Current Affairs

by Raskin, Barbara;

  So I shut my eyes and do what I always do. Mickey is doing, I assume, what he always does. Actually he feels me up quite a bit, which is nice, since Eli doesn’t bother with that much anymore. Revenge, of course, sweetens everything. The juxtaposition of love and hate always heightens the thrills of sex. Hateful love—like a whiskey priest, criminal lawyer, defensive weapon or peace-keeping missile—is an exotic concept that spices all sorts of different experiences.

  “You see? It works just like it’s supposed to,” Mickey says, holding himself up for inspection.

  “Why shouldn’t it?”

  “You’re too sheltered,” he complains. “In New York, maybe only one in five works. Or at least that’s what I hear. Twenty percent.”

  So I look at the unfamiliar organ he’s holding.

  It could belong to a dinosaur.

  It is primitive, primeval, prehistoric.

  A blunt, unrefined, undefined part of human anatomy. It is large and red and ugly as sin.

  Old as Man.

  “Your Eli must be some hero,” he says.

  “I really don’t want to talk about him right now.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  Then, like teenagers with two straws stuck in the same soda, we begin to keep company. Seek a rhythm. Find a beat. Work it out. At first I don’t like the way he does it very much. I’m probably too used to Eli. Mickey is totally different. Everything feels somewhat strange and offbeat. It’s all right, but not great. Just okay. This must be what methadone feels like after years of heroin. The craving’s cut, but the high’s not the same.

  Then I realize:

  This is just recreational sex.

  This is like the recreational shopping we did in Southampton. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s like playing tennis or golf or going horseback riding on a dude ranch. You do it just to do it. You do it just to see how good it can make you feel. You do it to kill off a July afternoon when your life’s falling apart and you’re powerless to impede its collapse.

  Mickey’s in no hurry. He starts things and then drops them. The minute we get some real major mo going, he stops and sits up on the edge of the bed. He studies my body. I dig my nails into the palms of my, hands to stifle an almost overwhelming impulse to cover myself. Next he gets up and refills our wineglasses. He messes around with the radio until he finds some sixties-style music station. Then we just hang out for a while, sip ping our wine.

  “I guess I’m as different from Shay in bed as I am out of bed.”

  I hand him that remark as if it’s a box of candy from which he must make his own selection.

  “Oh, you know Shay,” he answers lightly. “She gets carried away about everything.”

  “Sex too?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Oh,” I say, deeply wounded.

  “Hey,” he cajoles. “Now what’s the matter?”

  “It hurts my heart to hear you say that.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It sounds like she even has better sex than other people.”

  “Hey, I didn’t say that. And don’t sell yourself short, kiddo. You dig it plenty. You just have to play a little catch-up.”

  “What does she like?”

  “Different things. Have you ever tried amyl nitrate?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for? Your cardiologist to prescribe it?”

  I laugh, although I’m not totally certain what he means, what people do with all their sex enhancers. My sister is part of a bevy of worldly women who know tricks to which I’m not privy. I don’t even know why bidets are such a big deal. This is a bit embarrassing because I don’t like to look primitive.

  Anyway, I do what Mickey tells me to do when he tells me to do it, since he seems to be in active pursuit of my pleasure. Indeed, he is exclusively concerned with pleasure. Mine and his at the right time in the right way. Do I like this or do I like that? Do I like this better than that? Should he do this before he does that? After a while I’m so wired I can’t tell the difference between doing this or doing that in any particular order.

  But then he stops again, totally derailing me.

  “I’m crazy about you, Nat.… Shay’s an acrobat. You’re more of a sensualist.”

  I can live with that.

  As a show of appreciation, I get on top the next time.

  “I knew you’d be fabulous,” he says much later.

  There is no sweeter report card than a good sexual one.

