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  In the belly of my wineglass looped a ruby pool of zinfandel. Dumb good substance. Unlike Cavanaugh running after annihilation. I had nothing to say. He felt unknown. Irrelevant. Deer didn’t look at him. I didn’t either. I looked beyond his head when I glanced in his direction. I saw the wallpaper and a dish cabinet standing beside the kitchen door. Old yellow pine. Brown knots like birthmarks and a tall glass front. Deep shelves stacked with china and knickknacks, tiny pink pigs and dancing yokels. Porcelain sillies. It didn’t suit decent old pine. Neither did the wallpaper. In Kramer’s house nothing suited anything and all of it seemed chosen.

  A house of blatant heart, yearnings for excitement, everywhere in different styles. Orange rug in the living room. Glossy acrylics on the walls. The opposite of puritanical is the savage energy of bad taste. Cavanaugh was pouring himself more wine. He said, ‘Come on, Terry. Your turn.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Berliner, ‘tell us about Deborah Zeller.’

  ‘Graduate student,’ I said. Terry looked confused, as if he were waiting for us to tell him his story. ‘You said you almost married her, then you stopped talking.’

  ‘Don’t be ashamed,’ said Cavanaugh. ‘Don’t feel crap like that. Kramer’s right, man. This is the twentieth century. We didn’t come here tonight to feel ashamed.’

  Canterbury said, ‘Oh, let him alone.’ But he’d been quiet so long he’d lost the power of being heard. A psychological superfluity at this table, in this house. Lean ghostly fellow wearing glasses and pastels.

  Terry said, ‘I believe I see your point, Cavanaugh. Shame is old-fashioned. I’ll write a paper on the subject for a medical journal. What should I feel in the meantime?’

  ‘Feel guilt,’ I said. ‘Tell what happened with Deborah Zeller. Don’t leave anything out.’ I spoke as if to meet his irony, but I was thinking still of Cavanaugh. Though we’d been friends for years, he never talked of very personal matters. A sociologist says a woman appears half-naked at a party, but, with one man, she’d never dress that way. The principle applied here. In a crowd Cavanaugh could say anything.

  Canterbury sneered at me, the expression fleeting, minimal, difficult to interpret. I wasn’t even sure I’d seen it. Had I offended him by urging Terry to talk? He was looking at me. I looked back, as if seeing him for the first time. Pale and blond. Lunar qualities. White negative space, like conscience. He said nothing. I looked down.

  ‘It’s very silly,’ said Terry. ‘Shortly after my divorce I met a woman named Deborah Zeller—’

  ‘Wait,’ cried Berliner, rising. ‘Shortly after my divorce I met a woman.’ He was striding away, passing through the living room, heading for the stairs, running up, shouting, ‘Don’t say another word until I piss.’

  Terry lowered his voice. ‘I married young. I didn’t know much about women.’

  ‘I hear you,’ shouted Berliner.

  ‘Amazing,’ said Terry. He waited. Everyone waited, including Deborah Zeller, the name so familiar it felt like a thing. Chunky. Bulging. Almost hot. My mother used to say, when I sneezed, ‘Somebody is talking about you.’ I imagined Deborah Zeller sneezing, and, upstairs near the roof, Berliner. He stood with legs spread, like a statue at the bowl. The trousers of his grey polyester suit were open. He held his dick. Green eyes watched the urine plunge. He pissed long and long.

  Three

  ‘I WAIT LIKE AN OX,’ says Kafka. Masochists don’t mind waiting, but most people do. It’s a miserable, degrading thing, a social torture inflicted on convicts and dogs. I wondered if Berliner had a problem pissing. He’d said his body gave him trouble. He’d also said, ‘Don’t say another word,’ and here we were, six male heads around a table, waiting in silence.

  In the middle of the table lay a salmon head, like an emblem of our situation. Not so different from our heads – intact, open-eyed, stopped – except for the slick sheath of skin, trailing spine, murdered mouth. It looked as if it had been devoured in flight, so quickly devoured it was unaware that it was dead. A waiting look. Thus, I identified waiting and death. ‘My wife told me a waiting story,’ I said, determined to disobey Berliner; to talk and not to feel dead.

