Mark Fishman - No. 22 Pleasure City

“Give me a break, will you?”

Shimura leaned back in his chair.

“Now tell me this,” he said. “What’s the difference between you and him?”

Aoyama took another drag at his cigarette.

“I give up,” he said.

“This thing with the money is just an idea you got, but it’s not a very good idea. It’s more like an excuse for getting yourself stuck in a problem.”

Aoyama shook his head, frowning thoughtfully.

“You can’t help everybody out of everything they get themselves mixed up in,” Shimura said.

It was just like every other time Shimura had sat him down for a few words meant to straighten him out and Aoyama had listened to what he had to say and knew that Shimura was right and that he’d got himself into a fucked-up situation, and so he felt a bit stupid and embarrassed and at the same time grateful that Shimura was telling him to watch his step because he told him in a way that meant it mattered to Shimura what happened to him.

Aoyama stared at the floor. Finally he looked up, nodded slowly, and mumbled: “What do you think?”

“That we get into the car and go over to 4 Nightingale Lane.”

Pohl put on a clean pair of underwear and socks, a laundered shirt, jeans, then polished shoes. He combed his half-white hair in front of the bathroom mirror. His face looked back at him and gave him a guilty smile. It was eleven forty-five. Violet would be pressing the buzzer in a couple of minutes.

He didn’t know why he’d given Violet his address, he didn’t have any expectations and didn’t want anything from her, but it wasn’t just curiosity about what she’d have to say that made him feel the way he was feeling now. He tried to tell himself the reason was certainly some unknown reason, but he knew he was kidding himself.

He began to ask himself some questions and pretty soon he got the answers and didn’t like them because it added up to two very important things, the first thing being that he’d taken a good look at his own eager face in the mirror, and the second was the promise of Angela’s homecoming that’d given his mind a twist — he was remembering the game with the vibrator and ball-gag — and so he had to admit he was thinking only about sex, no matter how much he scratched the itch never went away, and then he heard the buzzer.

He opened the door. Violet was standing there looking at him with her green eyes and black hair and a grin that told him he’d better watch out because he was about to get swallowed up whole. She wore a khaki knee-length raincoat and a knee-length skirt and a short-sleeved sweater, her legs were bare, she wore low-heeled shoes.

“Are you going to make me stand out here?” she said. “You can look at me all you want when I’m inside.”

His eyes were wide. He gaped at her.

“You going to let me in?” she repeated. “I’d sure like to come in.”

He took a very deep breath. He looked at the open door and then his gaze went over to Violet, going up the length of her from the shoes to the jet-black hair. He stepped aside to let her in. She brushed against him, he smelled a faint flammable odor, and he remembered that it was her natural scent. He shut the door behind her, locked it.

She went straight to the living room like she already knew the layout and took off her raincoat, folding it over the back of a chair. She spun around to face him and her skirt twirled with the motion. Pohl didn’t want to shut his eyes, it was just a reflex. They were shut, and when he realized they were shut he opened them right away to get a look at her.

“Okay, you want me to do it again?” she said, spinning to show him what she was wearing under her skirt.

He looked her up and down again. She caught a glimpse of a bulge in his crotch.

“We’re going to have a little talk,” she said. “You got anything to drink?”

Pohl was moving calmly toward her with a measured stride. He didn’t want her to know he had to catch his breath. “What would you like?”

“Vodka,” she said.

“No vodka.”

“What have you got?”

“What’s it look like?” he flipped back at her. “A hard-on.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“Whisky and soda, okay?”

“Whisky and soda it is.”

He turned around, his face red, and went to the kitchen to make a couple of drinks and to cool down. He came back with them and saw she was sitting in an armchair with her legs crossed, wagging her foot at him. He gave her the drink. He felt the temperature of his skin climb again.

She saw it, smiled, and took a sip from her glass.

“You don’t know me and I don’t know you but I’ve been thinking about you since the other night,” she said.

“I haven’t been thinking of you,” he said gently, trying to protect himself.

“Maybe not. But here I am.”

He couldn’t argue the point, so he sat down in a chair opposite her with his drink in his hand and waited for her to say more.

Violet said nothing. She looked at him, took another sip from her glass. Her foot kept on wagging at him.

He was in for something he’d wanted for a long time but didn’t have the guts to get for himself because he was passive and it would have to come to him if he was going to get it. He wanted a release valve to let off steam and the steam was his frustration with Angela, and it looked as if something that had come out of left field, Violet Archer, was going to ease that pressure. It was a normal buildup of the kind of thing that happens to a man who hasn’t been with a woman in a long time and it had to be taken care of right away.

What he couldn’t figure out was why it was going to happen the very night before Angela came back. If Violet said she wanted to fuck him, he didn’t know if he’d say yes or no because of Angela, and it was on the order of a quiz show and it worried him that maybe he wouldn’t have the right answer.

“What are we going to talk about?” he asked.

She leaned forward and said: “You and me.” She finished her drink in a gulp. “For instance, what do we have in common?”

“I don’t know you.” Pohl tried to make it sound casual.

“You don’t have to know me to know what I want.”

“What have you got in mind?”

“Plenty.” She stared at him, uncrossed her legs and opened them to give him a view.

Pohl nearly choked on his drink.

“Usually I talk about money at this point, but I’m tired of it,” she said. “Come here, on your knees.”

Pohl didn’t get what she meant about money but he followed instructions and crawled toward her until his head was between her legs.

“Lick me.”

She took a handful of his hair and pulled his mouth against the crotch of her panties and he stuck his tongue out and got them wet and then pulled at the material with his teeth. After a minute he felt a couple of fingers against his upper lip trying to get past his mouth and when they did get where they were going they pulled the piece of fabric aside and he had access to where he wanted to go.

When he came up for air, his eyes focused on the soft skin between her legs and he saw the glistening wetness of where he’d been and a scar that was a blemish on her inner thigh. He touched it with his index finger, then slipped two fingers inside her, spread the fingers and moved them rapidly in and out while the heel of his other hand pressed down on her lower belly.

A transparent liquid came out of her, a low sound came from the back of her throat, and he moved his hand faster until his wrist was soaked.

Violet looked at him through crossed eyes and when they uncrossed and she saw him clearly she was looking at a cracked smile on his face that made him look like he was high as a kite. Pohl sat back on his folded legs. He wore a grin and at the corners of it there was plenty of saliva.