Chapter 5
A Playwright named William Shakespeare once asked, What's in a name? But he didn't expect anyone to answer him, because he already knew the answer: Nothing.
You call a man Sam because that's what his parents decided to call him. If you call him Clyde, it doesn't change the fact that he's Sam. And if you call him Fanny, it doesn't change the fact that he's a man.
Call him anything you like. It may not be appropriate, it may not be accurate, it may even earn you a punch in the nose. But the name itself isn't going to mean a bloody thing.
Shakespeare himself spelled his own name many different ways-Schackspere, Shakspeare, Shakspere, Shaxpere-and that just goes to show how much he cared about it.
Gully Fry was at the door of the Herald office, trying to fit his key in the lock, when he heard somebody say his name.
But why should that mean anything? he wondered. There's something special about my name. I've worn this name all the years of my life. I've heard thousands of people say it, I've written it, and seen it written on certificates, and forms, and cards, and tags more times than I can count.
It's just a collection of letters. It might just as well be a series of numbers, for all it means.
But he heard his name, and it stopped him cold.
"Gulliver Fry," the voice said again.
Only his name-but with a difference. This time, for the first time in years, it was his whole name.
This is silly, he thought. Nobody in town knows my whole name. They all call me Gully. It even says Gully Fry on the window of the office here. How could anybody from around here know what my full name is?
The answer, of course, was that no one could.
He turned in the doorway, still moving with drunken care, barely managing to remain erect, like an expiring child's top. Away to the right burned the lights of the Four Star, plus a few other illuminated sstore fronts. To his left, Main Street ran off into darkness and climbed the hill out of town.
That was the hill Gully himself had come over almost twenty years ago. Beyond it to the east were a lot of things he thought he'd left behind. Things like his full name-he hated the name Gulliver-and things like moral decisions, and questions or right and wrong, and battles between the brain and the glands. But most of all, he had hoped to leave behind forever the sound of a soft, feminine voice calling: "Gulliver Fry."
Up to this moment he thought he had succeeded.
She was standing on the corner of Main and Greene street, only a block away. He could see her dimly in the darkness, but it wasn't necessary to see her face. The voice told him who she was-the voice, and the way it said his name.
"Gulliver?" she said. She extended a hand toward him.
"Meg?"
"Of course, Gulliver."
He passed a hand over his eyes. "Impossible," he muttered.
"No, Gulliver. Nothing's impossible."
He looked up, and she was still holding out her hand. He felt himself being drawn out of the doorway and down the dark street toward that hand. And he was surprised to discover that he was suddenly almost completely sober.
When he finally reached her, when his extended fingers touched the tips of her own, it was as if the past twenty years had never existed.
"Where did you come from, Meg?"
"Where do you think, Gulliver?"
"Clayville? Have you stayed in Clayville all these years?"
"Ever since you left," Meg said. "I never followed you, Gulliver."
"Until now," he said.
"No," Meg shook her head. "This is just an accident, Gulliver. I was just passing through this town and I saw that office. The Weekly Herald-that's the same name you used when you ran the Clayville paper. So I looked closer, and saw your name on the window."
"Meg-it's been twenty years."
"I know that. Take my word for it."
"But-we don't have anything to talk about any more, Meg."
"Don't we?"
"No," he said vehemently.
"Why did you run away from me, Gulliver?"
"I didn't run away from you," he said. "You know that, I ran away from that town."
"Did you really believe all that stuff you said in your paper-all about Mayor Kinderhook, and how vice and corruption were going to swallow Clayville? Was that really you talking, Gulliver?"
"Yes," he said. "I meant every word of it. Clayville was my home, Meg. I couldn't stand to see it drown in all that muck. I tried everything I could think of to keep that bandit Kinderhook from getting into office."
"Kinderhook was mayor for almost twenty years, Gulliver, and Clayville's still there." He didn't reply. "What about us, Gulliver?"
"Us?"
"Yes. If you were so dead-set against vice, how come you spent so much time with me? Wasn't that the kind of vice you were yelling about?"
He gritted his teeth and looked away from her. "Yes," he said, "It was. That's why I left."
"You said you were running from the town, Gulliver."
"I was running from myself," he replied. "I knew what was right and what was wrong. But knowing good and doing good are two different things, Meg."
"I know that" she said.
"When Kinderhook took over, I knew that I'd either have to run away or be swallowed up in vice myself. There wasn't any alternative. He turned his face back toward her. "I could never have gone without you, Meg, so I had to run. I had to find someplace where you weren't available."
"You loved-me, didn't you, Gulliver?"
"Yes, damn it," he said fiercely. "I made the most stupid mistake a man can ever make. I fell in love with a whore."
"Why didn't you ask me to marry you, Gulliver?"
"Would you have?"
"No."
"I didn't think so."
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Then Meg said, "I'm not a whore any more, Gulliver."
"You're not?"
"No. I'm a madam."
He closed his eyes. "Meg, please don't stay here. Go back to Clayville."
"I can't, Gulliver. There isn't anything for me in Clayville any more. Kinderhook is dead and the town's gone straight. I had to run, same as you."
"Then run right by," he cried. "Go on wherever you were going. Don't stay here where I can see you. Where I can...."
"Want me, Gulliver?"
"Yes," he said.
"Nothing ever changes, does it, Gulliver?"
"Nothing ever changes."
She smiled and squeezed his hand, then released it. "I'm not going to talk to you about old times," she said. I don't want to make things any harder for you than they are. You ran away from Clayville, you ran away from your own idea of sin, and that's nobody's concern but your own. I decided that long ago, when I made up my mind not to follow you. But I wanted to stay, Gulliver."
"I know," he said.
"We could have made a great team, you and me. All by myself I started a house, built it up to twenty girls. It was a great business until the bottom fell out of the town. It could have been greater if you'd gone with me instead of running away."
"Forget it, Meg. Please-I can't talk to you any more. Just move on."
"That's impossible, Gulliver."
"What do you mean?"
Meg shrugged. "I'm stuck here-me and all twenty of the girls. We're going to have to hit this town-set up somewhere and turn some tricks-before we have money enough to move on."
"No," Gully said faintly.
"I'm sorry! Gulliver. That's the way it is."
He didn't speak for several moments. His head seemed to hunch down into his shoulders until his neck was no longer visible. "What do you want from me?" he asked finally.
"Can you help us, Gulliver?"
He thought of Clayville. He remembered those afternoons and evenings so long ago, sprawled naked on a bed in the sunset light from Meg's window, his hands on her warm flesh, his leg flung over her thigh, his body sated, his mind strangling on guilt. He remembered thinking: What people want and what people should have are two different things. Every rule ever made was made to restrain the basic wants. Obey yourself, and you do evil.
Why was that?
And he could recall vividly the mental process by which he skirted that question and left it unanswered, to concentrate on the fierce joys of the flesh-the flesh of his own body and of the naked female body beside him. He could recall it all because it was happening again, right at that moment.
He looked at her. She hadn't changed much. She was bigger, but she had always been big, and the years seemed to have increased her size without adding any fat. He imagined that she would still be as firm to the touch as she had been the last time.
"Yes," he said.
She smiled. In the dimness, he saw the whiteness of her teeth, remembered the nip of those teeth against his body and the way her skillful whore's tongue had turned every painful little bite into pleasure.
"Come on, Gulliver. The girls are all down this side street, waiting for us."
As he left Main Street, he thought. A prison is no place to hide from anything. Prisons are made to keep people in. But there isn't a prison anywhere with walls thick enough to keep the world out.
Tansy's feet hurt.
As far as she was concerned, the pain in her feet was just another example of how perverse and irritating life was. Every day you lived fought for a balance between too much and too little, between having and not having. You tried to walk the middle road, not leaning to the right because too much would make you sick, and not leaning to the left because too little would starve you.
Life is like a beam-balance scale with sieves for pans, she thought. You poured sand into both sides, and it ran out just as fast as you could pour it in. You could never get the damn thing to balance.
It was that way with big things, like loving and caring and with little things as well, like sore feet. For two days she had sat stiff and uncomfortable on that lousy bus, aching for an opportunity to stand up and walk around. Now that the chance had come, her feet hurt.
She shifted her stance, and made a little annoyed sound. Pete, of course, heard it instantly.
"What's wrong, baby? Is there something wrong?
"No, Pete, I'm fine."
"Tell me if there's anything wrong, now. I mean that I want to know if there's anything wrong, so I can fix it for you. I want everything to be just fine for you, Tansy, all the time."
