I love them so much, E. And I hate to see them in pain. God, how I hate it. I wish I could help all of them.
A lot of these clubs are steep to get into, the better to keep out fools like you and me. But they’ve got all these trial memberships and complimentary first visits so it’s really not very hard to front your way in for a workout. And fronting, as you well know, is not something either one of us has ever had much trouble doing. No, it’s the straight life we can’t handle. Why is that, Friend E? Did somebody drop us on our heads when we were born? Or did somebody drop everybody else in this world on their heads? Maybe that’s it. Maybe they’re all crazy and we’re the together ones. Maybe we should be running things and they should all be locked up. Maybe they ARE locked up. Maybe their whole lives are prisons. Maybe that’s why they are so fucked up, and we are so free.
I found her in the Manhattan Fitness Center on East 39th Street. They advertise a lot on TV. Have four or five locations around the city. Plenty elegant, too, for a place you go to to grunt and sweat. Man, there’s carpeting and polished chrome and potted plants and a juice bar and no smell of anybody’s armpits. The people who go there all look like executives or people who play executives in soap operas. Upstairs, there’s a workout room with a bunch of those fancy machines. Also a room where they have aerobics classes, which are mostly for the big girls. They wear headbands and spandex leotards, and it is not a pretty sight at all, believe it. Disco never died here, I’m telling you. Or did Mr. Tom Jones rise up from the dead while I was inside? Because that man is back. And sounding as shitty as ever.
I tried out one of those Stairmaster things, E. What a joke, people paying good money for that. Why don’t they just take the stairs to their apartment instead of the elevator and save themselves a thousand dollars a year in membership? I guess I know why. Because you don’t meet the man of your dreams in a stairwell. Not unless you want to fuck a janitor.
Mostly, I rode a bicycle in place and scoped for honeys. And there were some. They came in two categories
—
them that wanted to be bothered and them that didn’t. Them that did kept changing bikes, adjusting their seat, keeping busy. Them that didn’t stayed put. Wore headphones and stared at magazines while they pedaled, this shield of paper and sound between them and everyone else. Like they’re fooling me. Like they don’t WANT to be saved from their pain. Like they aren’t PRAYING for me to come to them. Poor things. They’re just fronting, that’s all. We’re all just fronting.
I found her down in the pool swimming laps. Knew she was the one for me right away, E. Not that I could even tell a whole lot about how she looked. She had on a bathing cap and goggles
a
nd was facedown in the water. Didn’t matter. She had the smoothest, easiest stroke. Cut through that water like a knife, all smooth and slick and shiny, her little pink feet making not so much as a ripple behind her. I just stood there in my own swim-suit watching her for a minute, transfixed. Then I dove in and splashed around some. There were maybe a half-dozen lanes in the pool, but we were the only two in it. A sign said there was a lifeguard on duty, but I didn’t see one, not unless you count the Puerto Rican who was mopping the floor. I did a couple of laps in the lane next to hers, taking it slow.
She knew I had my eye on her. They always know. But she wasn’t at all self-conscious about showing me her butt when she got out. Based on my experience, E, that meant she was under 25. Not that she had any reason to be self-conscious. She was plenty slim and shapely, her butt taut and muscular, her legs fine. Outrageously good ankles. She had the tattoo of a heart on the inside of her left one. Plus she had more than a little up top. I’m talking zoomers, E. She wasn’t hiding them either. She had on a string bikini, the kind they wear when they’re advertising. She took off her goggles and her bathing cap and tossed her hair loose and I knew for sure this one was the one. She was a redhead, E, with wild curly hair and creamy skin and pillowy, pouty lips. She looked so fresh and clean and lovely standing there. I cried inside for her, E. I did. Because she was so hopelessly sad.
And, yet, she was so lucky.
Because I was there for her now. I was there to answer her prayers.
She seemed to have water in her ear. Kept holding her head at a funny angle and whomping away on it. She went over to the whirlpool and got in. I did another lap and joined her. She flashed me a smile, great big one, and said Hi. Which a lot of your New York honeys won’t do. I said Hi back. She was in there up to her chest with her titties sort of bobbing around on top of the bubbles. Very inviting. She was still trying to get that water out of her ear.
