checks and his Gold Card, they acquired the maximum allowable five hundred
dollars in cash and forty-five hundred in traveler’s checks. Combined with the
twenty-one hundred in cash and traveler’s checks left over from their honeymoon,
they had eighty-five hundred in liquid assets.
During the rest of the afternoon and early evening, they went shopping. With
credit cards, they bought a complete set of luggage and purchased enough clothes
to fill the bags. They got toiletries for both of them and an electric razor for
Travis.
Travis also bought a Scrabble game, and Nora said, “You don’t really feel in the
mood for games, do you?”
“No,” he replied cryptically, enjoying her puzzlement. “I’ll explain later.”
Half an hour before sunset, with their purchases packed tightly in the spacious
trunk of the Mercedes, Travis drove into the heart of San Francisco’s
Tenderloin, which was the area of the city that lay below O’Farrell Street,
wedged between Market Street and Van Ness Avenue. It was a district of sleazy
bars featuring topless dancers, go-go joints where the girls wore nothing at
all, rap parlors where men paid by the minute to sit with nude young women and
talk about sex and where more than talk was usually accomplished.
This degeneracy was a shocking revelation to Nora, who had begun to think of
herself as experienced and sophisticated. She was not prepared for the cesspool
of the Tenderloin. She gaped at the gaudy neon signs that advertised peep shows,
female mud wrestling, female impersonators, gay baths, and massage parlors. The
meaning of some of the billboard come-ons at the worst bars baffled her, and she
said, “What do they mean when the marquee says ‘Get a Wink at the Pink’?”
Looking for a parking place, Travis said, “It means their girls dance entirely
nude and that, during the dance, they spread their labia to show themselves more
completely.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“My God. I don’t believe it. I mean, I do believe it—but I don’t believe it.
What’s it mean—’Extreme Close-Up’?”
“The girls dance right at the customers’ tables. The law doesn’t allow touching,
but the girls dance close, swinging their bare breasts in the customers’ faces.
You could insert one, maybe two, but not three sheets of paper between their
nipples and the men’s lips.”
In the back seat, Einstein snorted as if with disgust.
“I agree, fella,” Travis told him.
They passed a cancerous-looking place with flashing red and yellow bulbs and
rippling bands of blue and purple neon, where the sign promised LIVE
SEX SHOW.
Appalled, Nora said, “My God, are there other shows where they have sex with the
dead?”
Travis laughed so hard he almost back-ended a carload of gawking college boys.
“No, no, no. Even the Tenderloin has some limits. They mean ‘live’ as opposed to
‘on film.’ You can see plenty of sex on film, theaters that show only
pornography, but that place promises live sex, on stage. I don’t know if they
deliver on the promise.”
“And I don’t care to find out!” Nora said, sounding as if she were Dorothy from
Kansas and had just wandered into an unspeakable new neighborhood of Oz.
“What’re we doing here?”
“This is the place you come to when you’re trying to find things they don’t sell
on Nob Hill—like young boys or really large amounts of dope. Or phony driver’s
licenses and other counterfeit ID.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, yes, I see. This area is controlled by the underworld, by
people like the Corleones in The Godfather.”
“I’m sure the mob owns more of these places than not,” he said as he maneuvered
the Mercedes into a parking space at the curb. “But don’t ever make the mistake
of thinking-the real mob is a bunch of honorable cuties like the Corleones.”
Einstein was agreeable to remaining with the Mercedes.
“Tell you what, fur face. If we’re real lucky,” Travis joked, “we’ll get you a
new identity, too. We’ll make you into a poodle.”
Nora was surprised to discover that, as twilight settled over the city, the
breeze off the bay was chilly enough for them to need the nylon, quilt-lined
Jackets they had bought earlier in the day.