Tansy slapped her palm against her thigh impatiently, she didn't answer.
"Baby?" Pete bent her head forward in the darkness and tried to see Tansy's face. "Are you mad at me?"
"Oh Pete-leave me be, will you?"
"Tell me what's wrong, baby, and I'll fix it?"
Tansy drew her slim body up very straight. "My feet hurt," she said. "Can you fix that?"
"Oh sure-here, come sit on the curb, and I'll put my sweater down so you...."
"I'm sick of sitting, Pete. Can you fix that too?"
"Tansy...."
"I'm sick of traveling too. I don't like this town. I don't like living in a cathouse and never having a home of my own. I don't like laying down and spreading for every jerk with the price. And I don't like having to listen to you asking me what's wrong all the time. Can you fix any of that?"
Pete's silence was eloquent.
Now why did I say all that? Tansy wondered to herself. Why did I go out of my way to make Pete mad at me, or unhappy, or whatever she is? Pete's all I've got, isn't she? Pete's the only person in all the world who cares about me for myself, and not for how good I am in bed, or how much money I can earn.
Maybe if things had been different on the bus-if Pete had kept up a little longer, and if all that crazy bloating of excitement had found release-maybe then Tansy would have felt better. But Pete had stopped too soon in the bus, and the finale had never been reached. And that had been the very first time that Tansy hadn't made it with Pete.
Why was that?
Of all the whys, it was the biggest.
Crazy Pearl and Anna stood a few feet off, listening to Eva tell a joke. Eva told jokes well, always with the knack of making the girls laugh. Her skull came in handy as the twenty of them waited for Meg to return, and wondered about the future on this dark street in this strange town.
"So this guy would get engaged over and over again to different gals," Eva said, "but he would never marry them until he told them he was color-blind. He had this idea that being color-blind. He had this idea that being color-blind was a terrible thing. And every time he'd tell his girl, she'd break off with him."
Anna giggled, and Crazy Pearl turned to look at her. "Whay the hell's so funny? The joke ain't over yet."
"I swear," said Anna. "Eva's such a card-she makes me laugh no matter what she says."
"Shut up, you two," said Louise, who was known to use her fists when she got mad.
They shut up.
"So one day," Eva continued, "this guy got sick of being left in the lurch. He made up his mind to go out and find a gal that'd marry him, and not tell her a damn thing until afterwards. So he found this gal, and she said yes, and they went to the justice and got married. Then they went to a hotel and banged all night, just the way this guy had wanted to do all the time."
Anna giggled again, and Crazy Pearl dug her elbow into the girl's side.
"So in the morning he felt bad about it, and he tells the gal. 'Darling, I got a terrible confession to make to you.' And the gal asks him what? And the guy says, "Darling, I'm color-blind.' And the gal says, 'Honey, yo' sho' is'."
For a moment, nobody laughed. Then the whole pack of them broke up. Eva really had a knack for telling funny stories, especially stories about Negroes. Eva's stories about Negroes were given added dimension by the fact that she was a Negro herself.
When Anna finally stopped laughing, she turned and whispered in Pearl's ear. "I don't never know whether to laugh at Eva's colored jokes or not. I keep thinking maybe she'll get insulted."
"I cut a colored gal once," Crazy Pearl said.
"Pearl," Anna cried, backing off angrily. "I swear you take the fun out of everything."
Crazy Pearl smiled a small self-contained smile in the darkness.
I cut a colored gal once, she thought. And I cut a dyke once. And a couple times I cut whores like me. And I cut a man with a fat belly once, and a man with a set like a stallion, and a man with different color hair on his chest than he had on his head. I cut all sorts of people in my time. Nobody believes it, but I don't care. I know it's so, and that's what counts. And I got my knife still and that counts even more.
A new town, a new scene, a whole new set of people. If things worked out, they would probably be in this town only for a day or so, then hop into their bus and ride away over the horizon, where no one would ever find them.
Things were looking up, no question about it. Crazy Pearl had a feeling that the chance to use her knife again was just around the corner. The anticipation warmed her and set the juices of her lust perking in her veins.
Why, she wondered, didn't more people get their kicks from cutting?
At the edge of the group, Mr. Salmon stood leaning against a fence, clamping his cigar and trying to find something to look at besides prostitutes. A touch brushed his sleeve gently, and his entire body jumped with surprise.