Had her head tilted at a funny angle and was shaking it and craning her neck around and fussing and I guess what happened is one of the jets gave her a nudge because she suddenly lost her balance and started waving her arms around in the air and sure enough one of her tits, the right one, came popping right out of her top. No kidding, E. It popped out. There it was, just as perky and as mouthwatering as can be. She got bright red and stuffed it back in where it belonged, but not before I got myself some view. Right away, I said Well, I guess we have no secrets from each other now. And she laughed and said Not so fast
—
it’s your turn now.
And just like that we got to talking, real nice and easy.
She told me her name was Bridget Healey and she was a secretary for one of the big law firms until the scumbags laid her off over Thanksgiving, which she thought was an incredibly shitty thing to do. Since her membership here at the club was paid up through the rest of the year she’d decided to come by and have a swim instead of working on her resume, which was so incredibly depressing. I said Tell me about it
—
I run an employment agency for executives who are looking to relocate. She said You mean you’re like a headhunter? Right away, E, her eyes started sparkling. Man, she could practically see it
—
her on a private jet zipping off to Corfu with some zillionaire corporate guy who was great looking and single and needed a personal secretary to suck on his dick.
Dare I say it again, Friend E? Okay, I’ll say it again: Be whoever they want you to be.
We agreed to go out for coffee after we got dressed. I had to wait for her outside on the sidewalk forever. It was cold but the cold felt good after the whirlpool. Bridget had put makeup on was what took her so long. It made her look older and somehow a bit more common. She wore a New Utrecht High Twirlers school jacket, tight jeans and little red cowboy boots. You would have loved those boots, E. We started walking over toward Third in search of a
c
offee place. She mentioned there was this nice country-western bar, El Rio Grande, downstairs in the Murray Hill Mews. She lived right across the street, so it was kind of her neighborhood place to hang. I said that would be cool.
Until I got a good look at the place. This Murray Hill Mews turned out to be a modern high-rise apartment building, lots of doormen. And El Rio Grande was way full of people doing the brunch thing in front of big picture windows that looked out over Third Avenue. I didn’t like any of it. Too many people who might recognize me. So I said You know, I’d be happy to take a look at your resume and give you some advice on how to polish it. She let out this sort of a squeal, and said Oh, wow, would you really?!
And she invited me up to her place, just like that.
Man, she was desperate. I mean, you know me, E. Would you invite me up to your place just like that? No way. It was almost like she couldn’t wait for it, know what I’m saying?
Bridget lived in a converted carriage barn on East 38th, half a block down from the Cuban embassy, where a cop sits out on the corner in a little booth day and night so as to discourage any anti-Castros from blowing up the place. I paid him no mind. I didn’t have to walk by him. Just up three flights of steps. Rear apartment, fourth floor. Bars on the windows to keep out the undesirables.
Like we can’t get in if we want to.
The apartment was nothing special at all. Just someplace small and dark and cramped to die in. She had to turn the lights on even during the day. But she kept it neat, I’ll say that for her. She even had a tablecloth on the dining table. That almost broke my heart, E. That tablecloth. I don’t know why. I guess because it was like she was trying to make it into a home, even though she was there all alone and there was no one. Damn. She put coffee on and told me to have a seat on the sofa, which I did. I said So what would you like to be when you grow up? And she let out a nervous
l
augh, said To be honest, I would enjoy the challenge of launching and running a business of my own.
Which practically blew me away, E. Her sounding just like she was a contestant on some TV game show. I was waiting to hear the guy say What do we have for our winners, Johnny …?
She sat down next to me and started telling me all about some direct marketing thing some friend of hers had started and blah-blah-blah and that’s when I decided to put her out of her misery sooner than later because she was really starting to bring me down. Friend E, I am usually a very up sort of person most of the time. But, damn, I could see her future laid out right there in front of her. A series of bullshit jobs filled with nothing but disappointment. A one-sided affair with a married man who would fuck her one or two nights a week after work and never leave his wife for her. Man, her whole life was THERE in her eyes. I could see it. And it was so totally fucking depressing. And she was BEGGING for me to save her from it.
And here I was. So the best thing to do was just take off my belt and get it over with fast.
