Mark Fishman - No. 22 Pleasure City

Then because he was a human being he started to worry about the money. The worry was more or less along practical lines. He couldn’t ask Fitch for money because he wasn’t looking for a payoff, in fact he even saw the possibility that he might have to give Fitch something since he’d have to get him to agree to his side of it. He’d have to convince him it was the right thing to do and Fitch wasn’t some kid who accepted candy for payment and if he didn’t go along with it he might make things difficult for them. A struggle wasn’t what they needed to get him to give her up. And what he knew about Fitch didn’t give him a lot of confidence in the setup. He’d have to play it as it lay.

Shimura turned right onto Ruby Avenue and parked at the curb. He walked over to the market on 12th. A plump young woman with dingy-blonde hair walked through the narrow aisles gathering items that she held in her arms. Shimura picked out a couple of bottles of sparkling water from the refrigerator. He wanted to ignore her but found himself sneaking a look as she bent down to pick up an item placed on the lower shelf. She wore a jean jacket and beneath it a tight-fitting dress made of some stretchy material that spread out across her round bottom and gave him a good picture of the shape of her buttocks and the space between them.

The man who owned the market gave him a smile and the way Shimura interpreted the smile, what he thought it meant, left him cold. He was just looking at her and didn’t want to do anything more than that because it was enough of a pleasure to look at all women. But that quickly changed. He took a chocolate bar from the display in front of the cash register. The plump blonde was standing behind him. He could smell the perfume she wore and it was a good smell and it wasn’t cheap. He paid for the water and chocolate bar.

Standing on the sidewalk, he tried to shake off her smell and turn the dizziness he felt into a picture of his girlfriend. The picture didn’t develop because Tomiko was out of town for a few days working flights going east and west. He hadn’t thought of getting mixed up with another woman, it just came to him when he saw the blonde. He didn’t even think about whether or not she might accept an invitation because thinking wasn’t what it was about when he was under the influence of a hard-on. He saw his tongue run up and down the space between her buttocks leaving a snail’s trail of saliva on fine blonde hairs. He blinked, lit a cigarette, took a drag, tossed it in the street and walked home.

In the kitchen he poured a glass of sparkling water, squeezed lemon in it and added ice. He drank it down and felt the icy cold hit his erection, but that didn’t make it go away. The dingy-blonde’s buttocks shook before his eyes and his eyes watered as if he were slicing an onion.

He threw off his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt but left it on, went into his bedroom and dropped his trousers. He lay on his back in bed, shut his eyes and masturbated until he came on the back of his hand. He hadn’t felt such a strong urge in a long time. He got up, washed his hands, buttoned his shirt, walked around the apartment in his boxer shorts with the shirttail over the elastic waistband and his feet in a pair of lavender socks.

At this point, he wondered what it was about her that had switched him on and made him crazy for sex. He hadn’t felt like this in a long time. He wished that Tomiko wasn’t out of town. He paced back and forth in the living room with an unlit cigarette between his lips. He wasn’t nervous but so intensely focused that he couldn’t stop moving. Then he snapped his fingers, lit the cigarette and sat at his desk.

People in the city indulged themselves in anything and everything and the need to gratify their appetites was so concentrated and fine that it seeped into the smallest cracks of the mind and left something like biochemical grains there which sprouted desire and that desire grew until it broke sooner or later through the skin. They did whatever they had to do to get themselves a dose of pleasure. The city had got to him. Knowing this, it was as though someone had moved in and lifted a burning weight from his shoulders.

Shimura put out the cigarette and went to the full-length mirror in the bedroom, stripped off his boxer shorts and socks and shirt. He stared at himself but didn’t see anything except his naked body. There were the usual sparse black hairs on his thighs and chest, a patch of pubic hair and his cock was no longer erect. His skin was masculine, muscular and white.

He felt a little weary. He wasn’t the man he’d been a few short weeks ago, and he knew it. The search for Angela Mason had made him ask more questions than he’d had answers to, and when those questions were about himself and how he spent his time trying to solve other people’s problems without solving any of his own he became morose.

But that reflection lasted a few seconds and he recognized the thinking for what it was which wasn’t anything special except a way to make himself feel bad.

He didn’t know what he wanted now, but he knew he had to do something to change his mind because standing in front of the mirror looking at himself was making him really crazy. He wasn’t going to waste time figuring out what the biochemical grains were up to, he had to get out of there.

He threw his discarded clothes in the hamper and got dressed in clean clothes, picked up money and keys to his car, put on a lightweight coat, turned off the lights and left the apartment.

Standing next to his car on Ruby Street, he hesitated and looked to the left at the corner market. It was still open. He walked slowly toward it.

Burnett looked at his wristwatch. It was nine o’clock.

“So, you’ve got a new girl,” Violet said, sitting on the sofa. She narrowed her eyes at him.

He sat down opposite her, covering himself carefully with the hem of the bathrobe because beneath it he was wearing the dark-blue panty briefs Cathy Jones had worn while they were fucking. Just before she’d left he told her to leave them behind.

“What’s it to you?” Burnett said, leaning forward to pick up his glass of whisky. The bathrobe parted slightly, he drew it over his knees.

“Drop it. I’m just warning you,” Violet said firmly.

“Drop what?” His eyes flickered warily. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Don’t play innocent with me, Lew. I saw her. I saw the way she was walking. Limping, really. You’ve done it again. You must’ve done to her what you did to me.”

“Now listen, Violet—”

“No, you listen. If you’ve done any damage to her like you’ve done to me I’ll make sure you’re fucked up permanently by somebody who knows how to do the job.”

“Don’t threaten me, sister.”

“You’d better wake up to yourself, Lew.” She stood up. “And don’t call me sister.”

“Sit down, please. You’re behaving like a jealous child.”

“I’m not jealous because I’m not interested in you. And you know I’m no child. I mean what I’m saying. You’re finished with her if you’re going to play the kind of games with her you’re used to playing.”

Violet’s arm swung out and knocked the whisky glass out of his hand, his arm flew backward, the glass shattered against a pristine white wall beneath the dark frame of a photograph. Burnett stood up, the bathrobe swung open, Violet saw a pair of women’s panties stretched across his erect cock.

She started laughing. She was bent over double and holding her sides and almost choking with laughter. Burnett, smiling at first, laughed along with her until they both had tears in their eyes.

They stopped laughing at the same time. He sat down on the sofa, leaving the bathrobe open. She sat down next to him. Nothing was said for almost a minute.