He laughed even as she pushed his face into the delicate softness of her belly and held him there so that his laughing sounded like continuous baby farts, and continued as she pushed him down through the crisp tangle of pubic hairs, on down to the opened gates where all of humanity has, and will forever, enter the world.
There he lingered, in the fleeting and impossible hope of finding transformation from the irrevocable physicalness of life. Honey, sensing his desire, pushed and thrust, pushed and thrust until Beckman, overcome with even greater lust, injected the mad tentacle of his tongue and with it searched the mysteries of her womanhood.
Only a few hours ago, Beckman could count on two fingers the times he’d had sexual intercourse. The first was the game of guilt-ridden coitus interruptus he and his high school girlfriend had played the night after a football game. They had swilled a whole six-pack of beer and had cheered their team on to victory in the state tournament. It was done in the quiet of a necropolis where they parked her parent’s car and, with fear and trembling, exposed the forbidden fruits. It was, as he was to learn later, like most first encounters among the innocent and the ignorant—clumsy, painful, terrifying, and not a little ridiculous. It never happened with her again, and only a short time after that she stopped speaking to him completely.
The second time was with a prostitute twice his age who bore the scars of a radical mastectomy, a butchered appendectomy, and a difficult Caesarean. That was shortly after he had moved into his first apartment, over a bar in east Baltimore. She was sitting at the bar discussing Brave New World. Beckman was feeling highly gregarious and free-spirited. He sat next to the woman and immediately joined the conversation. The possibility that she was a prostitute had never occurred to him. He assumed she was a public school teacher, relaxing after a tough day with the school kids and, he found out later, that was what she actually had been, but had to resign over “some trouble.” He couldn’t remember exactly how it happened, or just when she unveiled the truth, but Beckman, after seeing her paunchy, scarred body and the lined, sagging face in the light from his window, watched his drunken erection shrink like a deflating balloon. Observing this, the prostitute announced that he needed a “Frenchie,” whereupon he experienced, for the first time, the unheard-of practice—except in jokes—of fellatio. The prostitute worked for over thirty minutes, using all of her anatomical knowledge, but with only partial success. Almost in desperation, and as a last resort, she began a mild, erotic dance about the room, resembling a naked belly dancer, pumping her hips, fondling her one breast and culminating in an act simulating orgasm.
Beckman had read from authorities on the subject that sex was purely a mental phenomenon. There had been case studies on mentally retarded adults to back it up, studies on psychotics, neurotics, asexuals, homosexuals, and classical heterosexuals of average intelligences—all supporting the hypothesis of the psychological dependency of sexual dysfunction. So, Beckman was completely mystified to see his erection reestablished, at least firm enough to do the job, while mentally he felt nothing but revulsion and disgust with his situation. The prostitute, seeing her efforts as successful, leapt into Beckman’s bed and motioned for him to hurry. Beckman, with servile obedience, did as he was bid until sufficient time had gone by, when he joined the prostitute in faking an orgasm.
Lying in bed with the sleeping Mrs. Moskowski, his body drained of its seminal fluids, his ubiquitous symbol of creation and vitality lying raw and withered as a flailed piece of rope on his leg, he felt mystified and slightly appalled at the situation he now found himself in. His George Washington wig had twisted during sleep so that its pigtail hung over his ear. Even Honey’s wig had fallen off and lay like an empty beehive beside her. A year ago, before his last birthday, he would have recoiled from this crazy scene. He would have struggled with the sadness of it for days. But now it was as if a rush-hour crowd had pushed him aside, declaring him forever invalid, denying him their reasons, and their purpose. He felt adrift without wanting to be, forced against his will to find separate reasons and, if he was extremely lucky, a new purpose.
The feeling depressed him and the painful dryness in his throat reminded him of his mortal, ever aging body. He slipped out of bed, wincing from the pain in his genitals, and walked, bowlegged as a rodeo cowboy, to the bathroom. He turned the water on in the shower as hot as he could stand it, and stepped in, determined to bear the pain in the tenderest of places, until the water had numbed it.
