Richard Deming

The Cesspool

I never met Harlan Johnson’s wife, but she couldn’t have been the paragon he said she was. No woman could be.

On the other hand, Harlan wasn’t the paragon his wife might have thought him. I know, because when he was particularly disgusted with himself, he let me have a glimpse or two into what, he called his “cesspool of a mind.”

According to Harlan, his wife Janet thought he was just as wonderful as he thought she was. He always gave the impression of being a little humble because Providence had let something as nice as Janet happen to him.

George Swift spoiled the little pink cloud Harlan lived on. George, and Harlan’s own cesspool of a mind. When a man strays from a wife like Janet to a cheap tramp like Sally, you can’t put all the blame on the guy who introduced them.

The three of us had a rather peculiar relationship. We became close enough friends to confide our intimate thoughts to each other, without ever getting to know each other well. We never saw each other anywhere, except at the Men’s Bar on Forty-second Street.

What brought us together originally was simply that all three of us worked till midnight, and we all fell into the habit of stopping at the Men’s Bar for an after-work drink. Harlan Johnson managed a movie house just off Times Square, George Swift worked the four to midnight trick as head waiter in a restaurant frequented by theatrical people, and I worked the same trick as a police reporter. We were all in our early thirties, all had been married, but Harlan was the only one still working at it.

Probably what first drew us together was the mutual recognition that we were usually the only fully-sober midnight customers at the Men’s Bar. By midnight most tavern customers are pretty well on the way to hangovers, but as we’d all just gotten through work, we’d come in cold sober.

At first it was just polite nods of recognition when we met at the bar, then a little casual conversation, finally mutual introductions and a nightly habit of matching for drinks. We never did reach the point of going out together anywhere other than the Men’s Bar.

Nevertheless, we became pretty firm friends.

George Swift was the core of the trio. Tall and skinny and full of nervous energy, he always knew the latest jokes and, because of his nightly contacts with theatrical people, always had up-to-the-minute inside dope on everything going on in town. Harlan Johnson was a big, blond, quiet man with glasses, a listener rather than a talker. As I’m not much of a talker myself, we spent most of our nightly half hour together listening to George.

That’s how we first heard of Sally. George knew all about her within twenty-four hours of her appearance in town.

“Boy, have they got something hot over at the Silk and Satin,” he announced as we awaited our drinks.

“What’s the Silk and Satin?” Harlan asked.

George gave him a wide-eyed look. “You were born in this town and never heard of the Silk and Satin?”

I said, “It’s a cat house, Harlan.”

George raised a supercilious eyebrow. “That’s like calling the Stork Club a saloon.”

“Okay,” I said. “So it’s high-class. What’s it got that’s so hot?”

“A new gal. Who likes her work.”

Both Harlan and I looked puzzled.

“I mean really likes it,” George explained. “Not just puts on an act. Sally’s her name. They say she’s insatiable.”

Our drinks arrived then, interrupting the conversation. We matched to see who paid. I won the honor.

After we’d all tried preliminary sips, Harlan set his drink on the bar and regarded George thoughtfully through his glasses. He asked, “What’s so strange about a woman in that business liking her work?”

George said, “Know anything at all about abnormal psychology?”

Harlan shook his head.

“Well, it takes a peculiar psychology for a woman to become a prostitute. Studies by Kinsey and other psychologists indicate that very few pros have any passion at all. A large percentage have schizo tendencies. That is, they live in a world of fantasy and have the ability to dissociate their minds entirely from what they’re doing. Nymphos hardly ever go into the business. They just go around giving it away.”

While George was no dunce, this dissertation was a little too glib to come from his own reading. I guessed he was repeating something he’d heard one of his customers say. Probably the same customer who’d told him about Sally.

When Harlan had absorbed this, he said, “I can see how that would be. A prostitute would almost have to shut her mind to reality to be able to live with herself. But how do you know this woman isn’t just putting on a good act?”

“Testimony by an expert. Tony Severn was over to the Silk and Satin last night.”

If Tony Severn was the source of George’s information, it was probably accurate, I thought. Severn was a fading matinee idol and a notorious satyr. Probably no one in town was better qualified to judge female passion.

“She’s not only hotter’n a dollar pistol,” George said. “According to Tony she’s a living doll, and intelligent on top of it all.”

