alt.sherlock.holmes

by Gini Koch

A short, dirty woman, obviously in and out of shelters, with short hair and a broken flat cap, but there was a sparkle of intelligence in her eyes.

  Sherlock looked at her, with that look I would come to know so well. He was studying her, taking in details and making a judgement about whether or not to engage. Whether she was worth his breath, his attention.

  “What about a proposition?”

  “Oh, sure. I’ve had plenty of those. What do you want to do? Where? Under the pier? East or Hudson? Hudson’s extra. It’s dirtier, but if that’s your thing...”

  “Not that. Not at all. It’s not your body I’m interested in, it’s your mind.”

  “Conversation? Okay. Four bucks for thirty minutes, six bucks for an hour. We can talk about anything you want.”

  Sherlock glanced at me, a twinkle in his eye. “We’re not what you think. Here’s my proposition. Come have a coffee with us. No strings. If we like what you have to say, we’ll both buy your manifesto. If not, I’ll pay for the coffee and give you a dollar for your time. Thirty minutes.”

  She looks at him, and at me. “Make it breakfast and it’s a deal. You get as long as it takes for me to eat. Thirty minutes guaranteed.”

  “It’s better and easier than getting a man to pay you for sex, is it?”

  “Look, you want me to talk to you or not? Sure. I’ve turned tricks, gotten men to pay me to watch, to talk, whatever. It’s no business of yours.”

  “Sorry, it’s just that I don’t want you to feel like you need to hide anything from me. I can see that you’re occasionally homeless, but not always. That you’re a lesbian, even though you seek the attention of men—that for money, you’ll go with them, but that it’s less attractive, miserable, middle-aged men that you end up spending time with. You’ve got moustache hairs and macassar on your fur-collared coat from at least seven different men, one black, three Italians—or Southern European descents, anyway—a blonde and two brown-haired professional men in polyester suits, and though I can see smudges of dirt from both the Hudson and East rivers, suggesting that you’ve slept under piers—though more often the Hudson—you’re clean enough that you must shower regularly. At, if I’m not mistaken, the Chelsea Hotel, which is where my friend lodges. Shall we walk? There’s an all-day breakfast place around the corner, Ms...?”

  “Solanas. Valerie Solanas. Author of the S.C.U.M. Manifesto. I’m going to change the world.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “DON’T GET ME wrong. You guys seem all right. A girl’s got to make a living, though. There’s some real scumsters around.”

  Sherlock looked at me, an ice-blue sparkle in his eyes. He was feeling the blue beauty.

  “Some real scumsters.”

  “Yeah. Like that guy, Andy, down at the Factory? My friend Irene brought me down there. She’s this real Hot Girl. One of his so-called Superstars. She said that I ‘just had to meet Andy.’ When he met me, he asked me to do a screen test. Put me in one of his movies. Then I showed him a script I wrote. Brilliant play. Up Your Ass. He read it, said it was well-typed. Well fucking typed. Can you imagine that? Then he asked me if I was working with the vice squad to entrap him, it was so dirty. I told him, ‘Andy, Irene told me you liked it dirty. I told you it was called Up Your Ass, didn’t I?’ He didn’t have much to say to that, but told me that he couldn’t produce it because the cops would be all over him. They were just looking for a reason to come in and shut him down. He’s really paranoid.

  “Then this guy Maurice had me out for dinner the next day. French guy, he says, talks with an English accent, though. Says he’s published Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller. I was explaining the S.C.U.M. Manifesto to him and he said he wanted to publish it. Bought the rights. Wrote me a cheque right there and then for five hundred dollars and put it there with a contract. Said he could sell it and sell some more of my work, too. I could write some adult books, maybe. So I signed. Paid my bill at the Chelsea. Paid back some friends. Made some more copies of S.C.U.M. to sell. Got my typewriter out of the pawn shop. I had to get up onto the roof and get typing. Maurice wanted an expanded version of the S.C.U.M. Manifesto, a novel based on it, so I got typing. Working on it. Trying to make it into a novel. I made characters who got screwed over for each fucked-up thing that men did to women. Each grievance a character, like Greek Furies.

