New Title 1 by Patrick Lestewka Read Free Book Online Page B

They’re wearing identical cream silk blouses, tweed skirts—one pleated, one not—and black satin pumps, holding Tab colas in manicured hands. Their hair is shoulder-length and dyed the same retina-searing platinum blonde. Their tits are a surgically-augmented 36C, flashy but not overstated, the size preferred by image-conscious Wall Streeters. Their legs are tanned and toned from personal training sessions, arms baby’s-ass smooth from seaweed wraps. They smell like a cosmetics counter: papaya-scented shampoo and sandalwood skin astringent, lemongrass deep-pore cleanser and Q.T. Instatan bronzing lotion. The scent of them fills the cab, an invisible yet deeply-textured odor.
    They give me a fucking headache.
    “Where to, ladies?”
    One of them gives an address in an upscale section of Greenwich Village. She repeats the address three times, perhaps because she believes I am, or cabbies in general are, retarded.
    “Vanessa darling,” one of the doppelgangers says once we’re moving, “where are we going tonight?”
    “Brice promised a reservation at Slander—”
    “Benjamin Cullen’s new restaurant?”
    “The very same, Vanessa.”
    Oh, Christ. They’re both named Vanessa?
    “Have you tried the marlin—the marlin and squab chili?”
    “I can’t remember.” Vanessa plucks a white pill from a Gucci gazelleskin purse and swallows it with a sip of Tab.
    “Oh you must try it. And the tuna carpaccio? To die for.”
    “People have died for less,” Reflecting the red marquee lights of the Winter Garden Theater, the woman’s eyes appear to be filled with blood.
    I unroll my window, beckoning the din of honking horns and squealing tires, jackhammers and surging foot traffic to drown out their voices. It strikes me with a poignancy verging on despair that these women are the end product of our American Dream, the American aristocracy: private schools, Ivy League universities, summer houses in the Hamptons or Martha’s Vineyard, vacation villas in Aspen and Monte Carlo. Their husbands are lawyers or stock brokers with seven-figure salaries, their lives a procession of private soirées and exclusive nightclubs and benefit dinners for causes they care nothing about. Their husbands will fuck blonde, big-titted secretaries while they have loveless affairs with tanned masseuses, everyone dining on Waldorf salad and yellowtail sashimi and sundried tomatoes. Their existence is that of goldfish in a crystal bowl: the outside world, a world of discount superstores and homeless people and welfare mothers is as remote and unbelievable to them as elves or Chewbacca or Captain Lou Albano or—
    “—those panelists on Geraldo Riviera simply must be paid performers!” Vanessa squeals. “Yesterday’s topic was Men Living as Women . You should’ve seen —hairy-knuckled men wearing lavender sundresses, feet stuffed into stiletto heels. Not a designer label in sight!”
    It was the American Dream that took me to Vietnam. Uncle Sam wanted Victor Charlie to be just like him, to wear suits and eat cheeseburgers and drive a Chevy. In October 1966, a military Jeep dropped me off at a training facility outside Corpus Christi. It was there my particular… skills …were revealed. I was transferred to Duc Phong, fifty miles northeast of Saigon, where I joined the Mobile Guerilla Force, detachment A-303, Blackjack unit. It was my pleasure to serve.
    “Ohh, I absolutely adore this song,” Vanessa says. The dial’s tuned to WNYX and “That’s All” by Genesis is playing. Vanessa raps on the Plexiglass barrier like a spoiled kid trying to get the attention of a zoo animal. “Turn this up,” she commands. To Vanessa: “Phil Collins is sooo brilliant. I would have his love child.” To me: “High er .”
    I know people in this city. Bad people. I know a man with a drill and an axe and a bottle of acid. I could give this man my passenger’s addresses and this man would pay them a visit—maybe not tonight or tomorrow, maybe not