Got Your Number

by Thomas Dietzel

Joey Dupree was a man with high standards and bad taste. It was impeccably bad, this taste of his – leopard-skin Speedos at the Star Market, blonde hair coiffed and blowdried into a translucent mane (except when it was pulled back in a ponytail for sunbathing), rhinestone earrings...and he was oblivious to all of it. As far as Joey Dupree was concerned, he was a pretty nifty guy who knew what he liked.

On this particular night, a Saturday, Joey was having a little fashion show for himself in front of the bathroom mirror. He was trying on pair after pair of tacky (impeccably tacky!) sunglasses to assess which of them most spoke to him. He was always using this phrase, this spoke to him bit. Joey Dupree lived in an animistic universe in which sunglasses, rugs with cartoon characters on them, and erotic fur-covered sculptures of female genitalia all spoke to him. Joey must have had some pretty keen hearing, because most of the things he liked (a nifty guy!) didn’t speak to anyone else very much.

The things he liked most of all were women, who didn’t speak to him much at all. Oh, they spoke to him, all right, but they didn’t talk to him, except to say things like, “Get the fuck out of my face, pig,” or “I’m calling the cops.” Now Joey couldn’t help liking women as…as intensely as he did…it would have been better for him to have preferred something else, something more attainable, like plutonium, or extinct birds, but this was not the case – it was the female form, like a divine eggbeater, that thrashed his blood into a lively froth.

Sigh…the ladies. He removed a pair of especially egregious shades that had little pink Playboy Bunny silhouettes on the lenses and shook his head from side to side with mock concern, as though to say, what am I gon’ do with all these ladies? Then he stood up straight and sucked in his cheeks and gazed levelly into his own eyes in the mirror. Joey D, he thought, you are one smokin’ dude. The smoking dude was clad in a pair of purple thong underwear and nothing else. Part of the ritual of hitting the clubs, as he called it, was psyching himself up, which involved a lot of seminude prancing about in front of various mirrors (which were ample in the Dupree domicile) and complimenting himself on his manly physique, on his chest hair, on the sheer quantity of testosterone that must be (had to be!) lubricating his virile testicles...

Joey D, as he called himself, finally settled on the Playboy shades (impeccable!) and went into his bedroom, where he turned on the radio and turned up the volume. The bedroom was a hideous temple of Bad Taste, with leopard skin sheets adorning a truly gargantuan water bed, a black light overhead casting its heady glow upon a series of wall posters depicting buxom women (the ladies!) slithering over the seats of Harley-Davidsons and the hoods of Lamborghinis, and, on the bedside table, the erotic fur-covered model of female genitalia. Over the airwaves of WFIN (98.9 FM – “The Fin!”) came the sound of a new song Joey D adored – it was a dance number called “I Got Your Number” by somebody named Baby Earthling. The chorus went:


Don’t need to know your name, no
But you can call me Daddy-O
And I can call you anytime
Already got your number!
I got your number!


Joey D methodically thrust his pelvis forward and then retracted it, slowly, mouthing the words of the chorus to himself before the (another!) mirror that hung over the water bed, and then gradually accelerated his pelvic thrusts until he was locked into Baby Earthling’s dope groove. He imagined himself dancing on a table, or a stage, surrounded by a mob of women (the ladies!) who had been driven into an irreversible frenzy by his dance moves and were divesting themselves of their undergarments, which they hurled at him with wild abandon. He closed his eyes and imagined the musky aroma of so many panties flying through the air around him. The dude…is smokin’…


Your mouth says this but your ass says that
And I know that you know that I’m gonna make you, stat!
Don’t need to know your name, no…


In the kitchen, Bob Barker the Dalmatian put his paws over his ears and made a mournful keening sound as though he were about to be sent to the ocean floor in a bathyscape.

One of the minor indignities of being Joey Dupree these days was the distinct lack of wheels…ahem…oh, it was a mere hiatus, was what it was, but a painful hiatus nonetheless. The D-Mobile, a labia-red 1993 Mazda, had something dreadfully wrong with the transmission, or maybe the clutch – when he started it up it lurched forward in violent peristaltic waves and an acrid burning smell emanated from the engine…it was so acrid he could taste it. The painful truth was that the Dupree finances were not in such great shape at the moment - no, they were not. Joey D had been laid off from the little sausage processing plant across town, Hannah’s, a few months ago and it turned out…well, it turned out that the government seemed to think that a weekly unemployment check equal to two-thirds of his previous (barely-adequate) net weekly income would somehow spur him toward new, gainful employment by virtue of its own deficiency. The logic of this was unassailable…and yet…and yet…Joey D was content for the time being to forgo many of the creature comforts of life (which a few mere months ago he had viewed as inviolable necessities) for the sake of this newfound life of leisure he was currently enjoying, if that was the right word. So – the D-Mobile was kaput, for now. Okay, fine. There was less chance of him getting a DWI that way, anyway – no chance at all, really. You could be as drunk as you liked on the bus as long as you didn’t become violent or start throwing up.

Joey D liked to sit at the back of the bus, in the third of five seats that ran across its width. Being that this seat alone looked directly down the long vertebral aisle of the bus, it conveyed a certain regal status on whoever sat there; you could see everybody getting on or off, which Joey referred to as scopin’ bods. Specifically, he was on the lookout for gorgeous ladies (the ladies!) traveling alone or with other gorgeous ladies and not with some hulk of a boyfriend…in the event that one of these hapless female souls should make eye contact with Joey D for half a nanosecond he would smile toothily at them and shout out, “S’up, doll?” More often than not they ignored him, which over time he had come to attribute not to his crass salutation but to a problem of volume – these fine cookies simply couldn’t hear him over the roar of the enormous bus…so over time his greeting had grown louder and louder until it was a stentorian yell, a bellow.

It was a warm May evening and the windows on the bus were mostly open; the sound of the diesel engine mixed with the ambient noise of the streets of the Rose City – cars honking, teenagers squealing. Joey sat in his commander’s seat at the rear of the bus, the panopticon, eyes keenly focused on the long aisle before him. He sprawled in the seat with a kind of casual insolence – he was slumped down just enough so no one would think he was some kind of posture freak, his head tilted slightly downward, his eyes shooting up and out at a slight angle. Any woman (the ladies!) who should see him, however, would be hard pressed to notice anything about his posture, their attention being drawn to the outrageous getup he had on, like a beam of heavenly light being sucked into a black hole of bad taste: black leather parachute pants with miles of zippers and pockets, a skintight sleeveless gold lame basketball jersey with blue stripes criss-crossing in angular patterns across his pectoral muscles, in the center of which hung a (fake) gold lion’s head on a (fake) gold necklace, aluminum-foil shiny silver sneakers that looked as though they had been recycled from one of the lunar landers back in the 1970’s, and, of course, the Playboy Bunny shades. His mane of blonde hair bounced friskily about his shoulders like an electric stuffed animal. But it was the lips that did it…his fleshy lips seemed to be frozen in a peculiar sneering smug half-twist of smarmy self-entitlement, an expression he favored when out in public, which was intended to convey something else entirely: that he was a force of nature to be reckoned with. This phrase, to be reckoned with, like scopin’ bods or spoke to me, was part of the Joey D idiom, and a rather new one at that – it implied that, love him or hate him, he couldn’t be ignored. Which was true.

