Peep Show Read Online Free Page B

look up at the marquee, the thousands of bulbs ignite into a rolling upward wave of lit color that runs from the base to the tip before spurting confetti into the air above us. I watch it rain onto my palm as I try to erase the image of my father making porno movies in some attic.
    â€œBefore he went and plugged this thing in, the Marion was just like my father’s old theater. All these along here, all just grand old cinemas before and into the war.”
    A blonde Hispanic girl walks past us and smiles as if she knows my father.
    â€œTake it in, kid,” he says, lifting his box from the ground. “Take pictures. Because one day soon, just like me, it’s
all
gonna disappear.”
    â€œYou busy?” the girl says to my father.
    â€œTake a hike.”
    Thick white steam rises from the manholes and taxis sail through it, dragging it on their way down Broadway. Across the street is an old synagogue and next to that is what my father calls a “tit joint,” the Pussycat Lounge. I smell boiling hot dogs and pretzels as a man right next to us takes a leak on a phone booth. I follow my father down the street. It starts to drizzle and then rain so I put my box on top of my headand we walk three more blocks, past pinball arcades and bars and dozens of neon twenty-five-cent peep-show signs. When I see an evangelist on an upside-down milk crate, I put the box down to take his picture.
Click
. He waves a tongue-depressor crucifix and talks directly to the sidewalk. Behind him is a bag lady with brown Magic Marker eyebrows. She smiles for the camera; her gums are tan.
Click
. When we get up to Forty-eighth and Eighth, we stand outside the Imperial and look at the marquee above the entrance. Today, the cinematic lettering reads INTERNATIONAL BURLESQUE SENSATION BRANDI LADY—MAY 3, 4 AND 5 . Under that it says, HALF-PRICED WELL DRINKS—TUES. TILL CLOSING . My father and I cross the street to the front doors, where a man with a mustache is pulling on the locked door.
    â€œNot open yet,” my dad says. “Eleven o’clock.”
    â€œYou’re the owner,” the man says. “You’re Marty, right?”
    My dad nods.
    â€œI hear you’re fuckin’ the help, ya lucky Jew bastard.”
    My father puts his box on the curb. “What’d you just say?”
    â€œBrandi Lady,” he says. “Aren’t you and her doin’ the—”
    â€œHey
dick
head!” my dad says.
    I put my hand on his shoulder. “Dad?”
    â€œThis is my
son
. Okay,
prick
? My son. You talk to me like that in front of my son?”
    â€œJust let it go, Dad.”
    â€œI didn’t know he was your boy, Marty.”
    â€œSo you call me a Jew bastard? Who the fuck are you?”
    He glances at me. “Nobody,” he says. “Just a kike from Queens.”
    My father puts his hand on the man’s chest and lightly shoves him backward. “Have some manners,” he says.
    Thankfully, my father unlocks the door and we’re in the lobby. The first and only time I was here, the other night, there was a party in this room for my father’s partner, Ira Saltzman. Now, empty, I see a much larger space than I thought, with its own chandelier that sparkles over the faded red carpet. There’s a small man on his knees with a bucket near the ticket booth.
    â€œToilet overflowed,” he says to my father. “Someone crammed a diaper in there and kept flushin’.”
    â€œA
what
?” says my father.
    â€œHi, I’m Jocko,” he says to me. Jocko’s right eye wanders and the knees of his black pants are soaked with toilet water.
    â€œI’m David.”
    â€œMarty’s boy?”
    I nod.
    â€œI heard you were here the other night.”
    â€œJust for a few minutes. My dad had to—”
    â€œIs that him, is that David Arbus?” A huge black man with a giant bald head walks up to me. He offers his hand. “Leo.