The Inglorious Arts

by Alan Hruska

  “And they did what you said?”

  “Like a shot.”

  “And you did too?”

  “Every stitch.”

  “And then you let them have sex with you?”

  “I did stuff to them. They did stuff to me. They started putting on rubbers, I finally got scared, so I grabbed my clothes, found a bathroom, got dressed, and got out of there. The funniest thing was how the elevator operator looked at me as if nothing had happened. And you know, it really hadn’t. It was fun. We were just playing around. It didn’t mean a thing.”

  Sarah says nothing. She considers whether Cissy has just made up the whole story, and then thinks, The way she told that story: If she hasn’t done it, she wants to and will.

  Cissy says, “So you’ve done nothing like that with Tino?”

  “No.” Flatly.

  “But you will?”

  “Not like that, no,” Sarah says.

  “Like what? When?”

  “When it means something. And it’s not just play.”

  Sarah, still in her school uniform, is eating alone at the kitchen island when Jesse walks in. “Mind if I join you?” Jess says.

  “Great.” Sarah pushes her Caesar salad and chair over a bit to make room.

  Jesse unwraps her own salad from a Madison Avenue emporium. “Good day?” she asks as she settles in next to her niece.

  “You know,” Sarah says, “you don’t have to do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Pay a fortune for some takeout at a local hold-up shop. We have plenty of food here. Amelia, the maid, does all the shopping. Just tell her what you like.”

  “That’s a bit awkward, Sarah.”

  “You think Alec cares about food money?”

  “You’re his daughter.”

  “And what?” Sarah says. “You’re no relation? You should know, Alec is the most generous man alive. He’d be terribly offended if he learned you were buying your own food.”

  Jesse puts down her plastic fork. “So we won’t tell him, right?”

  “Jesus!” Sarah says, staring at her aunt’s plate. “You won’t even use our silverware. That’s ridiculous, Jess.”

  Jesse groans. “I’ve got to move out of here.”

  “Move out?” Sarah exclaims.

  “I really have to.”

  “What did I say?”

  “It’s the situation, Sarah.”

  “What situation?” Sarah cries out, clattering her own knife and fork to the tiles of the counter.

  They stare at each other, equally bewildered by the outburst, until Sarah, embarrassed, lowers her eyes. “What about me?” she says.

  “You’ll be wonderful. As always.”

  “No, I won’t,” Sarah says, and her eyes, involuntarily, start tearing.

  “Omigod,” Jesse says, and wraps her arms around her niece.

  Sarah pulls away, rubbing at her eyes. “I don’t know where that came from.”

  “No?” Jesse says. “You’re home alone here every night. I come along, and I’m company. Then I talk about leaving.”

  “You’re more than company.”

  “Yes, that’s true. I love you. But I can do that from another apartment.”

  “We could take one together,” Sarah says.

  “Oh, Alec would thank me for that.”

  “So you know the easy solution.”

  “Yes,” Jesse says. “I do. We all do. The one that’s easy, obvious, and not good.”

  “I know you like him,” Sarah says.

  “Of course I like him.”

  “And he likes you. That’s obvious too.”

  “Yes.” Jesse frowns. “Even to me.”

  “So I know what you think is the problem, and I think it’s ridiculous, but I’ll shut up.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Not,” Sarah says emphatically.

  Jesse kisses her on the cheek and goes for a silver fork in the kitchen drawer. “But I won’t move out tomorrow. How’s that?”

  “It’s better,” Sarah says, “than your opening position.”

  “You sound like a lawyer.”

  “Wonder where that comes from?”

  “Okay, then,” Jesse says, returning to her salad. “Let’s talk about you.”

  “We’ve done that.”

  “Insufficiently.”

  “It’s a dreary subject,” Sarah says.

  “And why’s that?”

  “Usual teenage angst. Sex, no sex, that sort of thing.”

  “You’re being pressured?” Jesse asks.

