Plexus (63 page)

“Now, do you hear that?” said MacGregor. “How do you like that? Well, honey, it's your loss. In ten years I may be sitting on the Supreme Court bench.”

“But in the meantime?”

“Don't cross any bridges before you come to them, that's my motto.”

“He can always make a living as a public stenographer,” said I.

“And a damned good living at that,” said MacGregor.

“I don't want to marry a public stenographer.”

“You're marrying
me,”
said MacGregor. “Who knows
what
I am?”

“Right now you're just a misfit,” said Trix.

“That's true, honey,” said MacGregor lightly, “but so were lots of men before they climbed to the top of the ladder.”

“But you're not a climber!”

“Right again,” said MacGregor. “I was only using a figure of speech. Look, you two, you don't honestly think I'm a failure, do you? I'm only working on two cylinders now. I need inspiration. I need a good wife, a home, and one or two real friends. Like this bloke, for example. How about it, Henry, am I talking sense?”

Without waiting for a reply, he continued: “You see. Trix, guys like Henry and me are out of the common run. We've got
quality
. If you get me for a husband, you're getting a jewel. I'm the most tolerant guy in the world. Henry will vouch for that. I can work as hard as anyone
… if I have to!
Only I don't see the sense of killing myself. It's stupid. Now, I haven't told you anything about this, but I've got several bright schemes up my sleeve. More than that—I'm actually carrying them out. I didn't want to tell you until they panned out successfully. If only one of them comes through, we can sit back and breathe easy for the next ten years.
How does that strike you?”

“You're a dear,” said Trix, suddenly melting.

I don't think she believed in his schemes one bit, but she was eager to clutch at any straw.

“There!” said MacGregor, beaming, “you see how simple it is?”

On my way home, an hour or so later, I got to thinking of all the wild projects he had hatched, beginning from the
time I first knew him—when he was still going to prep school. How he had always complicated his life trying to make things easier for himself. I thought of the hours he had spent doing drudge work, so that “later” he might be free to do as he pleased, though he never did know precisely what it was he would do when he would be able to do only what he pleased. To do nothing at all, which he always pretended was the
summum bonum
, was thoroughly out of the question. If we went to the beach for a holiday he was sure to bring his notebook along, and a law book or two, or even a few pages from the unabridged dictionary which he had been reading, a page at a time, for years. If we flung ourselves into the water he would have to race someone to the raft or propose that we swim around the point or suggest we play water polo. Anything but float quietly on our backs. If we stretched out on the sand he would suggest we shoot craps or play cards. If we started a pleasant conversation he would turn it into an argument. He was never able to do anything in peace or contentment. His mind was always on the next thing, the next move.

Another peculiar thing I remembered about him was that he always had a bad cold—“a chest cold,” as he put it. Winter or summer, it made no difference. A summer cold was worse, as he always said. With the colds he often got hay fever. In short, he was usually in a miserable condition, always ailing, griping, sneezing, and always blaming it on the cigarettes which he swore he would cut out next week or next month, and which sometimes he did do, to my great amazement, but only to go back to them, only to smoke more heavily. Sometimes it was the drinking which he felt was putting him “on the bum,” and he would lay off the stuff for a while, maybe six or eight months, but only to return to it, only to drink still more heavily. He did everything in this on and off fashion. When he studied he studied for eighteen and twenty hours a day, until he almost got congestion of the brain. He might break the study routine by playing cards with the boys, which he considered
relaxation. But he played cards in the same way he studied, smoked and drank—always to excess. He was a bad loser, moreover. As for the women—if he was chasing a girl he would keep after her, no matter how many times she refused him, until he almost drove her crazy. The moment she relented, or succumbed, he was through with her. Then no more women for a period. Taboo. Absolutely. It was better to live without women: it was saner and healthier: he ate better, slept better, felt better: he'd rather have a good shit than a good fuck. And so on—to ninety-six decimal places.
Until he ran into another girl
, someone simply too irresistible for words. Then it would be another long goose chase, night and day, week after week, until he got his end in, and then she was just like all the rest, not a bit better, not a bit worse.
“Just cunt, Hen … just cunt!”