“That’ll be the day you see an intelligent pro,” I said. “Now I know it’s an act.”

“No fooling,” George told us. “Tony says her grammar is perfect and she talks like an educated woman. I don’t think a put-on act would fool him.”

“I’ll have to look this wonder over,” I said. “Soon as I save up a hundred bucks.”

“Is that what it costs?” Harlan asked, a little awed.

“Yeah,” George said. “But you get a lot for your money. All you can drink, all the time you want with a woman, or even several women, if you can handle that much. The girls don’t rush you, because they’re not on a percentage basis. They’re all on straight salary; so they don’t care whether they amuse a dozen guys during the evening, or just one. I think I’ll dig into the sock for a hundred and see how good this Sally really is. Or maybe we could all go over together and match odd man to see who pays.”

“Not me,” Harlan told him. “With a wife like Janet at home, what do I need with that kind of thing?”

The subject of Sally didn’t come up again until the following Monday. Then, shortly after we met at the bar, George said, “Well, I squandered my century note over the week end. Holy smokes, what a woman!”

“Sally?” Harlan asked.

George nodded. “It’s no act. That gal enjoys every minute of it. Cute as a button too. If I’d met her anywhere else, but where I did, I think I might fall for her.”

Harlan was looking at George with a strange half-disapproving, half-eager expression. “What’s she like, George?” he asked.

“Around twenty-five. Maybe a little older. I never could guess a woman’s age. Average height. Five three or four. Dark, wavy hair, and an absolutely flawless body. Firm as a sixteen-year-old’s, without a sag in it. And a kind of hot, sultry look on her face.”

“I mean, what’s she like — you know...” Harlan’s voice trickled off and he turned crimson.

George looked surprised. “Why, Harlan, you dirty old man!” he said with simulated shock. “You want a vicarious love affair. Janet will beat your brains out if she ever reads your mind.”

“Go to hell,” Harlan said embarrassedly. “With a girl like Janet, I don’t need vicarious love affairs.”

I don’t think George Swift suspected how accurately he’d put his finger on Harlan’s mental quirk when he made his joshing remark. I discovered it the next night when Harlan and I met at the Men’s Bar as usual. George wasn’t there because Sunday and Tuesday were his nights off.

When we had our drinks, Harlan suggested we sit in one of the booths because he wanted to talk.

After we were settled, he fidgeted with his glass for a time, finally said, “Pete, do you know anything about this abnormal psychology George mentioned one night?”

“Probably as much as he does,” I said. “George kind of talks off the top of his mind. I’ve read a couple of books. Why?”

“I was wondering if I ought to see a psychiatrist.”

I looked at him in surprise. “For what? You’re the most normal guy I know.”

“Not in my thoughts,” he said. “Sometimes I think I have a cesspool of a mind. I’ve been wanting to talk this over with someone, but I couldn’t possibly tell Janet. You mind listening?”

“Of course not. Go ahead.”

“Well, you know how much I think of Janet. I guess we have what people call an ideal marriage. We’re both still in love after six years.”

“I know,” I said. “I kind of envy you.”

“I... I suppose we have a normal sex relationship,” he said hesitantly. “I mean, we’re compatible enough and all that. But you know you can’t do all the things you’d secretly like to do with a woman you love and respect.”

“What kind of things?”

“Well, treat her rough. I mean, she’s your wife, and you can’t treat a wife like a whore.”

“Why not, if you want to?” I asked.

“Because you just can’t,” he said impatiently. “And lately I’ve been having mental fantasies about other women.”

“Specific ones?” I asked.

“No. Well, yes, except I don’t know what she looks like. She takes different shapes in my mind. This Sally, George talks about.”

“I see,” I said. “And that bothers you?”

“It seems abnormal. Here I’m married to a girl I love, yet I get tingly all over every time I think of that common prostitute. And I don’t even know her.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” I said. “I’ve had a few fantasies about Sally myself. And I’ve never seen her either.”

“You have?” he asked, surprised and a little relieved. Then he looked discouraged again. “But you’re not in love with another woman.”

“Look,” I said. “Mind if I ask you a couple of personal questions?”

“Why no. Go ahead.”

“What kind of early sex training did you have? I mean, how did you first learn boys and girls were different?”

