Authors: Richard Hawke
The Blairs had shared a look. It was Cynthia’s mother who voiced the thought. “I don’t guess it’s any of our business, either. Cindy didn’t seem to think so.”
THE MEAT IN THE MARINADE remained on the kitchen counter. An intrepid cockroach, having traveled from its favored nesting area within the electrical outlet behind the refrigerator, up the side of the cabinet and across the large open plain of the countertop, lay on its back in the marinade, its infinitesimal feet kicking uselessly, the armor of its skin no protection against the saturating juices. It would be dead by midnight.
The rain was falling steadily, a dim roar, a soft, ceaseless
shoosh
. Droplets bounced off the sill of Megan’s open window, hitting the side of the toaster oven in a fanlike splatter. Crumbs moved erratically in the growing puddle. A rumble of thunder, and the lights in the apartment flickered, then went off altogether, then flickered back on under a minute later. The clocks in the apartment—the clock radio in the kitchen and the bedside clock radio—kicked to their default, blinking 12:00…12:00…12:00…
OUT AT THE HUDSON PIER, Megan was sitting on one of the stone benches, hugging her knees to her chest. Rain dripped off the brim of her NYPD baseball cap onto the backs of her small hands. She was drenched, wearing only a windbreaker and her thick gray sweats, her feet bone-cold in a pair of saturated Converse low-tops. Her head was bent forward, and she was singing softly into the dry space. She hated the song. Insipid, stupid, ridiculous song. Devoid of all meaning, infantile, banal. Vaguely insulting, even. But the tune had her. She was helpless. It sucked the words out of her as if it were a parasite.
Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you…
IT HAD BEEN one of those rumors that go around. In the age of instant communication, it spread like a galloping virus.
Marshall Fox trolls the Internet.
The buzz was that, like millions of his fellow citizens, Marshall Fox liked to cloak his identity and go out there and talk dirty.
Very
dirty. Entire sites had cropped up devoted to alleged “sightings,” lists of anonymous e-mail addresses that may or may not have been those of the popular late-night celebrity. Exchanges between the “willing” and the “alleged” were posted. Some of the postings had the ring of, if not truth, at least possibility. They
sounded
like Marshall Fox. They employed his jokes, his manner of speaking, key phrases that were associated with him. Of course, anyone with the ability to type and talent for mimicry could handle that. Most people knew well enough that it was largely considered a game. A celebrity impersonation. Cyberchat with a cyber wax figure. Cybersex with a personable fraud.
For a while it had been all the rage. The term “Fox-Trotter” had been coined to refer to the Fox pretenders. Fox himself encouraged the fad. Several nights a week, he would fashion a comic bit around some of the more outrageous postings attributed to him. As he sifted through handfuls of e-mail messages, his eyebrows would rise in mock amazement, the mischievous grin stretching across his face.
“So, apparently, I was in touch last night with an Ingrid and an Olga. Seems they were determined to tell me everything I wanted to know but was afraid to ask about Swedish meatballs.” He milked the laugh and brandished another of the messages. “Look. Here’s one from some fellow named Sven.” Then, in a falsetto voice and a butchered Swedish accent, “De-yer Mr. Fox. Whatever yew dew? Stey awey from Innnngrid and Oooolga?”
