Daphne's Tune

"So why don't you make something out of your life?" Marty says to me.

"Like get married again?" I say. Marty has just taken a new young wife.

"Hmm!" Marty says, savoring his luck. "It's good," he says. "But it's not for you. Go back to Daphne."

I shake my head no.

"You're wrong," he says. "She's beautiful. Do you know what's the matter with Western civilization? We don't love our women enough."

A stockbroker, he talks like a poet.

"I'm not happy, Marty," I tell him. "I'm not living."

"So do something; that's what I'm trying to say. Live. Don't just let it float by. Be a man."

"I've lived. Want to see the scars?" I start to pull my shirt off over my head. Scars I've got. In the Army, I nicked myself with a bayonet when I was messing around. My first ex-wife's girlfriend stabbed me in the ribs with a kitchen knife. A little operation here, a cigarette burn there. It adds up to a life.

"Put your shirt back on," Marty says. "They'll throw us out of here."

I'm embarrassing him; he loves it. He can tell the story to Wanda when he gets home. They'll chortle over their Pinot Noir at the things crazy Eli is liable to do at the drop of a hat. "I'm telling him about Western civilization and he pulls off his shirt, the nutty bastard." Afterward, they'll have a long, satisfying fuck in their new bed and kiss and go to sleep holding on to each other for dear life. Not that this domesticity stops my friend Marty from little interludes with other women. I asked him once why he had a couch in his office. "Windfalls," he said.

"I know you," he tells me now. "You think if you admit you're wrong, you'll die. You lack flexibility. For example, Daphne. Tell the truth, don't you miss her? That woman still loves you; you could go back."

"Not in a million years."

"What a cook she was," Marty says.

True. Pot roasts, corned beef and cabbage, cannelloni that would break your heart like a symphony, home-baked breads made out of things you and I wouldn't think to put into bread if our life depended on it. Cream pies, custards, pastry right out of Vienna--it makes me feel fat just to think about it. And with all (continued on page 168)Daphne's Tune(continued from page 142) that, an educated woman with a Ph.D. in linguistics and a good job at the university. Not an ordinary person.

"And sexy," Marty says.

The bartender comes to our table to ask me politely if I would put my shirt back on. "This is a family place," he says. The only family I can see is a pair of ladies I happen to know caressing each other in a booth on the far side of the room, but all right.

"I was just showing my friend here that I have lived."

Sexy. Well, Marty has it right. Thirty-five years old when I left her, and tits that haven't sagged an eighth of an inch. She takes her shirt off, I'm panting like an animal already.

"So why did you leave?" Marty wants to know. He's asked me maybe a thousand times.

If I knew, I'd tell him. He could pass on the information to his young wife for her pleasure and education. But I'm damned if I do know. She was fooling around, but I'm not a jealous man. Women have their urges. She fooled around; now and then, I fooled around; we kept it discreet. Nothing to get mad about. The bartender is watching us. I wink at him, and after a second's pondering the proper reply, he cocks his hand like a pistol. The thumb snaps down and an invisible bullet of message flies my way. All right, that's what it's all about. I've been around long enough to know how to behave in public. Let Butch and Butch over there feel each other up under the table. I'll keep my shirt on.

"I'll tell you why," Marty says. "Love. You can't stand to be loved. You would have to give something back, and this you won't do. From this you'd die also, am I right?"

"Fuck off, Dr. Freud," I say. "Were you there? Do you know?"

I forget my good intentions about behaving like a civilized man and shout. The bartender catches my eye and shakes his head in warning. If I screw up again in his place, I'm out.

In times of stress or excitement, there's a little tune that Marty hums under his breath. Always the same melody: Ta-da, ta-da, ta-da, and so on. I've heard it before. It sounds French and melancholy, like it should be played on an accordion outdoors on a late summer evening. It seems to say that the good times are gone and we never noticed.

He stops humming long enough to hold up his fingers for two more drinks; the bartender comes over and his face says I've had enough, but Marty can charm bartenders, waiters and cabdrivers as quick as a Hindu can get a rise out of a cobra with a tin flute. They stand there and look at him with love. While we wait for the man to come back with the drinks, he hums some more. Ta-da, ta-da, ta-da. There's a message in there meant for me, but I can't read it. The drinks come; the bartender has forgotten he doesn't like me, he loves Marty so much. Across the room, the two ladies are staring at us. They don't look butch; I just happen to know, because I tried with their encouragement to pick them up one night. It's a little game and they play it nasty--I could have been killed.

