The Magician's Tale

by William Bayer

  "That's it?"

  "Pretty much."

  The indignation in her eyes cannot be described. She is utterly, irrevocably outraged.

  "It would appear there's no dealing with you."

  I shrug. "Not on the terms you're used to."

  "What terms then?"

  I hand her my card. "Tell Mr. Crane there's no need to hide behind your skirts. Tell him to get in touch, we'll have a talk and, depending on how it goes, I'll see what I can do." I glance at my watch, show concern, suggest it's time for me to leave. "You can also tell him I want my Contax back. . . if, by chance, he knows where it is."

  On the drive back to the city I sit in the front seat beside Brit. She's stiff, monosyllabic, until I ask her about the tennis trainer, Roy.

  "Oh he's a lad, Roy is," Brit says, amused.

  "Does he live at the house?"

  "Has his own suite above the garage."

  "Pretty sexy guy. He and Mrs. Lashaw—are they, you know. . ?"

  "I'm no gossip, ma'am."

  But from her grin it would appear Sarah and Roy play all sorts of games.

  Back home, agitated, I phone Sasha at the hospital, persuade him I'm too tired for a visit and suggest, in recompense, that we do Hard Candy Friday night.

  "Like a real date?" he asks.

  "You got it, Sasha."

  "Can we dress up?"

  "The whole nine yards!" I promise.

  I try to calm myself by meditating for a while, but I'm still too hyped by my day in the country. What should have been a pastoral interlude turned into a nightmare. In the process I've made a powerful enemy.

  Feeling the need to regroup, I grab my camera and head out for the Gulch. But I'm careful as I cross Sterling Park; even with Drake watching out for me, I have no wish to be sandbagged again.

  Tonight the Gulch is sweet, the air warm, the regulars posing in their usual places. I find Doreen lingering at the corner of Polk and Bush.

  "Missing you, Bug," she says.

  I tell her I've been trying to sort things out.

  "Story of my life." She laughs. "Good luck!"

  On Hemlock I spot Slick posing with a hustler I barely know, the one they call Sho because, Tim told me, he's three-quarter Shoshone Indian. Sho is handsome, grave, with dark skin, shoulder-length black hair parted in the middle and lovely quasi-Asian eyes.

  "I hear you take pictures," he says when we're introduced. "I need some head shots, eight-by-tens, to get my modeling career off the ground."

  I tell him I don't do glamour shots, but I'll be happy to shoot some outdoor candids if he thinks they'd help. We agree to meet the following afternoon at five. Just then a big Jaguar pulls up. The boys, nervous, move toward it.

  "Gotta go, Bug. This is our date," Slick says.

  I watch as they climb into the backseat, one dark, the other albino, hired for the evening to do God-knows-what. It takes all my self-restraint to keep from taking pictures, but tonight I don't want to get anyone upset.

  I walk for a while, stopping to schmooze with acquaintances, trying to regain my fascination with this tawdry strip. But though the territory is familiar, an important person is missing. I feel like a widow returning to a city where a great romance was born, hoping to find the same beauty in the streets, finding instead only piercing loneliness.

  Knob is standing beside the door of an all-male video shop near Sutter, thumbs hitched casually in his belt. He's grinning at me, the grin of a cougar awaiting the nightly prowl of a yearling deer. Will I pounce or won't I? his grin seems to ask. And since I'm not feeling particularly yearling like this evening, I dare to stop and meet his eyes.

  "Still stomping the Gulch, Bug?"

  "Any reason I shouldn't?"

  "Figured you'd gotten enough by now. Don't want to gild the lily, do we?"

  What the hell is he talking about? Have Lashaw & Crane already put out another contract?

  "Amoretto," I say. I don't know why; the name just springs into my head.

  "Yeah, what about her?" Knob replies coolly.

  I laugh, continue on my way, flabbergasted by his response. He didn't say "Who?" or "What?" or "Fuck off!" He said "What about her?"—which means he knows who she is.

