Close Relations (19 page)

“’Waste’ or ‘feces,’ Bill?”

“Waste, for God’s sake. This whole speech is disgusting. I don’t know why I have to talk about stuff like this.”

Besides Jerry’s absence, I was driving too hard at work, pushing out six or seven speeches a day and—at Paterno’s request—reviewing everything the ad agency produced, from scripts to memos. I didn’t enjoy that. A copywriter, tall and uptown-chic, dressed in what looked like an ivory cashmere shroud, told me I was “an utter ass” when I rejected her plan to film Paterno walking through Little Italy, his footsteps in sync to a tarantella.

“You cannot walk to a tarentella,” I told her.

“You can if you walk fast. It’s a thirty-second spot. Anyway, you said you want to appeal to ethnic—”

“Subtly.”

“Listen,” she said, “I won’t be condescended to.”

“Then don’t give me tarentellas. And no large family groups. No spaghetti. Get it?”

“And you expect me to do my job? Let me tell you a thing or two about advertising. You could stand to learn something.” I told her to get out of my office. Paterno made me call and apologize, but at least there were neither tarantella nor pasta commercials.

“I hear you were snippy to Margo Blythe,” LoBello snapped. I stood before his desk.

“Who?”

“The copywriter, goddamn it.”

“Sure I was snippy. She’s a dope.”

“She’s a lovely woman.”

“You sleeping with her, Lyle?”

“What’s with you? You’re acting crazy, Marcia. Everybody’s saying ‘What’s with Marcia Green? She used to shut up and do her work and now she’s acting crazy.’”

“Fire me, Lyle.”

“Get out of here. But you better watch yourself, Marcia. Watch your step. I’m keeping an eye on you.” He realigned the French cuffs on his shirt. “Your future may depend on me,” he added softly. “You better be nice.”

But my description of Lyle is too limited. He was no mere manipulator, no Neapolitan Sammy Glick, no slimy run-of-the-mill pol. He was all those things, of course, but he had a dynamism that fuzzed his less attractive attributes. Years before, when we were both free-lance political operatives working on a mayoral campaign, he had pursued me with a monomaniacal intensity that was irresistible. Marcia, you are one adorable girl. You want coffee? A doughnut? Two doughnuts? Would you keep me company while I check over the Queens petitions? Would you do me a great favor and rub my neck? Did you know you had fantastic, gentle hands? That was the first hour we knew each other.

During the second, he grabbed my wrist, pulled me into a supply closet, and pushed me up against the mimeograph forms. To my surprise, he used none of the ass-kneading, breast-grabbing techniques politicians employ in closets. Instead, he talked. “Listen, Marcia, you’re driving me crazy. Nuts. No, don’t interrupt. I mean it. I have to have you. I’ve got to have you or I’ll quit the campaign. I can’t walk around like this for three months, with a case of blue balls. Jesus, I don’t want you to feel I’m putting pressure on you. You make your own decision, but I want you to know what’s on my mind.”

I stood in the closet, stunned. To be desired so strongly, just a month after the final papers of my divorce went through without a word of protest from Barry. Lyle insisted, swore he had to have me. No one else I had slept with seemed to have had such a need. In fact, I sensed several of them would have preferred a pastrami sandwich, had the deli been closer.

“Lyle,” I had said, with the intention of going no further. My mouth opened enough to signal I wanted his over it. He obliged. And he groaned and then invoked two of the three members of the Trinity. He rubbed up and down against me, and his body was so hard it felt superhuman; Lois Lane would run her hands over such a physique.

“Tonight,” he said. “It’s gonna be so good.”

He undressed first that night, slowly, as if I were an audience deserving of a careful performance. He stood barefoot on the blue shag carpet of his apartment. The carpet, an unmade bed, and an elaborate set of weights and barbells were the sole furnishings. But I saw only Lyle.

He was astoundingly muscular. His upper arms were divided into swollen biceps and triceps, and his chest was so full he seemed to be holding his breath. His thigh muscles bulged extravagantly. His penis looked small, probably because it was overwhelmed by his enlarged other parts.

“Wow,” I said. Then I waited, prepared for his attack. After all, he said he had to have me. But Lyle was able to postpone his pleasure.

