open, penetrated, but not in any literal sense. Rather a being laid bare by the delicacy of sado-masochistic ritual -- until you reached out and you touched the beating heart of the person and it was this miracle, because the truth is, you've never seen anybody else's beating heart and up until this moment of touching you thought it was just a myth. Not in good mental shape. Almost unpleasant thought. I hear my own heart. I have heard and felt the pulse of hundreds and hundreds of other hearts. And no matter how good the slaves are, no matter how exquisite, it will all be the same in a couple of hours. That's why I want to be back here, isn't it? That is what I'm supposed to want.
Chapter Three
3 -- Elliott
The Voyage In
They told me to bring any clothing I would want when it came time to leave. How did I know what I'd want when it came time to leave? I'd signed a two-year contract for The Club, and I wasn't even thinking about when I would leave. I was thinking about when I would arrive. So I filled up a couple of suitcases pretty quickly, and put on the 'dispensable clothes' they'd told me to wear for the trip. And then there was an overnight case with what I might require on board. But at the last moment I threw in my tuxedo, thinking, what the hell, maybe I'd go to Monte Carlo as soon as it was over and gamble every cent they'd paid me for the two years. It seemed a perfect thing to do with the hundred grand. I mean it was such an irony that they were paying me anything. I would have paid them. And I packed my new book too, though why I wasn't sure. It might still be in a few bookstores when I got out, if the wars in the Middle East were still going on.
Photography books tend to stick around that way, but then again maybe not. I just had this idea that I should look at it as soon as I left The Club, maybe even page through it on the plane out. It might be really important to remind myself of what I'd been before I went in. But what were the odds that I'd still think I was a pretty good photographer by then? Maybe in two years it would all look like trash. As for El Salvador -- the book that didn't get done, the book I was leaving undone -- well, it was too late now. All I cared about on that score was shaking this eerie sense that I ought to be dead, just because some asshole had almost seen to it, this feeling it was some kind of special miracle that I was living and breathing and walking around.
It was strange the last evening. I was sick and tired of waiting. Ever since I'd signed the contract, it had been nothing but waiting, turning down the assignments from Time I'd ordinarily jump at, drawing away from everybody I knew. And then the final call. The same genial, well-bred voice. An American 'gentleman', or an American behaving like a British gentleman without the British inflection, something of that sort. I closed up the house at Berkeley and went to Max's at the Opera Plaza and had a drink. Nice to look around at the crowd against all that brass and plate glass and neon light. Some of the most beautifully finished women in San Francisco pass through Opera Plaza.
You see them in the Italian restaurant, Modesto Lanzone, or in Max's. Gorgeously painted ladies with professionally done hair and couturier clothes. Always wonderful to look at. And then there's the big bookstore, true to its name, 'A Clean Well Lighted Place,' where I could pick up half a dozen Simenon mysteries for the voyage, and some Ross MacDonald and LeCarr, some highgrade escapist stuff I'd read in the hotel room at three o'clock in the morning when the bombs were dropping on Damascus. Almost called home to say good-bye again, but then didn't, and then I took a cab to the waterfront address. Nothing but a deserted warehouse, until the cab had pulled away, and then a well-dressed man appeared, one of those nondescript guys you see everywhere in the financial district of a city at noontime, grey suit, warm handshake. 'You must be Elliott Slater.'