A Bad Man (47 page)

“I tried to discourage him—that’s the truth. The man insisted on our intimacy, giving me—met in the street, on corners, in stores, or even on the stairs or at the mailbox in the hall, gratuitous for us then as the garage in the back—the secret handshake of the heart. He was obsessed by our birthwrong. (And something just occurred to me: how did he know about mine? How did he
know?
I don’t remember telling him, but I might have. Put that down to my credit. Fair’s fair. Or if I never told him, then put down to my credit that it was written all over my face.) And leaned heavily on the Dedman-deemed mutuality of our lives like some old out-of-work frat man—he’d been, as I say, a student—making a nuisance of himself in his fraternity brother’s office. But of course even his premise was wrong. I’d had
my
father for sixteen years, and my homunculus, if I’d known it, forever.

“It’s a wonder I didn’t call a cop. ‘Get yourself a girl,’ I said. ‘Buy a paper tonight. Go through the want ads carefully. Look out for something with a future. Flourish. Thrive. Purge those gypsy grudges, Dedman. Lord,’ I called over my shoulder, ‘deliver this delivery boy.’

“So saying, I took hold myself. What’s good for the goose is unexceptionable for the gander, is it not? And to practice what one preaches makes perfect, doesn’t it? I
seized
the bullish world. What can I tell you? The war and all, opportunity, the seller’s market and all—I grew rich. By 1940 I had already chosen the warehouse that would become my department store, by ’41 I was already in it, and by ’42 and ’43 I was established, getting while the getting was good and the casualties mounted.

“I didn’t see a lot of Dedman in those years. I still maintained the same apartment but was away so much, putting together my store, that I didn’t see him. (Though he was there. Like myself he was four-F, and what he made of
that
I don’t have to tell you. ‘Our disease,’ he called it.) Then, suddenly, the year the war ended, I decided to capitulate. After a siege of ten years or so, I called him in and told him we would be friends. He smiled me a smile and shook my hand, and we made the manly acknowledgments, the toasts and the jokes, and I discovered before he went back to his apartment that night that it was too late—that we were already friends, that we had been friends all along and that our friendship ended on the evening I gave in to him. That until then I’d been fonder of him than he was of me, because, after all, he’d seen in me only an analogue of himself, only some far-fetched Dedmanic Doppelgänger, while I had seen in him qualities, states of being and the hardware of character. Before that evening was over I’d had it with him, with Feldman’s friend Dedman, his enemy Dedman.

“Though I didn’t let on. I knew I’d get him. (Let me make something clear. I don’t say I needed reasons. Maybe, at first. And maybe I had some. But what happened would have happened without reasons. So let me make something clear. What I did was not because I was acting on faulty reasons. It wasn’t poor judgment or a lousy argument.)

“It was very rough, being his friend. A little Dedman went great distances—light-years. Christ, I was bored.

“‘What do we do, Dedman, now that we’re friends?’ And don’t let him kid you—it was as new to him as it was to me. Neither of us had the hang of it. I know
I
was sorry we weren’t still kids. Kids have it soft. They wrestle, they run, shout, sing, throw the ball. So we just sat around, seemly now, shy. And suddenly making telephone calls.

“‘What’re you doing?’

“‘Lying around.’

“‘You want to come down?’

“‘I got my TV. Come up if you want.’

“‘Your television came?’

“‘I brought one home from the store.’

“‘How does it work?’

“‘Okay. Pretty good.’

“‘What’re you watching?’

“‘Wrestling.’

“‘Wrestling is fixed.’

“‘It’s all they have on.’”

“My God, the arrangements, the crabbed propositions of regard! Consideration’s deflections like blindness to a wart on a pal’s nose. Friendship is fixed.
Friendship
is. The dives of deference and the shaved points of solicitude.

“‘Leo, it’s Leonard.’

“‘Yeah, Leonard. Hi.’

“‘Do you want to go out?’

“‘What’s there to do?’

“‘There’s this movie downtown.’

“‘A movie? You think?’

“‘We could go tie one on.’

“‘Well, tomorrow there’s work.’

“‘You’re right. I forgot.’

“‘We’d get back too late.’

“‘There’s a lecture at school.’

“‘Is that so? What’s it on?’

“‘The Second World War.’

“‘Sounds over my head.’

“’Wanna come down and read?’

“‘Well, maybe. Okay.’

“‘Not too exciting.’

“‘Well, I’m tired tonight.’

“‘What time you be down?’

“‘Gee, I’ve still got to eat.’

“‘What time? Say a time.’

