Watchers

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.
    “Even in summer, nights can be cool here,” he said. “Soon, the fog rolls in. The stored-up heat of the day pulls it off the water.”
    He would have worn his jacket even if the evening air had been mild, for he was carrying his loaded revolver under his belt and needed the jacket to Conceal it.
    “Is there really a chance you’ll need the gun?” she asked as they walked away from the car.
    “Not likely. I’m carrying it mainly for ID.”
    “Huh?”
    “You’ll see.”
    She looked back at the car, where Einstein was staring out the rear window, looking forlorn. She felt bad leaving him there. But she was quite certain that even if these establishments would admit dogs such places were not good for Einstein’s moral welfare.
    Travis seemed interested solely in those bars whose signs were either in both English and Spanish or in Spanish only. Some places were downright shabby and did not conceal the peeling paint and the moldy carpeting, while others used mirrors and glitzy lighting to try to hide their true roach-hole nature. A few were actually clean and expensively decorated. In each, Travis spoke in Spanish with the bartender, sometimes with musicians if there were any and if