Thirty

by Lawrence Block

  “Yeah, that’s a point.”

  “Anyway, he’ll do this for three hundred dollars. He’s good and he’s clean and he’s safe, and if there are complications afterward you can call him and he’ll come. That’s what kills girls, bleeding afterward and they can’t reach the abortionist and don’t have the brains to call somebody else or go to a hospital. Although I think of hospitals as places to go if you don’t care what happens to you. You wouldn’t get me into one unless they already had the priest for me. Are you a Catholic by any chance?”

  “No.”

  “Neither am I. Just an expression, having the priest for me. Look, do you have three hundred dollars? Then your troubles are over.”

  “Except then I won’t be able to make the rent.”

  “So when the landlord comes around you’ll ball him.”

  “The landlord is a corporation.”

  “Same thing here. That’s some hunk of rent you have to pay. Look, get the abortion first and then you’ll worry about it, right?”

  I suppose she’s right. I’m seeing her tomorrow and then we’ll arrange a time and place for the abortion. The thing that bothers me is I’m sure I won’t be able to work afterward for at least a few days and maybe a few weeks. I don’t know how long it takes before one’s plumbing is back in working order. Are all abortions the same?

  That’s obviously a stupid question. There are obviously at least two kinds of abortions, the ones where the girl lives and the ones where she doesn’t.

  Cheerful thought.

  July 29

  Today’s the day.

  I know it’s stupid to be afraid. So I’m stupid. I can’t help it. Somebody’s going to reach up me and cut something out. Of course I’m afraid.

  And I’m reaching the point where I start wondering about the kid. The one that’s getting cut out in a few hours. I wonder which fuck caused it and whose kid it is. Whose kid it would be, that is, if it were going to get the chance to be a kid.

  I’ll tell you something, my kid that I’ll never get to tell anything to, I’ll tell you this much. You’re not missing a hell of a lot. The game’s not worth the candle.

  What bothers me more, frankly, is the question of what kind of abortion I’m going to have for three hundred dollars when the going rate is supposed to be something like three times that figure. According to Liz, this is a class doctor, but if so why am I getting a bargain basement abortion? She says he’s an occasional John and gets a kick out of aborting hookers. I suppose that’s possible. There’s nothing too odd or unusual for it to be some man’s personal kick.

  Actually if he bungles the job and I die I think I’m ahead of the game. If nothing else it would certainly take some of the pressure off. Because I don’t see how I’m going to be able to make the rent. It’s due the first of the month, which is like three days from now. I’ve got three hundred for the abortion and another hundred and a half, and I won’t be earning anything for a week after that. (Maybe I could at that. Such a high percentage of tricks are simple blow jobs that I could probably keep body and soul together without using my snatch at all. Not the first day, of course, but pretty soon.)

  Oh, everything will work out. I know it will. Liz keeps insisting she’ll lend me the money, and alternately invites me to move in with her until I get back on my feet. I hate to borrow from her but I also hate to give up this place. I know it costs more than it’s worth and more than I can afford and all that but I still like it.

  I guess I’ll stay with her after the operation, though. I gather it’s a bad time to be alone. If anything does go wrong (I keep telling myself nothing will go wrong, but myself doesn’t even begin to believe this), you want to have someone else around to call for help.

  Also they say it’s a dangerous time emotionally. You can have a perfect operation and be recovering very nicely and you get hit by this fantastic wave of depression and do yourself in. I don’t find this hard to understand. I’m pretty depressed and I haven’t even gone in yet.

  August 9

  How frustrating! This fucking book (and looking through it, that’s exactly what it is, a fucking book, since that’s what most if not all of the entries seem to be about) is habit-forming. A week or two can go by without an entry, but when I want to write something and the book’s not around, that’s something else again. I go into insulin shock.

  The abortion was a breeze. (I suddenly get the lovely image of a column of cold air tunneling up my cunt and aborting me, the abortion as breeze.) It was not nearly the horror I kept anticipating, and it was over and done with quickly, and then I napped for an hour and he examined me and sent me on my way, along with a couple of bottles of pills.

  I stayed with Liz. Stayed there until today, as a matter of fact, which is why I’ve been having withdrawal symptoms over the damned diary, which I couldn’t get to.

  There were all sorts of things I wanted to record, but that’s the thing about a diary, if you don’t put them down at the time the impulse gradually diminishes, and by the time you have a chance you wonder what it was about, the whole thing that was fresh in your mind.

  Of course Liz went right on tricking during this time. Even the first day, when I had to stay in bed. The couch in the living room is a Castro, and she opened it up and turned a couple of tricks on it while I lay in bed in the bedroom and listened to the springs squeaking and wondered whether I was going to live or die. After the first day I wasn’t stuck in bed anymore and I would sit drinking coffee in the living room while she balled her tricks in the bedroom.

  There was something interesting that happened that would have gone into the diary but it has become very vague in my mind since then, so the hell with it.

  Liz paid my rent. She insisted, and I didn’t argue very hard. She says I can pay her back once I’m back on my feet. Once I’m back off my feet is more like it. I can’t earn any money on my feet.

