Chapter III: Part 3

It was fun to say, and he began to call Footsy "Little Gee-yoo" at every possible opportunity, making terrible faces and then poking Footsy in the ribs with a laugh. It made him feel fine to keep saying it. One day the three room-mates were on their way to the ice-cream parlor where gentile girls hung out after class. Each time a group of girls walked by, Footsy would say to the redhead, "Tell them your one gag, One-Gag. That'll have them swarming all over us." And Stern would say to Footsy, "What did the little Gee-yoo think of that group?" At the ice-cream parlor, Stern held the door for Footsy, saying, "You first, Little Gee-yoo," and Footsy turned and said, "No more."

"What do you mean, Little Gee-yoo?"

"Don't call me that any more."

"The Little Gee-yoo doesn't like to be called Little Gee-yoo. Little Gee-yoo. Little Gee-yoo." It felt so good that Stern said it a few more times.

The three were inside the ice-cream parlor now, and Footsy said, "If you keep doing that, I have something I'll call you."

"There's nothing, Little Gee-yoo. Nothing at all."

"All right, Nose. What do you think of that? I'll call you Nose. Hello, Nose. Hello, Nose." With tweed-skirted gentile girls listening, he began to scream out the name--"Nose, Nose. Hello, Nose. What do you say, Nose?"--until Stern, thin-faced and large-nosed at the time, flew out of the door and down the street, the cry following him back to the boardinghouse. At night the room-mates did not speak until, finally, Stern said, "OK, I won't call you the name if you don't call me 'Nose,'" to which Footsy nonchalantly said, "All right." To break the tension, the redhead said, "Let me tell you my one gag. Does anyone have a match?" And Footsy said, "Save it." There was a strain between Stern and Footsy from then on. One day Stern inadvertently called him "Little Gee-yoo" again and added, "I'm sorry. It slipped out." Instead of overlooking it graciously, Footsy said, "That's all right, Nose."

"I said I didn't mean it," Stern apologized.

"That's all right," said Footsy. "You're getting one for one."

At the end of the semester, the room-mates decided that they would separate and Stern went to live with the old man who wore elastic gadgets on his groin.

* * * * *

In the Air Force, Stern, recently married and swiftly packing on hip fat, felt isolated, a nonflying officer in a flying service, at a time when the jets were coming in and there was no escaping them; the air was full of strange new jet sounds and the ground reverberated with the throb of them. Somehow Stern connected his nonflying status with his Jewishness, as though flying were a golden, crew-cut, gentile thing while Jewishness was a cautious and scholarly quality that crept into engines and prevented planes from lurching off the ground with recklessness. In truth, Stern feared the sky, the myriad buttons and switches on instrument panels. He was afraid of charts with grids on them, convinced he could never master anything called grids, and he was in deadly fear of phrases like "ultra high frequency" and "landing pattern." He had a recurring dream in which he was a fighter pilot, his plane attended to by a ground mechanic who resented Stern's profile for spoiling the golden, blue-eyed look of the squadron. Each day the mechanic would stand by, neutral-faced, arms folded, while Stern, able to check his plane only peremptorily, took off with heavy heart, convinced wires had been crossed and would split his aircraft in mid-flight. Stern, who traveled to distant bases to do administrative Air Force things, rode once to California as a guest on a general's luxury B-17, sitting alone in the bombardier's bubble and feeling over Grand Canyon that he had been put in a special Jewish seat and sealed off from the camaraderie in the plane's center. After eight hours of self-control, Stern felt the plane shudder and then hang uncertainly for a moment as it circled a West Coast Air Force base. He spread a thin layer of vomit around his bubble and then kneeled inside it as the plane landed, the pilots and other flying personnel filing by him in silence. Cowardly Jewish vomit staining a golden aircraft.

