Women: A Novel

  “How come you live in the Fairfax district?” I asked.

  “I like it there.”

  “Should I drive you home?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  She lived two blocks east of Fairfax. “That’s my place there,” she said, “with the screen door.”

  “Looks like a nice place.”

  “It is. Want to come in for a while?”

  “Got anything to drink?”

  “Can you drink sherry?”

  “Sure …”

  We went in. There were towels on the floor. She kicked them under the couch as she walked past. Then she came out with the sherry. It was very cheap stuff.

  “Where’s your bathroom?” I asked.

  I flushed the toilet to cover the sound, then puked the sherry back up. I flushed again and came out. “Another drink?” she asked. “Sure.”

  “The kids came by,” she said, “that’s why the place is such a mess.”

  “You’ve got kids?”

  “Yes but Sam is taking care of them.”

  I finished my drink. “Well, look, thanks for the drinks. I’ve got to get going.”

  “All right, you’ve got my phone number.”

  “Right.”

  Valencia walked me to the screen door. We kissed there. Then I walked out to the Volks. I got in and drove off. I circled around the corner, double-parked, opened the door and puked up the other drink.

  98

  I saw Sara every three or four days, at her place or at mine. We slept together but there was no sex. We came close but we never quite got to it. Drayer Baba’s precepts held strong.

  We decided to spend the holidays together at my place, Christmas and New Year’s.

  Sara arrived about noon on the 24th in her Volks van. I watched her park, then went out to meet her. She had lumber tied to the roof of the van. It was to be my Christmas present: she was going to build me a bed. My bed was a mockery: a simple box spring with the innards sticking out of the mattress. Sara had also brought an organic turkey plus the trimmings. I was to pay for that and the white wine. And there were some small gifts for each of us.

  We carried in the lumber and the turkey and the sundry bits and pieces. I placed the box spring, mattress and headboard outside and put a sign on them: “Free.” The head-board went first, the box spring second, and finally somebody took the mattress. It was a poor neighborhood.

  I had seen Sara’s bed at her place, slept in it, and had liked it. I had always disliked the average mattress, at least the ones I was able to buy. I had spent over half my life in beds which were better suited for somebody shaped like an angleworm.

  Sara had built her own bed, and she was to build me another like it. A solid wood platform supported by 7 four-by-four legs (the seventh directly in the middle) topped by a layer of firm 4-inch foam. Sara had some good ideas. I held the boards and Sara drove home the nails. She was good with a hammer. She only weighed 105 pounds but she could drive a nail. It was going to be a fine bed.

  It didn’t take Sara long.

  Then we tested it—non-sexually—as Drayer Baba smiled over us.

  We drove around looking for a Christmas tree. I wasn’t too anxious to get a tree (Christmas had always been an unhappy time in my childhood) and when we found all the lots empty, the lack of a tree didn’t bother me. Sara was unhappy as we drove back. But after we got in and had a few glasses of white wine she regained her spirits and went about hanging Christmas ornaments, lights, and tinsel everywhere, some of the tinsel in my hair.

  I had read that more people committed suicide on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day than at any other time. The holiday had little or nothing to do with the Birth of Christ, apparently.

  All the radio music was sickening and the t.v. was worse, so we turned it off and she phoned her mother in Maine. I spoke to Mama too and Mama was not all that bad.

  “At first,” said Sara, “I was thinking about fixing you up with Mama but she’s older than you are.”

  “Forget it.”

  “She had nice legs.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Are you prejudiced against old age?”

  “Yes, everybody’s old age but mine.”

  “You act like a movie star. Have you always had women 20 or 30 years younger than you?”

  “Not when I was in my twenties.”

  “All right then. Have you ever had a woman older than you, I mean lived with her?”

  “Yeah, when I was 25 I lived with a woman 35.”

  “How’d it go?”

  “It was terrible. I fell in love.”

  “What was terrible?”

