A Man's Game

by Newton Thornburg

  There was amusement in Slade’s sneer now, almost a kind of warmth. “Jesus, Pops, you really are a basket case, you know that? Down deep you’re a fuckin weirdo case just like the rest of us. The shrinks out at Western, they’d just love to get their greedy little mitts on you. Old Mister Proper Middle-class Sicko Voyeur!” He laughed so loudly that even the old man with the eyepatch gave him a disapproving look.

  Baird did not respond. He was not embarrassed so much as angry, internally raging at himself for what he was doing, for what he felt he had to do. Again he had broken out in a sweat, felt it sticking to his shirt and sliding down his spine.

  Slade leaned toward him, suddenly his buddy, his co-conspirator. “Listen, Jack, there’s somethin you just gotta see. Someone, I should say. And lemme tell ya, if there was ever a cunt a guy would wanta do—or watch someone else do—this is the one.” Like a French waiter, he kissed his fingertips. “Primo, man. A fox of foxes. A pussy among pussies. And there’s one other thing about her, somethin only you’d be able to appreciate. But I ain’t gonna tell you yet. Wait till we get there. Then you’ll see.”

  It was ten o’clock and already dark by the time they got there, a strip club located on the heavily traveled road that circled the northern end of Lake Washington, outside the city limits. The road was solid on both sides with retail businesses of every kind, a four-lane neon causeway difficult enough to negotiate when one was sober, trying to pick out the traffic lights from all the others, with shoppers’ and diners’ cars continually swinging onto the roadway and off. But this night, more inebriated than he had been in years, Baird had to concentrate all his energies on what he was doing. And even then it seemed as if he were driving through a tunnel with walls of light, rainbow-colored and spinning.

  He vaguely remembered parking and filling the half-pints again. He remembered the sequential neon sign out in front, giving the club’s name in separate gaudy syllables: “Oo-la-la.” And he remembered paying the cover charge for both of them. Then they were sitting on a love seat in one corner of the room, which looked a good deal like Harold’s, except that it was larger and more dimly lit, even the stage. He was aware of Slade spiking his drink and popping some kind of pill: speed, he imagined, judging by the man’s hyper manner.

  When a girl came up and offered to do a couch dance for them, Slade asked her where “Satin” was, and the girl said that Satin was on her break. Slade then nudged Baird and told him to get out his money.

  “Give her a five,” he said, and Baird did.

  “Now, tell Satin there’s an extra twenty-five for her here,” Slade said to the girl. “Fifty altogether. But she’s gotta come now—and really pour it on. You tell her that, okay?”

  The girl gave a limp smile, nodded, and walked off.

  “Money-grubbin cunts,” Slade said. “All of ’em.”

  Baird was very tired. He watched the girls with indifference and long since had stopped listening to Slade. He almost spilled his glass of 7UP, trying to pour vodka into it from his own refilled half-pint. Slade laughed and slapped Baird’s knee.

  “Hey, you drunk old sicko!” he said. “You ready for this?”

  Baird had no idea what he was talking about. And then suddenly there was another girl standing in front of them, a bored-looking girl who plucked the fifty from Baird’s hand as if she were removing something dirty from a child. Smiling then, she took off her bra and began to dance for him and Slade, gracefully undulating right over them, her body crawling with the colored moving lights from the glitter-dome. And by then Baird’s heart had stopped, or sunk, he wasn’t sure which, because he saw now what Slade had meant back in the downtown bar.

  The girl had long, wavy dark hair and a beautiful, delicately featured face, with haunting eyes and a lovely mouth and dazzling smile. And her body, though small, was so perfectly shaped—so tight and lissome in the waist and legs, yet so lushly full through the breasts and buttocks—that she seemed to have been formed by something other than nature, some hand of consummate genius. As Baird stared at her in a kind of anguish, Slade gave him an elbow in the ribs.

  “Well, what about it, Pops?” he said. “You see what I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “You bet your ass you do. A fuckin dead ringer, right? She could be your daughter, right?”

  Baird did not answer.

  “Just like in the photos,” Slade said. “Absolute primo perfection.”

