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  Caught up in her own grief, she missed seeing the tenacious little gob of charred protoplasm as it wormed past Renny’s slack lips, to slide easily down his esophageal tract. Soon it would renew its work deep inside of him, where the heart was.

  The Last Crossing

  Thomas Tessier

  Even when you know it’s likely, when you have lived with the fear and uncertainty for weeks, it still comes as a terrible blow to be told that you no longer have a job. Dale Davies had been a trader on Wall Street for more than twenty years. He was a quiet but efficient man. He had risen to a certain level and then held his position. He was never a threat to the ambitions of his more aggressive colleagues. He was not brilliant, but the only people who seriously lost money with Dale were those who would have lost it anyway.

  There is a kind of poetry of money, a rhythm to finance that generally follows the heartbeat of society at large. Everyone in business knows that there will be highs and lows, steady periods, slumps, occasional jolts, and shocks. Through it all, the market goes on like life itself.

  But this new slide into stagnancy was particularly worrying. It was longer and steeper, and for the first time in memory there was no bottom in sight. Dale sensed early on that it might prove to be a transforming moment, such as happens only once in every two or three generations, when things change fundamentally. If that were the case, he had no doubt that sooner or later he would find himself among those culled from the herd.

  He was smack on fifty, a dangerous age: too far from young, too close to old. He believed that his best work was still ahead of him, but Dale knew he was probably wrong. All he wanted to do was carry on where he was for another twelve or fifteen years, to last the course.

  He didn’t. It was not his fault. Nothing to do with him or his performance. The firm was downsizing, and Dale was downsized out. The same thing was happening everywhere, a slaughter on the middle ground. The young wouldn’t go, because they are young and in touch and cheaper to keep on. The old men on top wouldn’t go, because they were, after all, on top. So it was Dale, and others like him, who were thrown onto the street.

  He was given his notice on a Friday. He tottered out of the building and hesitated. He should go straight home to New Jersey and break the news to Cynthia, his wife. But he wasn’t ready for that yet. Cynthia was a woman with lingering social pretensions. The hard fact of Dale’s unemployment would not go down well with her, and sympathy would not be her first response. Joanne, their youngest child, had celebrated her nineteenth birthday last month by moving in with a heavy-metal drummer in Hoboken. Things were tense all around. Dale went into Gallagher’s. He needed time to think and calm down. He needed a drink.

  Call him old-fashioned, but he believed that the dry martini was a divine creation. It seemed to go from the mouth right into the bloodstream, with welcome effect. But there was still a grim reality to be faced. Good Lord, Dale thought, what is happening? All that wariness and anticipation had failed to weaken the blow. It hurt, worse than he ever expected.

  He had grown up reading novels about the exciting, ruthless, high-stakes world of business, and he had longed to be a part of it. He studied through the silly sixties, pursued his dream, and finally achieved it. Twenty years—but where did they go? The world had changed so much, and yet here he was, sitting in a fine old gin mill around the corner from the market, felling just like a character out of Sloan Wilson or John O’Hara. His life nothing but an empty cellophane wrapper.

  There was no future, no job waiting for him elsewhere. Dale was at his peak, but in the marketplace he was finished, or would be by the time this slide ended. A desk in a small brokerage out in the suburbs was the best he could hope for, and in itself that would be a kind of death. His clients wouldn’t leave the firm to go with him—not for Dale Davies. He was finished. It was all over but the paperwork.

  He hit a few other bars, heading vaguely west, away from the financial district. Too many young Turks gargling happily. They were on the escalator going up, alive with their futures. It was not their fault, Dale told himself. They, too, would eventually take it on the neck. Still, he hated them.

  It was dusk when Dale realized that he had wandered all the way to the Hudson. The lights of Jersey City were fuzzed by fog. Over there, in the clean suburbs beyond, was his home: Across the river, to hell. Not yet. The night had barely started, and Dale was in the mood to cut loose. Let me get robbed, or beaten. Let me be thrown in the gutter. Let me flirt with some pretty young lady in a dangerous joint. Let there be an operatic moment in my life, and let it be tonight.

