I knew that as I talked Giselle’s vision was framed by the real and the filmic visions of Brenda’s performance, naked on screen, all but naked on stage. I turned to see Brenda remove her G-string and, unlike Consuela, stand before the club crowd without a garment, letting all eyes find what they sought while she danced another sixteen bars, and then, lights out, she was gone.
“Brenda looks naked, doesn’t she?” I said. “More fraudulence: She never lets herself be naked. She’s wearing an all-but-invisible G-string she puts on with adhesive. It covers her opening, and has a bit of hair that matches her own. She provides the illusion of nudity while she retains the protective integrity of the larger G-string, and so the customers never see the complete Brenda. I find a fascination in this betrayal of the public trust, don’t you? Most of the time in this life when you see a naked pussy you assume it truly is a naked pussy. Since we all live in the great whorehouse, and since we all give a fuck whenever we can, no matter what the cost, the discovery that even the most openhanded lewdness is only another act of cynicism seems just right, admirable even. Dr. Tannen used to chide me for my quest for innocence, or at least that’s how he described it. He said my time underground, or in the sewer as you put it, was really a search for something that didn’t exist in the world, not now, not ever. How far back in darkness do you want to go to find that innocence? he asked. The womb? Amniotic innocence? Do you really think the womb was such an innocent place? Maybe you’d like to go back beyond the womb to the soul’s descent into the womb, or back even to the soul’s creation. Personally, he said, I don’t think you can get there from here.”
Giselle put her hand on the right side of my head and held it. “Do you still get the headaches?” she asked.
“Once in a while,” I said.
“How often do you see the doctor?”
“We’re quits. I can’t afford him. But I understand. He doesn’t run a free lunch counter.”
“It was beautiful, what you did for me,” Giselle said.
“I’m glad you liked it,” I said. “I’ll pay your friend back when I get the advance on the Meriwether book.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take it out of my paycheck.”
“You are a generous woman, Giselle.”
“You’re a loving husband, Orson.”
“Yes. That’s true. Isn’t it a pity.”
Giselle dropped her hand from my head, took my hand in hers, and was smiling her smile of rue when the shooting began in the street. One shot broke the window in the club’s door, and Eddie the barman yelled, “Get down, folks, they’re shootin’ out there.”
I could see someone huddled in the doorway until the lights went out, heard a pistol fired twice, three times, four, heard a volley of return shots, and then the doorway went silent. Eddie switched the lights back on and when he opened the door a man in a light-gray overcoat rolled down from the two steps where he’d been huddling. Two uniformed policemen with drawn pistols stood on the sidewalk observing the situation. Both holstered their pistols and one went elsewhere.
“Who is he?” Eddie asked the policeman.
“He just held up the joint next door.”
An Interview with the Corpse on 52d Street
by Orson Purcell
The interview took place on the threshold of The Candy Box, a Manhattan nightclub on 52nd Street, a crosstown artery that is home to two dozen jazz bars and exotic dance clubs along its neon way. The corpse was male, reasonably well dressed, without a necktie, but wearing a shirt with starched collar, double-breasted dark gray suit, gray overcoat, and a gray fedora that had fallen off when the man was shot. Two policemen had come upon him almost as soon as he emerged, gun in hand, from an adjacent nightclub, where he had stolen an unspecified amount of money.
The door of The Candy Box remained open throughout the interview at the suggestion of police, who were awaiting the homicide photographer. A woman customer in The Candy Box was actually the first to photograph the corpse, using a Leica thirty-five-millimeter and natural light. This dramatic photo received wide currency, appearing in Life magazine six days after the shooting.
The corpse lay on its right side during the interview, bullet holes in its head, neck, chest, and other parts of the upper torso. The eyes were open, and the expression on the face (which was free of blood) was one of inquiry, as if the man had died asking a question. This was the first interview the owner of the corpse had ever given, either in life or in death.
O: Is there any single reason why you are dead?
C: The cops shot me eight times.
O: Why did they do that?
C: I shot at them.
O: Isn’t that a crazy thing to do?
C: You could say that.
O: Do all hoodlums behave this way?
C: Not everybody. It’s somethin’ you decide.
O: Was your decision prompted by the fact that you’re suicidal?
C: Hey whatayou sayin’? I was raised a Catholic.
O: Then maybe you were just stupid.
C: Nobody calls me stupid, buddy.
O: This is speculative conversation. Crime is often an aggressive form of stupidity. Don’t be upset.
C: You think stupid guys get away doin’ what I do? You think the boss’d trust me if I was stupid?
O: Maybe you were doing it to escape.
C: Now you’re talkin’.
O: But you didn’t escape.
C: I had a chance.
O: You gambled with your life. You’re a gambler.
C: I never win nothin’.
O: Would you consider yourself an unlucky man?
C: Yeah, could be. But, shit, luck ain’t everything. I know a lot of unlucky guys who got nothin’ but money.
O: Perhaps it was madness.
C: I’m as sane as you are, friend.
O: That’s not saying a whole lot, but we won’t go into that here. Perhaps it runs in your family. If your entire family was mad then possibly you are as well.
C: My old man wouldn’t let any nuts run around in the family.
O: What about fear? People get their backs up when they’re afraid, when they think something might destroy them, or what is most valuable to them.
C: Balls. I been in half a dozen shootouts. You want the rundown?
O: No need. Consider that you may have been foolhardy. More brave than smart, in other words. Is that why you did it?
C: We do what we do because we gotta do it. You don’t like that reason I’ll give you another one. We do it because it’s gotta be done.
O: A compulsive, responsible hoodlum. That’s rare indeed. But shooting it out with the police all but presumes a belief in your own unkillability
C: Oh yeah?
O: One might describe it as hubris, which of course means challenging the gods to destroy you.
C: You’re one of them smart bastards.
O: If I may sum up, you enter into this sort of contretemps with total awareness, and you do it because you decide it’s the valorous thing to do, because it proves that at your center you are a courageous individual, because it is your obligation to a world you mistakenly believe you understand, and that, no matter what the odds against you or your ideas, you are the final arbiter of your own action. Captain of your soul, so to speak. Am I wrong?
C: What the fuck are you talkin’ about?
O: It remains to be seen. One final question. Do you think it’s possible that you’re not really dead, that you have a chance at resurrection, I mean coming back to life?