Cocksure (18 page)

“Which one?
”

“Oh. Oh, I see.”

“WHICH ONE?”
Mortimer howled, knocking back his chair. “You only have one, then?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“Well, then. That is serious. That could be quite a handicap, my boy.”

Hours later, it seemed, Mortimer looked up from under heavy lids to hear a swaying Star Maker say, “So I simply must have an heir. A son.”

“A son! At your age?”

“Yes.”

Mortimer laughed out loud. “You’re not contemplating marriage, you obscene old bastard.”

“Dear me, no.”

“That’s something.”

“I’m told,” the Star Maker said, “that Polly Morgan looks up to you.”

“Really,” Mortimer said, rather pleased.

“I have been given to understand that you are the one man at Oriole whom she respects.”

“What do you want with her?”

“Easy, now. I’m a very rare blood type. Miss Morgan is the same type.”

“And so?”

“In the coming months it seems likely I’m going to need the occasional pint.”

“Star Maker, I’m unwell. Too much to drink. I’ve had enough for one day.”

“You may be excused, then.”

“We still haven’t gone into the question of the Our Living History series.”

“Mortimer, I was as shocked as you were to see the file. Tomasso certainly overreached himself there.”

“Overreached? He’s a murderer!”

“If that’s the case, he must answer for it.”

“What about the efficiency team from Frankfurt?”

“Dismiss them, if you like.”

“Do you expect me to believe you had no idea what was going on?”

“As you well know, I’ve been in and out of hospitals for months. There are so many other companies to look after … When you take over, Mortimer, you can have a free hand. Terminate the Our Living History series, if you like.”

“I haven’t said that I was willing to take over. I want to think about it.”

“Then we must talk again soon. Very soon. You are now a party to more than one of my secrets, Mortimer.”

“We can talk again after the holidays.”

“Yes. Certainly. Meanwhile, however, you must promise not to say a word about what you saw in the studio.”

“I’m not sure what I saw in the studio. I think I’m going out of my mind.”

“There, there now. Promise?”

Anything to get away. “Yes,” Mortimer said.

Mortimer returned to his office at Oriole just in time to find a swollen-eyed Miss Fishman cleaning out her desk.

“What’s going on?”

“After all I’ve suffered, I will not work for a Jew-baiter. Not for one minute more.”

“But my dear Miss Fishman –”

“How you must have hated me all these years.”

“That’s not true. On the contrary. I –”

“You will find,” Miss Fishman said, gathering her things together, “that I’m not the only one here with contempt for you now. There isn’t anybody at Oriole who hasn’t heard about the dreadful things you’ve been saying to that poor Mr. Shalinsky.” She left, slamming the door.

Mortimer dialed the typewriter pool and asked for a new secretary to be sent up.

“Right away, Mr. Griffin.”

The new secretary was refreshingly young and pretty. Deeply suntanned as well. “My name is Gail,” she said sweetly.

“Why, you’re an American.”

“Yes. I hope you don’t mind.”

“On the contrary.”

23

N
EW YEAR’S EVE
.

Joyce was wriggling into her black silk evening gown, her slender arms upraised, when Mortimer was all but struck in the face with shattering, proof positive of her infidelity: big clumps of black hair, glistening with sweat, protruded from under her armpits. Ziggy had once told him, “I don’t dig the
Playboy
bit, the non-touchable, cosmetic brand of pussy, if you know what I mean. I like my chicks earthy.”

What a fool I’ve been, Mortimer thought. I should have guessed. Ziggy had only been with them for four days before he had noticed the sour lingering smell in their bedroom. Joyce didn’t bring out her deodorant spray, which should have alerted him. Two more days passed before Mortimer realized that he no longer had to wait for his turn in the bathroom before breakfast. Joyce, apparently, no longer bathed first thing in the morning. Most likely, he thought, she now had her bath while he was at work. Or did she? For getting into bed that night the unthinkable had occurred to him: Joyce stinks.
Impossible
. No, no. It must be me, he had thought. The truth is I’m resentful of her because of my own inadequacy. For though neither of them mentioned it, Mortimer had not attempted to make love to Joyce since that humiliating night.

“Not pouring yourself another drink already,” Joyce said.

“What if I am?”

“The evening’s hardly begun.”

So there it is, he thought, watching Joyce get ready for Lord Woodcock’s annual New Year’s Eve party. Yesterday impotent, today a cuckold. Well, he had to laugh. It was funny, really funny: he couldn’t help but feel sorry for Joyce. Fastidious, hygienic Joyce. The very thought of her sliding between the sheets with hirsute, putrescent Ziggy sent him into transports of laughter. Imagine, he thought, that lotioned manicured hand slipping down toward his genital area, discovering the moldy underwear, Ziggy crawling with crabs and high as an overripe Camembert.

