Candyland

The rain may never fall

Till after sundown…

Chapter one

The brunette is telling Ben that what he's done with the space is truly remarkable. She's a lawyer with the firm, and he can't possibly imagine her knowing anything at all about matters architectural, so he guesses she's flirting with turn, although in an arcane legal sort of way.

The name of the law firm is Dowd, Dawson, Liepman and Loeb. It is on the thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh floors of the old Addison Building on Eighteenth Street and Ninth Avenue. The brunette is telling him that his multilevel concept echoes the very precepts of the law, exalted justice on high, abject supplicants below. Through the huge cathedral windows Ben designed for the eastern end of the space, he can see storm clouds gathering.

The brunette is drinking white wine. Ben is drinking a Perrier and lime. This is DDL&L's first party in their new offices. They have invited all their important clients as well as the architect and interior designer who together restructured and redecorated the two top floors of the building. It is now ten minutes past six on the twenty-first of July, a Wednesday. Ben flew in this morning and is scheduled to take the eight A.M. flight back to Los Angeles tomorrow. He listens to the brunette telling him how wonderful he is. She is full figured and wearing a very low cut red cocktail dress.

He looks out again at the threatening sky.

Ben's firm is called Ritter-Thorpe Associates. The company was Frank Ritter's before Ben became a partner, hence the top billing. There are seven architects altogether, but Frank and Ben are the only partners. Their receptionist, Agata, is a Chicano girl they hired straight out of a high school in the Venice ghetto. She greets him warmly in her accented English, and then puts him through to Frank who, she informs him, "hass joss return from a meeting."

"How'd it go?" Frank asks at once.

"Good," Ben says. "Lots of nice comments, half a dozen people asking for a card."

"Any mention of those windows that popped?"

"No, no. Why should there be? That was a long time ago, Frank."

"Only six months."

"Nobody mentioned it."

"You should have had a model made."

"Well. "

"Tested it in a wind tunnel."

"Spilled milk," Ben says. "Anyway, it worked out all…"

"We're lucky it happened when it did. Every window in the place could have blown out."

"Well, nobody mentioned it."

"Still," Frank says.

He's not too subtly suggesting that Ben's been letting too many details slip by nowadays. The air exchange for the storage room in the house in Santa Monica. The support for the free-standing staircase in the Malibu beach house. Minor details. Well, the windows popping out here in New York wasn't so minor, they were lucky nobody got hurt. But that was the structural engineer's fault, not Ben's. Still, the architect always takes the blame.

"Did anybody say when we can expect final payment?" Frank asks.

"I didn't bring it up."

"Big party, no check," Frank says.

"I'm sure it'll be coming soon."

"Unless they plan to bring up the windows again."

"I don't think so."

"We'll see," Frank says, and sighs. "When are you coming back?"

"I'm on the eight o'clock flight tomorrow morning."

"What time is it there, anyway?"

Ben looks at his watch.

"Five past seven."

"What are your plans?"

"Dinner. Sleep.

"Fly safely," Frank says, and hangs up.

Ben finds his airline ticket in his dispatch case, locates the phone number to call, and dials it. He knows it isn't necessary to reconfirm, but he wants to make sure he's on that flight. The woman he speaks to assures him that he is indeed confirmed for American's number 33, leaving Kennedy at eight A.M. tomorrow, non-stop to LAX.

"That's first class, correct?" he asks.

"First class, yes, Mr. Thorpe."

"Thank you," he says, and hangs up. He lifts the receiver again, waits for a dial tone, dials an 8 for long distance and then direct-dials his home number. It is ten past seven, which makes it ten past four in L.A. The phone keeps ringing. He hopes she's back from the hospital by now. Come on, he thinks, pick up the…

"Hello?"

"Grace?"

"Ben? What's the matter?"

"Nothing. I just got back to the hotel. My flight's okay for tomorrow morning, I just checked."

"Why wouldn't it be okay?"

"No reason. Well, it's raining here. Sometimes.

"It's raining here, too."

"Sometimes rain can cause cancellations. Or delays. But everything seems to be all right. What I plan to do is leave the hotel at six-thirty tomorrow morn.. "

"Isn't that early? For an eight A.M. flight?"

"Well, I like to get there a little early. I should be in L.A. at a quarter to eleven. Shall I come directly to the hospital, or what?"

"They want to do a bypass," Grace says.

"How does she look?"

"Gray. Tired. Sad. She's resting quietly now, but the pain was excruciating."

"I can imagine."

"I'm exhausted, Ben."

"I shouldn't have come East," he says.

"You didn't know this would happen."

"I should've come home the minute you called."

"Nonsense. It was important that you stay."

"I guess so. Anyway, I'll be home tomorrow."

"How did it go?"

"Oh, fine. The usual."

"Have you had dinner yet?"

"No, I just got back. I want to shower and change, then I'll go down."

"Where will you eat?"

"I thought Trattoria. It's right around the corner."

"Yes, it's good there."

"I want to get to bed early. It's been a busy day."

"Here, too."

"I'll call again when I'm back from dinner," he says.

"You don't have to, Ben."

"Well, I want to."

"I'll be here, but really, you don't have to."

"When will they do it, do you know?"

"Tomorrow morning. I think. It has something to do with all the numbers being right. I don't know what the hell they're talking about."

"I'll try you when I get back."

"Really, you don't have to."

"Well, whatever you say."

"Really."

"But call me if you need me, Grace."

"I will."

“Otherwise I'll talk to you tomorrow morning."

"I'll be leaving for the hospital early."

"Yes, but we're three hours. "

“Right, I forgot."

"In fact… well, let me see."

He hears her sighing on the other end of the line.

"You'll be asleep," he says. "We'll probably begin boarding around seven-thirty. That's only four-thirty, your time. Maybe I'd better call you when I get back from…"

"For Christ's sake, don't worry about it!" she snaps. The line goes silent.

"Well… if I don't talk to you before then, I'll see you at the hospital."

"Fine.”

“Call me if you need me, Grace."

"I will."

"Love you."

"Love you, too," she says, and hangs up.

Gently, he replaces the receiver on its cradle.

It is always "Call me if you need me, Grace."

In the twenty-two years they've been married, she has called him only once, and then to tell him that Margaret fell from a horse at camp. He travels a lot. There are always clients to confer with in St. Louis or Chicago, sites to inspect in New Orleans or New York, lectures to deliver in Omaha or Salt Lake City. He is Benjamin Thorpe, an important architect who is very much in demand.

It is still raining hard outside.

His daughter lives in Princeton, New Jersey, where her husband is a tenured professor of economics. Charles is perhaps the cheapest man in the United States of America, if not the entire world. It would never occur to him to make a long distance call to find out how Margaret's grandmother is doing out there in the wilds of Los Angeles. Nor would it ever occur to her to pick up the phone of her own volition, call Ben here, call her mother out there for a progress report.

This is now twenty past seven. His darling daughter has known since twelve noon that her grandmother had a heart attack early this morning L.A. time, and that her mother is frantic with worry. But she has not called since Ben spoke to her earlier today. Perhaps she's been too busy barbecuing hamburgers and hot dogs in her back yard.

He dials the New Jersey number now, hoping he won't get Charles the First, as he refers to him in private to Grace, the implied hope being that one of these days Margaret will move on to a second, more desirable mate. He is happy when his granddaughter picks up the phone.

"This is the Harris residence," she pipes in her three-year-old voice.

"Hi, Jenny," he says.

"Is this Grandpa?"

"This is Grandpa. Is this Jenny?"

"Hi, Grandpa. Are you watching television?"

"No. Are you?"

"They're still talking about John John."

"Yes, darling, I know."

"I want to go put flowers at his building."

"Maybe Mommy will take you."

"She says no. Will you take me, Grandpa?"

"I can't, honey. I have to go back to L.A."

"Ask her to take me, okay?" she says, and is suddenly gone. He waits. He does not like being a grandfather. He is only forty-three years old, and he blames his present premature senior-citizen status on his daughter, who married at the age of seventeen and delivered Jenny a scant ten months later. A man of forty-three — well, almost forty-four — should not be a grandfather. He does not enjoy being called Grandpa, or Gramps, or as Charles the First is fond of putting it, "Papa Ben." He is Benjamin Thorpe, Esquire, famous architect whose multilevel concept echoes the very precepts of the law, exalted justice on high, abject supplicants below — and not anybody's damn grandpa.

"Grandpa?"

"Yes, Jenny."

"She's coming. Ask her," she whispers, and puts down the phone with a clatter.

His daughter comes on, high-pitched and frantic as usual. He cannot imagine how he ever spawned such a nervous individual.

"She's dead, right?" she says at once.

"No, Margaret, she's not dead."

"Everybody's dying," she says. "Isn't it awful, what happened?"

"Honey, if Jenny wants to go put flowers. "

"I can't take her into the city just for that, Dad."

"It's important to her," he says.

"All the way down in TriBeCa, no less," she says, dismissing it. "What's Grandma's condition?"

"She's all right for now. They'll be doing.

"What do you mean for now?"

"She's resting quietly. They'll be doing a bypass tomorrow morning. Provided the numbers are right."

"What numbers? Numbers?"

He sometimes wishes she'd gone to college instead of becoming an instant nervous mother. Why did she have to turn him into a grandfather so soon?

"They do various tests to determine whether it's all right to operate.,

"What tests?"

"I don't know, I'm not a doctor, Margaret. They know what they're doing, they do a dozen bypasses every day of the week."

"Well, I hope so."

"Don't worry, she'll be all right."

"I hope so."

"She will."

There is a long silence on the line.

He never seems to know what to say to his daughter these days. His own daughter.

"Why don't you call Mom?" he suggests.

"Maybe I will," she says.

Which means she won't.

"Well, I have to go now," he says.

"What time is your flight?"

"Eight tomorrow morning. Margaret?"

"Yes, Dad?"

"These things are important to children."

"I know, Dad, but. "

"I was only eight when his father got killed in Dallas. I still remember it."

"Charles doesn't think it's a good idea," she says.

"Well."

There is another long silence.

"Do you want to come here for dinner?" she asks.

"I thought I'd get something near the hotel."

"You're always welcome here," she says.

"Thank you, darling, but I really don't think so."

"Well… call me later, okay?" she says.

What the hell for? he wonders.

"I'll talk to you in the morning," he says.

"Dad?" she says. "Do you remember when you used to read to me on Christmas Eve?"

"Yes, darling."

"“It was the night before Christmas.” Do you remember?"

"Yes," he says. "I remember."

"So do I," she says.

She sounds almost wistful.

His personal telephone directory is written in a code only he can understand. In order to decipher it, he depends largely on his own very good memory; he can recall the plot, and also lines of dialogue, from every movie he's ever seen. He can tell you which movie won the Academy Award in 1946. He can tell you who said, "Beware, Saxon, lest you strike horse!"

Heather's last name is Epstein. She is a twenty-year-old architectural student whom he met in April, when he was doing a guest lecture at Cooper Union. Ben has her listed in his directory as Stein, Ephraim. Her area code is 212, of course, she lives right here in Manhattan. But to throw off the bloodhounds, whenever or if ever they decide to go sniffing through his book, he lists the area code as 516. So if anyone dials 516 and then the phone number in an attempt to get Ephraim Stein who is in reality Heather Epstein, he will instead get some stranger in Nassau County who never heard of Benjamin Thorpe.

He dials her number now.

Nine for a local call…

He has just come out of the shower, he is still wearing only a towel.

Two, six, oh…

Heather Epstein. Five-feet seven-inches tall, long blond hair, blue eyes, a wide-shouldered, big-breasted Jewish girl who knelt before him, three hours after they met and asked him to touch her hair while she sucked his cock.

He feels himself becoming faintly tumescent under the towel.

The phone is ringing.

Once, twice.

"Hello?"

Her little girl voice.

"Heather?"

"Yes?"

She sounds sleepy. She always sounds sleepy. He visualizes her in a baby doll nightgown. Wide hips, full thighs, long splendid legs.

"It's Ben," he says. "Ben Thorpe."

At the lecture that night in April, she was wearing a long tan skirt, her beautiful legs came as a delightful surprise. Peach colored blouse, silken to the touch. That was the only time he went to bed with her, that one night here in New York. Ever since, it's been phone sex. She sometimes calls him collect at the office and says, "Hi, what are you doing?" Which means, "Would you like to jerk off with me?"

"Guess what?" he says now.

"What, Ben?"

"I'm here in New York."

"Oh?"

"Alone," he says.

There is a silence.

"I haven't heard from you in a while," she says.

"I've been very busy."

"I thought you'd forgotten all about me."

"How could I forget you?"

"How do you know I haven't got a boyfriend by now?"

"Have you?"

"How do you know I haven't?"

"I hope you haven't."

"Married man, can't ever see me unless he's in New York giving a guest lecture."

"I'm in New York now," he says.

"When did you get here?"

"I came in on the Red Eye this morning."

"So what took you so long to call?"

"I've been busy all day."

"You should have called earlier. I'm going to a party. I was just about to shower."

"I'm already showered," he says.

"So what would you like to do?" she asks, her voice lowering.

"What would you like to do?"

"What do you think I'd like to do?"

"I mean tonight. What would you like to do tonight? Heather, I'm here alone."

"What does that mean?" she asks.

"it means we can spend the night together. The way we did that other time."

"A hundred years ago."

"Only this past spring."

"A hundred years," she says, and hesitates. "Anyway, how do you know I want to spend the night with you?"

"Don't you?"

"Maybe. How do you know I haven't already made plans to spend the night with someone else?"

"I hope you haven't."

"Do you think I just sit around here waiting for you to call?"

"No, but. "

"Waiting for you to tell me to take off my panties?"

"Can you meet me?"

"Where?"

"Wherever you like. Trattoria dell'Arte? We can have dinner and then…"

"Where's that?"

"Right across the street from Carnegie Hall. Or would you rather I came downtown?"

There is another long silence.

Then she says, "I told you. I'm going to a party."

"Skip the party. We'll have our own party."

"I'll have my own party, anyway. You didn't think I was going alone, did you? Don't you think I have any friends?"

"I'm sure you do."

"Why don't you take your wife to Trattoria whatever?"

"She's in Los Angeles. That's what I'm trying to tell you, Heather. I'm alone. I want to see you. I want to spend the night with you."

He waits.

"I'm sorry," she says, "I've made other plans," and hangs up.

He looks at the phone receiver. He puts it back on the cradle. Rain is lashing the windows. I should have accepted whatever she was ready to give, he thinks.

He dresses casually but elegantly, a gray cashmere jacket, darker gray flannel trousers, a pale blue button-down shirt with a darker blue fie, blue socks and black shoes. He looks at himself in the mirror inside the closet door. Studies himself for several moments, and then shrugs. To tell the truth, he does not think of himself as particularly good looking In a world of spectacularly handsome men sporting Calvin Klein jeans and bulging pectorals, he considers himself only so-so. Quite average, in fact. Five-feet ten-inches tall, a hundred and seventy pounds, eyes brown, nose a trifle too long for his face, hair dark, a totally average American male. Who are you? he wonders.

He goes to the mini bar, opens himself a Beefeater from one of the small bottles arrayed on the shelf, pours it over ice. He opens a small jar of olives, drops a pair into the gin. The olives slide down past the ice cubes. He holds the glass up to the light, shakes the cubes. Everything twinkles like silver and jade. Grace doesn't like him to drink gin. That's why he drinks it. Fuck you, Grace. Sitting in a black leather easy chair under a standing floor lamp, he sips his drink and leisurely consults his address book again. He can feel the brittle booze burning its way down to his gut, feel too a spreading anticipative warmth in his groin. He does not yet know who, but some woman somewhere will soon be offering him comfort.

Most of the listings are out-of- town numbers, the names changed so that they appear to be men's names. Sometimes, he transmogrifies the name so completely that even with his phenomena] memory, he cannot for the life of him decipher the code. The challenge to recall becomes even more difficult wherever he's substituted one city for another. Sarah Gillis, for example, who lives in Chicago, Illinois, where he spoke at the Art Institute on two separate occasions, is listed as Sam Dobie and her Chicago street address is listed properly, but he's displaced it to Atlanta, Georgia. Her true telephone number follows not the 312 Chicago area code but instead the 404 code for Atlanta. He remembers Sarah Gillis with considerable ease because The Affairs of Dobie Gillis was one of his favorite movies, and Sarah was an astonishingly agile and inventive bed partner for the entire three nights he was in Chicago the first time, and the full week he stayed the second time.

Sarah has long blond hair on her head and wild black hair on her crotch and her unshaven armpits. She is a librarian, go ask. He frequently calls her from the office, and she describes torrid sex scenes for him while they both masturbate. He visualizes her in the stacks, coming all over Remembrance of Things Past. He is constantly amazed by the number of desirable women who will readily take off their panties and fondle themselves for him on the telephone. He attributes this neither to his charm nor his appearance. He merely wishes he'd known all this when he was sixteen. He may call Sarah later tonight. He is thinking that tonight he may pull out all the stops. Even call Heather again in the middle of the night, get her to do herself for him in contrition for her abrupt behavior ten minutes ago. Tonight is going to be the X-rated version of Home Alone. Tonight is going to be The Rains Came in garter belt and open-crotch panties.

Samantha is a black girl he met in New Orleans. He can remember every detail of her face and her body, but not her last name. Face as perfectly sculpted as Nefertiti's, perky little breasts with stubby brown nipples, crinkly crisp cunt hair, they'd fucked the hours away on a rainy summer night while the funky sound of jazz floated up from Bourbon Street-Samantha what? Not that she would do him any good here in New York City on a dark and stormy night, not all the way down there in New Orleans. He keeps leafing through the pages of his little black book, which is in fact soft brown Italian leather, purchased at Gucci on Rodeo Drive. Soft Italian leather and something much harder, more insistently prominent in his English flannel trousers now. He sips at his gin. Drinking and sex go well together, he's discovered, the hell with Shakespeare's observation. He takes another sip, exclaims, "Beautiful," out loud, and keeps turning pages. He is leafing through the M's when he comes to Milton, David. Oh yes, he thinks, Millicent Davies, right here in New York City, although the area code listed in his book is 8 13. Yes. Dear, dark-eyed, dark-haired Millie. He takes another sip of the gin…

"Beautiful," he says again.

… and dials.

He gets a busy signal, hangs up, puts on the speaker phone — nobody home to eavesdrop, how nice — and hits the redial button. Still busy. He picks up a pencil, begins alternately doodling and hitting the redial button. Millie is a marathon talker. He looks at his watch. It is already five minutes to eight. Ahh, the phone is ringing now. Once, twice…

"Hello?"

"Millie?"

"Who's this?"

"Ben.,

"Jesus, Ben, I've got a house full of people here!"

"I just wanted to. "

"I told you never to call me again! What the hell's wrong with you?"

And hangs up.

He looks at the receiver. He feels instant anger. What the hell's wrong with me? he thinks. What the hell's wrong with you? After everything we did together on the phone? All those times? You ungrateful bitch! he thinks, and slams the receiver down onto the cradle.

Chapter two

He is not a man who frequents saloons as such, but he does enjoy sitting at restaurant bars — waiting for Grace, usually — or at hotel bars when he's alone in another town, as he is alone tonight. He sits alone on a stool toying with the olive in his second gin since sundown, listening to the heavy rain lashing the windows on the street side of the room, hearing the sound of the lounge piano smoothing the clatter of cocktail conversation.

Come to think of it, he cannot remember a single occasion when Grace was on time. He is usually early, Grace is invariably late. in fact, promptness is a habit with him, and he prides himself on arriving at any given destination some five or ten minutes before time, which isn't easy to do in Los Angeles, the goddamn freeways. He remembers, before they relocated out there from New York, they were dining one night with Frank and his wife, and he was selling them on L.A., bragging about how "convenient" the city was, explaining that here you were always only twenty minutes from wherever you wanted to go. Frank's wife, a bit in her cups, said, "Only problem is there's no place to go."

He sits alone.

The buzz in the lounge is all about the discovery of the three bodies some seven miles off Martha's Vineyard. Everyone is talking about the tragedy. It is now ten minutes past eight. The men and women sitting here drinking and chatting have already known for several hours that JFK, Jr. and his wife and sister-in-law are in fact dead. Ben can remember the day President Kennedy got killed — well, his eighth birthday, how could he forget? The grief in this room is almost palpable. Some of these people are perhaps guests here, some may later be dining in the hotel dining room, others may be moving on to other restaurants or bars, but there is a shared intimacy among these strangers joined in mutual sorrow.

There are only two women sitting at the bar.

He wonders if either of them is a hooker,

He has met hookers who tell you they assemble Ancient Sumerian artifacts at the local museum, hookers who say they sell real estate, hookers who claim they are here for the Philatelic Convention, hookers who look like kindergarten teachers from North Dakota. It is sometimes enormously difficult to distinguish a working girl from a so-called respectable woman. Actually, he never knows for sure until it gets down to the wire. Until the essential question comes from either him or her.

He looks at his watch.

There is time.

He doesn't have to leave for the airport till six-thirty in the morning. There is time to savor his second drink tonight, and listen to the conversational hum, the spongy sound of cocktail lounge music, the rattle of cutlery in the adjacent dining room, where he may or may not be having dinner, if he has dinner at all tonight.

The woman sitting closest to him, a stool separating them, seems an unlikely candidate for a hooker, but he has been wrong before, and often. She looks to be in her late thirties, dressed to the nines, a possible sign that she's on the prowl, but then again she may be a Park Avenue divorcée who dresses for dinner and visits a different restaurant every night, stopping at various hotel bars for a drink beforehand. She is elegantly dressed in a gray tailored suit with a pink silk blouse, ruby and gold cufflinks showing at the wrists. She is smoking a cigarette and drinking what appears to be a Manhattan, a slice of orange and a maraschino cherry still floating in it.

She seems distressed about something. Sorrowful somehow. Taking occasional long drags of the cigarette, peering into her glass, seemingly unaware of anyone or anything around her. Sometimes they put on that act, to encourage conversation. Is anything wrong? you're supposed to ask. You seem sad, you're supposed to say. Oh, no, she'll answer, my mother just died five minutes ago, that's all. And one thing will lead to another until the essential question is asked by one or the other of you. He has asked and been asked the essential question many times in many different hotel bars.

The other woman at the bar tonight is sitting at the far end, closer to the service bar. She is a redhead in her mid twenties, he guesses. She seems to know the bartender. At least, she is in occasional conversation with him, checking her watch every few minutes, as if she is expecting someone who's late. They sometimes do this. They'll sit at the bar, becoming more and more concerned when a phantom date doesn't arrive, making nervous chatter with the bartender because they're presumably embarrassed sitting here alone at a bar. You're supposed to make some comment about signals getting crossed, he probably went to the Plaza instead of the Peninsula or wherever, and she'll immediately correct the impression that she's waiting for a man, this is her girlfriend who works at the same bank she works at, over on Whatever Street, she's worried something might have happened to her.

She'll finally leave the bar to make a phone call, giving you an opportunity to look her over top to bottom and when she comes back she'll tell you Wouldn't you know it, her girlfriend's baby came down with double pneumonia, and she had to get the doctor, and there goes her dinner date, oh well. At this point, you're supposed to ask her if she'd like to join you for dinner, seeing as you're all alone in a big strange city and A. Or else you simply ask the essential question. Or wait for her to ask the essential question. Which, if she's a hooker, she will eventually ask unless she thinks you're a hotel detective or somebody on the Vice Squad. Some of them will ask you straight out if you're a cop. That's the prelude to the essential question. Once she asks you if you're a cop, she's upstairs in your bed.

The redhead sitting there looking at her watch is dressed in a simple black dress, no jewelry except the watch, which is gold and expensive looking. High-heeled black pumps, hair falling loose and sleek, she turns to glance toward the entrance door, her eyes grazing him in passing. If he were a betting man, he would put his money on her as the professional. In fact, the lady in the gray suit and pink blouse is already paying her check and preparing to leave, putting her cigarettes and lighter in her handbag, pushing her stool back — display of long legs as she does so — same sad look on her face, not a glance at anyone in the room as she moves away from the bar. She is either off to a costly dinner alone at Le Cirque, or — if she's a pro — she's decided there's nothing here for her and is moving on to another venue. If he'd been interested — he should have indicated at least some regard for her obvious sorrow, the poor woman's mother so freshly deceased and all. You choose or you lose is the name of the game at these hotel bars, and the lady in the pink blouse — if she's a pro — has obviously decided that he's already chosen the redhead and so she is now on her way to greener pastures, fuck you, mister.

