MUSCLES

 

 

Jay was dry, his mind a vast open plain, barren of the slightest sprig of an idea. It worried him no little bit.

He finished his coffee and sandwich at his desk, then sat there tapping a pencil on his blotter. He looked around the empty office. This was getting serious. He needed a lead story for next week's edition and he was completely blank.

He picked up the current issue of The Light lying open on his desk, exposing the weekly eye injury on page three. That was one of his rules: Every issue had to have an eye injury on page three, preferably with a photo. Page five was reserved for the weekly UFO story. The dependable appearance of features like those kept the regulars coming back week after week. But it was page one that caught the impulse buyers, and they were the gravy. He closed it over and scanned the front page.

 

FOUND IN SIBERIA!

TWO-HEADED BABY SPEAKS

ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN!

 

There followed an eyewitness account of the left head speaking Russian and the right answering in English—talk about internationalism!—along with a photo of a two-headed baby from the freak file.

Jay frowned. Another of his rules was that freaks were a last resort for the front page. The presence one in this week's lead was testimony to the aridity of his current dry spell. But you had to go for the gross when you were competing against something as juicy as the Profumo scandal in the dailies.

He got up and walked around the tiny office, stopping before the front page of the March 15, 1959 issue framed on the wall. He’d only just started at The Light then, but he’d made his mark with that one. Even today they still considered it a masterpiece.

 

SECRET VATICAN PAPERS REVEAL:

RICHIE VALENS WOULD

HAVE BEEN NEXT POPE!

 

 

He shook his head at the memory. Boy, had that ever sold papers. The text had been the usual bullshit about secret information leaked by a deep contact who would talk only to The Light. A source in a place like the Vatican was a safe bet because the Vatican was so secretive anyway and naturally would be expected to deny the story. Of course, the tried-and true standby was placing the source behind the Iron Curtain. No way anyone could prove you right or wrong when the story came from Siberia.

Look at me, he thought. Standing here reminiscing about 1959 like it was the good old days. Hell, it was only four years ago.

He shook his head. Acting like a has-been at thirty.

He needed some air, a walk, a change of scenery. Anything but these same old lousy walls.

He pulled on his coat and headed for the elevator. He knew where he wanted to go.

 

 

* * * * *

 

Ah, sleaze. Something in the air here in Times Square did something for Jay. Not any one particular thing. The amalgam stimulated him—a benny for his soul. And the Square looked especially sleazy today, buffeted by a chill wind under a low gray sky that promised rain or snow or a mix.

He wandered past the Tango Palace.

 

Continuous Dancing from 2 P.M. to 4 A.M.

To the Type of Music You Love

Presenting Beautiful Girls to Dance With

 

 

Then came the Square Theater showing a double bill of The Immoral Mr. Teas and Wild Women of Wongo, past the Garden Theatre with a double of B-O-I-N-N-N-G! and Goldilocks and the Three Bares, past Hubert's Museum and Flea Circus.

He’d been to the Tango Palace a number of times—through the plain door and up the stairs to where the music was not the type he loved and the women not the kind he cared to dance with—and had seen the movies twice each. He knew the attractions of Hubert's by heart.

But he never got tired of the aura of the Square. The regulars here were living by their wits on the edge of the law, on the far side of truth, justice, and the American way. The skells, the sky-grifters, the street-hawkers, the streetwalkers all worked as hard at their trades as any straight, but they didn't want it straight. They wanted it their way. Jay could not deny a feeling of kinship.

Lighted headlines crawled around the Times Building—something about Kennedy and Khrushchev—while a guy in cowboy boots and a Stetson gave Jay the eye. He ignored both. A lot of women had told him he looked like Anthony Perkins and maybe it was true. Tall, very slim, dark brown hair and an angular face—a look useful in attracting women, but had its drawbacks in that it attracted certain men too. Not so popular, though, a couple of years ago when Psycho was such a hit.

Jay crossed the street and slowed when he came to Harold's Mondo Emporium where a line of about half a dozen guys was filing past the ticket window.

Harold’s Mondo was a relative newcomer on the Square, a smaller, poor man's version of Hubert's Museum and Flea Circus. Hubert's had been on the Square since 1929. Ernie Rawson had opened up Harold's just last year. He’d sounded like he was going under when Jay had spoken to him a couple of weeks ago. Now he was doing gangbusters with the lunchtime crowd.

Jay showed his press card to the ticket girl and wandered inside to look around. Same old junk as Hubert's: a taxidermied two-headed cow, a snake charmer, a belly dancer, pickled punks, the trade's charming name for bottled embryos—25 bucks apiece from Del Rio, Texas. He came to a closed-off section with a separate admission. If Jay remembered correctly, the last time he was in it had housed "Sexology" lectures with visual aids by a professor from the Sorbonne. Uh-huh. Now it said simply, "Supergirl." That was where everyone was going.

