A Glimpse of Tiger Read online

  Another lover would be Stanley Stud, an overpoweringly rustic man, a farmer or a shipworker, with the phallus and energy of a Percheron. They’d meet at dirty motels and crummy hotels and bang away on squeaky beds until he’d pass out drunk and she’d sneak away, through the seedy lobby, a lady of darkest mystery to the scrawny desk clerk who’d watch her exit with open-mouthed awe and rampant desire. Stanley Stud would be to keep her depths of passion properly plumbed. She would keep his phone number and call him from time to time, in Kansas or Singapore. And they’d meet like that, like wild bulls a-humping and a-bumping. And years later, after Stanley had gone on to his reward, his son—Solid Sydney—would have found her phone number written on one of his father’s athletic supporters, and he’d give her a call, and they’d meet, like every eighth Tuesday, and she’d bring her magnificently toned body to his walk-up flat, and she’d crack his back for him and make his tattoos curl. And he’d roll over, covered with beautiful perspiration, and he’d say, “Dad was right. You are the greatest ball of all.” And he’d ask if she’d be interested in meeting a few of his friends who didn’t really know what a real woman was. And she’d insist on seeing their photographs first. And those she liked she’d make appointments with, and she’d be as wanton as she chose because no one would know her true identity, and her sweet, dear husband, Captain Perfect, would never guess at her other life. And when it came for her to die, at the age of ninety-four, a few hundred unnamed men would come mysteriously to her funeral and toss roses upon her coffin. Woman—fantasy is thy name.

  She dried and warmed in the big towel and completed her unpacking, which really wasn’t much. She placed the wounded ballet dancer on the bureau, where it could smile at her. She’d keep it forever, of course. Her children would ask about it, and she’d make up fabulous stories about how it was an enchanted doll, given to her by a prince from a faraway land. Thank you, Luther, she thought. When it’s all said and done and is years and years behind and over, I will think on you kindly, and I will smile.

  She had asked the old lady at the desk if it could be arranged so that a New York Times could be placed at her door—and there it was. She scanned the first page, nothing good there, and went swiftly, as in a conditioned response, to the classified ad section. She would find a job that morning, damn it, and she’d be back on her own feet in the real world where there’d be new dawns and bright fresh surprises. She found a pencil in the ladylike desk and made professional circles on the newspaper page, notes and scrawls that had to do with job prospects but that looked more like football plays. There were a few compelling job prospects, jobs she could handle. She was anxious to get started and was pleased with her bushy-tailed attitude. She was demonstrating that old resilience, individuality, indomitability, and style. She had come through a tricky experience and already had it well behind her. Good show, Janice. Press on and what ho.

  She selected, for that day, one of the few remaining straight outfits she had. A nice yellow jumper, pretty green blouse, and ye olde and trusty brown shoes. They all welcomed her and hugged her warmly. She hadn’t lost an ounce since the last time she had worn them, or gained an inch, or changed a physical whit. She had, instead, amassed experience, shed a lover, and gathered maturity. Her mind was clicking, framing logical thoughts, dispensing rational conclusions. It was 8:30 A.M., a fine time to slide the ship into the water. The sun was shining, the day was unfolding like a morning flower, and the phone was ringing.

  That the phone was ringing was disquieting, for no one knew that she was there. Of course, it could be the lady at the desk, checking to see if the Times had arrived. But Tiger knew that it wasn’t. She let the phone ring for a while. And by the time she fitted the receiver and placed it to her ear her blood was running cold. “Hello?”

