Chapter 8

"What in the hell have you been doing?"

Charlie was sitting, reading a magazine in the office entrance.

I just grinned at him. "Been waiting long?"

"Half an hour," he said, looking at his watch. "I mean how much can you get for twenty-five dollars?"

"You boys enjoy yourself?" the girl at the desk said.

"Yes, yes and yes," I said.

"Come back," she smiled.

"Any time Charlie wants to pay." I shook Charlie gently by the shoulder to rub it in.

A moment later we were in the street.

"Well, what the hell were you into in there?" Charlie asked me. "You saw the broad I chose. You know what happened?" He looked at. me cheerily. "You know me, I'm panting even before we get to the room. She slams the door shut, wipes the bedspread off the bed. Wipes her dress off and stretches out on her back." Charlie shrugged, much as he must have done then. "I didn't know what to do, you know, I just stood there for a minute. So this broad opens her eyes and looks up at me and says, 'you want a blow job?' Just like that. Christ man, twenty-five dollars! So I climbed on her and shot off and left without saying anything to her."

I couldn't suppress a laugh.

"It's not funny. I put out twenty-five dollars for that."

"How about a drink, Charlie?" I said, still laughing. "On me."

"On you."

He laughed too. "How can I refuse?"

We went back to the bar where I had been drinking, running up a tab, before I met Charlie, and ordered drinks.

"Charlie, I hate to tell you," I said, tinkling the ice in my glass, "but, my girl was terrific. I took the little oriental chick, you saw her."

"Yeah, I thought about her," Charlie exclaimed. "But I decided I'd stick to something I understood for this one . . . "

"Well, Charlie, you just got to know how to pick them. You know, Charlie," I said, "I got a tab in this place, so I'm going to buy you a drink." I waved the barmaid over and ordered another round.

We drank that and then another before I began to think of doing what I had thought of doing almost the moment I laid eyes on Charlie in his room.

"I know a girl," I said slowly, "who I would like you to meet."

Charlie looked up at me with interest "Can I fuck her?"

"If you're cool, I think."

"Tonight?"

I pretended to rub my nose in order to keep him from seeing the smile on my face. "Maybe," I said. "Call her!"

I watched the excitement grow in his eyes a moment before I said anything. "Uh...no. I think we'd better just drop by."

"She might have somebody else there," Charlie objected.

"Well, I don't think so, Charlie."

"Hey, wait a minute," Charlie said suspiciously. "What's wrong with her?"

"Nothing. No nothing. I'll hang it in her, too, if she'll have us both."

Charlie looked at me, still suspicious.

"Look, why don't we just go over and see how she feels."

The downstairs door buzzed open and Charlie and I started up the hall.

"Hey, don't be surprised if she seems kind of strange." I faltered. "About...I mean about seeing me again."

"What is this?" Charlie said.

"Right here," I announced. "You knock."

Charlie's hand was poised over the door but he did not know. I knocked for him. After a moment the door opened.

"Janice," I said, "this is Charlie." Janice did not see that the reason she could not close the door was because my foot was in it.

Suddenly she gave a great sob and fled into the room.

I shoved the door open with my obstructing foot. "Come in, Charlie, Janice'll get us some tea or something."

I closed and locked the door behind Charlie and pushed him toward a chair across the room from where Janice lay, bawling, her face buried in a pillow.

"Janice," I called to her, "could we have some tea?"

She pulled her tear-stained face out of the pillow and glared at me.

"Tea," I repeated, as though I thought she had not heard.

She looked at me for several seconds, then, making a visible effort to pull herself back together she sat upright on the sofa.

"I thought you'd like to meet Charlie," I said, cheerfully, "and we've been drinking a lot and we'd kind of like some tea."

She stared at Charlie, whose face was a mask of confusion and sympathy. She blinked her eyes and looked away from him, down at the floor, then regaining her courage, pulled her eyes back up to meet his again.

"I don't want to...put you out," Charlie stammered.

"It's all right," she mumbled and threw herself into a standing position. A moment later she brought us a small Chinese tea pot and three cups. When she handed me my cup she looked into my face and tears began to roll down her cheeks again.

"Paul...." she said, but could not continue.

I'm sorry about the other day," I said softly. "Really. It must have been embarrassing."

The sob that had been caught in her throat came suddenly out.

"Paul" she sobbed. "I've been evicted."

I put my tea cup down and got quickly to my feet, and pulled her to me.

"Here, now. It's all right," I held her face against my chest "It's okay, baby. Well make you feel better." I motioned to Charlie behind her back. He moved toward us.

"She feels bad, Charlie, help me comfort her."