  Joel Glickman calls at eleven to say he's seen Hilly.

  "She made me meet her at this western bar. She was the only woman there and I was the only straight guy. She said we were safer there than anyplace else. She says she meets you at The Duchess."

  I laugh. "What'd you think of her?"

  "Friendly, smart, straightforward enough . . . until experience proves otherwise."

  "Is she onto something?"

  "Too early, kiddo. With these case-in-progress deals it's barely one in five. Remember, this isn't a whistle-blow. She's got a theory. Maybe she's right, maybe not."

  "But it's worth a shot?"

  "Definitely." Joel pauses. "I want to see Hale."

  Jonathan Topper Hale: how I'd love to photograph him! "Didn't he retire south?"

  "Uh-uh, he's still in the area. Lives in Oakland. And, from what I hear, is still obsessed with Torsos."

  "Does he know about Tim Lovsey?"

  "I hope not. I want to be the one to tell him." Joel pauses again. "Wanna come along?"

  Friday evening: When Sasha rings from downstairs I'm still dolling myself up. Maybe "dolling" isn't quite the right word, more like garnishing myself. I've applied several stick-on tattoos to my upper arms, the black New Age calligraphic kind. I've also painted my lips with black lipstick (if I'd used red it would appear black to me). My leather pants are secured by my concha belt. Now I'm snapping on a leather bracelet with chrome points. I buzz Sasha in, then return to self-adornment. I'm wearing a black lace bra, but can't find anything that looks good on top.

  Sasha is even more decorous. No longer in his serious-young-physician mode, he wears a tight black muscle shirt, black spandex pants, a chain-link belt that hangs loose about his hips, and a black leather motorcycle cap embellished by another length of chain.

  We preen for each other, then get down to business—how best to drape my torso. Sasha thinks the bra is all I need.

  "Underwear as outerwear," he says, "that's the hot new look."

  Actually it's a style that's five years old, but being unfashionable doesn't bother me; I only wish to be desired.

  "Want me to go bare belly?" I ask.

  "Why not? Half the women at these clubs do."

  "I don't know . . . I think I'll feel naked."

  "Let me decorate you then."

  I follow his instructions, remove my bra, then sit backwards astride a chair. He sits behind me and begins applying more temporary tattoos to my back. When he's done, he escorts me into the bathroom, where I have mirrors on opposite walls. Together we inspect his handiwork. I look like a Kandinsky from behind.

  "Very futuristic," Sasha remarks.

  Fine! I'll wear just the bra, my embellished skin taking the place of fabric. But Sasha has brought me a gift, a black leather collar with spiky points. He puts it on me lovingly as we both face the mirror. I like it. It matches my bracelet, says I'm kinky, and at the same time: Don't get too close, my throat's inviolate.

  Hard Candy, like most SoMa clubs, is housed in a former warehouse. There's something ominous about a stark windowless building on a dark empty street at night. There are piles of glossy trash bags up and down the block, and a homeless man huddled beside a grocery cart on the far side. A dozen snazzy motorcycles are lined up neatly beneath the lone streetlamp, while luxury cars of various makes are parked along the curb.

  No sign designates the club, just a neon strip (Sasha informs me it's violet) that outlines the door. A short line of bizarrely made-up and festooned wanna-get-ins clings to the warehouse wall. I take a place at the end of the line while Sasha goes to its head to negotiate.

  He returns to fetch me. The bouncer, a hairy guy in leather vest, doesn't crack a smile as he lets us in. Meantime the wanna-get-ins glare at us with hate.
>
  "How'd you swing it?" I whisper to Sasha.

  "Fifty bucks," he whispers.

  Ouch!

  We walk down a narrow, dark, oppressively low-ceilinged corridor until we come to a door padded with tufted leather. Suddenly it opens and music, heavy metal punk, smacks us like a blow across the face.

