Koko

9 In Search of Maggie Lah

1

All at once everything seemed to be going wrong, Tina Pumo thought, all at once everything was falling apart. He hated the Palladium and the Mike Todd Room. He also hated Area, the Roxy, CBGB’s, Magique, Danceteria, and the Ritz. Maggie wasn’t going to show up at the Mike Todd Room, and she wasn’t going to be at any of those other places either. He could stand at the bar for hours, drink until he fell down, and all that would happen was that hundreds of little night people would stomp him on the way to their next bottle of Rolling Rock.

The first time he talked his way past the doorman into the vast barnlike room that the Palladium used for publicity parties and private gatherings he had come from a marathon meeting with Saigon’s accountants. He was wearing his only grey flannel suit, purchased before the Vietnam War and small enough to pinch his waist. Pumo wandered through the crowd searching for Maggie. He noticed eventually that nearly everybody looked at him sharply, just once, then stepped away. In an otherwise crowded room, he was surrounded by a sort of DMZ, a cordon sanitaire of empty space. Once he heard laughter behind his back, turned around to see if he could share the joke, and saw everybody turn to stone, staring at him. Finally he went up to the bar and managed to catch the eye of a skinny young bartender with mascara on his face and a tangle of blond hair piled up on top of his head.

‘I was wondering if you knew a girl named Maggie Lah,’ Tina said. ‘I was supposed to meet her here tonight. She’s short, she’s Chinese, good-looking –’

‘I know her,’ the bartender said. ‘She might be in later.’ He retreated to the other end of the bar.

Tina experienced a moment of pure rage at Maggie. May be Mike Todd, Maybe not. La-La. He saw that this message was a trick followed by mocking laughter. He stormed away from the bar and found himself standing in front of a blonde girl who looked about sixteen, had stars painted on both cheeks, and wore a shiny, slinky black chemise. She was exactly his type. ‘I want to take you home with me,’ he said. The girl opened her flowerlike mouth and solved one mystery by saying, ‘I don’t go home with narcs.’

That had been a week after Halloween. For at least two weeks afterward, he kept the city at bay while he tore his kitchen apart. Every time he and the exterminators took down another section of wall, a million bugs scrambled to get out of the light – if you killed them in one place, the next day they surfaced on another. For a long time they seemed to be concentrated behind the Garland range. In order to keep the fumigant from spoiling the food, he and the kitchen staff taped thick sheets of clear plastic between the range and food preparation surfaces and wherever they were trying to exterminate the insects. They pushed all three thousand pounds of the Garland eight feet out into the middle of the kitchen. Vinh, the head chef, complained that he and his daughter couldn’t sleep at night because they heard things moving inside the walls. They had recently moved into the restaurant’s ‘office,’ a little room in the basement, because Vinh’s sister was having another baby and needed their room in her house in Queens. Normally the office was furnished with a desk, a couch, and boxes of files. Now the couch belonged to Goodwill, the desk was jammed into a corner of Pumo’s living room, and Vinh and Helen slept on a mattress on the floor.

This temporary, illegal situation looked as if it was becoming a permanent illegal situation. Helen not only couldn’t sleep, but she wet the bed – the mattress – whenever she did doze off. Vinh claimed that the bed-wetting got worse right after the child saw Harry Beevers sitting at the bar. That Harry Beevers was a devil who put curses on children was mystical Vietnamese hysteria, pure and simple, but they believed it, so for them it was true. Pumo sometimes felt like strangling Vinh, but if he did he’d not only go to jail, he’d never get another chef.

Headache upon headache. Maggie did not call or send word to him for ten days. He began having dreams about Victor Spitalny running out of the cave at Ia Thuc covered with wasps and spiders.

The Health Department issued him a Second Warning, and the inspector muttered about misuse of nonresidential space. The little office reeked of pee.

