“So like, not incredible to direct a far-reaching paranoia?”
I nodded. “Regarding Duranty, I would have thought that it would have taken some more years’ decay of his career before he
lapsed into paranoia.
65
But it’s likely that
any
speculations from his nefarious buddy might have set Willie off.” Of course, I was prepared to pontificate further, to edify
this babe with an area wherein I could at least pretend to be in command of what was going on.
“At the same time, you’re way sure his work was suppressed? For why, because of the S ’n M?” Before I could answer, she shifted
gears and her speech changed even more perceptibly. “What about choosing among futures? Did my great-grandmother manipulate
things that have happened to you now? As if some kinda witchy thing?”
“Maybe the old woman cast a spell, that’s still working itself out? If not manipulated, I must believe that it has been something
in the nature of her precognition. The ‘coinkydinks’ are just too weird. But what else does it insinuate if I take her at
her word that Linda and I only
happened
to book into her club?”
Justine gazed into her wine. “Dearest, she had only then become aware of you, years after you broke off with JJ,” she reminded
me softly. “How not take her word? Oliver Stone couldn’t write the conspiracy theory that has your entire life manipulated!”
“It’s true, babe. Even as I talk, I hear myself spiraling into the same paranoia wherein I classified Willie. Indulge an old
man. Before Oliver Stone, we had Ian Fleming.” I instructed her as to the old James Bond epigram, “One time is happenstance,
two times is circumstance—three times is enemy action.” I threw up my hands. “And what of the goddamned book that seems to
have always been waiting for me to bring it back to you, which sought me out as though it was sentient?”
There was a smaller point that was troubling me more and more. “By her admission, she hints at as least as much as she says.
So, what are we to do with, ‘Should you cross his path again,’ rather than ‘as well’? Did I meet you before now, and she had
foreseen it? I did live in the same city with you for ten years. Or did she just mean… oh hell, I don’t know!”
A thousand other questions plagued my mind as avoidance of the central issues began to break down. I poured the last of the
wine to slow the wheels in my head. I then began to confess my misapprehensions that I might be solely a vehicle for the realization
of her destiny, or recovery of her heritage.
She grinned impishly, “Disturbing, much, male egoist?” “I guess not,” I conceded, “only if it did not mean that I ultimately
lose you.” Now I was giving up the commitment she’d sought on the pier, and I felt my mortality heavier than ever before.
“I mean, one day you will have to go on alone, but until then…” I looked up and realized I’d blundered as the green eyes clouded
and she bit down hard on a knuckle.
God,
I thought,
she can’t cope with that at all, and rushed to banish the dark cloud.
“Look, babe. Priestley believed Dunne’s theory as applied to personal survival. Once freed from the linear time we know, you
may build up any sort of heaven or hell from the figures in your experience. He wrote that it would be a hell of loneliness
if they were merely chimeras for your own gratification, that you have to learn to build to please others.
66
Maybe a good idea to do that in this life?” Did I believe that, I wondered? Another notion in which I’d lost faith years
before—that unselfish conduct might constitute survival behavior?
“
Kewl,
I win!” Justine exulted. “If you really wanna build to please me, I want you to take me to the
Wild Orchid.
”
W
ILD
O
RCHID
WAS THE PRESENT-DAY NAME OF WHAT
had been the elder Justine’s Peachtree Street burlesque club. Though still freaked, I was intrigued with the prospect of
verifying that I had been there before, “in another life,” so to speak. Coming on it cold, I would never have been able to
recognize it. The classy, if campy, place I’d remembered on a seedy street had become, thirty years later, a rather shabby
place on a restored street. A modest lounge, which featured a band, had attached to an oyster bar on the street floor. The
burlesque showroom with its small theatrical stage had been upstairs.
The present-day outfit also operated lounge style, with an occasional go-go girl, but their real business was a nude joint
on the second floor. At first, I wondered to Justine if it indeed was the same place. While the lounge room looked familiar,
there was no oyster bar, nor did it seem there was any space for one. The upstairs seemed smaller, as well, despite being
absent the stage where Linda had performed with the magician. I doubted that the enclosure in the center, which had the character
more of a pit than a stage, would occupy equivalent space.
