggling closer to him.
“You’ll be fine,” Beauregard said. “All you need is a good night’s sleep.”
The car pulled up to her home in Turtle Bay. Beauregard thought of her hanging gardens which would be bathed in moonlight … a glass of champagne …
But before he had a chance to weaken, she was up and out of the car.
“I’m not going to ask you again, Beau,” she said, this time in a sincere voice. “Because I know that you can’t deny me three times in one night. However, when you get that woman out of your head … do come and see me.”
Beauregard smiled and shook his head. She reached back down, and he kissed her fully on the lips. He knew that if he was going home at all, he better make his move now.
“My driver will take you home, you dear fool,” she said.
“If those headaches come back,” Beau said.
“I know who to call.”
She squeezed his hand, winked at him, and then shut the door, and Beauregard watched her recede as he sped away into the night.
He was cold, and his eyes were filled with crust. He got out of the damp bed, damp from the sweat which had dripped off his icy body, and grabbed his water glass. When he put it to his lips, he suddenly felt them burning, and he jerked it away in horror. Then got up and looked at himself in the mirror. There was nothing on his lips and he wondered if he wasn’t losing his mind. “Nobody ever died from insomnia,” was what all the doctors said. But nobody ever talked about going mad from it. Nobody ever talked about waking up and feeling that one of your arms was gone, or feeling that the room was coming in on top of you to smother you like a big piece of dough.
He walked around the bed and slipped on a magazine, almost fell down. Jesus, let this night end … let it end … Why couldn’t he sleep. It had been fine for a couple of days there after Lorraine Bell … It had been fine … But now, now … It was back again. The feeling that the Space was calling to him again. The Space that he could never quite get full … He wandered into the living room, found his bathrobe lying in a heap on the floor. He picked it up, put it on, took out a cigarette from the pocket, and found his matches lying on the TV. He stared down at the TV … the huge eye which you watched all night, over and over, but which might be watching you … Ridiculous thought … calm down … but at four in the morning no thoughts were ridiculous. You were in the land of dreams, even though you weren’t asleep … He looked out the window, heard the wind howling … and saw someone hustling down the street, his raincoat flapping in his face. Yes, he thought, get home—get home fast, where it’s safe … Only he knew that it wasn’t safe anywhere. There was no place you could really get away from what was inside of you.
He turned on the TV, but the light blinded him, and after one minute of a Popeil’s Pocket Fisherman ad he turned it off. Next they would have on Vegematic … It slices and dices. He walked back through the hallway and went into the kitchen. Opened the refrigerator which seemed to be humming abnormally. He stared into it at the butter, which looked like a huge yellow brick, the tomatoes, and the waxy, dead-looking green peppers. He poured himself some grapefruit juice and sat down at the kitchen table. His temples ached and his hands shook. God, he had to stop this. He started to drink the juice when he saw a roach run across the table. He was startled by the bug, terrified by it. It was almost as if he were seeing it in 3-D. It was huge, its brown antennae hanging over the white table like some long, filthy membrane. He wanted to crush it, but somehow was afraid of it. Then he brought his hand down on it hard and watched it squish, and he started to laugh loudly … He hated the sound of his own voice, the laughter was not that of joy but of panic. He heard the Space whirling inside of him, and it seemed to cry out that it needed to be filled … it needed it desperately, and he shook so badly now that he was spilling the juice.
He got up and ran back into the bedroom. Sat down on the edge of the bed and called Debby. He had memorized her number, though he didn’t know why. He hadn’t even thought about it consciously. It just happened naturally, and he let the phone ring three times.
Finally she picked it up … He heard her voice … Yes, it was her.
“Hello … hello … Who is this?”
He wanted to say something. He felt like a fool. It must be three
A.M
. She would think he was crazy.
“Hello, who is this? Hello?”
He put the phone back on the hook and lay down on the bed, and stared up with wide, blue eyes at the rippling, buckling ceiling.