The day before Maggie put another ad in the Village Voice, Michael Poole called again, asking if he had time to see if anyone at a place called Gladstone House knew where Tim Underhill lived. ‘Oh, sure,’ Tina grumped, ‘I spend all day in bed reading poetry.’ But he looked up the number in the book. The woman who answered referred him to the editorial department. A woman named Corazon Fayre said she knew nothing about an author named Timothy Underwood, and referred him to a woman named Dinah Mellow, who referred him to Sarah Good, who referred him to Betsy Flagg, who claimed at least to have heard of Timothy Underwood, was it? No? Let me transfer you to publicity. In publicity, Jane Boot referred him to May Upshaw who referred him to Marjorie Fan, who disappeared into limbo for fifteen minutes and returned from it with the information that ten years ago Mr Underhill had written requesting that his circumstances and whereabouts be kept secret on pain of serious authorial displeasure, and that all communications, fan mail included, be directed to him through his agent, Mr Fenwick Throng.

‘Fenwick Throng?’ Pumo asked. ‘Is that a real name?’

The next day was Wednesday, and after getting Vinh off to the markets and Helen to school, Tina set out to buy a copy of the Village Voice at the newsstand on the corner of Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue. Many newsstands were closer, but Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue was only a few blocks from La Groceria, a cafe where Pumo could sit in pale sunlight streaming in through long windows, sip two cups of cappuccino while pretty waitresses with white morning faces yawned and stretched like ballerinas, and read every word of the VOICE BULLETIN BOARD.

He found a message from Maggie right above the drawing in the center of the page: Namcat. Try again same place, same time? Bruises and tattoos. You should fly East with the others, taking Type A with. Her brother must have heard about their trip from Harry and then told her.

He thought of what it would be like to go to Singapore with Poole, Linklater, Harry Beevers, and Maggie Lah. Instantly his stomach tightened up and the cappuccino tasted like brass. She would bring too much carry-on luggage, half of it paper bags. Out of principle, she’d insist on changing hotels at least twice. She’d flirt with Poole, pick fights with Beevers, and virtually adopt Conor. Pumo began to sweat. He signaled for the check, paid and left.

Several times during the day he dialed Fenwick Throng’s telephone number, but the agent’s line was always busy.

At eleven o’clock he gave unnecessary instructions about closing the restaurant, then showered and changed clothes and hurried off to the Palladium’s back entrance. For fifteen minutes he stood and froze with half a dozen other people in an area like a dog pound enclosed by a wire fence, and then someone finally recognized him and let him in.

If it hadn’t been for that New York article, he thought, I wouldn’t even be able to get in here.

This time he was dressed in a Giorgio Armani jacket that looked vaguely like chain mail, voluminously pleated black trousers, a grey silk shirt, and a narrow black tie. They might mistake him for a pimp, he thought, but not for a narc.

Clutching a beer bottle, Pumo walked twice up and down the entire length of the bar before he admitted to himself that Maggie had stood him up twice in a row. He wound his way through the mob to the tables. Extravagantly dressed young people, none of them Maggie, leaned toward one another in pools of candlelight.

All of a sudden, everything’s falling apart, Pumo thought. Somewhere along the line, my life stopped making sense.

Young people swirled around him. Synthesizer rock blared from invisible speakers. For a moment Pumo wished he were back home, wearing blue jeans and listening to the Rolling Stones. Maggie was never going to show up, tonight or any other night. One of these days, some hulking new boyfriend would show up at his door to collect the plastic radio, the little yellow Pony Pro hairdryer, and the Bow Wow Wow records she had left behind.

Pumo fought his way up to the bar and ordered a double vodka martini on the rocks. Hold the olives, hold the vermouth, hold the rocks, he remembered Michael Poole saying in Manly’s little club, where there had been no olives, vermouth, or ice, only a jug of suspicious yellow-tinged ‘vodka’ Manly claimed to have obtained from a colonel in the First Air Cav.

‘That’s the happiest you’ve looked all night,’ said a low voice beside him.

Pumo turned and saw a tall, ambiguously sexed apparition in camouflage fatigues beaming at him. Bare shaven skin gleamed above its ears. Aggressive, shiny black hair swept across the top of the apparition’s head and hung down its back. Then Pumo noticed the apparition’s breasts bulging beneath the fatigue shirt. Her hips flared beneath a wide belt. He wondered what it would be like to go to bed with somebody with white sidewalls.

Fifteen minutes later the girl was squeezing herself up against him in the back of a taxi. ‘Bite my ear,’ she said.

