Waiting for the Galactic Bus (15 page)

Roy sneered: a real one, all right. “Work hours, Ikey. You praying to Moses on company time?”

The tailor gave Roy an unhurried inspection before closing his book. Somehow, under that gaze, Roy recalled the factory worker he bad-mouthed in a bar once, a man who stood much bigger than he sat. Roy had the same second-thought prudence then as now. Jacob exuded an undefinable force that belied the humble appearance. In a dark alley, he might be dangerous. Though his head canted at an unnatural angle, his gaze was pitilessly direct.

“Not prayer, no. Thinking on the nature of belief. Like the Talmud, a preoccupation of mine.” Jacob clapped his hands briskly and rubbed them together; the image of quiet strength vanished. “But business is business. It’s good you come by my shop. Something in a uniform, yes?”

Jacob undraped his measure and subjected Roy to professional scrutiny, tugging at one ringlet. “It wouldn’t need to be made special. From looking alone, I can suit you from stock.”

He puttered about Roy, measuring fore and aft, up and down, noting the results on a greasy slip of paper. When he stooped to gauge an outseam, Roy saw the livid rope scar that ringed his neck.

“The
shwartzer
says I must always measure. Feh! Who has been a tailor so long? Go give advice but leave to me clothes. So: didn’t I say? A perfect size forty all around. Wait, I will bring it all for approval.” Jacob vanished into another dark recess and shortly reappeared with an armload of boxes. “You will try them on and say I know my business?”

Dressed before the full-length mirror, Roy palpitated: what approval was needed for sheer magnificence? Black the uniform, stern black and cut in SS style with silver buttons, even a death’s-head ornament on the peaked cap. Flared riding breeches fitted perfectly into high, polished boots perfect for striding over a conquered city.
Too much, oh, Jesus, too much.
In the mirror the magic uniform converted his whole image to strength and dominance. With a sense of ritual, he centered the cap on his head, tried a rakish angle, straightened it again and patted the heavy Luger at his hip.

“Gotta hand it to you, Jacob.”

“Only wait.” A protesting hand. “Something is missing, I think.”

“Hey, what?” How could perfection lack?

“Maybe a swagger stick like the Englishers? No, they are not a generous people. How long before they gave back Jerusalem? Who needs the English? We will keep it good and German. Moonlight! Bring to me,
bitte,
the Gauleiter Special.”

From the remote front of the shop: “Comin’ fas’ I can.” Followed by a considerable hiatus.

“Which means, we can hope, sometime before evening prayers.” Jacob lifted his eyes to Jehovah. “Meanwhile we will settle on the price.”

“Don’ you fret Mistuh Roy with no bill, you trash.” Moonlight hovered, stern, between the parted curtains. “All took care of by the Paladins. Here you is, suh: just what y’all need.”

Now, truly, perfection was improved. The black whip coiled in Roy’s hand with the lead-weighted feel of authority. He cracked it once; the sound was music.
All right, you motherfuckers, come on.

Jacob beamed approval. “You should wield it in good health. Maybe on the Arabs.”

With what he meant to be a superior smile, Roy nodded curtly and stalked out of the shop, cracking the whip. When the front door slammed, Moonlight and Jacob went through profound metamorphosis. Moonlight stood much more erect, chuckling as the whole cast of his features shifted.

“It’s impossible to insult them or overplay, Jake. New York, Harvard or the boonies: a nerd is a nerd, world without end, amen.”

“Yours to shuffle, mine to cringe and fawn.” Jake divested himself of the grizzled wig and spectacles to reveal youthful black hair. The gabardine, vest and prayer shawl added to his discards. He slithered quickly into a work shirt and corduroy trousers. “Honor thy stereotypes, the authors of thy thinking, for without them, thou wouldst have to see.”

“You dig El Shmucko with that whip?”

“He’s a fish,” Jake said with cold contempt. “And he’s going to get everything he always wanted.”

“What’s his bag?” Moonlight wondered.

“Power. The Prince is going to give him all he ever longed for.”

“He must be pretty rotten.”

“No more than most; just hungrier. The world shut him out. Never turn your back on a small man,” Jake said with conviction. “We’re a dangerous breed. Catch you later. Got a call on my cab.”

    16   

Problems of the whore/
madonna syndrome (Aryans at
half-mast)

Mirrored dramatically in A Son Goût’s polished window, Roy let his own image ravish him. From cap to boots and whip, he had never felt so tuned to his inner essence. He felt secure and strong, a man with an identity and a destiny at last, seduced as Narcissus.

When something else could intrude on his rapt self-admiration, the displayed pictures and X-rated toys in the window told him this was a place for lacks of a very special kind. A small rubric lettered low on the glass —
CATERING
TO
YOUR
REFINED
NEEDS
 — confirmed the impression. Drumm had steered him right.

Entering, Roy found himself in an opulent anteroom done in red velvet plush. Two young men in White Paladin uniforms, on their way out, snapped to rigid attention, puzzling Roy until he realized he was the recipient of the courtesy. Good enough. He touched the whip to his cap bill.

“As you were. I was enlisted once myself. Carry on.”

“Good
day,
sir!” A distinguished older man in tux brushed through beaded curtains at the rear, menu tucked under one arm, manner silken. “We hoped you might honor us with a visit. Welcome to A Son Goût, Mr. Stride.” A slight but impeccable bow. “Adrian at your service.”

“Heard you had a real nice place here. Take care of, uh, special needs?”

“Absolutely,” Adrian assured him quickly. “A Son Goût has earned its reputation: purveyors of the best and the unusual, an oasis to the male libido athirst.”

“Huh?”

“My own little joke.” Adrian waved it away. “This way, sir.”

