A Dish of Desire

Naturally I Laughed. My tailor said Mr. D have you had the suit cleaned. I said no. He said don't, the material is a distinct liability, so watch it. So I said I was watching. He said don't sit down in it, and walk with a clean stride, you don't want it to crease.

When gay eyes examine me closely I want them to see the gold thread in the garment. So when we went to eat in the roof garden I threw my careless hand in the night air and said bring us fish. Other faces at other tables were white with happiness. Heads went back to let out the throat gurgle and show the teeth. Our jewels were discreet. We all wear the bright eyeballs tonight. My eyes have green centers. After I got my legs loosened under the table and nicely folded one on the other I said after smelling, this fish is fine. Smells come to me now of a strange nature and one particular one which my sensibility thinking of your sensibility makes me not want to mention. But it is this foolish thread of adventure which is woven in me so when she said:

"My Charlie, you is big and nice."

Eyes on her heart I dlipped my face in the soup which I was eating with the fish and arranged the wind in my chest.

"Cynthia I am glad you have said that."

"Charlie, it was you who made me love you. Ha ha, you have the amplitude of a warehouse."

"Same to you."

"But kidding aside. But Charlie, I want marriage more than anything."

"It's the trouble I'm having."

"But we could be having a baby. Charlie, don't you want to reproduce? Don't you want me to have your child?"

"Hold it, Cynthia, hold it. In the nature of this argument where it seems we are not avoiding the facts, let me tell you something."

"I'm not a business acquaintance, Charlie. It hurts me when you talk like that. Why don't you be honest."

"Marriage will destroy me."

"Charlie I like you. Look at me. I'm a woman begging for a baby."

"I'm telling you twice, marriage will destroy me."

"But what do you do with your free time anyhow. Charlie, tell me that."

"I roller-skate. If my tailor didn't object to rough treatment of my garments I'd ice-skate too."

"See your pastimes are useless."

"Cynthia, I had to work hard for what I am now. I was not exactly born in the gutter but I am now what I wasn't then and look what happened to my friends. You want to know what happened. No, you don't. Jake is surrounded. He is surrounded by humanity which is of his own making. Don't tell me it's a joke to have orange juice squirted up the nose by upstarts started with a jump in bed and maybe some ceremony that costs a lot of money. Don't tell me, why Jake is gray before his time. Why Jake sits there rubbing his hand over his head, speechless, stupid with the effort of fending off four savage kids. Sure Jake says standing in the lobby of my apartment, I'm sorry Charlie for the broken table. I said Jake, kids are no blessing I know but you don't have to pay me for the table. You think I want that."

"We can plan parenthood."

"What a laugh. Plan parenthood. You know what I'm like in bed. Maybe because you don't let me but how can I plan when I don't have the remotest control over my urges. When legally you got to give."

"I could urge you not to."

"Cynthia, God created us to do it. I'm not having any nonsense like that. Do what God wants you to, that's my motto."

"Soon as I say something, you get like this."

"Cynthia it's true. Why should I curb urge. Marriage is the sacred joining of two bodies where if God is willing two people can at last have a little fun. That's why I still keep in good shape. When use of my body is finally called upon I can throw it into action and in this throwing into action I don't deem suppression of my natural wildness as good for me. Besides my doctor says so. He said let your natural wildness go. Naturally I'm waiting for the ripe time. Boy you've been some help. My doctor says I'm all right."

"Remember I've had medical overhauls too. Really complete and A-one."

"What, a specimen."

"He examined me for three days."

"Must of been fun. For myself my doctor only had to make me cough to see I was a specimen, a real one. Cynthia I'm svelte."

"That's what you wish you were. You got your share of lard. And your doctor, ha ha."

"He guided most of my family through their last illnesses."

"Boy what a recommendation."

"Cynthia, you want to know something. You really want me to tell you?"

