by Jack Ketchum
"Pretty good, T.J. How was your massage?"
"Great. I've had better, though."
"Oh yeah? That's too bad. She cost you much?"
He looked at me.
"Same as you, Stroup. Twenty."
"I mean inside."
"Cost me nothing inside. What are you talking about?"
"T.J., did you fuck her?"
"Jesus, no."
"She didn't ask you?"
"No. You got laid, Stroup?"
"I'm thirty bucks poorer. And half an hour happier."
"Where'd you get the thirty?"
"Buy me a drink, T.J.," I said, "and I'll tell you all about it."
"Was she good, Stroup?"
"She sure as hell was."
"You know, maybe I should have taken my pants off. Maybe then she would have asked me."
I was crossing the street with the dumbest man on the entire West Coast of America. Maybe in the entire Western Hemisphere. He didn't take his pants off so they thought he was a cop. That was what all the whispering had been about in the hallway. Probably thought I was a cop too since we came in together. So what was I doing sitting naked in there?
It must have confused the shit out of them.
"Yeah, T.J., I think maybe you should have."
We went for a drink and I sat there with the scent of Sonja on my hands and every time I'd take a swallow of scotch she'd come back to me on my fingertips, all that blonde hair and pale flesh and the lips I hadn't kissed. It was like losing my virginity again.
Only once before had a scent held so much mystery.
And the scent of her lasted through the night's drinking until morning and well into the afternoon. I took care to keep it there. I tried to keep her face in my mind too, that beautiful face I'd known for half an hour only. But by quitting time I could not remember the look of her. Only the long blonde hair and the flesh and the lips and the feel of her cunt around me and I still had the scent of her which was fading, fading slowly and the next morning she was gone.
A slight departure for Stroup. No one in his right mind would say he's exactly sensitive in this story but a lot of the anger's missing. I'd say maybe he's getting old, mellowing, except that the story which follows belies the notion.
I actually did work in San Diego for a while, editing a glossy, mass-market paleontological magazine called FOSSILS which folded after one issue. I was too poor to rent a car and spent most of my time cooped up at the office. And yes, the nights were long and drear.
NEVER TRUST A SMART CUNT WITH TWO FIRST NAMES
(published as FIXING HER PLUMBING)
I was living in an old once-handsome building on 71st Street. Stanford White had designed it in the '20s. He was shot dead long ago which may have been lucky for his pride because now the landlady was a crazy old bitch who looked like Broderick Crawford in drag and she'd let the place slide. Now the lobby looked like a big gaudy movie-theatre lobby in candy-apple red and gold and everything was frayed and melting. It was the late, great Bijou down to showing DEEP THROAT VI.
The landlady was dumb as a soap dish but she'd learned a few tricks. She'd learned you never spent money unless you had to. You let everything fall to hell and then when the heat failed or the floor fell in and the tenants were screaming for blood you only had to scream louder and longer than they did. You told them you were broke and the city and rent-control and the unions were killing you. You screamed and you screamed and you kept screaming until the tenants went away wondering how long it would be before somebody locked you up, you poor crazy bitch. But what you did not do, you did not spend a fucking penny. You did not handle the problem. You acted loony instead. That took care of things for a while.
So I got up one morning hung over as I ordinarily was and went to the closet, and all our clothes were in there, dripping.
I thought, humm, all the clothes are dripping, it's mighty wet in there, that's funny. Then my brain cleared a little and I started howling. I woke Clara up. I woke the two cats. All the rats and roaches ran away. Look out. Something crazy out there.
"YOU STINKING FUCKING PUKING BATSHIT OLD CUNT! I'll cut your fucking TITS off! You fucking MURDERER! Goddammit! Goddammit! Goddammit!"
There was a hole in the ceiling the size of a football. The plumbing was all shot to hell. Our clothes were covered with piss and shit and toilet-bowl water and little flecks of plaster. I wanted to kill. The neighbors were beating on the bedroom walls to shut me up. They couldn't shut me up. I stalked back and forth across the living room in my shorts, roaring. Carla went to find the super. It was hopeless. He'd be drunk by now. I grabbed a bottle of rye. It was early but I might as well join him.
