Hooking Up

by Tom Wolfe

  “What you having?”

  “A vodka twilat.”

  “What’s a vodka twilat?”

  Jimmy Lowe said, “It’s a drink fer fa—fer people lack Ziggy.” He raised his right hand and gave it a limp wrist and lifted his little finger.

  “Don’t pay no nevermind to’im, Lola. Him and refinement ain’t never been innerduced.”

  It went on like that for a while, with Ziggefoos and Jimmy Lowe ragging each other to see who could be the witticst and most manly. Little Flory didn’t have much to say. Lola compromised by ordering a tequila sunrise, and Ziggefoos said that showed she was a lady and didn’t want to sit around all night like some of the animals in here, swilling beer. Jimmy Lowe said Ziggefoos’s problem was, they almost hadn’t let him into the Rangers because he had … certain tendencies … and Lola changed the subject by asking Jimmy Lowe if it was true that part of Ranger training involved putting the recruit in a metal box the size of a coffin and shutting and locking the lid without telling him how long it would be before they let him out. This gave all three of them a chance to brag for a while and tell war stories about the rigors of Ranger training, whereupon Lola said she often had a dream just like that, about the metal box. She kept dreaming that she had been put in a metal box, stark naked, and she struggled and struggled. She pantomimed this part by twisting her shoulders and her chest this way and that. The three rednecks devoured every twist, every turn, every this, every that. Just when she thought she could hold out no longer, she said, someone would arrive mysteriously and pry the lid up, and she would wake up, trembling with excitement, before she ever found out who it was. The three boys were rendered practically speechless, trying to figure out what to do with this conversational opening without sounding totally crude.

  Ferretti looked at Irv and mouthed the words once more: “Star quality.”

  Then Lola put on the most suggestive smile Irv had ever seen and said to Jimmy Lowe, “You like veedeos?” She looked at Ziggefoos and Flory the same way.

  “What kinda videos?” asked Jimmy Lowe.

  “Unusual veedeos,” said Lola. The suggestive smile turned into a leer. She took a deep breath, and her breasts seemed to rise and fall a foot inside and outside the little black cocktail dress.

  “Depends, I guess,” said Jimmy Lowe, who already seemed to be breathing rapidly. He looked at his two buddies and then said to Lola, “I spose. Whirr they at?”

  “Out back,” said Lola with the same leering ham-actress smile.

  “Out bayack whirr?”

  “Een the parking lot,” said Lola with such a breathy voice and such a smoldering look it was as if she had said, “Een my boudoir.”

  “In the parking lot?”

  “Een my RV.” She lowered her chin and opened her big dark eyes and gave a look that was the Mother of All Insinuation.

  The three of them looked at one another, their eyes darting back and forth in a silent conference. The perfectly sleazy Country Metal music continued to bang and slosh away in the background.

  Finally Jimmy Lowe said, “Wale, hale, won’t hut to take a luck.” His eyes flicked toward Ziggefoos and Flory for confirmation of the decision. Then the four of them, Lola and the three rednecks, slid out of the booth.

  Irv’s heart accelerated again. They were coming out. The feed from inside the DMZ now showed only the empty booth. The other monitor screens showed the RV’s empty living room, still dark except for the lurid streaks that came beaming in from Bragg Boulevard and the parking lot. He took off his headset and started talking to Gordon and Roy—to try to calm himself down more than anything else. They already knew what to do. Gordon had a rheostat with which to adjust the lighting in the RV. He had him turn it up, to test it. The living room rose up on six monitors, in color. You could see the appalling brown-and-yellow-plaid pattern on the Alumicron tweed of the built-in couch. Then he talked to Roy, who was monitoring the sound. Roy assured him that the hidden microphones, which were no bigger than the head of a nail, would pick up everything, even the sound of the door handle turning when they reached the RV. Then he turned to Mary Cary and started to say something, but she cocked her head and narrowed her eyes and twisted her lips in a fashion that said, “Irv. Calm down.”

  Now Irv’s heart was beating at a terrific clip. He could feel it banging away inside his rib cage. Suppose it went into tachycardia? Or fibrillation? And he passed out? Fainted? The six of them—himself, Mary Cary, Ferretti, Gordon, Roy, and the fat makeup woman, whose name he never had caught—were packed into the little compartment, with the curtains drawn … silent … waiting … In the tubercular blue light of the monitors, they looked ghastly. He could hear the sounds of the strip and the DMZ seeping in … He put his headset back on … and waited some more.

