A Glimpse of Tiger Read online

  Still, living with Luther smacked of waste. Luther was wasting. He was a wastrel and a wasting waster. Surely he was capable of doing many things well. He was good with his hands—why was he not an artist or a sculptor? Or an architect or an engineer? He was open and verbal and glib, and possessed such a glittering personality—why wasn’t he a vice-president somewhere? He was inventive and original—he could be a writer, a philosopher, a television personality. What was Johnny Carson before they put a camera on him? Or Dick Cavett, for that matter? Luther could be many things, anything. Yet he chose to be nothing. He could, but he wouldn’t. He was but he wasn’t. And it all rose up in her throat until Tiger found herself verbalizing her concern. “You play so many parts that sometimes I forget who you are.”

  “They call me Clark Kent.”

  “And most of the time I never even know who it is who’s making love to me.”

  “Oh. That’s Captain Marvel.”

  Comic books, she thought. That was his frame of reference. It bugged her so, but she knew to keep it light if her point was to be made. “Don’t you think it shows an alarming lack of self-confidence never to be yourself?”

  “Yes.” He was not being drawn in.

  “Then why can’t you be yourself every once in a while?”

  “I’ll try it Thursday.” And he thought on it deeply. “Who do you suppose I am?”

  “Luther, please—”

  “Luther! Right. That’s who I am.” And he snapped his fingers. “Must try to remember.”

  “Okay, forget it. You want to be a little boy? Fine. Want to wet your pants? Fine. I don’t care. I really don’t.” She really did.

  He put his arm about her, and she had to walk along the path as though leaning against a moving building. “Listen, nutsy,” he said, “open up a man, any man. Open him up and give him air, and do you know what jumps out? A little boy jumps out. Jumps out and yells, ‘Hi ho, Silver.’ Everything else after that is just an act. That’s all it is.”

  “Okay. I don’t care. I really don’t.” She was sulking. A real fine sulk. Complete with lower lip pouting and eyes cast at the points of her shoes. The classic sulk.

  They approached a bench where three junior executive types sat, none of them knowing the other two, and so there was a separation on the bench between all three. Luther was still explaining to Tiger. “Just an act. The deep voice, the money in the bank”—he pointed to the shined shoes of the first man—“the shined shoes”—he pointed to the magazine that the second man was reading—“Newsweek magazine, it’s all an act. Take any man.” He stopped at the third man, who looked up disbelievingly. “Take this man.” Luther was making no effort to modulate his voice, and to the people in the vicinity it sounded as though he were making a speech. He pointed at the third man, his finger practically on the man’s nose. “What he’d really like to do is kick over his job and jerk off for forty hours a week. Plus overtime. Right?” The man started to say something, but Luther spoke first. “Right.” Then he pulled Tiger farther along the path, and she was perfectly mortified. As was the third young executive, who never moved at all. Partly because he knew that it didn’t happen. But mostly because he knew it was true.

  Tiger loved Luther’s insane capers. Still, because of her upbringing, she was often embarrassed by the things he’d say and do. And many times she’d hear her mother’s voice screaming in the wake of one of Luther’s bits. As for the family minister, she always pictured him toppling from the pulpit and getting sucked into the massive organ, emerging only as an F# in the following hymn.

  Soon they came upon two old men playing chess. A few other people sat around on nearby benches, only half-interested in the cerebral confrontation.

  Luther indicated to Tiger that she was to hold her ground. He, to the contrary, walked up to the two ancient combatants. Then he knelt between them, his eyes at chess-board level, and the two old men didn’t know what to make of him, so they pretty much ignored him. Luther, meantime, surveyed the chess pieces like a huge aardvark checking out an ant colony. Ultimately he looked up and smiled engagingly, first at one old man and then at the other. And then he addressed both of them as though they were children. “Is this a way?”

  The two men didn’t know what to make of that observation, so they stopped playing and listened to the rest of what the aardvark had to say.

