by John O'Brien
A combination of discretion—he does not want her to think that he has time for such nonsense—and boredom—the girl seems to have a proclivity for mysterious disappearances—caused Al to make his last passes of the Strip and Sera’s house relatively early in the night. He will see her in the morning.
And it will have to be a good performance, for once again he has been unable to make any contacts. Even strangers are avoiding him. In truth, Al himself is beginning to detect the odor of desperation; it seems to follow him around.
This morning, after being awake all night, he resolutely showered and dressed so that he might at last go and retrieve his pawned jewelry, only to end up at a slot machine trading silver dollars back and forth until, not-so-much to his surprise, it was dark outside, and he had lost more than two hundred dollars.
She’d better bring home a lot, he thinks, angrily stuffing another twenty in the patient garter before him. He contemptuously regards the men around him: all drunk and lecherous, not a shred of dignity to be found in the whole place. The women—he once owned many women that make these look like dogs—are prideless puppets. Without meaning or direction they stand naked before these pig-men, all for a few lousy pennies. “Another drink!” he yells, thrusting his glass in the air then slamming it back down on the table. She’d better bring home a lot, he thinks, lifting another twenty from his stack. The dancer gyrates down to accept it and spreads her legs for him. Al looks at her cunt, his eyes baleful and glassed over.
Noticing through her kitchen window that the first light of morning is beginning to drive away the dark, Sera sits and continues to drink from the bottle of tequila that she pilfered from her trick last night. She had stayed and talked with him for over two hours, and would have stayed longer if he hadn’t passed out. The tequila was taken as an improvised overtime payment, and because she wanted to go straight home without stopping to buy a bottle.
She is confused and intrigued by this man, Ben. He asked her none of the usual What’s it like… or Why do you… or How can you… questions that she has always heard from well-meaning tricks in the past who have tried to be her buddypal. Many times she has been through the would-be-social-researcher scene that tends to pop up now and then with tricks who don’t realize that they just want to fuck her or, worse, think that they want to save her. She has encountered all types of men with as many different quirks who, for one reason or another, must separate themselves from what they are doing and make it clear that they are her social and moral superiors. Ben showed no trace of this. The fact that he had paid her to suck his dick and to do whatever would have come next had no bearing on the conversation that followed, conversation which flowed from her so effortlessly that it might have occurred two weeks ago, when simple eloquence was still reflexive in her. Apart from a little superficial vanity, she can remember nothing deceptive about him, no pretense. He was drunk. He was gentle. He managed to speak to a part of her that had been hidden even from herself. If he would have acknowledged her as a whore—which he didn’t—she is sure it would have been with the same matter-of-fact acceptance that he used when calling himself a drunk. He seems to have no use for judgments, not even of himself—if true, a vacuum that must make it difficult for him to get along—and she wonders if that is because he is him or because he is a drunk. In any case, it is refreshingly simple, a splash of spring water to rinse off some of the toxic waste she lives in.
He told her about his trip to Las Vegas, from the decision to get rid of all his stuff to the perilous drunken drive. They sat naked in the bed together, and she, still sore from Al’s relentless pounding the night before, was glad for the break. Not wishing to appear overly interested in a trick, she failed to ask a lot of questions that she might have under different circumstances or that have occurred to her since. For instance, she isn’t clear on why he came to town. He claims that he likes to drink around the clock, and while she can certainly believe that, she doesn’t see where it can end; he didn’t strike her as being a member of the privileged class. He also said that he likes anonymity and that Las Vegas is a good place to find it. Two weeks ago she would have agreed. But he doesn’t seem to want to do anything but drink, and though that may be one more thing than what she wants, she can’t reconcile him with her image of a drunk.
She let him talk, listening half out of interest and half out of acquiescence, and let the time limit pass because she was comfortable and he wasn’t beating or pounding or pissing on her. His speech thickened gradually and then fell away. Thinking that he was in the middle of a pensive moment, she turned to look at him and was met by the sight of his rising and falling head snoring silently through an open mouth. After watching him for a few minutes she got dressed and called a cab, taking the bottle on her way out.