Stern lusted after the tiny silver wings that said you were a pilot, and once, in a Wyoming PX, he ducked his shoulders down and slipped on a pair, crouching as he did so that no one would see, holding his breath as though each second might be his last. Then he took them off and walked quickly out of the PX, feeling as though he'd looked under a skirt. A great eagle sat atop the cap of every Air Force officer, flying or nonflying, and there were those in small towns, ignorant of insignia, who thought each Air Force man was a pilot clearing the skies of Migs above Korea. One day on Rosh Hashanah, Stern, shipped for a two-week tour to Illinois, walked into a small-town synagogue, his khakis starched, his brass agleam, as though he had scored a dozen flying kills and now sought relaxation. He'd draped a tallith round his shoulders and stood, stooped with humility, in the last row of the temple, mouthing the prayer book words with all of his old speed. One by one, the congregation members, who seemed a race of Jewish midgets, turned and noticed him, and Stern, aware of their fond glances, sent forth some low groans and did several dipping knee bows he remembered from the old days. He did this to cheer them on further and to make it all the more marvelous that he, a man of the sky, took off precious flying time to pray in strange synagogues. Within minutes, the rabbi called him forward and began to heap honors upon his head. Not only was he allowed to read from the Torah but he got to kiss it, too, and then to escort it in a march around the synagogue. Ordinarily only one such honor was dealt out to a congregation member, and then only upon the occasion of a new grandson birth or wedding anniversary. The Torah back in its vault, Stern walked humbly to his seat, aware of the loving glances the tiny Jews kept shooting him. Wasn't it wonderful? A Jewish boy. A fighter. A man who had shot down planes. Yet when there's a holiday he puts on a tallith and with such sweetness comes to sit in synagogues. And did you see him pray? Even in a uniform he reads so beautifully. Stern loved it, and when they shot him glances, he responded with religious groans and dipping bows and as much humility as he could summon. When the Shofar had blown, they clustered around him, touching him, telling him what a handsome Jewish boy he was, saying how wonderful it must be to fly. They knew Jewish boys did accounting for the Army. But Stern was the first they knew who flew in planes. Dinner invitations were flung at the savior, and Stern, silent on his nonflying status, his lips sealed on the subject of his new bride, chose an orthodox watchmaker who did up timepieces for major league umpires and had a large and bovine unmarried daughter named Naomi. When Stern had finished dinner, he was left alone with the girl in a parlor that smelled of aged furniture, unchanged since it had been brought across from Albania after a pogrom. The light was subdued and Stern, belly bursting with chopped liver and noodle pudding, swiftly got her breasts out. They were large and comfortable ones, the nipples poorly placed, glancing out in opposite directions and giving her a strange, dizzying look. Stern fell upon them while the girl settled back in bovine defeat, as though she were able to tell from the sucks, greedy, anxious and lacking in tenderness, that nothing of a permanent nature would come of this, just as nothing ever came of her father's synagogue dinner invitations. She curled a finger through Stern's hair and seemed to think of the procession of dark-skinned boys who had been at her chest, wondering when a serious one would appear and want to wrap them up forever.

Stern stayed at her breasts like a thief, dizzy with adulterous glee. They were large, his wife's were small, and he stored up each minute as though it were gold. For hours he stayed upon her, expecting an exotic perfume he'd dreamed about to cascade from her bosom. The off-balance arrangement of her nipples prevented him from plunging on further; he was afraid there would be equal strangeness beneath her skirts. Then, too, the room smelled old and religious and Stern imagined himself piercing her and thereby summoning up the wrath of ancient Hebraic gods, ones who would sleep benignly as long as he stayed above the waist. She lay beneath him with cowlike patience while the night went by, and then Stern rose, said, "I have to go back now," and flew out of the house, reeling with guilt, a day of flying heroism beneath his belt and four hours of capacious bosom-sucking engraved in his mind that no one could ever steal.

* * * * *

Stern, a non-flier in a flying service, yearned for Air Force comrades but had only friends. There were two of them, non-fliers, with parasitic functions like those of Stern. One was Neidel, the Jewish captain, a finance officer who made furtive afternoon calls to grain market brokers, picking up $20,000 in barley one day, dropping it in wheat the next. A regular officer, Neidel, pockmarked and in his forties, had never married for fear of having to divert money from soybean futures. Stern occasionally had lunch with him in Neidel's old car, telling him of gentile girls from college while Neidel sweated and wolfed down economy coleslaw sandwiches he had prepared in the bachelor officer rooms. Stern's other friend was Kekras, a Greek who had failed in jets. Once lean and blond, he drank heavily now and seemed a parody of gentile fliers, his hair grown long, his khakis soiled, his face swelled up with beer. Kekras burped a lot, said next to nothing, but was a great admirer of strength, and Stern got rises out of him only with apocryphal anecdotes of Charlie Keller, ancient Yankee outfielder. "He could carry seven baseballs in one hand," Stern would report, and Kekras would shake his head and say, "What a monster."

"Some said he could even grab eight of them in his prime."

"Jesus," Kekras would say.

"I once saw him outside of Yankee Stadium," Stern would add. "He had the bushiest eyebrows I'd ever seen on a man, and you should have seen his arms. They hung down to the ground like an ape's."

"What a horse," Kekras would say, grinning and shaking his head with affection. "What an ox." And Stern was thrilled that he was talking intimately with a gentile man of the air, even though a cast-off, heavy-lidded one whose senses were too dulled for the new jets.

Stern felt like a thief throughout his Air Force tour, a sponger and a parasite, a secret vomiter masquerading in suits of Air Force blue with great heroic eagles perched atop his garrison cap. "I'd feel more comfortable wearing a different kind of uniform than the fliers," he'd tell Kekras, while the Greek burped and wondered whether Dolph Camilli's wrists were larger round than those of Johnny Mize. Only one brief moment did Stern feel in the Air Force and not an unwanted guest in a hostile house, each month taking money that should have gone to fliers.

