William Kennedy - Billy Phelan's Greatest Game

“Hey, Mo-ree,” the pimp said. “Whatchou lookin’ for?”

“Pussy,” said Morrie.

“You in the right place.”

The pimp, the same man Red Tom threw out of Becker’s, had a face as pointy as his shoes and resembled Martin’s long-snouted animal child. Why should the likes of him concretize a Daugherty abstraction? But why not? Ooze to ooze, slime to slime. Brothers under the sheets.

Two young women sat at the kitchen table drinking sarsaparilla out of jelly glasses. Knives, forks, glasses, and dishes sat in the sink. The stub of a candle stood in a pool of dry wax on a saucer. The pimp introduced the girls as Fela and Margie. Fela, obviously La Cubana , was dark, with hair to her kidneys. Margie had carroty red hair, redder by blood weight than Mary Daugherty’s crop. Both wore brassieres, Woolworth couture, a size too small, shorts to mid-thigh, with cuffs, and high heels.

“They got shorts on,” Morrie said. “Last time I saw a whore in shorts was Mame Fay’s.”

“I know Mame,” said the pimp. “She’s got influence up in Troy.”

“She used to recruit salesgirls in the grocery marts,” Billy said. “She tried to hawk a friend of mine.”

“She’d give talks in the high schools if they let her,” said Morrie.

“Young stuff is what Mame likes,” Margie said.

“Yeah,” said Morrie, licking his lips.

“Talk is gettin’ hot, hombres. Young stuff right in front of you. Who’s ready?”

“Don’t rush me,” said Morrie.

Billy pulled up a chair between Fela and Margie and looked them over. Martin felt a thirst rising.

“You have any beer?”

“Twenty-five cents, hombre .”

“I’m a sport,” said Martin, and the pimp cracked a quart of Stanwix.

“Those broads up at Mame’s,” Morrie said, “took their tops off when we come in. I’m the best, one of ’em says to us, so take me. If you’re the best, says the other, how come your boyfriend screwed me? You? says the other. He’d screw a dead dog with the clap, but he wouldn’t screw you. And then they went at it. Best whore fight I ever saw. Bit one another, blood all over the joint, one of their heads split open. Me and Maloy laughed our tits off.”

“We don’t fight,” Margie said. “We like one another.”

“That’s nice,” said Morrie, and he put his hand inside her brassiere. “Soft.” He laughed, found a chair, and sat down.

“Maloy,” said Billy. “What the hell is he doing in Newark?”

“Who said he was in Newark?” Morrie asked.

“I thought you did.”

“He ain’t in Newark.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s someplace else.”

“How do you know he ain’t in Newark? I heard he was in Newark.”

“What the hell’d he be in Newark for?”

“Why not Newark?”

“He don’t know nobody in Newark.”

“This is a famous guy,” the pimp told the girls, putting his hand on Morrie’s shoulder. “His name’s in the paper this morning. They say that’s all about the kidnapping, right Mo-ree?”

“Billy’s name’s in there, too.”

“Very big men in Albany if the McCalls put your name in there,” said the pimp.

“You don’t like the McCalls,” Billy said. “They threw you out of Becker’s for bad-mouthing them.”

“I never like them,” said the pimp. “They make me a janitor at the public bath, then fire me.”

“What’d they do that for?”

“For nothing. A little thing. Look at the ladies and pull the old rope. They catch me and tell me I’m all finish. Little thing like that.”

“It ain’t against the law to pull your rope,” Morrie said. “It’s against the law to get caught.”

“It sure ain’t against the law here,” Margie said.

“Yeah, you boys come here to talk or screw?” Fela the Cubana said.

“Screw,” said Morrie, “and you got it, lady. Let’s go.” He stood up and tongued her ear and she knocked a jelly glass off the table. He took her down the hallway and into a bedroom.

“Hey, Mo-ree,” said the pimp, “she’s the best blow-job in town.” Then he told Martin and Billy: “Margie’s good too.”

“Is that right?” Billy asked Margie. “Are you good?”

“I ain’t had a complaint all week.”

Billy washed a glass in the sink with soap and water and poured himself a beer. The pimp came over to Martin.

“What do you like, Mister? Little blow from the best?”

“I’m just along for the ride. I’ll stay with the drink.”

Martin washed a glass and poured a beer. He stared at the door of the broom closet, then opened the door and saw the notebook for The Flaming Corsage hanging from a nail on a short piece of cord. It was inscribed on the cover: To my beloved son, who played a whore’s trick on his father. Martin closed the closet door and sipped his beer, which tasted like the juice of rotted lemons. He spat into the sink.

Martin dried his mouth and studied Margie, who removed her brassiere for him. Her nipples lay at the bottom of the curves, projecting somewhat obliquely. Martin considered the nipple fetishists of history. Plutarch, Spinoza, Schubert, Cardinal Wolsey The doorbells of ecstasy, Curzio Malaparte called them. Billy reached across the table and lifted one of Margie’s breasts. People preparing for sexual conflict. The pimp slavered and picked his nose with his thumb.

How had Martin’s father prepared for sex? On spindly legs, he stood in his shorts in his bedroom, reading Blake on the dresser top. The shorts seemed unusually long. Perhaps he had short thighs. He looked sexually disinterested, but that was unquestionably deceptive. His teeth carried stains from pipe-smoking. He had a recurring ingrown toenail, clipped with a V, a protruding bone on the right elbow from an old fracture. These things were antisexual.

How would Martin’s son ever know anything of his own sexuality? Gone to the priests at thirteen, blanketed with repressive prayer and sacramental censure. How could the tigers of chastity be wiser than the horses of coition?

Ten years ago, a phone call had come for Martin after he’d completed a sexual romp with his wife. The caller, a Boston lawyer, had heard that the notebook of The Flaming Corsage was in Martin’s possession. Was that true?

Yes.

Was it for sale, or would it be preserved in the trove of Daugherty papers?

The latter, of course.

Well, you may take my name and address, and should you change your mind I want you to know that I will pay a handsome price for that notebook. Like the play made from it, it has a deep significance for my client.

What significance is that?

My client, said the lawyer, was your father’s mistress.

“All right,” Morrie said, emerging from the bedroom. “Little bit of all right.”

“That was quick,” Billy said. “You like it?”

“Short but sweet,” Morrie said. “How much?”

“Buck and a half,” said the pimp.

Morrie snapped a dollar off his roll and fished for the fifty cents. Margie put on her brassiere. Fela picked up the sarsaparilla bottle and looked for a glass.

“Only a buck and a half?” Billy said.

“That’s all,” said the pimp.

“It must be some great stuff for a buck and a half.”

“Go try it.”

Fela tipped up the bottle and gargled with sarsaparilla. She spat it into the sink and eyed Billy. The pimp took Morrie’s dollar and change. Martin opened the broom closet and found a dust pan hanging from a nail.

“How the hell can it be any good for a buck and a half?” Billy asked.

“Hey, I ought to know,” said the pimp with a rattish smile of cuspids. “She’s my sister.”

Billy hit him on the chin. The pimp sped backward and knocked over a chair, shook his head and leaped at Billy’s throat. Billy shook him off, and the pimp reached for the butcher knife in the sink, but Martin reached it first and threw it out the open window into the alley. Billy hit the pimp again, a graze of the head, but the pimp found Billy’s throat again and held on. Martin pulled at the pimp as the whores scrambled away from the table. Morrie pushed past Martin and bashed the pimp with the sarsaparilla bottle. The pimp slid to the floor and lay still. The whores came out of the bedroom carrying their dresses and handbags.