No. 22 Pleasure City

by Mark Fishman

  “I thought so,” she said, straightening her skirt. She left the room to fix them a drink.

  Burnett sighed. His eyes wandered to the windows. A few apartments across the street were lit up. An occupant of one of them came into view, a man in his late forties, and he looked out the window at Burnett, and then didn’t stop looking at him. Burnett responded by getting up and lowering the blinds in front of each of the windows, then giggled. Angela came back with two glasses of whisky with ice.

  She handed him a glass. “To our success, yours and mine,” she said, raising the glass out in front of her.

  Burnett downed his in a gulp.

  “I’ll get you another. You look like you need it.”

  He shook his head, and gazed at the face of his white-gold wristwatch. “No,” he said. He looked properly solemn.

  “Now, where were we?” Angela said, taking a sip of whisky and fidgeting with the hem of her skirt.

  [ 7 ]

  Pohl stood at the service entrance on the Birch Street side of Angela’s building a few feet and around the corner from the main entrance on Lake Street, with a handkerchief in his hand, wiping the perspiration from his forehead and breathing hard after coming down five flights of stairs two at a time. He couldn’t vomit properly. There was a strand of bitter, greenish bile dangling like a fish line from his mouth.

  He went over it in his mind. He saw what he thought he’d seen but he had a hard time accepting it. Angela squirming on a vibrator for a man in a neat dark suit that he didn’t know and had never seen before. A man whose head he’d like to kick through the goalposts. He brushed away the strand of bile with the back of his hand, then dried it with the handkerchief. He straightened himself enough to walk without looking like a drunk. He shook his head. Angela crawling on her hands and knees with the thing inside her. The picture hit him hard.

  He walked sharp on Birch away from Lake to the corner, turned without looking back, and made his way home, a twenty-minute walk heading southwest, clutching his stomach. A block before he got there, on Jackson Street, he ran into a short, middle-aged man, wearing a lightweight off-white linen suit, smoking a cigar, who wasn’t looking where he was going. They collided without mishap, but the man snapped his mouth shut and broke the cigar in two.

  “No objection, my fault,” the man said.

  “I think so,” Pohl answered, nodding.

  “Sorry. Any idea why?” the man said with a smile.

  “Not interested,” Pohl said impatiently.

  Nausea came up to his throat like a rope from a knot in his belly. Pohl took a forward step and the man didn’t move. He took another forward step and the man didn’t move and Pohl bumped into him. He stepped back and tried to walk around him but the man’s bulk was a short wall on the sidewalk.

  “Let’s not play innocent,” the man said, grinning.

  “Save it. I don’t want to know.”

  “I was just fucking. I’m not thinking about where I’m going because where I’ve been is more interesting.” He tossed his bent cigar into the street.

  [ 8 ]

  Angela stood for a long time under the shower because she didn’t like the smell of sex when the smell of it was connected to someone like Lew Burnett. She soaped herself and smiled at the method she’d used to trap him into doing what she wanted him to do for her, but she didn’t like the price she’d paid even though it wasn’t the first time she’d done something like it. She hadn’t learned it in any book, it was a natural gift she’d found in herself.

  She shut off the flow of water and dried herself with a thick, fluffy towel. She wasn’t worried about Pohl, he’d come sniffing around again, because any man who wanted her as much as he wanted her knew what to do about it. She was sure it made her more attractive to him to have seen her like that free of charge. It gave him something to think about in bed.

  She would rather have done it with Pohl instead of Burnett, but she wanted something Burnett could give her and Pohl didn’t have it to give and that was what made the difference between them. She smiled, drying her milky skin, the texture of flower petals. She looked at herself in the mirror. The woman looking back at her without any clothes on was strictly ethereal perfection.

  Angela went to the bedroom and put on a pair of pajamas. It was almost daylight. She threw herself on the bed, lying on her stomach with the pajama trousers bunched up at her knees, and flipped through the pages of a book. She found the bent corner of a page, eyed it, then leafed through the rest of the book until she got to the last page.

  The telephone rang. It was Burnett.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Why?”

  “In bed already?”

  “Where else?” she said indifferently. Burnett meant nothing to her. “Enjoy your evening?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t have to think about it.”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking.”

  “Don’t. Just do what I asked you to do. The way I explained it to you. Make yourself useful, I’ll let you wear my underwear.” She laughed. “Don’t complicate things by trying to use your head.”

  Burnett sighed heavily. “Okay, goodbye.”

  Angela switched off the light. Her head fell gently to the pillow. She shut her eyes.

  The telephone rang again. She frowned. She picked up the receiver. It was Pohl. It couldn’t have been anyone else but him. He didn’t say a word, just a repeated soft, choking sound, a kind of sob, and the line went dead.

  [ 9 ]

  Burnett didn’t sleep but his eyes were shut. Why would he go to sleep when he was waiting for the morning sunlight to creep in through the blinds so that he could get out of bed? He thought about Angela, and at the same time he thought that he ought to do something to keep his mind off her, but nothing he came up with worked, and anything he thought about just made him more conscious of the fact that he was trying not to think about her. What he was going to do when he got out of bed had everything to do with Angela. He’d agreed to help her pull off some stunt by looking for a deserted building, a run-down apartment house, a small two-storied shack, an empty Polish flat, a place in Pigsville, it didn’t matter, and then getting the information to her in trade for sex, and it was the kind of sex he liked so he was hooked.

  He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, pulled a pack of cigarettes from the night table drawer, jabbed one between his tightened lips and struck a match. He leaned back against the mashed feather pillows, gazing at nothing and taking deep drags off the cigarette. His eyes focused on the smoke coming slowly out of his mouth. Burnett put the cigarette out.

  In the kitchen he poured himself a glass of orange juice. He looked down at his bare feet and wiggled his toes. The linoleum was cool. Sunlight streamed in through the kitchen window. He hadn’t spent much time in the apartment since the last time the housekeeper cleaned it. The appliances gleamed, and he bent his knees to catch a glimpse of his unsteady reflection in the Inox refrigerator door. I’m all there, but I’m only half with it, he told himself. He got hard just thinking of Angela.

  He took the glass of orange juice with him to the mirror in the hallway. There were bags under his eyes. He wasn’t used to seeing himself like this. After only one night the thing with Angela was already taking its toll.

  When he’d finished his coffee, Burnett shaved and showered and dressed himself in another expensive suit. In the study, he telephoned a real estate consultant and asked her for detailed sheets on lots for sale and vacant buildings and remodeling jobs. He gave her a general idea which parts of the city interested him. The consultant promised that the information would be delivered to him by courier at noon.

  Burnett wanted to push Angela’s plan forward in a hurry. He put the phone down, thought about the prize for finding the right location for her, the place she wanted for whatever reason she wanted it. He shut his eyes. He saw Angela taking off her panties, sliding them down her legs and handing them to him. The scen
t of her sex was in his nose and he felt the slippery soft fabric against his face. It made him shiver.

  [ 10 ]

  Burt Pohl sat in front of the telephone without moving. He was like a statue, his face something carved from rock, a profile of hardened whiteness that hadn’t changed since he saw Angela on her hands and knees with a vibrator inside her. The hardship of it had turned his hair half-white and deepened the lines in his face. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but it’s killing me. Maybe I want it with her. His eyes were tightly shut and his fingers pressed against his temples. He wanted to talk to her, but he’d choked up when he heard her voice. He lifted the receiver again, punched the numbers. He listened to the ringing at the other end of the line. She didn’t answer.

  He let the phone ring for a long time, then hung up. He wasn’t in a hurry to find out anything that might hurt him more than the hurt he felt from wanting her. He shook his head and got up, started toward the bathroom, shuffling his feet, and the telephone rang. He jerked backward, nearly tripped over the chair. Pohl lifted the receiver.

  “Don’t you think it’s about time you put your clothes on?”

  He knew the voice, but he couldn’t put a finger on it because his mind was so far away the voice just didn’t register until it went on with a few more words that made him smile.

  “Or haven’t you got anything better to do than waltz around in your pajamas?”

  Pohl laughed. It was Shimura, his friend and a detective with the Kawamura Agency.

  “Waltzing? Do you know what time it is? It’s nine o’clock. Why shouldn’t I waltz?” he said, grinning and passing his hand over his head.

  “Listen, I’m not working until tomorrow night,” Shimura said. “Let’s have a drink and something to eat.”

  Pohl’s mind suddenly went blank. He was staring at a picture of Angela that stood in a frame on the table next to him. A tear dribbled out of the corner of his eye. His heart was pounding. He made an effort to pull himself together.

  He was glad to hear Shimura’s voice, but he was looking and couldn’t find anything to say. Pohl let out a sigh.

  “Maybe you want to talk about something,” Shimura said with a reassuring tone in his voice. “Whatever it is, you haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Why say that?”

  “I can hear it in your voice. It’s just plain misery, that’s all.”

  Pohl heaved a great sigh, then found it difficult to catch his breath. At last he said: “Tonight. Eight o’clock. At the Casino Club.” He paused. “You’re right, I want to talk to you.”

  “Eight o’clock,” Shimura repeated. “We’ll figure it out. See you tonight.”

  “Right.”

  Shimura hung up.

  The receiver buzzed in Pohl’s hand, he winced, then blinked several times because he was worn out. He put the phone down, wiped his tear-stained face with the back of his hand, made his way to the bathroom where he turned on the faucet to run a bath, took off his pajamas and folded them neatly, putting them on a shelf. He got into the bathtub with his socks on.

  [ 11 ]

  Angela folded her arms across her chest and looked up at the ceiling. A fan spun almost silently in the flower shop, the air barely stirred. Outside, the pale blue spring sky teemed with soft clouds that reached out far above the lake. Cars traveled up and down Prospect Avenue on the Eastside. The leaves of the trees lining the street fluttered in an unseasonably warm, gentle breeze.

  There was a coffeehouse next door to the florist. A group of students from the nearby university walked along the sidewalk in front of it, each in turn looking through the plate-glass window at Angela as they trailed sluggishly one after the other into the coffeehouse.

  Angela picked out two orchid plants. She waited for the florist and his assistant to finish wrapping the one she was sending to Pohl. She gave them Pohl’s address, paid, took the other plant in her arms, and marched out of the shop. A red Dodge pickup slowed down and the driver stared at Angela walking with the orchid in her arms. She raised her eyebrows at the driver. Her distrust of men alternated with her need for them. She gave the driver a smile, but she was thinking of Pohl. She wasn’t finished with him. She turned left on Second Street, crossed Lafayette Avenue, turned left on Lake Street, walked to the corner of Birch and Lake.

  At five o’clock in the afternoon she got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around herself because the intercom didn’t stop buzzing. She’d been on the verge of making herself come as the tide of buzzing knocked her off course. She stuck a slender finger out and pushed the button next to the speaker. It was Burnett.

  [ 12 ]

  Burnett left Angela’s apartment forty minutes after the meeting he’d sprung on her at five o’clock in the afternoon. He even shook his head at his own stupidity. He wasn’t in control of anything with Angela unless she offered the control to him, and most of the time when he thought he had control over anything at all, he was kidding himself. He couldn’t get it out of his head. It was the same thing with every woman he had sex with because dominating somebody else amounted to letting himself be dominated. There wasn’t any difference. A woman in a tied-up situation was stuck in the same position he was stuck in since his life was permanently bound up in his desires. In spite of that, it was a one-sided exchange with the weight of things leaning heavily in his favor. He might’ve given her something, let her have a piece of the intimacy, but right from the start he had the door wide open and waiting for him to walk through it, leaving every woman behind.

  He walked along the sidewalk past his car trying to put the pieces together and found that the puzzle was already assembled there in front of him. It was the personality he was born with and he’d known for a long time now that he had to go with the current and not try to swim upstream. He felt in his pockets for his cigarettes, put one between his lips and lit it. He took several rapid puffs as his frustration climbed to high gear. When it reached that point he turned around and headed back to the car, threw the cigarette away, got in without switching on the ignition, shut his eyes and rested his head on his wrists with his hands crossed at ten and two on the steering wheel.

  By the time he’d taken the elevator to Angela’s apartment she had put on a tie wrap satin robe. She stood at the open door, raised her arm and pointed at the living room. Burnett let her go ahead of him. Her unselfconscious stride stirred the knee-length hem, and her narrow hips swayed under the emerald-colored fabric. Spots of water made small, dark blemishes on the back and shoulders of the robe. Her hair was wet.

  Angela sat in an armchair with her legs crossed opposite Burnett, the open folds of the robe revealed the muscles of her legs to her upper thighs. It was unbearable. When she uncrossed her legs it was worse. Drops of water glistened just below her knees. Burnett wanted to lick them up, but she caught him staring at her legs and she crossed them again. He asked for a whisky.

  She left the room swinging her hips and returned with two glasses of whisky and ice. She put down one of the glasses, then held the robe closed as she leaned forward to hand him his drink. She crossed the room and switched on the CD player with a recording of Orlando Lopez.

  She turned to face him. “Well?” she asked.

  “I have part of what you want done.”

  She pulled up a zabuton cushion and sat down at the low table. Burnett sat opposite her in an upholstered straight chair. She looked up at him. The only thing Burnett saw was her bare legs. She straightened the robe, covering her knees with satin.

  “Okay, let’s see what you’ve got,” she said slowly.

  She looked at him. Burnett grinned, thinking of his cock and the rosy flush spreading over the lips of her pussy perfectly out of reach. She ignored the grin. He frowned.

  “I know what you want,” he said with a businesslike tone of voice.

  “Then show me.”

  He pulled sheets of paper and a street map out of his inside jacket pocket. He spread the map out on the low table, smoothed it flat. He hande
d her the sheets of paper that the real estate consultant had sent him. In the upper right hand corner of the sheets of paper with addresses Burnett thought she might be interested in, he’d made a red X with a permanent marking pen. A separate sheet of paper had the name Fitch and a phone number written on it. Angela leaned forward, concentrating, softly biting her lower lip. He watched her.

  She went on concentrating for a few minutes, giving particular attention to the pages marked with a red X. The red ink gave them weight, although she knew she’d make her own decision and didn’t count on his judgment. But he’d made a good job of what she’d asked him to do. She’d hooked him just like that. Angela lifted her eyes and smiled at him. She let the robe fall open offering him a view, then thought better of it and covered her knees.

  Burnett got up and went to the kitchen to refill his glass. When he got back to the living room, Angela was bent over the map. He stood behind her, looking over her shoulder. She made a tracing with her finger along a street on the Southside. The fabric of her robe was completely dry. He looked at her shoulders, the part of her neck that was exposed. He walked around her and sat down in the straight chair. Her eyes went from the map to the sheets of paper spread out on her knees. She took a very deep breath, held it. She wore a faint smile.

  “Take your time,” Burnett said. His tone was strangely detached. He knew that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with her today. “Check them out. I’ve gone over them with a fine-tooth comb. Now it’s up to you.”

  Angela didn’t reply. Not even a look. She exhaled, then reached for her glass and downed the whisky in a gulp. She looked up at Burnett. He gave her a half-smile.

  She didn’t really see him because she was staring at a point just beyond his head, as though to unfocus her eyes. She saw the blinds drawn in front of the windows. A world existed beyond the firm guard of those blinds, and the map in front of her represented in two dimensions the limitless world she wanted to explore in herself. She put the tip of her index finger in her mouth and rolled her tongue around it.