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…At an illusory coordinate on Lake Michigan, at approximately halfway between the ninety-five miles, as the crow flies, that separated the house in Skokie, Illinois, and the cottage in Lakeside, Michigan, on June 23, 1958, at sometime about 11:38 p.m. At roughly Longitude North 41 Degrees, 42 Minutes, 18 seconds, Latitude West 86 Degrees 53 Minutes, 27 seconds, Marsha and Mitchell Lipensky, unknowingly, on this night did, once again, make love.
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Chicago, Illinois
June 25, 1958
“So you’re going to see them this summer after all, eh, Lippy?”
“Yeah, Earl,” carrying opposite ends of two sheets of unwieldy 4x8 concrete splattered 3/4" plywood, “guess I am,” he said over his shoulder. A thought coming to mind, his mood darkening, “unless I get a letter telling me not to.”
“Hey, pal, don’t worry! If she didn’t want to see you, she wouldn’t have written.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Dropping the plywood onto a growing stack alongside the curb, turning back into the structure, “Bet you can’t wait to see your kid.”
“Yeah. But it’s going to be an awful long eight days.”
Asked enviously, “You think you’re gonna get laid then, Lippy?”
“Don’t know if it’s any of your business, Earl. But, Jesus, I sure hope so!”
Reaching the stack of plywood concrete forms, “Oh, by the way,” Earl, now in the lead, said over his shoulder, “my dad told me they’re going to be looking for sales trainees at the place he works.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So? You wanting to do this shit forever?”
“Haven’t given it a hell of a lot of thought.”
“Bullshit! It’s not too bad now ’cause it’s summer and you’re working on your tan and getting paid for it, but just try doing this in winter! Besides, knowing something about Jewish broads your wife’ll probably have something to say about her husband doing this kind’a Dago, Polack, Shvartzer work.”
“First off, I don’t even know if we’re getting back together! And secondly, so long as I’m bringing money home, and I’m making more now than ever, if I know Marsha, I don’t think she’ll care.”
Dropping the sheets of lumber, they turned back again.
“Oh, yeah! All Jewish broads just love telling their friends, ‘No, my husband isn’t a doctor, or a lawyer, or a C.P.A.… My husband’s a common laborer’! Yeah! Sure!”
Recalling the dream of Marsha snubbing him because he was a shlepper, “Yeah,” he said begrudgingly, “okay, maybe you’re right. Who’s your dad work for?”
“He’s a salesman; works for a company called Transco.”
“Transco?” Pulling his T-shirt from his pants, wiping sweat from his face with the bottom, “Never heard of ’em.”
“I’d say there’s probably a couple’a companies you never heard of.”
Hoisting his end of two more sheets of plywood, “Yeah, that’s for sure. The company? What’s…?”
“Transco.”
“Yeah. What’s Transco make?”
“Envelopes.”
“Envelopes? That’s what your dad does? Sells envelopes?”
“Yeah, envelopes! And he makes a damn good living doing it!”
“Who’s he sell envelopes to? Stationary stores?”
“Well, yeah, I guess so, but my dad sells mostly to businesses. Any company that sends a letter or a bill has got to put it in an envelope, don’t they? Have you ever…” dropping the plywood, “gotten a bill that wasn’t in an envelope?”
“Never thought about it, but, no, guess not.”
“Well, that’s what my dad does, and they’re looking for trainees.”
He’s right. Summer’s one thing, Mitchell thought, but doing this work in zero weather with the wind blowing? “Okay,” Mitchell said, “maybe I’ll look into it.”
Prospective: Detroit, Michigan
April 29, 1959
On this day, wearing the universally accepted uniform of an exhibitionist—a topcoat—Gordon Nathanson followed what appeared to be a middle aged, meek housewife dressed in a plain floral print house dress, holding, by its fabric string handle, a paper shopping bag containing one pound of hamburger meat, one sectioned raw chicken, one can each of Campbell’s tomato and mushroom soups, a loaf of Jewish rye bread in a white deli bag, a half dozen each of delicious apples and navel oranges, and one dozen, extra large, grade AA eggs.
