Chapter 5

I hooked the belt around the dog's collar. He came with me in leaps and gallops and erratically we made our way down the street to a large, old-fashioned building with a blue canopy and two fat doormen in gray uniforms.

"Joan Carter?" I said, repeating the name from the dog tag.

"Seventeenth floor," one of the men said, and patted the dog's head. "Hi, Spider. You have a nice walk today?"

I didn't bother repeating the dog's adventures but proceeded with him to the elevator and up.

It was Joan Carter herself who opened the door. I could tell because she took one look at the dog and grabbed him to her.

"You son of a bitch," she said, lovingly to him. "What the hell happened?"

As she spoke to the animal and welcomed him home, she motioned me into her apartment without one single word of thanks of apology for my inconvenience. Yet there was something about Joan that made me feel as welcome as the animal. An aura of warmth came from her that seemed to take in the whole world.

The first thing that struck me about her apartment was the number of paintings that hung all over the walls, some in frames, others in clips and still others matted and obviously stuck up just for the moment. I looked at one or two of them closely and saw, down in the corners, the initials J.C, which didn't surprise me at all. There was something about Joan that was interesting and artistic but in a way I could not put my finger on directly.

She had on white slacks and a navy blue blouse, well tailored but not flashy. Her tits were gigantic. She was braless and her nipples were jutting out in front of her. Her short cropped black hair fell over one ear as she tumbled with her dog and she didn't seem to mind at all that he got paw prints all over her clean pants. For a while she danced around with him in her bare feet. The sound of their movements were muffled by the thin, obviously expensive, oriental rug. From the record player came the string sounds of a Bach partita, the music unobtrustive, making a classic atmosphere that seemed to emphasize the informality of Joan's attitude toward life. The apartment, a hodge-podge of old furniture, gave one the impression that the pieces had fallen in from the sky and were left to their own devices to find a place for themselves. Eventually they had settled into a peaceful relationship with one another, rather tentative, but yet congenial.

At last she gave off playing with the dog, offered Spider a rubber squeak toy, which he took with great alacrity. He bounded off with it, tossing it into the air and knocking it around with his nose.

She sighed, stroked back some strands of hair from her ear and smiled at me now, giving me her full attention.

"You know, she's been gone since this morning," she said, "and I've been at my wit's end."

It was hard to believe. If she'd been at her wit's end, what was she doing at home instead of out looking for him?

"Did you notify the police or the ASPCA at all?"

She nodded. "Both."

"Well, I suppose you'd better call them and tell them the hunt's over."

"Yes, I had, hadn't I? she said with a soft laugh and went immediately to the telephone.

She was the kind of woman who followed through on her intentions. There seemed an immediate connection between desire and act which pleased me. I sensed that she was accustomed to success in life on many levels and that if life gave her half a chance, she had much to offer in return.

When the calls were over, she asked me did I want a drink or a light bite with her, and I said that what I would like was the belt from the collar.

"Oh, yes, of course," she laughed with recollection, called the dog back, removed the belt and handed it to me.

At that point I could have made my exit. But, somehow, I was hesitant to leave. There was something in her dark eyes, an exuberance, which held me and since Dorris and Kent were still on my mind, I began to conjecture whether this woman would be of any use to me for one of them.

It was a far-fetched idea, of course, but my mind was far-fetched. One never knows the hidden desires lurking under the most facile of attitudes.

And so, even though the girls was waiting for me, I accepted Joan's offer of a sandwich and a cup of coffee.

We talked on for a while. I discovered that she was separated from her husband, was spending most of her time painting the pictures that were displayed around the large room. She liked to paint and did much traveling, too, she said. I had the impression that her social life was something less that active, as though the world struck her as a hard, withdrawn place. Instead, she had found comfort and entertainment in her own company and was using herself to the utmost.

"I meet so few people in my kind of business who are self-sufficient that Joan Carter struck me as being a rarity and I felt inclined to want to know even more about her than she would care to reveal right off. But how to make friends with her? How to see her again? I would have to do this delicately so that I did not appear to be an intruder.

