I was weeping. Bea had started to dress.
“There are jokes,” I said when I’d regained control, “about men on motorcycles disappearing inside women, or getting lost. There’s this one about a rabbi married to a woman who’s supposed to be really fabulous. One day the cleaning lady comes into the bedroom where the rabbi’s wife is taking a nap. She’s lying on the bedspread, all naked except where she’s covered her genitals with the rabbi’s skullcap, and the maid says, ‘Oh, my God, I knew it would happen one day. The rabbi fell in.’ I used to laugh at stories like that, but I never will again. You’re so beautiful.”
“I didn’t scream,” she said, “because it was my fate.”
“What?”
“People find out about me. In high school, in gym, the girls would see me in the shower, and they’d tell their boyfriends. Then the boys would humiliate me. Worse things were done than what you’ve done. We had to leave town. In the new high school I got a note from the doctor so that I could be excused from gym, but they still found out. Maybe someone from my old town knew someone in the new town, maybe the doctor himself said something — I don’t know. Boys would take me out and … want to see. When I graduated I moved away and started all over in a different state. There was a boy … I liked him. One day we made love — and he told. It was terrible. I can’t even wear a bathing suit. You know? Then I came to Hartford. And you found out. I didn’t scream because it was my fate. At least you say you love me—”
“Adore you,” I said.
She said something I couldn’t quite hear.
“What was that?”
“I said it’s my burden. Only it carries me. It’s as if I were always on horseback,” she cried, and rushed toward me and embraced me, and I held her like that for two hours, and when I was ready we made love.
During the commercial break Dick discovered that apparently his guests had lost their voices.
After his confession the druggist had slumped in his chair, his hands in his lap, his mouth slack-jawed. His eyes were glazed, stunned by the violation of his character. Dick murmured his name and shook him gently, then turned to the others. “Do you think he’s okay?” he asked. But Jack Patterson and Pepper and Mel were as somnolent as the pharmacist. The cat had their tongues. Behr-Bleibtreau was smiling. “Listen,” Dick told his panel, “you can’t poop out on me. We’ve got almost two hours to go.” Pepper Steep’s eyes were closed. Jack Patterson was catatonic. Bernie was off in some private world. “You’ve got to be able to talk,” he said. “It’s bad radio.” He turned to Mel Son. “Come on, Mel, you’re the professional. Give us some help here. When we go back on the air, get with it.” Mel scowled; he winced and blinked. He seems alive, Dick thought, but helpless, like someone gagged by robbers.
Meanwhile the commercial tapes were being played over the loudspeaker in the studio. At this time of night there were only the public service spots: enlistment pitches for the Naval Air Reserve, appeals for Radio Free Europe, “Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires,” “Watch Out for the Other Guy.” Dick loved the ragged shrillness of these messages, their martial musical backgrounds, the sense they gave of a low budget and a moribund style: the sound man’s cellophane fires, more cozy than ominous, the long scream of a car horn gone awry that was, in these pieces, an inevitable signal of an accident proclaiming itself, a fanfare of the accomplished fact. He loved the starched treble of the announcer’s anti-Communist voice, and enjoyed — the discount for broadcasting public-service messages was enormous at this time of the morning — the sense the commercials created that his show was self-sustaining, a public service itself, that the equipment operated for him, existed to carry his voice out over the mysterious air incredible distances, into receivers (those strange extensions of his mouth), a sign in the night that there was no death.
Ordinarily he had to shush his guests who, suddenly relaxed, chattered nervously during these commercial breaks, annoying to him as if they drowned out the strains of some favorite song. Now he began to panic as the commercials came toward their end. Hurriedly he opened the key on his mike and spoke to his engineer. “Put up another commercial. Give me some time here.” He looked at Behr-Bleibtreau. If his panelists wouldn’t talk he’d be alone with him. He was getting scared.
Then Vendler came in with the sandwiches.
“Vendler,” Dick said, “where’ve you been? We’re all starving.”
From time to time Dick had attempted to put Vendler on the air, but the man wasn’t interested. The popular late-night television shows all had their Max Asners and Mrs. Millers and pet bartenders, even their favorite barbers and regular cab drivers: fans who never missed a night, who out of some inexplicable urgency were always in the studio audience and were never surprised when they were called on. But Dick had never been able to draw this man out. Probably he did not even listen to the show. He was content merely to wait around until Dick mentioned his delicatessen and then would pick up the empty lazy susan from the previous night and depart.
This time Vendler wouldn’t get away so easy. Dick pulled a chair up for Vendler and sat him down in it. Grabbing Bernie’s microphone, he put it in front of the man, gave him one of his own sandwiches and took one himself. Quickly he removed it from the wax paper envelope and took a great bite, pantomiming monumental chewing, holding it up in front of him and waving it about like a man eating on the run. Though he hadn’t said a word, it was as though he was speaking to them with his mouth full. He spun the lazy susan as if it were a roulette wheel and pointed to it with his sandwich hand inviting everyone in the studio to partake. No one made a move except for Jerry, his engineer, who came out of the control booth, grabbed some sandwiches and coffee and rushed back into the booth.
They were on the air.
DICK GIBSON: [In a split second balancing these factors: he was no longer alone with Behr-Bleibtreau. Vendler was with him. A laconic man but a presence from the outside, one of the best he could have right now. Yes. Vendler from Vendler’s 24-Hour Kosher-Style Delicatessen, with the smell of lox on his fingers, a suggestion of the briny deeps of pickle jars, his hands red from frankfurter dyes, dark bits of pastrami herb on his white shirt, a vaguely kosher-style lint. A man refulgent with the fluorescent light from his massive delicatessen cases, a solid fellow, full as salami casing, smooth as the formica tabletops he rubbed with damp rags. A generous man with cardboard placards for the Sisterhood Lecture Series using up the precious space in his windows, with slotted collection cans all along the top of his white cases, for Leukemia, Heart Fund, obscure agencies in Israel. A man with a bread-slicing machine, with the butt ends of corned beefs and bloody, delicious ropes about roasts, with sliced lox spread out on oily paper like cards in a card trick. Such a bright, glowing guy! And he wouldn’t be tainted by what had gone on that night. Yes! It was Vendler he would use against Behr-Bleibtreau.
But his habit was to leave right after his name was mentioned. So here was Dick’s problem: Should he guarantee the man’s staying on by never mentioning his name, or should he risk it and even throw in the plug? Vendler was in the chair, the mike in front of him. He had never been this close to being on the air before; he might even like it. If Dick was skillful enough, he might even forget they were talking on the radio after the first five minutes. Subjects, subjects, he needed subjects.