He looked puzzled. “From the other kids, I guess. Don’t most people?”

“Yes, unfortunately. Complete with giggles and the suggestion that there’s something dirty and nasty about a completely natural function. Ever get a sex lecture from your parents?”

He thought back. “Dad talked to me once or twice. Mainly in an attempt to scare me into behaving, I think. They were moral lectures rather than information sessions.”

“That’s average,” I said a little bitterly. “I got the same deal from my dad. You’re just a normal product of the times. As a kid, you had it pounded into your head that sex was something dirty and shameful. Subconsciously sex and dirt are so associated in your mind, you can’t fully enjoy a clean, healthy relationship. You want it a little nasty. That’s why happily married men go to cat houses. Because subconsciously they link sex and degradation.”

He thought this over, finally asked, “You think that’s my trouble?”

“It’s the trouble of ninety percent of the people walking around,” I said. “I wasn’t psychoanalyzing you; I was quoting from books I’ve read.”

“Then you think my fantasies about this Sally are entirely normal?”

“No,” I said. “But you’re in the majority. Our national attitude toward sex is so loused up by the puritanical idea that the best way to instruct kids about sex is to scare hell out of them, there probably isn’t one adult in ten with a really healthy mind. I spent a month in Paris once. And you know what I used to do? Deliberately look for women who couldn’t understand English. So that while we were making love, I could say all the filthy words I knew. I’m too inhibited to say them to a woman who could understand, see, even if I thought she wouldn’t object. Intellectually I know my mind is the same kind of cesspool you think yours is, but I can’t shake the emotional attitudes which were fixed in me as a child. And neither can you.”

“Well, I don’t intend to give in to mine,” Harlan said. “Thanks a lot, Pete. I feel a little better for having talked this out.”

Sally didn’t come back into our conversation until Friday night, when Harlan suddenly asked George if he’d been back to see her.

“You think I’m a millionaire?” George asked. “At a hundred a crack, about twice a year is my speed.”

I said, “I’ve been thinking of taking a look, George. How do I get in the Silk and Satin?”

A little importantly, George pulled from his pocket a small card advertising the restaurant where he worked, scrawled on the back, “Please admit bearer. George Swift.”

Handing me the card, he said, “You’ll have to hit it on your night off to see Sally. She works the same trick we do. Four P.M. to midnight.”

Harlan was eyeing the card in my hand fascinatedly. George asked, “You want an introduction too?”

“No, no,” Harlan said hurriedly. “I never go in those places.”

I used the card on my next night off, the following Wednesday. The Silk and Satin was an ordinary-looking two-story house up in the Eighties. From the outside it appeared to be just another residence, but inside it was elaborately draped and carpeted to look like an oriental harem.

I had no trouble getting in. A matronly-looking woman in evening dress answered my ring, briefly examined the card and graciously accepted five twenty-dollar bills.

“Just go on in,” she said, nodding toward an archway leading to what seemed to be the main lounge.

This was a room about twenty feet square furnished with nothing to sit on but low ottomans and cushions. There was some other furniture, however. A long table loaded with hors d’oeuvres, a small bar against one wall, a huge radio phonograph playing soft music and a number of low cocktail tables strategically placed within reaching distance of the cushions and ottomans.

The walls of the room were solidly draped with red silk, and the indirect lighting was just bright enough to see clearly without losing the glamorous effect of low lights.

Several men, some in evening clothes, some merely in business suits such as mine, lolled on cushions with drinks in their hands. Each had a slim female companion, dressed in the filmy attire of a harem slave: transparent nylon pantaloons bloused at the ankles, bare feet and a practically nonexistent brassiere consisting of two small circles of rhinestone-studded metal and a bit of golden cord. A surplus of three similarly-attired girls chatted together near the radio-phonograph.

As I entered the room, the three girls glanced up, and a slim redhead left the group to come over to me.

When she got close enough to smile a greeting, I said, “I don’t exactly understand the procedure here. This is my first visit.”

“There isn’t any formal procedure,” she said pleasantly. “If you’re in no hurry, why don’t you have a drink before you do anything else?”

I said, “I was looking for a girl called Sally.”

“Most first-time visitors are,” the redhead said without rancor. “She’s busy now, but should be free before long. What do you drink?”

