Spread

by Malzberg, Barry

  XIX

  My wife has joined some kind of feminine activist movement whose meetings and rallies she attends once or twice a week, and in the evenings she is home, she moves about with a new sullenness, a kind of grim determination around the mouth and eyes that is new although not entirely discomfiting. “Now I understand,” she says, “exactly why I’ve lived with you all these years; why I’ve put up with this kind of thing from the first. I’m afraid that this is the best that I can do and my training is to unquestioningly accept the supremacy of the male ego. What a fool I was! but it is of course never too late,” And a wise expression causes her mouth to purse. “Never too late,” she says, “although all of us have a long, long way to go.”

  I find the whole thing vaguely uncomfortable, but we have had too much trouble ourselves with the feminine activists recently to make me anything but very cautious in all of my dealings with them. The feminine activists assaulted our office in a body, some weeks ago, three or four miserable girls who said that we were degrading the female form and figure and pandering to the chauvinist impulses of diseased men to use women as mere outlets for their poisonous desires. I pointed out calmly enough that both males and females were shown nude in our pages and that women were as free to masturbate in or upon the newspaper as men; it was sheerly a matter of choice or taste. This seemed to satisfy the girls or at least to confuse them. They withdrew, mumbling to one another and stealing several copies of the current issue which happened to be available at that time. I thought that our difficulties were resolved, but it seemed that they were only biding their time; very shortly after that they got my wife, and now things around the house are more difficult than ever, although I try to spend a minimum of time there in the first place.

  “You went into the business to degrade women,” she says, turning after an hour of silence in the bedroom, to face me across the covers. “It was as simple as that. All your life you were looking for an image of degradation and you found it. It was so simple, really. I should have figured it out a long time ago.”

  “You take the money,” I say, but with a feeling of tiredness; the standard response no longer seems appropriate to the circumstances.

  “It was male power mania,” she says. “The whole thing is so easy to understand when you look at it the proper way. I was a fool. It was in front of me all the time.”

  “We print naked men, too.”

  “That’s rationalization. And men are always pictured as the aggressors.”

  “What do you do during the days, Dorothy? I don’t even know any more. You never tell me.”

  “I do a lot of things. Recently I’ve been going to meetings. What do you care? You never ask me.”

  “That’s because you never tell.”

  There is something of a silence and then she says, “We are going to have to re-evaluate our entire life together. Things can’t go on this way. We’re going to have to have a long look at this and then put it together in another way. It can’t be taken for granted anymore.”

  “You have no idea of the pressures.”

  “All our lives we’re trained to be inferior. To be submissive and docile. We learn that the tactics of inferiority will be rewarded, that those of assertion will be punished. We’re nothing but the new slave class.”

  “It works two ways.”

  “They pay off on submission. The other things don’t interest them at all.” She twists in the bed, moves her face from side to side, an old symptom of distress although, strangely, it also occurs during moments of passion. “I don’t even know why I’m talking about this to you. It doesn’t serve any purpose. I wish I didn’t feel that I had to talk to you.”

  “Go to sleep then.”

  “It didn’t work, did it Walter?” she says quietly. “It just didn’t work out the way we hoped it would, did it?”

  “No,” I say, “but then it never really works out for anyone.”

  “I believe in female liberation, but it’s not the whole answer.”

  “No,” I agree, “it isn’t the whole answer.” I run my hands up the panels of her body, feel her small breasts curve into my palms; she whimpers against me with a helpless jerk. “No,” she says, “not now. Please don’t do that to me now. I don’t want to.”

  “Yes you do. I do.” I feel her nipples rising with a slow sting against my fingers. “I know you do.”

  “Oh, nothing works out,” she says with a cry and comes against me. I feel her body opening up all along the line, I lean over her and begin to remove garments; in due course, naked, we press against and into one another, her thin cries at climax falling like birds into the spaces of the room. I withdraw slowly, inching my way out, feeling her close behind me and then for a while lie against her, looking at the pattern of the night lights against the wall, hearing the rumble of trucks on the highway. In the distance my wife is weeping softly, the sounds so faint that, near as she is, I can hardly hear them; far as she is, I cannot misunderstand why she is crying.

  Consorting with the enemy. Moving across the lines. The cowardly spy, the faulty saboteur. Ruined espionage and a campaign destroyed.

  XX

  An unusual advertisement comes into the classifieds and I decide to check it out. An attractive blond divorcée 42-24-38, is seeking male companionship in her home by appointment with people who can show their appreciation for her in the establishing of a meaningful relationship.

