“Yes.”
“Why don’t you get another one?”
“I don’t know. Inertia, I suppose.”
“Inertia. I believe you.” She laughed: it was a lovely lilting laugh. “How long has it been since you’ve had a woman?”
“Four years.”
“Four years? Why?”
“I’m afraid of what will follow.”
“Why don’t you get a whore?”
“Because I don’t know what a whore is.”
“Get a Webster.”
“You’re right. That’s a whore.”
“College?”
“No.”
“Where do you get your edge?”
“Despair.”
“What?”
“Deluge.”
He finished his drink, took her empty glass and walked back into the kitchen. He opened another bottle of wine, poured two drinks, brought them back and sat on the couch next to her. He handed her a glass, kept the other.
“I fascinate you,” he said, “because I’m not on the make.”
“You’re on the make but in a totally different way.”
“Being able to care but ready to give it up without a qualm.”
“Ultimate cynicism.”
“Ultimate training.”
“Both,” she said.
“We sound like a cheap Noel Coward bit.”
“You liked him?”
“There’s no way to like him or dislike him. He was just a semidelightful inefficiency. A tossed salad: Oscar Wilde mixed with a Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy duet with George Gershwin at the piano.”
“You’re starting to talk too much, you’re getting pompous and snide. The wine is getting to you,” said Ms. Evans.
“I was born,” he said, “in West Kansas City in 1922 . . . ”
“I don’t want to hear it.” She switched her legs again, this time a bit nervously.
“You remember Alf Landon?”
“No.”
He walked into the kitchen, refilled the drinks, came back. “I don’t have any cigarettes. Do you have any cigarettes?”
“Yes.” She opened her purse and brought out a package, a light green package of cigarettes. It was a fresh pack. She undid the cellophane, tapped out two. He lit them. “What went wrong with your marriage?”
“Oh,” she said, inhaling, “the usual shit.”
“Like?”
“He played around, I played around. I forgot who started it. His dirty shorts next to my dirty panties. It’s impossible to carry on a high-pitched day-by-day relationship.”
“I know.”
“You know what?”
“It’s this country: we’re the spoiled children of the universe—love out front, dangling in searchlights—Liz and Burton.”
“You’re drunk.”
“I liked Burton’s face. Liz reminds me of a specimen in a lab, only perfect for what it is. Then, plop.”
“Plop.”
He reached over and kissed her. She pushed away from him a moment, then gave. When they broke she said, “I’m here to check your credentials.”
“I’m sure.”
She pushed him away. Her fingers were long and narrow, he noticed them as she pushed him away.
“You suck,” he said.
She had her cigarette in her right hand and he got the palm of her left hand across his face, it caught part of his nose. His cigarette shot out of his mouth—sparks, fireworks—it broke, his hand catching part of it—there were these tiny sparks and spilling, and dark ash, and then white paper and unburnt brown tobacco.
“Care for another drink?” he asked.
Ms. Evans had both a briefcase and a purse and she gathered them about herself as she got up. As she stood up the dress dropped back over her flanks. She made a motion to straighten out some wrinkles in her dress, then gave off. “You’re nothing but a goddamned cowboy like the rest.”
“Right. The world may not exactly radiate over its continuous fucks but it certainly carries on.”
“That’s supposed to be clever?”
“Supposed to be accurate.”
She walked toward the door and the walk was magic; he let his eyes fall into each fold of her wrinkled dress, and each fold was an intimacy, a warmness and a sadness, and then his mind quickly laughed at his softness, and then he focused upon her behind, the twin circles, watching what the circles did. He wanted to say, come back, come back, we’ve been hasty.
The door closed. He had one more drink. Then he went to bed. He didn’t masturbate. He slept.
Within two weeks he got a letter in the mail informing him that he was not acceptable for automobile insurance from the main company but that there was a subsidiary branch out of St. Louis which would most possibly accept his application at nominal but slightly higher rates if he would fill out and mail the enclosed forms, postage-free. It seemed quite simple. There were just little squares to check after the questions.
