by Jim Nisbet
“This is a triumph of therapy,” I tell her. “I pronounce you cured of all emotional maladies.”
“Mmmmmmm . . . ,” she coos, and buries my face in her hair, and bites my shoulder.
“Let’s get married,” I say cozily, into her hair. “I want you to make an honest tenant out of me.”
“Oh, darling,” Marlene says, “it’d be too beneath me, marrying one of my tenants. What would the girls next door say?”
“They charge by the half hour for this sort of thing I believe,” I suggested, “and think you’re a fool for not doing the same.”
“That’s a good idea,” Marlene said thoughtfully. “I can’t believe I never thought of it.”
“I can’t believe I suggested it.”
A serious expression cast a shadow over her face. “Jas?” she said quietly.
“Yes, dear?”
“You didn’t do that just because you wanted to, did you.”
“Do what?”
“Ass-fuck me.”
I was silent. The very sounds of the words in her lovely mouth caused nerves to twitch in my spent dick.
“Jas?”
I gave her my most incredulous look. “Are you mad? Do you know how good that felt?”
“How good?”
“Why, why . . .”
“You’re a writer, come on: How good did it feel?”
“Why, well, er . . .”
“You see?”
“Wait, wait. I’m . . . I’m shy . . .”
“Shy!”
“Actually, I was wondering what that printer is up to.”
“Well, you should. Nobody can trust a printer.”
“No, no. The machine upstairs. Can’t you hear it?”
She listened, then shrugged. “So? It’s always sounding like that up there.”
“But I’m not there.”
“What difference does that make? It’s a computer, isn’t it?”
“Well, sure, but . . .”
“But so it doesn’t need you to work, does it?”
“Why of course it does! Like any machine, a computer is only as good as the person who’s running it. Without someone around to keep an eye on things, it would soon go off the rails . . .”
“So you say. It sounds to me like it’s getting along just fine without you.”
We listened for a while. Whatever was going on up there, form feeds and pages were flying over the platen, like pigeons in Manhattan. BOOK.SUB, looking after business. A 24-hour service.
After a time she asked me, “What’s going on, then?”
“Beats me.”
“Aren’t you curious?”
I thought a moment. It seemed to me that in fact I no longer cared about what was going on upstairs. I felt as if that room up there belonged to somebody else. It was filled with someone else’s books and electronics, and what went on there was no business of mine. I suspected that whatever went on up there, so long as it did not affect my life adversely, even were the activity profitable or nefarious, the less I knew about it the better off I would be.
The more I thought about this proposition the better I liked it. My distance from the room upstairs and its contents seemed to increase as I contemplated it. At length, I could hardly remember what it was that went on up there. I recalled experiencing the same feelings when I gave up television, in 1972. At first there was a feeling of self-loathing and disgust. Then a great emptiness overcame me, and I felt as if I had no purpose in life. But gradually I saw that I could learn to do new things. I realized that I had made myself a great gift of freedom in the form of Time. And after that first minute of doubt and dreadful introspection, I never looked back. Perhaps Marlene and I could strike a deal with the contents of the room upstairs. Perhaps we could close it up and just collect the rent. I looked around Marlene’s Victorian living room. The cabbage rose wall paper, the walnut armoire, the sideboard, the sliding doors that separated us from the dining room, now open, the waxed dining room table, the cabbage rose couch, magenta, lavender and cream . . . .
I kissed Marlene on the lips of her mouth, something I could not remember, to tell you the truth, having ever taken the trouble to do. I could tell right away this was a mistake, and kissed her again. Her lips were very soft, and currently displayed that fullness and color so peculiar to her features after sex, attributes I could dote on, I realized, for years to come.
“Of course I wanted to,” I said gently.
She shook her head. “I don’t believe you. If you really meant it, you could compare it to something. Isn’t that what writers do, compare things with other things?”
“And find them wanting, no doubt.”
“You see?” she pouted, turning her face away from me. “You didn’t really want to. It’s just some experiment you were conducting, to see what it feels like.” She tossed her curls. “I’ll bet that old detective of yours is about to get it in the ass himself, and that’s why you decided to try it on me.”
“How uncanny,” I said ingenuously.
“You see? I was right! Oh! Men!”
“Marlene . . .”
“Go away!”
“Marlene, wait . . .” I took her in my arms.
She struck at me. “Leave me alone!”
“Marlene, it was wonderful! Spontaneous! I swear . . .”
“Don’t swear!” she shouted. “Compare!”
“It, it was . . . ,” I stammered.
“You see?” she slapped me. “You weren’t even paying attention!”
“. . . like . . . like . . .”
“Animal!” She slapped me again.
“Wait, it, it was like the Titanic, slipping safely through the North Atlantic night.”
“Oh!” She socked me in the chest.
“How about, how about a volcanic cone, brimming with lava, rising for the first time through the surface of the Pacific with a hiss?”
“No!”
“Then, then it was almost as if we were making love for the first time, only to find out we are brother and sister.”
“What!”
“It was like, waking up at dawn, face down in your back yard, naked with a hangover, and finding yourself completely covered with lavender ornamental plum blossoms.”
“That’s better.”
“Can I stop now?” I asked timidly.
“No!” she shouted.
“O.k., o.k., it was like, it was like . . . . It was like . . . .”