Now the morning is almost in full swing and she’s ready for bed. She pushes the bottle to the corner of her kitchen table, next to the money that Ben paid her, and goes into her bedroom. Dropping her robe on the floor, pushing him from her thoughts, she closes her eyes and waits for a dream.
“Not even five hundred? I give you a full night on the street and this is the best you can do?” Al, unaccustomed to drink and feeling not at all well after last night’s overindulgence in the watered-down alcohol of the strip club, stands barking in her face.
Awakened by his knock and still in her robe, Sera says, “I’m sorry, Al. It was a slow night. I…”—frantically trying to assemble her thoughts—“I just couldn’t score.”
“What do you think you are, a sixteen year old girl holding out on me in Hollywood? You know better than this, Sera.” He slaps her, hard and quick with an open hand, a non-destructive, disciplinary slap.
And she likes it. She doesn’t know why, but it tastes like the key to something, and she likes it. She tries for more. “Don’t be ridiculous, Al. You know better than that. Maybe it’s just that nobody wants to fuck a chick with a cut across her cheek. That’s a new one for you, isn’t it, Al? Damaging the merchandise? It’s gonna scar, you know.” She thrusts her cheek to him in bold illustration. Drunk with the liberty of masochism, she is amazed at her audacity. “Best stick to the old knife game, huh? Out of sight, out of mind?” She turns and grabs a steak knife from out of a drawer. Throwing it at his feet along with her robe, she shows him her backside. “Here! Go ahead, Al!” she says.
Motionless, he is in virtual shock at this vituperation. He looks down at the row of marks that runs across her buttock and down the back of her thigh. For all these years he has carried the same marks in his memory. Don’t worry, Sera, he used to say, Never on the face. Now just turn over for me. So many tears. He gave her that gift. She is the only person to have ever witnessed his tears. That memory, this vision, her anger: it’s all too much for him. “Where were you last night,” he says, eyes wide and wild. His voice is shaking, under pressure as if he were about to explode.
“I told you. It was a bad night. I went to the Trop for a few drinks,” she says, meeting his stare. She feels like a third person in the room, watching all this with only mild interest. And now he kills me, now I sleep, and he will be gone. But she also remembers the tears, and how each cut into her was really a much deeper cut into him. Hers, she knew even as she bled, would ultimately heal.
Part of him wants to squeeze the life from her with his hands, or beat her until her heart just quits. He has never killed a man, much less a woman. Maybe that is what is wrong with his life. Instead he retches, nauseated and vulnerable, and has to catch himself on the table to avoid falling to the floor.
Unbelievably, she wants to go to him, to help him. Nothing changes. She wants to absorb his pain.
Regaining what he can of himself, he stands. He has never seen this woman before. He will never enter this place again. He spits and says, “Work tonight. Bring me the money when you are done… no matter what the hour is.” He turns and is gone, noise from the slammed door rattling after him.
“I will,” she says, naked in the kitchen.
; Sera knows, although she hasn’t yet realized, that she would like to see Ben—she thinks of him as that drunk trick—again. Her life has become somewhat pointless, and even passed out, he was still better company than anyone else she knows: an extremely exclusive club. Something about him—intimacy with black required to fully understand white—recalls for her the unique beauty of waking and working and eating and sleeping. Where is all of that now? Perhaps she felt it in his room.
So she is not at all surprised to find herself working the same stretch of sidewalk that she did last night when he picked her up. Every car that slows for her brings a fleeting moment of anticipation, which dies when she fails to recognize either car or driver. More argumentative than usual while negotiating price, she has lost a few customers and not really regretted it, preferring to stick around the street rather than take a chance of missing him or perhaps losing him to another girl for the night. For all she knows, he was so drunk that he doesn’t even remember what she looks like, though she doubts that this is so. A white limousine pulls to the curb alongside of her, disrupting her thoughts, and she anticipates the forthcoming offer; it may be difficult to refuse.
