Читать книгу Klick, the Dick - Milam Smith - Страница 7

“Oh yes, yes,” the one lady said with exaggerated feeling.

“Oh baby, yeah. Oh baby, yeah,” one guy responded, sounding more into it.

“Love it, baby, love it,” the other guy said, although he was looking at the other couple.

“Mmmff, mmmff,” said the second girl. I assumed she was saying either ‘love it’ or ‘yes yes,’ but I wouldn’t swear to it.

The snappy dialogue, accompanied by slurping sound-effects, was coming from the four naked bodies squirming around up on the small movie screen. I shifted in my seat. It was not exactly my favorite flick, although I’d been here twelve o’clock sharp the last three days.

The theater was so dark I wondered if a projector was being used. Two rows in front of me were two heads just visible above the seats. One head was dark-haired and the other one blond. The woman married to the man with black hair was not blond. In fact, she had hired me. Every now and then the two heads would merge—accompanied by slurping sound-effects better than on the screen. At least once during the movie one head or the other would dip from view. More slurping and groaning. Didn’t leave much to the imagination considering the locale.

A man in a red dress sidled down my aisle, sat down next to me and put his hand on my leg. I turned and stared at him. He seemed about to say something but after seeing my face in a flare of film-light he thought better of it and got the hell away from me. Being ugly comes in handy sometimes.

I turned my attention back to the two heads. Black-hair was gone, and Blondie was moaning something fierce.

On the screen there was a symphony of keening sexual release. The bodies momentarily put on their clothes and got back to the plot; one of those plots involving international intrigue, a chauffeur and a man walking a poodle. The poodle was central to the plot.

I joined the rush to the lobby. Popcorn time. There were about fifty seats in the theater, I guessed, split into three sections. Besides me and the two heads and the man in a red dress there were about fifteen people attending the—ahem—movie.

The lobby was a glaring relief. Sunlight was forcing its way through the huge, darkly-tinted lobby windows that looked out on Fort Worth’s Main Street. The light had a cleansing effect. Then I looked at the refreshment counter. Next to the popcorn bin there were various sex-aids for sell. I was careful not to order a hot dog. On the shelf behind the topless lady taking my order for a drink there were boxes of porno videos for sale. Chains and whips hung decoratively on the wall.

I took one sip from my Seven-Up, remembered where I was, and then deposited the drink in a dark-blue wastebasket.

I looked at my Timex. The little hand was just past the twelve and the big hand was on six. The movie had an hour to run, an epic. Time to call my client with the bad news. There were two phone booths inside. I carefully used one, punching the buttons from outside the booth and talking into the phone with the cord stretched tight. I had never noticed how difficult it was to hold my breath and talk at the same time.

***

“Mr. Klick?”

She had come up behind me and I hadn’t noticed. I’d been paying more attention to the cars zipping by on the street. The streets were wet from a brief shower. I had stood inside the lobby until the rain had stopped, then dashed out hungry for fresh air. The sun had shone brightly during the rain. There wasn’t a cloud in sight outside, as if all the water had been rung from the sky. Now the humidity was probably 105 percent.

“Yes’m. Just call me Clyde, please. Sure this is what you want to do? It’s not necessary.”

Mrs. Campos was wearing a yellow and white sundress and yellow sneakers with white laces. She had on a clear bonnet, something I hadn’t seen since grade-school, that folded up into a pocket-sized square that my mom made me take to school every day. Mrs. Campos was petite. Her smile was bright like her clothes and as relieving as the sunlight. Slim for a small woman, but somehow strong. Maybe it was the sneakers.

“Do you mind?” she asked in a hidden quiet voice that was as clear as a tinker’s bell. “I need to do it this way.”

“I’m bought and paid for, if that’s what you want to do. You seem like you can handle it. Or anything else, far as that goes.”

She smiled. And even though it was hard to tell because of her Mexican heritage, she seemed to blush.

“I’m sorry if that sounds like a come-on. Really.”

