“... and Will and Catherine and Mallory, and, and, and, oh yeah... and Darla-Jean were at Mallory’s house and his father said that if we were gonna drink we’d better give him a shot too,” the girl said and then she laughed and laughed.
The man was smaller than the buxom blond girl, and was wearing the gray uniform of some kind of repair service. Her ample bosom bounced when she laughed. The repairman nodded along.
John went up to the bar and sat on one of the unfinished pine stools, cautious not to get a splinter through the seat of his pants.
“Dr. Woman,” the bartender greeted.
“Mr. Lasky.”
Lasky was pale, also in his forties, prematurely balding, with eyes that seemed world-weary but resolved to make it through at least one more night.
“I guess I owe you five hundred,” the down-market mixologist lamented.
“I told you that Danny-boy would beat Matthysse,” John agreed. “The Argentine has the power, sure, but he thought too much of himself and Garcia’s from Philly. You never bet against a good boxer from Philly.”
Lou Lasky sniffed as if suffering an insult.
“Senta in?” John asked.
After giving this question serious consideration Lou asked. “What you drinkin’?”
“Martell Gordon Bleu.”
The bartender frowned as if he’d never heard of that particular poison. Then he went through a door behind the bar, leaving John to listen to pool balls clicking and teenage ramblings.
“... my mother said that they used to only teach girls how to type and cook when her mother went to school. Back then it was only men who had jobs. I wish I lived back then so I could sit at home and not do nuthin’...”
After a while John heard the words as sounds alone like when he stood on the fifth floor of Prometheus. Now and then the man’s voice rumbled. It was surprisingly deep for such a small man.
“On the house,” Lou Lasky said. He’d set down a snifter with a measured dram of amber liquid and no ice. “Room twenty-six at seven-thirty.”
John placed three hundred-dollar bills on the bar.
As Lou gathered the cash he said, “Next time it’s the full eight.”
“If you don’t make any more ill-advised bets.”
For the next few hours John read Colonel Chabert, by Balzac, on an electronic tablet. There wasn’t enough light for a real book and John liked e-readers; they seemed somehow secretive to him. He’d read the novel years before but adhered to his father’s edict — real reading is rereading.
Herman usually added that there is more history, more truth in fiction than in most so-called history books. Our dreams and fantasies get it right even when they don’t know it.
While John read the bar filled up. The patrons were white and listless, sometimes loud but more often silent, rarely, if ever, smiling.
One woman, probably in her thirties, came up to where the repairman and the teenager sat. She said, “Lou-Ann, you got no business in here. You should go on home to your mother.”
“My mother is across the street, Miss Melbourne,” the girl said. “And I’m locked out the house. You wanna take me home with you and Jack Frank?”
Hearing this John finished his third cognac and climbed off the rough pine stool. His left hip ached from sitting too long. Despite the pain he felt as if he was floating.
Outside the sun was set. The stellar desert sky had a magical feel to it. But John didn’t stop to appreciate the glittering dome of night. Crossing the transitional highway he took the outside stairs to the second floor of the two-story, turquoise-plastered Spark City Motel. Ambling down the external concrete hall he came to the last door, number twenty-six.
“Who is it?” she said in answer to his knock.
“Me,” he replied, uncertainty informing the word.
Forty-four-year-old Senta opened the pale olive door. Tall with a womanly figure, she had white-blond hair.
She had once told John that this was her natural color but she dyed it to get even blonder.
“Hi,” she said. She wore a pink dress that came down to the middle of powerful thighs. The frock had no shoulders or shoulder straps. Senta’s proud chest was enough.
“Hey,” John said shyly.
“You gonna come in or just stand there?”
John took a floating step forward.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” he said as she closed the door.
“Come on then.” She took him by the hand.
The turquoise-and-white toilet was small for two people but Senta didn’t leave him. She pulled down his zipper and rummaged around until her cold fingers found his penis. She pulled it out and said, “Okay, you can go now.”
After relieving himself John said, “I don’t want to move too fast tonight.”
“Of course not,” Senta agreed, shaking the last drops at the commode. “Lou says we have all night. Do you want to be tied down to the bed or the chair?”
When Senta was on top of John she climaxed at unpredictable moments. He wasn’t sure if these were real or feigned orgasms. He’d told her she didn’t have to pretend.
“You don’t believe that a whore can come?” she’d answered. “Don’t you know I really like you, Johnny?”
“You do?”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“Because you talk real nice and you’re always a gentleman. Most guys don’t know it but good manners will make a mature woman come way more than all them gyrations they do in porn.”
There were things they did every time; Senta, for instance, would tie John down with leather restraints. She was inventive and sensually perceptive. That evening she decided to spend a good deal of time kissing her twice-monthly client. Her kisses were soft but definite; up and down his arms, legs and torso...
She kissed him for nearly a quarter hour before mounting his straining erection.
John started bucking under her and when Senta told him, “Calm down, baby. We ain’t goin’ nowhere...” he came so violently that she was thrown from the bed; after that he lost consciousness for a while.
When he came to Senta had loosened the restraints.
“Wow,” she said. “That was wild.”
She lit a cigarette and poured herself a shot of sour mash. There was a fifth of the whiskey sitting on the nightstand next to her side of the bed.
She inhaled some smoke, took a swig of whiskey and exhaled the cool misty breath over his chest.
“I was scared that you had a heart attack for a minute there,” she said.
“Not me,” he assured her.
“You don’t know. Sometimes a young man can have what they call a irregularity in the heart and all of a sudden outta nowhere he falls down dead. I went to high school with a football quarterback who died like that.”
John put a hand behind his head and groaned contentedly.
“You don’t mind if I smoke?” she asked.
“I mind.”
“Then why don’t you ask me to put it out?”
“You need to smoke and I need you.”
“You could ask Lou for a girl who doesn’t smoke.”
“She wouldn’t be you.”
Senta stretched out next to John, laying her fair hand across his brown chest.
“What’s your real name?” she asked.
“John.”
“I mean your last name.”
“I’m John Woman, no middle initial.”
“I never heard of the last name Woman.”
“What’s your last name, Senta?”