The ride downtown from Fieldtown, the neighborhood in the Rose City where he lived, took about half an hour, which was plenty of time to scope bods and address those that spoke to him. As luck would have it, just five minutes into the ride, a gorgeous specimen of nubile perfection climbed on board and showed the driver her bus pass. She wore an open green leather coat over a black minidress, with black heels that went clop clop clop as she strode up the aisle. Her black hair had been pulled into tight pigtails with little green bows holding them in place. The front of the minidress plunged into a swooping V that revealed the tops of pale lovely breasts that quivered slightly with her locomotion.

She was about halfway down the length of the bus when Joey D let loose with his mating call. “S’up, doll?” he bellowed at her. She didn’t appear to have heard him but she did abruptly slide into a window seat and she sat there stiffly, facing the front. A young man who for some reason made Joey think of a gay librarian turned and glared at him through the Buddy Holly glasses favored by the youth herd these days. Joey ignored him again and instead repeated, in a barbaric yawp:

“S’UP, DOLL?”

This time it was obvious she’s heard him – she started and then gazed out the window, pretending to be engrossed in a passing fire hydrant. The young man near Joey turned around again and looked sharply at him and said, “Do you mind?”

Joey gave him a withering stare, the effect of which was nullified by the Playboy Bunny sunglasses he had on. How dare this…this faggot dare to interfere with Joey D’s romantic overtures! “Fuck the fuck off, fudge-packer,” he said to this nancy-boy in what he hoped would be a hoarse, menacing timbre, but it came out a bit whispery.

The nancy-boy gave him a surprised shrug and then turned around to face the front again. Joey got up and lumbered toward the front of the bus – a temporary relinquishment of the Seat of Command – and sat down in a seat to the right, across the aisle from the hot cookie with the green leather coat. She was looking away from him, staring out the window, and Joey noticed she had a tiny tattoo on the nape of her neck near the hairline – it was some kind of black symbol that looked like a little 3 with a curvy appendage attached and a dot above it. The whole thing was set in what looked like a tiny lavender flower.

“Nice tat,” Joey D said.

The woman turned her head a half-inch toward Joey and then looked away again, out the window. Joey failed to notice the nancy-boy bustling by him and having a brief, heated discussion with the driver.

“I SAID, NICE TAT,” Joey proclaimed. The bus veered to the side of the road and came to a halt and Joey stood up and sat down again in the seat directly next to this cookie, on the same side of the bus, so they were sitting side by side. He could smell – what was it? Perfume? Shampoo? It smelled tropical, like coconuts and mangos. He wondered if her whole body smelled like that.

The woman seemed to be frozen. If Joey had been more perceptive, he would have noticed that she was too scared to breathe – her shoulders and upper chest were absolutely motionless.

Suddenly Joey became aware of a presence in the aisle next to him. It was the driver. He was one of those men who are either very muscular or very fat – it was impossible to tell. His expression was one of professional boredom. “Sir?” the driver said. The nancy-boy had taken another seat, up front, and was doing his best to ignore all this.

Joey removed his sunglasses and scowled upward at the driver. “Wut?” he said. “Can’t you see I’m talkin’ to my lady friend here?”

The woman didn’t move. Nobody on the bus did.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to get off the bus,” the driver said coolly.
“Wut?” Joey D said again. “For wut?”

“You’re bothering the other passengers,” the driver said, “and you need to get off the bus.”

“Who?” Joey said. “That little faggot up there?” He pointed toward the front of the bus, where the object of his derision seemed to shrink into his scapulae in an effort to disappear.

“Okay,” the driver said, and placed a beefy hand on Joey’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

“I tol’ you,” Joey said, “I’m talking to –”

At this the woman exploded like a truck bomb. Her pigtails looked like they were about to pop off her head. “YOU FUCK!” she screamed. “WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, YOU FUCKING PIG!” There were tears in the corner of her eyes. She was scrunched against the wall of the bus, facing him, with her hands up in front of her like tiny claws. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!”

Joey raised his own hands in comic defense and rolled his eyes at the driver. “I just need a minute to talk to –”

He was interrupted by a painful, stinging sensation deep in his scalp. His hair! He tried to turn around but he was held in place by someone gripping his blonde mane, close to the roots. “My hair!” he shrieked.

It wasn’t the driver – the driver still had one hand on his shoulder but the other hand was resting on the back of the seat in front of them. A deep voice – it sounded African-American – said “You’re done talking now, grayboy,” and then Joey was being hoisted – hoisted! – out of his seat by this invisible entity.

“Maurice…” the driver said. He seemed to have some ambivalence about vigilantism, if that’s what this was.

“It’s okay, Jack,” the unseen hoister said, and the driver fell silent. And now the smokin’ dude was being marched down the length of the bus, toward the front, like a prisoner of war. Joey reached behind his head and tried to pry the viewless hand loose but its grip on his hair only tightened.

“Almost there,” Maurice, if that was his name, said through labored breaths.

“Aaarrrooooowww!” Joey howled.

And then he was pushed – pushed! - down the short length of stairs at the front of the bus and through the doors, which opened with a whoosh, and he tumbled onto the sidewalk, almost losing his balance. Maurice released his hold on Joey’s hair and he turned to face his oppressor, who was an enormous black man in his forties with a bald head and a brilliant yellow warm-up jacket on. He towered over the smokin’ dude. He reminded Joey of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Through the windows of the bus he could see all the passengers gazing at him with detached disgust. The nancy-boy’s eyes were as big as harvest moons. He couldn’t see the hot cookie, though.

Maurice was panting – drops of sweat ran down his forehead toward his eyes. He gave Joey D a contemptuous stare and said, “Next time I break your back, grayboy.” And then the doors went whoosh and he climbed back on the bus and it roared away in a blur of noise.

Fucking assholes, Joey D said to himself. He rubbed his scalp. It stung horribly where that – Joey restrained himself – that prick had ASSAULTED him…he gave the finger to the bus’ taillights as they vanished down 39th Avenue and then he wandered down the street in search of the next bus stop. He wasn’t going to let some n- some asshole keep him from hittin’ the clubs, was he? Fuck, no. He caught a glimpse of himself in the window of a dark restaurant and ran a manly hand through his mane of perfect hair.

