Author: Jack Ketchum
Date: 1999-01-02 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Splatterpunk
Description: Jack Ketchum's "Broken On The Wheel of Sex: The Jerzy Livingston Years" is the most complete edition of the "Stroup" stories ever collected together. Each story also features an afterword by the author. These stories, written from 1976 to 1981, and appearing in various men's magazines and other outlets, offer Ketchum readers a look into this author s formulative years. This is where Jack Ketchum honed his writing craft that has become so well known with his novels The Girl Next Door, The Crossing, Off Season and The Lost. Collected here is his character simply known as the Stroup, as well as s
Publisher: Crossroad Press & Macabre Ink Digital

BROKEN ON THE WHEEL OF SEX

THE JERZY LIVINGSTON YEARS

by Jack Ketchum

First Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press & Macabre Ink Digital

Copyright 2011 by Dallas Mayr

Copy-edited by David Dodd

Cover by Neal McPheeters

LICENSE NOTES:

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.  This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people.  If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.  If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to your vendor of choice and purchase your own copy.  Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

ALSO FROM JACK KETCHUM & CROSSROAD PRESS:

NOVELS:

Ladies' Night

Stranglehold

The Crossings

The Woman

COLLECTIONS:

Sleep Disorder – with Edward Lee

ESSAYS / BIOGRAPHY:

Book of Souls

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION:

THE GOBLIN ON THE DANCE FLOOR

PART 1:
THE HANG-UP

THE HEAT

SKIN GAME

THE BURN ARTIST

THE RUBDOWN

NEVER TRUST A SMART CUNT WITH TWO FIRST NAMES

FISH

OLD MEN DANCING

THE LIAR

THE FRENCH

THE CHRISTMAS CALLER

EAST SIDE STORY

DEAD HEAT

THE OLD DAYS

PART 2: BEYOND THE PAIL

Authors Note

UGLY GEORGE: CABLE TV'S PRINCE OF PICKUP

WELCOME TO THE CHATEAU

'FLASHERS AND FREAKS

BAD GIRLS, SAD GIRLS IN THE HEART OF DISCO

PART 3: A HERO RETURNS

SHEEP MEADOW STORY

INTRODUCTION: THE GOBLIN ON THE DANCE FLOOR

I'm sticking my neck out with this one, I know. Way out.

And I figure it only remains to be seen who amongst you will come bearing the headsman's ax.

Or axes. Knives and scythes and swords.

Anything with which to chop or hack.

I won't exactly blame you.

Jack Ketch, after all, was British slang for executioner. And the worm doth turn.

On the other hand some of you might just be perverse enough and forgiving enough to enjoy these early yarns.

I offer them up in either case.

Most were written during the years 1976 to 1981 while I was mostly doing other things. Record reviews, shorts and non-fiction of all kinds. Serious to half-serious to ridiculous, selling to every market I could scare up, from The Miniature Collector to Penthouse, from Parade to Creem to Classic Decorating and Home Crafts. I mean, I'd go anywhere. Just pay me and watch that IBM Selectric fly.

All the fiction, though, sold to low-to-mid-level-paying men's mags, Swank Magazine in particular but also to Genesis, High Society, Cavalier, Stag and Nugget. Many were reprinted several times, mostly by Stag, climbing down the ladder of decency and good taste until at utter nadir one of them actually reached Knave.

No kidding.

Am I proud of this? Absolutely. And I thank the editors of all these magazines for giving me the opportunity to learn about writing fiction while paying me in the one-hundred-fifty to three-hundred-fifty dollar range for each of the stories. There are a lot of folks only starting out in writing today who would probably kill for such a trip down that ladder and they'd be absolutely right to feel that way.

I've called these the Jerzy Livingston years because over half of them were written under that name and the rest under my real one. Somehow Jerzy seems more appropriate for this collection. My adoption of that particular pseudonym was both a joke—a play on words—and a nod to a very good writer, which I hoped someday to be. I had grown up in Livingston, New Jersey, a small suburban town across the Hudson River. My mom still lived there. As a college kid I'd been impressed with Kosinski's BEING THERE and THE PAINTED BIRD.

Ergo, Jerzy Livingston.

I was thirty years old at the time I put his name to the manuscript of THE HANG-UP, written at the insistence of my girlfriend that if I was such an all-fired hotshit writer I should get off my high-falutin' artsy ass and prove it and just sell something for chrissake and in fact the story I wrote in response to that dare was to be my first pro-fiction-sale. To a men's magazine. A stroke magazine. Swank Magazine to be exact and I was delighted as hell to have it.

But not exactly sure how my relatives and my parents' friends were going to react to all that Wide-Open-Beaver.

So I hid from the town I'd grown up in behind the name of the town I'd grown up in. It struck me as a neat idea so Jerzy became my nom de porn for a while.

I'd been working like a dog in a sweatshop hell of a literary agency for three long years but I'd quit that finally and set myself free to play again. I had unemployment checks and the occasional magazine money to support me. The places in which I chose to play very often had long rows of bottles of amber liquid to soothe me and alter my concept of what was possible in certain matters of friendship, courtship and seduction.

Some of these bottles would betray me. Some of these goddamn bottles would depress me or make me stupid. Or even cause me upon occasion to worship at the foot of some cold white god in the open mouth of whom someone had recently shat.

I understood this and accepted it. Because most of these bottles I felt to be my friends. They held within them the power to loosen the tongue and lighten my load and the loads of others, male and female, they made for companionship, laughter, dancing, for amiable languorous talks till dawn and sometimes, when I got lucky, releasing other, warmer loads into soft wet pockets of mystery.

I was callow. I was shallow. I was going to hell in a handcart.

It was A-Okay with me.

I had plenty of company.

My friend Nick Tosches had written an article a few years back which, as his agent in the Job From Hell, I'd sold to Penthouse. It was called BROKEN ON THE WHEEL OF SEX and postulated, humorously though in all seriousness, not really screwing around at all when you got right down to it, that the sexual revolution of the sixties was already over.

And that everybody had lost.

It was a notion that informed pretty much all my own fiction at the time.

The year was '76.

Go back there.

Disco and Punk, Country Music and soon, dead Elvis.

Donna Summer has not yet found her way to Jesus. She's still a Bad Girl Sad Girl plying her trade in the throbbing Heart of Disco. Sid Vicious is still Just That. The British have invaded once again and the Ramones and Patti Smith have fired back. There is still a Shah on the throne of Iran. Jim Jones in Ray-Bans and tropical shirt is only a few months away from making Kool-Aid the preferred beverage of the Walking Dead.

On-Premises Sex-Clubs attract Manhattan celebrities and wife-swapping newlyweds from Mamaroneck. Titty bars. Nude lap dancing. Reflecting globes and polyester three-piece suits. Snorts of coke and legal store-bought poppers. Drinks are still three or four bucks each in the clubs. A two-hour train-and-ferry ride from New York City to Fire Island and it is still possible to climb in the sack with practically anybody, any stranger who looks remotely fuckable, without attracting a certain nasty strain of virus.

Which would change all this inevitably and forever.

Nick was right. It was over and nobody knew.

In the meantime, we played it.

In the sixties it was Free Love.

The accompanying head-music of the time was dope and acid, mescaline and mushrooms.

In the seventies it was Fucking.

By then the tune had changed to coke and amys, Quaaludes and speed.

And all those rows of bottles.

The demise of worry-free sex began long before AIDS raised its miserable head and started actually killing off the participants. Of course it did, and a lot of us in our heart of hearts knew it even then. To blame AIDS for all that followed is revisionist bullshit. Sex was already in decay, friends. It had gone from sacrament to scorecard all in just a few years. AIDS just corked the genie in the bottle for good.

Still the period had its charms.

All truly decadent periods seem to. If you are going to hell in a handcart then somebody is carrying you. Which means you don't have to expend a whole lot of personal effort. You can cruise and float.

Which we did.

But it had its dark side too.

You saw it in the passed-out girls on the dance floor. You saw it in the rush to the john for one more snort of coke. Which usually you could ill afford.

It was dark all right. And I created my own Dark Hero to dwell there.

In a decade when Girl Next Door Nude Photo Contests abounded, when books and men's mags and women's mags and even some of the straight mags were promising you the stars, sexually speaking —if that old fat fuck Al Goldstein could get that much nookie, so can I—singing the praises of Recreational Sex and the zipless fuck, giving you instructions on how to hold the perfect swing-party or give the perfect blowjob, I pulled some guy up out of my twisted psyche who scored but almost never did, both at the same time.

His name was Stroup. No first name, just Stroup.

That was another play on words. Stroup was Proust sounded out phonetically and scrambled. Arguably the most sensitive writer in history I turned into a schmuck of almost leaden sensibilities. It was Stroup's lot in life to understand practically nobody, least of all himself and certainly not women, yet to pursue both women and his own satisfaction with dogged determination.

Without having a clue as to what might actually bring him either one.

A boozer. A loser. A homophobe. A highly questionable friend and unreliable lover. Misogynist as hell and for the most part proud of it.

That was my guy.

In the bars back then you met him all the time.

The true poet of this kind of thing was Charles Bukowski and I confess to aping him shamelessly. But Bukowski's millieu was not my own god knows, neither L.A. nor Post Offices nor dens of serious passed-out alcoholic weirdness and his sheer ferocity was not mine either. Stroup is pretty much a middle-class nobody trying to get over with his own line of bullshit, writing ad copy by day, carousing at night, usually living with a woman whose name is Carla or Shiela and always cheating on her.

Cheating almost as a code of honor. Always looking for more.

A quester, a man with a mission.

An asshole.

For a while I kinda liked him.

I wrote seven stories featuring Stroup, some in the first person and some in the third and sold six of them. When I started marketing the seventh my editor at Swank, Ben Pesta, asked to see a story that was not about this jerk, "unless Stroup is some goblin whose exorcism is really vital to your psychic well-being." Direct quote. I still have the letter.

I didn't know if he was or he wasn't. But unlike Stroup I could take a hint. I shelved him and went on to other stuff. The seventh story is being printed here for the first time and I'll direct you to my comments which follow the piece as to why.

In the tiny village of Fodele on the island of Crete I wrote three of the others appearing here, wrote them sitting on a terrace eating mezes and drinking retsina, typing on a little toy typewriter I'd rented for an exorbitant price in Heraklion because it was the only one! could find with an English-language keyboard. If they're generally nicer than the Stroup stories that's Greece speaking. But the sexual hustle of the seventies is still in there. All the others are set in New York City. East Side, Westside, All Around the Town.

Taken together they're a fairly varied group.

But I can't help thinking that the essence of Stroup keeps cropping up from time to time. Not in all the stories but somewhere in most of them. I think of the revenge-fuck in THE LIAR. All that cynical deadbeat bar conversation in EAST SIDE STORY. Slade Rule patting his brand-new client's ass in DEAD HEAT and his rampant homophobia.

So that maybe Pesta was right. And I really did have a goblin to exorcise at the time.

My heroes since have been largely nicer, I think.

What I do know for sure is that there's a whole lot of anger here lurking beneath what is for the most part dark comedy. Re-reading all this stuff for the first time in years that much was instantly clear. So that I'm thinking now that maybe the goblin was the period itself and how it refracted in me. Remembering that time only a few years before when for some of us Love really was Free and missing that. Whistling in the graveyard of what it had become.

We aging Hippies I guess have a lot to answer for.

Guys like Stroup included.

PART 1

THE HANG-UP

It was hard for Stroup to be nice to her.

When what he really wanted was to kick ass.

They'd been separated for a weekend, Stroup staying in the city while Shiela'd gone down to Cape May to visit some girlfriends and Shiela'd had a much better time than he had. Simple as that.

Okay. Not quite that simple. There was also the small fact that she'd gotten laid while she was away. Stroup had gotten laid himself but it was lousy. Then she comes home Queen of the Hop.

So it was hard to be nice but Stroup had no choice. They had an arrangement. They were living together and if he was going to put it to another woman once in awhile then she was going to give it to another man. That was the line.

She'd been sucking up this feminist shit like a riverbottom catfish. If he wanted to keep her he'd better keep his trap shut, pretend it was fine, she could give it to a Labrador for all he cared. He had to play the tough guy. No hang-ups.

The bitch.

"You want to hear about it?" she said.

Sure I do, thought Stroup. Like I want to dip my pud in a pound of strawberries. But what he said to her was sure I do.

"It was exciting. He tied me up."

"He what?"

"He tied me up. Actually it was masking tape he used. See, he didn't have any rope. He tied my hands together. Then we made it that way."

"Jesus. Did he hurt you?"

"No."

"He better not."

"Except he pinched me once real hard. Pinched my nipple. It hurt like hell for a moment. But what was exciting was that he could have hurt me bad if he wanted to. You know, psychological."

"Did you come?"

"Oh, yeah."

"You liked it, huh."

"Oh, yeah."

Figured.

It's always the new guy who carries home the trophies, thought Stroup. That was the way with women. Shiela would never have tried that stuff with him. They'd been together too damn long. She'd have said he was crazy even to mention it. But he'd thought about it, plenty of times. Sometimes she'd piss him off and he'd think about her tied head to toe and begging for mercy.

It was crazy, come right down to it. But hell, sex was crazy. It was crazy to live with a woman, crazy to give a damn. You could get lost thinking about a woman too much. Forget who you were supposed to be. What you were supposed to do with your life. That shit could tie you up too. A guy got angry.

But what really tore him was that here was this other guy rutting around inside his fantasy. It wasn't fair. This asshole wasn't living with Shiela, he wasn't paying any dues. All the same he gets the gravy.

It wasn't only when he was mad at Shiela that he thought about giving her a little smack now and then. He figured it was natural. Old days, they dragged 'ern by the hair. Sex was always violent to some degree, wasn't it? Or maybe, now that he thought of it, he was always mad at her in one way or another. He didn't know. Hell, he didn't care. It was hard to think about this shit.

He only knew it wasn't fair. Decided it was high fucking time he took a poke at it.

He smiled. Disarm her, that's the ticket.

"You ever think you might want to try it again sometime?"

"Sure, maybe."

"You think you might want to try it with me? I mean, might be fun, right? Make a change. I've thought about it sometimes."

"You have?"

"Sure. Try anything. Why not? Spirit of scientific inquiry, right?"

Was that casual enough? She laughed. He guessed so.

"Okay, Stroup. One of these days."

"I'll tie you up like a present. What color rope you want?"

"Pink," she said.

"You got it."

The next day after she went to work Stroup finished typing up his goddamn ad copy and went shopping. He bought a box of masonry nails and one hundred forty yards of three-ply craft and rug yarn. Pink. He came home and sunk a nail just above the moulding in the middle of the bedroom doorway. He sunk it deep and tested it, gave it a couple tugs. It was in there good all right. A good wide head on it so the yarn wouldn't slip. Next he went to Shiela's dresser and found a scarf. It would be nice to blindfold her. Or maybe he should gag her instead. A gag and a blindfold would look terrible together. You couldn't have the both together. To Stroup it was a matter of aesthetics. He decided on the blindfold. The blindfold would add suspense. She wouldn't know what the hell was coming next. Finally he pulled off his belt and slipped down his pants and gave himself a whack on the ass.

Not bad. He could use the belt without hurting her too too much. He looked at his ass in the bathroom mirror. Watched the red fade. The red faded quickly.

He was set. He was ready.

But then he had to wait. First she had her period. That passed. Then she got herself a sunburn and he had to wait some more. That faded. Then she came home one day and said she'd been to her gynecologist, she had a little disease, a little infection, nothing serious, not clap or anything but she was pretty itchy down there and they wouldn't be able to fuck for a while.

Shit.

At first Stroup was patient. He'd sit in bed at night with his hard-on and laugh to himself over the surprise he had in store for her—his secret. She hadn't noticed the masonry nail. He'd hidden the yarn. So one night he'd just pull it on her. He'd tie her up and she'd think she was getting it on the bed just like when the other guy gave it to her. Then he'd blindfold her. Then he'd stand her up and hang the yarn over the nail. She'd probably complain. Maybe not. Then he'd pull out his belt and smack her ass a little, tell her to spread 'em and give her a few on the insides of her thighs, turn her around and give her a good one across the tits. Now that would make her howl! Hell, yes! Then he'd throw her on the bed and bang the shit out of her.

That was how he imagined it.

But all this delay made him nervous. He sulked. He'd hardly talk to her. He felt somehow she knew his plans and was purposely screwing up her body in order to torment him. Period. Sunburn. Disease. Maybe there was no disease. How was he to know? It would be just like her to have found the yarn or the nail or the yarn and the nail and not tell him, put two and two together and then do all this stalling.

Even if the disease was real it wasn't fucking fair. He was ready, dammit! And she'd brought this on herself, you had to remember, she and her damned story, she and her miserable one-shot taped-up Cape May screwing. He figured that if he had to wait then he had to wait but then watch out, sister. And inevitably he would eye the nail totemic above the door whenever he walked into the bedroom.

Then one night after dinner she looked up at the doorway and pointed and said, Stroup, what the hell is that?

"A nail," he said.

"What's it for?"

"You over your disease yet?"

"Yeah."

"I'll show you."

Strip, he told her and she laughed and called him a horny old bastard, she seemed to forget about the answer to her question.

Which was good. They got down on the bed and he started to ball her and when he could feel her opening up to him he pulled out and got off her and went to his dresser. He took out the yarn.

"Pink," he said.

"I don't know, Stroup," she said.

"Yes you do."

"I might not be in the mood."

"You'll be in the mood. I'm in the mood. Put your hands out, dammit."

She smiled. "How forceful," she said.

"Horseshit."

He tied her hands together, left a loop to go over the masonry nail. Then he got the scarf. He tied it over her eyes.

"That's a nice touch," she said.

She was up for it, he could tell. Her smutty little mind was working her into a lather. This was gonna be fine. He stood her up. "Where we going?"

"You'll see. Right over here."

He lifted her arms, found the head of the nail with his fingertips and hooked her.

"Stroup!"

Suddenly she was worried now.

"It's okay. I won't hurt you, hon. Much."

He kissed her.

"Jesus Christ, Stroup."

"It's okay. Relax."

"What are you doing?"

He didn't answer. Instead he scooped his belt off the bedroom floor and let her have it, right across that soft white heavy ass.

"OWWWWWW! STROUP YOU FUCKING MANIAC, YOU CUT THAT OUT! You let me down, goddammit!"

"Not a chance. You love it, baby."

He whacked her again.

"STROUP, I SWEAR I'M GONNA GET YOU FOR THIS, STROUP, YOU SONOVABITCH! LET ME DOWN, GODDAMMIT! LET ME DOWN YOU COCKSUCKER!"

Cocksucker? Hell, thought Stroup, I could poleax her with this thing. It was big as a cucumber. This was a terrific idea. He was a fucking genius. This one's for the other guy, baby, he thought and whacked her again.

"Ahhh!"

And this one's for telling me about it.

"Owww! Damn you, Stroup! That's it, you hear me? That's enough!"

"Spread your legs."

"Are you kidding?"

"Spread your legs, tramp."

"UP YOUR ASS, STROUP!"

"Okay, let's turn you around, then."

"The hell you will."

"Turn around, dammit!"

"No!"

And this time when he hit her he damn well meant it. No fooling around this time, no sir. This whack was the real thing. Nothing erotic about it. He even felt his dick sag a bit. He was sagging and seething here.

Shit, he'd had it with her. He'd had a bellyful. It was always her way. Always her goddamn way. Their arrangement was all her sweet little idea in the first place. He was crazy to have given in to her. He always got the bad end, Stroup did, never got the goodies. The bitch. The whore. He'd like to beat the shit out of her. This time it was gonna work his way.

He hit her HARD.

She gasped, a choking sound in her throat.

"All right, Stroup! All right. You win. I'll turn around."

He stood there looking at her tits, those terrific tits of hers. Begging him to take his best shot.

But he didn't.

He suddenly didn't feel like it anymore.

He stood there feeling stupid. Trying to figure out what had happened. The tits had defeated him. They weren't as appealing whack-wise as they should have been. Now why the hell was that? Something wasn't right. Nothing was right. Not her, not him, not his life, jesus! not even fantasy. How was it supposed to have been? She was supposed to have liked it. Begged for more. Then he'd gone and lost his temper. He should never have lost his temper.

He'd soured everything.

Funny that it should be her giving in to him that pulled the wind out.

He was limp now. Funny.

"Forget it," he said. "It was a bad idea in the first place."

He reached over and pulled her off the nail. She removed the blindfold. He looked for tears in her eyes, anger. Something. He saw the eyes flicker for a moment but then there was nothing. Like she didn't care, like nothing had happened at all. She'd had her way again, he realized. Somehow she'd managed it. He could almost hate her.

Jesus.

"Hey look, you're down," she said. "You mean it didn't do a thing for you? I don't get it."

"At first."

"It did for me. Here, feel."

She was wet.

He'd be goddamned.

"You should have kept going."

He shrugged. "It's a lot of bullshit."

"It hurt but not too much. It made me hot, Stroup."

"You kept yelling."

"So?"

"I got mad."

"You shouldn't get mad."

"Yeah, right."

"Don't look so depressed."

"I'm not depressed."

"You know what? I got an idea. You should try it."

"Me? Nah."

"I'm telling you, it's pretty interesting up there."

"Is it?"

"Yeah, I bet you'd like it."

"Nah."

"You would. I know you would. C'mon. Let's do it, just a little."

"I don't think so."

"I wouldn't hurt you, I promise."

"Forget it, Shiela."

"I thought you'd try anything, Stroup."

"I said so, didn't I?"

"Well, then."

Women. You never could figure them. All that yelling and now she wants to play some more.

Maybe he ought to. He felt like shit. Probably somebody ought to smack him one anyhow. He deserved it, losing his temper the way he did.

Another nice evening pissed away.

Stroup watched as she tied his hands together.

She didn't do too bad a job for a woman.

She put the blindfold on him.

Probably, he thought, she'd have a ball. And he wouldn't. All he'd get out of it would be a sore ass. That was the way it usually worked with them. Well, let her go ahead. Right now he didn't give a damn. He felt stupid. Stupid to be doing this, stupid dreaming about this stuff, stupid for being with her in the first place.

He thought that maybe he'd break it off with her. Find somebody new. She was getting a little flabby in the hips. He'd find somebody with better hips, a better ass. Though he guessed the ass was all right.

He'd start looking.

A woman who'd stay home nights. That's what you wanted.

She stood him up and led him to the doorway, raised his arms and looped the yarn over the nail a few times. Stroup had the strangest feeling that there was nothing going on here, nothing at all, they were just going through the motions. That neither of them was really in the room.

"There," she said.

The feeling persisted as she tried out a few of her own innovations. Tied his legs together at the ankles. Stuck a scarf in his mouth and tied another scarf around it. He guessed they had different aesthetics. The blindfold was a bit tight, it cut across his ears and made it hard for Stroup to hear.

He dangled there awhile alone with his thoughts and sometime went by and he wondered why she didn't come over and get on with it for chrissake but he didn't really give a damn either and then dimly heard something slide across the floor which sounded like heavy leather. He couldn't be sure.

"What are you doing?" he tried to say and it came out Blot aww ooo oooee?

To hell with it.

He was glad when she pulled the blindfold down off his ears, though. It was starting to make him uncomfortable. He smelled her familiar perfume, heard the toe of her boot tapping on the floor. She had her coat on and her hair brushed and her suitcase stood in the hall.

"See you, Stroup," she said. "You know what made me hot? Thinking of this. Drop dead in your tracks some day, Stroup. You were always a bum fuck anyway."

He watched her haul the suitcase out the door.

He had a headache. Felt rotten.

It was a good strong nail and it took him quite awhile to get down.

THE HANG-UP was the first of the Stroup stories. In later stories it suited my purposes to resurrect his relationship with Shiela and particularly his arrangement with her. There were a lot of arrangements floating around in those days. They almost never worked.

THE HEAT

Stroup sat at the bar watching TOPLESS—ALL NUDE flashing in the window. Three-fifty per drink and he wasn't paying attention. Jesus! What the hell was wrong with him? Right beside him a customer was sucking off one of the dancers, Stroup could hear him slurping away like a hungry dog. No class at all. You'd never catch Stroup doing that, not on your life. God knows what guano had gone up that chute today. The dancer had at least twenty bucks in her garter belt and at a dollar a shot that meant plenty of fingers and drooly little mouths had been at her. Let her sit on Stroup's fist. He wasn't getting his mouth in there.

Besides, she was a pig. They were all pigs. He didn't know why he bothered coming back to the joint. They were all fat and old and ugly. They made crazy sniveling sounds in your ear. He guessed that was supposed to be sexy. Stupid as flies, they were. Still it was a kick to have some woman sit down on the bar and play with your dick while a dozen other men watched and you nonchalantly sipped your Scotch. Hot meat and a heart of stone. And once in awhile they got a nice black bitch in there and you could have a good time.

But right now it disgusted him. It was that goddamn Shiela.

Ever since he'd taken up with her his life had been a misery.

Shiela and her goddamn arrangement.

The man next to Stroup finished ferreting around in the dancer's snatch. He laughed and smacked his lips. The asshole. He'd still be laughing when his tongue broke out in prickly heat.

"You got a dollar for me, baby?" the girl said to Stroup.

"I'm broke," he told her. "I'm gonna have to watch."

She draped her arm around his neck. With the other hand she played with her nipple, made it hard for him. Nice big brown nipple. "Pity," she said.

"Yeah."

The trouble was, thought Stroup, that Shiela had logic squarely on her side. If he could fuck other women then she should be able to fuck other men. Fair's fair, right? If he objected he was just being a sonovabitch, he was old-fashioned, he was ridiculous. He wanted to live his own life? Well, so did she.

How in hell did I ever agree to that? he wondered.

It was okay in theory but now there was this Andrew character from work. Andrew yet! What kind of a candyass name was that for a man? Stroup had met him. Big rangy guy with broad hands, in pretty good shape, good-looking yellow beard. Shiela said he was good in bed but that Stroup was better. Of course she'd have to say that. But Stroup believed her. There was something precious about this Andrew. He doubted the guy could go the mile. Stroup could go the mile and then some. He wasn't worried. Shiela wasn't going to leave him for this guy. This guy was no big deal.

All the same it pissed him off, nights like this when he was alone and Shiela was off somewhere with Andrew. He would picture that yellow beard working up and down against Shiela's pale red thatch and that would make him mad. Andrew was getting the goodies, that was the problem. Somebody was new to you, you gave him your best action. Adrenalin was up, anything was possible. Shiela was good with Stroup but it had been awhile since she was really great. The heat was off. They had no inspiration sometimes. And he wanted that, he wanted the heat. He wanted that fucking heat! It was easy to resent Andrew. He finished his Scotch.

"Want another, mister?" said the barmaid.

The dancers were all at the other end of the bar. One had her hand in some bum's lap, he could see her stroking him.

"Jesus, no," he said. He had to get out of there. He paid the girl his three-fifty.

"Come back soon," she said. He left her a quarter on the bar.

Let her stuff it. He knew what he'd do. He had a phone number for Andrew's girl. Fair's fair, he thought.

Go for the heat.

He met her in a restaurant near her apartment, he picked it for proximity. They both ordered corned beef sandwiches and she had a side of coleslaw. Now that Stroup had a good look at her, she wasn't half bad. A little on the plain side, the face was. But he liked the body. Tight boyish ass, slim hips, big tits. Just about the way he liked it. He wondered why she let that little pale mustache grow there. It made her look dowdy. She should get rid of that.

"You called because Andrew's with Shiela," she said. She took a big bite of her sandwich.

"Right."

"I don't sleep around, you know."

"You don't, huh?"

"Not usually. Once. Twice. Andrew does a lot, though."

"So do I. But with me and Shiela it's even-steven. An understanding. You know."

"So what did you have in mind for tonight?"

"What did I have in mind?"

"Yes."

"Uh...I had in mind to fuck you I guess."

"I don't like that."

"What?"

"'Fuck you.' It sounds cheap."

"Sorry."

"I do think you're attractive, though. I thought so the first time I saw you."

"I think you're attractive too, Janet."

She smiled at him. A little coleslaw dangled from her chin. He handed her a napkin. She smiled again.

He had those great big tits in his hands and they were firm, they were soft and smooth, they were just dandy. He wished to god she'd shut up, though. She was a funny girl. She kept talking and talking, he guessed she was shy. Even while he stroked her nipples she was talking. She seemed embarrassed for him to look at her. All that yapping was to keep him from looking at her face when what he cared about was the body. The face was nothing. But it was a good body. She could use a little exercise, that was all.

"Wait a minute," she said. "I have to get up."

She went into the bathroom and Stroup got undressed and flopped down naked on the bed. He could hear her in there. She was brushing her teeth. Now what the hell was she doing that for? They'd both had the corned beef. So what was the problem? Corned beef can't hurt you. She came back and saw him lying naked. She laughed and turned away.

"Yeah? What?"

"Andrew and I never do that," she said. "We turn off the lights. We just never sit around nude like that."

"I ain't Andrew, am I?"

"No."

"So what were you doing in the bathroom?"

"Brushing my teeth. I do that a lot I guess. Three, maybe four times a day. I didn't throw up, though."

"You what?"

"I didn't throw up. Can I tell you a secret? Half the time I eat something I throw up. It's kind of a habit. Disgusting, I know. Do you hate me?"

"No, I don't hate you."

"I started dieting that way. Now it's sort of, like I say, a habit. Maybe that fact that I didn't this time's a good sign for us."

"Could be. Come on. Get your ass over here."

She giggled behind her hand and got into bed. Pulled the sheet over her leaving Stroup outside. Stroup smelled something. Now what the hell was that? As soon as she moved the sheets he smelled it. Something sour, wafting up from the bed. Smelled like piss. Hell, it was piss! Damned bed smelled like a catbox!

He hadn't seen any cat.

Screw it, he thought. So she throws up after her daily burger and fries and brushes her teeth too much and doesn't want you to look at her and probably she wets the bed at night or maybe that was Andrew, he wouldn't be surprised. The girl was crazy as a coot but screw it. This one was for Shiela. And up your ass too, Andrew.

Probably it was best not to waste much time though. She might have some more surprises. Right off the bat he plugged her.

"Just like that?" she said.

"I figure we'll start out fucking and work our way back," Stroup said.

"Okay. Only that's a new one for me. Andrew always warms me up first. He does his best to give me the most pleasure possible. He really goes out of his way. He says he'd rather give me pleasure than get pleasure himself. You're just going to take me, though, aren't you."

"Damn right."

"That's exciting."

"Sure as shit is."

"How do you feel about oral sex?" she said.

"Maybe later."

He had to hand it to her. Crazy or not she threw a mean, talented fuck. She'd turned off the lights. Said she didn't want Stroup to see the hairs on her belly. So they struggled with one another in the darkness. She was bigger than Shiela inside and with the extra room there he'd be able to go a long time before coming. He could just see that creampuff Andrew after this. He was hauling her into a whole new league. So old Andy went out of his way to give her pleasure, did he? Probably meant he tickled her armpits with a feather and nuzzled her pussy for an hour before sticking her. Well, she was going for a real ride now. And no preliminaries. He could feel the blood hurtling through his veins. He felt tough and powerful. He turned her over on her stomach and slipped it to her again.

She'd stopped talking finally. It was about fucking time she shut up. He had her wriggling like a worm here. These bitches, some of them say you can't come on the end of a guy's cock. Shiela says that. Well, take a peek at this one, Shiela. Just watch this woman tottering.

He was ramming at that wide-open gash like a cretin now. He could feel her open up around him. That made it easier. He turned her over on her back again and hit her harder, deeper. She was loose and wet as a jellyfish, starting to get real soupy, her body misted with sweat and Stroup did his damnedest to perforate her. In truth he'd been hornier. Plenty of women had made him more excited. But that wasn't exactly the point this time. This time he was balling one sloppy broad and a couple of ghosts. It was the ghosts that turned him on the most. He was thinking of Shiela and that creep Andrew. He closed his eyes and went right up Andrew's asshole. He was so good he was making Shiela's teeth chatter. Wheezing beneath him was a loony with a good wide snatch. To hell with her.

Then suddenly she grabbed Stroup around the waist with both hands, she dug her nails into him, jerked her head forward and nipped at his chest with her teeth. What now? he thought. Ah yes, she was going off. She started to quiver. Her jaw fell forward. She shut her eyes in what looked like pain. Then all at once she was yelling for him to do it do it harder, harder and Stroup felt his cock and balls bathed by something warm and thin as chicken broth. He heard her fart, the crazy bitch, felt her shudder once and then fall frail as a rag-doll back to the bed.

At first he had to smile. He'd been so good.

But there was that smell again.

Oh no, he thought. Oh god. This is not possible.

He put his hand down between them and it came up wet. His cock died inside her. He hadn't even come. He sure as hell wouldn't now.

There were probably worse things in the world but at the moment Stroup could not think of any. He'd given her the rut of a lifetime and what does she do? She ups and pisses all over him. It was fucking sick, degrading. How could a woman live like that? He'd slash his own fucking throat. That's the thanks you get for a good performance, he thought. You come out stinking like a polecat.

For about the thirteenth time that day he wished there no such thing as a woman. If it were up to him he'd have them all in a kennel. It was that damned Shiela who did this to him. He'd like to bust her one.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Sometimes that happens to me. I don't know why."

She looked miserable. Really miserable. He almost felt sorry for her.

But he was wearing her.

"It's okay," he said.

He cleaned himself up in the bathroom. Figured maybe there was one consolation. Probably Andrew got the same thing only on a daily basis. He wouldn't be surprised if she shit the bastard.

Or maybe not. Maybe it was just Stroup's bad luck again.

He wondered how much Shiela knew. It was possible that Andrew had told her about Janet's little habits. He wondered if maybe in that case he'd better just keep his trap shut about tonight altogether. She'd laugh him out of the room. Goddammit! What was the point then, if Shiela couldn't know he'd fucked her? Where was the goddamn justice in the whole damn thing?

He walked out through the bedroom into the living room. Janet was already dressed. A pile of sheets lay in the hallway. Jesus, thought Stroup, the place smells like a nursery.

"Was it all right for you, Stroup? Despite...?"

"It was fine," he said. "You're a good piece of ass, Janet. I've been thinking, though. We did this sort of in response to Shiela and Andrew. We kinda wanted to get even, y'know? I'm thinking that's no way to build a relationship, is it. I think we ought to cool it for a while. I'll call you."

"Yeah. But like I said, you were really attractive to me, Stroup. It wasn't that way for me, exactly."

"I know. Same here. You're very attractive. Let me call you, okay?"

"Sure."

She blinked at him, smiled some stupid smile at him. He thought about that piece of coleslaw in the restaurant. Later he stood outside the door for a minute. He could hear the toilet flush. He bet she was brushing her teeth again. That was a woman for you. He went back to the bar to spend a little money.

He hoped the girls were better.

It's in this story that Stroup emerges in all his misogynist, not to mention homophobic, glory. If you find anything sexy about this one it's probably time to spend a little money on a therapist. Bars like the one I've described did exist, by the way. In fact the one I used as the model for this one was a block and a half from Carnegie Hall, slightly down Sixth Avenue.

And I've not exaggerated a thing about it.

Giuliani woulda died.

SKIN GAME

Stroup finished inking in the game board and then went back to work on the instruction cards. I really should make them stiffer, he thought. No pantywaist bullshit in this one. You want it mean. One card pleased him thoroughly. No matter where you landed you were going to be involved in something pretty fucking outrageous. The card was in the last zone, the "Climax Zone" he called it. To receive your points you'd have to follow one of its instructions depending upon what quarter of the board your marker had landed, or else be set back.

The instructions for the LOOK quarter read, The player of your choice will strip completely. Then he or she will run his or her hands, nice and slowly, over whatever parts of his or her body you find most compelling. You can make those fingers go anywhere and stay there any length of time. You say when to quit.

Perfect. Make Shiela do that one, he thought. Stick those long slim fingers into that red thatch of hers—was it really going to be red?—guide them up to those terrific tits. The TOUCH quarter instructions were just as good.

Stand up and close your eyes. Your partner will bind your hands behind your back. Then all the players will bite, caress, rub and suck you to their hearts' content.

A jigger of bondage to add spice. He congratulated himself. The game was wonderful, it had everything, you couldn't fault it. I should probably get some of those his or hers out of the first one, though, he thought. Sort of awkward. He went on to the TASTE instructions.

Choose a player of the same sex. Take his or her nipple between your teeth and make it hard. Then that player will return the favor.

He wondered if Donna could be trusted to take the initiative with Shiela on that one. His bet was that she would. Donna was pretty game stuff, after all, and they'd discussed her gay fantasies often enough, god knows. Here was a chance to act on them in a totally controlled situation.

You could do things playing a board game you'd never dare to do otherwise. That was why the damn things sold so well. Over the past four months he'd made up three of them, all sex games of one sort or another. On commission. A thousand in advance for each with a damn good cut of the royalties. They'd sell like crazy too, through magazines and novelty shops. So that was not bad money.

Those games were pure crap, though. Nothing like this one. They were all geared up to the small-town college kid just trying to get his girl's pants down for the first time. Lots of forced boozing, a glimpse of pud and that was that.

But this was something else again. Nobody was going to buy this thing. It was much too hot. This was just for him and Donna. And if he could swing it, for Shiela too. He wondered if he should go so far as to make up an instruction card that would get Shiela to suck him off. Hell, why not? She could always refuse and lose the goddamn points. And if she chose not to...

Jesus, this was going to be fun!

The card for the MAKE LOVE quarter was really special. Get naked with the player of your choice and make love until another player asks you to please stop. Make sure the person you pick to stop you likes to watch.

No his or hers shit in that one, it was good. And he knew just the person for that third role, the perfect guy to complete their foursome. George liked to watch. He loved to watch in fact and he was queer as cut-away panties so it wouldn't be Shiela he'd be interested in watching. Fine. So what if I have to make a few gay moves here and there? Won't be the first time for that either. He liked flirting with gay guys so long as he didn't have to get involved with anything serious. Besides, he thought, George's body isn't nearly as good as mine. I'll look good by comparison. No problem getting him to play. He's been after my hairy ass for years.

George it is, then.

He worked all night and through the following day getting the cards in order. That was all there was to these games, nothing much, two or three days' work and probably five thou in the bank by the time the season was over. Lots of sales to horny kids at Christmas time. Easy work and not at all unpleasant either.

Too bad this baby'd never sell. Except maybe to Screw. Now there was an idea! Pitch the sucker to Goldstein. Certainly worth a try. Plus it would provide a kind of legitimacy to the evening, a reason for asking Shiela over. Donna could talk to her at work and tell her he was doing a road test for the hardcore market, explain it so it wouldn't sound too crazy, too weird.

You're fucking brilliant, he thought.

He packed up the cards and game board into a box and shoved them away into a closet for the time being. Then a few minutes later he pulled them out again and scrawled a few words on the cover of the box with a broad red Magic Marker. The finishing touch was always to give the thing a name.

THE SKIN GAME.

She was a real redhead all right.

What a juicy cunt, what a sweet piece of ass she is, he thought, and with all the guts you could ever ask for. They were still in the "Heavy Breathing Zone" but Shiela had drawn a Get naked, slowly card and damned if she wasn't doing it. He found himself having palpitations just watching her. The suspense was incredible. Donna was enjoying it too, you could tell and Jesus, even George was getting off on her! She had all the class a stripper, a pro, lacked these days. She had peeled off the panties and left her blouse for last and there was nothing, absolutely nothing beneath it. You could see a tiny patch of light red pubic hair behind the bottom hem of her shirt. She was pushing the buttons slowly through the buttonholes all the time watching them watching her, a little smile ticking at the corners of her mouth and then she parted the blouse and let it fall off her shoulders and stood there.

"Wow," said Donna. "You're really something!"

She was admiring both the body and the performance, that was clear. You had to. Shiela was spectacular, better even than he'd dreamed. He wanted her like a madman. Happily he still had his pants on. Timing was everything. You didn't want to give yourself away too soon and his dick was trying to tear its way through the zipper. On the next round she got lucky and was able to put the shirt back on. But that wouldn't last. By the time they reached the "Climax Zone" this was gonna get heavy.

"Oh my god," said Donna. "Will you look at this?"

She showed the card to George.

"Seven points down the tubes if you don't comply, dear," he said smiling.