"To Daphne," Marty says, holding up his glass.

"To life," I say, holding up mine. "Old friends and new wives and ex-wives. Everybody ought to be happy, so how come they're not? How come they're not?"

Marty shakes his head, shrugs. "Who knows?" Ta-da, ta-da, ta-da. "Who cares?"

It comes to me in a flash. This is the same tune. The one Daphne used to whistle between her teeth in the last year of our marriage while she wandered around the kitchen rattling the pots and pans and being unhappy. She whistled off key, which is why, I suppose, it took me this long to notice it was the same melody. There is only one explanation, I realize in this moment of terrible clarity: She was fucking Marty all that time. So why does he want me to go back to her now? The full dimensions of his treachery unfold in my head. He wants me to go back to her because he has his new wife and probably Daphne keeps calling him and asking for more. Marty's very lovable. Women can't get enough of him. I'm supposed to take Daphne off his hands so he can relax with Wanda, the treacherous bastard.

Only one thing to do now. I nudge him and point to the ladies in the back booth. "They've been staring at you all night," I tell him.

"No?" he says. He wants to believe. Marty is a man who lives by the prick.

They see him looking; the young one flashes him a sweet come-on-over smile, full of innocence and depravity.

"They want you," I tell Marty. "Think of it. Look at those tits; look at those legs. Two at once! What they'll do to you!"

Before he's halfway over there, with visions of an Olympics of fucking dancing through his head, I'm out the door and into a cab.

Ten minutes later, I'm ringing the bell to Marty's apartment. The young wife opens as far as the chain will let her.

"I have bad news," I tell her. "It's Marty."

Her rosebud mouth opens in a little O. "He's not. . . . Is he . . . ? Has there been . . . ?"

Women are so traditional. But I can swing life's clichés with the best of them. I let my face hang in proper mournfulness, preparing her for tragedy. "Yes," I say. "Poor Marty. Only thirty-nine years old."

She fumbles with the chain to let me in. "My life is over," she says. She makes me a cup of coffee and puts some Jamaican rum in it. We sit together on the couch. She sobs on my shoulder. Oh. Oh. Oh. I feel a certain guilt, but I remember Daphne. Who lives by the prick dies by the prick. In this case, mine. It's every man for himself. I put my arm around her. No time for talk. She wants the details. Did he suffer? Last words, and so on. Traditional.

"No, no," I whisper. "It's better if you don't know."

"You were his best friend," she says. I touch a nipple through her blouse. She moans. "No."

"Yes." Before you know it, we're rolling off the couch and tangling on the floor. Her dress is up around her waist. Her panties have little blue flowers on them. I take off my shirt and she sees the scars. She likes them.

I wake up later. My mouth tastes like cunt; my ears are sticky: my eyelids, glued shut. Wanda is talking on the telephone; her legs are across my chest. When I pry open one eye, it stares at her knee, too close to focus on without pain.

"Daphne," she says into the telephone. "Daphne, Daphne, Daphne."

Marty is likely on his way home now with some scars of his own, if the ladies didn't kill him altogether. In a minute, I'll hear his key in the lock.

Wanda says, "Daphne, Daphne, Daphne."

I can see my ex-wife at the other end of the line, listening patiently to this pointless repetition, maybe whistling her little tune.

"Daphne, Daphne, what have I done?" Wanda says. "I'm a good girl; it happened before I knew." She listens for a minute. "No, no," she says. "It wasn't Eli's fault at all."

She looks at me; I close the eye and pretend to be asleep. "He was a perfect gentleman," Wanda says. Her free hand wanders absent-mindedly to my prick, pats it. The devil raises his head. Wanda giggles. I take the phone out of her hand, hum into it. "Ta-da, ta-da, ta-da," and so on. I hang up, grab Wanda and roll her over like a perfect gentleman would. I'm happy now. I'm living.

"Do it from the back," she says. "Do it to me from the back. Wait, I'll get a mirror. I want to see everything."

She's gone. This is my chance to put on my pants and exit before Marty comes home magically resurrected. But who could leave now? Like Marty often says to me, a stiff prick knows no fear.

