Small Town

“They never told me. I just always think of it as female, I don’t know why.” She rolled onto her back, looked up at the ceiling. “I’ve mostly been with men. How about you?”

“Some of each. I’m mostly by myself. When I do the waxing, I make a ritual of it. Music and candlelight, scented oils. I’ll spend hours. So it’s not such a nuisance.”

“You did your own piercings, didn’t you?”

“Not the ears. They were done ages ago. But everything else, yes.”

They fell silent, and then Susan was surprised to find herself telling Medea about the incident at L’Aiglon d’Or. “I just wanted to do it,” she said, “and I did.”

“You’re very bold.”

“Am I?” She thought about it. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a whore.”

“You could be both.”

She laughed.

“But you’re not a whore,” Medea said.

“I have to ask you this. Were you with Chloe?”

“Chloe?”

“My assistant, I mentioned her before. The blonde with the crew cut and the nose ring.”

Medea laughed. “They’re all blondes,” she said, “and they all have nose rings. But I remember her, and no, all I did was pierce her and send her home. That’s all I ever do. This never happens.”

“Never?”

“Two, three times in as many years. Some repeat clients like to be immobilized and hooded, and of course it’s sexual for them, but not for me. I wanted you. I don’t know why. It won’t happen again.”

“If I wanted more piercings...”

“Where?”

“Like yours.”

“Wait at least three months, dear. Give yourself time to integrate the piercing you just had.”

“And if I decide I want a waxing?”

“I can give you the name of someone who’s very good.”

“I see.”

Medea leaned over her, kissed her lightly on the lips, rose from the bed.

“Alcohol on a cotton ball several times a day,” Medea told her. “Rotate the posts ninety degrees once a day. You can take aspirin for the pain.”

She’d have stuffed her bra in her purse, but Medea suggested she wear it to prevent her sore nipples from rubbing against her blouse as she walked. When she’d finished dressing she realized she hadn’t paid for the piercing. She reached for her purse, asked how much she owed.

“Oh, please,” Medea said. “There’s no charge.”

“But that’s not right. I took up a couple of hours of your time.”

“I enjoyed the experience.”

“And the gold studs, at the very least let me pay for the studs.”

“They’re a gift. You may feel like a whore if you like. But there’s no need.” And, when she hesitated, “We won’t do this again. We’re not going to become lovers. But I’ll think of you when I masturbate.”

Medea held the door for her, ushered her through it. She rode the elevator to the lobby, walked out onto Fifty-seventh Street.

And I’ll think of you, she thought, next time I blow a lawyer in a restaurant.

Her nipples tingled.

ten

The man who had registered at the Hotel Clinton as G. T. Strong, the man who had left his Tuborg untouched on the bar at the Kettle of Fish, the man who had lost his entire family in or after the 9/11 attack, stood in the shadowed doorway of an apartment house on East Twenty-eighth Street and watched the building directly across the street.

He was dressed differently, in clothes he’d retrieved from his storage locker. He was wearing a dark suit and a white shirt and a necktie, and he’d replaced his sneakers with lace-up black oxfords. He’d shaved that morning, as he did two or three times a week.

During the afternoon he’d found a leather briefcase in good shape at a thrift shop. A hardware store supplied a hammer, an ice pick, a large screwdriver, and a cold chisel.

It had taken him a while to get to this point, and there’d been some changes in the external circumstances of his life. He lived in a different hotel, and was registered under another name. He’d finished that volume of George Templeton Strong’s diary and had exchanged it for another book, Herbert Asbury’s The Gangs of New York. He liked Strong, but the man had been deeply interested in music, he’d taught it at Columbia, and the diary entries were full of music. He’d had enough music for the time being, and he always enjoyed Asbury, had read the book many times over the years. Picking it up was like taking up an old friendship.

Now he was three-fourths of the way through it.

For a week or more he’d been uncertain what to do, and so he’d followed his routine, walking, reading, taking his meals, waiting for the next action to reveal itself to him. Until early one morning, walking on Eighth Avenue in Chelsea, he’d seen a familiar face. It was the young man who’d discovered the body on Charles Street. Pancake, his name was. No, that was wrong, but he would wait and it would come to him.

He spent the whole day following the young man, and of course the name came to him as he had known it would. He’d seen it in the newspapers. Pankow, that was the name. He followed him to his home and returned the next morning to follow him on his rounds again.