A Bad Man (40 page)

Whoopee, Feldman thought. Whoopee yi o ki yay. This is it.
This
is. “Tear-gas fountain pens,” he said. “Cattle prods. And flags, plenty of flags. Let them know who we are. And the rifles! And the ammo for the rifles! Forty thousand dollars. I can equip an outfit of two hundred men and put them in the field for forty thousand dollars. You
got
forty thousand dollars?”

“
Do
you?” Feldman demanded.

The man was blinking steadily now, licking his lips.

“Come on, come on, it’s near closing. They have three and a half months, six minutes on us.”

“What about uniforms?” the man asked. “You didn’t say anything about uniforms.”

“Bowling shirts, yachting caps,” Feldman said sharply. “Do you have the money?”

“My savings,” the stranger said. His decision made, he seemed relieved. “And you’re right about these”—he pointed to his lapel—“just a lot of talk.”

“All right,” Feldman said, scribbling an order as he spoke, “take this to Sporting Goods. And I’m giving you this at cost, so I want to go into your political background to make sure the stuff isn’t falling into the wrong hands.”

The man nodded and extended his card. He acted as if something quite familiar were happening to him.

This encounter taught Feldman a valuable lesson: that everyone had already been tempted, that everyone had already succumbed, had had those things happen to him which he wanted to have happen, and was looking for them to happen again. Seduction was routine; yielding was; everyone had a yes to spend and spent it. And there was about them all some soft, run-to-fat quality not of knowledge but of consent and peace, the puffy eyes of the heart.

He felt better, relieved of his responsibility to satanize the world.

In the next few weeks Feldman did a land-office business in a wide variety of favors. He arranged an orgy for some conventioneers (a call to Freedman: “Lilly wants to go into a whorehouse, Doc. Figures she belongs in one after what she’s done to the family. Physicians keep tabs on this sort of thing. You know a place with a healthy bunch of girls? After all, I still have to sleep with her”). He helped out a woman who wanted to fix a judge (“Doc, Lilly was run in last night. What can you tell me about Judge Meader?”). He did some business with a homosexual, fixed up a childless couple with a black-market baby, and was generally content. It still nagged at him occasionally that he was not really responsible for his clients’ needs, but this was partially offset by an incident that occurred shortly after the visit of the right-winger.

A fellow came into the office but couldn’t say what he wanted.

“Girls?” Feldman asked.

“No. I don’t know.”

“Fellas then. I could put you on to some swingers. My personal physician treats them for the biggest families.”

“Not interested.”

“You drive? There’s this guy needs a wheelman for a bank job he’s planning.”

“I’m no crook.”

“Say, you
don’t
know what you want, do you?”

“Sure don’t.” The fellow sat spraddle-legged.

“All right,” Feldman said finally, “I’ve got it. I’ve been waiting for someone to try it out on. It’s new, an experiment. Not a bit risky, but very unusual and a lot of kicks.”

“Yeah?”

“Guaranteed, but it would cost you seven hundred bucks.”

“That’s a little more than I’d planned—”

“Okay, then it’s not for you. Forget it.”

“What is it?”

“Forget it. It’s not for you.”

“Well, you can tell me what it is.”

“No, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t want to cut corners on this project. We’ll think of something else.”

“Well, just tell me what it is. If it sounds worthwhile—”

“You’d do it?”

“Well, if I thought it was okay—”

“All right,” Feldman said. “You’ve got to go to Cleveland. You wear disguises.”

“What?”

“You wear disguises in Cleveland. I’ll send you to a place where they rent costumes.”

“Jesus.”

“You stay in a hotel, and every day you put on a different costume: fireman, baseball player, intern—that sort of thing.”

“Well, what’s so hot about that?”

“Sure. Forget it.”

“Well, what’s so hot about it?”

“Have you tried it?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then how do you know? Habit—everything’s habit. Tell me, what do you do when you hear a funny story?”

“Well, I laugh.”

“Exactly. That’s what I
mean
. Why not hold your right arm up instead? Look, do me a favor. Go to Cleveland. See what you think.”

He went, and a week later Feldman got a postcard saying it was the best seven hundred dollars he’d ever spent and that next year the man thought he would try it in Worcester, Mass.

