After another moment one of the other men pressed a little button on the armrest of his chair. There were five alarm-bell rings, and the thin redhead with the numeral 5 on her card put on a false smile that looked like a death’s-head grimace and came out through a barred door to meet her date. The redhead led the grinning, beer-bellied tourist through another doorway at the other side of the room.
“Hope ya’ll have fun!” the cowboy shouted just before the door closed.
The dancing started again. Two more men—kids, really, probably college students—entered the room and took their seats, giggling and whispering nervously. The cowboy paid them no attention; he just sat back, watched the bouncing boobs, and waited.
A couple more girls reemerged from the back room and started listlessly dancing. Neither of them was the one the cowboy sought. The pounding rhythm, the red walls, the dim light, made him sleepy, as if he were sitting in a huge womb. But after four minutes or so he slid his boots off the seat back and leaned forward, smiling with renewed interest.
A slender, pretty blond had joined the dancers, and was grinding energetically. Around her neck was a card with the numeral 2 on it. He started to press his button—but before he could, two rings came over the speakers. The cowboy looked around, startled, and saw one of the college kids sheepishly getting to his feet.
At once the cowboy was up, and he strode to the kid before Easee Breeze came out from behind the window. He clamped his hand firmly on the kid’s shoulder. “Easee’s my date, dude. Sit yourself down.”
The blood drained out of the kid’s face. He sat down fast, and the cowboy turned his best smile on Easee Breeze.
She didn’t touch him, but she gave him a wary smile and motioned him to follow. They went through the door, into a narrow red-lit corridor lined with cubicles. Moans and moist sucking noises came from behind some of the closed doors. A huge bald-headed man came along the corridor, jingling a ring of keys. “Twelve and thirteen,” the man said, tapping the doors.
“Listen,” Easee said, turning to the cowboy. She had produced a little tube of lip balm from somewhere, and she dabbed a bit on her index finger and swabbed her lips. “I’m kinda tired, okay? Like my jaws are really cramping bad.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Easee,” the cowboy said sympathetically.
Her eyes were pale blue, and they shone glassily. She had a cocaine stare, the painted eyes of a Kewpie doll. Easee’s lips were very red, and she kept working the balm in. “I’ll give you half-rate for half time. Fifty dollars for three minutes. Okay?”
“Three minutes will be plenty long enough,” the cowboy answered, and paid the bald-headed guy with two twenties and two fives.
“Good. I’m just about pooped. What’s your name?”
He glanced quickly at the bald-headed dude, who had returned along the aisle to his seat at the alley door. On that door was a sign reading THIS WAY OUT. “Travis,” he said. “Like that guy at the Alamo.”
“The Alamo what?” Easee asked. He didn’t respond. “I like your tattoos,” she said. “They’re funky.”
“Yeah, aren’t they.”
She motioned him into cubicle twelve, and she closed his door and then entered the next cubicle.
Between them was a thin piece of wallboard with a hole cut through it at crotch level. “Want me to get you up?” she asked. On her side was a little plastic trashcan, a chair, a stopwatch on a chain, and a box of Kleenex. She started the watch ticking.
“No. I’m ready.” The cowboy had dropped his pants, and he pushed through the hole.
Easee sat down in the chair and began, examining her chipped fingernail polish as she worked. “You ever see any of my movies, Travis?” she asked him between licks.
“I saw Super Slick. You were real good in it.”
“Thank you.” Silence, while Easee labored. “What was your favorite part?”
“When you went down on three guys. That was hot.”
“Yeah, I liked that too. Travis, do you like what I’m doing now?”
“Sure.” He smiled, his cheek pressed against the wall-board. “Keep it up.”
She glanced at the stopwatch. God, time crawled in this dump! Well, this was a temporary thing anyway. She was on her way back to L.A. on Friday. Her agent had a three-day film job lined up for her, and then she was flying to Hawaii to meet a rich Arab. Those Arab guys smelled a little bit, but they loved porno because they couldn’t get it in Arabia. Anyway, the Arabs always had a lot of money to throw around, and she’d even known two actresses who’d married sheiks and gone to live over there. Easee figured that was the life, lying around in a country that was just like a big Malibu Beach, doing your thing for some Arab and living in a castle. It could happen to her. Anything was possible.
