Private Pleasures

by Lawrence Sanders

  We started eating, and he got right down to business.

  "Tania," he said, "I'm going to lend you the hundred dollars no matter what, but I'd really feel a lot better about it if you'd tell me why you need it."

  "I knew you were going to ask me that," I said, "because a hundred dollars is an awful lot of money, and you just can't hand it over without wanting to know what it's for. I thought about it, and I decided that I would tell you if you promise not to tell my parents. "

  "I promise," he said.

  "Cross your heart and hope to die?"

  He nodded.

  "You've got to say it," I told him.

  "Cross my heart and hope to die," he said.

  "Well," I said, "I need the money because I'm going to run away from home. With Chet Barrow."

  He stopped eating his pizza, looked at me, then started eating again.

  "Who's Chet Barrow?" he asked.

  "His real name is Chester Barrow. He's a boy who lives next door to us.

  He's a year older than I am, and he is very nice.

  Also, he is smart."

  " Uh-huh, " Uncle Chas said. "Is running away from home his idea or yours?"

  "He thought of it first. He hasn't even said he'll take me with him.

  But I thought if I told him I had a hundred dollars, then he'd have to take me because I don't think he's got much money." , "Good thinking on your part," my uncle said. "Why does Chet want to leave home?"

  "Because he is unhappy there. His father doesn't talk to him, and his mother watches TV all the time."

  "I see. And why do you want to run away, honey?. "Because I'm unhappy also. My father drinks alcohol all the time, and he doesn't come home for dinner. And then, when he does come home, he smells from perfume, and he and Mother have these terrible arguments, and once he slapped her and she cried. So I don't want to live there anymore."

  He didn't say anything for a while, and we each had another slice of pizza. It had a very thick crust but it was good.

  Mostly I ate the topping off.

  "Where will you go?" Uncle Chas asked finally. "Have you decided?",

  "No, not yet. Chet is planning it."

  He sighed very sorrowfully. "Tania, have you thought this over carefully? I mean, you won't have your own room anymore, or your own bed, or three meals a day. And where will you go to school? "

  " School's out for vacation."

  "Oh, yeah, I forgot. But won't you miss the other things?

  "I suppose," I said. "But I'll get used to it. And it will be better.

  Can we have dessert now? I'll fix it.

  "Sure, honey. The ice cream is in the freezer. If it's too hard, heat the spoon under hot water."

  "I know how to do it," I told him. "Uncle Chas, did it hurt when you lost your legs?"

  "Sure it did. And for a while I thought they were still there. I mean I kept trying to wiggle my toes even though I knew I didn't have any toes. It was like having an itch you can't scratch."

  "I feel sorry for you," I said.

  "Thank you," he said.

  I brought him his brownie with ice cream on top.

  "That looks good," he said. "Why don't you bring the things over here.

  Then if we want more we can help ourselves."

  "I'm not going to have more," I said. "I don't wish to get fat. Now I suppose you're going to tell me I shouldn't run away.

  Well, it won't do you any good because I've made up my mind."

  "Hey," he said, "I wasn't going to try to persuade you not to. It's an important decision, and obviously you've given it a lot of thought."

  "I have," I said. "And once I make up my mind, I do it."

  "Sure," Uncle Chas said. "You're very determined, I can see that. But we may have a problem. Now look here…"

  He pulled out his wallet and spread five twenty dollar bills on the desk.

  "That's a hundred dollars, Tania," he said.

  "I know," I told him. "I can add."

  "Of course, you can. But the problem is, what are you going to do with it until you actually leave home? I suppose you could give it to Chet to keep, but then he might run away and not take you with him."

  "He wouldn't do that."

  "He might. It's possible, isn't it? Don't bite your fingernails, honey. And if you hide it in your room, or someplace else around the house, your mother or father might find it and want to know where you got it and what it's for."

  "I can hide it good."

  "Maybe you can, but there's always the chance they may find it. Now, I'll put this hundred dollars aside for you. When you and Chet are ready to leave, you take a cab out here. Tell the driver to wait, and I'll pay him for the trip. Then I'll hand over the hundred dollars, and you and Chet can go wherever you like. How does that sound?"