Jay spotted Ernie and sneaked up behind him.

"I'm from DC Comics," he said in a gruff voice. "Where can I find the owner of this establishment?'

Ernie whirled, wide-eyed, then laughed, "Jay! How goes it?"

He was a plump, stubby man with a plump, stubby cigar jammed into a corner of his mouth. And he was grinning like an idiot.

"You look like a man who just won the Irish Sweepstakes, Ernie. What's going on?"

"Great new attraction. Wanna see?"

Jay tried to appear disinterested, but he’d been hoping for an invitation.

"All right. Maybe there's a story in her.

"Is there ever! See her first, then I'll tell ya."

Jay followed Ernie into the room and stood in the back and watched this Supergirl. She had curly red hair, fair, lightly freckled skin, and she was built—not just in her D-cup halter, but in her shoulders, arms, and legs.

Muscles.

The girl was loaded with them. And her skimpy two-piece Supergirl costume showed them all. Not bulging bodybuilder-type muscles, but thick sleek cords running under skin. She’d oiled up like the Mr. Universe guys so the light played off all the highlights when she flexed. She was good, too. Knew how to work the crowd. She'd smile, banter, do her lifts, bend her bars. She'd been around. It could have all been an elaborate scam, but the guys in the crowd didn't seem to mind. Just looking at her was worth the ticket price.

"Here comes the blow-off," Ernie said. "Wait'll ya see this!"

Turned out to be a good blow-off. Supergirl pulled a drape off a pressing bench, got two medium-sized volunteers from the audience and had them sit on each end of an iron bar racked over the bench. When they were set, she lay back—with her crotch toward the audience, natch—and bench-pressed the two guys. As the audience went wild, Ernie pulled Jay outside.

“She terrif or what?"

"She's good, yeah, but not much of a story in a strong-woman act."

"Don't count on that. Wait'll ya hear about her gettin raped tree years ago."

"Raped?" This was getting interesting now. Jay couldn't imagine anyone doing anything to that lady without her permission. "Who did it—Man Mountain Dean?"

"A ghost, she says. An anyways, she weren't muscled-up back then. Maybe ya seen her at Hubert's. She was the snake dancer back in sixty.”

"Tell you the truth, Ernie, I didn't get much of a look at her face."

Those muscles had fascinated him. He'd never seen anything like them on a woman before ...the way they moved under her skin...

“You an evybody else.”

"But what's this about a ghost raping her?"

"What she said back then. Hollered bout it to the cops, then clammed up soon as the papers come sniffin. Quit her job an disappeared. Coupla weeks ago she shows up in my office wit all these muscles and this act. I mean, is she dynamite or what? And if you can give me some good press on her, I can up the ticket price and still be packin em in. And should that come to fruitition, I'd be willing to maybe find a way to—”

Jay held up a hand. "Don't say it, Ernie. Either the story's worth writing or it's not."

Had to keep an eye on the journalistic integrity.

"Okay, okay. Just meet her an talk t’her and see whatcha think."

"Will do. Which way to the dressing room?''

Jay was looking forward to this.

 

 

* * * * *

 

Now that she was swathed in a terry-cloth bathrobe, Jay realized she was kind of pretty. Not beautiful, but pretty in a girlish, nice-smile way. Pushing thirty, maybe a little hard around the edges, but the trace of vulnerability in those blue eyes appealed to Jay. He wanted to get to know her.

"This is Jay," Ernie said. "He's a reporter. Wants a few woids."

She gave Jay an appraising look. "Long as it's only words he wants, otherwise the two of you can take off."

Jay smiled at her. "Just words, I assure you, Miss..." He curved the end of the word up into a question.

"Hansen." She returned the smile. "Olivia Hansen. You can call me Liv."

She seemed interested. Maybe she liked skinny guys.

"I wancha to give Jay a good story, Liv," Ernie said. "About the rape an evyting."

Suddenly the smile disappeared. Liv's expression became fierce. She lifted Ernie off the floor by his lapels and tossed him against the wall.

“I told you never to mention that!" she shouted as Ernie bounced off the wall and cowered away from her. "Didn't I? Didn’t I?”

"Yeah, Liv, but—"

“No buts!" She turned toward Jay. "What paper you from?"

"The Light."

"Oh, that's great! Just great! 'Flying Saucer Men Stick Needles in Woman's Eyes!' I can't stand it!" She snatched a beige raincoat off a hook and pulled it on over the robe. "You really are low, Ernie.”

