New York City Noir

by Tim McLoughlin

  “What were they, porn?” Brian snorted.

  “Nah. Worse,” Sean muttered to the floor, glum.

  “What’s worse than porn?”

  Star Trek novels.”

  “Dude …” Brian exhaled a long, pitying sigh.

  “I know, I know. Whatever. I like them,” he pleaded.

  “So why’d you turn them around on your shelf then?” Brian leaned as far forward as he could.

  “Because it’s embarrassing. I didn’t want people to know that’s what I read. Anyway, I knew it wasn’t going to last. At first, it was like Christmas every day. I mean, I’d had my eye on her for months, and I’d have fantasies about her when I’d jack off in the shower. The first time I fucked her in that shower I nearly passed out. Come on, she’s beautiful, she’s smart, she’s up for anything, and she wants to be with all the time. I’m thinking, you’re kidding, right? After a week or two, I was like, how do I do this? I don’t know how to order off a menu with her, much less make conversation, she’s going to get bored of me fast. I knew that! Shit, even my friends were like, ‘She’s so out of your league, enjoy it while it lasts, pal.’ So I did what any guy would do to keep a woman hooked on him.”

  “What, spent all your money on her?” Brian rolled his eyes and leaned against the van wall. They’d spent a long time trying to figure out what they had in common—he couldn’t believe it was a woman.

  “Uh uh, I went down on her every chance I had. I knew her pussy better than her gynecologist.” Sean grinned, sitting back. “I’d look up at her and there would be nail polish streaks on the wall over the headboard. Fucking streaks the wall I’d work on her for like twenty minutes and she’d come so hard she’d push my head away and just twitch like she was electrocuted …”

  Brian thought he saw him wink. God, this guy was such a tool. He wished the blond guy passed out in the corner would wake the fuck up.

  “… Then I’d start all over again. I’d make her come three or four times and she’d be pulling me to her, begging me to fuck her. Now she needed me for something, now I had something she wanted really bad …”

  Brian chuckled softly and smirked at Sean, knowing he couldn’t possibly have anything she wanted. Brian slid his feet as far forward as he could to stretch his legs. He tried to figure out how long they’d been in this van. They had to have been sitting here talking for two hours, another hour or two on top of that when they were passed out. So, three … four hours, maybe? When he tried to rub his wrists together he realized his watch was gone. They took his fucking watch.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  “… Sure, I’d fuck her occasionally,” Sean said, carried away by the memory. He could smell her now, feel the curve of her waist. “Really slow, so she’d be moaning for it. I’d get her really worked up and then sometimes I wouldn’t finish her off. It was like a control thing, totally passive aggressive, you know?”

  Brian was bored. This kid was such a fucking amateur. “Cut to the chase.”

  Sean had thought about it a lot, he just never said it out loud.

  “After two or three months, we went out to dinner and I had it all planned out. It was going to be farewell sex, like a last meal before an execution, you know? In the morning, I just bit the bullet and as soon as she woke up, I told her we needed to talk, and she wrapped herself around me in bed. She got nervous like animals do when they know they’re going to be killed, you know? The worst part was she held my hand while I told her all this, like she thought I couldn’t be cruel to her if she was holding my hand.”

  They sat in silence in the windowless van, listening to the sounds of cars and trucks on the highway.

  “I told her that I wasn’t interested anymore, it was me and not her, this isn’t what I wanted, you know, standard dump speech. But I kind of twisted it a little and said I didn’t like how she was always doing stuff for me, buying me things and taking me places like she just thought she was just being nice when it was actually a control thing of hers.”

  “Nice touch. How’d she take it?”

  “She just curled up in a ball and cried for an hour. I was in the other room watching TV when she suddenly comes out with her stuff in a bag. She’d called a car service and didn’t even look at me, she just grabbed her shit and left. I mean, I felt awful, it was a shit thing to do, but I’d rather have her angry at me than drag everything out.”

  The silence hung in the air, cold and thick.

  “You want to know the truth?” Brian said gently.

  Sean nodded, hesitant.

  “You were a pity fuck,” he spat.

  Sean’s face hardened.