“Bite it,” Travis requested. “Harder. Come on, Easee. Harder.”
She worked, staring at the stopwatch.
“I’m a big fan of yours, Easee,” Travis said. “I saw you in Hustler last month. Harder. That ain’t bitin’! I saw you in Hustler. That was a real good layout. Man, I’d like to have me a job takin’ them pictures. I sure would.”
She grunted. The second hand crept.
“I saw you at the Triple-X in L.A.,” he told her. “When you signed autographs. You signed my book.”
Something was wrong with the stopwatch, she thought. She felt him tremble, and pulled out a Kleenex.
“I love you, Easee,” Travis said. “Wait a minute. Hold on.” He scraped back through the hole. “I love you,” he repeated. “Hear me?”
“Sure,” she said. And put her mouth to the hole. “Come on, Travis. Let’s finish our party.”
“We will. Just hold on.” He removed the Colt .45 pistol from his silver-buckled gunbelt. It was intricately filigreed and had a mother-of-pearl handle. On the belt were loops holding at least thirty bullets. “I dream about you all the time. Hot dreams.”
“Come on, baby. Travis?” She heard a metallic click. What the hell was the freak doing? “Come on, man!”
“Open wide,” he said, and he shoved the Colt’s barrel through the hole. “I loved Cheri Dane too,” he told her, and heard her gag.
He pulled the trigger.
The gunshot boomed hollowly, and the Colt bucked in his hand.
He heard her body thump off the chair. When he pulled the gun back in, its barrel was red and dripping.
Then, quickly, Travis zipped his fly and kicked the cubicle’s door open.
It banged out and tore off its flimsy hinges. The bald-headed dude was on his feet, a fleshy mountain of shock. One of the other cubicles opened; an Oriental girl peered out, saw the Colt, screamed shrilly, and slammed the door shut. A man looked out from another door, his jowly face contorted with horror.
Travis shot him. The bullet hit the man’s collarbone and knocked him off his feet. The whole cubicle collapsed, cheap walls folding in like cardboard. And then Travis, his eyes shining and glazed, began to stride toward the alley door, and as he walked he fired randomly through the cubicle doors. The shots boomed in the narrow space, sending bits of wallboard flying. The place was a bedlam of screams and calls for God. The bald-headed man was reaching into his pocket, and his hand came out with a switchblade.
“No,” Travis said calmly, and shot him through the throat. The dude strangled and fell back, the knife clattering to the linoleum. Travis brushed the bleeding bulk aside, but as he started to open the door a hand caught him by the hair and jerked his head back.
“You bastard!” the man gasped, eyes holes of rage and terror. “I’ll kill you, you lousy bas—”
Travis’s fingers moved on a hidden switch at the Colt’s handle. Four inches of serrated blue steel slid out from the mother-of-pearl, and Travis plunged the blade into the man’s fleshy cheek and tore brutally across it and out the mouth.
The man screamed, grasped his ripped face, and thunked to his knees.
Travis darted through the doorway and into the alley. The smell of blood and gunsmoke w
as up his nostrils, charging through his bones and nerves like a primal drug. He wiped the blade off on a discarded Burger King bag, triggered the switch again, and the knife slid back to its hidden sheath. Then he spun the pistol around his finger and returned it to the holster with a gunfighter’s grace.
He began to run, buttoning his coat as the wind whipped its folds around him. His face was pale and sweating, but his eyes were lazy and sated.
He ran on, away from the screams. The night and fog took him.
2
JESUS WEPT.
