Steve Erickson - Tours of the Black Clock

“Sure,” I answer.

“Thank you very, very —”

“All right, all right.” It’s disgusting. Hanks comes by later that day. “Jerry says to tell you ‘Thank you very, very much.’”

“OK,” he says, taking his paper through the car window.

“You got the correct tone of that?” I ask. “‘Very, very much.’ Solicitous as hell.”

“‘Solicitous’?” Hanks looks at his driver. “Billy, the kid says ‘solicitous.’”

“Yes sir, Mr. Hanks,” says the driver with the beak.

“What do you think of it,” says Hanks.

“It’s somethin’ all right,” Billy says tersely.

Hanks laughs. He points at Billy and says to me, “Billy says it’s somethin’. He’s got a way with words just like you.” He stops laughing after a bit. “How old are you?”

“Twenty,” I say.

“Ha ha,” says Hanks. He says to Billy, “He’s got a way with numbers too, huh? Eighteen maybe .” He waves, still laughing, and they drive off. Every day after that, when he comes to get his paper in the backseat of his car, he says to me, “So how about a ten dollar word today,” and I give him one off the top of my head. This goes on for a week and a half. Sometimes he’ll say, “How old are we today?” and I get a little tired of it. “Today I’m fucking retirement age, Mr. Hanks,” I say, “today I’m moving to Florida to live with the grandkids.” Hanks loves it. “Hear that, Billy?” he laughs, and Billy says, “Punk’s got a mouth if you ask me, Mr. Hanks.” Hanks just laughs more. “Billy’s not too happy with you,” he explains, “I’d never let him smartass me like that.” Finally one day Hanks makes his offer. It’s the middle of the afternoon and he’s just bought some cigars. “I have a club on the upper west side,” he tells me. He gives me a card that reads Top Dog , and there’s an address. “I can use a doorman who’s big as a damn wall and smarter than he looks. You come tonight around seven if you want it. Needless to say, you’re twenty-one if you take it. It’s a step up from peddling cigars, huh?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, just gives me a small salute as though to say it’s understood I’ll be there, and I have half a mind not to show up because of it. But that’s silly. I pick a guy out from among the drifters hanging around the corner like I was doing not too long ago and give him my job; today I’m retirement age, like I said. I roll up an issue of the pulp I’m reading called Savage Nights and stuff it in my coat pocket.

HANKS’ CLUB, THE TOP Dog, takes up the second-to-the-top floor of a brownstone on the West Sixties, between Columbus and the park; the only floor above it comprises Hanks’ various offices. The club has heavy crushed velvet curtains and an oak bar, European paintings and glass separating the booths, chiseled in each corner with the design of a rose. The women smoke from small ivory-and-silver cigarette holders and a guy in a dinner jacket begins playing the piano in the corner around nine. The veranda stammers with light. Sometimes standing before the windows I’ll remember when I could see the span of my life’s time from such windows. In these windows I don’t see any such thing. I see New York City.

LEONA CHECKS THE COATS at the Top Dog. She’s dark and dimpled, not one of the really beautiful women of the club but not plain either. The first time I see her, which is about five minutes after the first time I walk through the door, I know I’ll have her, I know she’ll be my first woman. I may have to work at it, but not that hard. She stares at me the whole night.

This begins my career as the doorman for Doggie Hanks. I wouldn’t make too much of it, it’ll only last about fourteen months and not once in that time do I see anything particularly interesting. “Just how shady is this?” I ask him one night, and he says, “Prohibition’s legal now, kid,” a non sequitur but I know what he means. The clientele is a mix of the completely respectable and the faintly dubious, none necessarily any more suspicious than the clearly underage doorman. I’m never called upon to escort anyone out, though a couple of times Doggie does suggest I sort of shift my attention in the direction of someone who risks getting out of hand. I guess the mere sight of me is always enough, which is the way Doggie likes it. “And he’s smart too,” he’ll say to this person or that. “So let’s see him do something smart,” the other person will say, and Doggie retorts, “He doesn’t have to do anything smart. You can just take my word for it.”

I have Leona my second week, one night after the club has closed. We’re back among the coats that got left behind by people too inebriated to remember them. Because it’s my first time I’m a little nervous, it’s probably not the most impressive performance. Still, Leona screams like she’s being impaled; when I begin to stop she croaks in my ear, “Don’t you dare, don’t you dare .” She wants the light off but I have to leave it on because in the dark I see these things I don’t want to see, the faces of Indian women, and I hear these things I don’t want to hear, voices from the dark of a doorway; so the light stays on.

Leona wants me to go home with her afterhours but that isn’t what I have in mind. For a month or two I sleep at the club on a couch in one of the offices upstairs until I get some money together for a room. I begin to do what I’ve been waiting to do. For a while I do it on a table in the cloakroom and later when I get my own room about seven blocks from the club, a room all of ten feet by twelve, with a bed and small dresser for my clothes and a table by the window, I do it there. Then I work up the courage to borrow the typewriter in Hanks’ own office and in the early mornings around six or seven o’clock I teach myself how to use it, one slow finger at a time, until I’ve finished with what I’ve already written out by hand. When Doggie catches me in his office he’s not very pleased about it; for the first time he scares me. Billy the driver happens to be there and is extremely amused. “Sorry,” I can only say, “didn’t mean anything.” Hanks is smoking mad. “Didn’t mean anything,” I keep muttering, “sorry,” over and over. Hanks nods to Billy. “Solicitous as hell,” he says. Billy guffaws.

“What’s this?” Hanks picks up my old beatup issue of Savage Nights next to the typewriter. He shakes his head. “Our fucking doorman’s making with the words ,” he says to Billy, then he throws the magazine down and sighs deeply. “You want to use the machine it’s OK, kid,” he says, “but not in my office. You can take it down to the cloakroom where you’ve been boinking my check-in girl.” I look at him surprised and he says, “Yeah I know about that, too. Look, don’t get it into your head there are things it’s better for me not to know about. There’s nothing that it’s better for me not to know about.” He looks over his shoulder at Billy and turns back to me smiling. “When you’re done with the machine, Billy will bring it back up for you.” All the amusement goes right out of Billy’s face. I want to laugh out loud.

Sometimes when I’m typing in the cloakroom Hanks sits out in the empty club in a booth with a girlfriend, or a business associate; then he comes by and sticks his head in. Or I’ll finish up and while Billy’s carrying the typewriter into the office, pale and fuming, I catch a glimpse through the door into Doggie’s private washroom, and he’s standing there with a razor in his hand and his face white with cream. As he shaves it smooth and rinses the razor he calls out to me and asks how the words are coming. Over the months I make up stories about some of the people who come into the club, once or twice I’m stupid enough to ask Hanks the wrong question as a bit of research. Like if he’s killed many men. I never figured him for a somber man, but he answers somberly, “You’re talking like a little kid now. Who I’ve killed and whether I’ve killed isn’t a joke.” I’m appalled by myself at this moment, but eight years from now it will seem small potatoes, compared to the mortifications to come.