I told her rye and water. She mixed two at the small bar and brought them over. We found a couple of cushions near a cocktail table and reclined.

“My name’s Sara,” the redhead said.

“I’m Pete,” I told her. “Do you always drink the same thing the customer orders?”

“Unless it’s something weird like straight gin. Good luck, Pete.”

We raised our glasses and drank. It tasted like bonded rye.

One of the male customers rose from his cushion, left the girl he was talking to and went across the room to a blonde who was sitting with another man. When he said something to her, the blonde looked inquiringly at the man she had been entertaining, who only shrugged. Rising, the blonde accompanied the first man toward a stairway visible through an arch at the end of the room.

I raised my eyebrows at Sara.

“You can pick any girl you want any time you’re ready,” she explained. “I’ll have to leave you if someone wants me. Unless you decide you do.”

She was a cute kid, but I’d come to see Sally. I decided to wait.

During the next fifteen minutes two more couples strolled off toward the stairway, another male customer came in and one of the remaining two surplus girls joined him at the far side of the room. Then a man and woman came down the stairs.

The man immediately crossed to the bar and began to mix himself a drink, but the woman stopped in the archway and ran her eyes over every man in the room. She didn’t even glance at the other women.

The redheaded Sara said, “There she is,” then raised her voice and called, “Oh, Sally!”

Instantly Sally came over. She was a slim, deliciously curved brunette somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, with still, delicately carved features. While not precisely beautiful, there was an aura of eager vitality about her which made her almost overpoweringly feminine. At the same time, she somehow managed to give an impression of naive freshness combined with genteel breeding. Dressed in something other than her harem attire, you might have taken her for a younger member of some country club set.

I couldn’t detect what George Swift had described as a hot, sultry look on her face, but she did have a sort of still, waiting expression, as though she hoped I might reach out and touch her.

I had risen, and Sara, still in a seated position, said, “This is Pete, Sally. He wanted to meet you.”

Sally looked at me steadily, without smiling and without saying anything. Sara rose languorously, gave me a tiny wave of goodby and returned to the radio-phonograph.

I said, “Can I buy you a drink, Sally?”

Slowly her eyes moved over me from head to foot. “Do you want to take time for a drink?”

I said, “Not particularly. I was just being considerate. I thought you might like a recess.”

“I only work till midnight,” she said. “And it’s nearly ten now. Let’s not waste time on drinks.”

I began to see what George had meant about Sally liking her work. There probably wasn’t another girl in the place who wouldn’t have been glad for an excuse to dally over a drink instead of going upstairs. But Sally, just having returned from a session with another man, was impatient to be gone again.

I killed the rest of my drink and set the glass on the cocktail table.

Upstairs the oriental motif continued to be carried out. The room to which she took me was furnished with a huge sleeping cushion, about seven feet square and a foot thick, instead of a bed. A couple of ottomans, a long, low cocktail table and two large wall mirrors were the only other furnishings. Except for the inevitable silken drapes, purple in this case.

“Do you like light?” Sally asked.

“Do you?” I countered.

She nodded. “If you don’t mind. Don’t you think it adds something?”

A small lamp on the cocktail table already lighted the room dimly. Sally switched on a bright overhead light. Then she took my hand and led me to the sleeping cushion.

For a moment we merely sat side-by-side holding hands. She looked at me sidewise, almost timidly.

“Would you do me a favor?” she asked in a low voice.

“Probably. What?”

“Treat me like what I am. Make me crawl and kiss your feet and feel like the lowest tramp in town.”

“All right,” I said.

Her lips parted and I could feel her hand begin to tremble in mine. “Will you really?” she asked.

“If you like rough treatment, you came to the right boy,” I said.

Freeing my hand from hers, I wound it into her hair, jerked back her head and kissed her with all the savagery in me.

As Thursday was Harlan Johnson’s night off, only George and I met at the Men’s Bar the next night. I told George I’d been to see Sally, but didn’t happen to mention it again on either Friday or Saturday.

Sunday, one of George’s two nights off, Harlan and I were standing at the bar together when it occurred to me he knew nothing of my experience.

I said casually, “I guess I didn’t tell you that I made the Silk and Satin the other night.”