“You the man, baby,” he said to his reflection, psyching himself up. “You’re golden.”

It was too dark to tell if the reflection agreed with him or not.

* * *
By the time he got another bus and got downtown it was already 11:30. As usual, the streets were full of the bridge and tunnel crowd – emaciated blondes in spaghetti strap dresses teetering atop six-inch heels, ruddy-faced wiggers with fluorescent T-shirts two sizes too big and soul patches and sideways baseball caps – as well as hipsters in their Buddy Holly glasses (that fudgepacking nancy-boy!)…he looked with scorn on all of them. Amateurs. What did they know about dancing or the art of love? Of course, the suburban cookies were fine to look at, but they invariably traveled in unapproachable herds or with some corn-fed juicer…he stepped off the bus in front of a used bookstore on 4th and Burnside and again drank in his reflection from the storefront panes…no ‘roids for this hunk, thank you! Some people are born with it, and others have to juice out…the lion’s head around his neck caught the light of a streetlamp and bounced it back at his retina as he gazed upon himself and forgot about that nasty business on the bus…there was no way around it. The dude was smokin’.

The club dearest to the heart of Joey D was called, appropriately, the Hookup, although nobody, not even Joey D, called it that. They called it the Hook. The Hook comprised the bottom three floors of an old municipal building on 8th and West Burnside; in ancient times architecture students and tourists had referred to it as the Farquat Building and they had come from distant shores to bear witness to its exquisitely cantilevered balconies and looping balustrades, but such visitors were rare these days. Joey had lived in the Rose City since he was a child but this building had meant nothing to him until that glorious day about four years ago that some very tan entrepreneurs from Miami Beach had opened the Hookup’s doors to the public...and he had gone there and met Dr. H that very night and had returned at least once a month ever since then…

The line outside the Hook stretched halfway down the block, held in check by the grandiose brickwork of the Farquat building on one side and a series of black velvet ropes on the other running like power lines from one shiny banister to the next. Everyone in line looked too young to be there, or too drunk, or both. The females (the ladies!) were clad in their usual dancing gear: black or dark-blue mini-dresses or skirts and dangerously high heels. Many of them wore fishnet stockings or red scarves and silver earrings and bracelets that went twinkle wink wink in the streetlights and headlights like a single fallen constellation…and the guys were dressed like pricks, as usual, in glittery sportcoats and pre-ripped designer jeans. Too many people…Late! Joey D. grunted with displeasure…the line was never this long when the smokin’ dude showed up! Inwardly he cursed the bus driver, the nancy-boy, the cookie in the green leather coat, and that fuckwad Maurice, and then he cursed them all again and assumed his place at the ass-end of the line to get into the Hook. And then he noticed…

Dr. H! Dr. H was nowhere to be seen…Joey D craned his neck like a sea monster, scanning the front of the line…was he on break? Dr. H was the porter, the gatekeeper, the angel with the flaming sword who separated the wheat from the chaff and cast the latter into outer darkness! The possibility that Dr. H (H for Hook, Joey had always assumed) might not be the doorperson on any given night had never occurred to him. This was a big problem for Joey D, because as oblivious as he was to his impeccably bad taste, he was able to intuit that his chances of getting inside the Hook without Dr. H were – well, there was no chance, was there? He and Dr. H had an arrangement…

What was supposed to happen is that when Joey D reached the door, which always happened eventually, as the angel with the flaming sword slowly but surely meted out his doom upon the underdressed and the uncool, was that the angel himself, Dr. H, would survey the line behind him in meditative silence for a moment or two and then announce to Joey D that it “looked like a forty dollar night” or “looked like a sixty dollar night” which was the gratuity (payable in cash, twenties preferred, thank you) Dr. H expected on top of the regular admission fee of twenty dollars in exchange for safe passage to the dance floor of the Hookup. This arrangement had begun shortly after the club opened, once the jarheads and the richie riches and all the other assholes found out about the place and showed up in mobs to ruin a good thing. Thank God Dr. H could be persuaded! Of course, it was only right and fitting that as the club had grown more popular there should exist some way to sort out the Elect from the Unwanted. (Joey D never thought of it as a bribe, but only as a necessary evil imposed upon both him and the gatekeeper by an economic system beyond their control. Naturally everyone couldn’t come in the club! There were fire codes!) These last few months, though…man! Seemed like every time he came down here now it was a hundred dollar night! And this with the pathetic unemployment checks he got each week! And yet this monthly pilgrimage to the club of clubs, the Hook, was one inviolable necessity that remained so…he couldn’t imagine not coming here. Hook night was the best night of the month! Would it have bothered him had he known that Dr. Hook and the other bouncers looked at him as something more like a mascot, or the butt of a collective silent joke, than a persuasive customer, let alone the smokin’ dude? Trick question – he never would have believed it in the first place.

So Joey D shrugged to himself and waited in line and waited and waited. Soon enough the line had grown behind him so that he was no longer at the end of it. He stood with his arms crossed, staring into space through the Playboy Bunny sunglasses, too anxious about what awaited him ahead at the gate to bother making his usual aggressive overtures (S’UP, DOLL?) to the cookies in line with him. Occasionally some passerby or someone in line would spot him standing there in his parachute pants and the sleeveless warmup jersey with his blonde mane fluttering gently in the breeze and gasp or point but he continued to gaze impassively in front of him. Not everyone could handle a dude like him. Love me or hate me, you can’t ignore me, he said to himself.

So the undeniable Joey D inched forward as the surrogate angel admitted and condemned in equal turns. By the time he reached the front of the line it was almost midnight…not a lot of time to get in there and get busy, but better than none, eh, D? Joey asked himself rhetorically. The bouncer was a pale, impassive brute with a shaved head and a maroon sports coat over a pale blue T-shirt. He let his gaze wander from Joey’s blonde mane to his lunar sneakers and then back to the mane again and Joey fidgeted like someone trying to sneak a couple of kilos across the Canadian border. After several seconds of this the bouncer flexed his lips into a thin merciless line and shook his head.
“What?” Joey D said.

“No way,” the bouncer said, and reached over and unlatched a segment of rope that hung nearby from its little banister so Joey could pass by him, back to the sidewalk. The Gate of Doom.

“You know,” Joey D said, leaning toward the bouncer, who recoiled in equal measure, “it looks like a sixty-dollar night, don’t’cha think?”

The bouncer narrowed his eyes. His enormous shaved head resembled a bulbous egg. He didn’t say anything. Joey D had the sudden impression that he was counting to himself.

“Or it might even be an eighty dollar night,” Joey went on, opening his wallet and pulling out a hundred dollar bill. He held it in the air aloft before him like a cross, a cross warding off vampiric inadmissibility.

