No. 22 Pleasure City

by Mark Fishman

  Aoyama stared at the floor. Finally he looked up, nodded slowly, and mumbled: “What do you think?”

  “That we get into the car and go over to 4 Nightingale Lane.”

  [ 73 ]

  Pohl put on a clean pair of underwear and socks, a laundered shirt, jeans, then polished shoes. He combed his half-white hair in front of the bathroom mirror. His face looked back at him and gave him a guilty smile. It was eleven forty-five. Violet would be pressing the buzzer in a couple of minutes.

  He didn’t know why he’d given Violet his address, he didn’t have any expectations and didn’t want anything from her, but it wasn’t just curiosity about what she’d have to say that made him feel the way he was feeling now. He tried to tell himself the reason was certainly some unknown reason, but he knew he was kidding himself.

  He began to ask himself some questions and pretty soon he got the answers and didn’t like them because it added up to two very important things, the first thing being that he’d taken a good look at his own eager face in the mirror, and the second was the promise of Angela’s homecoming that’d given his mind a twist — he was remembering the game with the vibrator and ball-gag — and so he had to admit he was thinking only about sex, no matter how much he scratched the itch never went away, and then he heard the buzzer.

  He opened the door. Violet was standing there looking at him with her green eyes and black hair and a grin that told him he’d better watch out because he was about to get swallowed up whole. She wore a khaki knee-length raincoat and a knee-length skirt and a short-sleeved sweater, her legs were bare, she wore low-heeled shoes.

  “Are you going to make me stand out here?” she said. “You can look at me all you want when I’m inside.”

  His eyes were wide. He gaped at her.

  “You going to let me in?” she repeated. “I’d sure like to come in.”

  He took a very deep breath. He looked at the open door and then his gaze went over to Violet, going up the length of her from the shoes to the jet-black hair. He stepped aside to let her in. She brushed against him, he smelled a faint flammable odor, and he remembered that it was her natural scent. He shut the door behind her, locked it.

  She went straight to the living room like she already knew the layout and took off her raincoat, folding it over the back of a chair. She spun around to face him and her skirt twirled with the motion. Pohl didn’t want to shut his eyes, it was just a reflex. They were shut, and when he realized they were shut he opened them right away to get a look at her.

  “Okay, you want me to do it again?” she said, spinning to show him what she was wearing under her skirt.

  He looked her up and down again. She caught a glimpse of a bulge in his crotch.

  “We’re going to have a little talk,” she said. “You got anything to drink?”

  Pohl was moving calmly toward her with a measured stride. He didn’t want her to know he had to catch his breath. “What would you like?”

  “Vodka,” she said.

  “No vodka.”

  “What have you got?”

  “What’s it look like?” he flipped back at her. “A hard-on.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?”

  “Whisky and soda, okay?”

  “Whisky and soda it is.”

  He turned around, his face red, and went to the kitchen to make a couple of drinks and to cool down. He came back with them and saw she was sitting in an armchair with her legs crossed, wagging her foot at him. He gave her the drink. He felt the temperature of his skin climb again.

  She saw it, smiled, and took a sip from her glass.

  “You don’t know me and I don’t know you but I’ve been thinking about you since the other night,” she said.

  “I haven’t been thinking of you,” he said gently, trying to protect himself.

  “Maybe not. But here I am.”

  He couldn’t argue the point, so he sat down in a chair opposite her with his drink in his hand and waited for her to say more.

  Violet said nothing. She looked at him, took another sip from her glass. Her foot kept on wagging at him.

  He was in for something he’d wanted for a long time but didn’t have the guts to get for himself because he was passive and it would have to come to him if he was going to get it. He wanted a release valve to let off steam and the steam was his frustration with Angela, and it looked as if something that had come out of left field, Violet Archer, was going to ease that pressure. It was a normal buildup of the kind of thing that happens to a man who hasn’t been with a woman in a long time and it had to be taken care of right away.

  What he couldn’t figure out was why it was going to happen the very night before Angela came back. If Violet said she wanted to fuck him, he didn’t know if he’d say yes or no because of Angela, and it was on the order of a quiz show and it worried him that maybe he wouldn’t have the right answer.

  “What are we going to talk about?” he asked.

  She leaned forward and said: “You and me.” She finished her drink in a gulp. “For instance, what do we have in common?”

  “I don’t know you.” Pohl tried to make it sound casual.

  “You don’t have to know me to know what I want.”

  “What have you got in mind?”

  “Plenty.” She stared at him, uncrossed her legs and opened them to give him a view.

  Pohl nearly choked on his drink.

  “Usually I talk about money at this point, but I’m tired of it,” she said. “Come here, on your knees.”

  Pohl didn’t get what she meant about money but he followed instructions and crawled toward her until his head was between her legs.

  “Lick me.”

  She took a handful of his hair and pulled his mouth against the crotch of her panties and he stuck his tongue out and got them wet and then pulled at the material with his teeth. After a minute he felt a couple of fingers against his upper lip trying to get past his mouth and when they did get where they were going they pulled the piece of fabric aside and he had access to where he wanted to go.

