The Girl From Nowhere (22 page)

“Who are you?” she whispered.

“Who am I? Don’tcha know? I’m your benefactor.”

Sandy looked as if she was about to faint. Her mouth fell open in disbelief.

“Why the surprise?” the man asked. “Who did you figure? Marlon Brando?”

A single tear trickled down Sandy’s face. The man laughed and walked toward her, stopping a couple of feet away. I tried to struggle to my feet, but the maniac pulled a wicked-looking knife from a sheath sewn like a pocket into his leathers and flashed it for my benefit.

“One stupid move,” he said, “and our lovely Sandra feels the edge of this blade.”

I stayed where I was.

“She’s so beautiful,” he said. “In a way I can’t blame
you
for fucking her, Novalis—but I can
never
forgive
her
. She had pledged herself to me—you know that? She made a sacred fucking vow.”

“I didn’t know . . .” Sandy whispered.

“Didn’t know what, babe? Didn’t know your benefactor’s identity? That was careless of you, my sweet. You should think things through. You’ll never see your dreams come true unless you think things through—all the way through. Didn’tcha learn that at the movies?”

“I just wanted . . .”

“Just wanted? That’s the problem with this world—everybody wants something, but when it comes to the big-ticket items not many people are prepared to pay the price.”

He studied her, his face a few inches from hers. She closed her eyes.

“Yes, shut them,” he said. “I am fuckin’ hideous to look at—unlike you, my sweet Sandra. You are so lovely. I’ve seen you many times before, of course. I watched you on stage in Paris when you were still a boy, and I watched you at Aladdin’s Alibi, and I’ve watched you on the street—more times than you know. Then there were those special photographs that Yari Mendelssohn took for me—the before-and-after pictures. I don’t suppose you told this sad jerk about those photographs?”

He gestured toward me.

“And I’m sure,” he continued, “that you didn’t mention to this sucker that
so
imaginative and so sensual painting that Stewart Langham made for what was supposed to be our nuptial bower. Didn’t you just love the masterly way—the passion—with which Langham evoked your flesh, your sensuality? Renoir? No. Rubens. It was as if the dirty old fucker could make love to you just by looking at you. I thought of having his eyes plucked out after it was finished, but he would just have gone on having filthy thoughts about you anyway. It hangs over my bed—I can look at it for hours on end—but I’ve never
really
seen you before, not this close. I’ve never seen you this
naked
before—this exposed.”

He mocked her by biting his lip.

“Do you know how many times I’ve seen you chew your lip like that? You do it in the act, of course—it brings the creeps in the audience to the edge. Oh, and it was so generous of Joey to hire you at the Alibi—though in fact the bastard had no choice. I could destroy Joey Garofolo with one word—you know that? Forget him, though. When you returned from Casablanca, beloved Sandra, I was aware how sensitive the aftermath of the surgery was—I knew that it would take time before you would be ready to engage in full wifely duties, ya know what I mean? I was prepared to wait—even relished the anguish of the wait—but I saw no harm in providing myself with the opportunity to look. And I liked to watch other men watching you. To have you available for inspection at the Alibi was the perfect solution.”

He turned to me.

“Did you ever see the lady strip? Too bad if you didn’t—she has a remarkable talent, although to call it striptease is dis respectful to a performance of such subtle artistry. Fuckin’ Sam Beckett ain’t in it. Let me set the scene. The curtain rises on a stage that’s empty except for a few bales of hay. Sandra enters with a small dog. She’s wearing a cheap gingham pinafore dress, white ankle socks, and lace-up Oxfords from Filene’s Basement. Her hair is gathered at the back in two bunches—an orphan down on the farm, just like Dorothy. She crouches to play with the dog, to tickle its stomach, then sends it off into the wings where its handler is waiting. Already the audience is tingling with anticipation—you can feel it. The aura of innocence and the anticipation of the loss of innocence is electric. Men feel a twitch of horniness. Women squeeze their thighs tightly together and hunger for an intimate touch. Sandra looks out at the audience—disdainful at first, then unsure of herself. She bites her lip. All around the room, in the energized darkness, moisture seeps from secret places, glands become engorged.

“There was piano music when Sandra first appeared—a gloss on something by Harold Arlen—but now it’s wall-to-wall silence. You could hear a pinafore dress drop in a tender heap on the floor, but our Sandra keeps hers on. She doesn’t dance, no hint of bump or grind—she just stands there fucking forever, gazing out into the darkness, making every man there—and many of the women too—believe she’s looking at him and him alone, teasing delicious fantasies. She bites her lip again, and sucks her thumb—but only for a second—snatches it out of her mouth as if she has been told to break the habit. Who knows what dirty, perverted practices thumb-sucking leads to? The silence is shattered by a cough from the house. Sandra feigns shock, covering her tits with her hands as if she has been discovered in a compromising situation, though she’s still fully dressed.

“A frown tells us that her shoes are pinching, poor girl. She sits on a bale of hay to take them off and finally she shows some flesh, even allows a glimpse of panties—girlish white cotton panties, the antithesis of the tacky lingerie favored by the other strippers. Men self-consciously adjust the paper napkins on their laps, maybe sip their martinis to moisten their gullets. Now Sandra seems lost in thought. She smiles to herself. She touches herself on the inside of her thigh, again permitting a tantalizing glimpse of white cotton. Is this the beginning of something? She lets her fingers rest there on her skin, looks down hungrily at her knees, her thighs, pulls her skirts up a little higher, hesitates, looks out into the audience—and bites her lip—guiltily this time.

“Now she stands up, as if embarrassed—stands and straightens her skirt, pats it down, and in patting it down seems to reawaken the thoughts she has so recently shaken off. There are habits—bad habits some stiffs call them—that are far more fucking fun, far more exciting than sucking your fucking thumb. Sandra looks out at the audience again, bites her lip again, smiles as if letting the friggin’ voyeurs in on her secret thoughts. She lifts the hem of her dress—just a few inches—then drops it with a furtive look in the direction of the audience. Suddenly, though, she seems vulnerable. It’s delicious. Can she trust those schmucks out there? Might they perhaps tell on her to Auntie Em? Or Miss Gulch? She paces the stage, as if she can’t make up her mind whether to let her desires overwhelm her inhibitions. It’s a dilemma. The audience is rooting for inhibitions to bite the dust. Sandra’s eyes plead with the geeks out there in the dark. With any other stripper this would provoke a chorus of ‘Take it off,’ but with Sandra no one would dare. She has them in the palm of her hand, and the men long to feel her fingers close around their dicks.

“She plays with them for a little longer, then she turns her back on the audience, and abruptly—with no fuss, no teasing—pulls up her skirts and tugs down those white cotton panties, allowing a fleeting glimpse of ass. The audience is shocked. Yo—wait a minute—is that all there is? Sandra-née-Sandford stands there for a long beat, back still turned, panties around her ankles. She steps out of them and turns to face the voyeurs out front who are rigid with excitement. She kicks the panties out into the darkness and they land on the bald head of some aluminum siding salesman from Peoria. He almost fucking croaks on the spot. Slowly she lifts her skirt. When the hem is approaching the Mason-Dixon Line there’s a roll of drums and a blackout that leaves the worshiping acolytes paralyzed with disappointment. Is that really all? But no—the act is not quite over. As the jilted swains sigh with disappointment, the lights come up again. Sandra is standing there, naked, her back to the auditorium, giving the suckers a full second or two to enjoy her gorgeous ass. And now she has on the ruby slippers . . .

“The lights are doused again to wild applause, and God-fearing American males find they’ve soiled their jockey shorts.”

He turned to Sandy.

“Did I get that right, darling?”

He seemed to have talked himself into a state of ecstasy.

Sandy said nothing, averting her eyes. The biker turned back to face me.

“I’ve a feeling,” he said in a half-whisper, “we’re not in Kansas anymore—don’t you, Novalis?”

He cocked his head, as if I should be enjoying his humor.

