Hot Night in the City

After it's been run, the two of us finish our drinks while raking those around us with glances of superior scorn. We're a team now. We've both accepted reality, both admitted we're there to get laid. Ergo... let's get to it.'

'And that really works, Marvin?'

'More often than not.'

'Hm-m. It doesn't sound very romantic.'

'We're not talking about romance. What we're talking about is more like giving blood, or taking a vitamin capsule, or pissing—which are, as a matter of fact, excellent analogies for the three major impulses that drive us towards random sex.'

Martha probed the bottom of her glass with a plastic swizzle stick. 'Would you mind telling me something? Why didn't you take a shot at me? Didn't you notice me sitting here?'

'I noticed you.'

'And?'

'Well, you see... I've got this problem. I only target young fish, sprats. Lurking in the corners of my mind there is this notion that youth is a communicable disease that one can catch through direct contact.'

'Does it ever work, this chasing after youth?'

'It always works... for about thirty minutes.'

She took the swizzle stick out and licked it meditatively. 'I don't think your sting would work for me. Too complicated. Too devious.'

'Don't lick that. Plastic causes cancer.' I must have swallowed too much hooch that night, because I found myself feeling something like compassion for her. So I decided to play it straight with her. 'Martha? I told you about the switch game where the angler lays it right on the line with the fish. Well, there's a more advanced version of the ploy, one I call the Double Switch. That's where I tell some intelligent fish at the bar all about the switch game.'

She was silent for a couple of beats. 'You're saying that I've just been a victim of the double switch?'

'That's it. But remember... it's reserved for the smartest fish.'

'And that's a compliment, eh?'

'Indeed it is.'

'Hm-m. But what about your taste for young flesh and all that business about youth being a communicable disease?'

'Martha! Do you really think I have so little imagination that I am incapable of lying?'

'...I see.'

'Like everybody else, I take what I can get. But because you're bright and witty, I thought I'd warn you. Particularly as this is your first night out on the hunt. Seems only sporting to give you a chance to get away.'

'I'm not all that sure I want to get away. Do you mind if I ask—do you love your wife?'

'Sure.'

'But then... why?'

'It's all about being fifty and not being a captain on the South China Sea or a farmer in Vermont. You're parked out in the lot?'

'Yes. A cream Mercedes.'

'Convertible?'

'Yes.'

'How did I know that? When this rain breaks, I'll follow you to your place.'

'Ah...' She put her elbow on the bar and her cheek in her palm, so that she was looking sideways up at me. 'May I use the confessional now?'

'Sure. I was almost through anyway. Confess away.'

'We can't go to my place.'

'Roommate?'

'Sort of. There's my husband and my children. I don't think they'd understand.'

I looked at her, and suddenly I felt very tired. 'You're not divorced.'

'Nope.'

'And this isn't your first time out cruising the meat markets.'

'Ah... no. Say, could there possibly be such a thing as a triple switch?'

I rubbed my face. 'So the Master Stinger got stung, did he? Well, how about that? Not bad, Martha. Not bad at all. Especially for a woman who found my crotch-scam too devious.' I pushed off the barstool and went to the window. The rain had thinned to little more than mist, and streetlights were reflecting in shallow pools faintly opalescent with automobile filth. I couldn't tell if the hail had done any damage to my battered old Avanti, but I was sure it had harmed her Mercedes, and that was a comfort.

'Marvin?' She joined me at the window. 'One morning a woman who has been a good wife and a busy mother lifts her head from life's tasks, blinks and looks around, and she realizes that she's forty and the parade has passed her by while she was making plans for others. You know what I mean?'

'Please don't batter me with this truth and sincerity stuff. I can't handle it. My whole life has been a celebration of artifice. Down with meaningful relationships! Up with the psychological barriers? Bring on the colorful hang-ups!'

She was silent for a moment. Then: 'I see. Well, at least we could console each other by making—what was it? The beast with two backs? I have enough money for a motel.'

I sat heavily in a chair by the window. 'I'm sure you have, Martha.'

She sat across from me. 'Your ego's hurt, isn't it.'

'Sure. Of course. But that's not really it. It would be pointless for us to make it in some motel with 'Genuine Western Oil Paintings' on the walls. In the morning, our strongest desire would be to shower until the scent of the other person was flushed down the drain. We'd be obliged to make up stories for people who no longer believe us. And a week from now, we wouldn't even remember each other's names. We don't have anything to offer each other, Martha. There's nothing we even want from each other. All there is between us is a low background fever of sexual curiosity.'

While I spoke, she smiled at me with amused patience that made it difficult for me to keep my eyes on hers. I felt burned out, vitiated.

Sam Three started up the worn record of As Time Goes By, and Sam One went along the bar telling everyone that the storm was over and he really had to close.

Martha continued to look at me, her eyebrows arched calmly.

'It would be absolutely pointless, Martha. We probably wouldn't even perform very well.'

'So what happens now?'

I sighed and stood up. 'I'm going to take a walk.'

'And me?'

'It's a big night out there. There's room for you to take a walk, too.'

'But not together.'

'But not together.'

She narrowed her eyes and evaluated me. 'Marvin, you're really a washout, you know that?'

'Yes, I know.'

I left Rick's Cafe Americain and walked around the empty streets for a couple of hours; then I decided I had to get away... go to someplace new and fresh! Canada, maybe. Or the South China Sea. I found my car standing alone in the lot, and I got in and drove north, with the rising sun glancing and glittering through the passenger side window.

But about ten miles out of town, I ran out of gas. I took that as a sign—hey, maybe even a metaphor for my life!—and I managed to get to my committee meeting at the university, unshaven but only a little late.

THAT FOX-OF-A-BENAT

The people of my village share with all Basque peasants an inborn reluctance to give out any information that might be used to our disadvantage, or, if not actually to our disadvantage, then at least to some other fellow's advantage, which must ultimately be the same thing, for God in His wisdom has seen fit to fill His world with fewer desirable things than there are people chasing after them, and so what the other fellow gets, I don't.