He had done some reading on alpha therapy when he started into psychokinesis, so while the hot water coursed over his body, he tried to see only pleasant scenes; mental gray and white pictures of ocean waves on the beach, or gulls turning and calling over Baltimore’s inner harbor, but his efforts were shattered when Honey flung the shower curtain aside and stepped in.
“Ouch, how can you stand it?”
Beckman simply didn’t feel like answering. He truly didn’t give a damn, until she reached for his tortured organ.
“Not!” He leapt back, banging his head against the shower wall.
“Ooooh,” Honey cooed, “it’s hurt, poor thing. Well, I hope it recovers by tomorrow.” She picked up the soap and started to wash her body, smiling at Beckman’s predicament. “Let’s go out tonight. I have the most wonderful place I want to take you.”
“Mrs. Moskowski, I’m broke, not a dime.”
“Christ, don’t worry about it. It’s on me.”
“I can’t. I just . . . ”
“Oh, don’t let your dated masculine pride get in the way. Besides, I probably owe you a great deal for saving my life.”
“I really didn’t do anything. If you hadn’t put that guy’s eye out . . . ”
“Don’t talk about it, don’t even think about it.” Honey looked like a greased-up English Channel swimmer.
“Mrs. Moskowski, I want to find out what’s happened to Malany.”
“Let’s don’t discuss it, all right? And for God’s sake, will you please call me Honey!” She screamed her name loud enough to momentarily deafen him.
“Okay, all right. There’s no need to get angry.”
“I’m not angry. It’s just that I can’t stand to be called that, especially by you. I have to take it from Leon’s hypocritical colleagues. Oh, those verbose clods are real masters of convoluted duplicity.”
“And the poet?” Beckman asked.
“Ha, the greatest lying lecher of them all.”
“So, his interest in Malany is all phony?”
“I’ll say. If he’s had any luck at all, she’s probably been deflowered more times than you have.”
Beckman stepped out of the shower and, dripping wet, went straight into the bedroom to dress.
“What the hell do you think you can do, punch him out like some spurned and outraged lover? Malany does what she wants to do, you should know that. He’s a satyr, that’s true, but he’s not a rapist. If he makes it with her, it’ll be with her consent. So, what are you going to do?”
Beckman stopped, stared straight ahead with pinpoint pupils, past Honey, through the wall, unaware that his underclothes had become soaked with water.
“Here,” Honey said, tossing him last night’s only unsoiled towel. “Finish drying, I want to take you out.”
Beckman thought his lack of fascination, or even of curiosity, with the assorted degenerates of Honey’s private club might indicate a rapidly maturing attitude of tolerance, or could it mean that he was on the road to what the female impersonator sitting at their table called “meaningful fulfillment”? Nothing at Honey’s club was what it appeared to be. Even he, at her near tearful insistence, had dressed in a pinstriped, double-breasted suit of the thirties, wore a carnation in the lapel, and had reluctantly pasted his hair back so that he looked like an Esquire whiskey ad of 1933.
He didn’t even object when one of Honey’s friends, dressed in a black body suit with DEATH stenciled in luminous paint across her forehead, joined them, and at once began caressing his leg. He s
imply took out one of Honey’s joints, lit it from the lighted end of the one that she was smoking, and made it a point to ignore the advance.
Honey rambled on with anyone who sat down at her table: nonsense stuff inspired by chain-smoked joints, and dry champagne laced with a drug she called XYZ. They watched, indifferently, a one act play of nude lesbians dramatize their condition in the straight world with a dialogue of screams and curses. Then a chorus line of female and male impersonators, some in futuristic costumes of clear plastic, others dressed like Roman generals.