There were always twenty or more hefty tomes stacked up on his desk: he would read them as soon as he could get around to it. Often years went by before he ever opened one, and by then of course the book had lost all its flavor. He would try to sell me them at half price; if I refused he would reluctantly make me a present of them. “But you've got to promise you'll read them!” he would say. He had copies of magazines ten and fifteen years old, and newspapers too, which were treated in the same manner. Occasionally he would take a batch of these with him, open them up on the trolley or the train, skim through them rapidly, then fling them out the window. “That's that!” he would say, smiling ruefully. He had cleared his conscience.

Now and then, meeting me accidentally, he'd say: “Why don't we go to the theater? I hear there's a good play on at the Orpheum.” We'd get to the theater a half-hour late, stay a few minutes, then rush out as if the very atmosphere were poisonous. “That's five bucks gone to hell,” he'd say. “How much have you on you, Hen? Oh shit, don't bother to look, I know the answer. When will you ever have any money in your pocket?” Then he'd steer me to a bar up
some dismal side street, a bar where he knew the proprietor or the waiter or someone, and he'd try to borrow a few dollars; if he couldn't get the money he'd make them stand us treat for a few rounds. “Have you got a nickel at least?” he'd ask petulantly. “I want to phone that little bastard Woodruff—he owes me a few bucks. I don't care if he's in bed or not. We'll take a taxi and make him pay for it, what say?” He'd make one telephone call after another. Finally he'd think of some girl he had thrown over years ago, some good-natured slob, as he put it, who would be only too glad to see him again. “We'll have a few drinks and beat it. Maybe I can make a touch. But don't start any funny work—she's always getting over the clap.” Thus the night would pass, running from place to place, getting nowhere, getting tired, getting crotchety, getting disgusted. Eventually we would wind up in Greenpoint, at his parents' home, where there was sure to be some beer on the ice. It had to be filched stealthily, noiselessly, because he was always on the outs with his old man, or else with his ma, sometimes with the whole family. “They don't have much love for you, Henry, I don't mind telling you. I don't know why it is, but they've got it in for you. I guess that business with the widow was just too much for them. To say nothing of that dose of clap you used to brag about.”

Though he had left home years ago, his room was always there for him, exactly as he had left it, which is to say, in thorough disorder and smelling as if a corpse were rotting in it. “You'd think they'd have the decency to clean it up occasionally, wouldn't you?” he'd say, throwing open the windows. “I suppose they're still trying to teach me a lesson, the damned idiots. You know, Henry, no one could have more stupid parents than you and me. No wonder we don't get anywhere. We got off to a bad start.” After rummaging around a bit he'd add: “I suppose I
could
clean it up myself, but I never get round to it. I guess I
am
a lazy son of a bitch. Just the same.…” And he'd trail off with oaths and curses.

Over a bottle of beer.… “Do you remember, Hen, when we put that advertising campaign over for your old man? Right in this room, wasn't it? Imagine, writing a thousand letters by hand! But we had a good time, didn't we? I can still see all those bottles standing on the floor beside us. We must have consumed a truckload of beer. We never got paid for the job, either—that's what I can't forget. Jesus, I can see what a chip off the old block you are! Never a cent on you. By the way, how
is
the old boy these days? Has he still the same twelve customers—or have they all died off? What a goofy business that was! I'm glad my old man was nothing but an ironmonger. Wonder how
we'll
wind up, eh? You'll probably be begging in the street in your old age. Your old man had some pride, but
you
, Jesus, you haven't an ounce of pride, faith, loyalty or anything, as far as I can see. Just day by day, that's it, eh Hen?
What a life!”

He could ramble on this way indefinitely. Even when we turned in, the lights out, the covers over our heads, he would carry on. Often he lay in bed with a cigar in his mouth and a beer bottle in his hand, talking, talking, flitting from memory to memory, like the ghost of a butterfly.

“Don't you ever brush your teeth?” I would ask. He liked such interruptions.

“Hell no! I used to, Hen, but it's too much bother. They'll fall out anyway some day.”

“But don't you have a bad taste in your mouth?”

“Of course I do.
Terrible!
But I'm used to it.” (Chuckling softly to himself.) “Sometimes it's so bad I can hardly stand it myself. Now and then I've had a girl remind me of it. That makes you feel a bit ashamed, of course. But you get over it. You've got to keep their minds concentrated on the other thing. Once you get it in, it doesn't matter what your breath smells like.
Right?”

