Brothel

by J. Boyett

  Gregory, Joe, and Phil all tensed. Maybe they thought they were about to be robbed without even getting fucked first. Or maybe they thought Ken was going to just start whaling on them with that thing for no reason.

  Ken cleared his throat. He held the script up before his concentrating face with his left hand, and with his right held the spiked bat, displaying it. Back in character, he began. “Gentleman. . . . Oh. There’s a bunch of you. So gentlemen. Okay, start over. Gentlemen, you now see here in my hand a spiked bat.” He held it up a little higher, for emphasis, then lowered it again, just as he had done in rehearsal. “In elementary school I was a star Little Leaguer, and in those days of yore I was oft known to knock the ball out of its cover, just like Robert Redford in that movie The Natural. Believe me, my friend, that gift has not been lost. If you are a good man, of true heart, like Launcelot in that movie Excalibur, then you need not fear me. But if ye be a Mordred, beware my lusty smiting. If you—”

  “Yo, dude.” The interruption came from Joe, spoken with a mixture of trepidation and annoyance. “Like . . . what is this, man?”

  “Yeah,” said Phil, “what the fuck, dude? Are you fucking with us or what? What is this shit?”

  Ken lowered both speech and spiked bat and shook his head. “What do you mean, what is this? It’s the speech, guys.”

  “Speech? What speech?” said Phil. Joyce noted that Gregory kept quiet, and decided that she had gotten the best of the three. The silence reflex was one she admired.

  “My pimp speech,” explained Ken.

  “Your what?” said Phil. “Your fucking what?”

  “Dude, don’t use harsh language in front of the ladies. My pimp speech, man. What’s to explain? I’m the pimp. I lay down the ground rules. I explain about our security procedures—which all y’all ought to be interested in, since they potentially involve the spiked bat. These procedures are detailed in the fucking pimp speech. Which y’all haven’t heard yet. And nobody’s fucking until this speech gets read.”

  “Uh.” This from Joe. “Why don’t you just tell us about these, uh . . . ‘procedures’? What’s up with the big long speech?”

  Ken sneered. “I guess somebody never heard of style.”

  “Go ahead and wrap it up, Ken,” Joyce said.

  “No way. I’m not going to start again in the middle. The whole spell will be broken. I’ve got to start all over from the beginning.”

  Sherry made a vulgar noise deep in her nose. “I’ve heard it before. It’s not much of a spell.”

  “Everybody’s a critic. Look, nobody is screwing until I have satisfaction. This is my house and you’re going to listen to me reading my pimp speech or else you’re all going to go to a motel to fork over money for a room.”

  Phil was proving rowdier than Joyce had first guessed: “Dude, I’d rather do that than sit here and listen to some faggy bullshit.”

  “If you’re going to a motel,” Mal explained calmly, “you can do it without me. I don’t know you. Ken, for better or for worse, is my pimp. He has that spiked bat for a reason: to wallop you if you fuck with me too hard. And there is no way I’m spreading it for some stranger unless he’s within walloping range.” After that, Phil only grumbled silently. You had to look at his face to see he was doing it.

  Gregory shrugged. “Hey, I don’t mind hearing some speech.” Of course, Joyce thought, the poor trembling virginal dear; he would welcome a short reprieve before having to unveil his own merchandise. “I mean, it’s not like we’re on a schedule or anything.” Joyce pursed her lips. In fact, a half-hour limit had been agreed upon, and reconfirmed several times. Apparently Ken had not bothered to mention this to their passengers on this maiden voyage. Or maybe Gregory had forgotten the rules in the heat of excitement. She studied his profile, his big soft square head. On his cheeks and chin were some rough patches he’d missed while shaving. Joyce didn’t mind if today—a special occasion—they went a little long. “Just start over again, Ken,” she said.

