Bad Behavior: Stories (8 page)

He smiled as he listened to the music. It evoked the swirling lights of dance floors he’d never been on, the tossing hair and sweat-drenched underwear of girls who danced and drank all night, girls he never saw except in commercials for jeans. He anticipated Lisette as he imagined her, the grip of her blunt-fingered hands, her curly head on his shoulder. Did she dance in places like that, in her white socks and pumps?

She came in with a white sheet under her arm. She clipped across the floor, sharp heels clacking. She turned off the radio. The silence was as disorienting as a sudden roomful of fluorescent light. “I hate that shit,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind. I have to put this sheet down.” She snapped the sheet open and floated it down over him. He scrambled out from under it, banging into the wastebasket as he stepped to the floor.

“Here,” he said. He took a corner of the sheet and awkwardly stretched it over the bed.

“No, it’s okay, that’s good enough.” She sat on the bed and stared at him, her small face gone suddenly grave. Her eyes were round and dark. Her muddy black makeup looked as if it had been finger-painted on. He sat down next to her and put his hand on her thigh. She ignored it. He felt as though he was bothering a girl sitting next to him on a bus. His hand sweated on her leg and he took it away. What was wrong? Why wasn’t she pulling her dress off over her head, the way they usually did?

“Do you come to places like this often?” she asked.

“Not too much. Every month or so. I’m married, so it’s hard to get away.”

She looked worried. She reached out with nervous quickness and picked up his hand. “What do people do now, mostly?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m new here. You’re only my second customer and I don’t know what I should do. Well, I know what to
do
, basically, but there’s all these little things, like when to take off the dress.”

He felt a foolish smile running over his face. Her second customer! “But you’ve worked before.”

“You mean done this before? No, I haven’t.”

He looked at her, beaming greedily.

“What do you do for a living?” she asked.

“I’m an attorney,” he said. “Corporate law.” He was lying. He felt cut loose from himself, unmarried, un-old, because of the lie.

“How old are you?”

“How old do you think I am?”

She smiled, and her black eye paint coiled like a snake in the corners of her eyes. “Fifty?”

“You’re exactly right.” He was fifty-nine. “How about you?”

“Twenty-two.”

She looked as though she could be that age, but he had a strong feeling that she was lying too.

“Why do you come to places like this?” She lay across the bed, her head on her hand, her legs folded restfully. “Do you not get along with your wife?”

He leaned against the headboard, his naked legs open. “Oh, I love my wife. It’s a very successful marriage. And we have sex, good sex. But it’s not everything I want. She’s willing to experiment, a little, but she’s really not all that interested. It can make you feel foolish to be doing something when you know your partner isn’t an equal participant. Besides, this is an adventure for me. Something nice.”

“Is it something nice?”

“With you it’s going to be very nice.”

“How do you know?”

“What a strange question.”

She crossed the bed to adjust her body against his, to put her head on his shoulder. She stroked his chest hair. “It’s not so strange.”

“Well, I just know, that’s all.”

They kissed. She had a harsh, stubborn kiss.

She took off her checked dress, button by button, very neatly. Her body was extremely pretty: white, curvy and plump. When she took off her high heels he saw that her legs were a little too short and her ankles a bit thick, but he liked them anyway. She folded her dress over the aluminum chair and turned to him with an uptilted chin, looking as if she might break into a trot, like a pony. She was proud of her body.

Her pride was pitiful in the stupid room. It made him feel superior and tender. He gushed a smile and held out his arms. She met him with a surprisingly strong hug, the pouncing grab of a playful animal.

“Goodness, you’re healthy.”

She grinned and squeezed him. “What do you want to do?”

“We’ll play it by ear. Don’t be nervous. It’s going to be lovely.”

The way she touched became unsure. She talked to him as they touched, and her crude, frank words were like pungent flowers against the gray of her shyness. When he touched her hips, he thought he could feel her innermost life on the sensitive surface of her body.

“It was like a honeymoon,” he said to her afterward. “Just like I knew it would be.”

“Oh, it was not.” Her face was in the mirror; she was swiping her mouth with lipstick. “Don’t be silly.”

