Gates of Eden

IPulled into the self-serve island of Herve's on Highland, up where it meets the freeway. I got out my two five-gallon provers. I put the regular nozzle into the red prover and squeezed. When the pump read five gallons, the bottom of the meniscus rested on 4.59. Herve was coming out to watch, wiping his hands on an oily rag.

I started gassing up the green one, this time unleaded.

"Looks bad, Herve." The pump was humming away, a happy little bandit.

"I had those pumps fixed, man."

"I should hope so, Herve. I gave you three months." We both watched the numbers climbing on the pump. "But the regular sure did look bad."

He looked at the can and licked his lips. "I got those suckers fixed."

The pump was turning over to four gallons but the gas in my state-issue can was bubbling short of its four. "The unleaded doesn't look good either."

I was easing off on the pump.One more spurt.

The pump read five State of California gallons.

The meniscus read 4.41.

Herve paled. "I don't understand."

"You don't understand." I holstered the nozzle, affecting calm. "Well, let me try to explain." When I wheeled, my right fist caught his throat.

He dropped, clutching at his Adam's apple and trying to suck air.

"I told you three months ago. Calibrate these sons of bitches!" I kicked him twice. "Don't fuck with the public! The meniscus don't lie!" He was still scrabbling at his throat, turning the mottled red of an L.A. sunset. "Read the state manual, greaseball!" I bounced a copy of the 400-page book off his ear. "It'll tell you everything you need to know!"

I grabbed a tire iron.

Herve was moaning, trying to (continued on page 152) Gates of Eden(continued from page 136) crawl away with one hand clawing at the pavement, the other pressed to his inflamed left ear. "That green card you got ain't a license to steal." I hefted the tire iron. "This is your second warning," I bellowed. "The state don't give three!"

I spun, around and around and around, and let go the tire iron. There was a crack like a pistol shot and the plate-glass front of Herve's went away.

I tossed the provers into my car and took off.

My name is Joe Gendreau. California Weights and Measures.

•

Our bureau works out of an avocado-colored bunker in Hollywood. It isn't much, but then I don't have clients to impress. My duty is to the public--not that they ever thank me. Your average consumer doesn't know that I'm the only thing standing between him and chaos.

Standards are what make us a society. A community agrees. A gallon is a gallon. A pound is a pound. He who says 15 ounces is a pound--he must be put down. A pound is a pound, or we go bango.

I hate a gyp. I hate it more than anything. The man who laughs at standards--that man must be put down. We are none of us perfect; I know that. But we must agree on what perfection is. I thought I'd met the perfect woman once. I was wrong, yes. Terribly wrong. But that doesn't alter the fact.

•

As usual, there was a knot of idlers laughing around Marty Shechter's desk. He was doing his Charles Nelson Reilly impression. Marty is a skillful operative, but he lacks commitment. For a lawn party--sure, ask Marty Shechter. For a job of work--no. Or rather, for a job of work--yes, Marty Shechter, provided there's no one around for him to showboat to. That's how I feel about Marty Shechter.

On my desk were messages from two gypmeisters who were contesting. I would have to make court appearances. And then there was a new complaint, from a Miss O'Hara, a colleen with a West Side number. Ordinarily I call to make an appointment for an interview, but her line was busy and, what the hell, she'd left her address.

•

I knocked at the door of a big sort of ranch house up Brentwood way. The Jap maid who opened the door was got up in native dress. She was young, and pretty in that dolly way of theirs.

"Hiya, sweets," I swept my hat off my head and grinned. "I'm here to see Miss O'Hara."

She exploded into tittering laughter, like the sound stars would make if they bounced off one another like wind chimes--or for that matter, like the sound of wind chimes.

I wasn't in on the okejay, but sweet as her laugh was, I didn't mind. I did a fast little soft-shoe and kidded her: "Tell her it's Fred Astaire."

She tittered some more, her hands flying to cover her cute little dolly mouth, her knees punching at the front of her kimono. "Missa Astaire," she finally gibbered, laying to rest my fear that she didn't savvy the English. "Name not a O'Hara. Ohara. I Ohara. I a house a head a house a."

It took a moment for me to decode it, that she was the mistress and not the maid. She tittered and bounced around some more, getting quite a kick out of watching my face drippin' egg.

