In the Diner
HE SAT AT THE COUNTER IN THE DINER WITH A CUP OF coffee and a cheese Danish, trying to remember, with a degree of clarity, something that had happened long ago, something fragile and insubstantial, so much so that it might as well have happened to someone else, and not necessarily someone else who was actuaclass="underline" a someone else who could have been his invention. An invented incident from a blurred past would surely be no less acceptable than his present poorly constructed, or, perhaps, arranged life. Or this someone else could have been a flesh-and-blood cipher that had once been him, but was no longer. Perhaps this was the best or the only way of thinking of the attenuated memory, that its protagonist had been a childish simulacrum of him; more perversely, perhaps he was but the adult simulacrum of the faded, all but obliterated figure of the child — who was standing in snow, in crepuscular gray light, and in — what was it? — a tunnel. A tunnel dug through snow banked on either side above him. His father was at the end of the tunnel, in a navy blue overcoat, a gray snap-brim fedora, and a silk scarf, snow-white with blue polka dots. His mother, a young woman of virginal beauty, holds his hand in her gloved hand, she smells of winter, a clean cold edged with a light perfume of delicate and unearthly flowers. It is intoxicating to the child. His father, now, is embracing his mother, their bodies pressed close to one another’s, and they kiss, they kiss in the snow before the door of the house. He has his arms around his mother’s legs, his face pressed into the soft wool of her coat, into her warm hip, he holds tightly to her legs, he wants to be embraced, he wants to be kissed, he wants to be his father. He is eating a green salad and a baloney sandwich with mustard in the bright kitchen. His mother pours him a glass of milk and says something to him, what? What does she say? She is still wearing the black dress with golden things on it that his father calls a knockout, a word that he really likes. He steps back to look at her, she’s flushed and smiling, and now, at the counter, he looks at her because he knows that he did not then know that she would never look that way again, because his father was disappearing, receding into winter days and nights, and that, by spring, his mother’s magical dress would be put away or given away or thrown away. He ate his baloney sandwich and felt, eating his cheese Danish at the counter, the emptiness of that little boy at the kitchen table, who could not understand the oddly desolate feeling that touched him. His father entered the kitchen, smiling, but his voice was hard and angry, and he could no longer remember what was said or done. There came to him an image of the table, on which stood a bottle of ketchup and one of Worcestershire sauce: there came to him an image of heaven.
Brothers
WARREN AND RAY, BROTHERS WHO HADN’T MUCH TO do with each other since their late adolescent years, had been carrying on, as they might say, with each other’s wives. The latter were women whom both men had known as girls since grammar school, and as young women through high school and on into the years immediately following, years of loud saloons, louder parties, stupendous hangovers, and night classes at various public colleges. In point of fact, although it might fairly be thought of as point of fact ordinary in the extreme, both brothers occasionally dated each other’s wives before, of course, they were each other’s wives. Dated is probably the wrong word: saw, went out with, ran around with were the euphemisms in vogue at the time of these somewhat diffident and unsatisfactory liaisons. How these brothers and their wives began, some twenty-five years later, to betray each other, is a story so common as to make one weep with sad ennui and need not be told, or, to be candid, will not be told here. But let me note, for those who must have background information, that the sexual possibilities inherent in the reawakened relationships among these four people flickered into life at two parties, which, it is obvious, both couples attended. At one, Ray sang “Prisoner of Love,” a song learned from his mother — their mother — and delivered in what he mistakenly thought of as Russ Columbo’s style. Perhaps the mediocrity of Ray’s performance made Warren’s wife feel tenderness for him, or perhaps she saw, in the paunchy, balding, half-drunk shipping-room supervisor who was wreaking meticulous havoc on the sweetly despairing old song, the boy who had been the first to touch her bare breasts, the first to bring her to orgasm with his fingers. Why did I marry Warren? she may have thought, although such thought seems rather coarsely literary. It may be of interest to note at this point that Warren’s wife, post-“Prisoner of Love,” managed to tempt or lure or inveigle — or simply ask — Ray up to the roof where, to his astonishment, she performed fellatio on him, and, perhaps, thought about the old days. Why, she may have thought again, did I marry Warren? a thought, I grant you, as crudely literary as it earlier was. Ray realized that he loved Warren’s wife, that he’d always loved her, although this realization was, you might agree, suspect. And their affair began. Why Ray’s wife, at the same time, decided to throw herself — her unspoken phrase — at Warren is not known, and there seems little point in inventing good reasons for the amour. Let us take for granted that Ray’s wife and Warren, at another party during the same febrile holiday season, had much the same experience as their spouses’: backyard or roof or basement or hallway or closet or bathroom as erotic locale; a limited repertory of sexual acts, dictated by the constraints of time, place, weather, clothing, and experience: however combined, such elements were triggers for the release of love, or love’s counterfeit, fascination, which, as the old song has it, implies a line between itself and love that is hard to find on an evening such as this, or, in this case, an evening such as that. So their affair began. The women, or so it seems, never found out about each other’s regularly occasioned adventures, but the brothers found out about everything after a few weeks. How it happened that the women remained ignorant — blissfully ignorant, I’m tempted to say — is beyond the means of this somewhat thin narrative, and it isn’t, after all, important. The brothers met on a rainy evening at Rockefeller Center for some reason or other, something to do with an insurance policy of their mother’s: a rare meeting, indeed. They walked in a drizzle over to a bar off Father Duffy Square and, inevitably, after some business of their meeting had been settled, talked about their mutual betrayals of each other as well as, of course, the mutual betrayals of and with their wives. After a few drinks and the most halfhearted denunciations of each other’s despicable practices, it became clear that they were not only not angry with each other, they were, on the contrary, content, even, perhaps, a little happy. Neither was so crude, or, perhaps, brave enough to say so, but it was obvious by hint and indirection, a smile, a glance, that their couplings with each other’s wives had made them feel, if tritely, young again; but, better than young, reckless, daring, thrillingly transgressive, in a word, immoral. As they were getting ready to leave, Ray reminded Warren of the time, so many slow years ago, when they had gone, for the first time, to hear Charlie Parker. It was at the Three Deuces, you remember, Warren? Ray said. Bird and Kenny Dorham, with Roy Haynes and Al Haig. But who was the bass? Slam Stewart? but he never, right? played with Bird? Tommy Potter! Warren said. Right, right, Ray said, Tommy Potter. They stood in the doorway, buttoning their coats, remembering themselves as inept boys in their cheap one-button lounge suits from Buddy Lee, hiding behind their hipster sunglasses. They looked at each other, deep in their luscious sins, knowing the secrets of each other’s wives, their yielding, lustful bodies. You want a Charms? Warren said, I use them to cut down on smoking. Cut down? Ray laughed. You smoke like a fucking chimney. Warren put a lozenge in his mouth and lit a cigarette. Well, my intentions are good, kid. The road to hell, Ray said, and smiled. Sure, he said, gimme one, and a smoke, too. Jesus, Charlie Parker, I still remember how I felt. And Bird wore a purple tie, too, remember? Purple. Those were the good old days, really. Not too bad now, either, brother mine, Warren said, and winked.