Swan Dive

Barry, and then all I know is that I feel like a man. For the first time in years, I feel like a fucking god.”
    ”You kept on seeing her after that?”
    ”Yeah. Once, maybe twice a month. Always down there.”
    ”Even at that, must have gotten kind of expensive.”
    ”Oh, no. She wouldn’t... look, I didn’t have any stars in my eyes or nothing. I knew what she was doing for a living. But since I had helped that once, when she didn’t know her way around, she... she saw me for free. Her pimp didn’t care what she did free-lance, and Teri knew about Eleni, the MS and all.”
    ”That night. I’ve got a pretty good idea what happened, but I’d like to hear it from you.”
    Chris tilted forward in the chair, working his hands like a man lathering with washroom liquid soap. ”I went to the bar association social, but with things not going so good for me, professionally speaking, I figured the cocktail time would be a better chance for getting some business than the dinner itself. You know, happy hour, you can move around, work the room a little, but at dinner, you’re stuck with whoever’s next to you or across the table. So, I was going to duck out after the drinks anyway, the fire alarm thing just gave me the perfect excuse for leaving.”
    ”You were planning to meet Teri that night?”
    ”Yeah, she even called me here, which she never did, called me from somewheres, insistent-like that I be there and on time. That she wanted to... wanted to try something different. So I got there all right, on time.”
    ”You knew the room number?”
    ”Teri had some kind of arrangement with the hotel. I never asked, nobody there knew me from Adam and I wanted to keep it that way. But she was always in the same room, with the good view.”
    ”What happened?”
    ”I knocked, she opened up, she was wearing... ne of those teddy things, you know? All lace and black and see-through. Usually, we’d have a drink, talk a little first. This time, she wants me to come right over to the bed, maybe five feet from the closet there. The Barry, it’s so old, they still got real closets you can walk into, and the door’s open maybe three inches. Well, she’s got some kind of Walkman thing she wants me to put on. I think it’s screwy, but she’d said she wanted to try something different, so I went along. It was like piano and lute or something, just continuous instrumental shit.”
    ”To cover any background noise you might have heard.”
    Chris looked down. ”That hit me later. Anyway, she puts these earphones on me, has me hold the little tape thing, and she undresses me. Slowly, kissing me and rubbing against me, everywhere, with everything. Then she... she takes me into her mouth, and goes wild on me. Jeez, John, all the other times with her, she never did anything that made me feel like that. I was saying things, I don’t know what I was saying, but every time I’d go to turn, or try to touch her, she’d nudge me back, sort of sideways to the closet.”
    ”For the camera angle.”
    Chris just continued. ”As I’m... getting ready to finish, the closet door bangs open and there’s Marsh, dressed in nothing but skivvies and some kinda doctors’ gloves. I can see a camera on a tripod thing behind him, and he’s smiling and holding a gun on me. I thought I was gonna shit.”
    ”What happened then?”
    ”Teri jumps up and starts screaming at him. Something like, ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you? You’re fucking up my screen test.’ He’s moving around the bed toward the window, kind of getting away from her but also kind of... I know this sounds weird, John, but kind of like he was trying to look at everything from a different angle, like he was trying to figure out if he shoulda had the camera somewheres else.”
    ”Go on.”
    ”Well, I didn’t know what to think. I mean, my brain’s just about dead. Then he waves the gun at me and says to get down on the floor, at the foot of the bed. On all fours, like... like some kind of animal. So I do, trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do, what the fuck is going on.”
    ”What’s Teri doing all this time?”
    ”She’s still screaming at him. He yells back. ‘This fuckhead wants my house. Well, he ain’t gonna get it. What he’s gonna get is sorry he ever tried to fuck with me. How do you suppose his wife will like your debut?’ That’s the word he used, too, ‘debut,’ like he’d thought all this through and planned out his