  We step forward, the door closes behind; then, through a confusion of cries, flashing lights, air thick with the aroma of sweat and pot, we make our entrance into Hades.

  Punked-out hairstyles, half-nude bodies, glistening writhing flesh—Hard Candy has it all. Perhaps I'm too old, staid, insufficiently coked up, but this kind of bacchanalian extravaganza only hurts my ears. I'm not offended by it, rather I'm bored. But far be it from me to pass judgment. There are worthy people, I know, for whom the late-night scene is a narcotic, an aphrodisiac, a cheat against the drudgery of daily life. A night at Hard Candy is a way to meet a lover, score dope, dance away excess energy and angst. It's a place to indulge all one's most decadent exhibitionistic and voyeuristic fantasies. Bottom line: It's our era's stylized version of that great and eternal human enterprise, the orgy.

  On Sasha's advice I've left my camera at home; the taking of photographs and/or videos is forbidden here. Thus, being denied my usual means of response, I have no choice but to step out onto the floor and join the debauch.

  Sasha, not surprisingly, is a fantastic dancer. He boogies so well I look good just following his lead. About the time I break a sweat, I feel the approval of others as they grant us extra space. We use it to get into a kind of twist-shag routine. When Sasha starts scissoring his fingers, I do the same.

  Gaining the impression we're being discussed, I tune in to snippets of conversation taking place around:

  "Great dancer," a female comments.

  "She's not half bad herself."

  "Good tats on that back."

  "Cool collar."

  "See them before?"

  "Uh-uh. But I like what I see."

  "Fresh meat. Let's try and link up."

  Sasha whirls me away, then separates again as we go into a series of retro-fifties moves. The music pounds. Sweat runs off my body. I worry my tattoos will wash away. Then I decide to just go with the rush. Soon, feeling the intoxicating effect of rhythmic movement, I yield to the self-obliterating energy all around. Let me become animal, I will, and willing it, feel it start to happen.

  We're sitting with four other people at a table on the balcony above the dance floor, sipping vodka and giggling at the goings-on in the passion pit below. We don't know the quartet we're with, but they know one another and are putting out feelers that they'd like us to join their circle.

  Proper names, professions, backgrounds—such information is not exchanged. Here it's how you look, dress, dance, present yourself. In the stripped-down ambience of Hard Candy, what you see is what you get.

  I decide to drop a bombshell. I make my eyes large, then pronounce the magic word: "Amoretto?"

  Heads turn. Lips curl into smiles. Attention is deliciously paid.

  "Seen her lately?" a woman asks. Her eyes are made up like a raccoon's.

  Heads shake.

  "She's like disappeared," the other female says. This one's hair is arranged into spikes that rival the ones on my collar.

  "You ought to say 'it.' Like—'It disappeared,'" says the young man to my right, who sports heavily gelled silver hair.

  The response to that is such wild mirth I'm led to believe he's spouted a witty line.

  "Friend of mine"—it's Spiky Hair speaking again—"she went with 'it' one time. Says all of a sudden she-he-it started plucking coins from her cunt."

  "That's nothing!" Raccoon Eyes says. "This gay guy I know tells me she-he-it plucked them from his ass!"

  Much tittering over that. Seems everyone has a story. The other male in the group, whose left eyebrow and ear bear multiple piercings, allows as how, since he's actually been to bed with the creature, he's the only one at the table who can authoritatively describe her/his/its genitalia.

  "Okay, Kit," Silver Gel taunts, "let us in on the big secret."

  Pierced Guy offers an enigmatic smile. "Amoretto' s like one of those, you know, magical goddesses—she can change sex even while you fuck."

  "I heard that too," says Spiky Hair. "You go to bed with a hen, wake up with a rooster."

  "Like she does you with a strap-on?" Raccoon Eyes asks.

  "No way !" Pierced Guy is adamant. "The cock's for real."

  "Well, you ought to know!" Silver Gel elbows Pierced Guy in the ribs.