The redhead has obviously reached the same conclusion: she herself is the chosen morsel from tonight's menu of hors doeuvres, no pun intended. The next time she turns to check the door for her girlfriend who is now so terribly tardy, she initiates the action, making eye contact and tossing a slight shrug in his direction. The shrug seems to say I really don't know what's wrong, do you? Where can she possibly be, do you think it's the rain that's keeping her, it doesn't look all that bad to me, does it to you? All of this in the simple shrug and the helpless eyes and the little girl moue. All of it saying Why don't you move over here, Big Boy, where we can discuss this?

He shrugs back.

She smiles.

Quite a dazzling smile.

Or…

She is probably waiting for her husband, who just flew in from Chicago. Ben hopes not. But that's it, of course. Her husband is right this minute rushing from La Guardia in a taxi, on his way to the hotel where he's supposed to meet her here in the bar because they have an eight o'clock dinner date.

He hesitates only a moment longer.

Then he picks up his drink, walks toward her…

She is still smiling.

… and sits on the stool next to hers.

"It must be the weather," he says.

"What do you mean?" she says.

He thinks at once he's made a mistake. She will signal to the bartender and complain that this man is making unwanted advances. But she is still smiling.

"I thought you might be waiting for someone. ”

"No.”

"… and the weather. ”

"No, I'm not. But thanks for your concern," she says, and flashes a quick appraising look before turning back to her drink.

He supposes that Grace would find what he's about to do quite disgusting. Is already doing, in fact, since the game has been afoot since the moment the girl made eye contact. Well, since long before then, actually. Afoot since he first decided how he would be spending this night alone in New York City. Afoot, in fact, since the very first time he'd ever placed his hand on a strange woman's silken thigh in a hotel lounge, on an airplane, at a dinner party, anywhere, everywhere, afoot for a long, long time now, my dear Watson.

If only you knew how much there is to be disgusted about, Grace. If only you knew that an hour from now, a half-hour from now, ten minutes from now, I may very well be eating this young girl's pussy, would you then ask me if I'd used your goddamn sacrosanct towel or toothbrush? I mean, really, Grace, if a woman won't let you use her toothbrush, how can she even entertain the notion of sucking your cock? Think about it, Grace. If you ever think about such things.

"Isn't it awful what happened?" the redhead asks, turning to him again.

"Yes," he says. "Terrible."

"They found the bodies, you know."

“Yes. "

"A tragedy," she says.

Shaking her head, eyes all wide in wonder and awe. Green eyes, he notices. Those cool and limpid green eyes. The Jimmy Dorsey orchestra. The Big Band sound. His father playing trumpet at more weddings and engagement parties and beer parties and bar mitzvahs and proms than Ben can count, most often with just four pieces, sometimes seven, less frequently with what his father used to call "a full orchestra," ten or twelve or fourteen pieces, like the time he played a gig — he called them gigs — up at Saranac Lakes in New York.

Weekend musician, he always pretended to be oh so hip. How you doin, man? he'd say to his own son. Called Ben "man."

How you doin, man?

Sported a little triangular beard under his lower lip, the tip pointing toward his chin, called the beard a "Dizzy kick," after Dizzy Gillespie, one of his idols. Told Ben it cushioned the mouthpiece, so how come AJ Hirt didn't have one? Or Herb Alpert? Ben was growing up during the time of the Tijuana Brass and "Taste of Honey", Mama Cass and "California Dreamin' ", The Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, but his father's music drowned out the sounds Ben preferred. He couldn't count the number of times he'd heard his father blowing "Concerto for Cootie" or "Night in Tunisia" in the spare room of the old house in Mamaroneck, where he practiced every night of the week after he got home from his day job selling real estate.

"How'd you like that, Louise?" he would proudly ask Ben's mother, opening the spit valve on the horn, blowing moisture into a chamois cloth, which his mother found disgusting.

"Don't give up your day job, Henry," she would say, shooting him down, and wink at Ben, conspirators. Henry. A wimp's name, an accountant's name. HENRY THORPE REAL ESTATE, it said on his stationery. But he called his band The Hank Thorpe Orchestra, even when it was just four pieces at an Irish wedding, and that's what it read on the business cards he handed out, The Hank Thorpe Orchestra, in delicate script lettering. His mother never stopped calling him Henry.

"Have you eaten here yet?" the redhead asks.

"I'm sorry?"

"The hotel dining room. Zagat says it's very good."

"No, I haven't."

"I thought… well, actually, I don't even know if you are, for that matter."

"Are what?" he asks.

"Staying here," she says. "At the hotel," she says.

"Yes, I am."

"Which is what I assumed. Which is why I asked if you'd eaten here yet."

There is still time to back away from this. He knows there is time. But in that instant, the redhead crosses her legs, and all at once there is a sleek expanse of naked white thigh below the suddenly higher hem of the already short black dress. His mouth goes dry. He tries not to appear too aware of her exposed thigh, but he is thinking she's not wearing pantyhose, maybe she isn't wearing panties, either, maybe she is naked under that short black dress. He pokes his forefinger into the gin, toys with the olive, finally grasps it between thumb and forefinger, and pops it into his mouth.

"What are you drinking?" he asks.

"Bourbon. Rocks."

"Would you care for another?"

"Are you having another?"

"I thought it might be a good idea."

"Then sure."

The dazzling smile again.

He signals to the bartender.

"Another round here," he says.

The bartender nods.

The bartenders all know who the hookers are. In most good hotels, the manager doesn't like hookers wandering in off the street, but for a slight weekly fee the bartender allows a select handful to solicit at the bar. He knows this for a fact because a bartender in St. Louis, where he was designing a synagogue four years ago, shared the information during the early hours of the morning, just before the bar closed. Of course, if anyone dared mention to the compassionate barkeep here in this fine hotel that at least in this one respect he is behaving suspiciously like a pimp, he would become highly offended, no Eugene O'Neill character he, oh nossir. But, really, sit, isn't that what the situation here most closely resembles? You, sit, are something of a pimp, and I am something of a john, and this redhead sitting beside me with,her legs recklessly crossed is most certainly something of a whore.

Or is she?

Before he asks the essential question

In architecture, or at least in the kind of architecture lie practices, the essential question is: Does it work? Does it work both functionally and, esthetically? For him, for Benjamin Thorpe, AIA, that is all there is, and all there is to know. Will it delight the eye and will it not fall down around the ears? Does it work? The essential question in the game afoot here at the bar is quite similar to the question Ben asks himself each time he sits at his computer. Does it work? Or, to be more precise, does she work? Is she a working girl? Or is she, in reality, an innocent young thing who has wandered in out of the storm in search of an overpriced dinner here in the hotel restaurant?

"Cheers," he says, and raises the fresh drink the bartender has deposited before him without a word. The redhead raises her glass, too.

"Cheers," she responds, with a tone and a shrug that suggests she never expected to be sitting here sharing a drink with a delightful male companion on this otherwise distressing night.

It's unusual that a hooker will sit drinking hard liquor when she is trolling for a customer, or a client, or a patron, as he has been called variously by women from whom he's accepted comfort and solace hither and yon, one of whom called him a son of a bitch bastard, in fact — but that was another story. The redhead's drink looks genuinely alcoholic, though, so perhaps she isn't what she seems to be at all, but is indeed a sweet little naif enjoying a pre-dinner drink in the cozy warmth of the hotel bar, it being so nasty and stormy and wet out there. Or perhaps she is, in fact, the slut he first took her for and still guesses she is, who's decided that old Ben here — who is forty-three, mind you, and incidentally beginning to feel these two and a bit more gins — is a sure thing, and so it's safe to have a drink in celebration of her catch. In which case, all that remains is for one or the other of them to ask the essential question.

"So what's your name?" she asks.

This is not the essential question.

Besides, it's been his experience that most respectable ladies

Oh, listen, don't give me the Madonna and the whore bullshit, he thinks suddenly and fiercely. I'm not cruising the universe tonight because I think my mother was Hail Mary, full of grace, and all other women are harlots, I mean the hell with that shit. I am sitting here working this redhead because… Well, who knows why I'm here? It has nonetheless been my experience, lie thinks, still annoyed without knowing quite why, that most respectable ladies as opposed to most whores will not immediately ask a man what his name is, preferring him to take the lead as they've been taught in proper finishing schools where they wear white gloves.

"Michael," he lies. "And yours?"

"Karen," she says, which is not the sort of name hookers normally choose for themselves. He has never in his life met a hooker with a name like Mary or Jane. Or Karen, for that matter. Kim seems to be the most common hooker's name, or for that matter the name of most common hookers.

Hello, Michael, I'm Kim.

Or Tiffany.

Tiffany is a good one.

Or Lauren.

He has met three hookers named Lauren, two of them in Miami.

"Do you live here in New York, Karen?"

"Oh yes," she says.

There is an almost playful manner about her now. Well, if not playful, at least more relaxed, more casual. It is as if now that the matter has been settled — although it really hasn't been settled since the essential question hasn't yet been spoken by either of them. But perhaps it's already been settled in her mind — I am a whore and you are a john — and so she can afford to be more, well, intimate, he guesses, swinging her stool around so that her knees are almost touching his, the skirt riding very high on her thighs now, her legs looking white and shiny and young and smooth and touchable in the pale blue spill from the lights behind the bar.

"Where do you live, Michael?"

"Los Angeles."

"Long way from home. How long will you be staying?"

"I'll be leaving tomorrow morning."

Across the room, the piano player is noodling a medley of what Grace calls "Old Fart Music," which is only the music Ben grew up with in the Mamaroneck house, the music he heard his father practicing at home every night, the music Ben heard him playing with his band and even his orchestra in various banquet halls and dance emporiums throughout Lower Westchester and the Bronx — but don't give up your day job, Henry. Which he finally did when he was sixty-three and suffered a heart attack that killed him, how you doin, man? Ben's daughter Margaret was sixteen at the time. She refused to go kiss him in his coffin. A year or so later, she met Charles the First and married him. Made me a grandfather, he thinks, isn't that odd? Until that time, my father was the grandfather. Now I'm the grandfather, and my father is dead. He used to play tunes for her on his mouthpiece. just the mouthpiece, no horn attached to it. Blew actual tunes for her, delighting her. Used to call the trumpet his "ax." Let me go get my ax, man. Wouldn't go in to kiss her own grandfather. No wonder she won't call California to see how Grace's mother is doing.

"I love this tune, don't you?" Karen says.

The tune happens to be "I'll Walk Alone", a big hit for Harry James during World War II. If Karen is, in fact, the twenty-three, twenty-four year-old he guesses she is, she wasn't even born when Helen Forrest sang it. His father used to put a mute in the horn when he was playing this tune, the better to evoke a lovesick woman waiting for her man to come back from overseas. His father never stopped talking about the goddamn war. Guys who'd seen combat were supposed to be shy about it. Not his father. His father could remember all the fucking Nazis he'd ever killed, took pleasure in describing their demise right down to the surprised expressions on their faces when he shot them. Karen is swaying to the tune now, hugging herself, white breasts swelling in the low neckline of the black cocktail dress, all creamy white above and below, long shapely legs and firm young breasts, swaying in time to the Music floating from the piano, sleek red hair framing an oval face, eyes closed. He feels an urge to kiss her while her eyes are closed, surprise her with a soft gentle kiss tasting of green olives and gin, but he doesn't because he's still not sure she's a prostitute, or perhaps he's still hoping she isn't a prostitute.

Once, when he tried to kiss a prostitute, she turned her face away and said, "What the hell are you looking for, mister? Love?"

The word "love" was almost contemptuous on her lips.

She almost spit out the word "love."

He had dressed silently and left her, shamed somehow.

Tipped her twenty dollars, he couldn't imagine why.

Most hookers will kiss, what the hell.

Karen opens her eyes.

"Do you like this tune, Michael?" she asks dreamily.

"My father used to play it."

"Is he a musician?"

"Was. He's dead."

"I'm sorry."

"Almost five years now," he says.

"And do you play, Michael?"

"I'm an architect," he says.

"I love architecture," she says.

They are sitting knee to knee now. Her eyes are so very green in the blue light.

He supposes it is time for the essential question.

"Are you a working girl?" he whispers.

"Yeah," she says, and pulls a face. "But I hate the job, truly."

He looks at her. This is the first time in all his experience that he's heard a hooker complain about the job. Is she planning to march for higher pay and shorter hours? Is he expected to show sympathy? Express compassionate understanding? Tell her not to worry, he'll be gentle? Or is she pretending ignorance of the code until she can make certain he's not a cop? Is she about to tell him she's a graphic artist or a social worker or an account executive at Merrill Lynch?

"I'm a phlebotomist," she says.

"Uh-huh," he says, and smiles conspiratorially. "And what's a… lobotomist, did you say?"

"Phlebotomist."

"Someone who grows exotic plants, right?" The knowing smile still on his mouth.

"I draw blood," she says, and grimaces again.

"Ah. You're a nurse."

"No. I just draw blood. P-H-L, phlebotomy. It's from the Greek word for blood-letting."

“I see."

"Yes. But I'm not a nurse. I just go from floor to floor, taking blood. It's a part-time job. I start at five A.M. and I quit at nine. The hospital pays me thirty bucks an hour."

"I see. And which hospital would that be?"

"Memorial Sloan-Kettering?"

"Where's that?"

"On York Avenue? Near Sotheby's? Do you know it?"

"Uh-huh."

He is studying her more closely now. He has met hookers with enormously elaborate stories to tell until the essential question is asked. But he has already asked the essential question, and he is now getting an unexpected song and dance. If she's suspicious, she should be asking personal questions, fishing to learn if he's a cop before they strike a deal.

"I wear a white lab coat," she says, "and go from floor to floor with my little cart and syringes. Some contrast between that and your basic black, huh?"

She nods, grins, happy with herself, happy with the way she looks in black, flaunting it a bit, is she a hooker or isn't she? He really doesn't have time to chat up a twenty-three-year-old girl, this is not The Dating Game, this is a mature man alone in the city of New York, very far from home. Is she or ain't she? Does she or doesn't she?

"What do you do when you're not at the hospital?" he asks.

Lead into it that way. What do you do when you're wearing your basic black cocktail dress without panties perhaps, sitting at a hotel bar, flashing legs that won't quit, what do you do at night, what are you doing this very night, and how much do you charge?

"Make rounds," she says. "Take lessons."

"Rounds?"

"I'm an actress."

"Have I seen you in anything?"

“Everyone always asks that."

"I'll bet."

"Do you ever go to any OffOff productions? When you're here in New York? Off-off Broadway?"

"No, I'm sorry, I don't."

"Then you haven't seen me in anything."

"So as I understand this, you draw blood from five A.M. to nine A.M…"

"Yes.. "

“And then you make rounds and take lessons."

"Right.”

“What kind of lessons?"

“Acting. Singing.”

“What do you do?"

"I told you. I'm an architect."

"Cause I thought maybe you were a district attorney, all these questions."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be nosey."

"Or a casting director."

"I'm sorry, really."

"Not that I mind. In fact, it's kind of nice to have a man take such interest in what I do."

"I'm sure there are many men…"

“Oh sure, zillions."

"… who take interest in what you do."

"You want to know something?" she says, and leans closer to him, and puts her hand on his arm. "In this city, most interesting men you meet are either married or gay, that's the God's honest truth."

"I'm sure you don't have any trouble at all."

"Right, no trouble at all."

"A beautiful young girl like you…”

"Oh sure, seventeen, right."

"Well, how old are you?" he asks.

"Oh dear," she says.

"I know a person's not supposed to ask."

“I'm twenty-five."

“No.”

“Yeah."

The phlebotomist grimaced again.

"You don't look at all like twenty-five."

"Twenty-nine? Thirty? Don't tell me. Forty?"

"I honestly thought twenty-three."

"Well, thanks. Twenty-three. Boy. How old are you?"

"Forty-three," he says.

"My father's forty-three!" she says, and bursts out laughing. "Excuse me," she says, covering her mouth, "oh, Jesus, I'm sorry."

"Your father can't be forty-three."

"But he is!" she says, still finding it funny, reaching for a paper napkin on the bar, dabbing at her eyes with it.

"If you're twenty-five, how can your father…?"

"He got married when he was seventeen."

"That's very young."

"Well, he's still very young."

"Oh, sure, make amends," he says, smiling. "Well, he is. Forty-three is very young."

"But I remind you of him, huh?"

"Not at all!" she says, and bursts out laughing again. "I mean it. You definitely do not remind me of my father! Did I say you reminded me of him?"

"Well, I mention I'm forty-three and next thing you know your father's in the conver… "

“Stop it!" she says. "Would I be sitting here flirting with you if you reminded me of my father?"

"Are you flirting with me?"

"Well, what do you think all this leg show is about?" she says, and kicks up her legs, and then hooks the rung of the stool with her heels again.

"They're very beautiful," he says.

"Thank you, I know," she says. "My best feature actually."

She shows them again, hands flat on her thighs, toes pointed, looking at them admiringly. Brings them back, hooks the bar stool rung again. Looks at him. Serious look now. Almost a solemn look. Green eyes steady.

"So?" she says.

This has turned into a different sort of game.

He would have preferred her to be a hooker. There is no uncertainty about hookers. You determine the playing field, and play the game, and that is that. With a respectable woman, you have to take time. True enough, he has all the time in the world — well, at least till six-thirty tomorrow morning. But, yes, he has the time. He's just not sure he has the energy. Once upon a time, he had the energy. Once upon a time, long ago, he thought it was all about love. Now he realizes it is only about fucking. That is somewhat sad, he supposes.

"You don't really want to eat here in the dining room, do you?" he asks.

“I am hungry," she says.

"I know, but the dining room?"

"Too stuffy, huh?"

"Very.”

"Then where?"

"Where would you like to go?"

"You're the man."

He looks at her.

Almost says How about my room?

Hesitates. Again almost says it. How about my room? Karen? Would you like to come to my room?

"There's a very good Italian restaurant right around the corner," he says.

"You twisted my arm," she says.

Chapter three

He asks for a corner booth and a waiter immediately leads them to one. He watches her walking ahead of him, and cannot detect a panty line, which ordinarily he finds very sexy, except when he's entertaining thoughts of Irish nakedness under the dress. He does not know whether or not she is in fact Irish — well, the red hair and the green eyes any more than he knows for sure that she isn't wearing panties under the black dress. He likes to think she's Irish. He likes to think he can slide his hand up under the dress and discover her open and exposed. He is beginning to like the idea that she's not a whore, though she probably is.

The normally packed restaurant is virtually empty Perhaps this is because it's still raining. Or perhaps it's because the rain has done nothing to cool the steaming streets and people would rather stay home in this ridiculous heat. Or perhaps it's because this is July and many New Yorkers are in the Hamptons or on the Vineyard. Or perhaps it's simply because JFK, Jr. was a New Yorker and the locals are staying home out of respect. Whatever the reason, he is grateful. The booth is cramped and intimate. He can feet her thigh alongside his on the leatherette seat, can feel the occasional glancing touch of her knee under the table.

Once, in Seattle, he picked up a girl in the hotel bar, and when they got to his room, she asked if he would mind her ordering something from room service since she hadn't eaten since breakfast and was truly very hungry. They had already negotiated five hundred for the night, and he didn't think another fifty or so for a sandwich and a beer would destroy him. Instead, the girl ordered one of the pricier items on the menu — duck A l'orange, if he now remembers correctly — and then went to sleep immediately afterward, still wearing all her clothes. It was raining, as he recalls. Well, it's always raining in Seattle. Grace called while the girl was still asleep on his bed. He had by then taken off her panties and unbuttoned her blouse, the girl snoring right through it. That was the time Margaret was thrown from a horse at camp. She was eleven, hated camp. She still hated everything. He hopes Grace will not call tonight.

He feels relatively certain that Karen will be sharing his bed tonight, and he does not want Grace interrupting with news that someone else has fallen from a horse. Her mother dying would be the only reason she'd call, he figures, so he hopes her mother doesn't die. Aside from the fact that she's a very nice lady whom he likes a lot, he doesn't want her spoiling his night with Karen. He has already convinced himself that he has never known a girl as desirable as this one in his entire lifetime. He knows for certain now — or guesses he knows for certain that she is not wearing panties under the black dress. As they study the menu, her thigh warm against his, he fantasizes raising the dress above her hips to discover no panties — he was right! — and a flaming red bush. He visualizes himself dropping to his knees before her. Her head is thrown back, tier hands are holding the bunched dress above her hips, her legs are widespread. She moans. He feels her legs beginning to buckle. She screams.

"Tell me what's good here," she says.

He recommends the linguini puttanesca.

"It means whore-style," he says, testing her.

"Yes, I know," she says, and their eyes meet and lock, and he thinks This girl is definitely a hooker, what's wrong with you? In which case, why hasn't she told me how much she wants for the night? Or is she going to eat a good dinner and then go to sleep like the one in Seattle, who finally woke up at midnight, By which time, he had fucked her twice, feeling somewhat like a necrophiliac each time. Rain pouring down outside. Yawning, she asked him if it would be all right if she went home now. He told her Sure, go ahead. Now, ten years later, he still doesn't know if she was a hooker or just some kind of hippie who'd swallowed a handful of whatever it was before he picked her up in the bar. No more than he knows if this redheaded Irish girl who's not wearing panties under her black dress is a hooker or just somebody hungry who's come in out of the rain.

She orders the veal parmigiana.

He orders spaghetti with tomato sauce and basil.

"Shall I order a bottle of wine?" he asks.

"I'll be useless," she says, and again their eyes lock. "Can I just have a glass?"

"Red? White?"

"Red, please."

He orders two glasses of the better Merlot. They sit sipping the wine, the restaurant inordinately still.

"So how often do you come to New York?" she asks.

"Every six months or so."

"That's not a lot."

"Sometimes more often. I was here just this past April, for example. It depends," he says.

"Do you travel a lot?"

"Most of our work is in California. But, yes, we have clients all over the United States. And, of course, there are lectures. I do a lot of lectures. "

"Are you famous?"

"No. I'm just a good architect, I guess,"

"Would I know you?"

"I doubt it."

"Michael what?"

"Thorpe."

He figures that's safe. Michael Thorpe. Relatively safe.

"Where do you lecture, Michael?"

"Schools."

"Here in the East?"

"Well, on the East Coast, yes. New York, of course. Boston. Lots of colleges in Boston."

"That's not far, Boston."

"Washington, D.C. Atlanta. Miami. We have several clients in Miami."

"So you're away from home quite a lot, actually."

"Well, I wouldn't say a lot. But I do my fair share of traveling, yes."

"Are you married, Michael?" she asks.

He hesitates. He does not want to lose her. Losing her now would be altogether too crushing to bear.

"Yes," he says. "I'm married."

"How long?"

“Twenty-two years," he says.

"Any children?"

"A daughter.''

"How old?"

"Twenty-one. She lives in Princeton."

He knows he's made a mistake, he should have lied. He has found in the past that talking about his daughter is a definite turn-off to girls scarcely older than she is. Not hookers. Hookers don't care if you're single, married, separated, divorced, remarried, redivorced, whatever, hookers simply do not give a damn But Karen is not a hooker, and he cannot imagine having been so unbelievably stupid as to tell her he's married with a twenty-one-year-old daughter in Princeton, has he completely lost his mind? An incredibly beautiful Irish girl sans culottes drops into his lap — or almost into his lap, they are sitting that close on the banquette — and he tells her his life history? Why didn't he also mention his three-year-old granddaughter Put the icing on the cake, why not?

"Is the wine all right?" he asks, clumsily changing the subject, and she says, "Yes, yummy," but she seems suddenly distant and thoughtful, and he knows he will lose her in the next twenty seconds unless he does some very fancy footwork. "Do you feel moved by his death?" he asks, changing the subject yet another time to something that's on the lips of everyone tonight, anyway, the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr., even the waiter commented on it when he brought their wine.

"Kennedy, you mean?"

"Yes."

"Not very," she says.

Still distant. Aloof almost.

I've lost her for sure, he thinks.

"His father got killed on my eighth birthday," he tells her, and she immediately says, "I wasn't even born, " and rolls her eyes, which causes him to think he's just made a worse mistake than talking about his twenty-one-year-old daughter in Princeton, New Jersey. He remembers his mother keeping him home from school to celebrate his birthday. November twenty-third. He remembers her taking him into the city. All the women were crying over the President. just thinking about it upsets him, somehow, all these years later. It was a mistake to mention the President, anyway, because she wasn't even born then, rolling her eyes that way, sitting there so still and silent now, the hell with her, he thinks.