  “She told me about you,” Brian continued. “She laughed that you were Transitional Guy, like you were a comic book character, except you didn’t know how it was supposed to end. She was supposed to end it, not you. So, yeah, it fucked her up and she had serious damage, but what can I tell you? That’s my thing, so I moved in.”

  “What do you mean?” Sean said, chilled.

  Brian sized him up carefully, to see if he was worth telling. “I bartend over at the Alibi by the park. This was, like, three years ago. September … a couple months after you dumped her. She came in one night with two or three other girls and I just zeroed in on her, ’cause she looked like she hadn’t been out in a while. You could tell that her friends took her out to cheer her up, so I kept making eye contact with her when I was at the other end of the bar. I gave her some quarters for the jukebox, asked her to go pick out some Tom Waits, kept her glass filled. Lot of attention, just kept looking at her and then looking away like she caught me. I’m good, right? By the end of the night, her friends are gone, the bar’s empty, and it’s just the two of us talking.

  “She’s smiling and playing with her hair, looking up at me, stroking her collarbone and fiddling with her necklace, leaning forward on the bar, it’s all body language. You know the thing about showing their palm, right?”

  Sean shook his head, his light brown hair falling in his eyes, making him look even younger. This was a master class, and he tried to keep up. He couldn’t believe guys like this actually existed and this was what he was up against.

  “When a woman shows you the palm of her hand, she’s open,” Brian explained patiently. “It’s a major sign. It means she’s vulnerable and she’ll probably show you something else, know what I mean? So anyway, I’ve got her, I’ve totally got this chick. It’s classic … classic. Everyone has one thing they’re born knowing how to do, right? This is it. This is what I do better than anyone else.”

  Brian tried to move his arms.

  “Fuck, my arm’s asleep. Anyway, I know what to talk about: stories about my family, what kinda pets I’ve had, how much I like to travel, where I’ve been and where I want to go next. Always say Morocco or Thailand, by the way, just trust me. It gives her a way to size me up, decide if I’m a quality guy, right? And she’s just glowin across the bar at me. She even says I’m not like the other guys and, you know, I do the blushing thing. You know the blushing thing, right?”

  Sean shook his head, confused.

  “You have to do it like this,” Brian confided, as he leaned forward a bit on the box and looked down at the floor of the van. “When she gives you a compliment or you ‘confess’ something, you look down like you’re a little embarrassed or trying to hide a smile. Then you keep your face down and look up with only your eyes, like this.”

  He demonstrated, his eyes peeking up shyly through his lashes. “Slays them every time, I’m telling you.”

  Brian’s expression morphed seamlessly from innocent and charming to cold and hard again, and then he grinned as he leaned back against the van wall. With his black hair and sharp eyes he looked even colder. “The best part was she thought she was the one pursuing me because I was acting like I had a serious crush, like it was love at first sight and this had never happened to me before.

  “We talk about artists we like, so l ask for her number like I’m real shy, say there’s
this Bill Viola show she might like to see. She’s actually blushing, like she’s already thinking of how to tell our grandkids how we met. I just knew it.”

  Brian was smug. “I’ve never hooked a woman so easy, so fast. Never

  “So what did you do?”

  “I didn’t even touch her that night, total gentleman. Called her the next day, said I couldn’t wait to talk to her, that I’d been thinking about her all day, and she’s totally charmed, right? So we made plans to see the gallery in the afternoon and I kind of kept it rolling to dinner and finally back to my place to hang out. We started talking about ecstasy and how she hadn’t done it in so long, so I said I had some at my place and we could share it, right?

  “She was so wrapped up in the moment,” Brian snorted, “thinking I was so easy to talk to, that we had so much in common … Fuck, I could have gotten her to do anything … I probably could have gotten her to shoot heroin I mean, my place is kind of a dump and she’s going on about how amazing the view is and how cool the paintings are and whatever. She’s totally delusional at this point, she thinks it’s karma, like we’ve really connected.