“Come on,” he said. “Come over here. You can touch me. I know you want to.” I did. I ran my hands all over him. There was not a trace of flaccidity; his entire being was transcendentally firm. And he was used to being stroked; he even pivoted around for me. I had never realized the human back had so many muscles. “I knew you’d like it,” he said.

But my response was awe, not passion. I wanted to run my hands from his swollen chest down his unyielding stomach over and over; caress his magnificent shoulders for hours. I didn’t particularly care about sleeping with him.

But Lyle finally had enough adoration. He was ready for me, although I didn’t realize it until he pulled off my turtle-neck with such vigor that my nose nearly came off with it. “Bed,” he said.

After a moment or two of polite foreplay, Lyle climbed on top of me. Actually, I was grateful, because I did not like seeing my body next to his; I was mushy, covered in spongy flesh, with mounds of undisciplined tissue that would often travel in a direction opposite from the one in which I was moving.

Lyle entered me and remained busy for a time, without gasping or groaning with the effort. He was, after all, in superb shape. When it was over, I was neither sore nor satisfied, merely sleepier than I had been before and grateful that in a few minutes I could dress and go home.

The next morning at work I found a note in my typewriter: “I want you so bad I can’t stand it. L.LB.” So I returned to his apartment that night, curious to see if his
A.M.
desire could last till
P.M.
It didn’t. But he gave me the opportunity to admire him again and nearly equal time to receive him. His technique never varied. During the day he’d be a brilliant advance man for himself; at night, having rounded up his crowd, he performed the way he pleased.

We spent every evening together for the next couple of months, except every other Sunday, when he went to visit his parents. He seemed satisfied with me, although he once expressed disappointment that my pubic hair was darker than the hair on my head. “You’re sure you don’t dye your hair?”

“I’m sure, Lyle.”

“Then how come the colors are different?”

That was our most profound discussion. But I made no move to get rid of him, for I sensed the next man would offer little improvement. Certainly he would not be as pretty. And leaving Lyle—or any of the others—would mean leaving a hole in my life which would remain until I could find another man to come and plug it up.

But two nights after that mayoral election, Lyle told me, as I was buttoning up my blouse, that though he didn’t want to hurt me, he didn’t think we were compatible.

“All right,” I said.

“So don’t bother coming around tomorrow night.”

A week later, I heard he was seeing a woman named Laura Crane, a stupid socialite who wafted about, floating from one noble cause to another. Presumably she and Lyle were compatible, because I saw them wrapped around each other at a few parties. She called him “Lylie.”

Since the number of people whose constitutions thrive on New York Democratic politics is not large, I often saw old bedfellows in new campaigns. Most were polite. A few tried to rekindle the old flame. But only Lyle leered, salivated over our past, as he called it, and used it to try to keep me in line.

Several days after my run-in with him over the advertising campaign, he came into my office and shut the door. “Does Morrissey know?”

“What?”

“Does he know?”

“Know what, Lyle?”

“You know.”

“You mean …”

“Yeah. About us. You and I. I mean, he called to report in from Buffalo and I felt real hostility on his part.”

“Maybe he just doesn’t like you, Lyle.”

“Marcia, I’m going to forgive you for that remark. I know you’re not yourself. You’re on edge, right? Come on, don’t feel you have to have a snotty answer for everything I say. I know what’s going on with you, with him being away. Now listen, just between us, if you need a man—well, you know what I’ve got.”

“Get out of here.”

“Honey, come on. You’re so horny.”

Eileen Gerrity told me to calm down. “Come on, Marcia. Have another sip of wine.” I sat on the edge of her couch, recounting that afternoon’s confrontation with Lyle LoBello. “He is horrendous, though. How could you ever have been able to …?”

“You should see his muscles.”

“You’re joking. Surely you’re joking, Marcia.”

“I’m not. He lifts weights.”

“That should be sufficient deterrent.” Eileen sat curled up on the far end of her couch, waiting for our TV dinners to heat. Her concept of entertaining guests was to serve a great deal of white wine. Dinner was an icy Salisbury steak which she sprinkled with red wine; when it was cooked, she transferred it from the aluminum tray to a plate. She scattered small flowers of parsley over it and surrounded it with small bombs of congealed starch called potato puffs which came with the meat.