Esther Goldstein got out of the elevator on the seventh floor of the Riverside Apartments. As she stepped into the hallway, she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her left arm—a strange, circulating spasm which shot around her neck and landed like an arrow near her left breast. She put down her heavy suitcase and leaned on the wall. Though she was fifty-eight and had felt the pains twice in the last month, she didn’t panic. If there was one thing she was not going to be, it was a Jewish mother. She was all through with that, had been since Morty died, and she had started analysis. Let people laugh, if they wanted, but her shrink, Dr. Gruenberg, had changed her life. She was a loving, caring, sensual person. Oy gevalt, if Morty could see her now, having an affair with a gentile weight-lifter named Big Ned Malloy. They had met at a YMHA dance and it had been love at first sight. She sighed and headed down the bland white-walled hallway toward her son’s apartment. Barty would never understand this … any of it … her lover or her new look … her fashionable Ralph Lauren hacking jacket and corduroy skirt, her tall Jourdan boots … her wide silk tie … but he was simply going to have to get used to it … After all, this was a new, modern world where people were free to live out their fantasies, and why shouldn’t they? If Barty wanted to stand down by the Big Board and read ticker tape all day, that was his business, but such a life? You might as well be eating stale bagels … and if they thought for one second she was going to let them ruin little Morty’s life … her only grandson … and turn him into a
nebbish
like his father, well, they just didn’t know Esther Goldstein. As she approached the door, she sighed heavily and felt a little twinge of pain again … probably nerves. With a cocky jab, she pushed the button to her son’s apartment. In a second, the door opened, and there stood a squat man with a head like a cauliflower with hair. His little eyes blinked in surprise and his hand ran up to his chest, where he patted the reindeer which was stitched on his sweater.
“Ma,” he said. “Ma … Hey, Betsy, come here quick. Look who we got at our door. Annie Hall.”
Peter Cross wheeled his patient, James Thomas, out of the operating room. Thomas, a forty-eight-year-old insurance actuary, had just successfully come through a colostomy, and though Peter had given him a shot of morphine just as the operation ended, there was little doubt that James Thomas was going to be in a great deal of pain when he awoke. He thought of the same man just the other day, sitting up in his room, talking about getting back on his local bar’s basketball team … “the over forty league,” he had laughed.
Peter stared down at him … at his huge, hulking body … the kind of kid who used to scare him on the playground, who punched him because he couldn’t climb the ropes in school, the kind of kid he had wanted to be. He kept his hand over Thomas’s chin to keep the airway patent. He could feel Thomas’s breath on his palm—yes, the breath was there, jerking but there—and Peter felt as though he were being drawn out of himself, into Thomas’s body. He was staring right at the wound, the lacerations, and he was surrounded by Thomas’s membranes; the blood pulsated in Peter’s ears, and he felt something happening inside him, the Space crying out, wanting to be filled. He looked over at the nurse on duty … He saw the surgeon … Carpenter, waiting for them.
“How’s he doing?” Carpenter said.
“Fine,” Peter said, amazed that his voice sounded normal, for he could feel it inside him, swirling around like a screaming, whispering snow.
“Time to wake up, Mr. Thomas,” Peter said as they wheeled him into his place behind the curtain.
Thomas didn’t stir.
“Come on now, Jim,” Peter said, lightly slapping his face. “Time to wake up.”
Now Thomas began to come out of it a bit.
“He’ll be fine,” Peter said. “Just fine.”
“Sure,” Carpenter said. “Sure … okay, I’ve got another one right away … This is sheer lunacy. Can you handle this, Peter?”
“No problem,” Peter said.
Carpenter smiled and nodded good-bye, and Peter stood there looking down at Thomas.
“Yes,” Peter said. “You’re going to be fine … Fine …”
They were all around him—just outside the curtain. He reached into his pocket, felt for the syringe … Funny, he wondered why he had stuck it in his coat after the operation. The feeling wasn’t even conscious then … He smiled at the idea … He was getting his responses directly from the patients now. Cross rubbed the syringe between his thumb and forefinger. He took it out … hearing the chatter of the nurses and other doctors in the Recovery Room. He stared down at the syringe. Curare, a good, quick shot. He held Thomas by the arm.