  “All right.” Once again he raised both paper and deadly bat, and, after again clearing his throat, began: “Gentlemen, you now see here in my hand a spiked bat.” Again he raised it for clarification, then brought it down again. “In elementary school I was a star Little Leaguer, and in those days of yore I was oft known to knock the ball out of its cover, just like Robert Redford in that movie The Natural. Believe me, my friend, that gift has not been lost. If you are a good man, of true heart, like Launcelot in that movie Excalibur, then you need not fear me. But if ye be a Mordred, beware my lusty smiting. If you are good, I will merely sit on this sofa and eat my cheesy poofs, avec docility. But should. . . .” He stopped, and raised his head like a rabbit sniffing for a fox. His audience froze, suddenly all newly aware of the sinfulness of what they were doing. Gregory cleared his own throat, a tiny sound. Joyce wondered if it was meant to camouflage a whimper. Sherry did not run her mouth, and tugged at her collar as if she were burning up. “What?” Mal asked, in a normal tone.

  Ken raised a finger for silence. “I thought I heard something,” he whispered.

  Now Joyce knew he was screwing with them. Ken put down the spiked bat, leaning it gently against the wall, but held on to his speech as he walked to the window and stared out it. The glass was dirty, and it was dark outside, and all the lights inside the duplex were on, meaning he had zero visibility. “I thought I heard cops,” he whispered.

  Joyce groaned. Sherry muttered something not in keeping with the spirit of the game. “And what do cops sound like, doofus?” demanded Joyce.

  “Like sirens, doofus,” replied Ken.

  “I don’t hear no sirens,” Joe offered helpfully.

  “They were out there,” Ken whispered, staring still and intently out the window. “They’re still out there. I can feel it.”

  “Finish your fucking speech!” shouted Joyce.

  Ken sighed and shook his head. “All these interruptions. It’s damn unfortunate.” He retrieved his spiked bat and resumed the position. Again he cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, you now see here in my hand a spiked bat.” He raised it and lowered it. “In elementary school I was a star Little Leaguer, and in those—”

  Phil howled. Joe said “Come on, dude!,” while Gregory put his face in his free hand. “Don’t start over, you asshole!” yelled Sherry.

  Ken looked at them innocently. “I told you,” he said. “The spell.”

  Despite her laughter, Joyce managed to say, “Dude, we are all so totally already under your spell, anyway. You don’t have to start over. Really.”

  “If y’all were under my spell you wouldn’t be laughing now. And now I’ve got to start all over again, because y’all interrupted me.”

  “Shit!” said Phil, but Mal hushed him. “Come on, Ken,” Sherry pleaded, “please!”

  Ken held out his hands and widened his eyes. “Hey, the more y’all cry, the less I care.”

  “Everybody shut up,” Joyce commanded. “Let him finish and we can get to it.” Sherry blanched, as if she’d forgotten just what Ken’s antics had been delaying. Ken looked at Joyce with exaggerated gratitude and said, “Thank you.”

  “But no more fucking around, Ken,” she said sternly. “Just read it through one time, and don’t fuck with us again, or we’ll all walk and that’ll be the end of the brothel.”

  For her part, she was bluffing—but Sherry might soon start looking for a cop-out. So Ken gave Joyce a more straightforward nod and “Yeah” than she was used to receiving from him, and resumed his place where the TV ought to have been, once more holding the speech and spiked bat in their proper positions. “Gentlemen, you now see here in my hand a spiked bat.” Raise, lower. “In elementary school I was a star Little Leaguer, and in those days of yore I was oft known to knock the ball out of its cover, just like Robert Redford in that movie The Natural. Believe me, my friend, that gift has not been lost. If you are a good man, of true heart, like Launcelot in that movie Excalibur, then you need not fear me. But if ye be a Mordred
, beware my lusty smiting. If you are good, I will merely sit on this sofa and eat my cheesy poofs, avec docility. But should mine ears detect even a whimper of fear or horror from this nice young lady—uh, ladies—I will burst into the appropriate room like the wrath of God and wallop thee with this here spiked bat.” Raise, lower. “Sir, I am but a small man. But lapse not into foolishness, for the spiked bat is a large man, and his throbbing instrument of both love and murder will seek out thy softest parts, to be sure. To be sure, should you incur its wrath, never or rarely again will you suffer injuries more painful, or more embarrassing to explain to the police, or to your bodacious mom when you ask her for her credit card so you can pay off the doctor. That having been said, sir—uh, sirs—I hope that you shall sample our delicious wares with both honor and restraint, and cum and go in peace, so that we may remain friends and continue in this supercalifragilisticexpialidocious arrangement, or relationship.” With that, he breathed a deep satisfied sigh and declared, “Let the fucking begin!”

