Snitch World

by Jim Nisbet

  Marci batted her eyelashes. “Phillip’s momentary gratitude?”

  Klinger laughed in her face.

  Marci’s gaze did not flinch. “How about my momentary gratitude?”

  Klinger looked at her. Her skin was flawless, her clothes clean, she smelled better than anything else in the room, and she was as dry as a seventeen-dollar martini. Klinger, on the other hand, was wet, cold, broke, alone, he stank of piss and adrenaline and other people’s cigarette smoke and, to say the very least, he hadn’t shaved and if he were to shave he’d have to buy the stuff to do it with and then he’d have to leave an island of stubble around the nick in his cheek until it healed.

  “Give me a fucking break,” he spat. And, in spite of himself, this declamation carried with it an unmistakable note of bitter sincerity.

  I’m too tired for this, he told himself. And, he abruptly realized, whether or not this chick is smarter than I am, she’s not tired at all.

  He could see it in her eyes. She was intelligent, unafraid, fresh …

  And predatory?

  The thought gave Klinger some pause. He was used, in his milieu, to what you might call elevated levels of self-interest. But he’d never had the personal wherewithal to find himself elevated to the stature of prey in another man’s eyes. Let alone, a woman’s eyes. He’d never been worth the trouble. It was that simple. It had always been that simple. He liked it that simple.

  “Look …” he suddenly began. Then he stopped. What the hell was happening to him? Had this woman, this complete stranger, abruptly deprived him of his nerve?

  Her smile exuded confident certainty. “Exactly,” she nodded. Otherwise, she didn’t move. “Where’s the phone?”

  Klinger retrieved it from its pathetic hiding place and handed it over.

  “As you said,” she said after a moment’s examination, “it’s dead.”

  “Yes,” Klinger agreed.

  “And you don’t have a charger.”

  “In my book,” Klinger sighed, “a charger is an armored horse in Ivanhoe.” He shook his head. “Do I look like a charger kinda guy?”

  Marci declined the bait. “So, neither of us has a charger.” She unzipped a side pocket of her purse and dropped the phone into it.

  Klinger mused the situation over. On the one hand, he may have been letting slip an opportunity to further capitalize on last night’s action. Something as simple as a reward, maybe. On the other hand, he might well be dodging the resulting beef. Manslaughter committed in the course of a felony, for example, if manslaughter there had been. Certainly the gravity of the latter seemed far greater than that of the former. So, once this person and that accursed phone were out of sight he would resume fretting over his existence in some other fleabag demesne and, so far as she would be concerned, effectively disappear forever. So far as he was concerned, this person will have become another live round dodged on the obstacle course of life.

  “I … suppose you can always get your hands on a charger,” Klinger suggested. “No doubt,” he brightened, “your friend Phillip’s got a charger. No?” he finished feebly.

  Marci zipped the side pocket closed and set the purse/ briefcase on the floor next to the bed. “No doubt.” She stood and, much to Klinger’s dismay, began to remove her jacket.

  “Uh,” said Klinger, nervous. “What now?”

  After but a moment’s hesitation Marci hung her knee-length jacket on the lonely hook on the back of the entry door, dead center below a printed card headed rules, chief among which figured no visitors.

  “Now?” Marci turned to Klinger and touched a button on her blouse.

  “Now you may fuck me.”

  ELEVEN

  A slight tremor clambered up the sternum, bifurcated at the manubrium, and dissipated. Nothing more. The only sounds specific to the room were the far-away laser battle peculiar to the rustle of silk, and the tinkle of bracelets. The only thing to look at was the sublunary lambence of her skin, unmarked by a past, all too present, presentimental, utterly incisive to the imagination. And what his imagination presented to Klinger was dread. If the specter of lust had arisen, it would have dissolved into weightless foam upon the beach of his feckless trepidation. But there was no lust. Only aversion. Only the abrupt thought of the cash in his pocket, only a sudden apprehension as to where, exactly, that pocket might be at the moment, what with a stranger in his room and all. Only the feeble light admitted to his cave by the exit to all else, a door, a portal, a vector created by the vacuum sucking him parched and drinkless into the greater world, a mere three or four days hence. Klinger lifted his hands and it may well have looked like a supplication. He even managed the word “please.”