  “Must there always be a winner?” Luther asked. “Isn’t that what’s really wrong with the world today? I ask you—what would happen if there were no leaders?” With that Luther calmly removed the two kings from the chessboard. “There”—he smiled—“now there’s no longer any reason for going on with it, is there?” Luther stood and addressed the other people, who by then were all ears. “Let there no more killing.” He raised his hands in benign benediction. “Let there be only peace. And let it be known that it started here, today, in this park, on this bench, with these two wise men.” He laid a hand on the shoulder of one of the old players. His other hand he laid over his own heart. “Bless you both. The President will be pleased.”

  Luther walked away as he imagined Mark Antony would have done, leaving the two players, a governess and her baby, two unemployed bookkeepers, three squirrels, and some pigeons to reflect on the profoundness of his words. Then, taking Tiger’s arm sweetly, he walked with her and filled in the true meaning of it all. “And the moral of the story is: There is no reason for any man to play chess…unless…he’s too old to jerk off.”

  They walked along. And shortly Luther was off into one of his patented philosophical monologues. Tiger could do nothing but listen, and nod, and say “Mmmmmm.”

  “Chess is an astounding game because it’s the truest expression of womankind’s urge to either be in total command or kill. I mean, the whole thing is over when the king buys it, and along the way, everyone else is fucked. The knights have short careers and usually get it up the ass from management. The bishops, Lord bless ’em, they’re pretty fascinating because they still reflect the church of the Middle Ages, always playing all the angles and only the angles. Ah, but for true sexual sagacity, I give you the queen. For it’s the queen who does the real damage. Talk about your Women’s Lib, where is the female more in charge than on a chessboard? The stupid king, he’s a leadfoot who seldom moves too far from his castle because that’s where the bank comes for the mortgage payments. Whereas the queen, ah, the queen—she’s out swinging all over the kingdom, chewing up pawns, defrocking bishops, fellating knights, and generally terrorizing the castles, of which she has two, one in Grosse Point and one in Bermuda. And worst of all, the queen is always glamming eyes on the other king, a nice royal fellow who’s home alone because his own wife is off screwing everyone in Bangor, Maine. And watch how often, when a queen is fucked, how it’s a knight who slimies up to her and sticks it in her because she’s left a crooked door open and let him zigzag in. And then, instead of crying with shame, she simply rams back at the big stallion and says, ‘Game’s over. My place or yours?’ The reason I prefer checkers is that checkers is so much more democratic. In checkers a guy can become a king by his own efforts, rather than, as in chess, having to be born a king. Also, the real thrill in checkers is in jumping one another, quickly and without heavy plotting. The supreme kick being a triple jump in which, because you’ve played it so cool, you’re screwing three of the little darlings on one bed in the Henry Hudson Hotel. But what I really like best is Monopoly because, in Monopoly, if you’re busted, you can get out of jail for just fifty bucks, and because, every time you pass the place where it all started, Daddy gives you two hundred bucks so’s you can get in trouble all over again.”

  Tiger said “Mmmmm,” and they went home.

  6

  “My check came in today,” Luther said. “I’m paid a king’s ransom never to set foot in Scarsdale again. I like a good healthy father-son relationship like that. Makes a man proud to be born with a silver spoon up his ass.” He was working on a forlorn doll that had once been a ballerina. In his s
killful hands it was fast assuming a second chance. A half-severed leg had been mended almost invisibly, and a new smile was dancing on the doll’s sweet patrician face.

  Tiger was off by herself in her usual corner, her chin resting on her knees as she gazed out the window at the nothingness of midnight. She was pensive to the point of being completely out of it when a mixed bag of sounds sprung a leak in her mind. They trickled through—sounds of a few years ago, muted and hollow, stumbling over one another in an effort to gain primary attention. Her mother’s voice, a bit harsh and a lot urging, as always was first. “Janice? Janice, are you ready? Freddie is here. He’s waiting. Janice, you spend your life in that tub. Janice, do you—.” Her mother’s voice was shortly displaced by the mingled voices of the high school cheering squad, of which Tiger was the prettiest, the loudest, and the highest jumper.

