The Price of the Ticket Read online

  Did he know a place.

  It was called Mrs. Robinson’s. Oak bound in brass, ferns in pots suspended from the ceiling; James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart and Jean-Paul Belmondo sulking on the walls; Dustin Hoffman wielding a cross. Music too loud, too up, and, sure enough, if you stuck around the loop always came back to Simon and Garfunkel. Orchestrated anarchy, highly-paid alienation, watered booze, noise fit only to stunt or even supplant perception.

  “How does it feel, so far?” the guy said, holding the door for her.

  “Like I died and went to heaven.”

  “Name’s Joel,” he said, releasing the door behind her and extending his hand.

  “Oh,” she blushed. “Miranda.” They shook.

  “That’s nice,” he said, keeping her hand. “Like the Decision.”

  She slipped her hand from his grasp. “You’re a lawyer?”

  “My degree’s in law, but I work in bonds. That’s where–”

  “–the money is,” she said brightly.

  “Pretty,” he smiled. “And smart, too.”

  The bar was granite and brass with a little teak. The bartender was dressed in the moral antithesis of a dress with slits up the front and back, like he’d just come in from a round of tennis in the 19th century, from the puttees right up to a heavily cabled sweater with garroting chevrons. He smiled when he saw Joel, and frowned when he saw Celeste.

  Joel said, “Hi, Byron,” and laid a fifty dollar bill on the bar between them. “This is my friend Miranda. She’s temping this week at Boulton McKenzie,” he added pointedly.

  “Byron. That’s an interesting name,” she said brightly. “You Australian?”

  Byron frowned tentatively. “No.…”

  “He’s an animal, though,” Joel said. “Going up for those boards a third time. Aren’t you Byron.”

  Byron shrugged.

  “Miranda went to Cal, too,” Joel chipped in, to no discernible purpose.

  Byron reversed the frown and added teeth. “What say, babe.” He spun a square napkin onto the bar in front of her, and another in front of Joel.

  Celeste smiled uncertainly and said, “Go, ah.…” She snapped her fingers at him: “Bears?”

  Byron turned both thumbs up.

  “Hey Byron,” said Joel. “Any idea how come all the lawyers wound up in L.A. and all the faggots wound up in San Francisco?”

  “Hey, no, how come, hey,” said Byron. He avoided eye-contact with Joel and got fastidious with lining up a row of clean glasses.

  “San Francisco had first choice, hey.”

  “All right,” said Byron, high-fiving Joel over the bar. “I’m moving to L.A. in the morning.”

  “Never work out, Byron,” said Joel, resuming his seat. “They got the same law boards down there as we do here.”

  “Bummer,” said Byron.

  “Better you should become queer and stick around.”

  “Either that or become a bond salesman,” said Byron.

  The two comrades shared a laugh of mutual derision.

  “Gosh,” said Celeste, after an awkward silence. “It’s so modern in here.” She cast her gaze here and there, then brought her eyes back to Byron. “Did you design it yourself?”

  Byron tilted his head. “Ahm, no. I’m not sure who did, in fact.”

  “That’s an interesting question, Byron,” Joel pointed out. “Do you think you could find out the answer to it?”

  Celeste looked distressed. “Oh no, that’s way too much trouble–”

  “No problem, ahm.…”

  “Miranda,” Joel prompted.

  Thanks, Celeste thought. She’d forgotten it, too.

  “Miranda.” Byron nodded. “If Mike the day manager’s still around I’ll ask him about the design. Can I get you something in the meantime?”

  “Cuervo Gold with a Corona back,” said Joel. He turned and looked at Celeste. “Miranda?”

  “Wow,” said Celeste. “I’ll bet you windsurf, too.”

  “As a matter of fact.…” Joel began.

  “A Margarita, I guess,” said Celeste, “so long as we’re going to Mexico.”

  “Cuervo Oro, Juan back, margarita–salt?”

  Celeste, frowning, nodded.

  Byron pulled a stainless steel canister from beneath the counter, pitched it into his opposite hand, and walked down the bar.

  “Did he mean like as in Juan Corona, mass murderer?” asked Celeste.

  Joel was staring at her. “Huh? Oh. Yes. Juan Corona beer, murderer of masses.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  Joel nodded, staring at her. “Yours is an exotic beauty,” he said.