Roy followed him through the beaded curtains to another room in the same plush with more gold trimming and tables covered with crisp white damask. Adrian seated him with a flourish and opened the menu with a practiced twist — frowned and closed it again. Kind of a queer, Roy guessed, but he had to admire the flashing choreography of the white hands. Strictly class. Adrian reminded him of that guy who used to advertise expensive booze in magazines.

Adrian snapped his fingers. “Esmeralda?” A rear door opened and a thin girl of about eighteen skittered into the chamber. She looked passably slutty to Roy; he could make it with her in a pinch: thin hips, way too skinny, in ratty black tights and a leather miniskirt. The pouting face with its carmine mouth, green eye shadow and frowzy, peroxided hair over dark roots might interest him on an odd night — but not special. Too punk rock.

“Esmeralda, this is yesterday’s menu. Today’s please.” The girl changed them quickly and slipped out after a sultry glance at Roy.

“Esmeralda is one of today’s specials.” Adrian pursed his lips over the current bill of choices. “We are expecting a party from SoHo.” He beamed at Roy, hands laced. “Do we have an appetite today, sir? Truly lustful? A full repast or just something to pick at?”

“The full treatment.” Roy settled back. “Best you got.”

“Good, sir.”

Roy twitched his whip. “No spades or losers, you got it? That special don’t look so hot. And no Jews.”

Adrian stiffened. “But of course not, sir. We prepare to order.

Esmeralda was prepared for the disco trade. We offer as well an
haute monde
selection, very popular with the New York set. And for the palate beyond astonishment, an anorexic double amputee. Then there is the consideration of vintage. For example, the’67: an excellent year but still a trifle young.”

Roy whetted to the prospect. “I like’em young.”

“And the 70,” Adrian ventured. “Naive but a fun libation.” The delicate turn of a pale hand. “Though for a true Sauvignon complexity, may one suggest the’54, which should be superb now. And absolutely Wasp, sir.”

Roy nodded. “Now you got the idea.”

“Untainted with, shall we say, Mediterranean influences.”

“Pure blood is very important.”

The white hands described a precise sine qua non. “To the discriminate, quite everything.”

“That’s what I want. But, you know... kinky.”

“Kinks, sir?” Adrian managed to correct and reassure in one breath. “Proclivities, rather. By a miracle of serendipity, we have a selection of two today, each a masterpiece.” The sommelier’s gift for description grew to rhapsody. “Ms. Eleanor Padgett-Clive, vintage’60. Niece to an earl. Down from Cambridge, firsts and blues. An enormous, one might say legendary, appetite for men, curbed only by her breeding and the restraints of civil law.”

“Hey, a real nymphermaniac?”

“With frequent relapses,” Adrian blandished, “which allow us to feature her as a selection of rare value. And — if it is not redundant to observe — dying to meet you, Mr. Stride. Are we tempted, sir?”

“Right on!” Roy bumped back the chair. “Lead me to it.”

Adrian wheeled with the precision of a sergeant major on parade. “This way, please.”

The bedroom was something out of old movies, done mostly in merciless scarlet and electric blue. To any taste but the most diseased, the colors alone might have precluded sleep or even relaxation; for Roy they were Uptown.

“Bon appttit,
sir.” Adrian withdrew.

If this was hell, it was definitely the high-rent district, and why not? Damned for making it just once with Charity, and that once not all that good. Face it, she didn’t know much, and he had his usual troubles like with any respectable girl. Why shouldn’t he land in clover just once: power, girls, every dream about to come true? He could really get comfortable here, make it every time with the right kind of woman.

“That’s our wish,” the low, musical contralto voice read his thought, “and our purpose, Roy.”

Eleanor Padgett-Clive poised in the doorway like an exquisite painting, marvelously sexual without working at it in the least, in a diaphanous dressing gown that left just enough to erotic imagination. She glided to Roy and slipped her arms about his neck. “Sorry to be late. I was reading and the time just stole away. Hello, darling.”

Roy felt bleak. To most men this side of terminal impotence, Eleanor would be a love call in herself. She resembled several English film stars of the’60s and’70s: full, luscious mouth, her face sculpted over exquisite bones. Her voice alone, low and musical, could remind a man of biological imperatives.

Could but did not; for Roy, everything about Eleanor was wrong. Wrong voice, wrong face, too damned high-class. Classy women made him feel angry and inferior, but he allowed her to lead him to the bed. Eleanor began to undress him. Her hands moved faster and faster, her breathing rapid and shallow with desire, until she was tearing the clothes from him.

“Hey, careful of the shirt, it’s new.”

In a very short time, Roy was naked as a peeled egg. Eleanor let her gown slide from creamy shoulders and pulled him eagerly down onto the bed, her heavy sensual mouth crushed to his. “Take me, darling. Use me. Ravage me.”

He wished he could.

“Darling, what’s the matter?” Eleanor searched Roy’s face for some answering spark and found none. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” he evaded. “Just...”

“Please, I’m so ready for you.” Eleanor writhed against him.

“Hey, take it easy, okay? Shit.” The same old trouble, no different here than back home. He could never make it with a nice girl like Charity that you wanted to marry. Even if Eleanor was just a whore, she
looked
nice. And there were other things needed that he usually had to pay for.

“A challenge,” Eleanor whispered. “Shall we not rise to it?”

She was more than beautiful, she was admirably deft and proved it in the next few minutes. The range of her erotic skill was phenomenal, employing the full gamut of her own marvelous equipment and parts of Roy even the Air Force doctors had missed. He only became more depressed and angry, thinking of all the guys who would’ve died happily by this time, how good it could be without that lousy hang-up, but... nothing.