Spread

by Malzberg, Barry

  “I’ll fire them both,” I say. “That’s what I’ll do.”

  “You’re not being rational, Walter. Why would you do something like that?”

  “To keep you from getting involved with them. I don’t want you getting involved with people like that.”

  “Oh, don’t be an ass. I’m twenty-five years old and I know exactly how I want to run my life and I’ve been around quite a bit. I wish you’d stop feeling that you can run people’s lives for them. You’re not going to fire them and nothing is going on so just cut it out.”

  “I thought that we had an understanding.”

  “What understanding? Of course we have an understanding. That doesn’t prevent you from living your own life, I’ve noticed. You go home to your wife all the time. I bet you’re making it with her, too.”

  “That’s only temporary. It’s only a matter of a little time until the whole thing is over. I’m just paving the way.”

  “Well, you pave the way. I’m not going to go to bed with either of them, believe me, Walter. I’d just make one of them jealous if I did.”

  “Come here,” I say.

  “Come here? What are you talking about?”

  “I said, come here. I’m going to bang you right here in this office with the doors closed, just twenty feet away from them, that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “Listen, Walter, if you want to do that you can. I won’t stop you, but it’s awfully immature, isn’t it? What is it going to prove?”

  “Nothing,” I say, unbuttoning, unzipping, clinging, unfolding, suckling, “but it’s something I want to do.”

  “It’s childish of you. It doesn’t change a single thing. And you shouldn’t have the idea that you can have me anytime you want. I have feelings you know.”

  “Oh, God I know. I know you have feelings,” I say, and plunge thickly into her without preparation, solder her tight, begin the familiar in-and-out motions, but moving sidewise since she is sprawled across my lap on the editorial chair, holding my neck and stroking as I wedge in quickly. “Everybody has feelings.”

  “The phone could ring, Walter. Someone could knock on the door. Someone could even try to come in. Oh, this is stupid, stupid. It’s stupid. Oh, stop that. Oh, God. Oh, don’t do that. Oh, it can’t go on this way. You’re just a bastard, do you know that? You’re an absolute bastard. I’m coming. I’m coming open inside me. I’m coming for you, all the way down. Oh, Oh. Oh, God.”

  Afterward, routinely, we dress and separate, part with smiles. She is quite right, however: when she leaves the office the faggarts are still there, chatting seriously in the corner about inventory, and they give her waves as she passes. It is one more nest of complication is what it is, although I could hardly fire them; they know things about the business that I could never understand, they have close contacts with the attorneys, and they are responsiple for the cash flow. Besides that, they are homosexuals and homosexuals have no interest in women. I am positive of this although a strange flush seems to brighten Virginia’s cheeks as she sits typing near them when I pass on my way to the elevator an hour later. The flush is not for me; it is not for them; it is, perhaps, only for herself. I say something to her as I pass by but she does not hear me. Small dimples appear in the corners of her mouth; she smiles to herself winsomely as with perfect concentration she places her tongue between her teeth and uses an eraser to make corrections.

  XXXII

  An advertisement appears in our classified placed by a young man deeply interested in the foot culture and anxious to give lessons in toe talk. Seeks same or females although males preferred. From a phone booth well removed from the office, I call him and make an appointment for the afternoon. He sounds cool, possessed, advises me that there will be a fee. I tell him that there was no such specification in his ad and he says that of course there wouldn’t be: do I think he is stupid? In any event, he does not practice his expertise for nothing; the fee will be $25 per half hour, payable in advance, and I am free to do as I please. I like his straightforwardness and tell him that I will be at his apartment at the appointed hour. He says that there will be no such thing and gives me the address of a hotel on the west side of Manhattan in whose Room 412 he says he will be at four o’clock. I am to pay the desk clerk the fee plus $5 room rent before going up. I tell him that I like his attitude and without arguing further, agree to what he says.