A timeless reaction, the slimly built blond man mused as he read today’s study in the philosophical textbook. Jesus wept almost two thousand years ago, and would certainly shed tears today. But tears alone would change nothing, the man knew. If Jesus had wept at the immensity of spiritual poverty in the world, thrown up his hands and given up humanity as a lost cause, then the world and mankind would have truly been consumed by darkness. No, it was one thing to cry, but there had to be courage too.
He finished the passage he was reading, closed the textbook, and put it aside. The strong afternoon sunlight slanted through the window blinds and painted the beige wall where a crucifix and figure of Christ were mounted. A bookcase was filled with scholarly works on such subjects as redemption, the logic of religion, Catholicism and the third world, and temptation. Next to the bookcase was a portable TV hooked up to a VCR, and a collection of tapes, among them the titles Victory over Sin, The Challenge of Urban Priesthood, and The Road Warrior.
He rose from his chair and returned the textbook to its exact place in the bookcase. He checked his wristwatch: twelve minutes before three. At three he was on duty in the confessional. But he had time yet. He walked into the small kitchen, poured himself a cup of cold black coffee from the pot he’d made this morning, and took it back to the den with him. On the fireplace’s mantel, a clock ticked politely. In the den’s corner was the man’s ten-speed bicycle, its front tire mounted on a little set of ratchets and gears so he could do his stationary riding. He went to the window and opened the blinds, staring down onto Vallejo Street as the sunlight washed into his face.
He had the soft features of a choirboy, his eyes gentle and dark blue, his thinning blond hair brushed back from his high forehead and allowed to grow a little long in back. He was thirty-three years old, but he might have passed for five years younger. Small lines were beginning to creep from the corners of his eyes, and deeper lines bracketed his mouth. He had a long, aristocratic nose and a strong square chin, and he stood at just under six-feet-one. His skin was pale, because he didn’t get out much, but his strict regimen of bike riding and jogging on a treadmill kept his weight at one hundred and seventy pounds. He was a man of discipline and organization, and he knew deep in his heart that he would have trouble living in the outside world, with its dissonance and disorders and riotous confusion. He was born for the meditative life of a priest, with its rituals and cerebral passions. He had been a priest for more than twelve years, and before that a student of priestly disciplines.
Over a squatty gray building he could see a large red X, a symbol on a building on Broadway. He could also see part of another sign: Girls and Boys. Monsignor McDowell, at their conference this morning, had told him there was a shooting in one of the flesh parlors last night, but the details were unknown. The young priest had never walked down that street, a block away from the Cathedral of St. Francis, and thinking about its dens of lust and corruption made his stomach churn.
Well, everyone in the world had free choice as to what to do with his life. That was part of the majestic beauty of God’s creation. But the young priest wondered often why God allowed such carnality and sin to survive. Surely mankind would be better served if all those places were leveled to the ground. He stared at the huge red X for a moment longer, then grunted, shook his head, and turned away.
He sipped at his coffee and regarded the half-finished jigsaw puzzle that lay on a table nearby. It was a picture of thousands of multicolored jelly beans, and he’d been working on it steadily for about two weeks. He saw where two more pieces fitted, and slipped them into their notches.
Then it was time to go. He went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and gargled with Scope. Then he put on his dark shirt and white collar over his undershirt, went to the closet and got his black suit jacket. At the top of the closet was a shelf holding a dozen jigsaw puzzles in their boxes, some with the shrinkwraps still unbroken. He kissed his rosary, said a quick prayer before the Cross, put a pack of Certs in his pocket, and went out his apartment door. On the breast pocket of his jacket was a little plastic tag that identified him as Father John Lancaster.
Outside his door, a carpeted corridor led him from the rectory to a staircase. He descended it, went through another door and into the administrative wing of the church, where his own office and the other offices were. Father Darryl Stafford, a dark-haired man in his early forties, came out of his office to the water fountain and saw Lancaster. “Hi, John. Almost that time, huh?”
“Almost.” John checked his watch. Two minutes before three. “I’m running a little late.”