“Has anybody seen Peter Cross?”
Peter jammed the syringe back into his pocket. He felt a cold sweat break out on his face.
“In there? Oh, thanks …”
He breathed in deeply and started to tap Thomas lightly on the side of the face.
“Okay, Jim. Time to wake up. Okay, Jim.”
“Well, hello.”
Peter looked up and saw Debby Hunter staring at him. She was dressed in a pair of tight Levis and a pink sweater, and had her sunglasses on top of her blond hair. She looked smashing, and he felt unable to speak.
“How’s he doing?” Debby said.
“Fine,” Peter said. “He’s doing just fine.”
“Terrific,” Debby said. “How are you?”
“Okay,” Peter said. His mouth was dry, and he thought of her voice at 3:00
A.M….
He felt weak.
“Listen, Peter,” she said. “I don’t ordinarily do this kind of thing …”
She laughed and sucked in her breath.
“No?” Peter said, managing a smile.
“God, that’s the oldest line in the world. But it’s true, I really don’t ordinarily ask a man out. I like to think they’ll ask me. But … anyway … I know you are a big Poe fan, and there is this Poe revival up at the Eighty-Sixth Street Cinema. I think it’s two pretty good ones.
Pit
and
the Pendulum
and
The Premature Burial.”
Peter stared back down at his patient, who was showing signs of coming to.
“There … that’s good, Jim. That’s good.”
“He’s okay?” Debby said.
“Yeah,” Peter said, in a voice so upbeat it surprised him. “He’s okay and I’m off … and, ah … I’ve got a very attractive date tonight.”
Debby sighed.
“Well, I tried,” she said.
Peter walked toward her and smiled.
“So if you’ll just go down to the cafeteria for about ten minutes while I scrub up … we can get going.”
Debby smiled and squeezed his arm.
“Terrific,” she said. “But if I faint, you’ve got to promise to bring me around.”
Peter laughed, turned James Thomas over to the Recovery Room nurse, and sat down at the little table to finish his tally of the drugs he had used during surgery and the amount of blood lost. As he wrote, he looked over at Debby, who was talking to another patient. God, she was beautiful … long and lean … and she had asked him out. He reached his hand into his pocket, ran his thumb and forefinger over the syringe. Then he got up, motioned to her that he’d be down in a minute, and hurried on down the hall to the locker room.
“God, I’m sorry,” Debby said as they left the theater.
But for Peter Cross, there was nothing at all to forgive. They had come into the theater too late for the first feature, but The Premature Burial had been exciting. Not that it was really any good. He agreed with Debby completely, the production was not much better than an old B-movie. But the scenes in the casket, the look on Mil-land’s face as they shoveled him into the earth, had contained real moments of genius, Peter thought. More important, seeing the images made his own impressions all the more vivid. He took from the scenes what he wanted, automatically and unconsciously filtering out the rest. The experience had been thrilling from beginning to end. And her presence there beside him … that, too, had been thrilling, though he didn’t know if he could tell her any of this.
They found themselves on the corner of 86th and Lexington, staring through the hazy, drizzling rain at the traffic lights and the pink marquee of the shop across the street.
“Well,” Peter said, “I’m famished. How about you? Would you like to get something to eat?”
“Yes,” she said, “I would. I’m hungry too.”
They crossed the street and Peter started to go in the coffee shop but suddenly changed his mind. He knew a little French place on Third Avenue. He hadn’t ever been there, but he had heard Dr. Beauregard talking about it one day. It was a crazy impulse, not like him at all. Ordinarily he paid very little attention to food, but tonight was different.
“Look,” he said suddenly. “Let’s get a cab. I know a much better place.”
“Sure, Peter,” she said happily.
He stepped out into the street to hail the Checker, and she took his arm.
The place was called Ça Va, and they found themselves a table in the back, beneath some hanging blue flowers. She smiled and took off her coat.
They ordered quiche and white wine, and Peter found himself talking. It happened suddenly. Right in the midst of his wondering if he could talk, he simply began, and he found that she was listening, really listening. The impact of this was too much for him, and he talked on.