At the Garden Court the next day, under the splendid green-house roof, Chino is having lunch with Marianne, whose terror and beautiful clothes have made her ravishing, beautiful. Chino is attempting a vain, somehow intimate speech to her. He seems to think only of Marianne.
“My job is to provide the illicit. Is that not so? In recent years I am up against hippies, sluts, and, worst of all, experimenters. And many of our country’s people have become queer. What can I offer a successful man besides mere convenience? I am not McDonald’s! I wish to be something more than a drive-up window. My clients are not … swingers! My clients are powerful, friends of the system. On the level of pure merchandise, they are happy with what I give and they … remunerate me so I can go on as a well-paid, quietly efficient person of crime. But … I think now I have something for the discerning, something which is not now easily obtained, not without crazy and needless risk. My clients have families and concerns; they need to express themselves.”
“What is it you can offer them?” Marianne asks, in terror of this knife-wielding animal playing the gent at the table.
“I can offer them an unwilling lady, an intelligent woman who hates everything that is happening to her.”
“But what if I learn to like it?” Marianne asks him desperately. Learning to like it is the only card she holds.
“Then you are just another one of the girls. You become commonplace.”
“To whom?” A disappearing pulse of courage.
“To me, to yourself. What’s the difference?”
Jane Adams, the lady realtor, a woman of energy and brains, is on the porch of Bobby’s Presidio Heights house running down a rumor. Jane hates this. She wanted to make a living and this is it. The porch is covered with glass from a broken bottle that has been thrown from inside. Jane states as she enters, “Why not say it? I’ve had complaints.”
The place is a mess, with half-finished meals and newspapers slung over the furniture.
“This certainly proves the value of a damage deposit,” says Jane, hating the position she’s in, this real-estate sham. Every time she has said “ranchette,” “bungalow,” “younger couple,” “handyman’s dream,” has been, she now feels, a black mark on her soul. But Bobby’s hauteur helps her through the moment.
“I couldn’t agree more,” he says jauntily.
“I’m thinking in terms of eviction.”
“You’ll need a hot lawyer.”
“I’ll get one. I rather thought your friend would be tidier.”
“She’s been kidnapped. Tough to be tidy, under the circumstances.”
It’s very quiet.
“Have you reported this to the police?”
“On, yes, first thing.”
“And what happened?”
“They said she had merely left. She had a record, which they said indicated that she had simply moved on.”
“A record for what?”
“Prostitution.”
“Well, I would never have guessed that!”
“Please don’t evict me. I’ll get a maid.”
“You look like you could cry.”
“Can I touch you?” Bobby asks.
“We shook hands once,” she said.
“Can I touch your hand again? I’m desperate.”
When Bobby has finished seducing Jane in the sordid shambles of the bedroom, he says, “I want my Marianne back.” His throat seizes. Tears stream onto his wino face.
“You make me feel like a stand-in.”
“You are a stand-in.”
This flings Jane into all the ugliness of her trade, and before she can stop herself she says, “I’m going to have your ass evicted if it’s the last thing I do. I’ll see you in hell.”
But then Bobby begins to cry a little, and once again she hates herself for being mean, a sensation Bobby has not experienced. He whimpers, “Please help me.” He’s beginning to acquire the tiniest bit of a new erection.
During the long day in bed, Bobby tells Jane everything he knows about Marianne, Donna, and Chino. Plus what he heard about Jan and La Costa. He keeps checking to be sure that Jane really knows the town. Too, he likes her hard flat-sided buttocks, her irrational exclamations, and her lingerie. Sometimes he cries a little, but Jane is drawn to him because he is crying less and less. Finally, he has a shower and puts on his striking clothes. How handsome! she will recall thinking.
Chino is in the luxurious living room of his condominium. He is speaking to Max, a hearty mid-forties salmon canner and developer from up north. Chino plays a marvelous new role; compared to the love birds in Presidio Heights, Chino and Max are just plain happier.
“North Beach had grown tiresome, even to me,” Chino explains. “The fire escapes made everything a little vulgar. Would you not say so?”
“I accept your work, Donald.” Max smiles. Chino has gone back to “Donald Arthur Jones.” Max is the only one with manners enough to accept it. The girls keep calling him Chino, as if he were some beaner from down yonder.
“And that one little door with no place to go. And the aging beatniks! Ugh! But that one little door made it seem so much like a drive-up window. I’m no McDonald’s!”
“How much is that fresh face?”
“Five hundred dollars.”
“Rather steep, isn’t it?”
“You know the law. Think of my risk. She’s very pretty, very educated. She has no reason to be here.”
Max pays him, remarking, “Don’t overbook her. A thing like that can lose its bloom overnight.”
Chino looks like a pixie as he opens the door to Marianne’s room. She lies curled up on an enormous bed covered by a huge, wholesome, handmade quilt. She faces the wall. She hears the door close, then Max’s gruff voice: “Get up.”
Three in the morning and the same bed. Marianne is bound, gagged, and naked, eerily delineated by a small amount of light that is sufficient, nonetheless, to reveal her tangled hair, stained face, and sense of all-consuming defeat and pollution. The light snaps on and La Costa stands in the doorway staring expressionlessly at Marianne. La Costa’s large eyes blink regularly until she has taken it all in. Then she goes into sudden motion, freeing Marianne from the knots that bind her face, hands, and feet. Marianne gets up. The new freedom nauseates her for a moment.
“Are you going to be all right?”
“Yes. Are you La Costa?”
“Uh huh. Why don’t you come here and lie down?” La Costa makes the ravaged bed with deft, efficient movements. The elephantine Max twisted everything in his ardor.
“I want some water. I want to walk.”
La Costa leads Marianne toward the kitchen, slowly and by the arm.
“When I feel like a child, I cry and suck my thumb. Even in front of a john. But never in front of a pimp. The good pimp has only one weakness, which is his desire to kill whores. He is watching and he is waiting.”
“Like a hawk,” says Marianne.
Back in Marianne’s room you can just make out the two faces as they talk like children at a slumber party.
Marianne asks, “What about Chino, though?”
“I think he’s hilarious.”
“Hilarious.”
“He read that more Americans can recognize the McDonald’s hamburger commercial than the national anthem. So he decided he and McDonald’s were in direct competition.” La Costa begins to sing, “You deserve a break today at McDonald’s.” But she is interrupted, at first by Marianne’s rhythmic sobbing and finally, “I’ve been raped I’ve been raped I’ve been raped.” La Costa rests a hand on Marianne’s back and looks out the window, slowly shaking her head.