The Widening Gyre

Chapter 15

Alexander's Washington home was a three-story yellow frame house on the corner of Thirty-first and O Streets in Georgetown. He let me in.

"Ronni's away for the afternoon," he said. "It's in the den."

He led the way. The house was elegant Victorian, entirely immaculate. The den was fireplaced, paneled, leather-chaired, and hokey. There was a bison head mounted on the wall above the fireplace.

Alexander said, "You know how to operate one of these?"

I said I did. The videotape player was in a cabinet under the television. The connection wires ran up behind the cabinet.

"The tape is in there," Alexander said. "Everything is on. Simply push the play button."

He handed me a key. "Lock the room while you are watching. When you are through leave the tape in the recorder and lock the door. I have another key."

I nodded.

"I'm going to work," he said.

I nodded. He paused at the door to the den, looking at me. He started to speak and stopped. His face looked hot. I said, "I'm sorry I have to do this." He looked at me another moment then went out and closed the door behind him. I went and locked it and left the key in the lock, then I went back and pushed the play button and sat in a leather chair and looked at the TV screen.

There was an interval of blank screen then some miniature polka dots against a black background and then a full-face medium shot of Ronni Alexander. She was doing a kind of inexpert dance, her arms above her head, her hips swaying. The sound cut in, not very clearly, as if the microphone were too far away, but I could hear that Ronni was humming as she danced, and, by listening hard, I could tell that she was humming "Night Train." I felt itchy with embarrassment. She danced past a table and picked up a glass, the shallow kind that people serve champagne in and shouldn't. She drank off the contents and threw the glass against the wall. Still dancing, she unbuttoned her blouse and slowly peeled it off. She was looking at someone in the room. I couldn't see much of him. Just the back of a dark head with a very expensive haircut. Ronnie unbuttoned her skirt at the side and slid the zipper down and held it momentarily with a look of contrived coquettish-ness, then let it drop. She wasn't wearing pantyhose. She was wearing underpants and stockings and a garter belt. A garter belt. Jesus Christ. The last garter belt I could remember was the year Mickey Mantle won the Triple Crown. She took off her bra. She unsnapped her garters and rolled her stockings off, one at a time, slowly, still making pseudodance movements and humming "Night Train." She drank several more glasses of champagne and tossed the glasses away. Tempestuous. Finally she slid out of her last garment and was naked. I thought of Alexander watching this and my throat felt tight.

"You bitch," I heard myself say aloud in the quiet, ornate room. My voice sounded more sad than angry. Her partner became part of the scene now, a soft-faced young man with a mustache, maybe a few years older than Paul Giacomin. He stretched out on the bed and let her undress him. I could hear scraps of their dialogue. What I could hear made me wish for "Night Train." I was glad the mike had been badly placed.

When they were both naked they had sex. They did more than that. They put on a clinic. Ronni's dance had been artless, but her sex was expert. She did things I had rarely contemplated, though nothing I objected to. And she made a good deal of noise while she did it. Her partner clearly enjoyed himself, but he was also careful to arrange her full face to the camera as often as possible. He wore sunglasses during the entire performance.

When the tape ended it simply ended, there was no dramatic resolution, it merely stopped in medias res. I rewound the tape and played it again. This time around I noticed that the room was brilliantly lit by sunlight and at one brief shot saw an uncurtained window wall off camera right. Most of the action seemed to take place on a double bed with a pale blue comforter on it. The champagne was on a bureau. In the background on a bedside table was a clock radio, with a digital display. The time seemed to be 2:08. With the sun shining in like it was early afternoon it meant the windows faced west or southwest depending on the time of year. From their clothing I couldn't tell the time of year.

The camera must have been concealed behind the mirror over the bureau. It covered the whole room from there, though its focus was on the human activity. In another shot there was a desk, apparently on the window side of the bed. I ran the tape back and forward over the desk several times. There were books on the desk, but the spines were turned away and I couldn't make out a title. There were pens and pencils in a beer mug. There was also a Smith-Corona portable electric typewriter. I rewound and ran the tape again. There was an emblem and lettering on the beer mug. I couldn't make it out. I found a magnifying glass in the drawer of a rolltop desk and tried again to read the mug as it drifted by on the screen. But I couldn't. The glass merely reduced the picture to its component dots. The best I could do was see that it looked like one of those mugs they sell in college bookstores with the college or fraternity emblem on them.

I ran the tape three more times, but there was nothing else to get from it. Ronnie seemed drunk. She postured in some childish fantasy of Salome; she was skillful in all of her sexual activity, but a little self-conscious about it, and her companion patronized a very good barber and wore sunglasses while screwing. The action looked to be in someone's bedroom, not a motel, and the bedroom had a western exposure, probably not at ground level or they would not have left the shades open, even for camera light. Unless Ronni was even more unusual than I thought.

I rewound the tape one more time, left it in the machine, shut everything off, closed and locked the door to the den, and let myself out Alexander's front door.

I knew why he'd left me there alone. I was glad he had.

My rental car was parked on O Street. I got in and drove a short block to Wisconsin, turned left, and headed in-town. I hadn't learned much, and I'd embarrassed my client and myself. I was getting used to that.