“What’s so funny,
darling?
Tell me and I’ll laugh too.”

Before they’ve done it, Mortimer thought, reaching for his drink, maybe she rouses him by licking his big crooked toes clean of jam.

“Mortimer, are you laughing at me?”

Later, in stolen moments, tender moments, she squeezes the blackheads out of his greasy forehead. Torture, he thought. Why’s she having it off with him, then? Self-punishment? No. Because he’s got a big one, a fat Jewy one, a voice came back.

“Mortimer, answer me.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” he said, staring.

“Is there anything wrong with my dress?”

“No. I’m just surprised you got into it without having a bath first.”

“Perhaps I no longer suffer from the need for self-purification rituals.”

Mortimer sniffed the bedroom air delicately.

“What is it now?”

“Must be a kitchen odor that’s drifted up through the floorboards,” he said, picking up the spray. “Surprised you haven’t noticed.”

“Are you, now? Well, I’m surprised you haven’t noticed something else.”

“Namely?”

“Our phone’s being tapped.”

Mortimer laughed in her face. “I can assure you,” he said, “the Government is not worried about the Anti-Apartheid League. Or your nuclear disarmament activities. Much as it would please you if they were.”

“Then why are there two men sitting in a car outside all day watching our house?”

“Possibly,” he said, amused, “they’re from the narcotics squad.”

“Oh, you,” Joyce said, escaping to the bathroom, slamming the door indignantly behind her.

“Ready to make the scene, my dears?” Ziggy called up.

No, Mortimer thought, not me. For he knew that everyone but Gail, delicious creature, would shun him at the party. Mortimer Griffin, the pariah of Oriole House. The Adolf Eichmann of Publishers’ Row.

Following Miss Fishman’s departure from his office, hardly anyone at Oriole House spoke to him, unless their purpose was to insult.

“Haven’t seen you around much lately,” Mortimer said to Hy one day.

“I’ve been combing the streets for Gentile babies,” Hy replied, slipping into his Chaym ben Yussel shuffle. “We need them for our blood rituals, don’t you know?”

Nobody but Gail, ubiquitous Gail, sat with him during coffee breaks or joined him for lunch at The Eight Bells. Then somebody, most likely Shalinsky himself, had fed an unspeakable item to
Private Eye
.

How much longer will Oriole House put up with that Jew-baiting boozer of a colonial editor who recently called the gentle Jacob Shalinsky, well-known Soho character and editor of
Jewish Thought
, “a meddling Jew”?

The following day Mortimer was stopped in the street by an earnest young man who identified himself as one of Colin Jordan’s
lieutenants in the British Nazi Party. “We are standing by,” he said. “If there’s anything we can do –”

Mortimer shoved him aside. It was, however, only the beginning. To his horror, he discovered he was now on the mailing list of more than one lunatic fringe group. The Sons of Poland, the Royal Hungarian Society, Fighters for a Free Ukraine, and other groups and unaffiliated persons long alert to the international Jewish conspiracy wrote with invitations to lecture and offers of help. All of which spurred Mortimer on to heavier drinking.

Fortunately Doug, who was on holiday now, was a comfort to him. His son, it seemed, could hardly wait for Mortimer to come home from the office and take him out. Indeed, some days he waited for Mortimer outside the house.

“Let’s go to a flick, Dad.”

“Shouldn’t I go in first and say hello to your mother?”

“Oh, she’s out demonstrating.”

“What about –”

“Ziggy’s been out all day. Come on. Let’s go.”

There were even days, curiously gratifying days, when Doug was so impatient to see him that he came to collect him at Oriole House. “I told Mom you were taking me out to dinner. Just the two of us, Dad.”

And now, Mortimer thought, pouring himself another drink, there was the New Year’s Eve party. Old friends would turn their backs on him. Lord Woodcock, surely, would wish to speak to him about the rumors.

“Coming,” Mortimer said, reconciled. “Coming.”

Champagne cost a shilling a glass at Lord Woodcock’s party and caviar sixpence a plate, proceeds for the wives and children of former German concentration camp guards, innocent bystanders otherwise entirely dependent on inadequate West German Government pensions.

Mortimer, avoided by the others, just as he had expected, watched as one by one guests came up to congratulate the saintly Lord Woodcock, who only last week had won another medal, the Grand Cross of the German Order of Merit, which had been presented to him on the playing fields of Dachau.