NIKKI ROSSMAN LOVED the Internet. She had once heard it referred to as the portal to instant depravity, and she agreed completely. The Internet had opened up for Nikki an entirely new section of the day. Not really day but morning, though for Nikki, it was just an extension of the night before. Nikki lived in Tribeca, lower Manhattan, an area with no shortage of clubs and bars, and she loved to dance. She especially loved to get stoned and dance. She was an excellent dancer; her bones disappeared and she was all fluid movements, either fast and furious in all directions at once or slow, dreamy, undulating. She loved the glow of perspiration. She loved noise, the more deafening the music, the better. In a jam-packed club with the music pounding, a person can let loose with the sort of full-throttle screams and shrieks that at any other place in the city would give someone cause to snatch up the phone and punch 911. Nikki loved to shriek on the dance floor. It was a self-prescribed turn-on. She’d read something somewhere once about chakras; it hadn’t made sense to her except the part that said loosening one could clear the way for loosening the others. Nikki took to the dance floor with a hopped-up vengeance, whooping and shrieking at the top of her tiny lungs, and in time she could
feel
the release taking place deep below. It made her hungry for sex—not ever much of a problem in most of the clubs. There were places. Dark corners. Bathrooms. If the night was nearly played out anyway and the guy was cute, there was her place, his place, someplace to go for it. The only risk was that the sex might not hit the spot she wanted it to hit; after the music and the dancing and the chakra-shaking shrieking, the guy had better close the fucking deal, that’s all she could say. She even had a name for the kind of sex she wanted it to be. Cataclysmic. It could be hit-or-miss, she knew that. But baby, when it hit—when it was cataclysmic…
A man she once met at the Cat Club had referred to her as “a tight little package.” Nikki loved that description. She thought of it every night as she readied herself to go out, worming her way into her panties, zipping up her baby-doll skirt. Tight little package. Open me first. She’d touch her wrists, the sides of her neck and her cleavage with any of the dozens of scents she lifted regularly from her job at Bloomie’s, imagining that the heat generated on the dance floor would activate the scent and send it out in all directions. Warm blood for the wolves.
Great fun.
Then along came the Internet. It was nothing cataclysmic; it couldn’t be. Hit the mute button and it was quiet as death. No pounding rhythms. No strobing lights. No pulsing sweat machines moving together around a cramped dance floor. It was a whole different thing. Tamer, no question about it. And a lot of the time, pathetically puerile.
Still, it was there, and it was constant. A portal to instant depravity. Four A.M. Ears buzzing. Chakras only partially satisfied. Turning the key and coming into her apartment alone. Nikki found it uncanny, all these freaks sitting out there God knows where, ready at the click of a mouse to climb into her virtual pants. What a riot! Thousands of them. Unseen by the human eye, cyberspace literally crawling with spunk—that was the only way she could put it. What a
freak
show. She loved it. Yes, you had to wade your way through the lamebrains—or, as her friend Tina called them, “numb nuts”—but like with anything else, a little practice, a little savvy, you could find what worked for you. They were there, the dudes with the moves. Or maybe some of them were chicks in disguise, but what did she really care? You weren’t going to get any safer sex than this. It was a lark, a harmless way to spend some tawdry minutes before climbing into bed alone and kissing the world good night. And some of these guys were good. Nikki liked to think that she was good, too, that she could give as good as she got. Like in the so-called real world. Lord only knows if 90 percent of the people she chatted up would have registered as big fat zeros on her radar if she’d run across them in person. But in her apartment, lit only by the white glow of her computer screen, what difference did it make? None. Nikki’s prompt was always the same:
I’m typing with one finger. Tell me what to do with the other nine
.
Very silly. Very immature. But get a clever respondent on the line, someone who had the touch, so to speak, and it wasn’t a bad way to top off the evening before brushing the teeth and giving a quick run of the cold cream.
And sometimes, of course, she took it offline.
NIKKI HAD CHECKED OUT some of the so-called Marshall Fox sites. She never for a minute felt that she was actually in touch with the
real
Marshall Fox, but still, it was fun. Some of the pretenders were exceedingly creative and funny, and not a few showed an impressive flair for the erotic, which Nikki enjoyed.
One morning she had been online with two of the fakers. One of the fakers was far superior to the other. He had the stuff. He wasn’t quite as clever as the real Marshall Fox, but come on, that guy had a whole bank of writers feeding him lines. But this guy was doing all right. He was pretty funny.
The other one? She wished he’d go away. She wondered if he might not be a twelve-year-old kid just getting his rocks off. Her friend Tina actually enjoyed fooling around with young boys online, but Nikki thought it was creepy. She wasn’t into that kind of thing. This guy had just sent her a typo-ridden posting including a long-winded joke that Nikki had already read online the week before. It was about a talking dog and a beauty pageant contestant and…it was stupid. She wished the other fake Marshall Fox would send something. It had been ten minutes since he had sent her anything. He’d probably gotten offline. That’s where I should be, Nikki told herself. Her elbow hit the mouse as she twisted in her chair to see if dawn’s early light was beginning to show. Not yet. Thank God.