  The classified interests me more and more; there is a whole world out there that I have literally never touched. At one point I felt like an entrepreneur, above the whole thing, manipulative, so to speak, but now I am not so sure. By opening up the market for advertisements of this sort I have, in effect, created desires, made possibilities, and I must be faithful to them. At the proper hour I am in the lobby of the hotel, a small, smoky building in which, signs tell me, classes in karate and black pride are offered on Wednesday evenings as well as a ceramics workshop. The desk clerk, a round menacing man in Army fatigues, asks me my business and I tell him Room 412; he asks me for $25 and drops his hands below the counter to fondle something which I very well think might be a gun. I remove the money from my wallet, give it to him and am then asked to stand straight, arms by sides for a moment. I do so and the clerk emerges deftly from behind the counter through a swinging door and checks me out top to bottom for concealed weaponry. At last he says I may go up, not to Room 412 but to Room 216 just one flight above. He advises me that I must return at the end of half an hour or he will go up to check on me.

  I climb the dangerous stairs, sliding a bit on the unsteady steps, clinging to the bannister, and walk down the hall of the second floor, past a few pans of lukewarm soapy liquid and an old man dozing inside an open elevator. Room 216 is at the end of the corridor, and I try to enter without knocking, find it locked, knock gently until the door is opened by a huge blond man bare to the waist. He asks me to state my business and I say that I have an appointment. He gives me a long, careful look and then takes me into the room and leaves, locking the door behind him. I feel no sense of apprehension; I am too suspended in admiration for technique to have any fears whatsoever. Besides, all advertisers in our newspaper, we give our readers to understand, have been pre-selected and may be assumed to have our Seal of Approval. Even the prophylactic creams.

  A small, wiry man is on the bed, naked except for socks which are knee-length. He is wearing glasses which he removes when I come near him. “Please undress,” he says. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk. I don’t like conversation and if you have anything to say, you’d better say it now.”

  “I don’t have anything to say.”

  “Good. Then please undress.”

  I undress except for my socks. “The socks off too, please,” he says. “How can you leave those on?”

  “You left yours.”

  The man shakes his head. “You don’t understand,” he says. “I’m very sensitive about my feet. No one sees my feet, do you follow that? No one.”

  “Why not?”

  “You don’t understand toe queens at all, do you?” the man says. “My feet are mine. They are the most private part of me. Take off your socks unless you want to leave the room at once.”

  I do not particularly want to leave the room at once. I remove my socks, looking out the window which has a fine view of Broadway; several people are gathered around a fruit stand which seems to have toppled; a perfect explosion of cucumbers, peppers and grapes lie on the asphalt, and the owner, tearing at his head, is trying to get some organization into the affair while passers-by snatch up the scattered fruits and vegetables and stuff them into large shopping bags which they appear to have brought for the purpose. I lie down on the bed next to the toe queen who instantly moves away, comes to his knees, looking at me with piercing eyes.

  “Do you really want it?” he says. “Do you?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Tell me. Tell me you really want it.”

  “I do. I really do.”

  “Tell me w
hat you want me to do with your feet. Go on. Tell me.”

  I tell him, relying upon certain chance phrases which I recall from a couple of dimly remembered books. Also I rely upon an article on foot-fetishes which we had received for publication a year ago but which I rejected at that time as being wildly improbable and applying, at best, to a very small segment of the population. I had suggested that if the author tried to inject some humor into it and did it as a satire on normal sex practices it might be funny but I could hardly see it as a serious piece. It is hardly likely, but perhaps I am with the author of the article now.

  “All right,” the toe queen says, “I’ll do it. I’ll do everything you want. Just lie back.”

  I lie back and let him perform upon me. It is quite interesting although not particularly exciting. From the new angle I cannot see through the window; I wonder if the vegetable crisis has continued or whether the owner has somehow taken control over the situation. I am all on his side; it is no fun to see one’s goods and produce shuffled away by small old people with brown paper bags.

