Mark Fishman - No. 22 Pleasure City

looking for a honest, sweet guy treat me right. i don’t have any bf or friends

Pohl sat down, Shimura set the folded newspaper on the tabletop, stared thoughtfully at Pohl. The waiter came to the table, Pohl ordered a beer, the waiter returned with an ice-cold bottle of beer and a glass.

They raised their glasses, each thinking in terms of friendship, and the benefits that it brought, and the comfort of being a man with friends, and what it meant in a city where a majority of people thought only of themselves and what they got out of life.

“I’m late. Sorry,” Pohl said.

“You’re here.”

“That’s right.”

“And you’re looking okay.”

“I’m feeling okay. Better.”

Shimura drank from his glass.

“I want you to know that whatever was going on between Angela and Burnett, it’s finished,” he said. “Over and done. And he’s not worth wasting your time.”

Pohl looked at him and into him and said: “I’ve already come to the same conclusion. I’ve already given up on it. On the idea of doing something to him, I mean. I don’t care.” He swallowed a mouthful of beer. “I just want Angela.”

“I know you do.”

Shimura finished the Virgin Mary, waved the waiter over to the table.

“You want another?”

“No, thank you,” Pohl said. He lit a cigarette.

Shimura ordered another Virgin Mary.

“You’re my friend,” he said.

“I know that.”

“I’m thinking about Angela.”

“So am I.”

“Not like that. I mean, what are you doing?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing?”

“She’s not for you. She may be your type, but she’s not for you. If it’s sex—”

“Listen—”

“No, you listen. What are you thinking?”

“That’s a lot of questions you’re asking me.”

“I’m a detective.” Shimura suppressed a smile.

“Funny.”

“Okay. What I’m going to do now is find her for you, then it’s up to you how to handle it.”

The waiter put the glass of tomato juice in front of Shimura, who stirred the concoction of Worcestershire and Tabasco sauce and celery salt with a spoon, fished out the lemon slice, put it in his mouth and sucked on it. The waiter replaced the used ashtray with a clean one. Pohl stubbed his cigarette out in it.

“If you want to marry her,” Shimura said, “I’ll fix it so that you can ask her to marry you because I’ll find her.”

“I’m in love with her.”

“You’re infatuated. A crazy, one-sided infatuation. That’s what it is, and you know it.”

“You want me to change my mind? Why do you want me to do that?” Pohl threw his arms out in a confused, somewhat frantic gesture.

“I’m trying to tell you how it really is,” Shimura said solemnly.

“I don’t even hear you.”

“You hear me and you know it’s the truth. You have no argument. But I promised you and you can hold me to it.”

Pohl didn’t answer, he lit another cigarette and moved the idea of Angela around in different parts of his mind looking for a place where she really fit in and when his doubts about her rose like a black storm cloud, he waved them off. He gave Shimura a slow smile.

“I know I’ve got it coming, what you’re telling me,” Pohl said, “and I know that you’re saying it for my own good, but I’m not going to give up just like that.” He looked at Shimura and didn’t have to force a smile.

“What you want from her isn’t something you’re going to get, but you’ll have to find that out for yourself.” Shimura drank from his glass of tomato juice.

Pohl took a long drag at the cigarette. As the smoke came from his lips, he said: “What can I do?”

“Nothing. Leave it to me.”

Pohl waved at the waiter, who took his time making his way through the restaurant to their booth, and when he got there he took Pohl’s order, poured the contents of the half-empty bottle into Pohl’s glass. Pohl drank it down. When the waiter returned with another full bottle of ice-cold beer Pohl didn’t touch it.

“I know her, and I don’t know her,” Pohl said at last. “I haven’t figured it out. Maybe I can’t see it because I’m in love with her.”

“Maybe I can’t see anything without an angle if that’s what I’m looking for,” Shimura said.

“We’ll find out.”

“Do you think she’s in trouble?”

“No.” Pohl raised his glass of beer to his lips.

“That’s what I think, too.”

“Then what is it?” Pohl asked helplessly.

“If I knew that, well, it’d be a lot easier for both of us.”

Rand Hadley crossed the park away from its western edge bordered by the river, on freshly mowed grass, and the short green blades wet with dew moistened his shoes. Shimura sat on a wooden bench at the edge of the park facing the parkway, reading the morning edition. The sun shone brightly from a cloudless sky. The flow of cars on the parkway was like a soft-distant murmur in Shimura’s ears.

Hadley swung wide and came to the bench on Shimura’s right so as not to startle him by coming up to him from behind. Shimura folded the paper on his lap, wiped the bench seat with his handkerchief, and Hadley sat down.

“Any news from your ex-wife?” Shimura asked.

“I had her on the phone the night before last and we’ve worked it out. I’ll add something to the monthly payment, and she’ll get some overtime.”

“You’re lucky, Rand. Even divorced, you’re lucky.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

Hadley took a pack of gum out of his pocket, offered a stick to Shimura, who refused it with a smile.

“Disgusting habit,” Hadley said, then unwrapped a stick and put it in his mouth.

“There are times I wish for a special kind of surgery, like an operation that would get rid of emotions.”

“You’re wrong. It’s just the thing that gives you an edge if you don’t let it get to you,” Hadley said, chewing slowly with his mouth shut.

“Pohl’s acting just like a kid by chasing after a woman who’s about as well-balanced as somebody falling off a building. I wonder if finding her is really doing him a favor.”

“If you lose your head over that—”

“I won’t lose my head, Rand. And I’m going to find her. That’s what’s bothering me.”

“Part of a day’s work.”

“He’ll be worse off with her around.”

“You can’t please everybody. Especially when you’re a cop.”

“You’re telling me. It’s the same with detectives at the agency.”

“When you’re a cop, you’ll be criticized, no matter what you do. My advice to you is to stop cracking yourself on the head, take off the brass knuckles and go easy. You’ll get enough to sweat about from everybody else.”

“And then I think of all the cases I’ve worked on, and I get very tired.”

“We all get tired.”

“I guess I’m making a big thing out of nothing.”

“You’re doing what you can do for a friend.”

Shimura stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. The television was on with the sound switched off and the remote control lay next to him on the small sofa. He held a glass of sparkling water against his chin, staring at nothing, then put it to his open mouth and swallowed a mouthful of water and chips of ice banged against his teeth. A breeze came in through the window.

The sun wasn’t all the way down, a salmon-colored glow lit the sky. Shimura watched the sky as it grew dark and it was growing dark very fast. Now there was just the fading light outside and the movement and colors from the television. He didn’t look at the screen, the sky was always more interesting, and he stared out the windows at twilight drinking the last of the water in his glass. He was tired of the blur of the television and he shut it off with the remote control before he got up from the sofa.