Mask Market

“That’ll be great.”

“And the lady?”

“Her name is Sophia. She’s tall, with—”

“She’ll ask for you, yes?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll bring her to you, sir,” he said, about as servile as a bull elephant during mating season.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, as I got up to greet her.

“Don’t give it a thought.”

The waiter was androgynous, of no apparent age, wearing a lavender satin shirt. Maybe it was a theme.

“I always feel guilty in a place like this,” she said. “I eat so little, and they charge so much.”

“Food’s just fuel,” I told her. “People come to places like this for the experience.”

“Oh, that’s just right!”

I made a toasting gesture with my glass of vitamin water, telling her I was glad she agreed, but I was done talking….

She got it as if I’d spelled it out in neon. “I know you must want this,” she said, sliding a folded piece of paper across to me.

I opened it. One glance and I knew it was a dud. Jeremy Preston’s last known address was care of a law firm in Manhattan. They might know where he was now, but they wouldn’t be telling if they did.

“I’m sorry,” she said, telling me she knew what she’d given me was useless.

“That’s okay,” I told her. “I might be able to work with this. My company’s no stranger to lawyers.”

“It was just an excuse,” she said, looking down at her French manicure.

“I’m glad,” I said, lying.

By early evening, the Ralph P. Compton number had been nuked, the phone itself sledgehammered and tossed into a vacant lot. A new name was in the slot at the office building. Michelle’s lavender-shirted pal would respond to any questions with the blank look he’d probably learned in reform school.

And if I’d guessed wrong on the range of security cameras at Sophia’s house, and Hauser ever got a call about his license number, he’d pass a polygraph that he’d left the car at the station that morning, and it was right there waiting for him when he returned.

But all of that was reflex—I knew Sophia wasn’t going to be looking for me. Just the opposite. She’d had her sad little adventure; Ralph would get the message when she never called again.

Of course, she couldn’t be 100 percent sure that Ralph wouldn’t come looking for her. Get angry, demand an explanation, insist on seeing her again. That would have frightened some women, but not Sophia. Action like that would have buzzed her neurons. She was a junkie who needed a risk-fix every so often. And Ralph Compton had disqualified himself.

“You know what I always wanted to do?” she’d said, walking around the hotel room like she was thinking of buying it.

“This?” I guessed aloud, giving her the chance to pretend this was her first time with a stranger, if she wanted it.

She didn’t. “Did you ever do it outside?”

“You mean, like, in a car? When I was—”

“No. No, that’s not outside. I mean, like…we came up in the elevator, but there’s stairs, too, aren’t there?”

“There have to be. In case there’s a—”

“We could go out there,” she said, leaning back against the wall. “It would be so…exciting. Why do you think I wore this skirt? I could just…” She slowly turned her back, tugged at the hem. By then, I wasn’t surprised to see she was naked beneath it.

Part of me wanted to tell her I never had sex indoors until I was a grown man. Alleys, cars, rooftops—that’s where kids like us got it on. One girl I had was so much shorter than me that I used to stand her one step higher on the stairs, come into her from behind.

I didn’t tell Sophia that. And I didn’t tell her about the sex I didn’t want. When I was small, when I couldn’t stop them from doing whatever they wanted with their property. Not their property, actually—I belonged to the State. But the State was always very generous about loaning out its possessions.

No, I just told her doing it outside the hotel room was too much for me. She’d almost walked out then, disgusted. But I guess she figured she’d already made the trip, so…

That night, I paid another installment on the malaria I’d bought with my stupidity so long ago. Fever dream. They come when they want to, but less and less over the years. Usually, they’re just jungle visions: running, pieces of earth blowing up in chunks, blood in the ears so thick you can’t hear the gunfire, fear rising like ground fog, clouding your eyes and imprisoning your mind. Sometimes the location shifts. I’m not always in a jungle. But that ground fog is always there, hungry.

I was my old self in the dream. I mean, I looked like I did before my face got rearranged. It was years ago—I knew that because I was in the downtown meat-packing district at night, and it was deserted. So it had to be before the place turned itself into Club-ville, like it is now.

I parked my car—my old car, a 1970 Plymouth four-door sedan so plain it made vanilla look exotic—off Gansevoort Street and started walking. It was as if I was watching from behind myself—I could see with my eyes, but I couldn’t see my face.

There was no music to the movie. It was like watching a man in an aquarium.

“You looking for a date, mister?”

I saw a girl’s face, peeking around the corner like she was playing hide-and-go-seek. Not one of the tranny hookers who had made the area their personal stroll; this was an XX-chromosome package. I remember thinking, How do I know that? But I never answered my own question.

She was under five feet, way short of a hundred pounds. Wearing a baggy pink sweatshirt over jeans and pink sneakers. Her hair was in pigtails. A teenager, trying to look even younger.

“Maybe,” I said, to bring her closer. “Would it be an expensive one?”

“That depends on what you want to do on your date,” she said, biting her lower lip and looking a question at me in the darkness.

“You have a place?” I asked her.

“It’s a nice night out,” she answered, as if she’d been expecting the question. “And back here”—she shot an unrounded hip in the direction of the alley she’d come from—“it’s real private.”

“I don’t…”

“Oh, you’ll love it, mister. You don’t have to get undressed or anything.” She stepped closer. “Just let me take it out. A man built like you, I’ll bet you’ve got a big cock.”

I had her then, left hand clamped on the back of her neck.

She didn’t panic. “All I have to do is scream,” she said, calmly. “My man’s back there, and he’s a real—”

“Scream,” I said, pulling my .357 Mag loose.

“Oh God!” she said, very, very softly. “You’re a cop, aren’t you? Please, please, please, please, please.”

“Just come with me,” I said, watching the mouth of the alley.

“Please, please, please.” She was crying with her voice, but her eyes were dry.

“Please what?”

“I can do it in your car. I’ll suck your cock until it explodes,” she whispered against me, groping with her hand.

I turned slightly, guarding my groin.

“No, no, no, mister. I just wanted to show you how good I can be. Come on, please. I always wanted to suck off a cop. You see how good I am, you’ll come back, right? Anytime you want, I’ll be right here.”

“Come on,” I said, clamping down a little tighter to get her moving.

“Please!” she hissed at me. “It doesn’t have to be like that. I’ll do anything, mister. I’ll take it in the ass, if you want. Anything.”