  I thought about it. "You promise to give us the money, Uncle Chas?

  When we leave home and come out here? "

  "Of course. Here it is. I'll put it in a special envelope marked with your name. I won't touch it.

  It's yours when you come for it."

  "Well, all right," I said. "I'll tell Chet about it, and then he'll have to let me go with him."

  "Sure he will. If he's as smart as you say he is."

  "He kissed me," I said suddenly.

  "He did?" Uncle Chas said. "Did you get mad at him? "

  "No," I said.

  "I liked it."

  He laughed, wheeled his chair over, and hugged me.

  "What's not to like?" he said.

  Mother came for me like she promised and we went home. I went looking for Chet and finally found him at the swimming pool.

  This was a pool for all the people who live in our development.

  I don't go in very much because the stuff they put in the water turns my hair green. Chet was sitting by himself on the grass, and he was wearing clothes so I knew he hadn't been swimming with the other kids.

  I sat down beside him. He was eating a Butterfinger and gave me a piece.

  "Listen," I said, "I've got something to tell you." And I told him all about how my uncle promised to lend me a hundred dollars. It was put aside for me in a special envelope, and when we decided to leave home, we could take a cab to his place and he would pay the driver, and then he would give me my money.

  "Wow," Chet said. "That's keen. We can go anywhere on a hundred dollars. I've been studying the map, and you know where I'd like to go?"

  "Where?

  "Alaska. It's a nice place, and also it's so far away that our parents would never think of looking for us there." Aren't there bears in Alaska?" I asked him.

  "I guess so," he said. "But they wouldn't bother us. There are alligators in Florida, but look how many people live here and never get bitten."

  "And wolves," I said. "In Alaska."

  "Okay, okay, " he said angrily. "Where do you want to go?"

  "Wherever you say," I told him. "Alaska is fine."

  But I really wanted to go to Paris, France. That's where Sylvia Gottbaum was going with her mother and father.

  DR. CHERRYNOBLE e called me on Saturday right after his niece Hleft, but I had just come from the beach and had to shower and dress. I stopped on the way to pick up a chilled bottle of Frascati and arrived at his studio about five o'clock.

  We sipped the wine from his ridiculous jelly jars and nibbled on brownies that had apparently been baked by his sister-in-law.

  They were quite good. Chewy, with walnuts.

  Chas told me about his lunch with Tania and how he had promised to hold the hundred dollars for her until she actually left home.

  "Do you think that was wise?" I asked him.

  "Can you suggest an alternative?" he said. "What I was really trying to do was stall for time. Look, Cherry, the kids might change their minds and forget all about running away. If they do go through with it and show up here someday asking for their money, then I'll just have to play it by ear. I "You know, Chas," I said, "aiding and abetting runaway children may be ag
ainst the law, I don't know. But even if it isn't, you're going to make enemies out of the children's parents and possibly leave yourself open to a civil suit."

  "I know that," he said, "but I didn't have much choice, did I? Unless I want to snitch on the kids, which I don't."

  "You said the boy's name is Chet?"

  "It's actually Chester, but Tania calls him Chet, Chester Barrow."

  I put down my wine and stared at him. "Barrow?" I said.

  "Is his mother Mabel Barrow?"

  "I wouldn't know. They live next door to my brother's place.

  Herman has eyes for her. He calls her a dumpling so I guess she's plump. And one of the reasons Chet wants to leave home is that she watches TV all the time."

  I drew a deep breath. "I shouldn't be telling you this, Chas, but I trust your discretion. Mabel Barrow is a patient of mine."

  "Oh, lordy."

  "And I can understand her son's desire to run away. It's obviously not a happy home."

  He looked at me. "What do we do now, doc?"

  "There's not a great deal we can do. Getting Mabel straightened around is going to take time-if I can do it. She's talking about divorce."

  "Oh, shit," he said. "And, of course, the boy senses what's going on."

  "Of course. Children are much more aware than their parents suspect."