I shrugged, finished my wine, and poured myself another glass. And then another.

“Marcia, stop watching the rug. It doesn’t need too much attention. Now talk to me. I’m a decent person. I’m making you a fancy dinner, which is more than you’ve ever done for me, despite all that boasting about what a grand gourmet cook you were and how you used to make your husband pheasant cutlets every night.”

“Well, it’s not really Lyle who’s bothering me.”

“Of course it’s not Lyle. He’s a pest, but you’re shooing him away adequately. It’s Jerry, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“What do you want me to say, Eileen? Everyone knows what’s happening. He’s being screwed.”

“Indeed he is.”

“So do you think it’s fun for me to watch him being screwed—long distance? When I’m helpless to do anything?”

“But you’re not the one who should be doing anything. It’s Jerry I don’t understand. Why is he toddling around upstate when he should be down here, sabotaging LoBello?”

“Because Bill Paterno is standing right behind LoBello. What can Jerry do?”

“Are you kidding? He can fight. And if he loses, he can quit. But it’s madness for him to be off like a good little boy on some meaningless expedition now. It’s going to kill him politically. Everybody is going to see he’s vulnerable, that LoBello was able to finesse him out of the picture. He’s got to get to Paterno. He’s got to come back and fight.”

“And if he loses? What happens then?”

“He gets another job.”

“Where? For God’s sake, where? Eileen, what can he do? He’s forty-seven years old.”

“That’s not dead, Marcia.”

“I know. But what can he do besides be a political adviser? Retire and sit on a park bench?”

“You have a real flair for hyperbole.”

“Sell shoes like his brother Dennis?”

“I’ll tell you one thing. I’d rather be playing with people’s feet all day than playing games with Bill and LoBello. It’s much more honorable.”

“Honor has nothing to do with it. Who has honor in politics? Paterno? Jerry? Me? I write speeches about Bill Paterno’s passionate commitment to women’s rights, and then fifty calls come in that another day-care center was shut down. And Bill goes on TV and says ‘I’m passionately committed to the working poor,’ and calls you and tells you to draft some new legislation—”

“Will you calm down?”

“No. So you draw up a couple of new regulations, and then he has Joe Cole and a couple of the others trot it around, singing hallelujah. And then what happens? He calls another press conference to say he has the problem licked, that all those women can keep their jobs and not go on welfare because their kids are taken care of and—”

“Marcia, we’re all trying. You’re not the only one who cares. We all work very hard.”

“We’re working for ourselves.”

“But that’s politics. Even when we act in our own self-interest, we benefit others. We have to be responsive to the public to succeed.”

“We have to
seem
responsive to the public.”

“Well, if it’s such an abhorrent business, why aren’t you glad Jerry’s on his way out? In fact, why are you still around, making all this dirty dealing sound so pretty, making a slippery pol like Bill sound like Saint Francis of Assisi? Why don’t you go up to Harlem and offer to baby-sit?”

“This is all I know how to do, Eileen. Jerry too.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute. You could be working for a newspaper or making up jingles to sell floral douches. And Gorgeous could sell real estate or lobby for the insurance industry or squire around a rich widow.”

“Listen to me, Eileen. I’ve only known politics. That’s it. The only person I know who isn’t involved in running for some office is my mother, but she’s congenitally unelectable. Look, who else do I know outside of politics?”

“I don’t know, but—”

“Who do you know on the outside? Come on.”

“Well, my sister Elizabeth is a teacher.”

“Not family.”

“All right.”

“So?”

“Just a second. All right, there’s my friend Joan. We’ve been friends since fourth grade. She’s a housewife with two kids.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“New Year’s Day. But that’s not fair, Marcia, because we’ve been extra busy, and since Gresham died I’ve been—”

“When was the last time you saw her before New Year’s Day? Come on.”

Eileen examined her short but perfectly manicured nails. “The New Year’s Day before that. But what does that prove? If you worked for a newspaper you’d have lunch with journalists. And if you were a teacher, your best pal would be an academic.”

“But political people are the only people I know. I’ve been with them since college. I have nowhere else to go. God, the only man I ever slept with who wasn’t on or about to be on the public tit was Barry. Every other man was employed—”