I kicked at the stoop and mumbled, "I'm terribly sorry, Miss Ohara. I guess my message--I thought it was from a--well, never mind. But my name isn't really Fred Astaire--it's Gendreau, Joe Gendreau. California Weights and Measures." I flipped out my leatherette wallet and flashed the buzzer. "I hope you'll excuse the misunderstanding."

"A Missa Gendreau," she was still giggling in her girlish, dolly way. "Come in a talk."

I did go in. The place was pleasant like I somehow knew it would be, with clean gleaming wood and paper-paned partitions. It felt all open and airy, like a Jap restaurant but without that plinky-plink music.

Her little dolly head bounced in front of me as she led with a mincing walk, hands gathering the kimono in front. I reflected on how she hadn't been offended by my little gaffe, whereas her Western sister would undoubtedly have pitched a mood. Well, that's the beauty of the Eastern female. We might tag her submissive or unliberated or what have you, but to my mind she has a grace and dignity all her own, bred by centuries of tradition. Her purpose in life, which she will ever strive to perfect, is the serving of her master, Jap though he may be.

We were entering a little area with a low wood dining table set out for two.

"We eat a fuss."

"I appreciate that offer, Miss Ohara, but I really couldn't impose. Whatever I can help you with, if you'll just--"

"We eat a fuss. Fussa we eat."

She bowed and grinned, not giving an inch. Departmental regs have things to say about chumming up with complainants, but they don't tell you to be rude either, and the woman had it in her head that we were going to eat.

I sat down on the floor, as chairs there were none. Little Miss Ohara, still grinning, slipped off my shoes and briefly rubbed my feet. I was embarrassed, but if she was aware of any foot odor, she didn't let on. She poured something from a little crockery doodad into the little crockery cup in front of me, then went away chirping. I reached for the cup and smelled. Sake. I tossed it back. Nice stuff, sake. Easy going down.

The little duchess was trotting back in with a lacquered board upon which were various fishments and wrapped textured tidbits, laid out with plenty of grace and charm, like a little garden. I marveled at the grace and charm.

She knelt before me, giggling, holding the board above her bowed head.

"Thanks, Miss Ohara, but why don't you sit down also and--"

"You eat a. Man muss eat a."

I shrugged and popped one of the morsels into the old boccarino. It was tasty, delicate. I reached for more. My fingers felt big and clumsy on the cool daintiness of the food. "You finis," she said, setting the platter in front of me. She poured some more sake and bounced to her feet. As she did so, I couldn't help noticing some chestiness where her kimono hung momentarily open. I knocked back more sake, dancing in hob boots on departmental regs. What the hell. Some bureaucrat sitting in an office in Sacramento can't possibly anticipate all the situations faced by the man in the field.

The little contessa had skipped out of sight, into the living room. "Miss Ohara," I called after her, "I sure do appreciate the hospitality, and you have a beautiful house and whatnot. But if we could just get down to cases here, we--

I heard humming and, naked as a jaybird, she flitted across the wedge of living room open to my view. She did it in a dancing, carefree kind of motion, her arms held out at her sides, Zorba-like, with a faraway smile on her face.

It was the damnedest thing.

I sat quietly, watching, hoping, I guess, that she would Zorba back the other way.

Well, no such luck. She reappeared, (continued on page 194) Gates of Eden (continued from page 152) after a minute, in a different kimono, tightening the sash. I guessed it was the after-lunch job, maybe for the tea ceremony. Once again I tried to put across the theme of my business:

"Hello again, Miss Ohara. I gather you know that I'm responding to a call you made to Weights and Measures. I--"

"Come look a garden," she said, and spun on her heel.

What the hell; I was done arguing.

•

The garden was--well, it was nice. A nice little flagstone path led through nice beds tiered with flagstones. Some of the beds were dirt; some were crushed white rock. It was a hell of a collection of greens and flowers and little trees, but not all gaudy and overstated like some gardens you see. No, somehow it was all just right, just like lunch had been, all sort of pleasant, with a lot of thought behind it, careful thought. Somewhere I heard a fountain gurgle. Yes sir. It was one hell of a thoughtful arrangement.

