by D Keith Mano
élan as a molded plastic suitcase. (I’m looking at my suitcase
now, hence the image. Maybe I should just pack and leave.) My
girls are fresher: college kids who want one or two gigs and don’t
have time enough to get involved with a booking agency. It’s more
work for me, but the customers respond.
There’s one customer I can do without—Mr. Floppy Hat.
Jako told me this. Jako has trouble expressing a personal opinion—at least in front of white men. He kept nodding and excusing himself, until I put my palms on his shoulders and drew him outside. Since my sad afternoon with Rita, I pay more attention
to Jako.
“ W hat’s wrong, Jako?” I asked.
“ I don’t keer for that doctor.”
“ Which doctor?”
“ One what weah the funny hat. ”
“ And the cloak? H e’s a doctor? W hat’s he a doctor of?” But
those distinctions are lost on Jako—to him there are doctors,
period.
It seems that the doctor poured a neat shot of Stolichnaya on
Lazarus—which roused him about as effectively as Jesus’s
“ Come forth.” The cat was still woozy from anesthetic, but I
had brought him back around six—I hated leaving what is, after
all, a feral cat in some vet’s cage. His tail area was furless—the
stitches were obvious. The vodka must’ve stung like shorted
wires. Jako was very upset. I calmed him, but I was perturbed,
too. Humans deserve whatever they get. But cats are free of
original sin.
Joe Solomon was doing one of the dancers’ summer school
homework—Cleopatra, the girl from New Paltz. Advanced calculus, it was. We have such bright people at The Car.
“ W ell,” I said. “ How’m I doing?”
“ You might make a pretty decent topless bar owner some
day.”
‘ ‘What a prospect. ’ ’
“ Mike, the department is feeling embarrassed right now
about Rita’s murder. No leads. Cops are insecure enough, we
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don’t feel loved. We get petulant. We take our bad feelings out
on other people. ”
“ What’re you telling me?”
“ Getting rid of the poker machine was good. But it wasn’t
enough. The Car will be made an example of.”
“ Drugs?”
“ Sure.”
“ Where?”
“ You know.”
“ Christ.”
Booked Berry for next Saturday night—in Glenda’s open spot.
I left a business-like message on her machine. But my heart was
banging.
FRIDAY, JULY 8
Afternoon
No one, but no one—NO ONE—would believe what I ’ve been
through this morning. No one. I ’ve got to get out of this business-m issionary work, yes, that’s it. I ’d rather do missionary work up the Amazon with headhunters. Solid, dependable citizens. Not—topless—dancers.
I ’m asleep at about 11 a.m ., half-asleep. Aware enough to
watch hypnopompic colors in paisley and neon blue race around
the inside of my eyelids. I ’m asleep and I hear a rap, rap, rap of
metal (a quarter) on glass. I awaken, looking like someone had
to sign an exhumation order before I could get up, and there
is . . .
Ta-dah. Bubbles.
On the fire escape, behind the grate, in short-shorts, halter
top and sandals. Waving at me. With a large stuffed elephant
under her arm.
Of course, I ’ve got NOTHING on under the sheet—God
knows how long she’d been watching out there. I cannot maneuver. I wave her off and turn over, pretending to sleep.
“ Let me in, huh? I ’ve got a present for you.”
No response. I do not need a stuffed elephant. Or that other
thing she has for me.
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“ Come on. I ’ll make you breakfast. I ’ll do my Jackie Mason
routine.”
No response. Though, now, yes, I ’m feeling cruel and, worse
for an Episcopalian, I ’m feeling uncivil.
“ Oh, gee. Oh, gee. Mike, I got an urge. I got an urge t’take
my clothes off out here. ’ ’
Jesus. The fire escape, you understand, is on the street side.
Where six old Jewish women sit in beach chairs at 11 a.m.
Tanning themselves to parchment. I do not want scandal. NUDE
ON PRIEST’S FIRE ESCAPE.
“ I ’m topless.”
So I swing around—is Bubbles bluffing maybe? No, she is
not bluffing. Her big, hard breasts are pressed (one in each glass
pane) so flat they look like buttocks. And the fly of her short-
shorts is coming unzipped.
And from the street I hear, “ Oh, a flasher. Look, Estelle, a
flasher. Look, Estelle, a flasher.”
I leap out of the bed, trying to make a toga, a loincloth, a
something out of my sheet. Naturally I step on my own drapery
and—wang—now I ’m naked, too. Worse, I don’t have any idea
how to open the metal grate.
Hey, no problem. The damn, rusted, orange-cruddy thing
falls inward the minute I jerk it. Corroded to rice paper. There
I am, nude, wrestling with 8 feet of double-gauge metal, which
is pinching my fingers and turning my chest into an orange
waffle, when Bubbles, never one to be Reticence Afoot, hoicks
the window frame up, dashes, breasts dribbling, across the
room, picks up the sheet, burrows into my bed and says,
“ Oh, I ’m hom e.”
“ Perverted goings-on up there!” yells a Jewish voice. “ Next
time it’s 911 on you.”
