The fat man had wiry black hair and tiny eyes. His nose was pugged and his mouth was large and fleshy. He wore a red and black wool shirt jacket hanging out of his baggy, olive green pants. Under his arm were three sex magazines he’d bought in a porno bookstore around the corner on Forty-second Street.
He stopped in the doorway of a store closed for the night, read the leaflet again, and looked at the photo of a naked young blonde squeezing her breasts ecstatically. He wondered if they really had girls like that in the massage parlor. He wouldn’t mind paying ten dollars for one of them if they did.
He headed uptown. For some time he’d been tempted to go to a massage parlor, but he’d never gotten around to it. Tonight he thought he’d check one out. He had a knife in his pants pocket, and if there was any trouble he knew how to take care of himself.
Beneath neon lights and movie marquees he made his way through black thugs, Puerto Rican gangs, college kids on a lark, the after-theater crowd, and frail young girls with the eyes of harlots. The fat man’s head bobbed around as he looked everywhere, catching every detail, not missing anything. He loved to come to Times Square at night. You could do just about anything, and nobody cared.
“Loose joints,” murmured a black man standing in front of a shoe store window.
The fat man kept walking. At Forty-fifth Street he turned left and crossed Broadway.
He walked erect, his haunch like shoulders rolling and his big round stomach far in front of him. He looked strong and mean, something like a bear, and not the kind of fat man a wise guy would pick on.
It was darker on Forty-fifth Street and there were fewer people. The theaters had closed for the night and old derelicts were bedding down on doorsteps. The breeze sent a newspaper flying over the sidewalk like the ghost of a giant butterfly. The fat man looked at the numbers on the buildings, then spotted the sign hanging over the sidewalk toward the end of the block. The sign said Crown Club in black on white and was lit by a single bulb. As he drew closer he saw a jive black man in a big apple hat standing in front of the door. The black man slapped his leaflets together three times and held one out.
“Beautiful girls upstairs!” he said.
The fat man stopped and looked at the open door. He saw a brightly lit flight of wooden stairs covered with an old worn rug. Rock and roll music could be heard from the second floor.
The black man sidled up to him. “Check ‘em out,” he said softly. “Only ten bucks.”
“What do you get for ten bucks?”
“Anything you want.”
“Anything?”
“Anything. And they’s real nice girls.”
The fat man wanted to screw a nice young girl, and ten bucks would be cheaper than a date, not that he ever went on dates. He entered the doorway and climbed the creaking stairs. The sound of rock and roll grew louder. As he neared the top of the stairs he saw two big white guys on the landing. They were leaning against the wall and talking in low tones. Evidently they were the bouncers, and they had jailhouse written all over them. As the fat man approached them, he wondered if he wanted to go into a place where they had bouncers like that.
“Step right in, sir!” said a booming voice.
The fat man looked to the left through a doorway and saw another big white guy with red hair sitting behind a small table in a squalid room. He wore a blue blazer and red striped shirt.
“Don’t be shy!” the redhead called out, motioning with his hand. “Come on in!”
The fat man didn’t like the looks of the place and didn’t feel like going in, but if he’d come that far he might as well go all the way. Squaring his massive shoulders, he walked into the room, and was dispirited further by what he saw.
A motley group of black and Latin whores were seated to the left on broken-down sofas and chairs. Most were overweight and over thirty. They smiled garishly at him, and he thought they were hideous.
“Step right this way, sir!” the redhead said, slapping his palm on the table.
The fat man looked at the redhead, then at the women again. He wanted to get out of there, but if he turned around and ran down the stairs, everyone would laugh at him, and he hated people to laugh at him.
“Can I help you, sir?” the redhead asked insistently.
The fat man thought he might as well go through with it, what the hell. He walked to the table where the redhead sat, and felt the girls’ eyes burning into his back. His face and shoulders prickled with heat.
“Ten dollars, please,” the redhead said.
The fat man reached into his pocket and self-consciously took out his roll of bills. Peeling off two fives, he dropped them on the table in front of the redhead, who tore a ticket off a big coil and handed it to him.
“What do I do with this?” the fat man stammered.
“You give it to whatever girl you want, and she’ll take care of the rest.”
The fat man turned around and felt vertiginous. All the girls were looking at him, licking their lips, crossing their legs, caressing their tits, winking and wiggling; all acting very freaky. He was so nervous he didn’t know what to do. They wore brightly colored ballerina tights and were a bunch of slobs.
He wasn’t anxious to screw any one of them: his eyes roved back and forth over their painted faces. His cheeks were hot and perspiration dotted his forehead. He had to do something, but he couldn’t leave because that would be too embarrassing. A blonde head and youthful face was among the older ones. Without giving orders to his feet, he found himself walking toward her, holding the ticket out. The closer he came, the worse she looked. She had pimples, a piggy face, and her body was shapeless, but at least she was young. Stopping in front of her, he gave her the ticket.
“Here,” he said meekly.
She made a little smile of satisfaction that indicated that she was pleased to have beaten out the other girls. Taking the ticket, she tucked it into the bosom of her purple tights, stood, and looked at him scornfully.
“Follow me.” She led him down a narrow corridor lined with doors. The walls of the corridor didn’t reach the ceiling, and he could hear grunts and muttering. He wished he were down on the street heading toward the subway. This was awful and there was nothing he could do about it.
She opened a door. “In here.”
He walked into a tiny cubicle that had a padded table against the wall. Any sound he might make could be heard over the tops of the walls in the other cubicles. He’d thought that at least he’d have some privacy.
“Take all your clothes off,” she said.
“All of them?”
“Yes all of them.”
“What for?”
“Because that’s the way it works here.”
The fat man felt a rise of anger, but he’d already paid his ten dollars; he wasn’t leaving now. He started removing his jacket and she walked out of the cubicle, closing the door behind her. He looked around. Her jeans, a shirt, and a Navy pea coat hung from a peg on the wall. In the corner was a box covered with a towel, and on it were bottles and jars of cosmetics. He took off all his clothes, hung them over the back of a rickety wooden chair, and sat on the massage table, feeling chilly and sick. His pecker was shriveled up and his scrotum was hard as leather.