Snitch World (12 page)

A knock. Klinger opened the door.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” Klinger said. He stepped aside.

She came in.

“Sit down, sit down.”

After a moment of uncertainty, she daintily perched on the edge of the bed, a purse/briefcase thing on her knees.

“Don’t worry,” Klinger chuckled. “Cooties can’t penetrate polyester. Not right away, anyhow.”

“This is silk,” she corrected him matter-of-factly. She stood, brushed the blanket with the flat of her hand, looked at her hand, resettled herself on the bed.

“Kessler,” the woman said, despite being unable to resist taking in every forlorn detail of the room around her. She held out the hand. “Marci Kessler.”

“Klinger.” He shook the hand, no knuckle-clutch,
no handles of beer steins involved. “Take your time,” he encouraged her. “There’s a lot to see.”

She leveled her gaze at him. “I don’t see a phone.”

“Right down to business,” Klinger nodded. “I like that. Do you have a charger?”

She shook his head. “How did you come by Phillip’s phone again?” She made a little smile. “I forget.”

Klinger nodded. “I found it on the sidewalk.” He jerked his thumb at the headboard. “First thing this morning.”

“First thing this morning …” she repeated thoughtfully. Klinger contemplated his visitor. She was twenty-five, twenty-six. Short black hair well cut, clothes all black, the package looking understated but expensive. And the woman herself was … Klinger frowned. Was she good looking? He gave it a thought. Maybe so. Her intensity predominated, however, and, what, her focus? And, could she be on the defensive, too? Wrapped tight? But that’s okay, Klinger wryly assured himself. She didn’t come here to be attractive.

“I wonder …” she was saying.

“Yes?”

“I spoke with Phillip about nine o’clock last night. Maybe it was eight-thirty.” She touched her phone. It made little blips. “Eight thirty-seven to nine oh five.”

Klinger nodded. “Before it started raining.”

“Oh,” said she, affecting no interest whatsoever, “did it rain last night?”

Klinger assured her that it had been raining.

An awkward silence descended. Klinger could hear a television nattering, in one or another of the rooms around them, and he assumed she could hear it too. Out in the hall, a floorboard creaked. Four floors down, the street door closed with a bang.

“Look,” she finally said. “Where’s the damn phone?”

“It’s here,” Klinger told her.

“Aren’t you going to give it to me?”

“It depends,” Klinger frankly said, “on what the deal is.”

“Deal? What deal?” she said faux-naively. “Did we have a deal? My friend lost his phone and you found it. You give it to me and I give it to him.” She smiled. “Simple.”

“Yeah,” said Klinger.

“So what’s this about a deal?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Klinger said. “How about, how do I know you’ll give it back to him?”

“You don’t,” she said. “You’ll just have to trust me.” Again with the smile. “Why wouldn’t I give it back to him? After all,” she said brightly, “I’ve got my own phone.” She held it up.

“I didn’t get where I got in life,” Klinger said without irony, “by trusting people.”

She deployed a little smile of disdain. “And where, exactly, have you gotten in life?”

“I’m still alive,” Klinger declared with an offhand certainty. “It’s a kind of triumph.” He shrugged modestly. “For what it’s worth.”

After a thoughtful pause she said, “Trust is a strange thing, isn’t it.”

“Okay,” Klinger said, as if patiently. “I bore easy.” He took a stab in the dark. “This guy Phillip’s beside the point. What’s with the phone?”

She appeared to consider this. “Phillip … really needs his phone.”

“Okay,” Klinger lifted his hands. “I got all day. After all,” he indicated their surroundings, “I live here.”

Marci lifted an eyebrow.

“In other words,” Klinger abruptly spelled it out, “I don’t give a shit about Phillip or his phone, and I don’t give a shit what’s in it for him or for you. I was minding my own business until you got here, lady. Now all I want to know is, since I got this phone and you want it, what’s in it for me?”

Marci batted her eyelashes. “Phillip’s momentary gratitude?”

Klinger laughed in her face.

Marci’s gaze did not flinch. “How about my momentary gratitude?”

Klinger looked at her. Her skin was flawless, her clothes clean, she smelled better than anything else in the room, and she was as dry as a seventeen-dollar martini. Klinger, on the other hand, was wet, cold, broke, alone, he stank of piss and adrenaline and other people’s cigarette smoke and, to say the very least, he hadn’t shaved and if he were to shave he’d have to buy the stuff to do it with and then he’d have to leave an island of stubble around the nick in his cheek until it healed.

