No. 22 Pleasure City

by Mark Fishman

  [ 33 ]

  Shimura sat in the kitchen with a glass of sparkling water and ice, looking at his small, almost feminine hands spread out on the tabletop in front of him. He heard the clock above the kitchen sink ticking off the time. It was late. There were no other sounds in the building.

  Professional necessity had given him the ability to turn his eyes without the use of his head and he did this while he sat at the table taking an occasional sip of water. His eyes caught something like the presence of Burt Pohl. Other than that, whatever he saw was familiar and it meant everything and nothing to him because he’d been looking for a long time at what he had and where he lived. He was used to seeing all of this but not, out of the corner of his eye, the presence of Pohl without Pohl really being in the kitchen with him.

  What he saw wasn’t really Pohl, of course, but it was the worrying Pohl was giving him because worrying was just as much a part of friendship for him as honesty or brotherhood. A friend like anyone else was capable of making a mistake or losing his power of reason over a woman, and it was his duty to worry about it and maybe do what he could to bring that power of reason back to Pohl.

  He might have wanted the same thing for Pohl that Kawamura had with Asami, but they were entirely different stories and he couldn’t substitute one for the other. Angela herself didn’t know what she wanted. It was trouble no matter which way he looked at it. He’d told Pohl what he knew about Burnett, but the facts weren’t enough to dissuade him from wanting to find her. Maybe what he called worrying was only thinking.

  Shimura got up from the kitchen table, finished his glass of water and left it in the sink. He left his conscience, and the presence of Pohl behind him because he wanted to get some sleep. The rest of the apartment was in darkness. He went down the short hallway past the bathroom to the bedroom and his fingers automatically found the light switch. He was asleep not long after he’d undressed, brushed his teeth and washed his face and hands.

  [ 34 ]

  Violet’s green eyes opened and she stared up at the ceiling, breathing in and out, and it was almost like a sigh of relief. The corners of her mouth moved up, starting to build a smile. There was a downy pillow under her head and someone breathing evenly beside her. She turned to look at the man that had been wearing a gray suit with a vertical suggestion of violet. Now she was horizontal and he was sound asleep. His hair hung lazily across his forehead.

  Violet had heard what she wanted to hear him tell her in the hotel bar. He was good-looking and soft-spoken, and he had plenty of money and no family to take it away from him. And she thought: Nobody to take it away from me if I ever get my hands on it. In the hotel room they fucked and liked it, and so they did it again and again, and it was not at all bad for a first time. She knew that the feeling would improve each time they did it, and it would no longer be fucking and then it would be called making love. But that was only if she went on seeing him and if he wanted to see her, and at this moment she didn’t know what was going to happen between them.

  She went over it in her mind. She was already making plans. He was going to be a lot better for her than Burnett and so she decided right then to forget about him. She’d call the Kawamura Agency and tell Shimura that she didn’t want anything from Burnett, he could drop it, and she’d pay him for his time. She was going to let Burnett off the hook even though the idea of it made her stomach turn. But it was going to be worth it. This one was a gold mine. She’d made a mistake thinking so small and ignoring the fact that she was lucky more than once in her life and figuring that Burnett was the limit when this man lying next to her now was proof that there was no limit.

  The man made a smacking sound with his lips. She didn’t like it but she could live with it because it came with money and fucking. She wiggled her toes. She inched closer to him, felt his breath on her face. She wanted to know what he was like in the morning. He had long eyelashes. She stuck her tongue out and ran it over the short, rough growth of beard. He mumbled a few words, his eyelashes fluttered and his eyelids raised halfway. She snuggled against him, tucked her face into his armpit and smelled him. She concentrated deeply on the smell and felt a wetness build between her legs. She reached down and held his cock in the palm of her hand. She stroked it, pulled it toward her, pumping it until it got hard.

  [ 35 ]

  On the second day of his research into the excesses of the city’s inhabitants, and his search for Angela Mason, Aoyama looked up at the yellow-complexioned sunlight that came down hard on the pavement, drank in the sunlight because the sunlight was strong like the persuasive warm-blooded halo of love, and breathed the air slowly to find out if he could already taste the gritty pollution in it.

  He went through his pockets looking for the photograph of Angela Mason that Shimura had given him. She’d gone missing, but when they located her, he was going to be in on it as soon as they got her out of whatever it was she’d got herself into. He examined her face, gazing closely at her bright eyes. A lot of people have it worse than you do, and there are thousands of people who have it worse than the people who have it worse than you. He sighed, put the photograph back in his pocket. Aoyama turned left on Kenton Street.

  Aoyama continued along the sidewalk following Kenton with his raincoat over his arm. Thoughts came to him that were all sizes and colors, but at the heart of them today was Angela Mason. He’d found a lot of missing people in a lot of different circumstances through the years at the Kawamura Agency. The pictures of them rolled around in his mind, playing like a lot of choppy films. He slipped a frame of Angela into the stream of pictures.