  “I was all wound up, telling this Maurice Girodias about Andy and how he was stealing my script. He said to me ‘That’s your next novel, after S.C.U.M. Up Your Ass. Just what you need to get into the big time.’ Maybe I should publish S.C.U.M. as it is. He wanted me to call it The Manifesto for the Society for Cutting Up Men. Said to get ready with Up Your Ass right after. But I don’t have the script anymore. I was worried. I wanted another five hundred bucks. Maybe more. You should get paid more for a second script, right? But he disappeared. Later on I look at the contract, and it says it’s not just for the two books, but for future writings, too. I think it must be all my future writings. Now he’s split, back off to France or L.A. or somewhere. I don’t know. I can’t get any answers.”

  “Have you got a copy of the contract? I could look at it if you like. I know a thing or two about the law. About a few things.”

  “Yeah. Hey. That’d be good. I just... I get all excited when people are nice to me. Hey. You two. What are you after?”

  “Us? We’ve just had a... what was it, John? A blue funk? It’s anything but. A blue buzz, maybe.”

  I found myself grinning like an idiot, pushing my hash browns around on my plate, watching pale yellow egg yolk run over them in the harsh fluorescent light. “We’ve just... had a couple of pills. They’re a bit...” I pointed to my plate. “Strong.”

  Sherlock looked at me and grinned. “Have you met John, Valerie? Call him Doc. That’s what everyone else does. I think he could be a candidate for the S.C.U.M. Male Auxiliary. He is a very, very good friend to have.”

  I smiled at Solanas. My feet were itching, tapping the floor in a syncopated rhythm that only Sherlock could understand. “I would really like to walk.”

  “EAST, TOWARDS THE Alphabet! Beyond the Village, there’s a city, a city of the Alphabet, Avenues of letters!” I said, exiting the greasy spoon six dollars lighter but carrying two copies of Valerie Solanas’ self-mimeographed S.C.U.M. Manifesto, inscribed ‘Too bad you’re men. You’d make O.K. broads—Valerie.’

  The grey New York light was coming up, and you could see dark shapes shuffling, junkies twitching in failed sleep in East Village Park, behind iron railings. A shaft of light pierced the gloom and murk.

  I looked for the street sign. “Avenue A. Direct sun, at dawn, every now and then. I thought I had enough of sunlight In Country, but I like it over here, in this quiet corner.”

  “It’s not so quiet, John. There are plenty of dark things prowling these streets, and I don’t mean rodents. People, John. The worst kind that skulk in shadows and desire harm to their fellow man. I’ve been considering this area.”

  He looked at me, up and down, appraising.

  “John, what would you think about leaving the Chelsea Hotel? Moving somewhere a bit more permanent? Shall we turn here, on Avenue B? There’s something I’d like you to see.”

  We walked along another two blocks, shapeless husks huddling in doorways, nestling with the bags of garbage on the street, shopkeepers opening their doors to conduct business through bars. Downtown New York.

  Sherlock stopped in front of number 221 Avenue B. A bakery, the bars on its front window painted white, a bright sign over the door. There was a bell over the door that rang as we walk in.

  “Mrs. Hendrix. How are you this fine morning?” He grinned at her, his teeth glowing almost blue in the light of the fluorescent tubes overhead.

  Mrs. Hendrix was a well-kept black woman dressed in a navy blue chef’s uniform, with a white starched apron and a few stray smudges of flour dusting her arms. “Mr. Holmes. You’re here mighty early, aren’t you?”

  “My colleague and I have just had our br
eakfast over near Washington Square Park, and I thought I might show him the rooms for rent. Alone, I might be a little worried about making the rent, but with a second person... well, if he’s willing to come in with me, then we’d never have a thing to worry about.”

  She looked at us, with her big smile on her face, and as it dropped off, the temperature dropped by several degrees. “My husband and I like you, Mr. Holmes, and we’re not worried about what you do in your rooms, but the rent. You have to make the rent. Every single month, due on the twenty-fifth, late on the first, understand? Or you’re out on the first, that day.”

