distance I might have to mutter an apology for. I don't get that hot anymore. Apathy, boredom, restlessness, free- floating, amorphous frustration, leisure, discontent at home or at my job — these are my aphrodisiacs now. I never got that far. It ended before I learned how. 'All that's required is one or two years of specialized training,' say the military recruiting posters. I got that specialized training in the armed forces. I came out of the army a handsome captain, and Virginia was dead. I was glad. (I was surprised I was glad, but that's what I was.) I tried to make a date with her from a telephone booth in Grand Central Station and failed. It's hard to succeed that way with someone who's dead. I liked hearing her tell me about sex. (It was like watching a dirty movie.) It was hard picturing someone as gentle, moderate, and considerate as Len Lewis being incited by her in a restaurant, movie, or automobile.
'I make him,' she boasted. 'I lead him on slowly. I know how.'
'How?'
Her father had killed himself too. 'We never knew why. We had lots of money. He was a quiet man. Like Mr. Lewis.'
'What does he do to you?'
'Whatever I ask him to. Or show him. He isn't sure how far he can go with me yet. He can't believe it,' she praised herself with a grin. 'He's very sweet. I like to make him happy. He's easy. You're easy too.'
'I'm hard.'
'Easy.'
'See?'
'I see, said the blind man.'
'You're making things very hard for me.'
'Should I meet you?'
'Hurry up.'
'I can only stay a second.'
'Hurry up.'
Her face wreathed in pink, blissful smiles of contentment whenever she saw me get an erection. (I think I got more hard-ons from her in my twelve months at that automobile casualty insurance company than I've had in the twenty or thirty years since.) I wish I had her smooth, round cheeks in my hands right now. I would stroke them languidly with pinky and thumb, stimulating her slowly, instead of grabbing and racing. (I know how to do that now.) It would be I who picked the mood and did the delectable tantalizing.
'Cover up,' she'd say.
'Come outside,' I'd beg.
'You won't have time,' she'd laugh. 'Better shoot to the men's room.'
'Meet me there.'
'I've got no key.'
'I'll sneak you in.'
'I've never done it in a men's room.'
'You did it in a canoe once at Duke University.'
'I did it in a men's dormitory once also at Duke University. With five football players. They made me. I was expelled. The one I liked so much brought me there. They sent me home. I was afraid to go. I never found out if they told my father.'
'Did they rape you? Is that what happened?'
'No. They didn't have to. I didn't want to. But they made me. They just held me down and kept talking. I knew them all. But it was fun once we started and I stopped worrying about it. I would have told the other girls. I think I hoped we'd get caught. I think I'd like to do something like that again sometime soon. It's exciting.'
'It's exciting me right now.'
'I see, said the blind man.'
'Come outside.'
'For a minute.'
'On the staircase?'
Sometimes she'd give me about three and one third seconds.
'Someone's coming!' she'd hiss with vehemence, and tear herself away. 'Let me go.'
I should have guessed from her educational curriculum at Duke that she was a little bit nuts and would probably kill herself sooner or later. I am able to spot propensities like that in people now (and I keep my distance). A friend in need is no friend of mine.
I envied and abominated those five football players at Duke. They thought so little of her. They treated her like crap. And she did not mind. There were days I found myself detesting her on my long, drab subway rides back and forth. There were mornings I would not talk to her and could not force myself to look at her, she seemed so foul. (I was betrayed. She was trash, that fatal kind of trash that can make you want to die. I'm glad I didn't die. I'm glad I outlived her.) I felt — and knew I felt correctly — that she still would have preferred them to me.
I am gifted with insights like that and able to prophesy with conviction in certain morbid areas. I know already, for example, that my wife (as she foresees also) will probably die expensively of cancer (she'll need a private room, of course, and private nurse) if she doesn't outlive me and we do not divorce because of drunkenness or adultery (hers, of course). If we're apart, or if I'm already dead, who cares what she dies of? (I'll probably miss my boy every now and then for a little while if I do move out for a divorce. I like it so much when he smiles. I'll have to leave so many things behind. My golf clubs. How can I rationally make time and room for my golf clubs and new golf shoes when I am breaking away from home and family in an irrational rage?) Will I be happy when my wife is dying of cancer? No. Will I be sorry for her? Probably. (Will I be sorry for myself? Definitely.) Will I still be sorry for her after she's gone? Probably not.
I am especially good on suicides and breakdowns. I can see them coming years in advance. Kagle is close to his breakdown now; his God won't save him, but maybe his boozing and whores will (supplemented by fortifying compounds of vitamin B-12 and self-pity mixed with self-righteous claims of mistreatment. If nothing else, everybody will agree he has been a nice guy). Kagle won't kill himself; he'll enjoy his wronged status too much for anything like suicide (he'll enjoy smiling gamely, forgiving generously). I'll have to get rid of him. I try to help him now. He grins incorrigibly (and I want to kick him in his leg). I know something he doesn't know, while Green, Brown, Black, and others watch mistrustfully and theorize (I feel. I know I don't feel honest with them). I want Arthur Baron to note my efforts to aid Kagle. Kagle's job will be given to me; it's all but inevitable now. Kagle welcomes my criticism (and ignores it. It's the attention he welcomes. If I threw spitballs at him he'd be just as grateful). He thinks I am a doting parent fussing over an appealing child. It does not cross his mind that I am a zealous heir grown impatient to supplant him. (I'd like to spit in his face. Won't he be surprised?) Martha, the typist in our department, will go crazy eventually (probably in my presence. I'll get rid of her deftly and be the talk of the floor for a few days), and I won't lay Jane, although I'll continue to flirt with her (fluctuate and vacillate, hesitate and saturate) and ferry the prurient interest she stimulates in me home (like melting ice cream or cooling Chinese food) to my wife in Connecticut or uptown to old girl friend Penelope, my weathering, reliable Penny, who still studies music, singing, and dance diligently (while working as a cocktail waitress in one place or another) and still likes me better than any of the younger men she successively falls in love with for a few months three or four times a year. (She should like me better. I