“Get the fuck out of here,” said the bouncer. He jerked a hairy thumb toward the sidewalk and put a hand on Joey’s shoulder, the same shoulder the bus driver had grabbed.

“C’mon, douchebag,” said a voice behind him.

“This is yours!” Joey whispered to the bouncer, waving the hundred dollar bill around. “”Jes’ lemme through!” He realized he was pleading. How undignified!

With a practiced hand the bouncer shoved Joey onto the sidewalk and replaced the rope. Joey gawked back at him in disbelief. It had happened so fast. Obviously this was a professional.

“Where’s Dr. Hook?” Joey cried but the bouncer ignored him. He had already turned to the next person in line, a chubby wigger who glowered at Joey with distaste. Sensing this was not the time to make his stand, Joey shrugged and wandered up the street to the corner of the Farquat Building and leaned against a lamppost there.

“Faggot!” yelled someone from a passing Gremlin. Faggot? Joey looked around to see who they had been talking to but he was the only likely candidate. A pair of Asian women giggled as they strode by him, their purses going whump whump against their thighs. He pulled out his cell phone, wondering if standing on the corner talking on a phone made him look more like a male hustler or less like one. Faggot! Let them say that to him in person. Of course they wouldn’t. He dialed 411 and requested the non-emergency number for the Rose City Police, and a robotic voice said it would be happy to connect him directly for no additional charge. Joey could still the bouncer’s bulbous head twisting this way and that like a milky balloon floating in the distance.

“Rose City Police Department,” said a female African-American voice. “Non-emergency requests, only, please.”

“Hello?” said Joey, cupping his hand around his mouth in case anyone was reading lips. “I have a complaint.”

“What’s your name, ma’am?” the woman said.

Ma’am? Faggot!” My name is Mr. Joey…DeLacy,” Joey D said, lowering his voice a few whole steps. Did he really sound like a…ma’am?

“What’s the problem, sir?” the woman said. She sounded as though she were any more bored she would stop breathing completely.

“Well,” Joey said, “it’s the bouncer down here at this club…The Hookup?” he said, his voice tapering up at the end of the sentence like it was a question. “And he’s…he dealing some kind of drug to people coming into the club. And people going by. Kids,” he added helpfully.

There was a long pause. For a moment Joey thought she had fallen asleep but then he realized she was typing something on a keyboard. “You don’t know what drug?” she said.

What drug? “I think I heard someone talking about Ecstasy?” Joey said. Why not?

“Could I have your address?” the woman was saying.

Wha? “Why do you need my address?” Joey said. Surely that wasn’t necessary.

“It’s all part of the report, sir,” the woman said. If she had any enthusiasm for her job, her voice did not betray it.

“I don’t really need to make a report,” Joey said. He was pleading again, whining, really. “I’m making a complaint.”

“Well, it’s the same to me, sir,” the woman said. “What is your address?”

“What is your name?” Joey said as unwhinily as possible. Down the street the bouncer was chortling toothily with a couple of blonde cookies. He could a bass drum thumping from deep within the bowels of the Hook. He was missing it!

There was another long pause, this one without any typing. Finally the woman said, “Cleary. Officer Cleary.”

“Well, Officer Cleary,” Joey heard himself saying, “Officer Cleary, I don’t feel comfortable giving you my address – if it ever got out who I was or where I lived – see, I’m right here in the neighborhood, right here, and I…well, there could be repercussions, you see, personal repercussions, to me, here, in my neighborhood, if this guy or…or any of his – connections should…connect this to me? I just don’t feel safe with that.”

“Okay, Mr.DeLacy,” Officer Cleary said, sounding like she didn’t believe any of it. “Thank you for making a report – I mean, a complaint.” Joey could hear someone else – a male – laughing in the background on the other end of the line.

“Are you gonna send someone down here?” Joey said. “Because, like I said – there are kids, kids he’s selling to. Teenagers. I think I saw some preteens.”

“We’ll look into it,” Officer Cleary said. “Is that all?”

“I…I think so,” said Joey lamely.

“Thank you, sir,” said Officer Cleary, and hung up.

Joey put his cell phone back in the parachute pants with their miles of zippers and stood there, unsure of what do to next. If the cops showed up, there was a chance he could sneak inside in the ensuing commotion. If they showed up…that Officer Cleary didn’t sound like she was about to marshal anyone over here anytime soon. At this point Joey became aware of a presence behind him and turned around. There, smiling coquettishly at him, was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

“Hi,” she said. Wavy blonde hair dangling insouciantly about bare shoulders…a gold strapless minidress looking like it had been laminated to her perfect brick house of a body…cerulean eyes that tilted slightly upward at the outer edges peeking at him through glittery eyelashes…red full lips set in a lithe oval face…legs like columns…like the pillars of a bank…reaching up to heaven…

“Umm…Hi,” Joey said. He was stunned. No woman ever initiated a conversation with him except his mother. The smokin’ dude was…snafu…

“I couldn’t help noticing what happened back there,” she said. Her voice had a peculiar singsong-like quality that made it sound as though she were reciting lyrics. “Turned away, eh?”

Joey felt a dull throb at the base of his skull. It was the calling card of an emotion he rarely experienced – embarrassment. Finally he said, “Yeah, I guess so.” What was the point in denying it?

She smiled at him again, a warm, inviting smile, that for some reason made him think of the First Lady. “It’s no big deal,” she said. Her eyes flashed with…with what– mischievousness? “Happens all the time.” Joey felt a slight breeze ruffling his mane as the wind kicked up a notch and he caught a whiff of her – she smelled like something he couldn’t quite place – sandalwood? Like some kind of incense.

“Well, not to me,” Joey said. He realized his voice sounded a little self-pitying and pathetic so he repeated his denial with more machismo. She was still smiling at him. He wondered if she was a prostitute or something. No, not looking like that, she wasn’t. Her skin was as taut as a trampoline. Prostitutes (or at least the women he saw downtown and on 82nd Avenue whom he thought were prostitutes) always seemed to have bad skin. He took off the sunglasses so he could see her better.

She reached into a tiny white purse and withdrew a shining cigarette case and a lighter. “You smoke?” she asked.


Ordinarily Joey frowned on the things. He had enough expenses without a nicotine habit. This time he heard himself say, “Yeah, sure,” and watched as his hand, as though motivated by remote control, reached out and took the cigarette she offered. He stuck it between his lips and she lit it for him with a flick of her pearl-colored lighter, and then she lit one for herself. They stood there for a minute in silence, smoking. Joey wondered what the fuck was going on. This woman (for some reason cookie didn’t seem to fit her) was sufficiently beautiful that Joey’s atrophied capacity for self-doubt and self-reflection vibrated deep in his cerebrum, stirring to life.

“So you want to go?” the woman said in her lilting voice, and for a moment Joey thought she really was a prostitute, perfect skin and all. Then he realized she was talking about the club.

