Now at this point-the point where Weiss suddenly left town and Bishop got thrown in jail and all-at this point I was already tired of Sissy in a thousand ways, but in one way I wasn't. She was older than I was by at least ten years, and she knew some sexual tricks that would've been illegal if the sort of people who made stuff like that illegal had ever heard of them, which they couldn't have or they wouldn't have been that sort of people. Me at that age: I was basically a penis with an idea for a human being attached. I wanted to leave Sissy and be with Emma, but I couldn't because of the things Sissy did with me in bed. I despised myself for this. In fact, I despised myself for my entire approach to Sissy, the way I pledged my loyalty to her at the same time I plotted to escape her as if she were some kind of Communist regime or something. Sissy was not a bad person at all. She was sweet and gentle and motherly, and so hungry to have a man in her life, she was even willing to settle for me. I liked her. I really did. I was just tired of her, that's all. I was tired of her and I was in love with Emma, my second soul.
Last night, the night before Bishop went to jail, I managed to get away from her somehow. I told her some lie or other. I haven't the stomach to remember what it was. Anyway, I drove out to Berkeley. I went to Carlo's. I figured Emma had come in there once; there was at least some chance she would come in again. Somehow, attempting to bump into her "accidentally" seemed less dishonest than calling her or going to her house while I was still involved with Sissy.
So there we find me, in Carlo's, at a corner table. Drinking a beer. Pretending not to watch the door.
It was Thursday night. The place was packed, noisy with talk and laughter. The chairs around the chunky wooden tables were full of kids from the university, kids not much younger than I. My gaze-my melancholy gaze-traveled over them: athletes pointing their chins and fingers at one another, shouting friendly insults back and forth; intellectuals talking vehemently nose to nose, as if they were disagreeing rather than working out the variations of a single ideology; outcasts in baggy clothes with sullen frowns and big ideas; and bright-eyed Businessmen and Businesswomen of Tomorrow who smiled across their pizzas as if they would be bright-eyed forever.
I gripped the handle of my beer mug, sipped the surface of my beer. I had been one of these very students not so long ago, one of the intellectual ones. I had been planning to continue on through graduate school, to become a college professor and write bad smart novels that critics praised and no one read, just like Emma's father did. God knows what lonely impulse of delight had led me to take a year off, to take a menial job at Weiss's agency. But there I found myself, working at a place and with people who seemed to have erupted whole out of the hard-boiled detective fiction I had loved since I was a boy. I wasn't one of those hard-boiled people. I knew that. But somehow being among them at the Agency had taught me something about myself. I didn't want to be a professor anymore. I didn't want to write bad smart novels. I wanted to live in the real world with real people and write the kind of novels I had always loved.
I told all this to Emma the night we met. She was the only one I had ever told or ever could tell. I told her and then I went back to the city and started up the thing with Sissy.
Now here I was and, oh, how melancholy it all seemed to me, how rife with personal symbolism. Which woman would I love? Which choice would I make? Which life would I lead?
Of course, looking back on it now, I see only one salient point about any of it, one fact that stood out above all others: to wit, I was a feckless poltroon-truly feckless; without a single feck. I was a moral coward to my bones. No wonder I despised myself.
I lifted my beer mug. Tilted it up. Drained it. I clapped it down on the table. I stood.
She would not come tonight, my Emma. She would never come again.
I drove back to the city in a state of high romantic sadness. I went home to my apartment. I slept alone.
9.
I arrived at work the next morning feeling all the stronger and more righteous. Having resisted Sissy for an evening, I was like the drunk who takes a night off alcohol and thinks he's beaten it.
The Weiss agency was on the eighth floor of a concrete tower on Market Street. With its red mansard roof up top and the electric streetcars snapping and rattling by its base, the building had a pleasingly timeless aspect. As I pushed through the glass door nestled beside the bank on the ground floor, it was easy for me to pretend I was pushing into that old tough-guy Frisco of my imagination.
I rode the elevator up to eight. There were glass doors there and a reception desk behind them and a receptionist, Amy, behind the desk. There were hallways to the left and right of her. I took the one on the left and went about two-thirds of the way down to a little alcove. That's where my desk was.
Originally, Weiss had hired me as little more than an office boy. My desk and I shared space with a copier, a fax machine, and a postage dispenser, and most of my time was still spent typing case notes, filing reports, and sealing envelopes. Lately, though, things had been changing for the better. Wonderful to relate, Weiss had taken an inexplicable liking to me. He would wander by the alcove now and then and stop to chat, and sometimes at night, when everyone else was gone, he would even invite me into his office. He would pour a couple of Macallans, and we would drink together and talk-or, that is, he would talk and I would listen. I was never quite sure whether he wanted to make certain I got things right when I eventually wrote about him, or if he just considered me a harmless cipher who would take his secrets with me when I left to begin my real life. But whatever his reasons, he confided in me. And, in due course, he began to trust me with small investigative chores. I lived for these. They made me feel like a real detective, as if I, too, like Weiss and Bishop, were one of the fictional heroes of my youth.
I was just settling down at my computer when my interoffice line went off. It was Sissy. She wanted me in her office. It was down the other hall, so I had to walk back through the reception area to get there. As I passed Amy again, I saw her hide a smirk in her coffee cup, and all my sense of strength and righteousness deserted me. Truly, I tell you, it is easier for a wealthy camel to enter heaven through a needle's eye than it is to keep an office love affair secret.
I found Sissy standing at the far window with her back to me. Traffic noise rose up to us from Market. Sunlight streamed in through the staggered city skyline. I shut the door. Sissy turned to face me across her desk.
She was a woman of delicate beauty, starting to fade. She had pale skin and blue eyes and golden hair. She had a whispery voice that inflamed me. She had a small, slender figure that fit wonderfully into a man's hands. She always dressed like a schoolgirl, in pleated plaid skirts and white blouses and pastel cardigans and so on. She had a sweet, motherly way of tilting her head to one side when she smiled. She smiled now and whispered, "Hello there, my little puppy dog. Did you get a good sleep last night all by your lonesome?"
That was another thing: she talked shit like that. All the time. Sweetie pie, puppy dog, baby boy-that sort of thing. When I first met her, I have to admit, it made me want to make love to her. Now that I had made love to her, it made me want to throttle her and then maybe hack her into little pieces with some sort of kitchen implement.
But all I did was grunt, "Yeah. Okay, I guess."
"No kiss?" She made a pouty face. "You're not going to give your mama a kiss?"
Have I mentioned I was a feckless poltroon? I went around her desk and kissed her on command. And I confess when I was doing it, when I was immersed in her clean, soapy scent, when I felt her tongue in my mouth and her fingers on a spot at the back of my neck I hadn't even known I had-I confess I was hers again for the moment and breathless for our next night together.