The princess was leading me with her little mincing step, like a champion show horse. My feet were landing harder than her--that's the thing with sake, it goes down so smooth you can forget how much you've drunk. The path rounded some low shrubbery and ended in flagstone steps leading down to a little rock pool. The eucalyptus trees rustled in a light breeze, and somewhere bees droned. I was feeling pretty damn good.

I stood there swaying. I watched Miss Ohara's shoulders work as she tugged at her clothing. Her broad satin sash fell away to either side, and when she gave a little shrug, her kimono slipped off her porcelain shoulders onto the ground. She was a naked little dolly. She stepped daintily into the rock pool, like some delicate creature slipping into a mountain lake to perform its natural bathing activities. When her steps cut the water, there was barely a splash.

I loosened my tie. The garden was fat with life, like a drowsy bumblebee at a pond in the woods on a scented summer day. But this man-made garden was more beautiful even than nature; it was perfectly composed, as if civilization at its highest had fused with nature, and each had made the other something higher still. I seemed in that moment to understand what Miss Ohara was trying to tell me, that she, too, was part of this nature, moving in oneness with the water, rolling in it and letting it roll over her. There was no shame in the garden, only beauty, beauty not just to look upon but to join in and be one with. Human beauty, natural beauty. I, too, could be beautiful. I could be part of the garden, perfect, just as she was. We could be man and woman, in the garden, without words, without shame. We could abide in beauty and be one.

With thick fingers I pulled off my tie, my banal tie. I pulled on my shirt buttons. It was slow going; I ripped the last few away and tossed the shirt. I sat to take off my stockings; they were too tight; I pushed hard, got my fingers jammed up, finally got them off. Back on my feet I unbuckled my belt, dropped my trousers, then stepped out of my shorts and was free. I was free in the garden. The warmth of the sun bathed my shoulders. A breeze played across my privates and made the eucalyptus rustle. Somewhere, far away, bees droned on.

Miss Ohara swam lazily, unself-consciously corkscrewing through the water. The water pushed unbroken over her body like a stream slipping over a smooth stone. I stepped into the pool.

The sun had warmed the water. Its warmth drew me in, tickling my flesh and drawing my weightaway. As I immersed myself, I was as light and graceful as Miss Ohara, a creature of the water She laughed and pushed her body toward mine. "Fussa yaw needs." My privates had become swollen, enormous, not from lust, as you or I know it, but as an expression of nature. Miss Ohara treated it not with dirty shame but with joyous love. "Help me, Miss Ohara." She smiled, and gasped a little when we first achieved oneness. The extent of my love surprised her; I guess they don't grow as big as mine in the shadows of Fujiyama. But then she moved with me in the shallows of the pool, and we obeyed the command of the garden. Our bodies swayed in the waves that we created. We were carried along by each other and by the gently rocking pool, and we performed the ancient act.

•

I opened my eyes.

I was lying facedown on the flagstones near the pool. My feet trailed into the water. The water was cold. The wind stirring the eucalyptus was chill now, and the garden gray. It was evening.

I was a beached whale. My body ached from its own weight on the flagstones. Shivering, I struggled to my knees. The flagstones dug into my knees; I pushed myself to my feet. The movement made my eyes pound and roused sumo wrestlers who blundered inside my head, slapping bellies, their weight tilting this way and that. As I looked for my clothes, my head swam about, adjusting late for the wrestlers' trundling inertia. I realized how I must look, and cupped my hands over my privates.

"Miss Ohara?"

The wind made rustling noises in the trees. There was no other sound.

I pressed my hands against my head to stop its swaying. I saw my clothes nearby, where I'd dropped them. But stooping for them squeezed my stomach, which squirted acid into my throat. I tried by force of will to calm my leaping stomach, and clamped my eyes shut as I stepped into my shorts. I straightened slowly, but not slowly enough. The wrestlers were back into their stagger, my head swimming with them.

Things spun dizzily. The flesh on my back was tingling, yet numb. When I squinted down at my shoulder, it seemed far away, as if I were a giant looking down on someone else's body. The flesh was very red. I pressed thick fingers into it. It turned ghastly white around my fingers, then quickly red again when I stopped pressing. My chest and stomach were still pale, marked by flagstone ridges. My penis was small and gray.