  "Poor kids," he said.

  "Poor ever I yone," I said. , "What's that supposed to mean?"

  I poured us more wine. "An occupational hazard," I told him.

  "I'm sure dermatologists get to thinking that everyone in the world has skin problems, and psychiatrists get to thinking that everyone in the world is screwed up."

  He laughed. "Maybe we are," he said. "We're all nuts."

  "Then what's the norm? " I asked him, but he didn't answer.

  He hadn't turned on the lights, and the studio was filling with the mellow luster of the setting sun. It had a purplish tint, almost mauve.

  The air seemed perfumed with that glow. It had a soothing effect, warm and intimate.

  "He kissed her," Chas said in a low voice.

  "Who kissed whom?"

  "Chet kissed Tania. She said she liked it. Is that the norm?"

  "It's a good start," I said.

  Again we sat in silence, both of us seemingly content. It was a rare moment, a good time to say what I had to say. And if I lost, my life would go on. Changed, but it would go on.

  "I love you, Chas," I said quietly.

  I thought he wasn't going to reply, but finally he did.

  "I don't deserve it," he said.

  That infuriated me. "Stop it!" I said angrily. "Now just stop it.

  Let me be the judge of whether or not you deserve it.

  I'm the one doing the loving."

  His laugh was rueful. "Yes, doctor," he said.

  I waited patiently, knowing that eventually he would try to explain himself. He was an honest man, he really was.

  "You know I want to," he said finally. "Not just the sex, that's only part of it. it's the giving, the surrendering, I find so hard. When I bought it in Nam, I was sure I was going to die.

  No pain yet, I was still in shock. But I looked down and saw my legs were gone. I just wanted to let go, let death take me. It seemed so easy-just to let go. But it wasn't easy. It was so tough that I couldn't do it."

  "Chas, are you equating death with loving?"

  "Of course not. I'm just saying that I thought letting go would be easy and I'd just drift away. It didn't happen. Almost against my will I fought back-or my body did."

  "The instinct to survive."

  "If you say so, doc. But it meant pain and the miseries.

  Now it seems so easy to keep on living the way I have been."

  "And loving me means pain and misery?"

  "Be honest," he said to me. "You know it does."

  "It also means survival! "Turn on the light," he cried. "My God, it's dark in here."

  I switched on the lights, and he turned his head away from me. I wondered if he was weeping.

  "I wish you had talked this way when you were under treatment," I told him. "I failed to draw it out of YOU."

  "Don't put yourself down," he said. "Maybe the only reason I can talk this way now is because of the treatment. Your treatment."

  "I know it's difficult for a man like you," I said. , "Yes, loving will mean surrendering, giving up a part of yourself."

  "I don't have many parts left, he said wryly, looking down at his stumps.

  "And you're right," I went on. "It will mean pain, for both of us.

  But the stakes are so high, it's worth the gamble."

  He grinned at me. "No pain, no gain-right, doc?"

  "Right," I said. "I'm supposed to be an expert on human behavior. But nothing I've read or studied or experienced in my practice can explain the way I feel about you, Chas. It's not analyzed in any of the textbooks. Perhaps because it's not abnormal."

  "It is for me."

  "Maybe. In your present mood. You see it as surrender. I see it as sharing. All I know is that I love you and want to make you happy. I think I can. But I have absolutely no desire to analyze the way I feel and understand why I'm acting the way I am.

  I just accept it. Besides, it's Saturday, and I don't work on Saturdays."

  He laughed. "All right," he said, since you won't analyze yourself, let me do it. You feel sorry for me."

  "Bullshit."

  "You're attracted to me the way a lot of people are attracted to freaks."

  "Total bullshit."

  "Or I represent a professional challenge, you don't feel my therapy is complete. Your love is strictly professional, all in the line of duty."

  "You've got it all wrong, Chas. I love you because I love you. Can't you accept that?"

  "It's too simple."

  "Love is simple. It's a plain, elemental human emotion.

