Welcome to Paradise (8 page)

That's when the two women came in and sat
down near him. They were no younger than himself, possibly a few
years older. He smiled at them as they sat and they sort of smiled
back, then pulled their eyes away. They ordered vodkas, lit up
cigarettes, and started talking.

By their second round they were talking
louder and Al was leaning subtly toward them.

"Don't get me wrong," one of them was saying.
She had wonderful thick hair that rose up in a single wave, dark
brown with unapologetic flecks of gray. "I don't hate men. I like
men. In fact, I prefer men, all in all. It's just that men are
kinky."

The other woman rattled her ice cubes. She
had a tan and bony face closely framed in lank pale hair. Al didn't
like her nostrils, which were flat as the nose holes of a skeleton.
"You can't just generalize like that," she said.

"Oh yes I can," the other woman answered and
lit another cigarette. She squinted at the smoke, which made Al
realize how big and round her eyes had been when they were fully
opened. "Look, I know the pattern," she went on. "At first it's
lovey-dovey, aiming at the conquest of the body. You know, straight
from high school. Getting in. But then right away it's head games,
toys—"

"Hey," the lank-haired woman interrupted with
a soft but bawdy giggle, "women, too, there's a lot of . . . let's
say improvising."

Al Tuschman sipped his 'Buca. He was
dying.

"That's different," argued the woman with the
wonderful thick hair.

"What's different?" said the woman with the
nose holes, gesturing for more drinks. "The body's the body and the
mind's the mind."

The thick-haired woman was groping for an
explanation. She ran a hand through her hair and her fingers
disappeared entirely. "It's about intimacy."

"Agreed."

"If the . . . improvising ... if the
improvising makes people more intimate, then it's, like, exploring.
Less intimate, then it's just kinky."

The pale-haired woman nipped into her fresh
drink. "So you're saying women explore but men are kinky?"

"I'm not kinky," Al Tuschman said.

He had no idea he was going to say it and he
could not believe that the words had actually passed his lips. He
inhaled sharply, as if to suck them back. An agonizing moment
passed. The two friends might ignore him or call him an asshole or
simply move away. He tried to look friendly. Not pushy, not
leering, not drunk. Above all, not desperate in his loneliness.

The lank-haired woman glanced at him
sideways. Blow him off or humor him? She gestured toward him,
lifted an eyebrow in what might have been some part of a smile,
then turned toward her friend as though she'd proved a point. "You
see?"

The thick-haired woman looked away, seemed
bothered and hard. Up until that moment, she'd seemed the cuddlier
of the two; in fantasy, she'd been the one that Al Tuschman was
going to sleep with. Now he realized the light-haired woman was
really much more spirited, appealing.

"You see?" she said again. "Not all men are
kinky. Some men know what simple pleasure is. No games. No
bullshit. Pleasure and comfort. Am I right?"

Al Tuschman sipped his 'Buca, dared now to
look full at her, soulful. She had high cheekbones, cat's eyes; the
nostrils weren't really so bad. He told himself, Don't say too
much, don't try too hard, don't blow it. "For me," he said, "that's
what it's always been about."

That was good. He was pleased with that. The
lank- haired woman smiled, opened up her shoulders, showed some
teeth. He could almost taste her mouth. He stopped himself from
reaching out his hand, draping his palm across her wrist. Too bold,
too soon.

The thick-haired woman reached forward over
the bar and roughly stubbed out her cigarette. She tossed back her
vodka like she was ready to leave. Al thought: Good friend, she
knows when to get out of the way.

Then she propped her chin in her hand. She
fixed Al Tuschman with a stare that cut right through the smoke and
through the other woman's gaze, a stare that was half defiant and
half imploring. Her lips puckered and breath moved between them in
the instant before there was a sound. "Prove it."

*

Not till he was bending over on the sidewalk
to unravel Fifi's leash from the parking meter where she'd been
tied did Al Tuschman realize he was very tipsy. Blood rushed to his
head, stars burst at the edges of his vision, annexed themselves to
the insane glare and flash of Duval Street.