  Presently Irv thought he could hear voices—redneck voices—voices so close he wondered for an instant if the three soldiers had come inside the RV without his knowing it. He looked at the monitors, and on five of the screens the RV’s living room rose up in light and color before his very eyes. No one in there. He glanced at Gordon, who had his hand on the rheostat. Then, over the earphones, sure enough, Irv heard the handle of the RV door turning. Then the door opened, and the sounds of the strip came thrumming into the headset. On one of the monitors he could see Lola entering the RV. The camera was looking straight down her dress; he could see practically all of her prodigious breasts. Then in came Jimmy Lowe and Ziggefoos and Flory. Those little figures on the monitor screens, with their T-shirts, their muscles, their tight jeans, their … skinned heads … were barely six feet away from him now, on the other side of a flimsy fake wall, big as life.

  Back in the secret compartment, Irv stole a glance at Mary Cary and the field producer, Ferretti. In the dead microwave glow, they looked ancient. They didn’t show a trace of emotion. They were absorbed in their headsets and the monitors.

  Barely six feet away, on the other side of the false wall, Lola was directing the soldiers to sit on the couch. Little Flory wound up in the middle, with Jimmy Lowe on one side and Ziggefoos on the other. One monitor now showed you all three of them, sitting there. Three other monitors gave you close-ups of them, head and shoulders, one by one. A fifth monitor showed you Lola, now settling into the front passenger seat, which had been turned around. Her little black dress was so short that when she sat down and crossed her legs, it made you wonder if she was wearing anything at all.

  Jimmy Lowe was craning his head around, his skinned head. His neck muscles were huge. “This here’s all yours, Lola?”

  “Un-hunh.”

  “What it setcha bayack?” said Flory.

  “Oh … I’on know,” said Lola. “Eet was part of a kind of a deal.” She gave him a smile oozing with significance. They all looked at each other and laughed a little too loud and nervously.

  Ferretti looked at Mary Cary and then at Irv and broke into a big grin, and once more mouthed the words “Star quality.” He kept on grinning, even after he turned back to the monitor. Irv wanted to smile, but a smile was beyond him. He was amazed that Ferretti could feel so genuinely amused in the middle of a situation this tense. They were both television producers, but they were very different animals.

  Lola offered the three soldiers some malt liquor, which they reckoned was a good idea. She got up and went to the refrigerator of the kitchenette and took out a 40-ounce bottle of Colt 45 and poured it into three paper cups. On the monitors Irv could follow their eyes—and their skinned heads and their ears, which stuck out—as they followed every locomotion, every twist, every inclination of her body. Then she removed a videocassette from a cabinet beneath the television set and slipped it into the VCR mechanism. Irv saw the one blank screen on the bank of monitors come alive with an abstract pattern of colors. It was fed directly from the television set in the RV’s living room. Lola and the three rednecks settled back. Their eyes were pinned on the set: a pine forest … shady at ground level, green and gold way up above where the sun shines throug
h the branches … music … an old Dionne Warwick number called “Anyone Who Had a Heart” … In the distance, the figure of a young woman in a white dress, a long, fancy, old-fashioned dress, down to her ankles. She’s wearing white gloves and a big Garden Party hat. She’s carrying a parasol and a small portfolio tied with a ribbon. She comes closer … It’s Lola … Her bodice is demurely covered with lacework that goes up to her neck and forms a little collar … but her breasts are obviously yearning to be free … She stops beneath a soaring pine, tucks the parasol under one arm, unties the little portfolio, and takes out three photographs … Dionne Warwick wails plaintively in the background about lost and unrequited love …

  On the monitors Irv could see the three rednecks staring at the television set, all eyes. You could tell they had a delicious inkling of what was coming.

  Lola, in her big belle époque dress, looks longingly at the three photographs.

  Longingly; oh yes. As an actress, it occurred to Irv, Lola was worse than the worst silent-film hambone. But in pornography, subtlety is not a virtue. A cloud crossed Irv’s mind. This video was his brainchild. Ferretti and a camera crew had taken Lola out to a forest in the sand hills near a town called Southern Pines and shot it, but it was he, Irv, who had dreamed it up. Christ—had he gone too far this time? Well, no one but this lot would ever see the whole thing.