My back had been roasting in the sun. That, and the alcohol, explained the dizziness. But what was the terrible ache thumping in my buttocks? I pushed my shorts gingerly back down and reached back with both hands. As I lightly grazed my buttocks region, the pulsing ache flashed into bolts of pain. My posterior was swollen and inflamed, skin stretched tight over irregular bumps, as if someone had sewn roasting chestnuts into the flesh. I remembered the drone of bees, now silent. That was it. Bee stings.

"Miss Ohara?"

Only the wind.

As I withdrew my hands, the stinging lapsed back into a throb. But the pain had reawakened my nausea, and now something else stirred deep within my bowels. I knew the feeling. Pressure dark and deep, it was the herald of an approaching stool. I tightened my buttocks. This recalled the stinging buttocks pain, but I needed to contain myself until I could dress and find a bathroom.

I aimed one foot at a leg hole in my pants, thrust desperately, missed. My hands were shaking with the rumble of approaching freight. I shouted at myself, words of calm, and guided my foot into the hole. The pressure was unbearable. My posterior muscles quaked with the effort of staying shut. I hopped into the second pants leg, convulsively clenching my buttocks against the on-rushing tide. No longer rhythmic, it pushed steadily, mightily, it did not ebb. The pressure grew, pushed, ballooned-- I was not going to make it. This was it; there was no denying the clamor at the gate; beating, roaring--this was it. I kicked away my pants and was dropping my shorts when the thing was upon me. I could only hunch forward, knuckles of one hand on the flagstone, buttocks thrust out behind me, in the three-point stance of the scrimmage line.

It came splushing out all liquidy and with a lot of fanfare, if you catch my meaning. There was no containing it, no way to let out just enough to ease the pressure. It blew, but good.

It had been cooked into a thin paste by bee poison and sun. Most of it blew back, but as it petered out, some dribbled onto my shorts and calves and ankles.

It smelled as if it belonged to someone else.

After the last of it had sputtered out, I stayed crouched, frozen there, for several moments, my sphincter quivering. I hunched there, hot yet cold, flushed yet clammy, until I became aware of my knuckles aching against the stone. I straightened up. I stepped out of my spattered shorts and turned round, trembling, to survey the damage.

My feces were all over the garden. They flecked the entire flagstone area, and some had even reached the bordering flower bed. They were a dark brown-black.

The expulsion had left me feeling weak and dizzy, dizzy and weak.

"Miss Ohara?"

Only the tree-rustling wind.

My buttock cheeks were slick against each other. I had to clean myself.

I picked up my soiled shorts and, holding them out away from my body, waded into the pool. The water was cold now; as it crept up, it pushed out gooseflesh and made my skin feel heavy and dead. When it reached my thighs, I paused, sucked in my breath and did a fast knee-bend. The ice water slapped at my anus, igniting the bee stings, and sloshed angrily around my testicles. I did several more knee-bends, then staggered, shivering, out of the pool.

I realized that I was no longer holding my shorts. I looked back at the pool. There they were, floating away like a lily pad in the failing light, a charcoal smudge on dull linen paper.

I stood there for a moment, trembling in the breeze. I picked up my trousers. Their texture, as I began hopping in, seemed terribly rough. I looked at my penis, and forced myself to look away. Still shriveled and gray, it had looked like a dead man's.

Miss Ohara's house was locked and dark; I left the garden by a side gate. I won't bore you with the details of how I managed to drive home. Leave it at this: that I was cold and hurting, and the whole way back I wept with shame.

•

That night I lay on my stomach, thinking. I had my fan aimed at my buttocks, besmeared with salves and unguents.

What did it all mean?

•

When I got to work the next morning, Marty Shechter was doing his Paul Lynde. People were laughing. I went into my office and dialed the number I had for Miss Ohara.

No answer.

I drove the streets, a donut cushion on the driver's seat. I was sapped, listless, still weak from sunburn and all the rest. Over on Van Nuys I walked into a Happy Burger and ordered one. The bald counterman said, "Deluxe?"

"What?"

"Fries widdat?"

"No."

"Bevidge?"

"Just the burger."

He stooped to open a minifridge facing the counter and raised his voice over the grill fan: "How do you want it, medium?"

"Raw."

"You, huh?"

"Raw."

