 |
||
|
Broken Jewel The Betrayal Game The Assassins Gallery Liberation Road Last Citadel Scorched
Earth The End of War War of the Rats Souls to Keep |
"Hello. Top Hat Escort Service." "Yes. I'd like to make an appointment." "Alright. That's what we're here for." "I...uh...could you..." "Yes?" "Could you tell me what it is I..." "Sir?" "Yeah?" "Let's do it this way." "What." "How about I run down our list of services for you. You can pick something you'd like. That's the way we usually do it." "That's better." "Yes it is. Let me ask you a few questions first. That OK? Nothing personal, just some preferences." "OK." "This is the Top Hat Escort Service. We have several items for discriminating adults to choose from. First, are you calling just for you or for a party?" "A party?" "You know, like a bachelor thing." "No. Just for me." "Alright. You want a dancer or an escort?" "I don't know. What's the difference?" "An escort will go out on the town with you, dinner, a play, whatever. You pick up the tab. A dancer will come to your home or office or wherever you say within reason and give you a private dance. If you want it in a motel, you arrange for the room." "I see." "Which one sounds good?" "A private dancer's a bit much. That's not...it's not what I was looking for. You know?" "You don't have to explain, sir. Just pick." "Could I get maybe an escort I could go out dancing with? Up in Marathon or Miami?" "Yes, of course. All our escorts are dancers too." "Oh." "Now let me tell you what we got. Our signature service is called The Top Hat. This is first-class all the way. Evening gown, stilettos, zircons, the whole nine yards. Very classy, very chic. Only our best girls." "Uh huh." "You can take 'em anywhere. People's eyes are buggin' out. You understand." "I get it." "You wanna go dancing, go. No extra charge." "Alright." "Next is our most commonly requested service, what we call The Fedora. This is a little less formal than The Top Hat. More like the tailored business suit look. Executive kind of thing, if that's your taste." "Uh huh." "Then there's The Panama, where we send you a Hispanic lady. Lovely. Latin. Great dancers. The best. Or maybe you want what we call The Ten Gallon, in case you don't feel like frigging around with all the dresses and jewelry, you just want a gal in a pair of jeans and boots, you know, just knock around. And finally, in case maybe you'd like something else, you know, something out of the mainstream. What I mean is maybe you want us to send you over a male escort, there's our Brown Derby." "No. No. Jesus." "Just asking." "I understand. No. The, uh, the Fedora." "Alright." "How much is that? Is a Fedora?" "One fifty." "Will she be, you know, pretty? I'd like it if she was attractive. For one fifty." "Sir, I'll have her waiting for you to pick up in the lobby at the Ramada on North Roosevelt. You don't like what you see, just get back in your car and keep driving." "Alright." "What night?" "Is tonight too soon?" "Right now is not too soon. You want tonight, we'll go seven o'clock. The Ramada. Have one red rose in your hands. She'll be in the lobby." "Who do I ask for?" "You don't ask for nobody. She'll approach you. Otherwise you could walk up to the wrong woman and catch yourself a smack. It happens. Seven o'clock. You pick her up, you pay her." "Alright." "Pleasure doing business with you. I'm sure we'll talk again." "What time do I have to have her back?" "You never done this before." "No. I'm married." "Yeah, well, don't feel bad. Lot of guys step out once in a while, it helps their marriages. Don't worry about what time. She ain't a pumpkin. Have fun."
Beatrice was down to her fishnets, pumps, G-string and tassels when her four o'clock tried to touch her. He reached out a big mushy white mitt and she slapped it away. "Hey!" he bellowed. "Shut up," she said. "You paid to watch. Watch." "Come on. What is this?" "This," she swivelled her hands down herself as if showing off a new refrigerator on a game show, "is a dance. This," she executed a quick pirouette on one spike, "is what you ordered." He sat back in the motel room chair. "Is that all I get?" Hands on hips. Pelvis in a circle rotating to the music from the portable player on the dresser. "From me it is." "Naw. Jesus." His eyes were glommed on her belly button. "Naw, Bea. You're killin' me." He spread apart his knees and held out his arms - Beatrice thought of Humpty Dumpty - the rod behind his zipper was plain, creases in his baggy fat man's suit pants pointed fabric arrows at his crotch. "Christ, I can't put up with this." Beatrice stepped left and stepped right, the imagination was leaching out of her movements. "Baby, please." He pointed with both hands at his bulge. "Come on. At least give me a hand job." Bea stomped one heel. She whirled to the boom box and snapped it off. "Look, maybe we're not communicating. I told you I'm a dancer. That's what you ordered, that's what you're getting. I am not going to touch you or allow you to touch me. You want something else, call 'em back and make other arrangements." The fat man lifted his eyebrows. He kept his legs wide as if to show Beatrice that his staff was so engorged and powerful that he could not close his legs. "Yeah," he said, "that's easy for you. But what am I gonna do with this?" She collected his coat off the bed. She tossed it at him, over his lap. "Buy a goat." He didn't move. The coat lay across his legs, his knees and arms were still open. "Come on, Bea. Look, how about another fifty?" "How about you hit the bricks. Show's over." "Seventy-five." "Out." She opened the bathroom door and reached around for her bathrobe hung on the hook. She put it on, belted the terry cloth tight. "Then gimme my money back." He pointed at her purse where his two fifties had been folded and stashed when he'd first come in the room. "You got more nerve than a bad tooth," she said. "Out." He rose from the chair and slid on his suit coat deliberately. He shot his cuffs and pulled his tie up under his rooster red chin. "I paid for the room. You gotta leave too." She