“Have you ever been married?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Then you don’t know what a honeymoon is like.” She was right, though. It wasn’t like a honeymoon at all.

She walked him to the door and he kissed her in front of the other girls. The stretch-pants woman smiled. “Good night, Fred,” she said.

When he got on the highway to Westchester, he used his push-button device to roll down the windows and drove too fast. When he arrived home he walked through the entire first floor of his house, turning on all the lights. His wife really was out of town, and he didn’t like to be alone in a dimly lit house. The refrigerator was clean and neatly stacked with food his wife had prepared for him. He got into his pajamas and slippers and made himself a sandwich of cold cuts and mayonnaise. He stood at the kitchen counter and ate the sandwich from a paper plate with a smiling cat face on it. He thought of Lisette lying across the bed like an arrangement of fruit, her shoulder snuggled against her cheek, watching him clean himself in the bathroom with a cheap pink loofah. She had a curious, sober look on her round face. She’s an intelligent girl, he thought. You can see it in her eyes. Why hadn’t he told her that he was a veterinarian? He had never lied to a prostitute before. He made himself a piña colada, with lots of crushed ice and a tiny straw—his wife had left a Dixie cup of red-and-white straws next to the blender—and went to bed.

The next night, he drove into Manhattan to see her again.

“Boy, I’m glad to see you tonight,” she said as she clacked into the room with the sheet.

“Are you? Why?” He stood to let her crack the sheet above the bed.

“Oh, it’s been sort of a bad night. I couldn’t stand to deal with another idiot.”

“I’m sure you get some pretty undesirable people in here.”

“You said it.”

“Nobody violent or anything, I hope?”

“No, just stupid.” She floated the sheet down and turned to curl against him.

Later, they lay folded together, listening to the sad gurgle of the fish tank. “Look at those poor, dumb things swimming around in
there,” she said. “They haven’t got any idea of the filth going on in here.”

“What did you mean about the men who come here? When you said they’re … just stupid.” He’d said “stupid” too loud.

“I don’t really mean they’re stupid. A lot of them are businessmen. They must have some kind of brain to do that. But they’re dumb about women and they’re dumb about sex.” She rocked him over on his back and lay on him, her fingers perched on his shoulders, her face right against his. “They actually think they can buy you for a hundred and fifty dollars. Like you’re going to become sexually excited because they give you money. I mean they can pay you to do certain things. But they can’t buy anyone for a hundred and fifty dollars.” She rolled off him and flopped on her back. “It’s so retarded. They don’t have any idea of what good sex is, so they wouldn’t know you can’t buy it.” She turned her head to him. “I hope I’m not insulting you. I’m not talking about you.”

He stuck his body up on one elbow so he could look at her. “No. No, I think it’s very interesting. I’m flattered that you choose to tell me these things.” Her stomach was sticking out like a little bread loaf. He tickled it lightly.

She scratched her stomach. “Why did you come back so soon?”

“Don’t you remember last night? I find our, uh, sex highly erotic. Not because I pay for it, but because it just is.” He paused to let her react. She stared at him and blinked. “Besides, I like you. I think there’s something between us. I think that if I were a few years younger and we met under slightly different circumstances, we might even have what’s now called a relationship.”

She smiled and looked at the happy lions snoozing on the designer sheets. He put his hand on hers. “The first night I came here, you were uncertain, kind of shy. You came out and admitted it, you asked me questions. You trusted me. Tonight when you were mad, you didn’t put on a phony smile. You let off steam, told me how you felt. You didn’t treat me like a customer. That’s nice. There’s hardly anybody that’ll be real with you like that anymore. Sometimes even my wife isn’t honest with me.”

She looked up from the smiling lions. “You shouldn’t come to prostitutes looking for honesty.”

“You’re not a prostitute. Don’t say that about yourself.”

“What do you think I am?”

“You just happen to be a pretty, sexy girl who, uh—”

“I have sex for money.”

“Well, all right.” He slapped her thigh nervously. “You’re right. You’re a prostitute.” It sounded so horrible. “But you’re still a wonderful girl.” He grabbed her and snuggled her.

“You don’t know me.”

“You’re wonderful.” He squeezed her like he wanted to break her ribs. She shoved her pelvis against him, threw her arms and one leg around him and squeezed with all her slippery might. She smiled with half-closed eyes, and bit her grinning lip. He squeezed harder. She jammed her elbows into his sides and he made a meek “whoof” noise.

He dropped his arms, panting. “God, you’re strong. How did such a small person get so strong?”

She grinned like a wolf. “I dunno.” She let go and rolled off, and padded into the bathroom.

He followed her. “Are you a gymnast? A dancer?”

“No. I used to work out with weights in school.” She dabbed between her legs with a nubbly white washcloth.

“University?”

“Yeah.” She grabbed a fat economy-size jar of mentholated mouthwash, threw her head back and dumped a big splash into her mouth. Her cheeks worked vigorously as she sloshed it to and fro.

“Do you show your strength in the way you deal with people? I mean, outside of this place?”

She spat a green burst of mouthwash into the sink and looked at him. “Yeah. I do.”

“How do you make them aware of it?”

She leaned against the sink, facing him with her arms behind her, her face thoughtful and soft. “I just … don’t let people sway my thinking. I don’t mold myself to fit what other people think I
am.” She came forward and put her arms around him. “It’s interesting that you find strength in women attractive.”

“Why?”

“Don’t most older men like passive, dependent women?”

“Oh, that’s an awful stereotype. Don’t believe it.”

“Is your wife a strong woman?”

“Yes, she is.”

“Is she a lawyer too?”

“No. She’s an antiquarian. She’s got a small rare-book business.”

“Did you meet her in college?”

“Yes. She studied art history and Latin. I was very impressed by that.”

“Was she the first person you had sex with?”

“Almost.”

“I bet that’s why you see prostitutes.” She let go of him and hurried to get dressed. The outermost flesh of her backside jiggled as she balanced on one spike heel and stuck the other through a leg of her underpants.

“What do you mean?”

“You had so little chance to screw around when you were young. You’re trying to get it now.” Her fingers were flying over the tiny buttons of her checked dress.

“You know, I think you’re writing a book. That’s what you’re doing here. You’re one of those journalists doing undercover work on prostitution.”

She smiled miserably. “No.”

“What do you do, besides work here? I think you do something. Am I right?”

“Of course I do something.” She said “do” very sarcastically. She trotted to the mirror and got out her shiny silver lipstick case.

“What? What do you do?” He came toward her.

“I don’t like to talk about it here.” She opened her black leather bag to replace the lipstick. He glimpsed a roll of money and a packet of condoms in sky-blue tinfoil.

“Why don’t you like to talk about it?”

“It makes me unhappy.”

The telephone by the bed rasped, indicating the end of their hour.

He saw her again the following night, and the night after that. He relished the way she laughed and playfully squeezed him around the stomach with her hefty thighs, or impatiently squiggled out from under him so they could change position. Her nonchalant reaction to his efforts to impress her sexually made him believe that her excitement, when it did occur, was real, that she wanted him. But if he so much as put a hand where she didn’t want it, she’d fiercely slap it away and snap, “I don’t like that.”

“That’s why I like you so much,” he said. “You don’t let me get away with anything. You’re straightforward. Like my wife.”

During that time, she told him that her real name was Jane. She still wouldn’t talk to him about her life outside the pale green room. Instead, she asked him questions about himself. He was too embarrassed by now to tell her that he’d lied about his job. The lie turned out to be a mistake. Not only was she unimpressed by his false attorneyhood, she was an animal lover. The longest conversation they ever had on a single subject was about a cat that she’d had for fifteen years, until the fat, asthmatic thing finally keeled over. “He had all black fur except for his paws and his throat patch. He looked like he was wearing a tuxedo with a white cravat and gloves, and he was more of a gentleman than any human being I’ve ever known. I saw him protect a female cat from a dog once.”

The cute stories he could’ve told about all the kittens and puppies that came into his office, clinging to the shirts of their owners, the birds with broken wings in white-spattered boxes!