  The immediate prospects were not encouraging. Dale was in a shabby dockside area full of rotten old offices, warehouses, meat-packing plants, and dubious shops cluttered with second-hand junk. But then he found a place, and almost at once he knew that it was the place he had been looking for all his life. There wasn’t any name on the small sign overhead, but the flashing lights promised a BAR and GIRLS, and that was good enough for starters.

  He went through a narrow doorway, down a flight of creaking stairs, and paid five dollars to a guy with no neck. Then he was allowed into the main room. He banged his right shoulder against a post thicker than a telephone pole—there were a few of them scattered about the big cellar, he saw, when his eyes adjusted to the gloom. There were faint lights strung along the stone walls, a long bar off to one side, some rickety tables and chairs placed in dark corners. The music was loud but not unbearable.

  Dale made his way carefully to the bar. He bought a gin and tonic, asking for extra tonic, as it was a good time to slow down and pace himself for a while if he was going to make a real night of it. There were quite a few customers: men on their own, as he was. And there were a lot of fairly undressed young girls out on the floor: some dancing, some lounging around with disinterest, others working the crowd.

  Dale saw stockings with garters, thong bottoms, string tops, gym shorts, hot pants, tiny tennis skirts, halters, as well as some skimpy or filmy pieces of lingerie. The girls, who included the odd black and Asian in their number, had good bodies, and some of them were strikingly pretty. The place was kind of a dump but it was definitely no dog pound, Dale thought.

  “Mardi Gras?”

  She was blonde, with layered curls. She was short and cute, with a thin tube top that barely covered her breasts. Below, she had V-shaped panties that were cut high on each side. Dale found himself thinking of a babysitter hey had used for a while, years ago. It wasn’t the same girl, of course, but the association was quite pleasant. Lisa, as he recalled.

  “What?”

  “You want to Mardi Gras?”

  “I’m sorry,” Dale said. “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Mardi Gras. It’s, like, lap-dancing.”

  “Lap-dancing? What’s that?”

  “Okay,” the girl said, smiling sweetly. “We’ll go sit down on one of the couches, where it’s nice and private, and you give me five dollars when the next song comes on, and as long as that song is on I’ll sit on your lap and wiggle around and rub you up and down and cuddle you. You know? Like that.” She tugged down the top of her blouse a little, an artfully nonchalant gesture he appreciated. But still Dale hesitated. “I can tell you one more thing,” she went on. “They play long songs here. Not like some places I know, where it’s two and a half, three minutes. All the songs on this album are like four, five, size minutes long.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure.” The girl moved closer, pressing her soft upper body against his arm and at the same time placing her hand just below the small of his back. “Come on, give it a try anyway. Then if you don’t like it, at least you’ll know.”

  “I can touch you?”

  “If you’re nice about it.”

  “Okay.”

  Dale put his hand just below the small of her back, and they made their way across the large room to a dark alcove where there was a battered couch. He noticed that the girl was wearing thick white cotton socks on her feet
. That’s why she was so short: The other girls, most of them, were in high heels. He preferred the socks. They were suburban, New Jersey, wholesome, and yet somehow more wicked.

  Why didn’t Cynthia dress like this? Why didn’t she act like this once in a while? Well, nowadays, she would neither look nor sound anywhere near as appealing as this fine young creature. It was a shame; even years ago, when she could have done this sort of thing with great success, Cynthia never had. It had to be his fault, for never telling her, teaching her. He never asked. The two of them had failed each other. Well, she had, anyway. Where was Cynthia’s natural lust, her creative sexiness? But where was his, come to that? He had been timid all his life, in the office and at home. It bed. He had taken life as it came to him, which is what Cynthia had done. It some ways, it had never arrived for either of them.