"Hello, Mr. Salmon," said a little voice.
He could just barely make out the circle of a plump feminine face looking up at him. "Who the hell are you?" he asked gruffly.
"Tina," said the girl. "My name's Tina."
"Good," said Mr. Salmon. "Fine. Nice to meet you. Now go talk to the girls, or powder your nose, or something."
"Aw, Mr. Salmon," she said, her voice cajoling. "What do you want to be such a big pickle for?"
"A what?"
"Putting on that sour face all the time," Tina said.
"That's silly. That's no way to make friends."
"I don't want to make no friends." Mr. Salmon spoke emphatically. "I never had no friends yet, and I ain't about to start."
"Oh, yes you do," said Tina. "Yes, I do what?" asked Mr. Salmon. "Do have a friend."
"Where? What friend? What are you talking about?"
"Me," said Tina. "I want to be your friend."
Mr. Salmon looked more closely at her. She was a short girl, plump without really being fat. In the half-light spilling from the main drag, he could just make out the fleshy globes of her breasts, pushing so tightly against the scoop-necked blouse she wore that the material threatened to split at any moment, like the seat of a fat man's pants. The dark cleft of her cleavage cried out for a hand to be plunged into it.
Mr. Salmon clamped his cigar furiously, and felt a few sour shred of tobacco flake off onto his tongue. "Go away," he said.
"I want to be your friend, Mr. Salmon. Be nice, now. Come on."
"You're out of your mind. What am I supposed to do with a damn friend?" Mr. Salmon realized that his voice was rising, and he lowered it. He didn't want to attract any attention to this conversation. Up to now, these crazy hookers had mostly ignored him, which was exactly the way he wanted it.
"Oh, Mr. Salmon," said Tina archly, "I think you could figure out a few things-that is, if your friend was a friend like me."
She's talking about sex, thought Mr. Salmon. He felt a chill run up and down his spine. "Couldn't you?" asked Tina.
"Look-did I ever do anything to you? Or for you? Did I ever look at you? Did I ever even say one word to you?"
Tina giggled. "No, you never did."
"Then what are you bothering me for? Go away and leave me alone. I don't want no friends."
Something brushed his abdomen. Something was going on down below and something terrible happened to Mr. Salmon's nervous system when he realized that his trousers had been opened.
Mr. Salmon couldn't move a muscle. He stood there trapped and paralyzed as Tina plucked the shabby cigar butt from his mouth and tossed it away.
He tried to step away, but the fence was behind him and Tina was thrusting her whole body against him. One of her hands was reaching for his face. Her other hand was buried between their bodies.
"I like you, Mr. Salmon. I like men in general, but I like you in particular. First time I looked at you back there in Clayville, I thought to myself-there's a real man. There's the kind of guy who can give a gal a first-class ride. You know, they say bald-headed men is the best there is in bed. Sure, you must know that. You're a bald-head, so you must know how good you are."
Mr. Salmon tried to speak, but that proved just as impossible as moving. Tina's plump little hand was invading him, assaulting him with tingling touches and caresses. He rolled his eyes frantically in his head, looking for escape, checking to see if they were being observed. None of the girls seemed to be aware of what was going on.
"Come on, Mr. Salmon," Tina said, pouting slightly. "It isn't every day of the week that a professional gal like me finds somebody she'll give it away to. It's an honor, Mr. Salmon."
He felt his hand being picked up from his side, and discovered that he was unable to control it when she turned his palm to face her.
"Here, now. You just grab a hold of this here, and see if that isn't nice. Isn't that nice, Mr. Salmon?"
It was a breast. It was big enough to warrant a two-handed hold. It was soft on the outside and hard on the inside, and there was a bump on the end of it which seemed almost to be poking right through her blouse and into his sweating palm.
And all the while her hand was doing things-insane things, crazy things, weird and wonderful things-things that only the hand of a true professional could do.
"I'll tell you what, Mr. Salmon-as soon as Meg sets us up and gets us a place to work, you and me are going to have a real blast. Not just a quickie, either, but all night, straight through till dawn. You like the sound of that?"
Mr. Salmon couldn't answer.
"Oh, boy," said Tina. "You do like that idea, don't you. I can tell you do. Mr. Salmon, honey, you are all the man that any little girl could ever use. You are a champ. I knew it, and was I ever right!"
