To Skin a Cat

by Thomas McGuane

  “North Beach had grown tiresome, even to me,” Chino explains. “The fire escapes made everything a little vulgar. Would you not say so?”

  “I accept your work, Donald.” Max smiles. Chino has gone back to “Donald Arthur Jones.” Max is the only one with manners enough to accept it. The girls keep calling him Chino, as if he were some beaner from down yonder.

  “And that one little door with no place to go. And the aging beatniks! Ugh! But that one little door made it seem so much like a drive-up window. I’m no McDonald’s!”

  “How much is that fresh face?”

  “Five hundred dollars.”

  “Rather steep, isn’t it?”

  “You know the law. Think of my risk. She’s very pretty, very educated. She has no reason to be here.”

  Max pays him, remarking, “Don’t overbook her. A thing like that can lose its bloom overnight.”

  Chino looks like a pixie as he opens the door to Marianne’s room. She lies curled up on an enormous bed covered by a huge, wholesome, handmade quilt. She faces the wall. She hears the door close, then Max’s gruff voice: “Get up.”

  Three in the morning and the same bed. Marianne is bound, gagged, and naked, eerily delineated by a small amount of light that is sufficient, nonetheless, to reveal her tangled hair, stained face, and sense of all-consuming defeat and pollution. The light snaps on and La Costa stands in the doorway staring expressionlessly at Marianne. La Costa’s large eyes blink regularly until she has taken it all in. Then she goes into sudden motion, freeing Marianne from the knots that bind her face, hands, and feet. Marianne gets up. The new freedom nauseates her for a moment.

  “Are you going to be all right?”

  “Yes. Are you La Costa?”

  “Uh huh. Why don’t you come here and lie down?” La Costa makes the ravaged bed with deft, efficient movements. The elephantine Max twisted everything in his ardor.

  “I want some water. I want to walk.”

  La Costa leads Marianne toward the kitchen, slowly and by the arm.

  “When I feel like a child, I cry and suck my thumb. Even in front of a john. But never in front of a pimp. The good pimp has only one weakness, which is his desire to kill whores. He is watching and he is waiting.”

  “Like a hawk,” says Marianne.

  Back in Marianne’s room you can just make out the two faces as they talk like children at a slumber party.

  Marianne asks, “What about Chino, though?”

  “I think he’s hilarious.”

  “Hilarious.”

  “He read that more Americans can recognize the McDonald’s hamburger commercial than the national anthem. So he decided he and McDonald’s were in direct competition.” La Costa begins to sing, “You deserve a break today at McDonald’s.” But she is interrupted, at first by Marianne’s rhythmic sobbing and finally, “I’ve been raped I’ve been raped I’ve been raped.” La Costa rests a hand on Marianne’s back and looks out the window, slowly shaking her head.

  In front of Melvin Belli’s office, which is a bogus old San Francisco–style place with a theater-set law library in the front window, two whores are using the reflection to improve their makeup. Belli’s occasional appearances on the other side of the glass are of the same order.

  About a block away, Bobby gives Jane a send-off. She is dressed pretty much like the girls at the window. They watch her approach warily.

  “What’s happening?” asks Jane.

  “We’re innocent, officer,” says the first girl, a Chinese.

  “I’m looking for a girl I used to know in the life. Name of Donna.”

  “Madonna?”

  “Donna.”

  “Donna who?”

  “Donna from Hamtramck with a chipped tooth.”

  “Where did you work?” the Chinese girl wants to know.

  “Out of a high rise on Sansome. I had a book.”

  “What’d you quit for?” asks the white girl.

  “I didn’t like the humiliation.” Jane doesn’t have her heart in this. She doesn’t want to find Donna and she doesn’t want to find Marianne. She feels like a dope in this hooker suit Bobby got her. The cheapie sequined pantyhose are squeezing her ass like an anaconda.

  The white girl says. “It isn’t no humiliation unless you don’t get paid. You were never in the life.”

  “What’s the difference? I’m not going to stand here and argue all night. Just tell me where a person could bump into Donna.”

  “Last time we seen her, which was tonight”—the Chinese girl walks off in disgust and casts a satirical wave to Bobby—“she was working the fake ship at Bernstein’s Fish Grotto.”

  Bobby and Jane glide down Powell Street in a taxi, headed for Bernstein’s. The imitation ship’s bow projects over the sidewalk. And in front of a window full of back-lit swimming fish stands Donna. The street is Atlantis.

  “There she is!”

  Bobby jumps out and Donna is gone like a deer. He sprints a few yards and quits. Bobby climbs back in and slumps in real depression.

  The driver says, “Give her ten minutes and she’ll be in Moar’s cafeteria.”

  At Moar’s, Bobby and Jane get out and rush inside. The door nearly slams in Jane’s face. Inside, Donna sits beneath Benjamino Bufano murals that depict brotherly love. She’s drinking a cup of coffee. They go to her table.

  Donna says, “A working girl can’t get nowhere today. You’ve got your nerve.”

  “I’m Jane Adams.”

  “Are you with the law?”

  “Let’s just say I’m helping Bobby find his—find somebody.”

  “Bobby’s a God damned deviate, and he had her up there working for free.”

  “Up where?”

  “Look, I’m not telling anything.”

  “Would it take money?” Bobby asks.

  “No.”

  “Something. What?”

  “Pain pills. Fifty thousand Percodans.”

  “We could land you in jail.”

  “So land me.”

  “Donna,” Jane asks, “what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is I still think my ship will come in. So far, the only one’s been at Bernstein’s. My cousin married a hippie trial lawyer and got out of the life. They adopted a three-year-old Chicano right off of a Hallmark card and live in Pacific Heights two blocks from the Russian Embassy. What’s wrong with that? My only trip to Pacific Heights and I drew a seventy-year-old eye-ear-nose-throat guy and he had a dead monkey in a footlocker. I gave him his money back. You know what? I can’t stand it. And I won’t talk. And if you don’t get out of here, I’m going to start screaming!”

  Somehow the next day, by the time La Costa has gotten Marianne to the cable-car stop, Marianne’s vitality has begun to return. Pragmatic La Costa is not interested in how Marianne got herself into this; to La Costa, Marianne is another prostitute, and, for instance, we all have a story. She says to Marianne, “I think it’s time the rotten little kids had a spree. Marianne, let’s go downtown.”

  They descend Powell Street gazing upon the beautiful city. When they pass the Bank of America La Costa says, “Many pimps in there.”

  They head for Gump’s department store and proceed to its imperial interior, crossing the great showrooms and on to the Kimono Room, where they play at being old-time courtesans amid the exorbitant women’s clothing. La Costa fills their purses with silk scarves. When Marianne looks startled, La Costa says, “If we’re nabbed, yell ‘racist.’ Tell them you’re high yellow.”

  On this same day, Bobby and Jane are downtown shopping in a glamorous Maiden Lane pet store, a splendid room full of South American birds, very carefully observed by an ocelot with an aqua collar.

  Bobby explains everything. “I can’t have another day without a hawk. And the only thing legal here is a Colombian broadwing, which is not a first-class hawk.”

  “I don’t know one from another,” Jane says, shyly gazing at Bobby.

  When the shrouded cage rests on
the back seat of the cab between Bobby and Jane, she says demurely, “I always thought hawks just killed chickens.”

  Bobby sighs. “That’s only part of the story, Jane.”

  Inside the Presidio Heights house, Bobby sets the cage on the floor and removes the shroud.

  “Open the cage, Jane.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “Open the cage.”

  Jane gingerly opens the cage and the hawk comes out, flying around the room with terrible beating wings, to settle finally on the back of the tall chair, where it stares with unforgiving yellow eyes at the amateur pimp and his realtor friend.

  The middle of the night at Quickee Char-Broil can be lone-some. The chef sweeps the little flaming pieces of meat onto a tray with salad and hands them over to Chino and Donna. Then the cook becomes the cashier and takes Donna’s money. Condominium Donald is Cheapo Chino again.

