WILLIE AND LORI HAD WORKED TOGETHER in the Sausalito brothel for years, even sharing one bathroom. It’s amusing to watch the relationship between those two people who could not be more different. To Willie’s chaos, cursing, and rushing about, Lori opposes order, precision, calm, and gentility. At noon, as Lori tosses her macrobiotic salad with tofu, Willie perfumes the atmosphere with the garlic of spicy sausages that would perforate the intestines of a rhinoceros. After he’s taken the dog for a walk, he comes into the office wearing the muddy boots of a ditch digger, and Lori amiably cleans the stairs so some client won’t slip and break his neck. Willie piles mountains of papers on his desk, from legal documents to used paper napkins, and every so often Lori sweeps through and throws them into the wastebasket; he doesn’t even notice, or maybe he does notice but doesn’t kick about it. They share the vice of photography and travel. They consult on everything and celebrate each other with no perceptible signs of sentimentalism; she always efficient and tranquil, he always hurrying and grumbling. She takes care of the computer, and keeps the Web page up to date, and he cooks meatballs for her following her grandmother’s recipe; he shares with her everything he buys wholesale, from toilet paper to papayas, and loves her more than anyone in the family, except me . . . maybe.
Willie teases her, of course, but he also tolerates her jokes. Once Lori made up an exquisitely lettered bumper sticker she stuck on the back of his car. It read: I LOOK VERY MACHO BUT I WEAR WOMEN’S PANTIES. Willie drove around for a couple of weeks wondering why so many men were waving from other cars. Considering that we live in a part of the world that may have the highest number of homosexuals per capita, it wasn’t difficult to explain. When Willie discovered the sign, he nearly had a stroke.
From time to time the alarm in the brothel goes off without any provocation, which tends to cause difficulties. Like once when Willie got there in time to hear the deafening clamor of the alarm and ran inside through the kitchen—on the lower floor—to turn it off. It was a winter evening and near dark. At the same moment he ran in, a policeman, who had kicked in the main door, came running down the steps, still wearing his sunglasses and carrying a pistol in his hand. He yelled at the top of his lungs for Willie to put up his hands. “Take it easy, man, I’m the owner,” my husband tried to explain, but the cop ordered him to shut up. He was young and inexperienced and perceptibly nervous; he kept yelling and calling for backup over his phone, while the white-haired man with his face plastered against the wall boiled with rage. The incident dissolved without consequences when other armed police arrived in combat gear and, after patting Willie down, listened to what he was saying. That episode set off an endless string of curses from Willie as Lori doubled over with laughter—though she might have laughed a little less had she been the victim. A week later when we were all at work, some of Lori’s friends, who were also good friends of ours, began to filter in. I thought it was a little strange, but I was on the phone with a journalist in Greece and merely waved at them from a distance. I finished my conversation just as a policeman came in—tall, young, blond, very handsome, sunglasses, and pistol at his waist—who asked to speak with Mr. Gordon. Lori called Willie, and he came down from the second floor ready to tell that “uniform” that if they kept fucking around and bothering him he was going to sue the police department. All Lori’s friends stationed themselves on the stairs to watch the show.
The handsome policeman held up a bundle of papers and told Willie to have a seat because he needed to sign some forms. Grousing, my husband obeyed. Then we heard strains of Arabic music, and the man began to dance like an enormous odalisque. First he took off his hat, then his boots, then the pistol, jacket, and pants, to the absolute horror of Willie, who pushed his chair back, red as a lobster, sure than the man had escaped from some institution. The howls coming from the stairway gave him the clue that the “policeman” was an actor Lori had hired, but by then the dancer had nothing on but his sunglasses and a thong that came up short in covering his private parts.
Considering that we all work at the same site, that we run Willie’s office, the foundation, and my office among us, that we see each other nearly every day, that we go together on vacations in the far corners of the planet and live within a radius of six blocks, it’s surprising we get along so well. A miracle, I’d say. Therapy, is Nico’s explanation.