by Camille Roy
“Filing,” I barked. “For Dr. Wittig. She’s a physicist.” The gas made my voice shrill.
“Dr. Wittig! I haven’t heard that name in years. She was one of the first people I met at the Institute. I picked her out right away—those flushed cheeks and that rapier instinct for the heart of the matter.” He added slyly, “Unnaturally vigorous in a woman.”
“I thought you sold insurance.”
“I was a biochemist, girl.”
I stood up and steadied myself against the bar. Ricardo had the amphibian eyes of a steady drunk, and often reminded me of a frog, but listening to him was part of the job.
“She and I got hired here at the same time. Biochemistry was a new field at the time and considered absolutely a bastard. Mix bio and chemistry and send up a rogue sprout. But hell. I was damn pleased with myself. No one in my family had ever gotten a college education.”
Back and forth, like a drunk fairy godmother, he waved his cigarette, then stared at its burning tip, speaking with effort.
“I lost that job. I got a sentence, one to twenty, Iowa State Penitentiary. The Dean didn’t appreciate that kind of sabbatical. I served 18 months.” A dry smile slid up one side of his face. “I was convicted of being a sexual psychopath.”
This was an idea even my shaky sense of reality could resist. “No way Ricardo,” I squeaked. Amazement filled me with a blazing light… Yet it was only history to me, his moving face. I squatted and fished through all the whipped cream cans, looking for another empty. Fuck, out of luck. I’d have to empty out a full can to get another buzz. There’d be soft heaps of cream in the sink which I’d have to wash down with the sprayer. How would I explain that to Ricardo? Not to go there. I stood up wearily.
“Yes,” he said. “A tearoom bust. Who could know they’d hollowed out the wall in the men’s room in the student union, and there was a cop holding a camera inside the paper towel dispenser? They had reels and reels of fag dick. Forty of us were arrested. Do ya want to know something else? Candid camera showed that every single one of us tearoom queens washed his hands. You think this is a joke, but it is absolute truth.” He sighed. “My career was over. Kaput, just like that. No one even remembers that I had one.”
“And Dr. Wittig, the iron maiden, went on to become famous. Even though her butch butt was queer as a three-dollar bill, I always thought, and I wasn’t the only one. It was the fifties. Almost every gay man at the institute got sacked. How do you gay gals do it?”
“How do we do what, Ricardo?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Live such sexless lives, I guess.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ricardo.”
“Do you have sex?”
“No.”
“Ta da. You prove my point. Have you ever had sex?”
“Yeah. Some of it I remember. The early years. I don’t know what happened. One gruesome adventure after another I guess.”
He sighed. “God you’re only twenty-one.”
“Almost twenty-one,” I corrected him.
“Well, I don’t have sex either,” he said, disconsolately. “The plumbing seems to work, but nobody’s interested.”
“You’d do fine Ricardo if you didn’t drink so much.” It was Sly. She’d come up on us without a sound. It was her way. Tall and thin and hunched about the shoulders, Sly cut the air like a rubber knife. She was followed by a girl in a black silk blouse. The girl didn’t bother to introduce herself, or even look at us. Her grey blue eyes reminded me of lake water.
Sly leaned towards me and lay a hand across my wrist. “Time was, there wasn’t a fag in town Ricardo didn’t screw.”
I took my wrist back. “How long ago was that?”
“So young and so cruel,” hummed Ricardo. “Sly, this young thing needs a date. She doesn’t have sex anymore.”
The girl in the black blouse whispered to Sly that she was tired and needed to sit at a table. We watched her choose one by the window, in the corner. Then Sly murmured to me, “I know someone, Camille.”
“I’m sure you do.” I poured her the usual, a gin and tonic. “But why for me?”
There was a faint whistle through the gap in her front teeth. “I’ve got Cippoline.”
“Camille, did you hear that our Sly has finally been tamed, by a woman named after a mild Italian onion…”
“It’s her real name. I’m crazy about it,” Sly declared.
This, from a mistress of secrets. Sly was a shit and a slut. Unchangeable. Cippoline must really have aspects of the incredible, perhaps the whirling arms of a Hindu goddess, or the equivalent in tits.