  We’ve got the team,

  We’ve got the stuff;

  Eastern, Eastern—

  Rough, rough, rough!

  In the ensuing roar, Dashing Donny McKay took the ball on Eastern’s eight and went all the way with it to Michigan State, where he proceeded to not make the varsity and never write to her. Finis to you, Dashing Don, and we’re all glad you’re captain of the team from Oblivion.

  The soothing voice of Dr. Martindale phased in. Sweet old Doc Martindale, Eastern’s principal, addressing the oh-so-sober graduating class. “And it is our hope that, many years from now, should the Class of Sixty-seven ever return, some of us will still be here to greet you. But until that time, we will raise the window high, for Robin wants to fly. We will leave some breadcrumbs on the ledge, in case Robin cares to return…”

  The tear-splattered alma mater came next as she stood up with the others and sang, for the last time, “Dear school of ours, Dear Eastern High, your loyal sons and daughters know how—”

  “You’re strangely silent tonight, my darling.” Luther’s voice snapped the brittle melody, putting a period on the bittersweet recollections.

  Tiger looked up and saw him smiling there. She pulled herself out of her reverie, a thing she was getting quite good at, and she smiled back at him. “Hi.” Then she made another typical move, a shrug of self-consciousness that seemed to announce, “You caught me dreaming again, oh, well.”

  Luther cocked his head quizzically. “All right, nutsy, what is it this time?”

  “Nothing”—she smiled—“just my entire life passing before me. It’ll…pass.”

  He curled up alongside her, and they looked like two kids first on line, waiting for the circus admission gate to open. “Am I in it?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “How come? Was I out of town?”

  She laughed. “Man, you are always out of town. You were born out of town, and you will die out of town.”

  “You’re trying to tell me something.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. You’re about to launch yourself into another long speech on emotional involvement, followed by some kind of diatribe on commitment.”

  Tiger was confused by her own thinking, so she laughed because it was better than crying. “Well, I know I don’t want to commit to you because you are only seven years old.”

  “Hark. It comes. The raucous cackle of the Midwestern Love-Me-Bird.”

  She thought about that, then nodded a kind of half-hearted agreement. “It’s a nicer sound than the Scarsdale Screw-You Bird, no?”

  “Make your point.” He was smiling, and that was maddening because it drew all the venom from her fangs.

  “Okay,” she said, determined to make good use of the opening. “I think it’s that even if I’m not loved, I’d like to feel loved. And you don’t give me that feeling. How’s that?”

  “Great. It implies that I don’t love you. How very Hitler of you to frame it in that manner.”

  A small pique was building in her temperament. “Does it ever occur to you that—I mean, it occurs to me—that I might just get pregnant. What happens then?”

  “Occur yourself an abortion.”

  She got up. “Swell.” She hated the fact that she could never draw him into a discussion on anything she felt was important. He was always elusive and disinterested, and it was depressing her to the point where she was having difficulty coping with it. She walked away. But not too far because, if she kept right on going, she knew he wouldn’t stop her.

  Luther remained by the window, still magnificently sidestepping the facts of their relationship. “Tiger, I have always trusted you. And included in that trust is the trust that you have been regularly taking your pill, I trust.”

  She faced him calmly because where Luther was concerned, fire was best fought with fire and not ire. “You have every reason to trust me. You sprinkle those pills on everything I eat, including yourself.”

  “A lovely thought, but an exaggeration.”

  “I found three of them in my Jello.”

  “Those were grapes.”

  “Grapes do not come with instructions.”

  “The instructions were for the Jello. The last batch you made, if you remember, swelled out so much we had to shoot it. And it was orange, the least virulent of the species. Damned shame.”