"And you're behind already," said Shiela.

"I know, I know. But you might want to know what this says before you try to push me into this. It says Choose a player of the same sex. Take his or her nipple between your teeth and make it hard. Then that player will return the favor. You ready for that?"

"I don't know," said Shiela.

Good old card, thought Stroup. Good old sweet fucking card. This is gonna knock me right out of the ballpark, he thought. Now if Donna's only the woman I think she is we are going to see something. They were all in the final zone now and both men were naked. Somehow both Donna and Shiela had retained their shirts though Shiela's had come and gone half a dozen times over the course of the play. Against all odds Donna had been given little to do thus far. She kept getting all the easy instructions and while she'd kept close to them in points they'd yet to see her starkers. No big deal there, thought Stroup, same tired stuff I've seen for years. But it struck him as kind of unfair anyway.

Things had not worked out all that well for Stroup, truth be told. Oh, he'd gotten to do a little fondling here and there but George kept turning up the really good cards and what the hell use were they to him?

Stroup had had to French him twice.

But this could be the beginning of the payoff.

"All right," Donna said.

Both women stood up and Donna walked over to Shiela and unbuttoned her shirt. Then she stooped and took one of Shiela's big soft nipples in her mouth. Shiela closed her eyes and inclined her head back slightly and Stroup went hard as a rock. When Donna took her mouth away the nipple was erect. She peeled off her own shirt and presented her own small breasts to Shiela. Watching the two women, both nude now, Stroup was beginning to feel delirious. Cards flashed through his mind with astonishing rapidity, each striking him with an almost palpable force, the force of every fervid hope with which he'd stacked the deck.

Tongue the inner thigh of, went the cards, suck the cock or clit of, make love to the player to the right of and to complete each instruction there was the hairy body of Stroup, febrile, giddy and furtive no longer, to which Shiela must ultimately be directed like water to the well. Stroup's hands trembled as he reached for the next card. Under control, though. Everything under control. No problem.

Easy points, said the card. Kiss your partner.

Fucking piece of shit!

He gave Donna a kiss and ran his hand over her tits for good measure.

"Hey," she laughed, "that's not in the directions."

"Taking liberties, Stroup," said George.

"Eat me," he said.

Another round went by and Stroup had to nuzzle around in George's pubic hair, his big gay cock standing up like a clotheshorse. Donna got points for biting Stroup's inner thigh. Big fucking deal. Shiela, out in front now, was close to winning the game, thus ending it. And Stroup was livid at the thought. But she only got three points this time for squeezing George's flabby ass. The promiscuous bastard loved it, he actually started to rise for her. And Stroup was left to reflect glumly that everybody seemed to be having a fine old time at his game but him.

His luck would have to change. It just had to. This time he picked a seven-pointer. Ah, yes.

This was it. This was the one.

Close your eyes and lie down, he read. The player of your choice will use his or her tongue on you however you wish, for however long you wish and however lasciviously.

"Shiela?" He showed her the card.

The floor felt cold against his ass. He didn't mind. He closed his eyes and heard Shiela kneel down beside him, felt her hair trailing over his chest.

"Neck," he said.

She moved her tongue along the lines of his shoulder blades and into the hollow of his neck. Terrific!

"Nipple," he said. He felt her lips against his left breast, her tongue making tiny circles over the tip of the nipple. She even gave it a bite for him. What a piece of work!

"Navel."

Oh god, it was good, this woman was so good! Here was a woman who'd been around some, not like Donna. Donna was okay in her way but Shiela knew what she was doing all the way down the line. She had passion, nerve, real fire. He'd been wrong to worry about inviting her to play. The game was probably kid stuff to her. Instinctively he knew she'd been everywhere, done everything. Made him feel almost like a novice himself, to be honest.

"Cock," he said.

"No," she said.

He opened his eyes.

"You'll lose points," he said.

He felt doused with tar. Suddenly it was all sawdust and mendacity for him.

"I don't care."

"But you're this close to winning!"

"So?"

"Aw, shit," he said.

"I think she should get half points," Donna said. "She went halfway."

"No points! No fucking points. All or nothing." And then to soften it somewhat he said, "You know the rules."

Instantly he regretted being so brusque with them. It was stupid to show that kind of attitude. Hell, there could be another round, maybe another one after that. You never knew.

"Sorry," he said.

Gave them that old embarrassed little-boy smile. Pretty much worked every time.

"You really had me going, that's all. I guess I got carried away. Everybody still friends here?"

"Sure," said Shiela. "Still friends."

"Oh my," said Donna. She'd drawn a new card from the deck. "Look what I got."

He was really pretty sick of that. Sick of all those look what I gots out of Donna. Donna could get the clap for all he gave a shit. But to keep the damn thing rolling he tried to look interested.

"What's that?" he said.

"I think this is a genuinely dangerous card."

She showed it to Shiela.

"Uh-oh. I think you're right. Positively dangerous."

Donna turned the card around and read it.

"Get naked with the player of your choice. Well, we're all of us naked as we're gonna get, so that's easy. Then take him or her into the next room and make love until the other players agree you should stop. You got a real zinger there, Stroup. Seven points, right? That would put me over the top."

Donna considered a moment. Looked at each of them.

Then said, "I choose Shiela."

They left the room and George and Stroup sat there listening to the sounds coming from the bedroom, liquid sounds and murmuring and then after awhile George asked Stroup if he thought they'd had enough time in there, if it was time for them to stop and Stroup said it sure as hell was, so George called out to them.

You can't always tell about these goddamn games, thought Stroup. Maybe those college kids have a really good time with them. Get to know one another, sort of. Maybe it's not just booze and a glimpse of pussy. Could be I'm performing a kind of public service here. Who was to say? As for this one, the hell with it. Too many holes, too many problems. Screw wouldn't buy it. Fuck it.

Good title, though.

"George, give 'ern a yell again, will ya?" he said.

But the sounds continued and George was gone and Stroup fell asleep on the couch long before the game was over.

My first paid writing job was ghosting for a big-money copywriter, doing soft-sell ads for Psychology Today's book club. He was living in Laguna Beach, California, at the time in a house on stilts that has since fallen into the sea. He was also creating sex-games and making very good money at it. I helped him road-test a couple. They were of the have-a-shot-of-whiskey, caress your partner gently variety mentioned here. But I got to thinking, what if you really went for the throat with one of these?

THE BURN ARTIST

(published as BOSOM BUDDIES)

I found Phil in the Belles of Hell. That was his bar. He was already drunk. He was drinking stout. There was a woman with him with a brace on her neck, a pretty woman, big phony eyes and big breasts loose and firm under the teeshirt. The teeshirt said ROCKIN' PNEUMONIA, all pushed out of shape by the tits. I read it a couple of times. I brushed her arm as I passed by. Soft skin, nice.

"There you go, there he is," Phil said. "This is my best friend in the world, honey. How you been, boy?"

He always talked like that. Talked like he came from Nashville. He came from New Jersey across the river. He'd been writing about country music too long. He was a hotshot six-gun country music outlaw from Newark. He was full of shit but he could write. Nobody could write, the writers were all dead. Everybody was a storyteller nowadays and nobody could put two lines together. All catfish sucking bottom, bunch of James Mitcheners. But Phil was all right.

"I'm pretty good, Phil," I said. "I hear you quit your job."

"Just this morning. Moving to L.A., buddy."

"L.A.'s a lousy city."

"Don't he know, Phil?" said the woman next to him.

"Know what?"

"No, he don't know, asshole. I been waiting to tell him."

"Tell me what?"

"You ought to tell your friends first thing," she said.

"I ought to carry you off in a manure cart," he said.

"Don't be mean, Philly."

He turned to me. "Me and Cathy are getting a divorce," he said. "She agrees to stay in New York if I agree to leave. That's our settlement."

"Doesn't sound so hot to me."

"Yeah, damned right it doesn't. Burned the hell out of me, didn't she."

"Sounds like it."

"Shit, they all do. They're all burn artists. Look at this one here. You don't know this one, do you. This is Helen. Helen, this is Stroup. Helen here is a cockteaser and a huge pain in the ass. Stroup is my best friend in the world."

"Pleasure to meet you," she said.

"She's full of shit," Phil said. "She'd like nothing better than to bleed us both for drinks all night and then go find some twelve-year-old Cuban kid to dick her. Don't let her hand you anything, Stroup. She's pure dreams and bullshit."

"Jesus, Philly."

"Don't you Jesus me."

He took a long pull on the stout. Helen was looking at me. Hot, like this kind of talk was a turn-on. She had eyes like a cow. Obviously she wanted them that way. She made them up to look as cow-like as possible. I wondered if somebody had put her in that neck brace.

Phil ordered drinks all around. He looked pretty bad, pretty morose. It was a sad excuse for a party. I told him I had to go soon but he insisted we have dinner together. You couldn't contradict him. He ordered more drinks. Then he seemed to snap out of it.

"See this cunt?" He pointed to Helen. "She won't let me lay her. She pretends to be a fan of mine but she won't fuck me. How do you like that. She wants me to write about her but I've never fucked her. Now what the hell am I supposed to write about?"

"Oooooooooo, you will write about me, won't you Philly?"

"Sure, bitch."

Then she was all over him. She wrapped her arms around him and kept poking the palms of his hands with her tits. I don't know how she managed to angle those tits into his hands all the time. It was uncanny. The only way he could get away from them was to face square to the bar and keep his hands flat on down on its surface.

Meanwhile all the time she was looking at me, performing it all for me. She'd stick out her tongue and run it over her lips and stare over his shoulder straight into my eyes.

She was a sexy-looking bitch all right. Real trash. I wanted to fuck her and then beat the piss out of her. It would be like balling a lovely corpse. You'd want to get off, and then you'd want to burn the thing.

Phil went to take a leak. Helen moved over to his stool and then all of a sudden those tits were in my hands.

She really had a talent.

"I won't fuck Phil," she said. "I know he wants me to. But he's too safe. He's married and all. He says he's moving to L.A. She'll take him back, though, you watch. He's too safe for me. But you. You look like you might be dangerous. I like a man to be dangerous."

"I'm thinking of kicking your ass," I said.

"Mmmmmmmmmm," she said.

The skirt she wore was silk, a nice French silk and the tits said ROCKIN' PNEUMONIA. I put my hand over one of the tits and squeezed it and she smiled so I moved the hand down over the silk and under it and under her panties and into her cunt. It was wet and I moved my finger in and out. I saw the bartender watching. I didn't mind. She smiled and closed her eyes, very dreamy. Then Phil came back and she went to take a leak.

"I'm going to fuck Helen tonight," he said.

"That so?" I said.

"I'll goddamn well rape her if I have to. There's nothing wrong with her neck, you know. She wears that thing just so guys won't beat her up when she pulls this shit. I've had it with her."

"Uh-huh," I said.

Then Helen came back and I went to take a leak. Who knows what they talked about.

"Let's get out of here," Phil said.

"Where to?" I said.

"Let's go to the Plaza."

We were wearing blue jeans and teeshirts, Phil and I. Phil had a belly that stuck out between his shirt and pants, you could see his big hairy navel there. Helen had that stupid brace. We were drunk. We looked like hell. We took a cab uptown and went to the Plaza.

"Gimme a Chivas and soda," he called out to the bartender. The bar was full of men in three-piece suits from Brooks Brothers and Paul Stuart. "And two more for my friends here."

The maitre d' came rushing over. Little guy.

"You can't come in here dressed like that," he said. "I'm sorry, sir."

"I just ordered a drink you sonovabitch," said Phil.

"I'm afraid you'll have to leave."

"Bullshit."

"You cannot come into the Plaza dressed like that, sir."

"Suck my dick."

The maitre d' motioned to a guy standing in the corner. Big guy. "Really. You'll have to leave, sir."

"You want my girl here?" said Phil. "You act right away, you can get her pretty cheap."

"That's enough, sir."

"When she takes off that neck brace she's not bad."

"Please, sir."

"Feel one of those tits. Go ahead, feel one. Tough as nails those tits are."

"Please."

"Do you know who I am?" said Phil. "Do you know who you're talking to?"

The maitre d' had it fairly well under control but you could see he was losing patience. The big guy moved in close. Uncomfortably close it seemed to me. We left the Plaza. We found another bar. And another one.

"Let's go to my apartment," said Helen. "I want to lie down."

"We'll get some chicken," said Phil.

"Cognac," I said.

"Chicken and cognac, right."

We bought greasy fried chicken and Courvoisier. I was broke but Phil had just sold a story for $1,000. I had to work two months for $1,000. I let him buy. Helen lived in two pastel pink rooms on West 72nd Street. She had a cat so the apartment smelled like cat piss. I told her if she fed the cat a little ammonia once in awhile she wouldn't have that problem.

We ate the chicken and sucked on the bottle of cognac. We'd been drinking all day so we dug into the chicken like savages. Helen got out of her neck brace. She had a nice neck, it looked perfectly okay to me. She also got out of the silk skirt so as not to get it greasy with chicken. You could see pubic hair sticking out of her panties running up to her navel and poking out each leghole. Her ass was too big but that bush looked good. I wasn't sure what to do. Phil really wanted her bad. If he was having trouble with the wife maybe he needed her too. I didn't want to stick around for seconds and I didn't want to get in his way if he had to have first shot at her. At the same time I wanted in myself. But my friendship with Phil came first. Best I just got out of there.

I finished off the cognac.

"I'm leaving," I said.

"Nooooooooo!" said Helen.

"Got to."

"I've got some J&B."

She pulled out the J&B. I had a swig.

"Okay, for a little while," I said.

"I'm going to take a shower," she said. "It's so hot. Be right back."

I passed the bottle to Phil. "You want to go look at her naked?" I asked.

"That's what she wants us to do."

"Really?"

"I tell you she's a lunatic. You know she's a legend in the music business. Rumor is she's still a virgin. Gets you hot and no payoff. Wears that neck brace all the time. Last year a bunch of guys were talking seriously about throwing a party, the First Annual Helen Bassett Gang-Bang. Make it a yearly event. They had a dozen women all volunteer to hold her down.

"She's always saying this guy or that guy is in love with her. Keith Richards, Dylan, Billy Swan, me. Everybody at one time or another. Makes a lot of guys' girlfriends mad. But she's crazy. She doesn't know shit. She's a burn artist. You want to help me fuck her?"

"No, that's all right."

"Okay. I'm going to fuck her, though."

"I'll just leave once we finish the scotch."

"I could go up her ass."

"That's all right. Thanks, though."

She came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, looked good. "Let's see those tits," Phil said.

He grabbed the towel.

"Nooooooooo," she said. It was too late. They were nice tits but they looked better inside the teeshirt.

"Please, Stroup," she said. "You've got to stop him. He's a madman. He's drunk!" Her eyes were flashing. She was flirting with me.

"Yeah," I said. I finished the scotch. "I'm leaving. I hope he plugs you good."

"I gotta piss," said Phil.

When he was gone she wrapped her arms around me, kissed me. She tasted good. I didn't like the towel there. I pushed it away and grabbed a handful of tit. She moaned. She was quite a liar.

"I don't want you to leave," she said. "Please stay."

"Why?"

"Phil will try to fuck me."

"So?"

"I don't want to fuck Phil. I'll fuck you though."

"Sure you will."

Phil came out of the bathroom and saw us there. I didn't let go of her. Instead I smiled at him.

"Woman here says she doesn't want to fuck you, wants me instead. What do you think?"

"I think you ought to fuck her then."

"Want to watch?"

"Sure," said Phil.

"You mind if Phil watches?" I said.

"Of course I do," she said.

"Good. Phil can watch, then."

I tossed the towel away from her, took one cheek of her ass in each hand and pulled her down to the carpet. Yellow wall-to-wall carpet in a pink living room. It smelled like cat piss and raw death. I pulled off my pants and put my cock inside her. It was warm in there and the size was good. I was on my knees with my hands under her ass lifting her back and forth over my cock. Phil sat down next to us and sipped a cup of coffee, black.

"Give me a hand here, will you, Phil?" I said.

He unzipped his fly and got his cock out. He crawled in underneath her and stuck his cock into her asshole and I lowered her down slowly on him. That left my hands free.

"Thanks, buddy," I said.

Helen groaned a little. I looked at her wide soft mouth. "Too bad we got nothing to put in there," I said.

"Get the cat," said Phil.

"I don't think so," I told him. I had my hands on her tits now, pulling on the nipples until they were hard and red and flushed with blood. I could feel Phil working away beneath her.

"What the hell you want to go to L.A. for?" I asked him.

"Good a place as any. And I can get work there. I can make a living."

"You're a writer. You can work anywhere."

"Yeah, but there's lots of magazines in California. Staff jobs. Nice and secure."

"You want security?"

"I could use some."

"Move a little to the left, will you?"

"That better?"

"That's it."

"No, it's mostly that I want to put a few hundred miles between me and Cathy."

"You must love her then."

"Of course I do."

"Then what do you want to split up for?"

"Hell, I don't. It's Cathy's idea."

"She's got a beef?"

"Christ, yes. I fuck everything I can get my hands on."

"Yeah, I guess."

Which brought us back to Helen. She wasn't a virgin. She was having a wonderful time except that Phil's zipper was bothering her. I didn't like to hear her complain.

"Get rid of the jeans, will you, Phil?"

"Sure."

She was starting to break out into a sweat and you could see she was close to coming. Her cunt had opened wide to me and I was into a nice soft glide. I told her to play with herself. It was just what she wanted to hear. You could hear the snick snick snick of her finger against her clit like an old man sucking at his old false teeth. With her other hand she tugged at her nipples. That made her sweat and moan some more. She was lathered like a pony when suddenly her back arched and I could feel her body flush and saw her thrash side to side. Phil pumped hard below and I hit her hard and deep and she took orgasm after orgasm like so much mortar fire. Wounded she was, gouged and broken and she lay back exhausted and then Phil came and lay back too.

Not me though. I picked her up and carried her into the bathroom. My prick was still inside her. I pulled it out and put her down in the shower. I aimed the nozzle at her and turned it on. I'd say the water was lakebottom cold. She screamed.

"I want you mean for this," I told her.

I got in beside her and pulled her on top of me so the water slapped across her back and was pretty near luke before it splashed down onto me and got inside her again. Her mouth was open wide, astonished, and her eyes squeezed shut tight. Her nipples were small and tight as raspberries, her skin cold as death. I rammed at her like a bull-goose loony and then I was coming, a long winding orgasm that began in my gut and slammed at me like a machine gun. I reached up and flipped off the water. I rolled her off of me. I went back into the living room.

"I got an idea," I said.

"What's that?"

"I don't want you going to L.A. You're my buddy. I want you to stick around. Suppose I go visit your old lady. How can she bitch about you if she's playing too? See what I mean?"

He thought about it.

"You got a hell of a nerve. You know that?"

"You want to go to California or you want to stay?"

"I want to stay."

"So let me take a shot. What can you lose?"

He thought about it some more.

"Nothing personal in this? Between you and Cath I mean?"

"Nothing at all."

"You wouldn't bullshit me?"

"Never."

"I don't know, Stroup."

Helen came out of the shower mad as hell. She wanted us to get out of there. Phil said that was impossible at the moment, we had something to discuss. He suggested she make some coffee.

"You just use a girl," she said. But we heard her in the kitchen. "It's a really rough thing to say, Stroup. I mean, to tell you to go ahead. She's my goddamn wife, you know? I don't know if I can do that."

"You can do it, Phil," I said.

"I don't know."

Helen poured the coffee. She'd forgiven us by now. She looked wonderful walking around naked serving us coffee, pouring the milk, spooning out the sugar. It's funny but a woman always looks better to me after I've fucked her. Some guys say there's nothing worse than the morning after. I've never found that so. It's as though I smell myself on a woman after I've had her, as though she walks around with traces of me on her from then on in.

"If we do it, it's gotta be now," Phil said.

"Okay. Fine."

"You're sure about this?"

"Completely."

"What are you guys talking about?" asked Helen.

"Don't you worry your ass about it," said Phil. "We'll see you."

"You're going?"

"Yeah."

"You too, Stroup?"

"Got to, baby."

"Will you call me?"

"Sure. Sit by the phone, all right?"

Outside the Manhattan night was pale brown on the streets and gold in the foggy sky. We took a cab down to 14th Street and I settled Phil into a bar while I went off to meet his wife. The bar had a pool table so he wouldn't get too drunk.

They lived in a basement apartment. I knocked on the door and Cathy opened it.

"Phil's not here," she said.

"I know. I just left him."

"Oh."

"I came to see you."

"Me?"

"Are you going to let me in?"

"Well, yes...sure."

"I hope you're not too busy. Am I interrupting anything?"

"Oh, no. It's just that...well, look Stroup. You've heard about Phil and me, haven't you?"

"Phil told me."

"Of course he did. And you're Phil's friend, you're his best friend and I..."

"Not anymore, goddammit."

"Not anymore what?"

"I'm not his best friend, that's what. Sonovabitch just walked off with the woman I love. I'd never have believed he could do that to me. Finest woman I ever met. Name of Helen. She wears a neck brace sometimes. Bastard just took her right in front of me, right there on the floor of her apartment."

She sighed. "So now you know what I've been dealing with, Stroup."

"I do. I do now. You're a good woman, Cathy. I'm amazed you put up with him so long."

"It wasn't easy."

"Oh hell, I'm sure it wasn't easy."

"I'm sorry, Stroup. I really am."

I had her then. All I had to do was let the tears roll. It was always easy for me to cry. All I had to do was think of that time I destroyed that big old beautiful '56 Buick for the insurance money. So I let them go. She watched me for a moment.

"Can I get you anything, Stroup?" She was very tender. "Is there anything I can do?"

"No, nothing," I said. I waited awhile, let the tears build up real well and then let go again. "Well, yeah, Cathy," I said, "I guess, there's something..."

Which was how I got to fuck Phil's wife.

Not that it helped. Phil still went out to the coast, San Diego actually, that ugly tar pit of highways, sailors and shit chili. Cathy and I got on very well that night and we still do. Every Tuesday. Wednesdays I go to Helen and Tuesdays to Cathy and the rest of the nights of the week I do what I can and who I can in between bouts with the wife. Oh yeah, I'm married, just like Phil. The wife doesn't matter much though in the scheme of things. Except I'm not quite as free as I could be.

You might find it interesting to know about Helen. She called me one day at the office. This was before Phil left, he was still in town. It had been a miserable morning. Everybody wanted his ass kissed and wanted it now. That kind of morning. I plugged away, Cursing, kissing asses. Around two o'clock she called me.

"How the hell'd you get this number?" I said.

"Phil gave it to me."

He'd been pretty pissed about my strategy with Cathy. Wasn't talking to me at all anymore.

I figured he'd put Helen onto me to get even.

"Do you mind?" she said.

"Damned right I do. If you ever call me at work again I'll kick your ass, you hear me?"

"Will you give me your home number?"

''No.''

"You won't?"

"No."

"Don't you want to see me again?"

"No."

"I want to see you."

"Sure you do."

"I mean it."

I gave it some thought.

"All right. Friday night, nine o'clock, your apartment."

"Great."

"And Helen."

"Yes?"

"I'm coming over to fuck you, understand? If I'm not fucking you within half an hour that's it, I'm never going to see you again. I'm not wasting any time on you."

Her voice was very small.

"Okay, Stroup. I understand."

She hung up and that Friday night was one of the best of my life. We fucked from hell to breakfast. In the sink, on the rug again. I had her bending over the fire escape. I came in her ass, in her armpits and in between her toes. I gave her a workout she'd never forget and it was only at the end of the night just as I was going out the door that I gave her or Phil any real thought at all.

"He's gone, you know," she said.

"Who?"

"Phil."

"Phil? He is?"

"Yeah. I saw him night before last. He left yesterday. He left you a note, though."

"He did? What's it say?"

She got the letter. I opened it. It was from Phil all right. Thoughtful, I felt. What a sweet guy, what a sucker. Then I read it.

TO HELL WITH YOU, it said. I USED TO THINK YOU WERE A BOSOM BUDDY. NOW YOU'RE JUST ANOTHER BURN ARTIST.

Who isn't?

The late lamented Belles of Hell was a wonderful old writer's and working-man's bar down in the West Village where drinks were cheap and there was live entertainment whenever somebody got it together. I remember seeing the legendary rock 'n roll writer Lester Bangs do some sets there, his teeshirt looking like he'd shoved his dinner up through it and his pack of Luckies regular sticking out through a hole in the back pocket of his jeans while he roared into the mike. To writers from Penthouse, the Daily News and a bunch of young-turk freelancers it was home-away-from-home once the workday was over.

The bar's long gone now and so is my buddy Lester and I miss them both. So this one's for you, Lester.

I think you'd have laughed a time or two.

The incident at the Plaza is substantially true. So is the woman with the neck brace. The rest is Stroup and bullshit.

THE RUBDOWN

San Diego wasn't just another boring town, it was the cold-cock deadass end of the fucking world. It was limbo north of absolutely nothing. It was a stretcher in a hospital waiting room and you knew you'd never get out of there alive. I had a job so the days were tolerable. But nights, hell, you were lucky to find a bar with a pool table and a piece of ass under fifty-five who looked better than a housefly. That was San Diego. A tired smug suntanned old juicer drowning in bad whiskey.

I wondered, where the hell did everybody go at night? Nights only the automobiles were out. I swear there was nobody in them. You could see them moving along, hissing along the concrete, nobody parked and nobody walking. Just headlights and noise along the dead wide highway.

T.J. and I went to buy some dope one night at a friend's place. The friend wasn't home. But the door was open so we walked in. We took some smoke from his stash and left our money on the table. He had a big black gopher snake so we smoked some weed and let the snake out of his cage and watched him slide along the doorjambs. We smoked some more and finally the snake made an exit through the front door. I watched him.

"That snake's getting away, T.J.," I said.

"Jesus sonovabitch!"

"We'd better catch him."

"I'm not going after some snake in the dark. Fuck it."

So we took our grass and got out of there. The snake went free.

And that was the best and most eventful night I had in San Diego. Until I found the whore that is.

I'd never been to a whore and there were two reasons for that. One reason was that I never had the money. That was the good reason. The other was that I didn't like the idea of paying for it. I was too stupid to realize that as the prophet says, you always pay for it in one way or another. But I was learning.

T.J. and I worked together. We worked ourselves dumb and exhausted every day. To us, at the end of the day, the office seemed to stink like a slaughterhouse and we were U.S. Grade A Prime. So we'd skip dinner and get right down to some serious drinking. Maybe dinner would come later. Sometime around the fourth or fifth round. But this night after only two T.J. started rubbing his neck and complaining that what he needed was a real good massage.

"You mean you want to get laid," I said.

"No. Seriously. I could really use a massage."

"T.J., I wouldn't take you seriously with a razor in one hand and a pistol in the other. You want to go to a whore then go to a whore. But don't bullshit me. You're a goddamn fraud and a drunk to boot and I don't believe you for a minute."

T.J. was a liar and a cheat and you had to let him know you were on to him. Once he knew that you could be friends. But he needed reminding once in awhile. His line was that he'd been a Marine working recon in Vietnam and that he'd killed over thirty men in hand-to-hand combat. Had no choice, he said. He was building a legend. But he probably was as dangerous as a porkpie hat. You could beat the hell out of him with a ten-letter word.

"Jesus, Stroup," he said. "I just want a massage, that's all."

"Okay. Me too. It's a wonderful idea. Only you pick up the tab."

"Why should I pick up the tab?"

"You want company?"

"Yeah."

"I have just enough money for this drink and one more." I ordered another scotch. "That's why."

"You can owe me for the massage, then."

"You want to put me in debt for a fucking massage? You must be out of your mind."

"Okay, Stroup. Okay."

"I mean, if you wanted to get laid, then that might be another thing altogether."

"Yeah, I see."

He didn't see shit. I had another thirty wadded up in my pocket. If I could find a woman as good at her game as I was at mine it was going to be a beautiful night.

We drove downtown.

The streets were packed with sailors in their cheap civvies. Quite a district. New York had nothing like this. Neither did L.A. or Boston or San Francisco. Girls working the storefronts in see-through lingerie. Whores and pimps and skinshows and rough bars everywhere with maybe six or seven massage parlors to the block. It was ten solid blocks of flesh and fast easy money. Ten blocks of steady hustle mobbed with boys who'd had ready cash in their pockets for months now and nothing but a fist to dip into. These kids were hungry.

If I wanted that terrific blonde over there I had better hurry. "Park it!" I said.

"There isn't any place to park it."

"Park it now!"

We found a place to park.

"You ever been to a whore, T.J.?"

"Naw."

"Not even in the service?"

"Hell, no, didn't need to."

"Well you need to now."

"I told you, Stroup. Just a massage. I got a bad neck."

"Uh-huh."

We crossed the street and the blonde was still there. Up close she was incredible. Slim, young and attractive. I felt like a man who'd found a ruby in the kitchen sink. So this was where everybody went nights.

"You free?" I said.

"Not really."

"Right. Don't go away. I'm begging you. Please."

"Okay."

I marched inside, T.J. at my heels.

"You looking for a massage?"

The girl at the desk wore a wedding ring and was ugly as a hangnail and sounded like bald tires on a bad country road.

"We have a massage for fifteen dollars," she said, "a nude massage for twenty dollars and a nude hour-long massage for thirty-five dollars. Whatever you want, sir."

"I want to get laid," I said.

"Tipping is permitted," she said.

"That lady out front, is she free?"

"Not really."

"Don't fuck with me. Is she available?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'll take the twenty. Same for my friend here. Call the lady, please."

Her name was Sonja. She walked in smiling and looked us over.

"Which one?" she said.

"Me," I said.

"Okay."

She smiled again, took my arm and led me inside. They handed T.J. a little redhead with a big ass. Not nearly in the league with my Sonja. But T.J. looked pleased. I wondered if he was still thinking about that crick in his neck or whatever.

"Just go in there and take off your clothes," she said. She opened the door for me. "I'll be back in a minute."

I did what she said. The room was nothing. Just a long massage table with a mirror at one end of the room and a small washbasin and nightstand on the other. Clean, cold and boring. I stripped down and lit a smoke and had a look at myself in the mirror. Not bad. A little too much belly but she wouldn't hate the sight of me. I lay down on the table and waited.

A couple minutes later she poked her head in. Looked at me.

"Be right with you, okay?"

"Okay."

I heard voices out in the hallway. Hers and the girl at the desk. Then another voice, that one female too. Excited whispering. She poked her pretty head in again. Looked me up and down.

"I'm still naked," I said.

"Just take me a second, okay?"

"Okay."

I stubbed out the cigarette. I heard more voices, then quiet. I waited.

She came back into the room smiling and took off the nightie and the bra and panties and everything was pale and fine. A real blonde. Breasts, belly, thighs and ass firm and strong. I had me a racing model here. The body was creamy white, the nipples a pale smooth pink, the thatch was golden. A goddess in the dull grey back room of the Princess Massage. Impossible.

"You're not a cop, are you?" she said.

"Hell, I'm not even a sailor," I said. "Why do you ask?"

"Oh, we ask everybody. What do you do?"

"I'm a writer."

"You make a living at that?"

"No."

"For eighty dollars I'll blow you and fuck you. Would you like that?"

"Yes I would. Say that again?"

"For eighty dollars I'll blow you and fuck you."

"I haven't got eighty. I told you. I'm a writer."

"How much have you got?"

"Maybe twenty."

"Twenty?"

"Maybe thirty."

"Okay, I'll fuck you for thirty. You want to pay me now?"

"Sure."

I handed her the thirty.

"Lie down," she said.

She picked up a bottle of baby oil and squirted some into her hand. Then she took hold of my dick and started to work it. It didn't take long. Meantime I had her ass in one hand and a tit in the other. I wanted that pink nipple in my mouth. I leaned over and put it there. She tightened her fist around my cock. If I wasn't careful this was going to be a thirty-dollar handjob. But she was ahead of me.

"You're ready," she said. "Let's fuck. Remember. No kissing."

"No kissing?"

"Unh-unh."

"Okay."

She turned around and I don't know where it came from but when she turned back to me again she had a rubber in her hand. She peeled it and snapped it and smiled at me and slipped it over my cock. She was more efficient than I'd ever been with the goddamn things. Then she poured some more oil into her hands and ran them over the rubber.

"Get up a second, will you?"

I moved off the table and she lay down on her back. She spread her legs wide for me. I stood there awhile looking dazed and foolish. I looked at her cunt. I looked at her lips. The ones I couldn't kiss. I still couldn't believe this woman was going to fuck me. Not me. It was too damned good, it was a mirage, my joint was in a dream.

"Something wrong?" she said.

"Are you kidding?"

"Well fuck me, then."

This incredible woman! I'd met her what? maybe ten minutes ago, she was one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen in my life and now I was fucking her. Just like that. No courting, no game plan, no buying of drinks or dinners, no preliminaries. Just a fee, and the rest was spunk and ecstasy.

Now I knew why you went to whores. The lady was efficient, experienced, under control, warm, friendly and beautiful. If she was impersonal, if I had no idea who she was or where she came from, she was also perfection in a way, she was a dream of fretless fuck. If there was calculation there wasn't much bullshit either.

She started to moan. It was fake and unnecessary.

"Cut that out," I said.

She laughed. "Okay," she said.

She slid her hand down between us and used her fingers on my cock while I worked away at that glorious cunt and it was too much for me, I'd be going off in a second.

"Don't do that, either." I said. "I'd rather not come yet, all right?"

"Come whenever you want to," she said.

"Thanks," I said. "I will."

I buried my face between her breasts. I kissed the soft flesh of her neck. She kissed mine. We fucked and fucked. I finally came.

I was exhausted but she had paced herself, she had plenty of energy. She got dressed while I just lay there on my back staring up at the spackled ceiling.

"Do I get that massage now?" I said.

"No, you don't get that and a massage. One or the other."

"Too bad."

I sat up and stared at myself in the mirror. Everything about the same. Except I was wearing this wacky grin on my face. And my head was still buzzing. Culture-shock. She opened the door and stopped there.

"How do you feel?" she said.

"Like I've lost my virginity all over again."

"You have." She laughed.

"Mind if I take one of your smokes?" She had a pack of Marlboros next to the towels on the side-table.

"No, go ahead. Take your time."

I smoked a cigarette and got myself dressed. It took awhile for everything to sink in. It still felt strange, this intimacy without knowledge or closeness, this goofy conscienceless immersion.

She poked her head through the door once to see how I was doing. It was not exactly the bum's rush but close. I got the picture. It was a busy night. The fleet was in. I stubbed out the cigarette and buttoned my shirt and made it to the door unassisted.

The door opened from the other side and there was Sonja standing with a sailor on her arm, a kid all of eighteen maybe, crewcutted and bull-necked and smiling a kid's half-assed embarrassed smile. Sonja kissed me on the cheek as I passed.

"Come back soon," she said.

I walked out of there. I looked for T.J. in the lobby and on the street but he was still inside. If he could fuck this long then maybe in fact he could kill. Meantime I watched the whores. The shore patrol went by. There were the girls and the sailors making their deals right out there on the street and the shore patrol just cruised on by.

I was ready to head for a bar when there he was, beaming at me. "Hey, Stroup, how'd it go?"

"Pretty good, T.J. How was your massage?"

"Great. I've had better, though."

"Oh yeah? That's too bad. She cost you much?"

He looked at me.

"Same as you, Stroup. Twenty."

"I mean inside."

"Cost me nothing inside. What are you talking about?"

"T.J., did you fuck her?"

"Jesus, no."

"She didn't ask you?"

"No. You got laid, Stroup?"

"I'm thirty bucks poorer. And half an hour happier."

"Where'd you get the thirty?"

"Buy me a drink, T.J.," I said, "and I'll tell you all about it."

"Was she good, Stroup?"

"She sure as hell was."

"You know, maybe I should have taken my pants off. Maybe then she would have asked me."

I was crossing the street with the dumbest man on the entire West Coast of America. Maybe in the entire Western Hemisphere. He didn't take his pants off so they thought he was a cop. That was what all the whispering had been about in the hallway. Probably thought I was a cop too since we came in together. So what was I doing sitting naked in there?

It must have confused the shit out of them.

"Yeah, T.J., I think maybe you should have."

We went for a drink and I sat there with the scent of Sonja on my hands and every time I'd take a swallow of scotch she'd come back to me on my fingertips, all that blonde hair and pale flesh and the lips I hadn't kissed. It was like losing my virginity again.

Only once before had a scent held so much mystery.

And the scent of her lasted through the night's drinking until morning and well into the afternoon. I took care to keep it there. I tried to keep her face in my mind too, that beautiful face I'd known for half an hour only. But by quitting time I could not remember the look of her. Only the long blonde hair and the flesh and the lips and the feel of her cunt around me and I still had the scent of her which was fading, fading slowly and the next morning she was gone.

A slight departure for Stroup. No one in his right mind would say he's exactly sensitive in this story but a lot of the anger's missing. I'd say maybe he's getting old, mellowing, except that the story which follows belies the notion.

I actually did work in San Diego for a while, editing a glossy, mass-market paleontological magazine called FOSSILS which folded after one issue. I was too poor to rent a car and spent most of my time cooped up at the office. And yes, the nights were long and drear.

NEVER TRUST A SMART CUNT WITH TWO FIRST NAMES

(published as FIXING HER PLUMBING)

I was living in an old once-handsome building on 71st Street. Stanford White had designed it in the '20s. He was shot dead long ago which may have been lucky for his pride because now the landlady was a crazy old bitch who looked like Broderick Crawford in drag and she'd let the place slide. Now the lobby looked like a big gaudy movie-theatre lobby in candy-apple red and gold and everything was frayed and melting. It was the late, great Bijou down to showing DEEP THROAT VI.

The landlady was dumb as a soap dish but she'd learned a few tricks. She'd learned you never spent money unless you had to. You let everything fall to hell and then when the heat failed or the floor fell in and the tenants were screaming for blood you only had to scream louder and longer than they did. You told them you were broke and the city and rent-control and the unions were killing you. You screamed and you screamed and you kept screaming until the tenants went away wondering how long it would be before somebody locked you up, you poor crazy bitch. But what you did not do, you did not spend a fucking penny. You did not handle the problem. You acted loony instead. That took care of things for a while.

So I got up one morning hung over as I ordinarily was and went to the closet, and all our clothes were in there, dripping.

I thought, humm, all the clothes are dripping, it's mighty wet in there, that's funny. Then my brain cleared a little and I started howling. I woke Clara up. I woke the two cats. All the rats and roaches ran away. Look out. Something crazy out there.

"YOU STINKING FUCKING PUKING BATSHIT OLD CUNT! I'll cut your fucking TITS off! You fucking MURDERER! Goddammit! Goddammit! Goddammit!"

There was a hole in the ceiling the size of a football. The plumbing was all shot to hell. Our clothes were covered with piss and shit and toilet-bowl water and little flecks of plaster. I wanted to kill. The neighbors were beating on the bedroom walls to shut me up. They couldn't shut me up. I stalked back and forth across the living room in my shorts, roaring. Carla went to find the super. It was hopeless. He'd be drunk by now. I grabbed a bottle of rye. It was early but I might as well join him.

The phone rang. I got the receiver.

"Look, if this is a complaint, you're wasting your time," I said. "I'll scream louder, you understand? Tell the landlady she's a dead man."

I hung up.

In a minute it rang again.

It was a woman's voice on the other end. Soft voice, sounded good. Her name was Laura Sally, she said, not Laura Sally anything, just Laura Sally. Oh, I said. She was a friend of a friend from San Francisco. She had just got to New York and mine was the only name she had. She hoped I could get her settled somewhere.

"Not now," I said.

"Oh please," she said. "Couldn't we just talk for a minute?"

I explained to her that there was shit all over my clothes but I guessed she could come over if she could stand the stink. What did I care.

"Thanks so much," she said. "I really do appreciate it."

"I may be in my shorts."

"I don't mind," she said.

"You don't, hunh."

I hung up on her again. I found a pair of dry pants and put them on. Then I gathered together the whole sopping mess and took it out to the cleaners. It was going to cost me a hundred bucks. I got the landlady on the phone and threatened her until she promised me my hundred. Her husband had Hodgkins Disease, she said. He was dying. She could hardly manage. I figured whatever way he got rid of her, he was lucky.

