After the First Death - Lawrence Block [17]
I knew I’d find the sailors. It was just a question of time. There are always several groups of sailors in the Village, and they always drink, and they always look for girls, and it never works out right for them. They all come from places like Des Moines and Topeka and Chillicothe, and they have all heard wondrous stories about Greenwich Village, where all the men are queer and all the women believe in Free Love—a situation which, were it true, would have to engender extraordinary frustration all around.
Poor sailors. There are no streetwalkers in the Village. There are any number of lovely young ladies, of all ages and colors and temperaments, and most of these young ladies look promiscuous, and many of them surely are, and none of them are interested in sailors. They all hate sailors. No one knows why; it seems to be traditional.
I met my sailors just as they were leaving a lesbian bar on Cornelia Street. There were three of them, and they were all somewhere between drinking age and voting age. They had evidently not known the place was a lesbian club. They had evidently not known that the girls therein had even less use for sailors than the average Village females. They had evidently made passes at some of the femmes and had been subsequently put down rather forcefully by some of the butches, and now they were trying to decide whether to be shocked or amused.
The saddest part was that they obviously felt that they were the first sailors to whom this sort of thing had ever happened, and for this reason they were both loathing and treasuring the moment. They were definitely not the first sailors to whom this sort of thing had ever happened. It always happens.
I fell in with them.
We walked and talked together. We talked of lesbians. We talked of women and whiskey the world over. We talked, before very long, of the desirability of locating female companionship as soon as possible.
“I hear the mayor calls this town Fun City,” said one of the sailors, the youngest and drunkest and loudest. “What do you figure is his idea of fun, the mayor’s?”
“Maybe a fast game of parcheesi.”
“The mayor,” said the third, “has never been to Tokyo.”
“Look here, Lou,” said the first, “you live here, right? You must know where we can find some chickens.”
Lou was my name, for the moment. Theirs were Red, Johnny, and Canada. Canada was the oldest. Red was the tallest and Johnny was the youngest and drunkest and loudest. They took me to a bar and insisted on buying me a drink. I ordered milk, mumbling apologetically about an ulcer. I wanted a drink, and thought I could handle it without any trouble, but caution seemed indicated. They had a couple of rounds, flashed large rolls of bills, ogled some girls, and talked again about the need that was paramount in their minds. We left the bar, and they suggested once again that I might know some agreeable women.
“If I thought you boys were really serious—”
“You kidding Lou?”
“Well, there are three girls I know who might be interested. Just kids, really. Nineteen or twenty. Let’s see—Barbara’s an actress, and I think Sheila and Jan are dancers, though they don’t get much work. Beautiful girls, and they like to have a good time.”
I let them coax details out of me. The three girls shared an apartment in the neighborhood. They weren’t tramps or anything of the sort, but they would spend a night with a fellow who came well recommended; after all, they had to eat and show business was hard on a beginner with no additional source of income. They only took guests for the whole night and then they liked to make it a party, with plenty to drink and soft music on the record player and nonstop bedroom activity.
“Real wild Village women, huh?”
“So what are we waiting for? C’mon, Lou—be a buddy!”
Well, I explained, there were other considerations. Price, for example. The girls were no back-alley hookers. I wasn’t sure of the price but I thought it was twenty or twenty-five dollars, and that might be more than the boys wanted to pay.
“That doesn’t sound so bad, not for all night.