She looked up at me with that smile that made me shiver. “That’s okay,” she said. “Maybe I need that right now, too. I’m not offended.”

There was a noise behind me. The movie was over and people were leaking outside the theater with umbrellas popping open even though the rain had long gone.

Mrs. Campos had called three days ago, wanting to find out why her husband had been taking two-hour lunches from his car-lot. Solid as she seemed, I didn’t know if she could handle what she was about to see. I hadn’t told her everything on the phone, and now regretted it. I had verified that her husband was cheating on her, but not with whom.

We stood about ten feet from the theater. There was no awning over its doors. No sign either, just a double-door like any other shop in the ten-story, slate-gray building. Other, taller and newer buildings surrounded us. It was like being in a canyon.

The blond guy came out ahead of Mr. Campos. He turned and took Mr. Campos’ hand as he came out. They cooed at each other and then turned towards us. I felt his wife stiffen next to me.

Mr. Campos was wearing a light-blue three-piece suit that was pretty rumpled now. He was of Mexican stock, too. His ears made Clark Gable’s look normal, and he had an overbite that would have covered up Bugs Bunny. He was about forty years old.

Blondie, though, was about twenty. Tight gray slacks, white shirt and black tie, black leather jacket and gray loafers. A salesman if ever I’d seen one. He worked for Campos, in more ways than one, it seemed.

Blondie glanced at me as he came towards us. His eyes were blue. Then Campos noticed his missus. He stopped, jerking Blondie to a halt. Blondie looked at his buddy and then followed his stare to us.

“Oh No!,” Blondie said.

“Be cool,” I said, giving him a stern look. He was slim and trim, but fairly broad-shouldered. His smirk told me he was young and thought he was in shape. He was almost my height, just under six feet. Still, I was half-again bigger than him by forty pounds.

That smirk seemed etched on Blondie’s face. Okay, maybe he was better-looking than me. That’s no reason to smirk. At least I wasn’t holding hands with a man the dog pound wouldn’t keep around the requisite seven days.

Mrs. Campos was quiet and still. My heart ached with her pain. I felt a strange emotion stirring in me, but forced myself to remember I was married.

Blondie got bored with it all. He folded his arms and looked down at his boyfriend’s wife. His smirk was beginning to irritate the heck out of me. I could fix that, though, although I doubted he’d appreciate my help.

“Look,” he said in a cool straight voice that I figured could sell an AMC Gremlin. “I don’t have all damn da—”

“I told you to be cool, and I meant it,” I told him. “Watch your mouth around the lady.”

“Yeah?” he said with a cock of his head. Then he swung at me.

It was a good clip, sent straight from his hip. I blocked it with a left outside-block, my forearm snapping out in an arc to absorb and deflect his blow. I brought up my right knee, then jabbed my foot at a spot an inch in front of his chin as I extended my leg, a text-book front-kick. He leaned away from it and bumped into Campos, who fell down on his butt with a thump.

Blondie assumed a fighting stance; feet spread wide apart and knees bent. He was still smirking. I wished I had tried to hit him.

”All right,” he said, like I was the best thing to happen to him since he’d seen his last Bruce Lee movie.

He came at me and spun, aiming a spinning back-kick at me head. I bobbed under it and came up with a right jab at that smirk of his. It was washed away in a mess of blood and teeth.

Blondie sat right down on the sidewalk and grabbed his mouth smothering his shriek of pain and loss - a typical martial artist who’d never had more than a one punch fight. But I had learned long ago not to look down at people who I thought had shortcomings I didn’t have. I learned it the day I looked in the mirror and saw the craters from popping too many zits.

Mr. Campos crawled over to Blondie and hugged and cooed him. I almost threw up.

That told Mrs. Campos all she needed to be told. She quietly turned away and I followed like a loyal pup. I selfishly enjoyed the backside view of her. We walked around a corner and went another block before we came up to a beige ‘78 Mustang. It was the closest parking she had been able to find. It was no longer easy in Fort Worth to find a parking space near to where a person was going. Fort Worth was a city now, no longer the Cowtown of past.