“Give me a fucking break,” he spat. And, in spite of himself, this declamation carried with it an unmistakable note of bitter sincerity.

I’m too tired for this, he told himself. And, he abruptly realized, whether or not this chick is smarter than I am, she’s not tired at all.

He could see it in her eyes. She was intelligent, unafraid, fresh …

And predatory?

The thought gave Klinger some pause. He was used, in his milieu, to what you might call elevated levels of self-interest. But he’d never had the personal wherewithal to find himself elevated to the stature of
prey
in another man’s eyes. Let alone, a woman’s eyes. He’d never been worth the trouble. It was that simple. It had always been that simple. He liked it that simple.

“Look …” he suddenly began. Then he stopped. What the hell was happening to him? Had this woman, this complete stranger, abruptly deprived him of his nerve?

Her smile exuded confident certainty. “Exactly,” she nodded. Otherwise, she didn’t move. “Where’s the phone?”

Klinger retrieved it from its pathetic hiding place and handed it over.

“As you said,” she said after a moment’s examination, “it’s dead.”

“Yes,” Klinger agreed.

“And you don’t have a charger.”

“In my book,” Klinger sighed, “a charger is an armored horse in
Ivanhoe
.” He shook his head. “Do I look like a charger kinda guy?”

Marci declined the bait. “So, neither of us has a charger.” She unzipped a side pocket of her purse and dropped the phone into it.

Klinger mused the situation over. On the one hand, he may have been letting slip an opportunity to further capitalize on last night’s action. Something as simple as a reward, maybe. On the other hand, he might well be dodging the resulting beef. Manslaughter committed in the course of a felony, for example, if manslaughter there had been. Certainly the gravity of the latter seemed far greater than that of the former. So, once this person and that accursed phone were out of sight he would resume fretting over his existence in some other fleabag demesne and, so far as she would be concerned, effectively disappear forever. So far as he was concerned, this person will have become another live round dodged on the obstacle course of life.

“I … suppose you can always get your hands on a charger,” Klinger suggested. “No doubt,” he brightened, “your friend Phillip’s got a charger. No?” he finished feebly.

Marci zipped the side pocket closed and set the purse/
briefcase on the floor next to the bed. “No doubt.” She stood and, much to Klinger’s dismay, began to remove her jacket.

“Uh,” said Klinger, nervous. “What now?”

After but a moment’s hesitation Marci hung her
knee-length jacket on the lonely hook on the back of the entry door, dead center below a printed card headed rules, chief among which figured no visitors.

“Now?” Marci turned to Klinger and touched a button on her blouse.

“Now you may fuck me.”

A slight tremor clambered up the sternum, bifurcated at the manubrium, and dissipated. Nothing more. The only sounds specific to the room were the far-away laser battle peculiar to the rustle of silk, and the tinkle of bracelets. The only thing to look at was the sublunary lambence of her skin, unmarked by a past, all too present, presentimental, utterly incisive to the imagination. And what his imagination presented to Klinger was dread. If the specter of lust had arisen, it would have dissolved into weightless foam upon the beach of his feckless trepidation. But there was no lust. Only aversion. Only the abrupt thought of the cash in his pocket, only a sudden apprehension as to where, exactly, that pocket might be at the moment, what with a stranger in his room and all. Only the feeble light admitted to his cave by the exit to all else, a door, a portal, a vector created by the vacuum sucking him parched and drinkless into the greater world, a mere three or four days hence. Klinger lifted his hands and it may well have looked like a supplication. He even managed the word “please.”

She paused in her undressing. “No need to beg,” she smiled.

Klinger shook his head and made little waving motions with the palms of his hands.

Marci allowed the shoulders of her blouse to fall to her elbows. Her black brassiere seemed the tracery of indecipherable arabesqueries upon the ivory astrolabe of her skin.

His mind just short of flailing itself for a rationale, Klinger began again. “It’s not …” he stammered, “I …”

A shadow of uncertainty flitted from one carefully sculpted eyebrow to another. “What is it, then?”

“It’s just that … You have the phone,” Klinger blurted.

She looked at her purse.

“Please!” Klinger exclaimed through clenched teeth. “Take it and go.”

Was he begging? Perhaps she caught the tone of mendicity. Perhaps it was unmistakable, perhaps she’d heard it before. But the vein of this plea was different. She countered it with one of her own. She peeled the diaphanes of the brassiere from her breasts. “I’m getting married soon.” One sleeve of the blouse slipped off her arm. “I want experience.”