  The camera follows Lola’s longing eyes, then comes in tight on the three photographs … Jimmy Lowe, Ziggefoos, Flory … One by one their faces fill the screen …

  “Jesus H. Christ,” said Ziggefoos, “how the hale’d you do thayut?”

  “Yeah, how the hale didja?” asked Flory.

  Jimmy Lowe merely stared at Lola with his mouth open. Now the other two were staring at her the same way. In fact, the pictures were stills adapted from the footage shot by the cameras hidden in the DMZ two weeks before.

  “Shhhhh,” said Lola. “What I told you? Thees veedeo ees unusual.” She smiled with maximum suggestiveness.

  In the dappled pine forest, Lola looks this way and that, as if to make sure she’s alone. She stoops, puts the parasol, portfolio, and pictures on the ground, stands up, and looks about some more. She takes off the long white gloves and lets them drop to the ground. She brings her hands to her throat and begins unbuttoning her lacy bodice.

  The three rednecks could see that their fond, lustful yearnings were about to be fulfilled. No more questions about the production process.

  A haunting saxophone solo … Lola’s busy taking it off … The Garden Party hat goes … With much writhing and wriggling she snakes her way out of the dress … She starts to go to work on her corset … Once more she looks longingly down at the three photographs on the ground before her … A still picture of Jimmy Lowe … All at once it comes alive and starts moving. Then Ziggefoos—same thing. Then Flory … Then the Country Metal music kicks in, and you see the three of them in the booth in the DMZ, drinking beer and talking.

  Jimmy Lowe said, “Godalmighty dog, Lola. I mean, sheeut, whirr the hale’d you git thayut? What the hale kinda video this spose a be anyhows?”

  “Eenteractive veedeo,” said Lola, in a way that as much as said, “Surely you know about interactive video.”

  Eenteractive veedeo … Ferretti turned to Irv and Mary Cary with a huge grin. Star quality! Mary Cary smiled back. All Irv could think about was: Suppose Jimmy Lowe got angry and broke through the false wall and came hunting for the Wizard of Oz?

  Fortunately, no one, not Lola or anyone else, had to provide further explanation, because now the video was back in the pine forest … Once more, Lola amid the soaring pines … in a thrall of ecstasy … rotating her hips and thrusting her pelvis in time with the Country Metal music … She has the corset undone down the front. She opens it wide and discards it, consigns it to the forest floor, revealing her glorious breasts.

  The three rednecks were mesmerized. They were deep in a sexual coma.

  She lowers her eyes coquettishly and looks down on the ground. There are the three photographs once more … Jimmy Lowe … Ziggefoos … Flory … the photographs … come alive again … in the booth in the DMZ … Ziggefoos is talking: “You jes see some may‘shated sommitch with a fo’-day growth a beard and his cheeks lack this here, lucking lack Jesus Christ and talking about AIDS’n gay rats.” Jimmy Lowe says, “Fuckin’ A.”

  On the video they talk about Holcombe, who is suspected of being homosexual, and Ziggefoos tells about the boardinghouse in Myrtle Beach where he and his brother had seen the “quairs” up on the roof “jes buggering the living shecut out th’other’n—”

  “It’s great, great, great!” thought Irv, breathing fast. They were in such a sexual trance, they were no longer looking at each other in alarm. They couldn’t see what was coming.

  The camera is on Lola again … half-naked in the forest … The Country Metal music is banging away … Lola spreads her legs and puts her fingers down inside her cache-sexe and begins throwing back her head as if in an uncontrollable ecstasy … Suddenly the video is back to the booth in the DMZ. Ziggefoos is saying, “And ‘at’s what I’m talking abaout. That’s what they ain’t abaout to tale you when they’s talking about gay rats and legal madge between homoseckshuls and all’at sheeut.” Then Jimmy Lowe, nodding away, leans over the table toward Ziggefoos and looks this way and that, to make sure nobody is eavesdropping, and he says, “You just put yer fainger on it, old buddy” … The sleazy throb of the Country Metal music … “Anybuddy saw what I saw in—” He hesitates, then resumes: “Anybuddy woulda done what I deeud, er leastways they’d a wanted to—”

  Now, on the monitors, Irv could see the three of them cutting glances at each other. They weren’t so drunk or so sex-besotted that they couldn’t realize this was dangerous territory … the details of what Jimmy Lowe had done when he had seen Randy Valentine committing fellatio in a toilet booth in a Bragg Boulevard bar—

