behind me, rubbing my neck and shoulders. I take out, one by one, a small address book, a checkbook, an American Express card, a Diner’s Club card, a Master Charge card; a driver’s license, a thin, black, refillable pencil, a crumpled scrap of paper with two phone numbers scrawled in ballpoint; a florist’s card, a mortician’s card, a classified ad torn from the Village Voice offering cut-rate carpentry services, a pink receipt from a Third Avenue dry cleaner, and three hundred and twenty-one dollars.
“Hm,” he says. His chin rests on my right shoulder now. His left arm is curled around me, his palm caresses my breasts. His right arm-slipped between my rib cage and my right elbow-stretches before me toward the tabletop, where it lines up the contents of the wallet in an orderly row.
“Leonard Burger, August 14, 1917,” he reads off the driver’s license into my ear. “What a clever name they gave him-our Leo’s a leo. Unless he’s just a Len. But what do you make of the mortician’s card? And why the carpenter? Was he pricing coffins, got discouraged with a seller’s market and decided to trust a drummer on dope who’s handy with a saw? Or does he just need new kitchen cabinets… ?” He tells me to call the numbers off the rumpled piece of paper, hands me the phone: one is busy and stays busy, there’s no answer at the second.
“This is losing its charm,” he says. “Call Len. Leo. Tell him his wallet’s in the trash down the street….” “Here?” I say. “You want him to come here?” “It’ll be fun to watch.” “We don’t know his number,” I say, my voice unfamiliar to me, my composure in the elevator unfathomable in retrospect. He points to the first page of the address book. PLEASE RETURN TO, it says, and then there’s his name, an address, and below that a telephone number. A woman answers. “Mr. Burger’s wallet is at the corner of…” She says, “What?” in a high-pitched voice, and, “Who… ?” but he has motioned me to hang up. “I give him half an hour,” he says and leaves the room to start my bath. The salad is prepared and the table set when he leads me back to the living room window.
We stand next to each other. His hand follows the shape of my buttocks over and over. A little yellow car pulls up to the curb, miles below us. A tiny man scrambles out. The toy car zips away while the toy man scurries toward a pretend garbage can. “Try this,” he says in a low voice, into my ear, and when I look at him he grins and hands me his field glasses. A CinemaScope face, drawn and gray, looms inches from mine. I recognize the wart on the left cheek, large beads of sweat glisten on a heavily lined forehead. One earlobe, a gray sprig of hair protruding from the cavity above, looks, incongruously, as if it had once been pierced.
He has hidden the wallet under only one layer of newspaper. “What if someone else finds it first?” I had asked. “Too bad for Leonard.” But no one has taken the wallet, there is no need even to forage. Spidery-veined giant’s hands hover, gingerly lift a vast sports page, a Spandex watchband catches the low sun. I put the glasses down. The toy man snatches up a grain of dust, stands immobile, swivels its head, waves a tiny arm at a little model Checker, and is gone.
A wave of nausea rises from the pit of my stomach. I swallow hard. The sour taste lasts only for a moment. 1 stretch my arms as far above my head as they will go and find-as my shoulder muscles respond to the pull, and the band of muscles across my chest, and the stomach muscles below-that a shifting, a sliding has begun in my body while I was still afraid of throwing up. The stir gathers momentum and depth, embracing small rivulets, now plentiful from all sides. He spins me around, his hands steel clamps on my shoulders, and shakes me, my head bobbing. His hands close around my throat, I slide to the floor, my eyes shut. I lower my circle of arms joined at the wrists around
“Hm,” he says. His chin rests on my right shoulder now. His left arm is curled around me, his palm caresses my breasts. His right arm-slipped between my rib cage and my right elbow-stretches before me toward the tabletop, where it lines up the contents of the wallet in an orderly row.
“Leonard Burger, August 14, 1917,” he reads off the driver’s license into my ear. “What a clever name they gave him-our Leo’s a leo. Unless he’s just a Len. But what do you make of the mortician’s card? And why the carpenter? Was he pricing coffins, got discouraged with a seller’s market and decided to trust a drummer on dope who’s handy with a saw? Or does he just need new kitchen cabinets… ?” He tells me to call the numbers off the rumpled piece of paper, hands me the phone: one is busy and stays busy, there’s no answer at the second.
“This is losing its charm,” he says. “Call Len. Leo. Tell him his wallet’s in the trash down the street….” “Here?” I say. “You want him to come here?” “It’ll be fun to watch.” “We don’t know his number,” I say, my voice unfamiliar to me, my composure in the elevator unfathomable in retrospect. He points to the first page of the address book. PLEASE RETURN TO, it says, and then there’s his name, an address, and below that a telephone number. A woman answers. “Mr. Burger’s wallet is at the corner of…” She says, “What?” in a high-pitched voice, and, “Who… ?” but he has motioned me to hang up. “I give him half an hour,” he says and leaves the room to start my bath. The salad is prepared and the table set when he leads me back to the living room window.
We stand next to each other. His hand follows the shape of my buttocks over and over. A little yellow car pulls up to the curb, miles below us. A tiny man scrambles out. The toy car zips away while the toy man scurries toward a pretend garbage can. “Try this,” he says in a low voice, into my ear, and when I look at him he grins and hands me his field glasses. A CinemaScope face, drawn and gray, looms inches from mine. I recognize the wart on the left cheek, large beads of sweat glisten on a heavily lined forehead. One earlobe, a gray sprig of hair protruding from the cavity above, looks, incongruously, as if it had once been pierced.
He has hidden the wallet under only one layer of newspaper. “What if someone else finds it first?” I had asked. “Too bad for Leonard.” But no one has taken the wallet, there is no need even to forage. Spidery-veined giant’s hands hover, gingerly lift a vast sports page, a Spandex watchband catches the low sun. I put the glasses down. The toy man snatches up a grain of dust, stands immobile, swivels its head, waves a tiny arm at a little model Checker, and is gone.
A wave of nausea rises from the pit of my stomach. I swallow hard. The sour taste lasts only for a moment. 1 stretch my arms as far above my head as they will go and find-as my shoulder muscles respond to the pull, and the band of muscles across my chest, and the stomach muscles below-that a shifting, a sliding has begun in my body while I was still afraid of throwing up. The stir gathers momentum and depth, embracing small rivulets, now plentiful from all sides. He spins me around, his hands steel clamps on my shoulders, and shakes me, my head bobbing. His hands close around my throat, I slide to the floor, my eyes shut. I lower my circle of arms joined at the wrists around
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