“‘Around eight? Around nine?’

“‘All right. See you then.’

“One night Dedman took me to a restaurant. I’d told him it was my birthday, though it wasn’t. I’d said it to give us something to do—just as when he got a new job or I had done well at the store, I would take him out, declare a celebration, so that at this time our relationship was one of shared occasions, Fictive red-letter days, spurious as the commemorative excuse for a sale of used cars. Oh, those celebrations, those pious festivals!

“And this was the night that I told him it wasn’t working out—though I hadn’t planned to, didn’t know that I’d do it till I’d done it, so that, let me make something clear, what happened, what I did, was never what you could call a conspiracy, just as it wasn’t predicated on feeble arguments—that the friendship had failed. ‘Phooey on our kid-glove comity, our loveless diplomatic chumhood. My apartment’s no embassy, Leonard. Tact’s crap, it’s defunct. Well, I take
your
line,’ I said. ‘No one’s to blame. What, orphans like us? You kidding? Shy, sure we’re shy. Us virgins in croniness, us unpanned-out pals. Oh, the roughnecks, Leonard’ I said, ‘they have the fun. They’re the ones.’ (Let me make something clear. I’ve said I’d known I would get him. I’ve told you that. So that what was beginning to happen that night, unreasoned, not worked out, was maybe just a sort of destiny, Leonard’s lot, say, or Dedman’s portion, perhaps.) ‘Let’s really cut loose. Other guys do. Will you try? Are you game? Will you take my advice?’

“‘What do we do?’

“‘We must do as other men do. Don’t be embarrassed.’

“‘No.’

“‘Don’t be self-conscious. Don’t get cold feet.’

“‘No.’

“‘We must do as other men do.’

“‘But what? What is it?’

“‘Dedman, I’m going to ask you to call me “Ace.” It’s what the roughnecks call each other. I hear it everywhere. I heard it on the campus that time I went with you to the library. “Ace,” call me “Ace.” It’s manly. It has a fine ring. If you see me in the hallway, say “How’s it going, Ace?” When you pick me up to eat, say “Let’s chow down, Ace.” Or “Chow time, Ace.” And I’ll call you “Chief.” Or “Flash.” Whichever you prefer. We’ll work it out. I’ll say, “Way to go, Flash.” “Yo, Chief,” I’ll say. It’ll make a difference. You’ll see.’

“‘It will make a difference?’

“‘Absolutely. It will. Look, do me a favor. Give it a chance. When the waiter brings the check, say, “Here comes the man with the bad news, Ace.” ’

“‘Here comes the man with the bad news, Ace,’ Dedman said when the waiter came.

“‘Read it and weep, Flash,’ I told him.

“Dedman, who had no brains about money, as I say, paid the check without adding it up and overtipped the waiter a dollar. ‘Way to
go
, big fella,’ I said.

“‘Happy birthday, Ace.’

“‘Thanks, Chief,’ I winked at him. ‘Flash, how are they hanging?’

“‘Better, Ace. Really better.’

“And Dedman was into his fall now, leaning exultant into his descent like a breaster of tape. Lord, we had fun! Such times! The new-goosed Damon and piss-vinegar Pythias. Hurrah, I say! Like student princes we were, like heirs and heroes, raucous as drunks past curfew on cobble. Good times and high, Ace. And Dedman as good a man as myself. Because I had led him into the games now. Shilled and hustled him down this slow-boat-to-China garden path. Led him into the games now of Feldman’s Olympic friendship. And Dedman
good
at them, you understand, skilled as an actor, no feel only for what was what. Led him into the games now. The latest thing in friendship. Damon down and Pythias perished. Long live Quirk and Flagg! Gusto and zeal and zest and joy like new soaps for the shower!

“Listen, let me make something clear—it was a classic friendship out of operetta, musical comedy, Dennis Morgan movies. I honed this rivalry with him. We played cliches on each other. Jesus, the jokes!

“Dedman bought a car. We went to a ballgame. He had a beer in the third inning. In the parking lot as he was taking out his keys, I clipped him hard as I could on his jaw and knocked him out. ‘Sorry, Flash,’ I said over his unconscious body, ‘that hurt me more than it did you, but it would be suicide to let you get behind the wheel in your condition.’

“We pretended we were athletes in training. At night we’d each try to sneak past the other’s apartment to go out and meet this blond divorcée waitress we made up, who worked in this all-night diner we made believe was on the corner. We’d walk tiptoe and carried our shoes in our hands, wearing a bathrobe and pretending we were dressed underneath it. I’d spot him sneaking out, and Dedman would feign this angelic look and begin whistling. (He couldn’t really whistle, but he’d pretend to.) ‘Where you going, Chief?’