  “Do you ever wonder why,” Celeste asked, pointing at a row of posters, “these kinds of joints never have pictures of Jean Seberg, along with these other clowns?” She looked at Joel. “Do you really think it’s because her politics were wrong? Or was it simply that she had the bad taste to die in a car that wasn’t moving?”

  Joel propped his chin in his hand, his amorous expression struggling with bemusement. Here sat a guy who just naturally assumed that any woman who would talk to him was more stupid than he was. But after a moment he said, “Can you snort coke past that bone in your nose?” and he raised his eyebrows interrogatively.

  Bonus points for the clown in bonds, Celeste thought. But aloud she responded, “Does a communist go to bed every night hoping to wake up in Disneyland,” adding coyly, “Dude?”

  Joel smiled a big smile, and for the first time Celeste noticed his teeth were clenched. “Every night,” he said, and didn’t even bother to lower his voice conspiratorially when he asked her, “Will you join me in the unisexual lounge?”

  The bar was crowded and loud by the time Joel and Celeste made their third trip to the toilets. They locked themselves in the stall farthest from the entrance. The music in the bathrooms was even louder than it was out front. The lines Joel laid on the back of the toilet tank were bigger than their predecessors, and his were bigger than hers.

  Leaning to snort the second line of the third set, Celeste heard Joel’s zipper behind her, and felt the hem of her skirt lifted to her waist.

  “Mmmmm,” said Joel. He leaned against her and slipped his penis between her legs. Hardening already. Celeste gripped it with her thighs and inhaled the drug off the porcelain, allowing her sharp inhalation to convulse all the muscles between her knees and her waist.

  Joel did a little sharp inhaling himself. “Hang on,” she said primly.

  “Why?” he breathed, cupping her breasts.

  “There’s a condom in here somewhere,” she said, rummaging in her purse, which stood on the lowered lid of the toilet seat.

  The suggestion stimulated Joel, who closed his eyes and gyrated his hips.

  “We just don’t know where that thing’s been lately, now do we? You probably lost track, you busy boy.”

  Joel loved it. He was fully engorged when she gripped the tip of his penis with one hand and very carefully laid the duller edge of the blade of Pauley’s father’s straight razor in the crease between the base of Joel’s penis and the sack of his testicles.

  He stopped breathing on her neck.

  “All your bread,” she whispered against his hairline, “and the coke, into the purse.”

  “I-I-I’m–”

  She tightened the grip. “I know,” she said quietly, “a guy like you can be sensible and spend money at the same time.” Her palm was sweating.

  She felt his hand between her behind and his thigh, digging into the side pocket of his jacket. He dropped cash, coins and a bindle into the open purse on the toilet seat.

  “Keep the watch.”

  “Th-th-than.…”

  “Don’t thank me. Thank your taste. Now sit. Sit, sit. Straddle the base of the bowl. Good boy. Now lie down. Quick! Good boy. I’m going to step back over you. Ah ah, careful.…”

  She released him just as he ejaculated. The sperm and his face were as white as the tiles he lay on. Joel
clutched himself and spasmed, nearly doubling up on the floor. She had plenty of time. He was liable to be puking, too, before he got out of here. The tighter he held his penis, the further the sperm shot over his pinstripes. It would be a long time before Joel had another orgasm as good as this one.

  She leaned down and whispered, “Joel?”

  “Y-y-y-.…”

  He was completely convulsed, holding on with both hands, and still his cock was pumping. He managed to focus his eyes. She showed him the razor, then closed it.

  Joel’s eyes filled with tears. He nodded and blinked and made a little noise halfway between a gasp and a whimper, like maybe it was the first time he’d ever been jerked off.

  At the bar she signaled to Byron, who leaned toward her solicitously.

  “Damn it, Byron,” she said. “Is there a store around here, like a pharmacy?” she lowered her voice. “I’m having an attack of womanhood? You know.…”

  Byron raised an eyebrow, stood up straight, and pointed at the wall of glass and bottles behind him. “Block and a half west, across California. Next to the travel agency.”