“She must be a wildcat,” said Ricardo.
“A Brooklyn girl,” said Sly, as though that sealed it. “With the slim ankles of Sophia Loren. She grew up nearly on the streets and when she hit thirteen…it was…it was… the return of Rita Hayworth.”
“I can’t believe anyone could make an honest woman of you Sly.”
“It’s nothing like that. Cippoline tells me what she wants. Then I manage to do it. It simplifies things. It’s emptier. I guess I like that…”
Sly spoke quietly and brought her hands up to the edge of the bar. She folded them and looked down, a penitent, and we looked down too, at her long fingers, fastened in the position of prayer. The hands of a lockpicker.
Sly had peculiar fame. In thirteen years, she’d seduced thirteen deeply heterosexual co-workers, most of them married. She told each woman they were her first and only “lesbian relationship,” and each proudly guarded the secret of their relationship, while working and lunching with all of the others. Sly was so indistinct this prowess was almost inconceivable. You had to peer through some sort of cloud to even see her: brown eyes, her plainness, her pallid skin.
Perhaps that was her secret. Any conversation with Sly felt private. Her husky lilt snagged a listener but disappeared after you leaned towards it. Not into silence. It sank into my ear like some sort of burr.
“But you have someone for Camille.”
“Oh yes.” The hands fluttered up. Sly indicated the girl in the black blouse with a tilt of her head. “Married. She’s nervous. You’ll need to tie her up.”
Ricardo’s grin flashed. “Are you up for that Camille?”
“Nicole is her name,” she went on, her voice very quiet. “Look at her—the bone structure of an Arab and skin the color of grayish milk. In fact, she’s part Egyptian and part French. When she was thirteen, she had an affair with one of her Egyptian aunts, so she won’t be completely inexperienced…”
“Married?” I asked weakly.
“See how supple she is, but somehow fragile. She has that lovely reddish hair…”
My mind spun down some sort of tunnel to a little heap at the end. To that girl, Nicole. It wasn’t impossible. She could be waiting for me. It was so clear somehow. She’d turn towards the sound of steps and look up, and I’d know that what streamed across her grey blue eyes looked like clouds, but it was her mind, coming together. Silence anyhow. Then that familiar moment of sitting down next to someone and knowing it was just not going to work. Making a move anyway because that comes next, sliding past the eyeball of sex is what comes next. Cream to the blade to the bone as juices explode from the roots of my teeth.
“It sounds like a hassle,” I said at last.
“You’re young,” Ricardo said firmly. “You’re supposed to get hassled. It’s the price you pay for beautiful skin.”
“She’d be so grateful.” Sly’s tone was melancholy and her mood was carefully, clinically, tender. She lifted up one slender forearm and, as she framed the problems in the marriage, the empty space that a worm like she or I could occupy, she ticked her fingers down, one by one. I’d never noticed before that a fist has a bite-sized piece of darkness inside. Behind Sly, in the corner, I could see the dark silhouette of Nicole washed by yellow light. She was smoking.
“Her husband is named Bertrand. He showers her with presents: silk underwear from France, a thin gold chain sh
e always wears around her waist. But they barely speak. He has the charisma of a toad. It’s not that he’s an ugly guy. Bertrand is tall, slim, very acceptable. He’s just always chilly. It’s impossible to connect the gifts to the man.
“Nicole can do anything she wants but leave him. That seems to be their agreement. He’s been following her around since high school. He was her English teacher, and when she came here to go to school, he left teaching altogether and found a job working in a bank. I think their relationship began when she was fifteen.
“Nicole needs to prove she’s not trapped, that she’s not missing anything. She’s twenty-eight and she’s only had her husband Bertrand, and briefly, that aunt. Sex with Bertrand is pretty sour: he fucks her, rolls off, she gets herself off before he even goes to sleep.
“I like her. She’s intelligent, in a small way. She wants something better but she’s not serious about it. Nicole lives in fear. The reasons are obscure. She could be almost anyone’s captive; it’s just that Bertrand’s already got her. She’ll never leave him, even though she thinks she might…”
Sly shrugged and looked me over carefully. “But there’s room for you.”