  “She made me go to college.”

  “And that’s terrible?”

  “It wasn’t the kind of college you’re thinking of. She was the faculty, and I was the student body.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “I buried her.”

  “With honors? Did you kill her?”

  “Booze killed her.”

  “Merry Christmas.”

  “Sure. Tell me about yours.”

  “I pass.”

  “Too many?”

  “Too many, yet too few.”

  Thirty or 40 minutes later there was a knock on the door. Sara got up and opened it. A sex symbol walked in. On Christmas Eve. I didn’t know who she was. She was in a tight black outfit and her huge breasts looked as if they would burst out of the top of her dress. It was magnificent. I had never seen breasts like that, showcased in just that way, except in the movies.

  “Hi, Hank!”

  She knew me.

  “I’m Edie. You met me at Bobby’s one night.”

  “Oh?”

  “Were you too drunk to remember?”

  “Hello, Edie. This is Sara.”

  “I was looking for Bobby. I thought Bobby might be down here.”

  “Sit down and have a drink.”

  Edie sat in a chair to my right, very near to me. She was about 25. She lit a cigarette and sipped at her drink. Each time she leaned forward over the coffee table I was sure that it would happen, I was sure that those breasts would spring out. And I was afraid of what I might do if they did. I just didn’t know. I had never been a breast man, I had always been a leg man. But Edie really knew how to do it. I was afraid and I peeked sideways at her breasts not knowing whether I wanted them to fall out or to stay in.

  “You met Manny,” she said to me, “down at Bobby’s?”

  “Yeh.”

  “I had to kick his ass out. He was too fucking jealous. He even hired a private dick to follow me! Imagine that! That simple sack of shit!”

  “Yeh.”

  “I hate men who are beggars! I hate little toadies!”

  “? good man nowadays is hard to find,’“ I said. “That’s a song. Out of World War Two. They also had, ‘Don’t sit under the apple tree with anybody else but me.’”

  “Hank, you’re babbling….” said Sara.

  “Have another drink, Edie,” I said and I poured her one.

  “Men are such shits!” she continued. “I walked into a bar the other day. I was with four guys, close friends. We sat around chugalugging pitchers of beer, we’re laughing, you know, just having a good time, we weren’t bothering anybody. Then I got the idea that I would like to shoot a game of pool. I like to shoot pool. I think that when a lady shoots pool it shows her class.”

  “I can’t shoot pool,” I said. “I always rip up the green. And I’m not even a lady.”

  “Anyway, I go up to the table and there’s this guy shooting pool all by himself. I go up to him and I say, ‘Look, you’ve had this table a long time. My friends and myself want to shoot a little pool. Do you mind letting us have the table for a while?’ He turned and looked at me. He waited. Then he sneered, and he said, ‘All right.’”

  Edie became animated and bounced around as she spoke and I peeked at her things.

  “I went back and told my friends, ‘We got the table.’ Finally t
his guy shooting is down to his last ball when a buddy of his walks up and says, ‘Hey, Ernie, I hear you’re giving up the table.’ And you know what he tells this guy? He says, ‘Yeah, I’m giving it up to that bitch!’ I heard it and I saw RED! This guy is bent over the table to cue in on his last ball. I grabbed a pool stick and while he was bent over I hit him over the head as hard as I could. The guy dropped on the table like he was dead. He was known in the bar and so a bunch of his friends rush over but meanwhile my four buddies rush over too. Boy, what a brawl! Bottles smashing, broken mirrors…. I don’t know how we got out of there but we did. You got some shit?”

  “Yeah but I don’t roll too good.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  Edie rolled a tight thin joint, just like a pro. She sucked it up, hissing, then passed it to me.

  “So I went back the next night, alone. The owner who is the bartender, he recognizes me. His name is Claude. ‘Claude,’ I told him, ‘I’m sorry about yesterday but that guy at the table was a real bastard. He called me a bitch.’”