I could see the confusion on his face. I nodded to him that it was all right. Charlie put his hand in her hair and murmured something.

"Come on," I murmured in her ear. "You have a bed?"

She nodded quietly in my arms and I began leading her toward the only door in the room which I did not know already. Backing her through it I saw that it was a small room, with space enough for only one small single bed. Poor old Janice was apparently used to sleeping alone. I kissed her heavily on the lips and began unbuttoning her blouse at the same time. Charlie, I knew, was watching from the doorway. Janice was murmuring softly in my arms.

"Don't you want to?" I asked her, tipping her face up toward mine.

She could not say no. She looked at me with frightened eyes.

"I won't bite you," I said jokingly. "Promise."

"If anyone saw you come here, they will call the police," she said, suddenly fearful. "Nobody saw us."

Her eyes filled with tears again. I heard Charlie moving away from the door.

"Charlie," I called. After a moment he reappeared in the door. I looked up at him. Anger fought with confusion and lust in his face. I grinned. "It's all right, Charlie," I told him. "Come on and take your clothes off."

Charlie looked at Janice's wide, frightened eyes.

"It's all right, isn't it?" I asked her, putting my face between them and looking into her eyes, "Charlie's an old friend of mine."

She closed her eyes slowly, painfully.

"It's all right, Charlie, take your clothes off." I began slipping Janice's clothes off as quickly as I could until she was naked. I kissed her on the mouth and pushed her back on the bed. I turned around, Charlie was struggling out of his shorts, his pants were already down to his ankles and his cock was sticking out.

"Come on," I motioned to him. He struggled one foot out of his clothing and dragged the other leg with him.

I moved away from Janice, holding one of her knees with my hand. Charlie grabbed the other and lay in between her legs.

I moved away from them now. There was only one other piece of furniture in the room, it was a large bureau with a mirror on the back of it. It pleased me to sit upon it. I brushed the bottles back with my hand and climbed up to sit, Indian fashion, on its top. I divided my attention between Charlie's humping and Janice's face, which stared toward me, peeking out over Charlie's shoulder. Her legs gradually crept up and wrapped around his back.

I looked at all the bottles on the top of the dresser, some of them reflected the reflection in the mirror of Charlie and Janice. All I could see of poor Janice was her legs, one arm and her face peeking out over Charlie's shoulder.

From the look of Charlie's action, he was really giving her a working over. Good. She needed it.

I must be modest because when Charlie began to come, snorting and groaning and so forth, I picked up a bottle of perfume and read the label out loud to them.

"New form of fragrance, silkens as it scents. Stroke it here, there, everywhere. It's pure luxury...and the luxury lingers on.. . . " I looked at them when I had finished. Janice's tongue was out and she was groaning as though she were in terrible pain. She looked, in fact, as if someone had knocked the wind out of her.

I read it again. "New form of fragrance, silkens as it scents. Stroke it here, there, everywhere. It's pure luxury...and the luxury lingers on. . . . " I looked back at them.

Charlie was lying still. Janice's eyes and mouth were closed, still as though in pain and her legs were not wrapped around him, but lay out straight on the bed, denying that they had ever been wrapped around him.

I climbed down off the dresser and walked into the living room. My tea was cold but the pot was warm. I poured my cup into the one Charlie had been drinking from and poured myself a warm cup. I had taken one of Janice's cigarettes off the coffee table and half smoked it before Charlie staggered into the doorway, still naked. There was a strange look on his face.

"The tea is still pretty warm," I told him, "and here is a cigarette."

He sat down heavily in the corner of the sofa and put his arm on the rest, his thumbnail between his front teeth and looked at me. After a while he said, very lowly and softly, "She's waiting for you."

"Why?"

He moved his thumbnail up and down between his teeth and did not blink, he just looked at me.

"Go on," he ordered me quietly with a simple toss of the head.

A sigh of breath expelled itself from my lungs and I got up, stubbing my cigarette out I did not want it, but I took my clothes off and made love to her as gently as I could, whispering to her and kissing her softly. She came twice, twisting in my arms, shouting my name and cursing me and crying. I pulled out of her at last, without having come and kissed her good-bye.

I went back out into the living room where Charlie still sat as I had left him, still and solemn. We were both silent as we stuffed our spent and shriveled penises back in our pants.

"I needed that" he said. He bent over to pull on his boot and mumbled again, this time to himself, "I really needed that."

We left Janice's in silence and turned toward Joe's Grill without saying a word.

We waited silently for the spaghetti we had ordered to be served, neither one of us looking at the other. Perhaps we were thinking about what had just happened, or perhaps we were not thinking at all but just basking in the afterglow of having been thoroughly sexually exhausted.

