“She came home yesterday,” he said apologetically.
“Good for her. Let me be the first to tell you: you’re no great catch, lover.”
“I guess not.”
She glared balefully, a sphinx of accusation; he hesitated, straightened his tie, impaled by the wrath of her grief.
“Well,” he said, his hand on the doorknob. “See ya.”
“If you’re going,” she said, looking at her fingernails, “go. Buzz off.”
He moved a few inches. “I’m sorry,” he said stupidly. “If you need any money …”
“Get lost, will you?” She turned her head fiercely, shaking her inky hair — a contemptuous porcupine, full of injured dignity.
“If you want to know something, lover,” she whispered as though they were love words, “you’re no match for your big brother.” She forced a laugh. “Do you know what you are?”
Though it was a question that interested him, he decided not to wait to find out. Dragging his raincoat, he rushed out the door and down the four flights of stairs like a man in need of air, into the dusk-glowing rush-hour streets. As he fled, he thought he heard her saying, Stay, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean what I said, stay, but he couldn’t be sure; there were echoes in the hall, other voices.
He rode home on the subway, cramped against the door, sweating his guilt, his face in the window’s mirror smeared with regret. Why had he done it? For Herbie, he answered himself. How could he deny his own flesh?
| 4 |
Peter never went back to the Bureau of Economic Research. What for? He wrote a letter explaining his absence, tore it up, wrote another, sent nothing. Ashamed, guilty at his pleasure in not working, he left the house every morning in suit and tie (his uniform of responsibility) as though he had a job — which was almost the truth, a temporary lie. Provided for, or so she thought, Lois went to school while Peter earned their living, or so he pretended. He meant to tell her — a lie was more pain than he could bear — planned the telling of it so often that he thought he had. It was his own joke; he hadn’t, couldn’t — having kept it from her — until he found a job to replace the one he didn’t have. Only a matter of time. Lois found out without being told; in its dull way one of the worst shocks of her life. If she couldn’t trust Peter, who had no guile, who in the world could she trust? It was then that she decided not to have the child. She kept her decision, her knowledge, secret from Peter, who had forfeited his right to her confidence. In justice to herself — a sense of balance her life’s work — she would pay him back for his deceit. A housewife and a student, she kept accounts.
Looking for a job is part-time work, more or less, though depleting in other ways, tiring in all ways. Peter bought the Times each morning, circled the half-dozen or so want ads that seemed possible for him — disheartening possibilities — then tracked them down, a man of prospects. At about eleven he was through, unhired, a free man, the day ahead of him. His routine was to read the paper in the park for a start, writing notes to himself in the margins, until he got too cold and had to walk around to warm himself. So he walked around, a daydreamer, the past and future of the world like the ends of an unbuilt bridge in his dreams. The February wind, nervous and obscene, heckled him, clawed at his genitals. Unable, unwilling to afford lunch, he had coffee with lots of cream and sugar to keep the machinery going. Also, an occasional doughnut. Nature was provident: in his wanderings he found an Automat in which one of the apple-pie windows didn’t lock, but refilled itself in good faith automatically (the magic of automation: the broken fingers are out of view). Five pies were all he could take in one sitting; he came back later in the afternoon for a snack. “I’ve had my eye on you,” a flower-hatted old lady said, standing over him as he forced down the pie. “You’re not honest.” She pointed her umbrella at him to let him know that she was armed, and sat down at a neighboring table, keeping him under surveillance. He pretended to ignore her, then fled, reminded as he ran of his days of running from the police as a kid. He thought he heard her yell something after him — thief, you — but he didn’t look back.
The next day he phoned Gloria to get Herbie’s new address, hoping, nervous about calling, that she was no longer angry at him. Herbie answered. He was home alone, he said, Gloria out working for a change, no mention of Doreen at all, no mention of Peter’s favor to him. Some favor!
“Why don’t you come over?” Herbie said. “I’m not doing anything this morning; it‘ll be a chance for us to have a talk. Huh?”
“I have to look for a job,” Peter told him — an alibi of conscience.
“Who’re you kidding?” he said. “You want a job? I’ll get you a job. Come on over. We’ll talk about it.”
“All right,” Peter said, easier to go than to argue, “but I can’t stay long. For other reasons, it’s important …”
“Hey, how’s your wife? She treating you okay? You know what the trouble is — it’s the reason you’ve always screwed up — you’re afraid to lose her and you let her know it, so she takes advantage. If you want my advice …”
“I’ll be right over,” he said.
Herbie was the same: he dispensed wisdom, a five-dollar loan, and promised Peter that in a couple of days he would have a job for him. “Have I ever lied to you, kid?” he said.
“Once or twice,” Peter admitted.
“Never,” Herbie insisted, his honor at stake. “When?”
Peter was sorry he had mentioned it.
“You can’t think of a time, can you?” Herbie said. “Can you?”
Peter shrugged.
“Don’t make accusations you can’t back up,” he grumbled.
“I’m sorry,” Peter said, amused.
“One of these days,” Herbie said, stretched out on the Goodwill couch, his clasped hands a pillow for his head, “I’m going to make it. I’m really going to make it.”
“How are you going to do that?” Peter wanted to know. Herbie’s dealings, though apparently illegal (maybe not), seemed to pay less for greater expenditure of hope and energy than most “honest” work.
“When it happens, you’ll find out,” was Herbie’s answer, his huge stocking feet hanging over the arm of the sofa, a cavernous rip at the summit of the big toe. When the doorbell rang, Herbie, who had seemed incapable of motion, leaped to his feet, Peter following his example. “Don’t be so jumpy,” he said to Peter, putting on his shoes, tearing one of the laces. “That’s your problem — you’re jumpy.”
Peter put on his coat, ready to leave, ready to confront Gloria. Herbie admitted a small, nattily dressed man with a large ratlike head. “Come on in, Ira,” he said warmly. “Make yourself at home. My brother’s just leaving.”
“Your brother?” Ira looked him over, nodded, sniffed the air distastefully, his eyes impartial assassins. “He’s got an honest face,” he said softly, his mouth opening only slightly at the corner. “Herbie, never trust a man with an honest face.”
Herbie laughed enthusiastically, his eyes unamused. Peter left. It struck him as he walked across town, traveled west from the Lower East Side to the Fifth Avenue Cafeteria for a real lunch for a change — a knockwurst sandwich and a beer, coffee and cheese cake — that he hadn’t told Herbie about the business with Gloria, which was probably just as well, though as a matter of course it ruined his appetite.
Lois had just finished washing her hair, and was about to start in on her homework when Herbie called.
“Let me speak to your husband,” he said in his usual peremptory manner, not bothering to identify himself. She knew who it was.