  “So we have sex and she says it’s spiritual and amazing, you know, but it’s just E-love. Sex on ecstasy just fucking bonds you, except she’s never had sex on E before so it’s new to her and she thinks this is chemistry. Yeah, it’s chemistry, it’s fucking lab chemistry. So now we’re rolling and I love this part, this is where the head-fuck gets deep

  “Then it just became a question of how little could I do and still have her want me? It became a game and I stretched it out for months Little by little I pulled away, real small stuff like I stopped kissing her, wouldn’t hold her after sex, never went down on her. No foreplay, no talking, it was just fuck her and go to sleep, like when I’m done, we’re done. I wouldn’t even kiss her when she’d cry. I’d roll over with my back to her, and I swear I’d just be lying there, grinning in the dark. She’d sob for a while then finally she’d go to sleep. The next morning I wouldn’t say a thing, act like nothing happened. I know, cold, right? But you know what?”

  “What?” Sean asked nervously. This is who she ended up with after him?

  “She’d call me that night, want to come over, act like nothing ever happened,” Brian said, incredulously. “And I’d always blow her off, wouldn’t call her back for like a week! I’d wait for the voicemail to pile up and she’d get panicky, thinking it was something she’d done. I’d be out with the guys and we’d brag about who has the craziest phone messages from a woman, who can string some bitch along the longest, right? And there was no question, I won. I was the king of this, I had proof right here. I’d save the messages and play like a dozen of them to everybody, and they’d start with her all sweet. ‘Hi, it’s me,’ became annoyed, like, ‘Hey, where have you been?’ and then she’d get concerned, ‘Are you okay?’ and finally, after a week, it’s, ‘I’m sorry you’re so upset at me, I miss you, please forgive me.’ She didn’t even know what she’d done to make me disappear but she was already begging me to take her back! The next time I’d see her, and I’d always wait like at least a week or two, she’d apologize to for being such a basket case, and promise it’d never happen again!”

  “Jesus …”

  “I know! Totally fucked up, right?” He was on a roll now, and his dark eyes flashed. “But here’s the thing: If a woman thinks she’s worthless, if she’s been dumped by enough guys and her self-esteem is that low, she’ll excuse anything to keep you. I was so under her skin, she was dependent on me like a drug, she was hooked just like a junkie and she’d put up with whatever she had to.”

  Brian was grinning hard now. He’d never had an office job, never made serious money, kept getting fired, and had the shittiest credit of anyone he knew, but in this one sport, he was a champion. “Here’s the secret, and I know it’s so fucking wrong, but the worse you treat them, the more they want you. It’s totally fucked up, but the sooner you understand that, the better off you’ll be. I’m telling you.”

  Sean was quiet and let Brian’s story sink in. He was colder now, inside and out. The van hadn’t stopped once and they still had no idea where they were going or why. The back of his head was throbbing from where he had pounded his head into the van wall to try and get someone’s attention. He looked over to his left and saw the blond guy’s eyes were still closed, though he wasn’t slumped over anymore.

  “Hey, look at him,” Sean whispered to Brian. “Is he awake yet?”

  “Hey, buddy! You awake?” Brian barked.

  Blond guy’s eyes opened, suspiciously, like he’d been awake and listening to them for a long time.

  “Yeah, Brian,” he sneered. “I’m awake.”

  “How do you know my name?” Brian accused.

  “You and your pal, Sean, have been using up all the fucking oxygen in this van for the last hour or two, that’s how, genius.”

  “So who are you, asshole?”

  “The name isn’t Asshole, it’s Frank.”

  “Do you know why we’re here?” Sean said flatly, now a good cop to Brian’s bad cop.

  “We must all have something in common, right?” Frank smiled. “I’ll save you two some time: I’m a trader for Pettigrew Dean and I live on the Upper East Side in the city. I’m forty-one, single, I don’t gamble, I don’t owe anybody money, I don’t deal with the mob, I don’t have a criminal record, I don’t go to the Alibi, although I own some property in Fort Greene and Park Slope, and I don’t read Star Trek novels …”

  Frank was kind of enjoying this.

  “… And, oh yeah. I know her too.”

  The air in the van went ice cold as Sean’s eyes shot quickly to Brian, then back to Frank. This was seriously fucked up now.