Now things ran smoothly. Each day brought new challenges, and he derived a certain joy from the balanced schizophrenic nature of his store: the aboveboard floors, with their conventional commerce, and the queer open secret of his basement. He was even able to take more interest in the main store, discovering, now that he could again pay attention to it, that in the last months it had prospered. He reconsidered his plans for building a suburban branch, and while he had not actually made his mind up to go ahead with the project, he deemed it a serious future possibility. Though he still believed in the lean years to come, he wondered whether he might not have exaggerated their imminence.

At home his relations with his family had entered a new phase. He neither tormented Lilly nor avoided her with his neutrality. Billy, who was out of school for the summer, was by the grace of his vacation able to obscure some of his intellectual clumsiness. Lean years would come for Billy, Feldman knew, but for now he was perfectly willing to pretend that there was not much wrong with his son. Though everyday he pursued Billy with questions about why he was the last kid chosen for a team, sometimes he allowed a tone of joking to give a good-natured dimension to his scorn.

It was against this background that he found himself one night on Lilly’s side of the bed. They had been watching television together, and Feldman, who always determined which programs they would watch, permitted her a movie. The grateful Lilly couldn’t do enough for him.

“Play with my back,” he murmured. He lay on his side and pulled his pajama tops up around his shoulders. “Use your other hand,” he said. “I feel your callus.” It was pleasant to lie there in the dark with his eyes closed, listening to the movie. “Lower,” he said, “a little lower. Yes. There.” Lilly didn’t have any idea when she had overworked an area. “Keep moving around,” he told her. “Try to remember where you’ve been. That’s it.” For a few minutes it was much better, but every so often she would become engrossed in the movie. Then her hand would falter and stop, and he would have to shake his shoulders to get her attention again. During commercials, however, the hand came alive by itself and fluttered hither and yon with an almost geisha attention. During the next commercial Feldman removed his bottoms, and even after the movie came on Lilly’s fingers still moved expertly.

“I’m going to turn the set off, Leo,” she said in a few minutes. In the dark she groped her way back to the bed. “Play with the backs of my legs,” he said. “Play with my kneecaps. Play with the nape of my neck.”

She reached across his body and drew her fingers up his thighs. “Let’s make love,” she whispered.

“No. Play with my back again.”

“Please, Leo.”

“I can’t.”

“I’ll make you. Shall I try to make you, Leo?”

“All right,” he said, “try to make me.” He lay on his back, and she took his penis in her left hand. The callus irritated him. She rubbed him this way for a few minutes and then began to thrash about against him.

She put her breast on his nose. “Do you have a hard-on, Leo?” she asked sweetly.

“I have a soft-off.”

She put her hand back on his penis. “Take my ear in your mouth,” he said. She took his ear in her mouth. “Don’t suck it, for Christ’s sake—you’ll break the eardrum.” She became gentler.

“Can you now, Leo?” she asked in a little while. “Will you try?”

“All right,” he said, “I’ll try.” He rolled on top of her. “It doesn’t fit.”

“Here,” she said.

“I’m not in.”

“Sure you are.”

He moved back and forth a few times. “I’m slipping out.”

“Ahh. Ahh. Oh, Leo.”

“You’re too dry.”

“
Ahhgghhrr
,” she shuddered.

“Play with my back,” he said.

“Leo, come back. Leo? All right,” she said, “I know. Let’s stand up.” They stood up.

“Stop. You’re breaking it off.”

“Let’s sit on the side of the bed.”

“No. The color television.”

“Leo, we’ll break it—and the tubes get too hot. Let’s stand on the dresser.”

“Let’s sit in the chest of drawers.”

“Leo, what are you doing?”

“Where’s the air-conditioning vent?”

“The air-conditioning vent?”

“Where is it?”

“There, on the floor. Near the chair. What are you doing?”

“I’m sitting down. Ohh,” he said. “Oh boy,
Arghhrr
.”

“Let
me
try.”

“Wait till I’m through.
Ahhghh
. Wow.”

“Leo, you’ll catch cold. Nothing’s worse than a summer cold. Leo?”

“Oh boy.”

“Leo, please, let’s get in bed.” She pulled him up and they got into bed. Feldman turned onto his stomach. “Leo,” she said after playing with his back for a few minutes, “try to catch me.”