  When he came up for air, his eyes focused on the soft skin between her legs and he saw the glistening wetness of where he’d been and a scar that was a blemish on her inner thigh. He touched it with his index finger, then slipped two fingers inside her, spread the fingers and moved them rapidly in and out while the heel of his other hand pressed down on her lower belly.

  A transparent liquid came out of her, a low sound came from the back of her throat, and he moved his hand faster until his wrist was soaked.

  Violet looked at him through crossed eyes and when they uncrossed and she saw him clearly she was looking at a cracked smile on his face that made him look like he was high as a kite. Pohl sat back on his folded legs. He wore a grin and at the corners of it there was plenty of saliva.

  “This gets very interesting,” she said.

  Pohl wiped his mouth, smiled amiably, aiming the smile at the very wet place between her legs, then bringing it up along her flat belly and crumpled skirt and sending the smile past the short-sleeved sweater, driving it farther on and finally parking it on her full lips. Her green eyes burnt a hole in his forehead and he started to sweat.

  [ 74 ]

  Fitch wasn’t used to going to 4 Nightingale Lane in daylight. He wasn’t used to doing much in daylight because he was either asleep or planning another job at the earliest in the late afternoon, and now he felt as if everyone was watching him as he drove past them on a busy street. But he shrugged it off, he was tired, and gave himself a smile and his eyes shimmered. He was almost through with trying to figure out and fend off Angela Mason. He switched on the radio.

  The afternoon sun shone yellowish-orange across the hood of the car. He looked through the windshield at the passing shops, a nursery of plants and trees and a gas station on his left, went through the green light, and then suddenly the smile faded from his face as he rubbed a thumbnail lightly across his underlip.

  What’ll I
do when I’ve finished the thing I’ve been doing every night with Angela? But there were a lot of messages on his answering machine and he told himself that he had plenty of things to do with a dozen calls and more clients than that waiting for him to come around out of this job and make himself available for the next one. You get what I’m saying? There isn’t anything to worry about so quit worrying.

  His eyes were on the road but he wasn’t concentrating and a truck with a tarp tied down over the bed cut in front of him and he swerved and leaned hard on the horn. The truck turned right at the next intersection.

  “Fuck,” he said with his head inclined and his eyes narrowed. Without sound he said, You sure that’s what you figure on doing?

  But he didn’t have an answer because he was busy looking for the turn onto Hartrey and when he found it he took the turn and continued to the end of Hartrey and made a left, following the drive a short distance until he got to Delaplaine Road, then turned right and went straight to Lavergne Terrace. He pulled over to the curb in front of the garden at the center of Lavergne Terrace, shut off the engine. Fitch was two blocks away from the small, four-room house at 4 Nightingale Lane in Pigsville.

  The sun was going down slowly. He sat behind the wheel contemplating the change of light, then reached over to the glove compartment and removed a special sack that kept its contents cold. He took a narrow, rectangular box out of the sack that held his personal set of chloral hydrate suppositories, individually sealed in a foil jacket, shaped like bullets. He’d put them in the box with its padded cradles before he left his apartment. Each suppository of the brand Aquachloral was 650mg. The right dose would take effect in about half an hour, which meant giving her two of them, inducing sleep in less than an hour. Their melting point was 135°F. He snapped the case shut and reached into his shirt pocket for a cigarette.

  He thought of the moment he would put them inside Angela and smiled because he was an ordinary man and it was a real pleasure to see himself spreading the cheeks of her ass. He knew the instructions by heart:

  If the suppository is too soft to insert, chill it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or run cold water over it before removing the foil wrapper.

  To insert suppository — First remove the foil wrapper and moisten the suppository with cold water. Lie down on your left side and raise your right knee to your chest. (A left-handed person should lie on the right side and raise the left knee.) Using your finger, insert the suppository into the rectum, about ½ to 1 inch in infants and children and 1 inch in adults. Hold it in place for a few moments.

  Stand up after about 15 minutes. Wash your hands thoroughly and resume your normal activities.

  For rectal dosage form (suppositories):

  For trouble in sleeping: Adults — 500 to 1000 mg at bedtime.

  Fitch put the box in the side pocket of his jacket, got out of the car and locked the door. He walked toward Nightingale Lane without a hardcover notebook, smoking and avoiding garbage strewn along the sidewalk and listening to the birds singing in the overhanging branches of trees. He came to the four-room wooden house at 4 Nightingale Lane and went around to the back and let himself in.

  Angela wasn’t expecting him. She didn’t know whether or not it was daylight but she had developed an internal clock that told her Fitch was a lot earlier than usual. He took off her blindfold and untied her arms and legs and she rubbed the irritated places where the rope had rubbed against her skin. She was barefoot and there were red marks around her ankles. Fitch tossed his cigarette in the toilet, flushed it down.

  “We’re finished,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “I knew that already.”

  “I’m going to give you something to put you out,” he said. “Then I’ll take you home.”

  “You’ll get paid. I’ll give you cash.”