  Anyway, I’ve been on them since yesterday. I took far too long to go back and work the bars again. It didn’t have anything to do with the abortion, I don’t think. I don’t see how it could have. The doctor said four days before resuming relations, and I took twice that length of time, and there were no complications and no pain, so I obviously was stalling.

  Yesterday I made eighty dollars. I took my tricks to Liz’s place. Her idea. You really have to have a place to take these men, and having a hotel you can get into easily the way I did is not the answer. A lot of men just don’t like the idea of going through the aggravation of checking into a hotel, and then they’re in some sterile hotel room and they don’t care for it. I can understand this.

  Liz wants me to move in with her. I guess we’re pretty close, and there’s a sexual thing between us that seems fairly strong. Although except for that one phony baloney trick where we put on an act, we haven’t really done anything.

  While I stayed there of course we slept together in her bed. And naturally we would cuddle and touch a little, and sometimes sleep in each other’s arms.

  Hey! The first person, first and only person, that I have literally slept with since Howie!

  As far as living with her goes, I am tempted. It would be nice to have someone around. And Liz is someone I could stand living with.

  But I also like this place, damn it. It’s ridiculous for the amount of time I spend here to be paying almost four hundred dollars a month. I could move out. I’d lose the month’s security, but the hell with that. It wouldn’t matter.

  Or I could keep this place and split the rent on Liz’s apartment so that I could spend the night there occasionally and use it as a place to take Johns. But if I did that I’d be spending a fortune on rent. It just seems ridiculous to spend that much money on rent.

  Actually if there were a two-bedroom apartment in Liz’s building that we could both take, that would be perfect. Or, and this would be even better, now that I think about it, if there were a small apartment in her building that I could take by myself. Because her place isn’t really big enough f
or two girls to bring dates to at the same time, and also because I think I would like a certain amount of real privacy. A place to sit and write in this book, for example. And have whatever thoughts I want to keep to myself.

  I just took a walk around the neighborhood and I felt like a complete stranger. Not just since the abortion, but when I was tricking uptown I found myself spending less and less time around here.

  I guess there’s no real point in having an apartment down here anymore.

  I wonder where Eric is. And Susan. People keep walking in and out of my life. He might be around—I haven’t been here to answer the phone.

  I could go over to his apartment and ring the bell and see what happens. But I won’t do that because I’m afraid he might be there.

  There’s an argument for moving. I would just as soon be unfindable by him.

  Though I have this irrational feeling that if he really wanted to find me there’s no place on earth I could hide. Like he has this all-seeing eye. I know it’s nonsense but I can’t dismiss the feeling.

  August 11

  There’s a vacancy coming up as of the fifteenth in Liz’s building. The superintendent showed it to me this afternoon. Just one room and a vestigial kitchen. The bathroom is big enough to turn around in if you plan your moves carefully in advance. Not a bad view, though, of Fifty-fourth Street.

  It’s two hundred and ten dollars a month, and I have to take it as of the fifteenth, and my place downtown is paid through the first, not to mention the security, so there’s a lot of money I’m throwing away. But the hell with it, I’m taking it.

  If the super had his way he’d rent to no one but whores, according to Liz. She told me how much she gives him at Christmas, and the doormen, and everybody else connected with the place. She really throws money around, and as a result they fall all over themselves to do her favors and open doors for her, and of course she has no hassle about men coming to her apartment. The respectable tenants, meanwhile, sometimes have to wait three months to get a leaky faucet fixed.

  I went crazy yesterday and made a hundred and thirty-five dollars.

  August 17

  I met Howard yesterday. Walking downtown on Lexington between Forty-eighth and Forty-seventh. He was walking uptown, I was walking downtown. And there he was.

  Talk about awkward.

  Miss Plastic Tits was nowhere to be seen. He was alone, carrying that attaché case that I used to think was welded to his hand. We just stopped in our tracks and stared at each other, each waiting for the other to be the first to say something. When we finally started a conversation it went something like this:

  “Well, what do you know.”

  “Well, hello.”

  “I always wondered when I’d run into you, Jan. A few months ago there was a time when I kept thinking I saw you around town, but I would look and it was never you. You’re looking good.”

  “Thank you. You look good yourself.”

  “You’ve lost a lot of weight.”

  “I’ve been gaining a little back lately.”

  “Well, you look good.”

  “Well, I—”

  “I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “Actually I have an appointment.”

  “I said I’ll buy you a drink. We have some things to discuss, Jan.”

  “I have this appointment.”

  “I’ll make a scene.”

  “Huh?”

  “Listen, bitch. You walked out without looking back. You gave me some bad nights, bitch.”

  “I’m sorry about that. Let go of my arm.”

  “I will like hell let go of your arm. We have some things to talk about. I want a divorce. I don’t want to wait to talk about it until we happen to run into each other again. No, you can’t brash me, Jan. I’ll raise my voice, I’ll attract attention, I don’t really give a damn.”

  “You want a divorce?”