He checked the questions, made the appropriate markings within the squares and dropped the prepaid envelope into a corner mailbox two or three days later.
Her name was Minnie Budweisser, yes, just like the beer, and Minnie might drag you back to 1932, but she was hardly that, sitting in my office that hot July afternoon, just in slacks, not trying to show too much, not much of it was even tight-fitting, but you could see all that woman in there, the almighty woman that one woman in a million possessed. There she was: Minnie Budweisser, but she’d had sense enough to change her name to Nina Contralto for box office purposes. I looked at her, she was it, the tits weren’t silicone and the ass was real, and the movements and the flow and the eyes and the gestures. She was there. She had the damnedest eyes I’d ever seen—they kept shading: first they were blue, then green, then brown, they kept shading, changing, she was a witch, and yet I knew she probably ate peanut butter sandwiches and snored a little in her sleep and even farted and belched once in a while.
“Yes? I asked.
“I’m down from Vegas.”
“Trouble?”
“No trouble. Just sick of it.”
“Come down to learn Spanish at Berlitz? Become an ambassador?”
“Fuck you.”
“Anytime. We pay 5 bucks an hour. You’ll get tips from the sicks. If you really want to make it, you’ll trick on the side. Ninety-three percent do. If you give head you can bank 23 thousand a year, only 6 grand tax-deductible.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, fuck you. You’ve only got five good working years. After that you’re down at Norm’s with a sweaty ass. You score now or you’ll never score again. The body’s all you got, and it just won’t last.”
“When do I start?”
“Six p.m., tomorrow night.”
Nina was ready at 6 but Helen was still on. I sat at a table and brought Nina a double Scotch. Helen was on but Helen was just dumb. She’d gotten a silicone job but one of the tits had come out about one-half size larger than the other and she couldn’t dance, she just moved one leg and then moved the other. She was just like a sleepwalker. The boys played pool and turned their backs to her at the bar.
Then Nina got up there. “No music, please,” she said. And then she began making these movements: it was more a prayer than a dance; it was as if she were looking into the sky for salvation, but it was hot, don’t worry—she had on these tall silver spikes and she had on these pink lace panties and her buttocks whirled in heat to some unsolvable god. Actually—with another woman—you might think it corny—she had on these long black gloves that ran halfway up between the elbows and the shoulders, and all these rings were on the fingers of the gloves; her long stockings had the word “LOVE” embroidered into them near the tops. She had the mascara, the long false eyelashes, even pearls about the neck, but it was the movement, the movements—and in silence—that did it. Her body was the magnificent gift but it wasn’t that—there was something searching inside of her and she couldn’t find it, the man, the way, the ci
ty, the country, the out. She was totally alone, without help, although many thought they could help her. As the final act in her dance she took the small red rose that was in her hair and she bit into the stem with her teeth and voluted up at the ceiling, whirling, moving, almost beyond meaning. Then she stopped, stiffened, and walked off coming down the steps at the side.
I raised her to $10 an hour right then. I told her about it. “Thanks, daddy,” she said, “but I need some coke now or at least I want to sniff some h. Let’s go someplace and score.”
“All right,” I said. So I took her down to Vanilla Jack’s in the Canyon and we sat over his coffee table and he spread it on the mirror and we tried some. I didn’t get any results but Nina said it was straight stuff. I gave it the two-on-one (double-nostril suck). Nothing happened. “I’m crazy,” I said, “but I don’t think it’s there—it’s spread, no backbone.”
Nina tried it again and said it was there. Jack weighed it all in a little silver scale made in Munich, and I paid him, thinking there’s no chance for any of us: we just think we’re circling the vultures.