She reaches for her wine glass, sips at the Merlot. Picks up her knife, cuts into the veal. He knows he's already lost her, easy come, easy go, the hell with her. She looks up from her plate, turns to him, nods.

"Married, huh?" she says.

"Married," he repeats, and nods ruefully, trying to put a lighter spin on it, but he knows it's already over and done with.

She lifts the glass of wine, sips at it.

"So what do we do now?" she asks.

"What would you like to do?"

"Give it a shot," she says, and smiles.

He feels the soaring joy he knows when the roof goes on. That is when he knows it's going to be a building. Something that started in his mind, something he transferred to paper, has miraculously turned into walls and a roof. He has that same feeling of accomplishment now. Not satisfaction; that will come later. But fulfillment nonetheless. A secure knowledge that his efforts at the bar earlier and now during dinner have miraculously resulted in a promise of gratification from this beautiful young redhead at his side. He almost winks at the waiter on the way out.

"Do you think I could have another drink?" she asks.

"Of course," he says, and goes immediately to the mini bar. "Bourbon on the rocks, right?" he says, pleased that he remembers. "Wild Turkey okay?" he asks, rummaging through the bottles on the rack inside the refrigerator door.

"Yes, fine. Thank you."

The ice bucket on the counter above the mini bar is empty. He goes to the phone, asks room service to send up some ice, please, and then goes to where she is sitting, and leans over her, searching for her lips. She turns away.

"There's something I have to tell you," she says.

She's a hooker, he thinks. She is going to tell me this will cost five bills. She is going to pull one of those little credit card machines out of her handbag, the way a hooker in San Diego did one night.

"What is it?" he asks.

What were you expecting, he thinks. A virgin?

What the hell are you looking for, mister? Love?

"Wait till after the ice comes," she says.

The bellhop arrives some five minutes later with a plastic bag of ice that costs Ben a dollar tip. The bellhop glances at Karen where she is sitting in an easy chair near the television set, her long splendid legs crossed, the black skirt high on her thighs. He glances admiringly at Ben as he leaves the room. Ben closes and locks the door. He carries a glass over from the bar counter, shakes ice cubes into it, unscrews the cap on the bourbon, and pours.

"Aren't you drinking?" she asks.

"I don't think so," he says.

He carries the glass to her. Hands it to her. He almost asks Okay" how much? She takes the glass, nods thanks, and sips at the bourbon.

"I lied to you," she says.

She is going to tell him she's not really a phlebotomist. She is going to tell him she arrived here in New York from Minnesota last winter, got off the bus at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, hungry and cold, and was offered solace and cheer from a black pimp wearing a black leather coat. She is going to tell him she's a good girl who got trapped in evil ways but who wants nothing more than to go home to her rheumatic old mother and crippled younger sister in Moose River Falls. She is going to say she's saving every penny so she can go home, which is why she's asking seven bills for the night instead of the customary five, because she has to hold back a deuce for her pimp, you see, honey? Around the world, no holds barred, no questions asked, what do you say, honey?

He says nothing. He knows what's coming. The rest is all a matter of negotiation.

"Remember when you said it was probably the weather? And I said, No, I wasn't waiting for anyone? Remember? I was lying. Actually, I was waiting for a blind date. He never showed. Would you mind if I take off my shoes?" she asks, and then slips out of them, and pulls her legs up under her, making herself comfortable, the skirt riding higher on her thighs. He wonders again if she's wearing panties. "The way it works," she says, "before you actually meet, you talk on the phone. He must have called me every day last week. We had these long meaningful conversations on the phone. Finally, we arranged to meet for a drink. The way it works, if the drink goes okay, you usually move on to dinner. I waited a full hour. I never wait for anybody that long."

"I'm glad you did."

"Me, too. I was sitting there feeling sorry for myself when you walked in." She sips at the Wild Turkey. "I love bourbon," she says, "even though it gives me a head in the morning. I don't know why. Nothing but bourbon ever gives me a head" She takes another sip. "You thought I was a hooker, didn't you?" she says.

He hesitates. He still doesn't know if this is some sort of game. You thought I was a hooker, didn't you? And then: Well, you were right, baby! Five hundred for the night, how's that sound?

"Yes," he says. "I thought you were a hooker."

"I can see where you got that idea."

"But you're not."

"I'm not. Relax."

"Okay.”

"We'll give it a shot, okay?"

"Sounds good to me."

"I know you're married, but you won't have to worry about me calling your wife in Los Angeles and telling her I just slit my wrists, this won't be anything like that."

"I'm glad to hear that."

"When you first told me, I thought just my luck, a married man. I don't have much luck with men, you know. Well, my blind date tonight, for example."

"Maybe he was gay."

"Maybe, but I doubt it. I lived with a gay guy for six months. He was a prize, believe me," she says, and rolls her eyes "But back there in the restaurant, I began thinking…"

"I was wondering what you were thinking."

"Yeah, I could sense the panic. I was thinking this might turn out to be a good thing for both of us."

"I think it could."

"I'm sure it could. You only come East every now and then, which means I'd still have my freedom.

"Of course you would."

"And you won't have to worry about me getting all clingy and weepy. I could see you whenever you're in town, or even come to meet you in Boston or Atlanta, Washington, wherever you said. "

“Washington, yes.”

"'Wherever you'll be," she says, and sips at the bourbon again, a lowers her eyes. "If You think you might like that," she says.

"I think I might like that very much," he says.

"'Well, good. I think I might like that very much, too.

"I will have that drink, after all," he says, which line he guesses he has beard in about two hundred movies. Though not as often as the most frequently used five words in the history of film, which, once he knew what they were, ruined one out of every two movies he went to see. He is tempted to reveal the five words to her now, in exchange for what she's promised will be a long and mutually satisfying relationship, but maybe he'll save them till tomorrow morning when they're on the way to the airport together, the sweet redheaded Irish girl accompanying her lover to bid him a fond farewell till next time. Walking toward the bar, he shakes his head in what he hopes will express to her his amazement and delight at having found this cuddly little darling now sitting there curled up with her skirt so high he feels if he drops to his knees before her, he'll know in an instant if she's naked under it. just a single glance will tell him. Grinning like a schoolboy, he finds another little gin bottle, and pours it in a glass over ice. He raises the glass.

"I'm happy you're here," he says.

"I am, too," she says.

What goes around comes around, he thinks. Earlier tonight, he was sitting here thumbing through his little black book and sipping a Beef eater, and here it is almost ten o'clock, and he's still sipping a Beef eater, although no longer searching for a bed partner because it seems he has had the extreme good fortune of finding one who's looking for a good steady fuck, no strings attached.

"The thing is I feel I really know you," she says. "I feel we're so alike in so many respects, don't you? I know that's ridiculous, I mean, what've we spent together, an hour, two hours? But don't you feel this affinity? I know I do. You're a dear sweet gentle person, Michael, and I really do want to make love with you. I visualize something very good or both of us here. In the future, too. For a long time to come. And I won't call your wife, you don't have to worry about that."

"I know you won't," he says, and goes to her where she's sitting, and cans over her, and kisses her gently on the lips. Gently, he takes her hands, lifts her out of the chair, holds her against him, kisses her again, gently. Rigid cock in his pants notwithstanding, he will treat her gently. He will be kind and gentle and tender and loving, and she will nevermore think about the blind date who stood her up tonight. Tonight, he will be her friend and her lover both, and she will leave this room eternally grateful to the masked man from California.

But meanwhile, he has to pee.

"Why don't you make yourself comfortable?" he says, which he is certain is a line from another thousand movies he's seen. "I won't be a minute." He's heard that one before, too. She smiles somewhat wanly, nods, and watches him as he goes toward the bathroom door, and opens it, and walks inside. There is a fierce urgency to his need. If he does not pee within the next ten seconds, he feels he will explode. He loosens his belt and unzips and lets his trousers fall to his ankles. Forcibly angling his stiff cock down toward the bowl, he waits for the stream to start, the flow inhibited by his erection — God, how he wants to fuck this girl. Like a sputtering spigot after the water has been turned off for a while, the urine trickles and spits from his shaft, and then at last gushes forth in a strong steady stream. He closes his eyes and throws his head back. He does not want to lose the hard-on. He knows this is not an early-morning piss hard-on, but he's fearful the reaction may be the same, you pee and it's gone. He wants to come to her stiff and eager and obliging.

He washes his hands, and brushes his teeth, takes off all his clothes and folds them neatly on the hamper top. Removing the white bathrobe from its hook on the bathroom door, he puts it on, and ties the belt at his waist. He looks at himself in the mirror over the sink. Who are you? he wonders again, and opens the door.

"I hope I haven't… " he says, and realizes the room is empty.

But no.

But yes.

His eyes cut around the room fitfully, to the chair she was sitting in, the chair is empty. To the dresser where she'd placed her handbag. The bag is gone. To the door where her open blue umbrella was on the floor drying. The umbrella is gone.

"Karen?" he says.

Is she hiding somewhere? In the closet perhaps? Is she playing game? Find the phlebotomist and she is yours? He goes to the closet door, opens it. Hanging on the rod are the trousers and jacket he will wear on the plane tomorrow morning. There is nothing else in the closet. So where is she? Come on, he thinks. This isn't funny anymore Really.

"Karen?" he says again, and goes immediately to the window, an pats down the drapes hanging on each side. There is no one behind the drapes. Rain slithers down the windows. He stands there looking out blankly at the shimmering lights of New York. Where else can she be? There was a fire escape, she might be outside on that. But there is no fir escape. So where?

"Karen?" he says, but he has already given up hope, the way the searchers for John John and his party gave up all hope long before they found the bodies. Well, wait, she might be under the bed. He know, damn well she won't be under the bed but he gets down on his hand and knees and looks anyway. Of course not. He pushes himself to his feet, goes to the entrance door, opens it, and looks out into the corridor.

"Karen?" he calls, softly.

He can hear the elevator down the hall, humming down the shaft He wonders if he should race down the steps, try to catch her before she leaves the hotel, visualizes himself bursting into the lobby in a bathrobe, and abandons the idea at once. Should he call the front desk ask one of the clerks there to stop her before she hits the revolving doors? For what purpose? She's gone.

He closes the door.

"She's gone," he says aloud, sounding surprised even though he's known it for the past five minutes.

He was in the bathroom too long, that was it. He shouldn't have given her all that time to change her mind. Why had he afforded her an opportunity to panic? To escape? Goddamn it, how could he have been so fucking stupid? He can just imagine her sitting here in the easy chair, sipping at her bourbon, going over her present situation, I don't have much luck with men, you know, wondering if old Michael here who has a wife in Los Angeles and a twenty-one-year old daughter in Princeton, New Jersey, is really the right man to change that situation. What is she getting herself into here? What was she even thinking? And finally — ta-tà! The five most famous words in the history of motion pictures, racing through her mind and propelling her out of that chair and out of the room and down the hallway and into the elevator: Let's get out of here!

I'd have preferred your not having discovered those words on your own, he thinks. I'd have preferred whispering them in your ear as part of our after play, Oh, just a clever little observation of mine, Karen, based upon having watched hundreds upon hundreds of movies, listen for them the next time you go see one. I would much have preferred that, Karen, couldn't you at least have given me a chance? I'm not a bad person, really.

It is ten-thirty.

Three hours earlier in Los Angeles.

Should he call home and tell Grace he's back from dinner and is going to bed? Clear the decks for whatever the night might still hold in store? He's got eight hours before he has to leave for the airport. He can steep on the plane. Karen, I'm sorry to have lost you, he thinks, but there's always another streetcar.

He picks up the phone, hits 8 for a long distance line, then dials 1, and 3 10 and then his home number. Grace's voice on the answering machine picks up on the fourth ring. "Hello, you've reached Grace and Ben Thorpe, neither of us is able to come to the phone just now, but if you'll leave a message we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks."

"Honey," he says, "this is Ben, I just got back from dinner and a nightcap downstairs, and I'm going straight to bed. I won't be talking: to you again before I leave, but I'll see you tomorrow. I hope Mom's okay. Tell her I love her. You, too."

He hangs up.

So what now? he wonders.

Do I get dressed again and go down to the bar? Really have the. nightcap I mentioned to Grace on the answering machine? See who else might be sitting there having a nightcap? See who or even whom of the female persuasion might be patrolling the night in search of company? What time does the bar close? he wonders. He picks up the phone, dials 0, waits.

"Good evening, Mr. Thorpe," a woman says.

He visualizes her sitting with earphones on her head. Is she Lily Tomlin or Judy Holliday?

"Good evening," he says. "Is the bar still open?"

"Which one?" she asks.

"How many are there?" he says.

"There's the lounge bar and the roof bar," she says. "Both close at midnight."

Then why'd you ask me which one? he wonders.

"Thank you," he says.

"Goodnight, sit," she says, though it was "Good evening" a minute ago.

He is beginning to feel irritable. He supposes that achieving erection and then losing erection so abruptly is not too good for equanimity. He wonders idly how Bob Dole manages mood swings within the parameters of erectile dysfunction and popping Viagra pills. He wonders where Karen is now. Is she sitting downstairs at the bar again? Or perhaps up on the roof at the other bar? Crossing her legs and searching in a similar hurry? He really regrets her leaving. Now he will wonder forever if she was truly naked under that black dress. He had wanted her so very much. Truly. He sighs heavily, picks up the phone again, dials 0 again.

"Good evening, Mr. Thorpe."

Same girl again. "Goodnight" has become "Good evening" again. A switch hitter. She sounds Puerto Rican.

"Good evening," he says. "Is the gift shop still open?"

"No, sir, they close at ten."

He looks at his watch.

"Is there anywhere else I can get a magazine?" he says.

He is tempted to ask if she's wearing panties.

He is tempted to tell her he's sitting here at the phone wearing nothing but an open robe. The Open Robe by Seymour Hare, he thinks.

"There's a newsstand on Fifty-seventh and Sixth," she says.

"Are you Puerto Rican?" he asks.

"Dominican, sir," she says.

“What's your name?"

"Maria Teresa."

"Thank you, Maria Teresa. Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Mr. Thorpe."

Little flirtatious lilt to her voice there?

Smiling, he replaces the receiver on the cradle, and goes into the bathroom for his clothes.

He is dressed again and about to leave the room, actually has his hand on the doorknob, when the telephone rings, startling him. Can it be Maria Teresa calling back to say she quits work in a little while, does he want her to come up to the room and discuss hot tamales? He virtually bounds across the room, yanks the receiver from its cradle.

"Hello?"

"Ben? You weren't asleep, were you?"

"No, no." Instant recovery. Not Maria Teresa, after all. Grace. Calling from California. Her mother is dead. What else can it be? "what time is it?" he asks. He knows very well what time it is. If he doesn't hurry downstairs, even the newsstand might be closed. "It isn't your mother, is it?" he asks.”

"No, she's all right. They'll be doing it early tomorrow morning. Are you in bed?"

"Yes," he lies.”

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't be calling."

"What is it, Grace?"

"You told me you'd be going to sleep. It could have waited till you got home."

"That's okay, I wasn't asleep yet."

"But if the restaurant's still open, you might want to go there."

"Grace, I have no idea what you're. "

“You left your credit card," she says.

"What?"

"At the restaurant."

"I left my…"

“MasterCard called here just a few minutes ago. The person I spoke; to said you'd left your card at Trattoria dell'Arte… is that where you, had dinner?"

"Yes?"

"Said you'd charged a hundred and five dollars and sixty cents there — and left your card behind. They're holding it there for you. I don't know how late they'll be open. What'd you eat?"

"What?"

"That cost a hundred and five dollars and sixty cents?"

There is a silence on the line.

"Ben?"

"I had a few drinks before dinner," he says.

"I still don't see…"

"And a bottle of wine with the meal."

"You drank a whole bottle of wine?"

"There was nothing by the glass. Nothing I liked."

"But a whole bottle?"

"Well, I didn't drink all of it, Grace."

"After two drinks?"

"I had a long, hard day, Grace. I really don't see anything too terrible about a grown man. "

"It just seems like a lot of money."

"It is a lot of money. New York is an expensive town. Trattoria is an expensive restaurant. I earned two hundred thousand dollars designing that fucking building, so I think I'm entitled to a lousy…"

“Ben? Lower your voice, please."

There is a long silence.

In even, measured tones he hopes are conveying weariness, impatience, and not a little annoyance, he says, "I had a couple of drinks. I had spaghetti with tomato sauce and basil to start. I had the veal parmigiana as…"

"You don't have to tell me everything you ate, Ben. I'm just calling to say you left your card there."

"Thank you, I appreciate that," he says.

You're full of shit, he thinks.

"What kind of wine was it?"

"A French Merlot."

"How much did it cost?"

"I have no idea. I would guess forty or fifty dollars."

"I hope you enjoyed it," she says.

Another silence.

"I guess now I'll have to dress and go down for the card," he says.

"Call first," she suggests. "Make sure they're still open."

"I'm sure they're still open. They get a big after-dinner crowd."

"Then you're safe," she says.

"I'll let you know how I make out."

"You don't have to. I know you're tired. Get some sleep. Anyway, I'm going out to dinner."

"Oh? Who with?"

"Whom," she corrects automatically. "Sue Ellen."

"Give her my love."

"I'm sure she sends her love, too. Good night, Ben."

"Love ya," he says.

But she is already gone.

Well, he thinks, what the hell was that all about?

Little bit of Sherlock Holmes out there in Topanga Canyon? Is she now calling a liquor store to check on the price of a French Merlot? Is she calling Trattoria dell'Arte to ask if Mr. Thorpe was there alone tonight? Will she call him back to say she now knows he was dining with a redhead, what's wrong with you, Ben, is something wrong with you? What is wrong with me is that I have a suspicious controlling wife who never wants to make love and who thinks I am fucking every other woman on the planet, including Sue Ellen Pearson, I'm sure she sends her love, too, my ass! I have never so much as blinked at Sue Ellen Pearson, try Rachel Fein instead, whose fine ass I have groped at many a country club dance, try her why don't you? You have no goddamn reason to believe I wasn't dining alone tonight, having a couple of drinks and a good bottle of French wine, no reason at all. What's wrong with me? What the hell is wrong with you? What the hell is wrong with a woman who when she sees you walking into a bedroom preceded by a foot long flagpole will smile like a virgin cheerleader and turn her head away? What's wrong with a woman who, when you're fucking her, if you're fucking her…

He would never dream of saying he fucks Grace, oh no. Every other woman in the world he knows or has known says, "Come on, baby, fuck me!" Grace says, "Give it to me!" As if she is actually going to take possession of it, slicing it off and putting it in her box of keepsakes on top of the faded love letters he wrote her while he was at Yale and she was at Radcliffe, and the gold pocket watch her grandmother left he when she died, which had previously belonged to Grace's adore grandfather in Kansas — well, he can't blame Kansas for Grace. Her father moved the family to Massachusetts when Grace was still a child, so he can't blame Kansas for whoever or whatever she is. He can only blame Grace for that.

He never has to fantasize in bed with any woman but Grace. Ever other woman is here and now, to have, to hold, to fuck. With Grace, he fantasizes blondes and brunettes and redheads galore, in various postures and poses, alone or in pairs or in threes. Grace's hair is blondish-brown these days, a cross between what Clairol calls "Twilight Brown" and "Moonlit Brown," lighter than her natural color, which is what people not in the Hair Trade might call "Mousy Brown."

Mousy brown was the color of her hair when he met her at a football game in New Haven, the girls having been trained down from Boston to cheer on the Crimson Tide, Ben not caring who won either way, sports never having been his particular cup of tea.

She was quite the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his life.

What happened? he wonders now.

Where did you disappear to, Grace?

He's half-tempted to call her back, ask her why the third degree on a goddamn bottle of red wine when her bill from shopping Rodeo Drive come to thousands of dollars each and every month.

The newsstand.

He throws on a lightweight raincoat, checks the room one last time for what? Does he still think Karen might be hiding in here someplace?

… and closes the door behind him.

The newsstand is festooned with magazines like Oui and Hustler and Juggs and Marquis but he buys only New York and Penthouse. To the reader not looking for whore-house ads, New York appears eminently respectable. Penthouse is more problematic. It does not quite wallow in the gutter the way Hustler does, but neither is it as reputable as the dowager Playboy. Nonetheless, to ensure his veneer of proper gentleman out for a late-night stroll — which he is, after all, isn't he? — he carries the magazines with the cover of New York facing out, hiding Penthouse beneath it. He walks back to the restaurant in a slow drizzle that does nothing to dissipate the oppressive heat.

His MasterCard is waiting at the hostess's console. A pretty blonde tells him she's sorry for the inconvenience, and he assures her it wasn't a problem. He accepts the card, and momentarily places the two magazines on the console, wondering if the blonde can tell Penthouse is hidden beneath New York. But she pays no attention to the magazines. Instead, she watches him as he puts the credit card back into his wallet, as if making certain he won't leave it behind again.

"Well, goodnight," he says, picking up the magazines. "Thank you."

"Come again, sir," she says.

Come again, he thinks.

Does she know to what purpose he'll be putting the magazines?

He smiles at her.

"Sir?" she asks, puzzled.

He is staring at her now.

Still smiling.

"Was there something else, sir?" she asks.

"What did you have in mind?" he says, and is instantly sorry. The puzzled look on her face becomes annoyance and then brief anger and then something like revulsion. She turns away from the podium, recedes into the depths of the restaurant. He feels suddenly embarrassed. He ducks his head, and hurries out into the humid mist.

This is a summer night, and the weather isn't truly rotten enough to keep people indoors. He knows without question that half the women out here on the street tonight are prostitutes. The problem is determining who is and who isn't. It's exactly like the two women sitting at the hotel bar tonight. His chances were fifty-fifty bark then, and he's sure his chances would be fifty-fifty out here on the street as well. Stop me woman, any woman, ask her if she'd like to come back to the hotel with him, he'd either get his face slapped or she'd say, "Sure, honey, it'll cost you a deuce." He has never tested this theory, but he's sure that would be the case. He's similarly convinced that if he approached any shopgirl in any city in America, and asked her if her passport was in order, she would immediately answer, "Where you taking me, honey?" He feels he knows this for a fact.

He has known a great many women in his lifetime, you see. He won't even try counting them all. He started to do that once, and first found himself getting excited by the various memories, and next feeling guilty as hell when he realized the magnitude of his transgressions — well, perhaps that's too harsh a word, he thinks. No one's committing any crimes here. Flirting with women isn't a goddamn crime, is it? Well, it's more than flirting, actually. Even so, using a word like "transgression" for something that's essentially a habit — well, it's more than a habit. Well, a bad habit, all right? Well, more than that, too. What he does is… well… foolish. And reckless. And dangerous, too, he knows that. He knows that if it became known, for example… if a client telephoned California, for example, and said he'd seen Ben with a woman not his wife, a woman who looked like a whore, for example… well, that could lead to trouble. Very serious trouble. Not that Karen looked like a whore. But even someone who looked like a nice girl. Even someone like that. Someone who looked like Karen, in fact. If someone spotted him with someone like Karen, this could become a problem. His behavior, if it became known, could become a problem. Because, let's face it, behavior of that sort was simply foolish and reckless and dangerous. He knows that. He doesn't care what Grace might think, he's long ago stopped caring what Miss Kansas City might think, she already holds him in such low esteem, anyway, so who gives a damn? But he doesn't want his colleagues and peers to learn that when he's out of town on architectural matters, he's also out of town on certain other matters. He does not wish this rumor to gain credibility in the profession — or is a rumor still a rumor when it's true?

It is true that he seeks women.

Constantly. This is an undeniable fact, Grace, step to the head of the fucking class! To Ben, the world is an immense chocolate shop brimming with confectionery delights. The trick is in knowing which delectable sweet to select, which dark candy to sample. In the bar tonight, he made the wrong choice, settling for a goddamn phlebotomist when he could have had the melancholy pro in the pearl gray suit. But, oh, he has been so deliciously on the nose in the past. Oh, he has been so god' damn lucky in the past. He can remember different women in different situations as if he were meeting them for the very first time right this instant — but, look, I don't want to count them, he thinks, I really don't want to start feeling guilty all over again! I feet guilty enough after each time, anyway, I don't have to relive the fucking guilt now, do I? Okay?