“All right.”

“Close your eyes.” He heard her get out of the bed. “Count to fifty.”

“All right.”

“Don’t start counting until I tell you.” Her voice came from across the room; she was sitting on the air conditioning. “You can start counting now, Leo. Leo? Are you counting?”

“What?”

“Are you counting?”

“You woke me up.”

“Oh, Leo!”

She got back into bed. “You’re hard now, Leo. Come in me.”

“All right.”

“Oh, Leo, you’re so hard now.”

“I have to pee.”

“Oh, Leo. Oh. Oh. Oh, that’s wonderful, Leo. Oh.”

“Where’s the Kleenex?”

“Oh. Oh.”

“There’s only three left. How can you let the Kleenex get so low?”

“Oh, I love you, Leo. I love you.”

“All right.”

“I did something, Leo. It’s the first time. It was wonderful.”

“Been quite a night for you. First your own program on the TV and now this.”

“You do something too, Leo. You do something now too.”

He flipped out of her and rolled off. “Can’t cut the mustard,” he said philosophically, putting his hands behind his head.

“I’m sorry, dear,” Lilly said. “It’s been wonderful these last months. You’ve been marvelous to us. To Billy and me. So relaxed.”

“Yes.”

“Things must be going well at the store.”

“Very nicely.”

“See? It doesn’t do any good to worry.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Leo?”

“Yes?”

“Did you know that
I’ve
been worried lately?”

“No. I didn’t know that.”

“I tried not to show it.”

“Well, it worked.”

“But it’s all right. I found out today it’s all right.”

“That’s good.”

“It’s my callus. I went to see Freedman about it.”

“Best not to play around with these things—Freedman?”

“Yes, and do you know, Leo, that man looked at me in the queerest way.”

“You took your callus to Freedman?”

“It was absolutely embarrassing, Leo. He tested me for syphilis.”

“He tested you for—oh no—he t-test—tee hee—tested you for syph-ha-ha-lis?”

“You’d think he never saw a callus before.”

“She saw Freedman. She took her callus to Freedman.” Feldman laughed. He roared. He threw his right hand up in the air and laughed harder.

“Leo, what is it?”

“F-F-Freedman,” he sputtered. “Freed
man
,” he guffawed. “Freeeeeedman,” he sniggered. He tittered and giggled and snickered and chuckled and cackled and chortled. “
F-F-Freeeedman!
” He couldn’t stop laughing, and as he laughed his erection grew. It became enormous. It was the biggest hard-on he had ever had. Lilly, astonished, pulled him on top of her greedily. Laughing, he rocked and shook himself into an orgasm.

The next morning he still had to laugh every time he thought about it. His eyes teared and his nose ran. Once, during a sales conference, he actually slapped his knee in his mirth like a vaudeville farmer. It was the best laugh of his life, persistent as the symptom of a cold. When he tried to work, the thought of Freedman and Lilly kept getting in the way and he had to lay aside whatever he was doing. The people around him, Miss Lane and some of the executives and buyers, had never seen him this way, but his laughter was so infectious that they had to join him, laughing the harder because they didn’t know the joke. Possessed by his laughter, he made a decision—he would remember this laughter and try always to be happy.

Then, riding the escalator up to the third floor when he returned from lunch, he saw something that made him stop laughing. A girl he had sent to the abortionist was mulling over some handkerchiefs at a counter. And as he peered through the crowd he recognized others he had seen in his basement.

“Oh, hi,” a young man said to him on the fourth floor. It was the lad for whom he had obtained the prescription.

On a sofa in the furniture department, sitting there as if the thing already belonged to her, was a lady for whom he had obtained a black-market baby. She nodded to him as he went by and fumbled with her pocketbook as if she meant to show him a picture of the child. He hurried to an elevator to take him the rest of the way up to his regular office. How had they come up? He wondered. Why weren’t they in the basement? What were they doing this high in his store?

Sure enough, when he stepped into the elevator, there was the man he had sent to the queers.

17

W
hat would you do if a hole opened up in that wall?” Bisch asked.

“That couldn’t happen,” Feldman said warily. “How could that happen?”

“No, I mean it. Suppose a hole, big enough for a man to go through, suddenly opened up in our cell wall. What would you do?”