I got to my place, got her to my place, we got out the mirror and spread it. I had gotten a good bottle of French wine, vintage way back and I put some Shostakovich on the Frisbee. She was as beautiful as ever. With some women their beauty can vanish in one half-hour, or even sooner—as soon as they begin to speak, then their tricks and cons, having vanished, there are no cards left and no light left—well, one card, let’s fuck for the sake of fuck and hope for the best. Nina held, she remained total.
I suppose Jack’s stuff was good. I began to feel it, even though I mistrusted that Munich scale. “I’ll marry you,” I told Nina, “I’ll give you half of my money.”
“You don’t understand,” she said.
“Understand what?”
“You don’t know what love is.”
“I love you.”
“You just love the idea of me. It’s all shadow and light and form.”
“But I love that. Christ, give me a chance.”
“Suppose I were 66 years old? With one eye missing and my shit running out of a sack taped to my side?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know. Spread some more of that shit on the mirror.”
We got higher and higher and then finally went to bed together. I didn’t try. I didn’t want to try. The world ran through the top of my head and down my back and out the window.
I didn’t try with Nina again. She kept coming to work and making it with her silent dance and she had 75 guys in love with her. I found out from a pretty good source that she wasn’t making it with anybody after her show. All that body, untouched. There were crimes against mankind and that was certainly one of them.
She worked the 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift. That Wednesday afternoon somebody stole all the clothes out of her locker: the silver spikes, the long black sleeves, the long stockings embroidered “LOVE” near the tops. All the other gear. She came down and began banging lockers and screaming. She was in an old white T-shirt and bluejeans and she looked more beautiful than the sun, raving and wobbling and insane. I told her fuck, forget it, I’d pay her night’s wages, all she had to do was to go around and serve an occasional drink to the boys. It wasn’t a bad night: Nina was better serving drinks than the other girls were on the wood. I drove her to her apartment that night and she was laughing.
It was strange the next day. She was on at 6 and she came on down the street toward my place at 4:30 in the afternoon moving toward my place. She was all over the sidewalk with that great body and everybody looking, and she was in this mini-skirt, runners all over her stockings, she was rocking back and forth, the newsboys and the ordinaries watching—they’d beat off for a month to the memory of it and then she hit up against the frontglass of Billy’s Half-Hard Club hard, hit that hard, and it didn’t break, and she had on this red wig, this big red wig and it fell off of her head and she didn’t know it and just kept moving toward my place—out of it—and somebody picked up her wig and followed her. It was more than snow. She stepped in and started really doing a dead-ass dance in mockery of the girl on the wood then. It irritated me.
“Listen,” I said, “you’re an hour and a half early.”
“So what?” she asked.
“So,” I said, “fuck you, you’re fired.”
“Fuck you,” she said, and walked out.
I think of her sometimes now but I get the idea that somehow she’s not in this town or in any town near here. Now here I am calling L.A. a town. It’s a city, isn’t it? But I finally found out who stole her gear. It was the one with the silicone who got one breast bigger than the other. She wears it now, the tall/silver spikes, the pearls, the long black gloves with all the rings, 17 rings, and the “LOVE” stockings, all of it. She’s even learned to dance a bit, but it just doesn’t work.
Barry, who I hadn’t seen for two years, phoned and asked if I wanted to fuck his wife’s mother. I said all right, got the directions to where they were living, got in my car and drove out. It was somewhere off the San Berdo freeway, quite a ways out. I found the street, the house, parked the car, got out. Barry was sitting on the front steps drinking a beer. I had four six-packs. We went into the house and Barry started putting the beer in the refrigerator. “The mother has a pussy just like the daughter. I’ve fucked them both. There’s no difference.”
“If there’s no difference, I’ll take the daughter.”
“Fuck off,” said Barry. “Come on, they’re in back.”
We took some beer out into the backyard. I knew Barry’s wife, Sarah. He introduced me to the mother, Irene. She flashed me an enormous smile. “Oh, Mr. Bukowski, I’ve read your books and I think you’re a wonderful writer!” Both of the ladies were in short pants and blouses, wore sandals. Irene had nice legs but they had very many blue veins upon them.