  It came out like one long, wiggly strand of spaghetti, Luther’s voice. “Tiger? It’s me. You’re my first call. Remember Big Sur? Well, he’s with the phone company, until he gets enough unemployment credit, after which he’ll get himself fired. Anyway, he just installed me, sort of a bootleg job. It’s my first concession to the outside world—an honest-to-shit telephone. Tiger, I’m putting it all together for when you come back. In the meantime, my awareness of your sick reliance on religion told me that you’d end up at some YWCA somewhere. Thank God you’re not in the pool because you know you don’t swim well. Listen, whadya have on for today? Don’t tell me. The yellow jumper-green blouse ensemble, right? You’re into your autumn thing, you and the trees, I know, I know. I hope you’re not planning on looking for a job, but I know you are. Yet with your inheritance, Elizabeth, there’s no need for you to ever work, except maybe as a nurse in some national holocaust. A job? You must have taken leave of your senses. Probably have a fever. Don’t get your quinine tablets mixed up with your birth control pills or you’ll end up with a litter of mosquitoes that look like me. Anyway, I’ll call you tonight. Just remember the antidiscrimination laws. If you’re qualified for a job, they have to hire you. So what if you’re a Communist lesbian, there’s still a place for you. And please, Wanda, wash your feet in the chlorine when you come out of the pool or else you’ll be arrested and charged with first-class athlete’s foot. Good-bye, my love. Take care. Look lively. And beware the jabberwock.” Click.

  “Bye.” Tiger placed the receiver back upon its cradle. Spook, she thought. Luther, you spook. You goddamn big son-of-a-bitching spook.

  There was no way for me not to find her. I could pick up her spoor in Calcutta in August. If I was in a ring with a dozen sweaty sumo wrestlers, and she walked by three blocks away, I’d know it. I know her sweet smell. I know the way it conspires with perfume and autumn and how it rides the breeze like Diana in search of Apollo. So finding her was no great trick. Getting her back, ah—that was something else. Instinctively, owing to my years as a jungle fighter, I knew that a direct frontal assault would immediately be repulsed. She’d be expecting that; she’d be ready for it. So I fashioned another approach that was more nearly like a fox hunt. It’s the only way I can explain it to myself now. I had set her running, across a course vaguely confined to Manhattan Island. I then put myself on her trail. She had one night’s head start in the forests of Gotham City and I had already picked up her trail. It would be, judging from that, no contest. I would let the lovely beastie run herself tired for a while, and then, before it got too deep into the mating season, I’d close in on her and nip her on the tail and roll her in the grass. The important thing, as any member of a proper hunt club will tell you, is to allow the brittle thing no rest, no breather, no pause to refresh. Let her go, let her run free, even wild, but never let her think she can stop looking over her shoulder. Never let her believe that out of sight is out of mind. Haunt her. Find a way into her nighttimes. Harass her with intruding flashes of yourself. Keep her emotionally dependent on you. Feed that addiction. Let her run scampering and unfettered, boundingly oblivious, until she finds herself in some raunchy chicken coop, screaming for a fix. Then, sirs, members of the club, you will have her. And not until then. Tally fucking ho.

  15

  Tiger was on the subway again, this time as a passenger, and in the rush hour yet, a true baptism of fire. She stood shakily, her arm looped about a pole, studying the New York Times. She had never learned the proper way in which to read that publication on a subway car. As a result, she held it fully open, as if she were a giant butterfly resting for a moment but still quivering its delicate wings. And as a result of that, she was flapping newsprint on smaller butterflies within range.

  Through it all, Tiger managed to jot down additional notes in the margins of the help wanted section. Notes that superseded earlier notes. Evaluations, comments, odds. It was a scientific approach that would have pleased Napier. She had narrowed down the calls she’d make to four companies, each of which seemed to be in desperate need of typists. And for the four she had fixed on a sequence. And foremost in that sequence was the legal firm of Harper, du Bois & Malloy, because it smacked of prest
ige and tradition and class. Harper, du Bois & Malloy. It had a rhythm. Harper, du Bois & Malloy. The rhythm could not have been improved on by stringing out the names in any other order. Malloy, Harper & du Bois—nothing. Malloy, Harper & du Bois—not likely. Du Bois, Malloy & Harper—no. Harper, Malloy & du Bois—bad, wrong. Du Bois, Malloise & Harpoon. No. Harpoon, Festoon & Spittoon. Maybe. Spittoon, Balloon & Buffoon. No. Buffoon, Baboon & Maroon. Bumpkin, Lumpkin & Pumpkin. Piffle, Diffle & Whiffle. Muffle, Scuffle & Shuffle. Lexington, Avenue & Out.