There is something enormously romantic about the soft drizzle, the wet pavements and streets, the muted shine of the street lamps glowing through the mist. He suddenly misses Karen with a poignancy he hasn't known since he was a teenager, when girls became suddenly available but oddly unattainable. Along Sixth Avenue, there are lights burning in apartment buildings above the closed and shuttered shops. He visualizes women in those apartments, behind the drawn yellow shades, women disrobing, women in their tubs, women powdering themselves, women touching themselves, their nippled breasts, their crisp pubic hair, their dark hidden

Stop it, he thinks.

And hurries back to the hotel.

Chapter four

Glancing into the lounge, just in case.

There are no women sitting at the bar, and only one woman sitting alone at a table, but he has never been bold enough to simply walk up to someone at a table and say "Mind if I join you?" Besides, she is a woman in her early fifties, he guesses, and he is not quite that desperate tonight, though once at the Bel Air in Los Angeles, sitting at the bar and waiting for a client to arrive, he struck up a conversation with a not unattractive woman who told him she would be celebrating her sixtieth birthday the following week (Oh my, really? I never would have guessed!) and one thing led to another until he mentioned he lived in L.A. and had never seen any of the rooms in this hotel. Which naturally prompted her to ask if he'd like to take a peek at her room, and five minutes later she was on her bed with her panties off and his cock in her mouth while he rejoiced in praise of older women — but not tonight. Tonight, the night is still young.

He wonders if he should call Heather again. Heather Epstein, listed in his little Gucci book under Stein, Ephraim. See if she's back from her party yet, what time is it, anyway? He looks at his watch. It's a little past eleven, she might be home, who knows? Give her a dingle, see if she'd like to pop by, renew old times, old glories, who knows? He is feeling suddenly secure again, in possession of Penthouse and New York as well, his insurance policies if all else fails. He opens his dispatch case, finds his soft brown leather address book, and is scanning the S's when the phone rings, almost scaring him out of his wits.

Grace again?

For Christ's sake, what…?

He picks up the receiver.

"Hello?"

Trying to sound half-asleep in case it's his wife waking him up again In his mind, she has already woken him up once tonight. And now again. When she knows he has to leave the hotel at six-thirty What the hell is it now, Grace?

"Michael?"

A woman's voice.

"Who's this?" he says.

"Karen," she says, sobbing. "Please forgive me. I'm not a cock tease Michael, really. I never have been."

"You're forgiven," he says.

You only broke my heart, he thinks.

Which he knows isn't true at all.

"I don't know what got into me," she says. Certainly not me, he thinks.

"Please stop crying," he says. "I forgive you. There's nothing to be upset about."

"But there is."

"No, forget it, really."

"I walked out on you."

"I walked out on you."

"That's okay. Don't worry about it." She keeps sobbing into the phone. He feels helpless. He stands holding the receiver, listening to her sobbing.

"Michael?" she says.

"Yes, Karen."

"Do you really forgive me?"

"I do. I really do."

Her sobbing is gentler now.

"You're a very nice man, Michael."

He hears her blowing her nose.

"I shouldn't have left," she says. "I freaked out, is all."

"We all. "

"But it won't happen again. I promise you. Michael?"

"Yes, Karen?"

"I haven't been to bed with anyone since last Christmas."

He doesn't know what to say. He says nothing.

"Michael?"

"Yes, Karen."

"This was the gay boyfriend I was telling you about? He brought home two Butch friends on Christmas Eve, watched while they both did me. It wasn't rape, exactly, but it was horrible. I left on Christmas Day." She is silent for several moments. At last, she says, "I'm sorry, forgive me. I know I've got to get over this."

"There's nothing to forgive," he says.

"I let them do it," she says.

"Well, you mustn't. "

"It makes me so ashamed."

"No, no, don't be."

"You're a very nice man, Michael. I don't want to cause you any kind of trouble."

"I know you don't."

"It was horrible," she says. "I'll never forget it. But I have to get over it, I know I do. I really used to enjoy sex, I mean it. A lot," she says. "I have to get over this, Michael, or I'll never forgive myself. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Of course I do."

"Would you like to come here, Michael? I'm downtown on Greenwich Avenue. I'm in bed already, I'll be waiting for you."

He visualizes her naked in bed, red hair fanned on the pillow. Green eyes smoldering. Remembers wanting to slide his hand up her leg to her naked pussy under the short black dress. Visualizes wild red hair at the joining of her legs. Imagines licking her there. He looks at his watch. It is ten minutes past eleven. He does not like the thought of venturing out into New York City at this hour of the night — well, it isn't really that late. But still, New York. And she lives all the way downtown in the Village, Greenwich Avenue, she said, homosexuals cruising the night down there, he's not sure he wants to go all the way down there. In fact, all at once, he's not sure about any of this.

Girl walks out on him for no good reason except that two big fags fucked her in the ass last Christmas, does that excuse her abrupt departure? We're all of us rape victims, he thinks, one way or another, honey, so don't come begging mercy for what was done to you last Christmas, okay? In some venues, that just won't wash. We all had something done to us last Christmas or the Christmas before that or Christ knows which Christmas? All at once, this girl seems to have too many ghosts of Christmas Past bugging her. And Ben's not sure he wants anything to do with any of them.

"I'd love to come down there," he says, "but I'm expecting a phone call."

"What?" she says.

"From my wife."

"Oh."

"She said she might call."

"Turn off your phone. Say you're about to go to sleep."

"I am about to go to sleep, that's another thing. I have to catch an early plane."

"Come here instead. Turn off your phone and come here. You could even call her from here. She won't know where you are. If your phone's turned off, she won't know."

"Well, she might say it's an emergency."

"You can tell the operator no emergencies."

"Well, her mother's in the hospital. There really might be an emergency,"

"Give me another chance, Michael," she says. "Please. I don't know what possessed me. I just got so frightened all at once, the thought of actually doing it scared me half to death. Please come here, Michael," she says. "Come to me, okay? We'll start all over again. It'll be a beginning, Michael. I'll see you whenever you come East, I'll never bother you, I promise you, I'll never call your wife or anything, I just want you to make love to me. Please, Michael, can you please…?"

He places his forefinger on the cradle rest bar.

Hears a dial tone and puts the receiver back on the cradle.

His heart is pounding.

He stands with his hand pressing down on the receiver, finalizing the act, shutting this suddenly dangerous woman out of his room, out of his life. I won't call your wife, indeed, you don't have to worry.

He goes to the mini bar. Cracks open a bottle of gin, pours it into a short glass. The ice bucket is empty.

He looks at the phone as if suspecting she's still lurking inside there someplace, ready to spring out at him again.

He takes a long swallow of gin.

He feels a bit calmer now, God, that was close.

But suppose she calls again?

He picks up the receiver, dials the 0.

"Good evening, Mr. Thorpe."

"Good evening," he says. "Is this Maria Teresa?"

"No, sir, this is Elizabeth."

"Elizabeth, no further phone calls tonight," he says.

"Including emergencies?"

"Everything. No calls. None."

"We'll just take messages then, sir."

"Yes. Take messages. Thank you, Elizabeth."

"Did you wish to leave a wake up call, sir?"

"Yes. Five-thirty, please."

"No calls till five-thirty, yes, sir. Goodnight, sir. Sleep well."

He finishes the drink.

Looks at his watch. It is now eleven-thirty. But he can sleep on the plane. He finds Heather's number in his book, dials a 9 to get out of the hotel and then the seven digits and waits while it rings on the other end, twice, three times, four, five, again, again, and is about to hang up when, "Hello?" The girlish voice, always sounding a bit sleepy.

"Heather?"

“Yes?"

He visualizes the long blond hair and blue eyes, the wide hips and long splendid legs. He wonders what she's wearing. "It's me," he says.

"Ben. How was your party?"

"Took you long enough to call again," she says.

"I didn't think you'd be home yet."

"I just got here," she says.

"So how are you?"

"Same as I was before."

"Want to come here?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"Cause I've got somebody with me."

"No, you haven't."

"Yes, I have."

"You don't sound as if someone's with you."

"She's right in the other room. We're watching television."

"Oh?" he says.

There is a silence on the line.

"Why don't you bring her with you?" he says.

"What do you mean? There?"

"Sure."

"You've got to be kidding."

"Or I can come there."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"I think I might. How about you?"

"I'm not into that sort of thing."

"What sort of thing?"

"Whatever it is you're thinking."

"What do you think I'm thinking?"

"Whatever. Anyway, it's late."

"Only eleven-thirty."

"Five. And it's raining."

"What sort of thing, Heather?"

"A three-way. Whatever."

"Might be fun."

"For you maybe, sure. Anyway, we're not coming there, so forget it."

"I'll come there then, how's that?"

"I told you no."

"Why not?"

"What is it with you?" she asks.

"I just want to see you."

"You should have called before you got to New York."

"I know I should have. I'm sorry about that, Heather. Really."

"Sure."

Pouting.

"Anyway, I'm here now, and you're home from your party… so why don't you ask your friend if she'd like me to come over?"

"I don't have to ask her. I know what she'll say."

"She might surprise you."

"I don't think so."

"What's her name?"

"Lois."

"Lois what?"

"Ford."

"Like the car?"

"Uh-huh, like the car."

"Ask her, go ahead."

"No. She's watching television."

"What's she watching?"

"Something about Kennedy."

"Go ask her if she'd like to come here."

"No. Anyway, I don't want to come there."

"Then let me come…”

"No."

There is another silence.

"How was the party?" he asks.

"Fine."

"What'd you wear?”

"My green dress. You don't know it."

"Are you still wearing it?"

"Ben," she says, “nothing's going to happen here, okay?"

"I just want to know…"

"Goodnight, Ben," she says, and hangs up.

He feels angry and embarrassed and ashamed. He feels like calling her back and asking her just who the hell she thinks she is, a twenty year-old twerp who was cleaning board erasers when he gave his lecture at Cooper this spring, how does she dare treat him this way? Does she know there's a girl downtown on Greenwich Avenue — a multiple sodomy victim, no less — who practically begged him to come fuck her, does she know that? If he had her number, he would call her right this minute and tell her he was on the way and she'd welcome him with open arms. Does she know there are girls he talks to on the telephone who aren't so goddamn coy about telling him what they're wearing or even not wearing, as the case might be? Does she know, for example, that Karen downtown isn't wearing a goddamn thing right this goddamn minute? Why didn't he get her telephone number? Why'd he hang up on her?

He goes angrily to the television set, snaps it on, clicking the remote past channels busy with news of the burial at sea, witnesses for the hundredth time since the plane went down, the black-and-white image of John John saluting his father's coffin as it rolls by, keeps clicking the remote until he comes to a leased access channel where commercials for escort services provide telephone numbers a person can call if he desires instant company. Beautiful busty white girls look ecstatically orgasmic as they fondle breasts or coddle pussies. Black girls lick their lips and show glistening teeth and pink vulvas. Slitty-eyed Asian girls adjust gartered silk stockings as they step out of limousines. Gay guys stroke cocks the size of telephone poles. There is something here for everyone, a cornucopia of promised pleasure just a phone call away. In fact, if these commercials were a bit longer and a bit more explicit, a man could satisfy himself with no trouble at all. But they are designed to inspire telephone calls, and he's afraid they might send him a dog instead of one of the sleek beauties displaying their wares onscreen. He has never called any of the services advertising on television, but some of the creatures the Yellow Pages loosed on the night were truly horrific to behold.

What do you look like? you asked on the phone, when they called your room some ten minutes after you rang the service. They sometimes phoned from a town half an hour away, who the hell wanted to wait that long to satisfy an urge? Though in all truth, it never was an urge as such. In fact, he thought about sex all the time. Well, most of the time. No, all the time. Well, most men thought about sex, didn't they? Most of the time.

I'm blond, they'd say, or brunette or redheaded or My hair is green, one of them said, which was tempting, but he visualized some sort of junkie who looked like a parrot, and promptly called another service. They'd tell you how tall they were, and how much they weighed, and usually they were telling the truth, because they didn't want to describe themselves as five-nine and weighing a hundred and ten, and then show up in your doorway looking like a fire hydrant. This was one occupation where it was okay to ask a prospective employee if she was black, though you could usually tell by their voices on the phone. Sometimes, you could even tell a Chinese girl by her voice on the phone. Anyway, most of the services asked flat out what kind of girl you preferred White, Black, Latino, Asian, you pays your money and you takes your choice. It always amazes Ben that politicians get all exorcised by dirty movies or television shows, and local watchdog groups take Catcher in the Rye off library shelves when you can go to any city in the United States of America and find hundreds of advertisements for escort services or massage parlors right in the goddamn Yellow Pages.

If the girl sounded okay on the phone, you asked how long it would take to get there because you didn't want to call at say, ten, and have somebody rapping on your door at midnight, which one girl did one night, told him she was right around the corner in a bar, when actually she was coming in all the way from Waukegan. To Chicago, this was, He'd been asleep when she tap-tap-tapped discreetly on the door, only two hours later than when she said she'd be there. A fright. A total horror. Grinning foolishly, badly in need of dental work, apologizing for what she called her "tardiness," a skinny-legged black girl in a sleeveless pink dress, track marks up and down her left arm, a hooker from Central Casting if ever there was one, he hoped she hadn't stopped at the front desk to announce herself. He told her she was too late, told her he was already asleep, told her he had to catch a plane early the next morning, and she said, "I can do deep throat, honey," and he was instantly hard.

He clicks to the music video channel, catches Madonna repeatedly thrusting her crotch into his face. Do any of these rock singers — excuse me, artists. They call themselves performing artists nowadays. Do these performing artists realize that after ten minutes of watching them grinding their hips and fondling their tits and licking their lips and slitting their eyes and otherwise performing on videos that have nothing whatever to do with the songs they're singing, any red-blooded American male out here might easily be persuaded to a performance of his own, in his fist? Does Madonna realize that hundreds of boys and men are out here jerking off to her gyrations right this instant? He supposes she does. Or maybe not. In any case, he doesn't choose to fuck the screen image of Madonna or any of the other dry-humping performing artists, or even any of the soft-focus, soft-porn movie queens in the so-called adult flicks the hotel provides on a pay-per-view basis. He truly wishes he could at least talk to Heather and her girlfriend Lois like the car, doesn't anyone want to talk anymore? He's not even angry at her anymore — what the hell, she's just a kid. Get both of them talking on extensions, have them tell him what they're wearing, lead them through the paces, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards tonight, does it? Well, there's always Penthouse. That's why he bought the magazine in the first place.

He has never called any of these magazine phone-sex numbers, but there's always a first time, and tonight seems as good a time as any, given the lack of amateur talent available. He fans through the magazine to the 800 and 900 numbers at the back of the book. There is no question here about what is being sold. He is glad he's not blind because the photographs are explicit and in full color, good-looking men or women or both exposing themselves or each other in poses designed to encourage and entice, the more the merrier, Ben thinks. The last several digits of the telephone numbers spell out words like DICK and CUMM and PUSS and PINK and SEXY and PETT and LICK and WETT and HEAD and WILD and LEGS and COCK and STUD and SUCK and BUTT and DEEP and FUCK and other subtle variations on the theme. The headlines range from the maudlin: LONELY? CALL ME NOW! to the boastful: SIMPLY THE BEST LIP SERVICE to the quasi-medical: MASTURBATE? ORGASM IN 30 SECONDS! to the confessional: I ADORE GIVING HEAD to the imperious: CUM FILL BOTH MY HOLES or SPREAD MY LEGS WIDE or GIVE IT TO ME! (does Grace have a phone-sex line?) to the merely didactic: ASS FUCKING or SWEET ACHING SNATCH or DILDO FUCKING or TEENAGE TARTS or HOT COCKS HERE or QUICKIE BLOWJOBS or HORNY LOCAL HARLOTS.

Ben chooses a service that shows a color photograph of two scowling young girls sitting spread-legged with shaved pussies. The headline over the photo reads FILTHY YOUNG COCKSUCKERS and the 900 number ends in the word SUCK. He dials a 9, which he supposes will get him out of the hotel, and then a 1 and the 900 number ending in SUCK, visualizing his call going out into the wild blue yonder to where a middle-aged farmer's wife will be sitting in a XXX-rated flour sack on the front porch of a ramshackle house, shucking sweet peas while she talks dirty to him. Instead, he gets a very proper male voice on a recorded message that informs him he cannot dial 900 numbers from the room, so much for that.

He wonders if he should try Heather again, beg her pardon for having committed the unpardonable sin of not having called her from California the moment he knew he'd be in New York, ask her if he could just talk to Lois Ford for a minute, maybe she might understand the possibilities of — no, the hell with it. There are girls galore here at the back of the book, all of them with 800 numbers to call, all of them patently more receptive than Heather or her pal. In a wild swing away from his first choice, he settles on a service with a headline reading SEX SLAVES! DAY AND NIGHT! and listing an 800 number ending in the word LASH. He dials a 9 again, gets a dial tone, dials a 1 and then 800 and then the first three digits and the word LASH and lo and behold he gets a human female voice, albeit not a live one.

"You have reached the Sex Slave line," the voice intones, "where young girls ache to satisfy your every need. You may charge this call to any major credit card or direct-bill it to your telephone number. Please stay on the line for our next available…"

Wait a minute, he thinks, and hangs up.

Does that mean I can direct-bill it to the hotel's number? Because I certainly don't want an item called SEX SLAVES INTERNATIONAL to appear on any of my credit cards, and I don't want an 800 number ending with the word LASH to appear on my next telephone…

Well, wait a minute.

L-A-S-H translates as 5-2-7-4. If that appears on the phone bill, no one's going to raise an eyebrow. But there'll also be a date alongside the number, won't there? And Grace might wonder why he called an 800 number on the night he was in New York, not that he gives a damn what she wonders. Still, she's already grilled him about a non-existent bottle of fifty-dollar wine, whatever he said it had cost. What'll she do if she gets her hands on an 800 number charged to the home phone? In fact, will these Sex Slave people even be willing to charge it to a number he isn't calling from, without first checking with that number? It all sounds suddenly too risky. He picks up the receiver, and dials "0" for Operator, intending to ask whether he can bill charges from an 800 number to the hotel here, and then realizes that this is like telling her he'll be dialing out for phone sex. He puts the receiver back on the cradle.

Nothing's ever simple, he thinks.

He sits in the comfortable chair under the glow of the floor lamp, and opens New York magazine in his lap. He has used this magazine before. There are no booby traps awaiting him here. He would have preferred not leaving the room again tonight, but it's still early…

A glance at his watch tells him it's eleven forty-five.

… and he'd rather venture into the rain than go to bed with this cramped and somehow ugly feeling still inside him. He skips past the ads listed under the heading MASSAGE/THERAPUMC. All too often, these are legitimate practitioners catering to jocks with pulled muscles or strained tendons, although some of the ads sound highly suspect.

Like:

Heavenly Hands. Private. In/Out. Complete Bodywork.

Or:

Magic Touch. Personal and Private. Sensual Therapy.

But why waste time and why take chances offending someone who may indeed be a licensed therapist? Instead, he flips past BOATS AND YACHTS and NEW YORK KIDS (do pedophiles skim the ads under this heading in vain?) and SUMMER ENTERTAINING and INTERIORS AND EXTERIORS and comes to the heading MARKETPLACE, which is an apt description for what he hopes to find listed there. Skipping the sub headings for APPLIANCES and ASTROLOGY and CLEANING SERVICE and LIMOUSINE SERVICE and PETS he comes to a heading in bolder, larger, blue type: ROLE PLAY.

He has often been tempted to visit a dominatrix, but he has never followed through on the impulse. And yet, he finds exciting and seductive all these ads that promise Creole Role Play or LADY HELEN — BEHAVIORTHERAPY or STRICT SISTERS or ASIAN FANTASY BONDS — but all of these possible delights are listed under the "Role Play" heading and he does not wish to submit himself to anyone who wants him to crawl on his belly and lick her shoes or her asshole, not tonight, not after having narrowly scored with Karen. He turns the page somewhat reluctantly, flips back again for a final glance, his eye scanning the listings until it lights on:

Attracted, but afraid to call, fearful the phone will be answered by a fierce woman who will belittle him or demean him, insist that he control himself or pay attention, he almost breathes a sigh of relief as he turns the page again and comes to the next heading, again in larger blue type: MASSAGE.

Here, now, is the true marketplace. Here is New York magazine's own little open air meat market, beef on the rack, juicy cuts of tender loin or porterhouse, how would you like your cunt, sir — your cut, excuse me — medium, well done, or rare? He is tempted to open Penthouse, allow his eyes to sample pages of pink lips and rosy nipples, permit his glance to alternate between the open crotches there and the open invitations here. But he resists the bait, so close at hand, stays with the printed ads instead, at least a hundred of them on the page, it seems, so many treats and so little time, his plane leaves at eight in the morning. Idly, he wonders what such an ad costs. He wonders, too, if the people busily running around New York padlocking sex shops in decent neighborhoods know that in equally decent neighborhoods all over the city there are hookers galore who advertise their wares in New York magazine, do they know this? Do they realize that there are lonely men like me who look through these ads in the hope.

Well, I'm not lonely.

I have a wife in Los Angeles. A daughter in Princeton, New Jersey.

I'm not lonely.

And anyway, there's nothing wrong with looking through a magazine.

If there's nothing wrong with placing the ad in the first place (in a respectable magazine like New York, no less!) then there's nothing wrong with a person glancing through the goddamn ads, is there?

He glances through them now.

Here is a veritable grab bag of unsorted, unalphabetized pleasures, all of them but a single telephone call and a taxi ride — or perhaps even a short stroll — away from the hotel. He looks at his watch. It is six minutes to twelve, but most of the services listed here are available around the clock. He knows. He has called as early as ten in the morning or as late as three A.m. They are always figuratively and literally wide open. No padlocks here, Your Honor. Here instead are all the "sensual," "hidden," "elegant," "extraordinary," "pure," "classy," "incredible," 11 smooth," "professional," "discreet," "silky," "exotic," "satisfying," "luxurious," "affordable," "sweet," "snoothing,'' "priivate," "unforgettable," "magical," "superb," and "exceptional"

Take a deep breath, Ben.

…"escapes," "body rubs," "delights," "colonics," "relaxations,".synchronizations," "body scrubs," and good old massages," either "Shiatsu," "Swedish," or "Mongolian"

Another deep breath.

… administered by a "Southern belle," a "Viennese lady," a "skillful French masseuse," a "classy Russian masseuse," "a professional masseuse from Japan," a "California model," a "mature woman," an.ebony goddess," a "refined woman," a "China doll," a "British lady," a "sophisticated beauty," a "Boston girl on summer break," a "sensitive Swede," and "3 Asian Lovelies

A yet deeper breath.

… with names like Margo, Claudette, Bridget, Patricia (and Friends), Millicent, Sandrine, Ruriko, Stefanie, Maria, Helena (and Hildy), Bedelia, Darlene, Katie, and Natasha from Kiev.

He wonders if Maria is Puerto Rican.

He can remember fucking a Puerto Rican girl in San Juan.

She told him she had two little girls in nursery school.

It occurs to him that his keenest memories are of sex.

It further occurs to him that perhaps all of his memories are of sex. Well no, he thinks. He can certainly remember…

Well, yes.

Well.

He doesn't like to believe this about himself. Someone secretly preoccupied with…

Well, there's nothing secret about this, there's nothing furtive about remembering pleasant episodes or events that were frankly sexual in content…

Well, unpleasant sometimes, too, he supposes, but nothing in life is without its darker side. The point is, a healthy interest in sex is not what anyone might consider perverse. If his mind occasionally wanders down the garden path, what's so terribly wrong about that? He's a forty-three-year-old man who finds women attractive, is that so difficult to understand? Thinking about sex, recalling sex, dreaming about sex, searching for sex isn't something to be ashamed of, or even embarrassed about, or even anything to worry about, for Christ's sake! It isn't as if his constant…

Well, it isn't constant, come on.

His occasional sexual "associations," he would call them, are something every man in the world experiences at least as often as he does and perhaps women, too, they think about sex, too, don't kid yourself, all the time probably, it takes two to tango, honey. Finding the opposite sex attractive is something wonderful and strange, vive la difference! Besides, he's in complete control of the situation, thank you very much, Grace. This isn't some kind of adolescent habit like, well, masturbation. This isn't a habit at all, when one examines it. Finding women attractive is not the same as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day or drinking six martinis before breakfast or shooting dope in your arm. Habits are something a person tries to kick. Habits are something bad. Since when did fucking beautiful women become undesirable? I'm not some perpetual adolescent trapped in a monkey-spanking time warp! I am Benjamin J. Thorpe — gentleman. Is what Karen called me. A gentle man.

He goes down the columns of ads again.

Something called XS Salon catches his eye.