  Terry put down his fork and looked at me as if this subject – waiting – engaged him crucially. Perhaps it did. Doctors have waiting rooms. His attention, like his great bald head, made an impression of solidity and fullness. I didn’t feel equal to it, but I proceeded mechanically to talk.

  ‘The story is about when she was a little girl and lived with her mother.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Terry.

  ‘Her parents were divorced. Her mother worked.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. The word pressed me like a finger. I picked up speed.

  ‘She used to walk home from school alone. When she got to the apartment and put the key in the lock, she’d feel frightened. Her mother worked late. The apartment was always empty in the afternoon, but she imagined someone was inside, waiting for her. She’d open the door, hurry straight to the TV set, and sit down in front of it on the rug. She remained there until her mother came home. She wouldn’t move, wouldn’t even take off her coat and gloves. One afternoon, sitting close to the TV set, she had to wait longer than usual. It got dark. She flicked on the TV. A face appeared. It held her. A man in a white suit. He was talking to her. His voice was full of love. It was like “a deep silver spoon”, she says. He was exhorting her to believe, telling her it was good to believe, and he kept on smiling as he talked, showing her how good it was. Alone in the dark apartment with this man talking to her, she heard herself begin whimpering, “I believe, I believe.”’

  Terry smiled, then said, ‘I don’t get it.’

  I felt a rush of embarrassment, as if I’d told a joke badly. Now, glancing at the salmon head, it was nothing but the head of a dead fish. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I don’t get it either. I could tell other stories that have no point. This often happens to me. I start to talk, thinking there is a point, and then it never arrives. What is it, anyhow, this point? Things happen. You remember. That’s all. If you take a large perspective, you’ll realise there never is a point. There’s only a perspective. For example, look at that salmon head. The poor dumb fish was swimming upstream and his head landed in that plate.’

  ‘But I get it,’ said Paul, turning an intimate face to me. ‘I see what you mean. I have an old friend named Mitch. He was always late. I was always waiting. Skinny guy with glasses and crooked teeth. He could give you a look, you’d crack up laughing. I loved him. Everybody loved him. Five years ago he phoned. I hadn’t heard his voice in a long time, but right away I said, “Mitch, Mitch. It’s you, for God’s sake.” You know what he said? He said, “Who is this?”’ Paul stopped and shook his head. To settle his feelings. Make them collect.

  ‘He’d phoned me by accident. He was in Memphis and couldn’t stay on the line. Too expensive. I told him to hang up, let me call him. When I called, it was the wrong number. I was so frustrated I kicked the wall. Then I calmed down. I sat by the phone, staring at it, waiting, smoking cigarettes, praying it would ring. It didn’t ring. Then, last week – five years later – the phone rings and it’s Mitch. He says he’s in Berkeley. I recognised his voice right away and this was no mistake. He phoned me. He wanted to talk to me. I almost went crazy with happiness. He came by to my place, the same funny Mitch with the glasses, the crooked teeth. I asked if he remembered the time I loaned him fifty bucks. Years ago in New York. I had to get fifty bucks and meet him on a corner uptown, near the park. He sounded desperate. I ran to the bank. There was forty-two bucks in my account. I wrote a cheque for fifty. I was scared. Man, if some guard pulled his gun on me, I would have thought it was natural. But the bank was busy. Long lines. They cashed my cheque without looking. I asked Mitch if he remembered how cold it was, how it was snowing. He laughed. I could see he remembered. But talk about waiting. Man, I waited in the cold, fifty bucks balled up in my fist. Three hours late, Mitch arrives in a taxi. I couldn’t believe it. He shows up three hours lat
e in a taxi with a dynamite black chick sitting beside him. He took the fifty bucks through the window. I didn’t even have change for the subway. I walked home. “I still owe you that fifty,” he says. I told him forget it. Seeing him was worth more than fifty bucks. Then he says his luggage was lost at the airport and he has a big appointment in San Francisco. Could I lend him a tie and a nice pair of shoes? I found him a tie. The shoes were beautiful, handmade in London. A little tight, but they looked great. I’d worn them only once. Mitch said he could have them stretched. He knew a “cobbler” in San Francisco, retired army officer who’d had an eye shot out in the Africa campaign. We laughed. Mitch always knows somebody. Whatever you want, he knows somebody. Drop Mitch anyplace in America, even in the world, he’ll have connections. He’ll know a guy who can fix your watch. Another guy who can do a first-class valve job, cheap. Another guy who can get you some coke. A woman whose sister’s boyfriend can get you a machine gun. He knows a chiropractor who does abortions for twenty-five bucks. Mitch said he couldn’t hang around. He’d come back after his appointment. We could talk then. He wanted to hear how I’d been doing. He wanted to meet my wife and kids. He had things to tell me about himself. I was so excited I didn’t go to bed. What if I fell asleep and didn’t hear the doorbell? My wife woke me at four in the morning. I was asleep in the kitchen, my head on the table. She said, “Mitch isn’t coming.” She pulled me upstairs to bed.’