  Dale felt so sad that he had a moderate erection even before the girl settled on his lap and began using her body to play with him. He had his feet up and was sitting back against one arm of the couch. She spun around gently, put her face to his belly, and slowly slithered up his chest. Her tube top was pulled down, and her bare breasts—not large but firm, buoyant—brushed across his face, and he kissed them. She took his hair and pressed his face to one breast, then the other. Dale’s hands moved down over her back, gliding to her bottom, her taut thighs.

  She stood up on the couch, and suddenly she was in his face. He put his mouth against the thin cotton fabric. She turned and deftly bent away from him, her fanny still in his face. He moved his head forward, touching her there. And that was the moment he didn’t want to end, not ever. The smell and feel of her sent his mind swirling off in a dozen dizzying spirals. She touched Dale, her hand stroking him lightly, but that wasn’t what mattered. It was this closeness—she was a stranger, he didn’t even know what her name was—this sudden profound intimacy, much more intimate precisely because it was not the act of sex itself, that made him tremble and ache. In the cellar of this dead factory, warehouse, whatever, to have this contact, this moment.

  “I love you,” he said faintly.

  “The song’s over, honey.”

  But she didn’t move. Dale extracted a twenty, put it in her hand. She touched him again. He ran his tongue along the inside edge of her panties. He tasted her. Pushed his tongue into her. Anyone watching He didn’t care. Everything was on the line.

  “Oooh…honey…hey.”

  He gave her some more bills.

  “Oh, God.”

  “What?” she asked quietly, not moving.

  “You have to be home.”

  “It’s okay, I told them I’d be late,” she replied after only a brief hesitation. “My folks are asleep by now. Don’t worry, I won’t wake them when I get in.”

  “I’ll be late getting back.”

  “You stopped for cigarettes, or milk. Gas.”

  “I…love…you.”

  “Mmmmmh…”

  Suddenly he splashed her face.

  “God…help me.”

  A murmur, but she caught it.

  “You don’t need any help now, honey.”

  “Lisa?”

  She laughed softly as she moved off him. “Samantha,” she corrected. “Sammie. I’m here from four till midnight, every day. You’re sweet. You must eat right. I hope you come again.”

  “Yeah…”

  “Look for me?”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “If you don’t see me, ask.”

  “Lisa.”

  Laughter. “Sammie.”

  “Right. Sammie.”

  He stumbled around, found his way, lost it, wandered again. The fog was worse now. Rare to see it in Manhattan and never as thick as this. The streets were choked with mist, the buildings gauzed. It had the effect of dimming all lights, giving them the weak glow of oil or gas lamps. The cars and trucks inching along cautiously seemed like vehicles from another century.

  Dale somehow made it down to the pier and got the passenger ferry to Jersey City. As usual, just later and drunker. Though not too much later, and not nearly drunk enough. He had lost the desire to have a roaring great night in the city. The romance in it, spurious at best, had vanished somewhere. Besides, he had to navigate his car home. He could drink more at home. Rip through the night and then pass out. Why the hell not?

  The air was damp and raw, but Dale stayed out on deck as the ferry slowly pulled away. Amazing, how little there was to see! The bright lights of the city were feeble specks beneath the fog. Too bad it wasn’t daytime, the whole of Manhattan would look like some ghastly cocoon, he thought. It would look like a dead thing, but it would be teeming with tiny insect life.

  Dale went inside. There were only a few other passengers on the ferry. Business types going home, sitting apart from anybody else, each in his own bell jar of solitude. A tipsy young couple standing in a corner, bodies tight, a pint in a brown bag passing discreetly back and forth.

  Dale sat down opposite a girl who was on her won. He looked across at her just long enough to register that she was a little on the young side, a teenager. Somewhere in that area. She was staring right back at him, so he glanced away. Schoolbooks. It wasn’t smart, a youngster out alone at this time of night.

  His eyes drifted back to her legs. Pretty. She was wearing a denim jacket and a short skirt. Her legs parted. Bare thighs. Her legs parted a little more. White panties, just a tantalizing glimpse of them. Dale stared for some minutes.