For a moment Harlan stood very still. Then he said, “Sally?”

“Yeah,” I said. “George didn’t exaggerate her a bit.”

For a time Harlan kept looking at me, then looked away, as though fighting some battle with himself. Presently his shoulders seemed to sag a little and he gave me a sort of beseeching, apologetic look.

“Can I ask you a kind of favor, Pete?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Maybe we’d better sit in a booth.”

He led the way to a booth out of earshot of the bar, nervously played with his drink after we were seated.

“This is going to sound kind of silly,” he said eventually. “But I wish you’d tell me all about it.”

I looked at him. “Why?”

His glass moved in faster and wider circles. Without looking at me, he said, “I guess George was right when he said I wanted a vicarious love affair. I can’t help my cesspool of a mind. I have to know about it, Pete. What you said to each other, and what you did, and whether she made little moaning noises. All the gory details.”

The circling glass stopped moving and he looked me straight in the face. “Now tell me to go to hell if you want.”

It was a little while before I made any answer at all. Finally, I said, “It sounds like a kind of teen-age stunt. At least I haven’t described a bedroom scene to a pal since I got out of my teens. But maybe it will be good therapy for whatever’s ailing you.”

So I described everything that happened from the time I entered the front door of the Silk and Satin until I left sometime after midnight. When I finished, Harlan was staring glassily at his forgotten drink and breathing as though he’d just climbed a flight of stairs.

I said, “I’m not proud of the way I acted. But I guess I got rid of a few inhibitions.”

Harlan shook himself from his trance. “When are you going back?”

“I’m like George,” I told him. “At a hundred bucks a night, about twice a year is my limit.”

“Suppose — suppose I paid half of it?”

I frowned at him. “What would you get out of it?”

Not looking at me, he said in a bare whisper, “You’d have to promise to tell me everything that happened again. Every little detail.”

“Hey,” I said, beginning to get a little alarmed at his mental state. “You’re letting this thing become an obsession. I’m not sure what you’re doing isn’t some kind of perversion.”

“Would you if I paid half, Pete?”

“No,” I said. “This thing is getting out of hand. I’m not going to be middleman in some screwy love affair between you and a phantom. You’d better kill your inhibitions by going to see the gal yourself.”

He shook his head violently. “I’m not going to cheat on Janet.”

“Then take what’s bothering you out on her,” I suggested. “Maybe she’d like it. Maybe she’s as inhibited as you are, and would welcome a caveman approach.”

“Don’t be idiotic,” he said impatiently. “Janet’s a nice girl. You couldn’t treat a respectable woman like that.”

“Suit yourself,” I said, “but I’m not pampering your obsession any more. I’m sorry I told you what I did tonight.”

He looked a little embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have made that silly suggestion, Pete,” he said. “Forget it, will you? Let’s have another drink.”

We didn’t discuss Sally any more until the following Tuesday, when George Swift again had a night off. I think Harlan deliberately waited until then to bring her up so that we’d be alone.

He started in a roundabout way by telling me his vacation began June ninth, which was only a week away.

“We’re not going to do much,” he said. “Just drive out to Fire Island a few times.”

“Well, that’s as nice a vacation spot as you’ll find anywhere,” I told him. “You don’t have to drive halfway across the country to enjoy a vacation.”

He said, “I’d like to make it a kind of second honeymoon. We spent our first one at Fire Island, you know. Maybe a honeymoon atmosphere would knock these thoughts about Sally out of my mind.”

“You still letting her bother you?”

He began moving his glass in a little circle on the bar. “You know, Pete, I think maybe if I could actually picture her, I could block her out of my mind. Not knowing what she looks like, she takes so many forms, I’d have to keep my mind permanently blank not to think about her. If I knew, I could just refuse to think about that one mental image.”

“You mean you’re going to see her?”

“Not inside,” he said. “She gets off work at midnight, doesn’t she? I thought maybe I could stand across the street from the Silk and Satin some night and see her when she comes out.”

“A whole shift of girls finish at midnight. You wouldn’t know which was Sally.”

In a diffident tone he said, “I thought maybe you’d be willing to go along and point her out.”

I frowned at him. “We both work till midnight. By the time we got clear up there, she’d be long gone.”

“Tomorrow’s your night off,” he said. “I could arrange to get off early and meet you.”