At the middle point of the show Honey announced that she was bored and wanted to go. No one seemed to notice even though she had shouted it at the top of her voice. Beckman followed her, weaving past groups of large-muscled, African big game hunters, and assorted historical figures in cod pieces, out to the car. She put a finger to his chin with unusually hard pressure.
“You drive, please.”
Honey was more than drunk. She was high, in the broadest sense of the word. It was as though her mind raced out of control and her body now functioned strictly on hyperfine stimuli. She seemed like a totally rational, completely alert, extra-planetary creature.
Beckman drove her home, which she seemed not to recognize. He sat up with her while she babbled continuous nonsense, drank from a fresh bottle of vodka, and searched, with periodic hysteria, for her lost cocaine. It was after four a.m. before she finally toppled over and Beckman dragged her to bed, made sure she was safe, then removed her keys and a $20 bill from her purse.
He had managed to wangle the poet’s address from Honey before her awareness checked out. It was a seventh story apartment downtown, overlooking the Mississippi River and the Arkansas flats, with inspiring sunsets when the sky was clear. Beckman parked Honey’s Model A across the street from the apartment building. He waited, feeling like a 1920s mobster. A few lights shone on the seventh story. Were they the poet’s? Beckman had forgotten to get the poet’s apartment number. He got out of the car, which, as in 1928, still required some elegance, and glanced ominously down to both ends of the light dotted street.
He dashed, catlike, to the building entrance, and stepped back against the wall, out of the glow of the streetlight. He felt completely ridiculous and, as he kept asking himself; what the hell was he going to do? Rescue Malany as though she were some damsel in distress, or had Honey’s grass and booze turned him into a temporary psychotic?
Car lights turned toward him, moving down the street. Beckman pressed himself flatter against the wall and tried to think of a believable story in case it was the police. The car rolled slowly by. It was the black Lincoln.
Beckman gripped the wall with all ten fingers. He could see the driver looking at the entrance door. The Lincoln went past him and parked in the first space beyond the no parking zone in front of the building. Beckman watched, almost hypnotized by the glaring red taillights of the car. The thought of meeting Malany’s husband face to face, at four thirty in the morning and in front of the apartment building where she had, he suspected, broken her ascetic vows, made him slightly dizzy.
The driver stepped quietly out of the car and started walking toward him. It was the same big man he saw talking to her in the old man’s bookstore. It was clear to Beckman that he would undoubtedly end up, if he was lucky, in the hospital if the man chose to be unreasonable. The man passed him. Without consciously intending it, Beckman moved behind the man and shoved his finger in the man’s back, grabbing him by the collar at the same time. The man froze and Beckman, encouraged, pushed the man’s face against the wall.
“Okay, buddy, don’t shoot. Don’t shoot. You can have it—all I got.” The man pleaded.
To Beckman’s disappointment, the man was trembling; trembling hard enough to rattle the change in his pocket.
“Who are you?” Beckman asked, trying to disguise his voice.
“Look, I’m a private investigator, just trying to do a job. That’s all.”
“Well, what are you doing driving that car?”
“It was part of the expense deal. Hey, who are you? Why do you want to know all this?” The man stopped shaking and was glancing back.
Beckman couldn’t think of a believable explanation, especially since he couldn’t think of one that wasn’t a lie. He continued the bluff, backing away slowly, and said, in his most deadly voice, “Don’t move or else.”
At that, the man dropped his hands and spun around.
Beckman ran for the car. He could hear, even feel, the man’s heavy footfalls behind him. There was no time for psychokinetic concentration. He merely wished, with all of his racing heart, that the man would fall and possibly break his leg. Beckman jumped in the Model A, locked the door, and ground the slow-starting engine while the huge man outside ripped away the door handle and pounded the window glass into webbed fractures.
“I know you, buddy, and you can bet this’ll be in my report!”