  She picked a twenty out of Joel’s change, still on the bar, and winked at Byron. “You’re a dear,” she said. “Set up another round and tell that hell-raising Joel I’ll be back in a flash.” She folded the twenty around her forefinger, dropped her arm, and walked with an exaggerated wiggle to the street door, the twenty flashing at her hip.

  Friday night and Joel, Byron thought, gathering the beer bottle, glasses and napkins from the bar, his eye alternating between the greenback and her behind, Friday night’s always been a big night for that Joel.

  Chapter Seven

  PAULEY FORGOT THE TRANSMISSION AND ITS BOX OF PARTS AS soon as he turned his back on them. When he remembered and checked they were gone so he forfeited the bet to himself, just to have the cash flow. Horseknocker would have remembered. Horseknocker also would have shouldered the Torquemada as if it were crated helium. Moreover, he had the ability to move boxes and keep track of time simultaneously. But Horseknocker, whose real name was Horstknohler, had last been seen in front of the Roxie Theater, waiting on line for a midnight showing of an intellectual porn epic called Café Flesh, and he was on LSD and insulting people too, as unnamed sources would have it. Though at the back of the line at the movie theater, Horseknocker stood in the front ranks of those who hunger for all the stimuli the world has to offer. Strong as his nickname, 42 years old, still claiming to be blinded by the light, any light at all, Horseknocker managed to sample such stimuli at will, yet he had never been arrested for anything more serious than telling a cop where to put his nightstick. A real marvel. Most of the fights he’d lost had stemmed from similar carelessness, but that didn’t matter because he liked to fight. This is not to say that Horseknocker had never indulged in various crimes, including physical labor, for the money with which he could purchase his drugs and other entertainments. Quite the contrary. But it must be said he genuinely enjoyed work–legal or otherwise. All a prospective employer had to do was find him.

  Pauley left word on the street that he had some work for Horseknocker, and forged ahead. By one o’clock he’d crated another Torquemada, a Catherine Wheel, two sets of John Winthrop stocks, a Junipero Serra and a Golden Spike. Still no Horseknocker. So Pauley handtrucked these and other works to the Toyota and manhandled them into the bed by himself. The kidney belt, the handtruck, the pinch bar. By one the truck was loaded and tied off and Pauley had a pinch in his sacrum. A very big guy had body-slammed him onto a concrete floor a long time ago, and Pauley’s back hadn’t been the same since. But this injury aside, he was simply too old to be doing what he was doing after doing what he had done to get to where he was, which was nowhere except too old to die young. He should have planned his youth more carefully. Yeah, said a little voice. Get one a them pocket agendas.

  He lashed down the load and wasted a few minutes hanging around his office in the hopes that Horseknocker might make it in time to help at the other end of the route. Close to the entrance door of the basement, from where he could keep an eye on the truck, the office consisted of four square feet of plywood cantilevered off a post with a stool in front of it. The stool was a recent modernization. A wall-mounted telephone hung on the post above the plywood and nails driven at different levels into all four sides of the post held the paperwork. Pencils, pens, keys, drill bits, chuck keys, a reefer and a nose bone stuck out of various holes drilled into the post. Not a dope-smoker, Pauley had put the reefer there three months ago, and bet against himself on how long it would be before Horseknocker noticed it. Bearings, two halves of a broken sharpening stone, a chain saw file, an end wrench and further miscellany cluttered the surface of the desk–everybody called it that. “Where’s that invoice?” “On the desk.” “Oh.” At the base of the post a pair of two-foot stacks of catalogs served as footrests.

  Some day he would be big-time. His office would have a door and a chair, maybe even a throw rug. Salesmen would call on him. To encourage his business they would give him preferential discounts and complimentary ballpoint pens. He would have employees. Many keys would dangle from his fob. City tax assessments would give him tachycardia. The Makita Girl would hang on his wall.

  Sitting on the stool he hunched over the desk and idly untwisted one end of the reefer. Strange it had taken Horseknocker so long to notice it, usually such a hound for dope. Pauley rolled the cigarette back and forth between his fingertips, the untwisted end down. Small flecks of vegetable matter ticked to the surface of his invoice pad. The flecks were not green, however; they were cinnamon brown. He pinched a few between his fingers and sniffed. Redwood sawdust. The son of a bitch had noticed.