  I poured more drinks all around. In another minute her breasts would be out.

  “The owner said, ‘It’s O.K., forget it.’ He seemed like a nice guy. ‘What do you drink?’ he asked me. I hung around the bar and had two or three free drinks and he said, ‘You know, I can use another waitress.’”

  Edie took a hit on the joint and continued. “He told me about the other waitress. ‘She pulled the men in but she made a lot of trouble. She played one guy against the other. She was always on stage. Then I found out she was tricking on the side. She was using MY place to peddle her pussy!’”

  “Really?” Sara asked.

  “That’s what he said. Anyhow, he offered me a position as a waitress. And he said, ‘No tricking on the job!’ I told him to cut the shit, I wasn’t one of those. I thought maybe now I’ll be able to save some money and go to U.C.L.A., to become a chemist and to study French, that’s what I’ve always wanted to do. Then he said, ‘Come on back here, I want to show you where we store our excess stock and also I’ve got an outfit I’d like you to try on. It’s never been worn and I think it’s your size.’ So I went into this dark little room with him and he tried to grab me. I pushed him off. Then he said, ‘Just give me a little kiss.’ ‘Fuck off!’ I told him. He was bald and fat and very short and had false teeth and black warts with hairs growing out of them on his cheeks. He rushed me and grabbed a hunk of my ass with one hand and some titty with the other and he tried to kiss me. I pushed him off again. ‘I got a wife,’ he said, ‘I love my wife, don’t worry!’ He rushed me again and I

  gave him a knee you-know-where. I guess he didn’t have anything there, he didn’t even flinch. ‘I’ll give you money,’ he said, ‘I’ll be nice to you!’ I told him to eat shit and die. And so I lost another job.”

  “That is a sad story,” I said.

  “Listen,” said Edie, “I gotta go. Merry Christmas. Thanks for the drinks.”

  She got up and I walked her to the door, opened it. She walked off through the court. I came back and sat down. “You son-of-a-bitch,” said Sara. “What is it?”

  “If I hadn’t been here you would have fucked her.”

  “I hardly know the lady.”

  “All that tit! You were terrified! You were afraid to even look at her!”

  “What’s she doing wandering around on Christmas Eve?”

  “Why didn’t you ask her?”

  “She said she was looking for Bobby.”

  “If I hadn’t been here you would have fucked her.”

  “I don’t know. I have no way of knowing….”

  Then Sara stood up and screamed. She began to sob and then she ran into the other room. I poured a drink. The colored lights on the walls blinked off and on.

  99

  Sara was preparing the turkey dressing and I sat in the kitchen talking to her. We were both sipping white wine.

  The phone rang. I went and got it. It was Debra. “I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas, wet noodle.”

  “Thank you, Debra. And a happy Santa Claus to you.”

  We talked awhile, then I went back and sat down.

  “Who was that?”

  “Debra.”

  “How is she?”

  “All right, I guess.”

  “What did she want?”

  “She sent Christmas greetings.”

  “You’ll like this organic turkey, and the stuffing is good too. People eat poison, pure poison. America is one of the few countries where cancer of the colon is prevalent.”

  “Yeah, my ass itches a lot, but it’s just my hemorrhoids. I had them cut out once. Before they operate they run this snake up your intestine with a little light attached and they peek into you looking for cancer. That snake is pretty long. They just run it up you!”

  The phone rang again. I went and got it. It was Cassie. “How are you doing?”

  “Sara and I are preparing a turkey.”

  “I miss you.”

  “Merry Christmas to you too. How’s the job going?”

  “All right. I’m off until January 2nd.”

  “Happy New Year, Cassie!”

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m a little airy. I’m not used to white wine so early in the day.”

  “Give me a call some time.”

  “Sure.”

  I walked back into the kitchen. “It was Cassie. People phone on Christmas. Maybe Drayer Baba will call.”

  “He won’t.”