"Let me tell you something, mastermind. Just let me tell you something. I don't need your body to get me pregnant. Just think of that one, will you, while you're at it. There are lots of men wandering around who would like what I could give."

"What are you giving."

"The companionship of an exciting mind. What I've wasted on you."

"This is ruining the fish meal as well as the suitable libation."

"We know you went to night school, Charlie."

"Libation is a word I have been acquainted with since childhood. I'm too young to marry."

"The way we argue about this marriage. For two years you kept saying it was money. Money! Look at all the money you're making."

"Don't forget my early struggle."

"That's a real laugh. You started with one store. Then you got two. Then you got three. Then you sold them all. And got one big one. Then you got two. How could I forget your early struggle you repeat every time we go out plus all the things people did behind your back."

"I'm proud to say Jake is still my friend. My struggle was real. My struggle was not an accident. Social acceptability is open to me everywhere but before that my friends deserted me and did most unkind things behind my back for which I have not forgiven them and for which I drove them out of business. Was I supposed to laugh when they put dynamite in a bathroom fixture, right in the house I live in, my home, tried to blow me up while I was shaving. You call that funny."

"I call it funny you can't face a baby."

"Why don't we eat the soup, the fish and libate. I'm tired tonight. I know you for too long, Cynthia."

Cynthia with her high hair held with a spike of gold. Charlie, the love beast. I've always wanted to be a child of love. Like I am with things in my heart. In business they don't believe what the lips say, only what you get on paper. I'm not against babies. Or Jake's four kids. I love other people's little whippersnappers. I want Cynthia to come like a queen to my apartment. Right into my house. Maybe stopping outside the door to pick four lillies I grow there. I want her to hold them high. Rest them on her head. Then rest them on my head and take her hand to play in my hair. I want my door chimes to go on ringing. Those chimes are intimate to me. Because I chose them to play one single tune. A tune I heard after I closed my first big deal and was in a bus station where a kid was playing an instrument for a dime I gave him. I took that tune in my head back to my apartment. I sat down with a book and figured it out all by myself how to work it into chimes.

(concluded on page 50)Dish of Desire(continued from page 47) Cynthia heard them and she told me if I ever wanted to marry her I better choke off those chimes. When she left after saying that, because I threw her out on her ass, I stuck a match in the bell. Went back to the living room floor and I cried. Only done that twice in my life. If that moment had only been otherwise. Cynthia, lillies on her head, put her hand in my hair which she wouldn't do unless I made her. Said maybe you have something I could catch. The chimes taught me a lot. In my own way, love is a thing I like to keep. Maybe it's a sound. A memory of a beautiful gesture. A keepsake of a king that I would be had four years ago she said sure Charlie I love you enough to let you do it. Her body had some fine lines. I don't want planned parenthood. To this day and from the day I met her through an introduction on the beach she teased me with the fine lines. These lines are not so swell now. I carried a cane with a fancy nob then and used it when I was only wearing a bathing suit. She thought it was so high class. I tried never to disillusion her from that observation. Four months later she was telling me a pair of striped trousers I was wearing was an obstacle to me going out with her. I put myself in the hands of the tailor, saves fighting, I say, blame him. I know what class can do to people and what people do to you if you don't have it. She said her father was an opera singer. Two months later I find it's a lie. I've been ashamed of my parents but I don't go around saying they sing operas. I tried to get her on the sand late at night on the beach the first day but the sandfleas were terrible. She said don't get too familiar.

"Hey Charlie, fussy face."

"Me?"

"Charlie the fish, the soup, all charming. And the libation you have garnered the meal with is subtle. I'm glad you can live the way you do."

"So am I."

"But we're young no longer."

"Cynthia, youth is not only being young. I have expanded with the years."

"Charlie I wish you had brutality."

"What's this?"

"If you had been a real bull in the past."

"Hold it Cynthia. Your suggestion is criminal."

"I know."

"Why did you make it for then."

"It's exciting."

"Don't try serving me with a dish of desire. I've had enough desire."

