Lawrence Block - No Score

We went and sat together in a booth in the back, and she kept breathing on me and dropping single entendres. She put her hand on my leg. Then she put her hand a little higher and gave me a friendly squeeze. By this time she looked about a hundred and eight and I got this all-embracing wave of nausea. I said I had to go to the toilet. I was half afraid she would follow me. I wouldn’t really put it past her. I went to the john, and then I went to the back entrance and slipped out, leaving her to pay for my coffee and find some other boy to molest. I went out of my way to avoid that particular diner ever after.

And you know something, by the time I was a couple of blocks away from that woman, I called myself every name I could think of. I mean I really felt stupid. Obviously she was nothing spectacular, but the thing of it was that she was there, for Pete’s sake, and she was willing. And it wasn’t exactly as though I had to beat women off with a club. I was, let’s face it, a very horny kid with a desperate desire to stop being a there’s-that-dumb-word-again virgin. She could at least have served that purpose. I didn’t have to love her to ball her. I didn’t even have to like her.

That was as close as I came to scoring in the streets of Chicago, that and a couple of others and come-hither glances from faggots, with one of them going so far as to make a tentative grab for me while I was making use of an industrial bathroom fixture. I told them all no, and they all took no for an answer. I guess nobody found me exactly irresistible.

You might think, after all that, that I would have spent all my time around the apartment. I did spend a lot of it there, as a matter of fact, but what drove me out of there from time to time was the fact that Aileen was driving me right out of my mind.

It wasn’t just what she looked like, which I told you about. It wasn’t just that their bedroom door was not very substantial, and that I could hear them whenever they made love, which they did almost every night. (If they hadn’t, I would have worried about Gregor. Really.) And it wasn’t just that she was so sane and healthy about her physical self that she was completely casual about walking around half naked in front of me, giving me groin-grabbing glimpses of one part of her after another until I literally ached.

It was that, on top of all of this, I was really digging her and Gregor as human beings. And it was a strange relationship, see, because I really didn’t know what sort of relationship it was supposed to be. They were both a lot older than me. I think Gregor was in his forties, and I suppose she must have been close to thirty. So some of the time they were something like replacement parents, and since they had come into my life so shortly after my own parents left it, this did seem a logical role for them to play.

But I had never felt about my own mother as I felt constantly about Aileen. (Or if I did, I wasn’t aware of it, and I’d just as soon not find out about it now, either, Dr. F.) If Aileen was my mother, then I was King Whatsisname with the broken ankles. And proud of it.

They were also like an older brother and older sister, and they were also like my boss and his wife, and they were also like my landlady and her husband, and, oh, it was too involved to keep straight. So the outcome was that I felt very comfortable and secure hanging around the apartment, reading a book or watching television or playing knock rummy with Gregor or helping Aileen with the dishes. I felt very comfortable almost all of the time, and then all at once, I would just have to get out of there before I started running around on all fours and chewing at the carpet.

I mean linoleum.

It was on a Friday night when Gregor got a phone call and said he had to go out. The first time this sort of thing had happened I got very ginchy about being left alone with Aileen, very hopeful and very anxious both at once, but nothing happened then, and after that I got accustomed to it and thought nothing of it. If anything, I found it very relaxing to be alone with her. I could talk to her when there were just the two of us in a way I couldn’t with Gregor around. About my folks, for instance, and what I wanted out of life, and various heavy things it would have embarrassed me to talk about in front of Gregor. Aileen hardly ever said much, but she had a way of listening that went down very smoothly.

Gregor went out around eight-thirty, and Aileen and I talked and watched television for about an hour and a half. Then he came back looking happy.

“We’re in business,” he told her. “Mark can use as much as five hundred or a thou’s worth of the right stuff.” He turned to me. “A photography assignment, keed. You thought I made the whole nut snapping dummies in the street, didn’t you? But sometimes something good comes up.” To Aileen he said, “I’ve got the studio from now until four in the morning if I want it.”

“You want to go there?”

“Right. And use the darkroom right there, and deliver the goods in the morning. And have the money in my pocket before that kike changes his sonofabitching mind. You want to get ready, keed?”

“Me?”

“He means me,” Aileen said.

“My prize model.”

I said, “No kidding? You do the modeling?”

“That’s how I found her, keed. My best and sweetest model. You ever look at the fashion magazines? Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar —”

“Greg, put a sock in it, damn it.”

He smiled at her. “Sure, they’re all dying to give her a spread, aren’t they, keed? And she’d give them a spread in return.”

“Greg, in one minute you can go take pictures of soup cans.”

“Just kidding.”

“I mean with photographic artistry like yours, Greg, the subject’s not really important, is it? You could go take artsy-craftsy shots of sewer gratings and the museums would stand in line for them.”

“Baby, all I said—”

“I mean let’s keep track of just who we all are, why don’t we?”

This went on awhile. I had the feeling that I’d walked in on the last reel of a movie that only made sense if you’d seen the first part. I was still thinking it over while Gregor packed his gear and Aileen went off to change her clothes and make herself up. When they were ready, Greg started picking up his equipment, and I offered to help him carry it.

He said, “Well, sure, I suppose—” and she cut in to suggest that I come along and watch a photographic session.

“You futz around in the darkroom all the time, you might as well get acquainted with all sides of the photography business. Isn’t that right, Greg?”

“You really think so?”

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s fine with me, keed.”

“It’s certainly fine with me.”

“If you say so.”

“Because this would be a dumb time for modesty, I certainly think.”

“If you say so.”

“And Chip’s practically one of the family, aren’t you, honey?”

I listened to all of this without saying anything. I suppose you figured it out a long time ago, but then you’re sitting down somewhere reading it all at once, while I was living it a little at a time. I knew there was a lot going on that I wasn’t getting, but that was as far as I could go with it. I was lost, and waiting for someone to find me.

So we walked the couple of blocks to the office suite. It was empty except for a little guy at one of the desks who was catching up with his bookkeeping. He looked up when we came in and then looked down again. We ignored him and went into the studio. Gregor locked the door.

He set up his equipment and arranged various lights and things, explaining it all to me as he did it. I didn’t catch much of what he was saying because I was too busy trying to figure out what I was missing.