William Bayer - Tangier

After a while he stopped, exhausted, feeling pain in all his joints. There was a band of burning across his chest. The walk had worn him out. He looked around, spied an outcropping of rock, went to it, sat down to rest. Life was so unfair. For ten years he'd struggled. And then-one humiliation after another had piled on since May, until now, in August, his world had turned to ash.

He gazed down upon Tangier. The city glowed miles below. It baked away beneath the brutal sun, a secret city, closed upon itself. How lonely it looks, he thought, that decaying town of ancient streets. For a decade his life there had been sweet. Now everything was over, and the city was growing mean.

Yes, it was more than TP that was over for him now. It was Tangier that was finished too. A way of life. A sweet embrace. That season had come now to its end. The Moroccans had turned against the Europeans. They didn't want to live with foreigners anymore. The era of the Mountain would soon be over, and those who'd just scorned him would soon be scorned themselves.

His eyes glazed as he began to think about himself, look back upon his life, take the measure of his worth. He'd spent years, he realized, in cheap theatrical hotels, hovels not much better than his shanty in Dradeb. He'd spent a lifetime trying to preserve his dignity in the face of all the humiliations an actor must endure. What had it meant-his life upon the stage? Not much , he thought- barely anything at all . He'd played uncles and butlers and inspectors from Scotland Yard, small, neat, lonely little men with a moment or two of grandeur, a line or two of wit. Theater, he'd told himself, was nothing if it was not an art, but he'd always known this wasn't so, that it was a shabby life, a glittering sham.

He had a revelation then of what he truly was: a discarded old actor, irrelevant, gone to grief, gazing down upon a foreign city that had never recognized his talent and had always been hostile to his dream. He was an extraneous, foolish old man, clutching tight to a ridiculous creation while others, equally foolish, pried hard to unloose his grasp. He lowered his head, covered his face, prepared to sob with pity for himself. But all he could conjure to express despair was a bone-dry bitter laugh.

And yet-he loved Tangier. Uncovering his eyes, looking down again, he was moved by its beauty, its whiteness through the August haze. Then he was overwhelmed by a sense of his own mortality: soon death would overtake him, though Tangier would survive.

Death . He'd thought about that a lot of late, pausing at midday sometimes on the sweltering streets, staring off into space, or lying naked on his sagging bed at night praying for a cooling breeze. But still he was glad he'd climbed so high, had taken in this stunning view. He knew with utter certainty now that he would not live to see another summer in Tangier.

Sitting in his office one Sunday afternoon in August, waiting for Peter Zvegintzov, Lake felt that he was finally putting things in order, and that the climax of everything was near. For weeks he'd thought of his life as a film in which two opposing stories were intercut: his descent into a pit of sensuality with Jackie, and the execution of his plan for Z.

He'd tried to simplify, had taken certain steps. He'd sent his wife and sons back to Minnesota for the month, on the pretext that his mother needed company and that the boys would profit from a change of scene. Then he'd distracted Foster, inventing all sorts of time-consuming tasks. He'd sent him into the city to study social currents, and several weeks ago on an inspection tour of northern Morocco which, he hoped, would last at least a month.

Lake sat back in his swivel chair, smiled, and closed his eyes. Now finally rid of his wife and his lover's husband, he could concentrate on the great adventure of his life. In less than an hour the Russian would be closing up his shop. Lake had invited him to the empty air-conditioned Consulate to mount the final stage of his assault.

The telephone rang, harsh, abrupt. Lake was startled. He sat up straight. Who the hell was it, he wondered, reaching for the phone. Not some stranded tourist, he hoped, or Zvegintzov begging off.

"Hello."

"It's me."

It was Jackie, her voice mellow and breathy. She called him all the time now, day and night.

"Is that you?" she asked.

"Of course it's me," he said. "Who else would be here on a Sunday? Who'd you think it was?"

"Just wondered how the work's going," she said. "I'm lying here in bed now, absolutely stark. Gosh, I'm horny, Dan. My legs are thrashing. I'm just dying for you to come."

"Well," he said, pleased by the image of her spread out, tempestuous with desire, "you're going to have to wait quite a while, Jackie dear. I've still got a hell of a lot of paperwork to do."

"Okay, Dan. That's Okay. Just wanted you to know I'm waiting for you here." She made a squeaky little kissing noise just before hanging up.

Horny! Christ! When was she not?

She was a man-eater, insatiable. There were marks all over him that testified to her passion. When she was excited she clawed him like a tigress. Though she proclaimed herself a vegetarian, she devoured his flesh like meat. They'd screwed, he guessed, over every chair and table in the office, on top of his big State Department desk, even against the dictionary stand. Her gymnast's body was capable of incredible contortions. Sex to her was joyous exercise.

It was marvelous to be involved with such a creature, not much good for anything, he thought, except to screw. He'd been contemptuous of her at first, had found her utterly moronic, but after a while, when she'd reduced him to the state of a happy animal, he began to find great virtue in her guiltless pursuit of sex. He let her lead him then, turned his body over to her to use. And use it she did, pleasuring and exhausting him, restoring his vigor, curing his insomnia, sweeping away the worries that had been cluttering up his mind.

She even had him doing calisthenics now. ("Got to work off all the flab, Dan! Got to get yourself back in shape!") She taught him how to jog in place and stand on his head against the wall. He did a dozen pushups every morning and skipped rope nude at night.

At first her addiction to athletics put him off. They'd be screwing away, lost in a rhythmic daze, and then he'd begin to hear her counting off the strokes. "One, two, three, four!" Christ! It was like being in boot camp or training at a YMCA gym. But eventually he got used to it, and her athletic imagery too. The more he thought about it, the more impressed he was by her imaginative powers. Going to bed was "going to the mats." Afterward they'd "hit the showers," then have a "skull session" to figure out "new plays." When she wasn't ready, and needed more oral stimulation, she'd suggest he "take another lap."

She was full of tricks too, such as fondling his organ through the rough mesh of her pantyhose, or taking the rubber band off her ponytail and letting her long hair fall upon his genitals like a gentle, tickling rain. She'd shake her head slowly then, side to side, using her hair to arouse.

Sometimes she called him up at the office to ask if he was "horny" or to make an obscene suggestion in her cheerful, breathy voice. She was a maniac for oral sex, and would suggest it to him at the oddest times. "I want to give you head, Dan," she whispered once at a reception for the officers of a Sixth Fleet submarine. Christ-she was unbelievable. He couldn't think of anything but her golden pubic fleece. Once she came into La Colombe when he was down on his hands and knees helping Zvegintzov fix his ice cream freezer. At the sight of her calves (she was wearing shorts) he trembled so much he dropped his screwdriver on the floor.