“Thanks, honey.”
“There’s plenty more where that came from.”
“What are you trying to say?” I had piqued her curiosity. She sat down again.
“Suppose I wanted to have a party?” I said.
“Like, what kind of a party?”
“Suppose I wanted Noam Chomsky explained to me by two girls?”
“Oh, wow.”
“If you’d rather forget it...”
“You’d have to speak with Flossie,” she said. “It’s cost you.” Now was the time to tighten the screws. I flashed my private-investigator’s badge and informed her it was a bust.
“What!”
“I’m fuzz, sugar, and discussing Melville for money is an 802. You can do time.”
“You louse!”
“Better come clean, baby. Unless you want to tell your story down at Alfred Kazin’s office, and I don’t think he’d be too happy to hear it.”
She began to cry. “Don’t turn me in, Kaiser,” she said. “I needed the money to complete my Master’s. I’ve been turned down for a grant. Twice. Oh, Christ.”
It all poured out — the whole story. Central Park West upbringing, Socialist summer camps, Brandeis. She was every dame you saw waiting in line at the Elgin or the Thalia, or penciling the words ‘Yes, very true’ into the margin of some book on Kant. Only somewhere along the line she had made a wrong turn.
“I needed cash. A girl friend said she knew a married guy whose wife wasn’t very profound. He was into Blake. She couldn’t hack it. I said sure, for a price I’d talk Blake with him. I was nervous at first. I faked a lot of it. He didn’t care. My friend said there were others. Oh, I’ve been busted before. I got caught reading Commentary in a parked car, and I was once stopped and frisked at Tanglewood. Once more and I’m a three time loser.”
“Then take me to Flossie.”
She bit her lip and said, “The Hunter College Book Store is a front.”
“Yes?”
“Like those bookie joints that have barbershops outside for show. You’ll see.”
I made a quick call to headquarters and then said to her, “Okay, sugar. You’re off the hook. But don’t leave town.”
She tilted her face up toward mine gratefully. “I can get you photographs of Dwight Macdonald reading,” she said.
“Some other time.”
I walked into the Hunter College Book Store. The salesman, a young man with sensitive eyes, came up to me. “Can I help you?” he said.
“I’m looking for a special edition of Advertisements for Myself. I understand the author had several thousand gold-leaf copies printed up for friends.”
“I’ll have to check,” he said. “We have a WATS line to Mailer’s house.”
I fixed him with a look. “Sherry sent me,” I said.
“Oh, in that case, go on back.” he said. He pressed a button. A wall of books opened, and I walked like a lamb into that bustling pleasure palace known as Flossie’s.
Red flocked wallpaper and a Victorian decor set the tone. Pale, nervous girls with black-rimmed glasses and blunt-cut hair lolled around on sofas, riffling Penguin Classics provocatively. A blonde with a big smile winked at me, nodded toward a room upstairs, and said, “Wallace Stevens, eh?” But it wasn’t just intellectual experiences. They were peddling emotional ones, too. For fifty bucks, I learned, you could “relate without getting close.” For a hundred, a girl would lend you her Bartok records, have dinner, and then let you watch while she had an anxiety attack. For one-fifty, you could listen to FM radio with twins. For three bills, you got the works: A thin Jewish brunette would pretend to pick you up at the Museum of Modern Art, let you read her master’s, get you involved in a screaming quarrel at Elaine’s over Freud’s conception of women, and then fake a suicide of your choosing — the perfect evening, for some guys. Nice racket. Great town, New York.
“Like what you see?” a voice said behind me. I turned and suddenly found myself standing face to face with the business end of a .38. I’m a guy with a strong stomach, but this time it did a back flip. It was Flossie, all right. The voice was the same, but Flossie was a man. His face was hidden by a mask.
“You’ll never believe this,” he said, “but I don’t even have a college degree. I was thrown out for low grades.”
“Is that why you wear that mask?”
“I devised a complicated scheme to take over The New York Review of Books, but it meant I had to pass for Lionel Trilling. I went to Mexico for an operation. There’s a doctor in Juarez who gives people Trilling’s features — for a price. Something went wrong. I came out looking like Auden, with Mary McCarthy’s voice. That’s when I started working the other side of the law.”
“Quickly, before he could tighten his finger on the trigger, I went into action. Heaving forward, I snapped my elbow across his jaw and grabbed the gun as he fell back. He hit the ground like a ton of bricks. He was still whimpering when the police showed up.”
“Nice work, Kaiser,” Sergeant Holmes said. “When we’re through with this guy, the F.B.I. wants to have a talk with him. A little matter involving some gamblers and an annotated copy of Dante’s Inferno. Take him away, boys.” Later that night, I looked up an old account of mine named Gloria. She was blond. She had graduated cum laude. The difference was she majored in physical education. It felt good.