  It was a busy street, kinetic. Morning on Madison Avenue. Mad Avenue. Crazy. It was where it was at, the scene. Groovy. Still, it seemed brightly foreign. A sunlit nightmare. The structures, the pace, the noise—they all snapped at her heels, very unfriendlylike. She checked the address of a lofty skyscraper against that on her tattered remnant of a newspaper page. They matched. She turned to go in and was scooped up by a revolving door that then spit her out into a marble-floored lobby, the kind you slip on and bust your ass on when it’s raining. She moved with the clicking group and was swallowed by an elevator. She stood in its whale belly with the rest of the plankton, being digested and regurgitated simultaneously. Two female minnows were discussing things, not caring or not knowing that all the world could overhear. Flotsam (in curlers) and Jetsam (in kerchief).

  “Well, he didn’t call again last night, but I expected that.”

  “He’s playing it cute. Him with his new semi-executive status.”

  “Anyway, my hair is set for eight o’clock tonight, just in case. Semper Paratus, shall we say?”

  “Mine, too. I’m streaked.”

  “I noticed. How much?”

  “Thirty. Mr. Horatio.”

  “Thirty? Jesus.”

  “But it’s Mr. Horatio.”

  “For thirty you should get Liberace.”

  “What can I tell you? I do the best I can. It’s time for Arnold to call. Remember him from the last time?”

  “Who could forget Arnold?”

  “Anyway, if he calls—so be it.”

  “Listen, I’m thinking of wearing my blue dress with the mother of pearl buttons.”

  “Good. It sets you off nice. Your face.”

  “Of course, I’ll have to stay at my desk all day, on top of the phone.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But he won’t call at the office.”

  “He won’t?”

  “Nah.”

  “Why?”

  “Come on, you know why.”

  “No. Why?”

  “I’ll tell you. But it’s so evil.”

  The whale burped, and Flotsam and Jetsam blew out along with some other debris, and right in the middle of their story. Tiger would never know the ending. She smiled. It was a scene she had played before, only better. With sicker premeditation and greater flair.

  The Harper, du Bois & Malloy interviewer was a female, efficient and phonily warm, camped behind a desk that had been conceived for the President of the United States. The name card on her desk, pseudo walnut, identified her as Miss E. C. Walker. Tiger loved that and, in her mind, immediately changed it to E. C. Rider in honor of Dennis Hopper and all the boys in the motor pool. Tiger loved the whole world of names she had stumbled into that morning. All these look-alike folks had names and initials to set them apart from one another. Fascinating. Like the faceless pro football players her father watched on Sundays. Big, lumpy look-alikes except for their names and numbers. Hats off to you, Aldous Huxley, you called it back in 1932.

  E. C. Rider was going over the application blank that Tiger had filled out before being asked to wait along with four other look-alikes, Dora, Flora, Cora, and Clytemnestra. And now it was her turn before the bench. “Why did you leave Smith, Miss McAllister?”

  Miss McAllister, Tiger thought. That was her. Janice Lynn McAllister. J. L. Mc. Daughter of B. M. Mc. Born in Ind., U.S.A. Where are you, Luther? I am sinking in a sea of alphabet soup.

  “Miss McAllister?” The woman was looking at Tiger from over the rim of her bifocals. “Smith is a very fine school. Why did you leave?”

  “Illness in the family.” It seemed the thing to say.

  “Whose?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, it is a bit personal, but—” It all came flowing out, shades of Luther. “Both my parents contracted measles. It’s very severe with adults, you know. I was called home from school because, at first, they thought it was scarlet fever, to which I was immune, having already had it. I’ve had every childhood disease there is, if it’s of any use to you.”

  “It’s not.”

  “In that case, they all pulled through.” She smiled, shrugged, and decided to shut up.

  “So you’ve never really worked at all, have you?”

  Tiger could feel the job slipping away, unless she could come up with something more meaningful than measles. “Well, I didn’t write it down because I didn’t think you’d find it terribly relevant, but I have worked in the shoe business. Shoes and boots.”

  “I see.” She was writing it down! Gawd! “At the retail level?”

  “Well, I would say it was more…wholesale. We had…an outlet, but in one of your finer neighborhoods.”

  “I see. And was that a regular position?”