Walking behind on the scantily occupied sidewalk, Gordon waited until he saw a bisecting alley, then speeding up he passed the woman, cut into the alley, and as she came abreast stepped out and…
****
Unknown to Gordon Nathanson, the lady was Janice Kemblowski, who was not a lady, but a fifty year old prostitute on her way to her monthly rendezvous with seventy-four year old Arthur Katzman, whose milquetoast wife, Beverly, had died seven years earlier, and now Arthur could only get it up when his Beverly/Janice wife came through the door wearing a cheap house dress—as she always had—carrying a shopping bag full of groceries—as she usually did. Dragging her to the floor, Arthur would ravage her—as only a seventy-four year old man can ravage a woman—then Janice, now naked, facing his feet, straddling Arthur with her hind quarters in open view, gave him a blow job… then helped lift him off the floor, and Arthur, for the wife act, blow job, and his once a month, sometimes, orgasm paid Janice’s fee of fifteen dollars, plus for the bag of groceries.
****
“Hey, lady!”
“Jesus H. fuckin’ Christ!” In deep thought, startled, Janice Kemblowski threw both arms into the air, spilling the contents of the shopping bag where one dozen, extra large, grade AA eggs splattered over her dowdy housewife shoes, and the one can each of Campbell’s tomato and mushroom soups, along with six delicious apples and six navel oranges rolled down the steeply pitched street.
As always, buoyed by the startled look on the person’s face and her shocked reaction, Gordon’s reedy penis instantly inflated… but didn’t stay that way very long because…
Doing the last thing Gordon Nathanson, or any exhibitionist, or, for that matter, any man expects…
Janice Kemblowski plowed into him, smashing Gordon against a brick wall and, not being too bashful, her forearm pressed to his throat, grabbing hold of his now instantly deflated penis; hanging onto the long, dangly appendage as though it were a lifeline, “Cop!” For the first time in her life Janice yelled for a “Cop! Goddamnit! Gi’me a god’damned cop!”
Patrick McGarry, a rookie walking his beat, rushed to the sound of shouting.
But as soon as McGarry arrived and cuffed Gordon, wanting nothing to do with the police, figuring this had to be his first day on the beat because, surprisingly, Patrick McGarry must be the only cop in Detroit that did not know her, Janice Kemblowski disappeared, naturally without giving her name.
Although they’re not too happy about a rookie cop, indeed, on the first day of his beat apprehending him, after seventeen years the Detroit Police Department did, finally, have the “snake man” in the Michigan State looney bin.
Janice Kemblowski was happy she’d had Gordon Nathanson arrested because, as she told a fellow whore later, “Creeps like him give sex a bad name.”
Harriet Nathanson no longer had to worry about problems two and three.
As for Marsha Lipensky, unfortunately she never knew what became of “Nate.”
Skokie, Illinois/Lakeside, Michigan
July 4, 5 and 6, 1958
Awaking earlier than he’d wanted and much too early to begin moving about, unable to sleep again, thinking, Mitchell lay awake staring at the brightening shadows that stippled the bedroom ceiling in the home of his parents.
In just a few hours he’d see his son again and the thought filled him with anticipation. But the thought of seeing his wife again filled him with apprehension because, thinking, somewhat rationally, for the thousandth time: What if I misunderstood the letter? What if she didn’t say “love” because she really doesn’t love me and really doesn’t care and didn’t say it because really she doesn’t want me to think she does! Thinking, somewhat irrationally also: What if she didn’t get my letter? What if it got lost somewhere and she doesn’t know I’m coming? What if she went back to Chicago and I get there and she’s not even there? Or what if her whole family’s there and she told them some kind’a bullshit story and they tell me to go back where I came from?
Word for word Mitchell had thought about what he would say when he saw Marsha and how she might respond and what he would say when she did respond. Indeed, he’d always—word for word—thought about what he would say to Marsha, then, when it was time to say what he wanted to say he either forgot what he wanted to say, or changed his mind, or did say it, and because his words either came out wrong or—in Marsha’s feminine logic—what he said was misconstrue d to mean something altogether different than what he’d meant to say and, as so often happened, Mitchell would be sorry he said it.
“Shit!” Getting out of bed, dressing quietly, he went downstairs and, for the second time since coming home yesterday, washed the car.