  “Not by Tino. Of course he wants to. So do I. But if you remember, it’s not so simple at my age. And he’s a goddamn saint. Doesn’t make it any easier.”

  Jesse stops eating. “I’m hardly the one to give advice on this subject, but what I know—think I know—is this. Pretty much everyone wants to have sex with the right person. But there are actually only two kinds of right people. There’s the kind it’s just fun to have sex with and who gives you no grief about it. And there’s the kind you love so much, you can’t bear not to. It’s a necessary deepening of that love. At your age, I don’t think the first kind is a good idea, and I’m not sure you can be ready for the second kind.”

  Sarah says sharply, “So, you’re saying, basically, my only option is no.”

  “Sarah…” Jesse puts her hand to her mouth. “I hope I don’t sound like I’m preaching. Just follow your heart.”

  “Unlike you,” Sarah says.

  And Jesse laughs. “Yes, maybe.”

  SEVENTEEN

  It starts midmorning with a call from Cadigan Breen. “Alec. Can you drop everything, get up here right now?”

  “What the hell’s happening?”

  “It’s bad. Client’s in my office. Just get here.”

  Flagging a cab on the street, Alec lands at their meeting in twenty-five minutes. Walking in on a session of gloom. Until then in Alec’s experience, Caddy Breen, quick with an impish smile, had always borne the look of an engaging adolescent. He was also a lawyer who treated good news and bad with infectious humor and charmed every client in sight. But gone from his face now is any trace of bonhomie. And absent is any charmed client. Instead, prominently seated in Breen’s office and equally glum is a spindly older man with a pinched face and combed thin hair. Breen introduces him as Edison Electric’s general counsel, Standish Moore, and rattles off the names of Moore’s two associates. Serious men dealing with a nasty turn of events, and they look it.

  Alec says, “So let’s hear it.”

  “Well,” Moore says, “I’m about to retire. And though it’s not a very well-known fact, somehow word of it reached your judge, Hal Richardson.”

  Sensing where this is going, Alec lowers himself into a comfortable chair, as if he expects to be there a while.

  “Last night, he called me at home,” Moore continues. “No idea how he got the number. I’ve never met the fellow. It took him a while to get to the point, but what he wanted was for me to give my job to a friend of his, the assistant general counsel of Pharmex.”

  “His old client,” Alec says. “And yes, I remember the guy—pleasant, capable enough, but, at the moment, that’s not particularly relevant.”

  “No,” Moore says. “It’s not.”

  “And what did you tell him?” Alec asks.

  “That my successor had already been chosen.”

  “And was that the end of the conversation?”

  “Not quite,” Moore says. “Richardson took the news badly, but it was obvious he was drunk.”

  “Doesn’t help,” Alec says. “If Richardson had no connection whatever to Edison Electric, that call would have been improper. It would look like a federal judge using the influence of the court to extract a favor for a friend. Since he’s actually sitting on your biggest case, the ethical violation was so stupidly flagrant that only drunkenness might explain it—but obviously not excuse it.”

  “Right,” Breen pronounces. “That’s what I s
aid before you got here. So the question is, do we have to inform Freddy Musselman of the call?”

  Alec gives Caddy a sour smile.

  Moore says, “No one is likely ever to hear of this. I’m sure Richardson regrets what he did. And when he’s sober, he’s an excellent judge.”

  “He’s biased, Stan,” Breen says. “Happens to be biased our way, which, I grant you, is a unique experience for us—but he hasn’t left us with any choice. You agree, Alec?”

  “Sorry, Stan,” Alec says. “Caddy’s right, and it’s not a close question. We violate our own ethical rules if we sit on it.”

  Breen nods and presses his intercom. “Get me Musselman on the phone.” He stares at his client, who says nothing.

  Alec says, “Stop the call.”

  Hesitating only briefly, Breen does just that. Then looks at Alec for an explanation.

  “Let’s call chambers instead. Set up a conference for later today or tomorrow. Then tell Freddy.”

