This was a guy who wanted a nice big retro-style gun. A six-shooter, no less. With a shoulder holster, even, that still reeked of new leather and creaked when I pressed on it. I bet he put it on and posed with it in the mirror every now and then. Someone should have told him that Travis Bickle was from New York and Dirty Harry was from San Francisco and neither of them would have been caught dead in Los Angeles.
I replaced the sheet carefully.
The fridge was the size of a car. I found some fruit in the bottom bin, and piled bananas, clementines, apples, and passion fruit on a plate, grabbing a knife and a couple of spoons before walking it through to Trix.
Trix was in front of the widescreen TV, watching a local news report about a blind man who’d been arrested for raping his guide dog.
I laid the fruit next to her. “Sometimes I almost understand why that old bastard wants to use the book on America,” I smiled.
Trix picked up a clementine and started skinning it without looking away from the screen. “I don’t even get how he’s going to do it. Read it out on TV?”
“Apparently he can’t do that. You have to be in the actual presence of the book, to get the subsonic effect or something. They’ll take it from town to town, like the Freedom Train in the seventies. Big public gatherings. Putting the reset button to all you weirdos one crowd at a time.”
Trix flipped a segment of clementine into her mouth. “Will that work?”
“He seems to think so. I mean, unless this is all one big costly joke at my expense.”
“You have to admit that’s possible.”
“Yeah. No. I don’t think so. Not this time. He really believes it. And, you know, he might be crazy, but he’s not stupid.”
Trix chewed and considered. “I don’t think you should give him the book.”
“Why not?”
“Okay. Assume this isn’t totally nuts and this book can somehow affect people’s brains. Is it right that the government should be able to reset people’s personalities to some two-hundred-year-old notion of ‘morality’?”
I sliced off some apple. “Because people should be free to rape their own guide dogs any time they like?”
“Aside from the fact that there are many, many working bestiality relationships in America today—”
“You’re kidding me.”
“There was a TV documentary about it last year.”
“That’s not exactly anyone’s idea of a mainstream society, Trix.”
“Says who? It’s on national TV and it’s not mainstream? This
“You’re going to sit there and defend dogfucking as a lifestyle choice?”
“Why do I have to defend it? Why not just accept that such relationships exist and then ensure that abuse isn’t taking place?”
“Fucking a dog isn’t abusing a dog?”
“Why not find out first, before condemning it? Adult animals crossbreed all the time. When I was a kid, my rabbit and my guinea pig were shafting each other senseless every season. It’s not like we’re talking about pre- sexual beings.”
“Trix, you are seriously defending people who fuck animals here.”
“I’m saying there’s more going on in the modern psyche than can be defined by some Puritan notion of the way life should be. Hell, in the last couple of weeks I’ve done things to you that are still illegal in some states. The pace of change in the way we live isn’t limited to the number of consumer products available, Mike. Hell, look at the way porn’s changed.”
“I know. I saw a TV show with the guy who invented anal sex.”
“I kind of doubt that. But, you know, some women can’t get off vaginally. Some women can’t get off without a bit of the rough stuff. Porn doesn’t invent that. It reflects what’s going on in the world. And some bad easy-listening music and ten minutes of vanilla missionary doesn’t do it for everybody. Using that book in the middle of any major city would be consigning thousands of people to hell every time.”
I stabbed my last slice of apple. “So you’re saying me finding the book would make the transcontinental pervert community very unhappy, and that they would conceivably be forced to unlearn all their special pervert tricks.”
“Mike, you’re talking about lobotomizing people. Think about it: what would that book do to me?”
“You wouldn’t want to make me ejaculate into the Baby Jesus’ head anymore.”
“Two hundred years ago, the female orgasm was mostly theoretical. Hell, a hundred years ago, the male psyche didn’t have a problem with selling women. We barely got educated. Career aspirations, forget it. The
“With that look in your eye? I don’t think I want you to have the knife.”
“What, you’re afraid I’m going to put it up your ass and call it romance? Gimme the fucking knife.”
I watched as she pushed the apples and oranges onto a nearby coffee table, unzipped the bananas onto the plate, sliced them, cut the passion fruit, and squeezed the pulp all over them. She started eating the mess with one of the spoons, watching the TV.
There were no ashtrays visible in the place, so I decided to press some clementine peel into service and lit up.
