Gigolo Johnny Wells

by Lawrence Block

  To hell with you, he thought. You probably haven’t done it twice in one night since they shot Lincoln. So you’ve got nothing to gripe about.

  When he left she gave him one hundred and seventy-two dollars, which struck him as an unlikely sum but certainly more than sufficient. He was pleased by the payment but roundly disturbed by his own performance, or lack thereof. Despite what he’d said to old Margaret, she hadn’t taken anything out of him but desire. Making love to any woman twice in one night was nothing for him. And to top it off, he hadn’t had any woman in better than two weeks.

  So what was wrong?

  It happened again the night after that. This was worse, because it happened the first time and he certainly couldn’t plead exhaustion. Nor could he rationalize his failure to himself. The woman involved was not unappealing by a long shot. She was a neat little number cheating on her husband and she had a body that couldn’t have been better.

  But nothing happened.

  Again he covered himself, this time in a different way. “Darling,” he warbled, “you must get bored with the usual run of lovemaking. I want to make love to you in a new and different way.”

  She was all for it. She said something properly silly about variety being the spice of life and he gave her enough spice to fill a few hundred pepper mills. He satisfied her skillfully without revealing his impotence.

  This may have satisfied her but it sure as hell didn’t satisfy him. It kept him from sleeping that night. He tossed and turned in his own bed all night long, and when he finally did drift off to a hazy sort of sleep it was beset by continual nightmares. He woke up exhausted, feeling as though he’d just finished running twenty miles with an eighty-pound albatross around his neck.

  Bad.

  Very bad.

  Terrible.

  He couldn’t figure it out. It couldn’t be that he was too old. Hell, he’d just turned all of eighteen. No matter how much loving-around you did, you didn’t get too old for it at age eighteen. It was senseless.

  What was he supposed to do? Travel? Take a vacation? He’d just done both of those things and now he was up the creek in a lead canoe. An impotent gigolo. You didn’t get rich that way.

  So what was he supposed to do?

  He went to the library and read up on impotence. All he could find was that it was almost exclusively psychological, which was something he had already figured out.

  Chapter Seven

  “HOLD ON,” HE SAID. “Right here is good enough.”

  “This is only 93rd,” the cabby said. “Thought you wanted 96th Street.”

  “This’ll do.”

  He passed a bill to the driver, told him to keep the change, then opened the door and swung out onto the sidewalk. It was a bright, warm day — no clouds, a hot sun overhead. For several moments he stood still on the sidewalk, watching the cab pull away from the curb and continue north on Broadway, looking the old neighborhood over to get the feel of it once again after three or four months away from it, sniffing the air and getting his bearings. Then he crossed Broadway at the corner, then continued uptown toward 96th Street with his arms swinging at his sides.

  The same old neighborhood, he thought. The same buildings, the same people. He wondered what he’d expected to find. Nothing much, he thought.

  Why come back at all? That was a good question. The books would have dozens of answers. Symbolic search after his vanished past. A back-to-the-womb movement. An unconscious attempt to regain his previous footing now that he was slipping.

  Hell with it. He was coming back to have a look at his old stamping grounds. To hell with the books. That was all he was doing and to hell with it.

  He wore the jacket of his brown tweed suit with a pair of soft brown flannel slacks. He wore a tan sport shirt open at the neck. He walked easily, but as he approached the pool hall he felt his stride changing to the walk of the old Johnny Wells. He was turning into a jungle animal again, walking hungry. He felt old familiar lines of tension and wariness return to the corners of his eyes and to his mouth.

  Home, he thought. He grinned wryly to himself and pulled open the outer door of the pool hall, then took the stairs two at a time. He was still in good shape — good living hadn’t ruined his physical condition at all. He hesitated at the top of the stairs, glanced through one door at a small bowling alley, then opened the other door and strode into the pool hall.

  Nothing was changed. Cigarette butts were sprinkled across the wood board floor. A gnarled man stood behind the counter and smoked a cigar. Teen-agers leaned against the walls, bent over the green felt-covered tables, smoked and talked. Older men played billiards with the precision of mathematicians. It took Johnny a couple of seconds to get his bearings. He hadn’t been in a pool hall since he had left the neighborhood. A gentleman didn’t frequent a pool hall. A gentleman didn’t play pocket pool at all and if he played billiards it was in a home or a private club. He felt awkward standing there and covered his awkwardness by lighting a cigarette. He blew out smoke and felt a little more at home.

  He looked around. There were plenty of familiar faces but he couldn’t put names to any of them. Ricky and Beans and Long Sam were not around He glanced at his watch. It was almost five. Maybe someone would drop around soon.

  He walked to the counter and the gnarled man looked up at him. “Gimme a pool table,” he said. The man nodded shortly and told him to take table six.

  He walked over to select a cue and thought that it was funny — he hadn’t said I’d like a table or A table please. Instead his speech had found its way back to four months ago. It fit the neighborhood again. Funny.

  He found a heavy cue that didn’t seem to be warped. He rolled it on table six and saw that it was true. He racked the balls tightly, chalked his cue and broke the pack. He walked around the table, getting his bearings, then took an easy shot at the six, trying to poke it into the side, and miscued. He topped the cue ball and it dribbled off the side for a scratch.

