SOMETHING WAITS (22 page)

“Nuther phone call?” grinned the counter man.

Mr. Conway countered the counter man’s grin with one of his own. “How does one become a member?” he demanded, nodding at the little alcove door.

“Member?”

“Come on.”

The counter man held his grin. “Oh, that.”

“Is there a fee? A membership tariff of some kind?”

The counter man shook his head. “No membership fee.”

“It’s free then? All right, I’d like to join.”

The counter man put down his
Reader’s Digest
. “Join what?”

Mr. Conway gestured impatiently. “The club, the club! Or whatever it is you’ve got back there.”

Facetious eyes studied him. “You wanna join somethin’ you don’t even know what it is?”

Mr. Conway rocked once irritably on the balls of his feet. “Let’s just say my curiosity’s aroused.”

“Yeah?
That’s
what’s aroused?”

“Very cute. Come on, what do you say?”

Now the counter man turned at last, slowly and deliberately as though seeing Mr. Conway for the first time. He studied the door in question. Then he looked back and studied Mr. Conway a long moment. “Naww…you ain’t ready for that yet.”

Mr. Conway raised up on his toes again, cleared his throat indignantly. “Aren’t you a little presumptuous? How exactly
does
one qualify for admittance?”

The counter man cocked his head reflectively, looked Mr. Conway up and down unhurriedly. “Well now, you might call it intuition. I can always tell about potential members.” He turned leisurely in his chair and gave Mr. Conway the once-over one more time--from his Brooks Brothers tie to his Andre Bellini shoes. “A fella has a certain look.”

“And--?”

He shook his head. “You ain’t got the look.” The grinned widened. “No offense.”

“Now listen—“

“Try cubicle 12.”

“I’ve already admired your retro peep show.”

“Not number 12 you ain’t.”

“I’d prefer the members only club, thank-you.”

“Sorry. Maybe some other time. We don’t let just anyone in. Try number 12, we guarantee satisfaction!”

What am I doing?
he thought with some amazement,
standing here in this sleaze hole on my lunch hour talking to this grinning idiot about peep show rooms! I should get out of here!

So he did. But not before investigating cubicle 12.

It was an experience. The girl was nothing special. But the guy! He could only have been a circus performer—a sideshow freak. Such convolution, such gymnastics! Mr. Conway had never seen the like. Triple-jointed is what the guy must have been. It was a truly educational experience. Mr. Conway was tempted to applaud after his last quarter finished the reel.

But it wasn’t what he’d come to see.

“Do I qualify for membership now?” he addressed the man behind the counter.

The grin was really getting on his nerves. “Come back some other time!”

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to! Don’t think I just fell off the turnip truck—I’m a man of means, a man with more money, more connections, more…everything than you could begin to conceive in your wildest dreams!”

“That’s nice.” Grin.

“I was pulling bait and switch tactics when you were still in your Buster Browns! I know how to prime a customer, dangle a carrot, tease the mark, slam shut the trap and close the deal! I’ve been up against the best, pal, the
very
best! There’s nothing a punk like you could teach me! Now I want to see what’s behind that door!”

“Fine. No problem. But some other time.”

Mr. Conway rocked righteously on his heels. “Impudent little slug! I won’t be back!”

* * *

He came back every day for the next month.

And always the answer was the same: polite, congenial, unhurried but firm. “You ain’t quite ready yet.”

The little door, the dangling sign, haunted his dreams. Both the day and night variety. He saw the dangling sign at the office. He saw it superimposed over the TV screen at night. He saw it in the faces of his employees, in his won ton soup, in the silk luster of his wife’s evening gown. He fantasized about it when he should have been working, conjuring every conceivable scenario, every possible image of defilement and debauchery, every imaginable tableau of rampant licentious libertinage.

But none of these, he knew, were the answer to the mystery, the secret. Something extraordinary lay beyond the flaking veneer of that warped little door. Something he could wonder about forever and never know until he saw. There was a kind of crude genius at work here, a subliminal sort of hypnosis, and only those deemed privileged were rewarded. Only the elite.

Mr. Conway was one of the elite. He could sense it, feel it in his bones, always had. He’d been born one of the elite, the privileged, the inheritor of greatness and greatly coveted secrets. He just couldn’t convince the grinning man behind the counter. Not yet…

* * *

He became a man obsessed.

He was nearing the point of drastic action: sneaking down the darkened block at night, forcing entry into the filthy little hole, revealing what lay hidden behind the little door under the reproachful eye of the full moon. He actually felt cunning enough to pull it off; but that wasn’t the way, he knew. In some cosmic way he understood that this was a privileged event, a trust to be earned. A road paved with patience.

One bright, sunny but typically dull Tuesday afternoon several months later, he had an inspiration. Why not make this Tuesday different? Break routine! Skip lunch, forget all about Conway and Waterman Associates, forget all about the dingy little porno shop on the corner, jump in his car, whisk himself home without so much as a phone call ahead and surprise Althea with dinner at the most expensive, secluded hideaway in town! They hadn’t done that years, and she used to adore that kind of spontaneous frivolity…before the company had become the center of his life, filled his every waking hour, turned him, perhaps, into a husband that didn’t deserve her. It was a splendid idea.

The problem was, by the time he arrived home to their nine room mansion, Althea was already eating. Only she wasn’t alone and she wasn’t doing it in the dining room exactly. She was doing it in the swimming pool with Mr. Conway’s trusted friend and partner Stan Waterman.