  Terry said, ‘I must be slow tonight. I don’t seem to understand things. You say, after five years he shows up, takes your tie and shoes, and he disappears.’

  ‘It’s just shoes. Just shoes. A tie. It’s clothes, you dig?’

  ‘If you hit him in the face, I would dig.’

  ‘You should see his face. Long skinny face with snaggle teeth. He looks like a broken stork. When they cashed my cheque, the money was for Mitch. If it was for me, the guard would have blown my head off. Everybody loves Mitch. The bank didn’t know the money was for him, but if it was for me they would have looked at my account. They would have said, “Only forty-two bucks in your account, mister. Get your ass out of here.” You think I could hit him in the face? Man, I was walking home broke after waiting three hours in the cold to give him fifty bucks, and I didn’t even feel angry. I couldn’t hit Mitch.’

  ‘I hear you,’ shouted Berliner, his footsteps coming downstairs, turning into the hall to the kitchen. Paul grinned and shut up. Through the kitchen wall, Berliner said, ‘Shortly after my divorce, I screwed Deborah Zeller.’

  Poor Deborah Zeller, I thought, compared to Mitch. The kitchen’s swinging door jolted, shoved wide. Berliner stood in it, reborn. ‘Go on, baby. You were saying “shortly”. I like that word. I’m going to use it, too, shortly.’

  Cavanaugh said, ‘Sit down, man, or I’ll kill you.’

  Paul was still grinning, delighted by Berliner’s return. His grin made him look sort of stupid, but he was merely loyal. He’d die for a buddy.

  Four

  NOT SITTING, Berliner said, ‘I’ve been thinking about your sleep trouble.’ He leered at Cavanaugh, the expression magnifying his features, freeing light in his eyes, making long, evil teeth. ‘A marriage bed has benefits. You fart in it and nobody is offended.’

  Cavanaugh’s voice was weary and severe as he said, ‘A marriage bed has benefits. I appreciate what you’re saying. When I do it with another woman I have to wash afterwards.’

  Berliner sat. Again triumphant. White hairs coiled in his nostrils, like incandescent wires, seething.

  ‘What are you talking about, Cavanaugh?’ I asked the question exactly as if I didn’t know what he was talking about. My face was hot.

  ‘I wash and check my clothes for hairs. I chew gum, worry about sex stinks, marks on my body. You know. Not worth it, man. The time. The phoney conversation. I hate the kissing in particular. It makes me think of Sarah. How many ways can you kiss a woman? Then having to be charming for two or three hours in the afternoon. I drive home thinking I’ll never do this again. But I do it again.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yeah. I do things I don’t like to think of myself doing. I don’t like being the kind of man who likes doing it. Except I like it. Man, what am I talking about?’

  ‘Making it with another woman,’ said Kramer. ‘You lie to Sarah?’

  ‘I talk with half my head. The other half doesn’t exist. I don’t lie to her, I lie to myself. I come home after doing it. I can’t get there fast enough. Dinner is ready, table is set, kids are cleaned up and waiting for me. A jar of daisies is in the centre of the table. Milk is set out for the kids. Like nothing happened. This is it, the way it is and it should be. White, yellow, clean. Even the cat looks happy. I lift the fork to my mouth and catch a whiff of cunt, because twenty minutes ago I was fucking my brains out down the road. I scrubbed good, but there it is. The kids are laughing. They knock over a glass of milk. Sarah says to me, “You have to make them behave. I can’t be the only one who does that.” I yell, “Behave, or I’ll rip your heads off.” They giggle and Sarah wants to kill me. I tell her to get the daisies off the table. They take up too much room. We don’t need daisies when we’re trying to eat dinner. Man, I like those daisies and I’m telling her to get rid of them.’