  “Mrs. Hendrix, I wouldn’t dream of being late. You and I are going to be the best of friends. Frustrating, I’m sure, at times, but I think we understand each other, and you’ll have nothing to fear from me, as long as you don’t bother about what we do. I will do experiments, sometimes, and Doctor Watson here will assist me with his medical and chemical knowledge.”

  Her smile reasserted itself, erasing any hint of malice and covering the world-weariness she felt. “Okay, then, want to have a look?”

  THE SECOND FLOOR was filled with ovens, sacks of flour, paper bags, the leftover junk of running the bakery. “You have to pass through here, but just stay on this side of the tape, and try not to track any mud through or anything. Health department rules. Not that they inspect much, but you never know. Not with a ‘spade’ business.”

  She pointed to the ovens, with the pipes running from them. “My husband worked on ships in the war. We heat the water from the bakery ovens so there’s plenty of hot water until around midnight. Building heat, too.”

  We went up to the third floor. It was a massive, open space, swept clean but could use a good scrub. “Used to be storage for a magazine company during the war. They had some clerks up here before that. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter, but the heating’s covered and the windows open, top and bottom. You get a good airflow in summertime, here and on the fourth floor. I’ve done enough stairs, though, so you can go up to the fourth yourself.”

  “There’s another floor?” My entire room in the Chelsea wasn’t a tenth of this space. Fourteen-, maybe sixteen-foot-high ceilings of bare wood. You could dance in here. There was nothing but a couple of hard chairs and a simple table.

  “Yep. There’s an old bed up there, too. Just the one. My husband and I lived up here while we were fighting with Stuy Town, before that Mr. Lorch let us move in to his place.”

  I remembered them. The Post had written a scathing editorial about letting ‘that spade family’ move in and ‘corrupt’ the all-white enclave.

  Sherlock looked at me, rubbing his fingers against his thumb. I reached into my pocket and gave him the ten-dollar bill he had given me a few hours before outside the Chelsea. I was overdue there, and I wasn’t going to pay them another dime. I was going to live here.

  “Mrs. Hendrix, we’re happy to take the floors, effective today. Right now, if that’s all right?”

  She turned from the top of the stairs. “That’s no problem. Y’all do what you need to do. I’ve gotta get keys cut, but y’all stay here if you need and they’ll be ready as soon as we can get them out. Breakfast rush about to start. First of June, now. See you on the first of July, if not before.” The bills disappeared underneath her apron.

  Sherlock looked at me. “This floor alone is worth it, isn’t it? Shall we look upstairs?”

  The next floor was the same, if a little cleaner. There was a bed, made up, with a dust cover on it, and a small rough wooden dresser.

  “We’re allowed to do what we like. Put up walls if we want, or not. And Mrs. Hendrix wanted to keep the furniture up here, said that it was too much trouble to bring it down. And free breakfast. Anything left over from the day before. I think your trim waistline may expand, if you’re fed enough.”

  I yawned.

  “Poor John Watson. I’ve tired you out with my manic walk the length of Manhattan Island. We should lie down.” He pulled back the dust sheet.

  “This is the one thing. The blue beauties will make you yawn, tired and exhausted, but you’ll have trouble sleeping.”

  “I’m sure we’ll find something to do.” He pulled me to him, to those lips and that lovely long face I’d been dreaming of all night.

  A SINGLE RAY of actual sunshine wandered across the floor, motes of dust sprung up from our bodies twinkling in their slow journey to the floor. “Look at the dust, Sherlock. Floating there, swirling. Lighter than air. It’s like magic.”

  “Not at all. They’re very light, but not lighter than air, or they’d float up and we’d have far less sweeping. They’re just light enough that the lift from swirling air molecules, from tiny temperature changes can slow their descent. The sunlight is heating the air as it streams through the window. That’s your magic, John. Motes of dust are simply pawns in the sun’s game.”

  “Take the joy out of everything, don’t you?”

  “Not everything, John.” He smiled at me, then, the first time I saw his secret smile; the one he only shared with me, and only when we were alone. That smile told me that this, that we, were special, but that it wasn’t to leave the confines of the private lair we would build for ourselves, there above Alphabet City.