Nikki scanned the talking-dog joke. Her orange fingernails clattered on her keyboard.
Dogs know when I have just had sex.
What the hell. She hit send. A minute later, a message appeared on her screen. It wasn’t from the kid, or whatever he was. It was from the other fake Marshall Fox. The good one. Nikki realized what she must have done. When her elbow hit the mouse, she must have clicked back to the other guy’s last message.
Lucky dogs.
She typed,
I’m glad you think so
.
The screen was still for nearly a minute. Nikki thought maybe she had lost him. Then:
I want to be a lucky dog.
Nikki giggled out loud as she typed back:
The lucky dog who knows I have just had sex or the lucky dog who just had it with me
? Oh God. I’ve got to stop this and get some sleep. She hit send.
The answer came back immediately.
Both.
THE CYBER-FLIRTATION HAD gone on for close to two months. He adopted a new identity, just for her. Lucky Dog. For him, Nikki dropped Love Bar and countered with Bitch. He wrote back that she was clever.
Why, I bet you can even do tricks.
He also preferred four in the morning for his online dalliances. He wrote that he was always awake at that hour and enjoyed corresponding with her while the rest of the world slept. Nikki deduced from the comment that he must be located somewhere on the East Coast. When she put the question to him, he responded:
I’m Marshall Fox, remember? Where else would I be writing from
?
Right. Of course.
They got into a rhythm. At four on the nose, Nikki would shoot out a one-word command.
Speak.
Within seconds came the response.
Woof.
And off they went. Lucky Dog was a riot. So long as they were just bantering back and forth, he kept his postings short. He knew how to make her laugh. He was quick. He picked up on little things she’d mentioned and shot them back to her with his particular skew. They could have been talking in a bar. More than once she found herself wishing that they were.
He was good. It was almost creepy how good he was, almost as if he were crouched behind her as she sat at her computer, whispering into her ear, deftly guiding her hands, guiding her thoughts. Sometimes that was precisely what he wrote:
I’m there with you. I’m in the kitchen at the moment, fetching a glass of warm water. Hang tight, I’ll be right back in. I want to hold it up against your neck.
And a few seconds later:
Okay, I’m back. You can feel it, can’t you? It’s not too hot, just a little warm, right? Good. Why don’t you take my other hand and give that lovely breast of yours a soft touch. You know where. That place we both like.
And damned if she couldn’t
feel
it. The slight warmth on the back of her neck, almost like a breath. And somebody’s fingers running very lightly over her…
SHE WANTED TO meet him. Yes, it was probably a stupid idea. It would probably ruin everything, but what the hell? She wanted it. Maybe it could be fun. God forbid, maybe it could be cataclysmic.
She broached the subject.
Does Lucky Dog want to come out and play?
It had been a frustrating evening. Nikki and Tina had gone clubbing and ended up in an argument. Over a boy, no less. A hard-bodied Honduran named Victor. They met him at the Vault. Correction. Nikki met him at the Vault. The two were already on the dance floor when Tina came back into the club. She’d gone outside to make a phone call. Victor was hot. Awesome moves, he had Nikki spinning like a top. He lifted her clear off the floor, a rock-solid arm around her small waist. He had dark lashes, cocoa skin, an almost feminine mouth. He’d been into Nikki, she could tell. But something screwed up somewhere. Nikki skipped off to the bathroom to sharpen her makeup, and when she came back, Tina and Victor were practically screwing right on the dance floor. Twenty minutes later, they were practically screwing in the dark hallway on the way to the bathrooms. Nikki purposefully hip-checked Tina as she passed by the two of them, and Tina followed her into the bathroom and nearly tore her eyes out. Nikki had left the club and ended up at Sugar. The cute bartender was there. So was his girlfriend. It looked to Nikki like the breakup wasn’t a whole lot in evidence. The bartender set a Cosmo in front of her. “Six dollars.” She left the drink on the bar.
Lucky Dog didn’t respond for nearly five minutes. Great, Nikki thought. Three strikes and I’m out, now I’ve chased
him
away. She was just about to send a follow-up telling him she hadn’t meant it, when up popped his response: