Something Happened

'Get a room.'

And always when I began inching back to her tremulously (that's the perfect word) I did not know if she would let me back into her voluptuous and smutty good graces. (I would have felt penniless without them.) She always did. She could have cut me off at the knees with a single, slicing sentence (she could have told people about me); and I might have remained like that forever, no legs, just stumps. (Somebody would have had to move me about, lift me up from one spot, like a chess piece or checker, and place me down in another.) She liked me. She was not impressed by Tom.

'You're better,' she told me.

'Then why doesn't she do it to me?'

'Do it to me like you did to Marie on Saturday night, Saturday night.'

Tom had no sense of humor. (What he did have was a handwriting I wanted and took from him.) He was getting laid, but I could make Virginia laugh. (Ha, ha.) I was pleased with myself when I did. (I told stories about her to teen-age friends back in my neighborhood.) We teased each other lubriciously all day long. I leaked (lubriciously. Lubricious is a lubricious word). Nobody teases me now. They say Yes if they come along at all and are out of their clothes before I can even get my shoelaces unknotted.

'That was good,' they sigh afterward.

'I really needed that,' they declare.

As if I believe them. Or even care. All I'm thinking about is when I ought to leave or how I'll be able to get them out of Red Parker's apartment in time to take a nap before returning to the office or catching my train. They're as obtuse as my wife in her naпve good moods, still trying to work out ground rules for a happier marriage, while I am wondering how much longer I will have to remain with her before I pack my bags and get my divorce. That sanguine stupidity of hers (that utter lack of connection with my deeper feelings) is maddening.

'I'd like to know,' she'll sometimes say, 'what you're really thinking.'

(No, she wouldn't.) 'About my speech.'

'I mean all the time.'

'My speech. I may have to make a much different one if I get the promotion.'

'All of us think you're angry when you get so quiet. We try to guess what it is.'

Virginia would tilt her head backwards and to the side, eyeing me lewdly with a knowing, taunting look, a festive leer, her powerful breasts (girls with big breasts sometimes wore very tight bras then too) elevated like artillery pieces on weapons carriers and thrust out brashly just for me. She knew what I was thinking.

'These,' she'd announce proudly, 'are what Mr. Lewis likes about me.' The tip of her tongue would glide for an instant between the edges of her shiny teeth as she watched me stare. 'You do, too.'

'Come outside.'

'Come inside.'

'You're a tease.'

'You're a tease. You keep a girl all hot and bothered all day long and then won't even take her to a hotel.'

'I don't know how.'

'I'll tell you.'

'You do it.'

'They'd lock me up. They'd lock me up as a prostitute. We'll do it together. Register as Mr. and Mrs. Bang.'

Today, twenty-one is too young for me, childish, pesty. I wouldn't lay one like that on a bet now if she worked in the same office. The whole company would know. (They talk about you now to their friends. They talk about you to their parents!) I don't even like them working for me that young or hearing their strident gibberish (with defective pronunciations that give their neighborhoods and working-class background away). They lack refinement. Most of those that don't wear bras have pendulous breasts that look awful. I don't often envy youth. I detest it. Kids don't hear noise. They make so much. I wish they'd all keep their mouths shut in public and turn down their phonographs and transistor radios. My daughter will soon be the same age as Virginia. She looks older now, because she's taller, when she stands up straight. I wish she'd realize that and wear more than just a nightgown when she comes out of her room. I wish my wife would tell her. It's hard for me to say anything about it to either one. (I don't think I will ever be able to sleep in a double bed again with a male. I would choose the floor or a chair. And that would be equally suspect.) I am not a fanny patter. There are times I don't even want to handle my wife. I just want to put it in and get it over with. Or I don't want sex at all. I make excuses. There is a barrier of repugnance. It's shelter. It dissolves when I want it to. They've got nothing there but something missing. I think filthy. That's shelter too. (Other times I want it and my wife doesn't, and it's like receiving a blow across the forehead, eyes, and the bridge of my nose.) Virginia was twenty-one and older than I was (and that's the way I will have to keep thinking about her if I want to be able to keep thinking about her with romantic nostalgia and devotion).

She would have lapped me up, turned me topsyturvy (as Penny can do), spilled me head over heels into a sea of winy, rippling vibrations, whirled me backwards quivering into a hailstorm of palpitating infancy and insanity, sent me scrambling up the walls with sensation and rocketing through the ceiling like a surface-to-heaven missile with the flaming tip of her crimson, naughty tongue. I would have begged for mercy as soon as I recollected who I was and found myself able to speak again. (I do that with Penny now. I do it with my wife.) And she would have looked lovingly at me with sated sweetness afterward, resting on her knees between my own, satisfied herself by how beautifully she had done, how prodigiously she had pleased me. I'd like that now.

'Isn't he jealous?' I had to ask. 'He can see us right now.'

'He wants to leave his wife and marry me. We go to empty restaurants and have drinks and dinner. He likes the way I kiss.'

'So do I.'

'So do I. It took a lot of practice for me to get it just right. You should try me when I'm all naked and really feel in the mood. I don't know what you're waiting for.'

I lowered an accident folder over my groin (in case another one took place). 'Come outside.'

'I see, said the blind man. Something's happening.'

'Is this case yours?' I inquired boldly. 'I bet I know the cure.'

'Meet me?'

'Did you ever go to bed with a stiff problem and wake up with the solution in your hands?'

'You made it hard for me but I can't hold it against you.'

'Go first. I'll meet you.'

'I'm coming, Virginia.'

'Do it to me like he does to Marie,' she sang back softly, as I moved past her out into the hallway.

I was Captain Blood the pirate on that staircase, a dauntless freebooter. I bore the accident folders before me prudently like a gallant shield. (I had something to hide.) I was carrying hot pellets.

I always yearned to take it out and ask her to hold it a little while. I didn't dare. Mrs. Yerger was in charge before I was able to, and I quit soon after. I practiced the words but couldn't say them; interchangeable first ones jammed in my larynx and pharynx; there was a multitude of syllables with which I might have begun:

'Will —»

'Take —»

'Would —»

'How about —»

'Don't be —»

'I —»

'Please.'

I could not speak any of them. I did not know what pose to adopt. (I had no choice.) Now I know it would not have mattered. (She either would or wouldn't. The thing to have done was to whip it right out, mumbling anything. Please would have done fine.) How I wanted her to. It would have been laden with need almost beyond endurance, swollen to bursting with tenderness, gone lunging off rabidly like an epileptic relative I would soon attempt unsuccessfully to repudiate, self-centered, an embarrassment, a connection of some