  Tiger had had enough. “Well, like I said, it’s nothing.” She was very down and stickily self-pitying. But she didn’t care. She felt end-of-the-line and clearly saw that there was no longer any real purpose in staying alive. “Actually, the last three years of my life are nothing because…I’m nothing.” She was over at her big purse, fingers fumbling in it. “And it shouldn’t go on any longer—I don’t think.” She had her hand on the little vial, and it made her words behave more and more erratically. “And, having carefully thought it over—I find that, when it’s all said and done—” The vial felt warm in her hand. She wasn’t afraid of it. She wanted it.

  Luther looked up. He was alerted to something. He couldn’t see exactly what it was that she had taken from her purse. But he was distrustful of her halting words and odd movements.

  She tried to be brave, to keep back the tears. She wanted him to see her with a smile on her face so she turned to look at him once more. “Anyway—”

  “Tiger?”

  She knew exactly what she was doing. She raised the vial toward him, as in a toast. “I hope you won’t try to stop me.”

  He moved toward her, quickly, but not quickly enough.

  She tossed her head back and drained the vial and just stood there, looking at Luther, who had stopped in his tracks. She smiled and said, “Oh, well.” She smiled again, but it came out as a grimace, and her body jerked, and she seemed to stiffen and recoil. She gasped. Staggered. Coughed. All her unhappiness translated down into this one brief moment of agony. Her fingers curled into a claw. Her body stooped arthritically. She looked at him through wild brown eyes, and she knew she had him. She was giving the son of a bitch two tits for his every tat. “Doctor, I…feel that…I don’t know what comes over…and—” She shuffled toward him, bent as a witch, dragging one leg tortuously, her tongue hanging out of her mouth like a drooling hound’s.

  It hit Luther like a bell. She was doing a bit. Marvelous! He backed away in feigned terror, covering his mouth with a frightened fist. “No! Go back! Back, I say!”

  “No escaping me now, Doctor…now that you know my secret.” She laughed insanely, and gurgled, and even salivated, all the while moving toward him, her claws practically dragging along the floor like the knuckles of a baboon. Her breath came in fast snorts, as though she were trying to blow sharp pebbles from her nose.

  “Faversham!” he warned. “Get hold of yourself! Surely, there’s an antidote!”

  She kept shuffling toward him, her eyes glowing sheer lunacy, groans coming from the very base of her larynx. “Yes…Something I have to do.”

  “What? For God’s sake, what?”

  “I have to ball you.”

  “Oh, that—”

  She was on him like a cat, and he found himself struggling beneath her continuou
s low growl. Things toppled from tables, and the earth trembled five levels below as she threw her bones on his with Olympian lust. It was love but not quite, for it was far too violent to qualify for the word. It was something else and something apart. Something instigated by Tiger—an urge to inflict hurt, to punish, to end. She was the predator, wrapped about the big wildebeest like a feline clam. Her ankles locked his legs together, holding him properly in place, while her anvil thighs hammered him home. It was near impossible for him to breathe, let alone function. And he wasn’t so much a male participant as he was a hapless tool. She clawed him and pounded him with fists of clenched granite. And she bit, and thrashed, and writhed—and none of it was in passion. All of it was born of some lurking drive to kill that which was killing her.

  7

  Later, or earlier the next morning, the storm had subsided, and they nestled together in the warm aftermath. The tigress had been sated, but the phallus, though flaccid, had won again. She huddled very close to him, her anger spent, replaced by an ambiance of belonging which she knew to be false but which she reveled in just the same. Luther waited until her eyes flickered back to full awareness, and when the clear things revealed that she was fully awake and breathing like a human being once again, he reached over and bestowed upon her the little ballet dancer he had repaired before Rome toppled onto both of them.

  Tiger squealed delightedly, for she had believed the little doll to be beyond salvaging. And she thought to herself, how marvelous, she’s me. She didn’t say it aloud, but then again, maybe she did. Because Luther was saying, “Hmmmm. There is a resemblance; only…she doesn’t wet.”