But there seemed no way.

When I had gotten through my second cup of coffee, I took the belt and said, "I'll have to give this back to the little girl who helped us."

Joan gazed at the belt. I could see her face closing in upon itself, as though she were imagining the shape of the belt's owner. "I'm sorry you didn't bring her up with you," she said. "I would have liked to have met her."

She offered no explanation and none was necessary. On the surface she meant, of course, that she wanted to thank the girl also for helping bring Spider back. But underneath that thin veil I thought I sensed a different kind of interest, one which sparked my own interest even more intensely now.

"Maybe she'll come back with me,"I said, smiling, "if you'd like."

"Oh, no, no," she shook her head. There was a certain shyness in the gesture. "She won't want to be bothered, after waiting for you all this while."

I thought I understood Joan's hesitation completely and I didn't press the issue. "Perhaps you'd like to take Spider for a walk yourself now and we can both go back to the girl."

She gave me a penetrating look which in one instant told me I had no business pushing the matter out of shape, the way I seemed to be doing.

My response to this was such an immediate sympathy that Joan seemed to change her mind during that second of wordless interchange between us.

"Yes, it might be nice to go out for some air tonight."

I didn't know whether she wanted to go out for air or not, but, whatever her excuse was, it served my purpose. I finished the last dregs of coffee while she put on a dark suede jacket and pulled the wrap-around belt tight, cinching the waist in to show off her rather slender figure. She was no longer young but her supple movements created an attractive atmosphere which would endure.

The last light of day had already faded and when we reached the bench where I had left the girl, I saw that the bicycle was no longer against the tree and that the girl herself had already left.

"Well, she's gone," I said, conforming the obvious.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I kept you upstairs with me too long."

"Well, I guess she didn't really want her belt all that much," I said, making light of it.

I looked at Joan and saw obvious disappointment. She had wanted very much to meet the girl and the reason suddenly seemed quite clear to me.

Immediately I felt on safe, familiar ground. In Joan Carter I had found a person more hungry to make the right contacts but unable to find suitable doors of entry.

My mind connected Joan with Dorris. I felt I had fallen into luck.

We walked for a while along Central Park West with Spider between us, leaping and bounding about, completely untrained, which Joan didn't mind at all. Obviously she loved him but couldn't cope with him and had accepted her own incapacity with good cheer.

In order to give her more confidence and encourage her to open up about personal matters, I began telling her about my own life, not pulling any punches and trusting to her intelligence.

I found my judgment quite justified. She did not object to what I did for a living and seemed rather curious, for mine was a way of life which she did not often meet in people. Soon she began questioning me about the kind of women I dealt with.

Here was my opportunity, I felt, and I began gently, obliquely, to tell her about Dorris.

The more I talked the more I sensed an increase in Joan's interest. She did not seek to hide her attention and pursued question after question which I answered as best I could.

"It might do me good to meet a woman like Dorris," she said eventually, without further explanation.

I knew she knew I understood her. "Yes," I said, "and it might do Dorris a lot of good, also, to meet you."

"Well, then, when?"

I loved Joan's openness. "Why not this evening?"

"Yes, why not?"

We walked on to Columbus Avenue. I went into a drugstore to call Dorris to tell her that I had a possible friend, if she were available tonight.

Dorris laughed into the phone. "Of course I'm available. That's what I'm here for, Joe. Bring her over."

"She has a dog."

"So she has a dog. I like dogs."

It all seemed so auspicious I could barely believe the coincidence of events. I turned to Joan who was waiting on the corner and we took a taxi over to Dorris's hotel.

The room was up high in a corner of the building with double exposures that looked out over the city quite romantically.

I introduced the two and watched them look at each other. Immediately I wished I could leave and let them alone together to find each other as they might. I felt like kissing each of them on the forehead and saying some kind of benediction. The idea of playing godfather to these two amused me for they were, each of them, quite sufficient as mature adults. And yet, underneath it all, so helpless and lost.