  She paused in her undressing. “No need to beg,” she smiled.

  Klinger shook his head and made little waving motions with the palms of his hands.

  Marci allowed the shoulders of her blouse to fall to her elbows. Her black brassiere seemed the tracery of indecipherable arabesqueries upon the ivory astrolabe of her skin.

  His mind just short of flailing itself for a rationale, Klinger began again. “It’s not …” he stammered, “I …”

  A shadow of uncertainty flitted from one carefully sculpted eyebrow to another. “What is it, then?”

  “It’s just that … You have the phone,” Klinger blurted.

  She looked at her purse.

  “Please!” Klinger exclaimed through clenched teeth. “Take it and go.”

  Was he begging? Perhaps she caught the tone of mendicity. Perhaps it was unmistakable, perhaps she’d heard it before. But the vein of this plea was different. She countered it with one of her own. She peeled the diaphanes of the brassiere from her breasts. “I’m getting married soon.” One sleeve of the blouse slipped off her arm. “I want experience.”

  Klinger’s head was shaking involuntarily, but the negative was volitional. “No.” His hands fluttered as if feebly trying to wave off a wall as it fell on him. “I mean … I’m not … It’s …”

  Now she shook her head. “Everybody’s got something to bring to the sexual feast,” she assured him. “It’s the nature of experience in the natural realm.”

  Klinger, still shaking his head, exhaled loudly. “This is not natural,” was all he could think of to suggest.

  The other sleeve slipped off the other arm. “It’s the most natural thing in the world,” she asserted with confidence. “And it only gets better with experience.” She batted her eyes. “Or so I’m told.”

  “So—so,” Klinger stammered, “why not practice with your … your intended?”

  “He’s too busy,” she stated mater-of-factly. The blouse dropped to the floor. “I hardly ever see him.”

  “That … that’s a shame,” Klinger managed.

  She took a step forward.

  Klinger took a step backward.

  Marci frowned, just a little, but she was also amused. “Are you serious?” she said, unable to repress a smile.

  Klinger vigorously nodded.

  Marci applied the fingertips of one hand to a corner of her mouth, as if considering Klinger’s reticence.

  Klinger, who had never experienced a migraine headache in his life, felt one coming on; it was if a slim blade were slowly entering the right hemisphere of his brain. He squinted one eye against it.

  She moved one step closer. “What was your name?”

  “Smith,” Klinger told her involuntarily. He opened the eye. “I mean Klinger. It’s Klinger.”

  Her hands had fallen to the zipper on the hip of her skirt. “You’re not living up to it,” she said huskily.

  Klinger frowned. “I beg your—. Oh.” He shook his head. “You mean, I’m not clinging very well.”

  She shook her head. “You’re not clinging at all.”

  “Well,” Klinger stipulated forthrightly, “perhaps you’re not getting the message.”

  The zipper, an inch or two along its course, stopped its descent. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

&nb
sp; She looked alarmed. Klinger made the palms of his hands shape the air between himself and this strange woman, as if they were finding their way through spider floss. “Nothing, nothing,” Klinger insisted. “It’s just that I—. I …”

  Now Marci’s own enthusiasm began to wane. “It’s just that you what?” she asked with apparent sincerity. “Come on.” She pulled the zipper back to its public position. “You can tell me.” She crossed her arms over her breasts and frowned. “Are we queer? Impotent? Dead?”

  Klinger began to shake his head, but switched to nodding it. Then, reconsidering, he began to shake it again.

  “Well?” she said. “Go ahead. Don’t be afraid. You can’t shock me. As Vice President of Compliance, I’ve heard it all.”

  Klinger resolved to speak before she threatened him with therapy. “It’s just …” he began.

  Marci nodded.

  “It’s just that …” Klinger began again.