The engine started and the Model A leapt clumsily away from the curb, leaving the private investigator stumbling forward in a delayed fall to the street. Beckman drove through the streets of Memphis, panic stricken. He drove without direction or plan, without reasoning, until the car clanked and sputtered with its last drop of fuel. He coasted silently to a stop beside a vast darkness. An unlighted necropolis? No one wastes light on the dead. He was lost, out of fuel, and still not safe. He curled up in the front seat and waited for morning. There seemed little else to do. Morning would come with its perennial promise of a new start.
Beckman awoke with a start and, for a few moments, did not remember where he was. It always frightened him when this happened, and he sat up quickly. A stiffening pain shot down his neck and back. His legs were cramped but, surprisingly, he had slept.
There wasn’t a hint as to what time it was. Beckman wished that he had not hocked his watch last year to buy a case of Muscatel. He needed to know what time it was. He needed that solid and enduring handhold on reality.
A green and thickly wooded park appeared from the vast grayness of morning. Waist-high mist floated among its still-life energy. Beckman got out of the car and looked around. Inconspicuous residential homes jammed the opposite side of the street, and there wasn’t a gas station in sight, or a telephone. He noticed a movement in the park, and watched as a woman, dressed in a white robe, emerged out of the mist. Seeing him, she turned and ran, almost seeming to float away from him.
“Wait!” Beckman shouted. “Wait! I only want to ask you something!”
The woman ran on, robe flowing behind, and mist swirling in her wake. The ground was spongy, and Beckman sank as he lost traction in the soggy, grassy ground. He tried, but he could not close the distance. Was it the condition of the ground or was the woman a true spirit? He was afraid that she might vanish at any moment. But she didn’t vanish. Instead she abruptly stopped and turned to face him. Beckman slowed his pace to catch his breath. The woman was young with wide, clear gray eyes and long, light hair.
“I’m not going to bother you. I only want to know what time it is. I’m lost and out of gas.”
The woman continued to stare at him. She had not heard or understood a word of what he had said.
“Look, please believe me. I’m not going to hurt you. If you don’t know what time it is, then could you tell me where I am and where I can get some gas?”
Yellow sunlight split through the trees and refracted in the mist, glowing around the girl in rainbow colors. Her image seemed to blur and fade into transparency. Beckman, believing now that he was seeing the vision he had longed for since childhood, fell to his knees, sinking several inches into the wet ground.
“Don’t go away, please. I’m lost. I need to know what time it is. Please help me.”
The woman, trembling a little, looked at her watch. “It’s six—si—si—six thirty, mister. Please, mister, don’t hurt me. I’m just a secretary. Please don’t mess with me. I won’t tell anybody. Please.”
Beckman rose from the ground. Cold water ran
down his lower legs. The knees of his pants were caked with black mud.
“You mean you’re not . . . ”
“I’m not crazy, mister, really I’m not. I just like to come out here sometimes before work and walk around. It’s real nice this time of morning. I know you think I’m crazy, but I’m not. Really.”
“But I thought, I hoped you would help me.”
“Help you?”
“Yes,” Beckman said.
The woman looked at her watch again. “Uh, it’s 6:35 now, mister, and I don’t know where the nearest gas station is, but I’ll be glad to call somebody for you when I go to work.”
The girl started backing away, slowly.
“Jesus, how I had wished, how I had hoped, you were from another place, a spirit, an angel, or even an alien from another planet.”
“Oh, God!” the woman half-screamed, throwing her hands to her mouth before she dashed past Beckman and ran, hard, toward the street.
Beckman thought of running after her, but the effort seemed like everything he had tried since meeting Malany—pointless. He could find his way back to Honey’s with a little extra trouble. He wasn’t really convinced that the woman was not truly crazy. He now had the comfortable assurance of facts. The woman was a secretary; the time was 6:35. He walked back to the car, ankle-deep in wet grass and mud. The sun was higher and most of the mist had evaporated, exposing pockets of litter.
He trudged on to the car and down the street. A twisted sign labeled it Goodlett Ave. and, several blocks down, he found a gas station attendant not too eager to sell him a gallon of their precious liquid.
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