  “I heard all about you guys.” Frank narrowed his eyes at Sean. “The time she brought a glass of fresh orange juice and a clean towel to you as you were stepping out of the shower and you just walked right by her. That fucking slayed her. She never forgot it.”

  Sean crumbled at the memory; he’d never told anyone about that. He felt nauseous.

  Frank turned to Brian. “And you? Yeah, she told me all about you and how you twisted her inside out like a game. How cold you were, how you used her for fun and then fucked her over. She didn’t see anyone for almost a year after that, she just holed up in her apartment and didn’t go out. Did you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t know that,” Brian admitted quietly, as the bravado slid off his face like he’d been caught by his mother. He leaned back, away from the light of the van’s harsh bare bulb. It never occurred to him that there would be real dam-age. Everybody played hard, it was part of the game.

  “Yeah, guess not,” Frank said coolly, his pale hair and pale eyes seeming to soak up the light. “Did you know she six different anti-depressants that year? Did you know she started having a hard time leaving her apartment? Did you know she thought everything was her fault, that she was a terrible person? She thought there had to be something wrong with her for everyone to keep treating her like this, right? By the time I met her, she was so fucking fragile, I thought I’d break her if I held her hand.”

  Frank was furious now.

  “How did you meet her?” Sean asked quietly, staring at the floor. Was that blood?

  “At a dinner party.” Frank’s voice quieted at the memory. “We were sitting next to each other and she was just starting to go out again, but she was so gun shy, she was really having trouble talking to me. It took an hour to even drag a conversation out of her. She couldn’t function at all, so I asked her about what she did, and then we talked about movies, cool flea markets, what we were reading, all kinds of stuff.

  “I liked her,” Frank recalled, moving his head from side to side. His neck was cramped from leaning over for hours. “She seemed sweet and, I don’t know, textured in some way. She wasn’t glossy at all and I could tell by the way she hunched her shoulders and shuffled when she walked that something bad happened to her, she’d bee
n thrown away. She seemed really hurt and tired when she finally told me about it all. It made me furious, and sad, like, how dare they? How dare … you?

  Frank seemed larger now, and Sean and Brian had lost their swagger, shamed.

  “So I kissed her hand goodnight, really gently, and I gave her my phone number so she could decide if she wanted to talk to me. I left it up to her, we’d talk when she was ready. I wasn’t going to press her. It was two or three weeks before she called me, and she was so nervous that I knew she’d been practicing what she was going to say. I’ve gotta tell you, it was so sweet it tore my heart out. She said she had to find a bedside table and did I want to go scout some places on Washington Street? Saturday afternoon, easy enough, no pressure, so I said, yeah, sure. I got there and she was dressed up more than usual, like she’d really thought about what she was going to wear. She had this flared black-and-white tweed skirt and black shoes with a strap across them, like showgirls wear, with this burgundy coat that had a fur collar, and this dark red lipstick sort of smudged like it was an accident. She looked like an old-fashioned movie star on her day off. Adorable, totally adorable.

  “We started dating and I spent a lot of time with her. She was real cautious and warned me to go slow with her, that she needed time to work some things out and could I deal with that? I said, sure, she was worth it. So we started talking every day, then we were traveling together, like she’d come out to my place in the Hamptons for the weekend and she’d stay over at my apartment a few nights a week. We were going to the opening of a new club, Plush, you know that one? I took her shopping for a dress, and I guess that freaked her out because she wasn’t used to being treated well. Do you believe no guy had even sent her flowers? I mean, fuck.”

  Sean looked at Frank and Brian across from him. He wondered who was thrown in the van first.

  “So I took her on as kind of a personal project. Get her out, get her to take some classes … We started to take trips together, she got more social, and I started seeing a real difference in her. We’d go to art openings, I took her to some dinner parties, and I’m thinking she could be a good corporate wife, like do charity work during the day and take care of the house stuff. Plan the vacations and take care of the kids—I mean, I’ve got to start thinking about that because I’m not going anywhere without the wife and family thing … Company’s not going to promote someone who doesn’t fit the picture. Clients don’t trust a guy handling their money who’s not like them. Like, if you’re forty-five and still running around? Forget it. Doesn’t matter how good you are.