* * * * *

On temporary duty in Wyoming one night, Stern had taken a seat at a bar in the officers' club next to a buxom woman quickly labeled a "hooker" by the bartender--"one of the worst I've seen in this club." Stern, who felt he'd married prematurely, now prowled tormentedly after women on his tours about the globe, keeping mental track of every loveless caress, every conversation, every female contact, as though only when he'd grabbed a certain number of breasts, stroked a certain number of thighs, racked up a magic number of sleepings would he be able to relax and be married. Bracelets of lines ringed the woman's neck, and she sat enclosed in a circle of cheap perfume, but the bourbon quickly got to Stern and turned the perfume into something desirably earthy, the neck lines into lovely chevrons of sophistication. Stern imagined taking her to his staff car, stripping off her undoubtedly worn and tragic underwear, and allowing her to entertain him with slow and worldly acts of love, and then returning quickly to the bar, possibly with an easily cleared up disease upon him, but one delicious notch closer to his magic number of sleepings. Stern sidled close to the woman, an offer of a drink on his lips, when a romantic voice behind him rang out: "Come, woman, and drink my wine. I have need of company and you seem much woman to these eyes." The hooker wheeled on her seat, said, "Scuse me," to Stern, and joined the one who had called out--a husky middle-aged man with much blond hair curled romantically down over his forehead and with deep lines burned in his face. He was wearing civilian clothes and talked in a bleary-eyed, outrageously romantic way, rising gallantly for the hooker and telling her, "Woman, you're a rare one and you've wisdom in your smile." When the hooker took her seat, the romantic man shouted to Stern, "Let the Jew join us, too. I'll not close our circle to the Jew." Stern's face froze at the bar, but he came over and said, "What do you mean, Jew?" And the man slapped his shoulder and said, "Let the Jew sit and take wine with us." Stern, oddly at ease, sat down with the pair, uncomfortable only because the man was talking so loud. "Your company is good, woman," the romantic man said, leaning back and drinking deeply. "Big Jew, you warm me with your presence." He called Stern "Jew" and "Big Jew" each time he spoke to him, and he called the hooker "woman," endowing her with a universal quality, and Stern felt a nice feeling of camaraderie sitting and drinking with the pair, the romantic gentleman who might have been an aging soldier of fortune and the wise and silent hooker who had been to many places and stayed with a legion of men. He felt as though he was in a small bar in Macao, among scarred people with grave crimes in their past, at the world's end now, saying only bitter, philosophical things and waiting to die. Ava Gardner a must for the film version. The romantic man, indeed, _was_ a kind of soldier of fortune, a civilian flying instructor assigned to the Air Force. He had trained a small group of Israeli pilots during the Arab-Israeli war, and he had glowing things to say of Israeli skills. "You Jews fly well, Big Jew," he said to Stern, who exulted in his words. "You fly a good plane, and my hat is off to the flying Jew. I'll drink to you, Big Jew. You do well in the sky."

"I don't actually fly myself," Stern said, but the romantic man waved him off and said, "Big Jew, you fly a deadly plane. Drink deep with me. The woman drinks well, too."

The romantic gentleman went on extolling the virtues of Jewish pilots, and each time Stern insisted that he himself was no flier, the man said, "Let the Jew be silent and drink with me as a man of the sky."

A major Stern knew from the headquarters office came over with his wife then and stood alongside the table as the gentleman cried out, "The Big Jew is a modest man. Come, Jew, and tell us of your courage."

"That's disgusting," said the major's wife, and Stern said, "He's not saying it the way you think." But then, for the sake of the new couple, he turned to the middle-aged soldier of fortune and said, "Quit that. Don't keep calling me that." The gentleman said, "I've tasted too much of wine," got to his feet unsteadily, and walked out of the club, the hooker supporting his arm. The couple sat beside Stern, but as soon as the middle-aged gentleman had gone, Stern wanted to call him back. He wanted to say to the couple, "You're wrong. He wasn't saying 'Jew' like you think. He was saying _Big Jew_. _Tall_ Jew. He saw me as the strong and quiet Jew in a brigade of international fighters. I might have been the Big Swede or the Big Prussian, but I was the Big Jew, the quiet, silent one with bitter memories and a past of mystery, a man you could count on to slip silently through enemy lines and slit a throat, the one with skills at demolition who could blow a bridge a thousand ways, brilliant at weaponry, a quiet man with strong and magic hands who could open any safe and fix an exhausted aircraft, fly it, too, if necessary. Send the Big Jew. He knows how to kill. He'll get through. He says little, but no one kills a man better, and it is said that when a woman has been to bed with him she will never be loved better as long as she lives."

Stern wanted to say these things to the major and his wife, just as now, ten years later, he wanted to go out of his house and say to the man who'd kiked his wife and peered between her legs, "You've got me wrong. I'm no kike. Come and see my empty house. My bank account is lean. I drive an old car, too, and Cousy thrills me at the backcourt just as you. No synagogue has seen me in ten years. It's true my hips are wide, but I have a plan for thinness. I'm no kike."

But Stern said nothing, continuing to drive hunched and tense past the man's house, until one night he saw a line of giant American flags flying thrillingly and patriotically from the man's every window. At that moment a great flower of pain billowed up within Stern's belly, filling him up gently and then settling like a parachute inside his ribs. He nursed it within him for several weeks, and then one evening, warming tea at midnight by the gas-blue light of the ancient kitchen stove, an electric shaft of pain charged through Stern's middle and flung him to the floor, his great behind slapping icily against the kitchen tile. It was as though the kike man's boot had stamped through Stern's mouth, plunging downward, elevator-swift, to lodge finally in his bowels, all the fragile and delicate things within him flung aside.

_Part Two_

Stern's doctor sent him first to a man with a forest of golden curls named Brewer who took pictures of his belly. Brewer had said, "Come very early; it's the only way I can get a lot of people in," and when Stern arrived, he filled him first with thick, maltlike substances, then put him inside an eyelike machine, and, taking his place on the other side of it, said, "Think of delicious dishes. Your favorites."