  At the right moment, Mickey takes an amyl-nitrate inhaler from the pocket of his shirt and presses it beneath my nose. I inhale, and suddenly all erogenous sensations are taken to the max. I exist in a state of suspended excitation, an exquisite, seemingly eternal moment of stasis, before I experience a gorgeous explosion of nerve endings that touches off equally dizzying reverberations. I am dazzled and delighted by my own body, thrilled by Mickey and me. This is the kind of selfish pleasure that makes me feel wealthy. Affluent. Benevolent. Magnanimous.

  A regular sexual philanthropist.

  11

  Often when a a woman doesn’t go to bed with a man she desires, she’ll impulsively jump into the sack with the next guy who comes down the pike. It’s a way of punishing herself for missing the real thing. By substituting a lesser experience, usually in the form of a more “appropriate” man, she expresses her own self-contempt and pays reparations to the gods for lost lust. Or lost love.

  Mickey and I have a bedroom fight before he leaves. He starts bad-mouthing Bo again and I get angry. He says Bo’s a loose cannon and there’s no way to know how he’ll perform once we’re at Ariel. I object strenuously.

  “You know, we don’t even know for sure that Jerry got shot because of the Fawn Hall papers,” Mickey says, using aggression to shore up his defensiveness. “Jerry Russo was knee-deep in a lot of illegal shit. He’s got plenty of enemies who might have shot him. It’s also possible he might not have gotten shot if Bo hadn’t gone over there. Your house obviously got looted because those hoods were still looking for the fucking interview. We could have avoided both those events if I’d been allowed to proceed with my plan, if I had just returned the damn papers. But macho man had to high-tail it over there to do his number. Shi-iit.”

  I reject this analysis. I get stubborn, angry. I tell Mickey he doesn’t have to go with us, that I’ll go alone with Bo. Then, rolling his eyes as if I’m nuts, Mickey leaves to dress for dinner. What should have been a creamy postcoital scene turned into a political pissing contest.

  Of course I still take great pains to glamorize myself when I get dressed. Women are supposed to look good after they make out, as a compliment to their accomplice. So after I shower, I finally open the suitcase containing my loot from Southampton. I put on a white silk suit with a tropical-print blouse that cost almost as much as our monthly mortgage payments. Sexually speaking, having delivered the goods, I now feel entitled to some of the spoils—the bad goods.

  I look fine on the outside, but inside my heart is banging around like an unlatched screen door in a thunderstorm. I can hardly look at Mickey when we go to retrieve my car from the garage. He drives and I sit beside him, feeling remorse and regret beginning to seep through my system.

  Oooh! Why did I do it?

  Why did I go to bed with him? And why am I now on my way to shake hands with the Devil again? Rolled up tight like a miniature poster in my evening bag are the famous Fawn Hall papers, ready to be returned. Suddenly I am acting totally out of character—with reckless speed and self-destructive relish.

  Georgetown.

  Ariel.

  Valet parking. A velvety entrance into a large Art Deco space, elegantly decorated. A Republican aura of power-without-grace. Silky strokes from an elegant maître d’, who leads us to our table. The crystal sounds of cultivated voices, mannered laughs, expensive foreign accents. Self-confident Clint Eastwood– and Khashoggi–type men are sitting at white-skirted tables with good-looking younger women in bla
ck sliplike dresses. Satin spaghetti straps drip down over their slim, sexy shoulders as they pose and posture, telling little jokes to provoke salty male laughter.

  These women interest me. They are not like any of my friends or colleagues. These women are a different country—bunnies and bimbos still living off men, still using sex to survive, afraid or unable to upgrade, reeducate or retrain themselves. Shay should write an article about America’s need for rehabilitation centers to retrofit and retrain capitalist geishas.

  Bo arrives and joins us at our table. He’s looking good, as usual, dressed in his vanilla suit, but there’s a subdued air about him tonight. He shakes hands with Mickey. Smiles. Means it. Then he looks at me.

  A long moment passes.

  He knows.

  He knows Mickey and I have become lovers.

  He knows that after I left Herb’s I went to the Hilton and made out like a bandit with my sister’s lover.

  Bo is hurt bad.

  Kicked in the balls.