Just those words. XS Salon. And a phone number.

He likes the pun on the word "Excess." He is in the mood for excess tonight. He likes the dyslextic quality of the "XS" ellipsis, which he imagines to be "sex" spelled backward with a missing "e." "Salon" is exotically French with a Sunday afternoon literary feel to it. Hoping some black guy in his undershorts won't be answering phones for a stable of junkie hookers who make outcalls only — he is not in the mood for any more surprises tonight — he dials the listed number and waits. His heart is pounding.

"XS Salon, good evening."

A young girl's voice. Breathy. Inviting.

"Hello," he says. "I'm calling about your ad."

"Yes, sir, where did you see it?"

"New York magazine?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Where are you located?"

"In the East Seventies."

"And where?"

"Third Avenue."

"Your ad didn't… uh… say very much. I was wondering… Always the difficult part. On the phone, you can't come right out and ask if this is a… er… whore house?

Everything on the phone is in code. On the phone, he sometimes feels like a spy.

"I was wondering if you can tell me a little about yourself," he says. "What kind of a salon are you?"

They're listed under "massage," but he doesn't want to get there and have someone offer him a haircut and a manicure.

"We're massage," she says.

"Full body rub?"

"Full body rub, yes, sir."

Meaning hand jobs.

"Complete satisfaction?"

"Complete, yes, sir."

Meaning they'll jerk you off till you come. No squeeze and tease.

"What do you charge?" he asks.

"A hundred dollars for the hour massage, sir. Sixty for the half hour. "

"How about gratuities?"

"Strictly between you and the girls, sir."

Meaning they'll fuck or suck if the price is right.

"How many girls do you have there?"

"There's usually a nice selection, sir."

"How many?"

"Usually from six to ten girls, sir. Depending on the hour."

Meaning it's a full-scale brothel.

"How many girls do you have there right now?"

"I believe there are seven, sir. I haven't been downstairs in a while."

"Okay," he says.

"Sir?"

"Can I have the address there, please?"

"Did you wish to make an appointment, sir?"

"Yes, I think so. What's the address?"

"I'll need your name, please."

"Michael," he says.

"Have you ever been here before, Michael?"

"No, never." He almost says "That's why I need the fucking address, hmm?"

"Just a moment, please," she says.

He waits. Is she running the name through a computer, to make sure they don't have a Michael who's a serial murderer or a rapist, a Michael…?

"Have you got a pencil, Michael?"

Apparently he's passed the security check.

"Yes," he says, "go ahead."

She gives him the address. He writes it down on a pad that has the hotel's name across its top in script lettering, using a hotel pen stamped with the hotel's name on its barrel.

"When you get here," she says, "ring the bell for apartment B for Beautiful, do you have that, Michael?"

"Yes," he says.

"B for Beautiful," she repeats. "Can you remember that, Michael?"

"I'll try," he says drily, but she misses the sarcasm.

"When do you think you'll be here, Michael?"

"Ten, fifteen minutes. If I can find a cab."

"It's raining, yes," she agrees. "Well, we'll see you when we see you. You didn't have anyone special in mind, right?"

"I've never been there," he says.

"Right," she says. "Okay, we'll be looking for you, Michael."

"See you," he says, and hangs up.

He almost decides to go straight to bed, the hell with this. It's raining outside, it's already a quarter past twelve, and he has to leave the hotel at six-thirty in the morning, the hell with this. But he goes to the door instead, and out into the hallway, and into the elevator, and down to the lobby and out into the night.

Chapter five

The building is on Third Avenue and Seventy-fourth Street, a four story, red-brick tenement squatting between a Korean grocery and a bar called The Shamrock, how original. As he steps into the bar, he feels as if he is in some sort of trance… well, not a trance, certainly, no one has hypnotized him. But he knows he's performed this same action before, in cities stranger to him than New York is, and he recognizes that he is now following the same compulsive… well, not compulsive, he can go back to the hotel room anytime he wishes, there's nothing compulsive about what he's doing now. You start thinking compulsive, you automatically think obsessive, and then you've got someone who's being led around the universe by his dick.

He admits that he enjoys women, perhaps enjoys them a bit too much for his own good, but to say that first stopping for a drink is part of a customary delaying tactic… well, that would be jinxing it somehow. He wants a drink because he's excited. He doesn't want to walk into a whore house advertising his need. One look at the bulge in his trousers and all at once a girl with a sixth-grade education will think she's superior to a Yale graduate. He doesn't want a chorus of whores stroking crossed fingers and chanting "Shame, shame, everybody knows your name."

The drink is a way of cooling his ardor somewhat, and not any part of a ritual he's developed over the years, although he recognizes it as something he does habitually before going to any of these places he picks from a magazine or the Yellow Pages. This isn't some kind of voodoo ceremony here; it's just something he does as a matter of course. In fact, when he thinks about it, it seems to him that whiskey is somehow part of it all, at least when he's doing what he's doing tonight. He has identified his quarry in the pages of New York magazine, has made initial contact over the phone, has tracked the beast to its lair, so to speak, here on the Upper East Side, and is now ready to pounce upon it — but not before he has a soothing little drink in an amiable little pub here on Third Avenue.

The bar is, in fact, rather cozy, with a great deal of mahogany and brass, and black leather booths with green-shaded lamps hanging over wooden tables. He checks it out for women, because he always does this, even when he's not looking for anything. Two girls are sitting drinking alone in one of the booths, heads almost touching over the table as they exchange secrets about men, that's all girls talk about when they're alone together. Otherwise, there isn't a woman in the place, nor does he need one. He's already made arrangements, they're expecting him next door at any moment — but they'll have to wait. He hangs his raincoat on a peg just inside the entrance door, takes a stool at the bar where he can watch the coat, and asks the bartender for a Beefeater martini on the rocks, couple of olives, please. The bartender mixes his drink, and brings it over, and then says, "Hell of a thing about Kennedy, ain't it?"

"Terrible," Ben agrees, and wonders why he didn't cry when he heard the news earlier tonight. He realizes he didn't cry when Robert Kennedy got killed, either, and he wonders now if he cried when the President got killed. Well, there was so much confusion that day, his eighth birthday and all. But did he cry? He can't remember crying.

The bartender is in his early fifties, Ben guesses, a reddish-blond Irishman wearing a green vest open over a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up over muscular forearms. One of the men sitting at the bar is wearing a brown suit, brown shoes, a button-down shirt with a striped brown-and-gold tie. He looks as if he came here directly from work and has been sitting here since. A bottle of Amstel beer sits on the bartop in front of him. The other man at the bar is in his mid-sixties, Ben guesses, wearing a blue cotton cardigan with a shawl collar, a bluish-green plaid shirt, blue cotton trousers, and white sneakers. He has a white mustache and green eyes, and he looks as if he just came off a sailboat. He is drinking something brownish in a glass brimming with ice cubes. He takes a sip of his drink, and scoops up a handful of peanuts.

The man in the brown suit pours beer from the Amstel bottle and says, "It's the curse of the Kennedys. First the President, then his brother, and now the son. It's a curse, is what it is."

"I remember just where I was when the President got killed," the bartender says.

"So do I," the man with the mustache says.

"Everyone does," the man in the brown suit says.

"I was fifteen years old," the bartender says. "I used to work delivering groceries. I remember I knocked on the door to this apartment, and an old lady opens the door and tells me she just heard on the radio that JFK had got shot. I'll never forget that minute as long as I live. We both started crying like babies."

Ben tries to remember if he cried. All he can remember is that it was his eighth birthday.

"I was just coming in off the road," the man with the mustache says. "I used to sell books for a living, my territory was the New England states. I walked in the front door and my wife was in tears. I thought something had happened to one of the kids. I burst out crying when she told me it was Kennedy. I don't know if it was relief or what. Later, I felt guilty, I don't know why."

"It was my eighth birthday," Ben says, and almost adds I felt guilty, too — and wonders why.

"My wife and I were in California," the man in the brown suit says. "We'd gone out for my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary. My sisters were there, too, the whole family had come from all over the country to celebrate. My parents almost called it off. They should have. Nobody wanted to dance, believe me."

“I'll never forget what Moynihan said," the bartender says. "Senator Moynihan? This woman was telling him they'd never laugh again. And he said, 'Oh, we'll laugh again, Mary. It's just that we'll never be young again.'"

"He was right," the man with the mustache says. "We lost our innocence that day."

Ben nods silently.

But he can't remember crying.

Sipping at the martini, he begins anticipating what ties just ahead, savoring the gin and vermouth, savoring as well the secret he harbors here among these hearty men drinking and smoking on a rainy night. Keeping the secret is almost as exciting as the anticipation of the illicit adventure that awaits him just next door. He asks for his tab at last, leaves a good tip on the bartop, bids the other men goodnight, and puts on his raincoat. It is twelve-forty-two on his watch.

If only you knew where I'm going, he thinks, and smiles secretly, and steps out into the rain again.

He looks up and down the street before he steps into the shallow doorway. A row of bells beckons, but only one has a nameplate under it, the letter B in outline, filled in with a red marker. B for Beautiful, he thinks, and rings the buzzer. He knows there is a surveillance camera over the door, he sported it before he stepped close to the rack of bells. He knows he is being observed now. Perhaps by the same girl who answered the phone. He waits. He rings again. He feels exposed here, huddled in the doorway, his back to the street, the rain failing behind him. He rings yet a third time.

"Yes?"

A girl's voice, but not the same one who was on the phone.

"It's Michael," he says.

"Do you have an appointment, Michael?"

"I called a few minutes ago."

Longer ago than that, actually.

"Come on in, Michael, we're on the first floor."

He hears a buzzer, twists the knob, gratefully steps into a small foyer with cracked black-and-white tile underfoot, a row of mailboxes on his right, none of them bearing a name. He resists the temptation to look out into the street, see if anyone spotted him coming in. There is an inside door as well, glass panel on its upper half. It opens to his touch the moment he twists the knob. A row of wooden steps leads upward at a sharp angle. A bulb shaded with a frosted globe hangs on a wall to his right. He glances past the steps, suddenly fearful someone may be lurking there in the hallway, sees only a shadowed gloom, and hurries up to the first-floor landing. A door without any marking on it is at the top of the steps. He walks past it, turning right, past the steps he just climbed, past a wooden banister and railings that define a narrow hallway smelling of Lysol, and comes directly to a door at the far end, a brass letter B hanging on it. There is no bell button set into the doorjamb. He knocks on the door. A voice inside says, "Yes?" A girl's voice. She is looking out at him through the peephole.

"It's Michael," he says.

"Just a second, Michael."

The door opens a crack, held by a night chain. He sees a partial face and figure in the narrow crack of the open door. There is a red light in the area immediately behind the girl. He smells incense burning.

"Open your coat, Michael."

"What?"

"Your coat. Unbutton your coat. Hold it open for me, please."

He does as he is told. Unbuttons the raincoat for her, holds it open like a flasher.

"Turn around, please, Michael."

He turns around, back to the door.

"Raise the coat, please."

He pulls the coat up over his hips, as if he's beaming a moon.

"Face me again, please, Michael."

He is thinking "What the hell".

"Sorry, Michael. We have to do this."

He faces the door again.

"Pull up your pants legs, please."

He realizes she's looking for a weapon.

He pulls up first one trouser leg and then the other.

"Okay," she says, "thanks."

And the chain comes off.

And the door opens wide.

"Sorry," she says, "we were held up last week."

A dazzling smile.

"Come in, Michael. Please."

Hesitantly, he steps into the small entryway. He is thinking he doesn't want to be anyplace that gets held up. He doesn't need cops, and he doesn't need crooks, either. He's a respectable architect. He stands there feeling clumsy and somewhat foolish and not a little frightened as the girl brushes past him to put the chain on the door again. He smells the heady aroma of powder and perfume, hears the rustle of satin or silk, feels the merest touch of her breasts as she squeezes past him. And then the chain is in place again, and the door is double. locked, and he is here, he is home, he is safe. She is wearing a flimsy black wrapper over red bra and panties, a red garter belt, black nylons, Her blond hair is frizzed. Her lipstick looks shiny and wet. She seen bursting out of her skimpy lingerie, a buxom bawd standing some five. feet eight-inches tall in black, ankle-strapped sandals with stiletto heels, She is somewhere in her late twenties, he supposes, a girl with an obliging smile, generous hips, and cushiony white breasts.

"Well, come in, come in," she says. "Let me take your coat."

He still feels clumsy and awkward, certain he is blushing, the 01 standing behind him half-naked, breasts behind him, close to him, most touching him again, helping him out of his coat. There is the murmur of voices from the adjoining room. Another girl suddenly laughs, is she laughing at him? Something is going to happen here, he doesn't know what. He knows exactly what, and yet he doesn't really know. He feels this way each time he's with another strange woman, or women, a tight, flushed, clogged feeling that is exciting but embarrassing at the same time, he can't imagine why. It's as if he's in a movie theater watching a particularly thrilling scene that's making him feel ashamed somehow, but he can't do anything to change the scene or affect its outcome. Nor can he leave the theater until the movie is finished. He can only sit there watching the movie, helplessly enthralled. It is like that each time.

"Girls," she says, "this is Michael."

There are not the seven girls he was promised on the telephone. There are, instead, only three in this "nice selection." Four including the frizzed blonde who did the security check and who is now leading him into the room. Even in the dim red light, he can tell that none of these girls are racehorses. In fact, he dismisses two of them at once.

One is an Irish-looking girl, freckle faced, too fat for his taste. Reddish hair and very dark eyes, perhaps thirty years old or so, flopped sloppily on a velvet thrift-shop couch that once must have adorned the living room of an old Romanian lady who fell upon bad times. She is wearing white silk tap pants printed with oversized red hearts. No bra. Red garter belt with opaque, patterned white stockings. Red sequined pumps, like Dorothy's in The Wizard of Oz — but this ain't Kansas, Toto.

"Alice, this is Michael," the blonde says.

"Hello, Michael," she says, and smiles.

The second reject is introduced as Fatima.

She is very tall and slender, with pale good looks that seem to indicate Mediterranean or Near Eastern origin. She wears a silk robe pattered in a floral design and hanging open over black, elastic-topped stockings, black high-heeled shoes — and nothing else. Crisp black pubic hair at the joining of her legs hints fierce sexuality. But the look in her pale blue eyes is hollow and somewhat frightening.

The third girl has possibilities.

There is the long leggy look of a thirteen-year-old about her, though she is surely older than that. Tiny cupcake breasts under a short, sheer, white, baby doll nightgown encourage the image of precocious teeny-bopper. She is wearing high-heeled, white satin slippers with puffy white pom-poms. No panties. Long blond hair on her head. Blond hair shaved close below. Lounging in a doorway that leads to the further reaches of the apartment, an amber light glowing somewhere behind her, she throws Ben a sultry look when she is introduced as Heidi. She could be sucking her thumb as easily as his cock. He is tempted. But there is something frightening about her — he cannot imagine what.

Perhaps the single gold tooth in the corner of her mouth.

Perhaps the wise eyes.

"And you are?" he says to the tall, frizzed blonde who let him into the apartment.

"Cindy," she says. "See anything you like?"

"Yes," he says. "You."

She looks surprised.

"How long did you have in mind?" she asks.

"An hour," he says.

She looks at him again. Appraisingly this time.

"Heidi?" she says. "Wanna take the door?"

Heidi gives him a petulant look to chastise him for his inferior choice, and then walks coltishly to a high stool in the little shelved alcove just inside the entrance door. She climbs onto the stool. Behind her, the red light glows and a wispy trail of smoke rises from the incense burner. A telephone on the shelf above the burner begins ringing. Heidi picks up the receiver. "Heidi," she says, and listens. "She's going upstairs with a client," she says, "I'm on the door." She listens again "Okay," she says, "I'll watch for him." Ben immediately figures some one else has called the number in New York magazine, or wherever else it may be floating around out there, to make an appointment with one of the nice selection of beauties here in this room. He hopes he does not run into whomever Heidi will be watching for, the next man who will be submitted to an anterior, posterior, and lower extremity search in the narrow hallway smelling of Lysol. He thinks for a moment — but only for a moment — that he ought to get out of here. But Cindy — all hip, strut, and insinuation — is already walking toward the amber light beckoning from the room beyond. Uncertain he's following, she glances back over her shoulder, raises an inquisitive eyebrow, and asks, "Coming?"

He is certain now that the blonde in the restaurant fully intended "Come again, sir" exactly the way he'd heard it.

Ben has been in whore houses all over the United States. He has visited one in the upstairs room of a go-go joint in San Francisco, another in a store-front massage parlor in Washington, D.C., yet another in a rickety wooden shack near the Mississippi River, others in a two-story building on the Houston waterfront, and a high-rise on Lake Michigan, he has visited all these at one time or another in his lifetime. He prefers to use the word "visited" instead of "frequented," a more heavily freighted word. "Frequented" might imply that he's been to the same whore house more than once, which is not the case, except on a few occasions he's already forgotten. It's a matter of semantics, he supposes. An occasional "visit" to a different location whenever he's footloose in a strange town and can't raise an old friend on the phone or meet a willing partner in the hotel bar is not the same thing, for example, as Simenon strolling down into the village each and every day of his life to "frequent" the local whores when he wasn't being seductive with his own daughter who wore his wedding band, for Christ's sake! Ben has never given Margaret a ring in his lifetime. Nor has he ever behaved in anything but a circumspect manner with his daughter, who is just a little younger than Cindy here, but nowhere near as invitingly juicy. He suddenly wonders if the man on the phone just now, the one Heidi Will be watching for, the one probably speeding breathlessly crosstown in a taxi through the rain, could possibly be Charles the First, wouldn't that be something! Run into his own son-in-law here in an Upper East Side whore house? Talk about worst fears realized. Charles the First with his meager dick in his hand, Ben feels certain.

He does not know where Cindy is leading him. He is usually good at assembling in his head complete structures by viewing merely disparate parts. But he suspects the original architecture in this old building has been altered in recent years, interior walls, ceilings and stairwells restructured to accommodate a previously unanticipated use. He feels as if he is being led through dim, labyrinthine corridors in an old fortress, up secret staircases to the king's chambers or perhaps to a tower room where prisoners hang in chains on dripping stone walls — Yonder lies d'castle of my fodder dcaliph. There is the caustic scent of Lysol again, He suspects they have come several flights up and have now exited into the same interior stairwell space again, coming down a banistered corridor similar to the corridor two or three floors below, where Charles the First might at this very moment be knocking on a door identical to the one here, save for the brass letter B for Beautiful, God forbid.

Cindy has a key to the door.

Voilà!

She pulls it from the cleft between her ample breasts, glances back at him once again, smiling, and inserts it into the keyway in the door. He wonders if all these minutes climbing and strolling and now waiting for Cindy to unlock the door here will be deducted from the hour for which he'll soon be shelling out a hundred bucks minimum. He hopes not. He doesn't wish to get into an accounting dispute with a common whore who will then undoubtedly have to check with the high command on the other end of the phone, the person or persons screening any potential "client" (as Heidi had called him not a few moments before), the keepers of the gate who'd asked her to "watch" for any arriving Peter, Paul, or Charles — bite your tongue.

Cindy flings the door open, flicks a light switch, and steps aside to let him pass. He is aware again of her truly extraordinary breasts, creamy white and soft in the red bra, a Wonderbra, no doubt, otherwise she's all the more wonderful. As he moves past her, the scent of her perfume wafts about him, not quite "Sweet Gardenia and Lace" but not "Cheap Pussy and Piss," either, more a blend of "Girl Next Door" and "Femme Fatale." Grace never wears perfume. Never. She prides herself on smelling of good clean soap. Has it ever occurred to her, he wonders, that a man might sometimes prefer a woman who smells cheap? A woman who reeks of sex, has that ever occurred to you, Grace?

There is a king-sized bed in a room the size of his own vast living room back in Topanga Canyon. The room here appears even larger because it is virtually unfurnished. There is the bed, a pair of night tables flanking it, a lamp on each table, a painting of a nude above the bed, a single wooden straight-backed chair at the foot of the bed — and that is it. Minimalist design, be thinks. The painting looks as if someone purchased it at one of those store-front galleries that sell genuine Rembrandts for thirty dollars apiece, you see them all up and down Broadway, Gypsy Girl lying voluptuously on an inexpertly rendered, fringed red velvet throw, one leg outstretched, the other bent at the knee, breasts tipped with bursting nipples, secret smile on her face, at least she's wearing golden earrings, so who knows? Cheap. The painting is cheap, and the room is cheap and the frizzed blonde in the Victoria's Secret lingerie is cheap. And you are cheap for being here, he thinks. In which case, don't fucking smell of soap all the time!

"So," Cindy says, "you want to make yourself comfortable?"

She says this not because she's trying to be seductive but only because, if he's a cop, she wants him naked before she asks for money. In that way, he will have already compromised his position. Legally. He will have engaged in something called entrapment, which for some legal reason will cause a judge to throw the case out of court. Entrapment was explained to him a long time ago by a hooker who used to be a police officer before she realized there was better money to be made out of uniform. Though why prostitutes, trapped or otherwise, should be dragged into court in the first place is another thing Ben can't quite understand. This isn't somebody sniffing his life up his nose or drinking it into the gutter. This is a productive human being satisfying a perfectly normal and natural urge, which thank God there are women like Cindy willing to satisfy, however cheap they may seem to some.

Still fully dressed — or at least more fully dressed than the girl in the painting over the bed — she watches him as he takes off his clothes. This is a little embarrassing because he is already faintly tumescent, and he doesn't want her to think he's some horny jerk who wandered in off the street, but at the same time he wants her to know she's going to get fucked within an inch of tier life, wants her to see the weapon he's still got hidden in his pants because he's removing first his jacket and then his shirt and tie and shoes and socks, and now his trousers, and nowhere it comes, sweetheart, shield your eyes, you are about to witness a rod of such astonishing magnitude and dimension that it will forever change your perceptions of width, length, and girth! Are you ready? Get set…

He takes off his undershorts.

"Nice," she says. "Very nice, Michael. Impressive."

Which they always say in one way or another. My, what a huge cock! Boy, are you endowed! You don't plan to stick that thing in me, do you?

He knows they're exaggerating. Well, lying, in fact. He's not really that big. He's not some black guy with a dong like Godzilla's, which is what occasional hookers have told him black guys possess, intimately sharing racial sex secrets with him after they've been in bed together for ten minutes and know each other like good old home boys from the hood. He knows these girls are being paid to tell him how wonderful and manly and sexy and exciting he is. He knows this. But he smiles modestly anyway, and feels himself growing perceptibly larger as she studies his cock with all the solemnity and professional aplomb of a urologist.

"Uh… I hate to ask you this, Michael," she says, tearing her eyes away, "but the basic massage is a hundred bucks."

"Okay," he says.

"Could I have it now, please?" she says, and pulls a girlish face. "I know, it's tawdry," she says, "but I do have to ask."

He takes out his wallet. Finds two fifties. Hands them to her.

"Thanks," she says. "I'm sorry."

She does seem genuinely sorry, but he knows that's an act, too. This is all a performance here. This is a movie, They are both performers in a movie about a man and a woman in a whore house. Except that it is all real. He sits on the edge of the bed, studying her ass and her legs as she stands on rip toe to reach for a handbag on the top shelf of the closet on the wall beside the bed. She takes down the handbag, opens it. A black handbag. To match the stilettoheeled, ankle-strapped black shoes. She puts the hundred bucks inside the bag. Isn't she afraid he might steal it? Didn't she tell him they were held up here only last week?

"Okay," she says, and snaps the bag shut, and puts it back on the shelf, and slides the closet door closed, and turns to him. "I don't usually do this, you know," she says.

I'll bet, he thinks.

"I'm usually on the door," she says. "I sort of greet people."

"How come I'm so lucky?" he asks.

Please don't tell me I'm gentle, he thinks. I've already been there tonight.

"Is that meant to be sarcastic?" she asks.

But she's smiling.

"No, not at all. I'm curious."

"I don't know," she says, and shrugs. "Change of pace." She takes off the black wrapper, drapes it over the back of the chair, and moves to where he's sitting on the bed. “Want to kiss these?" she asks, and leans over to offer her breasts, squeezing them together with her hands. He finds the clasp at the back of the bra. Unfastens it. Her breasts fall free. He kisses her nipples.

"Mmmm'" she says, faking enjoyment.

Or maybe not.

He tries to kiss her mouth.

She turns her face away.

"Uh-uh," she says.

"Why not?"

"I hardly know you."

"I'm hoping we'll get to know each other better."

