'Really? Tell me more.'
'Cut it out,' I said. 'That tickles.'
'Does it really? Tell me what else you've got on your wish list. How about a tight pussy?'
'That would be too much to hope for.'
'Oh, boy,' she said. 'You're really asking for it, aren't you?'
'Am I?'
'Oh, I hope so,' she said. 'I certainly hope so.'
AFTERWARD I lay in her bed while she turned the stack of records and brought back two cups of coffee. We sat up in bed and didn't say much.
After a while she said, 'You were pissed yesterday.'
'I was? When?'
'When you had to get out of here because I had somebody coming over.'
'Oh.'
'Weren't you? Pissed?'
'A little bit. I got over it.'
'It bothers you, doesn't it? That I see clients.'
'Sometimes it does. Most of the time it doesn't.'
'I'll probably stop sooner or later,' she said. 'You can only keep on pitching for so long. Even Tommy John had to pack it in, and he had a bionic arm.' She rolled onto her side to face me, put a hand on my leg. 'If you asked me to stop, I probably would.'
'And then resent me for it.'
'You think so? Am I that neurotic?' She thought it over. 'Yeah,' she said, 'I probably am.'
'Anyway, I wouldn't ask you.'
'No, you'd rather have the resentment.' She rolled over and lay on her back, gazing up at the ceiling. After a moment she said, 'I'd give it up if we got married.'
There was silence, and then a cascade of descending notes and a surprising atonal chord from the stereo.
'If you pretend you didn't hear that,' Elaine said, 'I'll pretend I didn't say it. We never even say the L word and I went and said the M word.'
'It's a dangerous place,' I said, 'out there in the middle of the alphabet.'
'I know. I should learn to stay in the F's where I belong. I don't want to get married. I like things just the way they are. Can't they just stay that way?'
'Sure.'
'I feel sad. That's crazy, what the hell have I got to feel sad about? All of a sudden I'm all weepy.'
'That's okay.'
'I'm not going to cry. But hold me for a minute, okay? You big old bear. Just hold me.'
Chapter 9
Sunday afternoon I found my film buff.
His name, according to Phil Fielding's records, was Arnold Leveque, and he lived on Columbus Avenue half a dozen blocks north of the video store. His building was a tenement that had thus far escaped gentrification. Two men sat on the stoop drinking beer out of cans in brown paper bags. One of them had a little girl on his lap. She was drinking orange juice out of a baby bottle.
None of the doorbells had Leveque's name on it. I went out and asked the two men on the stoop if Arnold Leveque lived there. They shrugged and shook their heads. I went inside and couldn't find a bell for the super, so I rang bells on the first floor until someone buzzed me in.
The hallway smelled of mice and urine. At the far end a door opened and a man stuck his head out. I walked toward him, and he said, 'What do you want? Don't come too close now.'
'Easy,' I said.
'You take it easy,' he said. 'I got a knife.'
I held my hands at my sides, showing the palms. I told him I was looking for a man named Arnold Leveque.
He said, 'Oh, yeah? I hope he don't owe you money.'
'Why's that?'
' 'Cause he's dead,' he said, and he laughed hard at his joke. He was an old man with wispy white hair and deep eye sockets, and he looked as though he'd be joining Leveque before too many months passed. His pants were loose and he held them up with suspenders. His flannel shirt hung on him, too. Either he got his clothes at a thrift shop or he'd lost a lot of weight recently.
Reading my mind, he said, 'I been sick, but don't worry. It ain't catching.'
'I'm more afraid of the knife.'
'Ah, Jesus,' he said. He showed me a French chef's knife with a wooden handle and a ten-inch carbon-steel blade. 'Come on in,' he said. 'I ain't about to cut you, for Christ's sake.' He led the way, setting the knife down on a little table near the door.
His apartment was tiny, two narrow little rooms. The only illumination came from a three-bulb ceiling fixture in the larger room. Two of the bulbs had burned out and the remaining one couldn't have been more than forty watts. He kept the place tidy but it had a smell to it, an odor of age and illness.
'Arnie Leveque,' he said. 'How'd you know him?'
'I didn't.'
'No?' He yanked a handkerchief out of his back pocket and coughed into it. 'Dammit,' he said. 'The bastards cut me from asshole to appetite but it didn't do no good. I waited too long. See, I was afraid of what they'd find.' He laughed harshly. 'Well, I was right, wasn't I?'
I didn't say anything.
'He was okay, Leveque. French Canadian, but he musta been born here because he talked like anybody else.'
'Did he live here a long time?'
'What's a long time? I been here forty-two years. Can you believe that? Forty-two years in this shithole. Be forty-three years in September, but I expect to be out of here by then. Moved to smaller quarters.' He laughed again and it turned into a coughing fit and he reached for the handkerchief. He got the cough under control and said, 'Smaller quarters, like a box about six feet long, you know what I mean?'
'I guess it helps to joke about it.'
'Naw, it don't help,' he said. 'Nothing helps. I guess Arnie lived here about ten years. Give or take, you know? He kept to his room a lot. Of course the way he was you wouldn't expect him to go tap-dancing down the street.' I must have looked puzzled, because he said, 'Oh, I forgot, you didn't know him. He was fat as a pig, Arnie was.' He put his hands out in front of him and drew them apart as he lowered them. 'Pear-shaped. Waddled like a duck. He was up on three, too, so he had two flights of stairs to climb if he went anywhere.'
'How old was he?'
'I don't know. Forty? It's hard to tell when somebody's fat like that.'
'What did he do?'
'For a living? I don't know. Had a job he went to. Then he wasn't going out so much.'
'I understand he liked movies.'
'Oh, he sure did. He had one of those things, what the hell do they call it, you watch movies on your TV set.'
'A VCR.'
'It woulda come to me in a minute.'
'What happened to him?'
'Leveque? Ain't you paying attention? He died.'