The phone rang. I got the receiver.
"Look, if this is a complaint, you're wasting your time," I said. "I'll scream louder, you understand? Tell the landlady she's a dead man."
I hung up.
In a minute it rang again.
It was a woman's voice on the other end. Soft voice, sounded good. Her name was Laura Sally, she said, not Laura Sally anything, just Laura Sally. Oh, I said. She was a friend of a friend from San Francisco. She had just got to New York and mine was the only name she had. She hoped I could get her settled somewhere.
"Not now," I said.
"Oh please," she said. "Couldn't we just talk for a minute?"
I explained to her that there was shit all over my clothes but I guessed she could come over if she could stand the stink. What did I care.
"Thanks so much," she said. "I really do appreciate it."
"I may be in my shorts."
"I don't mind," she said.
"You don't, hunh."
I hung up on her again. I found a pair of dry pants and put them on. Then I gathered together the whole sopping mess and took it out to the cleaners. It was going to cost me a hundred bucks. I got the landlady on the phone and threatened her until she promised me my hundred. Her husband had Hodgkins Disease, she said. He was dying. She could hardly manage. I figured whatever way he got rid of her, he was lucky.
Carla returned. The super was drunk as expected so I got a mop and went to work. Instead of piss, now the place stunk of ammonia. It was a rotten world.
In half an hour or so Laura Sally arrived. While I finished up the closet and pulled on the bottle of rye she and Carla got to chatting and soon you could hear them laughing in the kitchen and Carla getting out the coffee cups.
I had a look at her. She didn't look bad to me. The skirt she wore was long and loose so you couldn't tell about the ass, hips or legs but she had nice big breasts and the face was pretty. A weak chin but otherwise pretty. It might be okay to fuck her. Welcome to New York.
They did all the talking. I just listened. She was from Berkeley, here to make it big in publishing. She had degrees up the ass but it was all useless English-major stuff. She'd be lucky to get a job answering a phone in a porn house. I'd been stuck in publishing awhile myself, so I knew. If you were a woman you were nothing. If you were a man you could get to be a pimp. Lucky you.
But first off she needed an apartment. Carla told her there was a two-bedroom open here in the building and we knew a girl over on 68th Street who'd probably go halvsies with her. I warned her that the landlady was turning the place into a slop bucket but that didn't seem to bother her. So we promised to help.
That settled, Carla went out for more coffee and Laura got up and walked around staring at my bookshelf. Hmmmmm and ohhh yes, and oh I've read that. Smart stuff, she was. She knew all the right names. She asked if she could borrow my Jung so I let her. Then she sat down and I sucked at my bottle of rye while she bored me with how much she knew about Important Literature. I hate that shit.
I thought she might do well in publishing.
"You've got a good library here," she said. "But you're missing some people, you know? It's a good library all told. But if you don't mind my saying so you have some things that are really not so great."
"Do I really?"
"Oh ye
s." You should have so-and-so-and-so-and-so and get rid of so-and-so and so-and-so.
Well, I thought, she was young. But I should have seen it right there. Never trust a smart cunt with two first names.
She flopped with us a couple of days until her apartment was arranged. We got her a roommate, the kid over on 68th. Sandy her name was, a nice friendly kid. We loaned her a couple bucks here and there. Carla had gotten pretty friendly with her. I liked her a whole lot less but I still thought those tits were alright. I thought seriously about fucking her. But there was all that talk about Great Books to put up with.
Oh jesus.
Two weeks passed and Sandy and Laura moved into their apartment together. The landlady still hadn't fixed our ceiling. Then one night Sandy came downstairs in tears. She had complaints. Laura was a slob who left food and old rancid underwear and cigarette butts all over the place. She stole food. She stole money and clothes too. Two pair of panties were missing and Sandy's favorite blouse. Laura wouldn't pay the rent or the bills on time.