I zang the steelwork down, grab my blue jeans and go into
the kitchen to make coffee. Maybe it’s best to ignore the whole
thing.
The whole thing is still in my bed, however, when I get back.
“ Hug m e,” it says from a fetal position.
“ Why d ’you do this, Bubbles?”
“ Because I don’t feel whole until a man has his arms around
me. I feel like I ’m falling apart. It’s a very scary sensation. I
love you.”
“ You don’t. You just decided t ’fixate on me this week.”
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“ If I could have a month with you—just a month. ”
“ You can’t .”
“ A week. This afternoon. Just, FOR GOD’S SAKE, hug
m e.”
I did. I sat on the edge of the mattress and hugged her. She
tried to pull me prone (she’s a strong girl), but I wouldn’t go
down. She kissed me. I didn’t return her kiss. She put her hand
on my groin area—but blue jeans are the best contraceptive.
“ Did you get that abortion?”
“ N o.”
“ Why not?”
“ Because it’s something that cares for me. Why can’t I have
it a little longer?”
‘ ‘The longer you wait, the more it becomes a sentient being. ’ ’
“ A sentient being?” Bubbles let me go and fell backward
onto the mattress. Her breasts followed like an aftershock. She
had to push them away from her chin. “ A sentient being? God,
you’re so matter-of-fact.”
“ I ’m just trying t’do the honorable thing. I don’t want t’take
advantage of you. ”
“ Please.
Couldja be a little less, you know, with the scruples
and take advantage? Please.”
“ I don’t love you, Bubbles.”
“ Yeah, well tell me something. Didja give Dilip a Saturday
night booking?”
“ What if I did?”
“ I can’t stand this. You gave that rodent a Saturday night
booking. Her tits are, like, printed on. I mean, it looks like her
push-up bra missed. You’re seeing her?”
“ Who says?”
“ I know. She doesn’t belong on Saturday night—you wouldn’t
give her Saturday, ’less she was giving you something back.”
“ She’s a nice girl. Not everyone can be as voluptuous as you
are.”
“ Gimme a cigarette from my bag.”
I opened her carryall—this is part of the topless dancer’s uniform, a big duffle. Full of G-strings and bras, a pungent body odor mixed with fragrances of another week. I dug, with some
distaste, through the lingerie and saw—
One million pills. Okay, one million is an exaggeration. Green
and red and yellow pills. Loose pills and pills in bottles. Time-
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release capsules released. Pills glued to each other like jujubes.
One thousand pills. At least.
“ You’re carrying a drug store. No wonder you can’t afford a
better apartment. ’ ’
“ You want some? You wanna do some Percocet with me? I
got uppers and downers and things, wow, that make one half of
your body go stiff like a stroke victim. Here’s a Placidyl. Here’s
a nice, nice Quaalude.”
“ These look deadly.” I had two big pink tablets in my hand.
“ Those are beads from my G-string. It’s falling apart. It has
V D .” She popped something.
“ Where d ’you get all these?”
“ From those friendsa mine you m et.”
“ Not from The Car?”
“ N o.”
“ D ’you know what’s going down in The Car?”
‘ ‘Everyone knows. ’ ’
“ W hat?”
“ Leonard deals cocaine.”
“ You’re sure?”
“ Mike—huh? Don’t be like you’re from M ars.”
I was going to say, I ’m not from Mars, I ’m from another
galaxy, when there was a rap on the door. Pearl. Returning the
keys to my Lincoln, which she had borrowed yesterday so she
could take her mother to the chiropractor this morning. Pearl,
outside.
“ You up yet?”
“ Yes, yes. Com ing.” I turn to Bubbles and put a finger over
my lips, but Bubbles is already out of the bed, still topless, bag
and bra in hand, at die door, before I can stop her.
“ It’s all right, Pearl,” she says, opening the door. “ We just
finished, you have perfect tim ing,” as she flounces, with her
naked breasts echoing the flounce, onto the landing, past Pearl,
down the first flight of stairs, singing “ Feelings, ta-de-dah, feelings . . .”
‘ ‘You had the pick of all those bimbos—and you go and prong
that little m eshug.”
“ It’s not what you think—”
“ Who am I t ’judge this generation? Do. Do. Whatever you
want, do.”
Aaaaaaaaaaaaarghh!
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* * *
And now I have a stuffed elephant.
5:32 a.m.
Nothing is as it seems, ladies and gentlemen—we see through a
glass darkly and no one wants to grow up. They strut and they
slide, they lick lips lightly in imitation of lust. They flaunt and
they taunt and their favorite audience is not you and me, sorry
fellas, their favorite audience is that image in the mirror.
How often I Ve watched them, these naked children, absorbed
almost to unconsciousness by a reflected self. Upsweep the hair
or let it pour down, braid it, lap it over a shoulder, drape it—
how mysterious and beautiful I am. Stomach in, lose weight,
raise the G-string crotchline to give me more leg, cover that spot
on my buttock. Always with a thoughtful smile. In another
world, swept off their feet with self-longing—in front of a hundred irrelevant men.
