Gloria sat at the mahogany bar and locked her heels in the bottom rung of the stool. She talked quietly to Mike, the bartender, who mixed the chilled martinis and seemed genuinely concerned about her.
" Hello, Gloria," he said, as she sat tiredly in front of him. " Haven' t seen you for a couple of weeks."
" I' ve been away," she lied.
" Back home?" he asked eagerly. He had been tending in the village for eleven years, but his mission was to send small- town girls out of the city.
" No," she said, " just a vacation to Fire Island."
" Fire Island," he echoed. " I used to go there years ago. Had a nice, quiet crowd then. But I hear it' s changed."
" It' s pretty wild," she agreed. " But it still looks kind of rustic, and the beach is terrific."
Talking to him, calmly and mundanely, she felt that she was grabbing frantically for a remnant of her sanity. That was the quality of a good bartender, to make the drunk feel sober and sensible. This is what happens to us, she thought, when we really go nuts. We become absolutely banal. I' d give him my life if he' d just stand here and talk to me about the weather.
" Excuse me, Gloria," he said, and moved up the bar to take an order for two Manhattans. He stood talking to the man who ordered the drinks and then moved to the back of the bar to mix them. Gloria cupped the martini glass in her two hands and swallowed the clear liquid.
Why am I doing this to myself? She knew that while she had been talking to Mike, she had been thinking of the rapist. She had just been making sounds with her mouth to dim the ever- playing record in her head. Why am I doing this? He isn' t important; I know that. He could rape a thousand women, and except for the shock and horror, they' d delete the memory with a hot douche. It' s all my comedy. He is nothing… a fantasy. He' s probably a salesman who got hot, or a moving man with a bored wife. He must be illiterate and gross and sick, enjoying only the women he takes violently. And she remembered the cool voice saying, " We' re going to have a little party…" and her hand trembled with desire.
It was his insolence that maddened her. No. Insolence was a word that you used for snide servants. She washis servant. His face had been white; not a face that turned to the sun or air. He was airless, magnificently useless. A man without enthusiasms, and he made the rest of the world seem petty in its ambitions.
My God, I am creating a genius of disdain. He might be praying for a promotion in a department store shipping department. It' s the not knowing him. I detest knowing the men who fuck me. They' re so full of themselves, but they pretend to know I' m under them, soothing their pricks. Two bloated bodies meeting in space. He pressed me under the steps and I didn' t exist. I was just his passion. No one can make me live, but he obliterated me.
Without saying another word, Mike mixed her a double Martini. He poured it into her empty glass, which was careless, since Martini glasses should be chilled. But she couldn' t last a second without the drink before her, just as she couldn' t breathe without having something between her legs. A cock had become a pacifier to her, a teething ring.
That' s it. I' m just cutting my teeth, and what will I do with them when they' re fully grown? Men are supposed to be afraid of the mouths into which they offer their malehood. But if I can' t have one of my own, I certainly want them to hang on to theirs. A world without a prick is like a house without a hearth, or something like that.
She was deep in the second drink when a man sat down next to her and said, " Let me buy you the next one."
Mike looked up hastily across the bar. He didn' t like to see his regulars annoyed. He moved toward them, but Gloria stopped him with a look.
" Thanks," she said. " I' d love you to buy the next one."
Mike looked amazed, then disappointed. He thought that all women must be rotten, and then remembered his wife and daughter and wanted to rush out and drive directly to Queens. They should be sitting down to dinner now.
Seeing the man' s raised hand, he mixed them both fresh martinis, and this time he gave Gloria a new glass. But the drink just reached the white chalk- line. No bonuses for tarts.
Gloria fought her embarrassment and took a long, cool draught. It more than helped. It made scruples a forgotten Sunday School lesson. The man, with his bought privileges, moved his stool closer to Gloria' s.
" I' ve seen you in here quite often," he told her.
" Yes, I live across the street. It' s a good place to come for a quickie."
He carefully misunderstood the word. " We all need ' quickies' once in a while," and he winked with adolescent lasciviousness.
" Brilliant." She hated him for the weak pun, and for his enjoyment of it.
The man looked back at her, first with confusion and then with distrust. " Lady," he said rudely, " I just want a piece of ass."
She thought only ignorant soldiers used that expression, and for an instant her face contorted with distaste.
" I know what you want," she said.
He was going to let her despise him, so long as he could have a fifteen- minute fuck. " You' re a smart little girl." He changed his tone.
" Buy me another drink," she commanded.
It was no longer a question of getting a prick into her. She knew that if he left her, she would have nothing but the memory of white eyes and her haunting inadequacy. It would be enough to know where he was, what he did, who his women were. That way she could sink herself into his invisible life. But it was knowing nothing, nothing but the feeling in her groin, that fed her desperation.
She reached over and patted the man' s hand. " Don' t mind me," she apologized. " I' m just fighting a ghost."
" Someone in your family die?" he asked with the mock suburban concern he always showed to whores.
" Yes," she said. " Someone in my family died."
" Why, that' s a shame, little girl," he murmured. " But we all have to go sometime."
She wondered if she should kill him instead of the rapist.
" We all have to go," she echoed, and laughed.
" It makes you think," he added. " It makes you think that you' d better enjoy life while you got it."
" You' re right," she said. " Everyone should enjoy life. To the fullest, to the brimming- over cup."
He looked down at his brown and white shoes. " Now don' t be sacrilegious."
She almost fell off the stool.
" What I mean," she said, pressing against his frightened, corpulent body, " is that everyone should fuck a lot."
He didn' t answer her for a few seconds. " Who died?" he asked, getting the conversation onto safer grounds.
" I did," she answered. " If you don' t object to necrophilia, I guarantee a good time."
" What' s that?" In his confusion, he lifted his hand for another round.
" It' s fucking a corpse," she told him in the tone she' d use to tell him the time or her name.
He turned his head away. " You' ve got a funny sense of humor."
" What?"
" You got a helluva sense of humor," he said, with a slight toughening alteration of his voice.
" I was even funnier," she explained, " when I was alive. When I was alive, I was an absolute scream."
" And now?" he said, afraid to look stupid.