Women: A Novel

  “Add your ages together,” I said, “and you’ve got me.”

  Arlene’s hair was long and black. She sat in the chair by the window combing her hair, making up her face, looking into a large silver mirror, and talking. She was obviously high on pills. Tammie had a near-perfect body and long natural red hair. She was on pills too, but wasn’t as high.

  “It will cost you $100 for a piece of ass,” Tammie told me.

  “I’ll pass.”

  Tammie was hard like so many women in their early twenties. Her face was shark-like. I disliked her, right off.

  They left around 3:30 AM and I went to bed alone.

  42

  Two mornings later, at 4 AM, somebody beat on the door.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s a redheaded floozie.”

  I let Tammie in. She sat down and I opened a couple of beers.

  “I’ve got bad breath, I have these two bad teeth. You can’t kiss me.”

  “All right.”

  We talked. Well, I listened. Tammie was on speed. I listened and looked at her long red hair and when she was preoccupied I looked and looked at that body. It was bursting out of her clothing, begging to get out. She talked on and on. I didn’t touch her.

  At 6 AM Tammie gave me her address and phone number.

  “I’ve got to go,” she said.

  “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  It was a bright red Camaro, completely wrecked. The front was smashed in, one side was ripped open and the windows were gone. Inside were rags and shirts and Kleenex boxes and newspapers and milk cartons and Coke bottles and wire and rope and paper napkins and magazines and paper cups and shoes and bent colored drinking straws. This mass of stuff was piled above seat level and covered the seats. Only the driver’s area had a little clear space.

  Tammie stuck her head out the window and we kissed.

  Then she tore away from the curb and by the time she reached the corner she was doing 45. She did hit the brakes and the Camaro bobbed up and down, up and down. I walked back inside.

  I went to bed and thought about her hair. I’d never known a real redhead. It was fire.

  Like lightning from heaven, I thought.

  Somehow her face didn’t seem to be as hard anymore….

  43

  I phoned her. It was 1 AM. I went over.

  Tammie lived in a small bungalow behind a house.

  She let me in.

  “Be quiet. Don’t wake Dancy. She’s my daughter. She’s 6 years old and she’s asleep in the bedroom.”

  I had a 6-pack of beer. Tammie put it in the refrigerator and came out with two bottles.

  “My daughter mustn’t see anything. I still have the two bad teeth which makes my breath bad. We can’t kiss.”

  “All right.”

  The bedroom door was closed.

  “Look,” she said, “I’ve got to take some vitamin B. And I’m going to have to pull my pants down and stab myself in the ass. Look the other way.”

  “All right.”

  I watched her draw liquid into the syringe. I looked the other way.

  “I’ve got to get it all,” she said.

  When it was done she turned on a small red radio.

  “Nice place you got here.”

  “I’m a month behind on the rent.”

  “Oh …”

  “It’s all right. The landlord—he lives in the place up front—I can hold him off.”

  “Good.”

  “He’s married, the old fuck. And guess what?”

  “I can’t.”

  “The other day his wife was gone somewhere and the old fuck asked me to come over. I went over and sat down and guess what?”

  “He pulled it out.”

  “No, he put on dirty movies. He thought that shit would turn me on.”

  “It didn’t?”

  “I said, ‘Mr. Miller, I have to leave now. I have to pick Dancy up at school.’”

  Tammie gave me an upper. We talked and talked. And drank beer.

  At 6 AM Tammie opened the couch we had been sitting on. There was a blanket. We took off our shoes and climbed under the blanket with our clothes on. I held her from the back, my face in all that red hair. I got hard. I dug it into her from behind, through her clothing. I heard her fingers clawing and digging into the edge of the couch.

  “I’ve got to go,” I told Tammie.

  “Listen, all I’ve got to do is to make Dancy some breakfast and drive her to school. It’s O.K. if she sees you. Just wait here until I get back.”

  “I’m going,” I said.

  I drove home, drunk. The sun was really up, painful and yellow….

  44

  I had been sleeping on a terrible mattress with the springs sticking into me for several years. That afternoon when I awakened I pulled the mattress off the bed, dragged it outside, and leaned it against the trashbin.

  I walked back in and left the door open.

  It was 2 PM and hot.

  Tammie walked in and sat on the couch.

  “I’ve got to go,” I told her. “I’ve got to go buy a mattress.”

  “A mattress? Well, I’ll leave.”

  “No, Tammie, wait. Please. The whole thing will take about 15 minutes. Wait here and have a beer.”

  “All right,” she said….

  There was a rebuilt mattress shop about three blocks down on Western. I parked in front and ran through the door. “Fellows! I need a mattress … FAST!”

  “What kind of bed?”

  “Double.”

  “We’ve got this one for $35.” “I’ll take it.”

  “Can you take it in your car?”

  “I’ve got a Volks.”

  “All right, we’ll deliver it. Address?”

  Tammie was still there when I got back.

  “Where’s the mattress?”

  “It’ll be along. Have another beer. You got a pill?”

  She gave me a pill. The light shot through her red hair.