  But then the video is back to the forest … Lola, leering, running her pink tongue around her ruby lips. The camera closes in on her loins, on her very groin, her corona of pubic hair, the lips of her vulva … Bingo!—Back in the booth at the DMZ … Jimmy Lowe is saying, “I mean, I saw some kind a rayud, and ‘at was when I kicked inny doe. Broke’at little metal tab rat off’n it.” Ziggefoos says, “Summitch mussa wunner what the hale hit him.” Jimmy Lowe says, “Whole goddayum doe hit him, I reckon. That summitch, he was lane upside the wall when I grabbed him.”

  On the monitor Irv could see Jimmy Lowe turn toward Ziggefoos. There was real alarm on his face now. “What the hale is’is sheeut?” Then he looked at Lola. He was angry. “What the sheeut’s going on here?”

  Lola kept smiling, although Irv could detect the fear in her eyes. She rose up out of her seat, then gestured toward the television set.

  Neither Jimmy Lowe nor Ziggefoos nor Flory could resist it. Their eyes swung toward the set—

  —and there’s Lola in the forest, her fingers pressed into her crotch, her hips rolling, her garter straps swinging like tassels, her breasts pitching and yawing—and the three rednecks were transported. They couldn’t take their eyes off it.

  Irv turned to Mary Cary, who was right beside him, her headset on, her eyes pinned on the monitors. He nudged her with his elbow, then held his forefinger in front of his face and revolved it clockwise, to indicate that the tape was near the end—and she would soon be on. He could barely see her, it was so dark on this side of the partition. Dark, crowded, and hot; he felt as if he could hardly draw a breath. But Mary Cary merely nodded and looked to make sure her makeup woman was still standing by, then turned back to the monitors. Irv nudged Ferretti. He couldn’t believe it. Ferretti had a smile on his face.

  Lola’s back is arched. Both hands are on her genitals. Her pelvis is thrusting. She gasps, she sighs, she moans some more. And then she goes, “Hanh hanh hanh HANHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”—a dying shriek.

  The camera pulls back … The saxophone solo refrain of “Anyone Who Had a Heart”
resumes …

  For a moment Jimmy Lowe remained agog, even though the tape had come to an end. Then Ziggefoos smacked him on the side of his leg with the back of his hand. “I ‘on know, Jimmy, I’on lack’is sheeut.”

  Jimmy Lowe turned to Lola, who was now standing right beside the RV’s door. She was trying to hang on to her smile and beginning to lose the battle.

  “Look here, goddayum it, Lola,” said Jimmy Lowe, “I wanna know what the sheeut’s going on, and I wanna know rat now.”

  “Eenteractive teevee,” said Lola, “eenteractive teevee. Eenteractive teevee.” She was holding on to this term “interactive TV” for dear life.

  “You kin innerack with my sweet ayus, Lola,” said Jimmy Lowe. “I ax you a simple question.”

  “You don’ believe me?” said Lola plaintively. “Eenteractive teevee. Eenteractive teevee, Jeemy!”

  PART THREE

  GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!

  Jimmy Lowe was now leaning toward Lola, beginning to snarl. Behind the partition, Irv’s heart was beating wildly. He still had his headset on, although he wanted to take it off. His central nervous system was going into the fight-or-flight mode, and he was definitely partial to flight, and the headset would be an impediment. He looked at Mary Cary and mouthed a single word: “Ready?” But she had anticipated him. She already had her headset off and was standing still, facing the partition, while the makeup woman fluffed up her great blond hair and touched up her forehead and nose with powder. The two technicians, Gordon and Roy, were already up off their stools, headsets removed, standing right behind her. What a pair of great wide hulks they were! (Thank God!) They must have been in their thirties, but in the pallid glow of the monitors, their faces looked like a pair of ancient underwater rocks. Right next to them stood Ferretti. He had taken his headset off, too. He gave Irv a wink!—a wink! As if he didn’t have a worry in the world! Once more Irv marveled.

  “I’m gon’ show you, Jeemy, right now!” It was Lola’s voice, sounding in Irv’s ears over the headset. She was losing her composure. He looked at the monitor screen. She was trying to recapture her concupiscent leer. She also had her hand on the door handle. Miss Lola Thong was ready to bail out. “There!” She pointed toward the partition. “You have a special vees’tor!”