  Donna carries the tray to the table and puts the meals down carefully. She aches with love. The two sit. Immediately, Chino swaps plates.

  “I said rare.” He fills his mouth. “That other God damn thing’s like a baseball glove. How’d you do?”

  “Four hundred.”

  “Give it ta me.”

  Donna hands him the money proudly. Now is her opportunity.

  “I want to work in the condo.”

  “No room.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “You want to go back to Petaluma?”

  “I’m not from Petaluma.”

  “I know a big-time Jap chicken farmer. I’ll send your ass to him in Petaluma.”

  “I brought you Marianne, and now I’m working the hotels and she’s in the condo. That’s not fair.”

  What an outburst. Chino reaches and seizes her steak in his hand. He squeezes it until beef blood runs between his fingers.

  “You shit too,” he says. “See that? That’s your Petaluma face. Gimme your napkin.”

  Chino puts her steak down and wipes his hands. He continues, upon reflection.

  “Don’t give me no eye. Looking at me like you got nothing to eat.” Impulsively, he shoves the steak down her blouse. Tears stream as the steak bleeds through. Chino is on the verge of raving. “ ‘I wanna be in the condo, I wanna be in the condo.’ How much room you think is there? Huh? Look, I’m no McDonald’s.” He stands in total disgust and turns to the staring fry cook. “Hey.” He menaces him. “Try going blind.” He turns back to Donna, his original fury intact. “I’ll give you a condo. Petaluma Jap chicken condo. I give up.”

  He upends her purse on the table.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m gonna make sure there isn’t something in here I should know about. What’s this?”

  “Herbal Essence Shampoo.”

  “What about this crap?”

  “It’s for dry-skin relief. It’s by Revlon.”

  “This is the biggest bottle of Excedrin I’ve ever seen. What’s this?”

  “Silverfrost. It’s an eye shadow. Also by Revlon. That little box? That’s Aziza two-tone luster shadow.”

  “What about this?”

  “Supernails.”

  Chino pulls out an eyelash curler and tries it on himself. Donna is crying, but she thinks he’s cute. Then a green jar. His face is a question mark.

  Donna says, “That’s analgesic balm, for small injuries.”

  “Let me ask you something, Miss Whore. Why don’t you take your repair kit and get the fuck out of my life?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Then bring me Marianne’s boyfriend. Get him drunk first. Otherwise you’re too ugly to get the job done.”

  The condo in the gloaming: long blades of bayside light penetrate the cloud-high dwelling. Marianne is in her room with her new friend, who, dressed for the street, turns shining African eyes on getting it while she can. Marianne is dressed in silk pajamas, part of the basic issue, suggesting a youthful housewife caught in an unsavory trap. Thanks to La Costa, she’s confident she can do a walk-through, keeping her mind’s eye on a better day. Meanwhile, she’s trying to explain Bobby. She says he must have caught her at the right time. She thinks maybe she fell in love with him or, as so many young women say, “I thought so at the time.” “Sometimes,” says Marianne, “you find yourself counting how long you’ve been away from home and sometimes you know you’ll never get there again.”

  The door bangs open: Chino.

  “You want to head out, La Costa? Marianne’s got a visitor.” La Costa makes a little comic rotary wave and leaves. Then Chino leaves, somewhat in La Costa’s wake, and the door is closed like the shutter of a stalled-out camera. When it blinks open again a huge wavering figure appears and closes the door. This is an enormous man. His tiny briefs are lost in the declivity of flesh that is the last fold of his belly. He’s about fifty and has the ponderous face of an oaf and the baleful gazing eyes we associate with martyrs whose stories have been lost.

  “Do you like me?” he wants to know. His ring finger hooks the corner of his minute briefs. Desperately, Marianne recalls the buffalo paddock, the fog, the lost, adventurous dreaming of long ago. It was coming at her.

  Chino and La Costa are watching a Western on TV.

  Chino says, “Guy in there with Marianne?”

  “Yeah?”

  “He designs golf courses.”

  “Is that so.”

  “His wife’s a concert pianist, but he made her quit.”