Carla returned. The super was drunk as expected so I got a mop and went to work. Instead of piss, now the place stunk of ammonia. It was a rotten world.

In half an hour or so Laura Sally arrived. While I finished up the closet and pulled on the bottle of rye she and Carla got to chatting and soon you could hear them laughing in the kitchen and Carla getting out the coffee cups.

I had a look at her. She didn't look bad to me. The skirt she wore was long and loose so you couldn't tell about the ass, hips or legs but she had nice big breasts and the face was pretty. A weak chin but otherwise pretty. It might be okay to fuck her. Welcome to New York.

They did all the talking. I just listened. She was from Berkeley, here to make it big in publishing. She had degrees up the ass but it was all useless English-major stuff. She'd be lucky to get a job answering a phone in a porn house. I'd been stuck in publishing awhile myself, so I knew. If you were a woman you were nothing. If you were a man you could get to be a pimp. Lucky you.

But first off she needed an apartment. Carla told her there was a two-bedroom open here in the building and we knew a girl over on 68th Street who'd probably go halvsies with her. I warned her that the landlady was turning the place into a slop bucket but that didn't seem to bother her. So we promised to help.

That settled, Carla went out for more coffee and Laura got up and walked around staring at my bookshelf. Hmmmmm and ohhh yes, and oh I've read that. Smart stuff, she was. She knew all the right names. She asked if she could borrow my Jung so I let her. Then she sat down and I sucked at my bottle of rye while she bored me with how much she knew about Important Literature. I hate that shit.

I thought she might do well in publishing.

"You've got a good library here," she said. "But you're missing some people, you know? It's a good library all told. But if you don't mind my saying so you have some things that are really not so great."

"Do I really?"

"Oh yes." You should have so-and-so-and-so-and-so and get rid of so-and-so and so-and-so.

Well, I thought, she was young. But I should have seen it right there. Never trust a smart cunt with two first names.

She flopped with us a couple of days until her apartment was arranged. We got her a roommate, the kid over on 68th. Sandy her name was, a nice friendly kid. We loaned her a couple bucks here and there. Carla had gotten pretty friendly with her. I liked her a whole lot less but I still thought those tits were alright. I thought seriously about fucking her. But there was all that talk about Great Books to put up with.

Oh jesus.

Two weeks passed and Sandy and Laura moved into their apartment together. The landlady still hadn't fixed our ceiling. Then one night Sandy came downstairs in tears. She had complaints. Laura was a slob who left food and old rancid underwear and cigarette butts all over the place. She stole food. She stole money and clothes too. Two pair of panties were missing and Sandy's favorite blouse. Laura wouldn't pay the rent or the bills on time.

She'd conned us, all of us. It was New York. What else was new.

She took us upstairs to show us the crap pile she'd made of the place and where her stuff was missing. Right this minute, she said, she's probably out selling my shoes. I felt bad for her but short of smacking Laura around a little there was nothing I could do. "You want me to smack her around for you?" I said. She didn't think so.

Obviously Laura Sally had arrived in the City flat broke. She made friends fast though and now she was hustling them all hand over fist. What did she need with us? We stopped talking to her. So what? We could count at least a dozen people who owed her money. She knew I had no use for her but every so often we'd meet in the hall by the mailboxes and she'd bitch at me. She was a secretary in a small publishing firm. She felt it was beneath her. She was right. It was beneath anybody. But hell, I thought, let her sweat. At least she hadn't been able to sucker them yet. But I had few doubts about her future. Ask any housefly. Shit floats.

We saw Sandy occasionally and she was always belly-up like a dead catfish. It was sad.

Then Carla and I had a fight one night as would happen from time to time and I was sick to death of her, sick to death of all women, I was in one of those moods. And I wanted to wallow in that for a while. So I got me a bottle and went up two flights to Laura Sally.

"Got a joint?" I said.

Laura was cheap as most hustlers are cheap but you could catch her off-guard now and then.

"Uh...yes," she said and she dug one out for me.

It wasn't bad. I sat in her living room squinting at her looking mean and ironical smoking on the joint and pulling on the bottle of whiskey. I alarmed her.

"Aren't you going at that a bit heavy?" she said.

"Think of it as soda pop. Want to join me?"

"Afraid I can't."

"Why not?"

"I'm having a party."

"You are?"

"Yes."

"Tonight?"

"Yes. People should be arriving in about an hour or so. I've got to get ready. There will be lots of publishing people. You might want to stay, Stroup." She smiled, innocent as a daisy. "My first party in this town," she said. "Isn't that exciting?"

"My dick's getting hard," I said. "Suppose you roll us another joint."

"Okay."

While she was rolling I reached over and put my hand on her thigh. In the other hand I had the whiskey. It was a good thigh. She looked at me, not knowing what to make of me. The innocence dropped away and you could see the mind percolating, figuring the angles. Finally I guess she figured it might be fun to fuck Carla's man.

"I have to take a bath," she said, "but I want to continue talking with you. Come on. We'll leave the door open. You can stand outside the shower and talk to me."

"Sure," I said. What a free spirit she was. What a Berkeley girl. It was just another cocktease. I had them catalogued and numbered by now.

She peeled off her out clothes there in the hall, telling me about the party and all the good people who'd be there and how much she liked the Jung I'd loaned her and books again, books, books, books and all the time she was talking she never once looked at me, just kept peeling and yapping like there was nothing peculiar going on, very casual, just going to have a little bath, fop, out fall the tits, what do I think of Lautreamont, swish, down go the panties, splash, it was going to be a wonderful party, what do I think of incubi succubi, they had half a pound of Hawaiian coming. I stood there watching.

A nice body. You didn't have to be kind to animals to have a beautiful body. She was a louse but her thatch was golden. I watched the pale nipples go hard and then soft again in the warm water. I watched the pubic hair drifting like a bed of kelp. I took off my clothes and sat down between her legs.

I took her ass in both hands and pulled her onto me. The warm water had opened her up and it was like sliding into a vat of butter. She moaned and her smile was hot and phony but I didn't mind. I turned her around onto her hands and knees so it was her back I was facing and I didn't have to see. I lifted her tits and twisted the big soft nipples until she winced and arched her back against me. I jammed two fingers inside her, pushed her forward a little and slid my cock through the water and harpooned her in the asshole.

It was tighter that way and good to be taking her as though she were a boy. She wouldn't have liked my thinking that and that was good too. Just for fun I thought of her as a sheep or a goat. I wondered if I could make her bleat. The water broke against the tub and splashed the floor as I slapped away at her ass. I had four fingers in her now and pumped her from the other end. She was bent so low I could hear her gurgle in the bathwater. I tipped her forward and soon I had my bleat. Maybe it was an orgasm and maybe not. I didn't care. I was sure of mine.

I pulled out of her and washed myself off with her Bayberry soap and reached for the whiskey. "Not bad," I said. "Maybe I will stick around."

"It was wonderful," she said and kissed me. Our first kiss.

It tasted like lies.

I got out of the tub and dried myself off and waited for her to finish her bath. Meantime I was drinking and feeling pretty good, the way you feel when you've done something pleasurable and slightly rotten. You want to do something more rotten still. So I thought about it. Laura was having a party. I was invited. I remembered another party long ago when I'd gotten so drunk I'd thrown up on the guy sitting next to me and thought nothing of it. In fact it was a feeling of power, being that incompetent. Sorry buddy, I'm totally outa control. Nobody expected a thing of you but the absolute worst.

But I'd already played that tune. You couldn't vomit on too many laps or you got yourself a reputation.

I thought some more. Slowly it began to take shape in my mind, variations on a theme. Drunkenness was so disarming. Almost like innocence. Drunkenness was a good con.

"Listen, Laura," I said. "I have to take a shit. You nearly done in there?"

"Just a minute."

I took the bottle with me. I went into the bathroom. I closed the door behind me and locked it. I set the bottle on the floor and pulled off my pants and took my crap. Laura was in the bedroom putting on her makeup. People would be arriving very soon, it was only necessary to wait. I took another slug of rye. In a few minutes I was beginning to numb over. It felt good. I thought about the fight with Carla. Women could be such miserable creatures. They could be evil. But I could be evil too. Watch me.

The rye was working. I was starting to feel all creamy soft all over. There was no dizziness, no sickness, just a good relaxed feeling, soft and easy. I felt I could slide right down through the hole in the shitter. I sat there waiting for my second crap to happen lazy as a grub.

I must have sat there twenty minutes when I heard a knock at the door. It was Laura.

"You all right?" she said.

"Fine."

"You sure?"

"Absolutely. Be out in a minute."

She went away. A few minutes later I could hear her guests arriving. Heard them laughing and talking. Ice tinkling, drinks being poured and passed around. Then more people arriving, more drinks, more talking. I heard Laura's voice light and cool. I sat there drunk and smiling with my secret and my bottle.

Soon there was another knock at the door. Very tentative. "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT, ASSHOLE?" I said. It was a woman's voice, very small. A stranger.

"Oh," she said. "Sorry."

"That's okay, sugartits," I said.

I heard her whispering to someone just outside the door. He called me sugartits! She couldn't believe it. There was an ogre in the bathroom. Who is he?

A little while later there was another knock. A man's voice, another stranger, asking if it was okay if he used the john. I said, don't bother me, can't you see I'm sucking my own COCK in here? He went away too.

Then Laura was back again.

"Jesus, Stroup," she said. "Are you still in here? I thought you'd gone long ago! And what the hell have you been saying to people?"

"I don't remember any people," I said.

"Stroup, are you all right?"

"Fine, Laura."

"Well you've got to come out of there. Somebody wants to use the bathroom."

"That's not possible. Sorry."

"Why?"

"Can't move, Laura. I'm too damned drunk."

"Well, unlock the door and we'll get you out."

"I can't do that either. Arms won't move anymore."

It was nice not having to lie to her. My arms were gone and my legs were gone. I was just a brain with a mouth attached. The brain was clear, though and enjoying itself immensely. If they wanted in they'd have to get the door off its hinges. I doubted if anybody in publishing could manage that. When you are nearly passed out you're committed. Let 'em find another place to piss. Let 'em stick it out the window. I couldn't even lift my head to see if there was anything left in the bottle. Didn't want to, either. I was fine as-is.

"This is my first party, Stroup! I don't even know half these people. Do you realize what they're going to think? Please make an effort, will you?"

I did try. I tried to move my arms. No go.

"Can't do it, Laura."

"Oh, Christ! I'm going to get Carla."

"Why don't you do that," I said. "Get Carla."

She returned a few minutes later.

"Carla won't come," she said.

"That's funny," I said. "She usually does for me. Did you try tickling her clit awhile?"

"Stroup, this is embarrassing."

"Not to me, it isn't."

"Dammit, have some pride!"

"Pride's all gone. Jumped into the bottle, drowned. Died happy."

Somebody started pounding on the door. I couldn't have that. It would give me a headache.

"HEY!" I said. "Don't you publishing people have any DECENCY? You got no COMPASSION? You're just gonna have to wait an hour or so till I sober up some, all right? Jesus! Meantime, you go on and have yourselves a good time. Drinks are on me. Me and Laura. Who I don't mind saying is the greatest little butt-fuck in the industry!"

I must have been pretty loud because the party sounds all stopped for a moment. I heard whispering and then a male voice at the door.

"Have you been sick, buddy?" he said.

"Not that I know of. I'll check my shoes when I can see them. But thanks for asking."

After that they gave up on me. Every now and then Laura would come back to see if I was ready yet but I never was ready so pretty soon they just let me alone in there. Plenty of beer and no toilet. It was going to be a short party. I felt like a letter-bomb, completely anonymous and tricky and devastating.

An army travels on its plumbing.

Soon I was able to move but that wasn't much fun so I got the bottle off the floor and drank till I was immobile again. Then, nice and quiet as could be, I fell asleep.

When I awoke there were no voices outside, no music. The party was over. Through a thick half-drunken headache I wondered what time it was. I pulled on my pants and opened the door. There was Laura Sally passed out on the couch, with a nasty pasty look on her face as though she'd had a hard night. I bent over and gave her a kiss on the forehead. Sweet dreams, bitch. I went back to my apartment.

There was plenty of aspirin.

I woke up smiling.

Finally Stroup wins the day. But only, it should be noted, because the woman he's involved with here's an even bigger prick than he is.

Do I really feel that way about the publishing industry?

Who, me?

It should be noted that this was the first time I was ever censored—the title was censored no less—and that it was done by a stroke magazine. That's got to be some kind of distinction.

FISH

Stroup was sitting in a bar. He was half lit, morose, and faltering.

He was after a woman but there was nothing there. So he talked awhile with the bartender and ordered scotch-and-waters and waited for things to change. It was looking to be a long night. All the good ones came in pairs and went right to the tables in the back. Stroup was never much good at the tables. At the bar he was different. Relaxed, easy. He could talk and pitch all night at the bar. At the tables he was just another rumdumb hoping for a pickup. He looked awkward and superfluous.

Besides tonight he had no confidence. He felt big and fat and ugly. That was bullshit he knew. He had little extra weight on him but that was all. He was ugly but that was nothing new and it never stopped the women before. Maybe the scotch would give him confidence. Dutch courage. He drank.

The problem wasn't his. The one with the problem was Carla. This time she'd practically pushed him out the door. Gave him no choice. Wouldn't screw him, nothing doing, just wasn't up to it she said. He didn't know why. They'd fought and he'd left. So you had to get it somewhere, didn't you? It was a pain in the ass because what was a woman for, what was the point to living with a woman besides putting an end to the chase and here he was again cruising. Cruising and drinking too damn much for his own good.

So he'd hurt her a little last time. Got a little rough. He didn't mean it. You'd think he meant it, you'd think he was really fucked up or something. There were times you just got carried away was all. And sometimes she seemed to like the rough stuff.

He didn't know what the hell she wanted. Never had. It made him feel bad. He wondered why he took all this crap. He'd never understand her. You go through life looking for god knows what from a woman but at least you want somebody to make you content to stay home nights and then when there is someone and you think, at last, hallelujah she goes all deadass on you, she'd rather read the paper. What was a guy to think about himself? Life could drop you like a steer. It was a six-gun world, a swamp-bottom universe.

The guy next to him was drinking something pink and pretty, some awful shit. He wanted to talk.

"You ever read these men's magazines," he said.

"Never."

"I do. You know, once in awhile. Read this thing the other day. You wouldn't believe it."

"Probably not."

"You really wouldn't. About a guy gets turned on by fish. Fish! What do you think of that?"

"Fish, huh."

"That's right. Grew up in a fish store, his parents owned a fish store. Used to fantasize rubbing his mama's tits with filet of sole."

"That's disgusting."

"Lot of sick people out there, I tell you. Guy would take a mackerel into the bathroom with him and whack off over this dead fish, he'd tickle his ass with what do you call them? the dorsal fins. A painter this guy was. You know what he'd paint?

"What?"

"Naked broads and fish."

"Together?"

"That's right."

"Jesus Christ."

"What do you think of that?"

"I think it's nuts."

"Damned right it's nuts."

"Wonder what it would be like, though," Stroup said, "to smear a woman up with fish."

"Disgusting. That's what."

"Yeah. Stink like hell, wouldn't you."

"Like death itself."

"Yeah. What about lobster?"

Fucking people, thought Stroup, they're a bunch of lunatics. Here's this guy all dreamy-eyed over half a pound of flounder. He scowled. Nip that conversation in the bud, jesus! He didn't need it. He wished there were a way to go home and still save face. He wished Carla didn't make him feel so damn mad, so lousy all the time. Bars were places you went to looking for what you knew could not possibly be there. He knew about bars. You went to a bar hoping somebody would come along and rescue you. But nobody would show. Hell, they were all the same as you, losers losing and hardly worth a damn.

A woman sat down beside him. Stroup had a look at her. She was drunk, leaning low over the bar. Not much to look at but not so very bad either. A shame to see them down like that, he thought. It was always worse seeing the women.

This one wanted to talk too.

"I swear," she said, "that if I don't find a job within one week, as a waitress or something, I'm gonna kill myself."

"Huh?"

"If I'm not working as a waitress within one week then fuck it, I'm checking out."

"You must want to sling chili pretty bad."

"Something," she said. "Anything. Is that asking too much? Job as a waitress in some lousy place like this?"

"That's nothing."

"Damn right. But it's something to me. Hey, I'm not stupid you know. I just finished my dissertation as a matter of fact. I've been locked up in my apartment with a dissertation for three and a half weeks. This is my first night out. It's finished now and what do I do? First night out in over three weeks? I go out and get shitfaced. Yeah, I know. I know I'm shitfaced. Don't give me that goddamn look. But see, something's gotta happen for me now. I'm broke.

Tuition, books, all of it. I'm flat fucking broke. I give myself one week to get a job or I'm dead meat."

"What was the dissertation?"

"Melancholia."

Stroup ordered drinks. She said she was broke so he paid. What a mess she was. Hair all long and tangled, skin the color of mushrooms, grey as death. It was too bad. She could be okay if she fixed herself up a little. She got up to take a piss. She walked with a drunken stoop. Waddled, bobbing her head like a chicken. She shuffled to the back of the room and Stroup drank a little and then she was back sitting heavily on the bar stool beside him. There was no light to speak of in the place but she squinted at him anyhow.

"What do you do?" she said.

"I'm a writer."

"And you got a girlfriend, don't you."

"Yes."

"Well I write myself. Here, look."

She pulled a pen and notepad out of her purse. Sat there composing a poem on the bar. She finished and showed it to him. It was the worst piece of shit he'd ever read. There was only one halfway decent line. Eros to me is the longing to remember I am lovable. That was almost okay. Almost.

"What do you think?"

"That's the worst piece of shit I've ever read."

"You should see my dissertation."

They laughed. Cheers she said and they both downed their drinks. Stroup ordered two more.

Then in walks this fine piece of ass and Stroup forgot all about her.

He was lucky. The guy to the other side of him had just got up and headed for the door and that left Stroup sitting beside the only empty stool at the bar. The girl sat down. She smelled fine and Stroup could glance out of the corner of his eye down the loose blouse cut low over her breasts. He did that a number of times.

He started talking to her and they hit it off. Well well.

Stroup was rolling strong when somebody took his arm and leaned in close so he could smell too many cigarettes and bourbon instead of the high musky perfume. It was the drunk, the poetess.

"Will you take care of me tonight?" she said.

"Will I what?"

"I'm drunk, much too fucking drunk. I'm sorry to interrupt your conversation. But would you take care of me?"

The other girl had turned away and he got the feeling she didn't like hearing this.

"Hey listen," said Stroup, "You seem like a nice enough lady and all but..."

"I just don't want to be alone right now. Ever get that way? So that it's important?"

"Sure, I guess so, but..."

"Can we get out of here? Will you take me somewhere?"

"Where you want to go?"

"Take me home."

"Aw, jesus."

She just looked at him.

"Lemme think about it, okay?"

It's crazy. You do some things and there's no reason why. At least Stroup couldn't figure it. Maybe he'd lost the will to hustle for a while. He didn't know. Whatever. But he waited for the girl beside him, the new girl, the beauty with the low-cut blouse, to get up and take her piss and then he took the drunken poetess out of there. Figured why not walk her home. Tell the other girl when he got back this that one was his cousin, had to get her on a train or some damn thing, she was too drunk to get there herself. No big deal. Make sure she didn't get her ass mugged along the way. Do something nice for a change. Why the hell not.

"It's a damn shame," she was saying, "I can't seem to connect with anybody. You're the first one. You seem like a nice guy."

"Yeah. Well sometimes. Maybe."

Nice guy was not a phrase Stroup was generally speaking comfortable with. He wasn't now. He basically equated it with sucker.

"I think it's the dissertation's made me crazy. What a subject to lock up with for two and a half months, huh? Melancholia."

"I guess somebody has to."

"Do you know that dissertations break up a lot of marriages? They do. It's very common. A lot of marriages. You'd be surprised."

"You'll be okay."

"I will. You're right. Anyhow, I see my psychologist tomorrow night. Seven o'clock. All I gotta do is hold out till then, that's all."

"It's that bad?"

"This is it," she said.

It was a basement apartment. She had some trouble with the doors. Stroup stood on the top step watching her. Finally she was inside and both doors were open and she turned to him. She seemed almost sober for a moment.

"Of course it's that bad for chrissake. You think I like begging you to leave when there's another woman on your arm? And another woman you probably live with? When I'm all fucked up and you're doing this just to humor me? Nobody likes to beg. Asshole!"

Stroup just stood there. Finally she shook her head.

"I'm sorry. Jesus. Can't you just come in and sit with me awhile?"

She looked at him but he said nothing and then she shrugged. "I'm loaded and probably disgusting. Do what you want. You coming in or not?"

"I'm coming in," he said.

The apartment was clean but small and stale with the odor of cat piss. She had a cat and a mongrel dog. They each made their overtures. There were photos of animals, posters, on all the walls. No people. It was a lonely room. In the middle of the room there was a desk with a typewriter and a cigarette tray filled with butts. Beside the desk a big pile of books. No television, no stereo, no radio. Just animals and a place to work.

She made instant coffee. Stroup sat down beneath a portrait of a Pomeranian. She told him her name was Dee Dee and he asked what name she was born with and she said Diana. He said he was calling her Diana then. Dee Dee was one of those bullshit names some asshole gives you when you're a kid and it was ridiculous, her weaving around stone drunk looking like a beat chicken and wearing a name like Dee Dee. He asked if she'd meant it saying she'd kill herself if she didn't get a job. She said she did at the time. She needed the money and she'd done all this work, this dissertation, without getting paid a cent for it. Hell she'd had to pay them for the privilege of working herself half to death. It was unfair, she said. Now all she was after was a decent day's pay for a decent day's work.

Stroup told her lots of luck with that.

He drank his coffee and thought how strange it was that he was sitting there. Drunk the way she was she was unattractive to him yet he was listening to her. He liked listening, he was interested.

And maybe in a way she wasn't so unattractive. It was never much fun making it with a drunk, he didn't think he'd want to make it with her. But he wasn't exactly thinking of her as just a drunk. Maybe it was because she'd asked him for something that was simple and easy for him to hand to her. A walk home, a little company. Things weren't that way with Carla. They were never that easy and straightforward. Stroup never knew what the hell to give Carla, never knew what the hell she wanted. And she pretty much never said. Not outright anyway. He had to intuit everything. As far as intuition went he had shit for brains.

It had been awhile since he'd felt this...useful. He could hang around until she fell asleep, couldn't he? Sure he could. In her condition she couldn't hold out long anyway and there was nothing so damned important waiting for him out there. A girl in a low-neck blouse, maybe. And maybe he'd get real lucky and she'd still be there when he returned.

"You go on and get some sleep," he said. "I'll just sit awhile and read a magazine till I know you're off. No problem."

He looked around for a magazine. Cat Fancier. Dog's Life. Cat and Caboodle. Ah, here we go. Natural History.

"You really are nice, Stroup."

"Yeah. I'm nice. Tell it to my old lady."

She got out of her clothes. He flipped the pages.

"Don't you want me?" she said. She stood there naked. Swaying.

He looked at her. Her body was surprisingly good. It was tempting.

"Nothing personal. But no, not really. I don't think so."

"What if I want you?"

He had to think about it. Did that change things any or didn't it? He was being asked to perform for her, right? Or was he?

Perform. Wasn't that the kind of thinking Carla would come up with? Something out of Ms. or Cosmo? He played with the word. Something felt wrong about it. Perform just didn't sound right in this instance. Maybe he was being asked something else, then. It was just as easy to lie with a woman as to sit up with her all night long. And maybe now he had a handle on something.

Nobody likes to beg, she'd said.

"Whatever you want, Diana."

He climbed into bed with her and drunk or not she was good. Really very good in fact, her body yielding and gripping, slowly somehow gaining purchase of the night, he thought. So that perhaps it would gain purchase of the following night as well. Stroup could hope so. And asking him to sit there with her had been just a fraud, a hoax, a way of wooing him. Fine. Afterwards they wisecracked about her tactics and found them agreeable. Then they fell asleep.

In the morning Stroup was first awake and sat over instant coffee watching her. She was still not lovely and the place smelled of sour booze and cigarettes and cat piss but it pleased him to sit and watch. She woke up and they talked awhile while she fed the cat and dog and poured herself some coffee. She was going to shower and get ready and go out and hunt for a job and then in the evening there was her shrink. When she opened the door for him they saw it was raining so she gave him a newspaper to hold over his head and gave him a peck on the cheek goodbye. Two friends who would probably not see one another ever again.

He walked home in the rain. He had money for a cab but it was a warm morning so there wasn't much point and besides he wanted to walk. Gave him time to think. Carla'd be at work by now. He'd write awhile and then call her later, say something nice to her. They'd make it up and when she came home they'd fuck like wildcats. That was how it was with them. Maybe it would change one day and maybe not.

Soon the newspaper was soaked through limp over his head and no use to him at all. He held onto it anyway and let the rain pelt him all the way back to his apartment.

Hard to take, isn't it? Almost unbelievable. Stroup finally does something nice for somebody. A woman, no less. Evidently the editors I sent the story to, most of whom knew Stroup well by then, thought it was hard to take too, because though most of them seemed to like it I kept getting the same responses. It's too sad, "too much of a downer."

I guess getting pissed on while you're screwing struck them as a whole lot merrier.

Do I really think that about the publishing industry?

Who, me?

Readers of my novel LADIES' NIGHT may recognize Dee Dee/Diana as one of the characters. Except in that book she doesn't make it home from the bar at all, she turns into a slavering beast instead. For reasons which have nothing to do with her dissertation. But then in that book she didn't have our dauntless hero to escort her.

OLD MEN DANCING

(published as DANCIN')

There were only two things wrong with Ios and the first was the hotel Spence was living in. The landlord was probably the wealthiest man on the island which had made him surly. He was young and good-looking and the only nasty Greek Spence had ever met. He knew he shouldn't stay there. But the ship had arrived at dawn, he hadn't had any sleep the previous night and the hotel was right there on the docks. It was convenient to drop his bags and get some rest. At the time he gave no thought to the fact that it was expensive by island standards or that he'd immediately disliked the Greek. He just wanted the mosquitoes out of there so he could sleep.

The landlord grudgingly went up and sprayed the room and Spence crawled in under the covers, his eyes smarting from bug spray. Only eight hours later did he consider that on his budget it really was damned expensive. But to hell with it for now. He'd get out of there the following morning and up into the hills where the rooms were a dollar-fifty a night and where the action was.

But that was the second problem. The action began at 1:00 a.m. and Spence could never drag himself down the hill before dawn. That meant he awoke around two in the afternoon. Too late to get out of his room without having to pay for an additional day. So he stayed there and watched his money disappear into the hands of the surly Greek, not to mention what he was spending in the bars nights.

Actually there was a third problem too though Spence didn't like to think of it. The truth was that he sometimes felt too old for this sort of thing. Sure, his body looked good enough, he could still compete with the backpackers in that department. But he was thirty-five and Ios was an island of twenty-year-olds. What they could do until six in the morning Spence couldn't do. After hours haunting the discos his back ached and his eyes began to close with the whiskey. He had to score fast or not at all. But there were maybe four men to every woman on the island. So the women could afford to shop around till dawn and that was what they did.

Spence looked bad by then. The strain was apparent. He'd finish up most nights drinking with an Aussie named Colin who was two years younger than Spence but who had even less tolerance for the late hours and none at all for the whiskey. Colin's solution to the problems was that they should leave the island. For him Mykonos was the promised land.

"I tell you, Spence, that's where we should be. I've never had such women! The most beautiful women you can imagine. Not kids like you've got here. The truth is we don't belong here. Mykonos, that's the place for us. I swear to you, Spence, that all the men on Mykonos are queer! Women come from France, from Germany, from Britain, everywhere, all of them looking for sex, looking for a good time and they see all these beautiful men around them but half of them, more than half of them, are queer. So they get frustrated, don't you know. It's a straight man's paradise! We'd do marvelously there. I don't see why you want to stay on Ios. And damned if I want to leave without you. Let's get out of here, all right?"

"I like this island."

"So do I. But it's killing me, Spence. A man's got to have a woman sooner or later. You've got to be realistic. We're too old for this place. We're looking for women, not little girls. Listen, there's a ship for Mykonos at 8:30 tomorrow morning. I want to be on it."

"It's 5:30 now, Colin."

"We'll stay up all night. What do you say?"

"All right."

"You won't regret it. Wonderful. It's set, then."

They ordered another round at Spence's insistence. One last try at the island, he said. And the dancers danced and he and Colin sat watching them, the luster of their open glances fading fast. Once he got up to dance. The girl was polite but in his style, in his moves, in his lean good looks, uninterested. When he returned to the table Colin was more than ready to leave. He wasn't.

"A little longer," he said.

"All right. But I'm going home to pack. I'm going to be on that ship, Spence. Will you be there?"

"Yes. I'll try, Colin. I promise."

And that was the last Spence saw of him. Later he regretted missing the boat to Mykonos. Colin was good company. But there was a girl in the bar with long dark legs who yielded as she danced. He watched her, thinking that her partner was not half what she deserved. She marooned him at his table until, in the half-light of morning she and her incomprehensible young man walked out the door. Spence followed them at a distance. Down the winding cobble stairway to the port. When he awoke it was past noon, the ship was long gone and he was faced with yet another day to make a shambles of his budget.

But again by evening he was in fine form. It had been a good day. He'd gone to the nude beach for a change and this time had not burned. In the mirror he saw that his body was a deep golden brown. Not even a tan line where, on more modest days, his trunks had been. He'd rarely looked so good. He drew strength and well-being from the mirror and resolved that tonight could hardly be like the others.

Nor was it. By midnight there was a tall, blonde, talkative Canadian girl sharing his table. But the talk irritated him. She was after reassurance of some vague order and Spence would not give her any. He was feeling bold and powerful and when he saw the German girl across the floor he decided that a younger man would be more to the Canadian's liking.

He asked her to dance and they danced well together. When the music stopped they laughed and fell into each other's arms as though to test their embrace. Her name was Uta. Her body against him was slim and girlish and the flesh of her arms was very soft.

He walked her home. It was 5:00 a.m. and the Canadian girl watched them go. They had both had a lot to drink. They walked up past the corral. Spence could feel his good shoes slippery with mud. He hoped it was mud. On her porch they turned and kissed and soon his hands were beneath her ass and his cock was hard against her. Her flesh was moist beneath the tight jeans. She wrapped one leg around him and pumped submission to him in the dark.

"Not here," she said. "I have a roommate."

"My place, then," he said.

They walked the broad steps to the harbor, the girl tucked neatly and comfortably beneath his arm. For a moment he thought of Colin leaning over a bar in Mykonos. Of course he'd been right. Sooner or later a man had to have a woman. But Spence was glad he'd found his woman in Ios. You could not refuse to compete. If you did you were already beaten.

He opened the door and cleared his belongings off one of the beds. They undressed in the dark. They came silently together and when he touched her cunt it was already wet for him. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her full soft breasts against him and they fell together to the bed. He was still a little drunk but his head was clear enough. He bit deeply into her soft breast and heard her moan. He took her chin in his hand so she couldn't move her head and stroked her clitoris until he felt the thick heavy sweat well up between them, until she twisted over on the hand between her thighs, wanting his entry.

Then he was deep inside her, the wide lips of her cunt closed over him and the girlish ass in his broad hand, he could feel from beneath each stroke of his cock within, each swell and closure. With her head still immobile between his fingers and her body twisting hard against him he bit her breast again and then her neck and the soft juncture of arm to breastflesh. He felt her open further and his cock swell to meet her and then again the even moist slide that shook them with each stroke until finally she arched against him and her mouth fell open wide. In the thick warm come of her his cock flung off the weeks of loss and longing.

Afterwards he pulled the covers over them and she fell asleep, her head resting on his arm. He looked out the window and saw that it was dawn. He wondered where Colin was now. He brushed away a mosquito. It was strange that he couldn't sleep.

Tonight there was a wildness inside him. It was not the wildness of a younger man, it was a considered violence self-inflicted upon his past, a breach with all that baggage of his years which had weighed him down. He had no modesty, no shame, no responsibility. Anything could be attempted and accomplished. It was possible to be reborn in an instant now.

He moved his fingers into Uta's cunt again and waited to see if she would wake. He saw her lips curl into a smile as she grew aware of him, her eyes fluttering in half-sleep. That was what he wanted, to fuck her at the edges of a dream. Her thighs were wet with come as he spread them gently apart and settled in between. He moved into her slowly. She was thick with semen. He drew himself up so that he was barely touching her and began a long slow rocking glide. The cool soft tips of her nipples grazed his chest. She began to stir beneath him, her thighs straining slowly upward. Yet he did not want her fully awake this time.

He stopped, poised above her. His cock was all that joined them now. He felt her relax. Then he began moving again but only barely this time, thrusts so small and slow they were almost painful. She responded, moaned, began to match his rhythm and pressed toward him, the muscles inside her clutching him convulsively, spreading semen out over her thighs. When he realized she was coming again he lengthened his strokes and soon he was coming too with a power which hardly seemed his own, his cock throbbing out an ecstatic rhythm, his body stopped, still and trembling.

We're too old, Colin had said but that was absurd now. Uta was the proof of it. Though it had honestly worried him for a while. What was he doing here in Ios? he'd wondered. Where if you were not a native Greek you were probably a kid just out of college having one last taste of freedom before career and family became more important than freedom. But Spence had deserted wife and career nearly a year ago and missed them not at all, knew very well the value of freedom and in that sense had more than an edge on all of them. Still he'd felt hemmed in, oppressed by the island, all that youthful energy had oppressed him. It was different now. He was on the upswing, he knew. Now, he thought, we will have to see what the energy of a somewhat older man is good for.

He brushed away another mosquito. Dammit!

"What is it?"

"Just a mosquito."

Soon she was asleep again. He watched her. He recalled the pleasure he'd taken in her and relived it, watching. It was fucking, not medicine, which was the healing art. It was wonderful to have a woman again, especially one like this. He hoped Colin was as successful. Colin was a good fellow but in truth Spence worried about him. He was still on the run. You needed to be both more aggressive and at the same time more patient and flexible. You needed to wait and watch and trust yourself.

And to allow yourself a very wide margin for error.

Suddenly he was wide awake.

Dammit! he'd been bitten again! Jesus! They were everywhere! Now that he was aware of them his ass felt itchy. Probably it was just his imagination but he decided to have a look. He moved his arm out from under her and lit the bedside lamp. He was glad when she did not waken. He looked in the mirror.

There were bites on his ass, all right, and up his spine as well. It was worse than he'd suspected. They'd probably had quite a time of it while he and Uta were fucking. His wrist, the one that had been exposed above the covers, had gotten the worst of it. He counted over a dozen bites there in a neat little semicircle. It was beginning to swell. In the lamplight he saw them circling Uta's body in bed. She'd be a mess by morning, he thought. It made him angry. That goddamn Greek! It was impossible to sleep. He didn't know how Uta was managing it. He drew the covers up over her and pulled on a pair of pants and went downstairs.

Even now he was still a little light-headed from the drinking but that didn't matter. The morning was cool and bracing. He knocked at the landlord's door but there was no answer.

"Come on out, dammit!" he said. "And bring that spray!"

He pounded again.

The Greek was dressed in striped pyjamas. "What is the problem?" he said. The contempt in his voice made Spence even madder.

"I'll tell you what's the problem. Your damned room's infested with mosquitoes."

"Infested? Dthen katalaveno."

"You understand me well enough," he said. "Here, look at this."

He raised his wrist.

"If it's mosquitoes you complain about, I told you, I spray two days, maybe three, but then you must buy your own spray. You want me to spray for you, ten drachmas."

Had the man really told him that? He couldn't remember.

"You're not getting a fucking cent. You're already paid three times what they get up on the hill and I want some service for it. You go up and get that goddamn bug spray."

"You Americans," the Greek snarled, "you want everything perfect but you don't want to pay for it."

"Don't you give me that 'you Americans' crap. You see this?" He pulled an old battered press card out of his wallet. It had been void and useless for years.

"I'm a writer," he said. "A travel writer. And your hotel is going to get some very lousy notices, mister."

The lie felt good.

He was surprised to find that he was truly furious now. He was shouting and that felt good too. Almost as good as the fucking.

"Exactly what we expect from you!" said the Greek. "You come home at six o'clock in the morning smelling of whiskey and then you try to blackmail me. Well, write what you want. You Americans are all sons of bitches anyway. I want you out of here. Now! Today!"

"Did you expect me to stay? I'll get out, all right. But first I want some sleep. So you get those damn mosquitoes out of my room."

The man turned and stalked away and Spence knew that he had won.

Uta was sitting up in bed. "You have had quite a morning," she said.

"We'll get some sleep now."

Spence lit a cigarette and waited for the Greek. Uta fell asleep again. Soon there was a knock at the door and Spence opened it. The Greek uncapped the aerosol can and began to spray. Then he stopped and pointed to the bed.

"What's this?" he said.

"What does it look like?"

"You didn't tell me there would be a woman."

"Why should I?"

The Greek said nothing further and finished spraying. The small room was thick with poison now.

"I'll be down before checkout time to settle up," he said. "Have my bill ready."

The man closed the door behind him and Spence climbed into bed. He set the alarm for 10:30. He'd get four hours anyway.

In his dream he saw Colin trapped in the belly of a transparent whale and understood somehow that the whale was Colin's mother and about to give him birth. Colin did not particularly want to leave the whale but neither was he so comfortable that he wished to stay. There was a sort of dialogue between Spence and Colin as to which environment was preferable, the belly of the whale or the open sea. The alarm woke him before it was finished.

He roused Uta and packed his clothes while she used the bathroom. It was a rush job but it would have to do. They arranged to meet in the town square for dinner that evening. In the meantime Spence was going to leave his things with some friends and find himself an inexpensive room up on the hill. He apologized to her for any discomfort he might have caused her. It occurred to him now that he was sober that all this might have seemed very ridiculous from her point of view.

"I slept through most of it," she said.

He went downstairs and into the hotel office and there was the Greek impassive behind the desk. His passport was already out and the Greek was adding a column of figures.

"I do not charge you for the mosquito spray," he said.

"Good."

"You have three nights at one hundred-fifty drachmas and one night, tonight, at two hundred fifty drachmas. You see I do charge you for the young lady. It is a double room so I must be compensated double occupancy. Seven hundred drachmas, please. You may check with the Tourist Police if you wish. I am within my rights."

Spence did not have to check. Nor did he want to. The Greek's face looked grey and ashen. He wondered how such a complexion could exist beneath such a sun as Ios had. He counted out seven hundred-drachma notes and one fifty and tossed them on the table.

"The fifty is for the bug spray," he said. "No, the fifty is to buy you a new disposition, at least for the rest of the day. If you try to give it back to me I promise I will wring your neck. You've got a loser here, right? No argument from me. But this loser doesn't care a shit for you and will buy you for fifty drachmas. Katalaves?"

The Greek looked perplexed.

"That is my pleasure," said Spence.

He regretted the money later. He regretted, also, leaving his razor and comb, soap and soap dish and washcloth in the bathroom in his haste to pack. But he did not go back for them. It couldn't be helped. Nor could it be helped that Uta did not meet him for dinner that night. He'd half expected it.

But late in the evening he found himself in a small taverna up in the hills where two drunken fishermen bought him cognac and danced together, danced until they were exhausted, strong male dances they had learned as children and perfected in the lonely hours at sea. They were old men, yes, but Lord they could drink and dance. There was one dance they seemed to favor which fascinated Spence. They would hold a sponge between them and one man would balance the other as his partner spun across the floor, leaped and feinted in every direction, always close to falling yet always held to point by the sure equilibrium of his partner. And they finished each dance with a slap to the boot and a fresh glass of cognac all around. Spence knew only a little Greek but they taught him all he needed to know to enjoy their company. And it was no trouble to forget the morning when there had been Uta the night before. A man could get by on very little. A man could be patient and flexible. Hang the money, the soap dish, even hang the girl. In a few days there would be Mykonos.

Title changes are a funny thing. The first time I was ever censored was with the title to NEVER TRUST A SMART CUNT WITH TWO FIRST NAMES, which was retitled FIXING HER PLUMBING. This story, originally called OLD MEN DANCING, became DANCIN'. Probably because for the men's mags of the period old was as dirty a word as cunt.