  “Come on,” she coaxed him.

  “It’s just that I don’t give a shit,” Klinger expostulated, and speaking with more energy than heretofore.

  For once in the hour, Marci seemed taken aback.

  “It’s that simple,” Klinger said, modulating his tone so as to sooth her. “And it’s nothing personal. Honest.”

  Marci appeared to consider this.

  “Trust me,” Klinger told her, deliberately tamping the begging tone from his voice. “It’s the way it is.”

  Marci watched the palms of her crossed arms as they smoothed her own breasts. “While it’s true that I don’t have much experience,” she said, “which is what I was trying to glean, what little I do have is contravened by your professed reaction.” She slipped the fingers of each hand beneath the upper seam of the respective cup of her brassiere and inhaled so that her breath hissed between her teeth. “Am I not to your liking?” she asked, watching him through slitted eyes.

  Klinger bit his lip. She was nubile, for starters. She had beautiful skin and, for all he knew, she was a beautiful woman. Klinger bit the inside corner of his mouth. Experience would come, all right. But that wasn’t Klinger’s point. Klinger’s point was that Klinger didn’t give a shit. A point very difficult, if not impossible, to explain to anybody, let alone to this young woman. She, to whose every whim a large portion of the world’s men would only be too happy to cater, could barely comprehend that the wages, as it were, of such as Klinger lay well beyond her ability to pay. Only profound experience of the type with which catalogue Klinger was all too familiar would grant to this woman, this girl, this … foxy executive a mere gleam of insight into the depth of Klinger’s despair. If sexuality is an impulse toward life, it is precisely the impulse that the likes of Klinger long ago left behind, and assiduously avoid recultivating, for, to them, any impulse toward life, sex included, perhaps sex chief above all, serves only to prolong the agony; and, if you were really unlucky, exquisitely so.

  “Put your clothes on,” Klinger abruptly said. His voice carried an unexpected ring of authority, and it was sufficient to take Marci aback. Her complexion colored.

  She let fall her hands, then extended her arms away from her hips, palms outward. “Do you not find me desirable?”

  “I’m sure you’re very beautiful,” Klinger said quietly, his voice uninflected by so much as a particle of interest. “And no doubt your future husband will express himself accordingly.”

  She appeared to consider this. But watched him as she did so. “I’ve never had an orgasm,” she suddenly announced.

  While, to some people, this may seem a fine topic for discussion, Klinger found himself at the end of forbearance. Can of worms, he told himself. You’re almost out of it. Don’t go there. He pointed at the briefcase. “There’s probably an app for that.”

  Poised for disappointment, Marci smiled. “Phones are getting good,” she said. “But not that good.”

  A silence fell between them.

  “I can’t help you,” Klinger finally said.

  Marci looked at him, then looked around the room. Fourteen by twelve feet. Curtains, once beige, now brown, with finger smudges shoulder high. Tinfoil on the panes, as perhaps a poor man’s Faraday grid, intended to keep out evil radio signals along with the least soupçon of daylight; a sempiternally cold radiator below, and it, too, painted gray many times. A dirt-flocked light bulb on a cord dangled from the ceiling, and a beaded pull-chain dangled from that, with an odorless and faded pine-tree air freshener as finial. Gray carpet heading to black, its pile mostly shredded, even its formaldehyde leeched into the ambient fetor long since, let alone any comfort it might afford to stockinged feet. A brown haze deposited by cigarette smoke on the ceiling directly above the damp impression of a human on the bed’s gray blanket. A bedside stand that held no clock, no book, no phone, no radio. The walls had been papered, painted, papered, then painted again, gray, gray, gray, into the layers of which many thumbtack holes revealed a long and fading trail of disappeared images, icons, photos, clippings, pinups, prayers, calendars. She turned back to Klinger. “Of all the places to find a man I can respect,” she said at last. She retrieved her blouse from the floor, turned her back on him, set about getting dressed. “You’ve never had a decent woman in your life?” she said to the door.