Stern was barefooted and wore a thin shift; the light in the streets had not yet come up and his eyes were crusted with sleep. "I may be sick," he said. "How can I think of delicious things? All right, eggs."

"Don't fool around," said the man, squinting into the machine. "I've got to get a lot of people in. Give me your favorite taste temptations; otherwise the pictures will be grainy."

"I really do like eggs," Stern said. "Late at night, when I've been out, I'd rather have them than anything."

"Are you trying to make a monkey out of me?" the man screamed, darting away from the machine. "Do you know how many I have got to get in today? _You give me your favorites._" He flew at Stern, fat fists clenched, blond curls shaking, like a giant, enraged baby, and Stern, frightened, said, "Soufflés, soufflés."

"That ought to do it," said the man, his eye to the machine again. "I'm not sending out any grainy pictures."

A week after the stomach pictures had been taken, Stern sat alongside an old woman with giant ankles in the outer office of Fabiola, the specialist, and it occurred to him that he would hear all the really bad news in his life in this very office; there would be today's and then, at some later date, news of lung congestions and then, finally, right here in this very room with the wallpaper and leather couches that seemed specially designed for telling people hopeless things, he would get the final word, the news that would wrap up the ball game forever. The woman beside him sorrowfully tapped her feet to an obscure Muzak ballad and, although Stern knew it was cruel, he could not help passing along his observation.

"This is a room for bad things," he said. "All the bad news in your life you get right here, right to the very end."

"I can't think now," she said, tapping away. "Not with these feet I can't."

Stern felt ashamed when he was called ahead of the giant-ankled woman, but then it occurred to him that perhaps her ankles had always been that way and were not swollen and enfeebled but sturdy with rocklike peasant power. Perhaps within her there raged fifty years more of good health; Stern was being called first because he was much further downhill, the slimness of his ankles notwithstanding.

Fabiola was a tall, brisk man who wore loose-flowing clothes and lived in the shadow of an old doctor whose practice he had taken over, the famed Robert Lualdi, a handsome, Gable-like man who had been personal physician to Ziegfeld beauties. Somewhat senile and in retirement now, the elderly Lualdi, nevertheless, would drop in at odd times during the day, often while examinations were in session, put his feet on the young doctor's desk, and reminisce about the days when he had a practice that was "really hotcha." Once, when Fabiola was examining a young woman's chest, the old man had come into the room, pronounced her breasts "honeys," and then gone winking out the door. The interruptions kept the young doctor on edge, and he had developed a brisk style, as though trying always to wind things up and thereby head off one of the elder doctor's nostalgic visits. He was holding the pictures of Stern's stomach up to the light when Stern entered, fingers dug into his great belly, as though to prevent the parachute within from blossoming out further. "You've got one in there, all right," said Fabiola. "Beauty. You ought to see the crater. That's the price we pay for civilization."

"Got what?" Stern asked.

"An ulcer."

"Oh," said Stern. He was sorry he had let the doctor talk first; it was as though if he had burst in immediately and told Fabiola what kind of a person he was, how nice and gentle, he might have been able to convince him that he was mistaken, that Stern was simply not the kind of fellow to have an ulcer. It was as though the doctor had a valise full of them, was dealing them out to certain kinds of people, and would revoke them if presented with sound reasons for doing so. Political influence might persuade the doctor to take it back, too. Once, when Stern had been unable to get into college, his uncle had reached a Marine colonel named Treadwell, who had phoned the college and smoothed his admission. Stern felt now that if only Treadwell were to call the doctor, Fabiola would call back the ulcer and give it to someone more deserving.

"Look, I don't think I want to have one of them," Stern said, getting a little dizzy, still feeling that it was all a matter of debate and that he wasn't going to get his point across. "I'm thirty-four." When the doctor heard his age, he would see immediately that he had the wrong man and apologize for inconveniencing Stern.

"That's when they start showing up. Look, we don't have to go in there if that's what you're worried about. We get at them other ways."

"What do you mean, go in there?" said Stern. Going in there was different from simply operating. He had a vision of entire armadas of men and equipment trooping into his stomach and staying there a long time. "You mean there was even a chance you might have had to go in?"

"I don't see any reason to move in," said Fabiola. The old doctor opened the door then and, with eyes narrowed, said, "I knew I heard some tootsies in here." He limped in rakishly and took a seat next to Stern. "Excuse me," he said, "I thought you were a tootsie. My office was always full of 'em. The real cheese, too."

"I think I may be pretty sick," Stern said, and the old man rose and said, "Oh, excuse me. I'll be getting along. Well, boys, keep everything hotcha. Any tootsies, you know who to call.

"Hotcha, hotcha," he said, and winked his way out the door.

"Look," Stern said, leaning forward now. "I really don't want to have one." He felt suddenly that it was all a giant mistake, that somehow the doctor had gotten the impression he didn't mind having one, that it made no difference to Stern one way or the other. This was his last chance to explain that he really didn't want to have one.

"I don't see what's troubling you," said Fabiola. "You'd think I'd said heart or something."

"Maybe it's the name," Stern said. "I can't even get myself to say it." It sounded to Stern like a mean little animal with a hairy face. _See the coarse-tufted, angry little ulcer, children. You must learn to avoid him because of his vicious temper. He is not nice like our friend the squirrel._ And here Stern had one running around inside him....