In truth, she doesn’t have any conscious ideas about what she might expect from Ben. Maybe he’ll ask me to go steady, she thinks cynically, as a hot spray of semen hits the back of her throat. She is kneeling at the foot of a bed in a hotel suite, fulfilling her bargain with a Japanese businessman from Texas who offered her so much bread for a single blowjob that she couldn’t say no. Spitting come into a hotel towel and pushing her hair back, she tells him that she has to leave and hurries back to the street, where she finds Ben seated at a bus stop and drinking out of a glass, as if he were at a cocktail party.
“Don’t run away!” he says, holding out his palm reassuringly as he rises.
“Why should I?” she asks. Now that he is standing in front of her, and the situation she has constructed abstractly all night has become real, she is defensive and unsure. “I know you’re not a cop, so what is it tonight? Another two fifty to watch you sleep?”
“No,” he sits back down, a little put off. “I couldn’t remember what happened last night. I was afraid that I might have been mean or rude to you. If I was, I’m sorry.”
“No, just drunk,” she says, warming, “but that’s okay.”
“I came here hoping that I could find you again tonight. I can pay you if you want, but I’d rather just take you out as a friend. That is, I like you and would like to see you on a social basis, if you know what I mean. I don’t know if you have a boyfriend, or for that matter, a girlfriend, but if you have some free time… maybe we could… have dinner.”
“Are you serious?” she says, knowing that he is.
“If I’m at all clear about this—and we both know that I may not be—I think that you know I’m serious.”
“When?” she asks.
“It’s still early tonight, as if that matters in Las Vegas,” he says, standing again, a little giddy now.
“I just turned a rich trick.” This is spoken as a test, and she looks sharply at him for a reaction but fails to get one. “I can quit for the night. If you want to get something to eat, that’s fine—you look like you could use it—but first I have to go home and shower. It won’t take long, if you don’t mind waiting. Where’s your car?”
“I sold it this morning.”
“I should have taken it when you offered.” She is a little surprised to hear that he really meant to sell it, and this small revelation somehow adds validity to the rest of what he has said. “I bet you got a great price at one of our non-profit car dealers here in town.”
“Just about enough to pay my cab fare back to the room. I don’t care. I’m always too drunk to drive anymore. We’ll take a cab to your place. It’s my new hobby, taking cabs.”
They both smile. Caught in the acceleration of a brand new rapport, they share the unspoken anticipation of conversations yet to be had, society yet to be felt; they freshen with the recovery of long dormant skills which seem to be no less effective for their lack of practice. Oddly, it is Sera, between the two of them, who embraces most readily the spark, still just a speck in her peripheral vision. Her inner voice speaks to her of thirst and memory.
“We should stop for a bottle of tequila,” she says. “I owe you a bottle of tequila.
“You certainly do,” he says.
After crossing the street and picking up the liquor, which she insists on paying for, they flag down one of the readily available Las Vegas taxicabs and start the short ride to her apartment. She has never allowed a trick to see where she lives, not that any of them would have necessarily cared to; Sera was not the regular customer type. But then, Ben lost his customer status at the very moment that she decided to take him to her home.
Home in his sweetroom, as home as it gets anyway, Al can hear voices emanating from the other side of the wall behind his headboard, the room next to his. Completely absorbed, he has been sitting in the dark for hours, trying to follow the thread of conversation between these strangers.
“…six hours… believe… every time… couldn’t sit still… nursery school…”
At the foot of his bed is an overturned room service tray. Potatoes and lamb, still uncut, litter the floor, peas and raisins sail on a puddle of tea, steeped to an indeterminate degree. Al has no recollection of how this happened, for when he awakened from an earlier nap to the sound of these voices, the mess had already been made. It was to be his dinner.