  “The more decent they were,” Klinger answered without hesitation, “the sooner I ruined them. After that, they were nothing but trouble. In the end I realized that if I cut women out of my equation, I saved myself any number of difficulties. Them, too.”

  “And how long ago was that?” she asked the door.

  Klinger snorted. “I have no idea.”

  She turned around. “How’s this?”

  “You’re pretty with your clothes off, you’re pretty with them on,” Klinger offered.

  She made a little grimace. “It’s kind of you to say so. Now what?”

  Klinger shrugged. Despite having been up all night, he no longer felt like sleeping. “Now I guess I’ll get some coffee. After that, I’ll visit the Goodwill, buy myself some dry clothes.”

  Marci put on her jacket. “How about some breakfast?”

  This took Klinger aback.

  “Know a place?”

  Klinger nodded dumbly.

  She glanced at the face of a little watch on the outside of the wrist that bore no bracelets. “We’ll be able to buy a battery in about an hour.”

  Klinger blinked. “We?”

  Marci nodded. “If Phillip’s phone coughs up the information I need, there will be a reward for you.”

  “Reward …” Klinger repeated, almost to himself. “What sort of reward?”

  “Well,” Marci smiled wryly, obviously gaining on her former confidence, “since you turned down the good stuff, how about a little cash money?”

  “Money …” Klinger said softly. “Oh, money …”

  “Jesus Christ.” Marci made a little frown. “Is money another sign of life you abjure?” She shook her head with authority. “That just can’t possibly be true. If you were to go about eschewing sex as well as money, you’d be as good as dead.” She wagged a finger at him, so that the bracelets rattled. “If not dead in fact.”

  Klinger shook his head. “It isn’t.” Then he nodded. “It isn’t a sign of life which I …”

  “Eschew,” Marci prompted him.

  “Dodge,” he substituted. “Don’t get me wrong,” he continued, suddenly loquacious, “I like money. I really do. It’s just that money is the bane of my existence. All my life,” Klinger confirmed, “money has been the bane of my existence.”

  “Listen to me,” Marci told him, suddenly all gravity. “You dear, dear man.” She extended her hands toward him, palms down. Klinger’s mouth fell open. She turned her palms up and waggled her fingers. “Come on,” she said. Klinger blinked. She waited. Klinger covered her palms with his own. She clasped his hands with hers. She clasped them gently, but she clasped them firmly. She locked eyes with him “Are you listening to me?”

  Klinger nodded
.

  “I can’t hear you,” she said, “Klinger,” she added, using his name for the first time.

  “I’m listening,” he told her.

  “Marci,” she told him.

  “Marci,” he repeated.

  “Look at me,” she told him.

  Klinger raised his eyes. It was the first time he’d looked another human being in the eye in a very long time. He didn’t even go eyeball to eyeball with his own reflection—especially his own reflection. There’s more than one reason they don’t put mirrors in these rooms—. “I’m listening,” he abruptly said.

  “Money,” Marci told Klinger in all sincerity, “should be the bane of other people’s lives. Not yours.” She gave their clasped hands a squeeze. “Other people’s. Understand?”

  Klinger watched her with amazement, and not a little alarm. What money? What other people? There was never any money. None. And there were no other people, not any to speak of, not any other people who counted, no people who counted at all.

  At bottom, Klinger had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Well,” she said. “Do we understand one another?”

  “Sure,” Klinger nodded and lied. “Sure.” He smiled woodenly. “Can I have my hands back?”

  “Only if you promise me,” she said earnestly, “that you will try to bring to bear what I have just told you upon your daily life, and especially,” she squeezed the hands, “upon those around you.”

  Klinger watched her, askance, from under the ledges of his eyebrows. When she’d finished speaking, he moved his head through a figure eight. It might have been a token of hasty agreement. It might have been a recalcitrant shudder of denial. It might have been a fly in an orgone box, desperate to escape.

  “Okay,” Marci said. “Good.” She released his hands, and paused to smile before she retrieved her purse/briefcase from the floor next to the bed.