I said what happened?
He said I said you feel like some dinner? Here at the hotel? She said I’d like that but tonight’s a problem. Let’s do it next time you’re in town.
I said how come she gave you my phone number?
He said your phone number?
I said yeah. We talked yesterday.
He said that was you? Hey. Go figure. She said it wasn’t her number. Said it was a friend s number. Said if I called her at home there might be a problem with the guy she lived with.
I said okay, swinger. That’s not how it happened. Here’s how it happened. You were hassling her. Wait! You were hassling her, in the bar, in the foyer, I don’t know. Maybe you followed her out into the street. She gave you the number to get you off her back. You were—
He said that’s not what happened. I swear. Okay, I escorted her out to the cab stand. And she wrote down the number for me. Look. Look.
From his inside pocket Debs produced his wallet. With his big fingers he leafed heavily through some loose business cards: There. He held it up for me. My number followed by Jennifer’s crisp signature. Followed by two exes, crosses—for kisses.
I said you kiss her, Arn?
He said yeah I kissed her.
And he paused. It was gradually dawning on Debs that the momentum had turned his way. He was feeling good again now. What with the fomenting adrenaline, and the double Dewar’s he’d long gotten down himself, as if against time.
“Yeah I kissed her. There a law against that now?”
“With your tongue, Am?”
He straightened a finger at me. “I conducted myself with the upmost correctitude. Hey. Chivalry ain’t dead. What she die of anyhow?”
Well that’s something. She’s dead. But chivalry isn’t. “Accident. With a firearm.”
“Hell of a thing. All that beauty. And the poise, you know?”
“Okay. Thanks, Mr. Debs.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah. That’s it.”
He leaned closer. His breath, over and above the booze, was richly soured with male hormones. He said,
“We talked on the phone last night, I thought you were a guy. Not a little guy either. Somebody my size. People make mistakes. Right? I got real sure you were a woman when you showed me your shield. Give me another look at it. For your information, in my room I got a bottle of Krug in a ice bucket. Maybe tonight ain’t a total wipe. Hey, what’s the rush? You on duty? Come on. Stick around and have a real drink.”
-+=*=+-
In the old days I would sometimes booze my way through clinical aversion. I used to take the pills that give you epileptic fits if you mix them with alcohol. And I’d mix them with alcohol. It felt like it was worth it. What the fuck. The convulsions only last for a few days. Then you don’t have a problem.
I couldn’t do that now. Mix me with alcohol, and the result would be fulminant hepatic failure. I couldn’t drink my way through that shit. Because I wouldn’t be around.
It’s not too late. I’m going to change my name. To something feminine. Like Detective Jennifer Hoolihan.
For a girl to have a boy’s name, and to keep it— that’s not so unusual. I’ve come across a Dave and a Paul who never tried to pretty things up with Davina or Pauline. I’ve even met another Mike. We stuck with it. But how many grown men do I know who are still called Priscilla?
Here’s something I’ve often wondered: Why did my father call me Mike if he was going to fuck me? Was he a fruit, too, on top of everything else? Here’s something even more mysterious: I never stopped loving my father. I have never stopped loving my father. Whenever I think of him, before I can do anything about it, I feel great love flooding my heart.
And here comes the night train. First, the sound of knives being sharpened. Then its cry, harsh but symphonic, like a chord of car horns.
ALL HOLE
The dispatcher directs you to a large Tudor-style residence on Stanton Hill. Two tearful parents, supported by a small cast of tearful servants, lead you up the staircase. With your partner at your side (Silvera, in this case), you enter a bedroom infested with stereo and computer equipment, with CDs and PCs, with posters of babes and rock stars all over the walls, and on the bed is the corpse of some poor kid with a weak leer and an earring. His pants are down around his hightops. He is lying in a pool of skin magazines and amyl nitrate. There is also a rented adult video in the VCR and, beside the pillow, a remote smothered in latents. And he has a polyethylene bag half wrenched off his face. So you spend an hour with the folks, saying what you can, while the science crew come and go. And as soon as you’re back in the unmarked, you both give the cop shrug and one of you will start: