Answered Prayers (15 page)

“Hmm,” she murmured, like a drowsy child. “That’s nice. Tell me, how did you fall into the hands of our naughty Mr. Nelson?”

I was glad to talk; anything to get my mind off that mischievous hard-on. So not only did I tell her how I’d met Aces at a bar in Tangier, I continued with a brief resume of P. B. Jones and his journeys. A bastard, born in St. Louis and raised there in a Catholic orphanage until I was fifteen and ran away to Miami, where I’d worked as a masseur five or so years—until I’d saved enough money to go to New York and try my luck at what I really wanted to be, a writer. Successfully? Well, yes and no: I’d published a book of short stories—ignored, unfortunately, by both the critics and public, a disappointment that had brought me to Europe, and long years of traveling, scrounging about while I attempted to write a novel; but that, too, had been a dud. So here I was, still drifting and with no future that extended beyond tomorrow.

By now I’d reached her abdomen, massaged it with a rolling circular motion, then descended to her hips, and then, with my eyes on her rosy pubic hairs, I thought of Alice Lee Langman, and Alice Lee Langman’s memories of a Polish lover who had enjoyed jamming her cunt with cherries and eating them out one by one. My imagination enhanced that fantasy. I imagined soft pitted cherries marinating in a bowl of warm rich sweetened cream, and I saw Kate McCloud’s savory fingers selecting
creamy cherries from the bowl and inserting them—My legs trembled, my cock pulsed, my balls were tight as a miser’s fist. I said: “Excuse me,” and walked into the bathroom, followed by Mutt, who watched with puzzled, pixie interest as I unzipped my fly and jacked off. It didn’t take much: a couple of tugs and I launched a load that damn near flooded the floor. After removing the evidence with Kleenex, I washed my face, dried my hands, and returned to my client, my legs weak as a seasick sailor’s but my cock still semi-saluting.

The dormer window was smudged with wintry Parisian dusk; lamplight defined her figure, silhouetted her face. She was smiling, and she said, a flickering amusement tempering her tone: “Feeling better?”

A bit gruffly, I said: “If you could turn over now … !”

I massaged the nape of her neck, rippled my fingers along her spine, and her torso vibrated, like a purring cat. “You know,” she said, “I’ve thought of a name for your dog. Phoebe. I once had a pony named Phoebe. And a dog, too. But maybe we ought to ask Mutt. Mutt, how would you like to be called Phoebe?”

Mutt squatted to sprinkle the carpet.

“You see, she loves it! Mr. Jones,” she said, “could I ask a great favor? Would you let Phoebe spend the night with me? I hate sleeping alone. And I’ve missed my other Phoebe so much.”

“It’s all right with me, if it’s all right with … with Phoebe.”

“Thank you,” she said simply.

But it wasn’t all right. I felt if I left Mutt here with this sorceress, she would never belong to me again. Or, perhaps, I’d never again belong to myself. It was as if I’d slipped into furious white water, an icy boiling current carrying me, slamming me toward some picturesque but dastardly cascade. Meanwhile my hands worked to soothe her back, buttocks, legs; her breathing became rhythmic and even. When I was sure she was asleep, I bent and kissed her ankle.

She moved, but did not waken. I sat down on the edge of the bed, and Phoebe—yes,
Phoebe
—jumped up and curled beside me; soon she was asleep herself. I had been loved, but I had never known love before, and so I could not comprehend the impulses, the desires careening around my brain like a bobsled. What could I do, what could I give Kate McCloud that would force her to respect and return my love? My eyes toured the room and settled on the fireplace mantel and the tables supporting the silver-framed picture of her child: such a serious little boy, though sometimes he was smiling, or lapping an ice-cream cone, or poking out his tongue and making comic faces. “Kidnap him”—wasn’t that what the Black Duchess had advised? Absurd, but I saw myself, sword unsheathed, castrating dragons and fighting through infernos to rescue this child and bring him safely to his mother’s arms. Pipedreams. Bullshit. And yet, instinct somehow told me the boy was the answer. Surreptitiously, I tiptoed out of the room and closed the door, disturbing neither Phoebe’s slumbers nor those of her new mistress.

TIME OUT. I NEED TO
sharpen pencils and begin a new notebook.

THAT WAS A LONG TIME
out; almost a week. But it is November now, suddenly, unreasonably cold; I went out in a hard driving rain and caught a dandy. I wouldn’t have gone out if my employer, Miss Victoria Self, the High Priestess of the Dial-A-Dick, Call-A-Cunt services, hadn’t sent an urgent message ordering me to her office.