Only when we were passed by the door charge did I recall that I was accompanying this property’s landlady. The operator would
have been naturally solicitous anyway, even had the weeknight business not been slow. With some amusement, I found it relaxing
to be back in an arena where having a woman half my age on my arm was worth no extra looks! The operator confirmed that the
building had once been larger. Fire had wasted the oyster bar, long before, and that entire half of the building had been
sold.
“Where did you first meet her?” Justine had become quite taken with the recognition that I possessed some small living memory
of her predecessor. “You said she was sitting back in the dark.”
“Gone.” I gestured to the wall beyond which the other half of the room had been lost to fire. “The office as well.” Since
hearing about Linda’s desire to work at the roadhouse, the setting of the “interview” had fascinated her.
After witnessing the activities out there, Linda had so wanted those experiences for herself that she could taste them. Another
featured dancer had been obtained from the agency, to the magician’s distress, and Linda had been “interviewed” in the office
late on a Friday night. In an effective ritual, she had been stripped and probed with questions about her sexuality. She’d
then been driven, still naked, out to
The Château
to assume the position in which we’d observed the young blonde. It occurred to me that the girls hanging from the balcony
had been reminiscent of the “living decor” that had edified visitors to Seabrook’s apartments in Paris and New York.
I’d described to Justine the way her great-grandmother had appraised me when she handed me the bundle of Linda’s clothing,
declaring offhandedly that it was a good night for an initiation, the patrons more aggressive. She had told me that we would
go out and watch. I could have helped do the honors if I’d wished, but, in that the other girls tended to be more implacable,
she recommended that I leave Linda to them. The high erotic charge of the situation, as thus described, had not been lost
on one such as Justine.
I was reviewing these memories while Justine, maybe just a bit aroused, blatantly flirted with the operator. “The studly says
they do hot-oil wrestling on Thursdays,” she whispered with a giggle. I glanced at “studly.” No slimier than he ought to be,
I concluded.
What-ev-er.
She then began regaling us with tales of an adventure in mud wrestling during her college days. I reflected on how big an
ass I might have sounded the previous night—declaiming, as though to an innocent, on the history of the skin trade!
Watching the operation, a typical nude joint running a drink hustle, amused her. A tall girl, who reminded me of Linda in
her younger days, was working a customer in a booth. Their backs to us, her gown straps were loose on her bare shoulders,
hinting that it was unfastened down the front. Their postures in the dim light, plus her sporadic twitches and small sounds,
insinuated that mutual masturbation was in progress.
I studied Justine, her eyes shining and nostrils a bit flared. Indubitably the progeny of old Justine, I thought, and a girl
after my own heart.
“In the technical jargon of your professional staff, ‘heavy mix,’” I joked.
I’ve had it supposed that, because my general politics are far to the left, I somehow forfeit the right to enjoy such crass
“exploitation.” Allow me to clarify: I did not spend a life fighting the system, at great personal cost, to further advance
institutional intrusiveness. I believe the right of individuals to “exploit” themselves and their endowments, inclusive of
the sale of sex, to be undeniable. Finally, I resist any cadre presuming to monitor public morals, whether self-appointed
or state-sponsored. Any questions? Told you I’m a cranky old man.
————————
“D
UDE,
I
WANNA DANCE.
” Justine grinned mischievously. “Gimme tunes!” The operator registered surprise, then started looking for opportunity. He
was thirtysomething, clean-shaven with ponytail and earring, in a good suit with dark shirt buttoned to collar without tie;
official hard-guy uniform of the nineties. A kind of younger version of me, in fact, and could grow a better tail. Should
I be concerned? I cautioned under my breath that she had a business relationship to consider.
“My bad, tonight.” She waved me off with a grand indifference. “You can punish me later.” Again, be perfectly clear that I
had no basic problem with any of this. I’d once spent enough years around that business as to be jaded to things that most
seem to find highly kinky. While I wasn’t sure whether her playing about sexually would be the same rush for me, as in my
younger years, I knew for certain that inhibition would be counterproductive.