Did I really feel that decrepit and in need of a boost when I wrote the story, at age thirty? I guess I did.

THE LIAR

I sat one row behind her on the opposite side of the bus so at first there was only her profile. The countryside was stark and lovely but now we just watched the girl. She had long brown hair and wonderful light blue eyes and her skin was very pale. I wondered how she'd do in the powerful Cretan sun. She was dangerously fair.

Through the window beside her the land whirled by—olive trees, cypress, century plant, a flurry of poppies, the rolling sun-scorched earth. There was an old man in black by the side of the road loading fresh-cut scrub onto a donkey. She turned to look at him and the blue of her eyes poured into me for a moment. Her mouth was wide, her lips full. In a little while the bus pulled over into the town square. I got up to get my bags and glanced at her again. Her skin was cream-colored and rose against the bright white-washed walls of the taverna.

"What do you figure," I said to Mike beside me. "Irish or English?"

"English," he said.

"I figure Irish. Did you see those eyes?"

"Do you want to meet her?" he asked.

"Of course I do."

He shrugged. "Matala's a small town. It ought to be easy. Just find out where they serve the best calamari and she'll turn up. The English are suckers for calamari."

"What about the Irish'?"

"Screw the Irish."

But Irish she was, born in Dublin, a midwife of all things. Her name was Mary and her best girlfriend's name was Helen but she was traveling alone now because Helen was a bitch who had left her in Mykonos for a Greek boy. That's what she said. She liked delivering babies but had not liked her job before that as attendant in a Dublin asylum.

It was easy to meet her as Mike had said it would be. The next day he had already made a place for himself next to her at Red Beach over the mountain. Like most of us she took the sun naked. Her skin was so pale you could see the delicate web of blue just beneath the surface of the flesh. Her eyes were Ionic blue like the sea. Sometimes it seemed you could gaze right through her to the waves and the sea beyond as though she were transparent, as though she and the sea were one.

She'd decided on the bus that if I asked her I could sleep with her. And of course I was asking. But it wouldn't last. In a few days she would leave Matala to make Istanbul before the ten days left in her vacation were up. I tried to tell her that was a bad idea. The Turks were famous for mauling fair-skinned women travelling alone. We joked about white slavery. I told her that if you wore pants in Turkey you were a whore. She said skirts would be fine with her. She was going.

I admired her independence if not her good sense. But who was I to talk. I had a pound of coke in a suitcase under my bed. The price would be good in Athens but one mistake and I was finished. Maybe she was as vulnerable as she looked and maybe she wasn't.

At dinner that night there was too much cheap cognac so we wandered down to the tourist beach nearby to clear our heads and find someplace to lie down for a while. As usual there was a sky full of stars overhead and you could fix on them and feel the cool breeze over you and the sand cool beneath you and listen to the regular pounding of the waves like a sobering steady hand gliding over your body.

It was a lazy night and we were in no hurry. We kissed like sleepwalkers in a long fine dream. Her hair smelled of the sea. There was drunken laughter and long contented sighs. Whatever passion there might have been was buried beneath strong drink and contentment. We fell asleep.

When I woke up she was gone. So was the moon and it was getting on to morning. I called her as loudly as I dared without waking the campers on the hillside. There was no answer. I tried to remember if she or I had been first to fall asleep. It seemed important. If I had dozed first I might have wounded her somehow. But if she was first, then why had she left me? Had she simply changed her mind? There was nothing to do but go home with my worries and sleep and wait till morning.

It was nearly noon before I was dressed and out the door. Mike and the Canadian girl he'd met the night before were drinking coffee in the square. He called me over and his smile told me he'd seen her. The Canadian girl smiled too. Ironically, I thought. I decided I didn't like her much.

I said, "What's the bad news from Ireland?"

"Ire," he said. "I just saw her on her way to the beach. She's very pissed at you, you know. Very pissed. Says the two of you fell asleep out there last night and when she woke up you'd split."

"What?"

"That's what she said."

"That's crap," I said. "It was the other way around. I woke up and she was gone."

"That's not the way she tells it. I'd give her the day to cool off if I were you. I've already invited her to dinner tonight so you can straighten things out between you then. Sit down and have some coffee."

"No thanks. I'll go over the mountain to Red Beach as long as she's staying here. You think there's a chance she'll come looking for me?"

"I doubt it. You sure you didn't walk out on her, Ben?"

"Are you sure she wasn't kidding you?"

"Absolutely. Odd, don't you think?"

It was odd. I tried to think of some way we could both be telling the truth. There wasn't any. I knew I wasn't lying. That left her. But what was the point? All day long I worked the problem over in my head. I got nowhere. Then at dinner all she did was smile at me.

"Pretty poor trick, mister," she said.

"You're serious, aren't you."

"Of course I am."

"You really think I left you."

"I don't think it. You did. I had to find my way back from the beach alone. I was still rather drunk, too."

"I didn't leave you, Mary."

"Don't be silly."

"I woke up and you were gone. I called you. I looked around. I couldn't find you anywhere."

"Please, Ben, let's not be ridiculous about it. I've long since forgiven you."

"You've forgiven me?"

"Naturally."

"That's nice."

I drank my drink. Leave well enough alone, I thought. There was no explaining it. She was lying for some reason I couldn't figure out. Maybe it didn't matter.

After dinner we walked back down to the beach, back to where we'd lost one another the night before. In the darkness we took off our clothes and went into the water. As the warm calm sea rolled over my thighs and hips it was as though I were already inside her. I rose to meet the ocean's hot womb and when she turned and wrapped her legs around me she was open as a woman who has already had the full hard length of her lover.

Our wetness turned the night air cold. We dressed quickly. We walked the beach slowly in our damp clothes. Suddenly she stopped and turned and kissed me hard on the mouth. I tasted blood. I kissed her back blindly through the fever-chill of pain and cold flesh flashing heat through my lips and thighs. We fell to the sand. I stripped the pants from her and then stripped off my own and lurched inside her again.

"No," she said. "I want to taste you in my mouth. I want to taste both of us."

I did as she asked, clasping my hands to cradle her head. In the moonlight her eyes were wide with fear and greed and something else too. I couldn't put a name to it. Then her lips slid slowly over me and I threw back my head and looked up at the stars. I was in another ocean, another current, warmer than the other and better. Unexpectedly, she stopped and looked up at me.

"Take me with you," she said. "Ask me to go home with you and stay with you. Now. While you're having me. I want to go home with you, Ben. Ask me!"

I asked. I moved down to fuck her.

"Good," she said.

I took her cool sandy ass in my hands and punished her.

I thought I was teaching her not to lie to me.

Two days passed, softly and pleasurably and I figured she'd forgotten all about Istanbul. We made love and sat in the sun. Mike and his Canadian girl were usually with us and it was good to watch the two women get on together, two beautiful nudes lying by the shoreline. I had left my initial problem with the Canadian behind. We lay back, closed our eyes and heard them laughing far away. In the water we let them ride our shoulders and fight each other down again. There were other women on the beach but we had no need even to talk to them. All our needs were cared for now.

But one night there were a pair of German girls across from us at dinner, their escort a strong affable Swede named Tommy whom Mike had met in Heraklion. While we were waiting for Mary and the Canadian we joked with the girls and I thought how good a German girl was to her man and envied Tommy a little. By the time Mary and the Canadian arrived the atmosphere had become flirtatious. That was fine with Mike's girl but as the Demestica flowed and the heady retsina followed Mary grew sullen. I might have stopped it then but something told me to play it through. The game was innocent enough. The girls were Tommy's. I wondered what Mary was seeing.

I knew now that it had been anger in her eyes on the beach that night because here it was again. A cold muted anger that slowly turned her nasty. The Germans spoke English awkwardly and Mary used that against them. Her jibes got progressively cheaper. Mike and his girl felt the change in her and drew more and more toward the other table. Neither Tommy nor the German girls appeared to notice. I listened long enough to get disgusted and then decided it was time.

"What are you doing, Mary?" I said quietly.

"I expect you know," she said.

"I don't know."

"Do you think I like being made a fool of?"

"I don't suppose you do. But how are you being made a fool?"

"I see you toying with these women. Which one is it you want?"

"I like them both," I said. "I want neither of them. They're with Tommy, or haven't you noticed?"

"I know that kind of woman," she said. "They're with anyone who'll have them. Helen was just the same."

"Helen?"

"In Mykonos, remember?"

"Oh yes. Your girlfriend."

"I hate that kind of woman. Don't call her my girlfriend."

"You're imagining things," I said. "Nobody's making a fool of you."

"Just tell me one thing," she said. "Am I going home with you tonight?"

"Of course you are."

"I thought it was questionable."

"To me it was never questionable. It's getting so now."

"Leave off with them!" she said. Her voice was quiet but I was receiving an order nevertheless. I didn't like it.

"Don't tell me what to do," I said.

"I am telling you!"

Something slid into her eyes dangerous as a snake. A cold anger, physical and somehow erotic, suffused the beautiful face and made it ugly. She was dangerous, all right. I accepted the knowledge with a shock of recognition and a strange intoxication. "You ought to be very careful going to sleep tonight," she said.

There it was. An open naked threat. Suddenly I was very tired of her. I said, "Go. Get out of here. I don't want to look at you." I was cold sober and maybe as dangerous at that moment as she was. "Get out of here before I break your damn neck." She went.

I don't know how she got into my room above the taverna that night unless it was through the window off the long narrow sun-porch which connected all six top-floor rooms. It was accessible by a stairway from the garden below. But when I arrived she was waiting for me on the bed. She had rummaged through my things and found a bottle of cognac. She was either drunk and angry, or just plain angry, I couldn't tell which. She also could have just been stoned. Because she'd also found the cocaine. The bag was open and I wondered how much of it she'd tasted.

"You've got a hell of a nerve," I said.

She looked down at the coke and smiled. "You're a bit cheeky yourself, then, aren't you."

"Are you drunk?"

"Are you?"

"Let's go out on the terrace," I said. I wanted some air and time to think. I didn't like the turn things were taking.

We sat down in the deck chairs and I let the huge theatre of sky and stars produce the accustomed calm in me. After awhile Mike and the Canadian girl appeared and I handed them the bottle of cognac. They took it with them to the far side of the terrace, away from her, unwilling to get too near until they were more sure of her again. That left me to reconnoiter the territory. I didn't want the job. I would just as soon be rid of her. But there it was.

There was something merry and predatory, something utterly incongruous in her eyes as I looked her at that made me wonder what cards she figured she was holding. She had draped a white cotton sheet over her body. She was naked underneath. I supposed that was one card. The coke was another. What else? I got right to the point.

"I don't want you here," I said. "Not anymore, not after tonight. I don't like being threatened."

"In your position I can understand that."

"There you go again."

"I'm sorry. It's just that you always seem so vulnerable."

"Vulnerable? What are you talking about?"

"Remember that first night on the beach, when you thought I had left you?"

"Yes."

"I hadn't left you. I was right there a few feet away. I heard you calling."

"That's impossible."

"You think so?" She laughed. "And now look at you, holding cocaine in a foreign country, a secret that isn't a secret anymore. You could go to jail, couldn't you."

"I could also wring your neck."

"No, you couldn't. Look."

Before I knew it she was up off the chair and standing in front of the window to the room next to mine. It was dark inside. A couple of Italians were staying there. She opened the cotton sheet and if the Italians were awake they could see her standing naked in the moonlight. She began hooting like an owl.

It was four in the morning.

"Hoo, hooooo," she said. "Get your asses out to play with us, dears! Come on!"

She flashed the sheet in front of her like a matador and moved to the next window. Kicked a chair out of her way. It crashed to the railing. An American couple was in there. Not young and very conventional. Before she could repeat her owl act I was out of my chair and slapping her hard across the face, wrapping her in the sheet and hauling her into our room. I had a glimpse of Mike looking astonished. Inside she began to cry.

"You bloody bastard," she said. "You damned bloody bastard."

"Shut up," I said. "One more sound out of you and I'll fucking kill you."

It was just what she wanted to hear.

"You wouldn't dare," she said. She dropped the sheet to the floor. "I dare you. Come on. Kill me, you bastard. Try and kill me."

"Just make another sound."

She opened her mouth to scream. I put my hand over her mouth and pulled her down to the bed. I held her tight against me. She bit my fingers and began to struggle. I needed both hands to hold her so I pulled the hand over her mouth away. Something told me she wouldn't scream. Suddenly I got the picture. She wanted to hurt me with pure Irish muscle. She wanted to hurt me and make me hurt her at the same time. It was a good hard fucking she was after and all of this had been some kind of crazy foreplay.

I pinned her arms above her head with one hand and slapped her again with the other. He eyes flashed pleasure at me. I slapped her again. She smiled. It was going to be one hell of a night. I spread my free hand over both her breasts and dug hard at the nipples. She groaned and writhed and tried to throw me. I held on. I brought my knee down on her stomach and doubled her over. I figured that would hold her for a while.

I stepped back, pulled off my pants and mounted her. She was coming almost as soon as I got inside, slippery with pain and lust. But tonight she'd planned to drive herself wild and I was hardly through. Even as she shuddered under one orgasm I could see her working herself up for another. Her hands went to her breasts and she squeezed them long and hard. When her hands fell away her breasts were inflamed and her knuckles dead white. I felt her fingernails dig into the flesh of my ass and rake across my back and shoulders. I got hold of her hands again and spread her arms wide against the bed.

"Bite me," she said. "Bite me hard! Draw my blood, you bastard!"

I obliged her.

I bit deep into the soft flesh of her pale upper arm, deeper into the joint of arm and breastflesh, deepest of all into her long damp beautiful neck, each time slamming at her with my cock held hard and high against her. I drew back and opened my mouth wide and saw her gasp as I came down on her breast, filled my jaws with her and then moved slowly back and away, closing hard over her breast, biting and scraping back in slow withdrawal until there was only the tip of her nipple between my teeth, erect and salty-tasting and I knew at last I'd bloodied her. Her orgasm was like a slow dying. Her body arched against me and fell, arched and fell, arched and fell again and then I came inside her too and we collapsed into an unholy heap of stink and sweat.

Soon she fell asleep. I sat awake for a long while watching her. Remembering what she'd said to me at dinner. You ought to be very careful going to sleep tonight. To hell with it, I thought. To hell with you. Then I too fell asleep.

I got rid of her the following morning. I put her on a bus to Herkalion and watched her smile at me through the window. It was as though we had always been good friends. To the very end she was unfathomable.

I stayed on in Matala two more days then I left too. It was time to get to Athens and deliver. In Heraklion I boarded a ship for the mainland. It was a second-class ticket and the compartment was filled with Greeks and students on their way home to school in September. I sat down next to a pretty blonde who was reading a book I'd just finished, THE GREEN HILLS OF AFRICA. It was a good way as any to start a conversation. I remarked on the coincidence and pulled my copy from my travel bag to show her. She had just arrived from Hania in the northwest. She had walked the gorge. I said it would be nice to do that someday. Some other trip. I asked if she was traveling alone and midway through her story I realized who she was.

"I don't believe this. Is your name Helen?" I said.

"How did you know?" she said.

"Because I just said goodbye to your girlfriend," I said.

On the road you have many options. You can tell the bald truth about yourself or you can try on a pack of lies and see what fits. No one knows you so you're free to choose.

The truth always tires me less.

I told her what kind of woman her girlfriend was. I left nothing out. I even told her about the cocaine. Then she told me. That it was all daydreams. There had been a Greek boy back in Mykonos but he was Mary's, not Helen's and one day Mary just disappeared on both of them. As to Istanbul, that was impossible. By now Mary would be back in Dublin. She was due to start work the following day. That meant she'd stayed with me right to the last possible minute. There had never been any intention of going to Istanbul.

There had never been any midwifery either. She worked for a greengrocer.

I asked about the madhouse.

"She's never worked in one to my knowledge. But I'm afraid she does visit them now and then," she said.

It wasn't surprising. But I wondered how close I'd come to dying that night. I remembered her threat.

Helen told the truth, though, and told it nicely. We arranged for a bunk together and screwed our way across the Sea of Candia. She stayed with me in Athens and waited outside the hotel while I made my delivery. Her eyes were not blue and her skin was deeply tanned.

There was nothing transparent about her.

This is based on an actual incident or series of incidents. Though I was not stupid enough to try to deal coke or anything else during my travels in Greece. The character Mary later became the model for Lila, the beautiful crazed antagonist in my novel SHE WAKES. It was necessary in that book to leave out the coda on the ship with Helen but believe it or not, it's absolutely true.

And I was scared of Irishwomen for years afterwards.

THE LIAR won Swank's Best Fiction of the Year Award for 1979 and appeared in their annual Best of Swank collection in 1980.

THE FRENCH

We were down at Red Beach every day and that was where we saw them. But they kept to themselves and so did we, taking the sun until even the gin and grapefruit juice didn't help and it was necessary to go into the water, basting ourselves with sonnenmilch when we got out again and trying not to burn. When the heat got to be too much we would sit up into the sea breeze and put on sunglasses and eye the naked women. That was how we first noticed the French. When they were naked you didn't see the greasy silks and the camp dust. You just saw how good the women looked and how mean. I wanted one of them in a passive sort of way, not any one of them in particular but any of the dozen or so. Just a tough little French runaway with a cruel line to her jaw who would give me a good hard time for a while. But we both had Swedish women who were good women so that was out. The French were beautiful though.

Matala is a fine town but a very small town too, the kind of place that changes fast and visibly in high season. I had been there for a week, a nice easy life with the pound tucked away in my suitcase awaiting delivery. My man in Athens was in no hurry and neither was I. There was plenty of money. In Greece a couple of hundred dollars is plenty. And Matala was a good safe place to rest and occasionally sample the merchandise.

Or it was for a while.

But now the town seemed to be slowly turning ugly. Talk had it that the French were responsible, that the campground up the hill from the tourist beach was surly now and perhaps no longer safe. I didn't know about that and neither did Tommy. We had money so we didn't bother with the campgrounds. We were out of town a ways at the Minos and we each had a woman and we both drank a bit too much and all we knew of the French was that the men used mascara or coal and that the women were hard and beautiful and dressed in silks from India.

Besides, around the same time we started hearing rumors about the French, Tommy seemed to be trying to get us both killed every day, so evenings we had our own stories. There was nobody who looked milder than Tommy but with a few drinks in him there was nothing he liked better than the short fuse or bad odds.

He was a big Swede with a gentle voice and he seemed very mild and easy. But he was a very dangerous fellow and probably he was born bad yet that was the way he liked it and he was a very good friend to me. If Tommy got you into trouble and there was a way out of it and he could see it, you'd be out of trouble way before Tommy was, he'd be sure of that, and you could trust him.

But there was almost always trouble.

He came paddling over in a cheap plastic kayak one day and suggested that we use it to explore a cave he'd found. I could barely fit into the kayak and it was a precarious business getting into the cave and then, once inside, we turned the damned thing over and my breakfast was a lungful of salt water.

The next day he wanted to hunt for fossils. He knew I was interested in fossils and he had found a bed of them which he said was a very rich bed high up in the cliffs over Red Beach. The cliffs looked fine but once you were on them they were a catwalk of crumbling sandstone with the sea and the rocks far below and there were fossils all right but there was no way to get them down and hardly any way to get us down either.

We had no ropes and we were stark naked besides because Tommy had said what an easy climb it was and our descent was the worst two hours of my life. At nearly every step the sandstone fell away underfoot and I had to hold on to the vertical cliff-face like a spider to keep from going over. That was no good either because the rock above fell away too. I cursed the stuff and kept going, holding one terrific fossil stubbornly in one hand and the rock face with the other.

Tommy was out ahead of me all the way and I could see he was having a hard time of it too. The poor bastard had probably made one wrong turn and here we were, wondering if we'd survive. Then suddenly I felt something come loose beneath my hand and a stone the size of a grapefruit whacked me in the back of the head. I heard it splash into the water. Everything went bright yellow for a moment and then black and then bright yellow again. My vision cleared and I moved on. I didn't dare worry about my head. The important thing was to keep moving and get down and not to fall.

We reached bottom with hands and feet all bloody, trembling and sweating with fear. The back of my head felt raw and pulpy. I tumbled down on the sand and on my knees called Tommy every kind of asshole I knew in every language I knew while he stood there panting and grinning at me. And it was then that I saw Tommy's grin for the first time really. A cold clear light from the bottom of hell and merry to the very end. He noticed the back of my head and I watched his face change just as a wave of nausea hit me and I blacked out on the sand.

I wasn't out for long. When I awoke I saw one of the French girls bending over me. She had grey-green eyes and she was one of the sad and dangerous ones I'd been admiring.

"Your head is bleeding," she said.

"Cracked it on a rock," I said.

"Let me get some water."

Her voice was soft and strangely without expression or concern I thought but she returned with a jar of water and a towel and washed my head. She had been on the beach for days but I noticed that her skin was still fair. She had a beautiful body. She said nothing further. The wound was not a bad one so I thanked her and she smiled distractedly and then returned to her party. Tommy decided he had better get me back over the hill into town. He was all remorse.

"It's not your fault," I told him.

"It was my idea, wasn't it? I swear I never thought that climb would be so bad. It wasn't last time. I got turned around up there."

"Forget it."

"I feel terrible. Suppose you've got a concussion?"

"I haven't got a concussion. It's nothing. Save your breath for some more climbing. Hell, you're just trouble. I've known that all along. From now on I'm just going to know it a little better, that's all."

"You've got one hell of a bump there. But it's stopped bleeding, anyway. I'm really sorry, Ben."

"Hell, Tommy, I had a fine time."

I had three quarters of a beautiful old sand dollar in a pound of matrix to show for my trouble and I had seen that crazy smile. I was very proud of the sand dollar and showed it around everywhere until a shop owner cited the Greek antiquities law and impounded it. With what I had in my room I couldn't complain.

I stayed out of the sun for a few days while my head was healing and Tommy kept me company. Our women had gone on to Hania to hike through the Gorge so we were alone most of the time. The Domestica was cheap in the marketplace so we did our drinking there and once in a while someone would come up off the tourist beach and join us for a glass and then go back down again. But the French were all over at Red Beach every day so we hardly saw them until the night of the roundup.

There was a place down by the sea where the calamari was well-prepared and always fresh so we liked to eat there. You could look out over the tiny harbor with the tourist beach beside it, then up to the cliffs filled with caves the backpackers had slept in for years until the town became famous for them and thus too crowded and too prone to drug traffic, so that the caves were off-limits now, and then out to the sea for the fast wonderful sunset. All along this strip of harbor there were restaurants but this one had the best food and the best view of all.

We were finishing dinner one night when six policemen walked into the restaurant just next to ours and looked around. It was damned surprising to see them there. You almost never saw a cop in town and certainly not six together. Matala had no police, it had to import them. But rumor had it that the night before there had been some stealing at the campgrounds and evidently the haul was a tidy one. Passports, travelers' checks, currency. Even a credit card or two.

And it was the French they suspected. There were six of them sitting in the restaurant. The police hauled them out of their chairs and demanded to see their passports. There was shouting and name-calling while the passports were produced and examined and then a few more police arrived with a few more French in tow.

Finally there were maybe thirty French and plenty of cops and they herded the whole bunch of them down to the beach and dumped their packs and suitcases out on the sand while we watched and drank our cognacs.

The cops were thorough. They went through everything. The French were furious but there was nothing they could do. Soon the beach looked more like the town dump than a tourist beach. The French were screaming and the police were screaming and the entire town watched from the restaurants and the shoreline.

I had never seen Greek justice before.

It wasn't pleasant, not for me.

But they were not going to miss. I looked for the girl who had washed my head for me and she was there. Every French national in town was there. The girl seemed to be trying hard to stay under control. She looked even better to me now than she had then. She was explaining something to a policeman and when she talked her long thin hands moved ceaselessly and when she stopped speaking they remained poised and trembling in front of her. She was slim and very beautiful.

It took over an hour but in the end they let the crowd pack up their gear and disperse while they pushed two sullen unhappy boys ahead of them up the hill to the paddywagon. Their silks were worn and dirty but one of them was a big fellow and you could see he was a leader of sorts, he had dignity, and that he had just lost a very important battle. I felt a bit sorry for him though it seemed to me that stealing in a foreign country was probably a very stupid thing to do. Then again moving drugs was probably not so brilliant either.

We finished the wine and walked over to the Dolphin where the liquor was cheaper and they had some old fifties rock music we liked to hear. It was the last place in town to close up at night and the best place to find a woman since it had the only dance floor. We walked by the paddywagon and saw the Frenchmen were inside and it looked like the cops were giving them a pretty hard time. The big fellow's face was hard and disdainful but the other boy was crying.

It was unpleasant to see so we just kept walking.

Inside the Dolphin the French were doing some serious drinking. We sat with friends and talked awhile. Meantime we watched them. Everybody did. You couldn't say they were getting much sympathy but they had been through a hell of a circus at the hands of the Greek police and there was some respect for that. Yannis, the barman, put a bottle of red wine on their table and told them the house was buying. "That everyone should be friends," he said.

"Yannis is crazy," Tommy said. "He's handing out free liquor to a pack of thieves."

"You can't say they're thieves, Tom," I said. "The thieves are outside in the wagon."

"Sure I can. Look at them. They all look guilty as hell."

He was right. In one way or another they all did look guilty. It was good to see that the girl was not among them.

I didn't like watching them there.

"It's a peace offering," I said.

"He's crazy. Probably just hoping to make it with one of the women."

"Maybe. But in that case maybe he's not so crazy."

"I guess. It's a pretty bad fucking group though."

"You think?"

"Oh yeah, sure. Very bad, very distasteful."

Then there was that smile again.

"But then what the fuck can you expect from a Frenchman," he said.

I mean he said it loudly.

And I guess I was a bit fuzzy with the cognac, a bit slow to react to what he'd done because while I was still laughing somebody leaned across the table and put a fist in Tommy's face. Then things got clear enough, though because there were three of them, two on Tommy and one on me and we were suddenly very busy.

Now my man wasn't a big man. He was small and wiry and mad as hell, so mad that he was easy. He swung once, wide and high. I pulled in tight and let him have it in the kidneys. He howled and went down. Then I turned to Tommy.

They both were on him but he was doing fine. They had made the mistake of grappling with him instead of standing back and slugging and that was to the good. Tommy had big arms and hands and one man was hurting bad with Tommy's arm around his neck while the other had Tommy in a similar hold from behind. But his hold wasn't working. The man didn't have the power. Tommy did.

When he'd hurt the first man sufficiently he let him drop and then turned in the other man's arms and for a while they looked like lovers standing there until Tommy broke the Frenchman's hold, took one step backward and slapped a fast right to his nose. The nose cracked and started leaking blood all down his mouth and chin. The man sagged into a chair and threw back his head to stop the bleeding and it was over.

Except for Yannis hollering.

Except for the police whistles outside.

There was nothing to do but run.

"You dumb sonovabitch," I said. "Do you know what I'm holding?"

"What?"

"A pound of coke."

We ran. It was late and the streets behind the Dolphin were empty. I didn't hear them behind us but I didn't want to assume anything. Maybe the French had got the blame, maybe not. There was no sense taking chances. We ran steadily and quietly. Pretty soon we could see the Minos up ahead.

"I think we made it," I said. "Let's walk the rest of the way. I don't want to upset the neighbors."

"Okay."

Greeks are frugal people. On a moonless night a Greek country road is one of the darkest, loneliest places you'll ever see. But by Greek standards our landlord was a very affluent man and he had a lantern burning all night long. It hung from a tree in front of the hotel. There was somebody under the tree. Somebody just standing there, not moving. We strained to see. And then we did see. Something had told me it wasn't the police. I couldn't be that unlucky. We kept walking.

It was the girl—the French girl. I was very relieved. I said hello and listening to her voice I had that strange feeling again, it was that same vacant voice I remembered. She spoke just to me as though Tommy wasn't there at all. I couldn't tell what to make of her.

"May I come inside?" she said. "May I come in with you?"

I looked at Tommy. "Sure," I said.

"Is there a problem?" Tommy asked her.

"No," she said. "No problem."

We went inside. Tommy and I had adjoining rooms so we said goodnight at the door as though nothing had happened at the Dolphin at all and Tommy went to his room and I went to mine with this strange French girl on what was probably one of the strangest nights of my life.

"Were you looking for me?" I asked.

"Yes."

"How did you find me?"

She shrugged. "You've been here a few weeks. You are known."

Her voice was still empty, impossible to figure. But it seemed to me now that she was lying to Tommy before when she'd said no problem.

"Are you in trouble?"

"No."

"Is that the truth?"

"Of course."

She sat down on my bed. She ran her forefinger over the clean course linen sheets.

"You've noticed me before, haven't you," she said.

"Oh yes, I've noticed you."

"Do you want to sleep with me?"

Why now? I should have asked her but she looked at me and it was the first time since the day on the beach that I saw her eyes up close which were large eyes and beautiful and direct, not like the evasive gestures or the distant unresponsive voice.

So I told her the truth.

"Yes I do."

The eyes lowered again. There was no smile. She pulled the thin blouse over her head and her breasts were bare beneath and stood slowly and pulled off the loose-fitting jeans, which were so worn and shabby-looking and she was naked there too. Her body was wonderful in the lamplight.

"Come," she said. Just the smallest gesture of her hand.

I went to her and saw that there was a thin gold chain around her neck and that dangling from the chain was a stone in a handsome setting. I knew little of stones but it looked like a good one to me as did the setting and for a moment I knew, I just knew she was a thief, not just the boys in the wagon but her too. And then the moment passed and I was lost in her.

Only next morning did I remember that flash of intuition.

But she was gone by then. And my suitcase was wide open and the coke was gone too.

Staring out at the harbor over breakfast I told Tommy. "Well, Ben," he said, "you've had an expensive holiday."

"You don't think I can find her?"

"No. I don't. She'll be long gone. Forget it, Ben. Forget it."

"Then it was a damned expensive holiday."

"Cheer up. It could have been worse. I could have gotten you killed, remember? Several times."

"Tommy, I have creditors. I'm not out of Greece yet. I could still get killed."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Excuse me?"

"We're friends, right?" He tossed back the thick Greek coffee. "Listen," he said. "I suggest we go fishing. I talked to a man this morning who has a little boat. It's not much but we can get it cheap."

"Jesus, Tommy."

I could just see the water lap the pilings from where we sat.

"I don't know. It looks pretty rough out there to me. Damned rough I'd say. Exactly how good is this boat?"

Tommy only smiled.

A good deal of this story also found its way into SHE WAKES.

I think it's interesting to note that there's really no sex in the thing at all unless you count a little eyeballing on a nude beach and the brief, contact-free scene at the end. That it could appear in a small-circulation men's mag at all tells you how much things have changed since.

Too bad.

THE CHRISTMAS CALLER

The call came just as he was returning from the office party.

"Merry Christmas," she said. "What are you wearing?"

"What am I wearing?"

"Yes." Her voice was unfamiliar.

"Um, a grey Paul Stuart pin stripe three-piece suit, double-worsted. Is this some kind of survey?'

"What else?"

"Blue silk tie, black socks, black shoes. Why?"

"Knee-length?"

"The socks? Yes."

"That's cute. I bet you're good looking."

"I could stand to lose a little weight." There was something screwy here. "Who is this?" he asked.

"Never mind about that. Take them off."

"Take what off? The socks?"

"No, everything."

"Who is this?"

"Never mind," she said. "Come on. I'm already naked. I have a very beautiful body. You want me to describe myself? I'll describe myself. While you take off your clothes. Are you hard yet?"

"Hard?"

"Is your cock hard?"

"No. But I'll tell you, I'm perspiring a little."

"You are? That's wonderful. Put your hand inside your pants and I bet you get hard in no time."

He pulled at his tie and unbuttoned his collar. He really was perspiring.

"Is this some kind of joke?"

"Of course not."

"Lucy? Is this Lucy?" It was a name out of the distant past but the only one that came to mind. It had to be her. It would be just her style to pick Christmas for a gag like this.

"No, my name is Jeanette," she said.

"You mean this is really an obscene phone call?"

"Don't call it obscene. I wish you wouldn't do that."

"Lucy, is this you?"

"Jeanette, damn it. I told you."

"Sorry."

"Are you getting undressed now?"

"Not really."

"I wish you would."

"Where do you want me to start?" He was wavering. "You mean you'll cooperate?"

"I guess so." Why not? he thought. It was Christmas and she did have a very nice voice. He wondered how far she was prepared to go.

"Gee," she said. "I really didn't think you'd do it. You didn't seem as though you were going to be real cooperative."

"You'll have to pardon me. It's just that I've never had...I mean, this is all new to me. I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to do."

"You're supposed to get undressed, silly. Now you go ahead and I'll describe myself while you do. Get undressed just as though you were taking me to bed. Are you hard yet?"

"Not yet."

"We'll take care of that. Where are you? Are you sitting on your bed?"

"As a matter of fact I am."

"Okay, take off your shoes and socks and get yourself comfortable. You want to know what I look like?"

"Well, I was kind of wondering."

She laughed. "I like you," she said. "We're going to have a good time. You ready now?"

"Yes."

"Okay. You should picture me lying on my bed."

"Is that where you are?"

"Yes"

"Me too."

"Good. Okay, I have long blonde hair and green eyes, a cute nose and I guess you'd say my lips are on the voluptuous side. Wide, I mean."

"Your nose is cute?" The word did nothing for him.

"Cute, yes. Turned up a little. I mean, you wouldn't call it beautiful or anything."

"Do you have freckles?"

"No. Well, I have a few right around my shoulders. Why? Does that bother you?"

"No, I've always liked freckles."

"Oh. Well, okay. I have very slim shoulders and a long slim neck. My arms are long too and so are my hands. Do you know what my hands are doing now? Can you guess?"

"Tell me."

"Playing with my nipples. They get very long and hard when I'm excited. And I'm excited right now."

"What color are they?"

"A very light brown. And they look beautiful against my breasts which are very pale."

"You're playing with both nipples?"

"Yes."

He tried to picture it but it eluded him. "How can you do that?" he said. "I mean, the telephone..."

She laughed. "I have the phone tucked in the crook of my neck and that leave my hands free. Now can you see it?"

"That's much better."

"Good. I'm moving my hands over my body, which is very firm and not fat at all. I have big firm breasts and a flat stomach, a pale firm ass, firm thighs and slim hips. You'd really like looking at me. You really would. Now I'm moving my hands down over my breasts, circling the nipples with my fingertips, pinching both nipples, then down over my stomach and over my navel, which is an inny by the way, down along my thighs, which I'm spreading very slowly now and along the insides of my thighs. And now I have them right there at my...you say it."

"Cunt," he said.

"Say it again."

"Cunt."

"Again."

"Cunt."

"Oh, that does sound good. Are you hard yet?"

"Uh-huh."

"Are you naked?"

"Yes."

"Do you have a big cock?"

"Medium-sized. It looks pretty big right now."

"Oooooooooh," she said. "I wish I were there to suck it. Think of me sucking it for you."

"I already did."

"What are you thinking now?"

"Thinking about fucking you. What color is your pubic hair?"

"Very light brown. I'm a real blonde."

"I've never had a real blonde before."

"You've got one now. I'm a special present, just for you."

"What's next?" he said.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean what do we do now?"

"I have my finger inside my cunt. It's very wet. So I'm going to play with my clitoris. You want to hear it?"

"Sure I do."

There was a brief silence and then he thought he heard something like faucet leaking. He had never paid much attention to the sound before but it was a delicious sound. He heard the plash of the labia as she worked the clitoris in what he imagined were fast even strokes of her finger. It was like the moist lips of an old woman preparing for speech, like ice melting in a distant cave. Soon there was another silence and then he heard her groan.

"I'm almost there," she said.

"Already?"

"Oh, yes," she said. "I'm very hot. I'm coming. Oh, oh! There I go!"

"You're coming?"

"Oh yes, Yessssss."

"Does it sound like anything? Can I hear it?"

"No! Yes! I mean no!"

"Is it yes or no?"

There was the sound of something rolling over something else and then after a short pause he heard her cry out and the receiver barked once in his ear and then began to rattle.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I dropped you."

"Is is over?" he asked. "Did you come?"

"Oh, yes."

"How was it? Was it good?"

"It was fantastic."

"I'm glad."

"Thanks. That's nice of you." There was a brief silence. Then she said, "You're a pretty nice guy. I'm going to do something for you now, okay?"

"Okay."

"Just let me catch my breath."

"Take your time."

"Whew! That really was good."

"Really?"

"It was pretty special."

"I'm glad. Tell me…Jeanette?"

"Jeanette, that's right."

"Jeanette. Don't be offended. But do you do this kind of thing often?"

"You swear you'll believe me if I tell you?"

"Of course."

"This is my first time."

"Really?"

"The very first. I'd thought about it once in awhile. A girl is always getting calls from men, you know. Anyway I thought this would be something different. Sort of a Christmas present to myself, if you know what I mean."

"You just picked my name out of a phone book?"

"That's right. Are you glad?"

"Naturally I'm glad."

"Your name sounded nice."

"It did?"

"Oh yes. Like somebody I'd like to be with on Christmas."

"Maybe we should meet. You know, get together."

"I don't know." She seemed to consider the idea. "I hadn't actually thought of that," she said. "Let's think it over."

"All right."

"Meantime it's your turn now." She laughed. "Merry Christmas."

"Do you think you'll be able to come again right away? With me, I mean?"

"Oh, sure. I get off real easy."

"Good. I want you to make it too."

"Okay, but let's work on you for now."

"Okay," he said. "But you try to make it too, all right?"

"Of course I will. Now go get a picture."

"A picture?"

"Don't you do it with pictures? I thought all guys did."

"Oh, you mean a naked girl."

"That's right. Go get your favorite picture."

He thought about it. "I don't really have one," he said. "A favorite, I mean. Besides, I don't think I really need one."

She was flattered. "You really are sweet," she said. "But it's just my fantasy, you see. I've always wanted to see a boy get off over a picture. Women don't, you know."

"Yeah, I've heard that."

"We really don't."

"But I haven't got a picture. I mean, there are no magazines at all in the house right now. No, wait. Wait, that's not true. Hold on. Will Farrah do?"

"Sure. Is she naked? I didn't think she'd ever done any nudes."

"No. It's just the cover of a TV Guide. That's all I've got."

"You're going to jerk off over a TV Guide?"

"I've never tried it before. But it's a pretty good picture."

"Well, what the hell, then," she said. "Are you hard?"

"Yeah, I'm doing it right now."

"You're masturbating right now?"

"Yes."

"Let me hear it."

"Okay."

"And let me know when you're going to come."

"I will."

He held the phone in one hand next to his cock and stroked himself with the other. He'd licked the palm of his hand so she'd have something to listen to. He looked down and he could almost imagine her head down there, as though she were watching him from between his legs. He did not tell her that in his imagination it was not the photo of Farrah but her he was fucking. Already some part of me's claimed her a little, he thought. I guess I'm just like that. He stared at the photograph but it was her description of herself he saw. Mouth open, face flushed, nostrils of the cute pert nose dilated. He heard the familiar slap of flesh on flesh, felt the familiar spread of warmth within him.

"Okay, pretty soon now," he said, raising the phone. There was no answer. "Are you there?"

"I...oh, yes, I'm here," she said. "But I'm doing it too. It sounded so good!"

"Good. Do it harder, then," he said. "I want us to come together."

"No, you go ahead. It'll take me longer."

"I can wait," he said.

"No, I want to give you pleasure."

"Don't worry, you will. Please don't argue. Pinch one of your nipples for me."

"Mmmmm."

"Now harder."

"I can't...oh, yes."

"Now put one of your fingers inside yourself."

"Okay."

"Now pinch the nipple harder."

"Wait...wait...okay."

"Now stick your finger up your ass."

"But I..."

"Go on, you'll like it."

"No, listen, I never..."

"Try it."

"I'd really rather..."

"For god's sake will you just try it!" Then suddenly he felt it beginning. "Oh, oh, oh...I'm coming. Now... now...Ohhhhhhh!"

His aim was true. He splashed her between freckled nose and toothy grin.

If he tore off the cover fast enough the pages wouldn't even stick. It was only Sunday. Just to be sure he tore off an extra leaf and crumbled the pages together.