. . . It was like somebody drove a cement truck up his ass with the drum going and all thirteen yards in it badly mixed, heavy on the sand and aggregate, with new tires. But nothing that had ever happened to Windrow would stand up to being compared to it. He had been shot, stabbed and run over. He had been thrown off the balcony of a condominium, heaved through the plate glass window of a nightclub, thrown into the bottles behind a bar. A chandelier fell on his head in 1967, and the gas tank exploded when a motorcycle rear-ended his ’69 Pinto in ’78. Ralph Nader had been right about that car. Th at’s what it was closest to, the gas tank going up on the Pinto. Th at, and being stabbed. That and, he hated to admit it, it killed him to admit it, he cut himself shaving in the morning, when he looked himself in the eye in the mirror and admitted it, but, after awhile, somewhere deep down inside, though he hated Tiny’s guts, and would kill him when he found him . . . .
“. . . it felt good, too,” Marlene said coyly, quietly. Her tongue flicked over her lips. She lightly brushed the hairs along my thigh with the flat of her hand, so that they stood up after it passed over them. Then she said tenderly, “I wonder, if you’ll let me suck you, I mean if you’ll wash it off , and then if I suck you, can we . . . can we . . .” She blushed and lowered her eyes, then looked up through their lashes at me . . . and said . . .
“. . . Can we do it again?” Windrow’s eyes asked their reflections.
Or was it the other way around? Were the reflections asking their eyes?
Windrow left off shaving long enough to take a sip fr
om the glass of dark Mexican beer with a raw egg in it, that stood on the shelf above the sink. His hand shook a bit.
Somewhere out on Folsom Street, below the open window of his office, a convertible stopped at a light. Its radio was loud. The tune was “You Can’t Sit Down,” by the Dovells.
Windrow listened for a moment, then set down his breakfast drink and continued shaving. Revenge on his mind, a razor in his hand. Goddamn twentieth century , he thought to himself . . .
Upstairs, paper spewed off the printer.
“Oh Marlene,” I said softly, stroking her hair, “I’m so glad you’re cured . . .”
EIGHT
The Fag Flag had tripped in the Hard Boiled Bylaws. I forgot about it, or went too far, or no longer cared. Something . . . At any rate, BOOK.SUB knew. When I returned to my room the floor was two feet thick with tractor paper. BOOK.SUB had rejected Scream to the Touch in its entirety. That might have been okay, but somehow in dumping the book to disk on my computer the printer had fired up and listed everything: the communications, the manuscript itself, the legal justifications, the Bylaws, error codes . . . . It was all there, waiting for Marlene’s fireplace.
The Bylaw is real simple. It says, Tough guys don’t get sodomized . That’s it. Now, I got enough power to get around some things. After all, I’m a member of the Mystery Writers of America, they wrote these unwritten laws. But I’d gone a step too far. There’s a corollary to the Sodomy Clause, and it’s real simple, too. It says: And if they do [get sodomized], they don’t like it.
No way.
Ever.
Other Martin Windrow Titles You’ll Want To Purchase and Enjoy:
The Gourmet
The Damned Don’t Die
Ulysses’ Dog
So Long, Pockface
Squeam with a Skew
Cablecar to Hell
This World Leaks Blood
Through a Mandible, Delicately
Heart of Mercury
Scream to the Touch
A Moment of Doubt
(xsub active) . . .
Interview with Jim Nisbet by Patrick Marks and featuring Gent Sturgeon
One evening in the summer of 2010, Patrick Marks, the proprietor of The Green Arcade in San Francisco, sat down with Jim Nisbet and artist Gent Sturgeon, who did the cover of A Moment of Doubt , to nourish a few cocktails and chat about writing and other matters.
Patrick: So besides a wordsmith you are another kind of smith?
Jim: Well, I’m a cabinet maker, a carpenter, a construction type of guy. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.
Patrick: You wrote A Moment of Doubt in the eighties. When did you last read it?
Jim: An hour ago, in a panic because I knew you were coming over. Actually, I last read it in the eighties, when I proofed and put it bed; probably around 1985.
Patrick: So where does that come in your oeuvre?
Jim: Good question. My first novel to get published was The Gourmet, in 1980 . (Later The Damned Don’t Die, retitled by Barry Gifford when he published it at Black Lizard in 1984 or ’85). It was the old days: I sold the book and then two years went by before it came out. Galleys brayed o? the pan of inked type, like that. In ’80 I wrote a sequel, Ulysses’ Dog, just in case The Gourmet rang the gong, you know. Outside chance, to say the least, but one feels that one must be ready . Stupid, too. What if it had actually happened? And then I girded my loins and wrote a novel that has never been published, Jolan , a “straight” novel. And then, caught between wavering and conflicting ambitions and a highly literate girlfriend, with whom I shared a suspicion of the detective novel, I wrote A Moment of Doubt . All three, note, might be construed as “Martin Windrow” novels. In fact, I was very disgusted by detective writing. It was too easy, it was too dumb, it was too clichéd. The first one I wrote twisted the clichés, the second one I wrote just pulled them out by the roots, and the third one gave it implants and extensions. Bottom line, A Moment of Doubt says, “I can’t do this genre.” And I probably could have been one of those guys, a Robert Parker kind of guy, not to denigrate Robert Parker—
Patrick: So it all comes to a head in A Moment of Doubt.
Jim: It’s that writer guy going nuts writing detective fiction. Going way nuts. And while he was going way nuts, I was having way fun. All of a sudden stuff was available to me that hadn’t been available—satire, pornography, obscenity, social issues—fun!
Patrick: In the dedication of the book you mention, in 1985, Kevin Killian.
Jim: Kevin Killian is one of the very few who read the manuscript and he was very complimentary about it. It would be interesting to see if he remembers it that way, or at all, for that matter. The way I recall his reaction, 25 years down the line, is, he laughed his ass o?. You might want to check with him on that.