‘Here?’

She tilted her head toward him. Pumo put one arm around her shoulder and took her earlobe between his teeth. Fine black stubble covered the side of her head.

‘Harder.’

She squirmed when he bit down on the gristly lobe.

‘You didn’t tell me your name,’ he said.

She slid her hand over his crotch. Her breasts nuzzled his upper arm. He felt pleasantly engulfed. ‘My friends call me Dracula,’ she said. ‘But not because I suck blood.’

She wouldn’t let him turn on the lights in his loft, and he groped his way to the bedroom in the dark. Giggling, she pushed him down on the bed. ‘Just lie there,’ she said, and undid his belt, got rid of his boots, and pulled down his trousers. He got out of the chain-mail jacket and wrenched off his tie. ‘Pretty Tina,’ Dracula said. She bent over and licked his erect cock. ‘I always feel like I’m in church when I do this.’

‘Wow,’ Tina said. ‘Where have you been all my life?’

‘You don’t want to know where I’ve been.’ She lightly scratched his scrotum with a long fingernail. ‘Don’t worry, I don’t have any nasty diseases. I practically live at the doctor’s office.’

‘Why?’

‘I guess I just enjoy being a girl.’

Exhausted, dulled by alcohol, Pumo let her proceed. When she sat up, straddling him, she looked like an Apache warrior with plucked eyebrows. ‘Do you like Dracula?’

‘I think I’ll marry Dracula,’ he said.

She unbuttoned the camouflage shirt and tore it off, exposing firm conical breasts. ‘Bite me,’ she said, pushing them into his face. ‘Hard. Until I tell you to stop.’

He gently bit one of her nipples, and she ground her knuckles into the side of his head. ‘Harder.’ She dug her nails into his cock. Pumo bit down.

‘Harder.’

He increased the pressure.

When he tasted blood, she screamed and moaned and gripped his head in her arms. ‘Good good.’ Her hand left his head and found his cock again. ‘Still hard? Good Tina.’

Finally she let him raise his head. A thin line of blood oozed from the bottom of her breast down her ribcage. ‘Now little Drac goes back to church.’

Pumo laughed and fell back on the pillow. He wondered if Vinh or Helen had heard her scream and decided they probably hadn’t – they were two floors below.

After a long delirious time Pumo’s orgasm sent looping ribbons of semen over her cheeks, into her eyebrows, into the air. She moaned and hitched herself onto his body so that his arms were pinned beneath her legs and astonished him by rubbing his semen into her face with both hands.

‘I haven’t come like that since I was about twenty,’ he said. ‘But you’re sort of hurting my arms.’

‘Poor baby.’ She patted his cheek.

‘I’d really appreciate it if you got off my arms,’ he said.

She looked down at him triumphantly and hit him hard in the temple.

Pumo struggled to get up, but Dracula struck him again. He found himself unable to move for a second. She grinned down at him, her teeth and eyes flashing in the murk, and slammed her fist against the side of his head.

He yelled for help. She struck him again.

‘Murder!’ he yelled, but no one heard.

Just before the twentieth blow to his temples, Pumo’s eyes cleared and he saw Dracula peering impersonally down at him, her mouth pursed and her lipstick smeared.

2

Pumo came to in darkness, he knew not how much later. His lips throbbed and felt the size of steaks. He tasted blood. His whole body ached, the pain radiating out from the twin centers of his head and groin. In sudden panic, he put his hand on his penis, and found it intact. His eyes opened. He held up his hands before his face – they were dark with blood.

Pumo lifted his head to look down his body, and a white-hot band of pain jumped from temple to temple. He fell back on the wet pillow and breathed heavily. Then he lifted his head more cautiously. He was very cold. He saw his naked body sprawled on dark wet sheets. Working its way from ache to ache, a thin hot wire of agony snaked through the middle of his head. Now his lips felt like rough red bricks. He touched his face with wet fingers.

He considered getting out of bed. Then he wondered what time it was. Pumo raised his right arm and looked at his wrist, which no longer wore a watch.

He turned his head sideways. The radio with its digital clock was gone from the bedside table.