“What do you think I should do?”
“I don’t care. Do what you like. We’ll be at the cafe later. Stop by and hang out with us.”
“I have to work. I have another job right after this one.”
“Camille works at the massage parlor.” This from Ricardo. He liked to make trouble.
“As receptionist,” I snapped.
Sly’s eyes widened. She stared at me, sympathetically, I think.
“You should take the night off,” said Sly.
I thought about it, after they all left, and the bar was empty. There was nothing else to do except polish glasses and memorize a few more drinks in the Playboy bartenders’ guide. But I didn’t make a decision. My thoughts simply ambled along and I followed them.
Why had I taken this job in the massage parlor? Maybe I just wanted to know what it was really like. There was that whorehouse reputation, spiky and difficult: girls weeping into their pills, everybody drowning.
Wait for me, girlfriend. Speak to me before you crumble like soggy cake.
On the other hand, cut someone’s gut, you could try that. You never knew what might happen. Laughs might spill out.
In truth, I never knew why I did a single thing. Any job, any event, was just transportation music, sliding by as I continued my trek to the truth of the story. But somehow it got late. Even the century was drying up; with every tick it took a beating. What had happened to its tiny charm?
As I stumbled away from the bar, through the minimall parking lot, my thoughts soared towards the irresistible Dr. Wittig. She’s squalid as a pig, squealing and rooting in her little pen—suddenly I could see that. It was what she had. My heart lifted and broke. I was so glad to be working for her.
The building that held the parlor was right at the corner. I lunged towards the building door and it gave with the usual squeak. You won’t believe this, but I heard her voice. It was Dr. Wittig, whispering to me from the privacy of her home office:
What I thought was a forest was really a cluster of violins. When I walked through that forest their bluster burst overhead: works of fire.
Plod plod plod. The parlor was on the third floor and there was no elevator. I watched my shoes as I climbed the dusty stairs, past streaks of moth powder on the walls. Moths fumbled in clouds at the landings, where the light bulbs were. They fell into my face, droppings from a bad dream.
No blame. Some things are so deranged they can’t be avoided. And I was only doing what anyone does, waiting for my mistakes. I knew they’d slither up to me like my own personal language. I just hoped I’d recognize them.
I reached the top landing and there was the parlor door. It had a pink frame around a panel of frosted glass. Behind it was a small lobby with a yellow couch, coated with girls. I could hear them from the hallway. Just as summer ticks across a hot beach, the parlor was a place for girls—to talk or squawk or fall into magazines, bored. The first time I walked in, they just grinned and someone offered me a job.
I opened the door to smells of disinfectant and air freshener. “Hello Camille,” Lima trilled. On this particular night, she was the only one on the couch, wearing a pink halter top. Up here tits had sugary resting spots. All the halter tops were bright pink, yellow, turquoise, or electric green. They came from a bin in the back. Girls came in and fished around, exchanging their flannel work shirts for eye candy. However, I wore a black turtle neck because I was the receptionist.
I leered at Lima; my face felt like a billboard.
“You’re a Pink Lima tonight,” I told her. “Where’s everybody?”
“I’m working. So is Dusty, she’s somewhere in the back.”
That was Trixie talking; she was sitting cross-legged on the floor. Her legs were so long and angular they looked like construction equipment—she was a Lego whore, with flower decals on her blue jeans. Trixie was scowling at a book, while Steve, the day shift receptionist, looked over her shoulder.
“A whole book on itching!” he exclaimed. “You girls are sure into your cats.”
“It’s the I-CHING,” she shouted. “An ancient Chinese oracle!”
Trixie threw her coins. Steve’s head sunk as he read aloud:
“The arousing, thunder.
The abysmal, water.
Whoa, Trixie. That’s pretty deep.”
I settled into my desk. It was my favorite part of this job, being hidden from the waist down. Hiding your privates: A better way to live. The desk sat squarely in front of the entrance like a fort.
Clump clump clump. Someone was coming up the stairs. “Dusty! Business!” Trixie brayed, then got to her feet and heaved herself on the couch.