The narcissism here is overpowering: like funeral flowers.
This part of the dance they love—the self-seduction of it. The
mental masturbation. They could swoon. Come here, you in the
mirror—you-who-alone-understand-me. My secret lover. Twine
around my body, let’s be feminine together.
Even, yes, Pearl. Poking and plumping her dusty wig, as
sedulously as a grower of orchids might. Made up so severely
an African witch doctor would step aside and give her preference. A dear old egotist. . .
Who, I now realize, has such a following on Northern Boulevard because she is witty, large-hearted and, yes, a bookie.
Matt, the ex-mattress man, is her runner. We are, in fact, providing a secret OTB outlet in the afternoon.
Everyone is someone else. Everyone has something on someone else. Everyone has agreed to follow the eleventh commandment, to wit: I will not blow your cover if you don’t blow mine.
And the boss is a priest.
Am I officiating at a black mass? Some corrupt, foul inversion
of the sacred meal? Was The Smoking Car built over an ancient
pagan temple site? Do we draw fertility to the land by paying
the earth goddess to expose her breasts here? Was Glenda’s milk
set apart for worship?
I ’m going nuts.
Began the day with Bubbles and ended it with Tanya. And
the end was worse than the beginning.
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It was a four-thousand-dollar night—some beer league soft-
ball team was celebrating. Tanya had made at least six hundred
dollars. The sulkier she got, the more men paid. Tanya is just
emotion, surrounded, held in, by the thinnest membrane. I admit it, I was thinking—after our last car ride together—that maybe it was me, the reason for her dance of sadness. I couldn’t
quite convince myself. Tanya is, of course, surpassingly beautiful-surpassing, certainly, me. But I was up for intrigue.
Enough to be patient with her—Tanya takes FOREVER to
change. It’s as if she molts her Car persona, scratches the shell
of it off, rubbing against the wall. She never wears makeup on
the street. (I have never seen her do so, anyhow.) Tanya is always
last to leave, and Joe, sitting with me on the Lincoln’s fender,
as he folded the chess board up, said:
“ Tony useta wait for her, to o .”
And—the thought crossed my mind (insane, narcissistic
thought)—I thought, I never want to lie where Tony has lain.
Nor fish in the same warm stream. So I said,
“ Was he having an affair with Tanya?”
Joe laughed. “ Your brother sometimes misjudged his.options. But he wasn’t stupid.”
“ She’s beautiful,” I said.
“ She’s beautiful,” he said. “ Such beauty is disfiguring, such
beauty is a curse. It’s like being a celebrity without accomplishments. That girl cannot find herself. She gets nothing but misinformation from the world. How would you like it—havingta live up t’that face? I feel for her. ’ ’
‘ ‘Let’s go, ” said Tanya, coming out. As if / had been keeping
her. I
locked The Car up. Tanya kissed Joe goodnight and, I
swear, his knees bent in obeisance.
Tanya was silent across the 59th Street Bridge. I made little
openings: she didn’t seem to hear me. But, as we reached 14th
Street, Tanya said,
“ There’s usually parking this time of night. Why don’t you
come up for a drink?”
Chung, chung, chung went my pulse.
“ I—” I said, “ I don’t think that would be w ise.”
“ Please,” she said.
Shall I, I thought, run my lips up along that cheek to where
the ear lives eaved in brown hair? Shall I really? Will I remember
anything else as long as I live? Not because I love her, but
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because it is to participate in a heightening of things. The exaggerative world that beauty lives in.
“ Just a drink.”
“ That’s what I said.”
Her brownstone apartment building is, as I ’ve noted, third
rate. There was unbagged garbage in the foyer. I watched the
back of Tanya’s neck as she peered into her pocketbook for a
key. I wanted to kiss that neck. Thank God I didn’t. Because,
after we proceeded along a dark hall (she lives in the first floor
“ garden” apartment, a euphemism for “ airshaft” ), as we proceeded, suddenly the hall was flooded by reddish light and there—in the doorway of Tanya’s apartment—stood . . .
An enormous bull dyke.
“ Get in here, you bitch, ” it said. “ Get in here before I make
you ugly. ’ ’
“ We have company, Costanza,” Tanya said. “ This is my
boss at The Car—he does all the booking—Mike Wilson. Costanza, Mike.”
I put my hand out. There are Jewish sects that consider the
touch of a woman unclean: with such passion, a deep religious
pride, did Costanza ignore my hand. But she stepped back.
Tanya had become smaH. A pirate’s prize, taken in battle, and
far from her native land. She urged me with her eyes. And I
went in. Because I sensed that I was her buffer state. A device.
A buying-of-time for Tanya. My best dancer, who would never
let me run lips up/along her cheek.
Costanza is from Puerto Rico. She has an enormous behind:
anger and complexity are locked in her hips. Costanza is pretty
enough, but whatever charm she may possess has been blunted
by aggression. I have seen her male counterparts: she has modeled herself on them. Men who will not be crossed. Men who stake out territories by lifting a leg and urinating. Men who