"You have no idea how good that was," he said. "Thank you. Really. That was beautiful. This is turning out to be some Christmas."

"Yeah, sure," she said. But there was something new in her voice.

"What's the matter?"

"I'd rather not talk about it if you don't mind."

"But I do mind. I mean, I want it to be good for you too. What's the matter?"

"'Stick your finger up your ass.' How could you? How could you say that to me?"

"I just thought you'd like it," he said.

"How could you think that? You don't even know me."

"That's true. But I…"

"You were thinking of yourself, that's all. Sex is supposed to be a sharing. I mean, just whose obscene phone call is this, anyway?" she said.

"Obscene? You're calling it obscene now?"

"Obscene, yes. 'Stick it up your ass.' What else would you call it?"

"It's just a thing people do, for pete's sake. There's no need to get upset about it."

"Honestly," she said. "You men."

"Aw, come on. Let's not start that routine!"

"I'm not starting anything," she said. "Goodbye."

"Hey! Wait! Don't hang up."

"Well, why the hell not?"

"Because I don't even know who you are. I hate to have it end this way. I'd like to see you sometime. We can straighten this out. Be reasonable."

"Sure you'd like to see me," she said. Her voice was bitter. "So you can tell me what to do, boss me around, make me fit your own dumb ideas about women."

"All right," he said. "Do what you want. Hang up if you want to."

"You don't really give a damn, do you?" she said.

"No. I don't. Not if you're going to behave like this."

"Behave like what?" she said.

"Childish. Unreasonable."

"What's so unreasonable? Really, you men..."

It made him suddenly angry. "Don't give me that you men crap! I'm the one who wants to make peace here. You're the one who's threatening to hang up on me. Don't give me that you men stuff."

Her voice was quiet. "All right," she said.

"What?"

"I said it's all right. Okay. I was a little out of line. I'm sorry."

"All right. Forget it."

"I really did get off on you, you know. A whole lot."

"I got off on you too."

"So what are we fighting about?"

"Nothing."

"That's right, nothing." Her voice was almost tender now. "Are you still hard?"

"A little."

We've had our first fight, he thought. There was a moment's pleasant pause while a warm sated glow moved languidly from receiver to receiver. Then all at once it was over.

"Uh-oh," she said. "I have to go now. There's somebody at the door."

"You want to get together sometime?"

"Let me call you," she said.

"You'll call?"

"Sure I will. Is Saturday a good day for you?"

"In the afternoon. Fine."

"I'll call you Saturday, then."

"You sure you just don't want to get together? For a drink or something?"

"Sure. But not right away, okay? I don't want to rush things."

"Okay, I understand."

"Good," she said. "I'll talk to you soon."

"I'll talk to you, then."

"Good speaking with you, Harry," she said.

He frowned. The receiver went dead.

Harry? Harry? His name was Charles! Oh, god! he thought, that stupid incredible woman! What a ridiculous thing to do. He got out the phone book to look for a Harry with a similar number and his own last name. It took him a hellova while. Then there it was. Harry B., 31 Elvira Street. She was only one digit off. He dialed the number. It was going to be damned difficult to explain. But he knew how to begin.

"Merry Christmas," he said.

This began its life as a one-act, one-character play. I was still dipping into that area now and again. Then the editor of Swank asked me for a Christmas story. I hadn't the foggiest idea what to do. Horny Santas or elves didn't make it for me and reindeer were probably out of the question. So, I intuited, was the sex life of the Virgin Mary.

Then I thought, Christmas is also about the spirit of giving, ain't it?

Who says it has to be socks and underwear?

EAST SIDE STORY

(published as HEAD GAMES)

We were over on the East Side, our third bar that night. In the first one I'd asked the barmaid when things got started. She just smiled at me and you knew that things never got started there. In the second place a drunken blonde was going on and on about what she called the bar's baroque decor. The only way to get rid of her was to leave. Neither Dan nor I knew anything about the East Side. He was from the Village. I was from the Upper West Side. In New York that meant we were both tourists here.

We were also broke but there was enough cash between us for this third bar and we looked pretty good that night and didn't want to waste the creases in our trousers. We sat there feeling pretty snappy, grinning at each other while the music squalled at us from the twin dance floors upstairs. We'd cruised the dance floors and the cruising was very good. Soon something sweaty would slip by looking for a beer and we could make our moves. The place was wholly workable, no question about it.

We had gone to lunch with Dan's agent, who was going to sell this western novel and get him out of the magazines and we'd been drinking ever since. Dan had on his best Brooks Brothers prep look, cashmere V-neck and all, and I wore my all-white Western. My only suit but beautiful. That suit had taken me to lunch. Dan had told his agent it had inspired the entire novel and what did the agent know of the ways of writers? So we sat at the bar thinking about the agent and the good women and smirking contentedly at one another.

Then she walked in.

At first all I saw was money, a thick unrelenting burst of dark hair, a slim body and wonderful pale hands. Delicate hands, sybaritic with rings and bracelets, refined hands with fingers poised like a high-wire man moving on tiptoe along the dark polished wood of the bar. I loved those hands. I'd have loved them on an elf or a troglodyte. Then she turned and buffeted me with a little smile and I felt something melt inside me like warm taffy. She was gorgeous.

"Can I buy you a drink?" I asked her.

"I'm with friends," she said.

I turned around and sure enough there were three other women there, one of whom Dan seemed to know from someplace. While I was staring he had already gotten a conversation going. There was too much noise to know what they were talking about but talk was talk.

"Your friends are with my friends," I said. "So, can I buy you a drink? Name's Tony, Tony Campuzano."

"Stephanie." We shook hands.

I had her hand in my hand. We were touching.

"No," she said. "I don't think so."

"No drink?"

"I'll buy my own, thanks."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

There was no payoff to insisting. She didn't look the type you insisted with. Besides, I had about ten dollars in my pocket and from the stuff she was wearing I figured she could buy my suit and all the trimmings and still have enough left in that little bag of hers to stand a round for Southeast Asia. I was willing to be bought if she offered. I liked it easy and it hadn't been easy for a long time. So I let it go—almost. The only way to get money was to spend money, to prime the pump, right? Or at least appear to.

"Later then. You'll have to let me, eventually. I'm celebrating."

"Celebrating?" She cocked an eyebrow at me that made my stomach churn.

I nodded. "Movie deal. My first screenplay."

Hell, I'm not even a writer.

At the moment I was a short-order cook. That of course was temporary. I was really a high-priced photographer but my Nikon was in hock. The lady looked interested, though. I hated to get them that way but what could you do?

"Really?"

"Yeah." I grinned at her. "A western. I haven't even got a book contract yet but the Fox deal ought to help, don't you think?"

"Fox?"

"Fox. Just came through today so my buddy and I are celebrating. Of course, I haven't got the money yet. But in six months..."

"That's really wonderful," she said.

"It is, it really is." I acted like I was mulling it over, reflecting on all those years of struggle. Then I dropped the bombshell. "There's talk of a series."

"Oh my god!" she said. "Television?" There was a kind of reverence in her voice.

I essayed a modest little smile and then decided enough was enough. "And what about you? What do you do?" I asked her.

"Oh, I run a travel business. Small, but growing. And it suits me." I bet it did. Again I sniffed money. I saw all those free trips to Tahiti and Corfu and Paris. I knew I was thinking like a whore. But try working a burger joint for a few weeks. If the lady had the price I had the time.

A few hours later I found myself trying to kiss that delicate bejeweled hand of hers since she kept laughing and avoiding me whenever I went for her mouth. That was okay, though, because I already loved her. She had high cheekbones and full lips and dark lazy eyes that blinked in sensuous slow motion. Her body was patrician, long and slim, just what I'd always liked best and practically never had a chance with.

I told her there were guests at my apartment. She said that was all right, we'd go to her place, which saved me the considerable trouble of trying to explain a one-room All-City Roach-Fest off Broadway at 79th.

Her place was a three-bedroom first-floor split-level off First Avenue, with a butcher-block table in the kitchen longer than my entire apartment. Oriental rugs and Early American furniture, all good antiques. Paintings—not prints or lithos—by Metzinger, Maholy-Nagy, Marie Laurencin. Every light on its own dimmer. A porch garden that had been healthy for decades. Silver. Mahogany. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows facing the street. The place was a shrine to the good life. It made my teeth chatter.

"Beautiful," I said.

She slid shrewdly into my arms. I kissed her once and knew it was forever.

We moved across a carpet any thief would kill for and into a brass bed that was not quite as big as a U-Haul and slid between the satin sheets. Her body was a Bentley in a dealership for Pintos. Long tight languorous legs, smooth and cool as glass, a mean boyish ass, low small breasts that pooled to the touch, small dark pointed nipples, all of her perfect and inviting. I gave quiet thanks that seventy-five sit-ups a day had finally done something with my gut.

Fucking her was god's answer to paying taxes. I moved my hands over her in a kind of ecstatic wonder. Everywhere a blend of cool and hot, a new softness, glide of muscle. As for her, she was hungry as a ferret under me, all mouth and tongue and fingernails. I liked the sharp pain dancing across my back, the wildness beneath me. Had I put it to her then I'd have gone off in a minute and this was too good for that. So I moved down between her thighs and drove us both crazy with my tongue awhile. Soon the satin beneath me had a damp feel to it and you could see it streaked with sweat like trails of phosphorus. She began to scream, little yips that caught and died behind the welter of pleasure moving over her like static electricity.

I slavered over her like a mad beast. She sluiced across my cheeks and chin and slid down along the sides of my neck. Then suddenly I lost her in an uncontrollable spasm so I moved up and into her while she grabbed my ass and pressed me that last half-inch inside her and her body performed little miracles beneath me. I felt her wet me to the balls and shake and cry out and slowly fall away. I stayed where I was and let her drop. After a few minutes I began to move again. I'd caught her in the midst of a half-dream. Her eyes went wide and she looked at me for a moment like I was a total stranger. Then I felt her start to tremble again. It was going to be easy to come together this time, and it was.

I rolled away from her and looked at her and then we were grinning like idiots together in the pale light. I'd forgotten every bit of my scheming, the travel and money, until she said we ought to move in together, said it like she knew what she wanted, had found it and it was me.

"Sure," I said.

There would be a few details of my past and present to cover but I said sure like there was no tomorrow. Without her there were only more burger joints and that was no tomorrow either.

I went home the following morning for a few changes of clothes and then for sixteen days Stephanie and I "honeymooned" at her place. She told me she'd called in for a week's vacation. Boss' prerogative. I never called in at all. They could toast their rolls without me.

We fucked and drank splits of champagne and lived off the ice box and that was about it. Once in awhile we changed the sheets. There was an Irish lady named Doris who came by to clean every other day. No other visitors. We didn't talk business and that was just as well. Once of these days my movie deal was going to have to fall through but I could fake that with a telephone call and a little depression. I just hoped she didn't ask to read the manuscript.

I got used to that apartment quickly. Plenty of toys for me to play with. Stereo, tape deck, video disks, Super-8 camera, even an Arcade-sized Space Invaders game. I became a pornographer, taking miles of footage of Stef naked in the apartment. I intended to edit a montage but I never could get to the editing machine. I could never get enough of watching her, of peering through the viewfinder. Unless of course I was fucking her. There was all that grace and class.

Then one day I was standing naked at the Space Invaders game, still stinking of early-morning rut and she was behind me watching, not paying too much attention, glancing out the window now and then. I could almost feel her smiling. Then she suddenly pulled away from me and of course the damn Invader guys shot me down.

"Shit," I said to the machine and then to her, "What's up?"

I looked out the window. Three people were walking up the steps to the apartment. One of them was the woman Dan had known at the bar. There was another woman I didn't recognize and a tall man in a three-piece suit walking between them.

"Listen," she said. "There won't be time to explain. Don't worry about what's going to happen. Try not to answer to anything these people say. Especially anything they say about me or about us, okay?"

"Huh?"

"Just remember that everything that happens here is going to be a kind of joke. I'll explain later, okay? Please don't take offense and don't say anything, just follow my lead, that's all.

"Okay, sure. But Stef?"

"What?"

"We're naked."

"Oh, shit."

We ran into the bedroom and threw on bathrobes and went back into the living room. I was just belting up when I heard the key in the door. The girl from the bar entered first. She took one look at us and her mouth dropped open. The other girl started laughing.

"Jesus, Stephanie," she said. "Aren't you going a little far this time?" The guy looked puzzled.

Stephanie just smiled. I didn't know what the fuck to do. The one with the keys walked over to Stef. There was something cold in her eyes I didn't like much and even if she was a damned pretty woman in that long white fur and tight jeans and seven-league boots she looked surly.

"Want to explain this?" she asked.

Stef's smile faded a little. "Let's go into the kitchen for a minute, all right?" She said. "You too, Janet, if you don't mind." I hated to hear that tone. There was something almost submissive there.

They trooped off into the kitchen, leaving me feeling stupid standing there in a bathrobe with this guy in a three-piece pinstripe. He didn't look wholly unfriendly. And he looked like he didn't know what was what any more than I did.

We talked about the weather. I hadn't seen the weather for days so I was almost interested.

After awhile Stef came out of the kitchen and took me by the hand and led me into the bedroom. I nodded to the guy and he just looked at me blankly and confused like we were a pair of walking condoms or something.

"What the fuck is going on?" I asked her.

"Look," she said. "I told you it was a joke but maybe trick is a better word. I've known about it all week but it just came at me a bit quickly, that's all, I didn't expect them so soon. The man out there is a lawyer, very successful, very big-time, you know? Laura, the girl in the fur coat, is nuts about him. They've been dating for about a month and I guess it's getting pretty serious. The thing is that Laura is a very smart woman, very educated, but you know what she does for a living?"

"What?"

"She's a stripper. Actually, a topless dancer."

"That lady is a stripper?"

"Topless dancer, yes. And she makes pretty good money at it too. But everything she makes goes on her back as you can see. She lives in a dive over on Avenue A. For years the only guys she's met have been drunks and assholes at the bar and the junkie who lives upstairs from her. Clement is the first really respectable man she's met in two years, Tony."

"So?"

"So I told her I'd loan her my apartment for a while."

"I don't get it."

"I told her she could tell him she lives here, see? He thinks she's a fashion editor at Cosmo. Fashion editors don't live in places where the plumbing is a long tube of rubber. So I told her she could use the place for a few days while she works herself up to breaking the news. It's only for a few days. He loves her. It won't matter in the long run what she does for a living or where she lives. But she told him this thing and now she's got to stick with it for a couple of days."

I could sympathize with that. Sure I could.

"So where do we fit in?"

"We're the unwelcome guests. Unless you want to get out of here and go to your place. Which I think would be a very good idea for a while."

"Uh...I've still got those people there. They're very strait laced, if you know what I mean."

It was clumsy but she bought it. She smiled.

"I really don't want to deal with them, Stef. And neither do you, believe me. I guess we better stay."

"Okay," she said. "Let me go talk to Laura for a minute. You better get dressed."

I got dressed. Then Stef walked back into the bedroom and said that everything was fine now, we just had to remember to keep up the pretense, that was all. I wondered exactly how fine because I could hear Clement's voice in the kitchen and he sounded pretty distressed.

We hardly spoke as the weeks went by. I mean, Stef and I spoke and did what we'd always done and did it very well too, thank you, in the small bedroom to the rear of the apartment. Laura and Clement spoke too. You could hear them fucking and laughing in the big bedroom. Sometimes they argued a little, which I suppose was about us being there. But the four of us almost never spoke together.

It got a little tense sometimes as the weeks dragged by and I took to griping at Stef. When the hell was she going to get rid of them? Why didn't she tell Laura to take her chances and tell the poor guy fair and square just who and what she was? Right now, today?

And then I'd think, listen to me. Jesus.

She couldn't do that, she said. There was a friendship involved here, a favor for an old friend. I couldn't shake her though there were days I definitely tried.

It was one of those days that I had my talk with Doris, the cleaning lady. There had been a particularly icy breakfast between the four of us that morning and I'd been screaming at Stef to tell them to fuck off, friendship be damned. Doris couldn't help but hear me. So when Stef left the apartment to do some shopping there was Doris, shaking her head and clucking at me while she vacuumed. I liked her, so I asked her why she was clucking at me.

"Because you're a very nice man, Mr. Tony. And I don't like to see ya yelling at folks that way, I surely don't. Miss Steffie's a good person too."

I explained our situation, swearing her to a vow of silence. And while I talked I watched her face pucker up and sour like time-stop photography of a rotting melon until her nose saluted the pointy tip of her chin.

"Ah, Mr. Tony," she said when I was finished. "Ah, Mr. Tony."

"Ah what, Doris?"

"I'm afraid that Miss Steffie's misled you. This ain't hers. This is all Miss Laura's place. I've been with her for years. And ya know she's no topless dancer, not a bit of it, she's a..."

I heard no more.

Who cared.

I played Space Invaders until Stephanie got home. I won some and lost some. When she walked through the door I accosted her like a mugger. Doris had since disappeared in anticipation of the coming storm. Stef told me everything. There was no agency, no job and no money. She had only the clothes on her back. There were tears, downcast eyes, sidelong glances.

I thought about my movie deal.

So I told her. Glances grew darker and more somber and then in awhile a little lighter and soon we were laughing, we were howling. Hell, at least I had a place to sleep. By the time it was all out in the open we both felt lightheaded. We laughed some more and then I took her dainty hand with the phony jewels and led her over to the Space Invaders game for one last battle. I lost. Badly. Probably we were never going to get rich. Fuck it, I thought.

We packed and went to my place and started killing roaches.

The plot of this one is lifted from one of those Spanish ribald tales, the kind you read in Playboy. It's so long ago now that I don't remember who the author was but it might have been Cervantes. Someone, I think, in that period. If anyone reads this and recognizes the original, I'd be pleased to have a letter. So much lying goes on in bars, certainly in New York bars, especially in East Side New York bars, that an updating placed in this setting seemed perfectly natural.

DEAD HEAT

The early-morning traffic was light on West 72nd Street. Outside I heard the trucks slamming over potholes on their way crosstown. The sun crept up my stained office window shade like a swarm of spiders. I pushed myself up off the couch and looked at my watch. I'd been baking there asleep for three hours. The back of my neck felt raw and sweaty. My tongue felt like a cyst. It was mid-August in New York City and the only thing I hated worse was a night like last night, when every woman was a Fury and every drink a long sweet slide into annihilation.

And now there was another knock at the door. It was the knocking that had brought me out of my dream. In my dream somebody had severed my brain stem and was slipping me quietly into a lobster pot. I was grinning and the water bubbled nicely beneath my feet. The knocking had changed all that. I guessed I had something to be thankful for.

"Hold on," I said. "I'm coming. Count your change a minute."

I slid off the couch and stared out through the pebble-glass door. The blurred shape was smallish and thin. At least I probably wouldn't need the .38. I opened the closet and had a look at myself in the mirror hung inside the door. I looked like two weeks of prickly heat. I straightened my tie. It had been so long between clients I'd almost stopped caring. The tie was the only proof of almost.

I opened the door.

"Mr. Rule?"

She was about twenty-seven, twenty-eight years old, blonde and breathing hard. She smelled of sweat and Mentholatum. I had smelled worse. Ringlets of hair clung to her forehead. The T-shirt was blue and said ADIDAS. The shorts were blue too and said I have one hell of a terrific ass. Her legs were long for the rest of her and deeply tanned. She wore white sweat socks with a powder-blue trim. The running shoes were so streamlined they looked like they could fly without her. I checked her wrist. No chronograph. I put her down for a hobbyist.

"That's right. I'm Rule."

She looked distrustful. Even distrustful she was beautiful. "Slade Rule? The private detective?" She squinted at me and I remembered the mangled look I'd had in the mirror.

"You want to see my library card?"

She didn't smile. I decided to be nice to her. The shoes looked like they cost a fortune.

"Relax," I said. "You look like you could use a rest."

"Thanks. I guess I could."

She sat down and the leg muscles shimmered. Either there was a lot of testosterone in the girl or she'd been gulping steroids like I'd been gulping Budweiser.

"What's the problem, Miss..."

"Foot. Sandy Foot. I think my running partner has disappeared."

"What makes you think that?"

"This makes six days now he hasn't shown up in the morning. We always meet at Tavern on the Green. We do the Lower Loop together. You know, from 57th Street over to Fifth and up to East 72nd. Then we go for fruit juice. Frankly, I'm worried."

"What's your partner's name, Miss Foot?"

"Call me Sandy. His name's Dave Loggins. He's twenty-seven years old, has brown hair, blue eyes, a hundred and ninety pounds. He wears the blue Puma Elite Riders and the brown Gore-Tex warm-up suit. Or else a Kafka T-shirt. He has a small mole on the inside left thigh, almost at the knee, light brown in color."

"You're a good observer, Sandy."

She smiled. "I used to be a lifeguard."

I let it slide.

"You said he wears the Puma brand of shoe?" Something about that bothered me, some dim memory just out of reach.

"That's right. Why?"

"No reason in particular. Let's go on. Address?"

"I don't know. Like I say, we always meet at Tavern on the Green. I've never been to his apartment and he's never mentioned where he lives. Somewhere on the West Side, I guess. We just run together, that's all. So I don't really know much about him."

"I see."

I sat back in the chair and watched her a moment. I had the feeling she was holding back on me. Something in her story didn't smell right. I decided to level with her.

"Look, Miss Foot, I get a hundred dollars a day plus expenses. To be honest, that seems a lot of money to pay somebody to find a lost running partner. If that's all he was to you. You sure you want me to go ahead with this?"

"I'm sure." I let it hang awhile until she started to look uncomfortable. Then I let it hang some more. Finally she said, "The fact is that Dave is very important to me. Much more than you could know. I used to be...I used to be a fat girl, Mr. Rule. I just ballooned up after High School. I met Dave in the park one day and he encouraged me to run. I got rid of twenty-five pounds in six months. Do you what that means to a girl?"

"I understand," I said.

Sure I did. Like I understood black holes in space and why the dinosaurs disappeared. But I took the case. Days and nights were long lately and I needed the cash.

On her way out the door I gave her a little pat on the ass. She didn't mind. It wasn't a fat girl's ass. Not anymore. It was the kind of ass that toppled governments and gave barflies like myself one last hope for the world. You know the kind. The kind that sings.

I found what I was looking for in the New York Public Library, in Friday's copy of the Post. It was a page-one story or else I'd never have noticed it. I don't buy the papers, I glance at newsstands on the way to somewhere else and that's the extent of my interest.

But there it was, in the Post's inimitable style. PUMA PANTHER SLAYS THIRD RUNNER. COPS WINDED.

I dragged a dime out of my pocket and put in my call to Jerry DiMartini over at Homicide.

"Tell me about this Puma Panther clown," I said.

"What's to tell? Asshole kills joggers. Props open their mouths, sticks in the shoe-tongue from one of those Puma running shoes and closes it up again. Looks pretty funny, actually. If you forget they're dead for a minute. Then he sends the victim's shoelaces over to Breslin at the News with a little note so's we know it's him."

"What's the note say?"

"Same thing every time. 'Better than blisters.' That's all. Except he signs it 'The Puma Panther.' Schmuck."

"Give me the MO."

"The guy seems to like variety, Slade. First time was a young girl. Got her with a .45 caliber slug over on the West Side Highway. Shot through the heart. Time of death approximately 5:10 a.m. Nobody heard or saw a thing, naturally. There's nobody but drunks and joggers out at that hour, anyway."

"I know," I said. And I did.

"Second victim was run over by a car on the East River Drive. Unidentified male."

"Describe him."

"Caucasian, five-two, thirty or so, hundred and four pounds. Wore glasses. The coroner found over a pound of bananas in his stomach. Something about potassium being good for leg cramps or something. I swear all these assholes are crazy, Slade."

"Get on with it, Jerry."

"Okay, final victim, the guy we got on Friday. Also unidentified. See, the problem is these jokers don't carry identification half the time. Like a wallet would slow 'ern down, right? Anyhow, this one's also male Caucasian, one-ninety, in his twenties, about six feet tall..."

"Scars? Moles? Anything like that?"

"Now that you mention it, yeah. Mole on his left leg. You onto something, Slade?"

"I'll let you know. How'd he die?

"Blunt instrument, baseball bat or something. Found him at 62nd and Central Park West. Some faggot with a poodle discovered the body. Dog nearly took a leak on him."

"Give me his name and address, Jerry." He gave it to me.

I decided to call my client before going any further. I had some questions. The pickup was on one ring but I didn't know the voice on the other end.

"Who's this?" I said.

"Who's this yourself?" The voice was female but hoarse and nasal, as if she had a cold. I gave her my name and asked for Sandy. "Just a minute," she said.

A moment later Sandy came to the phone. I hadn't the heart to tell her yet that her running partner was dead. So I just asked the questions. It would be easier to break it to her when I also had the answers.

"Do you know anybody of the homosexual persuasion, Sandy?"

She thought a moment. "I don't think so," she said.

"And you say you haven't seen Dave in six days, right?"

"That's right."

"And before that you ran every day."

"Yes."

That was interesting. Loggins had only been dead for three days. That left three unaccounted for.

"Have you found anything, Mr. Rule?"

I'd dreaded that question. But for the moment I had to lie to her. "Not yet. I'll tell you when I do. By the way, who's the girl who answered the phone?"

"My roommate Beatrice. She's been wonderful, Mr. Rule. I think she really understands what I'm going through."

I figured it was nice that somebody did.

"Does she run too?"

"Bea? Oh, no. But it's good not to be alone now, you know?"

"I know. I'll be in touch, Sandy."

I hung up the phone, figuring to leave the commiseration to the roommate. I had a faggot to see. A faggot with a poodle. My god, I thought. What a world.

His name was Mandy and the poodle was Cloris. With rents the way they were the brownstone over on 71st was worth its weight in gold. I flashed my identification at him and he showed me into a room that was not quite as big as Long Island. We sat down over tea and he gave me the details. He put the time at 7:45. And apart from Cloris he'd been alone.

"Anybody else around?"

"Oh, the usual. A drunk or two. A rather attractive black fellow on roller skates. And what's his name, Gibson, the Man With No Legs."

"No legs?"

"That's right. He has a hotdog stand down at the base of the park. I'm surprised you don't know him. He's very much the local character." He lit a cigarette, holding it with the tips of his fingers. You know the way they do.

"I see you're a smoker."

He looked up at me as though I'd just sprouted a goiter on my neck. "What of it?"

"Just wondering how you feel about joggers."

"I don't like them," he said. "I don't know if you're aware of it, Mr. Rule, but it used to be that a dog like Cloris was all one needed to meet some very nice people in this town. You'd walk the dog and meet plenty of other dog-lovers in the park. It was a graceful way to meet, over a mutual enthusiasm. Poodles, Pomeranians, Schnauzers. Now you have to run. And personally I have never liked to sweat. Outside the bedroom."

Gibson's hotdog stand was within walking distance so I decided to stroll over. After two blocks the sweat began to creep down my neck like a mucinous slime. The city ate it raw but it was all I had.

Gibson was an ugly little weasel with all of three teeth in his mouth and a hydraulic lift that allowed him to reach the franks with his fork. I ordered a pair and told him to hold the kraut and onions.

"Does the word Gatorade mean anything to you, Mr. Gibson?" I flashed my ID.

He smiled and I saw that two of the three teeth were fading fast. "Sure," he said. "That's the shit them runners drink. Them runners is weird bastards, you know? I never sold a frank to one of `em yet. You know what they eat? Eggshells. Eggshells ground up fine. Supposed to give `em calcium or somethin'."

"Lactose intolerance," I said. I'd been doing my homework.

"Huh?"

"Lactose intolerance. They can't drink milk, some of them, so they eat eggshells."

"I guess you're here about the killin'. "

"That's right."

He shook his head. "Whoever it was did it nice and quiet. I never heard a thing."

"You a drinking man, Mr. Gibson?"

"Me? Sure. Within moderation, naturally."

I decided to throw him a fastball. "How'd you lose them?" I said.

"The legs? Discotheque. Fan fell out of the ceiling fixture in the middle of a Gloria Gaynor number and mowed 'em away. Wouldn't have taken me for a dancin' man, now would ya?"

I had nothing. A lot of dead ends. It was time to level with my client. I'd found her running partner and that was what I was paid to do. It wouldn't be pleasant, telling her about Dave.

Or about the Poodle.

I phoned and told her I'd be right over.

The cab ride uptown did nothing to improve my mood. Everywhere I looked I saw them running, running, in pairs or alone, the lithe beautiful girls in shorts and athletic bras, the strong young men beside them, mouths open and sucking air, faces streaked with sweat. They were out there innocent and vulnerable and somewhere in the City there was a maniac loose. I had pieces to the puzzle but something was missing and I couldn't help them. To run was to take risks, I guessed. Blisters, torn ligaments, chafing. They were a tough courageous crew and you had to respect them. But dammit, that was about all I could do.

The cab pulled over next to a shabby brownstone and I walked the two flights up. Sandy opened the door, a look of nervous anticipation flushing her face beneath the golden tan. She saw my frown and all the animation suddenly deserted her. She was a smart girl. She saw it coming like a night-train to oblivion.

"He's dead, isn't he," she said.

"The Puma Panther. Sorry."

"Who?"

"The Puma Panther. You didn't read about it in the papers?"

She shook her pretty head.

"I don't read the papers. I just glance at newsstands on my way to somewhere else. I guess that's the extent of my interest. Oh my god," she said. "I'll never run again."

It was a death sentence to her. Rolls and rolls of fat coiled on the horizon like poisonous snakes.

"You'll run," I told her.

"Not without Dave."

"I'll make sure you run."

I took her in my arms. I felt the twitch fibers of her legs jump against my own. It was contrary to my principles to get involved with a client but there had to be exceptions, there had to be compassion in the world. I kissed her. Her breath was sweet with wheat germ and honey and I remembered it was suppertime.

She knew all the moves. The Downward Dog. The Sitting Wall Push. The Partner Back Stretch. Her spine was as limber as her thighs were sleek and powerful. She made a burbling sound down deep in her throat when I peeled the Band-Aids off her nipples. And I knew that no T-shirt had ever chafed them the way that I was chafing them now.

It was a fast break. I dug in. At the ten-minute mark I began to have periodic cramps in both legs, upper and lower, front and back, but the pain was exhilarating and wonderful. At the fifteen-minute mark her face looked physically broken, her stride became erratic. But she covered those last few miles like a champion. Her legs moved like pistons. Her arms flailed at her sides.

Then suddenly it was over. We rolled away from each other at fifteen minutes twenty-eight seconds. I thought she was the bravest girl I ever knew.

"You'll run," I said. And she smiled.

I lay back on the pullout sofa in the living room and had a look around me.

Some cases break like a flower opening, some are like walking into a grave. This one was like a door opening on a bright summer morning. You took a single step out of your room and into the light. A pair of glasses, thick glasses, lay on the table beside us. Behind us shelves of books. Books piled nearly to the ceiling. I checked the titles. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Lawrence, A. A. Milne, Rimbeaud, Jung and Freud. Somebody around here was pretty bookish and I had a hunch that it wasn't the tanned naked goddess lying here beside me.

I turned to her. "Your roommate, Beatrice..."

"Yes?"

The voice behind me was flat with hate, the same voice I'd heard on the phone, only now it was rising through tar pools of emotion. I whirled on her and at the same time slid my right hand into the jacket pocket beside me for the .38.

"Don't try it," she said.

The .45 in her hand looked like a mouse in the trunk of an elephant. She must have been all of five-two and weighed three hundred pounds. Her belly made huge shimmering waves inside the shapeless dress. Her eyes were flat and amphibian behind the inch-thick bottle glasses. Her mouth was a single nuance in a face that was otherwise lost in folds of flesh and now it was smiling.

"That's right, Rule," she said. "You found your Puma Panther."

She held the gun steady, its cold steel gleaming like a fish in the twilight.

"It all led up to this, didn't it? You killed the first two just for window dressing," I said. "It was Loggins you were after all the time. You were jealous of Sandy, jealous of her body. How does it feel to be a fat lesbo bitch, Beatrice?"

It was a wild card but I had to play it. I had to shake her somehow. It was like trying to shake the Great Pyramid at Giza. She laughed. "You've got me wrong, copper," she said. "It was a vendetta, pure and simple. How long do you think I could stand everybody out there jogging, jogging, jogging? Everybody I know! When there's Lautreamont and Sartre and Dickens and Henry Miller? How long! Isn't it bad enough I have to put up with five minutes of sports on the evening news every night of my goddamn life? Do I have to see them every time I go out on the street? Their hairy legs? Their unshaven armpits? What the hell ever happened to reading?

"And as for that bastard Loggins, he was cheating on Sandy. For three days he'd been running with another partner." She turned to Sandy. Her eyes began to pool with tears. "I'm sorry, Sandy," she said. Her nose began drooling. "I just couldn't stand it. You're the only jogger I've ever known who's ever been decent to me. I'm sorry."

She was close to breaking down. It was now or never.

I swung off the couch and pushed Sandy down flat beside me and heard the gun go off and saw the bullet sink deep into the B volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Before she could squeeze off another one I had the .38 turned on her and put a slug in her belly. It disappeared without a trace. I fired again and this time caught her square in the chest. Something red and soupy began to happen there. Her tiny pig eyes rolled back as she fell. It was as though they'd amputated the top two floors of the World Trade Center. I went to Sandy.

"You all right?"

"I think so," she said.

I lifted her to her dainty calloused feet. "Get dressed," I told her. I dialed the police and told DiMartini to bring a truck and eight men, that I'd shot the Puma Panther.

"What is she, a cave bear?" he asked me.

"Bigger."

By the time I got off the phone Sandy was dressed and I saw that she had on her Sub-4 mesh singlet and her Adidas Marathon Trainers.

She was going to be all right.

We drank some bananas and eggs and waited for the police to arrive. When it was over we went outside and I hailed myself a cab. Sandy paced us for a few blocks and then waved goodbye as we pulled away from the light at Lincoln Center. I knew I'd never see her again. Runners ran. A man like me didn't.

Back at the office I left the door open awhile to draw in the cool night air from the window. I opened a fifth of Scotch and three drinks later I was asleep. There were no dreams.

When I woke it was morning and hot again and there was a tall slim brunette standing over me watching me grope my way off the couch. I looked hard at her. She wasn't as tall as she looked at first.

Not without the roller skates she wasn't.

I was surprised as hell to learn that, having come up with the name Rule for my private detective in this story back in 1981, I used it again for my hero cop in the novel ROAD KILL aka JOYRIDE in 1994. Not Slade this time but just plain Joe. Either senility had already begun to settle in by then or I just like the name Rule for persons of the detective persuasion.

You live in New York, especially if you live anywhere near the Park, you can get pretty testy in the summertime. Joggers, skateboarders, rollerbladers—skaters when this was written—they all seem out to get you. Not to mention the delivery boys on bikes or the busses and cabs and commuters. It used to be you looked at the direction traffic was flowing and if nothing was coming you crossed the street. Now you look both ways and if you want to avoid a hospital bed as much as I do usually you do it twice. People are hurtling through New York these days like all the dogs of hell are yapping at their heels and maybe they are.

I don't really like public exercise. I'm old-fashioned. I believe sweating should be done in private, at home or in your own back yard or maybe in a gym. Hence the Jogger Murders.

And what the hell did ever happen to reading?

My sympathies are with the cave bear.

My comment on the World Trade Center is now regrettable, to say the least.

THE OLD DAYS

Stroup lit up a Winston. He set his scotch down on the bar. The glass was almost empty. Aside from Stroup and Robert and Diana the bartender so was the bar.

"What're you gonna do once you can't smoke in bars anymore, Stroup?" said Robert.

"I'm gonna smoke in bars, Robert. It's not us they're gonna fine, it's the owners. Fuck the owners."

"The owners'll just throw you out, Stroup."

"I'll go someplace else."

"So? They'll throw you out of there too."

"I'll go someplace else. Will you quit interrupting me for chrissake? I'm trying to tell you a story here. I'm trying to tell you how it was. I'm trying to tell you about the old days. You got cigarettes on the brain. I got pussy."

He drained the scotch and waved to Diana for another. Diana was looking pretty good tonight. He wondered if she'd ever let him fuck her. If you are what you eat, Stroup thought, he could be Diana by morning.

"Anyway, so this Julie person is all over me in there. I mean, she is fashion-model gorgeous. Tall, slim. I figure she's in her twenties. Me, I'm thirty-three. I got a belly. She's goat on this teeny little two piece jumpsuit, shorts and top, and I'm holding my glass in front of me talking to her and she keeps brushing my knuckles with her tits. My knuckles tell me there's no bra. I don't give a shit if she spills the scotch all over me. I'm wondering how I got so lucky. Okay, so her two brothers are looking at me kinda funny. Okay, so they're built like construction machinery. I figure she knows what she's doing even if she is a little drunk.

"But these two guys keep looking at me. Like I'm sandwich meat and they're deciding if they want deli or pizza. Then she leans over and sticks her tongue in my mouth and the next thing I know one of the brothers has got her by the left arm and the other's got the right and they haul her off the floor and all the way out of the bar before I can even get my wind back.

"Next thing you know they're coming through the door again and they are pissed. Who the fuck do I fucking think I am? and all this shit. I'm gonna get my ass kicked for sure. No question. But this girl, this Julie, she comes in right behind them. Gets between us. Turns and whispers to me, I'll be back, and then she's saying it's not his fault for chrissake, come on, let's go! let's go! let's go! and the brothers do. It's a miracle! I don't get so much as shoved here."

"Jesus, Stroup."

"You got that right."

He lit another Winston. Diana brought him his drink.

"What're you gonna do when you can't smoke in here anymore?" Diana said.

"Go somewhere else. You think I come in here for my health, Diana? You won't even let me fuck you. Why is everybody so concerned about my welfare all of a sudden? Do I look sickly or something?"

"Who says, Stroup?"

"Who says what?"

"Who says I wouldn't let you fuck me."

"Don't do this to me, Diana. And what are you smiling at Robert for?"

"You could always quit. Get the patch. Go on a program."

"A program? A program? Jesus, Diana, anything with twelve steps isn't worth climbing. That's what they make elevators for. Pour Robert a drink on me, okay? I gotta finish this story.

"So I order another scotch and I'm maybe halfway through it when Julie's back again, she's as good as her word. Already I love this girl. Let's go she says but it sounds much better this time and shoves her tongue down my throat again. I ask her what about her brothers and she says don't worry about my brothers so I pay up and we get the hell out of there. It's now maybe four in the morning on this nice warm summer night.

"But now we got a problem. We can't go back to my place because Carla's there and we can't go to hers because of her brothers so we head for the park, we're necking all the way down 72nd Street all the way to the park and finally we sit down on a bench and I've got this raging hard-on because I've already found out that there's nothing inside that jump suit, either top or bottom.

"We get up and start walking again after awhile and she's got her hand inside my jeans wrapped around my pecker like I'm some Schnauzer on a leash and she's walking her dog into the park. It's getting light outside. It's damn near dawn. She's laughing and I'm laughing and pretty much the first tree we come to she pushes me up against it and unzips me and pushes aside the leg of the jumpsuit and there we are, fucking against this tree in Central Park at dawn. This old guy comes along walking his real dog so we wave at him. When we finish I zip it up and we go out for coffee."

"Central Park at dawn? Are you out of your mind, Stroup? What if a cop came by?"

"I'm not finished. So we're sitting drinking coffee in this greasy spoon and she asks me how old I am and I tell her. Then she asks me how old I think she is. I say I dunno, twenty-one, twenty-two and she laughs and says fifteen. See, I was screwing jailbait in Central Park at dawn. What do you figure? Twenty years at Rikers? Five off for good behavior?"

"Jesus, Stroup!"

"Right again. But see, that's how it was back then. It was a crazy time. I pick up this woman one night at a disco, her breath smells a little funny. It's not a smell I've ever smelled before, y'know? But she's great-looking and she feels great and I find out later that she's great in bed too and a little while after that I find out why her breath smells so funny. She's on coke, speed, opium, Quaaludes and poppers. All at the same time. And of course the vodka. She's a walking pharmacy, this woman. A fucking hospital dispensary is what she smells like.

"I got used to it. She was a hell of a dancer."

Robert's drink arrived. "Thank you very much, Diana," he said and smiled.

She smiled back. "You're very welcome, sir."