  Yes, as you said, the results may be pain and misery. But the feeling itself is clean and uncluttered. Nothing complicated about it. it just exists. And if you deny it, you risk more pain and misery than love can ever cause."

  "Now you're preaching," he said.

  "Yes, I'm preaching."

  "Fighting for my soul, are you?"

  "If you want to call it that. I don't want to see you wasting your life, Chas, that's for sure. But more important, I don't want to waste mine. if that sounds selfish, so be it.

  You're not going to ask me to stay for dinner, are you?"

  "No."

  "Just as well," I said. "it would be anticlimactic. Is there anything I can fetch you before I leave?"

  "Yeah," he said. "I do believe that right now I need something a little stronger than white wine. Mix me a whiskey and soda, will you?"

  "Which whiskey?"

  "Whatever."

  I made him a brandy and soda with a lot of ice and brought it to him.

  "Thank you, Dr. Noble," he said.

  "You're quite welcome, Mr. Todd," I said.

  "Bend down," he said, motioning.

  I leaned over his wheelchair. He crooked an arm about my neck, pulled me close, kissed me on the lips. A long, lingering kiss. Then he released me.

  "I liked it," he said. "is that the norm?"

  "It's a good start," I said.

  WILLIAM K. BREVOORT isten, I've been around the block twice, and the Lway Big Bobby Gurk was acting was making me antsy.

  First of all, he phoned me at least four times wanting to know if I had a sample of the ZAP pill yet. I told him I was working on it, but I didn't like those checkup calls. When guys you've got a deal with get that eager you begin to think (1) it's bigger than you figured, and,or (2) they're conniving a way to cut you out.

  Then suddenly Bobby wanted me to meet this twitch. Now when guys do that, it usually means they want to dump the broad and hope you'll take over, or she's such a gem and you're such close pals that he wants you to share the goodies. I didn't figure Gurk had either of those reasons.

  But I
went along with him because I was curious about what was on his mind, and also I didn't want to get him sore at me because I needed him if I was going to score big with bets on the fights and football games using the ZAP pill.

  Bobby's woman turned out to be a big, friendly judy who was no slouch in the brains department. After we got to know each other, I asked her how come she had teamed up with a pig like Gurk, who sucked up his spaghetti like a vacuum cleaner and probably had the first buck he ever stole framed on the wall of his office. Also, he didn't smell so great. So how come she picked him?

  "Beggars can't be choosers," Laura said. That was her name, Laura Gunther. "I've always had lousy luck with men."

  Then I told her about The Luck and how I always had it. She said that was wonderful, and she wanted to keep seeing me in hopes some of it would rub off on her.

  I got married years ago, but I don't know where she is now.

  Since then I've had a few women, but to tell you the truth, it wasn't all that important to me. But Laura and I hit it off right from the start, and I began seeing her two or three nights a week.

  I'd take her to ritzy restaurants and nightclubs where she could show off her rags and play the lady.

  "You're the last of the big-time spenders, Willie," she told me. "I like that."

  "Easy come, easy go," I said.

  "Where does it come from?" she asked. "You got a business? "

  "The information business," I said. "I buy from people who know and sell to people who want to know."

  "Hey," she said, "that beats flipping hamburgers for sure." After a while we found out we had both been in the, skin trade, which gave us something in common. And finally I told her about my hobby of cross-dressing. It didn't spook her.

  "Look," she said, you like to do drag and I like to smoke cigars. So what's the big deal? Live and let live is my motto."

  The beauty part was that I could wear most of her dresses and lingerie because we were about the same size. I bought a lot of stuff from the boutique where she worked, and sometimes we'd go to a fancy shop and pick out gowns we both liked. She'd try them on before I bought them.

  It saved me a lot of bucks for alterations, and I liked wearing things she had worn. We kept all the new clothes at her place.

  Also, she showed me some tricks with eye shadow I hadn't known about.

  As far as sex goes, we never did connect, if you know what I mean. But we'd smoke a joint together or maybe do a line of coke and just play around. It was fun and no one got hurt. I helped her out a few times when she had the shorts, but she never really leaned on me for money.