She'd conned us, all of us. It was New York. What else was new.
She took us upstairs to show us the crap pile she'd made of the place and where her stuff was missing. Right this minute, she said, she's probably out selling my shoes. I felt bad for her but short of smacking Laura around a little there was nothing I could do. "You want me to smack her around for you?" I said. She didn't think so.
Obviously Laura Sally had arrived in the City flat broke. She made friends fast though and now she was hustling them all hand over fist. What did she need with us? We stopped talking to her. So what? We could count at least a dozen people who owed her money. She knew I had no use for her but every so often we'd meet in the hall by the mailboxes and she'd bitch at me. She was a secretary in a small publishing firm. She felt it was beneath her. She was right. It was beneath anybody. But hell, I thought, let her sweat. At least she hadn't been able to sucker them yet. But I had few doubts about her future. Ask any housefly. Shit floats.
We saw Sandy occasionally and she was always belly-up like a dead catfish. It was sad.
Then Carla and I had a fight one night as would happen from time to time and I was sick to death of her, sick to death of all women, I was in one of those moods. And I wanted to wallow in that for a while. So I got me a bottle and went up two flights to Laura Sally.
"Got a joint?" I said.
Laura was cheap as most hustlers are cheap but you could catch her off-guard now and then.
"Uh...yes," she said and she dug one out for me.
It wasn't bad. I sat in her living room squinting at her looking mean and ironical smoking on the joint and pulling on the bottle of whiskey. I alarmed her.
"Aren't you going at that a bit heavy?" she said.
"Think of it as soda pop. Want to join me?"
"Afraid I can't."
"Why not?"
"I'm having a party."
"You are?"
"Yes."
"Tonight?"
"Yes. People should be arriving in about an hour or so. I've got to get ready. There will be lots of publishing people. You might want to stay, Stroup." She smiled, innocent as a daisy. "My first party in this town," she said. "Isn't that exciting?"
"My dick's getting hard," I said. "Suppose you roll us another joint."
"Okay."
While she was rolling I reached over and put my hand on her thigh. In the other hand I had the whiskey. It was a good thigh. She looked at me, not knowing what to make of me. The innocence dropped away and you could see the mind percolating, figuring the angles. Finally I guess she figured it might be fun to fuck Carla's man.
"I have to take a bath," she said, "but I want to continue talking with you. Come on. We'll leave the door open. You can stand outside the shower and talk to me."
"Sure," I said. What a free spirit she was. What a Berkeley girl. It was just another cocktease. I had them catalogued and numbered by now.
She peeled off her out clothes there in the hall, telling me about the party and all the good people who'd be there and how much she liked the Jung I'd loaned her and books again, books, books, books and all the time she was talking she never once looked at me, just kept peeling and yapping like there was nothing peculiar going on, very casual, just going to have a little bath, fop, out fall the tits, what do I think of Lautreamont, swish, down go the panties, splash, it was going to be a wonderful party, what do I think of incubi succubi, they had half a pound of Hawaiian coming. I stood there watching.
A nice body. You didn't have to be kind to animals to have a beautiful body. She was a louse but her thatch was golden. I watched the pale nipples go hard and then soft again in the warm water. I watched the pubic hair drifting like a bed of kelp. I took off my clothes and sat down between her legs.
I took her ass in both hands and pulled her onto me. The warm water had opened her up and it was like sliding into a vat of butter. She moaned and her smile was hot and phony but I didn't mind. I turned her around onto her hands and knees so it was her back I was facing and I didn't have to see. I lifted her tits and twisted the big soft nipples until she winced and arched her back against me. I jammed two fingers inside her, pushed her forward a little and slid my cock through the water and harpooned her in the asshole.