  “You’re not concentrating. You’ve got to put your mind to it.”

  “My mind’s right on it.”

  “No it isn’t,” he says, but continues. I observe him for a while and find, much to my surprise, that I have an erection. He observes it with satisfaction, reaches out to touch it, then continues. The sensations are mildly pleasant although nothing to write home about. They have everything and nothing to do with the act of screwing. I decide that I am not really a toe fetishist and at that moment, to my greater surprise, ejaculate. The toe queen makes a small approving noise, moves away from me and says, “Well, that’s it.”

  “That’s what?”

  “That’s it. You got what you came for. Now you’ve got to leave.”

  “So quickly?”

  “Unless you want to pay again.”

  I decide that I do not and get up slowly; feeling vaguely disconnected; get into my clothes. The toe queen, of all things, curls himself on the bed, yawns, and goes to sleep. I dress; try the door, find that it is locked, suppress panic and knock lightly. The blond man opens it from the outside, comes in, checks the sleeping man on the bed and nods.

  “Well,” he says; “what are you staying around here for? You got what you came for, now get out.”

  So I get out. I do not know exactly how I feel, it is not precisely liberated but then, as my own articles in the newspaper have pointed out, too much liberation at a single time would undoubtedly kill us. It is better to take things in small doses. Unconsciously I have been limping, I realize. The desk clerk gives me a knowing, sideways look as I stagger past him and I push my stride into its usual free-form float as I hit the pavement, although unquestionably my toe does now ache a bit as I come into Greenwich Village.

  The vegetable man is standing by his cart mumbling as I pass. No one is around him. All of his produce seems to be gone; all that remains on the cart are some wrinkled ears of corn, a few brown radishes and a rotting pumpkin, a face carved into it in an inept rotting grin which seems, eyeless, to wink at me as I pass.

  My foot tingles unpleasantly for several days thereafter and I go in for epsom salt baths. They do no particular good but induce sufficient tenderness and sensitivity in the foot as a whole to make the toe no longer an object of special concern.

  XXXIII

  Tony from the Bronx has a new system. His brother has been fired from the racing sheet in a general shake-up and cutback maneuver which is part of the economic depression, and now Tony will play on his own hunches and inspiration. “He was never any good anyway, the lousy son of a bitch,” he confides to me over the phone. “Every now and then he’d give you a little something but more often than not it would pay a low price or lose; and the real good stuff he was always holding back for himself. He was the same way when we were kids; I was a couple years younger than him, and I was always getting the girls that he dumped. By the time he ran through them, they wasn’t good for nothing. I was running on seconds; until I was twenty years old I thought they was loose inside.” Tony has an excellent hunch that Prophet’s Bell in the feature will run in at 7–1 or more. He wants me to go out and play a $100 to win for him and apply the profits to his bill if he collects; otherwise I can carry it on for him. And he will, of course, pay my car expenses, admission and even a very small lunch.

  “But listen,” I point out to him, “I don’t want to go there anymore. I don’t want to run your bets, Tony. I’m a publisher; not a runner. I’ve got better things to do in the afternoon than run out to Aqueduct.”

  “It isn’t Aqueduct any more, you dummy, it’s Belmont. They run at Belmont until the middle of October and then they go to Aqueduct because that’s the winter track. You don’t keep up, do you?”

  “I’m not a horseplayer. I really don’t find that it interests me. If it’s all the same to you, Tony, I’d just as soon not be a runner.”

  “Now you listen to me, kid,” Tony says over the phone in a rather ugly tone of voice; although I have never seen him (this is a fact), I can picture the convolutions on his face as he gathers the mouthpiece close to his lips. “You listen to me; I been floating your lousy stinking little operation up here on the Concourse for two years. If it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t have a Bronx circulation. Everything you make out of the Bronx, every penny, you owe to me, and furthermore I got contacts in Brooklyn and Richmond Hill, too. I can cut you off just like that, you understand me?”