He slid himself off the side of the bed, finding the floor first with one foot, then with both his knees. His chest slid across the sheets, and he swallowed a bitter mouthful of vomit. When he stood up, his head swam and his vision darkened. He propped himself up on the headboard with aching arms. A cut on the side of his head beat and beat.

Clutching his head, Pumo slowly made his way into the bathroom. Without turning on the light, he bathed his face in cold water before daring to look at himself in the mirror. A grotesque purple mask, the face of the Elephant Man, stared back at him. His stomach flipped over, and he threw up into the sink and passed out again before he hit the floor.

10 Conversations and Dreams

1

‘Yes, I’ve been lying low, and no, I haven’t changed my mind about going,’ Pumo said. He was talking on the telephone to Michael Poole. ‘You should see me, or rather you shouldn’t. I’m hideous. I stay inside most of the time, because when I go out I frighten children.’

‘Is that some new kind of joke?’

‘Don’t I wish. I got beat up by a psychopath. I also got robbed.’

‘You mean you got mugged?’

Pumo hesitated. ‘In a way. I’d explain the circumstances, Mike, but frankly, they’re too embarrassing.’

‘Can’t you even give me a hint?’

‘Well, never pick up anybody who calls herself Dracula.’ After Michael had laughed dutifully, Pumo said, ‘I lost my watch, a clock radio, a brand new pair of lizard-skin boots from McCreedy and Shreiber, my Walkman, my Watchman, a Dunhill lighter that didn’t work anymore, a Giorgio Armani jacket, and all my credit cards and about three hundred in cash. And when the asshole took off, he or she left the downstairs door open and some goddamned bum came in and pissed all over the hallway.’

‘How do you feel about that?’ Michael groaned. ‘Jesus, what a stupid question. I mean, in general how do you feel? I wish you’d called me right away.’

‘In general I feel like committing murder, that’s how I feel in general. This thing shook me up, Mike. The world is full of hurt. I understand that there’s no real safety, not anywhere. Terrible things can happen in an instant, to anyone. That asshole just about made me afraid to go outside. But if you’re smart, you should be afraid to go outside. Listen – I want you guys to be careful when you get over there. Don’t take any risks.’

‘Okay,’ Michael said.

‘The reason I didn’t call you or anybody else is the only good thing that came out of this whole thing. Maggie showed up. I guess I just missed her at the place where I encountered Dracula. The bartender told her he saw me leaving with someone else, so the next day she came around to check up. And found me with my face about twice its normal size. So she moved back in.’

As Conor said, there’s a flaw in every ointment. Or something like that.’

‘But I did talk to Underhill’s agent. His former agent, I should say.’

‘Don’t make me beg.’

‘Basically the word is that our boy did go to Singapore, all right, just like he always said he would. Throng – the agent’s name is Fenwick Throng, believe it or not – didn’t know if he was still there. They have a funny history. Underhill always had his checks deposited in a branch bank down in Chinatown. Throng never even knew his address. He wrote to him in care of a post office box. Every now and then Underhill called up to rant at him, and a couple of times he fired him. I guess over a period of five or six years the calls got more and more abusive, more violent. Throng thought that Tim was usually drunk or stoned or high on something, or all three at once. Then he’d call back in tears a couple of days later and beg Throng to work for him again. Eventually it just got too crazy for Throng, and he told Tim he couldn’t work for him anymore. He thinks that Tim has been agenting his own books ever since.’

‘So he’s probably still out there, but we’ll have to find him for ourselves.’

‘And he’s nuts. He sounds scary as shit to me, Michael. If I were you, I’d stay home too.’

‘So the agent convinced you that Tim Underhill is probably Koko.’

‘I wish I could say he didn’t.’

‘I wish you could too.’

‘So consider this – is he really worth risking your neck for?’ Tina asked.

‘I’d sure as hell rather risk my neck for Underhill than for Lyndon Baines Johnson.’

‘Well, hang on, because here comes the good part,’ Tina said.

2

‘I don’t think adult men actually exist anymore – if they ever did,’ Judy said. ‘They really are just grown up little boys. It’s demeaning. Michael is a caring, intelligent person and he works hard and all that, but what he believes in is ridiculous. After you reach a certain level, his values are completely childish.’