Gagliano,Anthony - Straits of Fortune.wps Read Online Free PDF Page A

The cameraman, whoever he was, panned in on his face so that I could see him sweating. Vivian's eyes looked glazed, and I gave in to the merciful thought that she had to be on something. Matson went first. He was tall, rangy, with a hawk nose and a shock of straight black hair that made him look like a rock star. I remembered the times I had trained him, taught him a little tai chi and tried to get him off the coke. He had the arms I had given him, but also the puffed-out gut of a skinny, full-time drinker he had given himself. I watched him and tried to understand that he was dead. 24
    He was very thorough with her, as was she with him. Then the other man came over, looking shy and tentative and trying to hide it with the fake smile of a man who would rather be elsewhere. Matson went and sat down and drank his wine while his pal took his turn. The other man was trying extra hard to look lustful, but all he managed to do was look sad and pitiful, like a man who has reached some previously unexplored limit in himself and does not like very much the new territory he's discovered there. Matson drank his wine and watched them like a man at a movie, like me watching him. But only one of us was a masochist, as far as I could tell. I watched far more than I should have. I fast-forwarded until I came to the part where Matson and the blond man dragged the couch away from the wall and bent her over it. The quality of the film and lighting were both very good, but I would have paid money for a few shadows to hide the obvious pleasure I saw on her face. It was ugly and degrading and enthralling, and by the time I shut it off and was standing by the window looking out at the yacht, I was feeling like a man who's roasted himself over a fire while turning the spit himself. I went back to the night when I had walked into a bar after a long drive back from Gainesville, where I'd gone to see an old friend who was dying from cancer. It was an out-of-the-way place, and I was in an out-of-the-way mood. I had gone there for the specific reason of having a solitary drink without having to talk to anybody I knew. The chances of my being there at all on that or any other particular night were so slim as not to be calculable, but I was only there a short while when I saw her and Matson swapping spit in a booth. It was just a month or so after I'd introduced them. I don't remember how I got over to Matson. Possibly I levitated or passed through the ether like a ghost. But I re- 25
    member well enough how the bouncers there pulled me off him. I remember the shock on Vivian's face, the livid embar- rassment that held for a moment, then collapsed into tears. The bouncers were only doing their jobs. I didn't want to fight them, but one of them hit me in the side of the head and drew blood, and from that moment on, as far as I was concerned, they were on Matson's side. Then the cops came, as cops will. One of them smacked me over the head with a nightstick and took me away. I had to call the Sheik, another client of mine, to spring me from jail. The only good thing that came out of it was the com- munity service I had to do. I spent the better part of a month showing some retarded kids how to throw a Frisbee at a Jewish recreation center. Those kids were all right, even if their parents were a little leery of me at first. When the ad- ministrators realized I wasn't a complete maniac, they even offered me a part-time job. The pressures of the marketplace didn't allow me to take it, however, but I still went back once or twice a week or when business was slow, even after I was done with my atonement. I was standing by the window staring at the yacht and thinking about all this when I heard the door open behind me. Williams was standing there. I would have known it was him without having to turn around. He was easily the tens- est man I'd ever met, and the steroids weren't helping much either. His eyes had the jaundiced tint of someone who'd been on the juice