“This is where I spend a bit of my social life when the world is too much with me,” I said, pulling out bar stools for Giselle and myself.
We were in The Candy Box, a 52nd Street club that featured striptease dancers from 6:00 p.m. till 3:00 a.m. It was eight o’clock and the low-ceilinged room was already full of smoke that floated miasmically in the club’s bluish light. Four young women in low-cut street dresses sat at the bar, two of them head-to-head with portly cigar smokers. The other two, on the alert for comparable attention, turned their eyes to us, recognized me, gave me greetings.
I called them by name and sat beside Giselle. On the dance floor, Consuela, a busty platinum blonde, awkwardly unhooked her skirt to the music of a four-piece band, while three other club girls cozied a table full of men, and another dozen solitary males watched the blonde with perfect attention.
“This is so depressing,” Giselle said. “Do you come here to be depressed?”
“I know the bartender,” I said.
“You know more than the bartender.”
“He’s a friend. He lost his leg at Iwo Jima. A colleague in war, so to speak.”
“And your stripper, she works here?”
“Five nights a week.”
“Are we in luck? Will we get to see her?”
“It turns out we will.”
“Is that her trying to make herself naked up there?”
“No, that’s Consuela, one of the new ones, still a bit of an amateur. My Brenda is a talented stripper.”
“Your Brenda,” said Giselle. “Your behavior is ridiculous, Orson. It’s the way you were back in Germany. You seem to like living in the sewer.”
“Orson the underground man.”
“What’ll you have, Orse old buddy?” the bartender asked. He was tall and muscular, with a space where his left canine tooth used to be, a casualty of a bar fight. But you should see the other guy’s dental spaces.
“Port wine, Eddie,” I said. “The best you have. Two.”
“Port wine. Don’t get too many calls for that.”
“It’s a romantic drink, Eddie. My wife and I are celebrating our reunion. I brought her in to meet Brenda.”
“Yeah? Now that’s a switch, bringin’ the wife in here. You don’t see much of that either.”
“Wives have a right to know their husbands’ friends,” Giselle said.
“Not a whole lot of husbands buy that idea,” Eddie said.
“It’s trust, Eddie,” I said. “There has to be more trust in this world. Shake hands with Giselle.”
“A pleasure,” Eddie said, taking Giselle’s hand.
“When is Brenda on?” I asked.
“She’s next.”
“We are in luck,” Giselle said.
“Eddie, would you ask her to come out and say hello before her act?”
“Right away, old buddy.”
“Eddie is certainly a friendly bartender for a place like this,” Giselle said.
“You should avoid categorical thinking, Giselle. There are no places like this.”
“They’re all over Europe.”
“The Candy Box is different. Trust me.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“Because basically I’m a good person,” I said.
“That’s another reason I married you, but I’ve decided that doesn’t mean I should trust you.”
“In God we trust. All others should be bullwhipped.”
I saw Brenda walking toward us from the back of the club, wrapped in a black dressing gown that covered less than half of her upper significance. On the stage Consuela was removing, as a final gesture, her minimal loin string, revealing a shaded blur that vanished in the all-but-black light that went with that ultimate moment.
I stood to greet Brenda, her eyes heavily mascaraed, her red lipstick outlined in black, her shining black hair loose to her shoulders. I bussed her cheek, offered her my bar stool, then introduced her to Giselle as “my good friend Brenda, who has done everything a woman of her profession is ever asked to do by men.”
“And what is your profession, Brenda?” Giselle asked.
“She’s a dancer,” I said.
“I didn’t ask you, I asked Brenda.”
“Is this really your wife, Orson?”
“She really is,” I said. “Isn’t she lovely?”
“I’m a dancer,” Brenda said to Giselle. “What’s your profession, honey?”
“Giselle is a photographer,” I said.
“You take my picture,” Brenda said, “I’ll take yours,” and she parted the skirt of her gown and spread her legs.
“Is that what you’d like me to photograph?” Giselle asked.
“No,” said Brenda. “That’s my camera.”
“She has a sense of humor, your Brenda,” Giselle said.
“She’s had dinner with Juan Perón, she’s stripped for the Prince of Wales. Is there anything you haven’t experienced, Brenda?” I asked.
“True love,” said Brenda. “Men only want my body.”
“What a pity,” said Giselle.
“It’s good for business, is how I look at it,” said Brenda. She stood up from the bar stool. “Business calls me.”
“Happy business,” Giselle said as Brenda left us.
“A lively mind, don’t you think?” I said.
“I’d say her tits were her best feature,” Giselle said.
On stage Brenda worked with a film of herself dancing, and a stage spotlight. The film and her live dance were the same but in the film she was seducing a shadowy male figure. As she removed a garment on stage the camera moved in for a close-up on the area about to be revealed, then cut away as the stage garment was tossed. The spotlight dimmed progressively as nudity impended, and then the camera focused in grainy close-up on the parts of Brenda that were illegal in the flesh.
“Clever juxtaposition, isn’t it?” I said. “It was Brenda’s own idea.”
“Two Brendas for the price of one,” Giselle said.
I turned my back to Brenda’s performance and faced Giselle. “I have something I must tell you,” I said.
“Don’t you want to see how Brenda comes out?”
“I know how Brenda comes out. My editor didn’t buy my book, he rejected it. The money I spent belonged to your friendly editor from Life. I took two of his checkbooks and his identification to cash them. It’s really quite simple to assume a new identity.”
Giselle stared and said nothing.
“The care and feeding of love and beauty should be a primary concern of the human race, but if I can’t afford it at any given moment, it doesn’t follow I should abandon my concern. Making love to you this afternoon, I argued with myself about confessing the deed, but confession would have destroyed the aura of love that we’d created. I also tried to understand whether my fraudulence was enhancing or diminishing my excitement, and decided it wasn’t a factor, that I existed for you apart from my fraudulence. But I knew the confession would change your view of what was happening, and I didn’t want that. I wanted you to see what lies in store for you in America, the future of your ambition, which we both know is formidable. You will have a successful career, I’m certain of that. Given our marriage and our love, I suspect you’d be inclined to tuck me in your pocket and carry me along with you, or park me in an apartment on the Upper East Side while you circle the globe with your camera. But I would rather have no Giselle than half of Giselle. I could never survive the madness that would follow such a raveled connection.”