The pool was just off the driveway so Mr. Conway had a front row seat of the entire show in vivid, commercial-free detail. He never would have believed his wife was such a…gourmet. She certainly had a surprisingly healthy appetite. Perhaps the most tragic thing was that all the splashing and huffing wasn’t what bothered him most—or even that it was his best friend and business partner providing the smorgasbord. It was the fact that Stan had apparently been frittering away his afternoons this way for some time now, frolicking with his supposedly jaded, un-passionate wife instead out cementing deals. That’s what bothered him the most, and that Mr. Conway found sad.

He sat there for a long time in his beautiful Boxter and watched them. Eventually he realized the main reason the scene was so arresting was he’d seen it before, or at least some variation of it. Then it came to him. His business partner was using the same contorted gymnastic techniques as that guy in the film behind door 12! It was amazing! He really had it down! Ole Stan must have watched that film a hundred times inside that sweaty little cubicle! Mr. Conway couldn’t understand why he and his partner hadn’t crossed paths before now under the grinning man’s counter! Trouble was--he had to admit--ole Stan was pretty good. Althea certainly seemed to think so.

The rest of scene played out like a bad B movie. The Boxter screeched to the edge of the pool, Mr. Conway leapt out, Althea shrieked piercingly, Stan leapt around the water like hooked carp searching for his bathing suit, Mr. Conway chasing him with the aluminum pool skimmer.

Afterward, Mr. Conway went for a long walk.

But not to the little porno shop. He didn’t even think about that. He thought about his childhood mostly, how comparatively happy that had been, in contrast to the last few years of what had become—he had to face it—the lifeless corpse of a marriage. And he felt himself grow bitter inside, laughing a mirthless laugh, shaking a mortified head. Goddamn Stan Waterman: no wonder the bastard never had lunch with him anymore…

Later that night at home, as he was turning down the bed in the guest room, tossing back his third vodka gimlet and allowing himself to visualize the first vague images of what would doubtless prove a phenomenally costly divorce, the phone rang. It was Stan Waterman and he wanted to apologize. He’d had a few gimlets himself, apparently.

“Stan, go fuck yourself.”

“Please, I don’t want to dissolve the partnership!”

“Stan, the partnership is dissolved.”

“No, please. It’s a big mistake doing that, trust me.”

“Trust you?”

“Please.”

“Blow me.”

He started to hang up , then—probably because the vodka was making him feel perverse—he added a parting shot: “By the way, your technique isn’t half as good as that guy in room 12.”

There was a sobering pause from Stan’s end. Then: “You saw the film?”

“The guy had it all over you, Waterman. Good-bye.”

“Wait! Listen, there’s something I’ve got to ask you! That little alcove door to the right of the counter, the one marked ‘members only,’ did…did you get inside it?”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Good-bye, Stan.”

Well, that was some consolation at least: the cuckolding bastard had never seen the inside of the mysterious little cubicle. At least
that
hadn’t been taken from him! He snapped shut his cellular and sat there staring at it. But by God,
he’d
see it! And he’d see it tonight! And he wouldn’t take no for an answer! He’d taken enough shit today!

Mr. Conway dressed quickly, strangely steady on his feet and clear-headed after three vodka gimlets, and passed his wife’s door on his way downstairs.

“Darling, I’d like to talk with you—“

He hardly heard her. He was on a mission.

* * *

He arrived after midnight but the shop was open 24 hours, so that was fine.

He pushed through the front door, marched straight to the wood counter and the grinning face behind it. His voice was level, controlled, but adamant. “I want to---“

“—join the Members Only Club,” grinned the Cheshire face, “of course. We’re all ready for you, Mr. Conway, step right this way!”

‘Mr. Conway’? Had he ever mentioned his name?

The counter man stepped to the door with the little hand-lettered sign and placed his fingers on the silvery knob. He turned. “One hundred dollars, please.”

He’d expected something like this. All right. He was prepared. He’d pay, gladly. Nothing was going to prevent him from stepping through that paint-flaking door, even if he found only an empty, cobwebbed room.

And that’s about what he found. That, a single straight-backed metal chair, and a portable, glass beaded home movie screen atop a crooked stand. The counter man gestured toward the metal chair. “The feature will begin in a moment. Popcorn?” And he snorted a laugh.

“Just get on with it!” Mr. Conway snorted back, seating himself imperiously.

The counter man exited. In a moment the room went dark. There was faint, familiar whir, and the screen grew bright. The lighting and sets seemed Spartan even by grindhouse standards. The girl wasn’t even pretty. She wore a plan gingham dress and a plain, even old-fashioned, hairstyle. And a very plain smile. Her figure was…well, plain.

She stood in an ordinary little apartment kitchen preparing what appeared to be a simple evening meal. Nothing fancy here either, not even particularly healthy food: the old-fashioned meat and potatoes variety as opposed to the vegetarian dishes he had forced on himself in recent years. After the meal was prepared (and it took some time, during which the hard metal chair grew even harder) she brought it smiling into a modest dining area and placed it on a modest walnut table before the camera. She lit a candle, unfastened her apron, and then—to his further amazement—sat down, dished herself a portion and began eating.

This also took some time.

Mr. Conway cleared his throat impatiently, craned over his shoulder at the mote-dancing cone of light behind him. The projectionist and/or counter man were not to be seen in the gloom.

After dinner, the girl cleaned the dishes, winked at the camera with a warm smile, and moved into the modest living room where she relieved the hall closet of a sweater. If Mr. Conway thought he was about to witness a strip tease, he was wrong. She merely put the sweater on over her dress and left the apartment. The screen went dark momentarily.

Mr. Conway squirmed in the metal chair. What the hell was this leading up to?