Slowly he straightened, eyes on me, holding a papered patty. "Real rare, huh?"

"Raw," I said for the third time. "And never mind the roll and pickle."

He looked at me, then down at the patty. Slowly, sadly, he slapped the patty facedown onto the plate. His hand came away with the paper backing. He shuffled reluctantly toward me, staringat the plate; when he reached my stool, he stopped but didn't put it down. He stood motionless, frowning at the plate, feeling the distress that any good counterman would feel on serving a naked raw meat patty.

At length he mumbled, "I put it on a bed of lettuce," and started to turn away.

I grabbed one elbow, snarling, "Give it here." He watched as I opened my kit and took out the scale. "Who owns the place?"

"Huh?"

"Who's the boss?"

"Mistuh Katz."

"He have a first name?" The burger weighed in at just under 6-1/4 ounces.

"I guess."

"This is Happy Burger, Home of the Seven-Ounce Bun-Buster?"

"I guess."

"You don't seem sure of much."

"I don't get paid but for knowin' how to cook."

I flipped him my card. "Tell your boss to call if he wants the padlock taken off the door."

•

I drove past the house in Brentwood, staring like a lovesick schoolboy. I thought of ringing the bell but couldn't picture what would come next. Where would we begin? Could we begin again? Could I ever explain the mess in her garden? The whole thing--had it even been real?

•

An 8"xl0" envelope was on my desk. It had been hand-delivered. On its face was handwritten my name and, underneath that, the word Personal.

Somehow, I knew.

I closed the door to my office, put the donut on my chair and stared at the envelope for a long moment before I opened it.

They say that pictures don't lie. Well then, I guess I dreamed all of what happened between me and Miss Ohara. These pictures didn't show a man and woman celebrating their oneness. They showed a sagging middle-aged guy screwing a Jap. Shame, shame--all I felt on looking at those pictures was dirty shame, shame that Miss Ohara had seen me naked. I mean, hell, she looked pretty damn good. And I was--well, if I just had a month or so to work out a little, get back in fighting trim....

But there were more than just the action shots. There were a couple of front angles of me with Miss Ohara, later stuff I didn't remember. She'd wrestled one of my arms over her shoulder and had me lolling in the pool next to her. Her gaze was cool and businesslike; I was grinning like Crazy Guggenheim. Jesus, I needed a brassiere worse than she did. Anyway, after these posed shots--meant to leave no doubt that it was me with the naked little missy--there was a picture that showed what had happened before I woke up. I was sprawled out facedown on the flagstones, mouth gaping like a fresh haddock's. Miss Ohara, in a kimono now, was squatting over me, along with a Jap guy in rimless glasses. Miss Ohara was holding a jar open-end down against my buttocks. The guy was tapping at the jar. The picture wasn't so sharp that I could see the activity inside the jar, but of course I knew.

Well, that was it. There weren't any pictures of my last adventure in the garden, the one I remembered all too well. They had probably left long before I woke up. There was only a short message, a slip of paper with an awkward scrawl: Lay off a Yatsimura Bros.

Jimmy Yatsimura and his brother, Wa, ran a fruit stand in Santa Monica. I'd been looking into them since their scales never seemed to match their customers'. But so far, somehow, they'd spotted the DWM shoppers and we hadn't been able to pin anything on them.

The message was clear. If I didn't toe the line, these gyp artists would show the pictures to my boss, to the public at large, to whomever. Except for the last picture, the one with Jimmy Yats. They'd just thrown that in to twist the knife, so I'd know how the bee stings got there, that it wasn't just happenstance. It got my goat, all right--not just the pointless spite but the planning that must have gone into the whole thing. The act with Miss Ohara, whoever she was (Ohara probably being Nipponese for Smith or Joe Dokes or what have you). The mickey finn in the sake. Hell, maybe they'd also slipped in some kind of Tokyo depth charge to help loosen my bowels. I slowly flipped through the pictures, again and again, at the end of every cycle coming to the slip of paper-- Lay off a Yatsimura Bros. I looked atthem, at her, at myself. Again and again. Dirty shame. Again and again.

•

I don't know what I was thinking when I drove out to Santa Monica that evening. I hadn't planned anything. I was just going there. There was no plan. I was still in a daze. There was no plan.