"Well aren't you two Mr. and Mrs. Polite," said Stroup. "Don't go all British on me, all right?" He held up his glass. "Me too, Diana. So listen to me. I walk into this place Paalson's one night —it's gone now—great pickup joint. I order a drink and look the place over and there's this terrific brunette down the other end and she sees me looking at her and crooks her finger at me, motions me over.

"We start talking and she's smart and funny and sexy as hell. Turns out she's a dominatrix, y'know? A pro, a hooker for godsakes in this middle-class West Side bar. Well, I know a bit about that scene because I've just finished this piece on a downtown S&M club for Genesis or Swank or something, and turns out she knows the place, she works out of there sometimes. We know some of the same people. Big George the bouncer. Denise, the little black mistress. So now we're really hitting it off.

"Finally she asks me if I want to go to her place. Hell, yes, I tell her but no offense, I'm not into paying for it. That's okay, she says, buy me another drink. So I do and off we go. We get to her place —it's a big one-room apartment right off West End Avenue with a huge king-sized bed—and right away what she wants to do is to tie me up, tie me to the bed.

"Nah, I tell her, I'm only into straight sex but once again, no offense. That's okay, she says I haven't had straight sex for a while, it'll make a change but how about some of these? And she pulls this big black box out from under the bed and inside she's got all these dildos and vibrators and cuffs and whips and creams and black leather everything, dozens of items in there, all stacked and packed, real neat.

"I never tried one of those cock rings I tell her.

"Fine, she says. And assures me she disinfects them after every use. So we try a couple on for size. We find one that fits and it's really kinda neat, feels good. You ever try one?"

"No."

"You should. Anyway she's going down on me in this highly expert way when I hear a key in the latch and the door opens and in steps this blonde kid. She takes her mouth away but she's keeping me hard with this equally expert handjob and meantime they have this conversation, her and the kid. He's her roommate, see, also a hooker. He's got this trick and needs the bed in oh, about an hour, is that okay? Sure, she says.

"He goes out again and she goes back to sucking me off and finally we're fucking and when it's over we have a glass of wine and smoke a Winston or two and finally I get dressed and she pats my ass as I go out the door. I don't have her phone number and damned if I can remember her name. I go to her building once a couple weeks later and buzz what I think is her apartment but I get no answer. Never saw her again."

"That's kind of sad, Stroup."

"Sad my ass. One of the best nights of my life. I gotta piss."

He got up and at the urinal reflected that it was too bad but there was no way he was going to be able to tell this guy Robert how it was back then in the City. Hell, there was one night there when his father and he had gone out together just for a drink or two and they both got lucky and they both got laid and his father had been about seventy. How could you explain that to somebody who had never been there? It was impossible.

He thought women in New York these days were a sorry piece of work all told. Either they sported Sharper Image double-wide strollers and guzzled Starbucks by the gallon or they pierced their eyebrows and tongues and had shampoo barcodes tattooed on their necks. Either that or they were fitness junkies who ate nothing but organic sprouts and miso. In Stroup's estimation vegetarians should be grilled and eaten. You want the bottom of the food chain? You got it.

Where were the old days? Where was the heat?

He walked out and there was Robert writing something on a cocktail napkin and passing it across the bar to Diana. She slid it into her jeans.

"We were just talking about you," he said.

"You were? What about me?"

"You try too hard sometimes, Stroup. No offense. But it's like you're on a mission, y'know?"

"What kind of mission?"

"Never mind," said Robert.

"No. What kind of mission? You can say whatever you want to me. No problem."

"Like your dick is Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of you is just cavalry, artillery and air support."

"What? My dick is gonna liberate Iraq?"

"That's the point. I doubt it. Think about it, Stroup. Diana? My turn to buy this time, okay?"

"Nah," Diana said. "This one's on the house."

She poured and they drank. After awhile when she was out of earshot Stroup turned to Robert and said, "So what was on the napkin? Phone number, right?"

"That's right," he said.

"I don't suppose it's business."

"No. Not business."

"That's what I thought. Well, here's to you, Robert. Here's to you, my friend."

And Stroup thought that maybe it wasn't so very much different from the old days after all. For all the stories like the ones he'd been telling here tonight there had been about a dozen or two that went pretty much like this one.

They didn't make for much in the telling, though.

He preferred his.

He lit a Winston.

The cigarette thing? He didn't know.

This is a new one—written for the 2004 Delirium ultra-limited-limited edition. Like the novella SHEEP MEADOW STORY from TRIAGE it resurrects my old buddy Stroup again. For the Delirium book a very real Robert won the toss to have his name inserted in the story, hopefully not to his immense distress. I would and will buy him a drink whenever he presents himself. Even if he did get the girl...

PART II:

BEYOND THE PAIL

Author' s Note

Coincidental with being asked to do a new edition of BROKEN for Delirium Books I had for a couple of months previous been going through the tearsheets and hard copy from some of my older magazine stuff with an eye toward putting together my first nonfiction collection—scribblings on my own work and other people's work, memoir, musings, whatever. I didn't know what would fit and what wouldn't, and since a lot of it was written on either an old IBM Selectric or an Apple 2E—5 1/2 inch discs, folks, back in the days when a floppy truly was a floppy—I figured what the hell, enter it all on your computer, print it out, see what you've got, and then edit.

Some of it did make it into the book. But most of it went directly into the pail where it belonged. Hence the title of this section.

These four pieces didn't.

I felt they still said something—however squalid—about the era. Firsthand observations on just how perverse and silly a lot of us were back then. Myself included. They didn't fit the book. They were of a piece but the tone was all wrong. Not exactly dogs in the chicken coop but close enough. I'd intended to hold them aside anyway with an eye toward doing some small lurid chapbook one of these days, and then when Delirium came to me asking if I had anything that hadn't been reprinted for a while and which I could somehow tweak a little to make it special, I thought of BROKEN and I thought of these four yarns to do the tweaking.

I offer them, once again, very much at my own risk. Especially since they're true, god help me.

Read them at yours.

UGLY GEORGE:

CABLE TVs PRINCE OF PICKUP

Tuesday, 11:32 p.m.

As soon as Paula hears the polka music (tayattata-yattata-yattata-ya) she leaves the room.

She's not a fan.

The Manhattan Cable tuner is turned to Channel J—The Ugly George Hour of Truth Sex and Violence. Paula has seen The Ugliness and is not amused. "Reprehensible," was her comment.

At the moment George is in a hallway with Wallie who calls herself a graphic artist. ("Our first dimly-lit hallway," exalts the overdub.) Wallie has big dark nipples that George likes and he is posing her in that funny cheesecake Russ Meyer way of his, hands on hips and spine arched to the extent that if you turned her over you could probably beat eggs in the small of her back. He shoots her from below to accentuate the loll of her breasts. She is holding and squeezing them together. Wallie is from Westchester and has just finished high school. "One of us has a hard-on," George says. She laughs, nervous. George asks her to shake them. She does. Then he asks her to move slightly so she can't be seen from the street.

The rest, for George, is typical. A girl getting naked in a New York office building while George interviews her about her "busty" condition. How tits change your life. At first she's reticent to strip completely but George convinces her. Women will do the strangest things. She wads her panties into her mouth and draws them slowly out again, sucking them off for the camera.

We move on. To an ad for the Charles Nelson School of Self-Defense. To a plea for letters and photographs to The Ugliness' new mailing address. "Hi, boys and girls—whip 'em out. Your pens and pencils, that is."—To an on-the-street interview with Robert Guillaume of Benson, notable for George's lead question. "How does it feel to play a flunky?" To the usual footage taped at Naked City, Indiana—usual because Naked City is a sponsor—which gives George a chance to vent his spleen at the girls of New York. ("All you liberated females, are you ready to be in a nude beauty contest? Do you know that we have Communists in this country called feminists who think they can tell other women what to do with their bodies?")

To an interview with one of the contestants, the Number One Female Sword Swallower in the World. ("What prize did she win? Did she get The Ugliness after the contest? Stay tuned.") Then back to New York for a feminist rally at Grand Army Plaza. More spleen. And finally another request for photographs, stated in George's strange arch way of proceeding from the negative. "Be sure not to send any pictures of yourself to Ugly George if you're really liberated. That's right, if you're out of the closet and a beautiful young virgin, be sure not to send photos of yourself like these, from Montana and Indiana, because then someone might think you're liberated and can think for yourself. You wouldn't want that to happen, would you?" With which captious remarks the screen abruptly blanks and the half-hour "Hour" is over.

Paula returns to the room.

"I don't see how you can stand that man," she says.

"You'll meet him tomorrow," I tell her. "He's coming over for the interview. Be sure to smile."

"I hate duplicity," she says.

Wednesday, 1:25 p.m.

Paula smiles at him. He's wearing hiking shoes, Wranglers and a faded red tee-shirt. There are nearly one hundred pounds of port-a-pack video equipment on his back, a Sony DXC 1610 color camera and an SLO 340 Betamax which barely clears the cabinet in the hall. He lowers the equipment to the couch and my cats sniff at it furtively. He is not ugly. His features are regular and he has good brown eyes that gaze at you directly. He will not tell you his age—though I place him in his late thirties—his real name, or where, specifically, he comes from.

What he will say is that he was once a college professor "in the New York area" working toward his Ph.D. in international relations and dreaming of becoming, one day, secretary of state. He gave that up. He is of Russian descent and speaks, reads and writes the language. He does not drink, smoke, or take drugs. For two years he worked on Wall Street. On lunch hours he would go out on the street with a twenty-five-dollar still camera and use it to try to pick up girls. He got pretty good at it.

He managed to talk a girlfriend into posing nude for him. Became a camera junkie. Soon he was spending more time dashing across streets after women than working and now he was asking them to flash for him as well. He tried to make it as a straight photographer but failed. His work seemed predetermined—the pickup as art. And he pursued it, trucking his photos around to men's mags for a living. Editors were impressed by the fresh faces of the women. "Where do you get your models?" they wanted to know. "I pick 'em up," George said.

He made enough money off stills to buy his first movie camera, a hundred-dollar windup Bolex. He shot some loops for the porn market. Everybody said his camera work was awful but that the girls were good, all new faces. Real everyday women. Where'd he get 'em? "I pick 'em up," George said.

One day a film producer suggested that what George was doing was not a bad premise for a movie—and that George should play himself in the lead. The film never got made. But George attained some minor notoriety as a result. A cable TV show taped him talking to a prospective model. When it aired, viewer response was evidently an overwhelming outburst of joy-of-sleaze and George decided that there was a market out there for him and that TV was his medium.

So in December of 1976 The Ugly George House of Truth Sex and Violence was born, a crude masterstroke of black-and-white drool. It lasted a year before problems with Manhattan Cable got him cancelled. By February of 1979 he was back on the air for a month, only to get cancelled again due to a clerical error and was finally rescheduled four months later.

By now he was working in color. The Village Voice wrote about him. So did Playboy and New York magazine. "Repulsive but fascinating," said New York. Other media began paying attention too. 20/20 taped a segment on him. He was a guest on the Stanley Seigel Show.

Cable TV has nothing to offer quite like the Ugly George show. He makes Midnight Blue look as stylish as Last Tango in Paris. George is supremely trashy and as such has found his ecological niche. The upshot is that his port-a-pack equipment now costs in the neighborhood of $5,000—a lot of cash to carry through the wild rapacious streets of New York. George has learned self-defense techniques in order to protect it. "Most of which are killer techniques," he says.

He believes the show now reaches 100,000 people, mostly young and affluent, or at least enough so to bother with cable TV. He has five videotape recorders at his disposal, three color cameras and a new Sony editing machine. He puts together three half-hour shows a week at six or seven hours editing time per show and the rest of his time is spent with business appointments and, of course, cruising. He carries three hours of blank tape with him everywhere he goes and cruises every day, Sundays included. He is out from nine in the morning until maybe ten at night. He tells me he already has enough tape in the can to edit fifty shows or more.

But that's not enough. There is never enough tape. Cruising, after all, is George's life—the show is just his forum and the means of paying for his habit. He has no steady women. But he can expect to meet at least one cooperative girl every day and some of these encounters get him laid in the bargain. For George this is jubilant romance. He knows which Manhattan hallways he can usually find empty for a few minutes. Their locations are "secret." Cops no longer hassle him—many of them watch the show and know that he coaxes, does not rape. So he coaxes hard? Enterprise is New York City.

Any woman will do so long as she meets George's personal standards of beauty and especially if he senses some "vibration" that she will strip. He has shot forty and fifty-year-olds. But it bothers him that not all women will play along. Especially resident New Yorkers.

He is, he says, sometimes bitter.

"Half the pretty girls walking around New York call themselves models and actresses," he says. "And they really believe they are because they're going through the motions. They're paying to go to acting school, they're paying for dancing lessons and singing lessons, paying for a portfolio, buying all the papers oriented toward show business. Now you'd think that when a girl like this sees me coming down the street...you would think that she would say to herself, 'There's a guy with a camera, here's my chance to be on television, why don't I be friendly to him?' But you're exactly wrong. Not only is she not friendly to me, she runs away. And is nasty to me."

Industry propaganda's against him he thinks. Girls learn that there's a right way and a wrong way to get into television and that Ugly George is the wrong way. He points to all the movie and TV stars, Suzanne Somers particularly, who've done nude work before they got famous. It escapes him that this is not exactly the same thing as pulling up your tank top in some malodorous hallway.

Has anybody ever gotten famous from The Ugly George Hour? Well, George has. And he recently shot two local TV commercials in which the sponsors—a disco and an Italian restaurant—asked specifically for a pair of girls George previously had photographed starkers. According to him they're on their way, thanks to The Ugly George Show.

But beyond that, George has plans, big plans. He's beginning to syndicate to Michigan, Long Island and upstate New York. He sees satellite hook-up on some distant horizon. One day very soon, he expects to be playing himself in guest shots on some network TV series, playing Ugly George "having something to do with shooting girls nude. It's already happening." He declines to say how or when. Eventually he sees a sitcom based upon his exploits. Girls who go along with him now can follow him up the Long Heady Staircase of Success. He is sick of "the same old trashy excuses from 'quote, unquote' actresses."

And dancers? Forget 'ern. Dancers never go along.

So who will, then? What's the profile? "No profile," he says, "that's just the point. You'll see."

Tomorrow we go out together.

"That's a very, very strange man," Paula says.

11:30 p.m.

The show again. Not only is Paula not in the room but I think my cats have a problem with polka music.

First there's old business—more footage from Naked City, more requests for letters to the new address. Then new business —Hits and Misses. "If you're a beautiful, liberated chick such as myself," says a decidedly male voice," you drag Ugly George into the hallway and if you're lucky, he might just let you rape him. And that is what you call a Hit, folks."

Then George is on the street waving his hands in front of the camera, girl in sight. "You think Ugly George could let a D-cup like this pass by?" he says. "What do you do with that D-cup in real life?" he asks her. "How does it feel to be a busty girl in New York?"

"Feels like shit," she says.

She comes from Hawaii. She's heard about the show. There's a break in the tape and the next thing you know she is pulling money and pills out of her bra so she can flash for George on the street. Which she does. A single toothsome breast. Then there's another break and they're in a hallway. George is trying to pull up her shirt.

"My shirt does not go up," she says. "No thank you." George has got her pissed off somehow. "A little shy at first," overdubs The Ugliness. "But she was willing to learn. Ugly George had to go into the patented Ugly George rap. And here are the results."

Cut to George's hand lifting a tit out of her bra. "Arch your back," he says, "that's it, a little more." She holds the pose. Then suddenly someone's in the hall with them. George seems to be motioning him by. "It's all right," he says, "she's not shy." The off-camera voice belongs to an old Jewish man. Polite, long-suffering, tolerant, unhappy. "Don't do that, please," he says. "Take the camera away. Take the camera away."

George does. Cut to the studio set and the same girl wearing only panties, posed against a pink rug hanging from the wall. There's a clothes rack with a sad-looking towel hanging down. George wants the panties off now. He gets them started for her. Finally she's naked and mashing her tits together and sticking her tongue out just like the real floozies do. Cut to an overdub and George getting naked, standing over her beside the bed. "And I'm ashamed to admit, gang, that I let Hawaii score with me. I have to cut it here—you would be offended."

I go to the kitchen for a beer. When I come back George is pissed at New York girls again. "Why is it that little boys can come up to me," he says, "but big girls cannot come up to me? Are you telling me that women are inferior to little boys?" Montage of women on the run. Then cut to E. G. Marshall smiling into the camera. "Could this be the famous E. G. Marshall," says George, "extinguished...I mean, distinguished actor?" E. G. introduces his son to George and starts to move away. "E. G.!" says George. "What do you think of sex and violence on television?"

I go for another beer. When I return there is a girl in the hallway, a pretty girl with NORTHWESTERN on her tee-shirt. George is trying to get the shirt up and the bra down. "Don't touch!" she says.

"This is only for work," says George.

"All right. But this is my body!" she says.

That so? Just flip on The Ugly George Hour. It belongs to everybody now.

Thursday, 12:38 p.m.

George is a bitcher, a kvetcher, a chronic malcontent. A girl walks by. "That's right," says George, "be sure not to smile. Don't become a TV star, don't get rich, don't get famous like Ugly George. That's right, keep running into obscurity, blondie! Let me know if you ever become anything." He looks over his shoulder and around his camera at me.

"That's why I get bitter," he says.

To stand on a corner with George and watch the girls trot away from him, you wonder how he meets any at all. Women are afraid of his camera. Not that he looks very intimidating. He's wearing the same red tee-shirt, Wranglers and walking shoes as yesterday. There is not yet any effluvium about them. He is decently shaved and washed. The video rig looks patched and bruised but it's real enough to even the barest scrutiny. So why do they loathe him?

There is, of course, an insular psychology peculiar to New York women, as George insists. From the moment they step off the bus someone is making obscene noises at them from a street corner. There are so many New Yorkers the noises can rise to a psychological squall level at times. They learn to pass men standing alone at a brisk pace. There are also many professional cameras in the city, shooting commercials, films, ads, television. It is a point of honor with most New Yorkers not to gawk to excess. And then there is the little red sign on George's camera—THE UGLY GEORGE HOUR OF TRUTH SEX AND VIOLENCE. What's a girl to expect of this encounter? Who wants to hear the truth on Fifth Avenue? As to sex, is Ugly George her type? And what if this time George's subject is violence?

Better scram.

Any girl can outrun George, what with that rig on his back. George has got so he rarely gives chase anymore. Though I did turn my back on him once to get a pretzel. I finally spotted his rig a block and a half away across the street. But the mad dash is rare. Most of the time he stands still or sits somewhere and watches, waiting for some opportunity to come along and present itself.

Or he walks and cruises the oncoming pedestrian traffic. He cruises hard. Walking with him I have the feeling I am on a serious hunt. Slowly I begin to see who he's rejecting. The extraordinarily beautiful, high-fashion type. The extremely well-dressed and moneyed. The utterly unlovely of nearly every variety. The business suit, the obviously straight, the very young and the very old. Everybody else has potential. Especially if they are showing somehow, if the pants are tight or the tee-shirt worn sans bra, if a bit of breast is visible through an open shirt front, if the girl has flash or a touch of the gaudy or carnal.

We walk all day, from 23rd Street up Fifth Avenue all the way to 57th Street, stopping to rest occasionally. At 37th Street George gets some chicken and a glass of milk and I have a couple of beers. We sit streetside at the open entranceway and George puts his rig on a chair between us, his UGLY GEORGE sign facing passersby. We get a lot of smiles and stares. George is well known here.

"One rule," he says. "Don't speak to drunks, scumbags, or old women." A girl might walk by and he'd miss her. But people do ask questions. "Don't answer," George tells me. And he ignores them scrupulously. Every so often he jumps up to talk to somebody. "That's right, don't smile, Miss Adidas—you might get on television!"

Always from the negative. Yet it often works, gets a smile, in which case George goes into his "patented rap," pulls out his Village Voice clippings and begins to sell the girl on television, on what a good body she has, on her potential for getting into commercials and—if she seems to have a sense of humor—on fucking him. He has a good eye. He can see what he wants across a crowded street, sees what I miss entirely. But then this is my first day at this.

Alas, my last day too. Whenever a girl ignores George he begins to grouse. The TV grousing is real, students. "Look at that. That's brilliant. Just walk away." George works as hard at his job as anybody I've ever seen—that rig is heavy—but it doesn't seem to make him very happy. Part of the problem is the street. He gets up to talk to a girl and while I'm watching them a black guy in a business suit comes over and eats his chicken and fries and reaches for my beer. I catch him reaching for the beer. The street can be lousy.

And I think that all the rejection makes him a little crazy. For instance, there's a woman ahead of us on the corner, waiting for the light to change. "See, this happens a lot," George says to me. "She's watching me out of the corner of her eye." She is? Damned if I see it. The light changes. "Now she's going off in a huff because I didn't approach her." Missed the huff too. Looked to me like she just crossed the street. But then this is my first day at this.

By mid-afternoon we've tried a lot of women. Some have been very nice and some hostile. Most have just danced away. But at 42nd Street in front of the New York Public Library, George hits. They're a pair of girls from the Midwest, blonde and a brunette, young and pretty. The blonde is the one showing—a bare midriff and an open blouse. I back off to give him room to work them. In a few moments they're walking down the street, the three of them arm in arm. George knows a little place off Fifth a couple of blocks down. I walk a few paces behind them so as not to spook anybody—this by arrangement with the maestro.

I turn a corner to see a door close half a block away. Through the doorway I see them going up to the second floor. Then George appears. "It's all right, come on in," he says.

By the time I get to the second floor landing the blonde has her blouse open and George has the camera and lights on and his hand inside her blouse, lifting both breasts out of the shirt. The other girl stands beside her, in the frame but still fully clothed. They're staying in Queens with some uncle. They're just out of high school. They had not really thought about being actresses or models but what the fuck.

The girls have to catch a cab somewhere so we wrap it up and George hands the girls a pair of releases. They seem to engage in a moment of quiet panic, but it is only a moment and they do sign. It's amazing how easily it goes.

Out on the street again we move up the Avenue past Saks, past Tiffany's. We stop awhile. George sees a girl. "Not another stuck-up model who doesn't want to be on television!" he says. The girl smiles and walks on. It's rush hour now and the wrong kind of woman is walking by in force. Business suits everywhere. We move through the crowd. George stiff-arms a middle-aged lady in defense of his rig. He sees a possibility across the street.

"They're always on the other side of the street," he says. He's not about to chase her. So we walk and wait.

By now I'm bushed. I convince him to sit down. We talk about the life, about the housewife who's so bored she lets him plug into her electricity and shoot his pick-ups in her apartment just to have something to do. About New York women and beautiful women and how defensive they can be and usually are with The Ugliness. I'm tired and my head is beginning to hurt, maybe because of the beers and maybe because George really does complain a lot.

He goes off to make a phone call and I watch his equipment. When he returns he's really pissed. That new mailing address he's been pushing on the show? It seems the managers of the building have been tuning in nights and they've decided that what George does for a living is disgusting. So he can't use their mail drop anymore. And he's just delivered a week's worth of tapes to Manhattan Cable, all of which hype the new address. George can just bet some sponsor is going to try to reach him and the mail is going to fuck him up. Or some girl, some really hot girl, will send her pictures. Now he'll have to sue or something. Jesus!

A woman comes racing by on roller skates, moving gracefully through the crowd. She sees us. "It's Ugly George!" she says and grins. But she's interested too long and plows into a guy with a briefcase in front of her. They both go down screaming.

"Too bad you didn't get that on tape," I tell him.

"Fuck her," says George.

You can tell what he's thinking. He still has problems with Manhattan Cable. Now this business with the mail. And shit, no good girls around. He's a little morose about it all. We sit down.

And now the mood is really getting to me. George hasn't stopped a woman for about a half-hour though he assures me he's far from finished for the day. I tell him I've got to go, it's dinner time. "I can see you're not really into this," he says. "Too bad. Probably fifteen minutes from now I'll be balling some girl in a hallway." I tell him I don't doubt it. But I've got enough for the article. "Okay, muscles," he says and I say goodbye.

I go home and turn on The $1.98 Beauty Show. There's a cross-eyed Jewish girl with a nice body, a Hawaiian girl named Tweety and a fat middle-aged woman in a Liza Minelli costume singing a tune from "All That Jazz." A line from a poem comes sliding into my head unbidden. "The world was old and cluttered with spoiled arts they defended but could not revive." Good line. Paula walks into the room and asks me, "how did it go?"

I tell her, "we scored."

WELCOME TO THE CHATEAU

(published as HOT NIGHTS IN AN S/M CLUB)

I'm sitting in an uptown bar, sipping a beer, stoking up for Chateau 19 again. I'm not the kind of guy who wants to arrive totally sober. The Chateau is New York's first on-premises S&M club, whips and leather for sale at the door. I have to stay sober for the cab and lubricate for the club. I can manage it.

There's a guy behind me who looks familiar but the coincidence is too weird to register at first. I keep watching, though, and the third beer clarifies. Last time I saw him he was running, literally, to save his ass. A hand over each hot red cheek. He was the star of the party that night, a good-looking guy with dark fuzzy hair and a trim body that was constantly shedding its jeans so that somebody or other could abuse it somehow. The Chateau has been open for a year but last Thursday was my first night there and he was just about the first thing I saw, aside from Robin tied to the ladder. He was in the back room, lying naked on his back in the dim semi-darkness, with the spike heel of Denise's boot turning slow circles in his mouth.

A crowd had gathered standing four-deep on the soft grey carpet and on the mats in the raised recessed cubicles that give the place the look of a cavern at twilight. The only sounds in the room came from deep in his throat and from Denise, who kept telling him to eat it, asshole. "Suck it, you stinking piece of shit." It was Denise who taught me the first maxim of S&M —that a slave must not be pushed beyond his capacity for consent. But that was later. Now she was just an attractive black woman whose boot had somehow become the object of this guy's cooing adoration. It seemed silly and none too interesting. I wondered if it was staged. I went outside the main room.

To Robin tied to the ladder. When I later spoke to Robin he told me that it was not really pain he was into, it was costumes. Sometimes he was slave, sometimes master but always he was costumed. He had even named himself after his favorite getup, Boy Wonder. Now all he wore was a leather hood over his head and a prodigious length of rope. His cock peered out from the coils like a small pink mouse. Somebody had scrawled ASSHOLE over his chubby middle-aged chest and there were esoteric doodlings along his big pot belly.

Robin was bound so tightly because he happens to be a sort of amateur escape artist who prides himself in wriggling free whenever he can. Tonight that was impossible. Behind him, a fat woman lightly whipped his ass with a riding crop while a middle-aged man looked on. He introduced himself to me as Robin's protector. They were not lovers but had been good friends for quite a while and he made it his business to see that none of the more excitable dominant types pushed his friend beyond his limited taste for torture.

On the floor, the heel-sucker had emerged and now a stringy-haired platinum blonde transvestite was tying him to the ladder and whipping his ass with abandon. It was action the crowd was after and they surged forward, one of them too close. "Back off, slut," said the transvestite and the slut—a little man in dark glasses—did as he was told, the crowd moving politely along with him.

But soon there was a second interruption. A fat woman stepped out of the crowd and claimed that the heel-sucker belonged to her and that the blonde had a hell of a nerve fucking with him without permission. They argued and shook crop handles at each other while the heel-sucker moaned and clung to the ladder. Finally the transvestite backed off—hell, the woman had fifty pounds on him—and she took over. The heel-sucker didn't seem to care that she made his ass extra red for his infidelity. It was hard to tell if he even knew he'd changed mistresses.

It was ten o'clock or so and the smallish suite of basement-level rooms that houses the swing club Night Moves every night but Tuesday and Thursday—when it transforms into Chateau 19—was filling rapidly. Over at the cloakroom a girl with a burn-ravaged chest was taking entrance money—$7.50 for men and $2.50 for women, two free drinks included—and hanging furs and parkas, while a big black bouncer stamped the patrons' hands in Day-Glo ink. Down at the bar a crazed Italian girl was searching for someone who evidently had stolen her whip. Beside her the transvestite was making new connections. Back inside the caverns Denise was whipping a guy's prick with a small clapper-paddle. "They say it don't hurt," she grinned, "that it just makes noise. That depends on how you use it."

There was a lineup for the bathroom out in the hall. The rumor was that some golden-shower freak had been in there with another guy for ages and they were blocking up traffic. Standing there I listened to the music, mostly old disco but sprinkled with odd songs with wry lyrics and song titles that mirrored the collective psyche. "Big Girls Don't Cry," "You Can't Always Get What You Want," "Our Love Is Insane," "Surrender To Me." For the first time I was really listening to the lyrics to "Bobbie's Girl" ("What a faithful, thankful girl I'll be.") I shifted my weight and stepped on the guy behind me. Getting into the mood of the thing I turned and glared at him. He smiled.

Inside the john I took my time and wrote down a few notes. But the beers were making me impatient for a little havoc of my own. What I really wanted to do was what I usually want to do in a bar where there are attractive women around. And for the most part the women here were quite handsome. Wildly outnumbered by men of course—and worse—nearly all dominant types.

If I have a type myself, I guess that so am I.

I wondered if you could dominate a dominant. Talk about your long shots.

All the same that's what I decided to go for. I walked out to the main floor and started some serious scrutinizing. It wasn't long before one of them got to me. She was standing next to some big college boy and the two of them were watching another guy get his ass flayed over on the whipping horse.

One nice thing about coming on dominant at the Chateau is you don't have to worry about much competition from the other guys. If you pretend they simply aren't there that usually suits them fine. So I walked over and listened for a while until I got her line. She was involved in a critical appraisal of the show over on the horse. She smelled wonderful. Up close she looked wonderful too—dark thick hair and pale skin, a deep husky voice, a fine sleek throat and a thin tight body, proudly worn. Of course I could have done without the whip.

A few quick questions about style and finesse did the introductory work and she turned away from the college guy to explore my own possibilities. I'd already learned that a lot of the women here were pros—mistresses for hire—so it seemed wise to smokescreen a little until I could find out about her. But that wasn't possible. She went right for the throat.

"And what are you into?"

"I'm a writer."

"That's not what I mean."

"I know that's not what you mean."

I told her my name. She avoided mentioning hers. I was wearing a thin black 1950s-vintage silk tie and she took it in her hands and twisted it.

"You know what I'd like to do?" she said. "I'd like to take this tie and string you up with it. Would you like that?"

I figured it was a good time to declare myself.

"Actually I had stringing you up in mind."

The surprise had her at a momentary disadvantage. It was a start, at least.

She laughed. "With me it doesn't work that way," she said.

"You should be flexible."

She took my nipple between her fingers and started to flirt with it slightly. I reached up for hers. "Oh, no," she said. "You can't do what I do."

"Okay." I grabbed her ass instead.

"I don't think I should be talking to you," she said.

"Why not?" I kissed her. She kissed me back.

"I think you may be dangerous," she said. Sure. Next to her I was about as dangerous as a pilot fish swimming round a shark. She turned to the guy who was still standing behind her, presumably watching all this.

"Ready?" He nodded. She turned back to me. "I have a client," she said.

"You're a pro, huh?"

"Completely."

"Another time, then."

"I don't think so." She smiled and kissed me again. "I doubt it."

"You're weakening."

Another kiss and she was gone, her slave following close behind. Suddenly I was swept into the crowd again. Something was up. I moved along with them to the area cordoned off for the horse. And there on the floor was the heel-sucker again, naked and writhing and moaning while two women belabored him with riding crops. One of them was his fat mistress and the other was a short slim Germanic girl with glasses who is probably the most diabolically resourceful Pain Queen since maybe use Koch. A few moments later he was howling and on the run, cheeks in hand and making for the bar.

Which is where we came in.

Tuesdays are slower at the Chateau. Some of the regulars like it better without the crowd of "tourists," as they call the horde of voyeurs and scene-spotters who show up Thursdays. The eroticism is lazier without the crowds, without the heat of their quietly impassioned bodies. All there is to do is talk, so that's what I do.

To a foot fetishist who tells me how he is always faithful to one pair of feet at a time. Even if, as in the present instance, those feet belong to a woman who belongs to another man. The couple took him to see SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and made him sit on the floor throughout the movie so he could worship her shoes. He knew each shoe intimately and was keenly aware of which needed special care. It was too bad but a pair of her shoes had died recently. She made him bury them and say a few words. Now he brings flowers to their grave regularly.

To Denise, the pretty black dominatrix from East Harlem who is the only full-time mistress on the Chateau payroll. Denise's particular province is the narrow cavern to the back of the club. She stands at the entrance to make sure no drinks or cigarettes get inside, supervises its entrails to see that nobody gets carried away. Having come to this scene only a few months before and being involved with a guy who has never been here and would no more allow her to humiliate him than he would eat cinders, she is critical of power-tripping mistresses and masters who do this less for sexual current than for strange-brew ego kicks or ordinary cruelty.

It's a fine distinction, but I watch her make it.

"Crawl!" she says to a shy young man she has just finished whipping. "Crawl the length of the fucking room and back to me, you stinking piece of shit!" He begins to whimper in confusion. He is not into that. There are too many people around watching. Denise caresses his head and tells him he's a bad slave—he will have to come back to her another time for instruction. She backs off, and it's just what he wants to hear. It lets him off the hook and promises games to come. "Yes, mistress," he murmurs and hitches up his jeans. Denise apparently is a mistress with a heart.

To Sir George, the Chateau's official Fantasy Counselor, a good-natured giant in leather vest open across his beefy chest, with silver MASTER belt buckle, walrus stature, receding hairline. George is chief custodian of the general peace, believing firmly in every man's right to his own desires so long as nobody gets hurt who doesn't want to be. He has two personal slaves of his own, a male and a female. There was another female once but he dismissed her so she could get married.

I watch him twist mercilessly at his slave girl's nipples while she makes a bad attempt to jerk him off in time to the music. She has a terrible sense of rhythm. Meantime he talks about his private "Fantasy Fulfillment" service, a kind of berserkers' FANTASY ISLAND.

Recently, a client came to him with a notion to be eaten by cannibals. Sir George and his staff set up a "kidnap" and then a "roast" and finally seasoned the guy with baby powder and bit at him until the customer came in a hot slash of masticatory delight. "We'd have used real salt and pepper," says George, "but the guy specified that he wanted baby powder. Tasted miserable."

I ask him who the woman was I had put the move on last Thursday. "Oh, that's Margot," he says. "She's here all the time."

Only so briefly tonight that she's out the door with another client before I have a chance to accost her. I walk around a bit but the girls are few and mostly fat and ugly and because of the cold, Denise has kept her clothes on all evening. Denise may have the best tits in town and I found out last Thursday that she doesn't mind my handling them now and then. But I do miss the crowd. There's a bracing wildness to a good crowd. As for this Margot person, I know I'm wooing ectoplasm. But I'll be back again Thursday.

There is blood in the air from the beginning. Something out there vaguely vibratory in the atmosphere.

"Lotta lezzies tonight," someone says and I do see a lot of women huddled in close pairs. Also more gay men and drag queens than had been around before. Turning from the bar with beer in hand I stare down at the bald speckled head of a tiny old man with clear blue eyes and bulbous nose. There are a lot of old men too. Some have brought their wives.

By nine Denise is already naked. George is late arriving. There is no sign of Mistress Margot so I decide to try my luck elsewhere. The women are good tonight. I walk over to a thin dark girl peering over the crowd from the third step on the ladder. She is dressed in sheer black bra and panties, black garters and black stockings.

"Looking for somebody?" I ask. I run my hands over her bare arms and shoulders toward her breasts—preliminaries being pretty useless here. But the breasts evade me. She looks amused.

"You don't seem very submissive to me," she says.

"I'm not."

"Good try," she says.

I move on into the back room. I push my way through a lot of silent chinless young men to where a woman sits naked astride a dwarf while a bearded man pokes his dick at her from behind. She's directing all the action but it's the first straight sex I've seen at the Chateau in three consecutive visits. She tells the guy to take her dog-style while she sucks at the dwarf's limp cock drifting out through his fly. When that pales and the dwarf is up a little she sits on him again and sucks off the bearded man while an old man directly to my left strokes her tits. The dwarf seems distracted and shy and when another scene starts in a cubicle behind us he's the first to notice.

A woman and two male slaves have arrived. One of the men is naked and the other wears a little black-and-white serving maid's costume. His hands are tied behind him and a red rubber ball in his mouth gives him color. The naked guy wears a dog collar and the woman is holding his leash. While the crowd herds from one threesome to the next and vies for position she attaches the leash to the collar and pushes the man to his knees in front of the serving maid. Then she pushes the maid down on his back onto the mat. He's naked under the frilly skirts. The dwarf's cock looked more significant. All the same she moves the naked man's head down over it and tells him to suck while she swats his ass with a paddle. I guess he's not so good at it because the harder he sucks the more she paddles. "Slut," she calls him, "scumbag!" and the crowd laughs and I sense that the evening is off and running.

Outside the little SS girl from last Thursday—"Short Power," George calls her—has a man bare-assed over the horse and is showing off with the crop, stroking and then whipping the insides of both thighs as high up into the soft tender joints as humanly possible without hitting cock or scrotum by mistake. She's so good that each stroke jolts him to his knees and she has to reposition him again.

Sir George has arrived with his ex-girlfriend—an ex-hooker, ex-addict from Brooklyn—who arrives already high and jangly and proceeds to disintegrate entirely. She wants screwdrivers and sends George out to a package store for vodka. A few minutes later she has a bad case of the lurches. All night long I see her slashing her way through a crowd or hear her screaming that she wants out of this joint, she wants to go someplace she can dance, always moving at a rate just below a run and balanced just above a fall. George just brings her the vodka and lets her run amok. Inevitably, she hits the floor a few times and I bring one of them to George's attention.

"She's all right," he says. "What can I tell you? She's my first girlfriend."

"Oh, from the old days," I say.

He gives me an odd blank stare.

"From a year and a half ago," he says.

I let it go. "Pretty girl," I say. And she is.

Down on the floor the horse is busy again, this time with a couple of transvestites posing and playing cutesy with a paddle. The crowd isn't buying and begins to drift away, bored. Just as I'm about to join them a girl steps forward and stops me cold. To say she is beautiful is like saying Jerry Lee Lewis plays piano. But it's the hunting knife in her hand that's the real attention-grabber.

"Is that thing real?" someone behind me says.

But the transvestites aren't worried. Maybe they're stupid or maybe they know her. Anyhow, they laugh while she strokes their necks and thighs with the blade and pokes around beneath their skirts. The crowd pours back in again, wide-eyed. Once I have dismissed the potential for massacre I take a better look at her. Black sheath dress, cut low and tight and sleeveless, a black pillbox hat with a thin black veil to the bridge of her nose, a fine nose, a perfect nose and above it, dark eyes that gleam and flay and clout, below it a mouth bred in gentility and fed on the blood of wolverines. A trim tight body in serious showdown with the black sheath dress. Altogether stunning. She holds up the knife.

"No blade," she says to someone in the crowd. "Only the point is sharp. Quite sharp."

So be it. I move over to her. "Who are you?" I ask her and take her arm. Feels good. She turns to speak to someone.

"Who the fuck are you?" I say again and I'm probably being far too impetuous because without turning from her conversation or removing her arm she pushes the knife into the pit of my stomach and holds it there. It's sharp, all right. If I take a breath I am going to have to pay for it dearly or else move away.

I gather she doesn't want to talk to me. I move away.

Into the caverns. Where Denise is twisting some guy's cock and balls until the whole package looks fit to burst. When she lets up, she says it feels like maybe there is blood on her hands but it's too damn dark to see.

Out again. Where George's old girlfriend has finally found some body willing to disco. Then into the john for a quick pee. A mistake not to lock the door behind me. Someone stumbles inside. "Later, asshole," I tell him. I pretty much have the hang of things now.

Outside Margot is smiling at me from across the floor. I work my way over. Just as I arrive she moves away. "I can't get too close to you," she says. She looks terrific in the white silk blouse.

"Why the hell not?"

"Listen," she says, "you're much too uptight. You really should loosen up." Her arms are around my shoulders and she's smiling. "I'd like to get you into a bra and panties. That would loosen you up, I bet."

"You always put your men in bra and panties?"

"Yeah." From the look in her eyes, I believe her. In her eyes, a 'gator swallowing salmon.