It beats me why, when you think of the money that woman must be coining, she and her Mafioso confederates, they can’t fork out for slightly less sleazy headquarters than the two-room
dump above a 42nd Street porno shop. Of course, the customers seldom see the premises; they only make contact by telephone. So I guess she figures why waste money pampering the help, us poor whores. Drowned, the rain water all but gushing out of my ears, I sloshed up the two flights of creaking stairs and once more confronted the frosted-glass door with chipped lettering:
THE SELF SERVICE. WALK IN.

Four people occupied the stuffy little waiting room. Sal, a short hunky Italian wearing a wedding ring; he was one of Miss Self’s moonlighting cops. And Andy, who was on probation for a burglary charge; but, if you didn’t look too closely, he might pass for an average college-kid type; as usual, he was playing a harmonica. And then there was Butch, Miss Self’s blond, languid secretary, who, now that the last of his Fire Island suntan had deserted him, resembled Uriah Heep more than ever. Maggie was there, too—a plump sweet girl: the last time I’d seen her she had just got married, greatly to Butch’s indignation.

“And
now
guess what she’s done!” Butch hissed as I walked in. “She’s pregnant.”

Maggie pleaded: “Please, Butch. I don’t see why you’re making such a hullabaloo. I only found out yesterday. It won’t interfere.”

“That’s what you said when you sneaked off and married this bum. Maggie, you know I love you. But how could you have let such a thing happen?”

“Please, honey. I promise. It won’t happen again.”

Not mollified, but somewhat, Butch rustled papers on his desk and turned to Sal.

“Sal, I hope you’re not forgetting you have a five o’clock appointment at the St. George hotel. Room 907. His name is Watson.”

“The St. George! Jeez,” grumbled Sal, whose nickname is Ten Penny because of his ability, when his dick is fully erect, to
line ten pennies along its thick length, “that’s in Brooklyn. I got to haul-ass way the hell over to Brooklyn in this weather?”

“It’s a fifty-dollar date.”

“I hope it’s nothing fancy. I’m not up to anything fancy.”

“Nothing fancy. Just a simple Golden Shower. The gentleman’s thirsty.”

“Well,” said Sal, stepping over to a water cooler in the corner and grabbing himself a Dixie cup, “I guess I’d better tank up.”

“Andy! ”

“Yessir.”

“Put that miserable harmonica in your pocket and leave it there.”

“Yessir.”

“Is that all you delinquents do in jail? Get yourselves tattooed and learn to play the harmonica.”

“I ain’t got any tattoo—”

“Don’t talk back to me!”

“Yessir,” said Andy humbly.

Butch swerved his attention my way; in his expression there was an extra-added smugness hinting that he might be privy to some ominous information concerning me. He pressed a buzzer on his desk, and said: “I believe Miss Self is ready to see you now.”

Miss Self seemed oblivious to my entrance; she was stationed at a window, her back to me, pondering the downpour. Thin grey braids were looped around her narrow skull; as always, her stoutish figure bulged inside a blue serge suit. She was smoking a cigarillo. Her head swiveled. “Ah, so,” she said with the leftover remnants of a German accent, “you are very wet. That is not good. Have you no raincoat?”

“I was hoping Santa Claus would bring me one for Christmas.”

“That is not good,” she repeated, advancing toward her desk.
“You have been making good money. For sure you can afford a raincoat. Here,” she said, producing from a drawer two glasses and a bottle of her preferred tranquilizer, tequila. While she poured, I wondered anew at the severity of the setting, starker than a penitent’s cell, utterly unadorned except for the desk, some straight-back chairs, a Coca-Cola calendar, and a wall of filing cabinets (how I would have liked to have got a look inside those!). The only frivolous object in view was the gold Cartier watch flashing on Miss Self’s wrist; it was so out of character. I puzzled as to how she had acquired it—was it perhaps a gift from one of her rich and grateful clients?

“Kicks,” she said, emptying her glass with a shudder.

“Kicks.”

“Alors,”
she said, sucking her cigarillo, “you may recall our first interview. When you applied here as a potential employee of The Service. Recommended by Mr. Woodrow Hamilton—who, I regret to say, is no longer with us.”

“Oh?”