  “I understand you.”

  “Listen, kid,” Tony says, “I really don’t like to talk to you like this. It breaks my heart. You seem to be a nice kid from our conversations and you got a nice little rag there; nothing sensational, you understand, but a lot of fun, and personally I enjoy reading it. I don’t mind pushing it around. But you got to understand in this business exactly who your distributor is and what he means to you and what he can do, and you got to show a little common respect. Now I’ve taken it easy with you because you obviously ain’t been around very much yet and a lot of these things you got to pick up by being in earshot. But sooner or later, you got to get the point across. It really hurts me to have to talk to you like I did. Make believe I didn’t, huh? Just forget the whole thing.”

  “All right,” I say. “It’s forgotten.”

  “Just go out there and bet the horse for me and I’ll finance a little bet for you, too. Say you put five on his nose and charge it on my account. Win or lose. If he comes in, you can get to keep everything, even the original five. All right?”

  “All right, Tony,” I say.

  “That’s a good kid. And you can call me from a luncheonette outside the track right after the race and tell me how it all worked out. I don’t like to wait for the wire, it takes forty-five minutes and gets you all distracted. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “What I think you ought to have in that sheet if you don’t mind my saying so, is more young girls. I mean, a distributor just takes the stuff out, he doesn’t have the expertness that you have and I don’t want to presume because you probably got a hell of a lot more education than I do, but I got good taste and I know what really interests people. You ought to get some young girls in that sheet, like thirteen, fourteen years old, you know what I mean? Young stuff with just half-formed titties spreading it open for you. That’s what the guys like to see. They don’t like to look at a whole lot of hippie whores about forty years old.”

  “I appreciate that, Tony,” I say, “but there are certain problems when you start printing pictures of kids. They can get you for corrupting the morals of minors and so on, even if you have signed releases. Of course we can try to get some models who look like kids and get them in there. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Well, sure. Whatever you say. You’re gonna make that bet for me now, are you?”

  “Yes,” I say, “I’ll make the bet for you.”

  I hang up the phone after more courtesies and editorial comment and get my coat and go off
to the track. At least the job as it has been developed leaves you with a certain mobility, there is no question of that. It is a long drive to Belmont — much longer than to Aqueduct — and I lose my way several times, but I manage to get there by the seventh race and put a hundred on Prophet’s Bell for Tony, five on Prophet’s Bell for myself. Then I stand in the garden, drinking beer under the toteboard, waiting for the call and hoping that the horse will lose. If it loses I can look forward to less Belmont errands in the future.

  The horse wins and pays $9.60. A lot of people seem to have been in on the information. I apply the three hundred and eighty dollars profit to Tony’s bill but it turns out that he still owes us several thousand dollars. I begin to have a vague understanding of how Tony plans to work that off and of who exactly is going to do the working for him.

  XXXIV

  New sales figures, tentative, but highly trustworthy, indicate that circulation has dropped off alarmingly within the past month; from 110,000 to 80,000 or perhaps even a little less. Everyone seems at a loss to understand this; the newspaper has remained in the same format for two years and the quality of the last issues did not vary from the standard we have established. It is true that the book reviewer quit, saying that he had run out of books to review, but this can hardly be called an outstanding feature and otherwise the mix has held to its previous level.

  I have a series of conferences with myself — there is really no one ese to talk to about this, Virginia is nothing more than a secretary and the faggarts are purely mathematical types — and decide that I can do nothing but ride on as before. The basic soundness of the package has been proven, even if the District Attorney took some of the strength out of it at the beginning. Perhaps it is a reflection of the overall economic situation and people, cutting back on their purchases, are reusing materials to jerk off to. This is plausible and means that when the stock market and employment begin to curve upward again, masturbation will begin to occupy its role once again as a joyous release in the lives of our consumers and sales will move far beyond the initial curve.