"Well, I personally look my best when I'm all naked and sweaty."

"Oh, no," she says. "I already did my naked and sweaty number for the year."

"Try it biannually."

"Ah, hell," she says, "your body's probably for shit and you're probably lousy in bed and a rotten writer."

"You like to try to cover all the bases, don't you?"

"Absolutely."

"Listen, Margot. I want to square off against you sometime. It would be fun. I have a real mean weekend in mind."

"But I'm not into that," she says. "This is what I'm into."

She takes my nipple between her polished manicured fingernails and twists and squeezes as hard as she can. It's okay. I can handle it. I go for her ass but the jeans are too tight to grab substantial purchase so I switch to her own breast and thumb the big erect nipple back into her chest until she winces and her eyes open wide. She quits and takes a breath. I put my mouth on hers and the kiss is good and hard.

"How often," I whisper, "do you get to fuck a fine writer with a terrific body who can break your ass in bed?"

She laughs. "Jesus, all right," she says. "So maybe I'd like to square off with you too. But it will cost you."

"You want money? From me?" Like we're old buddies from high school. But of course she does. I ask her how much.

"I know what I'd like to get. I'd like to get a hundred dollars."

"What will you settle for?"

"Fifty. Special writers' price."

I kiss her again. "I'll think about it," I tell her. This time it feels good to walk away. She's quite a woman. But I wouldn't give her the fifty if they flew her in from the Galapagos Islands.

Down on the floor, the place has finally arrived at the utterly bizarre.

There's a boxing match in progress.

A pretty little Spanish girl who can't be more than twenty is punching the hell out of a sandy-haired bearded guy in jogging trunks. He's wearing a mouth guard and he needs it, because for every punch to the body he takes three to the jaw. The gloves look huge and ridiculous on the girl's tiny arms but she makes up in gusto what she lacks in heft, she is slamming him with everything she's got and he makes no move to cover. Just a few short jabs to the shoulder to bring her on. He's got a good mean bitch here. No class, but a lot of native viciousness. And judging by the rocks in his shorts I'd say a good licking is his idea of a night to remember.

I decide I've got more to say to Margot so I look around for her but she's disappeared so I return to the boxer. The match is over now and he's standing by the ladder talking to a tall heavy blonde girl and a lovely black girl, his mistress. Beside the ladder is an overnight bag filled with boxing gloves in various weights and sizes. He's trying to explain the appeal this has for him but the blonde isn't listening. "It's the impact," he says, "the impact." The blonde calls him a stupid bitch and slaps him openhanded.

Something he's done has offended her. It doesn't worry him. He slips down his shorts and begins to masturbate while she glares at him. She backhands him a couple times and then rears back and lets him have a hard one to the jaw. "You better put in your mouthpiece, asshole," she says. "Give me a glove," she tells the black girl. It's for her knuckles obviously, not for him, because there's very little padding. Meantime he's obeyed her and stands there waiting for her to lace up, his lips forced open by the mouthpiece, cock in hand.

I'm not sure I want to watch this.

But I'm here and they're here and what the hell.

The outer reaches of consentuality.

"Love tap, love tap!" he squeals while she pummels him. Then he says nothing. There are no body blows at all now, just more and more punishment to the head. The blonde can hit hard and she won't hold back. She comes at him from either side, then head-on to the mouth and jaw, jabbing and punching, roundhousing. Then the black girl joins her—bare-fisted and just as mean as she is and they bash at him in tandem. His eyes get glassy. His cock wilts. His head begins to dangle. His lip splits and the black girl calls for a towel.

If anything, the blood incites them further. They pretend disgust with him for bleeding on them and wipe it away distastefully. Then they smash him again. The black girl's smiling. His balance starts to go. I see Denise moving through the crowd and I figure it's over.

Denise caresses the jaw tenderly. Then slaps it hard. What the fuck is this? She caresses him again. Then throws a perfect backhand. Christ! And now the other girls want him back again! Denise looks contemptuously at her bloody hand. "Go wash your mouth," she commands. He stumbles away. A strange rescue, I'm thinking, graceful in its way. And I guess it helps confirm my notion that at heart Denise is a softie.

But I've had it. I'm about to leave when Margot walks by.

"You know what I've decided?" I ask her.

"Don't want to know."

"You're not curious?"

I grab her arm and pull her over. "I've decided," I tell her, "that I want it free. Fifty dollars is a good price and I'm sure you're worth that and more. But if I give you money then I give you an edge and I don't want you with an edge on me."

She kisses me and smiles. "I'm busy," she says.

"That's okay. I can wait. You won't always be busy, right?"

"I might be."

"You won't be."

I'm betting I'm wrong.

And I think that life is full of these strange meetings and missed connections. As I walk out the door, there's George hurtling across the sidewalk in front of me. For a big guy, he can move. Up ahead of him two girls are screaming and chasing somebody they seem to want to slaughter. George catches them, hoists one under each arm and walks back to the Chateau. Whoever they're chasing has stopped and stares back at them and as I get closer I see that it's George's old girlfriend they are after. There are tears streaming down her cheeks and she's nearly too drunk to stand. I keep walking.

FLASHERS AND FREAKS

I'm thinking my informant is full of shit. There's nothing happening here.

I'm sitting in a mid-Manhattan movie theatre watching Marilyn Chambers suck off one guy and get fucked by another while a blonde girl tugs at her tits. The usual. It's obvious to me why I'd sworn off porn movies. Any minute now both guys will pull out and squirt her—and as far as I'm concerned the cum shot is the dumbest thing since, say, BLONDE VENUS. Maybe you remember that one. Marlene Dietrich sings "Hot Voodoo" in an ape suit.

But the crowd here is suddenly restless. People are leaning forward in their seats. Guys get up and scurry to new seats toward the center of the theatre. A frantic seething murmur begins to percolate over the soundtrack of Marilyn going glumph glumph and hangs gibbering in the air for a moment. The movie is forgotten. In front of me a guy stands up and moves away and I lean forward over his chair and peer into the crowd.

There it is.

Two rows down and a few seats over a blonde head is pumping up and down on some guy's lap—she's sprawled over an empty chair in order to reach him—while beside her a second guy, presumably her date, has her panties down over her thighs and his fingers are trawling her cunt. My informant is one hundred percent correct, bless his sleazy little heart. I catch only the end of it but it's worth it. The guy leans back gasping, his seat squeaking dangerously on its hinges. There is, of course, no cum shot.

Back to the day I first heard of all this.

We are standing in the projection booth of a 42nd Street live show and movie theatre where my friend is manager. Onstage a couple are finishing up their act, ploughing away at one another with what looks like real commitment. Beside us in the booth the projectionist and another guy are playing chess on top of a metal garbage can, an
I Love Lucy rerun on the portable Sony. You get so blasé in this business.

"I've seen guys actually fuck girls out in the audience," my friend is telling me. "Some of the best action I ever saw—this girl starts out by giving her old man a handjob, then a blowjob, then pulls off her pants and sits on it. Starts bouncing up and down. Real good-looking woman. There were five guys behind 'er, and six in front of 'er, and guys lined up against the wall. Everybody watching. They really got off."

Yes folks there's a new game in town—or rather, a variation on a very old game. Flashers and Freaks as the players themselves call it. Even if you haven't been to a movie in years you've probably run into the Flashers. A venerable breed. I met my first Flasher in the balcony of the Branford Theatre in Newark, New Jersey in 1959. I was thirteen at the time. The movie was THE HORROR OF DRACULA but it was the Flasher who scared the shit out of me. "Can I suck ya off, kid?" Pud in hand. I mean, you want to see a young man move.

But that was before the new game began. These days flashers are younger—late twenties and early thirties for the most part—and scaring kids is kids' stuff. They are after the couples, the Freaks. "Ninety percent of the Freaks are into swinging," my informant is telling me. "But they're tired of that and this is something different. A fantasy trip, doing it in public, in a movie theatre." Remember drive-ins? Necking in the back rows? That fantasy. "Then you have a certain percentage who don't even know they're into it. But maybe they get a little high, they watch the film and they get horny, get loose. And they may never do it again in their lives. It's a one-shot deal.

"A woman walked in here one day, a beautiful redhead and she and her old man were playing around. He was finger-fucking her. So this flasher walks in, looks at 'em, sits down two seats away, takes out his dick and starts beatin' it. She looked at it. Looked at it again. And then fell face first into his lap. Bet you anything it was a one-shot. I never saw her again."

"Checkmate," says the projectionist.

They clear off the garbage can. I Love Lucy blares on. Onstage the live act is finished and a movie is running. My informant is telling me about business suits.

"You see a lot of business suits and attaché cases on these guys," he says. He knows one Flasher who is a TV actor, another who is a New York District Attorney, a third a hairdresser whose products are featured in boutiques all over town. Most of the couples, the Freaks, are young and attractive. Some come here to warm up before a session at Plato's Retreat. A lot are from out of town, here for a vacation or from New Jersey across the river. A lot from New Jersey. "The best time for Flashers," he says, "is after 10:00 p.m., because we get a lot of the after-theatre crowd."

They go see Peter Pan I guess, think happy thoughts and fly down here.

"Most of the women come in with guys. Though we'll get a single woman occasionally. I was doing a live show once and this woman came in and sat in the front row and after awhile I noticed that the crowd wasn't watching us. So I looked up. She had pulled her dress up and the crotch was cut out of her panties and she was playing with herself, watching the show."

The scene's pretty widespread, pardon the pun. Flashers like balconies when they can get them but almost any porn house will do, especially one where the aisles are open on all sides so the Freaks can't hide against a wall somewhere. I've even had reports of a Flash/Freak session during a show of ANIMAL HOUSE over on the East Side. "Some nights," says my friend," we have only one couple come in. But other nights we might have six couples, ten couples, and then the action is all over the place." A hot new porn movie in town will attract a lot of couples so serious Flashers watch the papers. Others will roam from theatre to theatre until they find one where the action's good.

"We've got regulars who come in every night. One couple will come in every Wednesday or Thursday, between 10:30 and 1:00. Like clockwork. The guys all know them by now. They don't ever bother to sit two or three seats away. They just sit right next to 'em and take it out. And the word spreads. One Flasher will say to another, 'hey, I had them last week.'"

Sometimes a Flasher will work for his own particular theatre. "Here we got only one floor-man, see, and he has to watch the entrance and the interior. On a busy night he can't do both. So we'll let a Flasher in for free and he'll keep an eye on the audience and the back door."

Often the action will spill over to the restrooms. If you see a lineup of maybe a dozen guys waiting outside the john you can be pretty sure what's going on inside. "There was a woman in here Sunday—she took on nine guys. I have one woman, comes from Rhode Island, she sucked off eighteen guys in an hour, including the projectionist."

If you're wondering where the security guard is during all this the answer is that they're usually in on it. "They won't stop you from playing with your meat because, hell, that's what the theatre is for. The only time they'll jump on you is if you bother somebody who don't want to be bothered. The guy who turned me on to Flashing was a security guard."

All the same there are rules, techniques, the unspoken refinements that make the difference between feast and famine here.

Normal Flasher procedure is to find a likely couple and sit down, not next to them, but one or two seats away. On the woman's side if possible. He waits a few minutes for the couple to get used to his presence, then catches their attention by lighting a cigarette. Then he quietly and inconspicuously pulls his pud from his pants. "He's gotten his dick hard, lights the smoke, catches her eye and she looks, and the flame from the match shows her what he's got." It's also possible to spread out and tie a shoelace brushing her leg on the downswing and again on the upswing.

Flashing can be graceful.

Occasionally it won't be possible for the Flasher to get to one side or the other of his target Freaks. No problem. In that case the next best thing is to sit in front of them, wave it in the air and glance back over his shoulder now and then. Meaningfully. If worse comes to worse it's possible to sit behind a couple and light a lot of cigarettes. Conversation won't work. A Flasher has to lead with his dick. Uncrossing arms and legs, lighting numerous cigarettes, occasional glances are all acceptable come-ons.

But you're not supposed to talk at the movies.

It's also unacceptable to slide past a couple on the way to your seat. Approaches must be made from the front, back, or either side. "It's an unwritten law," my friend tells me. "Why, I dunno."

But the big taboo is to interrupt another Flasher's action. This is often hard to resist. The urge to gawk is hard to shake. But gawking in and of itself is okay. What isn't okay is to move, to sit down beside, in front of, or behind the action. Some couples are there for a gang grope but others are not. They find someone up close in their face all of a sudden and they leave. Which makes for a very angry Flasher.

"We got one guy here who's a Hassidic Jew. He walks up and down the aisles and when he sees a couple with a Flasher he walks up behind 'ern, stands there and looks over their shoulders. And you know how it is, you get a feeling when someone's standing behind you. So this couple will turn around and see this guy with the hat and the curls and the black coat and they go, what the fuck? He blows a lot of action that way."

When a couple gets up to move the Flasher shouldn't follow unless invited. "Sometimes the Freaks will sit in the center of the theatre to attract Flashers and then when they've picked out the one they want they'll bring him to the back of the theatre because they don't want the entire crowd watching." If we think of Flashers as sharks in the water this is a kind of selective feeding.

Breaking this rule is apt to get a security guard involved. Or worse.

"Not every Flasher gets over. We had one guy flash and the woman—I don't know if he touched her or what—but she stood up and hit him over the head with a beer bottle. Then pulled out some mace and sprayed his face. Then proceeded to do a Muhammad Ali on him. Beat the shit out of him in here."

If this sounds like the kind of action you crave you can probably get over. Remember that theatres are dark. You could look like Larry Talbot on a full moon and get over now and then. Because of the darkness, the important thing is to notice the action when it's there. My informant for instance tells me that he worked as half of a live-sex team for over a year before he caught on. His buddy the security guard came up to him one day and said, "how come you don't get any of the action in here." What action? "There's pussy in here!" the guard said. And four seats away a woman was giving some guy a blowjob.

"You'd be amazed at what people don't notice. One night I was walking up the aisle and I looked over to my left and said to myself, hmmmmm, that woman's naked. And she was. And would you believe that it took her forty-five minutes to get any action? Nobody noticed. Her old man was sucking her tits and nobody noticed."

When the audience does notice, it is apt to notice hard. Maybe it's the lure of the forbidden that accounts for that—if the same thing is happening onstage or onscreen and in the audience the audience will always win hands down. In the live shows the performers find this a flying pain in the ass. I talked to one of them. "Of course the team gets pissed," she said. "Here you are doing the whole number—dancing, doing a nice showy strip and then the guy comes in and you do your theatrical seduction scene and then you got ten or fifteen minutes of boner under those fuckin' lights and you turn around and everybody's watching some little shit from Scarsdale get her ass fingered in row three. You say to yourself, why bother? One night one of the big porn stars came in with a guy and another girl and they proceed to fuck and suck right in the front row. How can you compete with Annie Sprinkle bouncing up and down right within groping distance? You can't. Man, that night we just lay there looking at each other."

By the time I left the Chambers movie that night it was nearly ten o'clock, exactly the time my informant told me things began to hum out there. I was so tired from too many sleepless nights that the only thing I could think to get into would maybe be a little nap. But there was a story to do and it seemed stupid to quit when the time was right so I paid my five and hit a movie joint on Forty-Deuce. I sat down and in ten minutes I was asleep. When I woke it was midnight and a nameless couple on the screen was doing something ridiculous with a radish.

I stared at the crowd, my eyes slowly focusing in the dark. Nothing. I watched the movie awhile and then looked around again.

Just then a couple came in, he in a business suit, she in skirt and blouse, looking to be in their mid-thirties. They sat down. Within five minutes like the shifting of atomic particles around a splitting nucleus the theatre began to stir and move. The place was crawling with them, the Flashers and the Freaks.

The night was off and running, the game was on.

BAD GIRLS, SAD GIRLS IN THE HEART OF DISCO

Suppose you're out in Secaucus, New Jersey, on an "even" day with an "odd" license plate number and there's barely enough gas in the Pinto to get you through the Lincoln Tunnel, let alone to 2001 that night or even to Studio 45 which is closer and where you've occasionally been able to gain admission by dressing up like Rudolf Nureyev who you slightly resemble. Faced with a night without big-city disco, what do you do? It's dusk and withdrawal pangs start to render you frangible and forlorn. You can feel Donna Summer sounding to the depths like a whale in your veins. For the first time, you ponder the lyrics to Sylvester's "I Who Have Nothing."

Cheer up for god's sake. There's nightlife out here too. And in the suburbs of Chicago, Detroit or Los Angeles for that matter. But here comes the really pertinent question—can you get laid out here?

Absolutely.

Remember, disco is subliminal. It works on the pleasure centers of the brain—all those thump-thump-thumping woofers and squiggly tweeters do it—get the juices running without you even knowing it. There's also something nicely wanton about clouting a woman over and over for a full ten minutes with sentiments like "I like to do it, do it, do it/So let's get to it, to it, to it" or "Push, push, in the bush." The ladies get the message and the odds are on your side.

Just to be sure, I drove out to Jersey with Cousin Willie from Detroit a few nights ago to check it out. We had a copy of New Jersey Monthly (every state has one of these guide rags), a pocket full of quarters for the telephones, a Toyota and a driver—me with a miserable sense of direction. We got lost a lot. So what? We were all right. We were searching for the heart of disco.

We used the Monthly's "Nightlife" section to locate some likely places. I got on the pay phone because Willie hates to dial, he will only use push-button phones although he can't afford one. Back in Detroit he will use his telephone only for incoming calls. Otherwise, when he needs to talk to somebody he runs out to the corner to use the phone there. It's push-button.

So it was me on the phone and the first thing I found out is that there's quite a variety of places to choose from. Dry discos for eighteen-and-under. Places that offer a disco breakfast at six in the morning. Discos that brag over the phone about their $500,000 lighting equipment. Discos that ask you to dress neat. After-hours discos. Jacket-and-tie discos. Over thirty joints. And a lot of discos with live bands.

"What do they play?" I asked the woman—suspicious that any disco with a band is not a disco at all.

"They play everything, sir."

"They play disco?"

"Everything, sir."

"But disco too, right?"

"Everything."

"Leave the old lady alone," said Willie, listening in. A habit of his. He could hear she was at least forty-five. "She probably don't know rock from roundeye anyway."

We decided to steer clear of places that played everything. It was disco we were after. Unadulterated, deejay at the helm, lights flashing, bad girls sad girls beep beep, the heart of disco—the loins too.

And Willie wanted the thighs.

"Look at that one," he said, nodding toward a blonde a few stools down along the copper-covered bar. She was thumbing through a TV Guide and the color of her drink was pink. She was wearing a slit skirt, very big this year. And there was thigh all right.

"Not bad, right? But what's she doing with that TV Guide?"

"Stuffing it into her purse," I said and she was.

"Think I'll buy her a drink."

"Let me buy. I'm the one gets expenses on this. I'll just ask her a few questions about the action out here."

"Sure," he said. "And I'd never see her again. You know these Jersey broads. Half of 'em would rather talk than fuck anyhow. The other half would rather drink. That expense money makes you bad competition on both counts. Talk to the barkeep."

I did for a while. The place was an old riverboat lying deep in the muck of the Hackensack River. Chauncy's. Below us was a restaurant. The barman wore a black vest over a white puffy-sleeved shirt. So did the barmaids, with black shorts and black stockings. All the barmaids looked good.

It was the kind of place where you saw a lot of neatly trimmed beards and guys who wore big gold rings and their collars turned outside their leisure suits. The women favored Danskins with bras underneath. So far it looked like mostly couples. Beside me a woman kept licking her lips distractedly at the man she was with, a big guy in a plaid jacket threaded with bright red and gold. Across the bar another woman was caressing some guy's face. There were a number of surprisingly pretty women around even if most were coupled up. It looked promising.

Around ten o'clock the deejay turned up the volume on Desmond Child and Rouge's "Our Love Is Insane," the lights in the bar area went down and the lights on the dance area went up. By eleven, I guessed, it would start popping. I noticed that the solo women kept entering in groups of four while most of the men straggled in alone. Was four some kind of safe number? Or just socially the thing to do?

Willie seemed to be doing fine with the pair of thighs down the bar. He had her laughing, anyway. He wasn't much of a dancer but he could talk them up pretty well. I saw that a lot of the men were huddled toward the back of the bar so I went over. I wondered how they ever intended to interest a woman, hanging out in big groups like that, so I asked somebody.

"Look," the guy said, "you ever meet a woman who could hold her liquor?"

I said I knew a few.

"Well, not out here you don't. Been coming here for years. The thing is to outlast them. By one, half the broads in here are soused enough to go home with my father, for chrissake. So you just sit here and have some good conversation and outlast 'em."

But what about the other guys—and here I pointed to Willie—who were already in there hustling?

"They take their toll. They do. They thin 'em out some. But don't forget that a lot of them fuck up along the way too. They move in too fast or slow or whatever. I figure that if a broad is still talking with a guy by one or so you've got just as much chance with her as you do with the ones who are alone. If she was going, she'd be gone by then. So you move in on her."

"And if all else fails," said another guy, "there's always Paula Balla. See that girl there?" He pointed to a tall woman in a floral blouse.

"I went to school with that one," he said. "In a pinch, there's always her. Back in high school we used to call her Paula Balla. One summer she lost about fifteen transistor radios. She'd come down to the sand pit all the time where the guys were playing baseball and she'd always have a little transistor radio on her. She'd sit on the sidelines and make eyes at everybody. Then when the game was over the guys would rush her and grab the radio and they wouldn't give it back unless she went back into the woods with them and took off all her clothes.

"She'd complain and scream and all but shit, she'd always go. And then when she was naked we'd run off with the radio anyway. One time we ran away with her clothes. But she kept coming back every goddamn time and every time she had a brand-new radio. You could count on a broad like that. Still can. Last week she blew me in the parking lot of JP's."

I didn't stick around long enough to find out if the wait-and-see strategy really worked though these guys seemed pretty confident it would. Pretty soon Willie came over.

"That girl is fucked up, man," he said.

"How do you mean?"

"Remember the TV Guide?"

"Yeah."

"She can practically recite it to you, man! Like it was the bible or something. It's scary. She wants to be an actress, that's what she says. But she can't seem to get up the nerve to make it across the river. She's damn near crying in her beer over there. I told her all the usual—you know, move to Manhattan, get yourself a job, some pictures, an agent. You know what she said to me?"

"What?"

"'Don't you tell me what to do!' Real hostile. Then she asked me what I did for a living. I told her I cleaned fish. Fuck her."

We moved back to the dance floor and had a look around. It was small by New York standards but the dancing was pretty good, a little too good in a way, practiced and partnered-up with routines and all,) But there were solo women sitting there too so we found a pair of them and the deejay played "Hot Stuff" and all was merry for a while. The girl was a brunette with great legs. Good to look at and good to touch. Not exactly the heart of disco and certainly not the loins but pretty neat.

When it was over we sat down and truer to my assignment than I'd really set out to be, I started to pump her. What was she? Secretary. How long had she been coming here? Six months or so. Before that she went to the Palladium. Did she usually arrive alone? Always with girlfriends. Did she leave alone?

And that was where the trouble started. She looked pretty damn pissed at that one. I tried to tell her I wasn't trying to lay some crude make on her, I was only doing my job but I think that offended even more. As though she'd rather I were hustling her than what I said I was doing, asking questions for a New York skin mag. A lot of women like to be interviewed no matter what the magazine, no matter what the subject. Not this one. Did she leave alone? That night she did. I tried reversing directions midstream, told her to forget that I was supposed to be working, we'd just dance some more and have a good time. No such luck. She left and took her girlfriend with her.

"Thanks a lot, asshole," Willie said. I couldn't blame him.

We danced a bit more but we were just marking time. The incident had soured the joint for us. I thought maybe a change of scene would brighten things up a bit. I decided to find out where this place JP's with the valet parking and the blowjob was. We got directions. We climbed into the Toyota and got lost in five minutes flat. Pulled into a gas station and got found again.

Ah, I thought, walking through the door, heart of disco. The place was packed, the music blaring, lights flashing with abandon. Again the bar was long and narrow but this time the dance floor was big and crowded. There was a pinball machine against the far wall. In the john guys were lined up two-deep, combing their hair in the mirrors. I had a flash of sock-hop déjà vu from the Fifties.

The look for guys was Greek-Italian, tight pants and print shirts open nearly to the waist. Out on the dance floor the girls still favored Danskins but there were fewer bras now to stymie the gaze. The dancing was less showy but more interesting. We were not watching routines. We were watching serious preludes to fuck. You didn't need to know how to dance much, only how to move it as well as your partner. It was a sleek good-looking crowd but not entirely so, fatties and pimply-types out there boogying with the cream of the Jersey crop. Nice mix.

Back at Chauncy's it looked as though about half the crowd had come there just to dance and drink. Not here. What you had here was a pickup joint, classic. In a place like this if you sat at the back of the bar with a bunch of guys and waited things out you were going to go home soused and lonely. Here it was the girls who inhabited the back of the bar, shadowy unhappy girls who could or would not dance, palpably sick at heart at being there while others swam the current. It was Sock-Hop City again—the girls waiting along the sidelines bound to go home waiting.

"I bet you can't get laid here, can you," I said to the guy standing beside me. He grinned.

"If you got feet you can," he said.

I decided to watch his action. There was a small group of men standing together over by the pinball machine. Nobody bothered playing. It was a good place to stand and view the floor. He walked over and joined them, talked for a while and then turned around to watch the women. For a good five minutes nobody spoke, just watched.

Then when the tune was over he made his move.

The girl was a little redhead and she was dancing with a guy in white pants and white shirt but you could see she wasn't enjoying it much. From the minute my man touched her on the shoulder to turn her attention away from her partner he had her. She smiled the way a woman smiles when she's glad to see you and her eyes went wide open in a long steady gaze. The music started and they began to dance.

The guy wasn't particularly good but he had the good sense not to try anything flashy either. He let her do all the work—which was just what she wanted. They moved gradually to the center of the floor and soon she was the star of the show. She had a loose slim body that danced as though it were born to dance, intuitive and cunning, impatient with formal style. Never made the same move twice. He simply watched her while she lost herself in some internal mirror image, breaking away only when he'd move in and match her for a step or two. Then she'd smile at him, seeing herself through him for a moment, maybe, then go back to her own personal mirror. An hour later I saw them leave together. No surprise there at all.

A woman asked Willie for a cigarette.

"Menthol okay?" he said.

"Love menthol."

He lit it for her. "Do you come here often?" he said.

I'd still like to think he was kidding.

"My boyfriend will be back in a minute," she said.

"Jesus," he said to me," how do you do this interview stuff, anyway? Did you hear that?"

I'd been watching the man in white the redhead had abandoned. I looked for disappointment on his face but there wasn't any. He was evidently an old hand at this—you got the feeling there were a lot of old hands here tonight—and one thing he knew was that you didn't look down at a disco. You'd get nowhere. He wasn't much to look at and there was something institutional about all that white but he kept pitching, kept smiling. He tried a few women but nothing seemed to work out for him. A refusal here, a dance there.

He disappeared for a while and I watched some of the other guys moving around the edges of the crowd for a better look at the women, navigating the dance floor like skippers trying to pull their crafts out of a whirlpool.

Then I saw all that white reappear again and moving along in front of it was one of the girls from the back of the bar. Only moments ago she'd been sitting alone with the rest of them in grim pairs. Now she was smiling. Weaving slightly. A little drunk, I guessed. They started dancing and she was a terrible dancer but very enthusiastic. She had a good tight body with big breasts and you could see the guy admiring them now and then. At the end of the set she was in his arms laughing and they made a beeline for the bar. When I did a round of the place a few minutes later they'd both disappeared and I never saw them again.

Closing time was two and I decided to wait it out.

By one-thirty the place got feverish. The men moving in concentric circles around the dance floor moved more swiftly now—heads darting out to view some woman or other and then darting back again, passing her by. Voices got louder, much louder. Between the voices and the music the joint was roaring. The doors swung open constantly. Latecomers arriving at a run, couples leaving together, drunks weaving their way toward the parking lot.

Willie had found himself a blonde in an Elvis tee-shirt.

"Too bad about Vernon," I heard him say.

I wasn't crazy about the line but it worked. She stayed put.

There was a groan that wafted high and clear above Dee Dee Bridgewater's "Bad For Me" when the bartender yelled last call. Sorrow and high spirits. Then the deejay put on Donna Summer's "Last Dance"—back in high school it was "The Party's Over" by The Lettermen. People were streaming out the door now. So I stopped one guy on his way out. He was alone and sober so I figured he knew where he was going.

"Where to?" I said.

"Little after-hours place."

He named the bar and said there was disco there till dawn. No booze, though. Dry. I got directions. I went back to look for Willie. He had his hand over Elvis' broad crooked grin on the tee-shirt. The girl looked a little woozy and quite content. I kept my distance and caught his eye and motioned him over.

"Has she got a car?" I asked him.

"Wait a minute."

He went back to her and awhile later he returned to me at the bar.

"She's got one," he said. "And an apartment in Hoboken and I'm invited. I can take the bus back to town in the morning. See ya, cuz."

The bar was a few miles up Route 3, beyond the Totowa-Wayne exit on 46, a couple hundred yards past the Two Guys From Harrison on the left. The usual happened. I got lost. I drove around for half an hour or so and finally stopped in a burger joint and asked if there were any good bars around, preferably disco. I got addresses for two of them.

I couldn't find either one. I decided to call it a night, found Route 3 again and drove back to Manhattan.

Next day I phoned Willie. I reached him about four in the afternoon.

"How'd it go?"

"She wanted to stop one more place for a couple dances before we went to her apartment," he said. He named one of the bars I'd been looking for.

"There was a bottle of rye in the glove compartment so we took a few hits on that. Then there was dope in the parking lot."

Was it valet parking? It was not.

"So by the time we get inside we're flying, see. So we dance a few dances but there are a lot of kids in there so we get back in the car and she starts to drive and we both start to hit the rye again. By the time we get to Hoboken she's a stumbling drunk who parallel parks in the middle of the road and I'm not much better off myself. We're laughing, though. It's all right. But it's dawn, man and we're both bone tired.

"So we try to make it awhile but it's really not working. But that's okay too. We say, we'll get some sleep and come up fresh in the morning. I wake up at about two and she's gone! She forgot to tell me, she works in the morning. She works on Saturdays! Fuckin' New Jersey, man. It's inhuman!"

"People work on Saturday in the City too, Will."

"No they don't, man. They're all like you. They fuckin' talk to people for a living."

Of course he's wrong. And what happened could have happened in any state, any city, any suburb.

Anywhere in the heart of disco.

PART 3:

A HERO RETURNS

SHEEP MEADOW STORY

AUTHOR'S NOTE; I thought I'd more or less shut down the Stroup side of my brain for good but in 2001 Richard Laymon came up with a notion for a book called TRIAGE consisting of three novellas, one by him and one by me and one by Edward Lee, all beginning from the same starting point plot-wise but then roaring off in whatever direction we cared to go. I started to think about the story and there he was, glowering down at me again. My hero.

"Let's go have hamburgers on a beach, surrounded by mermaids flapping their wings."

—John Hinkley to Jodie Foster

THURSDAY

"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones."

—Proverbs 4:4

Stroup took the cell phone off his belt. He hated the goddamn things but sometimes they came in handy. He dialed. She answered.

"Lesvos Taverna. May I help you?"

"I'm gonna get you, Carla."

"What?"

"I'm gonna get you."

"Who is this?"

"I'm gonna get you NOW!"

He hung up. He swung the pump shotgun out from under his raincoat and stepped across Columbus Avenue. Traffic swerved and skidded. Not even the cabbies cursed him. Not with the shotgun.

He stepped through the open glass door and looked around. The hostess screamed so he shot her in the face. The bartender screamed so he shot her in the tits. Some Indian or Pakistani busboy didn't scream, just stood there holding a full tray of empties. Stroup shot him anyway.

Patrons dived for cover beneath their tables. He'd disturbed their lunch. Waiters and cooks and kitchen staff hit the floor. Women screamed. Men shouted. He figured she'd be hiding in the office. Like some STAFF ONLY sign was going stop him. He checked the toilets anyway, pushed open the stalls. Nobody on the shitters.

He walked through the empty back room to the door and tried the doorknob but it was locked. Like some locked door was going to stop him. He blasted the shit out of it and pushed it open. Carla was cowering behind the desk. She looked nice there. He almost felt like fucking her.

"Stroup! Oh jesus, Stroup, it's YOU! Why are you DOING this?"

"It's not me, baby. People don't kill people. Guns do."

"Are you CRAZY?"

She was close to hysterical. It was something new at least. "You've fucked with me for the last time, Carla."

"PLEASE, Stroup!"

"You called me an incompetent nobody, Carla."

"I didn't mean it, Stroup. PLEASE!"

"You own this dyke souvlaki joint now, right? You're such a hot shit? Well, own this."

He pumped the shotgun. She tried to rise so he shot her in the legs. They were good legs. Once. She went down screaming even louder and in a different way than he was used to and even though he more or less liked the sound of it he put the barrel into her open mouth and fired again.

She painted the walls and floor and furniture.

Stroup turned and walked away.

Some guy at the bar was sipping a martini.

"You're Stroup?" he said.

"What's it to you?"

"My name is Maxwell Perkins."

The guy was old and dressed in a nice clean suit.

"I'm a big fan, Mr. Stroup. I've read everything you've ever written, in fact. I think you're a genius. And I'd like to offer you a three-book deal. Would a million per-book advance be acceptable?"

"Make it two million and you got a deal."

Stroup ejected a shell. Maxwell Perkins smiled and extended his hand.

"Done," he said.

Stroup woke up smiling.

It didn't last.

He looked at the clock. The clock was set for 9:00 but it was only 8:45. Good fucking dream but it had him up fifteen minutes early.

In the bathroom he splashed water on his face and lit a cigarette and exhaled and went to nuke the coffee. The coffee was three days old and tasted like a rat had recently died in it. It was hot though.

He sat on the edge of the bed drinking his coffee and considered a shower and shave or at least brushing his teeth and a change of shorts and then considered what he had on his plate today and growled and decided all of that could wait. He had work to do. Yesterday he'd rejected two short stories, a coffee-table photo book—naked pictures of some guy's geriatric wife—a self-published Mormon genealogy and Lillie Mae Hipps' poetry collection A BOWL FULL OF LOVE. It was all handwritten and the title poem had a funny misspelling—a bowel full of love—but that wasn't why he rejected the thing. He rejected it because it was shit.

They were all shit.

Fifteen years now he'd been working as a reader for the Cosmodemonic Literary Agency and not once had he come across anything that wasn't shit. Maybe the other readers got the good stuff. He didn't know. Out of the hundred-fifty-dollar, two-hundred-dollar, or three-hundred-dollar fee the Agency charged he got to keep ten percent. For that he had to write a two-to-four page letter explaining why they wouldn't be taking on THE HAUNTED DENTAL CLINIC or the autobiography of some illiterate junkie or CARLOS, THE FARTING CAT for literary representation.

He had to encourage them to try again and write some more miserable swill and send more money.

At least with computers and the net these days he could e-mail copy for the boss' approval or disapproval and got to work at home.

He could roll out of bed and knock it out. He'd started in a room with a dozen kids fresh out of college all pounding on their IBMs and the sound in there was like eight hundred tap dancers all working on different routines at once. You could smell the fear-sweat to produce and do it fast like rotten eggs.

He'd been the oldest guy working there. He guessed he probably still was.

The phone rang. His answering machine picked it up.

"It's your quarter," his voice said. "Leave a fucking message."

Whoever was calling didn't. Either he'd scared them off again or it was some goddamn solicitation. At nine in the morning. The machine was on twenty-four hours a day. He hated solicitations.

He took the coffee over to his desk. Saw the inevitable pile of manuscripts. He picked them up once a week. On top was something called APPLE KNOCKERS' DELIGHT. The cover-letter said it was a novel. The hero was a guy named Jimmy Ballocks who was a hundred-ten years old and was fucking a twenty-year-old schoolteacher. He credited his staying-power to organic gardening. To apples in particular.

Two-hundred-fifty pages.

Jesus.

By four-fifteen he was ready to wrap it.

He'd taken a break to shave, shower and shit and another for his midday beer. He wasn't the drinker he used to be but that beer was always good.

The phone had rung four more times, all hang-ups. Maybe he should include some heavy weapons-fire on the message.

The final manuscript of the day was another book of poems by Martin Wellman. Old Marty had already been to Stroup's well five times before but kept plugging away at getting himself some representation. Stroup's personal favorite had been the poem TOILET from the last batch. He'd kept a copy.

It's always there when I'm in need

You'll find that the Toilet is a true friend indeed

It never complains or nags about what you put in it

It just sits there to accept and spin it

Too much to drink and your stomach will reverberate

But you got the Toilet there to eat what you ate

Don't mention bladder problems

Sometimes the outside of the Toilet will get drowned

So you took some Castor Oil and you've got to defecate

It splatters against the walls of the Toilet and still The Toilet don't make a complaint

And now you've got to pee

The Toilet says, "squirt it in me"

Yeah, you bathe in there too every now and then

Can you name the times it's been your friend?

Yes, it's always there when we're in need

The Toilet is a true friend indeed.

Talking toilets. He'd encouraged Wellman on that one. Only complained about the obvious meter difficulties and mentioned that problems didn't rhyme with drowned. What the hell. If ravens could talk why not a crapper? Maybe the guy had read his Edgar Allan Poe.

While he was dressing he turned on CNN. The Republicans were behind in the polls. In Georgia a guy and his wife were arrested for dragging the family dog half to death behind the rear bumper of their car. The dog wouldn't come when they called him. In Florida another kid had walked into another high school with another Glock and shot up the halls. A teacher and a sixteen-year-old girl were dead. Six others wounded. No wonder he'd had that dream last night. It was in the fucking air.

He finished tying his shoes and got up thinking he ought to change the sheets next week and walked out of the apartment and four floors down to the street.

He was meeting Marie at her place at six. Same as every Thursday. An hour and a half to drink.

Some asshole drug-money gold-chained darkie had the windows of his brand-new BMW open as he crossed Broadway on the northbound side and the speakers were blasting rap. Thunkthunkthunkthunk. Unintelligible street-nigger lyrics. He thought he heard his name mentioned but that couldn't be. Martin King died for this. Made a man wish for a hand grenade. Just pull the pin and toss it into the passenger seat. Exit thunk, exit asshole darkie. He counted seven respectable white citizens on their cell phones on the single block between 68th and 69th. One of them a chunky young female jogger, her tits bound tight by a running bra, her tits mashed down into her chest. He wondered how she heard who she was talking to with that fucking walkman on her head.

Between Broadway and Columbus he counted seven strollers, two of them double-wide. He had to walk right into the street to get around the three black nannies walking side by side. What he really wanted to do was plough through them like a bowling ball through the four, eight, and seven pins. Little white baby-bodies flying. The mothers all looked like they used tanning salons and Starbucks decaffeinated coffee. They summered in the Hamptons and not one of them had lost her figure in the slightest during childbirth. Immaculate conceptions maybe.

He stepped into the End of the World Cafe and sat down at the bar at the corner where he could watch the window if he wanted. Liana knew what to pour him. He lit a cigarette and sipped his Dewars rocks and stared at the rows of bottles. The bottles at least were friendly.

The bar was dead. Just one old rumdumb down at the end with his eyes on Liana. Stroup couldn't blame him. Liana was from Jamaica and taller than god and had smooth cream-and-coffee skin. But the bar was going to hell in a handbasket despite her. At this rate it'd be lucky to last the summer. Their Happy Hour consisted of half-price beer and well-drinks and Stroup drank Dewars. Their Happy Hour meant nothing to him.

He reflected that Carla's place was only a block north. Taverna Lesvos was doing fine.

Carla had gone dyke on him in '86.

He never went there.

He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. With what these babies cost he was going to have to cut down.

Sure.

The door opened and two women walked in. Girlfriends. Laughing. The thin one in the short skirt had good legs and no bra.

Not bad. Her girlfriend was the usual. Overweight, with everything on her a size too small except maybe the shoes. They always travelled that way. Fat and skinny had a race, and no race at all.

They sat down at the bar in front of the window so that he had to look at them if he wanted to look out the window and ordered frozen Margueritas. A couple of minutes later the blender was roaring, giving him a headache and Stroup was growling deep into his chest. Had to stop that so he did. Liana brought him another Dewars. That was better.