  By this time Sasha is giving me a look. He leans over, whispers: "Who the hell are we talking about?"

  I want to know more. "Could it've been twins?" I ask.

  Pierced Guy screws up his face, spreads his hands. "Wish I knew," he says. "I was just too stoned to notice."

  I take Sasha's hand, tell the others we're going back down to the pit. They're a little hurt, taking our departure as rejection, but I must rescue Sasha, who is, after all, a mere ladies' man. These bisexual kids we've been hanging with play in an entirely different league.

  "Were you talking about someone human?" Sasha asks me on the stairs.

  "Just some club-scene person I want to meet."

  "Pulling coins out of pussies and asses. Weird!"

  Poor Sasha! He knows all about the insides of people's bodies, but perhaps not so much about their fantasies.

  The music here is too percussive, the lyrics to the songs screamed too loud. We've only been here an hour and a half, and already I feel burnt-out. Sasha's proven his skills on the dance floor. Now I'm ready to go home.

  Outside, I ask the bouncer if Amoretto's been around.

  "Not lately," he says in an ultra-serious tone that tells me he'll provide no more information. But on the way back to my apartment in Sasha's BMW, I consider the fact that when we sat down with strangers, they all knew who I was talking about. One even claimed to have spent the night with her. Knob also knew who she was. So, it would seem that Ariane is notorious in town, at least within a certain set—a fact of which I, in my isolated artist's life on the hill, have until this evening been unaware.

  Back at my place, Sasha and I strip one another of kinky attire, then fall into bed. Though it would be my preference to apply rubbing alcohol and sponge off my tattoos, Sasha wants me to keep them on.

  "I like you encrusted," he tells me, perhaps not the most romantic words to escape his sultry lips. But he's been good to me tonight, taken me where I wanted to go, so now it's my turn to give him a ride.

  In the morning, still half deaf from the heavy metal assault, I pace about my apartment trying to collect my thoughts.

  What do I know?

  One, that Ariane lived in Tim's building.

  Two, that she most likely moved out within the past week.

  Three, that living so close, in possession of each other's keys, they surely saw each other a lot . . . yet Tim never let on that she existed.

  Four, that just as he hustled on the Gulch, she had her own hustle going at the clubs.

  Five, that they seemed to have played an erotic variation on David deGeoffroy's Zamantha Illusion, Ariane going to bed with someone, then switching places with Tim, thus freaking the new bedmate out.

  Six, it would seem Ariane deliberately cultivated a bizarre reputation among club people as some sort of gender-bending mistress of legerdemain.

  Seven, Ariane and Tim stole fifty thousand dollars from David, and Tim boasted to me he had fifty thousand stashed—which has never turned up.

  Eight, it's clear that Tim's hints there was a woman in his life I'd want to photograph were references to his twin, Ariane.

  Nine, the day Tim was killed, when he set up a meeting with me, he sounded as if he was scared.

  Ten, Ariane's apparent lack of interest in recovering her brother's body and subsequent disappearance suggests she too is scared, perhaps of meeting the same fate.

  But what good does all this
analysis do me? None ... unless I can locate the girl. From the moment I heard of her I've wanted to meet her. Now I feel I must.

  I look up Courtney Hill in the city phone directory. No listing. For all I know, she's from down the peninsula, East Bay or Marin. She's so young she probably still lives at home with her parents. Unless, of course, she's in college somewhere. . . in which case I might be able to find her.

  I make a few quick calls: San Francisco State, Stanford, University of California at Berkeley. I'm prepared to make many more, but I luck out at U.C., where, I discover, a Ms. Courtney Dayton Hill is indeed registered as an undergrad.

  I leave a message at her dorm, then walk down to Marina Aikido for class. Today my workout partner is Flora, a Philippine diplomat's wife. We practice fiercely, throw one another well, blend energy, get into the flow. When we finish we realize we've been watched. After we bow, the class applauds.