  Tammie had been voted Miss Sunny Bunny at the Orange County Fair in 1973. It was four years later now, but she still had it. She was big and ripe in all the right places.

  The delivery man was at the door with the mattress.

  “Let me help you.”

  The delivery man was a good soul. He helped me put it on the bed. Then he saw Tammie sitting on the couch. He grinned. “Hi,” he said to her.

  “Thanks very much,” I told him. I gave him 3 dollars and he left.

  I went into the bedroom and looked at the mattress. Tammie followed. The mattress was wrapped in cellophane. I began ripping it off. Tammie helped.

  “Look at it. It’s pretty,” she said.

  “Yes, it is.”

  It was bright and colorful. Roses, stems, leaves, curling vines. It looked like the Garden of Eden, and for $35.

  Tammie looked at it. “That mattress turns me on. I want to break it in. I want to be the first woman to fuck you on that mattress.”

  “I wonder who will be the second?”

  Tammie walked into the bathroom. There was a silence. Then I heard the shower. I put on fresh sheets and pillow cases, undressed and climbed in. Tammie came out, young and wet, she sparkled. Her pubic hair was the same color as the hair on her head: red, like fire.

  She paused before the mirror and pulled in her stomach. Those huge breasts rose toward the glass. I could see her, back and front, simultaneously.

  She walked over and climbed under the sheet.

  We slowly worked into it.

  We got into it, all that red hair on the pillow, as outside the sirens howled and the dogs barked.

  45

  Tammie came by that night. She appeared to be high on uppers.

  “I want some champagne,” she said.

  “All right,” I said.

  I handed her a twenty.

  “Be right back,” she said, walking out the door.

  Then the phone rang. It was Lydia. “I just wondered how you were doing??
?.”

  “Things are all right.”

  “Not here. I’m pregnant.”

  “What?”

  “And I don’t know who the father is.”

  “Oh?”

  “You know Dutch, the guy who hangs around the bar where I’m working now?”

  “Yes, old Baldy.”

  “Well, he’s really a nice guy. He’s in love with me. He brings me flowers and candy. He wants to marry me. He’s been real nice. And one night I went home with him. We did it.”

  “All right.”

  “Then there’s Barney, he’s married but I like him. Of all the guys in the bar he’s the only one who never tried to put the make on me. It fascinated me. Well, you know, I’m trying to sell my house. So he came over one afternoon. He just came by. He said he wanted to look the house over for a friend of his. I let him in. Well, he came at just the right time. The kids were in school so I let him go ahead…. Then one night this stranger came into the bar late. He asked me to go home with him. I told him no. Then he said he just wanted to sit in my car with me, talk to me. I said all right. We sat in the car and talked. Then we shared a joint. Then he kissed me. That kiss did it. If he hadn’t kissed me I wouldn’t have done it. Now I’m pregnant and I don’t know who. I’ll have to wait and see who the child looks like.”

  “All right, Lydia, lots of luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  I hung up. A minute passed and then the phone rang again. It was Lydia. “Oh,” she said, “I wondered how you were doing?”

  “About the same, horses and booze.”

  “Then everything’s all right with you?”

  “Not quite.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, I sent this woman out for champagne….”

  “Woman?”

  “Well, girl, really …”

  “A girl?”

  “I sent her out with $20 for champagne and she hasn’t come back. I think I’ve been taken.”

  “Chinaski, I don’t want to hear about your women. Do you understand that?”

  “All right.”

  Lydia hung up. There was a knock on the door. It was Tammie. She’d come back with the champagne and the change.

  46

  It was noon the next day when the phone rang. It was Lydia again.

  “Well, did she come back with the champagne?”

  “Who?”

  “Your whore.”

  “Yes, she came back….”

  “Then what happened?”

  “We drank the champagne. It was good stuff.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Well, you know, shit …”

  I heard a long insane wail like a wolverine shot in the arctic snow and left to bleed and die alone….

  She hung up.

  I slept most of the afternoon and that night I drove out to the harness races.

  I lost $32, got into the Volks and drove back. I parked, walked up on the porch and put the key into the door. All the lights were on. I looked around. Drawers were ripped out and overturned on the floor, the bed covers were on the floor. All my books were missing from the bookcase, including the books I had written, 20 or so. And my typewriter was gone and my toaster was gone and my radio was gone and my paintings were gone.

  Lydia, I thought.

  All she’d left me was my t.v. because she knew I never looked at it.

  I walked outside and there was Lydia’s car, but she wasn’t in it. “Lydia,” I said. “Hey, baby!”

  I walked up and down the street and then I saw her feet, both of them, sticking out from behind a small tree up against an apartment house wall. I walked up to the tree and said, “Look, what the hell’s the matter with you?”

  Lydia just stood there. She had two shopping bags full of my books and a portfolio of my paintings.

  “Look, I’ve got to have my books and paintings back. They belong to me.”

  Lydia came out from behind the tree—screaming. She took the paintings out and started tearing them. She threw the pieces in the air and when they fell to the ground she stomped on them. She was wearing her cowgirl boots.