“…fix it for… paycheck… open at… lifeguard…”
Al listens, eyes very wide. He could have sworn they said his name not one hour ago. Perhaps he has been too obvious here in Las Vegas, asking around too much. He must learn to keep a lower profile. From now on he must be very careful.
“You know, I saw you last week,” she says, taking another exploratory step. “I saw you fall down on the sidewalk.”
“No kidding? Which time? Last week I fell down two times—two that I know about. Hang around with me and you’ll get to see it a lot,” he says.
Choosing not yet to address the pros and cons of falling down habitually, she says, “It was not far from where you’re staying, but on the other side of the street, and late at night, early in the week. I shouted to you, but I don’t think you heard me. You fell down and didn’t move, and I was afraid that you might attract the cops—you know, lying there looking like a corpse.” This last is meant to be humorous, but she instantly regrets it, realizing for the first time that he does, in some ways, look a little too sick.
“I didn’t think I was down that long. Didn’t I just get right up and walk away?”
“Well, I don’t know. I guess. You say you’re used to it, but seeing you fall like that had me worried.” Her pronunciation of worried is accompanied by a raised eyebrow and a look that cuts right to him. This hint of affection stymies the prattle, and fearing that she may have gone too far, she backs off. “I worry about everybody,” she says.
“I know that you do,” he says. The cab pulls to the curb in front of her apartment building. They are at her home.
With Sera in the shower and Ben a first time visitor, the apartment itself becomes a passive participant in their evening. Conspicuous in its silence, much like a sequestered house cat, it watches Ben with a dubious eye. He sits patiently waiting at the kitchen table where Sera left him. Then rising with polite curiosity, he shuffles around the room, one hand holding a glass and the other pausing here and there to pick up and inspect various objects, first in the kitchen, and then boldly into her living room.
Her possessions are indeed few and far between, and what there is has been arranged with a great sense of order. He sees his past self in her neatness, and this revelation comforts him. There is in the kitchen a collection of fifteen or twenty souvenir toothpick holders. Most bearing enameled legends of this city: I was PICKED KLEEN in LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, they are each filled with an appropriate quantity of toothpicks, their respe
ctive capacities observed to the pick. Gifts to herself, intentionally tacky, he guesses, the product of a slow night on the Strip. His hands pass over them in reverence, for they are no doubt important to her. Taped to the refrigerator is a greeting card photograph of a kitten and a ball of yarn. Upon flipping it open to read the signature inside, he finds the card blank and dismisses its presence here on the fridge as part of a feminine affinity for this type of image. The furniture, neither expensive nor creative, is tasteful at best. The girl clearly has no aspirations in the field of interior design. In fact, he notices, this apartment sports a general paucity of art in any conventional form. Like a Shaker home, this place platonically denies all but function, and for that reason aspires to a higher level of art: a deliberate art of basic reality. The television is black and white and looks to be rarely used. There is a simple radio on a bookshelf, which also contains a respectable collection of English and American literature, all in paperback. The carpet is gray indoor/outdoor, the sofa linen; there are no shags or velours, no pinks or lime-greens. The apartment reflects no preoccupation with high-end consumer electronics, no fascination with media, no periodicals, no posters, no paintings. Yet it has none of the make-do atmosphere of poverty. Nor does it show evidence of the haphazardry, the random guesses at quality, so often found in the dwellings of the unimaginative. Ben spins on his heel, watches the room blur, and stops too quickly at the sound of the shower being turned off, sloshing part of his drink on to the floor. This place offers no definitions of its occupant. This, he decides, is the home of an angel.
“You okay out there?” Sera calls from the bathroom.
“Of course. Why, shouldn’t I be? Take your time, I’m fine.” He goes back into the kitchen and pours himself another drink.
Her muffled voice continues, “I won’t be long. Make yourself another drink.”