  “I’m sure it’s impossible for you to believe that anybody could want a divorce from you. Jesus, you’re sick, do you know that? You’re a sick person, do you know that?”

  “Of course I know it.”

  “Huh?”

  “I don’t especially want a drink, Howard. We can go across the street for coffee. All right?”

  We went across the street and had coffee. He had to have my lawyer’s name and address. That was nice, except I didn’t have a lawyer.

  “Just a minute.”

  “You’re not going anywhere yet.”

  “Oh, fuck off, Howard. I have to make a phone call. I won’t go out of your goddamned sight.”

  I called Liz. She was back at her place and had just finished turning the first trick of the day. She works a lot by telephone, and gets morning people quite frequently. She calls them the coffee-break crowd.

  “Who’s my lawyer?”

  I told her why I wanted to know, and she told me the name of her lawyer, who she said is reasonably good. Jason Silverblatt. I love that name. I like to write it, the way it looks on the page. Jason Silverblatt. Jason, wherever you are, whoever you are, I’d ball you for free. I love that name.

  “Jason Silverblatt,” I told Howie, and gave him the address. He wrote it all down. “And what else is there to say besides See my lawyer?

  “I want your address and phone, too.”

  “Up yours.”

  “I don’t see how in hell you’re the injured party, Jan. Why come on so strong?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re the one who walked out. Not after a fight, not because I did anything that I know about. You just walked out.”

  “I know. You were right before, I’m a bitch.”

  “Well, people have problems.”

  “Problems. Are you getting married again, Howard?”

  “Eventually, I suppose.”

  “I mean is that why you want the divorce?”

  “Oh. No.”

  “Just to get it over with, I suppose.”

  “To get rid of loose ends.”

  “Sure.”

  “There are some girls that I see, one more than the others, but I suppose I’m a little reluctant to get too deeply involved with anybody right now, Jan. Once bitten and all that.”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, I don’t want to keep you—”

  “We might as well finish our coffee.”

  “All right.”

  So we sat there and finished our coffee, but nothing much else got said. And then he paid for our coffee—poor men, they always pay for everything. And we went our separate ways.

  I haven’t even called Silverblatt myself yet. I suppose I ought to. I told Liz I don’t want any alimony from him, or even anything from the house. She told me to take a cash settlement then.

  “If you don’t take it, you’re throwing money away. You know what you could get? About half of what he earns from now until the day you remarry, and you’re not going to remarry.”

  “But I’ve treated him badly enough already.”

  “Men and women always treat each other badly. It’s a law of nature.”

  “You know, I think that might be true.”

  “Of course it’s true. Would I lie to you? Listen, at least talk it over with Jason Silverblatt. I’m sure you can get five or ten thousand dollars in cash just for signing a paper saying good-bye, Charlie.”

  “I looked at him today and I wanted to take him home with me.”

  “You’ve got the hots for him all of a sudden? For your own husband?”

  “No, it wasn’t that. A pity thing, I guess. He looked so pathetic.”

  “Terrific. You screwed him up and you feel sorry for it and now you want to screw him up some more.”

  “I know it doesn’t make sense. That’s why I didn’t do anything about it. It was just an impulse.”

  “You have to watch these impulses.”

  “I know.”

  “You take the money. He had the best years of your life, the son of a bitch.”

  Maybe she’s right.r />
  August 22

  I had an orgasm whipping a John.

  I thought it would be impossible to come with a John. It isn’t. Every once in a while one of them gets to you. Of course they never know the difference, because you fake it anyway, so it all comes to the same thing.

  I don’t too much love the S-and-M stuff. I had this one a few days ago who wanted his balls spanked. That was what he wanted. I was supposed to suck him into a state of magnificent erection, then take my mouth away and hold his cock out of the way with my one hand and slap him across the scrotum with the other until he got his gun. He kept wanting me to hit him harder, and I was certain I was going to hit him too hard and ruin him for life. I kept hitting him and eventually he got where he was going. He shot all over himself, the hair on his chest and everything. I let him take a shower, the poor son of a bitch.

  This one today, it was more ordinary. I whipped him with his leather belt across the behind. Maybe because I wasn’t touching him and he was just whimpering quietly I was able to trip way out on my own private thoughts and associations, and I got into various similar experiences I had had, things with Susan and Eric, and it got to me, and surprise! I came.

  It’s funny when that happens when you didn’t expect it.

  August 25

  The weather has been really impossible lately. It’s just too hot to breathe. Of course the apartment is air-conditioned and so is Liz’s place but even so the heat has to get to you. You take one step out of doors and you literally wilt.

  You would think, or at least I would think, that the men would wait for cooler weather. Who wants to screw in weather like this?

  But nothing stops them.

  August 29

  I can almost pay Liz back already. Not for the kindness, that will take a long, long while to pay back, but for the actual cash.

  It constantly amazes me how much money there is in this line of work. There is really a tremendous amount of money involved. I keep thinking about those jobs I once considered, five days a week of nine to five for a hundred and ten dollars a week.