  Then she took my books out of the shopping bags and started throwing them around, out into the street, out on the lawn, everywhere.

  “Here are your paintings! Here are your books! AND DON’T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN! DON’T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!”

  Then Lydia ran down to my court with a book in her hand, my latest, The Selected Works of Henry Chinaski. She screamed, “So you want your books back? So you want your books back? Here are your goddamned books! AND DON’T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!”

  She started smashing the glass panes in my front door. She took The Selected Works of Henry Chinaski and smashed pane after pane, screaming, “You want your books back? Here are your goddamned books! AND DON’T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN! I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!”

  I stood there as she screamed and broke glass.

  Where are the police? I thought. Where?

  Then Lydia ran down the court walk, took a quick left at the trash bin and ran down the driveway of the apartment house next door. Behind a small bush was my typewriter, my radio and my toaster.

  Lydia picked up the typewriter and ran out into the center of the street with it. It was a heavy old-fashioned standard machine. Lydia lifted the typer high over her head with both hands and smashed it in the street. The platen and several other parts flew off. She picked the typer up again, raised it over her head and screamed, “DON’T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!” and smashed it into the street again.

  Then Lydia jumped into her car and drove off. Fifteen seconds later the police cruiser drove up. “It’s an orange Volks. It’s called the Thing, looks like a tank. I don’t remember the license number, but the letters are HZY, like HAZY, got it?”

  “Address?”

  I gave them her address….

  Sure enough, they brought her back. I heard her in the back seat, wailing, as they drove up.

  “STAND BACK!” said one cop as he jumped out. He followed me up to my place. He walked inside and stepped on some broken glass. For some reason he shone his flashlight on the ceiling and the ceiling mouldings.

  “You want to press charges?” the cop asked me.

  “No. She has children. I don’t want her to lose her kids. Her ex-husband is trying to get them from her. But please tell her that people aren’t supposed to go around doing this sort of thing.”

  “O.K.,” he said, “now sign this.”

  He wrote it down in hand in a little notebook with lined paper. It said that I, Henry Chinaski, would not press charges against one Lydia Vance.

  I signed it and he left.

  I locked what was left of the door and went to bed and tried to sleep.

  In an hour or so the phone rang. It was Lydia. She was back home.

  “YOU-SON-OF-A-BITCH, YOU EVER TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN AGAIN AND I’LL DO THE SAME THING ALL OVER AGAIN! ”

  She hung up.

  47

  Two nights later I went over to Tammie’s place on Rustic Court. I knocked. The lights weren’t on. It seemed empty. I looked in her mailbox. There were letters in there. I wrote a note, “Tammie, I have been trying to phone you. I came over and you weren’t in. Are you all right? Phone me…. Hank.”

  I drove over at 11 AM the next morning. Her car wasn’t out front. My note was still stuck in the door. I rang anyhow. The letters were still in the mailbox. I left a note in the mailbox: “Tammie, where the hell are you? Contact me…. Hank.”

  I drove all over the neighborhood looking for that smashed red Camaro.

  I returned that night. It was raining. My notes were wet. There was more mail in the box. I left her a book of my poems, inscribed. Then I went back to my Volks. I had a Maltese cross hanging from my rearview mirror. I cut the cross down, took it back to her place and tied it around her doorknob.

  I didn’t know where any of her friends lived, where her mother lived, where her lo
vers lived.

  I went back to my court and wrote some love poems.

  48

  I was sitting with an anarchist from Beverly Hills, Ben Solvnag, who was writing my biography when I heard her footsteps on the court walk. I knew the sound—they were always fast and frantic and sexy—those tiny feet. I lived near the rear of the court. My door was open. Tammie ran in.

  We were both into each other’s arms, hugging and kissing.

  Ben Solvnag said goodbye and was gone.

  “Those sons of bitches confiscated my stuff, all my stuff! I couldn’t make the rent! That dirty son-of-a-bitch!”

  “I’ll go over there and kick his ass. We’ll get your stuff back.”

  “No, he has guns! All kinds of guns!”

  “Oh.”

  “My daughter is at my mother’s.”

  “How about something to drink?”

  “Sure.”

  “What?”

  “Extra dry champagne.”

  “O.K.”

  The door was still open and the afternoon sunlight came in through her hair—it was so long and so red it burned.

  “Can I take a bath?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Wait for me,” she said.

  In the morning we talked about her finances. She had money coming in: child support plus a couple of unemployment checks with more to come.

  “There’s a vacancy in the place in back, right above me.”

  “How much is it?”

  “$105 with half of the utilities paid.”

  “Oh hell, I can make that. Do they take children? A child?”

  “They will. I’ve got pull. I know the managers.”

  By Sunday she was moved in. She was right above me. She could look into my kitchen where I typed my things on the breakfast nook table.

  49

  That Tuesday night we were sitting at my place drinking; Tammie, me and her brother, Jay. The phone rang. It was Bobby.

  “Louie and his wife are down here and she’d like to meet you.”

  Louie was the one who had just vacated Tammie’s place. He played in jazz groups at small clubs and wasn’t having much luck. But he was an interesting sort.