“‘Who? Me, Ace?’

“‘Yeah, big guy, you.’

“‘Oh, nowhere, Ace. I thought I heard a suspicious noise in the hall, and I came out to check it.’

“‘A suspicious noise. You mean like a burglar would make?’

“‘That’s right. Like a burglar.’

“‘
Then why were you whistling?
’

“‘I was
pretending
to whistle, Ace.’

“‘You were off to see Trixie O’Toole, weren’t you? Weren’t you?’

“‘Who, Ace?’

“‘You know who. A certain cute little blond hash-slinger with big blue eyes over at Joe’s all-nighter.’

“‘Come on, Ace. But that reminds me, now that you mention it, what are
you
doing out here in the hall this time of night?’

“‘Who, me? Why, uh—that is, er—well, uh—gulp—er—who, me?’

“Dedman would double up, he’d be laughing so hard. I’d watch him and smile. ‘This is the life, ain’t it, Skippy?’ I’d say.

“‘It is, Ace. It really is.’

“It really was.

“We took these twin sisters to night clubs. We ordered one glass of champagne apiece and then went to another night club, where we ordered another glass of champagne apiece, and then on to another and another, having one glass of champagne in each place, and one dance, building the evening like a montage in films. We danced until dawn and rode home in a milk wagon.

“Once when I wasn’t with him, Dedman got picked up for speeding. He gave my name to the police, and they called up and asked if I wanted to bail him out. I said, ‘Never heard of the dirty rat.’ Do you know, before I hung up, the desk sergeant told him what I’d said and I could hear Dedman laughing?”

“All right, Feldman, get to it,” the warden said.

“Blasts. Balls and binges: We would—”

“Get to it, I said.”

“We courted the same girl,” Feldman said softly. “Marge. Is this it? What you want me to say?”

“Marge,” the warden said. “Yes. Marge.”

“We saw the same girl. We took out the same girl. Only, I didn’t care for her as much as Dedman did.”

“You hated her.”

“Yes.”

“Yet you made believe you loved her.”

“No. I never told her that.”

“Not her. Dedman.”

“Yes.”

“Go on,” the warden said.

“I’d met Lilly by now in New York. We were engaged to be married. Dedman didn’t know—I hadn’t told him. But there was time because we couldn’t be married until Dedman was married.”

“What?”

“Sure,” Feldman said. “Because that’s part of the game, marrying off your friends. You know, the married man who can’t rest until his buddy is married too, who hates the idea of there being bachelors left. So I picked out Marge for him. Scum. She was scum. A bitch. And divorced. A Trixie O’Toole, she was. She even had a kid. Dedman didn’t know. Christ, she was grubby. You could smell her soul on her breath. Not Dedman.

“So I built each of them up to the other. It was easy with Dedman—romance was right up that orphan’s alley—but harder with her, with Marge. I hinted of money. (I think she got the idea that I was queer on him and that I would make him rich if he married.) I told her how to speak to him. I gave her the titles of books and taught her the names of operas and the themes from symphonies. What the hell, Dedman, that dropout, didn’t know much more himself. And I gave her things to say that would make him jealous and bring him around.

“One night Dedman knocked on my door. ‘I want to talk to you,’ he said.

“‘Shoot, Chief.’

“‘No. Listen to me.’

“‘Why so serious? What’s up? Come on in and sit down.’

“‘Listen to me. I want to make something clear. It’s about the game.’

“‘The game?’

“‘The game we play.’

“‘Why such a long face, Flash?’

“‘It’s over, that’s all. I mean it isn’t a game.’

“‘What?’ I was afraid he’d found out.

“‘I mean it. The game is over. I’m not playing any more.’

“‘Look, Leonard, what is it? Tell me, will you?’

“‘I’m in love with her.’

“‘Who?’

“‘You know who.’

“‘Marge?’

“‘Yes, damnit, Marge.’

“‘Oh,’ I said.

“‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry. Really. I’m sorry. I am.’

“‘Oh.’

“‘I didn’t want this to happen.’

“‘Oh.’

“‘I didn’t.’

“‘Well, say,’ I said. ‘What’s the big deal, Flash? What’s so terrible?
Me?
Say, is that what you think? You feel bad ’cause of me? Now, look, don’t be silly. I’ll be all right. Hey, old buddy, cheer up. That’s terrific news. That’s swell. That’s really swell, Flash.’

“‘Would you be our best man?’