“For a serious infraction of Our Rules. Which is precisely what I want to discuss with you.” She narrowed her pale Teutonic eyes; I felt the queasiness of a captured soldier about to be interrogated by the Commandant of the Camp. “I acquainted you with those rules in complete detail; but to refresh your memory, I will remind you of the more important ones. Firstly, any attempt by a member of our staff to blackmail or embarrass a client will result in
severe
retribution.”

A vision of a strangled corpse floating in the Harlem River insinuated itself.

“Secondly, under no circumstances will an employee ever deal directly with a client; all contacts, and all discussion of fees, must be made through our auspices. Thirdly, and most especially, an employee must never associate socially with a client:
that sort of thing is not good business and can result in very disagreeable situations.”

She doused her cigarillo in the tequila, and downed a generous slug straight from the bottle. “On September eleventh you had an appointment with a Mr. Appleton. You spent an hour with him in his room at the Yale Club. Did anything unusual happen?”

“Not really. It was just a one-way oral deal; he didn’t want any reciprocation.” I paused, but her unsatisfied demeanor indicated that she expected to hear more. “He was in his early sixties, but in good condition, hearty. A likable guy. Friendly. He talked a lot; he told me he was retired and lived on a farm with his second wife. He said he raised cattle—”

Miss Self impatiently interrupted: “And he gave you a hundred dollars.”

“Yes.”

“Did he give you anything else?”

I decided not to lie. “He gave me his calling card. He said that if I ever felt like breathing country air, I was welcome to visit him.”

“What became of this card?”

“I threw it away. Lost it. I don’t know.”

She lit another cigarillo, and smoked it until a long ash tumbled off it. She picked up an envelope lying on her desk, extracted a letter from it, and spread it out before her. “I’ve worked more than twenty years in this business, but this morning I received a letter unique in my experience.”

As I may have mentioned before, one of my gifts is an ability to read upside down: those of us who subsist on our wits develop offbeat talents. So, while Miss Self examined the mysterious communication, I read it. It said:
Dear Miss Self, I was well pleased with the amiable fellow you arranged to meet me at the Yale
Club this past September 11th. So much so that I would like to get to know him better in a more gemütlich atmosphere. I wondered if it could be arranged, through your auspices, to have him spend the Thanksgiving holidays here at my farm in Pennsylvania? Say Thursday through Sunday. It would be a simple family gathering; my wife, some of my children, a few of my grandchildren. Naturally, I would expect to pay a reasonable fee, and I leave it to you to assess the amount. I trust this finds you well and in good spirit. Most sincerely, Roger W. Appleton.

Miss Self read the letter aloud. “Now,” she snapped, “what do you say to that?” When I did not readily reply, she said: “There’s something wrong. Something suspicious. But putting that aside, it stands in contradiction to one of our primary rules: a Service employee must never associate socially with a client. These rules are not arbitrary. They are founded on experience.” Frowning, she tapped the letter with a fingernail. “What do you suppose this man could have in mind? A
partouze?
Involving his wife?”

Careful to sound indifferent, I said: “I can’t see any harm in that.”

“Ah, so,” she accused me. “You see nothing against this proposal? You
want
to go.”

“Well, frankly, Miss Self, I’d welcome a change of scenery for a few days. I’ve had a pretty rough time this past year or so.”

She slugged down another double dose of the cactus juice; shuddered. “Very well, I will write Mr. Appleton, and ask a fee of five hundred dollars. Perhaps, for a sum like that, we can for once overlook a rule. And with your share of the profits, promise me you’ll buy a raincoat.”

ACES WAVED TO ME AS
I entered the Ritz bar. It was six o’clock and I had to squeeze my way toward him between the populated tables, for at cocktail time the bar brimmed with
suntanned skiers recently descended from Alpine holidays; and pairs of expensive tarts keeping each other company while waiting to be winked at by German and American businessmen; and battalions of fashion writers and Seventh Avenue rag traders gathered in Paris to view the summer collections; and of course, the chic old blue-haired ladies—there are always several of them, elderly permanent residents of the hotel, ensconced in the Ritz bar sipping their allotted two martinis (“my doctor insists: so good for the circulation”) before retiring to the dining room to chew in mute chandeliered isolation.

I had no sooner sat down than Aces was summoned to answer a telephone call. I had a good view of him, for the telephone is located at the far end of the bar; occasionally his lips moved, but mostly he seemed to be just listening and nodding. Not that I was really watching him, for my mind was still upstairs contemplating Kate McCloud’s loose hair, her dreaming head—a spectacle so consuming that Aces’ return startled me.