"You were just thinking of me on the beach that night we first met, weren't you? I know the look."

"I was not."

"You were. You always think of it."

"I regret you pressing me on this question."

"Oh yeah."

"I also regret you see fit to cast me in the shape of a person without candidness."

"You were thinking of me on that beach with my brown legs. I was in the surf then, I was lovely."

"Don't forget the sandfleas."

"Don't forget how you said you desired me because you loved me."

"Don't forget how you said I was the first man who ever said that to you so fast."

"Charlie, how did our love stop."

"Who said it stopped."

"I'm not stupid Charlie. Our love stopped. I've asked you for mercy."

"That's reasonable after four years of nothing."

"I've asked you for marriage."

"Yeah."

"To take me as I am before it's too late."

"Too late for whom, Cynthia, get it straight."

"I want you to tell me you love me."

"Eat your soup."

"Like you did that Easter time."

"The past is past."

"I wouldn't care if it was only some remark like saying, Cynthia you doll, or something like that. Words don't matter so long as you mean them. Charlie, you chopped me down. You really cut me down. The happy time when I made you the strawberry cake. You ate it like a hungering animal and it was good to watch."

"Naturally, that was all I was getting was the cake."

"I was showing you my creative process in the home. That oven hasn't cooked a good thing since. Tell me why, Charlie. Why we sit here cut from each other. Sure you'll say when wasn't it like that. But even a libation doesn't lift the pall. I'm even glad you used that word tonight. I liked you for using it. I really did. I'm not changing my mind now just to please you. You've got command. I was thrilled by the way you ordered tonight."

"Let's face facts, Cynthia. I asked them to mail the menu to me last week. I rehearsed what I was going to ask for tonight for three hours this afternoon till I was nearly hoarse. Just to ask for three items on a menu. This is no credit to me. I've got a whole heart, the pumping parts of which are not eternal, although to briefly make a play with words, it's internal. But don't fool me, Cynthia. Flattery only makes me uncomfortable after four years."

"You still chop me down, Charlie. Chopping me right down."

"Cynthia, you're not going to suck my blood in a marriage."

"I swear I swear I won't do that."

"Your bloom is gone. Now you want to give me a smell. I don't want to hurt your feelings. I'm not the large-hearted person you take me for. I had a love for beauty. Still got one."

"Charlie, you can take me tonight."

"No."

"Charlie, don't you want me?"

"No."

"Charlie, please, a chance."

"No."

"It's over. You're telling me it's over."

"It's over."

"I didn't think it would happen like this. Charlie, can't we relive it. Just relive some of the nights we went out and had such fun."

"Too expensive."

"You think you had to buy me."

"I bought you. I got companionship and comments on how I should behave to be able to keep paying you. Now tonight you make a special offer at half price."

"I was only keeping it for later. Saving it. All girls have to save something. It would have been such a treat for you because you've wanted it for so long and I thought you would go for it and like it because you were starved."

"What makes you think I was starved."

"Aren't you starved for some."

"I'm distinctly not starved for some. I even know a woman who likes it."

"Oh."

"No surfeit but I'm not starving."

"Charlie, do me one favor. Don't look upon me in your memories as if I teased you with it."

"That's not asking for much. I will look upon you in my memories as if I saw you for what you are. I've got to. I can't make this mistake twice."

"You wouldn't even give me that. You wouldn't even let my memory be sacred."

"No."

"What would you do if I told you here and now I'm sorry for what I did. That I'm heartily sorry. That I would do anything to undo what I've done, even though it took the rest of my life."

"I'd tell you you were nuts."

"Not one vestige of mercy left in you, is there."

"No."

"I guess I just fininsh eating and swallowing the libation. Just like that. Just like squeezing this lemon. Then throw it away."

"Whose juice got squeezed out, not yours."

"Is there any use asking for another chance. If on God's earth there is anything I can possibly do to bring us together, you'll tell me won't you."

"No."