  He sits down, starts to fidget with his cigarette lighter, adjusting the dial that regulates the height of the flame. He is trying to hide his confusion. He cannot look at me. He is shy, as if he and I had spent the afternoon making love to each other.

  Maybe that’s what should have happened.

  Mickey eavesdrops on our silent conversation. Although he hasn’t got a clue about our feelings, he’s aware of a cosmic disturbance in our vicinity. Reverting to form, he summons the waiter and orders champagne. This at least provides us with the distraction of a wine ritual—the silver bucket, the napkin wrapped like a bunting around the waiter’s arm, the expensive explosion of cork and the giggle of liquid into our glasses. We cleave to the ceremony, seeking recovery time.

  I begin by just sipping my champagne, but soon speed up the tempo. I am heartsick, crushed that Bo knows I slept with Mickey. Everyone is tense and unhappy, feeling either betrayed or alienated. The waiter refills our glasses. Once. Twice. Another bottle. We look around at the other people, the elegant bone-china men and their crystal women.

  Bo is desperate to say something.

  “I wonder if Ocheros’ll sit down and talk,” he says. “This might be the only crack I ever get at him. Excuse the pun.”

  He gives me a swift sidelong look, demanding I laugh.

  So I do. He wants me to laugh, I laugh.

  But Mickey is too pissed off at Bo to be accommodating.

  “What I can’t understand is why the police weren’t watching Nat and Eli’s house,” Mickey says, smearing sarcasm over his words like a thick syrup. “The place just got shot up a few nights ago and yet there wasn’t any surveillance or protection last night. No nothing. Seems like there should have been some sorta extra security.”

  Bo’s face becomes an iron curtain.

  “Also you guys should have come up with some suspects by now. It’s not like you don’t know who’s involved. In fact, that’s what’s causing all the trouble, isn’t it? The names in Fawn Hall’s interview? You must even know their addresses by now. I bet the only thing you don’t have is their shirt sizes. Why don’t you round them up for questioning? I thought the cops were supposed to chase the robbers. So how come the robbers are chasing us?”

  When he stops, silence explodes like a bomb at our table.

  The waiter brings menus. I open the heavy leather folder. They have given me a woman’s menu, without any prices. Nothing costs anything. Señor Ocheros has never heard of nouvelle cuisine. The menu reads like a takeoff on the Palm restaurant. It’s basic roadhouse fare. Ariel may be the last place in North America where a twenty-ounce porterhouse steak and a baked potato with four kinds of topping don’t attract any attention. Here good and bad cholesterol wrestle for dominance in public view.

  “You’re right,” Bo says with a sudden squirt of laughter. “We’ve been a little outta sync up till now, but it looks like we’re gonna turn it around tonight. We’ll give the bad guys everything they want and then they’ll leave you alone. Works out perfect.”

  “Save me from any sermons,” Mickey says coldly.

  “I want to tell you something,” Bo adds. “I’m going along with this gag because Natalie has the right to call the shots and she’s decided to return the interview. But if she gave me the high sign, I would blow this off in a minute. I think anyone who wanted to release that interview to the press could use the subsequent publicity as a shield. No one’s blown away a whistle blower yet.”

  I feel gross. Mickey is treating Bo contemptuously, as if things got fucked up because Bo was somehow limited, incompetent. Bo is hanging tough and I’m in the middle; it is going to be a very long evening. It is nearly ten o’clock and Ocheros is late, but the night is still young here at Ariel. People continue arriving, surveying the scene, drinking champagne and starting to party. We order dinner.

  As I get drunk, my discomfort decreases a little and my tension subsides. This kind of triangle is new and spicy for me. Two handsome men, one I just slept with and the other jealous about it, flank me like bookends. This is how my sister lives her life—sitting in silky restaurants with attractive admirers, locked in sexy triangles that produce involuntary body rushes.

  Talk about strokes.

  Our food arrives, elegantly presented.

  Mickey studies his platter. “This looks good,” he says. “I propose a truce while we eat.”

  He must be hungry. He eats everything. Fast. The next thing I know he’s back at it again.