Mrs. Campos stopped and kind of hugged herself, bending down her head. She seemed to shrivel and get smaller. She was already less than five feet tall. It was all I could do to not hug her.

She cleared her throat and straightened up, reached into her small yellow purse that I hadn’t noticed. She pulled out a set of keys and unlocked the Mustang.

It began to rain even though the sun was still alone, just like a while ago. What’d my mom used to say? The Devil was beating his wife? Something like that. I had always been struck by that saying, wondering why the Devil would bother to marry.

When the Mustang’s door opened I felt the pent-up heat from inside. Mrs. Campos leaned in, rolled down the window.

She reached into her purse again. “Here,” she said. “Three hundred, right? Three days.”

It was all cash. I took it, then peeled out two twenties and a ten and handed then back to her. “I won’t charge but half for today. So let’s say two-fifty for two-and-a-half days, s’right.”

She smiled and looked down. She had a puffy smile with her lips closed. “Can I drop you off somewhere?”

“No, I always walk in town. The office is just over a block or so from here.”

“What about the rain?”

I held out my hand and said, “What rain? I’d get wetter playing a round of racquetball.”

She got in the car and I shut the door. I leaned down on the roof and stared at her. She looked up.

“Listen. He comes home and hassles you, call me. No charge.”

“I’ll be fine. I’m going straight to a lawyer and I’ll be ready. Can I tell my lawyer to call you?”

“Sure. Comes with the job. Anytime. Bye.”

I watched her car slide down the street and turn onto Main. I considered walking back to the theater to see of Blondie was still smirking. But why bother? He would probably try to sue me as it was. All those guys that start fights are like that. Kick their butt and they try to use a lawyer to kick you back.

So I headed back to the office. I took long steps like a physical therapist had taught me long ago. It did seem to keep my knee from hurting so much. Sometimes.

Fort Worth definitely was getting too big for its britches. As I walked none of the pretty ladies I passed smiled at me or seemed the least bit friendly. Maybe it was just my face. But then, no men smiled or seemed friendly towards me either. Not that I wanted them too.

Naw, Fort Worth was a city, that was it. No longer a town. Cowtown it had been called for ages because people had been bringing cows here or through here ever since the 1860s. People just weren’t as friendly in a city, it seemed. ‘Course, nowadays, people didn’t seem too friendly anywhere.

I saw a sight across the street that made me stop. A bag lady. For crying out loud - a bag lady in Fort Worth. She was pushing a Kroger shopping cart loaded with paper and clothes. She was wearing a lot of clothes, at least two jackets, one a Navy pea coat.

How could she stand it with the heat and humidity? Maybe she was kin to O’Hara, the guy Chan had conked earlier.

I finally came to where Main dead-ended at the front of the blue and white Tarrant County Convention Center. The bubble-topped roof of the main auditorium was being re-tarred. The sharp smell of the tar almost knocked me over with the memories it caused to rise up in me. I had known a girl when I was a kid whose father had been a roofer, and I remembered the smell of his tar machine. I turned right, ignoring the enticing tranquility of the small park on the corner. I had spent a few lunches there, whenever I happened to be around.

My office was across the next street in what is without a doubt the ugliest building in Fort Worth. Maybe in the world.

The Ironwork building is triangular because of the weird junction of streets. The first ugly thing noticed is the color; green the color of tarnished copper. There were the ledges, too, circling the building at each story, beneath the windows, for all six floors.

U-G-L-Y.

There weren’t any cars except for mine parked in front of the Ironwork. Now that’s ugly.

When I passed by the Booke Stoare, the only occupied street front of the building, Mrs. McGurty tapped on the window. I kept on walking. She tapped and then banged as I ignored her. The entrance for the upper offices was at the southeast corner and I didn’t stop until I got there. I hoped no one saw me enter.

I wondered how many clients I lost because being seen coming into the Ironwork was too embarrassing. Was that why Mrs. Campos had phoned?