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There is a short, thick pause dining which she shrugs. The nipples pucker expressively although her face is impassive. “I work for the police department,” I say and remove a twenty from my wallet. “Here it is.”

“Wait a minute,” she says, withdrawing, “what do you mean, you work for the police department?”

“I’m in an investigatorial branch. A special division. Do you want to take this twenty or not? I want to see you take it and place it in your possession now. How about that?”

“Now wait a minute,” she says, getting up and backing toward the wall, taking another cigarette from the table, “I don’t think I understand the bag here. What do you mean investigatorial work? I don’t like this kind of gig, if it’s your idea of a joke.”

“Take the twenty,” I say, following her and putting it lightly on her left breast; the fortunate bill seems to crinkle sympathetically from the slight bobble of the breast. “Just take it.”

“Look,” she says, “I don’t want any trouble at all. Trouble isn’t my kind of thing. I’m not taking any money from you. I only do it with people I like, and I don’t like you very much at all. The money is like a gift, see, that people I like give me after it’s all over to show their appreciation. That’s what it is. I don’t want to make it with you so get out. I’m not taking your money so that’s the end of it. I want you to go.”

I back her full into the wall and say. “Prostitution is illegal, you know. It is a misdemeanor and carries a maximum penalty of six months. Also, it takes an enormous toll of human lives in damage, deceit and disease. It must be eradicated.”

“I want to get dressed.”

“You’ll get dressed in due course. You listen to me. You may think that all of this is perfectly innocent but you’re wrong. You’re leading men into decay. You are wrecking human lives. We don’t like this kind of thing in my division. We’re starting to get very serious about this in an effort to stamp it out once and for all.”

She begins to cry now, more or less at the time I had predicted. Perhaps she is a little bit slow on the draw, a bit more hardened than I had thought. Still, amateurism leaks from her. “I’m not a prostitute,” she says, “I’m an actress.”

“An actress without work, right? Like a writer without books. No, I don’t think it washes. You’d have been better off doing the commercials. Commercials aren’t illegal in our society, you know. This is. And you’ve got to live in society although more and more of you people nowadays have the disgusting idea that you can take the blessings of America and pay none of the dues. We’re going to stop that kind of thinking. We’re beginning to get very serious about this now; it’s gone on too long.”

“Please,” she says, “please go away. I’m frightened. I don’t want to hear this anymore. If I did anything wrong, I apologize. It was stupid of me. I’ll stop. Just please leave me alone.”

“Taking the ad was really stupid,” I say. “Don’t you think we monitor that sheet? Don’t you think that every agency in the world has an eye on that rag knowing that it will bring every creep, fanatic, rapist and pervert out of the woodwork to spread his disgusting filth in their columns? Didn’t that ever occur to you? Don’t you understand what that sheet really is?”

“I never read it. I just heard about it and thought I might as well take an ad. Please, can I get dressed? I don’t want to stand this way.”

“You really don’t understand it, do you, baby?” I say, stepping back from the wall and allowing her to scurry in the direction of the couch. She seizes her sweater and puts it against her chest, cradling it like a child, trying to get inside of it but not willing to bare her breasts to me again. “You don’t understand a hit of it, do you? You miss the whole point. You people think that you’re so clever and so advanced and so liberal with your life-styles and intellectual and so on but you don’t realize that we were around long before you came on the scene and that we’ve forgotten tricks you never knew. We have our hands on
eveything.
Everything, do you understand me?”

“Go,” she says. “Please go.”

“That’s
our
magazine,” I say, “
our
publication. We created it, we own it and we run it. How else do you think we’re able to keep an eye on every creep and pervert in New York? We get their advertisements, we get their mail, we get everything from them. They trust us, you see. They think that they’ve found an outlet. They think that we’re their
vox populi.
And all the time we’re keeping an eye on them, keeping the files up to date, getting ready to make a move anytime we want. We have the whole thing right in our hand, you know, and how do you like that?”

She has succeeded in getting the sweater on, pats it into place, smoothing it over her breasts, hanging tightly inside. She seems to have recovered some particle of her manner. “I don’t know what to think. I asked you to go. Please go, I promise you I won’t do it any more.”

“You bet you won’t do it anymore.” I say to her with a flourish, taking one of her cigarettes and sticking it into my mouth for effect, although I have not smoked for several years, considering the habit extremely dangerous. “And you know why you won’t do it? You won’t do it because we’ve got our hand on everything. Nothing escapes our sight now; nothing vanquishes our control. Look at every newspaper on the stand. We’ve got them all. Everyone.”

I go over to her, rest a hand on her shoulder, squeeze lightly and feel the soft resilience gathering under me; for an instant I regret that I have not been able to lay her. From the feel of her flesh, she would have been an extremely good fuck. Nevertheless, there are larger purposes assigned here. “Just remember,” I say, “Remember this. Remember everything. Consider this a warning. We won’t let you off like this the next time. The next time we go for the big wheel. This time you can consider yourself lucky.”

“I don’t like New York,” she says. “I never wanted to live this way. There’s something about this place that makes people crazy. Maybe I’ve been crazy.”

“Maybe,” I say, “maybe, maybe.” And I take my hand off her, back to the door, give her a farewell tilt of the hand, reach behind me with the other hand, deftly pull on the knob and in a single motion am standing on the threshold, tilted in profile toward her, cigarette dangling, an air of pure menace sifting from me and hopefully throughout the room. “Remember,” I say, “there is no escape.” I give her a wink, salute her and pull the door closed, dart down the steps quickly and into the jangle of the pyschedelic store music. Behind me I hear the sound of a bolt being thrown, kicks against wood, the grinding sound of a chain; behind me she has quite clearly locked up for a long time.

