“What’s she doing?”
“Balling.”
“Here?” I said, not that loudly. Beside being surprised, I remember I thought it was not very cool for someone as down as she was on the gang-bang bit (but basically pretty together when it came to keeping her thing in front of assaulting-type male personalities) to be making it with one of the guys from the nest in my loft.
Somebody was coming up the hall from the john.
“Come on,” I said to Denny. We went out on the service porch. “Who’s she fucking?” I knew the answer was going to be a surprise; and also that there were six—no, five guys I would particularly not like it to be: Spitt, Copperhead, Thruppence, Jack the Ripper, or Fireball; because they were all the sort who, through malice or ignorance, might try to make it into something unpleasant.
“Some guy I picked up downtown.”
I was surprised. “—you picked up?” I hadn’t expected to be relieved, though. “You balled him too?”
“Naw. Naw, it was her idea.”
“This sounds very familiar,” I said. “What do you mean, her idea?”
“She asked me to go out and find somebody who wanted to fuck her for money…for five dollars.”
“Whose five dollars?” I asked. “His or hers?”
Tarzan and D-t came up the steps and through the porch door, Tarzan to listen, D-t to wait for Tarzan to finish listening.
“It’s hers now.” Denny grinned. “She said she was listening to us talk about hustling, I guess, a lot, and I guess she was curious. Christ, was it hard to find someone with any money at—”
“We didn’t talk about hustling a lot.”
“Didn’t stop her from listening. She told me she was curious. She said she wanted to try it.”
“Yeah, yeah. Sure.” I cuffed his shoulder. “I just want to know why you’re not in there doing your thing.”
“Shit.” Denny scowled. “The guy’s a creep. He didn’t seem so bad when I met him. But he’s a creep, you know?”
“Jesus Christ.” Tarzan leaned against the sill of the screenless window frame. “You let your old lady…?” and stopped; probably because of the way I looked at him.
I said: “Let her what?”
“You know, mess around with…well…you know.”
I took the orchid from the chain around my neck, I raised my hand and slipped it into the harness, and the sky darkened outside the windows, the sky roared outside the window screens, and I snapped the collar on my wrist, and the light split in two, each arm growing, regged-rimmed, with magnesium bright edges, arching the sky, and I swung my hand up at Tarzan’s chest.
“Tarzan,” I said, “if my old lady wants to fuck a sheep with a dildo strapped to her nose, that is largely her concern, very secondarily mine, and not yours at all. She can fuck anything she wants—with the possible exception of you. That, I think, would turn my stomach. Yes, that, I think, I would not be able to take. I’m going to kill you.” On my hand—it swung up at Tarzan’s chest—was the orchid. “That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to play tic-tac-toe on your face, and them I’m—”
“Hey…” Tarzan whispered, “you’re crazy…!” looking very scared, looking at Denny, then D-t; but they had stepped away—and he looked scareder.
“Yeah?” I nodded. “You didn’t know I was crazy?”
I held the clutch of blade-points right in front of his left tit. While everybody held their breath, I thought: It would be easier here than any place else. Then I said: “Aw, shit! Run, motherfucker!”
Tarzan looked confused.
I dropped my hand. “I want to see you run! And that’s the last I want to see of you till after the sun comes up tomorrow. Otherwise, I will beat the shit out of you, carry your broken, bleeding, and unconscious body back to your mother’s and father’s door sill, apartment 19-A, and leave you there!”
“They don’t live in…” Then his mind clicked back to where he was; he sighed—I guess it was a sigh—and lunged for the door. He collided with a pigeon-chested man in the bluest shirt I’ve ever seen (“Hey, watch it! You okay…?”) and fled down the hall.
The man looked confused too.
Not that his hair was long; but for the type of person he was, your first thought would naturally be: He needs a haircut. “She said,” he said, “I should go out this way…?”
“Okay,” Denny said. “There’s the door.”
Dragon Lady had come up the steps and was standing outside it, watching.
“I gave her the money. Hey, thanks a lot. That was really nice. Maybe I’ll be back.” He looked at me, then looked just a little more confused.
Dragon Lady opened the door for him and he hurried down into the yard. She looked after him, then let the door close, but stood outside on the top step.
It isn’t despair. That vanishes with enough laughter and reason. I have both of those a-plenty. I guess most people, when all is said and done, lead lives as interesting as they can possibly bear. But I don’t remember putting it on. I don’t.
I looked at the orchid.
I don’t remember putting it on.
I took it off.
“You like him,” I asked, “D-t?”
“Who?” D-t said. “Tarzan? Man, he’s okay. He just don’t know when to keep his mouth shut. That’s all.”
“You made him piss all in his pants,” Denny said. Then he laughed. “You see that? He was getting wet, all down the side of his leg.” He gestured at his own thigh.
“Huh?” I said.
“He wet all over himself.” Denny laughed again, sharp, and barking, like a puppy.
“I wish I’d seen it,” I said. “It would have made me feel better.”
“I…don’t mind Tarzan,” Denny said.
“Look, man,” D-t said. “Tarzan’s just a kid. He don’t know anything.”
“Shit!” I slipped the orchid back on my neck again. “He’s older than Denny!”
“He comes,” D-t said, “from a very strange family. He’s told some of us all about them. You got to make allowances.”
“They’re not that strange,” I said.
“I mean,” D-t said, “they didn’t teach him too much. I mean about the way things are.”
“Yeah?” I took a very large breath. “Maybe what gets me is how much his family reminds me of my own.”
Then I went down the hall and into my own room.
Lanya, visible down to her nose, looked over the edge of the bed like a cartoon Kilroy.
“Hello,” I said. “How are you?”
“When I heard you come in,” she said, “I thought Denny would keep you in the front room. That’s why I sent the guy out the back.”
I climbed up into the loft.
She sat up and made room; she was wearing her jeans, but they weren’t buttoned yet. “You know what turned him on most? That I was a chick who balled scorpions,” she said immediately. “That was all that really interested him. He was nice enough. But I could have been a piece of liver one of you guys had jerked off in; he would have been just as happy.” She touched my knee, tentatively. “I mean, I don’t mind being a…what do they call it, ‘a homosexual bridge’ if I enjoy both ends. Really—he was too funny.”
“I was going to ask you,” I said, “whether you had completely lost your mind. But coming from me, I suppose, the question is presumptuous to the point of quaintness.”
“I don’t think I’m out of my mind.” She frowned. “To finish up the fantasy, I should turn this—” she pulled a five dollar bill from under her knee—“over to you. Or Denny…” She sucked in her lower lip, then let it go. “Actually I’d like to keep it.”
“Fine by me,” I said. “Just don’t get into this money thing too seriously. You’ll end up like Jack.”
“It isn’t the money,” she insisted. “It’s a symbol.”
“That’s just what I mean.”
“I think you should take your own advice.”
“I try,” I said. “Hey—this wasn’t intended as some kookie way to get back at me for mugging that guy in the street?”
“Kid!” She sat back. “You just shocked me for the first time since I’ve known you!”