  He looked up at her face. Pretty, very pretty, and somehow familiar. She smiled at him, but it was shy, not the bold smile of a blatant come-on. He looked down. Her jacket was open, and her blouse unbuttoned to the fourth button. Was that really the curve of her breast? She shifted slightly on her seat, as if to help him see that it was, but then she straightened up and the shirt flapped and that exquisite vision was gone. Her legs moved back and forth slightly. Peekaboo.

  Dale gazed at her face again. She was still smiling at him, but there was puzzlement in it now, as if she expected him to say or do something and couldn’t understand why he didn’t Where had he seen her before? The more it eluded him the more certain he was that he knew this girl.

  “Sammie?” he asked quietly.

  She said nothing, but her head tilted a fraction of an inch and he eyes seemed to narrow with interest.

  “Lisa?”

  The ferry docked with a bump. People were up and moving to the exit. Dale waited until they were all gone, as did the girl. Then he rose from his seat and took one step toward her.

  “Do I know you?”

  “Do you?”

  Dale didn’t know what to say. Then she got to her feet and stood in front of him. Waiting, apparently, for him to make some kind of move. She adjusted the schoolbooks in her grip.

  “Do you need a ride?” Dale asked. “My car is parked in the lot outside.”

  “Thanks.”

  The night was clear, the fog blown away by a sharp wind from the northwest. Dale felt a chill, but it didn’t seem to bother the girl. Her long sleek legs flashed as they hurried toward his car, and her blouse hung open in the harsh air. He turned on the heater, watching her intently as he waited for the engine to idle down. She put her books on the floor and sat back, smiling.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Where do you want to take me?”

  “Home.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “My home,” Dale said.

  “I know.”

  It was so outrageous it made perfect sense. Dale could see exactly how it would play out. It was late. Cynthia would be up in bed, sound asleep. Probably snoring. And when she slept, she really slept. Dale would bring the girl in, take her downstairs to the new seldom-used family room, make her a drink, and then see what happened. Later, he would drop her off wherever she had to go. It was like a movie. It was delicious. He accelerated, and soon Jersey City fell behind them.

  “I’ll make you a drink.”

  “Thank you,” she said enthusiast
ically.

  “How old are you?”

  “I’d better not say.”

  “Well, I bet you’ve never had a martini.”

  “No, but I’d love to try one.”

  “The martini is one of man’s greatest achievements.”

  “Mmmm. Sounds good.”

  She took his right hand and placed it on her thigh. So warm and soft, yet firm, and gloriously bare. It was such a beautiful feeling that Dale nearly had tears in his eyes. He looked across at her: blouse open, now revealing a lot of breast, those dream legs that seemed so amazingly long, the girlish smile, the finger held to her lips—such a vision. When you find such a beauty you can’t just walk away from it. Before this night was finished, he would lay his face on her flat belly and cry. With sadness, yes, but also with joy—for being granted this moment at all.

  Twenty miles flew by. The house was dark, a very good sign. He pulled right into the open garage, so that no snoopy neighbor would see the girl on the way into the house. She left her books on the floor of the car. They went inside through the breezeway, through the kitchen, and downstairs to the family room. He turned on only one small table lamp.

  “Ooh, it’s nice and warm in here.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  The girl threw off her jacket and then flopped onto the sofa like a child. She wiggled and stretched her legs, and her skirt bunched higher. She sat up suddenly, turned, and leaned across to look at the books on the shelf nearby. They were Cynthia’s. The collected works of Danielle Steel. But Dale was gazing with awe at the girl’s backside, those legs and the way the flimsy panties clung to her heartbreaking fanny.

  “Do you want that martini now?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “First take off your blouse.”

  She smiled. She undid the remaining buttons and slipped off the blouse. Some cheap gold chains hung between her so-lovely breasts. He went to her and touched one nipple with his cheek in an act of homage. She was still smiling, but with curiosity now, and he knew then that she had never behaved like this before, not with a boyfriend, never. It was new for her, too.