“Look, Harlan, I only get one night a week, and I don’t want to spend it standing across the street from the Silk and Satin. Even for a friend.”

He was silent for a time. Finally, he said, “This is important to me, Pete. I’d even be willing to pay your way for an evening there. You could walk out with her at midnight, so I’d know which girl she was.”

I shook my head. “I suggested seeing her home last time, and she wouldn’t have any part of it. She said it’s a house policy that the girls never see a customer outside of working hours.”

“She wouldn’t object to your just walking out with her and leaving her in front of the place, would she?”

“I suppose not,” I said dubiously.

The thought of a free evening at the Silk and Satin was attractive, and if it was that important to Harlan, I didn’t see any reason I shouldn’t go along.

“It’s all right with me if you want to spend your money,” I told him. “But we’re not having any of this vicarious stuff afterward.”

“No, no,” he assured me. “All I want is to see what she looks like.”

Pulling out his wallet, he counted out a hundred dollars. I knew he didn’t ordinarily carry that much with him, which led me to believe the idea hadn’t been a spur-of-the-moment one, but that he’d come prepared to buy my co-operation.

My evening at the Silk and Satin was much the same as the first, except that I got around to Sally later than I had before. I timed things to take her upstairs about eleven, so that I’d be the last customer she saw. Afterward I lingered in the main lounge until she and several other girls came down dressed in street clothes.

As they all started for the front door, I fell in at Sally’s side.

“I told you I don’t let anyone see me home,” she said quickly.

“I wasn’t planning to,” I told her. “I just happen to be leaving too. I’ll walk you to the corner.”

She didn’t object to that, and we went out together. I held back a little, holding the door open for the other girls so that they could reach the street and disperse before Sally and I went down the steps.

As we reached the sidewalk, I glanced around in an attempt to locate Harlan. I wouldn’t have spotted him if I hadn’t been looking for him, for he stood in the shadow of a doorway across the street. I couldn’t make out his face, but by his size and the glint of his glasses, I knew it was Harlan.

I also knew he was able to get a good look at Sally, because there was a street light immediately in front of the house.

Sally permitted me to walk her as far as the nearest corner, then stopped and said in a firm voice, “Good-night, Pete.”

I grinned at her, tipped my hat and said, “Night, Sally.”

I watched the movement of her hips as she walked away, then turned and went back to speak to Harlan. But he hadn’t waited. The doorway was empty when I got there.

That was the last time I ever saw Harlan Johnson. My next news of him came from a report on the police blotter.

I didn’t expect to see him at the Men’s Bar on Thursday, as that was his regular night off. Friday George and I wondered where he was, but it didn’t occur to us anything might be wrong. Saturday, during my routine check of the police blotter, I ran across a missing report on a Mrs. Janet Johnson. The report had been filed by her husband, Harlan Johnson.

I tried to phone Harlan at the movie house, but a woman there told me he had started his vacation a few days earlier than planned because he was so upset over his wife’s disappearance. Looking up his home number in the book, I tried there, but got no answer.

Two days later the real story broke. Janet Johnson’s body was found floating in the Hudson River. I didn’t get the story assignment because the news broke at nine A.M., and one of the boys on the day trick took it.

But I followed the story. An autopsy disclosed that she’d been raped and then strangled, presumably while on her way home from a neighborhood movie she was believed to have attended the night she disappeared.

The killer was never apprehended. Dozens of suspects were picked up and grilled, most of them known sex offenders, but the police couldn’t pin the crime on anyone. Eventually, the story simply died and was forgotten.

George and I discussed whether or not we ought to attend the funeral, but since neither of us had ever met Janet, we finally settled on sending, a large spray in both our names.

Harlan Johnson never returned to his job at the theater. I phoned it again two weeks after the funeral and was informed he’d taken a job managing a theater in a small town upstate.

It was another six months before I saved up enough money to revisit the Silk and Satin. It was to be my last visit, because the place wasn’t the same. Sally was gone.

According to the redheaded Sara, Sally hadn’t even given any notice. She’d just walked out after work on the night of June third, and never showed up again.

It so happened that that was the night I walked her to the corner, so that Harlan Johnson could get a look at her.

Content

Richard Deming
The Cesspool