"I can see all of this if I'd said heart," Fabiola said, beginning to write. "All right, we'll get right at her. We can do it without moving in."

"Don't write," said Stern, searching for some last-ditch argument that would force Fabiola to reconsider. The writing would make it final. If he could get Fabiola to hold off on that, perhaps a last-minute call from Colonel Treadwell would clear him.

"I wear these tight pants," Stern said. "Really tight. I think the homosexuals are influencing all the clothes we wear, and it's silly, but I wear them anyway. I can hardly breathe, I wear them so tight. Do you think that might have done it?"

"No," said Fabiola, filling up little pieces of paper with furious scribbles. "You've definitely got one in there."

Once, on a scholarship exam, Stern had gotten stuck on the very first question. There were more than four hundred to go, but, instead of hurrying on to the next, he had continued for some reason to wrestle with the first, aware that time was flying. Unable to break through on the answer, he had felt a thickness start up in his throat and then had pitched forward on the floor, later to be revived in the girls' bathroom, all chances of passing the exam up in smoke. The same thickness formed in his throat now and he toppled forward into Fabiola's carpeting, not quite losing consciousness.

"I didn't say heart," Fabiola said, leaning forward. "I could understand if I'd said heart."

Helped to his feet, Stern felt better immediately. It was as though he had finally demonstrated how seriously he was opposed to having an ulcer.

"I think we ought to bed this one down for a while," the doctor said, writing again. "I know an inexpensive place. Can you get free?"

"Oh, Jesus, I've really got one then," said Stern, beginning to cry. "Can't you see that I don't want one? I'm thirty-four." Fabiola stood up and Stern looked at the doctor's softly rising paunch, encased in loose-flowing trousers, and wondered how he was able to keep it free of coarse-tufted, sharp-toothed little ulcers. Fabiola's belly had a stately, relaxed strength about it, and Stern wanted to hug it and tell the doctor about the kike man, how bad it was to drive past his house every night. Then perhaps the doctor would call the man, tell him the awful thing he'd done and that he'd better not do it any more. Or else Fabiola would ride out in a car and somehow, with the stately, dignified strength of his belly, bring the man to his knees.

"It's a little place upstate," said Fabiola, leading Stern to the door. "The way you hit the floor I think we ought to bed it down awhile. They'll be ready for you in about three days."

Stern wanted to protest. He wanted to say, "Wait a minute. You don't understand. I _really_ don't want to have one. I'm not leaving this room until I don't have one any more." But the situation had become dreamlike, as though a man was coming for his throat with a razor and he was unable to cry out. "I just didn't want this," he heard himself say sweetly.

In the corridor, the old doctor winked at Stern and said, "You boys have a couple of tootsies in there?"

"I'm awfully sick," Stern said, and went out the door.

* * * * *

Crying in the street, Stern hailed a cab and gave the Negro driver, a scholarly-looking gentleman, his office address. "I've just been told I've got something lousy inside me," Stern said, still crying. "Jesus, how I don't want to have it in there."

"Cut him out," the man said, shaking his head emphatically, as though he were crying "Amen" at a good sermon. "He an ulcer, cut him out an' throw him 'pon the floor. He very strong, but you throw Mr. Ulcer 'pon the floor, you see how he like that. I got an uncle, he cut one out, he live to be fifty-four."

Stern wanted to tell the man that fifty-four was no target to shoot for and that there'd be no cutting, either. He wanted to say that he thought the man's advice was terrible, but he was afraid the Negro, outwardly scholarly, had once fought as a welterweight and, irked, might quickly remove his horn-rims, back Stern against a fender, and cut him to ribbons with lethal combinations. When the cab pulled up, Stern said, "I might try cutting it out," and tipped the scholarly Negro handsomely.

* * * * *

At a drugstore counter near his office, Stern took a seat three stools down from the owner, Doroff the druggist, a loose and boneless man whose body seemed made of liquid and who appeared to be flowing rather than leaning against the counter. He was talking to a slender girl with long, impossibly sensual legs who twisted and untwisted them as Doroff asked her where she ate certain types of food. "Where do you gopher Chinese?" Doroff asked, and when she answered, he made a negative, fishlike face and said, "Uh-uh, the only place to go in this city is a little spot named Toy's on Fifty-third. Where do you gopher French?" He kept asking her the restaurant questions, and no matter what her answer, he would shake his head in fishlike disapproval and tell her the only good place to "gopher Indian" or to "gopher Italiano." Each time he filled her in, she would spring back suddenly, as though kissed, crossing and uncrossing her legs with glee. Stern hated the fishlike Doroff for always having cute girls on stools beside him, girls who were much too appealing for the boneless druggist, and it broke Stern's heart to see this one reacting to him with such delight. He had fears that one night the two of them would "gopher Spanish" or "gopher German" together and that before she knew what happened the boneless Doroff would be floating up against her, getting to enjoy the length of her twisting legs. He wanted to say to her now, "What's so great about him knowing restaurants? Is that something to get excited about? Yours are probably as good as his. You'd never know it to look at me now, but if I weren't so upset, I could really tell you worthwhile things. I could tell you of Turgenev."