If I were serious about keeping a youngster like Justine, I’d best be prepared to let her play. Our emotional bond appeared
to be a given. Hell, no potential contender had any outside chance of touching the convoluted thing going on between us. My
unnatural advantage appeared to be absolute.
Why did it not surprise me when he generously offered her some costume from his office downstairs? She gave me a teasing kiss
before running off to change. When she returned, she was adorned deliciously sluttish in a black, thigh-length cover-up, which
opened down the front to display her pierced navel and provide a glimpse of the front of her panties. I marveled again at
those legs, “You should wear high heels just as much as you can stand.”
Waiting for the music to be cued up, she snuggled beside me. “He sat on the couch in the office, checking me out, while I
changed,” she whispered, “so I stripped bare before I put anything back on. Thinks he’s all that, he really does. He’s gonna
be all over me. Are
we
thinking he should get lucky?”
“Justine,” I asked in good humor, “what are you doing?”
Her full lips parted sensuously. “Playing the whore,” she breathed, and playfully grasped my crotch. “Hey, this gets you up,
I know it does!” I could hardly deny that, and it had been years since I’d been turned on by anything seen or done in a skin
joint. While I had no wonder that this display was largely for my benefit, I’d been learning never to be too sure I knew where
Justine was going—with anything.
The music came up, and she went onto the low platform in the enclosure. She moved well, working directly to two guys at a
stageside table. I appraised her while she got out of the cover-up; she was good for a novice. In another life she would have
made a hell of a strip. Was that also what this was about? Was she demonstrating to me that she could do the dancer bit, as
I’d described Linda to her?
I’m aware that some cannot imagine pleasure in watching a loved one in such a role. Some may be appalled, some disgusted.
If you don’t understand, I can’t explain it to you; nor would I trouble myself to try. If this seriously repels you, don’t
look; and spare me meaningless little judgments.
Moving about a pole at center stage, she was grasping it with both hands above her head. Her high heels helped to throw her
torso into an “S-curve,” showing off her firm bottom. She was peeking at me over her shoulder and revolving slowly, reversing
her grip but keeping her hands high up on the pole, pantomiming being tied to it. Then she locked eyes with me, sharply twitching
her hips and belly to each beat, as if being struck.
I was getting thoroughly into it. Of course,
then
the operator had to decide to come back and visit with me. One of the very few upsides of age is that date of rank carries
the privilege of ignoring idiots and dismissing bullshit. Not father, boyfriend; yes, looks like she’s having fun; no, doesn’t
need the money; no, the rent will not change. Christ, he was likely to get laid out of it; wasn’t that enough?
Justine got to her knees and crawled toward the pair at stageside, wagging her butt in cute exaggeration. She sensuously removed
her shoes, then, instead of popping her pants, she gradually wiggled them down about her ankles. She left them there as she
began the squirming undulations that the girls call “floor work.”
She pushed herself up on her hands, jiggling her breasts, and spoke with the men in front of her. They laughed and looked
at each other as she lowered her chest back onto the stage and thrust up her hands to them. Each taking a wrist, they held
her as she writhed about and flexed her buttocks, again surely in pantomime of bondage and punishment.
The operator was going on about how she could play on his stage anytime. As she would say, I was
way
sure of that! She sat up, lost the panties, and thrust her legs with knees bent over the little tables, a bare foot in each
guy’s lap. She’d continued to converse, and it was with her clear consent that one reached to play with her labial rings.
When she lifted her hips and positioned herself, the better for him to grasp, I heard a sharp intake of breath from the operator.
He was looking furtively about, clearly hoping there were no vice cops in the club. I expected some objection, but supposed
he didn’t want to piss her off. I laughed as he rushed to dim the lights way down, recalling Seabrook’s precious line about
the barely pubescent daughter of the
Druse
judge Ali bey Obeyid, “… A
DANGEROUS AND INFLAMMATORY LITTLE BAGGAGE IF
I
EVER SAW ONE.
”