“Yikes, a customer,” said Steve. “Gotta go. Bye y’all. Have a good night.”
He darted out and we heard him scamper down the stairs. Trixie sighed. “How could such a rabbity fag be so dumb?”
More stamping. Loud enough to flatten the building into threads. Then silence at the door. We stared at the long black overcoat through the filmy glass. It was such a noir moment, and so improbable—one of the moths had finally made it all the way up the stairs. It was surprisingly difficult for them. They had to save their pennies, and they did. They saved and they lied. But, sometimes, all that was not as hard as getting in the door.
The door opened and an old man lurched across the threshold. He stopped, dazed. A muscle fluttered in his throat. He took every one of us in with his good eye; his other ticked back and forth like a metronome.
“Good evening!” I said heartily. He was drab but not poor, and that gave me confidence. I slapped my palms down on the desktop and knocked a few wild tilts out of my desk chair.
“These are our models tonight: Pink Lima, Trixie, and Dusty Bean.”
This was a line I said two or three times in four hours. The place didn’t do much business. But I always twisted the names a bit. Gave them a little sparkle in the headlights…
The old man picked Trixie, who grunted assent. Trixie was a grim girl, and funny looking, but blond. She teased her hair for work, so it sat on top of her head like a yellow muff. The old man took her hand, and she dropped it. “Follow me,” she commanded. They took the hallway back to the series of little rooms; someone told me this used to be a dentist’s office. Then a door clicked shut.
So, the old guy was about to tumble off his ledge; he was sick of being stuck up there, wherever he was. I got that part; I was filled with understanding with regards to that particular part. But what kept him stuck?
I turned the page back to the beginning of Trixie’s oracle. It turned out to be Deliverance:
The hindrance is past; deliverance has come. The superior man recuperates in peace and keeps still…
“So, you must be the new girl.” I looked up to see Dusty Bean. She had made it to the couch for my call and now she was look
ing at me. Her bright blue eyes came at me like fists. But they were friendly. It fit her reputation: a big mouth who was generous with fights. She was the color of Goldie Hawn. Thin, yet muscular. Her halter top was black strings crocheted into spider webs that covered each small tit.
After I nodded, Dusty’s questions came quickly. Did I like it here? Why was I working here?
I just made something up. I told her I had vague but uncompromising plans to blackmail any professor who had a role in flunking me out, should I happen to spot one here.
Pink Lima cracked a giggle. “Well,” she said, her voice all syrupy, “You have your chance. The fellow in there with Trixie is Professor Hemorrhoids.”
Silence fell, until Dusty broke it. “Not too much business but what we got is well-behaved. So, we return the favor.” She sounded disgusted. “Anyhow Professor H retired years ago, from the biology department. You were in physics, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Never saw the guy in there with Trixie,” I said. I felt a shot of relief which let me know I wasn’t up to blackmailing anyone. “It occurs to me,” I mumbled, “doing biology your whole life is enough punishment. All those fluids.” Then I told Dusty that I was probably too disorganized to carry it off.
“Get organized, baby,” said Dusty Bean. “That’s the only way. That’s how we got this parlor. We struck the old parlor. The owner was a jerk, an asshole. A prick. He thought he could come in anytime and harass the girls. Well, we struck his ass and boy was he surprised. They wrote about us in the paper. Our picture was on Page One. Whores picketing!”
“No way,” I said.
“Way,” she said. “It gave us the idea of starting our own parlor. Everyone here works as little as possible.”
Pink Lima leaned towards Dusty like the Tower of Pisa. “Dusty is such a cool girl. Plus, the best softball player.”
“Softball,” said Dusty Bean, patiently.
Pink Lima boomed, “Dusty to the rescue! Dusty to the rescue! That’s what everybody chants when Dusty Bean hits one out of the park. Plus, she’s got a great arm. Whether she’s throwing rocks or baseballs, she gets it where she wants it to go. BLAST that Bank of America window… It shimmered before it shattered. Before a big window breaks, it bends. It was so cool. Do that again, Dusty Bean.”