  And Baird did not even care what Slade—intentionally or otherwise—had just admitted, for he had never doubted that old Jimbo was the one who had violated his home. More to the point, Baird could not take his eyes off the girl.

  “See? What’d I tell ya?” Slade gloated.

  “Yes, I see.”

  Slade laughed happily. “Just think of the possibilities,” he said. “All them juicy possibilities.”

  Driving the same road home, Baird found the tunnel even smaller, a tight circle of clarity surrounded by darkness and noise and confusion. There, in the center of the circle, he felt, if not cold sober, at least sober enough to know how drunk he was. So he drove with manic caution, all the while trying hard to concentrate on the ravings of his passenger, who was happily, boisterously, stupidly drunk.

  “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, but that Satin, huh, man? Christ, what a fuckin piece, what a fuckin primo-perfect piece of fuckin ass, right, Jacko? A guy see that, he’s just got to have it, man, no two fuckin ways about it. He’s just gotta have it. And that’s what I’m gonna do, Jacko. I’m gonna dip into that like real soon.”

  “Satin, huh?” Baird said. “You gonna do her?”

  Slade seemed to catch himself then, realize what he was admitting to. “Naa, not do her, man!” he said, looking offended. “I don’t do any women. I ain’t like that. All I mean is I’m gonna have her, you know? Like on a date. All nice and legal.”

  “My mistake.”

  “I know some guys, though—one in particular. For the right money, he’d do any cunt you say, anywhere, anytime. And you could watch.”

  “No kidding?”

  “What I say, huh? You gone deaf or something?”

  “Just wanted to be sure, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, and I know why!” Slade whooped with laughter. “Cuz you’d be all for it, you fuckin old sicko!”

  Slade was slouched back against the passenger door, drinking Scotch straight from the bottle. The rum was gone altogether, the vodka half gone, the empty half-pints tossed away in the parking lot, missiles for Slade’s amusement. Though the night was cool, he had rolled his window down and kept sticking his head out, as if he wanted to feel his ponytail flapping in the breeze, right along with his tongue.

  “Well, how about it, man? You want a deal like that or not?”

  Baird shook his head. “No, I couldn’t do that. It would be wrong. Just like the guy doing her would be wrong.”

  Slade howled at that, dancing his feet against the carpeted floor. “Wrong!” he bawled. “How the fuck you figure that, an educated old fucker like you? It’s just nature, man—that’s all it is. Satin and your daughter and every cunt that ever lived, they got this thing we need, right? And we didn’t ask to need it, did we? Fuck no, it’s just the way it is. Like food and water, it’s somethin we just gotta have. So when a guy asks for it, and they say no, what’re you fuckin supposed to do? Just say okay and then go starve to death? Fuck no! And anyway, if a guy just up and takes it—what’s the big deal? The cunt’s havin sex the same as the guy. She don’t lose nothin. Fact, if anybody does any losin, it’s us, you know? Cuz we shoot our load, right?”

  Baird glanced at him, wondering if he was serious. But old Jimbo’s eyes were half-closed and his face was slack, as if he were about to fall asleep. Baird looked back at the road, the circle of light, just in time to see something bright red pass overhead.

  Slade giggled. “Jesus, man, you just ran a red light! You’re a fuckin menace, that’s what you are! A fuckin old sicko voyeur menace!”

  Shaken,
Baird wanted to pull over and phone Ellen or Leo to come and get them, see them safely home. But of course he couldn’t do that, not with the passenger he had. And anyway, it wouldn’t happen again, he assured himself. He had been frightened awake. The circle of light was larger now, more like a tunnel again. Then too, there was still work to do.

  “You seriously believe all that?” he asked.

  “All what?”

  “About rape.”

  Slade yawned, then tasted himself, smacking his lips like a dog with candy. “Your fuckin A,” he said finally. “It’s the truth, ain’t it? Rape! Shit, all rape is, is a guy takin what nature forces him to take. And if the cunt gets a little banged up in the process, that’s her goddamn fault for resistin. After all, what’s happenin to her ain’t no different than what’s happenin to the guy—they both havin sex, right? So what’s the big deal?”

  They had just driven over the Montlake bridge, leaving the university district, so Baird was acutely aware that time was running out. He wasn’t sure exactly what else he needed from Jimbo Slade, but he went after it anyway.