I walked into the fruit stand and browsed along the table of iced lettuces. I thought, What the hell are all these different lettuces? Did the japs bring them? The Koreans? Why did they bring so many? What kind of society has ours become, when one kind of lettuce is no longer enough? Isn't the need for variety, past a certain point, a sign of decadence? Why do we need to be teased with subtle flavorings and exotic strains? The kind of person who needs that much variety in his sex life, we call a pervert. The true man, who is hungry, eats.

The true man eats.

I ripped a plastic bag off the plastic bag roll and started dropping in navel oranges. When the bag was full, I ripped off another bag and filled it. I brought the two bags over to the register and put them down on the counter. "Two bags of navel oranges, please," I said.

Behind the counter, Jimmy Yatsimura picked up the bags and put them on his scale. He gave no sign of recognizing me. He punched in the price per pound and waited for the numbers to settle.

I looked at him looking at the scale. He stared through his rimless glasses, his tongue stuck between his teeth. I wondered if he was having a sex relationship with Miss Ohara. I felt certain that he was. I tried to picture it, Jimmy Yats and Miss Ohara. I wondered if they did it in the garden. I felt certain that they did. I could see him clearly, engaged in the act, wearing nothing but his Mr. Moto glasses, his tongue sticking out between his buck teeth, his face red, making soft oofing noises, people screaming.

My muscles were locked. I saw his face, at the end of my arms, turning from red to blue. My fingers were round his throat. I felt his fingers prying uselessly at mine. He was twitching. I didn't see any of the people screaming. I heard gibbering and did just see, out of the corner of my eye, Wa Yatsimura trotting toward me, raising a length of pipe. I turned and started--but only started--to raise my arm. Then I went visiting in a land where the trees hang with cauliflower and lotus blossoms fill the air.

•

"Joe," said the old man, sitting next to my hospital bed, "you're the finest field agent I've had in twenty years in Weights and Measures. You don't know how hard it is forme to say this."

"Then don't," I mumbled through my bandages. They'd wrapped my head up pretty good--and had needed to, as much as Wa Yatsimura had worked on it before the police had managed to drag him off.

"There were witnesses, Joe. They all said you attacked the Jap. You're lucky he's not filing a criminal complaint."

"Check his scales. They're piped."

"We already did. They're clean, Joe."

"Then he's a thumb weigher. The Yat-simuras are dirty, Fred. I can't tell you how I know, but I know."

The old man took off his glasses, breathed on them, started wiping them with his tie. He wasn't looking at me when he said, "You've taken state regulations into your own hands. I'll need your plastic, Joe." I thought there were tears in his eyes.

I know there were tears in mine.

•

When I checked out three days later, my head was still bandaged, but I was able to drive. The old man, or someone, had arranged to have my car brought over to the hospital in the Valley. I was fighting rush hour so it was early evening by the time I got to Brentwood, dazed from the drive, from being out in the world.

The neighborhood was cool. The palms and jacarandas rustled in the breeze as I stepped out of my car. The door slam echoed crisply up the street. I was sweaty from the drive and hadn't shaved in three days. I must have been a sight, had anyone been looking--my jaw dark with stubble, my head swathed in white.

I leaned against the car and looked at her house. The lights were just starting to go on along the street, though none did in her place. It was a Jap design, with rich, low-slung wood, its eave a long arcing brow. The house looked out darkly, placidly, over the gentle rise of its lawn, like a ship perched on a rolling wave. Redwood fence dropped away from either side to enclose its back garden. Faintly, very faintly, I thought I heard its fountain gurgle.

I folded my arms, leaning against the car, watching the house that seemed mutely to watch me. Under its bandages my head itched. But the breeze stiffened and crawled through my hair where it poofed out on top, and I heard the wind, the sound through my bandages like a seashell at the beach, and it was colder as I stood there and hugged myself, waiting, I don't know how long, I don't know what for. Maybe I was waiting for Miss Ohara, or for any woman, to open the door, invite me in, rub my feet and take the pain from my heart.

I stood there as it grew dark.

"I hate a gyp. I hate it more than anything. The man who laughs at standards must be put down."

"Miss Ohara pushed her body toward mine. 'Fussa yaw needs.' My privates had become swollen.