Ordinarily in my business people get together physically right away. There is no excuse needed for the passing of time and formality. It is a money transaction which brings people into contact with each other and they make no bones about leaping into instantaneous action. But not these women. They seemed to require a testing and tasting of personalities, a mutual exploration, for to each of them this meeting could possibly be the most important introduction of their lives.

And so I could not leave.

Not yet.

I waited around maybe half an hour or so to smooth things over and then, almost insistently, I took my departure, knowing that they would have to stumble and fumble about on their own and that my company, my presence, would really be no help now that I had done my job of liaison work.

From there, because the mood was upon me, I went to a lesbian bar where I was thinking, in the heat of my success, that I might be fortunate enough this evening to come upon someone for Kent, too. Good luck comes in groups and I felt as though I were riding high on a wave of fortune.

Homosexual bars in New York City come and go but there are some old-time places that seem to survive raids and closings and election years. There was one in particular that I rather enjoyed. A large, dingy place downtown, not altogether devoted to lesbian clientele but mixed with an influx of gay men and fringe heterosexuals, too.

I knew the bouncer and the bartenders and the manager. I also knew some of the girls and had helped them on and off during the years when they'd been in trouble. It had taken some work and time on my part but I was no longer considered an intruder and no one stiffened with self-consciousness at my appearance on the scene.

It was a crowded night. Girls were dancing with each other in the back room. I found a small table which happened to come vacant, ordered myself a beer, sat down and watched the prettiness around me with personal enjoyment as well as with the vested interest of Kent on my mind.

I find it pleasant to watch girls dancing. I like the sight of their bodies close, the gracefulness of their touching and movements together, the intimacy on their faces, and the impending caress in the way they touch each other. One can feel the intense sexuality to come later that night. My observation was similar to the sniffing of the aroma of the delicious food and following a trial to the table. It wasn't long before one of the girls came up behind me, bent over and whispered into my ear, "Hey, Joe, I need some money tonight."

I turned my head and looked up into the clear brown eyes. She was young and on the verge of getting drunk but not quite there yet. Her blonde hair slicked back, tried to make her face look hard but didn't quite manage.

"You want to make twenty bucks?" I said.

"Why don't you just lend it to me, Joe? I'll give it back to you on Monday."

I laughed. "Sure," I said, and reached into my pocket and handed her a bill. "But why don't you want to work for a living?"

"I do."

"Wouldn't you like to do something else for a change?"

She slapped me on the shoulder. "I don't like your kind of work, Joe. It's not my style."

I agreed with her. This wasn't the girl for Kent. I was wasting my time in trying it out.

She thanked me, kissed me on the cheek and went off to the bar. I watched her buying a slender, dark-haired feminine creature a scotch, acting like a big shot on borrowed money. It was a vicious routine with some of these dykes, no confidence in themselves, pushing money and drinks and hoping to receive a lay in return. I suppose that Kent had seen a great deal of this and was, quite naturally, put off. And yet I knew there must be a woman for him, just as Dorris and Joan existed for the purpose of each other. So there must be someone for Kent. Only who and where would I find her? There just had to be a woman he could fuck.

There comes a time in a gay bar called the desperate hour when people who have come to make out realize that they are not going to and realize, also, that they will take anything rather than go home alone. It was getting to be just about that time when I looked around me with a last reconnoitering glance before leaving.

The blonde who had borrowed twenty dollars was sitting at the bar now all by herself. I was surprised that she had lost her girlfriend and even more surprised that she was sitting there glumly with her hand holding up her chin and gazing at me, of all people.

I sidled over to her and sat down on the stool beside her.

"Rotten luck tonight, eh, kid?" I said. "It gets to be a drag," she said. "Been coming here long."

"Too long."

I shrugged and ordered another beer for myself and a scotch for her. "I still say you could break it up a little."

"With what."

"With a guy?"

"Oh, God, don't pull that story on me, please."

"Maybe you don't know what you're missing."

"Maybe I do, thank heaven."

I laughed. She laughed. This was no time to get grim about anything. The desperate hours are too grim all by themselves without people adding an extra burden.

"You sure you don't want to try it out?"

"What's in it for me?"