  “No. It was kind of…off and on.” Tiger was beginning to wish that she’d never brought it up. “We had kind of a very select clientele. Top businessmen, trend setters, community leaders. You know.”

  “Miss McAllister, have you ever worked at a steady job?” There was no doubt about it—the skids were being greased for Tiger’s departure.

  Which is why the answer came out of Tiger almost before she had had a chance to edit it. “Yes. In the exterminating field. Though it was pretty specialized. I mean, it was limited to bugs. We didn’t deal with animals or crows or bunnies—just these bugs.”

  “I see. And just what was it that you did?”

  “I killed them. I mean—not personally. I mean, I didn’t whomp ’em over the head. Nor was I even around when they died. I just sort of…set ’em up for the kill, if you know what I mean.”

  “No. Frankly, I don’t. Just what is it that you do mean?” The woman was fast losing interest.

  And Tiger knew it. So she quickly tried something else. “Well, no matter. Most of my efforts, because of my privileged upbringing, have been devoted to charities.”

  “Fund raising?” She seemed to like that. Fund raising connoted leisure time. Leisure time implied wealth. Wealth begets class. And class was what got respect, you bet your ass.

  Tiger became lousy with class, even raising the tilt of her nose slightly. “Yes. I’m quite active in fund-raising endeavors. Worthy causes, you know. Have you heard of the UJA?”

  E. C. Rider was suddenly not one for silly diversions. And she knew when her leg was being pulled (if only she could get a fella to do the pulling). “Miss McAllister, we need typists rather badly. Can you type?”

  “I’m quite proficient at typing.” A lie. In CAPS. Ex-clam. Close quotes.

  The woman made some red crayon slashes on a card that you’re not allowed to bend, spindle or mutilate, and then she thrust the card out at Tiger. “It’s seventy-five dollars a week to start, provided you can do the job.”

  “Oh, I can do it.” Heathen liar. For shame!

  “Report to Miss Clarkson, in the steno pool.”

  “Her initials?”

  “L. S.”

  “Thank you.” And Tiger left, wondering why it was so bloody impossible for her to be serious about so serious a thing as earning a living. Part of the reason, and she knew it, was that she was not yet out of range of Luther and his big laughing. That would take more time. And until that time, she’d still feel him around, yakking away whenever she’d have to deal with the established world. Okay, she figured, sooner or later, she’ll flick him off—like a mugwump. Meantime, she was walking
down the corridor looking for the steno pool. And what the hell was the steno pool? Sounded like…psycho ward. She asked someone and wasn’t surprised at the logical answer. Steno meant stenographer, of course. And pool was where the stenographers all hung out until someone came by and picked one of them out, like in a lobster pond. Miss L. S. Clarkson, a hundred and nine years old, grunted at Tiger’s card and then tossed her, heartlessly, into the steno pool, where about twenty other orphan fish sat typing. It was disheartening and deafening because there were no windows, just overhanging fluorescent fixtures that looked like inverted ice trays. The girls looked as though they were attached to their typewriters via electrical umbilical cordicals. And all together they made a collective clackety-clack, whereas Tiger chipped in with an individual pippity-pip.

  Anyway, Tiger soon had a pile of work before her, reports and things, that had to be deciphered, translated into legal English, and then typed neatly, in triplicate. And when that had been completed, she had to collate (staple) all the blooming copies. And after that, she figured, the foreman would come by, and if she had done it all to his satisfaction, he’d stuff a small fish into her mouth just as you’d do with any trained seal.

  Tiger attacked her work studiously, secure in the knowledge that she’d never last the day and would shortly be out of the gloomy place and on the street again, looking for a less frightening and more satisfying manner in which to earn a proper living. Some of the things she typed up were more confusing after than they had been before. Obviously she had rediscovered her uncanny old touch of making a bad deal worse. It was a god-given talent that she hadn’t resorted to since she screwed up the invitations to her sorority luncheon at Smith, causing half the guests to come a day early and the other half a day late. And here she was again, glue in the axle grease of civilization.

  She had been at it for almost an hour when a nice but heavy-legged girl walked over from an adjacent typewriter. She looked over Tiger’s shoulder and smiled at the page in Tiger’s humming machine. “C-A-T, cat. Good.”