Klinger’s head was shaking involuntarily, but the negative was volitional. “No.” His hands fluttered as if feebly trying to wave off a wall as it fell on him. “I mean … I’m not … It’s …”

Now she shook her head. “Everybody’s got something to bring to the sexual feast,” she assured him. “It’s the nature of experience in the natural realm.”

Klinger, still shaking his head, exhaled loudly. “This is not natural,” was all he could think of to suggest.

The other sleeve slipped off the other arm. “It’s the most natural thing in the world,” she asserted with confidence. “And it only gets better with experience.” She batted her eyes. “Or so I’m told.”

“So—so,” Klinger stammered, “why not practice with your … your intended?”

“He’s too busy,” she stated mater-of-factly. The blouse dropped to the floor. “I hardly ever see him.”

“That … that’s a shame,” Klinger managed.

She took a step forward.

Klinger took a step backward.

Marci frowned, just a little, but she was also amused. “Are you serious?” she said, unable to repress a smile.

Klinger vigorously nodded.

Marci applied the fingertips of one hand to a corner of her mouth, as if considering Klinger’s reticence.

Klinger, who had never experienced a migraine headache in his life, felt one coming on; it was if a slim blade were slowly entering the right hemisphere of his brain. He squinted one eye against it.

She moved one step closer. “What was your name?”

“Smith,” Klinger told her involuntarily. He opened the eye. “I mean Klinger. It’s Klinger.”

Her hands had fallen to the zipper on the hip of her skirt. “You’re not living up to it,” she said huskily.

Klinger frowned. “I beg your—. Oh.” He shook his head. “You mean, I’m not clinging very well.”

She shook her head. “You’re not clinging at all.”

“Well,” Klinger stipulated forthrightly, “perhaps you’re not getting the message.”

The zipper, an inch or two along its course, stopped its descent. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She looked alarmed. Klinger made the palms of his hands shape the air between himself and this strange woman, as if they were finding their way through spider floss. “Nothing, nothing,” Klinger insisted. “It’s just that I—. I …”

Now Marci’s own enthusiasm began to wane. “It’s just that you what?” she asked with apparent sincerity. “Come on.” She pulled the zipper back to its public position. “You can tell me.” She crossed her arms over her breasts and frowned. “Are we queer? Impotent? Dead?”

Klinger began to shake his head, but switched to nodding it. Then, reconsidering, he began to shake it again.

“Well?” she said. “Go ahead. Don’t be afraid. You can’t
shock me. As Vice President of Compliance, I’ve heard it all.”

Klinger resolved to speak before she threatened him with therapy. “It’s just …” he began.

Marci nodded.

“It’s just that …” Klinger began again.

“Come on,” she coaxed him.

“It’s just that I don’t give a shit,” Klinger expostulated, and speaking with more energy than heretofore.

For once in the hour, Marci seemed taken aback.

“It’s that simple,” Klinger said, modulating his tone so as to sooth her. “And it’s nothing personal. Honest.”

Marci appeared to consider this.

“Trust me,” Klinger told her, deliberately tamping the begging tone from his voice. “It’s the way it is.”

Marci watched the palms of her crossed arms as they smoothed her own breasts. “While it’s true that I don’t have much experience,” she said, “which is what I was trying to glean, what little I do have is contravened by your professed reaction.” She slipped the fingers of each hand beneath the upper seam of the respective cup of her brassiere and inhaled so that her breath hissed between her teeth. “Am I not to your liking?” she asked, watching him through slitted eyes.

Klinger bit his lip. She was nubile, for starters. She had beautiful skin and, for all he knew, she was a beautiful woman. Klinger bit the inside corner of his mouth. Experience would come, all right. But that wasn’t Klinger’s point. Klinger’s point was that Klinger didn’t give a shit. A point very difficult, if not impossible, to explain to anybody, let alone to this young woman. She, to whose every whim a large portion of the world’s men would only be too happy to cater, could barely comprehend that the wages, as it were, of such as Klinger lay well beyond her ability to pay. Only
profound experience of the type with which catalogue Klinger was all too familiar would grant to this woman, this girl, this …
foxy executive
a mere gleam of insight into the depth of Klinger’s despair. If sexuality is an impulse toward life, it is precisely the impulse that the likes of Klinger long ago left behind, and assiduously avoid recultivating, for, to them, any impulse toward life, sex included, perhaps sex chief above all, serves only to prolong the agony; and, if you were really unlucky, exquisitely so.