But the thick-haired woman was impressed with
and reassured by the little shih tzu. So unlikely, so unmacho. She
petted the dog, made faces at it. Then, cuddly once again, she
leaned against Al, her side warm along his flank, as they strolled
together off Duval and through the quieter streets toward
Paradise.

They went through the gate, around the pool
that shimmered blue in a mild breeze.

"Nice place," the thick-haired woman
said.

Al nodded modestly. "Where you staying?"

"Me? I live here."

Al felt dumb for asking. But impressed with
himself, too. And flattered. Sleeping with a local. More exciting,
memorable, more legit, somehow, than just colliding with another
unmoored tourist far away from either person's life.

He unlocked the door of his bungalow. Inside,
they had their first kiss, peppery with the taste of her
cigarettes.

"I'm glad I'm here with you," she said.

"I'm glad, too," said Al.

"You don't talk much, do you?"

"Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't."

"Strong silent type," she said.

"Not really," he admitted. "Sometimes, to the
dog, I ramble on and on."

She laughed, and the laugh became a long
kiss. They pressed and petted. Loins together. They had their
clothes on and they were four feet from the bed. An awkward
moment.

"You a little nervous?" the thick-haired
woman asked.

Al tried to answer, could only nod.

"I am, too. I think that's nice, don't
you?"

She led him toward the bed, undid the buttons
of his tight blue shirt. Lifted off her loose, thin blouse, stepped
out of her soft and draping skirt. He looked at her. She was bluish
in the moonlight. Fleshy and candid as the women in the painting on
the wall above the bowl of fruit. He kicked off his shoes and
wrestled with his pants and pulled back the thin blanket.

She lay down. He was in love with her hair by
now. It was so thick and springy that it made a second pillow for
her head. He settled in next to her and they embraced. Mouths
together; chests together. Kinky? Al thought dimly. Who needed
kinky when there was such delight in lips and arms, such unfailing
suspense in the surge of bellies and the wrapping of thighs?

That's when he felt the first pinch on his
scrotum.

It was a harder pinch than was really
necessary. There was a certain excitement in it, though he couldn't
honestly say it felt that good.

Then the thick-haired woman made a soft and
teasing and catlike sound. It might have been meow or maybe only
ow
.

He liked the sound but didn't know just what
to make of it. Was she goading him to pinch her in return?
Where?

Then she pinched down really hard, so hard
that his testicles seemed to flash forth a pulsing red and green
like Christmas bulbs.

Through the pain he noticed that both her
hands were on his chest.

And her soft and playful
ow
rose to an
enraged and screeching OUCH, and she belted him across the temple
with her forearm.

Wrestling with the bedclothes, thrashing and
struggling to free herself, she hissed out, "You're not kinky, you
sick bastard? Just one more sick bastard!"

She managed to rise, clutching at the inside
of her thigh. As she did so, something clunked onto the floor and
seemed to drag itself away. Fifi, her neat paws skidding on the
varnished boards, ran in circles until she'd tracked it down. There
was a scuffle, then a yelp.

A befuddled but tumescent Alan Tuschman
scrambled up from bed. He watched the thick-haired woman quickly
climb into her skirt. The anguish of losing her briefly overwhelmed
the searing pain in his groin, and it was a heartbeat or two before
he focused on the unnatural weight and appalling pressure he was
feeling there.

Then he looked down and he screamed. Loudly.
He had a two-pound lobster dangling from his nuts. Its antennae
were exploring his stomach hair and its tail was curling upward
toward his asshole. "Help!"

The thick-haired woman was not inclined to
get that close. She pulled her blouse on and turned her back. "You
fucking pervert," she said across her shoulder. "I feel sorry for
the dog!"

Al reached down and grabbed the two shells of
the lobster claw, tried with all his strength to pry them off his
scrotum. "You think I had this planned?" he yelled.

There was no reply. The thick-haired woman
was out of there. Hadn't even closed the door behind her.

Hopping madly, fighting with the lobster and
fondling his dented balls, Al Tuschman stared out at her sudden
absence, at the giant philodendrons and the faint blue shimmer of
the pool beyond.