"Fm going back," Charlie said quietly to no one in particular. He stared into the bottom of his coffee cup. Slowly a frown began to gather on his face. "I've been thinking," he talked into his cup, not to me, really, as though he were permitting me to overhear his thoughts. "I can't hack this again."

"What," I said, to remind him that I was there.

"What happened up there," he said flatly, challenging me to defend it.

"We fucked a broad, what of it," I said, rather more loudly than I intended.

"Yeah. We fucked a broad. Swinging from the god damn fucking chandeliers we fucked us a broad." He looked up at me for the first time in anger and disgust. "Tell me something, god damn it, just tell me one thing. Are you in love with that girl?"

A fist tightened in my chest, threatening to cut off my words. "What?"

"Are you in love with Janice?"

The tightening in my chest suddenly exploded in anger. "What the hell difference does it make to you?"

"Because, god damn, you're my friend and I want to tell you something, boy, if you feel anything for that girl or any other, or anybody for that matter, even yourself, for Christ sake you'd better give this shit up."

"Hey, wait a fucking minute," I shouted at him, unaware of the heads which had turned in our direction. "It was your idea." I stared at him, overcome with the feeling of injustice. It had been for him, after all.

"I know, I know," he motioned me back to my seat with his hand. "I'm sorry." He got out his cigarettes and made me take one. He smiled at me to get me to see that he was no longer angry.

He lit our cigarettes and then took slow drags off his, all the time his mind was whirling, I could see. I waited, poised for the attack I knew was coming.

"Can I just lay it on you flat? I mean just tell you what Fm feeling," he looked at me for a long, searching moment, waiting for me to agree. At last he said, with a shrug, "Well, I'm going to anyway."

"I thought you were going to take me to a whore," he began slowly. "When we got up there I realized you had taken me to...a girl. Your girl." He looked at me, waiting for the significance of this to sink in. I stared back at him. "Paul," he said, "how do you think I felt. I was fucking her for all I was worth." He leaned toward me to keep everyone from hearing, "because I hadn't fucked anything for the past six months, and what do you think she was saying in my ear?" He stared at me, hatred building in his eyes. "She kept saying, "Paul, Paul.' That's right, 'Paul,' that's all she could say. And she was crying." He spat it out incredulously. "And I looked up and what were you doing? You were sitting on the damn dresser playing with yourself and grinning at us."

I knew he was staring at me, I could not keep my hands from covering my face. I shut my eyes as tightly as I could but I could not shut out the sight of them. Charlie, my friend, fucking Janice. The moment when he looked up at me. Christ.

"You knew it, didn't you?" Charlie said, accusingly.

That she was saying my name...no. That she was crying...no. That she loved me. Yes. I shook my head silently.

"That's what I thought," Charlie said quietly.

The spaghetti came and we ate quietly for a time, winding it around our forks and pushing it into our mouths without looking at each other. He was angry and didn't want to say too much.

"What happened, Paul," he said, at last. "You used to be such a great guy. I mean...I mean, maybe you still are, I don't know, but, man, you seem different to me. I mean, I can remember you trying to save chicks from me. I used to tease you because you were the squarest I kids. When you said you knew a chick that would take me on, I thought, well, old Paul's gotten on the stick, but when we got there I began picking up the vibes, man, and you were up to something else. You know what I mean?"

I twirled my fork in my spaghetti and tossed down the rest of my beer. My hands were shaking.

"Okay, okay, okay.. . I know what you mean."

"What was it, Paul?"

My head was shaking back and forth. "I don't know. I don't know...I wanted to hurt her, don't ask me why?" I stuffed a forkful of spaghetti into my mouth and swallowed it whole. "Maybe she hurt me, I don't know." I was fighting back tears, incredibly. "Man, I can't tell you...I just don't know."

He slumped down in his chair, suddenly drained, or relieved, and looked at me, but this time it was compassion in his eyes.

"Paul," he said, quietly. "What's happening to you?"

I shook my head. How could I know what was happening, I only knew that something was different, somehow I had become a different person.

Charlie began eating again, "I guess you've become a real swinger," he took a new approach now.

"Yeah," I mumbled, I still could not bear to look up at him, now that he had divined my secret. "A real swinger."

"A new girl every night, I guess."

I did not bother to admit that it was true.

"You like it?" He grinned and winked. "Yeah, I guess it's pretty great at that." Suddenly he dropped his fork and threw up his hand. "I'm sorry, Paul." He shook his head and grinned sheepishly. "Now that "I've said it, it seems not so important." He looked at me, asking me to forgive him. "I mean, after all the broad was willing. Hell, she was dying to take us on, I thought so too, at first."