  “Okay,” Caddy says, “but what’s the point?”

  “You care who we call first?”

  “It’s the same difference to me.”

  “Then trust me,” Alec says.

  After school, Sarah and Tino lie in her bedroom, amidst soft coverings but few girlish things. They wear their school clothes, which Tino evidently finds uncomfortable.

  “No,” she says, placing her hand on his.

  He ceases the unbuttoning and pushes away from her in the small bed.

  “Now you’re angry,” she says. “Classic.”

  “I’m not angry,” he says. “You’re not ready. You’ve warned me. I should have known.”

  She sits up. “Jesse will be back.”

  He gets up on one elbow. “That’s the reason?”

  She says nothing.

  “And what?” he says. “She’ll just barge into your room?”

  “No, she’s cool.”

  “Then… what?”

  “Then… nothing. You’re right. I’m not ready.”

  He takes a moment, then says, “I will never force you, or push you, or make you do anything you’ll regret.”

  “Good.”

  “So maybe I should leave.”

  She blows out her cheeks. “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “Okay,” he says with resignation, and lies back. He doesn’t wish to leave either.

  It’s an old building, and they listen to the radiators lisp.

  “So,” she says, “you’ve done this with lots of girls?”

  “I haven’t done this with anyone.”

  “All the other girls just let you do anything you wanted?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he says, and hoists up again. “The sex thing doesn’t really matter for us. It will come.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Definitely,” he says. “In time. Naturally.”

  “You know this, of course, from your worlds of experience.”

  “It hasn’t been worlds.”

  “But you’ve had sex,” she says. “The actual doing of the thing.”

  “Yes.”

  She lies back. “How many girls?”

  He holds up a fist, then unfurls three fingers.

  She says in a rising voice, “Three girls?”

  He raises his pinky belatedly.

  “Four!” she exclaims.

  “It was just sex. And before I met you.”

  “But multiple times with each one?”

  “More than once,” he says. “With three.”

  She elbows up too, so they are now face-to-face. “The problem as I see it,” she says, “is this inequality of experience. Maybe I should have sex with four guys, and then you and I could get started.”

  “Not funny.”

  “Of course, you could teach me,” she says in a derisive tone. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “You’re making fun of something I’m not sure you understand.”

  She says, “The fact that I haven’t done it before doesn’t mean I don’t know how it’s done.”

  “I’m not talking about the… mechanics of the thing.”

  “Oh, I see,” she says. “You mean the spiritual adventure of letting a boy shove his erect penis into me.”

  He lifts himself from the bed. “I’m going.”

  She watches him hunt for his shoes, find them, sit back on the bed to put them on.

  She says, “I was right, after all. The problem is you’re experienced, and I’m not. I’ve never even let a boy see me without my clothes on.”

  “Bodies are bodies,” he says.

  “That’s not true! I’ve seen lots of other girls naked, and, believe me, there’s tons of differences. I’m sure it’s the same for boys.”

  “You’d be shocked to learn, probably, how little that means after the first time.”

  “Really?” she says with a show of innocent surprise.

  “Yes. Really.”

  “Okay,” she says. “So I have a possible solution.”

  He has his coat in his hand but stands waiting. Sarah lying on the bed, with her school skirt rucked up, still, obviously, affects him.

  “What’s the plan, Sarah?”

  “See, you’re entirely more comfortable with this thing than I am, so to even it out….” She looks at him expectantly.

  “Yes?” he says with growing impatience.

  “You take all your clothes off. Right there. And I’ll watch.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “And then you’ll take your clothes off?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe? You think that’s fair?”

  “Fair?” she says. “Hmm. Good thought. One should be fair. So this is a test! Does he trust her to be fair, or doesn’t he?”

  More radiator music.

  He tosses his coat on a chair, kicks off his shoes, and lifts his T-shirt over his head.