  “Bo, tell me—why’re you so hung up on there being higher powers involved in all this drug shit? Does that make you feel bigger and better or something? It wasn’t Noriega who ransacked Nat’s house, you know. Some small fry did it and you could round them up in a minute. Shit—even I could.”

  “Don’t turn around,” Bo orders, without raising his voice, “but our man Ocheros just walked in with another clown I know. Ocheros is the little guy. The tall one is some Columbia Road jefe, a bagman for the contras. He’s probably here picking up proceeds, drug money. This is the connection I’ve been talking about.”

  I turn slightly and look toward the doorway, where I see the two men. The small skinny guy is wearing a white Armani suit. The tall one, the bagman, is wearing a flashy silk jacket with slacks that probably cost a thousand dollars.

  There are big differences between a bagman and a bag lady.

  “I couldn’t have wished for anything better than seeing those two pricks together,” Bo says with sweet surprise. “Right in front of my eyes.”

  The maÎtre d’ approaches our table with his wine steward in tow. He looks back and forth between Bo and Mickey for a moment and then, of course, hands his wine list to the white man.

  “Mr. Ocheros would like you to select a wine or champagne with his compliments. He’d like to come over and join you.”

  Mickey orders an expensive bottle of champagne, which arrives only moments before Ocheros does.

  Up close the Nicaraguan looks even smaller and thinner than he did from a distance. He has a sharp copper-colored face, narrow and pinched. His straight black hair sports a wet look.

  “Well, I never thought I’d be doing business with you, Mr. Culver,” he says to Bo with a laugh as he slips into our fourth, empty chair. He has an accent like Desi Arnaz.

  I see Bo flinch as if taking a hit below the belt.

  “Howya doin’, José?” he asks dryly.

  “Mister Ocheros,” the man responds with a quick smear of a smile. “People call me Mister Ocheros until I tell them not to bother.” Ocheros smiles at Bo with false indulgence. “And who’re your friends here? We should have some introduction.”

  “This is Natalie Myers. She’s a social worker who lives in Adams-Morgan.”

  “Madam’s Organ?” José Ocheros asks with a laugh.

  He has clearly made this little joke before.

  “This is Michael Teardash. A businessman from New York.”

  Since both Ocheros and Mickey are seated, their handshake is an
awkward one.

  “Mr. Ocheros,” Mickey says, “I’m a good friend of Natalie here, and also her sister, who’s out of town. I’m also an acquaintance of Jerry Russo, whom I saw this morning.”

  “Yes, how is he?” Ocheros asks, frowning. “It was a terrible thing, someone shooting him like that.”

  “Would you excuse me for a moment?” I ask, rising unsteadily to my feet. “I’ll be right back.”

  I begin a long trek toward the rest rooms. My legs feel weak. I have drunk much too much. The other guests, who had seemed so distinct when we entered, are now blurred and imprecise. Inside the women’s lounge, I finger-comb my hair in front of the mirror until two older women finish smoking their cigarettes and leave. It is good to see my own reflection. It helps me remember who I am.

  Then I open my evening bag, remove the papers, reroll them even tighter and carefully insert them, horizontally, inside my bra. After checking my silhouette in the mirror without detecting any disfiguring bulges beneath my blouse, I reclose my evening bag and walk back out into the restaurant.

  The papers scratch uncomfortably against my breasts, but I feel a comfortable sense of closure. If Fawn Hall could hide documents in her undies to get them out of the White House, I can hide her testimony in my bra to avoid returning it to the criminals who want it.

  Mickey eyes me critically as I sit down again.

  “I guess I’ll have to recap a little,” he says to announce his irritation. “Natalie, you know someone inadvertently removed some papers from Mr. Russo’s home and that now we’re going to return them. Mr. Ocheros and I have come to a clear understanding that, upon their return, all efforts to recover them by any interested parties will cease. There will be absolutely no more acts of retaliation. In other words, Nat, you’ll have nothing more to worry about or fear.”

  “I was sorry to hear about your experience,” Ocheros says to me with mock shock.