"Where y'goin?" he said as she headed for the door.

"None of your business!"

"You got a two-o'clock show!"

"I'll be back."

And then she was gone.

"She betta come back," Ernie said, squaring his shoulders inside his rumpled jacket and trying to look like he was really the boss. He smiled wanly at jay. "That all think they're stars."

Jay nodded absently, thinking. He gauged Ernie's weight at a compact 170. Liv had handled him easily.

"Strong girl."

He smoothed his lapels. "Yeah."

"Sure she’s coming back?"

"Absotootly. She always goes out between shows." He sighed. "I think the broad's a man-hater. She got her share of stage-door Johnnies, an now and then I see her let one buy her a drink, but she’s got no steady. Prolly a dyke."

Jay thought about those muscular arms and legs wrapped around another woman...what a waste.

"But look," Ernie was saying. "Tonight's her early night. She's done at eight. Whyncha come back then and—”

Jay shrugged. "Don't see much of a story here, Ernie. Sorry."

"Maybe I can talk t’her, make her come aroun."

"Sure. Let me know."

Jay waved good-bye and headed down to 42nd Street. Followed it east to the Daily News building where he checked the morgue files for stories about a "ghost rape." Sure enough: a little story in the lower left corner of page six. Olivia Hansen's name in print, but no direct quotes. The story looked like it was culled from a police report.

Jay thought of Olivia up on that stage with those sleek, shining muscles and felt a little lead sneaking into his wood. He idly wondered if maybe he had some fruity tendencies that muscles could get to him like this, but reminded himself that they were on a woman. That was the important thing: a good-looking woman.

With muscles...

Back to the files: He checked a few more years and found two other similar reports: another "ghost rape" and a "monster rape." Both in the Times Square area.

The juices began flowing as he headed for the street. By the time he reached his office he was psyched. He had his story: Something prowled Times Square at odd intervals, ravaging women. Its victims said it was hideous, ghostlike. What was it? A man? Or something else? Was it perhaps the living excrescence of all the sleaze, disease, perversion, and depravity of Times Square? The embodied concentrate of the lost hopes and shattered dreams of the wretched, wrecked lives of those who haunted the Square?

Oooh, that sounded good.

And not all that farfetched. After all, the White House had been occupied by an Irish Catholic for the past couple of years. What could be more farfetched than that?

Readers would eat it up. All he needed was a final touch, an added ring of authenticity that would enable him to drag it out for two or three issues: personal testimony.

He needed to talk to Olivia Hansen.

 

 

* * * * *

 

It hadn't been easy coaxing her out of the cold and into Clancy's. Jay had used every ounce of persuasive skill he owned—and fervent promises of no talk of her past, just her present and immediate future—to cajole her into having one lousy drink with him before she went home. She hadn't removed her raincoat, just sat there opposite him in a rear booth and answered in monosyllables as she sipped her drink.

He’d poured on the charm and pushed the Anthony Perkins boyishness to the limit to stretch one drink into two, and then into three.

She was beginning to loosen up.

"I don't usually drink," she said. He heard a slur growing in her voice as she sipped her screwdriver. Yeah, she was getting very loose. "Bad for the muscles."

Hey, Paula was playing on the juke. The vodka in the screwdrivers had relaxed the anger lines in her face, making her softer, prettier. Jay sensed even more vulnerability in her eyes, and a faint tang of sweat in the air. He found it exciting as all hell.

"Tell me about the muscles."

"What about them?"

"Why have them?"

"I gotta be strong." Her expression was suddenly fierce. “Strong enough to keep any man from doing what he wants with me ever again."

Jay repressed a cheer. She’d opened the door.

He took a deep breath. Here goes nothing.

"You mean the rape?

"Hey! I thought you weren't going to mention that!"

"I didn't bring it up—you did."

She calmed.

"Want to talk about it?" Jay said softly.

"No!" She shook her head violently, then began to do what she said she wouldn’t. "It was awful! Horrible! I was in my dressing room at Hubert's, getting ready to go on with my snake dance when he—it—appeared out of nowhere. I mean, one minute I was alone in the room with all the lights on and the next minute he was there and everything went dark and cold."

"What he look like?"

She shuddered and Jay wondered uneasily what it took to get a shudder out of a girl who used to dance wrapped up in a boa constrictor.

"I only got a glance at him before everything went dark but he was old and greasy and unshaven and dirty and his skin wasn't right, like it wasn't human, and he was cold, so goddamn cold, and the things he did to me and the things he made me do, the things he made me do!"

She sobbed and Jay thought she was going to lose it.

She took a deep, shuddering breath. "I was powerless, completely powerless. But that'll never happen again." He saw her flexing her muscles under her coat. "No one'll ever do something like that to me again. Ever!"

