Lawrence Block - A Dance at the Slaughterhouse

Sascha giggled. We made conversation, and after a few minutes Sascha sashayed off to the ladies' room.

"To powder her nose," Danny Boy said. "As it were. The best argument for legalizing drugs is people wouldn't keep running to the lavatory all the time. When they figure out the man-hours cocaine is costing American industry, they really ought to factor in those rest-room trips."

I waited until Sascha's next trip to the ladies' room to bring up Richard Thurman. "I sort of assumed he killed her," Danny Boy said. "She was rich and he wasn't. If only the fellow was a doctor I'd say there was no doubt at all. Why do you suppose doctors are always killing their wives? Do they tend to marry bitches? How would you explain it?"

We kicked it around some. I said maybe they were used to playing God, making life-and-death decisions. Elaine had a more elaborate theory. She said people who went into the healing professions were frequently individuals who were trying to overcome a perception of themselves as hurting people. "They become doctors to prove they're not killers," she said, "and then when they experience stress they revert to what they think of as their basic nature, and they kill."

"That's interesting," Danny Boy said. "Why would they have that perception in the first place?"

"A birth thought," she said. "The mother almost dies when they're born, or experiences a great deal of pain. So the child's thought is I hurt women or I kill women. He tries to compensate for this by becoming a doctor, and later on when push comes to shove-"

"He kills his wife," Danny Boy said. "I like it."

I asked what data she had to support the theory, and she said she didn't have any, but there were lots of studies on the effects of birth thoughts. Danny Boy said he didn't care about data, you could find data to prove anything, but the theory was the first one he'd ever heard that made sense to him, so screw the data. Sascha had returned to the table during the discussion but it went on without interruption, and she didn't seem to be paying any attention.

"About Thurman," Danny Boy said. "I haven't heard anything specific. I haven't listened all that hard. Should I?"

"Be good to keep an ear open."

He poured himself a few ounces of Stoly. At both of his places, Poogan's and Mother Goose, they bring him his vodka in a champagne bucket packed with ice. He looked down into the glass, then drank it down like water.

He said, "He's with a cable channel. A new sports channel."

"Five Borough."

"That's right. There's some talk going around about them."

"What?"

He shook his head. "Nothing very specific. Something shaky or shady about it, some dubious money backing it. I'll see what else I hear."

A few minutes later Sascha left the table again. When she was out of earshot Elaine leaned forward and said, "I can't stand it. That child has the biggest tits I've ever seen in my life."

"I know."

"Danny Boy, they're bigger than your head."

"I know. She's special, isn't she? But I think I'm going to have to give her up." He poured himself another drink. "I can't afford her," he said. "You wouldn't believe what it costs to keep that little nose happy."

"Enjoy her while you can."

"Oh, I shall," he said. "Like life itself."

BACK in her apartment, Elaine made a pot of coffee and we sat on the couch. She stacked some solo piano recordings on the turntable- Monk, Randy Weston, Cedar Walton. She said, "She was something, wasn't she? Sascha. I don't know where Danny Boy finds them."

"K Mart," I suggested.

"When you see something like that you have to figure silicone, but maybe they're like Topsy, maybe they just growed. What do you think?"

"I didn't really notice."

"Then you better start going to more meetings, because it must have been the vodka that was making you drool." She drew closer to me. "What do you think? Would you like me better if I had huge tits?"

"Sure."

"You would?"

I nodded. "Longer legs would be nice, too."

"Is that a fact? What about trimmer ankles?"

"Wouldn't hurt."

"Really? Tell me more."

"Cut it out," I said. "That tickles."

"Does it really? Tell me what else you've got on your wish list. How about a tight pussy?"

"That would be too much to hope for."

"Oh, boy," she said. "You're really asking for it, aren't you?"

"Am I?"

"Oh, I hope so," she said. "I certainly hope so."

AFTERWARD I lay in her bed while she turned the stack of records and brought back two cups of coffee. We sat up in bed and didn't say much.

After a while she said, "You were pissed yesterday."

"I was? When?"

"When you had to get out of here because I had somebody coming over."

"Oh."

"Weren't you? Pissed?"

"A little bit. I got over it."

"It bothers you, doesn't it? That I see clients."

"Sometimes it does. Most of the time it doesn't."

"I'll probably stop sooner or later," she said. "You can only keep on pitching for so long. Even Tommy John had to pack it in, and he had a bionic arm." She rolled onto her side to face me, put a hand on my leg. "If you asked me to stop, I probably would."

"And then resent me for it."

"You think so? Am I that neurotic?" She thought it over. "Yeah," she said, "I probably am."

"Anyway, I wouldn't ask you."

"No, you'd rather have the resentment." She rolled over and lay on her back, gazing up at the ceiling. After a moment she said, "I'd give it up if we got married."

There was silence, and then a cascade of descending notes and a surprising atonal chord from the stereo.

"If you pretend you didn't hear that," Elaine said, "I'll pretend I didn't say it. We never even say the L word and I went and said the M word."

"It's a dangerous place," I said, "out there in the middle of the alphabet."

"I know. I should learn to stay in the F's where I belong. I don't want to get married. I like things just the way they are. Can't they just stay that way?"

"Sure."

"I feel sad. That's crazy, what the hell have I got to feel sad about? All of a sudden I'm all weepy."

"That's okay."

"I'm not going to cry. But hold me for a minute, okay? You big old bear. Just hold me."

Sunday afternoon I found my film buff.

His name, according to Phil Fielding's records, was Arnold Leveque, and he lived on Columbus Avenue half a dozen blocks north of the video store. His building was a tenement that had thus far escaped gentrification. Two men sat on the stoop drinking beer out of cans in brown paper bags. One of them had a little girl on his lap. She was drinking orange juice out of a baby bottle.

None of the doorbells had Leveque's name on it. I went out and asked the two men on the stoop if Arnold Leveque lived there. They shrugged and shook their heads. I went inside and couldn't find a bell for the super, so I rang bells on the first floor until someone buzzed me in.

The hallway smelled of mice and urine. At the far end a door opened and a man stuck his head out. I walked toward him, and he said, "What do you want? Don't come too close now."

"Easy," I said.

"You take it easy," he said. "I got a knife."

I held my hands at my sides, showing the palms. I told him I was looking for a man named Arnold Leveque.

He said, "Oh, yeah? I hope he don't owe you money."

"Why's that?"

" 'Cause he's dead," he said, and he laughed hard at his joke. He was an old man with wispy white hair and deep eye sockets, and he looked as though he'd be joining Leveque before too many months passed. His pants were loose and he held them up with suspenders. His flannel shirt hung on him, too. Either he got his clothes at a thrift shop or he'd lost a lot of weight recently.

Reading my mind, he said, "I been sick, but don't worry. It ain't catching."