I put my hand in my pocket. "More of the same."

"Yeah, I know. I could make a fortune."

"Well, maybe you could."

She looked at me with curious intensity. I had not expected to touch her with offers of money, not this girl, but I saw that possibly I had made a mistake.

"You wouldn't mind having money," I pursued the issue. "Lots of it, would you?

You know what money buys."

"What does it buy?"

She was kidding me and I saw right through it to her intense hunger for luxuries, cash, the kind of freedom that cash would buy and perhaps the kind of women it might buy her for a while, anyhow. There was something about having money that would give her strength where she needed it and give her the opportunity to hunt out her women in other places besides this dingy bar.

I waited in silence and continued to wait while I knew these thoughts were sinking into her brain. And making the proper impression there, the impression I wanted. It was obvious that she was one of the lost souls and too young to be lost. Again, my own need for change came into the ascendant. I felt a strong need to have this girl change in some way, change the pattern of her life to something more satisfying so that that sweet young face would soften again to its natural expression and the joy of living would bring that youthful body into exuberant play.

"For openers," I said, "how about coming home with me and trying it out?"

She grimaced and twisted her Up into a small sign of contempt. "Are you asking me to go to bed with you?" she said.

I nodded. "Umm hummm."

"So that's why you gave me the bills."

She was disappointed but not rightfully so.

Only I couldn't explain to her that my thoughts concerning her life had come to me much after I had given her the money. Well, there's no use in banging one's head against a hard skull. Let her think what she would.

"Well, so what about it?" I continued. "You got no one better to spend the night with anyway. And I won't hurt you."

"Yeah, I know. You'll be good to me.

That's what they all say."

The bitterness was high in her and I found myself asking myself if I could enjoy sleeping with this girl since she seemed so reluctant. I don't need challenges of this kind. There are too many women available, eager, happy to please, glad for the cash it brings them. What did I need with this sour kid? And yet I felt something, undeniably, like a creative urge to recast her more in the image of my own imagination. We talked on for a while. I told her where I lived and that it would be a nice warm place, cozy and friendly, with company through the night. I knew this last would get to her. She didn't want to go home to her own place alone. I could imagine where she lived, in some small back room, maybe with the sound of rats in the walls. It was not hard to know this.

"Yeah, how about a little luxury for one night?" I continued in a bantering tone. "What would it hurt?"

She had given up answering or arguing with me and the desperate hour was getting to her, cutting in deep.

She swallowed down her scotch and then another. Her eyes were getting a little bloodshot and her direct, open look was fading, showing behind trembling leaves of thought.

"Come on," I said, sensing my opportunity. "We'll take a cab uptown. I've got good booze and a color television and maybe I won't even bother you if you don't want to be bothered, kid."

"Don't call me kid."

"What's your name, then."

"Just call me Nebbish."

"Nebbish means nothing."

"That's my name. Nothing. The over-dramatization did not surprise me in one so young. It is the young people who feel despair most keenly, I had learned. Older people know that one can live and survive hopelessness of every type. She slid off the bar stool, put her hands in her pockets, pulled herself up at her diaphragm, took a deep breath, cleared her throat, coughed, settling all the fragmented pieces of herself into some semblance of a unit.

"Okay, buddy," she said, "I'll go home with you."

She knew very well tha my name was not Buddy but was deliberately insisting on keeping the situation between us quite anonymous, impersonal, and cold, which was part of the accepted routine, I knew. It didn't make any difference to me how she approached the matter, just so long as she did, in fact, come home with me. I would attend to the details of her attitude later, if at all.

We had to wait a while to find a cab at that hour of the night but finally caught one and zipped uptown. I sat away from her, not making any move or play in her direction, not wanting to crowd her or make her uneasy.

She took out a cigarette and stared out the window while she smoked, stretching out her legs in front of her, propping them up on the jump seat and crossing them at the ankles. She had an attitude of utter casualness that might have fooled someone else but didn't even reach me. Not that I thought her pathetic or lost forever, but quite the contrary. If she were really down on her face, I knew I wouldn't have made an attempt. What I sensed in this girl, in Nebbish, as she wanted me to call her tonight, was a struggling of her vitality to get through the chicken wire out into the world. And I appreciated her effort, approved of it.