  “What’s he gonna make Marianne do?”

  “No telling.”

  La Costa is staring at the television. “Is that Montgomery Clift?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think he’s about to kick John Wayne’s butt. Don’t he just move his eyes cute, though?”

  The golf-course designer appears in a blue suit.

  “Highly overrated,” he says.

  Chino stares, at a loss for words.

  “And this pitch about resistance? I’m glad it’s on your phone bill. I’ll tell you what she is: she’s a whore. I saw through her in a minute. She’s simply a prostitute like Mandy there. Don’t call me again. I can do better at the Masters in Augusta.”

  Chino is abashed. This topflight professional has made him feel like a crumbum. Then he’s mad. He’s infected with anger. It’s like some incoherent mind scabies crying for a final scratch. He makes no remark as the golf-course designer shoves open the door and leaves.

  Dusty and battered after a long fight, Montgomery Clift and John Wayne are casting glances of new-won respect at each other. There’s a big free sky behind them as well as admiring townspeople to watch them become friends.

  Chino stares at the screen, trying to get his bearings.

  In the kitchen in Presidio Heights, Jane, pressing out little silhouette men on a buttered cookie sheet, has to dust her hands to answer the door. It is Donna, and she tells Jane how to find Marianne.

  La Costa makes up Marianne’s eyes and powders her golden cheeks with a sable brush. Neither of them says a word.

  Bobby comes in from the Palace of the Legion of Honor, where he saw a documentary about the end of the elephants. “They had these fabulous aerial photographs of elephants in their death throes. Then there was this terrific shot of an enormous bull who had died long ago, and all he was was like this terrible emblem on the desert floor.”

  Jane replies, “You can find Marianne any night after nine in the Room of the Dons at the Mark Hopkins. She’s a whore.” Then Jane says to Bobby, “Stay with me.”

  Bobby says, “Stay with you? Without your cross-referenced street guide, I wouldn’t have been with you in the first place.”

  The Room of the Dons is a dark, paneled room. Marianne sits at the bar against the backdrop of paintings that depict the mythical Amazons of an imaginary California. Bobby sits next to her and rests his head on her shoulder. He holds her arm in both of his hands.

  “Oh, my baby.”

  “Hello, Bobby.”

  “Has it been awful?”
r />   “No.”

  “Can we go?”

  “We need a room.”

  “Can we go home?” says Bobby.

  “I’ve got a place.”

  Once they’re inside Marianne’s room in the condominum, Bobby turns his eyes toward her in terrified suspension. He walks to the window and its pricey vista.

  “Am I going to have to pay?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Then I think you’re trapped.”

  “No, you are,” she says.

  Bobby hands her his wallet. “I don’t want to hear the numbers. Take out how much it is.”

  Marianne peels the bills into her purse and gives Bobby his wallet back.

  “Shall I undress you?” she asks.

  “Did you take out for that?”

  “I took out for everything,” she says slowly. And for once in Bobby’s life pure desire pours through him like flame. For once.

  Having quietly let himself in, Chino waits his turn in the front room. But, as with Bobby, nothing happens quite as he has foreseen it. Because Marianne’s door bursts open and Bobby flings himself into the hallway, a knife plunged in the base of his neck, jetting fatal quantities of blood on everything. Bobby clambers down the hallway toward Chino like a bride in a dream, smearing the walls as he goes, reaching, reaching toward the only man in the place.

  The bloody bed is repeatedly ignited by flashbulbs. The officer turns to the press for a moment of candor. The people have to know. A stretcher passes covered with a sheet, the anonymous contents of which constitute a valediction to every long walk off every short pier in America.

  The officer says, “We have no clues. Okay? You can see he was well off. He has no record of employment. Y’with me so far? Perhaps he was living on a trust fund. Since we don’t know what was here, we don’t know what was stolen. I think there’s a very real chance that, as a man of independent means, he kept too many valuables around. Okay? Such men are very relaxed about their possessions. You could pick the lock; you could buy the doorman. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. But this much is certain: I cannot offer any encouragement that your readers will ever hear the end of this story.”