  “This Satin,” he said. “You’re going to use her as a kind of surrogate for my daughter?”

  “A what?”

  “Surrogate. A substitute.”

  Slade shook his head. “Hey, I keep tellin ya—I don’t do nobody. Not Satin, and not your precious little girl either. Understand?”

  “That’s good to hear. Because I want her safe. I want them both safe.”

  “Yeah, like hell you do. I know what you want, Jacko. You want me to do Satin so bad you can probably taste it right now. And you know why you want it? So you can watch and play your little game—pretend you’re me and Satin is your kid. Am I right? Ain’t that what you’re really hot for? Daddy’s little girl finally sittin right where she belongs—on your twisted old cock!”

  “Now who’s the sicko?” The moment Baird said it, he wanted to howl with laughter. Even as drunk as he was, he could appreciate the surreal absurdity of the moment: old Jimbo’s twisted buddy Jack calling him a sicko.

  Slade suddenly pushed up the armrest and slid across the seat, as if he were about to blow in Baird’s ear. Instead, he took hold of the lapels of Baird’s jacket and, giving him a playful shaking, laughed drunkenly in his face.

  “Jacko, I am so fuckin hot for that cunt,” he said. “If we wasn’t so fuckin wasted, we could go back tonight and do her—I mean, take her out—you know, everything all legal. But I’m really hammered, man. I’m wasted. And tomorrow I got things I have to do—money to make, shit like that. But some other night, Jacko. Some other night we go to the Oolala again, okay? Late. Satin gets off at one. And I know where she lives. I’ve followed her other nights.”

  “Satin?” Baird said.

  “Well, fuck yes, Satin! Who else? You comin with, or not?”

  Baird strained to free himself from the weight of the alcohol. He knew he had to choose the right words, do the right thing, but his brain felt as heavy as his eyes, which kept falling shut.

  “I don’t want you to do this,” he said. “It’s wrong.”

  Slade looked at him in disgust. “Man, you don’t listen. I never said I would do anything. All I’m sayin is we go and check her out. We scope her comin home—cuz who knows, there could be some bad-ass rapist fiend just waitin for her, ready to do his little thing—while we watch! While you watch!”

  “It would be wrong,” Baird said. “Legally and morally wrong.”

  Slade’s grin became an open sneer. “Well, who gives a fuck what you say? In this world, I do what I fuckin want!”

  “Don’t do it for me.”

  “Hey, I wouldn’t do shit for you, man. I’m just askin in case some other guy might want to do her, and for a little extra scratch would let us watch. You be for that or not?”

  Baird felt like a bottom fisherman, patiently paying out his steel line. “If I didn’t go along,” he said, “would he do her anyway?”

  “What d’ya think—he’d be doing her just for you? You got a high opinion of yourself, you know that?”

  They were driving along a residential street, moving uphill toward Fifteenth Avenue. For another block, Baird said nothing, then he nodded. “If it’s gonna happen anyway—okay, I’ll be there.”

  But Slade suddenly decided to waffle. “Well, who knows what’s gonna happen—not me, man. I’m just sayin, ‘What if.’”

  “And I’m just saying, ‘Okay, then, I’ll be there.’”

  “Big surprise.” Slade gave him a playful punch on the shoulder and slid back across the leather seat, again slouching against the passenger door. “How else you gonna be a sicko voyeur unless you came along?”

  “Good point,” Baird said.

  When they reached Gide’s parking lot, Baird went all the way to the rear, turning into the alley before stopping.

  “Well, it’s been real,” Slade said, sitting up and holding out his hands for a brotherly slap. Feeling like a fool, Baird sat there for a few seconds before forcing himself finally to lift his hands and lamely let them fall on Slade’s. The creep laughed and punched him in the arm again.

  “Jesus, Jacko—you’d make one lousy nigger, you know that?”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Hey, old Jimbo’s always right. So, some other night soon, okay?” His sneer was almost a grin again. “You bring your wallet, and we have us a real party, Jacko. Us and maybe Satin too. Who knows?”