answered with a stare. "You think you're so hot," he said. She kept staring. "Well, little lady, you're not. You're a forty year-old bimbo past her prime. You ain't righteous and you damn sure ain't too good for me." She moved to open the door. He stepped out into the garishly carpeted hall. "No," she said sweetly, "you're right. Nothing's too good for you." He turned as she closed the door. She put her smile in the remaining gap. "And that's just what you're getting," she said. "Nothing." The door clicked with its solid and heavy motel door fit. She heard him mutter walking away, "You can't do this to me." Beatrice dropped her head to her chest and drew a deep breath. She whispered, "Fuck." She took off the robe, laid it on the bed and stepped out of the three-inch heels down to her five-foot five. She peeled down the hose, skimmed off the G-string and spit on her fingertip to melt the glue from the tassels over her nipples. She piled all the clothes on the made bed in a stack of black and scarlet. She, naked in the mirror, felt her abdomen for flatness, ran a probing touch along the tendons of her groin muscles, inspected the curve of her hips. Her breasts round as water balloons were not all naturally hers so she did not pause with them. She, naked motionless in the mirror, without the skimpy outfit, without the writhing and music and the man, was free of the yoke of her beauty, she was only beauty pure. She was free of her history. A white virgin of the eye. She turned on the shower and put up her brown hair while the water warmed. She wasn't a forty year-old bimbo past her prime. She was forty-two. And if this body was past its prime, why was the fat man so eager to pay a hundred to see it dance and an extra seventy-five to touch? She had a seven o'clock pickup tonight here at the Ramada. She planned to take a nap then dress. Tonight was a Fedora. Bimbos didn't get the Fedoras. A Fedora was good work, good money. She was proud; the company only had four girls who rated a Fedora, and only two who did the Top Hats. She'd brought along her favorite ensemble, a khaki mid-thigh business suit. She slipped under the water and closed her eyes. She put the stream on her cheeks, hot down her neck and front. She stood a long time like that and let the shower cry for her, something she would not do for herself.
Everything in his life for the past eight years had happened because he'd killed that girl. He hadn't intended to kill her. But then he hadn't intended a lot of what had happened over the last eight years either. That was some sort of justice, he figured. You let things get away from you once and they stay away, like some dog you kicked. The street light turned green. A passel of tourists walked in front of his bumper before he could move forward and he had to wait. This time of the evening, the dinner hour, brought tourists swarming out of their hotels and B&Bs daubed in pastelled frippery like reef fish cruising around Key West's Old Town in search of eateries and happy hours and patio music. He looked at the colors and saw them as he always did, with the quiet jealousy of a man who had in his lifetime had the colors taken away. He tattooed his fingers on the steering wheel. Enough, Virgil thought. He tapped his horn to tell the stragglers to get back on the sidewalk. He turned from Whitehead onto Truman which would become Roosevelt and he'd be at the Ramada by seven. Ellen was at an Old Town Merchants Association Meeting for the evening. The kid Woody was closing up. Virgil pulled into the Ramada parking lot five minutes before seven. Not for the first time he noticed how much the Ramada resembled a prison building. It was a flat-faced square of brick walls and white paint. The dark vertical creases of the curtains in all the windows looked like bars. He'd been thinking about prison all day on this the eighth anniversary of the girl's death. Lynn was her name. Would have been her name today, people calling her Lynn right this second maybe if he hadn't run her over. If. To taunt him, like so much did, a speedboat churred past on Garrison Bight across the street heading to open water to do some sundown water skiing. Virgil saw a beer bottle tip up. Too weird, he thought, to see that right now, today, even though in another part of his brain he knew a speedboat of people sipping beers was something you saw everyday. He wiped his hands across his face until the sound of the power boat was gone. Parked close to the building, he looked through the windshield into the high brick wall of the Ramada and was struck by the old closed-in feeling. He shook it off. He took up the single red rose and fingered a thorn, pressing his thumb onto the point. It smarted but he stopped before he broke the skin. Seven o'clock. He walked into the motel lobby. The jacketed desk clerk saw him and his red flower held up like a school boy's apple then looked back down to his paperwork. Other employees and passing guests saw him and went about their business. People moved in and out of the lobby. No one appeared to be waiting. He sat on a cool leather sofa and laid the rose across his lap. Five minutes he sat. No woman looked to be expecting someone. No one sashayed up to him and took the rose and breathed to him Let's go. He lifted the flower from his lap and wondered how slowly the thing must be dying without water. The rose cap was unfairly red, provocatively velvet; against his will it flung him into his memory, into the warm ocean with the blood, a cumulus of red around him. A well-dressed woman exited a taxi; Virgil's ribs squeezed. A man got out behind her and they walked past his sofa laughing. He glanced at his watch. Six minutes after seven. This isn't going to bring her back, he thought. It's not going to bring anything back. He left the rose on the sofa. He looked at his watch one more time to pretend for the desk clerk that he had an appointment elsewhere and hurried from the lobby. |
| Site design by riverrun enterprises, inc. Copyright 2010, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002 |