  Prostitutes rarely advertise in the newspaper. The majority of our readers either are looking for something more bizarre or are oriented entirely toward masturbation, the idea of contract-and-expense somehow repellent to them. The day the issue comes out I phone the number she has given and make an appointment. She lives on the fourth floor of a building in Greenwich Village and tells me that the fee will be $20 for a quick engagement, $50 for all night. We settle for an afternoon rendezvous and at the proper hour I tell Virginia that I am going out to appear on a panel and leave the office. I must explain my days to Virginia as I must explain my evenings to my wife — there is no end to the little cubicles I must construct for myself, you see — but fortunately Virginia has no true conception of the internal workings of the business and will accept any explanation as plausible. Besides that, she enjoys being in the office by herself; the faggarts are usually with the attorneys or out in the field scouring up business, and with the doors closed and shades drawn, Virginia can imagine herself to be, somehow, an empire maker. She has total control anyway of the assignments made to the freelancers and over the piles of manuscripts which we receive daily on submission, but this is not enough for her. The fact is that she wants a feeling of total control over a business situation, some sense that she is connecting with and influencing a whole series of lives. This trait of hers makes me sentimental and indulgent because in my own life I have no feeling of control whatsoever and am happy to turn it over to almost anyone who thinks that he does.

  The apartment turns to be a walk-up in a dismal building jammed between a psychedelic shop and an Italian restaurant, flooded with sounds and grease and small deadly implements which the tenants of the building seem to have left on the stairs. The prostitute turns out to be strikingly attractive, twenty-five or so, with breasts truly as large as she has advertised, a waist only slightly thickened through dissipation and an astonishing pair of hips which manage to be simultaneously hard and soft as they jut out of the thin pants she wears. She is also wearing a sleeveless sweater without a brassiere. Her name, she says, is Rochelle, and she is an actress who finds New York almost impossible although she will not allow the city to defeat her. She does not consider herself a prostitute but merely someone who is performing a service as legitimate as any other. “I could go to television work,” she says, removing her sweater, “commercials, you know. There’s always a call for people to do commercials, but to me that’s the worst thing. To turn your art into something to sell products that people don’t need and don’t want. It’s not honest, you know what I mean? This way at lea
st I can do something honest which makes people happy. I’m not helping them to make further lies of their life.” Her breasts are enormous, descend only a little in movement, the nipples as large around as tea saucers, glinting at me. She is chatty, distracted, as she moves around the studio apartment, taking off the remainder of her clothes, flicking spots of dust off the wall. “I hate to ask you this but I have to, like, make you pay me first, if you know what I mean. You don’t mind, do you? It’s just better that way.”

  “How much?”

  “I told you over the phone. It’s twenty for a straight and fifty for an all night. That’s very reasonable. You can’t get a good-looking white head for that kind of price in New York. Even semi-pro action costs more than that to promote. Twenty and fifty, that’s it. Those are my only two prices. And none of the S-and-M bag. I don’t like dig that stuff at all. Otherwise anything goes if you make sure that you take care of me.”

  “But it isn’t night yet. So how can we have an all night at three in the afternoon?”

  “Well,” she says, putting the cigarette out, looking from side to side, then taking another cigarette and lighting it, “it’s like this. All night is just a euphemism, if you understand, for a longer session. Now, the way we’d do it if you wanted an all night is that you’d stay here until seven or eight in the evening. Or for an extra ten, sixty altogether, you can stay until midnight. You have to leave at midnight, though. I make it a rule that no one can really stay overnight with me; it’s just better that way. So what do you want, it’s your choice?”

  “You have large nipples.”

  “Yes, I do. I always did, but when I was eighteen they started to grow so fast that I thought they’d never stop growing, if you know what I mean. I thought I’d have two breasts that would just be all nipple, and I was embarrassed because I didn’t think that men liked that. Of course they stopped after a while, and I learned that lots of men do. It must have something to do with the milk supply. What’s your bag by the way?”

  “Oh,” I say, “I’m a businessman, I guess.”

  “I didn’t want to get personal. I mean, you don’t have to take offense. I just find that it’s a little better if you, like, get to know each other first, then it’s like you’re fucking someone instead of just doing it against the wall. That’s why I told you I’m an actress.”

  “No, I really didn’t take offense,” I say. “I am a businessman of sorts, that’s the truth. I work for the government and the government is the biggest business we’ve got.”

  There is a short, thick pause dining which she shrugs. The nipples pucker expressively although her face is impassive. “I work for the police department,” I say and remove a twenty from my wallet. “Here it is.”

  “Wait a minute,” she says, withdrawing, “what do you mean, you work for the police department?”

  “I’m in an investigatorial branch. A special division. Do you want to take this twenty or not? I want to see you take it and place it in your possession now. How about that?”

  “Now wait a minute,” she says, getting up and backing toward the wall, taking another cigarette from the table, “I don’t think I understand the bag here. What do you mean investigatorial work? I don’t like this kind of gig, if it’s your idea of a joke.”

  “Take the twenty,” I say, following her and putting it lightly on her left breast; the fortunate bill seems to crinkle sympathetically from the slight bobble of the breast. “Just take it.”

  “Look,” she says, “I don’t want any trouble at all. Trouble isn’t my kind of thing. I’m not taking any money from you. I only do it with people I like, and I don’t like you very much at all. The money is like a gift, see, that people I like give me after it’s all over to show their appreciation. That’s what it is. I don’t want to make it with you so get out. I’m not taking your money so that’s the end of it. I want you to go.”

  I back her full into the wall and say. “Prostitution is illegal, you know. It is a misdemeanor and carries a maximum penalty of six months. Also, it takes an enormous toll of human lives in damage, deceit and disease. It must be eradicated.”