  With that, he laughed again and got out of Baird’s car. Raising his arm in a kind of sidelong Nazi salute, he walked toward the old Impala, whose gray-primered roof shone silver in the moonlight. Baird immediately put his foot on the gas and sped away, roaring down the alley as if he were fleeing for his life.

  Eight

  Baird knew he was still too drunk to drive any farther than he had to, yet he soon found himself going on past his own neighborhood and heading downhill, toward Lake Union. He hadn’t forgotten the red light passing overhead, the belated terror of realizing that he had just sailed through a busy intersection against the traffic signal. But even that was not enough to keep him from plunging on now, like a twig in white water.

  He pretended to himself that he was thinking of driving over to Leo’s, but it was an hour past closing time and he wasn’t headed in that direction anyway. Instead he turned west under the interstate and made his way through the narrow streets of the Wallingford district until he came to her house. And there he stopped, right in the middle of the street, since there were no vacant parking places on either side. Like most of the houses in the block, the brown bungalow was dark, without even an outside light burning. And for a few delirious moments Baird considered getting out of the car and stumbling up onto her porch and pounding on the door.

  “It’s me!” he would yell at her.

  The door would open and she would hold out her arms and he would take her right there, on the floor, with the door open behind them and his car still parked in the middle of the street, lights on and the motor running. Thinking about it, he laughed out loud, for some reason almost proud to be so drunk and hopeless, lurking outside Detective Jeffers’ house like any other sex fiend, like any other Jimbo Slade. But then he remembered that that wasn’t the reason he had come here. It wasn’t “Love me!” he wanted to yell at her, but “Save me!” And abruptly his eyes were swimming and he thought the steering wheel was going to break in his hands. Desperate to get away now, he tromped on the accelerator and the Buick’s tires screeched.

  A short time later, driving past Lookout Park, he pulled over to the curb and got out. He saw no one else in the park, and at the end of the street only the usual lights were burning at his place and the houses of his neighbors. He walked across the park’s narrow strip of lawn and headed downhill through the trees and brambles. In an open space carpeted with needles, he fell to his knees and put his finger down his throat, wishing that he could get rid of it all, not just the greasy chicken dinner and the foul residues of vodka an
d Scotch but also the feelings of shame and disgust that seemed to have congealed in his stomach. Instead all he got up was a skein of phlegm, rank and viscous. He wiped his mouth with a leaf, then got to his feet, urinated, and stumbled back up the hill.

  Within minutes he was home, slipping in through the front door because he had forgotten to put the new back-door key on his ring. In the downstairs bathroom he drank some Pepto Bismol and washed it down with water. Then he walked quietly through the museum and fell onto the couch in the family room, not bothering to remove his jacket or even his shoes. In the museum he heard the grandfather clock strike three times. Then he let go, dropping like a stone into dark water.

  It wasn’t until after Baird left that Slade discovered how hopelessly drunk he was. At first he was unable to find his car keys, fishing in every pocket for what seemed like an hour before he finally located the goddamn things. But then the fucking keyhole wouldn’t hold still for him. And worst of all, when he did manage to get the door open, he tried to lean on it as he was getting into the car and the goddamn thing swung open and he fell on his ass, right there in the empty parking lot. For a while he just lay there on the asphalt, laughing at himself and kicking out at the fucking car, driving the heels of his cool rattlesnake boots into the rusty old fender.

  It took so long getting to his feet that he began picturing himself in a prizefight ring, on the canvas, looking up at his fellow jailbird, old Iron Mike, standing over him in his black shoes and no socks, his face expressionless and his huge arms hanging ready, like a couple of smoking cannons. And Slade laughed.

  “I’m gonna git you, motherfucker!” he bawled, making it to his feet finally, only this time falling into the car instead of next to it.

  He didn’t try to put the key into the ignition or even bother to close the car door. He just stretched out on the bench seat and immediately fell asleep. When he awoke, it was still dark, but he had no idea how long he had been asleep, for hours or only minutes. Checking Baird’s calendar watch, he saw that it was almost four in the morning; but even that was of little help, since he didn’t know what time it had been when he’d fallen asleep. About all he knew was that he was feeling like shit, not quite so drunk now, but queasy and parched, with a booming headache and a full bladder.