He inhaled and blew out smoke.

"Excuse me?" said the one with the legs.

"What can I do for you?" Stroup said.

"Do you think you could put that out, maybe? Or at least blow your smoke in another direction? I'm sorry. I'm allergic."

They were all allergic these days. All Manhattan had developed sudden desperate allergies.

Liana brought them their drinks. They smiled. At least the blender was finished.

"I'm looking out the window," he said.

"I'm sorry?"

"The smoke is blowing toward you because I'm looking out the window. You're sitting in front of the window and I'm looking out of it. You see? See that one with the tits there? I'm looking at her. That's why the smoke is going in your direction."

"Tits?"

"Tits, yes. She's gone now. You just missed her. Too bad."

She looked like she just found a turd in her marguerita. She turned and whispered something angry to her friend. Her friend was scowling, nodding. The roll of fat on her neck ebbed and flowed. Stroup sighed.

"Listen, ladies. This is a bar. People still smoke at bars in this City. It's a fact of life. Now, you've got this whole fucking empty bar here and you're sitting right in front of me. See all that space down there? Or else you got the tables. Why not try a table? It's cozy. There's no smoke. There's probably nobody around uses the word "tits" in mixed company. Though yours are nice by the way. I notice you're not wearing a bra. Good thinking."

"Stroup," said Liana.

"Aw, hell, Liana. You want me to leave, I'll leave."

"I didn't say you should leave. Just be nice."

"I am being nice. I told her she has good tits. She does."

"Stroup."

"All right."

He finished his cigarette and did not immediately light a third one. Then he did. He blew some smoke. The woman with the legs sighed and shook her head and the two of them took their drinks to a table far away.

Ralph walked in and took their place. He ordered a beer. Now he had to look at Ralph to look out the window. The women were better. Ralph was always going on about some rotten movie he'd just seen or his rotten new haircut which was rotten because he'd paid some kid in barber school five bucks for it or else he was telling bad jokes. He looked a little like George Burns and maybe that was why. The difference was Burns was funny. Ralph was about as funny as stillborn puppies. He was sixty-five and called himself a senior citizen. Stroup was only twelve years younger and would call himself a senior citizen when the Reform Party took the White House or Liana decided to fuck him, whichever came first.

"You hear the one about the doctor, asks this old lady patient of his how long she's been bedridden? 'Not for about twenty years,' she says, 'not since my husband was alive."

"No, Ralph. I hadn't."

"You hear the one about the doctor puts his stethoscope to some old lady's chest and says 'big breaths' and the lady says yes, they used to be?"

"You got something against old ladies today, Ralph? Or is it just me you hate?"

"You hear the one about the doctor asks his patient how he's doing with his medications? Guy says fine, except for the Patch. Doctor says what's the problem with the Patch? Guy says you told me to put a new one on every twelve hours and I'm running out of places to put them."

"Fuck you, Ralph. You're the goddamn village idiot."

Ralph laughed. Stroup finished his Dewars and ordered a third one and drank half of it.

"When are you going to fuck me, Liana?" he said.

"When hell freezes over, Stroup."

"Or the Reform Party takes the White House?"

"That's right."

"That's what I thought."

Two drinks and five more doctor-jokes later he was headed up Amsterdam toward Marie's. He made a stop at the Pathmark for smokes. The Indian woman with the gold tooth waited on him which was good because the Indian woman knew he smoked Winston red softpack and the others didn't know Winston red softpack from Virginia Slims green in a box. They were smokers themselves some of them but the cigarette rack seemed to baffle them. The Indian woman always smiled and handed him the change right. The others didn't. The others were stupid as goats. They handed you change of a twenty with the ten on top face-up and the singles on the bottom so you had to reverse the order to put them the hell in your wallet. He wondered where that started but almost everybody did it now. As he was walking out the door he thought he heard his name mentioned but that couldn't be.

Marie lived in a brownstone up on 78th Street. Only two floors up so even Stroup could make the stairs. Marie was a Personal Trainer and semi-professional bodybuilder and worked at a Fitness Center which used to be called a gym. Her pecs were better than Stroup's had ever been. She said that Stroup was the first man she'd gone out with who wasn't in shape. He said don't worry about it, he'd get in shape someday. Just not now.

She was a native Norwegian without an ounce of fat on her unless you counted the small smooth tits and her body was lithe as a snake. Not too massive like some of them. Some of them looked like they'd shoved footballs down the front of their thighs. He liked to watch her work out naked standing at the full-length mirror, the muscles making sudden unexpected appearances, the sweat running down those long sleek legs, the tiny vertical-shaved slit of pale blonde pubic hair glistening.

He rang the bell and waited.

He imagined her working out right now.

His hard-on browsed his pants leg looking for a way out. He rang again.

"Who is it?"

He talked into the speaker. "Rudy Giuliani. You're fucking under arrest. It's Stroup. Who else?"

She buzzed him in. He climbed the stairs.

He tried not to show her he was winded.

"I called you," she said. "I kept getting the machine."

"That was you? I thought it was some bastard trying to sell me something."

"I kept getting the machine."

He walked over and kissed her and she didn't smell like herring for a change. She had her countrymen's weakness for pickled herring which was sometimes an almost fatal weakness to Stroup's way of thinking. They'd be fucking and it would pour off her like a Stavanger sewer.

She was wearing grey sweatpants and a tight blue tank top. She looked great.

"Why didn't you leave a message?"

"I do not like to use the machine."

"You've used it before."

"Yes, but I do not like to."

"What're these?"

He pointed to the two dozen long stem roses on the coffee table.

"Roses."

"I know that."

"That's why I do not like to use the machine."

"Because of the roses?"

She sighed. Stroup let go of her.

"I do not want to tell you on the machine. It's not right. I am getting married, Stroup. I am sorry."

"You're kidding."

"No, it is truth. I'm sorry."

"To who?"

"Raymond. These are Raymond's flowers."

"Who's Raymond?"

"A client. A black man. You know I always like the black men. He is in very good shape. Very strong. He proposed to me today. I told him yes."

"Is he rich?"

"A little."

"How can you be a little rich?"

"Please, Stroup. Do not make this difficult. I am very fond of you, you know. But you know, we have never been, what would you say, exclusive."

He guessed that was true enough. He was seeing Brauna tomorrow night as usual.

Still he felt oddly lonely standing there. Maybe it was the abruptness of it all. You go out expecting dinner and a good hard fuck and what you get is walking papers. Or maybe he'd just miss her. The past three months they'd had a lot of laughs—she was a pretty funny woman for a bodybuilder. She thought he was funny. She told him he was great in bed. He knew she was.

She gave him a hug. A peck on the cheek.

"I am sorry, Stroup. It's been nice."

"It has. I'll miss you, Marie."

It was true. He would. He turned and walked away and down the stairs and out the door.

He wouldn't miss the herring.

The air conditioning at the Food Emporium was doing its impression of late December. He walked up the fresh meats aisle just to see if they had the plate of broiled Italian sausages out and they did. He impaled three on a toothpick and walked over to frozen foods. He got a Swanson Hungry Man dinner out of the freezer and dropped the toothpick on the floor.

The girl at the checkout counter looked at the Hungry Man dinner and looked at him. Then she scanned the box. You bought a single Hungry Man dinner, they knew you were alone. She handed him his change. Ten on top face-up, singles below, receipt on top of that, and on top of that, the coins. He tilted the bills so that the coins slid off into his hand and pocketed them and reversed the order of the bills and shoved them in his wallet. He threw the receipt on the counter.

He realized he was growling.

The Hungry Man dinner was dark-meat chicken, corn, whipped potatoes and apple-cranberry-crumb dessert. The closest thing you could get to KFC in this goddamn yuppie neighborhood. While it was cooking he poured himself a drink and then another. He checked his e-mail. Two distant relatives had sent mass e-mails of a religious nature. He deleted without opening. Ralph had sent more doctor-jokes. He deleted without opening. He had an e-mail from Brauna confirming tomorrow night.

That was something.

He ate watching CNN. The Democrats were behind in the polls. The kid with the Glock in Florida said he was only fighting back, that there was an organized plot at school to impregnate his twelve-year-old girlfriend with the child of Behemoth Yuggdoroth Nit. A Cornell research group had just published a paper finding that inept, basically useless people tended to be confident—even dead certain—that they were smart, witty, and always in the right. The truly talented, on the other hand, tended to underestimate themselves. Figured that they were really pretty ordinary, that if they could do it, anybody could. The scary thing, the report said, was that you could always talk to the talented and convince them they were better than they thought. But the inept were intractable.

When he got up to dump his chicken bones he thought he heard his name mentioned but that couldn't be.

He poured himself an after-dinner drink and decided to work on the story. He turned off CNN and fired up the Gateway. The story was about a nosebleed he'd had in Florida. The nosebleed had been intractable too. He'd needed surgery.

The story was a comedy.

A half hour into it the phone rang. "It's your quarter. Leave a fucking message," his voice said.

"Stroup?" said Carla. "Pick up, Stroup."

Jesus. No way.

"I know you're there, Stroup. Ann saw you walk into the building. Don't make me come over there, Stroup."

Ann was his upstairs neighbor. A mousy little friend of Carla's and a goddamn snoop who seemed to have no life whatsoever. He'd caught her once going through the landlady's garbage. Maybe it came as a result of being named after an indefinite article. He didn't know. He picked up the phone.

"What," he said.

"You know what," Carla said.

"No I don't. Hurry it up. I'm working."

"On what."

"A story."

"A story. You call that working?"

"Yes I do."

"Working is what a person does for a living. Has any story ever made you any money?"

"This one will."

"You know why I'm calling."

"The other money."

"What?"

"The other money. The money I owe you. Not the money I'm going to make on the story."

"Six months back rent, Stroup. Your half. That's two thousand, seven hundred and six dollars and ninety cents. You've owed me now for nine months, Stroup."

"I know."

"What do I look like, a credit card?"

"You should never have left home without it."

"Goddammit! I need that money. I need it now."

"Why now?"

"What?"

"Why not yesterday? Or last Thursday? Why now?"

"That's none of your business, Stroup."

"You want my money it is."

"It's my money. I carried you for six months, remember? So you could pay off your goddamn medical bills after that stupid nosebleed."

"What stupid nosebleed?"

"Don't be funny, Stroup."

He sighed. So did she. Here they were, sighing together. It must be love.

"Randi and I want to go on a vacation," she said, "if you must know. We need a vacation. The restaurant is driving us nuts."

"I hear great things about the calamari."

"To hell with the calamari. What about my money? You signed a note, Stroup."

He had. He was drunk. Drunks are stupid.

"You'll get it."

"When?"

"Soon. Tomorrow. Next week. The week after next."

"WHICH, goddammit!"

"TOMORROW OR THE WEEK AFTER NEXT. Whichever I say it's going to be, you get it? I put twenty long years into your ass so don't you piss on me for a couple thousand bucks and don't you yell at me again or I'll come over and fry you, you understand me? Now go tickle Randi's titties or whatever the hell it is you two do and don't call again. Goodnight. Goodbye. Fuck off, Carla."

He hung up the phone.

It didn't ring again. He half expected it to but it didn't. He wondered if she really needed him to pay her. The business was supposedly doing well but what did he know.

He went back to the story but couldn't get it down. He had another drink.

He had no chance at all of getting her the money.

He was barely breaking even here. He'd have to quit drinking. And smoking.

No chance at all.

Turner was running MARNIE. He thought Hitchcock was a crock. THE BIRDS was okay and REAR WINDOW and the first half of PSYCHO but he was also the guy who introduced QUE SERA, SERA into the canon. IFC was running NOSFERATU, THE VAMPIRE so he lay back on the bed and watched that, Isabelle Adjani doing all her silent-movie poses, all beautiful wide dark eyes and melodrama. It was just slow enough to bludgeon him to sleep.

FRIDAY

"Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

—John 14:27

By quarter after four he was ready to e-mail his daily rejections to Cosmodemonic for approval. Olgie Lamar from Arkansas after eleven months had finally sent in the last five dollar payment on the one-hundred-fifty bucks for her book about her husband who had been killed by a drunk on a snowplow. Some months she hadn't sent anything at all, she said, because the goats hadn't given enough milk.

The book was illiterate from the first line. So was the letter about the goats. So were all her letters.

Stroup encouraged her to try again.

He had a novel outline from Walla Walla State Prison from Joseph Johnson.

A small boy at the age of five, who had experience sex with his sixteen year old babysitter.

A woman get raped and have her hair pulled clean out her head. The main character get in touch with a seven-year-old pimp who get them some girls. Later find out the girls are male foggies.

One of the main character get tricked into having sex with a corpse.

Another getting the Blue Ball Claps and his penis grows to length of four feet by two. They cure him by smashing it with a sledge hammer.

The four main character meet this gorilla guy who they shoot, cut, hit, and run over with their car but he just keep getting up. One of the characters catch lice from a prostitute.

Another character get kidnapped and his ass raped and get an overdose of heroin. That near the end, the most touching part of the book.

The novel was called COOL AS SHIT and the author's cover-letter informed him that if he ever wanted to read "a good sexyassed book, which wasn't dirty at all but funny," then COOL AS SHIT was for him. "It's a magnificent book," Johnson said, "all it needs is publisher. Who is daring enough to make a millions of dollars."

Stroup told him to try again.

He had a short story collection written from the points of view of a varied group of backyard insects. ANIMAL FARM with an ovipositor.

He had something called DIARY OF AN ANAL-RETENTIVE HOUSEWIFE.

Stroup told them all to try again.

On the divide in the middle of Broadway half a dozen kids about five or six years old ran around him giggling playing tag or some damn thing like he wasn't even there. Maybe he wasn't. Their twenty-something mother or babysitter or whatever the hell she was looked on and smiled. Except for the fact that he was standing there he could have wished for an out-of-control beer truck to jump the divider.

The reek of stale popcorn and warm fake butter wafted out at him from the Sony Multiplex on 68th. He vowed he'd never eat that stuff again. The vow sounded very familiar.

On Columbus a pair of teenage girls, ballet students, duck-walked right into him and damn near knocked him into traffic.

Lincoln Center was trying to kill him here.

The End of the World was empty again. Stroup took his usual seat. Liana poured him the usual drink. He was meeting Brauna at eight. They were going to a party. Plenty of time.

The bar had their radio on and the song was bothering him. Something about video killed the radio star. Who gave a shit about video or radio for that matter. Video killed the radio star over and over. What bullshit.

"Liana, could you switch stations maybe?"

She shook her beautiful head. "Sorry, Stroup. Manager says this station only. Light Rock. Easy listening."

"Easy listening? You call this easy?"

"It attracts the customers."

"You don't have any customers, Liana. Just me."

"We will, though."

"When? How old am I gonna be then?"

"How old are you now, Stroup?"

"Fifty-three. And don't change the subject. What about the CD player?"

"Out of order."

"Tape deck?"

"Busted."

"Jesus, Liana. You're presiding over a goddamn wake here." The song ended. HARVEST MOON came on. He more or less liked that one.

"I hear you got dumped last night," Liana said.

"Jesus, Liana."

"Marie was in with her boyfriend."

"Fiancé."

"Fiancé, then. Sorry to hear it, Stroup."

"I'm sorry you heard it at all. Can't anybody keep their mouth shut in this town?"

"It would have been obvious anyway. He's black. You're not."

"Good-looking?"

"Very good looking."

"Shit. You want to pour me another?"

"Sure."

Ralph came in and started bitching about his haircut.

"I don't want to hear about it, Ralph."

He was right, though. Whoever cut it had let the hair grow over one ear and clipped it short over the other. Ralph was lopsided.

"You ever eat at Vinnie's?"

"Where's Vinnie's?"

"Third and 59th."

"That's the East Side, Ralph. I don't go there."

"The food was lousy. Don't go there."

"I won't, Ralph."

There was a woman of about thirty on the sidewalk outside talking to a pair of guys who looked ten years younger than she was and the guys with their baseball caps on backwards were standing in his way with their backs to him so he had to shift to try to see around them which he did because the woman was a looker. Long wavy auburn hair which she was primping with both hands smiling brightly at them. V-neck cleavage of the best kind and no bra, tight ass in the jeans, tight shirt over the tits. The woman glanced in his direction a couple of times and seemed aware of him watching. If she was aware of him watching then why didn't she tell these two bozos to move? You just couldn't figure a woman.

Take Liana now. An ex-model. What the hell was she doing slinging drinks and bowls of goldfish to the likes of him and Ralph? It was like hanging the Mona Lisa from an oil derrick.

He watched the woman walk away, the hair swaying, the tight ass swaying. The two guys were watching her too, turning to each other, saying something. He knew what they were saying. He could see it in their eyes. My cock right now is the lonesomest sonovabitch in the world is what they were saying.

He could sympathize.

A guy walked by with a wide bright swirl-patterned tie, yellow and green and orange.

He hated wide bright ties. He hated ties in general. He'd see one and want to turn it into a noose then and there.

Ralph said, "You hear the one about the...?"

Oh, jesus. Oh, forgive me,god, for I must have heartily fucking offended thee. Oh, shit.

On the way up Columbus to Brauna's a delivery boy on a bike going against traffic almost hit him, a kid on a skateboard going against traffic almost hit him, and a rollerblader going against traffic almost hit him. That was only three near-misses over the course of a six-block walk. Stroup figured he was lucky.

Brauna designed hats for fancy boutiques and lived in a doorman high rise and they knew him there. Nobody even questioned him now. He was King of the Walk one or two nights a week. He nodded to the doorman and the guy behind the counter. They smiled. They could afford to smile. They had a union. They made more than Stroup did just by standing there. At Christmas time they got enough tips to fly to Tahiti.

He took the elevator up to four and Brauna opened the door. She was wearing a smile and nothing else so Stroup went right at her. He grabbed her wrists with one hand and pulled them over her head and pushed her up against the closet door. She liked to have her nipples pinched, they were already stiff waiting for that so Stroup took one between his thumb and forefinger and pinched and twisted it hard and she gasped against his mouth and then moaned as he put his tongue inside her and rolled her ass against the door on one side and her cunt against his cock on the other. He pinched the nipple until his fingers ached and then let go. He'd get to the other one in a minute.

He let go of her and unbuckled his belt, unzipped his fly and slid his pants and shorts down over his ass and assumed the position. She was already wet so getting in was nothing. She moaned and bucked. Stroup realized he was growling. He cut it out. He pumped her hard and then took both nipples between thumb and forefinger and pulled them until his fingers and her nipples were nestled in his armpits. She started to scream. He couldn't remember if she'd shut the front door. He looked. She had. She came and he came and Stroup zipped up again.

"Hi, baby," he said.

"Hi, baby. You want a drink?"

He lit up a cigarette. "I sure do."

She went into the kitchen and poured them each a scotch on the rocks. They sat down on the couch from Bloomingdale's.

"Thanks, baby."

"My pleasure. That was good, Stroup."

"I know."

"God, my nipples hurt!"

"They damn well ought to."

"I love it when you do that. I can feel it run straight down to my cunt. Like it's electric, know what I mean?"

"We'll have to wire you up sometime."

She laughed. "Wire me up. I'm already wired up."

"That you are. Suppose it wasn't me?"

"Huh?"

"You came to the door stark naked. Suppose it wasn't me?"

"I cheated. I used the peephole. I had a robe handy in the closet just in case."

"Nice surprise."

"Mmmm." She finished her drink and stood up. "I'm having another. You?"

"I already had a few. In a couple minutes maybe."

"Okay."

He watched her fine dimpled ass vanish into the kitchen. She was shorter than Marie, a brunette, not quite the racing model Marie was but beyond the funny little mole on her chin that sprouted the occasional wiry black hair you couldn't fault her.

"There," she said. "I'll finish this one and start to get ready."

"What's the party all about, anyway?"

He didn't go to parties much. Too many people there.

"My friend Zia's got herself a new apartment. She wants to show it off."

"Zia? Your broker?"

"Uh-huh."

"Jesus, Brauna."

"You've never met her, Stroup. She's very nice. You'll like her."

"Where is it? Soho?"

"The east side. Just off Madison."

"Jesus, Brauna."

"Oh, stop bitching." She slapped his arm. "You make it sound like Wisconsin."

"It is Wisconsin. Dead River, Wisconsin."

"What are you so grouchy about anyway?"

"Carla's hitting me up for money again. I may have to kill her."

"Forget Carla. We'll have fun. I've never taken you to a party. You want something? I've got some 'hides and some pretty good dope. I was going to buy some coke but Zia says not to bother, there'll be plenty at the party."

"Another drink is all. I'll get it. You go and get ready."

The East Side, for chrissake.

Maybe they could grab a bite at Vinnie's.

He'd read somewhere that dirt was just something out of place. A cigarette in a pack wasn't dirt but a butt on the living room floor was. Fur on a cat wasn't dirt but a tuft of it lying in a corner was. Dust was mostly composed of flakes of dry shed human skin. Misplaced.

Dirt.

By that reckoning Stroup was dirt.

Zia's apartment was huge and minimalist-modern. She'd crammed it with people who ordinarily Stroup wouldn't have given the time of day. Nor they him, had he not come in with Brauna. Lawyers. Brokers. Surgeons. Bankers. Agents. They moved through the rooms like a lolling school of sharks and you knew that if somebody so much as pricked a finger there was going to be blood on the waters. He had never seen so many ties and suspenders in one place in his life. It looked like the casting call for AMERICAN PSYCHO.

He kept drifting back and forth to the wet bar hearing things he didn't like. Sensational and far and away and at this point in time and awesome and by the very same token and be that as it may and worst of all as far as Stroup was concerned the exact same thing. The only thing that was exactly the same about them was that they were all smug assholes with far too much money.

He kept hearing about their fucking plans, their aims, their long-term goals.

The only goal Stroup had in life was to outlive Al Sharpton.

Brauna kept disappearing on him. And every time she'd disappear she'd come back a little more manic-sounding. Coming out of this bedroom or that bathroom. Bolivian Marching Powder. Stroup abstained. He didn't like to mix his poisons. Brauna on the other hand was mixing Quaaludes, scotch, wine and coke and god knows what else. Brauna was having a hell of a time. With what she was nearly wearing and those nipples at attention she was very popular.

Finally he cornered her.

"Sniff," he said.

"What?"

"You're getting messy with the white stuff. Left nostril. Sniff."

She did.

"None of my business but do you think you should be doing too much more of that? You're spilling your scotch."

She was.

She exploded at him anyway.

"You're fucking RIGHT it's none of your business! JESUS, Stroup! FUCK YOU! Who do you think you ARE? YOU to be telling ME what to do? You goddamn LOSER! You write fucking AD COPY for a living!"

"It's not exactly ad copy, Brauna."

"YOU MADE ME PAY FOR THE FUCKING CAB, STROUP!"

He hadn't. She'd volunteered the money. He just hadn't refused it, that's all. He made it a point never to refuse money. And hell, she could buy and sell him.

People were looking. Fuck them. Time to get out of here. He took her arm.

"Listen, Brauna..."

She pulled away. For the second time that night her ass made contact with a wall. It was a tight ass and a soft wall. You could hear the thump over the Whitney Houston.

"Don't you tell me to LISTEN! I'm not your WIFE! I'm not your ANYTHING! YOU'LL FUCK ANYTHING THAT WALKS, Stroup, you asshole. And you want me to LISTEN?"

"That's not true. I won't fuck anything that walks. I am polyamorous, though."

That seemed to confuse her. Then she made a comeback.

"Get the fuck OUT of here, Stroup! I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN! You understand?"

She headed for the bathroom.

He turned and saw suspenders. He didn't try to stop her.

In the cab across town which this time he did have to pay for he thought he saw Carla at the corner of Central Park West and 66th but it turned out to be the movie actress Lori Singer. Singer was a blonde and Carla was a redhead so he wondered how he'd got that wrong. He thought he heard his name mentioned over the dispatch radio but that couldn't be.

He had the blues he guessed. He told the cabbie to let him off at 66th and Columbus just so he could walk the rest of the way. It was warm and breezy. The air would do him good.

At the corner of 66th and Broadway a couple of kids in their twenties wearing jeans and teeshirts and both of them slightly overweight were necking in front of the bank. They looked happy. Probably they were in love. Love was a Wonderful Thing. Three tall jocks in the latest Gap sweatshirts walked by. Once they'd passed the kids necking by a few yards and just as Stroup hit the curb opposite one of them turned around.

"Take it INSIDE!" the guy said.

The kids stopped necking and looked.

"You WISH you had something to take inside," Stroup said, "except for your miserable excuse for a cock. Fuck you, handjob! You useless piece of SHIT!"

The lovers were looking at him now. A crazy man amidst them.

"Carry on, kids," he said.

SATURDAY

"Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave."

—Song of Solomon, 8:6

Midway through ADVENTURES OF A CAT-TLE-BUR-GLAR the doorbell rang.

Stroup peered through the peephole. Some guy with a backpack.

"Yeah?"

"Mr. Stroup?"

"Uh-huh?"

"Messenger service."

He opened the door. The guy handed him an envelope, a receipt and a ballpoint pen. Stroup signed his name.

"Have a nice day," the guy told him. Have a nice day was an imperative. He didn't like it.

He closed the door and opened the envelope. A summons. Carla was taking him to small-claims court. He was told to appear in person on such and such a day at such and such a time. The fucking Stairmaster-using, aerobic-sweaty cunt-lapping shaved-twat nympho bitch. She was taking his ass to court.

He tore it in two and then thought better of it and Scotch-Taped it back together again. The last thing he needed was trouble with john law. He tossed it on his desk.

Midway through MY HOLE AND I the phone rang. He heard his boss' voice on the other end. His boss was calling on a Saturday. That was unusual. His boss was telling him to pick up. So he did.

"Max?"

"Stroup? Glad I caught you."

Like he had a life, maybe. Like he was going somewhere.

"You're calling on a Saturday, Max. That's unusual."

"I know. Listen, Stroup. There's no way to say this but straight out. You've been downsized."

"What?"

He was small enough already.

"Downsized, Stroup. The agency's tightening its belt. You and three others."

"Which three?"

"That doesn't matter. I'm sorry, Stroup. You always did good work. You got it in on time. I appreciate that."

"So why are you firing me?"

"I'm not firing you. You've been downsized. We can get kids who'll do the work for less."

"Less than ten percent? Are they crazy?"

"Ambitious, Stroup. They want to work for a prestige agency."

"That's what we are, a prestige agency?"

"No need to be bitter, Stroup."

"After fifteen years you're dumping me and I'm not supposed to get bitter."

"It's my day off, Stroup. Give me a break."

"I'm sorry to spoil your day, Max."

"Could you mail us back your manuscripts? Naturally we'll pay you for whatever work you've completed."

"Naturally."

He hung up. ADVENTURES OF A CATTLE BURGLAR was worth twenty dollars to him. MY HOLE AND I was worth thirty. THIS GUN SWEATS WHEN IT GETS HOT was worth another twenty. He had a handful of short stories worth fifteen each.

He threw them in the garbage.

His phone rang. Max again.

"You wouldn't throw those scripts away, would you Stroup?"

Stroup hung up on him.

He looked out the window. It was a nice sunny day.

He made himself a tuna sandwich and turned on CNN. He felt distracted. He could hardly pay attention. He kept glancing at the dresser drawer.

The Republicans were behind in the polls.

The kid with the Glock in Florida had confessed tearfully that it was he and not his schoolmates who'd impregnated his twelve-year-old girlfriend with the child of Behemoth Yuggdoroth Nit. He'd shot up the school so that somebody would stop him from doing it again. Stroup thought that was considerate of him.

In Connecticut some guy was suing the police department. He'd taken the test to become a police officer and they turned him down because his score was too high. The New London Deputy Police Chief said that anybody that smart would probably get bored with the job.

When he got up to bring his plate into the kitchen and passed his desk with the summons on it he thought he heard his name mentioned in connection with the New London story but that couldn't be.

He sat down again. He lit a cigarette and watched more CNN. He glanced at the dresser drawer. The Democrats were behind in the polls. Some diabetic in L.A. went into the hospital to have his ulcerous foot removed and they took off the wrong one. The diabetic was switching hospitals.

In Pakistan a court ordered an eloped teenage girl and her school-bus-driver boyfriend to be given a hundred lashes prior to being stoned to death. Her father evidently agreed with the courts. He'd reported the elopement.

The news was getting to him. He started surfing channels with the good old universal remote. He got a college football game and a tennis game and a goddamn New York Yankees game. He got Super Sabado. He got an antique show and a cooking show and MURDER, SHE WROTE and some wildlife thing about snails and tree frogs and Weather On The Ones and NAVY SEALS and MATLOCK and MOMMIE DEAREST.

Fuck it. Back to CNN. He thought for a moment that he'd clicked on in the middle of Willow Bey saying something about his sex life but that couldn't be.

He considered calling up a buddy. But then he couldn't recall having any buddies. Must be one or two around somewhere. Or maybe not.

He went over to his desk and re-read the summons. That was his name, all right.

He looked up Carla's number at the restaurant. Some woman answered.

"Taverna Lesvos. May I help you?"

He realized he was growling. He had to quit that.

They had the ball game on. He could hear it in the background. Classy joint.

"Carla there?"

"I'm afraid not. Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Randi around?"

"I'm afraid not."

"What exactly are you afraid of?"

"Excuse me?"

"Never mind. Any idea when she'll be back?"

"Carla?"

"Yes."

"May I ask who's calling?"

"Her ex."

"Oh. I really don't know. Probably not until this evening I guess. They took a picnic over to the Sheep Meadow. It's such a lovely day."

"The Sheep Meadow?"

"Uh-huh."

"I thought they were supposed to be working their asses off over there. I thought you were always fucking swamped."

"Excuse me, sir?"

"Hell, yes. I don't care what you did."

He hung up on her. He walked over and re-read the summons. They even had the amount he owed in there. Two thousand, seven hundred and six dollars and ninety cents. She was hitting him for the ninety cents. He glanced at the dresser drawer. He opened it and took the .38 revolver out from under his socks and underwear. He'd arranged to have the revolver straw-purchased for him in Pennsylvania some years ago when he still thought New York was a dangerous place and not just an annoying one.

He checked the chamber and put it in his pocket.

He took the remote off the bed and put it in his other pocket and then he left the building.

The bar at Taverna Lesvos was packed. Up front near the TV they were standing two-deep. Everybody riveted on the Yankee game. Perfect.

New York had invented baseball. Who the hell were this new generation? Hadn't anybody ever told these assholes that the entire point of a baseball cap was to keep the sun out of your eyes? Maybe wearing them backwards was some anti-redneck maneuver or maybe a form of rebellion. Like refusing to eat your spinach.

He stood at the far end of the bar as far from the game as possible and ordered a scotch. The bartender was a blonde who had to be all of seventeen. He waited until the bases were loaded and the Yankee pitcher was winding up and then took out the remote and turned on the Food Channel. Strawberry soufflé, it looked tasty. The boys at the bar moaned and shouted and pointed at the TV like Donald Sutherland pointing at Brooke Adams in INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. The bartender didn't seem to know what in hell was going on. She looked flustered. By the time she got hold of her remote and switched they were pitching Bud Lite.

More moaning and groaning.

After awhile the place settled down again.

Meanwhile Stroup pocketed the remote and waited until somebody hit one deep into left field and the Yankee fielder was running hard to get under, hustling real good. He turned on the Home Shopping Network. They were selling jewelry there. Nice stuff. Young executives-and-CEOs-to-be yelled and stomped their feet and raised their fists into the air like Nazi Youth watching a parade of orthodox Jews go by.

The bartender was doing something with ice and a shaker but she was a little faster this time and got to the remote just in time for everybody to watch the players retire the field.

Guys groaned and bitched and finally quieted down again.

He ordered another drink. Smoked a cigarette.

He waited until the Yankee first baseman was rounding third and headed for home on a terrific grounder to right field and turned on the Weather Channel. It was pouring in Duluth. Sunny in California. California needed rain. There was serious rage in the room this time. Well-bred wasps turned into Chicago gangsters before his eyes. They were screaming at the bartender to fix the fucking TV, dammit! what the fuck is going on? They spilled beers and slapped the bar with their baseball caps which at least was a decent usage for the damn things and leapt and roared.

He felt like a bullwhip in a herd of cattle.

When he switched to The Learning Channel on what looked to be a Yankee homer the place went the rest of the way to hell and somebody shouted SCREW this shit! I bet they got the goddamn game on at the End of the World. Yeah! somebody else said, LET'S GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! and they did.

The exodus pleased him.

It got nice and quiet in there.

He sat awhile with the remote in his pocket thinking how much Liana hated baseball and how these guys were going to be disappointed there too and finished his scotch and paid and tipped and left the bar.

He crossed Central Park West at 67th and walked through the parking lot at Tavern on the Green. Tourists walked in and out past the liveried doorman. Half-lame carriage horses stood blinkered and waiting, hoping not to die in traffic. What a life.

He dodged sweaty long-distance runners and bicycles on Park Drive and walked past the hot dog vendor and through the cyclone wire gate to the narrow dirt path and gazed out over the wide green grass below. He checked the trees nearby.

No Carla. Just a pair of blonde three-year-old kids and their Indian nannies. Strollers by Armani.

Carla was lazy as a grub when she wasn't either working or eating pussy. She also had delicate skin. The day was bright. She'd go for the trees.

He dropped the remote into a garbage can.

He wouldn't need it anymore.

He headed east along the northern border. Smelled fresh-cut grass. The grass smelled good. But how these sun-crazy fucks could stand the humidity he didn't know. The guys all had their shirts off and the women all wore halters or bikinis. Too bad it wasn't the other way around but still there were a lot of tits out there. He saw headphones and strollers and blankets and Frisbees and kites. He thought one of the kites had his name on it but that couldn't be. He saw black kids and white kids playing together. They were running around a tree, laughing. He thought one of them called his name but that couldn't be.

The area across from Mineral Springs' red brick refreshment stand looked like a good bet to him. There was a low outcropping of rock surrounded by a dozen or so tall trees and it was just a short walk from there through the gate to get a frozen yogurt or a smoothie or a bagel or a pretzel or bottled water or a lemonade or a hot dog or whatever the hell you wanted. He saw people in the shade in front of every tree he came to, dozens of them, happy or sleepy or having fun or all those things together. He saw a woman blowing bubbles for a tiny wide-eyed baby in a carriage. One popped on his nose. Soap-spit.

And then he saw Carla. She and Randi were on a blanket and propped against an oak tree a few yards away. Carla was feeding her potato chips. They were laughing. He realized he was growling. There was no point in stopping now so he didn't. He put his hand in his pocket and walked over.

They still hadn't noticed him but he was about to change that radically when his eye went to a blonde kid in a varsity letter-jacket, green, number thirty-four according to the jacket who was standing leaning against a tree maybe forty feet away from them and he was thinking what the fuck is some asshole doing in a letter jacket in all this heat? is he nuts? when the guy pushed away from the tree and opened his jacket and pulled out something short and black that looked like a combination pistol and machine-gun and started spraying the field and trees left to right.

Stroup hit the dirt. He saw the woman with the bubbles go down with red exploding from her shoulder and a guy with headphones double over like sombody'd kicked him in the stomach. He saw a kid maybe seven years old take one high in the forehead and then his father lurching toward him before his hip burst open.

People were screaming. Scrambling for cover.

The guy's automatic was moving toward Carla. They hadn't even gone down. They were holding one another, wide-open targets, the dumb lezzie bitches.

This guy was gonna do it for him, he thought.

This guy was gonna shoot the hell out of them.

The fuck he was.

He had the .38. He flicked off the safety and aimed and squeezed.

The guy yelped and stumbled back surprised as hell and then looked down at his belly. His belly was a mess. Stroup had made it that way. The guy screamed. Stroup squeezed off another one and the guy's balls were gone. Stroup was shooting in a nice vertical pattern he thought, down the guy's body. Had to finish it up higher, though. The guy was still howling when his jaw splashed against the tree.

Stroup pocketed the gun and stood. Carla was looking at him. He walked over.

"I saved your fucking life, Carla," he said. "Didn't I?"

Carla was white as paste. So was Randi.

"Y-yes," she said. "Yes you did, Stroup."

"You want to forget the rent now?"

`Uh. O-okay." She nodded.

"Thanks, bitch."

He turned and walked away.

He was watching New York One that night when his boss called. He was watching coverage of the shooting for the fifth time. He was drinking scotch. It looked like the black kid and his father were going to live and the bubble-lady too but the guy with the headphones was a goner. So was the shooter. The shooter had been identified as one Will Obey, originally from Center Cut, Texas. He'd told friends just the day before that he was six months pregnant with the child of Behemoth Yuggdoroth Nit. They hadn't believed him. So far nobody had mentioned Stroup's name but that couldn't be.

He turned the volume down. He had to do it manually. He was going to have to get a new remote, goddammit.

"Stroup?"

"You're calling me on a Saturday, Max. You're calling me for the second time. That's unusual."

"I know."

"You can't fire me, Max. You did that."

"Downsized, Stroup. Downsized."

"I don't care what you call it."

"Listen, are you watching the news, Stroup?"

"Matter of fact I am."

"Carla called me."

"Who?"

"Carla. I know it was you, Stroup. Carla told me everything. You're a hero, Stroup. You saved people's lives out there."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I think we can get a book deal."

"A what?"

"A book deal. It was Carla's idea, but I think she's dead right."

"At least she's dead something."

"Huh?"

"Never mind."

"Look, we do it anonymously, under a pseudonym. Nobody's ever going to find out."

"They found out about Ed McBain, Max. They found out about Richard Bachman. And what's his name? Ketchum or something."

"We'll be careful. Those guys weren't. Those guys were clumsy. I know plenty of writers who've never been found out. You're not a bad writer, Stroup. This book could be the beginning of a new career for you."

"And Carla gets a piece of it, right? That's the deal?"

"Well, yes."

"She mention a figure?"

"Well, yes she did."

"It wouldn't be something around two thousand, seven hundred dollars, would it?"

"Thirty five hundred. But look, advances for this kind of thing are crazy these days. We do it strictly true-crime. If it were fiction we'd be lucky to make a nickel. But we do this thing right, you could make a million dollars. Would that be acceptable?"

"Make it two million and you got a deal."

"I think I can safely say, done."

Stroup went to bed. And woke up smiling.

All fiction and non-fiction contained within are copyrighted by Jack Ketchum.

The Goblin on the Dance Floor © 1999

The Hang up © 1976

The Heat © 1977

Skin Game © 1977

The Burn Artist (originally published as Bosom Buddies) © 1978

The Rubdown © 1979

Never Trust a Smart Cunt with Two First Names (originally published as Fixing Her Plumbing) © 1979

Fish © 1999

Old Men Dancing (originally published as Dancin') © 1979

The Liar © 1979

The French © 1978

The Christmas Caller © 1976

East Side Story (originally published as Head Games) © 1980

Dead Heat © 1982

The Old Days © 2004

Beyond The Pail © 2003

Ugly George: Cable TV's Prince of Pickup © 1980

Welcome to the Chateau (originally published as Hot Nights in an S&M Club) © 1979

Flashers and Freaks © 1980

Bad Girls, Sad Girls in the Heart of Disco © 1979

Sheep Meadow Story © 2001 (Jack Ketchum, writing as Jerzy Livingston), novella, Triage, Matt Johnson, ed., Cemetery Dance Publications

Table of Contents

- PART 1
- PART II:
- PART 3:
- INTRODUCTION:
- PART 1:
- THE HEAT
- SKIN GAME
- THE BURN ARTIST
- THE RUBDOWN

- NEVER TRUST A SMART CUNT WITH TWO FIRST NAMES

- FISH
- OLD MEN DANCING
- THE LIAR
- THE FRENCH
- THE CHRISTMAS CALLER
- EAST SIDE STORY
- DEAD HEAT
- THE OLD DAYS
- PART 2: BEYOND THE PAIL
- Authors Note
- UGLY GEORGE: CABLE TV'S PRINCE OF PICKUP
- WELCOME TO THE CHATEAU
- 'FLASHERS AND FREAKS
- BAD GIRLS, SAD GIRLS IN THE HEART OF DISCO
- PART 3: A HERO RETURNS
- SHEEP MEADOW STORY