“You have to understand,” he said, “that Sandra invented this exquisite routine when she was still a boy. When she removed her scanties at Elle et Lui, or the Carrousel, or the Schmuzekatze Lounge in Berlin, it begged one all-important question—was something hiding under there? Was this gorgeous creature hung? That was the turn-on. Yari told me about her—begged me not to miss her act when I went to Paris. I was enthralled. I saw her ten times in a week and began to make inquiries. I discovered that she lived as a woman, longed to be one. I made up my mind to make her an offer. Someone had once provided me with the means to change my life, and I decided to do the same for her. Of course, the person who sponsored me didn’t extend his generosity purely out of the kindness of his heart—he was rewarding me for services rendered, and one in particular that helped secure the honor of his family. When I arranged, through a third party, for Sandra to undergo surgery, I too expected something in return.”

He returned his attention to Sandy.

“I still do,” he said. “The moment I had dreamed of has been snatched from me, but I still expect
something
in return.”

The word “something” snapped out of his mouth like a cross between a shout and a snarl. The icy poise dissolved in an instant and the crazed look returned to his eyes, which now were fixed on Sandy’s face with an intensity that recalled that day in Little Italy when he appeared to see nothing but her.

I had listened to his monologue, but at the same time my mind was working overtime, breaking down the elements of his story. He said he had seen her perform many times, in Europe and at Aladdin’s Alibi. Given his graphic description of her act, that rang true—yet how could a creature with such a disfigured face be a frequent member of Sandy’s audience without her being aware of him? I had heard that some clubs provided private viewing rooms for privileged patrons who liked to party with a couple of hookers while keeping one eye on the show, but I couldn’t quite buy into that explanation. And why had a man who could afford to sponsor Sandy for costly sex-reassignment surgery—and presumably who had supported her at considerable expense through the long months involved—never turned to a plastic surgeon to fix his own scarred features? There was something off about that, but I had no time to pursue the line of thought because his behavior toward Sandy was becoming increasingly threatening.

“I hope you realize,” he said to her, “that I own you. Every inch of your body, every hair, every fingernail, every sweat gland. Your breasts, your cunt—everything—but far more than that, because there is not a cell in your body that has not been transformed by treatments I paid for. By hormones and whatever black magic potions were administered by the good doctor in Morocco and those spooky endocrinologists.”

As he said this, the biker placed his hands on Sandy’s breasts. She looked helplessly in my direction. The biker ripped the bodice of the bridal gown open. I was on my feet by now, stumbling toward him. He had put away his knife, but he reached for something else in his leathers—it was a small semiautomatic pistol. He turned it in my direction and fired a single shot that hit the tarmac inches in front of me, showering me with dirt. It stopped me in my tracks. Now the biker, laughing maniacally, used his free hand to rip the bridal gown from Sandy’s shoulders. She screamed. He slapped her across the face, then grasped her throat. Taking advantage of his distraction, I jumped on his back. This made it difficult for him to threaten me with the gun, and I managed to get both arms around his neck—since my hands were still cuffed together, I had him in a stranglehold. As I jerked the cuffs back into his throat he fired two shots into the ground, trying to hit my feet or to at least scare me off. Then he tossed the gun aside so that he had two hands available to throttle Sandy. He was entirely obsessed with choking the life from her, seemingly unaware of me even as I continued to claw at his throat.

“Bitch! Cunt! Bitch!” he screamed.

Sandy’s face was turning purple and her eyes were threatening to pop out of her head.

“Scratch his fucking eyes out!” I yelled.

For a moment Sandy didn’t seem to understand what I was telling her to do, but then she responded, tearing at the biker’s face with her nails, ripping at his eyes and at the terrible scars. Suddenly he went limp and slumped to the ground, slipping from between my arms. I saw that his face had been completely transformed. Sandy had not succeeded in scratching his eyes out, but she had scraped away what seemed to be some kind of prosthetic makeup—the kind of stuff they use in the movies—thin sheets of sculpted, rubbery material that had given the man his grotesque appearance. The artificial scars were gone, and now I could see who he was.

“Brady Kavanagh . . .”

I recognized him from his photograph in the pages of
Vamp—
Brady Kavanagh, the presumed backer of the magazine where Yari’s revealing picture of Sandy had appeared. Brady Kavanagh the Invisible Mogul, Wall Street takeover tyrant, and the producer and director of trashy 42nd Street movies
—
films
more notable for their effects makeup than for their psychological insights. Brady Kavanagh who had risen from the streets to become one of the richest men in America.

“I’m not Brady Kavanagh,” he said, almost apologetic.