“In there?” he said. He remembered the way the bulbous-headed bouncer had dismissed him. “I – I don’t think so.” At least not until the cops get here, he thought to himself.

“C’mon!” she said. “I’ll get you in!”

Joey studied her. Was she serious? If any woman could get him in, it would be her. It was difficult to imagine any heterosexual male denying her anything she wanted. Admission. A car. Canada. And then he heard himself say, “Okay.”

Her smile grew wider until it seemed to bifurcate her perfect head. “Let’s go, then,” she said jauntily, and linked arms with him. They headed back down the street to the Hook.

The line was shorter now. The bouncer glanced at Joey as he went past and his face registered something like perplexity as he saw the woman he was with but then – nothing. They assumed their place at the end of the line.

“So…,” Joey said. “What’s your name?”

“Gretchen,” she said, beaming at him. She didn’t ask what his name was so he offered it.

“I’m Joey Dupree,” he said.

With this she unlinked arms with him and turned to face him. “Well, golly, Joey, it’s nice to meet you,” she said, and stuck out her hand in front of her. Joey wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic or ironic or funny or what but he took it anyway and she pumped it vigorously like an overcaffeinated evangelist. Then she laughed in a weird screechy way and released her grip. Joey wanted her to link arms with him again but she just stood there grinning at him. “Joey Dupree, you’re with me,” she sang out.

There was an altercation at the front of the line as some other guy was rejected. A moment later he strode past them on the sidewalk, on the other side of the rope, muttering to himself. His clothes were upscale but he looked a little disheveled – was he drunk? As he reached the end of the rope behind Joey and Gretchen he turned and faced the front of the line and put his hands together, improvising an organic megaphone. “GO FUCK YOURSELF, YOU FUCKING CUNT-ASS!” he yelled, presumably at the bouncer, and then turned around again and walked off into the night.

Gretchen fired up her witch-laugh again. “Cunt-ass!” she cried with delight. “Did you hear that?”

“Cunt-ass, yes!” cried Joey with feigned delight – in spite of the…babitude of the situation he felt a little discomfited...was this woman for real? He felt a dark twisting anxiety in his guts. It was – well it was weird, is what it was, this woman picking him up and taking him back to the club…was she connected in some way with that cookie…that woman from the bus? Gretchen’s shoulders were like whitecaps in a dark sea. They floated against the brickwork of the Farquat building as the line moved along.

Joey eyed the bouncer with distaste. He was scrutinizing a young black couple in matching purple monochromatic outfits. The woman had a silver sash tied around her waist and was looking down at her ample chest and pretending to brush something off of her. Then the bouncer shrugged and stood aside and they went in. When the red doors of the Hook opened for a moment the street boomed with the sound of a thunderous bass drum and the voice of Baby Earthling…


…I got your number!...


…and then the red doors went sfffftttt as they closed and the sound of Baby Earthling from inside the Hook again became a dull, uneasy roar under the ambient noise of Burnside.

“That’s my song!” Joey said. Girls liked it when you talked about my song or our song. He wobbled his hips slightly in autonomic sympathetic vibration to the indistinct presence of Baby Earthling’s hit.

“Oooooooo!” Gretchen squealed. “I love that song!”

Joey D acted as though this was the most improbable thing in the world, in spite of Baby Earthling having the number one hit on the American dance charts as well as being in heavy popular R and B rotation. “You like Baby Earthling?” he asked, his eyes full of wonder.

She grinned her bifurcating grin at him again and then the surrogate Angel of Doom ejected a band of chaff onto the sidewalk and it was their turn to confront him. For a moment Joey thought maybe the bouncer wouldn’t recognize him but then his eyes glazed over in his bulbous head and he jerked his thumb toward the sidewalk again.

“Wait,” said Joey D, taking a step back. The bouncer looked at him and then at Gretchen doubtfully. Gretchen pursed her lips.

There were only a couple people in line behind them. They were quiet now and looked on with interest. Joey turned his head and sneered at one of them, a pale Goth girl with a fur cape – or maybe it was fake, he didn’t know.

Gretchen drew in closely to the bouncer like a conspirator and looked at him. She mouthed something to him and his face broke into a warm leer and he leaned in toward her. This time she bent her lips even nearer to an ear in his bulbous head and whispered to him moistly. Then he shrugged and straightened up and chuckled in a reptilian way.

“Okay,” he said. “You go in for a little while, golden boy, with your lady here, but when she leaves you got to go, understand?”

Ordinarily this would have edged Joey toward bellicosity, especially in the presence of such a magnificent woman, but then he saw the expression on her face in the glaring floodlight that hung over the Hook’s red doors – she looked triumphant, mostly, with whatever deal she’d just cut with the bouncer, and then seized his arm and dragged him forward, past the bouncer who looked on with amused approval. Joey glimpsed the Goth girl behind them. She looked shocked he was on his way in. The doors blared open again and the music leapt into their jaws and their chests. Had Gretchen even paid him?

Inside the smell of perfume and cologne mingled in a sickly cocktail with the funk of sweat and adrenaline that wafted over from the dance floor and the bar, illuminated in their drift by the mosaic of purple and green lights overhead. They were in a narrow hallway that led from the red doors at the entryway to the edge of the dance floor, with another door off to one side leading downstairs to the Phone Room. The music was overwhelmingly loud. Joey D nodded in approval, but inwardly he revolted. Why was the music so loud? He wanted to chat this woman up, find out where she was coming from. They wouldn’t be able to hear each other at all up here.

They could go to the Phone Room. The Phone Room was another bar in the Hookup – it was downstairs in the basement where the music from the ground floor was sufficiently muffled to permit making and taking cell phone calls. Of course, these days most people communicated by exchanging short bursts of text, a deed which could be accomplished anywhere in the Farquat Building, rendering the Phone Room a little less necessary, but the people that ran the Hook kept it open, for now. They could hear each other down there.

“Do you want to go to the Phone Room?” he asked, thrusting his maned head toward her. “We could talk down there.”

“The what?” she said. She was almost yelling with her singsong voice to be heard over the music.

“We can talk down there,” he said meaningfully.

That time she heard him and blinked. “Talk about what?” she yelled.

She was right. He felt ridiculous. They stood there in the dark hallway that pulsated with noise and green violet lights. This was a dance club, after all. Of course she would want to dance. And he wanted to dance with her. For one of the first times in his life he wondered if he was as good a dancer as he thought he was. He hoped so.

“About…about what kind of dance we’re going to do,” he said, lamely. He almost said about what we do for work and stuff and he was glad he didn’t but then he thought what he said sounded stupid anyway so he just looked at her as she stood blinking at him there in the hallway. The music was going brum brum brum brum all around them.