  Pauley threw the cigarette out the shop door in disgust. That made ten bucks a day one half of his mind owed to the other half. How many days would it have been? Need he ask? Horseknocker had probably made the switch immediately, and bet himself Pauley would never notice. Pauley had himself 900 bucks ahead when he was probably 890 bucks behind.

  Maybe he could write it off.

  The only way to one-up this little game would be to get another reefer off the delivery driver who’d laid the first one on him. He could then substitute the legitimate reefer for the sawdust reefer, and wait and see.… And so on and so forth, a thing done for amusement in the workplace.…

  The stack of catalogs included a complete run of Affliction, as well as back issues of Fine Woodworking, Progressive Architecture, American Bowl Turner, Set Screw Review, and Design Appraiser, all complimentary, all unread. Somewhere among them was a single issue of Architectural Reader, which featured a spread of photos detailing the immodest “pied a terre” of an anonymous New Yorker. Anonymous but famous, the article assures us. Salient among the photos was a rather complete torture chamber, right down to a sound-proofed oubliette with a four-inch floor-drain. Though the article praised them as “exquisite and foreboding antiques”, many of the accouterments of the room were modern replicas selected from the pages of the Affliction catalogue, and if it was one of the catalog’s furniture-sized implements of torture, Pauley had built it. The room’s owner, ostensibly straight (plenty of dish available), ostensibly married (ditto), was also ostensibly “fascinated by the medieval mind” (“He has one,” the Funnel once remarked wistfully.) and collected “period implements.” Whereas most decorators would kill for a single photo in Architectural Reader, Comstock’s connections were such that even an outlandish put-on such as this one was business as usual, stretching to four pages.…

  The telephone woke him just as he’d dozed off.

  He watched it ring, squinting, trying to clear his mind. Once, twice, three times, a fourth. When he reached to pick it up his back twinged.

  “Ouch.”

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “I’ll start again.”

  “Sure.”

  “Mr. Paulos?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is Sergeant Vit
alli.” Pauley’s heart skipped a beat. “I’m calling on behalf of the Police Benevolent Association. How are you today, sir?”

  Pauley sighed raggedly. “I’ve got bad knees, a worse back, a girlfriend half my age, taxes in arrears, and a record, Sergeant. How about yourself?”

  “Oh. I’m sorry to hear about all that, sir.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Now, about this year’s funding drive.…”

  “First, Sergeant, let me ask you. What percentage of your agency’s collections actually gets to the charity you’re collecting for?”

  “I don’t have to give that information over the phone, sir.”

  “Aha.”

  “Are you the head of your household?”

  Pauley hung up.

  Still no Horseknocker. After a few minutes of shuffling through the paperwork piled on the desk he found the invoice book, on top the whole time. Though he kept duplicates, the invoices were mainly for the benefit of his customers. The rest of the business he kept in his head. Someday some Tax Commission was going to come down on him, and there would be hell, or, worse, money to pay. It would wreck his business. No, not his business. It would wreck his peace of mind. Hah. Peace of mind. Printing carefully, he listed the load in the truck, the price of each item, the total balance due. It ran to two pages. Wholesale, no tax.

  The phone began to ring again. He let it ring while he carefully printed NET 5 DAYS at the bottom of the invoice. Comstock was a good guy, and Pauley had met guys somewhat like Willie the Funnel in prison, decent guys with deeply fissured cortexes–often brilliant, usually twisted–Pauley got along fine with the two partners who owned the company. But the Affliction accounting department was always throwing carefully untwisted procedure at Pauley. Lately they had taken to whining that they needed thirty days just to get their paperwork together and, besides, their ‘check cycle’ cycled every two weeks. This meant that if Pauley submitted his invoice at certain more or less inscrutable times of the month, payment could be delayed up to something like 43 days. Because they came every other Friday, check runs never had the same dates from one month to the next. But the real problem was a guy Harry, the accountant, had once met in a Folsom Street bathhouse in 1983, who last month had the decency to call and tell Harry that he (the guy) had tested HIV-positive. So now things were a little disjoint around the Affliction accounting office, and while Pauley was loath to bother a frightened man about so simple and stupid a thing as money, check runs had become hit and miss. Pauley was idly wondering whether the bathhouse might ever have had a board for a desk when a twinge from his sacrum interrupted the thought as he answered the telephone again.