In a clean and quiet Long Island suburb,
Nicky Scotto climbed out of the bed he shared with his skinny,
late- sleeping wife and padded off to the bathroom. He showered and
carefully shaved, paying particular attention to the difficult
places at the corners of his mouth. Then he found scissors and
trimmed the overly luxuriant fringes of his eyebrows.

Standing now in his underwear and knee-high
cashmere socks, he buffed his Bruno Maglis till they gleamed. He
pulled on a black silk turtleneck and a pearl-gray worsted suit,
and headed off for his first morning at his former job, now very
temporarily his again.

He didn't have to dress this fancily for
work. In fact, it was totally impractical. The thin soles of the
loafers barely cleared the streams of fishy ice water that trickled
over tile floors toward half-clogged rusty drains. The silk
turtleneck didn't keep him warm enough as he made the rounds of
reefer trucks and seafood lockers, which steamed a frosty fog when
their doors were opened.

Still, he dressed rich because it reflected
how he felt. Walking through the clamor and the echoes of the
market, making his presence known, waving benignly to the little
people in the stalls as they shoveled ice, uncrated octopus, he
might have been an old-time duke parading through his village.
People called his name. There was a friendliness in it, almost a
hurrah, though it was not the friendliness of equals. It was the
friendliness of happy subjects, supplicants who were rewarded as
long as they paid tribute and obeyed the rules. Pete, Luigi, Tony,
Fred—beyond the confines of the market, they would casually make it
known that they called Nicky by his name, and this would give them
standing in the wider world.

So, quietly thrilled to be back, he did his
circuit, shaking hands, slapping backs, then headed down a chilly
corridor toward what used to be his office.

An absurd and salty sorrow tweaked him as he
neared the door. Not that there was much to have missed about the
place. The lighting was lousy and it smelled of fish. The furniture
was cold, cheap metal, and the one, dirty window faced out on a
loading dock and a mountain of cracked pallets. Still, when he
stepped across the pitted threshold and pulled the string that
worked the lights, Nicky Scotto felt a pang. He'd been happy here.
It wasn't just the money and the power. He'd felt like he was where
he ought to be. And if happiness and belonging didn't give someone
a claim, what did?

He went to his old desk. On it, in corny
frames, stood pictures of Big Al Marracotta's fat wife and ugly,
spoiled kids. He flipped them facedown against the metal, buried
them under a phone book. He sat in what used to be his chair, and
drummed his fingers on the arm, and told himself not to get too
comfortable.

He was there only as a fill-in, a pinch
hitter; his pal Donnie kept reminding him of that, as gently as he
could. Tony Eggs hadn't changed his mind about who should run the
market. Carlo Ganucci had been very clear: when Al Marracotta got
back from vacation, he would take over once again.

Well, that was life, thought Nicky Scotto.
You're up, you're down; you're in, you're out. But he didn't have
to like it, and he didn't have to pretend it felt right. Sitting
there as Big Al's sub, guest host on the show he used to run—it
felt wrong as hell, wrong as a bad clam beginning to break down and
spread its poison through his churning gut.

*

Al Tuschman didn't wake up happy.

His tongue was dry and swollen; there was a
deep, slow throb where his spine plugged into his brain. He ached
between the legs, and couldn't tell how much of the ache had to do
with thwarted sex, and how much with the depredations of the
lobster. In a feeble attempt to cheer himself, he remembered that
most people paid two hundred bucks a night to be here.

He got up from the sweaty sheets, threw water
on his face. He collected Fifi, whose nose bore a deep scratch from
a flailing claw, and they headed out for breakfast.

As they rounded the blue pool, Al noticed a
tangled and inert lump of something at the bottom. Turned out to be
a pair of suffocated lobsters, strangled by chlorine. Al felt a
moment's thin revenge, followed quickly by remorse. Poor guys. Try
to see it their way. Could they help it they were lobsters? They'd
survived bizarre adventures, endured the weight and heat of human
crotches, then made a bold break for freedom through terrain as dry
and foreign as the moon, only to end up in the dread gravity of the
sucking drain.

Then he recalled the thick and springy hair
of the woman he almost had, and thought, The hell with 'em, let 'em
smother.