Which I did. Only, it was different for me this time, E. It just plain wasn’t as good. Not totally sure why. Maybe because I got nothing back from her. It was over so quick she never did realize what was happening. She didn’t KNOW. There was no MOMENT. It was more like … one minute she was there, next minute she was gone. She just sort of went away, snap, like some bug on the kitchen floor. Gave me nothing back, is what I’m saying. Just left me standing there all by my damned self. I was expecting something more. I NEEDED something more. I had come a long fucking way to answer that bitch’s prayers! I needed a thank you. I needed some kind of fucking attention to be paid. I needed what I was due. Instead, I got shit. And felt empty inside. Felt starved deep down in my very soul. I thought I was going to scream or something, E.
Man, I went staggering out of there. I was so upset I even
f
orgot to take her boots, which I was going to give to you next time I saw you. I am sorry about that, E. Ended up at that El Rio Grande after all. Had me a bottle of Rolling Rock. But that didn’t help and I thought it was a crummy boring place full of Yushie scum so I walked. I walked for hours, E, trying to figure out why this one left me feeling so down. I guess because there are so many more Bridgets out there in the offices and health clubs and bars of New York, and I have so much more work ahead of me. I mean, I need to help them all. I HAVE to help them all. But I don’t know if I can do it. I just don’t know. I keep getting this feeling late at night, lying here in my jack rack, that there is no goodness left anymore in the world, only ugliness and pain, and maybe I’m too late. Maybe I’m wasting my time trying to perform my small service.
I don’t usually need a reward, E. The sheer pleasure of doing the work I do is usually reward enough for me. This one was different. But, hey, I guess they can’t all be fun, can they? Better luck next time.
Your pal, T
p.s. Really sorry about those boots
p.p.s. What DO we have for our contestants, Johnny?
V
IC WAS ON THE
telephone in the kitchen, sparring gruffly with some annoying reporter. I snatched the phone away from him and hung it up and called Very and got through to him.
“Was just going to call you, dude,” the lieutenant said briskly. “We got more on that bite mark on Laurie London’s butt. It was twenty-four to forty-eight hours old at time of death. Plus the impression we took of Tibor Farkas’s teeth matches up.”
“Lieutenant, I—”
“So it looks like his story plays. Plus he passed the polygraph, which is to say the examiner’s ninety-five percent certain Tibor’s telling us the truth when he says he’s innocent.”
“Lieutenant,
I—”
“Check it out, we also talked to her classmates at the New School. Not a one of ’em remembers her going off with some guy after class. She just said good-night and headed off by herself. You think our friend made that part up or what?”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Lieutenant?”
“Yo, dude?”
“Bridget Healey. She lived in a converted carriage barn on East Thirty-eighth Street, halfway down the block from the Cuban embassy.”
He was silent a moment. “I heard you say
lived.
Did you say
lived?”
“I did.”
“You sitting on another chapter?”
“I am.”
“Stay where you are, dude.”
“I will. Oh—Lieutenant? She has a tattoo of a heart on her left ankle.” I hung up, staring down at the envelope in my hand. Something in this chapter had struck me as odd, left a prickly feeling in my scalp. What it was I couldn’t say. But it was there, if only I could place it.
Vic was staring at me intently. I went away from his stare.
I went into the nursery. Pam was in there seeing to Tracy, who had just awakened from her nap and needed changing. Merilee was still at rehearsal—they were keeping her later and later now, what with preview performances before audiences of semi-alert humans only a few days off. I took over for Pam. There were times when I found changing Tracy’s diapers strangely comforting. This was one of those times. Because, well, here was something I
could
do. A problem I
could
solve: cleaning my daughter’s bumhole. Afterward, I sat there in the rocker with her in my lap. Something I’d been doing more and more of lately when I was tired and confused and searching for answers. I’d go into the nursery and sit with Tracy and ask her what the hell I should do. She’d gaze steadily up at me with those emerald-green eyes of hers, waiting patiently for me to figure it out. She knew that I would. She had total and complete faith in me. There was tremendous clarity in her eyes. She seemed such a wise child. She was not, of course. She didn’t even know right from wrong. But, then, neither did I. I thought I did once, but not anymore. Not now. They keep changing the rules of the game now. Sometimes, I don’t even understand the language they write them in anymore.