He sees the others. (Sunday rules: the people here all from the single tribe.) The men shirtless, in bathing trunks. Some in a pelt of body stubble the shape of a man’s undershirt, others smoother than women and with incipient, undifferentiated breasts like the uncloven tits of eleven-year-old girls. He sees the lightning strokes of old operations, the zippers and fossils of healed scars. He sees long testicles winking dully in great nests of jockstrap and the multiple vaccinations on the arms of the women, like the seals and stamps of official documents. Much care has gone into selecting their bathing suits. There are no bikinis, no bandanna prints. The women’s suits are one piece, black or the oxydized red of deep rust, only a little white piping running around the suits like a national border. Their feet are squeezed into pumps, the broad heels a sort of clear, frozen aspic with flecks of gold and silver foil floating in them like stars. They do not actually sit together. They sit in small groups, constellations of between three and seven, but arranged as they are, it is as if they are one group, people ringing a campfire, perhaps.
Preminger’s ears are grown enormous, like deep-dish radio telescopes. He hears everything as he sits, neutrally naked as the rest. Their voices flow into his brain like bathwater filling a tub.
“I’m telling you, Dave, you think this is an operation? It’s home sweet home and I ain’t knocking it, but I got a kid brother in California who lives in a condominium that would put your eyes out. Half the apartments out there have their own swimming pools.”
“I’m happy with this one.”
“Of course. I’m just giving you a comparison.”
“I don’t want the responsibility of a pool.”
“I’m not selling you one. I’m just trying to give you an idea of the scope.”
“I read there’s one going up in New York City — Onassis has one — that’s being built with two sets of corridors.”
“Two? What for? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Two sets of corridors. One for the residents, one for the servants and delivery people.”
“Jesus. Wouldn’t you hear them? I mean they’d be moving around like mice in the wall. You’d hear them.”
“They’d be trained. They’d take their shoes off. You might hear John-John. He’d be running up and down the second corridor with his friends all day. You’d only hear John-John.”
“Two sets of corridors. That’d mean two sets of elevators too. Christ, the maintenance on a place like that’d have to be twenty-five hundred a month.”
“Grace, tell me, you still looking for a girl?”
“Bernadine’s going to give me Fridays.”
“I thought she goes to Dorothy on Fridays.”
“We worked it out. Howard’s divorce came through. The judge gave him visitation on weekends. He brings the kids over and leaves them with Dorothy so she needs someone to straighten up on Monday. Bernadine goes to Olive on Mondays and Flo doesn’t need Helen now that Frank isn’t working so she comes to Dorothy on Mondays and I said I’d take Bernadine on Fridays.”
“Ex-cons I use, retards, wounded vets, all the handicapped.”
“Me too. That’s what the schmucks who work for me are like.”
“No, I mean it. It’s good business. They live by the skin of their teeth, those fellas. You never have no labor trouble from them. They don’t ask for raises or fringe benefits. The big fringe benefit is that they’re working at all.”
“You feel that sun? It’s like a vacation. I tell you it eats my heart out. This is the life. This is the life and I’m going to be sixty-four years old.”
“You’re as old as you feel.”
“You know something?”
“What’s that?”
“If I was ten years younger I’d be fifty-four. If I was thirteen years younger I’d still be over fifty.”
“Sunrise, sunset.”
“Yeah. I think I’ll go in the water. How’s the water?”
“Terrific.”
“Cold?”
“Not once you get used to it. The air is colder than the water.”
“I’m going in. I got to take a leak.”
“You got Blissner’s place when he lost his job.”
“That’s right.”
“May I ask a personal question?”
“What I had to give for it?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“Thirty-two hundred fifty above cost.”
“That isn’t bad. It’s the eighth floor.”
“He asked four thousand with the carpets and drapes. I told him to take them.”
“So he did?”
“The drapes. He had to eat the carpets.”
“All my life I’ve been busy. Now the kids are grown and Lewis sold the store, what do I do with myself? Sure, it’s wonderful to relax and sit by the pool, but that’s five months a year and I’ve got an active mind. What do you do the rest of the time? I thought about this very carefully and for me the answer is volunteer work. There’s plenty of trouble in the world that those who have the time can do something about. We don’t just have to stand idly by. If I can lend a helping hand to those less fortunate I’ve got no right to sit back. Beginning Tuesday I’m recording the weights for my Weight Watchers Club.”
“My manager’s landlord’s a Pakistani. So Steve, that’s my manager, and Milly are going to Peewaukee for the weekend and they want to leave the baby with the landlord. His wife had made this standing offer when they moved in. So they go down to Mr. Pahdichter and they ask if it’ll be all right and the Pak says — I can’t do his accent like Steve—‘Oh yes. Very good. But does the baby eat, does the baby eat, curry?’”
“They gave him to eat curry? A baby?”
“They’re very modern people.”
“Feldman?”
“I’m sunbathing. I’m getting a tan.”
“You’re beautiful. If they had a beauty contest it’d be you hands down. The rest of us wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“So?”
“Sew buttons. So? So what?”
“So when are you going to let me get you on the Johnny Carson show?”
“That again.”
“I can do it. I got connections with the higher-ups. When’s it going to be, Feldman? When does America look you over?”
“A week from Thursday.”
“What a wit. You really have to let me do it. You could show him how you take a sunbath. They’d introduce you as this big sunbathing expert from the North Side. Johnny’d take his shirt off and everything. It’d be a sensation. You and Johnny with your shirts off. The people wouldn’t know where to look first. You’d tell him when to turn over and he’d do these funny takes. Come on, Feldman. I’ll call up right now if you give me the word.”
“Why don’t you go on the Johnny Carson show?”
“Me? What do I know about sunbathing? It’s got to be you.”
“I still say you should have gone out. You had no right to stay in with two pair.”
“Queens and jacks?”
“Gert was also showing a pair of queens. You should have gone out.”
“It’s my money.”
“You ruin it for other people, Lenore. You draw their cards. That’s why nobody wants to sit to your left. You asked and I told you. I always say what I think to a person’s face. I can’t be a hypocrite.”
“Excuse me for living.”
“Should I call Johnny, or should we wait till he takes the show out to Hollywood where we can get you real sunshine?”