Blue World (31 page)

Here it was to be tasted. The neon signs and gaudy flashing lights stood like the gates into another world, announcing the wares that lay within the dark domains. The man in the cowboy boots stopped, a gust of wind riffling the knee-length brown canvas coat he wore. His dark brown, hollow-socketed eyes scanned the signs:

Girls and Boys Live Onstage! Dominant Females in Black Leather! Sorority Girls in Heat! All Sizes, All Flavors!

At the outer corners of his eyes were three small crimson teardrops, tattooed on the smooth pale flesh as if he were weeping drops of blood.

He went on, past the open doors that bellowed loud rock drumbeats and snared knots of gaping Japanese. His thumbs hooked in the ornate silver buckle of his belt, and his pace began to slow.

Just past the

All Nude! All Crude Honeys!

parlor was the sign he’d been seeking. It announced

Porno Queens Want to Meet Ya and had glossy pictures of attractive though heavily made-up young women covering the front window. Captions identified some of them, names like Tasha Knotty, Kitt Cattin, Easee Breeze, and Paula Bunyan. The man, who was of indeterminate age, possibly in his late twenties, regarded the photographs for a moment. Then he looked down at the sill, where dead flies lay and one was still feebly kicking.

This must be the place.

He strode through a red door into a corridor where a burly Chicano man sat reading a

Slash Maraud comic book behind a caged-in ticket booth. “Ten bucks,” the Chicano said in a bored voice. He didn’t put aside the comic. “You want to meet anybody special?”

“Yes,” the cowboy said in a toneless, whispery voice. “Easee Breeze.”

The sound--like the hiss of a snake--made the Chicano look up. He stared at the tattooed teardrops.

“You see somethin‘ you don’t like, amigo?”

“No. No, man.” The Chicano shook his head and sat up a little straighter. The crew-cut guy was lean, about six-two or six-three, and he looked like a dude you didn’t want to mess with. “Yeah, Easee’s in here, man. You want to party?”

“Maybe. Easee was in a movie called

Super Slick, wasn’t she?“

“She’s been in a lot of flicks, man. She’s a star!”

“I know that. I saw her in

Super Slick.“

He glanced toward another red door further along the corridor. From beyond it was a bass-heavy boom. “I want to meet her.”

“You go in there and sit down, man. Enjoy the show. If Easee’s onstage, you ring her number. If she’s not, she’ll be up in a few minutes. Ten bucks. Okay?” He tentatively tapped the countertop.

The cowboy took a wallet from the inside of his duster, opened it, brought out a ten-dollar bill, and slid it through the bars. A light sheen of sweat had begun to glisten on his bony face.

“Tippin’s extra, man,” the Chicano said. “Easee ain’t cheap.”

“Neither am I.” The cowboy smiled faintly, but it was a cold smile. Then he strode on toward the door, and the Chicano hit a switch that unlocked it. The cowboy went through, and the door locked again as it swung shut.

Speakers in the red-velvet-covered walls emitted a steady drumbeat. Three rows of tattered theater seats, where four other men sat in a smoky gloom, faced a large plate-glass window. Behind the glass gyrated three nude women, each with a numbered card hanging between her breasts. Easee Breeze was not among the dancers, and the cowboy took a seat on the back row and propped his boots up to wait.

After another moment one of the other men pressed a little button on the armrest of his chair. There were five alarm-bell rings, and the thin redhead with the numeral 5 on her card put on a false smile that looked like a death’s-head grimace and came out through a barred door to meet her date. The redhead led the grinning, beer-bellied tourist through another doorway at the other side of the room.

“Hope ya’ll have fun!” the cowboy shouted just before the door closed.

The dancing started again. Two more men--kids, really, probably college students--entered the room and took their seats, giggling and whispering nervously. The cowboy paid them no attention; he just sat back, watched the bouncing boobs, and waited.

A couple more girls reemerged from the back room and started listlessly dancing. Neither of them was the one the cowboy sought. The pounding rhythm, the red walls, the dim light, made him sleepy, as if he were sitting in a huge womb. But after four minutes or so he slid his boots off the seat back and leaned forward, smiling with renewed interest.

A slender, pretty blond had joined the dancers, and was grinding energetically. Around her neck was a card with the numeral on it. He started to press his button--but before he could, two rings came over the speakers. The cowboy looked around, startled, and saw one of the college kids sheepishly getting to his feet.