  Everyone looked at each other and laughed—everyone except Ken and Mal. Mal got to her feet first and extended a hand to Phil. He’d been planning some sort of chivalric gesture, but her offer caught him off-guard and he unthinkingly took her hand; she turned out to be stronger than anyone would have thought and hauled up a significant portion of the boy’s weight, which took him by surprise and nearly knocked him off-balance. To Ken she said, “Remember that I’m taking the closet.”

  He nodded matter-of-factly. Joyce tried to identify this new facet of Ken: something like professionalism.

  Sherry glued a hand to her hip and slanted her pelvis. “We haven’t really agreed about that, though.” Beside her, Joe jiggled on the balls of his feet. “I mean, why should you automatically get the room with the smallest cut?”

  “Because I called dibs on it.”

  “But, yeah, but why should you get it?”

  “Dibs.”

  “But why should you get dibs?”

  “Because I called it.”

  “Well, that’s not very fair.”

  “That’s what dibs are.”

  “Well. . . .”

  “Listen. If it means so much to you, then you can wait until Phil and I are finished.”

  “Joe won’t mind waiting!” hollered Phil. “But y’all’re going to have to wait a mighty long time on me! Haw haw haw haw! ” Joe smiled and blushed and stared down at his Reeboks.

  But Ken shook his head. “Nope, nope. All y’all go fuck at the same time,” he said. “Otherwise I’ve got to spend extra time pimping. And I charge for overtime. If you make me work, like, twice as long, then I’ll charge you double my biggest commission. That’s just standard business procedures. Sherry, Mal has called permanent dibs on the closet.”

  “Permanent!”

  “Come on,” moaned Phil. “I swear, y’all’re the fightingest bitches.”

  “I’ll pay the extra,” said Joe. Sherry took the hint and his hand and led him away.

  Had they later had the whole thing on video, the girls would have laughed their asses off, maybe even Mal. Ken never exactly laughed his ass off, but he would have been unable to keep an occasional grin off his face, and would have provided hilarious narration. As it was, the girls and their johns lacked an audience and could not be their own, and so would never realize with what comical seriousness they went about their business that sinless, Edenic night (although Ken did gloat over their naiveté, like a big-city host with his country guests). The six tiptoed forth, through the tiny kitchen, to the back of the duplex. Like elephants or children they held hands, Joyce pulling Gregory pulling Sherry pulling Joe pulling Mal pulling Phil, who continued to haw-haw and did not pull Ken, who followed behind, a master chef seeing the meal all the way to the table. No one noticed that he was wringing his hands—until he himself did, and shoved them in his pockets. The overhead lights were off, the mattresses all had sheets, and, as a special touch, Ken had gone to Wal-Mart and bought a trio of matching gold (not real gold) bedside lamps, which he’d placed on the floor beside the mattresses.

  They paused in Ken’s bedroom and all stared at each other. “Well,” said Sherry.

  Mal was the first to make a move, dragging Phil to the closet. “All right, baby,” leered Phil. She kicked off her shoes before entering the closet, and Phil followed suit, like a monkey. “After you,” Mal politely murmured. Seeming disoriented, Phil stepped in; even his first steps were of necessity onto the mattress. He appeared to realize only now that he was expected to fuck within the narrow confines of a walk-in closet. Mal followed him in, and turned to look at the rest of them one last time. Her face was grave, but she wiggled her eyebrows once as she said, “See y’all.” Behind her, in his sock feet and ball cap, Phil turned in circles. “Is this it?” he said. When the door closed they heard him say, “Yeah, all right,” and everyone but Ken laughed.

  Joyce and Sherry looked at each other and, smiling, shrugged, forgetting for the moment the big friendly boys they had. Then Joyce led big puffy sweet Gregory to the marijuana room and closed the door behind them.

  Sherry started leading Joe to the bed, then halted and narrowed her eyes at Ken, who stood there grinning with his arms folded over his chest. “You’re not watching,” she said.

  “Okay, okay!” he said, raising his hands, “I’m going.” Then he called out to all the girls: “So remember, if these guys get all rowdy and one of y’all needs the spiked bat, just let out a holler!”