  “I want to get dressed.”

  “You’ll get dressed in due course. You listen to me. You may think that all of this is perfectly innocent but you’re wrong. You’re leading men into decay. You are wrecking human lives. We don’t like this kind of thing in my division. We’re starting to get very serious about this in an effort to stamp it out once and for all.”

  She begins to cry now, more or less at the time I had predicted. Perhaps she is a little bit slow on the draw, a bit more hardened than I had thought. Still, amateurism leaks from her. “I’m not a prostitute,” she says, “I’m an actress.”

  “An actress without work, right? Like a writer without books. No, I don’t think it washes. You’d have been better off doing the commercials. Commercials aren’t illegal in our society, you know. This is. And you’ve got to live in society although more and more of you people nowadays have the disgusting idea that you can take the blessings of America and pay none of the dues. We’re going to stop that kind of thinking. We’re beginning to get very serious about this now; it’s gone on too long.”

  “Please,” she says, “please go away. I’m frightened. I don’t want to hear this anymore. If I did anything wrong, I apologize. It was stupid of me. I’ll stop. Just please leave me alone.”

  “Taking the ad was really stupid,” I say. “Don’t you think we monitor that sheet? Don’t you think that every agency in the world has an eye on that rag knowing that it will bring every creep, fanatic, rapist and pervert out of the woodwork to spread his disgusting filth in their columns? Didn’t that ever occur to you? Don’t you understand what that sheet really is?”

  “I never read it. I just heard about it and thought I might as well take an ad. Please, can I get dressed? I don’t want to stand this way.”

  “You really don’t understand it, do you, baby?” I say, stepping back from the wall and allowing her to scurry in the direction of the couch. She seizes her sweater and puts it against her chest, cradling it like a child, trying to get inside of it but not willing to bare her breasts to me again. “You don’t understand a hit of it, do you? You miss the whole point. You people think that you’re so clever and so advanced and so liberal with your life-styles and intellectual and so on but you don’t realize that we were around long before you came on the scene and that we’ve forgotten tricks you never knew. We have our hands on eveything. Everything, do you understand me?”

  “Go,” she says. “Please go.”

  “That’s our magazine,” I say, “our publication. We created it, we own it and we run it. How else do you think we’re able to keep an eye on every creep and pervert in New York? We get their advertisements, we get their mail, we get everything from them. They trust us, you see. They think that they’ve found an outlet. They think that we’re their vox populi. And all the time we’re keeping an eye on them, keeping the files up to date, getting ready to make a move anytime we want. We have the whole thing right in our hand, you know, and how do you like that?”

  She has succeeded in getting the sweater on, pats it into place, smoothing it over her breasts, hanging tightly inside. She seems to have recovered some particle of her manner. “I don’t know what to think. I asked you to go. Please go, I promise you I won’t do it any more.”

  “You bet you won’t do it anymore.” I say to her with a flourish, taking one of her cigarettes and sticking it into my mouth for effect, although I have not smoked for several years, considering the habit extremely dangerous. “And you know why you won’t do it? You won’t do it because we’ve got our hand on everything. Nothing escapes our sight now; nothing vanquishes our control. Look at every newspaper on the stand. We’ve got them all. Everyone.”

  I go over to her, rest a hand on her shoulder, squeeze lightly and feel the soft resilience gathering under me; for an instant I regret that I have not been able to lay her. From the fee
l of her flesh, she would have been an extremely good fuck. Nevertheless, there are larger purposes assigned here. “Just remember,” I say, “Remember this. Remember everything. Consider this a warning. We won’t let you off like this the next time. The next time we go for the big wheel. This time you can consider yourself lucky.”

  “I don’t like New York,” she says. “I never wanted to live this way. There’s something about this place that makes people crazy. Maybe I’ve been crazy.”

  “Maybe,” I say, “maybe, maybe.” And I take my hand off her, back to the door, give her a farewell tilt of the hand, reach behind me with the other hand, deftly pull on the knob and in a single motion am standing on the threshold, tilted in profile toward her, cigarette dangling, an air of pure menace sifting from me and hopefully throughout the room. “Remember,” I say, “there is no escape.” I give her a wink, salute her and pull the door closed, dart down the steps quickly and into the jangle of the pyschedelic store music. Behind me I hear the sound of a bolt being thrown, kicks against wood, the grinding sound of a chain; behind me she has quite clearly locked up for a long time.

  It is all really too much, and I find myself laughing almost hysterically on the street, but the laughter turns to somberness when I begin to think that she indeed would have been a wonderful fuck and I could have done everything that I did after instead of before and saved the $20 to boot. But then I remind myself that to do it first and then pull the stunt would have compromised my integrity to say nothing of the clarity of the role I have established for her, and these purposes above all must be honored. This makes me feel a little better although not entirely resigned, and I return to the office to find Virginia still alone, lock all the doors, pull the shades, put the tapes on high and at four o’clock on an October afternoon bang the living shit out of her on the floor, my eyes closed in convulsion as the pure surging arc of the orgasm overtakes me and moves me far from there. Making all the changes, the colors of the day.