"Charlie," I interrupted him. "Charlie, you were right before."

A frown flashed across his face. "Paul," he said deliberately, choosing his words, "I'm not sure what I was saying." He stopped talking for a moment and looked into his plate. "It was the look on your face," he looked at me, pleading for understanding, now. "You looked crazy. Like you were in some kind of pain." He searched for understanding. "Yet, you were grinning like an idiot."

"I was grinning because I didn't want to cry." I heard the words come out, each one a fresh shock to me. "I hate!" I did not know what I was saying. "I hate now, I never have before.

"I hated her and it hurt me, what I was letting you do to her." I was helpless. "Do you understand." It had been years since I had been able to cry, yet now I was fighting back tears. "Charlie, I'm afraid."

Charlie was good on his word. He was going home. We skipped the cable car and walked back downtown to the greyhound station. Charlie was subdued now, sorry, perhaps, that he had said anything. At last he broke the silence.

"What did you mean, you were afraid."

I let the sentence rest on my brain for nearly half a block. At last I gave up. "I don't know, Charlie. I just don't know. It's true, I am afraid . . . " Suddenly I stopped. Then I said, "Have you ever wondered if you were maybe . . . " I looked for the right word. "Have you ever wondered if you really were in control of yourself?"

He looked me in the face, trying to see if I was altogether serious. "I suppose nobody is altogether in control of themselves."

"Maybe." Suddenly it did not seem relevant Perhaps I was dramatizing myself.

As though he had picked up my thought he said, "I guess you must mean something by it. It's not like you to dramatize."

"Maybe I am, though." We stopped at a light and watched a rush of cars go by a cable car, passing and honking. It was a wonder someone wasn't killed.

"Once in a while I will walk through a door or turn a page of a book and suddenly I will seem to be someone else."

He turned and watched my face as I continued.

"It's suddenly as if I begin doing something I hadn't even thought of before. Little things even, like I'll start cooking dinner for myself and the next thing I know I'll be taking a bath or sitting in a movie. Then I panic, you know, and when I go back sometimes I discover that maybe I finished cooking and even ate the dinner I cooked or sometimes I discover that I just left it sitting there on the stove."

Charlie's face was full of concern. "Is that what happened this afternoon?"

"No, no, I don't think so...Charlie. I didn't know really what was going on. I still don't I mean, don't think I took you to some kind of innocent. I mean she is strange but she isn't as innocent as she looks."

"But you knew she had fallen in love with you?"

"Oh, I'm not sure, Charlie. She is a strange one, I don't even really know her that well."

"Baby, you can take it from me, she's in love with you."

We walked in silence for several blocks.

"Why did you break down in the restaurant," Charlie asked.

I'm sorry."

"No, you don't have to be sorry."

"Don't know, really. I think I blanked out up there, maybe, or maybe no, I can't tell for sure. Sometimes it is like that I can't really tell for sure. I was angry at you. I can't tell what happened. I just don't know."

"I suppose this is a corny thing to say, but have you thought about getting professional help."

"No." It was just that simple. I had not.

"Think about it if ifs giving you all this trouble."

"I.. . I don't think I believe in it."

"To tell you the truth," Charlie said, "I don't think anything is really wrong with you. If you told me the truth yesterday, you're living off the streets, going home with chicks for a place to sleep and something to eat. If anyone had ever told me that you would end up as a street hustler, I would have laughed in their face. And you'd better be careful too. I've known guys who have started out hustling women and ended up trusting men just because there was more money in it. And you know what happens to an old hustler? Well, they end up just about the same way an old whore does.

"You know I know what I'm talking about," he continued. "I hustled all the way through school." He looked up and down the street. "I fucked everything that walked on this street before I was through and, man, it ain't good. Get out of it, now."

"That's why you went to Idaho, isn't it."

"Yeah," he said simply, "I was too far into it. I knew if there was something to fuck I would fuck it. So I got out." He shrugged, "It's like dope in a way. First it's all for fun, then it gets to be business. First ifs pretty chicks, then it's anything that will give out for it Ifs a sick thing and all I can say is get out...hell, come to Idaho, go someplace, do something."

I saw him off on his bus and made my way back I'll up Powell Street. I wanted to go home, to lay down in peace and quiet and think about what we had said. But I had no home. Powell Street was my home. Powell Street, the restaurants on Montgomery, anyplace there were lots of women, that was home for me.

I thought about putting out a couple of dollars and getting a room of my own for a night, but somehow I could not do that. Instead I made my way toward Woolworth's fountain.