  As he saw it, a vision or a kind of second sight, her restrained, pale body was elastic in spite of itself. She was tied with rope to the plumbing under the sink in a dingy bathroom of a broken-down apartment where the toilet was filled to overflowing with shit. Her large sea-blue eyes were almost completely extinguished by the hours and days she’d spent waiting for someone to find her. The ropes were slackened from her pulling at them. Whoever had tied her up had tied the last knot and left her there with a bare 60-watt bulb burning in a fixture above the sink. Water dripped from the faucet. Her legs were bent at the knees and tied together with a rope attached to her ankles. Her feet arched in a spray of light stretching out across the filthy bathroom floor.

  Aoyama came to a halt at the corner of Monroe Street and Kenton, lowered his head. He’d been thinking in typical Aoyama-fashion, and he wasn’t surprised that he’d suddenly become depressed. He looked up at the sky, where he saw Angela Mason’s face through a sort of filter, like a thin photographic slide placed against his retinas, and it wouldn’t go away.

  [ 36 ]

  Shimura hung up the phone and got up from the edge of his desk. Violet had just saved him the trouble of closing out the account she’d opened on Burnett. He’d already decided the investigation was going nowhere and that she could hustle Burnett herself without wasting his time. He didn’t want any part of a paycheck that came from a woman like her. But she’d played an important role by inadvertently giving him a connection between Burnett and Angela. From what he knew, Burnett hadn’t seen Angela in over a week and there was nothing to add to that fact.

  He went to Kawamura’s office. The door was open, and Asami, wearing large round glasses, was standing next to Kawamura with the double-paned windows behind her. The daylight made them shapes without faces. Kawamura looked up at him, smiling. Asami bowed her head, brushed past him. Shimura went in, shut the door behind him.

  Kawamura couldn’t keep from grinning. “The wedding is in two months,” he said.

  Shimura bowed. “I wish you every happiness. A man is always lucky when he’s going to be married, Kawamura-san,” he said, looking down at Kawamura. “I put Aoyama on the missing woman.” It was a half-truth because he was using Eto and Frankie, too.

  Kawamura was shuffling papers on his right. “I will be very happy.” When he found what he was looking for he wrote something in the upper right-hand corner, then
dropped it on a pile of papers to his left.

  Shimura turned around and headed for the door, but before he had his hand on the doorknob he heard Kawamura say: “I’m letting you use him because Pohl’s your friend and you’re willing to deduct the costs from your salary.”

  “I know that, Kawamura-san.” Shimura didn’t turn around.

  “But there’s a limit to how long I’ll let you use him.”

  Now he did turn around, bowed slightly. “Thank you, Kawamura-san.”

  He shut Kawamura’s door behind him, turned and smiled at Asami, sitting at her desk, walked past her, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, and left by the front door.

  [ 37 ]

  It was afternoon, and Burnett lay stretched out on the sofa in his pajamas. He rubbed his thigh through the silk trousers, stared at the ceiling with a blank look on his face. He was thinking of a lot of things and nothing at all. There hadn’t been any news from Angela for nearly a week, she’d dumped him. He might’ve taken it a step further with her, but when it was done it was really done, and if he’d had any news it wouldn’t have mattered because he was already bored with her, her usefulness had come to an end, and he’d started proceedings for a replacement. A friend of his named Cooper had introduced him to a young black woman, Cathy Jones, who worked at the cosmetics counter of a department store downtown, and they’d had a drink together in the bar at the Regent Hotel.

  Now he had nothing better to do than think about the women he’d seen and didn’t know or knew and hadn’t yet started anything with and what he’d like to do with them, and he wondered if they’d go as far as Angela had gone. He had left a message on Cathy Jones’ answering service. Her particularly smooth skin made his cock hard. He wanted her to call him. He stretched his arms and folded his hands behind his head.

  Then he had a flash of Violet. He stayed with it. Much to his surprise, she had gone off the map, not the way Angela had, but in her own way, with a few lousy insults on the phone. No more calls, no surveillance, no unannounced visits. It was a relief. But he had a panicky feeling that he was being watched. He thought he had seen a woman with unnaturally white teeth chewing gum in a car parked across the street.

  The blinds were drawn and the room was in semi-darkness. A round spot of sunlight crept across the wall opposite him. He reached out for a toothpick resting on the edge of an empty plate with cracker crumbs and a remnant of the creamy center and whitish rind of Camembert.

  The telephone rang. It was Cathy Jones.

  “I’m ready,” Cathy said. Her voice whispered in his ear.

  “I guess you are.” Burnett switched the phone to the other hand and put his index finger in his ear where her voice tickled him.

  “Tell me what to do,” she said.

  “You’re in a hurry, and that’s not good. This is the kind of thing we’ve got to take our time with, to enjoy it, I mean.”

  “Okay, whatever you say. Just explain it to me.”

  “Don’t worry about that, I’ll tell you everything. You’re not old enough to know about things like that anyway, and I want you to like those things as much as I’ll like doing them with you.”

  “Maybe I do know what you’re talking about, Lew.”

  “You do? Maybe you don’t.”

  He put the phone back against the ear she’d tickled with her voice.

  “I’m ready, when you are,” she said.