"Even if we do."

"What I'm thinking. "

“Yes, tell me, Michael, what are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking we should go beyond the basic massage," he says.

"Wherever we go, we go safe," she says, and to emphasize the point, she opens the drawer in the end table on the right hand side of the bed and takes out a box of lamb's skin rubbers.

"We don't need those," he says.

"Oh, that's what you think," she says.

"I got tested just last week," he lies.

"Mm-huh, and I suppose you've got the signed papers with you, right? "

"No, but you can trust me."

"Oh, I feel certain," she says.

"I've never had a venereal disease in my life."

"Me, neither," she says. "And I don't want one now."

"Here's what I'm thinking," he says.

"If you're thinking no rubber, think again."

She smiles to show him she's still a genial whore. But she shakes her frizzed blond head at the same time, to let him know she's dead serious about safe sex. He smiles secretly, wisely, raises one eyebrow. The knowing look is to tell her that every hooker has her price, dear, a theory he is about to put to the test. But the box of condoms is still in her hands, so maybe he's wrong. In fact, she's now tearing off the cellophane wrapper.

"I'm thinking you should bring in the Arabian girl," he says.

"Oh, is that what you're thinking, Michael?"

"I'm thinking all three of us should forget about tomorrow," he says. "That's what I'm thinking."

"But how much are you thinking, Michael?"

Shaking one of the small blue plastic containers out of the package now, bringing it to her mouth, ripping the blue plastic seal with her teeth.

"How much do you think would be fair?" he asks.

She spits out blue plastic, and then, surprisingly, puts the box and the single condom down on the end table. She comes to where he is still sitting on the edge of the bed, steps between his legs, puts her hands on his shoulders, his cock standing stiff between them. She glances down at it. Her look is almost proprietary. She looks up again. Her eyes meet his. They are the deepest blue. He notices this for the first time. She is really a very beautiful girl.

"For what you have in mind," she says slowly, carefully, balancing time and demand like an accountant in a button factory, "me and Fatima, the busiest time of the night… I'd say a thousand flat."

"I'm not talking about a month in Europe," he says, and smiles again.

"You're talking about sticking that big hard cock in both of us bareback, is what you're talking about," she says, and glances down at it again. He is outrageously hard now. He reaches behind her to cup her buttocks. She presses his face between her breasts. She lets him finger her asshole. She grabs his hair and pulls his face away from her.

"What do you say?" she says. "Both of us. A thousand flat."

"For how long?"

She still has his hair gripped in her hand.

"Whatever you want to do," she says, avoiding the question. "However you choose to do it."

"Six hundred," he says, bargaining. "For however long I need."

He is breathless in her grip.

"Six hundred for an hour," she says. "Me and Fatima, okay? Both of us."

Helpless in her grip.

"Yes," he says. "Okay."

"Let me go get her," she says, and releases his hair, and drops suddenly to her knees before him. She gives his cock a swift wet lick, her tongue lashing out and back into her mouth again, and then she rises, and for a moment stands tall and splendid before him, a frizzed blond goddess. Then she slides open the closet door and takes her handbag down from the shelf. Lifting the sheer black wrapper from where it is draped over the chair, she slips into it, and glances slyly at his cock. Grinning, she says, "Don't let that thing go down," and spins away from him and leaves the room.

He wonders how long it will take for her to get back here with Fatima. Suppose Fatima is right this minute in another room in the building with the guy Heidi said she'd be watching out for? Otherwise engaged, as one might say. Suppose he has to wait till Fatima is finished with this guy, whoever he may be, until she can come in here with Cindy? He doesn't like the idea of her coming to him fresh from some other guy. Maybe he should have asked for Heidi instead, no, the gold tooth. Besides, by now she may be with some other guy, too, leaving the fat freckled babe to guard the sacred portals. He knows he's not the only man these girls see, but he likes to think of himself as such. The sultan calling for one or another of his harem girls. The eunuchs outside watching but not allowed to touch. All the girls belong. ing to him and him alone. Oh sure. He knows this is nonsense. But it's a nice fantasy. Moreover, he knows it's a fantasy. Knows this entire scene here, this scenario, this lavish production that's about to cost him an additional six hundred bucks is a figment of the imagination, a dream concocted — or about to be concocted — by himself and the two girls scurrying down the hall toward him this very moment, he wishes. Maybe he should have asked for Heidi, if it's going to take Fatima so long to get her ass in here for their big spectacular dream sequence.

He can just imagine Grace being picked for a spontaneous three-way dream sequence like this one. Grace, there's some guy upstairs wants both of us, go put on your garter belt! With Grace, you have to "plan" everything. She's like the commanding general of some vast army about to invade the European continent, she has all these complicated plans" to make. She's the same way about sex, too, she has to "plan" for it. Nothing is spontaneous with Grace. In the morning, she doesn't feel clean enough for sex because she hasn't bathed yet. At night, she feels too clean for sex because she takes three baths every single day of the year — not showers, baths — and at night, when you roll over against her with a hard-on, she tells you she just took a bath and doesn't want to get "messy." Grace Howell Thorpe is the cleanest woman on the face of the

The door opens suddenly, startling him.

Cindy comes into the room first.

"I hope you waited for us," she says, pretending to scold him. "Six hundred, please," she says, "I hate to ask," and extends her hand to him, palm upward. He slides down to the end of the bed, and reaches for his trousers where they're draped over the seat of the chair. He removes from his wallet six hundred-dollar bills, and hands them over to Cindy. "Let me take this downstairs," she says. "You two get started, I'll be right back." She licks her lips, winks at him, and leaves the room again. He wonders how long she'll be gone this time. He wonders whether all this coming and going is on the clock. Wonders if he'll get time off for good behavior.

"So I hear you have some ideas," Fatima says, sitting beside him on the bed.

She is not smiling, She sits on her heels beside him on the bed, hands flat on her thighs, studying him with those pale blue eyes of hers. He feels himself growing hot under her steady gaze. He feels himself growing hard.

“I hear you want to forget tomorrow,” she murmurs, and nods at his cock.

The nod frightens him.

"I have some ideas," she says.

He is angry with his cock for betraying him, annoyed at himself for not being more in control of his emotions, sitting here ridiculously and visibly hard under Fatima's steady gaze, exposed to her view, vulnerable to whatever ideas she may be entertaining. He thinks he knows what those ideas might be. He has met this woman in fantasies on one or two occasions before in his lifetime, three or four, has met Fatima during half a dozen daydreams, a dozen perhaps. He knows what vile and unspeakable acts she might ask him to perform, knows that if he allows this dumb fucking rigid cock of his to control him, he'll do whatever she orders him to do, right this minute, now. What's wrong with me? he wonders. What the hell is wrong with me?

She is rising to her knees on the bed now, her hands moving from her thighs to her crotch, her fingers spreading her lips for him. He has imagined this dark and merciless gaze before.

"So how about it?" Fatima asks. "You want to lick my cunt?"

Above the bed, the Gypsy Girl smiles lewd approval.

"Let's wait for Cindy," he says.

"Sure," she says, and sits beside him again, and casually takes his cock in her hand. "Where you from, Michaels?" she asks. Stroking him. Casually.

"Los Angeles."

"Nobody's from Los Angeles."

"You mean originally? Mamaroneck."

"Is that your real name? Michael?"

"Sure."

"Sure," she says. "The way mine is Fatima."

He's tempted to ask what her real name is.

"What do you do, Michael?" she says.

"I'm an insurance adjuster," he says.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah Marine insurance. There are lots of boaters in L.A. Lots of boating accidents, too."

"I'll bet. So what do you do, you investigate boating accidents?"

"Yes."

“You're full of shit," she says.

"I know," he says, and smiles.

She does not return the smile. He notices that she never smiles.

"Okay,” she says, “so don't tell me."

"I'm an architect," he says.

"Okay, that's possible," she says.

"It's true."

"So what do you design?"

"Houses, churches, buildings."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"You married, Michael?"

"Yes."

"You got kids?"

"One. A daughter."

"How old?"

"Twenty-one."

"You ain't that old yourself."

"Ho-ho," he says.

"Ho-ho," she echoes.

But does not smile.

"That why you like fucking young girls, Michael?" she says.

He looks at her.

"Cause you got a twenty-one-year-old daughter?"

He does not answer her for a moment.

Then he says, quite seriously, "I don't know why I fuck young girls."

Or older girls, too, he thinks. Or mature women. Or even a sixty year-old grandmother one time at the Bel Air in Los Angeles.

Her thighs are very white above the black elastic-topped stockings. There is a purple bruise on her right thigh. He wonders if she has a pimp who beats her. He didn't think these places were run by pimps. The Mafia, he thinks. He imagines the Mafia running weekly ads in New York magazine. She keeps stroking him almost idly.

"What's your real name?" he asks.

"Why? You wanna get married?" she says. But does not smile. "Josie, okay?" she says.

"Should I call you Josie?"

"No. Here, I'm Fatima."

"What do you do when you're not here, Fatima?"

"Why? You wanna go out sometime?"

"I'm just curious."

"You wanna go out with a whore, Michael? Is that it? Take me to dinner? Take me to the movies?"

"Is that how you see yourself?"

"No, I see myself as a brain surgeon."

"Where'd you get the name Fatima?"

"Who knows? Where'd you get the name Michael?"

"My best friend's name was Michael."

"Did he die or something?"

"No, no. I knew him when I was six."

"Fatima suits me, don't you think?"

"It's more exotic."

"Like me, right?"

"You do look exotic."

"I know. People think I'm from Morocco."

"I thought Arabian or something."

"You know where I really come from?"

"Where?"

"Brooklyn. I was born in Brooklyn. How old are you, Michael?"

"Forty-three."

"You don't need Viagra, though, do you?"

"Not yet."

"All you need is a young girl, right?"

"Not necessarily."

"How old do you think I am, Michael?"

"I have no idea."

"I'm not as young as your daughter, that's for sure. But how old do you think I am? Seriously."

"Tell me."

"I'm thirty-two."

"You look much younger."

"I know."

"You really do."

"It's because I'm so thin."

"You are thin, yes, but…"

"I'm too thin, right?"

"No, I wouldn't say that."

"My tits are okay, though, don't you think?" she says, and drops his cock suddenly, and cups both firm breasts, and looks down at them. "For someone as thin as I am? I mean, they're proportionately right for my body, don't you think?"

"Yes, they're very attractive."

"And my nipples are great," she says. "I really have terrific nipples." She suddenly releases her breasts, shrugs, grabs his cock again. "What's your real name, Michael?"

"Well, I don't think we really want to get into that, do we?"

"What do we really want to get into, Michael? Tell me what you'd like to do when Cindy gets back."

"Well, we'll just have to figure that out, won't we?"

"Cause zee clock she will be ticking. Comprende, amigo?"

"Where is she, anyway?"

"She'll be back. Let's just keep this nice and hard for her, okay? How come you picked the name of a six-year-old friend?" she asks.

"He was seven."

"Are You still friends?"

"I haven't seen him since I grew up."

"But You use his name."

"Sometimes."

"When You come to places like this, huh?"

"I guess."

"That's very interesting," she says. "Lie down on the couch and tell me about it." She is not smiling, she never smiles. 'I'll sit on your face while you talk. Would you like me to sit on your face, Michael?"

"Well. "

"While Cindy blows you?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"I taste of cinnamon wine, Michael," she says, and licks her lips.

"Really? What's cinnamon wine taste like?"

"Like me," she says. "Or would you rather fuck me in the ass? A hundred-dollar tip and you can stick this big thing in my ass, Michael, would you like that? Do you like to fuck young girls in the ass, Michael?"

The door opens suddenly, and Cindy rushes into the room, seemingly out of breath. "Big crowd downstairs, all at once," she explains, "We'd better get started here." She glances at his cock in Fatima's hand, nods appreciatively, and says, "Not bad for a beginner." He doesn't know if she's talking about him or Fatima, who now slides off the bed, her pale blue eyes searching his as if confirming a pact they've already made. She turns away at once, removes the peony-patterned robe, and tosses it over the back of the chair. Cindy glances at him more intimately than Fatima did, seeming to measure his cock with her eyes. She tosses her own sheer black robe over Fatima's. As if by signal — but he has seen none — the girls move to either side of the bed, Rockettes performing a rehearsed maneuver, blond hair and black, bookends in reverse. Cindy wriggles her red panties down over her knees, steps out of them, leaves them on the floor. Both girls stand akimbo, legs widespread in frank and open invitation.

Cindy is the heftier of the two, the more zoftig the one he imagined would now call the tune and lead the band. But when she sits beside him and reaches for his cock, Fatima brushes her hand aside in silent reprimand. Their eyes lock, deep cobalt and pallid sapphire. The look they exchange is intimate and female, dark and savage, electrifying but frightening.

Fatima insinuates herself beside him on the bed, swings her knees up, black elastic-topped stockings, black highheeled ankle-strapped sandals. The lifeless blue eyes flick his cock, as if drawn to it against her will. Cindy watches her, deep blue eyes learning; she is usually on the door, she is the one who sort of greets. Without warning, Fatima seizes him. He catches his breath sharply, caught in her grip, tight in her grip. She does not move her hand. She simply holds him firmly, staring at his cock as if unaware of the person attached to it, cognizant only of the clogged and aching member in her hand. Without glancing at Cindy, she says, "Suck it."

The trick now is to maintain control.

It is easy enough to let oneself go, he can do that anytime. Instead, one must hold oneself back to the very last moment, stay in charge here — though it is Fatima who is truly in charge, one hand guiding Cindy's blond and bobbing head, the other cold-bloodedly clutching his cock in a Mediterranean death grip. In a day and age of indiscriminate sex promising dread disease and certain death, he is uniformly amazed by the heedless abandon of most women he encounters — well, his own recklessness, too, for that matter. As he mentioned to Cindy earlier, he has never had a venereal disease in his life. Considering how sexually active he is, although he guesses other men are just as active, he is surprised but nonetheless grateful. He has never had gonorrhea, nor syphilis, nor even herpes. He knows he will never contract AIDS, either. He simply knows this. He is immune. He believes he is immune.

Cindy works him with excruciating precision, Fatima's left hand resting on top of her bobbing head. On her pinky, Fatima wears a ring with a ruby-colored stone. Her fingernails are painted to match the stone. Her lipstick is the same color. She holds his cock excruciatingly tight, as if trying to choke off the blood supply. Each time Cindy's mouth lowers around him, her lips touch Fatima's clenched right fist, Fatima will not allow him to escape the deliberate rise and fall of Cindy's blond head and soft methodical mouth. Occasionally, Cindy's eyes raise to meet his, a whore's trick. Occasionally, she smiles around his cock, another whore's trick. Fatima watches her as she works, her hand unrelievedly tight around him. Then suddenly, as if jealous or unexpectedly aroused, she says, "Me, bitch!" and grabs Cindy by the hair, yanking her head away from him and off of him. His cock feels suddenly wet and cold, but only for an instant.

Fatima's mouth engorges him, savagely hot, as tight and insistent as her encircling hand had been, her ferocious lips demanding instant submission. He says, "Careful," and tries to stop this surprise assault on his hoarded treasure, his hands coming up to her face, his back arching in contradiction, cock eagerly thrusting to meet her determined plunge, She brushes his hands away, her descent resolute, her murderous intent acidly clear.

"Give it to her, baby," he hears Cindy say.

He knows that within an instant he will surrender totally, he Will shatter and burst, he will be punished.

"Oh, please," he says.

Fatima's mouth relents.

"No, don't," he says. "Stop," he explains.

His cock stands rigid and throbbing between them.

"Come on, sweetheart," Fatima says, "let it go."

"Let it go," Cindy echoes. "Give it to her."

Give it to me, Grace says.

Fatima takes him in her hand again. Straddling him, sitting back on her heels, she holds his cock stiff at the joining of her legs, as if it is her own cock springing from her tangled black crotch, sitting back on the black high-heeled sandals, legs bent. Strict black stockings and bruised white thigh promise further mischief from her; she will punish him cruelly, she will keep him enslaved forever, she will never let him go. But instead she becomes surprisingly kind, coaxing him with soft murmuring sounds, all cooing vowels and childish lisps.

"Yes, baby," she whispers. "Yes."

"I have to," he says, pleading with her now.

"Yes," she whispers, "I know, baby."

"I really have to," he says.

"Yes, come for me," she whispers.

"I will," he says.

"So do it."

"I will."

The room becomes intensely silent. Fatima's hand glides smoothly, gently, encircling him, encouraging him, persuading him. Like a patient predator, Cindy watches. In the near-dark, he can hear her harsh breathing.

"Honey, you got a problem here?" she asks.

"You been drinking, honey?" Fatima says.

"I'm fine," he says, "please don't stop."

"Cause we ain't got all night here, you know," Cindy says.

"What?" he says.

"Your hour's almost up," Fatima says.

"You've got ten minutes, honey," Cindy says, and lowers her mouth onto him.

"Ten minutes? How…?”

"Tick-tock," Fatima says.

"You said however long…"

“We said an hour," Fatima says. "Do him deep," she advises Cindy.

There is a desperation to their efforts now. He senses that Cindy doesn't want to fail at this, she takes pride in her blowjobs. Neither of them wishes to fail, there is a certain sense of professional pride these girls take in their work, he senses this about them, and respects this about them. They are really trying quite hard to give him the "complete satisfaction" the XS spokesperson promised him on the phone, Fatima fingering his asshole now while Cindy labors above him, her mouth descending deep and deeper, her hand tight on his shaft, both girls sweaty and serious and industrious and infinitely patient, but zee clock she is ticking, comprende, amigo, and he can't imagine what the hell is wrong with him. This has never happened to him before in his lifetime, well, maybe with Grace, but never with girls he has known, women he has known, never!

"Last chance saloon," Fatima says.

"Just give me another minute."

"You've got about five," Cindy murmurs around his cock.

"Tick-tock," Fatima says again.

He can't believe he agreed to a mere hour for six hundred dollars! Was he out of his mind? Was he drunk? He knows he hasn't drunk too much. He's drunk far more than this on occasions too numerous to count, and has later come two, three times in a night, well, twice anyway, so what the hell is it? How much has he drunk tonight, anyway? There was the gin in his room, and then the one at the bar with the redhead, whatever her name was — was it two at the bar?

"That's the way, honey."

"Keep that big cock working, Michael."

"Oh yes, baby."

"Shove it deep in her mouth!"

Cindy's mouth is hungry on his cock. Fatima's middle finger is urgent in his asshole.

"Let's see that juice, babe."

"Give it up, honey."

"Shoot all over her stockings."

"Come on, honey."

"Come on, Michael, what the fuck's wrong with you?"

There is a moment when he feels he will come, knows he will come. The moment hangs in silence. A knock sounds on the door, urgent, demanding.

"Time," someone outside calls.

He hears high-heeled shoes scurrying down the hall, hears another knock on another door, hears the word "Time" again, distantly. The Otis are suddenly off the bed, scrambling off the bed. He is alone on the bed, lying on his back, alone on the bed, looking up at the Gypsy Girl lying voluptuously on the inexpertly rendered, fringed red velvet throw, one leg outstretched, the other bent at the knee, breasts tipped with bursting nipples, secret smile on her face. She knows be could not come, did not come. Time, he thinks.

Cindy puts on her black peignoir. Like a butterfly, she flits toward the door, opens it, and is gone without a word. Fatima pulls on the peonypatterned wrapper, picks up her shoes and stockings. "Get dressed, Michael," she says, "Somebody'll come up to take you down." Barefooted, she pads to the door, reaches for the knob with her free hand, turns to him. For a moment, she seems about to say something more. Instead, she nods wearily, opens the door, and then closes it softly behind her.

He listens to her bare footfalls going down the hall. He looks at his watch. It is ten minutes past two. Was it really an hour? He can't believe it was really an hour. And even if it was, couldn't they have given him a few extra minutes? For six hundred bucks? Psychiatrists get less than that, for Christ's sake! All he'd needed was a few extra minutes. Was that a lot of time to ask? Angrily, he begins dressing.

There is another knock on the door. Soft this time. Discreet. A gentle rapping.

"Come in," he says, but the door is already opening. He's never seen the girt who stands there, tentatively peering in at him. She was not one of the "nice selection" presented to him when he arrived. Is she part of a new shift? Or had she been with a customer? She looks Hispanic, wearing a green silk wrapper belted at the waist, high-heeled shoes, of course, curly black hair trimmed close to her head, large brown eyes, pouty mouth painted red. He is still sitting on the bed, putting on his socks and loafers.

"I'm supposed to take you down," she says. No accent. Maybe she isn't Hispanic. Or maybe she was born here. Maybe she's from Brooklyn, like Fatima, who looks like she's from Morocco.

"In a minute," he says.

She waits impatiently in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb, hand on her hip. He slips into the other loafer, rises, says, "Okay," and follows her out. As they head down the stairs, he says, "I didn't see you before."

"I was busy," she says.

"I have a raincoat," he says.

She turns to look at him. She appears angry but he figures she's only puzzled.

"Downstairs," he says. "Cindy took my raincoat to hang up."

"Okay, we'll get it."

He follows behind her, watching the movement of her ass under the green silk.

"What's your name?" he asks her.

She turns to look at him again.

"Blanca," she says. "Why?"

"What are you doing now, Blanca?" he asks.

"What do you mean?"

"Are you busy now?"

She looks him over, hands on her ample hips.

"What'd you have in mind?"

Appraising him. Eyes gliding down to the front of his trousers, coming up to meet his again.

"What I have in mind is a secret room with a narrow bed and a little blue light," he says.

"All that, huh?" she says, and smiles.

"All that."

"I don't know about the little blue light," she says. "You got a hundred bucks for me?"

"I've got time left on my hour."

"Time, I see," she says, and nods. "I didn't know we gave chits for time here."

"Check it with Cindy and Fatima. They'll tell you."

"They're with clients right now. Also, it's not the girls who keep time," Blanca says. "It's the manager. He just sends one of us around to knock on doors."

"So let me talk to the manager," he says.

"I don't know if he's available right now. We got kind of busy all at once." She looks him over again. "Whyn't you just slip me an ace, I'll find a bed someplace, take care of you real quick."

"Let me talk to the manager first, okay?"

"Whatever, I'll see if he's around," she says. "What kind of coat did you say?"

"A raincoat. Tell him I've got time coming."

"He'll want to hear that, all right. Wait here," she says, and uses a key to open the door with the hanging letter B on it. There is the glow of the red light as the door opens. Heidi flits by in her sheer white baby doll nightgown just as the door closes again. He waits in the hallway, eager to talk to the manager, eager to straighten this out. He has a seven hundred-dollar investment here already, and even a small portion of that should buy the twenty minutes or so he needs with Blanca.

The door opens.

"You want to come inside a minute?" she says. "I don't know which one is yours."

He steps inside, and is suddenly awash in red light and the cloying scent of incense. Only Heidi in her white baby doll nightgown is in the room now, lying in deep uffish thought on the velvet thrift-shop sofa earlier occupied by fat Irish Alice in her Wizard of Oz slippers — though she too seems to be otherwise engaged just now, We got kind of busy all at once. Blanca leads him to a closet where there are three almost identical raincoats hanging on a pipe rod. He would be hard pressed himself to tell which one is his, were it not for a small stain on the right sleeve, which he spots at once. He has been telling Grace about that stain for months now. Grace does not like taking things to the dry cleaners. Grace does not like doing anything in this fucking world but take three baths a day and polish her fingernails and toenails. That is what Grace likes to do.

"This one's mine," he says, and takes the coat off its wire hanger.

"You still here?" Heidi says, and grins at him, the gold tooth in her mouth flashing.

"I'm waiting to talk to the manager," he says.

"I'll go get him," Blanca says. "We got a room with a little blue light, Heidi?"

"You want a little blue light?" Heidi asks him.

"How about both of you and a little blue light?" he says. "I've got plenty of time coming."

"He thinks he has time coming," Blanca says.

"No kidding?" Heidi says, and grins as if she's just heard something very comical. "You really think so, Michael?"

"That's what he told me," Blanca says, and goes out of the room, presumably to search for the manager.

He looks over at Heidi, who is now lying on the couch. White baby doll nightgown. Long blond hair. No underpants. Shaved close below, He says nothing for several moments, just keeps looking at her. She smiles at him again, the gold tooth flashing.

"What time do you quit here?" he asks at last.

"Around three-thirty, four o'clock," she says. "Why?"

"I was thinking after we get this time business straightened out…"

"The time business, right."