At once the cowboy was up, and he strode to the kid before Easee Breeze came out from behind the window. He clamped his hand firmly on the kid’s shoulder. “Easee’s my date, dude. Sit yourself down.”

The blood drained out of the kid’s face. He sat down fast, and the cowboy turned his best smile on Easee Breeze.

She didn’t touch him, but she gave him a wary smile and motioned him to follow. They went through the door, into a narrow red-lit corridor lined with cubicles. Moans and moist sucking noises came from behind some of the closed doors. A huge bald-headed man came along the corridor, jingling a ring of keys. “Twelve and thirteen,” the man said, tapping the doors.

“Listen,” Easee said, turning to the cowboy. She had produced a little tube of lip balm from somewhere, and she dabbed a bit on her index finger and swabbed her lips. “I’m kinda tired, okay? Like my jaws are really cramping bad.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Easee,” the cowboy said sympathetically.

Her eyes were pale blue, and they shone glassily. She had a cocaine stare, the painted eyes of a Kewpie doll. Easee’s lips were very red, and she kept working the balm in. “I’ll give you half-rate for half time. Fifty dollars for three minutes. Okay?”

“Three minutes will be plenty long enough,” the cowboy answered, and paid the bald-headed guy with two twenties and two fives.

“Good. I’m just about pooped. What’s your name?”

He glanced quickly at the bald-headed dude, who had returned along the aisle to his seat at the alley door. On that door was a sign reading this way out. “Travis,” he said. “Like that guy at the Alamo.”

“The Alamo what?” Easee asked. He didn’t respond. “I like your tattoos,” she said. “They’re funky.”

“Yeah, aren’t they.”

She motioned him into cubicle twelve, and she closed his door and then entered the next cubicle.

Between them was a thin piece of wallboard with a hole cut through it at crotch level. “Want me to get you up?” she asked. On her side was a little plastic trashcan, a chair, a stopwatch on a chain, and a box of Kleenex. She started the watch ticking.

“No. I’m ready.” The cowboy had dropped his pants, and he pushed through the hole.

Easee sat down in the chair and began, examining her chipped fingernail polish as she worked. “You ever see any of my movies, Travis?” she asked him between licks.

“I saw

Super Slick.

You were real good in it.“

“Thank you.” Silence, while Easee labored. “What was your favorite part?”

“When you went down on three guys. That was hot.”

“Yeah, I liked that too. Travis, do you like what I’m doing now?”

“Sure.” He smiled, his cheek pressed against the wallboard. “Keep it up.”

She glanced at the stopwatch. God, time crawled in this dump! Well, this was a temporary thing anyway. She was on her way back to L.A. on Friday. Her agent had a three-day film job lined up for her, and then she was flying to Hawaii to meet a rich Arab. Those Arab guys smelled a little bit, but they loved porno because they couldn’t get it in Arabia. Anyway, the Arabs always had a lot of money to throw around, and she’d even known two actresses who’d married sheiks and gone to live over there. Easee figured that was the life, lying around in a country that was just like a big Malibu Beach, doing your thing for some Arab and living in a castle. It could happen to her. Anything was possible.

“Bite it,” Travis requested. “Harder. Come on, Easee. Harder.”

She worked, staring at the stopwatch.

“I’m a big fan of yours, Easee,” Travis said. “I saw you in

Hustler last month. Harder. That ain’t bitin‘!

I saw you in

Hustler.

That was a real good layout. Man, I’d like to have me a job takin‘ them pictures. I sure would.“

She grunted. The second hand crept.

“I saw you at the Triple-X in L.A.,” he told her. “When you signed autographs. You signed my book.”

Something was wrong with the stopwatch, she thought. She felt him tremble, and pulled out a Kleenex.

“I love you, Easee,” Travis said. “Wait a minute. Hold on.” He scraped back through the hole. “I love you,” he repeated. “Hear me?”

“Sure,” she said. And put her mouth to the hole. “Come on, Travis. Let’s finish our party.”

“We will. Just hold on.” He removed the Colt .45 pistol from his silver-buckled gunbelt. It was intricately filigreed and had a mother-of-pearl handle. On the belt were loops holding at least thirty bullets. “I dream about you all the time. Hot dreams.”

“Come on, baby. Travis?” She heard a metallic click.

What the hell was the freak doing? “Come on, man!”

“Open wide,” he said, and he shoved the Colt’s barrel through the hole. “I loved Cheri Dane too,” he told her, and heard her gag.