  Kramer grinned.

  Cavanaugh grinned back at him. ‘That’s not how it is for you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No kids. For you, bullshit is a way of life. How come you never turned gay?’

  ‘I’ve got bleeding piles. Don’t get personal, Cavanaugh.’

  ‘My wife is pretty,’ I said, a maudlin slide in my voice.

  ‘So?’ Cavanaugh glanced at me with irritation.

  ‘She moves pretty. She sits cross-legged in the middle of the quilt and brushes her hair. I see her do this every night. Her head tips against the stroke and I hear a fiery rush as the brush goes down. She finishes. Removes her glasses. She sticks them into one of her slippers, then goes to sleep.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘If I made it with another woman, it would degrade my wife.’

  ‘If she didn’t know?’

  ‘She’d get sick.’

  ‘Right,’ said Paul. ‘Right, right. She’d get very sick. She’d need an operation. The doctors would cut out her machinery. You like the way she brushes her hair?’

  ‘I depend on it.’

  ‘My wife does yoga before she goes to bed,’ said Paul, looking at his reflection in me. ‘That’s eloquent, man. The way she brushes her hair.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Berliner, sitting up sharply, staring towards the horizon of his mind. ‘Every night I see this dog. Legs like pins. Every night. Old Japanese man comes down the street, the dog bouncing in front of him, sniffing bushes, cutting his eyes back to see if the man is coming. It goes bouncing out onto the asphalt. Tiny dog. Nails like rats scratching the asphalt. The man stays at the kerb and the dog makes circles, tiny scratchy steps. Million to the inch, tighter and tighter circles, sniffing, trembling. The man lights a cigarette to show the dog he is being patient. The dog keeps circling, looking for the exact spot. Toothpick tail sticks up straight. He is about to squat and crap. But he has to do one more circle, then one more, then one more. He never craps.’

  ‘No?’ said Paul, his voice all charity. ‘How come?’

  ‘It isn’t in his nature anymore. He does circles for the man.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Cavanaugh.

  ‘Freedom, baby. I’m talking about freedom.’ Berliner’s eyes were big with vision, with desire to share it. Cavanaugh delivered us. He said, ‘I see what you’re getting at, Solly. But I’m not a little dog. I’m a pinball machine. One woman makes another necessary. I used to show up at parties with Miss Beautiful and I’d be looking at every other woman in the room. I’d feel trapped for the evening. You know what I used to do on the road?’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘I told Sarah about it.’

  ‘What did you do on the road?’

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sp; ‘I told her I was sorry. It was our anniversary. The kids were staying with my mother. We went camping up north. High pine woods. River. Burning yellow moon. Suddenly I had to tell her everything and I felt it would be okay. I told her about Kansas City, El Paso, New York – the women. You wouldn’t believe what she said. She said, “I want a divorce.” I told her it wouldn’t happen again. I wanted her to forgive me. She said, “I want a divorce.” Like I had one in my pocket. I was getting irritated. I promised her it would never happen again. She says she wants a fucking divorce. Then she says, “Okay. Me or basketball.”’

  ‘You picked her,’ said Paul.

  ‘Damn right.’

  Paul grinned, looking very pleased.

  ‘And it still happens,’ said Cavanaugh, ‘every chance I get. But I don’t move on the wives of friends. Never. I absolutely draw the line there. Except sometimes.’

  ‘You lack inner resources,’ said Terry. ‘It’s not serious.’

  ‘I love to fuck. That’s serious. It’s going to be my epitaph. Cavanaugh loved to fuck.’

  Terry lifted a piece of pie to his lips and said, ‘Personally, I prefer courtship.’ The pie slipped into his mouth. He chewed. I looked at his stunted thumbs. Brutal digits. He preferred courtship. Things figure in the human world to the degree they don’t.

  ‘What did you do on the road, Cavanaugh?’ I asked the question, unsure he hadn’t actually told us.

  ‘A lot of courtship.’