The misnomer was intentional.
The Purple Chairs was a Lesbian bar, and the subtle question being asked was: Is everybody out of step but Johnny? The chairs were white. Pure. Pristine. Innocent. Virginal. Then why insist on calling them purple? Where did perversity lie, in the actuality or in the labeling?
“Why here?” Carella asked immediately.
“Why not?” Fletcher answered. “I’m showing you some of the city’s more frequented spots.”
Carella strenuously doubted that this was one of the city’s more frequented spots. It was now a little past eleven, and the place was only sparsely populated, entirely by women—women talking, women smiling, women dancing to the jukebox, women touching, women kissing. As Carella and Fletcher moved toward the bar, tended by a bull dagger with shirt sleeves rolled up over her powerful forearms, a rush of concerted hostility focused upon them like the beam of a death ray. The bartender verbalized it.
“Sightseeing?” she asked.
“Just browsing,” Fletcher answered.
“Try the public library.”
“It’s closed.”
“Maybe you’re not getting my message.”
“What’s your message?”
“Is anybody bothering
“No.”
“Then stop bothering
“I think we’ve been invited to leave,” Carella said.
“We certainly haven’t been invited to stay,” Fletcher said. “Did you get a good look?”
“I’ve been inside dyke bars before.”
“Really? My first time was in September. Just goes to show,” he said, and moved unsteadily toward the purple entrance door.
The cold December air worked furiously on the martinis Fletcher had consumed, so that by the time they got to a bar named Quigley’s Rest, just off Skid Row, he was stumbling along drunkenly and clutching Carella’s arm for support. Carella suggested that perhaps it was time to be heading home, but Fletcher said he wanted Carella to see them all, see them all, and then led him into the kind of joint Carella had mentioned earlier, where he knew instantly that he was stepping into a hangout frequented by denizens, and was instantly grateful for the .38 holstered at his hip. The floor of Quigley’s Rest was covered with sawdust, the lights were dim, the place at twenty minutes to midnight was crowded with people who had undoubtedly awoken at 10 P . M . and who would go till ten the next morning. There was very little about their external appearances to distinguish them from the customers in the first bar Fletcher and Carella had visited. They were similarly dressed, they spoke in the same carefully modulated voices, they were neither as blatant as the crowd in Fanny’s nor as subdued as the crowd in The Purple Chairs. But if a speeding shark in cloudy water can still be distinguished from a similarly speeding dolphin, so were the customers in Quigley’s immediately identified as dangerous and deadly. Carella was not sure that Fletcher sensed this as strongly as he, himself, did. He knew only that he did not wish to stay here long, especially with Fletcher as drunk as he was.
The trouble started almost at once.
Fletcher shoved his way into position at the bar, and a thin-faced young man wearing a dark blue suit and a flowered tie more appropriate to April than December turned toward him sharply and said, “Watch it.” He barely whispered the words, but they hung on the air with deadly menace, and before Fletcher could react or reply, the young man shoved the flat of his palm against Fletcher’s upper arm, with such force that he knocked him to the floor. Fletcher blinked up at him, and started to get drunkenly to his feet. The young man suddenly kicked him in the chest, a flatfooted kick that was less powerful than the shove had been but had the same effect. Fletcher fell back to the floor again, and this time his head crashed heavily against the sawdust. The young man swung his body in preparation for another kick, this time aiming it at Fletcher’s head.
“That’s it,” Carella said.
The young man hesitated. Still poised on the ball of one foot, the other slightly back and cocked for release, he looked at Carella and said, “