Her hand underscored her enthusiasm.
"It's a date, right, Mr. Salmon? You are going to let me be your friend?"
Mr. Salmon was as mute and still as a statue.
"I won't let you go until you say yes," Tina said. "Come on, now. Be nice to me, Mr. Salmon, because I'm really going to be nice to you."
He managed somehow to nod his head.
She smiled. Then she thrust her body forward for an instant, crushing the resilient jut of her breast into his palm.
And she squeezed, just once, but once was plenty.
"Okay, Mr. Salmon. Now, let's fix you up here." Her fingers withdrew, miraculously leaving the zipper closed behind them. She moved her shoulders and slipped her huge breast out of his palm, then returned his hand to his side. "And that's only a preview, Mr. Salmon. There's plenty more to come-more and better. Boy, I can hardly wait.
Because I have a feeling that you are really going to be something, Mr. Salmon."
She wriggled at him, making her breasts dance inside her blouse, then turned and rejoined the group. None of the girls seemed to have noticed what had been going on.
All at once, Mr. Salmon broke out of his paralysis and began to tremble in every limb. Ever since he'd pulled his bus out of Clayville, he'd been afraid that something like this would happen. Now his worst fears were realized. No worse than his worst fears. He hadn't been anticipating anything more terrible than a simple proposition, or perhaps the sight of a few female bodies jiggling at him, and he'd been mentally prepared to handle either of those events.
But this! Tina had caught him completely unaware, trapped him before he had any chance to escape. He tried to quiet the roaring of his mind, but it was impossible. He couldn't shake the memory of how her great thrusting breast had squeezed into his palm, how that dot of excitement at the end of it almost pushed through her dress. He touched his palm gingerly, half expecting to find a hole in it.
So that was what a breast felt like. Funny-he had never imagined that a breast could be so soft and so hard at the same time. He couldn't recall ever having felt anything like it. But after all, he had never felt a breast before.
And now he also knew what it felt like having a female hand invade his masculine privacy. That was an even stranger feeling than the breast. The things that girl had done to him with her plump little fingers! He could still feel it almost as if her hand had never left him.
Strangest of all, she hadn't noticed Mr. Salmon's terrible secret.
He shuddered, and wished that he had his cigar. How could she have missed it? He wondered. How could she have touched him, and squeezed him, and played around like that, without realizing what was wrong with him? It was impossible that she hadn't felt it; yet the girl never said a word, just talked about good times and other things about which Mr. Salmon knew nothing.
He was still too numb to form a plan, but he knew that he would have to stop her from keeping her promise.' He had two more days to spend with these girls, and if any of them discovered his secret...."
It was too horrible to imagine, so he refused to think about it. In all the years he had lived, no one had ever guessed his affliction, and he wasn't about to let any lump little whore spoil a lifetime of caution.
No, sir. Not even if she stirred the unused and unfamiliar places in Mr. Salmon's angry, clamping body-unused and unfamiliar because Mr. Salmon had never had a woman, had never even seen a woman naked., had never even allowed himself to dream about the fabled delights of women.
Until now.
Help! he thought.
Meg's voice cut into the conversation. All the girls turned their heads and fell silent to hear what she had to say.
"Good news, girls." Her voice was pitched rather low, so that it would attract no attention from the nearby houses. Tansy had to strain to hear it.
"We've got a friend in this town," Meg continuted," and we've even got a place to stay. We're setting up in the offices of the Weekly Herald."
A baffled silence followed. "A newspaper, Meg?" asked somebody.
"That's right-a newspaper. Right around the corner, on Main Street."
Another voice spoke up,. "Is that going to be all right, Meg? Don't newspaper men hang out with the cops all the time?"
"Not this one," Meg said. "For the time being, girls, we're home free."
Home free, thought Tansy. What a nice pair of words. Home was a warm word, full of comfort, and safety, and caring. And free made her think of her dream, of doing what you wanted, of doing nothing at all if that suited your fancy, just lying in that hammock and swaying and dreaming, free to enjoy yourself, home where you belonged.
A very nice expression, she decided. Too bad it didn't mean anything.
As she moved off toward Main Street with the others, Pete fell into step beside her. "Tansy? Please tell me what's wrong. Be a sweetheart and let me help, huh, Tansy?"
Tansy ignored her.