  He cut his next shot too thin and missed the pocket a full six inches. He shot several more times and missed each time, and he felt as though everybody in the place was staring at him. This he knew at once to be patently ridiculous. Few people at a pool hall waste their time watching other players. But he was embarrassed and more than a little disgusted by the way he was playing. He stopped to light another cigarette and smoked for a few minutes while studying the table and trying to settle down. Then he ground the cigarette under his heel and picked up his cue again, crouching over the table.

  He sank two in a row, missed a tough bank shot, dropped another ball, then missed twice in a row. He kept playing and gradually his game came back to him. He still knew how to play — it was just a question of restoring the lines of communication between his brain and his hands. Piece by piece the lines returned. His cuts were more precise, his English better, his position more nearly accurate. He ran a string of five balls climaxed with a tough combination shot and felt a lot better.

  He went on playing. The game took control of him — once he got better he stopped worrying about the people around him, about himself, about anything other than the game. He cleared the table, racked the balls, cleared and racked again and again. From time to time somebody approached him and suggested a game; each time he dismissed the new arrival without raising his head and went ahead with his practice. He did not get particularly good but then he had never been top-flight. He could give Beans a game and could take Long Sam most of the time but he was never a match for Ricky. He simply wasn’t that good.

  He lost track of the time and merely played. Then, while he was lining a hard shot and gauging his position at the conclusion of the shot, a hand took hold of his cue. He whirled around, angry, and Ricky was there.

  “Cool,” Ricky said. “You’re a stranger here. Welcome home, man.”

  “You been around long?”

  “Ten minutes. I been watching you. Man, I never saw you work so hard on a string of balls in my life. You were almost sweat
ing, man. You weren’t so bad, come to think of it.”

  “Just out of practice.”

  “Yeah, I guess. What are you doing here man? Thought you were gone for good. I was digging the threads, you know, and they stack up fine. You dress like money. What are you doing uptown, huh? Slumming?”

  The tone was banter but Johnny caught a note of reproach. “Just wanted to drop around,” he said. “See people, like that. What’s happening?”

  “Not much.”

  “Beans and Sam around?”

  Ricky shrugged. “Beans lammed,” he said. “Two, three weeks after you split. Somebody tipped him they saw fuzz around his building. Beans didn’t even try to go home. He had a roll stashed and he grabbed it and split. Caught a rattler for Chi.”

  “He still in Chicago?”

  “I don’t know, man. Like he never wrote.”

  “And Sam?”

  Ricky sighed. “Sam got busted,” he said. “He hit this cat and this cat got a look at his face before the lights went out. Picked Sam out of a lineup. We found Sam a lawyer who told him to cop a plea. He got a year and a day. His lawyer put the fix in for him and he should be on the street in another, oh, three months at the outside. Makes a total of six months.”

  “That’s hard.”

  “It’s a bitch.”

  “And you?” Johnny looked at him. He looked the same — the same clothes, the same hungry look. But it was always hard to tell what Ricky was thinking.

  “I’m alive. You want to split, talk over a beer or something? This place can get on your nerves after a while.”

  “Solid.”

  Johnny returned his cue to the rack, went to the counter and paid for his time. He’d been there almost two hours. It hadn’t seemed that long.

  They went down the stairs to the street, then around the corner and across 96th Street to a small neighborhood bar. Ricky ordered two glasses of draft and they carried them to a table. Johnny sipped the beer and didn’t like the taste. But he couldn’t order cognac in a bar like that. It would be definitely the wrong way to come on. He sipped more of the beer, then lit another cigarette and gave one to Ricky.

  “So?”

  “I don’t know,” Ricky said. “It’s a hassle.”

  “There’s a shortage of marks?”

  “Not that. But you get a reputation. You hustle too long and they know you, see you coming. I can’t get a game around here unless it’s with some dumb schmuck who just blew in from Toledo or something. I been going up to a few places in the Bronx, neighborhood places up there where they don’t know me. Another week or two and they know me there. It’s a bitch.”

  Johnny didn’t say anything.

  “Anyway, another two weeks and it doesn’t matter.”

  “How’s that?”

  “The army. I’m going in.”

  “You get drafted?”

  “Hell, no. They don’t draft you until you’re past twenty-one around here. No, I signed up. Three years working for old Uncle Sam.”

  Ricky made circles on the table top with the beer glass. He made half a dozen circles while Johnny sat and watched him. “I don’t know,” he said. “I figure it’ll be a drag. But it’s like more of a drag sitting around on your butt all the time, looking to hustle some schmuck for a couple of bucks, then taking in a movie or some dumb broad with braces on her teeth and her eyes crossed. At least I get out of this crap town. Three squares a day, a nice pretty uniform to get the broads nice and hot. Maybe I’m nuts, I don’t know.”

  “It makes sense.”

  “That’s how I figure it but I might be wrong. How about you, man? Got things going for yourself?”

  “I get by.”

  “You must to dress like that. Those threads cost somebody money, man. You working?”

