Lawrence Block - Getting Off

Now and then, a man. Not a mannish woman, there were plenty of those, but occasionally a man entering or leaving, sometimes accompanied by a woman, sometimes alone. One of these — alone, shoulders slumped, hands in pockets — reminded her for a split second of Sid.

Sid from Philadelphia, who of course was not from Philadelphia, and was probably not named Sid. Sid the Cipher, Sid the Unfindable, the one remaining name on her list of Things to Undo. Sid who, just by existing, kept her from — what?

Living her life.

But this wasn’t Sid. It was just a man who looked disappointed, as if he’d expected to find the secret of the universe in a dykery, and—

Oh, for Christ’s sake. That’s why they called the place in Memphis The Daiquiri Dock , even in the utter absence of a Caribbean motif. Daiquiri=Dykery. It had taken her a week and a few hundred miles to get the joke.

She shook her head, finished her coffee. Then she’d returned to her hotel room.

Tonight she was back, and dressed and groomed for the place, more femme than butch, but certainly no housewife, no sorority girl, no cheerleader. Just a woman looking to meet a woman.

Missy, she thought. Tonight her name would be Missy.

And tonight she didn’t hesitate. She went inside, made her way to the bar.

While his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, the man led the woman to a booth with a good view of the bar. He sat down opposite her and breathed deeply, watching the women around him. And they were all women; he hadn’t seen another man since he crossed the threshold.

He said, “God, I love this place.”

“You love what we find here.”

“And the place itself. This bar, and others like it. I like the atmosphere, Jesus, I like the way it smells.”

“You like dyke bars because you like girls,” the woman said. “That’s the smell you like. You like the way they smell, and their softness, and how they yield, how they give in. How they submit.”

“Well,” he said.

The bar was called Eve’s Rib, and you had to be looking for it to find it, tucked away on a side street on the edge of the warehouse district. It catered to lesbians, but men were not unwelcome, so long as they didn’t make unwelcome advances to the women customers. There was a sad-looking older gentleman he’d seen there once or twice, always by himself, always wearing a suit and tie, always with a glass in his hand. But the fellow wasn’t here this evening, and he himself seemed to be the only man.

His name was Brady. That was his last name, but it was all anyone ever called him. He’d never cared for his first name, which was Winston, and had thought of changing it from Winston Brady to Brady Winston. Or perhaps to Brady Brady. With B for a middle initial. B for Brady, naturally.

He was tall, and he’d maintained the same weight effortlessly in the twenty years since college. He didn’t care that much about food, sometimes missed a meal. He didn’t run or go to a gym or do martial arts, but he somehow got enough exercise to maintain good muscle tone. The only thing he could be said to work at was his suntan, a deep bronze tone courtesy of the beach in the summer and a tanning salon in the winter. He was handsome, with strong facial features and high cheekbones, and he knew it, and knew the tan added to it.

His hair was dark, with just a touch of gray at the temples. He hoped it would stay like that, but knew it wouldn’t. A touch of gray was all right, it was even an asset, but he didn’t feel ready for a full head of gray hair. Maybe he’d dye it, if it came to that. But in any event he’d preserve the gray at the temples, because he liked the effect.

On the jukebox, an Anne Murray record ended and a K. D. Lang record followed in turn. A waitress came to their booth, took their drink order. She was neither tall nor short, a little thick in the waist but not objectionably so. She came back with two glasses of Chardonnay, and Brady watched her walk off.

“I wouldn’t mind,” he told the woman.

“Hands off the help.”

“Oh, I know. It was an observation, not a suggestion.”

“Anyway, she’s Girls Only. It sticks out all over her.”

“Not the only thing that sticks out.”

“She wouldn’t like it,” the woman said, “and you’d try to make her like it, but it wouldn’t work.”

“So? It could still be interesting. But it’s idle speculation, because, as you so kindly pointed out, it’s a case of hands off the help.”

“Exactly.”

“All the same,” he said, “I wouldn’t mind.”

She was sitting alone at the bar. She had ordered an Orange Blossom, straight up, without being all that certain what it was, but she’d heard the name and liked the sound of it. And wasn’t it something a sweet young thing named Missy would order? This one showed up in a stemmed glass, like a Martini, and it was orange, which figured, and garnished with an orange slice. She took a small sip and identified two of the ingredients, gin and orange juice, but there was an undertone of something else, some cordial, that she couldn’t place. Triple Sec? Cointreau?

She kept her eyes facing forward but surveyed as much of the room as she could out of the corners of her eyes. She felt someone looking at her, actually felt the gaze, and she turned her head just enough to catch an oblique glimpse of them. A man and a woman, and she was a beauty while he was movie-star handsome. And they were looking at her, and wasn’t that interesting?

But someone else was looking at her, and not from a distance. And walking toward her, no, not simply walking, striding toward her, with an aura of butch self-confidence overlaid upon a core of nervous anxiety.

“What’s that you’re drinking?”

“An Orange Blossom.”

“Good?”

“It’s all right.”

“Well, drink up and I’ll buy you another.”

A deep voice, probably deeper than the one God had given her. She’d read about a film star — a gay man, actually, although he kept it a secret until AIDS got him. He’d started out with a high-pitched voice, and did something about it; every day he went to a local subway stop, and when the express train roared by he screamed at the top of his lungs. After a few months his voice dropped a full octave, and he went to Hollywood and started playing romantic leads.

Did this one know the subway trick? Or was she just forcing her voice into its lower register?

Then again, what did she care? It was nice to be admired, but she wasn’t interested. If she was going to try being with a woman, what did she want with one who was trying to be a man?

The woman set down her glass of Chardonnay. “Hell,” she said.

“Oh?”

“That one would be ideal,” she said, “but that swaggering bulldyke got there first.”

“Have a look to their right, why don’t you.”

“How did I miss her? But isn’t that—”

“Susan.”

“No, but that’s close. Suzanne.”

“Suzanne it is. We called her Suze, as I recall.”

Which rhymes with cooze, she thought.

“Which rhymes with cooze,” he said, predictably enough. “She was delicious. And she really didn’t want to play, not at first.”

“She wanted to play with me. She didn’t get unhappy until you joined the party.”

“And then she got very unhappy.”

“Yes. Fear and anger in equal parts. I have to say it added a little something.”

“But she got over it. In fact by the time we were done with her I was afraid she was going to propose marriage.”