"But how come you clammed up about it back then? Maybe they could’ve caught this creep."

She shook her head slowly. "The way he comes and goes? Nobody’ll ever catch him. And besides, everyone was looking at me like I was crazy or trying a publicity stunt. Insult on top of injury. I didn't need it."

As the jukebox began Walk Like a Man, she glanced at the Schlitz clock on the wall.

“God! I've got to get home! The kid'll be starving!"

Kid?

Jay saw his story fading as she rose to her feet. He had to say something here, and quickly.

"I didn't know you were married."

"I'm not. Never was. Baby’s father was...well, we were just talking about him."

Jay was stunned. She got pregnant from the rape and kept the kid! What a headline!

Son of the Times Square Spook!

 

 

* * * * *

 

God, he could run this for months! Make Profumo and Christine Keeler look like the Knights of Columbus!

"Uh...” He didn't know how to phrase it. “Why...?"

"What was I to do? Risk an abortion and maybe die? Besides, it wasn't Baby's fault. He didn't do anything to me. And after carrying him for nine months I ... I couldn't give him up. I'm his mother, after all."

Here was one weird lady, but she’d be so easy to write about. The quotables just poured out of her. He couldn't let her go. Needed more time to work on her. If he could somehow get a picture of this kid—

"Let me take you home," he blurted.

“I don't need your protection."

Jay smiled, "I was hoping you'd protect me."

She laughed and Jay realized it was the first time she’d done that all night.

"Okay. It's only a few blocks. We can walk."

He used the walk to make contact.

First he took her elbow as they crossed the street, then kept a grip on her arm, then his arm was around her shoulders. By the time they reached her apartment house, she was leaning against him.

This was working out fine, he thought as he followed her up the stairs to the third floor. A little romance here, then handing her a line about helping protect other innocent women from this rapist spook by going public in The Light, and she'd come around for sure.

A shotgun apartment—a front room, back room, and a kitchen. Liv went immediately to the back, leaving Jay by the door. The front looked like a gym—barbells and dumbbells all about. A padded pressing bench sat where most people put a couch.

Liv returned from the back.

"Baby's sleeping."

"You leave him alone here all day? How old is he?"

She took off her coat, then loosened the tie on the terry-cloth bathrobe beneath.

"One and a half. He sleeps all day and most of the night. I check on him between shows."

he bathrobe was off now, revealing her Supergirl bikini and her muscles...ah, those muscles. Her breasts bobbed under the fabric as she walked over to him. She put her hands on his chest and looked up at him. He could tell the vodka had worked its magic.

"I need someone tonight. Want to stay?"

Jay ran his fingers up her biceps, over her deltoids and traps, and down to her lats. He pulled her close.

"I couldn't say no even if I wanted to."

He realized with a pang that this was probably the first completely honest statement he’d made all night.

She led him into the dark of the rear room. In the borrowed light from the front he dimly saw a bed against the wall and a crib in the far corner. He heard a rustle from the crib and saw the kid pull himself to his feet and look at them over the rail.

"He's awake, Liv."

"That's okay. We'll be in the dark here and he won't know what we're doing."

Jay glanced at the crib again. He couldn't make out any of the kid's features, just a shadow, craning his head and neck over the rail and staring at them. He didn't like the idea of an audience, even if it was just a one-and-a-half-year old, but then Liv had his shirt open and was kissing his chest and he forgot all about the kid.

 

 

* * * * *

 

She was crying, sobbing gently under him.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. That was so good. Sometimes I just need it. I tell myself I don't, but sometimes I just do. And that was so good."

It had been good, Jay thought.

He’d been good. Damn good. At the end there he’d thought she was going to squeeze him to death like a python. Even now, as he lay weak and limp atop her, she still had her arms and legs wrapped around him.

"You don't have to cry."

"Yes, I do. ’Cause I'm sorry."

"Sorry? You kidding? That was wonderful!"

"Oh, good. That makes me feel a little better."

Jay was trying to figure out what she was getting at when he heard a noise over by the crib. He glanced up. The crib was empty.

"I think your baby's out."

He felt her arms and legs tighten about him.

"I know."

He sensed movement along the floor, coming toward the bed, then a little face popped up over the mattress and looked at him from only inches away. He cried out in shock at the huge, dark, staring eyes and wide slit of a mouth crowded with teeth that would have been more at home in a shark. As the kid's teeth angled toward his throat, he struggled to free himself but could barely move, barely breathe.

"Let me go!"

Liv's arms and legs tightened around him even more, locking him helpless against her.

"I'm so sorry," she said through a sob, "but Baby needs you, too."