“They’d let me take my pants down and dance on the fucking table,” Tak said, “if I wanted. Wouldn’t they, Lanya-babes? You tell ’em.”
“Tak,” Lanya said, “I’d like to see that. I really would.” She laughed.
Jack said: “Wow!”
The dancer was climbing from the cage down to the bar; he made a joke with somebody below; somebody else gave him a hand, and he leapt lightly away.
At the doorway, a group had just come in.
A couple of men in leather had gone up to a tall black in a khaki shirt: even by candlelight, sweat darkened his shirt flanks. Other black men around wore suits and ties. People were putting tables together.
The redhead’s laughter carried her across the bar. She took the black’s beam-broad, khaki shoulders. He embraced her; she struggled, still laughing. Muriel barked about their knees.
Sepulchral Teddy, like some leather-sheathed plant, set bottles down, held back chairs. The tall black fell into his seat; his fists cracked open like stone on the table. Others sat around him. He reared back, stretched his arms, and caught the woman in coveralls with one and the sparkling dancer with the other. Everyone laughed. The woman tried not to spill her drink and pushed at the rough, dark head. The dancer squealed: “Ooooo!” His G-string broke. He pulled the cord across his white hip, yanked the whole pouch away, and spun from the circling arm. A black hand smacked the chalky buttocks. The dancer dodged forward, threw back an evil look that ended with a wink, flipped the silver strap over his shoulder, and stalked off, cheek grinding cheek.
“Jesus!” Jack said from the other side of the table.
The rabbity tuft above the dancer’s bobbing genitals had been dusted with glitter.
Teddy moved about the joined tables, pouring. Other people were coming up to talk, leaving to drink.
Lanya explained to his puzzled look: “That’s George Harrison. Do you…?”
He nodded. “Oh.”
“Jesus!” Jack repeated. “You got all sorts of people in a place like this, you know? I mean all kinds. Now that wouldn’t happen where I come from. It’s—” he looked around—“pretty nice, huh?” He drank more beer. “Everybody’s so friendly.”
Tak put his boot up on the bench and hung his arm across his knee. “Until they start to tear the place apart.” He turned up his bottle to waterfall at the wide mouth. “Hey, you all want to come up to my place? Yeah, why don’t you all come on back with me?” He put the beer down. “Jack, Lanya, you too, Kid.”
He looked across at her to see if she wanted to go.
But she was drinking beer again.
“Yeah, come on.” Tak pointed at her, so that when her bottle came down from her mouth, she looked at the engineer and frowned. “You’re not going to sit around this place all night and fight off the Horse Women of Dry-gulch Canyon, are you?”
Lanya laughed. “Well, if you really want me, all right.”
Tak slapped the table. “Good.” Then he leaned over and stage-whispered, “You know she’s a real stuckup bitch. Back when she used to hang out here, she wouldn’t be caught dead with the likes of me. But after we got to know each other, she turned out not to be so bad.” He grinned across the table.
“Tak, I’m not stuck up. I always spoke to you!”
“Yeah, yeah, so’s your old man!” Tak pointed with a thumb. “Is he your old man now?” Then he laughed. “Come on. Late supper at Tak Loufer’s. Tak Loufer’s gonna give a party. Jack, you were saying how hungry you were.”
“Gee,” Jack said. “I don’t know if…”
Lanya suddenly turned to him. “Oh, come on! Now, you have to come with us. You’ve just gotten here. Tak wants to show you around.” She positively beamed.
“Well…” Jack grinned at the table, at Tak, at the candelabra.
“I’ll give you something to eat,” Tak said.
“Hell, I’m not that—”
“Oh, come on!” Lanya insisted.
(He moved his hands over the notebook, stained with blood and charcoal, to where the newspaper stuck out from the sides…) Lanya reached across and laid one fingertip on his gnawed thumb. He looked up. Tak was standing to leave. Jack: “Well, all right,” finishing up his beer; Tak pulled his coat from the bench back. Lanya rose.
He picked up the paper and the notebook and stood beside her. Jack and Tak (he remembered again the juxtaposition of sounds) went ahead. She pressed his arm and whispered, “I’d say I just earned my supper, wouldn’t you?”
They skirted the Harrison party. “Hey, look a-dere go’ ol’ I’n Wo’f!” Harrison grinned up from a hand of cards.
“Go drown yourself, ape,” Tak jibed back, “or I’ll tell everybody you’re holding—”
Harrison pulled his cards away and rumbled into laughter—when suddenly the silver-haired dancer bounced into their midst, G-string mended; he grabbed Lanya’s arm. “Darling, how do you always manage to leave here with all the beautiful men? Come on, everyone! A big smile for your mother…Fabulous! Can I come too?”
Tak swung his jacket, and the silver head ducked. “Get outa here.”
“Oh, now, with that big old hairy chest of hers, she thinks she’s just too too!”
But they pushed toward the door.
The red-headed woman and Purple Angora were talking quietly by the wall. Muriel, panting, lay between their feet. The flickering candles kept gouging lines in the woman’s yellow face. She was not that made up, he realized as they passed, nor that old. But the roughness of her skin under the unsteady light suggested misplaced artifice. Over her jacket (he had not seen it before and wondered how he had missed it; unless simple profusion had misled him to think it was something else) were loops and loops and loops of the strange chain Faust, Nightmare, the dancer, indeed, he himself, as well, wore.
Muriel barked.
He pushed into the hall, behind Lanya, in front of Jack.
Teddy smiled at them, like a mechanical skull beneath his cap, and held the door.
The very blonde girl at the sidewalk’s edge bit at her knuckle and watched them intently.
The cool was surprising.
He had reached down to make sure that the orchid still hung in his belt loop when she said: “Excuse me, I’m terribly sorry to bother you, but was—” her face held its expression unsteadily—“George Harrison…in there?” then lost it completely. Her grey eyes were very bright.
“Huh? Oh, yeah. He’s inside.”
Her fist flew back against her chin and she blinked.
Behind him Jack was saying, “Jesus, will you look at that!”
“Now that is something!” Tak said.
“You say he is in there? George Harrison, the big colored man?”
“Yeah, he’s inside.” At which point Lanya tugged his arm: “Kid, look at that! Will you?”
“Huh? What?” He looked up.
The sky—
He heard footsteps, lowered his eyes: the blonde girl was hurrying down the street. Frowning, he looked up again.
—streamed with black and silver. The smoke, so low and limitless before, had raddled into billows, torn and flung by some high wind that did not reach down to the street.
Hints of a moon struck webs of silver on the raveling mist.
He moved against Lanya’s shoulder (she too had glanced after the girl), all warm down his side. Her short hair brushed his arm. “I’ve never seen it like that before!” And then, louder: “Tak, has it ever been like that before?”
(Someday I’m going to die, he thought irrelevantly, but shook the thought away.)