  From the marijuana room there was a grunt and Joyce’s voice: “Okay!”

  “But bear in mind that you might have to really yell, because I’m going to put some mood music on the stereo.”

  From the closet came Mal’s voice: “Stereo?” Then Phil’s: “Don’t worry about it, baby.” Ken left the bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

  Sherry tilted her head back to get a decent look at Joe’s face. He stared down at her with eyes wide and lips parted, sweat beads budding on his forehead, like he thought she was going to mug him. She slipped her hand under his untucked T-shirt and placed it flat against his belly; his abdomen felt like it was in the middle of a sit-up. It all suddenly seemed cute and vulnerable and under her power, and she smiled and said, “Well. Let’s do it, I guess.”

  Meanwhile, as soon as the door shut behind them, Joyce hissed “Get in there, you!” at Gregory, then tumbled him into bed and dove after him. She started pulling his clothes off, and, when he tried to help, she grabbed his hands and forced them away, explaining that, as a paid professional, she would be in charge of everything.

  “You can leave your cap on,” she told him, when they were both pretty much peeled and she was straddling him.

  “Th . . . that’s okay,” he said, but made no move to take it off. She had placed his hands firmly on the tops of her thighs and he was afraid to move them. “I don’t mind . . . you know . . . taking it off. . . .”

  “No,” growled Joyce. “Don’t take it off. It looks awesome.”

  Globetrotters. Café loiterers along the Champs D’Elysees. Volunteer ambulance drivers in World War One Italy. Movie stars, pop stars, and porn stars. The court of Louis Quatorze at Versailles. Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and Odysseus and Cortéz and Lewis and Clark and Hunter Thompson and all of them, the whole pack of them, the whole fucking pack of them—what did they—no, really—what did they—no, hang on, for real, this is serious—just what the fuck had they got that she didn’t?!

  And then, as she rocked on top of Gregory, Harry Mancini’s “Moon River” began to blare through the house, and Joyce cracked up and paused for a moment. When they started again, she and Gregory tried to match their rhythm to the slow saccharine song’s, and they actually managed pretty well. But Joyce had forgotten that Ken had two equally potent stereos (his mother, in most respects a frugal woman, had no sense of economy when it came to her Ken), until Funkadelic’s One Nation Under a Groove came on, bass-heavy and strutting, duking it out with Mancini.

  In t
heir little room, Phil paused in his ministrations. “What the fuck is that?”

  “That’s the voice from the whirlwind, baby,” said Mal.

  “Do what?”

  “Never mind.”

  Sherry was laughing about something cute Joe had said, when Ken burst in with the spiked bat. “Don’t mind me!” he shouted, and, miraculously, they didn’t. Sherry squealed and resumed her rocking as Ken executed a crude moonwalk across the room. “Hey, man, take a picture, take a picture!” cried Joe. Ken shouted, “Baby, what’s my name?!”

  “Ken!” shouted Joe and Sherry.

  He moonwalked to the closet, flung open the door, brandished his spiked bat, and shouted, “Is everything okay in here?!”

  Phil scowled over his shoulder at Ken, but his narrow pimply butt did not stop pumping. “Dude, you some kind of faggot or something?!” he shouted. “You come to see some shit?! This shit get you off?!”

  “What?!” Ken shouted. “I can’t hear you over the music! I just came to see if y’all were all right! I’m a pimp! I’m making my rounds! It’s like being a waiter!”

  “Do what?!” shouted Phil.

  “A waiter!”

  Mal tapped Phil on the shoulder and he returned his full attention to her. Ken, seeing nothing which did not please him, closed the door.

  The glass rattled in the window frames. Ken had never turned the music up this loud, at least not both stereos at once. The speakers on the Funkadelic one were bound to blow, but, shit, fuck it! Resting the bat on one shoulder, he strutted again across the room where Sherry and Joe were still fucking, to the marijuana room door, which he threw open with a flourish, jumping in and declaring, “I’ve come, my sweet!” just as Joyce and Gregory were cumming. It was Joyce’s first simultaneous orgasm, and Gregory’s first orgasm ever with even one other person in the room. For Joyce, the quake came upon seeing her blurry pimp enter the room. “HANG ON, KEN!” she screamed.