Wanda comes back hugging a mirror taller than she is. She puts it down against the wall; there are two foggy spots where her tits pressed against the glass. She checks the angles, blushes prettily, chooses her spot on the rug, bends over touching her ankles. "How do you like me like this?" she says.

I walk up behind her and make my entrance whinnying like a horse, to be in the spirit of the thing.

That's how Marty finds us.

Wanda has the mirror turned so that it reflects the door, and I see him first; but though I want to, I can't stop humping his wife. This gives him the advantage. Wanda is looking down at her toes and sighing deeply, getting ready to come. For her, Marty doesn't exist; and, anyhow, she's at the wrong angle to see the door.

I know Marty won't shoot, he won't stab, he won't pick up a blunt instrument and do me in. Marty is not a violent man. Even the sight of the scar on my chest where my ex-wife's girlfriend stabbed me with the kitchen knife made him sick. He has no morals to speak of, but he's a gentle person.

What he does is he screams a long scream in which there is indignation, sorrow, surprise, and also a certain amount of pleasure mixed in. Marty loves having the edge, even when it costs him personally.

The scream takes the traditional shape of My wife, my best friend! I see from the mirror that he has a black eye, a split lip and his nose is swollen. He takes off his sports coat and jumps up and down on the expensive fabric with his expensive shoes. Marty dresses like a prince. Who would trust a stockbroker who wore Sears, Roebuck suits? Wanda still has not seen him, but she has heard his terrible scream and she is flopping around on the end of my prick like a salmon on the hook, trying to get free. I can't let go yet. I would if I could.

She looks at Marty between her legs-- and between my legs, too, necessarily. "You're dead," she says. "How can you be here when you died?"

It takes a while to explain. Wanda makes coffee for all three of us and puts Jamaican rum in it. We drink; we talk. Marty yells so loud that I forget to put my clothes back on. Wanda forgets, too. Marty is a sight; those girls must have taken him someplace private and made him pay. Wanda sobs. Oh. Oh. Oh. She drinks her coffee. Marty yells at me; at the same time, his eyes are pleading: Don't tell Wanda about those two girls. Don't tell about Daphne, either, he would say if he knew how much I knew.

"My wife, my best friend," Marty says, enjoying himself a little.

Wanda says. "Oh. Oh. Oh."

The doorbell rings. Marty opens; it's Daphne, looking tough and beautiful in black pants and a dove-gray turtleneck. One pearl, on a gold chain, hangs between those perfect tits that for all I know will never sag till the day she dies.

"Well," she says. "I see it's a family group."

She walks over to me and examines my scars with one finger. She says, "I forgot that one," touching where, drunk out of my mind on the beach at Far Rockaway, I dropped the cigarette from my lips onto my chest and didn't notice the pain for about a minute.

"Hello, Daphne," Marty says.

"Your wife called," she tells him. "I thought I would come over and see what was going on with her, but I didn't imagine it would be this interesting."

"My wife, my best friend." Marty says. He tears off his beige-silk shirt. His chest is very white, almost without hair. He takes off his $100 shoes and throws them, one by one, across the living room.

Wanda says, "Oh. Oh. Oh."

"Should I take off my clothes, too?" Daphne says.

"Why not?" Marty shouts. "Where does it all stop?"

"Could I have a cup of coffee?" Daphne says.

Wanda goes to the kitchen to brew a fresh pot; her ass wiggles sweetly when she walks, but I would not have fucked her if it hadn't been for revenge.

"Where does it all end?" Marty says. There is a long scratch down the left side of his face, full of little droplets of dark blood.

"Where?" he says again when Wanda comes back with the coffee.

"Will you have rum?" she says to Daphne. Daphne holds out her cup and Wanda pours generously.

Marty is standing on a chair, half out of his pants; he left his shorts somewhere, maybe with the girls, and his little prick hangs out sadly.

We drink rum and coffee and watch him. "I didn't think you were capable of this," Daphne says to me with respect. "Calm down," she says to Marty, who is dancing on the chair wearing nothing but his socks, shouting, "Where? Where?" at the top of his voice.

Later in the evening, Daphne takes off her clothes, too. We drink rum without the coffee. Her tits are still perfect. We end up, all four of us, sitting on the carpet, arm in arm, swaying back and forth, singing Daphne's tune. Ta-da, ta-da, ta-da. And so on.

"'They want you,' I tell Marty. 'Think of it. Look at those tits; look at those legs. Two at once!'"