The man who had come for Stern's order was a paunchy, gray-haired counterman who had the impression that Stern was in on things, had inside information on deals and intimate goings-on. He was always asking Stern questions impossible to answer, such as "So what's going on?" and "How'd you make it today?" No matter what Stern's answer, he would wink deeply and shake with laughter. In sober moments, he would say to Stern, "I'd like to get out of here. You hear of anything doing around, let me know." He asked Stern now, "So how'd the racket go?" And when Stern said, "Usual," he let out a hysterical bellow and said, "You really got something going, don't you?" He asked Stern then, "So what'll it be?" And Stern, who felt he had a thousand pounds above his belt, said, "Milk. Warm it. I've got something going on inside me." One of Fabiola's papers had said to drink milk, and Stern was anxious to get some down, picturing a warm flood of it streaming past his throat and pacifying temporarily a hairy, coarse-tufted angry little animal within him that squawked for nourishment.

"No warm," the man said. "You have to ask the boss."

Doroff had overheard the exchange. He had had fights with Sterns boss, Belavista, down the street, and now he said, "All right on the warm. Is that what you get working for Belavista? Ulcers?" Doroff's use of the plural form brought a flood of tears to Stern's eyes. Ulcers. Fabiola had spoken of only one, and now he pictured a sea of them fanning out inside him. The girl giggled and Stern knew that he had lost all chances to get at her legs. He rose, his body hooked in a curve of pain, and whispered, "I've only got one," and then flew through the drugstore muttering, "Where do you gopher this, where do you gopher that." He wanted to holler out "_Where do you gopher shit?_" but he was certain Doroff would call out a number, sixty-two, and a drugstore plan would go into operation in which all eight countermen would loyally spring over the grill and trap Stern against the paperback books, hitting him in the stomach a few times and then holding him for a paid-off patrolman.

* * * * *

Stern, who wrote the editorial material on product labels, traveled eight floors upward to his office now, where he was greeted by his secretary, a tall, somber girl with gently rounded but sorrowful buttocks. She had lost both parents beneath a bus, and although she served Stern with loyalty, she placed a dark and downbeat cast upon all events.

"I've got something lousy in me and I've got to go away," Stern said. "Tell Mr. Belavista I want to see him. I've got to get wound up here so I can get out."

"What is it?" she asked. "The worst?"

"No, it's not the worst," Stern said. "But it's lousy and I'd rather not have it in there."

"Things like that take a long time to get cleared up," she said. "All right, do you want the bad news now?"

"What do you mean, bad news?" Stern asked. "All right, give it to me."

"The mail hasn't come yet and you've got someone who's been waiting on the phone."

"Is that it?" Stern asked.

"Yes," she said.

"That's not so bad," said Stern. "Why do you have to make everything sound so terrible?" She walked away and Stern studied her buttocks, rising easily beneath her black skirt. On any other girl, they would have been appealing, but he could not detach them from what he knew about her and they seemed as a consequence downbeat and sorrowful; touching them would have been reaching into a grave.

Stern picked up the phone and the voice said, "Loudon here. I've got something you're going to want and I'll only take a second."

"Something lousy happened to me," said Stern, "and I'm not doing any business. I just want to get wound up here a minute."

"I'll just be a second. Here it is. Hamburg has become the wickedest city in the world. Each year thousands of tourists troop there to visit its sin spots and to be fleeced by B-girls who know every trick of the trade. Strippers along the Reeperbahn go further than in any city in the world and, if you know the right places to go, _further_. Outwardly having no bordellos, Hamburg actually has many, and although its prosperous citizens pretend to have no knowledge of its wickedness, scratch the surface of any old-time Hamburgite and he'll direct you to the door of an establishment where flourishes the oldest profession in the world. That's about it. I go on from there detailing with anecdotes some of the more sordid practices in this bawdy city, which has replaced Paris as Europe's mecca of sin. What do you think?"

"What do you mean?" Stern asked.

"That's it. I want to do an article of say six thousand words on it for you. I can have it ready in two weeks."

"I do labels," Stern said. "For consumer products."

"You don't think you can work it in?" the voice asked.

"I do labels," Stern said. "And I don't feel good."

Stern chewed Fabiola's stomach pills and waited for his only assistant, Glover, to end his phone conversation. A tall, yellow-haired man who frowned continually, as though the sun were in his eyes, Glover spent hours on the phone each day, exchanging anecdotes with an elaborate network of friends. Glover viewed all people and listened to all remarks with pursed lips and then assigned them a rating that seemed to have been arrived at by a Board of Good Taste, staffed by witty, wafer-thin, impeccably dressed men whose job it was to continually evaluate behavior. Glover was their branch representative in Stern's office. When Stern commented on the summer heat, Glover would pause, purse his lips, and say, "You may not know it, but you've just made one of the seven best weather remarks of the season." His ratings were enervating to Stern, as when he prefaced an item of gossip by saying, "There are only five people in America who would appreciate this story. You're one of them." Stern wanted to tell him to spend less time on the phone, but he was afraid Glover, his body trim and supple from ballet exercises, would first fly at him in an effeminate rage and then pass along the episode to the Board, which would adjudge Stern "one of the three crudest men in America."