I had not forgotten that Kent was still at my place, but I had temporarily put it aside. I was almost surprised when I turned the key in the lock, opened the door and found him lying on the living room sofa wide awake, with all the lights bright. He didn't look like himself and it was immediately evident why. Something in him had jarred itself loose and he had yielded to an impulse, the impulse of cosmetics. He had rouged his face and put on a light coloring of lipstick. Strangely enough, the make-up did not distort his features in the least. He didn't look decadent or evil, but more somehow like himself.

Nebbish said, "Who is this?"

"Another Nebbish," I said. "Nebbish meet

Nebbish."

Kent sat up, took the girl in from top to toe, then gazed at me with a flicker of question. What was I doing? That question asked. What was I bringing home to him? "She's not for you," I said immediately. "She's for me."

Kent fell back on the sofa, clasped his hands behind his head. "I think you must have forgotten all about me, Joe," he said. "I have not."

Nebbish, the girl, jangled the change from the twenty dollars in her pockets. "What are we supposed to be doing?" she said.

I looked at Kent and said, "I'm taking her into the bedroom. Please don't disturb us."

"I wouldn't do that for a million dollars," he said, with a heavy weight of acid.

"I'll get you when I can get you," I said, snappishly.

"Yeah, I know. My problem is horrendous."

"What's his problem?" the girl said, I suppose wanting to delay getting into bed with me.

"He needs a lesbian," I said, "because he's a lesbian and is starved for companionship." I was speaking the truth, but I was saying it in such an ironic way that both Kent and

Nebbish laughed simultaneously.

"He doesn't look like a lesbian."

"Take another look," I said.

She did, walking over to the sofa and staring down into his face.

"What in hell's name do you want to be a lesbian for?" she asked. "God, if I could be a man, would I!"

"You think there's something in it, do you?" Kent said. "You're lucky. You don't know."

She shook her head. "Why don't you be a fairy or something."

"Because I'm not."

"Well, you sure as hell aren't a lesbian."

"How would you know?"

Her face went into a shattering puzzled expression. "Are you kidding?"

"No," he said quite casually.

"Well, how do you expect to pull it off, mister?"

"I don't," he said, in his hopeless, low tone. "That's what the problem is."

"Oh, God, you really have one," she concluded, realizing that Kent was serious all the way. "And I guess there isn't much you can do about it. A girl can wear a dildo or something. But a guy, how can he make himself a cunt hole?"

"Exactly," Kent said, with scientific approval. "How can I make myself a cunt hole?"

"You can't even use your anus," she added.

"No, I can't even use my anus."

"And even if you could," she proceeded, warming to the topic, "what would you do with that stiff cock up front? It would get in the way."

"It does."

"Oh, I feel sorry for you, mister. I certainly feel sorry for you."

"I feel sorry for me, too."

"I could hear it."

"Well, why shouldn't I fell sorry for myself?"

"I agree. You ought to. You ought to go to the window and jump out. This minute. And then you won't have to worry about being a lesbian anymore."

"I think I'll do that."

I stepped in between them. "Cut this shit," I said. I took the girl's arm. "Are you coming?"

"No, I rather prefer being here." Kent said to me, "She seems to like picking on me, so you might as well let her do it." His face had an interesting relaxation about it that implied he was being entertained by Nebbish's agreement with his despair.

Immediately I thought, well, maybe I ought to go to the bedroom myself and see if they can work out anything. It was getting around four-thirty and who had any brains to use. Maybe Nebbish would give up and play a game or two with Kent which would take both their minds off whatever was bothering them.

I acted upon my decision and began to walk away.

"Oh, no you don't," Nebbish called after me. "You're not going to leave me alone with this lesbian."

"Why? You think she'll make you pregnant?" I said. "She could."

"Take a pill," I said. "I have lots of them."

"I don't take pills."

"Maybe you don't sleep with girls," I said.