"After you and me and Blanca find that room with the little blue light…"

"Oh, sure, the blue light."

"You might want to come back to the hotel with me."

"Gee, a hotel," she says, and rolls her eyes in mock wonder.

"It's not far from here, Fifty-sixth and Sixth," he says. "What do you think?"

"I think it's not allowed, is what I think. But lees talk about that later, okay?" she says and raises her eyebrows to indicate someone is standing behind him.

"Sir?" a voice Says, and he turns to see a very large black man in blue jeans and a white tank top shirt standing near the telephone just inside the entrance door. "You wished to see me, sir?"

"Are you the manager?"

"I am. Is there some kind of problem, sir?"

"No problem at all," Ben says. "Whoever I spoke to on the telephone. "

"Yes, sir?"

"… promised complete satisfaction. Well, I just now…”

"So what's the problem, sir?"

"I just now paid Cindy and Fatima a hundred dollars for the basic massage, plus an additional six hundred for…”

"Tell me what's bothering you, sir."

"What's bothering me is I think I have some time coming," Ben says. "To honor the basic contract."

"Which contract is that, sir?"

“Complete satisfaction," he says.

"From what I understand, sir, the girls spent a full hour with you…"

"That's debatable. In any case, our understanding…"

“Maybe next time you shouldn't drink so much."

"What?" Ben says.

"They told me you'd been drinking."

"Told you I'd been drinking?"

"Yes, and don't yell, sir."

“I gave them six hundred bucks," he says, lowering his voice. "What do they mean I was drinking? Seven hundred bucks. I can't believe this! Seven hundred bucks and they say I was drinking. "

"Please don't yell, sir."

"No, wait a minute," he says, "don't go telling me not to…”

"Sir, we have…"

"If anything, I drink only in moderation…"

"We have other customers here, sir. I'm asking you to…”

"Maybe you ought to ask little Josie from Brooklyn if she and her blonde partner with the big tits aren't themselves responsible for what happened, hmm?"

"Watch the language, sir."

"Or is it easier to blame the whole fucking disaster…”

"Sir, I'm warning you…"

"… on a social drink I shared in a bar next door to a fucking whore house!"

"That's it, let's go," the man says, and shoves him toward the entrance door, and then opens the door and shoves him again, this time out into the hallway, where be shoves him yet another time, toward the stairs leading down to the street. Flailing backward toward the gaping steps, Ben loses his balance, reaches out to the black man for purchase. He feels the top step sliding away under his heel, grabs more frantically for the black man's support, the open maw of the stairwell behind him — and feels himself going over.

He knows better than to try to stop his downward tumble by sticking out a hand, that's a sure way to break a wrist or an arm. He's positive he'll break something anyway, a leg, his head, something. The steps are sharp and cruel and unforgiving, each angular joining of riser and tread unyielding. He jounces in punishing collision to the bottom of the stair way, and lies there breathless. He touches his nose, wondering if it's broken, it hurts so goddamn much. Above him, he can hear the black man thundering down the steps. The narrow entrance cubicle inside the frosted glass door is perhaps six feet square. The black man looms over him, reaches down for him, twists his hands into Ben's coat lapels….

"Hey, watch it," Ben says.

…yanks him to his feet, nods as if confirming that he is about to hurt Ben very badly, and then frees his right hand and smashes his fist into Ben's mouth.

The entryway is a limiting arena at best, confining to say the least when a man who appears to be seven feet tall with muscles everywhere and jailhouse tattoos all over his arms is throwing Ben from wall to wall when he isn't trying to batter him senseless. "You want to have some fun here?" he keeps saying over and again. "You want to have some fun, Whitey?" Ben is bleeding from the nose and the mouth. The black man keeps hitting him, mostly in the face because he knows this is where his blows are most visibly punishing, blood spurting, cuts opening, but he punches him brutally in the chest as well, and both arms, and the midsection, and the gut too because there is no referee here to warn about hitting below the belt, there is only a savage black man inexplicably enraged who is trying to teach Ben some kind of lesson here for having broken some kind of rules Ben didn't even know existed, when all he'd wanted to do was have a little fun here. "You want to have some fun here, Whitey?"

He is virtually senseless when the black man opens first the frosted glass inner door, and then the entrance door and drags Ben out onto the sidewalk and props him up with his left hand and punches him full in the face again with his right.

"Goodnight, Whitey," he says, and throws him into the gutter.

Chapter six

His legs are on the sidewalk, the rest of him is in the gutter. It is raining very hard now. Rain riddles the puddle in which he is lying, be will drown. He will die in a New York gutter, his face broken and bleeding, there will be headlines. Bits of flotsam float past his face in the gutter. he will choke, he will drown. A dog has shit in the gutter, the feces lies in a puddle close to Ben's face, it is a shame the people in this city do not obey the law.

I once had a dog, he thinks.

Or perhaps says.

"I once had a dog," he tells everyone or no one.

"Well, well, what've we got here?" someone asks.

A man's voice.

"He drunk?"

Another man.

"Got the shit beat out of him, looks like."

"Roll him over."

Hands on him.

The rain falls steadily onto his face and the front of the light raincoat. His hair is wet and hanging in strings on his forehead. The coat is drenched through to the jacket and shirt underneath. He doesn't know whether it's blood or water running down his face into the puddle In the gutter smelling of dog shit. He keeps his eyes squinched tight against the rain battering his face.

"Travelers checks ain't no fuckin good to us," one of the men says.

“There's cash, too," the other one says.

"How much?"

“Three hundred, looks like."

“Credit cards, too.”

“Take 'em. We'll fly ourselves to Paris."

Both men laugh.

His wallet splashes into the puddle.

One of the men kicks him in the head.

And then they are gone. And now there is only the sound of the rain beating down around him. He hopes a car won't come too close to the curb. and squash his head flat into the asphalt. He hopes a cop won't find him and arrest him, lying in the gutter this way. He wonders if they took his driver's license. He doesn't want anyone to know who he is, lying in the gutter this way. He is Benjamin Thorpe, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, but he doesn't want anyone to know who he is.

"Oh man," he hears someone say.

A woman's voice.

"You okay?"

He is not okay. He hurts everywhere, and he suspects he is bleeding his nose or his mouth or both. He is definitely not okay. He shakes his head. Tries to shake it. Glances upward and to his right. Sees heeled purple shoes, brown naked legs, a short purple leather skirt.

"You okay?" she says again.

Is kneeling beside him now. Shiny knees, purple leather skirt.

"Look what they done to you," she says.

She is lifting his head out of the gutter.

"Jesus," she whispers.

He can hear the sound of the rain everywhere around them.

“Listen," she says, "I got to call an ambulance, you hear?"

Shakes his head.

No.

No ambulance.

"You need a doctor, man."

Shakes his head again.

No.

"You're hurt real bad, man."

"No doctor," he says. "Go away. Leave me alone."

"You wanted or something?"

He doesn't understand her.

"You hear Me? Are the cops looking for you?"

"No," he says. His lips hurt when he talks.

"Then let me call an ambulance."

"No."

“I ain't gonna stand all night here in the rain with you."

"That's okay," he says.

"No, it ain't okay."

"It's okay, you can go. Thanks. You can go."

"Why you being so obstinate?"

The word "obstinate" amuses him somehow. He starts to laugh, spits up something he suspects is blood, begins coughing.

"Oh shit," she says, and sighs heavily. Come on," she says. "Get up. Get out the gutter, man, what's wrong with you? This wallet yours?”

"Yes."

She picks up the wallet, drops it in a purple leather tote, slings the bag over her shoulder again. He feels her hands under his arms, big hands, strong hands. Standing spread-legged, bracing herself on her high heels, she hoists him to his feet.

"Ow," he says.

"Yeah, Ow," she says. "Go tell a doctor Ow, you in such pain."

"Look," he says, "I think I can manage alone."

"Oh sure."

"No, really.

"You can't hardly stand up," she says, and waves her free arm at a taxi. She helps him into the cab, and then slides in beside him. He feels somewhat nauseous. He hopes he won't vomit here in the cab. The cab Ions through the sodden night, tires whispering against wet asphalt, windshield wipers snicking at the rain. Ben closes his eyes. Darkness rolls over him. He rests his head on her shoulder. She pats his hand. He wonders why.

"It's on the left," he hears her say. "Next door the laundromat."

The driver pulls the cab over to the curb. The woman takes Ben's wallet from her tote, opens the bill compartment.

"They cleaned you out," she says, and hands the wallet to him.

Reaching into the tote again, she takes another wallet from it, opens it familiarly, hands the driver a ten-dollar bill, waits for change, and then tip him. Ben is on the curb side, he slides out first, puts his wallet into the right hand pocket of his trousers. He knows they haven't cleaned him out completely because he heard them talking about travelers cheque being no good to them, but he doesn't want to look now, not with the rain coming down so heavily. He'd run for her building if he knew which one it was, but there are doors on either side of the laundromat There are still people in there doing their laundry. He wonders what time it is. He stands swaying on the sidewalk in the rain, fearful he will lose his balance and tumble into the gutter again. The taxi pulls away from the curb, tires spreading a canopy of water. The woman axon to him, takes him by the elbow, and leads him to the doorway on the left of the laundromat.

He closes his eyes and leans against the doorjamb as she fumbles for keys inside the tote. "Don't nod out on me now," she says, and he hears the click of a key being inserted in the keyway, and then feels her arm around his waist again. He opens his eyes. She has pushed open the door and is helping him into a vestibule the size of the one where he was beaten. There is an inner door here as well, etched glass with a running diagonally across its face. She inserts another key and then — her arm still around him — helps him inside and toward a narrow flight of steps leading upward at a precarious angle. He remembers his mad tumble down the steps at the XS Salon.

"You okay?" she says.

“Mm.”

"Stay with it."

“Okay.”

His lip is swollen. Something has crusted under his nose, either blood or snot or both. He feels completely disoriented. He knows he should not be here, but he also knows he cannot allow himself to enter a hospital. He can barely see through his left eye. His entire face throbs with pain. He knows that if she loosens her grip around his waist, he will fall and possibly hurt himself even further. But he can't go to a hospital where they will ask him what his name is, ask him where he lives, ask if there is anyone they should contact, anyplace he should be, the truth is he does not know where he should be. And here is as good a place as any. He suddenly wants to cry.

"Careful," she says.

Side by side, as if joined at the hip, they move down the third floor corridor to a door at the far end. Bracing him against her, she inserts a key, shoves open the door, and half-carries, half-drags him into the apartment. She eases him onto a sofa, and moves away from him to turn on a light. He winces against the sudden glare.

She is wearing a blond wig, cut in bangs on her forehead, falling straight and loose to her shoulders. She is wearing a little red monkey fur jacket over the purple leather skirt and a shiny purple blouse. She has thick lips and a flat nose, dark brown eyes lidded with purple 'mascara that glitters. She is a woman in her thirties, he supposes. He closes his eyes again. She helps him out of the soaking wet raincoat. He feels her easing his sodden loafers and wet socks off his feet. Something lands on the sofa beside him. He pulls back his hand, opens his eyes wide, turns his head, almost screams aloud when he sees a pair of Yellow eyes staring back at him.

"Just my cat," she says.

Her cat is a huge tabby, all black and gray, with eyes the size of quarters, sniffing around him, whiskers bristling. He is afraid the cat will bite him. Or claw him. Or whatever it is cats do to strangers. But he is purring loudly. Or she. Or it. Whatever it is, Ben wishes he had never allowed this blond black woman to take him here, wherever here is. What is he doing here, anyway, sharing a sofa with a cat the size of a young lion? He shifts his weight, trying to move away from the creature? But the cat nuzzles his arm and his hip, and the blond black woman says, "He's very friendly, ain't you, honey?"

He gives the cat a jitty look intended to state unequivocally that he does not choose to be friends with a cat, not this cat or any other cat in the world.

She is unloosening his belt now.

"Lift," she says.

He raises his hips, and she pulls his pants down over his ass and lower them past his knees and ankles, and tosses them onto an easy chair alongside the couch. The cat is still nuzzling him. He doesn't wish to appear rude because the cat's mistress did, after all, pull him out of the gutter and is now treating him with more gentleness than he's known all night long, but he truly does not like cats, nor dogs, for that matter, OK — Jesus Christ what is that in the corner! He sits up with a start because the first thing that registers is a sense of spectral whiteness, and then he hears a croaking sound like that of a witch, and then sees a distinct flutter of whiteness, and he realizes all at once that there's yet anther living creature in this apartment even before she says, "Just my bird."

He does not like birds, either.

"All you need to start your own ho house," she says, "is a little pussy and a cockatoo.”

She grins broadly.

“Get it?" she says. She has very white teeth.

"I get it," he says. His lips still hurt when he tries to talk.

She yanks off his undershorts and tosses them onto the trousers. He is too aware of this sudden menagerie everywhere around him to feel any embarrassment, even though the woman must think his cock looks shriveled and wet and limp, which it is. He suddenly hurts all over again, especially in the groin because he possibly aggravated something when he jumped up a moment ago. He is now fearful the cat will jump onto his naked lap in a further display of good fellowship. Or perhaps the white bird will fly into his face. Or worse, mistake his little boy's pee-pee which it has suddenly become — for a white worm instead of a grown man's cock. Or maybe there's also a pimp on the premises because all he needs now is for yet another angry black man to throw him down the stairs again. He almost asks her whether she has an angry pimp who calls non-African-American clients "Whitey" and throws them down the stairs. He does not want to meet any more macho muscle men tonight. He does not want yet another gallant musketeer imagining a princess in a baby doll nightgown was insulted by hi, had language when all he wanted to do was explain that he had some time coming. But she is busy loosening his tie and unbuttoning his shirt, and he doesn't wish to seem ungrateful for her hospitality and concern, any tart in a storm, he thinks. Her fingers move swiftly and expertly. She has undoubtedly unbuttoned many a man's shirt in her career as Hooker With a Heart of Gold. He still has one eye on the cat and another on the bird in the corner, who, he now realizes, is in fact a cockatoo. She has taken off the tie and shirt now, and tossed them onto the rest of his clothes so that they form a forlorn little heap on the easy chair.

“You smell like a toilet bowl," she says.

"Thanks," he says, and winces because his mouth and his left both hurt when he talks.

"Let's get you cleaned up," she says, and offers her hand to him. He takes it, allows her to pull him off the couch and onto his feet to the accompaniment of a sudden chorus of screeches from the white bird on its perch. The cat leaps off the couch, begins trailing Ben as if he's a long-lost, newly discovered master, following him over what Ben now sees is a worn Persian rug, toward an open door beyond which is a small bathroom. There is a smelly red plastic litter box just inside the door, and then a standing sink with a mirror over it, and then an old fashioned claw-footed bathtub.

The face in the mirror startles him.

His left eye is swollen almost shut, encircled with puffy flesh bruised Yellow and purple and blue. There is a cut on his right cheek and blood Crusted inside his nose and under it. His upper lip is swollen and cracked. There is a black gap at the front of his mouth where two teeth he been knocked out.

He stands looking at himself.

Who are you? he wonders.

Jesus, who the hell are you?

"Something, huh?" she says.

As she turns on the faucets in the tub, he keeps staring at himself in the mirror. The cat rubs against his leg. In the other room, he can hear the cockatoo screaming. Steam begins filling the bathroom. The face of the stranger in the mirror begins to cloud over. He wants to cry again.

She soaps him gently. The water turns pinkish when she sponges away blood stains, gently patting, lightly rubbing.

“What's your name?" she asks.

He almost says Michael.

"Ben," he says.

“You really lost this one, Ben."

"Yes."

"How many was they?"

He shakes his head.

"Beat you up, took all yo money. You had a big night, Ben."

Sponges him in silence for several moments. She has rolled up the sleeves of the purple silk blouse. Her arms are round and firm and brown. There is a small tattoo near her left wrist. Some kind of bird. or insect. He can't quite make it out.

"Where was you, to run into such types?" she asks.

He closes his eyes.

"Mm-huh," she says knowingly. "You here visiting New York, Ben?”

He nods.

"Out havin youself a good time?"

He says nothing. Keeps his eyes closed.

"You got nothin to hide from me, Ben," she says. "I been hooking since I was sixteen.”

He still says nothing.

"You goan drown here if I leave you alone a minute?"

He shakes his head.

"You need me, just yell."

He nods. In the other room, the cockatoo shrieks to welcome her arrival. He lies in the warm water, his eyes closed, feeling every aching muscle and bone where the steps and the black man punished him. Steam rises everywhere around him. He feels himself relaxing.

He dozes.

"You bout ready to come out?" she asks, startling him.

He opens his eyes.

She is holding a large white beach towel in her widespread arms, He climbs out of the tub, and she enfolds him in the towel like one of the children in Fellini's 81/2. He closes his eyes again.

"Just so we understand each other," she says, rubbing him. patting him dry, "if you plan on having any sex here, it'll coss you a hundred bucks."

"I don't have a hundred bucks," he says.

"You have five hundred," she says. "In travelers checks."

"I see."

"That's right," she says. "I looked thu your wallet. just in case."

"I see," he says again.

“Cause I figure you for a man familiar with the ways of the world," she explains.

“Uh-huh."

"All I'm sayin is the tub and a cup of coffee's on me. But if you're lookin for anythin else, it'll coss you. You unnerstan whut I'm sayin?"

"Okay."

"Does that mean you're interested?"

"It means I understand what you're saying."

"Let me see I can find something for you to put on," she says, and leaves him wrapped in the towel and goes out into the other room again. The cockatoo does his little song and dance again, it's an act they have. Somehow, he feels a bit disappointed in her, he doesn't know why. He looks at himself in the mirror again. There is not appreciable movement over what he saw the last time around. He wonders how go back to Los Angeles looking like this. He lifts his wrist to see time it is, but his watch is gone. He tries to remember whether he it off before getting into the tub, but he wouldn't have because it's a waterproof Rolex he bought on Rodeo Drive, did those sons of take his watch, too? But he didn't hear them saying anything about a watch, could they have missed the watch? The dial is black, they have missed it in the dark? Or did Little Miss Peek-In-the wallet here remove it from his wrist while she was undressing him, and it in her sugar bowl, he will have to ask her. You didn't happen to see a little Rolex worth close to five grand, did you? I wouldn't ask, but sentimental value. I bought it for myself the first time I had a in Architectural Digest, you see, so if you happen to know where I really would appreciate having it back, together with that cup of you promised.

“You can put on these," she says, and hands him a cleanly pressed blue denim a pair of jockey shorts smelling of soap, and a pair of faded blue washed and pressed. He thinks these may be clothes that belong pimp. He can visualize her pimp strutting around the apartment in them. He can visualize her pimp coming home sometime later to find Ben sitting in his favorite chair, wearing his nice pimp blue jeans and cans and shirt. Ben's every instinct tells him to get the hell out of here as soon as he can, go back to the hotel, explain to the night clerk that he just got hit by a bus, pack his bag, pay his bill, and go straight to the airport.

"Coffee?" she calls. "Yes? No?"

"Yes, please."

The clothes fit him a trifle snugly, but that's only because he had a few drinks and a big dinner, otherwise he can match his physique against any pimp's in the world. He comes out of the bathroom, and into what he now sees is a small living room furnished like a Turkish bordello, with the patterned rug on the floor, and the cockatoo perch in the corner, and mirrored throw pillows everywhere, and beaded curtains on one door leading to what he guesses is the bedroom, and beaded curtains on another door leading to what he can see is the kitchen, the woman there standing at the stove, looking at a coffee pot, He parts the curtains. She has taken off the silk blouse and is now wearing only the purple leather skirt, the matching heels, and a black bra, There is another tattoo, he notices, near the bra strap on her right shoulder, which he recognizes as a larger version of the one near her wrist. He tries to remember what you call these things, James Bond had one in bed with him one time, didn't he, these brown insects, he guesses they are — scorpions! A blue scorpion near her wrist, a red one w her shoulder. There is something enormously intimate about seeing her this way. As if he has caught her quite by accident, surprising her only partially dressed this way although she doesn't seem a bit surprised as she turns from the stove and smiles.

"Be hot in just a second," she says. "I don't have decaf, is regular okay?"

"Sure. Uh, you didn't happen to see my watch anywhere, did you?” he asks.

"On the counter near the lamp," she says. "How do you take it?"

"Light. One sugar."

He spots his watch on the counter, moves toward it, and backs away the cockatoo starts shrieking at him.

“Just tell him to shut up," she says.

He picks up the watch, gingerly, and backs away from the perch. He snap the watch on, and rolls up the cuffs on the blue denim shirt. In the pimp threads, he feels almost pimpish himself. Puts on a pimp strut into the kitchen. Pats the woman on the ass where she stands at the stove.

“Hey," she says. "That could start the meter running."

“Would you like to start the meter running?" he asks playfully.

“Depends on you," she says, and shrugs.

“You take travelers checks?"

“I even take green stamps," she says, and grins. "You get it?" she shrugs.

“I get it," he says, and pats her on the ass again.

“Hey, I m serious," she says. "You want to start foolin around here, it is the bread up front."

“I may want to start fooling around, who knows?" he says. "But let's have the coffee first, okay?"

He likes the idea of having coffee with her. There's something very intimate about the idea. He even likes the idea of her calling it "fooling around" now that she's in her bra cooking at the stove, instead of what Fatima had called it, "fucking." Or would you rather fuck me in the ass? Sounding exactly like a hooker. Well, this one's a hooker, too, no matter how daintily demure she may sound. She's made that quite plain, she's been a hooker since she was sixteen, and what is she now? 35? Thirty-six? Even her age is comforting somehow. There's something very comforting and intimate and warm about a thirty-six year old woman standing in her bra, in her own kitchen, waiting for the coffee to heat up, while he watches her. Unembarrassed while he watches her. Comfortable with him standing there watching her in her bra and her short skirt. He suddenly feels very much better than he did an hour or so ago. He looks at his watch.

"You got a taxi waiting?" she asks.

"No, no, I just wanted to make sure…"

"There's still time," she says.

Her eyes meet his.

"It's almost three," he says.

"Plenty of time yet."

Their eyes hold.

"What's your name," he asks.

"Lokatia," she says.

"You don't have a pimp who's going to beat me up, do you, Lokatia?"

"I used to have one," she says. "Who used to beat me up. This is ready," she says, and takes the pot off the stove. She pours coffee for each of them into two large mugs, adds sugar and milk to his, leave her own black. Steam rises from the mugs as they drink.

"What do you mean used to have one?"

"I stabbed him."

He looks at her.

"I killed him," she says. Her eyes hold his. "I done six years in jail for manslaughter," she says. "He's the one put the red tattoo on me. His brother gave me the blue one. You don't want to hear this shit," she says.

"I do."

"Nah, come on. Drink your coffee."

"Tell me."

"Nah. Stabbing people is boring," she says, and smiles.

Her teeth look very white against the deep brown of her face "be is wearing the blond wig, but it does nothing to disguise her essential blackness. This lady is black, he thinks, no question about it, this lady is virtually African. Her lips are thick, her nose is flat, her eyes are a very dark brown, with that somewhat moist look you sometimes saw on very black people, as if they were still crying over centuries of slavery.

"You mind if I take this off?" she asks, and walks out of the kitchen.

He follows her into the living room, and past the bird perch — the damn cockatoo squawking again — and through the beaded curtains, a light snapping on to reveal a small bedroom with drawn Venetian blinds, a queen sized bed, more mirrored pillows on it, red velvet curtains, and a gilt-framed mirror over a dresser with a wig stand on it.

"Who invited you in here?" she asks, but she is merely pretending annoyance, arching an eyebrow, turning to the mirror and saying to her own image, "Can't a lady have no privacy these days." Totally ignoring him, she begins removing bobby pins from under the wig someplace,her fingers probing, until at last she lifts the wig off her head and settles it gently on its stand.

"You didn't really stab anyone, did you?" he says.

"I wish."

She has a rat tail comb in her hand now, and is picking at her nappy black hair with it. She looks at him in the mirror.

"How old are you, Ben?" she asks.

"Forty-three. I'll be forty-four in November."

"You look older."

"Gee, thanks."

“All battered up, I mean. You know they's two teeth missing the front of your mouth?"

"I know."

"You could maybe ask for them for Christmas," she says, and grins like a little girl. "You get it?"

"I get it," he says.

"You upset I said you look older?"

"No".

"Don't be. I'm forty."

"Just wondering how I can explain it."

“You could say you fell out a third-floor window."

“I could.”

“You married, Ben?"

"Yes."

"How long you been doing this, Ben?"

"Doing what?"