"I've got to tell you the season's funniest tapered slacks anecdote," Glover said, entering Stern's office. "I'm passing this on to only four friends of mine."

"I'd like to listen, but I can't now," Stern said, certain the Board would get immediate notification of his conduct. "I've found out I've got something in me and I've got to go away for a while."

"_Growing_ in you?" Glover asked, slightly amused. Stern was aware that "one of the three funniest sickness descriptions of the summer" was taking form.

"No, just in there," Stern said. "I'm not sure what it's doing." Stern had the feeling that ulcers would be frowned upon by the Board as being dirty, Jewish, unsophisticated, only for fat people, and he was careful not to identify his condition. Only dueling scars and broken legs suffered while skiing would receive high grades.

"Anyway," Stern continued, "I want you to take over and keep the labels coming." He turned his head away and said, "Long telephone calls aren't good. You might keep them short."

Glover's face swiftly filled with color. He darted toward Stern's desk with vicious ballet grace, shrieked, "_I do my work_," and Stern, frightened, whispered, "Then make long ones," and went past Glover's coiled body to Belavista's office.

* * * * *

Waiting outside his boss's suite, Stern felt a growing flatness and wondered suddenly whether Dr. Fabiola wasn't perhaps deceiving him and planning to "go in" after all. Stern had a memory of a glum morning long ago when he had worn a starched shirt and been brought in a taxi at dawn to have his tonsils removed. He had gone along sweetly and had not cried, feeling that something would come up, the hospital would be closed, or someone would discover his tonsils were really fine after all; but when he arrived, serious men had undressed him and brought a giant cup down over his face while he struggled and clutched at the air. Stern imagined himself sleeping at Fabiola's rest home and men stealing into his room at night with the same smothering cup.

Stern looked in now at Belavista, a middle-aged man with giant feet and large, wood-chopping teeth. He was born in Brazil, and the natural charcoal of his face was reinforced by frequent visits to Rio de Janeiro. Belavista had $3,000,000, and it was upsetting to Stern that there was no way to tell by looking at him that he had that much money. He might have been a man with $300,000 or even $27,500, and Stern felt that if you had millions, there ought to be a way for people to tell this at a glance. A badge you got to wear or a special millionaire's necktie.

Stern felt that if you had that much money, you ought to fill up every minute with $3,000,000 things, ones you couldn't do if you didn't have that much money. During conferences with Belavista, Stern found it unnerving to think that they were both spending minutes of life together in exactly the same way, despite the fact that his Latin boss had spectacular sums of money and Stern had only $800. When Belavista ordered a rare tropical fruit salad for lunch, it depressed Stern. It would come from a fine restaurant and the fruit would be of gourmet succulence, and yet it was within the reach of people who had only $300 in the bank.

Belavista was the only multimillionaire Stern had ever known, and in his presence Stern trembled with awe and barely heard his words, studying everything about him instead. He would look at his pants and think, "Oh, Jesus, inside those pants is a three-million-dollar behind, and yet the fabric can be only so soft and fine." When Belavista made a vigorous motion or even walked about the room, it would occur to Stern that he was risking a heart attack and should, if possible, always sit in chairs and not move a muscle. And yet Stern had once seen Belavista race swiftly toward a train and dive between its doors, prying them open to get aboard. Stern decided that was really the difference, that was what had made him millions. And if people had all their money and possessions taken away and everyone had to begin all over, the men who plunged daringly toward closing train doors would survive and soon have fortunes again.

Belavista was a gentle man, and Stern often told others, "He's like a father to me." Childless and divorced, Belavista lavished all his attentions on two six-year-old Brazilian nieces, listing them both as corporation directors and sending them expensive gifts. A company joke was that for a Christmas present he had once given each of them a division of IBM. Stern pictured a day in which Belavista would put his arm around him and say that his nieces were foolish, that he had always wanted a son, and would Stern consider accepting a third of the label business, leading eventually to complete control? And then Stern, all considerations of wealth aside, would have a father who leaped bravely for closing train doors.

He went in to see Belavista now and yearned for the man to put his arms around him and take him back to his many-roomed house and keep him there, protecting him from the lake man and eventually calling for his wife and boy.

"Something's come up," Stern said. "I've got to go away. They found something inside me and I have to get it taken care of."

"I'm sorry to hear that," the Brazilian said. "What is it?"

"An ulcer," Stern said. "It just showed up in there."

"Does it nag at you around here?" Belavista asked, pointing between his ribs.

"Yes," Stern said. "That's where it gets you."

"Uh-huh," said Belavista. "I know. I've got it all right." He hollered out to his secretary, "Make an appointment for me with Dr. Torro."

"I know," said Belavista. "Gets you around the back, too, a little."

"A little," Stern said. "You feel as though a baby with giant inflated cheeks is in there."

"I know, I know," said the boss. "I've got it. I'm sure I've got the same thing." He shouted to his secretary, "Make sure it's for today," and then said to Stern, "I've got it, all right. I've got the same thing."