“You? Late? Never happen.” Stafford took off his glasses and wiped the lenses on a white handkerchief. “I’ve got the preliminary budget figures almost ready. If you want to go over them tomorrow, my schedule’s clear.”
“Fine. How about nine o’clock sharp?”
“Nine sharp it is.” Stafford returned the glasses to his face. He had large, owlish, intelligent eyes. “You heard about the commotion last night, I guess?”
“I heard about it. That’s all.” John took a couple of steps toward the next door, feeling the pull of the confessional.
But Father Stafford was starved for conversation. “I talked to Jack this morning.” Jack Clayton was a police officer who patrolled the area. “He says two people were killed and one wounded. A lunatic shot up one of those parlors and ran out the back door. He got away. Somebody described the guy pretty well, though, and Jack left the report with me. He wants us to keep a lookout for… Now get this.” He smiled with a hint of wickedness. “A man with red tears tattooed on his cheeks. Face cheeks, I mean.”
“It’s a relief to know I won’t have to be pulling anybody’s pants down,” John said, and then he grasped the door’s handle and hurried into the church as Stafford said, “You and me both, pal!”
The chimes began to ring, announcing confessional. John’s shoes clicked on the white marble at the front of the church, and he was aware of several people sitting in the pews, but he kept his head down, his face away from them. He entered the confessional booth, closed the door, and sat down on a bench covered with red velvet. Then he slid open the small grilled partition between his cubicle and the next, popped a Cert into his mouth, and waited for the chimes to cease. He took his wristwatch off and placed it on a little shelf where he could see it. Confessional was over at four-thirty, and at five-thirty he had a dinner appointment with the mayor’s council on the homeless problem in the area.
As the chimes echoed away, the first person entered the cubicle and knelt down. A bearded mouth pressed toward the grille, and a man’s Hispanic-accented voice said, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
It was the beginning of the ritual, and John listened. The man was an alcoholic, and had stolen money from his wife to buy liquor, then beaten her when she complained. John nodded, said occasionally, “Yes, go on,” but his gaze kept straying to the wristwatch. The man left, armed with his Hail Marys, and the next person—an elderly woman—entered.
“Yes, go on,” John told her, as her rubbery red lips moved on the other side of the grille.
When the woman left, John put another Cert into his mouth. The next person—a man with a terrible wheeze in his lungs—left body odor behind him. There was a pause of about ten or twelve minutes before the next person, also a man, entered, and in that time John wondered if he was going to be able to pick up his other suit from the cleaners before fi
ve-thirty. Then he brought his mind back on track and tried to concentrate on a rambling tale of infidelities and misspent passions. But John wanted to listen; he honestly did. It was just that the seat was hard and the red velvet was thin, the confessional’s walls were starting to close around him, and he was aware of his stomach rumbling from the cold coffee. After a while the ritual became just that—a ritual. John would say, “Yes, go on,” and the confessor would continue with a list of sins and miseries that became terribly, sadly commonplace. He felt freighted with human ills, contaminated by the knowledge of good and evil. It was if Sin and the Devil reigned full sway over the world, and even the walls of the church creaked and showed hairline cracks against such hideous pressure. But John clasped his hands together, sucked on a Cert, and said, “Yes, go on.”
The man said, “Father, I’m through,” and sighed as if the telling had shrunk fifty pounds off him.
“Go with the grace of Christ,” John told him, and the sinner left.
More came and went. The watch showed four-sixteen. John waited, thinking about his report to be given to the mayor’s council tonight. He needed to look over it again, to make sure he hadn’t made any errors in the figures. Another two minutes crept past, and no one else came in. John shifted uncomfortably on the bench. Surely somebody could invent a more comfortable way to—
The cubicle’s door opened. Someone entered and knelt down.
John smelled a musky, cinnamony perfume. It was a welcome aroma, clearing away the last traces of body odor the third confessor had brought in. John took a deep breath of the perfume. He’d never smelled anything quite like it.
“Anybody in there?” a young woman’s voice asked. A long, red-polished fingernail tapped the grille.
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