Wanda-Jean had looked down at her dress with an expression of horror. "I can't go to Old Town dressed like this."
Bobby Priest had laughed. "You can go to Old Town dressed any way you want to."
"With you done up like a truck driver?"
"We'll make a very striking couple, and anyway, there isn't time for you to get changed all over again."
Still protesting, Wanda-Jean had been hustled into the lift and down to the waiting car. They drove across the city, alone with just the chauffeur and bodyguard.
Bobby had been right about two things. Nobody had seemed to recognize them, and nobody took much notice of Wanda-Jean's overelaborate dress, although she had still spent most of the evening feeling slightly ridiculous.
One mercy was that the place they went to was very dark, almost dark enough to forget about the bodyguard who sat like a squat, broad-shouldered boulder at the next table.
When you got down to basics, the place was a small, nondescript cellar. The walls were probably damp but, mercifully, hidden in the gloom. The decor was a loving, if grubby, re-creation of the beatnik era. The furniture was mismatched. The crowning glory of each table was a red and white checked tablecloth and a candle stuck in a wax-encrusted Chianti bottle. These were the only source of light, except for a couple of spotlights that were trained on a small stage.
For maybe the first hour, all Wanda-Jean could think of was why Bobby Priest had brought her to a place like this. The tables were crammed with an assortment of standard weirdos. Some were so far into the part that they sported long lank hair and beards, or black and white existentialist makeup-what was the name of the chick who started the whole thing? Juliette something?
The food wasn't all that bad. It had a loose base in Italian cooking. Wanda-Jean suspected that it was loaded down with illegal flavorings, and maybe other illegal ingredients, as well.
With just about anybody else Wanda-Jean would have come right out and demanded he explain what he thought he was doing bringing her to a cruddy place like this. With Bobby Priest, she just didn't feel able to.
It was made doubly difficult by the fact that somebody seemed to have hit the man's off button. The stream of patter appeared to have totally dried. He sat in silence, pushing food into his mouth with a kind of mechanical enthusiasm. Every now and then he'd pause and tap his fork in time to the resident jazz trio. Conversation was zero. Wanda-Jean had become angry and confused. First of all he'd brought her up to this dump in Old Town, and then he treated her as if she wasn't even there.
Wanda-Jean still hadn't been able to summon up the courage to confront Priest with her displeasure. Instead she fumed inside, and went on drinking the harsh red wine that he had insisted on ordering. The cabaret, if one could call it that, started. The trio vacated the tiny stage, and were replaced by a wild-haired poet who bellowed unintelligible, and frequently obscene, blank verse across the smoke-filled room.
After the poet, a skinny kid with a guitar sat on a stool and, accompanying himself, did an unsuccessful job of reviving the kind of protest music that was popular around the time of the Asian war, a period that even Wanda-Jean's mother was too young to remember.
When the kid finally was through, the trio came back accompanied by a young and not very attractive girl with stringy black hair and makeup like a corpse. She sang one almost inaudible song, then slipped out of her kimono-style robe and, stark naked, proceeded to go through a series of listless but supposedly symbolic gyrations.
Bobby Priest applauded loudly after each act. Wanda-Jean, by the time the dancer came, was slumped, elbows on the table, her chin resting on her fists. For the first time all evening, Priest deigned to notice.
"What's the matter? Don't you like it?"
Wanda-Jean scowled. "This half-assed amateur talent show, what's there to like?"
Priest shrugged. "I can't get enough of it."
The statement had been delivered as though it was an absolute truth. It was enough to make Wanda-Jean sit up straight in her chair.
"You're kidding?"
"Why should I kid?"
Wanda-Jean had looked around the room with almost slack-jawed amazement. "You like… this?"
"Sure."
"Jesus Christ, why?"
"I'll tell you…"
He hesitated as two women pushed past the table. One was young, in a not very fashionable, but timelessly clinging, red dress with slits up to her hips. She treated Priest to a long liquid stare and puffed sexually on a thin black cigar. The other was at the end of an emaciated, almost cadaverous middle age. Her dress was a vastly expensive couture house creation. A mink stole was thrown around her mottled shoulders. The older woman made a small impatient gesture and they both moved on. None of the regular bearded and work-clothed clientele paid them any attention. Bobby Priest was the single exception. He winked at Wanda-Jean.
"How about those two?"
"How about them?"
"Five gets you ten they're a couple of dykes into S and M. I figure the old one wants to get the young one home and whip her crazy."
Wanda-Jean couldn't help picturing the scene, but she was determined not to be impressed. "So? They looked pretty out of place here."
"You think so?"
"Didn't they?"
"Looked to me like they fitted perfectly."
Wanda-Jean had shaken her head at that point. "I don't understand. I don't understand any of this."
"I expect you figured I was going to take you to some classy downtown joint and we'd wind up in tomorrow's gossip columns, right?"
Wanda-Jean was a little taken aback. "Yes… something like that."
"Well, let me tell you something, sister. Let me explain something. You want to know why I come to a dump like this?"
Wanda-Jean nodded. "I'll tell you. This is one of the few places in this whole fucking city where I can go without having people point and stare and elbow each other to get close to me. I need that. I need somewhere where I can be me, where I don't have to be Bobby Priest."
For the very first time Wanda-Jean noticed that, close up, there was something a little mad about Bobby Priest's eyes. The eyes seemed to bore into her.
"You don't understand what I'm talking about, do you?"
Wanda-Jean did her best to look sympathetic. She had decided it was the best way to deal with him. "Sure I understand."
"Bullshit you do. You're just starting on this. I've been on it forever. I've seen a thousand of you come and go. You all run around, getting your kicks out of being somebody for the first time."
"What's wrong with that?"
"There's nothing wrong with it, except I've been somebody so goddamn long I've had it."
Wanda-Jean wasn't sure she could handle this. She wondered what Priest was on. "You don't mean that. You wouldn't go on doing the show if you didn't like it."
"So I don't even get a night off now and then?" He waved his arm around the room. "You see these weirdos here? They don't know from shit about me or you or game shows or feelies, and they care even less. That's what I call a night off."
"I'm sure you need it…"
"But not on your time. You wanted to go to some joint where everyone would recognize us. Right?"
"I didn't say that."
"But it's true."
"I don't want to fight with you." Wanda-Jean was actually scared. It all seemed to be going wrong on her. She couldn't afford to get on the wrong side of Bobby Priest.
"Yeah, well…"
To her surprise Priest suddenly slumped. His shoulders sagged. He looked older and much less energetic than before. "I expect you want to go."