  Her impulse, when he gets to his jeans, is to stop him. But the jeans come down with a thrust, dragging the boxer shorts with them, get stepped out of and kicked to one side. This boy’s body in her room, naked and exclamatory, is a miracle.

  She’s far from being in a trance but rises as if she were. She places her hand on his chest and her lips on his mouth. Then says, “So you did trust me.”

  “Yes.”

  Squirming to get free, she squeals, “Shouldn’t have!”

  Her problem is his arms encircling her waist. Then his fingers undoing her blouse, her bra, her skirt.

  She kisses him and clings. She thinks her body is ordinary, compared to his. “Should we stop here?”

  “Is that what you want?” he says.

  “Ah, want.”

  “So, I’ve got a better idea,” he says.

  “I bet you do.”

  “But I could stop,” he says.

  “Stop?”

  “I don’t have to.”

  “Are you prepared?” It sounded breathless, even to her.

  “I’m always prepared.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “I thought you might be.” She leads him to her bed and sits to observe him fish out the small package and go through his “preparations.”

  He gives her a self-conscious look, as if to say, Do you really have to watch this?

  She says, “It’s my first time, Tino. I don’t want to miss anything.”

  Sal Angiapello takes a turn around the rink. He’s still capable of some flourishes and enjoys exhibiting his skill. One of his lieutenants, Lou DiBrazzi, watches from behind the dasher board. DiBrazzi, a protégé of Sal’s, is just forty, but now on the rise. Thus far he’s been loyal, as well as ruthless and smart, although he sometimes seems more sadistic than brutal, and possibly too independent. So Sal has a test in mind. It would give Lou the opportunity to prove he recognizes the line—and has the sense to stay clear of it.

  Sal picks up speed on the ice. He makes a bracket turn that resolves into a waltz jump, swishing up to DiBrazzi at the b
arrier. Not bad for an old man, Sal thinks, even if a bit cheated. “Walk with me,” Sal says as he clumps off on his skates to the locker room.

  He won’t shower; he’s barely raised a sweat. Quickly, he changes into his street clothes and slips on his custom-made shoes as Lou scouts the room.

  “No one’s here, Sal.”

  Sal nods toward the door. “It’s okay, we’re leaving.”

  On the street, Sal says, “Don’t trust that place.”

  “The Skating Club of New York?” says DiBrazzi, showing surprise.

  “Wired up the gazoo. At least since I became a member.”

  They walk a while, Sal’s car and driver following. With skates, Sal was DiBrazzi’s height; now considerably shorter. But Sal is used to commanding men of greater physical stature. In his world, no one has greater stature than Sal.

  “I have a job for you,” Sal says. “To do it discreetly, quietly, will require great skill.”

  “Then I am honored,” Lou says.

  Sal further appraises the man as they walk. He’s always doing this. With everyone. What he sees in DiBrazzi is a strong six-footer, with rough features, who has learned to hide his muscular frame in Italian tailored suits and pay more than $100 a week to a master barber for the maintenance of his thick black hair. He has also patterned himself after Sal in speech and manner. A definite mark in his favor.

  “Did you know Phil Anwar?” Sal asks.

  “Of him, sure. We never met.”

  “I want you to meet his daughter.”

  DiBrazzi says nothing, waiting for the more to come.

  Sal signals the driver to pull to the curb. With his hand on the door handle, he says, “She’s sixteen. You’ll take her on a trip. I think to the island. You’ll stay with her. Obedience training, but no scars.”

  “And then?”

  “Then we’ll see. But I think we’ll put her in trade. A rental, however, not a sale.”

  “You know, I’ve run some figures on that.”

  “Really,” Sal says, getting in the car and gesturing for DiBrazzi to follow. “Office,” he says to the driver and closes the glass partition between them. Turning to Lou as they speed off, “And yes, the figures?”

  “A well-negotiated sale to the right buyer for a girl’s first entry into trade brings a higher return than a long string of rentals.”