  “I want you to wear a skirt, just above the knees, not too short. No stockings, I want your black legs and black feet bare. Low-heeled shoes, or sandals. I want to see the upper parts of your toes. Wear dark-blue panty briefs. A shirt with buttons, no bra. Do you have a plastic raincoat? Wear it. Go to a sex shop. Buy a vibrator, a kind of egg with a remote control. Don’t forget the batteries. At the sex shop, put the vibrator inside you. Switch it on. Find a taxi. In the backseat, cross and uncross your legs. Make sure you’re good and wet. Do you have something to write with? I’ll give you my address.”

  [ 38 ]

  A faint rustling noise above him made Aoyama turn his head. He heard it again and looked up. A man wearing pajamas was leaning out of a window past a window box full of flowers. He was craning his neck, looking to the left and right. Aoyama crossed to the other side of the street to watch him. The man left the window frame for an instant and came back with a small watering can which he waved in a sweeping motion above the flowers. Then he disappeared from view again. Aoyama stepped back into a doorway out of the way of pedestrians. It looked like a gaseous cloud hung over the flowers.

  The man returned to the window, stood in front of the bright-hued flowers holding a cigarette lighter. Aoyama squinted. The man lowered his arm, turned his wrist so that the fingers grasping the lighter were just above the flowers. He struck the wheel with his thumb and a flame leapt quickly up from the window box. He jerked his hand away from the spreading flames, stepped back to admire his handiwork, dropped the lighter into the shirt pocket of his pajamas.

  He saw Aoyama watching him from a doorway on the opposite side of the street. He cupped his hands around his mouth.

  “I can’t help it!” he said hoarsely and loudly.

  Aoyama shook his head. The flames moved along the length of the window box. The flowers were gone, and the man laughed a hard, dry laugh, hopped up and down, showed his teeth with a broad smile, and his eyes screwed up like he’d just had an orgasm.

  The window box caught fire. The man was in a state of ecstasy and didn’t see how far the thing had gone. He was a fire bug and when the craving came it hit him so hard that he couldn’t wait to get started and getting it started required immediate action, now it was going to be a bigger fire than he’d bargained for, something on the order of three alarms, because the wooden box trimmed with metal was dry and a lot like kindling, and the wood frame building was old and dry and he was too busy with the pleasure he got from looking at the flames to notice it.

  Aoyama was already taking the stairs two at a time in the old building, holding on to the railing and moving as fast as he could to get to the man’s apartment before the fire got out of hand. He didn’t knock at the door but threw himself against it and it swung open right away.

  The man was sitting in an armchair staring at the burning window box with his arms folded and a blank expression on his face. Aoyama ran down the short hallway and found the bathroom, grabbed a bath towel, threw it in the sink and turned on the faucet.

  The towel soaked in water left a trail at Aoyama’s feet as he hurried to the window with it. He spread his arms holding the corners of the towel and dropped it on top of the window box over the flames.

  [ 39 ]

  Shimura crossed the street to the newsstand. He picked up a daily and dropped a coin into the palm of the news dealer’s hand. He went around to the other side of the newsstand, stood in front of a wall of advertising posters, opened the newspaper to the city section and searched the columns. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular. It was ten minutes after nine. He folded the newspaper, turned away from the newsstand.

  In the corner restaurant, he found a small red leather booth for two and sat down to wait for Pohl. He’d talked at length with Hadley about what he was going to say. He ordered a glass of tomato juice with Worcestershire and Tabasco sauce and celery salt. The waiter left it in front of him. He used the spoon to fish the slice of lemon from the bottom of the glass, squeezed the lemon juice into the drink, wiped his hands on a napkin. He took a sip, squinted down at the glass as if it tasted badly, then downed half of it, exhaling the flavor. He went on reading the newspaper.

  At a few minutes before ten a taxi let Pohl out at the corner in front of the restaurant. Shimura watched him pay the driver and almost collide with a couple waiting in line at the movie theater. He went back to the newspaper. Pohl swung the restaurant door open, spotted Shimura, made his way past the tables and the people sitting at them until he stood over Shimura, who was looking at the personals and shaking his head. He pointed out a notice to Pohl, wh
o leaned over his shoulder to read it:

  looking for a honest, sweet guy treat me right. i don’t have any bf or friends

  Pohl sat down, Shimura set the folded newspaper on the tabletop, stared thoughtfully at Pohl. The waiter came to the table, Pohl ordered a beer, the waiter returned with an ice-cold bottle of beer and a glass.

  They raised their glasses, each thinking in terms of friendship, and the benefits that it brought, and the comfort of being a man with friends, and what it meant in a city where a majority of people thought only of themselves and what they got out of life.

  “I’m late. Sorry,” Pohl said.

  “You’re here.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you’re looking okay.”

  “I’m feeling okay. Better.”

  Shimura drank from his glass.

  “I want you to know that whatever was going on between Angela and Burnett, it’s finished,” he said. “Over and done. And he’s not worth wasting your time.”

  Pohl looked at him and into him and said: “I’ve already come to the same conclusion. I’ve already given up on it. On the idea of doing something to him, I mean. I don’t care.” He swallowed a mouthful of beer. “I just want Angela.”

  “I know you do.”

  Shimura finished the Virgin Mary, waved the waiter over to the table.