Lighting his stale cigar and sitting bolt upright… “What does bother me, though, I'll tell you honestly, is to have a dirty crotch. I don't know, Hen, but I have the bad
habit of wearing my shorts until they fall off. You know how often I take a bath!
Once in a blue moon.”
He chuckled. “I guess I don't know how to wipe my ass. There's always something clinging to the short hairs—dilberries, I guess. Sometimes I clip them off with the scissors.”

Still running on … “We should have come home early and had a good talk, instead of running around that way. What's the matter with me, do you suppose? I've been chasing around like this since I was a kid. Sometimes I get so feverish I think I've got St. Vitus' dance. It gives me the jitters. I tell you, I can tremble like a dipso. Now and then I stutter too. That scares the shit out of me.…
How about some more beer?”

“Let's sleep, for Christ's sake!”

“Why, Hen? You'll sleep a long time when you're dead.”

“Save something for tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow!
Did you ever think, Henry, that there may be no tomorrow? You may die in your sleep—ever think of that?”

“So what?”

“Well, think of all you'd be missing.”

“I won't miss a damned thing,” I said irritably. “All I ask is a good ten hours' sleep—and a good breakfast when I wake up! Did you ever think of breakfast in heaven?”

“There you go—thinking of breakfast already. And who's to buy it, tell me that?”

“We'll worry about that tomorrow.”

Silence for a while.

“I say, Hen, just how much have you in your pocket? Tell me, will you, I'm curious.”

“I don't know… fifteen or twenty cents maybe.”

“You're sure it's not thirty-five?”

“It could be. Why? Do you want to borrow some?”

“Borrow from
you?
Christ no! You're a pauper. No, Hen, I was just curious, like I said. You start out with fifteen or twenty cents in your pocket—and not a wrinkle
in your brow. You bump into someone—
like me, for instance
—and you go to the theater, you drink, you take taxis, you make telephone calls.…”

“So what?”

“And it never disturbs you
.… I'm not speaking for myself, Hen. But supposing it were someone else?”

“What a thing to worry about!”

“I suppose it's all a matter of temperament. If it were me, I'd be miserable.”

“You like to feel miserable.”

“I guess you're right there. I must have been born that way.”

“And you'll die that way.”

He coughed violently, then reached for a box of cigars.
“What about a cigar, Hen?
They're a bit dry but they're Havanas.”

“You're mad. I'm going to sleep. Good night!”

“O.K. You don't mind if I read a while, do you?” He held up a few large pages torn from the dictionary. My eyes were closed, I was almost out, but I could hear him droning away.

“I'm on page 1504 now,” he was saying. “The unabridged.
Mandelic
. What a word! If I live to be another Methuselah maybe I'll make use of a word like that sometime.
Are you asleep?
It's queer, though, what you do retain out of all this shit and verbiage. Sometimes the simplest words are the strangest. A word like corpse, for instance. Cadaver is natural and easy, but
corpse!
Or take Easter—I'll bet you never thought where that comes from. English is a crazy language, do you know that? Imagine words like Michaelmas and Whitsuntide—or wassail or syndrome or nautch or whangdoodle. Wait a minute, here's a funnier one—prepollent. Or
parlous
—isn't that a strange one? Or take acne or cirrhosis—it's hard to imagine anyone
inventing
words like that, what? Language is sheer mystery. The more etymological I get the less I know.
Are you awake?
Listen, Hen, you were always a stickler
for words. I'm surprised you haven't read the dictionary through yet. Or have you? I know you tried to read the Bible through. The dictionary's more fun, I think. It's even crazier than the Bible.… You know, just to look at some words, just to roll them around in your mouth, makes you feel good. Here's a few offhand—old favorites: anacoluthon, sesquipedalian, apotheosis, which, by the way, you always mispronounce. It's apotheosis. Some mean exactly what they look like or how they sound: gimcrack, thingamajig, socdolager, gazabo, yammer. The Engles and the Jutes were responsible for the worst ones, I guess. Did you ever have a look at a Swedish book? There's a mad language for you! And to think we once talked that way.… Listen, I don't want to keep you awake all night. Forget it! I have to do this every night because I promised myself I would. It won't get me anywhere, I know that god-damn well. But there's one thing about this job, Hen—when I'm through I'm through. Yes sir! When I finish a page I wipe my ass with it. How do you like that? It's like putting
Finis
to a book.…”