  “Why?”

  “He never spoke aloud. He never spoke and he never touched money.”

  “That’s pretty good. Let me eat some of that raw dressing.”

  “O.K.”

  “Say—not bad!”

  Then the phone rang again. It worked like that. Once it started ringing it kept ringing. I walked into the bedroom and answered it.

  “Hello,” I said. “Who’s this?”

  “You son-of-a-bitch. Don’t you know?”

  “No, not really.” It was a drunken female.

  “Guess.”

  “Wait. I know! It’s Iris!” “Yes, Iris. And I’m pregnant!”

  “Do you know who the father is?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “I guess you’re right. How are things in Vancouver?”

  “All right. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye.”

  I walked back into the kitchen again.

  “It was the Canadian belly dancer,” I told Sara.

  “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s just full of Christmas cheer.”

  Sara put the turkey in the oven and we went into the front room. We talked small talk for some time. Then the phone rang again. “Hello,” I said.

  “Are you Henry Chinaski?” It was a young male voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you Henry Chinaski, the writer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, we’re a gang of guys from Bel Air and we really dig your stuff, man! We dig it so much that we’re going to reward you, man!”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, we’re coming over with some 6-packs of beer.”

  “Stick that beer up your ass.”

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘Stick it up your ass!’“ I hung up.

  “Who was that?” asked Sara.

  “I just lost 3 or 4 readers from Bel Air. But it was worth it.”

  The turkey was done and I pulled it out of the oven, put it on a platter, moved the typer and all my papers off the kitchen table, and placed the turkey there. I began carving as Sara came in with the vegetables. We sat down. I filled my plate, Sara filled hers. It looked good.

  “I hope that one with the tits doesn’t come by again,” said Sara. She looked very upset at the thought. “If she does I’ll give her a piece.” “What?”

  I pointed to the turkey. “I said, ‘I??
?ll give her a piece.’ You can watch.”

  Sara screamed. She stood up. She was trembling. Then she ran into the bedroom. I looked at my turkey. I couldn’t eat it. I had pushed the wrong button again. I walked into the front room with my drink and sat down. I waited 15 minutes and then I put the turkey and the vegetables in the refrigerator.

  Sara went back to her place the next day and I had a cold turkey sandwich about 3 PM. About 5 PM there was a terrific pounding on the door. I opened it up. It was Tammie and Arlene. They were cruising on speed. They walked in and jumped around, both of them talking at once.

  “Got anything to drink?”

  “Shit, Hank, ya got anything to drink?”

  “How was your fucking Christmas?”

  “Yeah. How was your fucking Christmas, man?”

  “There’s some beer and wine in the icebox,” I told them.

  (You can always tell an old-timer: he calls a refrigerator an icebox.)

  They danced into the kitchen and opened the icebox. “Hey, here’s a turkey!”

  “We’re hungry, Hank! Can we have some turkey?”

  “Sure.”

  Tammie came out with a leg and bit into it. “Hey, this is an awful turkey! It needs spices!”

  Arlene came out with slices of meat in her hands. “Yeah, this needs spices. It’s too mellow! You got any spices?”

  “In the cupboard,” I said.

  They jumped back into the kitchen and began sprinkling on the spices.

  “There! That’s better!”

  “Yeah, it tastes like something now!”

  “Organic turkey, shit!”

  “Yeah, it’s shit!”

  “I want some more!”

  “Me too. But it needs spices.”

  Tammie came out and sat down. She had just about finished the leg. Then she took the leg bone, bit and broke it in half, and started chewing the bone. I was astonished. She was eating the leg bone, spitting splinters out on the rug.

  “Hey, you’re eating the bone!”

  “Yeah, it’s good!”

  Tammie ran back into the kitchen for some more.

  Soon they both came out, each of them with a bottle of beer.

  “Thanks, Hank.”

  “Yeah, thanks, man.”

  They sat there sucking at the beers.