She pulled him forward and suddenly they were on the dance floor. Joey D was unaccustomed to seeing to the floor at this hour in the condition he was in, which was sober. Hordes of writhing silhouettes gathered in clumps and dyads, limbs thrashing like analog ghosts in the purple and green flickering shadows. Girls twirled around their dates or each other, pouring their white smiles into the air like wet paint, hair wild. The club was raging.

“C’mon!” Gretchen cried, and dragged him deeper into the mass of figures, which parted like a sea before them, and then she turned and met Joey’s gaze. Her eyes looked feral, like the eyes in the girls of every rock video he’d ever seen – suggestive, inviting, promising…what? She began undulating her hips while keeping her eyes locked into his. Joey heard some guy to his left hoot appreciatively. He turned to look for him but he vanished in a tornado of swirling bodies. Then he felt her hand on his chin, and she gently but firmly pulled his head back to the front, so their gazes met again, and then she released him and stepped back and resumed her undulating. She smiled at him in a way that was – well, fierce, is what it was. She looked as though she might devour him.

Now Joey’s usual method of operation was to get there early and have a series of rum and cokes. During this time he would sit facing the floor and start scopin’ bods, seeing which of the cookies dancing or standing around really spoke to him – this took up thirty minutes and by the end the smokin’ dude was ready to get DOWN. The sight of all that creamy flesh glinting behind glittery spaghetti straps or below fishnet miniskirts combined with a massive onslaught of ethanol drove Joey D into a truly incorrigible frenzy of potentia…but now – now there was the crowd of strangers surrounding them, the absence of any measurable blood alcohol level, and most of all, this – this admittedly beautiful but somewhat peculiar specimen of femininity who had practically dragged him out here now looking at him with her feral lustrous eyes and expecting him to…perform! Sober! Well…okay, Joey thought, watching her breasts heave and toss as she shook her hips in tiny figure 8’s, and began to move his hips in pendulous ellipses in return. Gretchen closed her eyes and smiled beatifically like she had been waiting for aeons for this opportunity to dance with the smokin’ dude…

…but the smokin’ dude felt flushed and weird and very self-conscious all of a sudden. He looked around and nobody else seemed to be paying any attention to him. The most noticeable dancer nearby was an altitudinous black man who wielded his flashing arms like samurai swords amidst the strobing greens and purples, and most of the cookies nearby (the ladies!) were casting sidelong glances at him. Only Gretchen seemed unaware of his presence. She looked ready to explode with rapture. He Who Could Not Be Ignored was relieved everyone else was ignoring him. It was too much.

Joey D reached over and tapped her gently near her clavicle. Her eyes fluttered as though she were waking from an ecstatic dream and peered at him with curiosity but she didn’t say anything. “I’M GONNA GET A DRINK,” Joey yelled over the bass drum that was going JOOG JOOG JOOG.

She frowned and cupped a hand to her ear, jiggling slightly.

“DRINK?” Joey bellowed, and made a sipping motion with his hand.

She shrugged and waved a hand at him and resumed dancing. She closed her eyes but she didn’t seem to be smiling. What did that mean? He backed away slowly, looking at her, and then turned toward the bar.

The air in the Hook felt vaporous and thick as Joey made his way through the crowds. What was up with this woman? She was so beautiful and yet…what? He found the terminus of the long line that led to the bar. He thought he could still see Gretchen through the crowd but he wasn’t sure…the woman in front of him was sure something, though. Black minidress, black heels, black hair pulled in tight pigtails with…green bows…and the little tattoo at the nape of her neck…

Shit! It was the cookie from the bus! As though she were telepathic she suddenly spun around and stared at him. She wasn’t wearing the jacket but it was her, all right. Her eyes blazed with fury and for a second Joey thought she was going to hit him. Then her eyes shrank into tiny ferocious slits and she left the line and disappeared into the crowd.

Aaahhh! Shit! Fuck! What now? He looked at the long line ahead of him that led to the bar and changed his mind. Why not go find Gretchen and get out of here? Go somewhere quiet. Or at least to some club that didn’t have that…dangerous woman with the tattoo in it.

After several minutes he found Gretchen again. She had moved closer to one of the enormous speakers that squatted in the corners of the club but she wasn’t dancing. She was staring at the speaker cone that shook visibly with each JOOG of the bass drum. Several idiots gathered in a semi-circle around her like predators. They took a collective step back when Joey D appeared and strode toward her, ignoring them. He touched her shoulder and she turned to face him, pulling errant strands of hair out of her eyes. Joey D leaned toward one of her pale ears and yelled, “LET’S TALK FOR A MINUTE.”

She looked at him oddly and shrugged but then let him lead her across the floor into the hallway and down the stairs to the Phone Room. He glanced back at her as they went - she looked slightly deflated but seemed strangely passive compared to her earlier self.

The Phone Room was all black brick walls and triangle-shaped tables with a bone-white bar running the length of the room. Most of the tables were vacant and the few patrons present didn’t glance in their direction. The bartender was a brunette cookie who looked bored and vaguely contemptuous. She was leaning on the bar on her elbows when they came in but then straightened up and looked with blank horror at Joey D’s outfit before regaining her composure and allowing the smokin’ dude to order a pair of rum and cokes without incident. He scarcely noticed, so eager was he to talk to Gretchen. He escorted her to a table in the corner with a good view of the staircase leading upstairs in case the black-haired cookie showed up. She sat with her back to the staircase and folded her arms across her chest. Her face was inscrutable.

“So…Gretchen,” Joey D said. “I was thinking – you know, it’s so loud here. Maybe we could go to some other place to talk-”

She cut him off. “It’s not loud down here,” she said. “I hear you fine.” Then she cupped her hands into a megaphone, like they’d seen the cunt-ass guy do, and shouted at him. “I HEAR YOU FINE!” One of the couples at another table turned to gawk at them. He thought she was going to start her witch-laugh again but she just smiled at him. He could smell the sandalwood or whatever it was.

“Look,” he said. “I come here so often. Wouldn’t you like to go somewhere else with me, somewhere new?” He was pleading again. S’UP DOLL seemed like light-years away.

Her lips curled into a petulant frown. “I just wanted to dance,” she said. “Don’t you want to dance with me?”

He wondered where the pissed-off cookie with the black hair was. “I do, I do,” he said. “It’s just that – well, there’s this other c- this other woman here who’s here that’s making me a little uncomfortable.” He tried to picture himself dancing up there with that fury on the loose and couldn’t.

She sighed and started messing with her purse. She pulled out her cigarette case and then put it back. Smoking had been banned in all the bars in the Rose City. It was easy to forget. “Look,” she said. “I’m not into – I’m not into playing fucking games. I came here to dance. If one of your little girlfriends is here that’s your problem. I’ll go dance by myself, I don’t care.”

