My Life As A Man

‘em up, amigo.” That, by and large, was my preparation for this dangerous life I now led.

“I’m Peter Tarnopol,” I hurriedly explained. “I’m Maureen Tarnopol’s husband. She’s the one who lives here. We’re separated. Legally, legally. I just came from the hospital. I came to get my wife’s toothbrush and some things. She’s my wife still, you see; she’s in the hospital-“

“I know who’s in the hospital.”

“Yes, well, I’m her husband. The door was open. I thought I better stay here until I can get it fixed. Anybody could walk right in. I was sitting here. Reading. I was going to call a locksmith.”

The cop just stood there, pointing his pistol. I should never have told him we were separated. I should never have told Rosenzweig I’d had “a love affair” with a student. I should never have gotten involved with Maureen. Yes, that was my biggest mistake.

I said some more words about a locksmith.

“He’s on his way,” the cop told me.

“Yes? He is? Good. Great. Look, if you still don’t believe me, I have a driver’s license.”

“On you?”

“Yes, yes, in my wallet. May I reach for my wallet?”

“All right, never mind, it’s okay…just got to be careful,” he mumbled, and lowering his pistol, took a step into the room. “I just went down for a Coke. I seen she had her own, but I didn’t want to take it. That ain’t right.”

“Oh,” said I, as he dropped the pistol into his holster, “you should have.”

“Fuckin’ locksmith.” He looked at his watch.

When he stepped all the way into the apartment I saw how very young he was: a pug-nosed kid off the subway, with a gun and a badge and dressed up in a blue uniform. Not so unlike Barry Edelstein as I’d thought while the pistol was pointed at my head. Now he wouldn’t engage my eyes directly, embarrassed it seemed for having drawn the gun, movie style, or for having spoken obscenely to an innocent man, or, most likely, for having been discovered by me away from his post. Yet another member of the sex, abashed to be revealed as unequal to his task.

“Well,” I said, closing the three-ring notebook and tucking it under my arm, “I’ll just get those things now, and be off-”

“Hey,” he said, motioning to the bedroom, “don’t worry about the mattress in there. I just couldn’t take the stink no more, so I washed it out. That’s how come it’s wet like that. Ajax and a little Mr. Clean, and that did it. Don’t worry-it won’t leave no mark when it dries.”

“Well, thank you. That was very nice of you.”

He shrugged. “I put all the stuff back in the kitchen, under the sink there.” hne.

“That Mr. Clean is some stuff.”

“I know. I’ve heard them say that. I’ll just get a few things and go.”

We were friends now. He asked, “What is the missus anyway? An actress?”

‘Well…yes.”

“On TV?”

“No, no, just around.”

“What? Broadway?”

“No, no, not yet anyway.”

“Well, that takes time, don’t it? She shouldn’t be discouraged.”

I went into Maureen’s bedroom, a tiny cell just big enough for a bed and a night table with a lamp on it. Because the closet door could only be opened halfway before it banged against the foot of the bed, I had to reach blindly around inside until I came up with a nightdress that was hanging on a hook. “Ah,” I said, nice and loud, “here it is-right…where…she said!” To complete the charade, I decided to open and then shut loudly the drawer to the little night table.

A can opener. In the drawer there was a can opener. I did not immediately deduce its function. That is, I thought it must be there to open cans.

Let me describe the instrument. The can-opening device itself is screwed to a smooth, grainy-looking wooden handle, about two and a half inches around and some five inches long, tapering slightly to its blunt end. The opening device consists of a square aluminum case, approximately the size of a cigarette lighter, housing on its underside a small metal tooth and a little ridged gear; projecting upward from the top side of the case is an inch-long shaft to which is attached a smaller wooden handle, about three inches long. Placing the can opener horizontally over the edge of the can, you press the pointed metal tooth down into the rim, and proceed to open the can by holding the longer handle in one hand, and rotating the smaller handle with the other; this causes the tooth to travel around the rim until it has severed the top of the can from the cylinder. It is a type of can opener that you can buy in practically any hardware store for between a dollar and a dollar and a quarter. I have priced them since. They are manufactured by the Eglund Co., Inc., of Burlington, Vermont-their “No. 5 Junior” model. I have Maureen’s here on my desk as I write.

“How ya’ doin’?” the cop called.

“Oh, fine.”

I slammed the drawer shut, having first deposited the No. 5 Junior in my pocket.

“So that’s it,” I said, coming back around into the living room, Delilah glued to my trouser cuff.

“Mattress look okay to you?”

“Great. Perfect. Thanks again. I’ll be off, you know-I’ll leave the locksmith to you then, right?”

I was one flight down and flying, when the young cop appeared at the landing over my head. “Hey!”

“What!”

“Toothbrush!”

“Oh!”

“Here!”

I caught it and kept going.

The taxi I flagged down to take me crosstown to Susan’s was one of those fitted out like the prison cell of an enterprising convict or the den of an adolescent boy: framed family photographs lined up on the windshield, a large round alarm clock strapped atop the meter, and some ten or fifteen sharpened Eberhard pencils jammed upright in a white plastic cup fastened by a system of thick elastic bands to the grill separating the passenger in the back seat from the driver up front. The grill was itself festooned with blue-and-white tassels, and an arrangement of gold- headed upholstery tacks stuck into the roof above the driver’s head spelled out “Gary, Tina & Roz”-most likely the names of the snappily dressed children smiling out from the family photographs of weddings and bar mitzvahs. The driver, an elderly man, must have been their grandfather.

Ordinarily I suppose I would have commented, like every other passenger, on the elaborate decor. But all I could look at and think about then was the Eglund Company’s No. 5 Junior can opener. Holding the aluminum end in my left hand, I passed the larger handle through a circle formed out of the thumb and index finger of my right hand; then, wrapping the other three fingers loosely around it, I moved the handle slowly down the channel.

Next I placed the handle of the can opener between my thighs and crossed one leg over the other, locking it in place. Only the square metallic opening device, with its sharp little tooth facing up, poked out from between my legs.

The cab veered sharply over to the curb.

“Get out,” the driver said.

“Do what?”

He was glaring at me through the grill, a little man, with dark pouches under his eyes and bushy gray eyebrows, wearing a heavy wool sweater under a suit. His voice quivered with rage- “Get the hell out! None of that stuff in my cab!”

“None of what? I’m not doing anything.”

“Get out, I told you! Out, you, before I use the tire iron on your head!”

“What do you think I was doing, for Christ’s sake!”

But by now I was on the sidewalk.

“You filthy son of a bitch!” he cried, and drove off.

Clutching the can opener in my pocket and holding the diary in my lap, I eventually made it to Susan’s-though not without further incident. As soon as I had gotten settled in the back seat of a second cab, the driver, this one a