Something Happened

"He never really bounced back."

I knew he was dead before he told me. I can add: Len Lewis was fifty-five when I was there and that was thirty years ago.

"Then his wife passed away about a month after he did. It's odd, really odd, the way people remember and keep calling up after so many years. I'm sorry I don't remember you, but you say you only worked here a very short time, didn't you?"

Len Lewis never left his wife. He didn't really want to. Virginia didn't want him to. He was too old. She was too young. Then she was dead. And I was alive in a phone booth. I called Len Lewis once shortly after I was married when I was feeling terribly lonely and despondent (and didn't know why. Oh, that abominable cafard. I was over thirty years old before I even knew what to call that permeating, uninvited sorrow dwelling inside me somewhere like an elusive burglar that will not be cornered and exorcised).

"Won't you come up and say hello?" he invited in his reticent, soft-spoken way. "There are still a few of us left."

"I want to get in touch with Virginia," I said. "I think I'd like to keep in touch with Virginia Markowitz if I can."

"She did it with gas.»

"How terrible."

". in the kitchen of her mother's home. I was very fond of her. She was always very fond of you."

(A woman's place is in the kitchen. A man's is in the garage. If I catch my wife and leave her, it won't be out of jealousy. It will be out of spite. If she leaves me, it would be shattering. I will turn into someone nervous. I might never be able to meet anyone's eyes. I would lack confidence and lose my job.)

I called Ben Zack a month ago late one afternoon when I felt I could not make myself go home one more time to my wife and children on my country acre in Co

I called Ben Zack again yesterday.

She was still not there.

"I asked for number four.

She said she wanted more."

"Although I remember her very well, of course, of course. Then you don't know what happened to her, do you?"

I told Ben Zack my name was Horace White. He didn't think he remembered me.

"I asked for number five."

I asked for Mrs. Yerger and was so glad when he said he didn't think he remembered her either.

"I felt it come alive."

"She was that very big, broad woman who was put in charge of the file room from someplace else and said she was going to fire all of us if we didn't shape up soon."

"Perhaps she didn't stay long, Horace," Ben Zack apologized. "It was all so long ago. Somebody else called up a few weeks ago to ask about Virginia Markowitz also. Isn't it odd? Isn't it odd that there are still people who call up for her after so many years?"

I asked for Tom.

"Tom who?"

"Thumb."

"Thumb?"

"Johnson. He worked in the file room too when Virginia and Mr. Lewis and you were there. He left to go into the army."

"He isn't here now. There's hardly anybody here now."

Tom Terrific, of course, who had given me the handwriting I use and who was able to stick it to Marie Jencks whenever she wanted him to in a way I wished I could and knew I could not. I couldn't even do it to Virginia, and I wasn't really afraid of her.

I asked for me.

I was not there either. (I had never done that before.)

It made me mad to hear that.

"But I'm pretty sure I remember who you mean, Horace," he said. "He was that nice-looking, polite boy with a good sense of humor, wasn't he? No, I don't know what ever became of him."

Neither do I. (I don't feel even distantly co

It would have made me glad to hear I was still working there in the file room as a nice-looking, polite, seventeen-year-old boy with a good sense of humor (at least I'd know where that part of me was while I scrounge around looking for the others), cracking jokes as I carried my incident folders back and forth past Virginia's desk, humming "Take it in your hand, Mrs. Murphy," or whistling:

"Joh

You know just where.

Under my petticoat,

You'll find a bush of hair.

If you don't tickle me.

In the right place,

I'll lift up my petticoat.

And pee right in your face."

We had other dirty songs we loved too.

I could find that right place now and wish I had a chance to prove it. I wish I had her on her back right now (and that I was the one who was older. She is twenty-one. I am twenty-eight). There'd be more than just bone with her. I wouldn't be afraid. (I don't think I'd be afraid.) There is just bone with so many of them now. (I get black and blue marks instead of ecstasy. I might still be afraid of Marie Jencks. I was enamored of her size and flashy good looks. After I found out about her and Tom, I was afraid. Her yellow hair seemed cold and crackly, her skin looked rough, and I often dreamed of the things growing in the cluttered junctures of her thighs as mossy crustacean claws, dark and barnacled as uncooked lobsters, if indeed they were hers. The smeared rectangular smile of vivid lipstick on the face they bore along beyond them was hers as the pincers advanced to seize, engulf, and consume me. Poor Tom. I often feared for him in that cavernous burlap wilderness that fascinated and repelled me. Maybe that's what happened to him. I envied him.) Virginia, at least, was soft and kind. More and more often lately I find myself wishing I had remained on closer terms with my sister and her family, and with my brother's wife and her children and even with her second husband. She married again and had at least one more child. She sent a card. They are nieces and nephews and might even enjoy a visit from me for a few minutes. Some people don't mind their uncles. I wish I were part of a large family circle and enjoyed it. I would like to fit in. I wish I believed in God. I liked shelled walnuts and raisins at home when I was a child and cracked the walnuts and mixed them all up with the raisins in a dish before I began eating. My mother sent out for ice cream often in the spring and summer. In the fall we had good charlotte russes. I would spin tops. I remember the faces of street cleaners.