320
LEONARD MICHAELS
they all want jobs? Stanger had said during our interview, "Come
to dinner, Mr. Liebowitz, on Bastille Day. We'll talk some more
about the job." I arrived. He nodded to me, took Mildred's arm,
then talked to her, to no one else, and here I was, his dinner in my
gut, grass in my brain, talking to myself, thinking grass. How do
you play this game? Like a delegate to my thinking, Mrs. Stanger
swept boldly through the grass. "So, Mr. Liebowitz, you're interested
in publishing," and she led me to a chair opposite hers. "You'll make
a lovely publisher." Her shoes were gold, her dress was white material
through which I couldn't tell if I couldn't see. Intimations of sym–
metry seesawed her voice. Slowly, precisely, she crossed her legs,
sliding white skin beneath white, translucent membrane. Her shoe
was winding in the air. I looked. "You can have the shoe, Mr. Lie–
bowitz. Are you a man who wants things?" I said, "Everyone must
want your things, Mrs. Stanger."
And that's what I thought. Nevertheless, I'd begged until Mil–
dred dressed for this party, combed her hair, and showed me good
girl
in the aspect of sullen bitch: "Do you
want
to walk so quickly,
Phillip? Do you
want
to suppose Stanger won't give you the job if
we're two minutes late? Is it thrilling to have people think you're
out with a whore? Is that what you
want?
Take my arm, you bas–
tard, or I won't go another step." A savage ride on the IRT, then
worse in the crosstown cab. "Two bucks for a lousy cab," she said.
"But if I need, really need, a pair of shoes you throw a fit. Tomor–
row, I buy shoes. Hear me?" She hadn't wanted to go. I had wanted
to rush. Stanger had nodded to me, taken her arm, and, la-Ia - I
looked - his hand was on her knee. Wanting not to go, she had a
moral advantage; she could blow him and lift a virtuous face:
"Don't give me that jealous crap."
Mrs. Stanger, apparently, wanted symmetry. A social lady with
a Viking face, symmetrical by instinct. The ghost of long bone figure,
unexorcised by a life of such occasions, still fighting, giving good as
it got. Perfect for Stanger. Why not for me? One thinks meat or
languishes.
Her eyes were tiger-bronze. They looked at me; not, across
the room, at them. She seemed to be saying, "Do you really want
the job, Mr. Liebowitz?" And she was. Winding her shoe, stirring
a golden pool of time. I had five seconds, perhaps, to seem not stupid.