It is all really too much, and I find myself laughing almost hysterically on the street, but the laughter turns to somberness when I begin to think that she indeed would have been a wonderful fuck and I could have done everything that I did after instead of before and saved the $20 to boot. But then I remind myself that to do it first and then pull the stunt would have compromised my integrity to say nothing of the clarity of the role I have established for her, and these purposes above all must be honored. This makes me feel a little better although not entirely resigned, and I return to the office to find Virginia still alone, lock all the doors, pull the shades, put the tapes on high and at four o’clock on an October afternoon bang the living shit out of her on the floor, my eyes closed in convulsion as the pure surging arc of the orgasm overtakes me and moves me far from there. Making all the changes, the colors of the day.

One of our advertisers threatens to get us into difficulty. It is a large mail-order house in California which advertises under several corporate names and box numbers; maybe two thousand dollars an issue of advertisements all told. They also use the personals column, employing names and box numbers to induce dirty correspondence for a fee. Our relationship with them is admirably cool, admirably distant; every week their typesetter mails in their new copy, ready for the printer and every other week, without comment, their check arrives, always including an extra six cents reimbursement for the formal bill they have us mail before they pay. In many ways, what we have established is the most satisfying and humane connection I have ever known.

One of their regular ads is for an orgasm-retarder, a kind of prophylactic cream which, when massaged over the erect penis, will dull the nerves and prevent premature ejaculation. It seems that this preparation is dangerous; in any event, we have received several letters from readers independently saying that the cream has caused scales to appear on their genitals and in one case produced pus and bleeding so serious as to necessitate an embarrassing and painful operation. Also three of the letters say that the female partner had discharge and pain for several days following the intercourse during which the substance was used. One letter even states that the cream resulted in an immediate loss of erective power which continues to the time of writing, two months later; the correspondent is still unable to have satisfactory sexual relations of any kind with any partner, male or female. Because the letters have come in at different times from widely disparate areas of the country, it is reasonable to assume that they are legitimate. It is also reasonable to assume that many more such letters would have come in if most of the purchasers did not simply buy the cream in the
hope
of sexual outlet.

After consultation with the attorneys who say that we might indeed be criminally liable if formal complaints were brought, I write a cautious letter to the company, addressing it to the president. It is the first letter I have ever written them and I point out the history of complaint, the way that the letters, coming in at different times, seem to corroborate one another, the possible penalties which both the company and I might incur if some of the complainants were to seek recovery. I keep the letter courteous and to the point; it is no more than four paragraphs altogether. I end by asking him to withdraw the offending ads from the newspaper while assuring him that we maintain the warmest interest in working with him closely and hope that the ad withdrawn will be replaced by one for something else. I close by advising that if I do not receive a reply within five days of the date of my letter, I will assume that he concurs and will remove the ad.

Two days later a special delivery letter arrives in the offices. It is signed in an illegible scrawl over the words FOR THE B&E CORPORATION and states that if we do not run the advertisement as we have done previously they will be compelled to remove all other advertisements from our newspaper.

Without much hope, I attempt to contact the B&E Corporation in California over long-distance phone, but find that there is no listing for them or for any of their subsidiary names. The information operator and I go through the various names carefully for half an hour to establish this, the operator in a mood of rising rage, my own a descending embarrassment. I write a second letter to the corporation, special delivery, pointing out that their product appears to be dangerous and that they, no less than we, would not want to be responsible for injuring people or incurring legal action. I advise that if I do not hear within two days of the date of this letter, I will assume that they agree with me that it would be in the best interests of all parties to remove the offending advertisement and that certainly their relationship has been valued over these past years and we hope that it will continue as previously. The following day, while I am going over a photographic agent’s latest submissions (pictures of nude women posed with zoo animals, the animals exhausted and seedy, giving the women shy looks devoid of ferocity or determination), Virginia informs me that I have a long-distance person-to-person phone call, and while these are generally only people who wish to pose for the newspaper or who want to know exactly what we are up to, I make it a matter of policy to accept as many as possible, wanting to know now more than ever what is going on in America’s deepest heart. A hoarse man tells me that he is Mr. B&E or perhaps that he represents B&E Enterprises. I do not quite catch which but assume that it makes little difference.

“The ad,” he says, “the ad stays. That’s the word. It stays in.”

“I’ve already written you a second letter,” I say, trying to sound as reasonable as possible. “There are some other facts — ”

“We got the second letter. The second letter came in already and they had a discussion. They told for me to tell you that the ad is staying. That is their final decision, it stays in and that’s the decision.”

“Look,” I say, “I take no position on the ads. You know that. And we’ve done a lot of good business together. But still I think it’s best — ”

“You don’t do business with me,” the voice says harshly, “you do business with
them.
Me, I am only the messenger. I don’t know anything. That is their message. It stays.”

“It could get very dangerous. If this stuff is poisoning people a lot of us could get sued and then — ”

“Listen, mister, you can’t argue with me. I don’t even know what’s going on. It’s not my business to know what’s going on, I just deliver the messages and it’s healthiest for everybody that way. The message is that the ad stays and that if it does not stay, then all the ads go. Every single one of them. We will pull all of the ads out of the issues starting right now. I mean, they will put them out; I just work for them and that’s why I say we.”

“The issue’s already made up. I couldn’t take the ads out.”

“Then you take them out the next time around. Listen, I have no further instructions. I can’t go on discussing this. This is what they want me to say and I’ve said it.”

“Is there anyone else I could talk to? Maybe if I were able to speak to someone in the offices — ”

“They’re all out to lunch.”

“When they get back from lunch.”

“They go out for long lunches. Sometimes they don’t come back until the next day. By the next day it will be too late.”

“If I could only talk it over — ”

“That’s all they wanted to say, friend,” the voice points out and hangs up on me.