  “Pawns.” He sat up, moving faster than I could even think of moving. “Tell me something, John. Do you remember Valerie Solanas? Did she strike you as a pawn? Someone who would do something, unasked, for someone else?”

  I thought about her. “Not really. She seemed more... more like someone who was used to playing her own game, changing the rules of the game she found herself in.”

  “Exactly, John. She’s a queen, able to make any moves, playing her own game, but she is without the luxury of her own board. Acting as a pawn. Driving towards the opponent’s back row, to regain her crown.”

  He got up and walked to the window.

  “But she’s not in control, is she?”

  “That’s exactly it, John. She’s not in control of her life, and she’s trying to work out who the king is.”

  “Or the player of the game.”

  “Or the player of the game. She’s the most resentful pawn ever committed to the game, and that makes her dangerous. She’s a puzzle, isn’t she? Where’s that manifesto of hers? I’m of a mind to read it. Ms. Solanas, you are a bit of a puzzle, aren’t you?”

  He padded back from the window, casting a long, lean shadow across the floor, rifling through the pockets of my pants looking for those ragged sheets with purple writing on them.

  OVER THE NEXT two days, I’d packed my few belongings for my new home at Avenue B, and Sherlock had turned up the next night with an array of tough youths carrying boxes and crates of notebooks and chemical apparatus, a coffee table made from a cable spool, and a few chairs that looked like they’d spent some time on the street.

  It was starting to look more like a home than anywhere I’d been since before the War.

  Sherlock was still talking about Valerie. We’d run into her once more on the street, and talked to her about her Manifesto. Sherlock wanted to know more.

  “Go on, John. Find out what you can about Valerie from your contacts at the Factory. Keep an eye out for her, and talk to her if you have to, but if you can follow her without her noticing, that would be helpful.”

  I didn’t know why we were so interested—why he was so interested, that is. I would have been happy to have whiled the weekend away with day-old cakes and bread. I had some deliveries that could be made to the Factory, though, so I went ahead, not knowing what to expect. Everyone had the same reaction. Nothing outstanding, for the Factory. Billy and Paul were there, ready to get their prescriptions, only too happy to share catty gossip.

  “Valerie? Who?”

  “You know. The street dyke. Twitchy.”

  “Oh, yeah. Creepy. Did you see her screen test?”

  “Eyes like dark holes, staring into your soul.”

  “Not attractive, really. Could be, if she put on makeup o
r something. Could be better, anyway. Better than street chic. Eau de Hudson, like she usually wears.”

  “There was something about her, though. Something interesting. She was clever, when she wasn’t too twitchy. Maybe if she’d been fed.”

  “Some days she’d be so angry, railing about men and scum. Other days, she’d be real personalable. Friendly. She used to come in with Irene, sometimes, but we haven’t seen them together in months. She just keeps coming in shouting at Andy about her script. He gets so many scripts from people. What’s he supposed to do?”

  “And money. She’s always asking everyone for money.”

  “Speaking of, Doc. What have you got for us? We loved those black beauties last time. Got us right through the move. What do you think of the new digs? Union Square? Next big thing?”

  “Orange OPs. Phew. Those things’ll keep you going, all day, and all night long”

  I finished my business and walked back to the Chelsea to see a few patients for some business there.

  It was strange, heading up there. I had a pocket full of money, and another full of tablets, and I was ready to see the back of that place. Sure, lots of people had written loads of stuff there, and it was a collection of plenty of interesting people, but did it matter anymore?

  Sherlock was in the coffee shop next door, sitting with a greasy-looking man in a brown suit with heavily macassar’d hair. Pencil-thin moustache, impeccably dressed, like he was just catching up with the Beats. They were out, man, didn’t he know? Sherlock saw me and took his lovely long hands and knocked on the window. I went and ordered a coffee.

  “John! How are you? Can I introduce you to Maurice Girodias, of the Olympia Press? Mr. Girodias is a fascinating individual, having published some of the more influential works over the last twenty years. Arthur Miller, Nabokov and others. Mr. Girodias, this is Doctor Watson. He’s called Doc by his friends. Don’t call him John. He hates it. Just indulges me.”