  “It’s not the money I’m worried about. I know you’re good for it. But I want to talk to you about life after therapy.” He emphasized the last words with a bit too much sarcasm to make her understand that he was worn out by the whole thing and had something else on his mind.

  “What kind of crack is that?”

  “Listen, I don’t want you to tell anybody about what we’ve been doing.” He was staring at her and feeling uneasy and not knowing why. “You got it?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “It’s not good for my reputation.”

  “Okay, I got it.”

  Fitch took the box out of his jacket pocket, laid it on the back of the toilet, swung around and said: “Maybe you should use the toilet. It’s not going to be an injection.”

  She understood him. “Maybe you should leave the room.”

  “I’ll be right here.” He went out with the box in his hand, leaving the door ajar.

  “Of course you’ll be right here. You wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

  Fitch winced, leaned against the wall opposite the door, lit a cigarette.

  She unbuttoned her jeans, sat on the toilet seat, her head down and hands at the side of her head with her fingers wound into her hair, then she fingered the diamond in her navel.

  Fitch listened to her emptying her bowels to make way for the chloral hydrate suppositories. He had a lot of respect for her, and because it was Angela Mason doing it he didn’t think twice about what he was hearing hit the water in the toilet bowl. The toilet flushed. He knocked at the door and went in. He was finished with his cigarette.

  “I’m done,” she said, buttoning her jeans.

  “Don’t do that.”

  He dropped his cigarette in the toilet, put the cover down but didn’t flush it.

  “What?”

  “We might as well get down to it right now.”

  “Okay, what do you want me to do?”

  “Pull your pants all the way down, your underwear, too, and lie here” — he pointed at the floor — “on your side, raise your leg and bring the knee up to your chest.”

  “You’re a pro.”

  “Cut it out.”

  He opened the box, removed two suppositories and unwrapped one of them, threw the foil in the wastebasket, and put the suppository under the running faucet for a second before bending down on one knee and letting himself admire her narrow hips and small, rounded ass.

  She turned her head to look at him. “Keep your mind on your work,” she said grimly.

  “Don’t get excited.” Fitch put his index finger in his mouth, got it very wet and gently rubbed the saliva-soaked tip of his finger around her anus.

  “Hey, what’re you doing?”

  He started to laugh, it built itself up into a big laugh and he couldn’t control himself because now he was shaking with laughter until he began to lose his balance, and then he felt a heavy blow to the side of his head that came from the open palm of her hand. It was strong enough to knock him over.

  Fitch’s head struck the base of the toilet, he slumped to the floor and lost consciousness. Angela got to her feet with her pants around her ankles. She propped herself up using both hands on the edge of the sink. She pulled her panties up, then the jeans, and buttoned them. She ran water from the faucet and washed her face and let the water run down her chin and didn’t dry herself off.

  Angela bent down and looked at Fitch’s wristwatch. It was almost four-thirty. She started to leave the bathroom and got one foot into the hallway before she laughed to herself and the laughing went on as she turned around. She crouched next to him, unbuttoned and unzipped his trousers and tugged them slowly down the length of his inert legs until they were around his ankles with one knee awkwardly bent over the other leg. She pulled down his underwear and saw his hairy ass cheeks. She made an effort not to burst out laughing at what she was about to do.

  The suppository he’d been holding in his hand before she’d knocked him down was on the floor just beyond his fingertips and she reached down to pick it up, ran cold water in the sink to moisten it, and then bent down again to the job at hand. She spread his ass cheeks with
one hand and with the other inserted the suppository an inch into his rectum. She ran cold water over another suppository, unwrapped it, moistened it and put it inside him like she was loading a shotgun.

  With some effort, because she wasn’t used to exerting herself, she pulled up his underwear and then his trousers, zipped and buttoned them. He lay on the floor, breathing slowly. She patted him on the ass.

  Angela washed her hands with the old piece of soap beside the faucet and wiped them dry on her jeans. She looked down at Fitch, shook her head, left the bathroom for the hallway, the kitchen, and then she used the rear exit to get out of 4 Nightingale Lane.

  She’d forgot to look for her shoes, they weren’t on her feet when she looked down at them, so she made her way barefoot through the small backyard past crumpled newspapers and greasy plastic containers, climbed a low fence and got herself moving on the sidewalk that ran along the street a block away and parallel to Nightingale Lane bathed in the last yellowish-orange glow of the sun on the horizon. The ground felt cool and soothing on the soles of her feet.

  She walked along not looking where she was going and thinking instead about what it meant to want to fall in love and trying to add it up. And what it amounted to was that for her love was a pain in the ass, and it wasn’t a solution to anything because in her opinion a source of suffering wasn’t a solution, and that was it, she got the idea to have herself kidnapped just to figure out a thing that’s better off left alone because if she went on chasing after it without really believing in its importance she’d lose her mind.

  She’d just go on living the way she’d been living without trying anything new that would only end up squeezing the inspiration out of her like shoes that were too small for her feet. Then she stepped on a small stone and hopped up and down in pain. She couldn’t bring herself to smile. She rubbed the bottom of her foot, then went to the corner and turned without thinking where she was going, knowing she was going somewhere in a hurry.