Texas by the Tail

obvious impossibility.' 'Well,' Mitch hesitated. 'If it was just a matter of money…' 'Always,' the psychiatrist said gravely, 'a fee of some kind is necessary. What is given for nothing, I find, is usually valued at that.

But it would be no problem, I assure you. Five dollars, say, for what I would ordinarily charge a hundred. The problem is that your wife would not see me. She would become very angry at the suggestion that there was a problem. Or do you say otherwise?' Steinhopf waited a moment, then continued. 'Sexual degeneracy is a way of life with her. The right way. She has no desire to change it. The tendency,'-another delicate pause-'has always been to expand it.'

Mitch felt himself reddening, as the doctor's words slowly sank in on him. Steinhopf spread his hands apologetically.

'Is not the evidence all around you, Mitch? A woman of Patently limited mentality, who allegedly earns an extravagant salary? The peculiar working conditions? The voracious demands upon you? The constant-'

'Thank you, Doctor,' Mitch said coldly. 'Thank you, very much.'

'Please, Mitch. For your own sake…'

Mitch turned his back on him. He kept it turned.

But he could not forget what the doctor had said. He could not allay the suspicions which, as Steinhopf had guessed, were already in his mind. He was very wrong to have them, he knew. It was hateful and ungrateful to think such terrible things about the mother of his son. Finally, he persuaded himself that he owed it to Teddy to find out the truth.

Mitch took his days off from work in the ordinary way, during the week in which they occurred. Teddy allowed hers to accumulate, taking them during the five days of the month which menstruation made difficult for her. Thus, he had the opportunity to follow her, and since she was not looking to be followed it was shamefully easy.

He knew the place she went to, not from personal experience but from informed hearsay. Still, however, he would not believe what was obviously a fact. There had to be some innocent explanation. Teddy would have gone there on some entirely honest errand, and she would not go back again.

He waited outside; waited for hours. She did not come out. So he followed her again the next night-still stubbornly resisting the truth-and that time he went in.

It was a well-run place. A partitioned tunnel extended a few feet inside the door, and an ape-like figure, with a sawed-off ball bat under his arm, stood at its end.

'No booze, no rough stuff,' he recited, giving Mitch a quick frisk. 'Okay, you're welcome.'

He stood aside to let Mitch enter. In the hallway, seated at a desk which guarded without blocking the stairs to the second floor-for this was a well- run place, you know-was a polite, pudgy little man in a neat serge suit.

'No booze, no rough stuff,' he smiled. 'What can I do for you, sir?'

Mitch told him. The man hesitated. 'I think you must mean Neddy, don't you, sir? Yes, I'm sure you must. Oh, no, please!' He gestured distastefully as Mitch reached for his wallet. 'The gratuity must be left with the young lady.'

Mitch sat down in a row of chairs with three other clients. They kept looking at one another and looking away again. As they were permitted to ascend the stairs, other men were coming through the entrance tunnel, each greeted with a frisk and a singsonged, 'No booze, no rough stuff…'

At last the man at the desk smiled and nodded at Mitch. Mitch started up the stairs, and the man said that Neddy could be found at the first door on his right.

'A preferred room, sir. And a very special young lady.'

'Thank you,' Mitch mumbled.

He was getting the Class-A treatment, he guessed. He was a more likely-looking customer than they usually got, and they wanted him back.

At the head of the stairs, he paused and drew a long shuddery breath. Then, he opened the muslin-covered screen door on his right and went in.

He was hardly breathing; unable to breathe. Nervously, he caught the door, letting it close without a sound. He dragged his eyes to the bed, made himself look and almost shouted with relief.

The girl was lying on her stomach, head pillowed on her arms. In the subdued light, her naked body was a shadow carved of ivory. A beautiful but vaguely limned shadow. It was only a little more clear to him than her face.

But he could see her hair, hair that by no stretch of the imagination could be Teddy's. A long page-boy bob trailing to her shoulders-and black! Coal black.

Fine beads of sweat broke out on Mitch's forehead. He was relieved, oh, God, was he relieved, but what the hell did he do now?

Obviously, he couldn't do what a patron was expected to do. But what was the alternative? What would this girl think or do, and what about that guy downstairs with the baseball bat?

He didn't know what would be an acceptable course of conduct. Almost as far back as he could remember, he had been hearing about places like this in the frankest detail. But he had never been in one. He didn't know what a customer who wasn't a customer was supposed to do.

Looking for a way out, some clue to getting off the hook, he let his eyes rove the room.

On the mirrorless dresser stood a white crockery water pitcher and a washbowl of the same color and material. Conveniently nearby was a small cardboard box of purplish disinfectant; the so-called snakebite remedy, soluble crystals of potassium permanganate. The washbowl was tinged with traces of purple. There were also smudges of purple on the towels which half-filled the basket at the side of the dresser.

In addition to a chair, and of course the bed, there was one other item of furniture. A large white chamber-pot. It was about half full like the towel basket-what could be more logical?-and its yellowish contents were also veined with the purple of potassium permanganate.

A well-run place. A house with a social conscience.

Mitch's lips quirked in a nervous smile. The smile began to spread. Then, the girl turned over on the bed. She sat up and stared at him.

She was a very wholesome-looking girl, with a sprinkling of freckles across her nose. The change in her appearance wrought by the black page-boy wig was incredible.

Mitch gulped. His emotions locked on the delicate gear between comedy and tragedy, the hideous and the hilarious. Then, there was a kind of inward back-thrust, the 'kick' of a mechanism that had built up more compression than it was meant to handle. And he began to laugh.

He laughed as though his life depended upon laughing well, as, in a sense, it did. He was still laughing, laughing and weeping, when Teddy got up and slugged him with the piss pot.

10

The major was waiting, studying Mitch with a mixture of malice and-and what? Envy? Hunger? Mitch's mind raced, trying to probe the other man's soul and brain. Meanwhile, the major felt forced to speak.

'A very fine young man, Samuel. I am truly sorry that he will not be able to continue here.'

'Why won't he?' Mitch said.

'Oh, now really, Mr. Corley. This is a very select school, as you know. To have a student whose mother is a, uh-uh- well, you must see that it's impossible.'

'Why? The semester will be ended in less than three months. Just why can't he remain here for that length of time?'

The major's mouth worked wordlessly, a man trying to explain the axiomatic. At last, with a helpless gesture, he placed the matter in purely practical terms. Yet his visitor remained