Stern felt a tiny bit of resentment now. It was as though he had finally come up with something that Belavista, with all his millions, could not have, and yet here was the man trying to horn in on Stern and get one too, a finer and richer one. Now Belavista rose and said, "All right, here's what I'm going to do for you," and Stern felt such a thrill of excitement that he had to hold on to his boss's desk. There were those who said that Belavista was a selfish and shrewd man, but Stern had always told them, "I don't see it. He comes through. He's always been very nice to me." Stern was certain Belavista had been waiting for a moment of crisis, a special time to make certain announcements about Stern's future. And now Stern, near tears, wanted to hug him in advance and say, "Thank you. Oh, thank you."

"I'm continuing your salary," Belavista said.

"That's wonderful," said Stern. "It will ease my mind." And then he waited for the list to continue.

"For as long as it takes. I don't care if it's three weeks."

"That's really nice," Stern said. He looked with humility at the floor, as though he expected nothing more.

"You've been pretty good around here and I want to play fair with you," said Belavista. "I've thought it over, and that's the way I'm going to handle it. I'd like to chat some more, but I've got an appointment I can't break. So look, take it easy, get your mind off things, and everything around here will be all right."

"It's amazing the way something like this just happens to you," Stern said.

"That's right," Belavista said, tapping his foot, and Stern, aware that he was keeping him from doing million-dollar things, said, "I'll be rolling along now."

"OK, guy," said Belavista, and Stern left his office, the parachute blowing up big and painful inside him. Once, when someone at college had made fun of Stern for being from Brooklyn, Stern, whose father had made a little extra money at that time, enough to buy a car, had said, "My father can buy and sell you," to the boy. Now, hating his boss, he wanted to say to him, "My father can buy and sell you." If Belavista then pinned him down on the actual worth of his father, Stern would be vague and say, "He made a lot of money in the shoulder pad business."

It was late in the afternoon when Stern got back to his desk, an unsettling and nauseating time; each day at this time Stern would have to face going home and, at the end of his trip, driving past the kike man's house. He would do things, try to distract himself, talk to people and force jokes, but no matter what he did, he would eventually have to leave the safety of his office, where even Glover's pursed lips and his secretary's downbeat buttocks were comforts, and ride home to the kike man. Each night he would buy his newspaper at the station, sit among groups of hearty men, and when one named "Ole Charlie" told a drainpipe anecdote, Stern would raise his head and guffaw at the punch line as though he understood, that he was riding home to a faulty drainpipe too, and that bad drainage was his major concern in life also. And then Stern would bury his head in his newspaper and turn to an important section, like maritime shipping, and look very serious, making an almost physical effort to blend in with the men alongside him, as though if he looked exactly like them, he would become exactly like them, speeding home to drainpipes and suburban pleasures. But then, as his stop grew nearer, a panic would start in his throat. The maritime section would become a blur and he would think how nice it would be to go one stop too far on the railroad and get off in a new place, where he could go to a home fully furnished with Early American chairs, a wife educated at European schools, neighbors named "Ole Charlie," and a street devoid of kike men.

At his desk now, Stern thought that perhaps tonight he would send his wife to tell the kike man to stop everything, to stop tormenting him, because Stern now had an ulcer. He was not ever to hit Stern in the stomach and do anything to his family, because you don't do those things to a man if he's got an ulcer. Not if you wear veteran jackets and fly flags from every window. You're a man of fair play. Stern imagined the man hearing the ulcer news and muttering something, perhaps snickering wetly; but he would never fling Stern's wife down again and peer between her legs. You don't do that to a man's wife if he has an ulcer blooming in his belly and you're supposed to be American and fair. Stern thought how much better it would be if he had lost a leg or gone blind. Then the man would certainly never do anything to him again. If he were blind, that would be complete protection for Stern's wife and child. At a meeting, the man might tell with a giggle of the blind Jew in the neighborhood, but it would be hands off Stern's wife and child. Perhaps, though, Stern had it all wrong. Perhaps the man's commando training would prevail. Never give up an advantage. If you blind a man; but there is still life inside him, jump on him and snuff it out. And Stern imagined himself tapping sightlessly past the man's house, his wife and child flanking him. The man would spot them, walk slowly forward, then gather some speed, put Stern out of commission with a judo chop, kick his child in the crotch, and then get his wife down to stab her sexually, and, worse, get her to wriggle and whimper with enjoyment beneath her conqueror while Stern thrashed blindly in the street.

Stern sipped milk now, got his desk in order, and thought of leaving the container in the center of his desk so that others would find it the following day and be consumed with heartbreak at the tragic symbol. At his desk, Glover spoke with pursed lips to the Board, and Stern imagined suddenly with fright that the moment he left for Fabiola's rest home, Glover would resign from the Board, renounce all effeminate mannerisms, marry immediately, and move into a split-level, thereby becoming attractive to Belavista. When Stern returned, his ulcer vanquished, Glover would be sitting at Stern's desk.

* * * * *

Stern's one Negro friend, Battleby the artist, came in then with sketches for Stern's labels and began immediately to fill Stern in on all his latest activities. A bearded Negro intellectual, he behaved as though his paintings were the major concern of all Americans and people walked the streets in a sweat, chafing to get late details on his career. When someone else in a room was speaking, Battleby felt threatened and would sweat and fidget, tugging at his collar and gulping deeply for air until the person stopped; then Battleby would swallow deeply and say, "They have some pen-and-inks of mine over at the West Side Gallery, and a Guggenheim director said I'm one of the eight best young Americans in casein."