Joey D thought of the tall black dancer and shuddered.

She reached into her purse again and took out a pad of paper and a pen and began to scribble frenetically. Then she tore off the top sheet and gave it to Joey. In spidery cursive it read: GRETCHEN HARRISON RM 82. “I’m staying at the Motel 6 down the street,” she said in a business-like fashion. “I’m going to go dance. If you like you can join me. If not, meet up with me later – this is the room number.” She put her pad and pen away in her tiny white purse and then she stood up and marched through the Phone Room and up the stairs.

Joey D was stunned. The whole conversation had lasted thirty seconds. Bango! Like that, she was gone. Her rum and coke was untouched. He examined it as though it were a moon rock and then picked it up and lifted to his lips, and it was gone, too. He put the empty glass on the table and picked up his own drink before looking at the piece of paper she had given him. What was up with this woman? The warmth of the rum began to unfold in his abdomen like a tropical bird awakening from a bottomless slumber. He closed his eyes and still had them closed when he heard the bouncer’s voice. “Hey, golden boy,” it said. “Where’s your date?”

He opened his eyes and saw the bouncer there standing next to him, his head looking more bulbous than ever. He looked around as though he hadn’t noticed she was gone and then blinked. “I think she went to dance,” he said.

“Yeah,” the bouncer said. “Somewhere else, I guess. She just split. Took off. So you gotta split too, Chuckles.”

Chuckles? “She said she went to dance,” Joey D said.

“Well, she may have said that, but she didn’t do that, because I just watched her go. Finish your drink and then scram. You’ve got five minutes.” He tapped an imaginary wristwatch and spun on his heels and disappeared up the stairs.

GRETCHEN HARRISON RM 282. The Motel 6 was only about six blocks away. He could walk there in five minutes. Had she gone there? He could go there and wait for her. He wondered if they’d let him wait in her room for her if she wasn’t there yet. Had she gone dancing somewhere else? Where? He sipped his drink without noticing he was doing so. A minute went by, and then another, and another.

At this point another woman entered the Phone Room from the stairway. She was very beautiful but she looked out of place – her blonde hair was pulled back in an athletic-looking ponytail and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. She had a wool overcoat on over jeans and sneakers. She narrowed her eyes and peered around the Phone Room until her eyes met Joey’s and she strode over to him. As she drew closer, Joey D could see her better - her eyes were large with something like fear or panic and her lips were compressed into an airtight little horizontal line. Much to Joey D’s surprise, she pulled out the chair in which Gretchen had been sitting and said in a quivery voice, “Mind if I join you?” She seemed very worried about something. Why did she seem so familiar? Those eyes... Joey nodded and she sat down.


“Look,” she said. “I’m – this is very awkward – I’m trying to find my sister.” She glanced around the phone room as though her sister might materialize. “That guy – the door guy, the bouncer – he said she was here. With you.” She stared at him and then put something on the table. It was a photograph. Before Joey even glanced at it, he knew who it was.

It was Gretchen. She was wearing some kind of knockout white sweater and standing in front of an enormous stone wall next to a giant brown horse. The horse looked impassive but Gretchen looked ecstatic.

“Were you with her?” she said. Was she about to cry?

Joey made a jabbing motion at the air with the edge of his hand. “Whoa,” he said. “Whoa, whoa. Who are you?”

She looked pained. “I’m her sister. Who are you?”

“Joey,” Joey D said. “Joey D. And your name is…?”

For a moment she looked as though she were trying to think of a fake name and couldn’t. “Gretchen,” she said.

Gretchen? “Then who’s this?” he said, thrusting a finger at the photograph.

“That’s my sister. Veronica,” she said. “She was just here with you, right?”

Veronica? What a mindfuck this night was turning out to be. What time was it? “Well…” he said, reluctantly. “I haven’t met anyone named Veronica.”

“Mmmm-hmmmm,” Gretchen said. “Let me guess. She told you her name was Gretchen, right? Gretchen Harrison?”

Well. “Yes,” Joey D said finally.

Gretchen leaned closely to him. “Look, Mr. D,” she said. “This isn’t any of your business - believe me, it’s not – but my sister is not well. She has a – a condition.”

“Uh-huh,” Joey said. “She goes around pretending to be someone else? You?”

Gretchen looked at him and several seconds went by. “It doesn’t matter,” she said finally. “I don’t feel the need to explain my family to you.”

“Okay, okay,” Joey said. He liked her sister better, nuts or no.

“Did she say anything to you? Anything about where she was going?”

RM 282. “No – not really,” he said. For some reason he flashed on that nancy-boy on the bus, hunched forward into his sternum.

She looked at him doubtfully. “Nothing?”

He could walk there from here. Six blocks. “Nope,” he said. “She just took off.”

“Mr. D,” she said, “are you positive? She didn’t say anything about staying downtown?”

Five minutes away. “Nope,” he said. He folded his arms in the universal gesture that says I’m finished talking now. He looked past her, looked at the bar. He could feel her still looking at him.

“Here’s my cell phone number,” she was saying. She put a blue business card on the table. It said, simply, Gretchen Harrison – Life Coach. There was a phone number in the corner. “Please call me if you see her, okay? Or if you remember anything about where she might be.” Her tone suggested she knew he was lying but she left it at that and stood up. “Thank you,” she said. “Sorry to bug you.” And with that she went the way of her sister: up the stairs to the main floor of the Hook.

The way the smokin’ dude saw it, this Veronica might be nuts, or she might not be, but he wasn’t about to abandon an opportunity to meet her in RM 282 at the Motel 6 just because her sister was looking for her. What a crazy story. He finished his drink and told himself to remember the way it felt going down his throat, like a icy fire, in honor of Gretchen, or Veronica, or whoever she was, who waited for him down the street! The business card…he examined it carefully as though looking for some sign and then dropped it on the table. Life Coach. He picked it up again and put it one of his myriad pockets and then made his way back up the staircase, no longer seeing the throngs, the flashing lights, but seeing only her face floating spectrally before him. He wondered if he should buy some condoms.


He was almost to the door when someone tapped him on the shoulder. Dreamily, he turned around, still thinking of Gretchen/Veronica with her desert-blue eyes, and for the first half of the next second he saw a man he had never seen before standing there – and behind him was the cookie! The one from the bus! He barely had time to register any details about the man who confronted him (there was no other word for it) other than that he had a five o’clock shadow that looked spiky and eerie in the half-light of the strobes flooding the hallway before in the latter half of the same second: SPRRRCKKK! he smashed the smokin’ dude in the nose, knocking him toward the red doors that marked the entrance and the egress to the Farquat Building, now the Hookup, colloquially known as the Hook. Joey’s hands flew to his nose and felt the sudden warmth of his own blood streaming down his upper lip. He turned around to face his aggressor, who was presumably acting upon some chivalrous impulse for the sake of the sexy cookie behind him…this thought swooped through his mind like some prehistoric bird, lumbering and metronomic, and then the second blow came – SPPPRRRCKK!- and knocked him flat…he rolled over until he came to a stop against the wall of the hallway. He blinked at the sight of a tiny puddle of his own blood that had formed on the floor like he was grilling a pancake.

