Thomas Pynchon - Bleeding Edge

But wait. She realizes these are yenta reflexes, like, please Vip, you can do so much better, so forth. Doesn’t even know him, already she’s criticizing his sex-partner choices?

Her attention drifts back into a shot of them getting dressed again while chatting animatedly. What? Maxine’s pretty sure she stayed awake, but it seems there was no money shot, instead, at some point, this has begun to diverge from canonical porn into, aaahh! improv! yes, they are now giving themselves lines, with deliveries of the sort that drive high-school drama teachers to drug abuse. Cut away to a close-up of Vip’s credit cards, all laid out like a fortune-teller’s tableau. Maxine pauses the tape, runs it back and forth, writing down what numbers she can, though the low resolution blurs some of them. The three get into a sub-vaudeville routine with Vip’s plastic, handing the cards back and forth, passing witty remarks about each one, all except for a black card that Vip keeps flashing at Shae and Bruno, causing them to recoil in exaggerated horror like teen vampires from a bulb of garlic. Maxine recognizes the fabled AmEx “Centurion” card, which you have to charge at least $250K a year on or they take it away from you.

“You guys allergic to titanium?” Vip playfully, “c’mon, you afraid there’s a chip in it, some lowlife detector gonna trigger a silent alarm on you guys?”

“Mall security don’t scare me,” Bruno all but whining, “been outrunning those ’suckers all my life.”

“I just show em some skin,” Shae adds, “they like that.”

Shae and Bruno head out the door, and Vip collapses back on the phony angora. Whatever he’s tired from, this ain’t an afterglow.

“On to the Tanger Outlets, fuck yeah,” cries Bruno.

“Anything we can get you, Vippy?” Shae over her shoulder with one of those Are-you-looking-at-my-ass-again? smiles.

“Off,” Vip mutters, “would be nice sometime.”

The camera stays on Vip till he turns to face it, resentful, reluctant. “Not too happy tonight, are we, Willy?” inquires a voice from behind it.

“You noticed.”

“You have the look of a man things are closing in on.”

Vip shifts his eyes away and nods, miserable. Maxine wonders why she ever quit smoking. The voice, something about the voice is familiar. Somehow she’s heard it on television, or something close to it. Not a specific person, but a type of voice, maybe a regional accent…

Where could this tape have come from? Somebody who wants Maxine to know about Vip’s household arrangements, some invisible Mrs. Grundy with a strong disapproval of threesomes? Or somebody closer, say more of a principal in the matter, maybe even a party to Vip’s skimming activities. One of those Disgruntled Employees again? What would Professor Lavoof say beyond his trademark, “There has to be a world off the books”?

Same old sad template here—by now there’s an unfriendly clock on Vip’s affairs, maybe he’s already kiting checks, wife and kids as usual totally without clue. Does it ever end well? Ain’t like it’s jewel thieves or other charming scoundrels, there’s nothing and nobody these fraudfeasors won’t betray, the margin of safety goes on dwindling, one day they’re overcome by remorse and either run away from their lives or commit terminal stupidity.

“Slow-Onset Post-CFE Syndrome, girl. Can’t you allow for at least one or two honest people here and there?”

“Sure. Someplace. Not on my daily beat, however, thanks all the same.”

“Pretty cynical.”

“How about ‘professional’? Go ahead, wallow in hippie thoughts if you want, meantime Vip is floating out to sea and nobody’s told Search and Rescue about it.”

Maxine rewinds, ejects, and, returning to realworld television programming, begins idly to channel-surf. A form of meditating. Presently she has thumbed her way into what seems to be a group-therapy session on one of the public-access channels.

“So—Typhphani, tell us your fantasy.”

“My fantasy is, I meet this guy, and we walk on the beach, and then we fuck?”

After a while, “And…”

“Maybe I see him again?”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah. That’s my fantasy.”

“Yes Djennyphrr, you had your hand up? What’s your fantasy?”

“Being on top when we fuck? Like, usually he’s on top? My fantasy is, is I’m on top for a change?”

One by one, the women in this group describe their “fantasies.” Vibrators, massage oil, and PVC outfits are mentioned. It doesn’t take long. Maxine’s reaction is, is she’s appalled. This is fantasy? Feeuhnt-uh-see? Her sisters in Romance Deficiency Disorder, this is the best they can come up with for what they think they need? Schlepping through her bedtime routine, she takes a good look in the bathroom mirror. “Aaaahh!”

It is not hair or skin condition tonight so much as the Knicks second-color road jersey she’s wearing. With SPREWELL 8 on the back. Not even a gift from Horst or the boys, no, she actually went down to the Garden, stood in a line, and bought it for herself, paying retail, for a perfectly good reason, of course, having been in the habit of going to bed with nothing on, falling asleep reading Vogue or Bazaar , and waking up stuck to the magazine. There is also her mostly unavowed fascination with Latrelle Sprewell and his history of coach assault, on the principle that Homer strangling Bart we expect, but when Bart strangles Homer…

“Obviously,” she remarks now to her reflection, “you are doing much, much better than those public-access losers. So… Makseenne! what’s your fantasy?”

Um, bubble bath? Candles, champagne?

“Ah-ah? forgot that stroll by the river? all right if I just step over to the toilet here, do some vomiting?”

SHAWN NEXT MORNING is tons of help.

“There’s this… client. Well, not really. Somebody I’m worried about. He’s in twenty kinds of trouble, his situation is dangerous, and he won’t let it go.” She does a recap on Vip. “It’s depressing the way I keep running into the same scenario time and again, every chance these clowns get to choose, they always bet on their body, never on their spirit.”

“No mystery, quite common in fact…” He pauses, Maxine waits, but that seems to be it.

“Thanks, Shawn. I don’t know what my obligations are here. It used to be I didn’t care, whatever they got coming, they deserve. But lately…”

“Tell me.”

“I don’t like what’s going to happen, but I’d feel bad ratting this guy out to the cops too. Which is what led me to wonder could I just pick your brain a little. Was all.”

“I know what you do for a living, Maxine, I know it’s all ethical trip- wires, and I don’t like to put in. Do I. OK. Listen anyway.” Shawn tells her the Buddhist Parable of the Burning Coal. “Dude is holding this burning-hot coal in his hand, obviously suffering a lot of pain. Somebody comes by—‘Whoa, excuse me, isn’t that a burning-hot coal in your hand, there?’

“‘Ooh, ooh, ow, man, yes and like, like it really hurts, you know?’

“‘I can see that. But if it’s making you suffer, why do you keep holding on to it?’

“‘Well, duh-uhh? ’cause I need to, don’t I—aahhrrgghh!’

“‘You’re… into pain? you’re a nutcase? what is it? Why not just let it go?’

“‘OK, check it out—can’t you see how beautiful it is? lookit, the way it glows? like, the different colors? and aahhrrhh, shit…’

“‘But carrying it around in your hand like this, it’s giving you third-degree burns, man, couldn’t you like set it down someplace and just look at it?’

“‘Somebody might take it.’