Dino Tomasso, his good eye glassy, his champagne glass spilling over, drove Mortimer into a corner. “If I were you,” he said, “I wouldn’t say anything here to upset the Star Maker. He wants to speak to you again, Morty, soonest.”

A group of unabashed admirers collected around Dig Jones, Daphne Humber-Guest among them. Another pair of star-crossed lovers, Mortimer thought, touched. Dig and Daphne could hardly keep their hands off each other. Even now, she stood directly behind him, screwing her breasts into his back, but the sad truth was their affair had yet to be consummated. Dig and Daphne’s respective agents had not yet come together on terms.

Mortimer searched everywhere for Polly, ignoring gibes about himself and Shalinsky, but nobody had seen her. Ziggy brought Mortimer a fresh drink. “Things just happen,” he said, his smile aching with concern. “Life is meaningless. Totally absurd.”

“Is it?”

“In the long run, we’ll all be dead, you know.”

An instant later Mortimer noticed Ziggy thick in a corner with Dig Jones, whispering. Again and again Dig, who was planning a new series, a different type of series, scrutinized Mortimer, sizing him up it seemed, as Ziggy talked on and on. Finally, Dig said, “I’ll have to think about it, Ziggy.”

“But I’ve seen his army documents. I’ve had photostats made.”

“I can’t promise anything.”

Lord Woodcock beckoned Mortimer to his side. “I would like to speak to you,” he said, “about your ‘Reading for Pleasure’ lectures.”

“I’m sure you would,” Mortimer said stiffly.

“This isn’t the time or the place, but we must get together soon.”

The clock struck twelve and Lord Woodcock, seeing everyone’s glasses being raised for a toast, beamed and bowed. “You’re too kind,” he said. “This is too much. Thank you. Thank you.”

Retreating, Mortimer collided with Rachel Coleman.

“They always have at least one nigger to a party,” Rachel said, thrusting a brown leg between his, rubbing.

Joyce, Mortimer was pleased to notice, was watching them surreptitiously.

“Hey!” Mortimer, to his astonishment, felt a spark, a tiny hopeful spark, of excitement. “Hey, there!”

Mortimer could not recall how he had managed it, but suddenly there they were, he and Rachel, stuffing their tongues into each other’s mouths, licking, biting, in the back seat of a taxi. As the taxi rocked to a stop before her flat, Mortimer wiped his hand on his trousers before he fished out money to pay the driver.

“This way,” Rachel said. “Oops. Careful. There’s a step there.”

If Mortimer, elated but fearful, was no longer sure how he had managed to slip away from the party with Rachel, he didn’t doubt why. Not for a minute. Mortimer’s motives were double-pronged, if only he – if only he –

Unable to manage even a bladder-filled morning erection since that humiliating night, he had pounced on a copy of
Human Sexual Response
, hoping to have certain questions resolved for him at last. It was a marvelous book, and one could only be grateful to those more than
600
subjects who had so selflessly undergone more than
10,000
complete cycles of sexual response while the color cameras whirred. A daily orgasm for everyone from eighteen to eighty (regardless of race, color or creed) was, Mortimer agreed with the authors, an ideal well worth striving for. But, he couldn’t help speculating, but would Drs. Masters and Johnson classify his ejaculations as “mere seepage”? In my dotage already, he feared. Not that this was the only question. It was one of many. For the problem inherent in such an
all-embracing study (one that measured the electrocardiographic delights of manual and mechanical manipulation, natural coition with the female partner in supine, superior, or knee-chest positions and, for many female study subjects, artificial coition in supine and knee-chest positions, as well as the joys to be had from a plastic dildo) was that it asked more questions than it answered.

Mortimer, for instance, found the workings of the plastic dildo especially instructive, even illuminating. “The equipment,” he read, “can be adjusted for physical variations in size, weight, and vaginal development. The rate and depth of penile thrust is initiated and controlled completely by the responding individual. As tension elevates, rapidity and depth of thrust are increased voluntarily, paralleling subjective demand. The equipment is electrically powered.” Turning to another page, he learned that this electrically powered do-it-yourself prick gave women more satisfaction than anything else going. “Understandably, the maximum physiological intensity of orgasmic response subjectively reported or objectively recorded has been achieved by self-regulated mechanical or automanipulative devices.” Maybe so, Mortimer allowed grudgingly, but he craved more information about the powered plastic dildo. Was it circumcized? Or black maybe? Conversely, were there attachments and coloring kits, such as went with a Mixmaster or a Black & Decker home drill? Could a female study subject unscrew the circumcized knob from the dildo and replace it with a goyishe knob? Or could she spray the dildo black or even Chinese yellow, if she fancied? Finally, if all these permutations were possible, which knob and color combo was the biggest hit?