"I think you know doing what."

"Too long," he says.

"You care what she thinks?"

"Not really."

"Then fuck it. Tell her the truth."

"That'd be the end."

"Maybe it's already the end."

He looks at her.

Maybe it is, he thinks.

There is a very long silence.

He thinks maybe he should go. He almost looks at his watch again, but that would be rude. The silence lengthens. She puts down the comb, and looks at herself in the mirror.

"I really must have a shower," she says, "'fore the Board of Health closes me down. You mind bein alone for a few minutes?"

"Maybe I should go," he says.

"What's your hurry? I won't be but a minute."

"I have a plane to catch."

"What time's your plane?"

"Eight."

"There's time."

"Well…"

"Stay," she says. "Ain't no hurry." She takes his hand. "Come." she says, and leads him through the beaded curtains back into the living room again. "Shut up, Whitey," she says to the squawking cockatoo. "Nothin personal," she explains. "It's just cause he so damn white. You like Sinatra?" she asks, moving around the small living room while she speaks. "Let me put on some music." Opening one side of a long cabinet to reveal a CD player and a stack of discs. "Would you like a drink?" Opening another door, behind which Ben sees an array of liquor bottles and glasses. "Fix yourself a drink, okay? The cat's name is Francis, you get it?" Kneeling at the CD player, short purple leather skirt and shiny knees, long legs and ankle-strapped pumps. "Make yourself comfortable," she says. Fiddling with the player. "Five minutes” she says, "I promise," and Sinatra's lush voice floods the room.

She is gone.

He sits alone. Hearing Sinatra. Hearing his father's golden horn. hearing the sound of the shower behind the closed bathroom door. He leave now. Pull a Karen on her. Split while she's in the bathroom. Take a taxi back to the hotel, what time is it, anyway? He looks at his watch. It is nine minutes past three. Grace will be angry, of course. He will go home to Los Angeles with his face looking like a club fighter's, and he will explain to Grace that he was walking back from the restaurant where he'd gone to pick up his credit card, just walking back the rain minding his own business when these two big black guys attacked him and left him for dead in the gutter, boy, what a city, he will tell her, boy. And everything will be all right again. Everything be just fine and dandy.

How long have you been doing this, Ben? Too long.

Too long.

How long is too long? he wonders. Well, that all depends on the meaning of the word "is," doesn't it? What was was, so who cares the first one was, or what she looked like, or whether she was any or not, or what led him into that place in the first place? Why is he here now, for that matter, listening to Sinatra singing while a very black showers in the other room? She must've been absolutely terrific, first girl, otherwise why is he still here, wherever here is? The truth does not know where he is. Has perhaps not known his exact abouts since that first thrilling time. If, in fact, it was the first. Or thrilling — who remembers? Who can possibly remember?

She looks clean-scrubbed and fresh-faced and she is wearing a fluffy robe belted at the waist. Barefooted, she looks to be about five or — eight. She is a very tall Masai woman who has just come from the well and is tending her cattle with a long stick in her hand, although her toenails are painted green, he notices.

"You didn't make yourself a drink?" she says, surprised.

"I was just sitting here enjoying the music," he says.

"Did I take too long?"

"No, no."

"What shall I fix you?"

"What have you got?"

"Anything you might like," she says.

“Little gin on the rocks would be fine," he says.

"Gin on the rocks," she says. "Corning up."

He listens to the music. Closes his eyes and listens.

"My father used to play trumpet," he says.

"No kidding?"

He opens his eyes. She is kneeling in front of the cabinet now, the flap of the robe failing open over one knee, reaching in for the of gin.

"Had his own big band," Ben says.

"What made you think of that?"

"I don't know. Sinatra?"

There is a flash of upper thigh as she rises, a fleeting glimpse of crisp black pubic hair. The white robe falls again like a curtain, but she knows he caught the display, and cuts a knowing look in his direction, as she carries the bottle of gin into the kitchen. He watches as she op c n s the refrigerator door, takes out an ice cube tray, cracks it, drops cubes into two short glasses.

"You want an olive in this or anything?" she asks.

"Might be nice," he says.

"One, two?"

"Three, why not?" he says.

She comes back into the living room, hands him one of the glasses, and sits on the sofa beside him, pulling her legs up under her, making herself completely at home. The robe parts again. He glances at her shiny brown knees and thighs.

“Nice, huh?" she says.

"Yes."

Her knees? Her thighs? The music oozing from hidden speakers somewhere? The gin with the three olives floating in it? Or just being here in this room together at close to three in the morning? He sometimes feels that morning never comes. He sometimes feels he is trapped in a perpetual nighttime of long-legged, big-breasted, red-lipped girls incessantly beckoning, offering dark and secret candy. He would love to sit here beside this girl — this woman, she's forty, don't forget — and not be so completely cognizant of her legs, sit here sipping his drink without yearning for another stolen peek at her pussy, sit here just drinking peacefully with her and talking quietly to her without being constantly aware of her sexuality.

"Tell me about this guy you killed," he says.

"Nah," she says. "That was a long time ago."

"How old were you?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Why not?"

"Cause I'm not proud of it. I went to jail for it. It was just something had to be done."

"Why?"

"Why? Cause his older brother turned me out when I was just sixteen. Cause after his brother died…"

"Turned you out? What do you mean?"

"Put me on the street. To peddle my sweet little ass. Was the older brother who branded me with this," she says, and shows him her left wrist with the small blue scorpion on it, stinger tail arcing over its back. "Both of them belonged to this gang called The Scorpions, this was to show he owned me." She flicks her hand as if trying to shake the scorpion off her wrist, and then drops the hand into her lap. "His name was Roger, I cursed him day and night, he finally died of an overdose, I cheered when the son of a bitch turned blue. The one I stabbed was in, younger brother. He stepped right in, took full possession of me, put the red tattoo on my shoulder, you mine now, Sweet Buns, dig?"

She sips at her drink, nods, remembering.

"Beat me day and night, the son of a bitch," she says. "Winston was his name. He was maybe this high," she says, and extends the left hand with the scorpion on the wrist to indicate a person perhaps five-feet, four-inches tall. "Used a rubber hose on me so it wouldn't leave no bruises, didn't wish to mar my gorgeous face or bod. One morning, come back off the street, he asts me Whut you got for me, cunt? How much you bringin home? I tell him Winston, this is what I got for you, this is whut I'm bringin home, and I pull a sling blade out my purse and rip his fuckin throat wide open."

"Just like that, huh?"

"Well, not juss like that, this wasn't no crime of passion, Ben. I kill him cause the surn'bitch turned me onto scag. I been shootin heroin since I was seventeen, Ben. I'm a dope fiend is whut I am. You wanna run out of here now?”

“What happened? After you stabbed him?"

"He turned all red on me, the way his brother turned all blue 2 years earlier. An' I got sent to jail, end of story, cheers," she says, and clinks her glass against his.

"So now you're back to hooking," he says.

"It would appear so," she says drily, and takes a long swallow of gin. "Which is lucky for both of us, right? You get it? Well, I guess maybe you don't," she says. "The brothers used to call me Lucky. Short for Lokatia. Was them who turned out to be lucky, though, wun't it? On of them OD's, the other gets his throat slit, good riddance to bad rubbish. I hated that name Lucky," she says, almost spitting it out. "You like Lokatia?"

"Yes, I do," he says. "It's a good name."

"African," she says, nodding. "It means Gorgeous Gazelle."

"Is that true?"

"No, I made it up just now," she says, and actually giggles. She shoves herself off the couch, long legs flashing again, and goes to where she left the bottle of Gordon's on top of the cabinet and pours herself a fresh drink, and then carries the bottle to him, and arches one eyebrow in inquiry, and when he holds out his glass to her, splashes more gin in over the ice cubes. "Trade was slow tonight," she says. "I'm usually out till three, four in the morning. But I was already on my way home when I spied you in the gutter."

Here it comes, he thinks. Uh, I hate to ask this, Ben, but if we're going to get this show on the road, that'll be a hundred in advance. I know, it's tawdry, as a colleague of mine once remarked, but I do have to—

"You know what I think it was?" she says.

"I'm sorry?"

"The Kennedy boy getting killed. That's why nobody's out on the street tonight. They home watching TV."

"Maybe so. How old were you?" he asks.

"What do you mean?"

"When the President got killed."

"Oh. Three?" she says. "Four? I must've been four."

"Do you remember any of it?"

"Just John John saluting the coffin."

"That was something."

"Otherwise, I was too young."

"I was eight," he says. "That's all I remember about my eighth birthday. The President getting killed."

"Your eighth birthday, huh?"

"Yeah. You know, it's funny. All day long, I've had the feeling something happened that day."

"Something did happen. The President got killed."

"Oh, I know."

"So what do you mean, something happened?"

"Something else. "

"That's enough to have happened."

"I suppose so," he says, and shrugs.

She makes herself more comfortable on the couch, adjusting her legs, exposing again the long brown flank of her thigh, but only for an instant. Feigning discovery of her indiscretion — or perhaps really discovering that he can see Catalina on a clear day — she pulls a little-girl face and immediately tosses the flap of the robe over her leg again.

"You remember lots of things from when you was young?" she asks.

"Some."

"When's the first time you got laid?" she asks him.

It occurs to him that their only lingua franca is sex. This is not surprising. Sex is Lokatia's occupation and sex is his preoccupation, so why shouldn't they understand each other? The dialogue here is free and easy; there is no need for either a translator or an interpreter. He can just imagine sitting in the living room of the house he himself designed in Topanga Canyon, enjoying a nightcap with Grace and discussing this very same subject matter, oh sure. But here he is in a living room decorated like a Turkish whore house, with beaded curtains and mirrored throw pillows and a frayed Persian rug, and Sinatra singing while a big black and gray tabby and a white cockatoo sit listening like a baggy-pantsed comic and his straight man, and a very black. virtually naked hooker snuggles into his shoulder and encourage him to talk about — gee, guess what, kiddies? — the first time he got laid.

"I don't remember," he says.

"Everybody remembers the first time."

"When was yours?" he asks.

"When I was eleven," she says.

He looks at her.

"True," she says, and crosses her heart with the index finger of her right hand "It was very romantic. He was a Spanish kid from a HunTwennieth and Park. We were in the same Special Reading class at school. Him cause English was a second language, me cause I was dyslectic. We did it on a blanket we spread near the pigeon coops. it was a starry night in July, we could hear the pigeons cooing all the while, it was so romantic, really. It was summertime in Harlem. Everything was summertime."

"What was his name?"

"Hector. Why?"

"I don't know."

"Hector Lopez."

"Have you seen him since?"

"Hector? I think he's in jail."

"I mean… after that night."

"Oh, sure. We went together all through junior high. Then I got involved with the fuckin Scorpions and summertime ended. Everything ended."

"Eleven was very young," he says.

"Not on my block. How old were you?"

"Nineteen."

"Get out!"

"I mean it."

"Nineteen? I can't believe it!"

"I was a late bloomer."

"A late bloomer? You were a Christmas cactus!" she says, and bursts out laughing. "You get it?"

"Well, I kept trying," he says, "I just never had any luck. I was attracted to older girls, I think that's what it was. I mean there were girls I went out with, girls I took to the movies and all, it wasn't as if I didn't want to. I just never got lucky, is all."

"Well, you got Lucky tonight," she says. "If you want her."

"What's your last name?" he asks.

"What's yours?"

'Without hesitation, he says, "Thorpe."

"Mine's Bruce."

"Lokatia Bruce," he says.

"That's me."

"Nice to meet you," he says, and they clink glasses again. The cockatoo lets out a shriek at the sound. "Oh, shut up, Whitey," he says, and the bird shrieks again, and Lokatia laughs.

"Bruce is Scottish, you know," she says.

"Funny, you don't look Scottish," he says.

"It must've been a slave owner's name. You want me to be your slave sometime?"

"I don't know. Would you like to be my slave sometime?"

"Lots of white guys like black girls to be they slaves. Yes, mas,a, please let me suck your dick, massa, all that shit."

"Would you enjoy that?"

"Better than bein a real slave, that's for sure. If you want to try it sometime, we could. Whatever," she says, and shrugs.

The cat suddenly jumps up on the sofa, startling him.

"I really don't like animals, you know," he says.

"Francis seems to like you."

"What does Francis know?"

"He senses things."

All at once, the cat moves onto his lap. He yanks his glass to the side away from the animal, spilling gin on his pants.

"You don't think you could put him in the bathroom or somethin, do you?" he says.

"Come here, Francis," she says, and lifts the cat off his lap as if she picking up a wet towel. "Didn't you ever have a pet?" she asks him.

"Sure, I did."

“But not a cat."

"Not a bird, either."

"Then what, a goldfish?"

The cat is on her lap now, pussy to pussy. She is stroking the cat. The cat makes contented purring sounds, his eyes squeezed shut. Lokatia's left hand, the one with the blue scorpion near the wrist, strokes the cat between his ears.

"A dog," Ben says. "My father gave her to me for Easter. Brought her home in a little basket with jelly beans all around her."

"You still got that dog?"

"No. I was only seven."

"What happened to her?"

"I don't remember," he says, and looks at his watch.

"You keep lookin at your watch, you'll make me feel undesirable.”

"You're desirable all right."

"Cause I'm an older woman, right?"

"To me, you're a younger woman."

"Right, you'll soon be forty-four."

"November twenty-third."

"The day Kennedy got killed."

"The day Kennedy got killed, right," he says, and looks at his watch again.

"So stop lookin at your watch, I'm so desirable."

"Sorry," he says.

But he has already registered the time. It is twenty-three minutes past three, and his plane leaves at eight A.M.

She swings herself off the couch, irritating the cat, who was beging to feel altogether too comfortable and secure, and who makes an little sound as he leaps to the floor. In the corner of the room, the cockatoo echoes the cat's disdain with a penetrating shriek that surely awakens* everyone in the building. She kneels to the cabinet again, exposing a fair amount of thigh yet another time, glances back at him over her shoulder, catches him staring at her, smiles as primly as a nun, and modestly lowers her eyes as she drops the CD into place.

"More gin?" she asks,

"I'm fine," he says.

She sits beside him again. The cat keeps its distance, still disgruntled. The cockatoo says not a word. Lokatia tucks her legs under her again. She sips at the gin.

"So when was your first time?" she asks.

"I told you. I don't remember."

"You said you was nineteen."

"That's right."

"So where was it?"

"College. Yale. I'd already met my wife. We were already going together."

"Was it her?"

"Grace!" he says. "Never in a million years."

"Some other college girl?"

"No.”

"Then who?"

"I really don't remember."

"Must've been a whore," she says idly, and sips at her drink.

"Maybe," he says.

"Am I right? It was a whore, wasn't it?"

He dimly recalls a back street somewhere on the outskirts of New Haven, remembers driving by a strip-mall store advertising girls modeling lingerie, an orange neon sign in the window declaring OPEN. which the talented woman inside turned out to be in every respect. He remembers telling himself that he was going in there to buy Grace some sexy underwear, though she didn't wear sexy underwear at the time. still doesn't wear sexy underwear, he doesn't remember why he went in there on that cold and dismal November night. He recalls the woman modeling a skimpy bra and open-crotch panties, recalls her saying, “I do a lot of young kids like you." Which he supposed made it all right She was a bottle blonde, he now remembers, though he can't for the life of him remember her name, if ever he knew it.

"Did she have a dog?" Lokatia asks.

"A dog? Of course not."

"Tell me about your dog."

"Why do you want to know?"

"Cause I like animals. Lots of hookers keep pets, you know. It's cause were lonely."

He looks at her.

Their eyes meet.

"What kind of dog was she?" Lokatia asks.

"A mutt. I think she was part Yorkie, part beagle. Her name was Cookie. My mother named her."

"That's a lousy name for a dog."

"I know. I loved that dog," he says. "She was very cute and very smart.”

"What happened to her?"

"I don't remember. I was only seven."

"She didn't get hit by a car or anything, did she?"

"No, no."

"Cause lots of animals get hit by cars, you know."

"Yeah, but this was Mamaroneck."

"Right. You were only seven, huh?"

"Well, almost eight. November twenty-third, I told you. Some birthday, huh?" he says. "President gets himself killed. We went to a movie that day, I remember. My mother and I. We used to go to movies a lot. I stayed home from school that day, because it was my birthday. It was supposed to be a treat. We were supposed to go to Serendipity afterward. That's an ice cream parlor. But something happened."

"What happened?"

"I don't remember."

"The President got killed is what happened."

“Sure.”

"Let me freshen that," she says, and takes his glass and carries it into the kitchen with her. She opens the fridge again, takes out the ice cube tray, drops ice into each of their glasses. "I sometimes think if I drink enough, I won't hunger for the shit. But it don't work that way," she says. "Gettin to be about that time, in fact. Don't worry, I won't start shakin or nothin, I got the dragon under control." She puts the ice back into the freezer compartment, and comes back into the 1iving room, to where the bottle of Gordon's is sitting on the cabinet. She pours liberally into each glass and then comes back to the sofa. Sinatra is singing with Barbra Streisand now. They sound as if they truly might have been lovers once long ago, telling each other all about the crushes, they have on each other.

"They recorded this in separate studios, you know," Lokatia and hands him his glass.

"Thanks," he says.

"Miles apart from each other."

"I know. Amazing."

"Cheers, Ben," she says.

"Cheers," he says.

They drink. She takes his hand in bets. She pats his hand the way she did in the taxicab, when be was hurting all over.

"What happened to your dog?" she asks.

"The ASPCA came to take her."

"Why?"

"Because she wouldn't pay attention. She used to crap all over the house."

He falls silent, remembering.

"They were supposed to come while I was at school," he says, "but they got there late. They were putting her in a cage when I walked in the house. I begged my mother not to let them take her. She kept telling the guy he should have got there earlier."

"So what happened?"

"He took the dog. And I stopped talking to my mother."

"Forever?"

"No, no.”

"Do you talk to her now?"

"She had a stroke two years ago," Ben says. "She's in a nursing home now. We never talk now."

"You were only seven, huh?"

"Well, almost eight. That was a long time ago," he says, and looks at his watch again.

"You notice how every time we start talkin serious here, you look at your watch?"

"I didn't realize that."

"But it's true."

"And I didn't know we were talking so seriously."

Something is nudging his memory.

I'd better get out of here, he thinks.

"You know," he says, "maybe I ought to go. I know you must be, tired…"

“Don't go yet," she says.

"I have a plane to catch."

"Plenty of time yet."

"I'll be late."

Something terrible will happen, he thinks.

He remembers his mother changing her seat. A woman wearing a hat sat down in front of her, so she moved one seat in.

"It must've looked like I was sitting alone," he says.

"What do you mean?"

"Empty seat on either side of me. That day. My birthday."

He falls silent. Across the room, the cockatoo picks up a nut, cracks it in his beak. The room is very still. He can hear the cockatoo working the nut between his jaws.

“What happened that day?" Lokatia asks.

"I don't remember."

"Did somebody sit down next to you?"

"I don't remember."

"Somebody make a move when he saw you sittin alone?"

"I don't know."

"Some man sit down next to you?"

“I don't know."

"Some woman?"

"I really don't know."

"Did somebody bother you, Ben?"

"I don't remember."

"Some person touch you?"

He shrugs.

“While you were watching the movie?"

"I don't know."

"Is that what happened, Ben?"

He shakes his head.

"Why didn't you tell yo mama what was happenin, Ben?"

He shakes his head again.

"Ben? Why didn't you juss tell yo mama?"

He turns to look at her.

"I wasn't talking to her," he says. "She gave away my dog."

At three-thirty in the morning, here in this room with her, there is the sound of traffic muted on the muzzle of the night below, the muffled sound of voices from television sets or radios turned low, the occasional sound of a toilet flushing or a baby crying, or someone mumbling in sleep, and now, yes, the sound of a couple moaning in ecstasy somewhere in the building. Lokatia reaches up to touch his face with the hand that has the blue scorpion tattooed near the wrist. She tucks her head into his shoulder, rests her left hand gently on his chest, He feels quite content here with her in his arms, her hand resting familiarly on his chest.

"Ben?" she says.

Her voice is very low.

"I got to go take care of myself now."

“Okay.”

"You don't have to leave," she says.

"Well, I think I'd better. "

"I'm sorry," she says. "But you know how it is, huh? I got my candy you got yours."

She sighs heavily, pats his hand, and wearily shoves herself off the sofa. The cockatoo shrieks as she walks swiftly to the beaded curtains hanging in the kitchen doorway, and tosses them aside. The curtains click behind her as she goes into the kitchen, stir slightly in her wake, hang motionless and still again, He sits staring at the curtains as if expect mg her to return at any moment. He can hear her rattling around in the kitchen drawers, can hear her swearing softly. He looks at his watch. It is thirty-seven minutes past three. His plane leaves at eight o'clock. He has to get to the airport. He has to fly home. But where is that? How did he ever manage to get so fucking lost?

What the hell had she meant?

I got my candy, you got yours.

In the ladies' room, they are all talking about the death of the President. His mother and all the other women have just learned about what happened in Dallas. He can see the ankles of women under the doors of occupied stalls, legs apart, can see high-heeled shoes, legs apart, can see long-legged women in short skirts putting on bright red lipstick at mirrors over stark white sinks, combing their hair, combing long blond hair, combing long black hair. He jiggles from one foot to the other in the center of the room. He is eight years old today, embarrassed that his mother still takes him into the ladies' room with her, frightened by what has just happened to him, excited by the shocking news and the high shrill voices of the women everywhere around him. Some of the women are crying now. A stall door opens and a girl wearing a mini skirt and high heels comes strutting out still pulling up dark green pantyhose, stepping around Benjy, "Ooops!" she says, smiling at him. Did it really happen? Or was it a dream? He hurries into the stall and unzips his fly. Urine trickles and spits from his penis, and then at last gushes forth in a strong steady stream. He closes his eyes and throws his head back.

Washing his hands at the sink, he can hear the women commiserating about the President. "Isn't it awful what happened?" his mother says. Warm water runs over his hands. He looks up at his own reflection in the mirror over the sink, and sees on his face the secret knowledge of what he shared in the dark with a stranger, and is suddenly Overwhelmed with shame and sorrow and guilt. Instead of going to serendipity for ice cream, his mother takes him home to Mamaroneck.

He does not know how many minutes he sits there alone in Lokatia', living room, the cockatoo silent, the rain beginning to taper outside. At last, he rises from the sofa, and blows his nose on a tissue he takes from a box on the end table, startling the cockatoo, who shrieks in response. His wallet — with the travelers checks Lokatia never asked for — is sitting on the end table beside the box of tissues. He tucks it into the right hand pocket of the jeans. Francis the cat is sitting just outside th, kitchen, staring at the beaded curtains, waiting for his mistress to emerge. Ben parts the curtains, and steps inside. Lokatia is standing at the counter. A blackened tablespoon is on the countertop. A syringe, in her right hand.

"I have to go now," he says.

"Okay, Ben," she says.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"For what?" she says.

"Are you sure you have to do this?" he asks.

"Just say no, huh?" she says, and grins like the little girl she or, must have been. "You get it?" she asks.

He nods bleakly. He goes to her. Takes her in his arms. Kisses her the forehead. Holds her away from him. Looks into her eyes.

"I'll see you," he says, though he knows their paths will never again after tonight. Unless he meets her again in some other city sometime, as he very well might, a white girl next time, wearing a red wig next time, or a Chinese girl wearing very dark lipstick, or a Latino girl smoking a long thin cigar, another Cindy or Fatima or Heidi or Kim Tiffany or Peggy Sue, another someone, another anyone, another woman or girl in yet another city or town someplace, anyplace, ever and always somewhere.

"I got my candy, you got yours."

He guesses he knows what she meant.

He guesses at last he knows.

He looks at his watch.

It is forty-six minutes past three.

Time is moving so very swiftly.

"Goodbye, Lokatia," he says.

"Goodbye, Ben," she says.

He goes to the beaded curtains, and parts them, and walks to the front door and out of the apartment and down the steps to the street.

The rain has stopped.

A heavy fog is rolling in.

He steps down off the curb and looks up the street for a taxi. On the next corner, a young black girl is crossing the street against the light. She is wearing a tight mini skirt and very high-heeled shoes. Her blouse is cut low over her breasts. She is smoking a cigarette. As she comes toward the curb, the light changes, bathing her in its red glow. She glances in his direction, hesitates when she spots him, smiles, waves tentatively to him. In the distance, in the mist, Ben sees the dome light of a vacant taxi.

He raises his hand.