He pulled the trigger.

The gunshot boomed hollowly, and the Colt bucked in his hand.

He heard her body thump off the chair. When he pulled the gun back in, its barrel was red and dripping.

Then, quickly, Travis zipped his fly and kicked the cubicle’s door open.

It banged out and tore off its flimsy hinges. The baldheaded dude was on his feet, a fleshy mountain of shock. One of the other cubicles opened; an Oriental girl peered out, saw the Colt, screamed shrilly, and slammed the door shut. A man looked out from another door, his jowly face contorted with horror.

Travis shot him. The bullet hit the man’s collarbone and knocked him off his feet. The whole cubicle collapsed, cheap walls folding in like cardboard. And then Travis, his eyes shining and glazed, began to stride toward the alley door, and as he walked he fired randomly through the cubicle doors. The shots boomed in the narrow space, sending bits of wallboard flying. The place was a bedlam of screams and calls for God. The bald-headed man was reaching into his pocket, and his hand came out with a switchblade.

“No,” Travis said calmly, and shot him through the throat. The dude strangled and fell back, the knife clattering to the linoleum. Travis brushed the bleeding bulk aside, but as he started to open the door a hand caught him by the hair and jerked his head back.

“You bastard!” the man gasped, eyes holes of rage and terror. “I’ll kill you, you lousy bas--”

Travis’s fingers moved on a hidden switch at the Colt’s handle. Four inches of serrated blue steel slid out from the mother-of-pearl, and Travis plunged the blade into the man’s fleshy cheek and tore brutally across it and out the mouth.

The man screamed, grasped his ripped face, and thunked to his knees.

Travis darted through the doorway and into the alley. The smell of blood and gunsmoke was up his nostrils, charging through his bones and nerves like a primal drug. He wiped the blade off on a discarded Burger King bag, triggered the switch again, and the knife slid back to its hidden sheath. Then he spun the pistol around his finger and returned it to the holster with a gunfighter’s grace.

He began to run, buttoning his coat as the wind whipped its folds around him. His face was pale and sweating, but his eyes were lazy and sated.

He ran on, away from the screams. The night and fog took him.

Blue World

Jesus wept.

A timeless reaction, the slimly built blond man mused as he read today’s study in the philosophical textbook. Jesus wept almost two thousand years ago, and would certainly shed tears today. But tears alone would change nothing, the man knew. If Jesus had wept at the immensity of spiritual poverty in the world, thrown up his hands and given up humanity as a lost cause, then the world and mankind would have truly been consumed by darkness. No, it was one thing to cry, but there had to be courage too.

He finished the passage he was reading, closed the textbook, and put it aside. The strong afternoon sunlight slanted through the window blinds and painted the beige wall where a crucifix and figure of Christ were mounted. A bookcase was filled with scholarly works on such subjects as redemption, the logic of religion, Catholicism and the third world, and temptation. Next to the bookcase was a portable TV hooked up to a VCR, and a collection of tapes, among them the titles

Victory over Sin, The Challenge of Urban Priesthood, and

The Road Warrior.

He rose from his chair and returned the textbook to its exact place in the bookcase. He checked his wristwatch: twelve minutes before three. At three he was on duty in the confessional. But he had time yet. He walked into the small kitchen, poured himself a cup of cold black coffee from the pot he’d made this morning, and took it back to the den with him. On the fireplace’s mantel, a clock ticked politely. In the den’s corner was the man’s ten-speed bicycle, its front tire mounted on a little set of ratchets and gears so he could do his stationary riding. He went to the window and opened the blinds, staring down onto Vallejo Street as the sunlight washed into his face.

He had the soft features of a choirboy, his eyes gentle and dark blue, his thinning blond hair brushed back from his high forehead and allowed to grow a little long in back. He was thirty-three years old, but he might have passed for five years younger. Small lines were beginning to creep from the corners of his eyes, and deeper lines bracketed his mouth. He had a long, aristocratic nose and a strong square chin, and he stood at just under six-feet-one. His skin was pale, because he didn’t get out much, but his strict regimen of bike riding and jogging on a treadmill kept his weight at one hundred and seventy pounds. He was a man of discipline and organization, and he knew deep in his heart that he would have trouble living in the outside world, with its dissonance and disorders and riotous confusion. He was born for the meditative life of a priest, with its rituals and cerebral passions. He had been a priest for more than twelve years, and before that a student of priestly disciplines.