“We’re going to bake some weenies,” said Barry.
“I just love hot weenies,” said Irene.
Barry took me over and showed me his new motorcycle. “Want a ride?” he asked me.
“No thanks, kid, bad for the hemorrhoids.”
“Oh Barry,” said Irene, I’ll go!”
Irene climbed on the back and they spun out of the yard and into the street. I finished my beer and opened another. I sat down next to Sarah. “Irene thinks you’re the greatest thing since Hemingway,” she said.
“I’m closer to Thurber mixed with Mickey Spillane.”
“That doesn’t sound so good.”
“It isn’t.”
“Mother is very lonely. She has trouble meeting people.”
“I’m scared.”
“Don’t be.”
Barry had only cycled around the block. They came in with a whirl of dust. Irene slid off. “WHEEEEE!”
“Come on,” Barry said to me, “help me get some wood.”
I walked around behind the garage with him. “She’s really horny,” he said. “I think she got it off on the bike. My god, she’s hot!”
“Barry, I don’t know what to do.”
“Just relax. It will happen.”
“Yeah.”
We both came round the side of the garage with the wood. “Hurry,” said Irene, “I could eat one of those things raw!”
“Now, Irene,” I said, “you wouldn’t want to do that.”
“Oh, isn’t he funny!” she said. “I’ve always said he was one of the few writers around with a sense of humor.” She drained her beer can and tossed it into the bushes, cracked open another one. Sarah spread mustard and relish on the bun and Irene watched the weenies.
“Oh, I want the big one!” she said.
“You’re very funny too, Irene,” I said and opened another beer. I tossed my old can into the bushes next to hers. “Our cans side by side.”
“Oooh,” went Irene, “ha, ha, ha, ha!”
“I think we’re going to move to Mexico,” said Barry, “a good writer needs isolation.”
“A good
writer needs money,” I said.
“I’ve sold nine novels this year,” said Barry. Barry wrote a novel a month, all on incest. I’d met him right after he’d come out of the madhouse. He used to be a baby sitter before he cracked the incest market.
We finished the weenies and sat about in the chairs drinking beer and watching the sun go down. Barry got up and came out with two six-packs and carried them into this shack in the back. “That’s where you and Irene are going to sleep,” he told me. I looked at Irene. She was lighting a cigarette. Her fingernails were lacquered purple.
Suddenly both Barry and Sarah stood up and walked into their house. I was alone with Irene. “Oh,” she said, “I just love sunsets, don’t you?”
“No, not really.”
“You’re a cynic, aren’t you?”
“I suppose I would be if I said I loved sunsets when I didn’t.”
“Oh no, that would be a hypocrite.”
“You’re a smart girl, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been around.”
“Vassar?”
“What’s that?”
“The name of the Frenchman who invented the hydraulic water pump.”
“Oh, shit. Let’s get in there and get it on.”
I followed Irene into the shack. There was a bed and a chair, a lamp and a nightstand. She threw herself on the bed. I sat on the chair and opened a beer for her and a beer for me. We sat there drinking the beers and looking at each other. The screen door pushed open and a little black kitten walked in. I picked him up. “Ain’t he sweet?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
I petted the kitten. “They’re so innocent. Look at the eyes. Look at the eyes, will you, Irene?”
Irene got off the bed, took the kitten, flung open the screen door and threw him into space. Then she came back and threw herself upon the bed again.
“I need another beer,” I said. “Look, we hardly know each other. Where were you born? Italy?”
“Denver.”
“Look. Why don’t you get on some high heels? Nylons? Gadgets. I like ear rings.”
“I’ve got some on.”
“Oh.”
Irene got up and walked out. She was gone a long time. She was gone so long that I got onto the bed with my beer. Jesus Christ, I thought, did D.H. Lawrence have to go through this? What did a man have to do in order to become an immortal writer?