The guy was yelling something at him but he couldn’t hear what it was – the music seemed louder than ever and he realized – could it be? It was Baby Earthling again! The same song! Wha?


Already got your number


And then like a nightmare he felt rough hands on his hair again and they were yanking him through the red doors. Now this time Joey D didn’t screech – he clawed at the hands of his aggressor as they pulled him forward. There was a nuclear bomb of pain exploding on his face in slow motion and he heard a girl screaming – for a second he thought it was the woman from the bus but then he caught a glimpse of her to the side of them and she wasn’t screaming at all – she was looking at him with grim satisfaction. Why were they playing that Baby Earthling song again? Did DJs repeat songs? he wondered arbitrarily. And then they were crashing through the doors and he felt the cool wind of the evening again. Rivulets of blood tumbled off his chin like tiny waterfalls, spattering his shirt and lion’s head pendant with specks of oxygenated blood. The man released his grip on his hair – what was this with these people and their hair-grabbing? – and he half-stumbled, half-fell forward and then regained his feet. He spun around again, this time with his hands in front of his face, and he saw his attacker – the guy was panting heavily. Out here he looked pale and sweaty and his stubble looked a little sickly. And behind him was the girl with the pigtails and the green bows, the girl from the bus. And to the side –

“There you are,” the bouncer said. “Glad you made it out before I had to come looking for you.” He was utterly unfazed that a bloodied Joey D had just been conveyed outside by this…this animal…

“Close personal friend?” someone said. It was his enemy, the fucking white knight.

“Naw,” the bouncer said. There was no one in line now. A couple of blondes stood a few feet away smoking cigarettes, their sparkly toes pigeon-pointed inward. They seemed engrossed in the brick wall of the Farquat Building. “Some prick I let in here by mistake.”

“You don’t mind if I, ah, beat this prick a little more, do you?” Five’o’clock said. His girlfriend, or whoever she was, giggled. He took a step toward Joey D, who seemed frozen. “See what else comes out of him?”

“Be my guest,” the bouncer said. “Hell, I’ll hold him for you.” And he took a step forward as well.

And then a bright beam, like a beacon from a lighthouse, swept across them, and there was the sound of boots on gravel and cement, and a trio of police officers was surrounding them. One of the three, rendered invisible by the glare of the enormous flashlight she wielded, swept the beam across them again and then let it come to rest on the bouncer like a laser. “Fucking freeze, you asshole,” a sharp female voice said. It sounded black. One of the cops who wasn’t holding the flashlight stepped forward – he was a tall black man who reminded Joey D of the dancer from the club. He seized the bouncer by his collar and whipped him around and as quick as a sneeze he had a pair of white plastic handcuffs on him.

“What the fuck?” the bouncer yelled. Joey D’s assailant looked at the cop with wide eyes and then at the bouncer, and then he stepped backward into the club, and for a second Baby Earthling filled the street as the doors swung open. His girlfriend was a step ahead of him.

“You holding something sweet?” the female voice said again – this time it was a black woman who stepped forward. Her head was almost lost in her enormous blue cap. The light was still dead on him- the cop with the flashlight held steady.. “What you holding, grayboy?”

He couldn’t believe it – he’d called the cops, and they’d come! Exactly when they’d needed him to! They’d actually – responded to his stupid phone call! With lights and handcuffs! Holy shit! For a second he was tempted to stick around and watch the aftermath – the bouncer was spitting all over the place – but then he decided against it and took off running up the street…

…and a block or two later he slowed to a brisk walk, and then a stroll, catching his breath, and he realized he was headed toward the Motel 6. He stopped, stopped there on the sidewalk, and looked behind him at the blaring lights in front of the Hookup, and then looked in front of him, up the slight incline where Burnside rose toward the west hills flanked by ribbons of streetlights…and then he pulled the business card out of his pants pocket and gazed at it…Life Coach.

He had escaped! He raised his free hand to his nose and felt again the strange warmth of his own blood in his fingers, on his knuckles. What the fuck…he wondered if his nose was broken…for a moment he thought of Gretchen/Veronica in room 282 at the Motel 6 but she no longer seemed like a secret prize, a hidden goddess. What was the point? What difference did it make whether she was there or not? He remembered how panicky her sister had looked – that was real, that panic, as real as the blood that was covering his face, his clothes, his hands, the sidewalk. Another voice inside him cried Nooooooo! but then went silent.

And then before he knew what he was doing he had his cell phone out of his pocket and he was dialing her number.

“Yes?” a female voice said.

“Gretchen?” he said.

What was he doing? “Gretchen,” he said. “I just saw you at the bar. You were asking about your sister?”

Pause. The bouncer howled in the distance. “Yes?” the woman said. “What?”

“She’s at the Motel 6 downtown,” he said. “Or she will be soon, I think. She gave me her address there – I mean, the room number.”

“Hold on,” the voice said. There was another pause and even over the ambient noise of the streets he could hear her walking around the room and rustling paper. “Okay,” she said. “Where is it?”

“Room 282,” he said. “The Motel 6.”

“282,” she said. “Ok.”

“Ok,” he said.

Pause. “Thank you,” she said.

“I’m sorry I didn’t – I didn’t tell you sooner,” Joey D said. No! So much for his rendezvous! He felt like two people! One of them stood there making wan confessions and the other one (the smokin’ dude!) looked on in horror.

“Ok,” she said. “Good night.”

“Goodnight,” he said. He started to say something else but then heard a click and she was gone. Down the street the bouncer was being thrust into the back seat of a police car.

He started toward the bus stop on Oak Avenue and then slowed down again. The air felt delicious on his cheeks, like chilled gelatin, and the pain from his (probably) broken nose had become just another piece of information, like a headline. He wondered if Veronica was already at the Motel 6. He heard the sound of a bus behind him and was about to turn to see if it was his and then didn’t. Instead he shrugged and rolled on and the bus blew by him. He didn’t look up to see if it was his or not. And suddenly, in some inexplicable fashion, he didn’t feel like two people any more. He felt like one person, like the person who’d told Gretchen where her sister was. It felt pretty good. The smokin’ dude was nowhere to be seen or heard.

Joey D liked the night. It spoke to him. Fuck it – it was a nice night for a walk. For no reason at all he thought about Hannah’s, the little sausage processing plant he’d worked at, and then he imagined Bob Barker curled up on the couch at home, waiting for him. Which he was.