  “Still hustling.” It was true enough, he thought. He was still working the angles. The money didn’t make him any less of a hustler.

  “Working the broads?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s a living. I guess it’s breaking right for you, huh? That’s all that counts.”

  Johnny nodded. Rick picked up his glass, finished his beer. “Look, man, like I got to go now. I’d like to hang around but I have to cut.”

  “Something cooking?”

  Ricky hesitated. “You remember a girl named Elaine Conners?”

  Johnny remembered the girl vaguely and nodded. He tried to recall whether he had made her or not and decided that he hadn’t. She wasn’t too much to look at. Not ugly, but sort of plain-looking. About a year younger than he was.

  “Well, I been seeing her lately. I got to run over to her place now.”

  “You getting much?”

  Ricky looked slightly embarrassed. “Well,” he said, “no. It’s not like that. I mean she doesn’t want to, well, to put out. I suppose she would if I wanted her to bad enough but I don’t want to push, if you know what I mean.”

  Johnny nodded.

  “The army bit was her idea,” he said. “To get it out of the way, so I won’t have to go later. And partly to get some money saved up.” He lowered his eyes. “Maybe I’ll never see her again, I don’t know. But it looks like we might get married or something when I get out of the army. Hell, it’s too far away to talk about it. But you never know.”

  There was an awkward moment during which neither of them said anything. Then Ricky stood up, grinning. “Take it slow,” he said. “We’ll run into each other, man. Be cool and keep taking good care of the broads. Knock off one or two for me, huh? Just for old times sake.”

  Johnny watched him leave. Then he turned his attention back to his beer. He looked at it but didn’t drink it. He lit another cigarette from the butt of the one he was smoking and thought about Ricky.

  Things had changed.

  Beans was gone, headed for Chi the last anybody had heard. Long Sam was doing a bit in jail with three months to go before he hit the street again. Ricky was ready to put on a uniform and play soldier. And thinking about getting married to a girl who wouldn’t even spread for him.

  Things had definitely changed.

  And here I am, he thought. Looking around for something and not knowing what it is. He didn’t fit this neighborhood any more. He could relax in it, could let his speech find its way back to the way it had been, could walk like a hood and think like a hood. But it was temporary. He didn’t belong on the upper west side any more. He was a different person than the Johnny Wells who had lived on 99th Street.

  Where did he belong?

  A good question, he thought. He picked up his beer, raised it to his lips, then changed his mind and returned it to the table. He just plain didn’t like beer. There didn’t seem to be any point in faking it.

  He stood up and walked out of the bar. He had a problem and he couldn’t find the answer. But the answer had to be somewhere uptown. He was fairly sure of it.

  Outside, the air had a chill in it. He buttoned the brown tweed jacket. He started to put the collar up the way you did on the upper west side when the air was cold. Then he remembered that it was an expensive jacket and left it as it was.

  He started walking after a few seconds of indecision. He had no goal in mind. He simply followed his feet, letting them take him wherever they wanted to go.

  He was surprised when he looked up suddenly and found himself standing in front of the building where he used to live. He had not planned on going back. There was nothing to go back to — his room had undoubtedly been rented time and time again since he left it. There was nobody there whom he wanted to see.

  Then he remembered the girl.

  The fourteen year old one. The virgin. The girl it had been so much fun to make love to, and the girl it had been so amazingly easy to forget along with the neighborhood and the old way of life that went with the neighborhood.

  Now he remembered her, remembered her and wondered what she was like now, wondered what she had been doing and how she looked and other things about her. What had her name been
? Linda, he remembered And her last name had been something unpronounceably Polish, and she lived across the hall from his old room with her alcoholic mother.

  Was she still there?

  Probably not. But it was worth a look, he told himself. He opened the door to the building and walked into the foyer, with cooking smells hitting his nostrils instantly. It was the same building — it looked the same and it smelled the same. He climbed four flights of stairs and passed all the different odors until he was on the fifth floor. Then he found her door, stood awkwardly in front of it for a second or so, and then knocked.

  He waited.

  The door opened. A fat old woman with broken blood vessels in her nose opened the door and stood staring at him. She was indescribably ugly. She was also Linda’s mother.

  “Wanna drink?”

  He did not want a drink. “Uh… is Linda around?”

  “She don’t live here.”

  “Aren’t you her mother?”

  “Yeah, I’m her mother. What good it is to me, I’m her mother. Yeah.”

  “She moved away?”

  “Ungrateful little slut,” the woman said. “She don’t live her no more.”

  “When did she move?”

  “I don’t know. Yesterday, a month ago, last year. I don’t know when. Go away.”

  The woman’s breath was knocking him out. He moved away but kept one foot in the door.

  “You know where she lives now?”

  “Don’t know,” the woman said. “Don’t care. You want a drink? Get the hell out.”

  He got the hell out, glad to get away from the woman. He hurried down the stairs and out of the building and wondered why he was disappointed that Linda hadn’t been around. She wouldn’t have done him any good. The only sensible thing to do with her was to take her to bed, and he couldn’t very well do that in his present state of impotence.