It was tighter that way and good to be taking her as though she were a boy. She wouldn't have liked my thinking that and that was good too. Just for fun I thought of her as a sheep or a goat. I wondered if I could make her bleat. The water broke against the tub and splashed the floor as I slapped away at her ass. I had four fingers in her now and pumped her from the other end. She was bent so low I could hear her gurgle in the bathwater. I tipped her forward and soon I had my bleat. Maybe it was an orgasm and maybe not. I didn't care. I was sure of mine.
I pulled out of her and washed myself off with her Bayberry soap and reached for the whiskey. "Not bad," I said. "Maybe I will stick around."
"It was wonderful," she said and kissed me. Our first kiss.
It tasted like lies.
I got out of the tub and dried myself off and waited for her to finish her bath. Meantime I was drinking and feeling pretty good, the way you feel when you've done something pleasurable and slightly rotten. You want to do something more rotten still. So I thought about it. Laura was having a party. I was invited. I remembered another party long ago when I'd gotten so drunk I'd thrown up on the guy sitting next to me and thought nothing of it. In fact it was a feeling of power, being that incompetent. Sorry buddy, I'm totally outa control. Nobody expected a thing of you but the absolute worst.
But I'd already played that tune. You couldn't vomit on too many laps or you got yourself a reputation.
I thought some more. Slowly it began to take shape in my mind, variations on a theme. Drunkenness was so disarming. Almost like innocence. Drunkenness was a good con.
"Listen, Laura," I said. "I have to take a shit. You nearly done in there?"
"Just a minute."
I took the bottle with me. I went into the bathroom. I closed the door behind me and locked it. I set the bottle on the floor and pulled off my pants and took my crap. Laura was in the bedroom putting on her makeup. People would be arriving very soon, it was only necessary to wait. I took another slug of rye. In a few minutes I was beginning to numb over. It felt good. I thought about the fight with Carla. Women could be such miserable creatures. They could be evil. But I could be evil too. Watch me.
The rye was working. I was starting to feel all creamy soft all over. There was no dizziness, no sickness, just a good relaxed feeling, soft and easy. I felt I could slide right down through the hole in the shitter. I sat there waiting for my second crap to happen lazy as a grub.
I must have sat there twenty minutes when I heard a knock at the door. It was Laura.
"You all right?" she said.
"Fine."
"You sure?"
"Absolutely. Be out in a minute."
She went away. A few minutes later I could
hear her guests arriving. Heard them laughing and talking. Ice tinkling, drinks being poured and passed around. Then more people arriving, more drinks, more talking. I heard Laura's voice light and cool. I sat there drunk and smiling with my secret and my bottle.
Soon there was another knock at the door. Very tentative. "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT, ASSHOLE?" I said. It was a woman's voice, very small. A stranger.
"Oh," she said. "Sorry."
"That's okay, sugartits," I said.
I heard her whispering to someone just outside the door. He called me sugartits! She couldn't believe it. There was an ogre in the bathroom. Who is he?
A little while later there was another knock. A man's voice, another stranger, asking if it was okay if he used the john. I said, don't bother me, can't you see I'm sucking my own COCK in here? He went away too.
Then Laura was back again.
"Jesus, Stroup," she said. "Are you still in here? I thought you'd gone long ago! And what the hell have you been saying to people?"
"I don't remember any people," I said.
"Stroup, are you all right?"
"Fine, Laura."
"Well you've got to come out of there. Somebody wants to use the bathroom."
"That's not possible. Sorry."
"Why?"
"Can't move, Laura. I'm too damned drunk."
"Well, unlock the door and we'll get you out."
"I can't do that either. Arms won't move anymore."
It was nice not having to lie to her. My arms were gone and my legs were gone. I was just a brain with a mouth attached. The brain was clear, though and enjoying itself immensely. If they wanted in they'd have to get the door off its hinges. I doubted if anybody in publishing could manage that. When you are nearly passed out you're committed. Let 'em find another place to piss. Let 'em stick it out the window. I couldn't even lift my head to see if there was anything left in the bottle. Didn't want to, either. I was fine as-is.
"This is my first party, Stroup! I don't even know half these people. Do you realize what they're going to think? Please make an effort, will you?"