Women: A Novel

“Well,” said Tammie, “we gotta get going.”

  “Yeah, we’re going out to rape some junior high school boys!”

  “Yeah!”

  The both jumped up and they were gone out the door. I walked into the kitchen and looked into the refrig. That turkey looked like it had been mauled by a tiger—the carcass had simply been ripped apart. It looked obscene.

  Sara drove over the next evening. “How’s the turkey?” she asked. “O.K.”

  She walked in and opened the refrigerator door. She screamed. Then she ran out.

  “My god, what happened?”

  “Tammie and Arlene came by. I don’t think they had eaten for a week.”

  “Oh, it’s sickening. It hurts my heart!”

  “I’m sorry. I should have stopped them. They were on uppers.”

  “Well, there’s just one thing I can do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I can make you a nice turkey soup. I’ll go get some vegetables.”

  “All right.” I gave her a twenty.

  Sara prepared the soup that night. It was delicious. When she left in the morning she gave me instructions on how to heat it up.

  Tammie knocked on the door around 4 PM. I let her in and she walked straight to the kitchen. The refrigerator door opened. “Hey, soup, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it any good?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mind if I try some?”

  “O.K.”

  I heard her put it on the stove. Then I heard her dipping in there.

  “God! This stuff is mild! It needs spices!”

  I heard her spooning the spices in. Then she tried it.

  “That’s better! But it needs more! I’m Italian, you know. Now … there … that’s better! Now I’ll let it heat up. Can I have a beer?”

  “All right.”

  She came in with her bottle and sat down. “Do you miss me?” she asked. “You’ll never know.”

  “I think I’m going to get my job back at the Play Pen.”

  “Great.”

  “Some good tippers come in that place. One guy he tipped me 5 bucks each night. He was in love with me. But he never asked me out. He just ogled me. He was strange. He was a rectal surgeon and sometimes he masturbated as he watched me walking around. I could smell the stuff on him, you know.”

  “Well, you got him off….”

  “I think the soup is ready. Want some?”

  “No thanks.”

  Tammie went in and I heard her spooning it out of the pot. She was in there a long time. Then she came out. “Could you lend me a five until Friday?”

  “No.”

  “Then lend me a couple of bucks.”

  “No.”

  “Just give me a dollar then.”

  I gave Tammie a pocketful of change. It came to a dollar and thirty-seven cents. “Thanks,” she said. “It’s all right.”

  Then she was gone out of the door.

  Sara came by the next evening. She seldom came by this often, it was something about the holiday season, everybody was lost, half-crazy, afraid. I had the white wine ready and poured us both a drink.

  “How’s the Inn going?” I asked her.

  “Business is crappy. It hardly pays to stay open.”

  “Where are your customers?”

  “They’ve all left town; they’ve all gone somewhere.”

  “All our schemes have holes in them.”

  “Not all of them. Some people just keep making it and making it.”

  “True.”

  “How’s the soup?”

  “Just about finished.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “I didn’t have too much.”

  Sara walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. “What happened to the soup? It looks strange.” I heard her tasting it. Then she ran to the sink and spit it out. “Jesus, it’s been poisoned! What happened? Did Tammie and Arlene come back and eat soup too?”

  “Just Tammie.”

  Sara didn’t scream. She just poured the remainder of the soup into the sink and ran the garbage disposal. I could hear her sobbing, trying not to make any sound. That poor organic turkey had had a rough Christmas.

  100

  New Year’s Eve was another bad night for me to get through. My parents had always delighted in New Year’s Eve, listening to it approach on the radio, city by city, until it arrived in Los Angeles. The firecrackers went off and the whistles and horns blew and the amateur drunks vomited and husbands flirted with other men’s wives and the wives flirted with who ever they could. Everybody kissed and played grab-ass in the bathrooms and closets and sometimes openly, especially at midnight, and there were terrible family arguments the next day not to mention the Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl game.

  Sara arrived early New Year’s Eve. She got excited about things like Magic Mountain, outer space movies, Star Trek, and over certain rock bands, creamed spinach, and pure food, but she had better basic common sense than any woman I had ever met. Perhaps only one other, Joanna Dover, could match her good sense and kind spirit. Sara was better looking and much more faithful than any of my other current women, so this new year was not going to be so bad after all.

  I had just been wished a “Happy New Year” by a local idiot news broadcaster on t.v. I disliked being wished a “Happy New Year” by some stranger. How did he know who I was? I might be a man with a 5-year-old child wired to the ceiling and gagged, hanging by her ankles as I slowly sliced her to pieces.

  Sara and I had begun to celebrate and drink but it was difficult to get drunk when half the world was straining to get drunk along with you.

  “Well,” I said to Sara, “it ain’t been a bad year. Nobody murdered me.”

  “And you’re still able to drink every night and get up at noon every day.”

  “If I can just hold out another year.”

  “Just an old alcoholic bull.”

  There was a knock on the door. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Dinky Summers, the folk rock man and his girl friend Janis.

  “Dinky!” I hollered. “Hey, shit, man, what’s happening?”

  “I don’t know, Hank. I just thought we’d drop by.”

  “Janis this is Sara. Sara … Janis.”

  Sara went out and got two more glasses. I poured. The talk wasn’t much.

  “I’ve written about ten new pieces. I think I’m getting better.”

  “I think he is too,” said Janis, “really.”

  “Hey look, man, that night I opened your act…. Tell me, Hank, was I that bad?”

  “Listen, Dinky, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I was drinking more than I was listening. I was thinking of myself having to go out there and I was getting ready to face it, it makes me puke.”

  “But I just love to get up in front of the crowd and when I get over to them and they like my stuff I’m in heaven.”

  “Writing’s different. You do it alone, it has nothing to do with a live audience.”

  “You might be right.”

  “I was there,” said Sara. “Two guys had to help Hank up on stage. He was drunk and he was sick.”

  “Listen, Sara,” asked Dinky, “Was my act that bad?”

  “No, it wasn’t. They were just impatient for Chinaski. Everything else irritated them.”

  “Thanks, Sara.”

  “Folk rock just doesn’t do much for me,” I said. “What do you like?”

  “Almost all the German classical composers plus a few of the Russians.”

  “I’ve written about ten new pieces.”

  “Maybe we can hear some?” asked Sara.

  “But you don’t have your guitar, do you?” I asked.

  “Oh, he’s got it,” said Janis, “it’s always with him!”

  Dinky got up, went out and got his instrument from the car. He sat down cross-legged on the rug and began tuning that thing. We were going to get some real live entertainment. Soon he began. He had
a full, strong voice. It bounced off the walls. The song was about a woman. About a heartbreak between Dinky and some woman. It was not really too bad. Maybe up on stage with people paying it would be all right. But it was harder to tell when they were sitting on the rug in front of you. It was much too personal and embarrassing. Yet, I decided he was not really too bad. But he was in trouble. He was aging. The golden curls were not quite as golden and the wide-eyed innocence drooped a little. He would soon be in trouble.

  We applauded.

  “Too much, man,” I said.

  “You really like it, Hank?”

  I waved my hand in the air.

  “You know, I’ve always dug your stuff,” he said.

  “Thanks, man.”

  He jumped into the next song. It also was about a woman. His woman, an ex-woman: she’d been out all night. It had some humor but I wasn’t sure if it was deliberate. Anyhow, Dinky finished and we applauded. He went into the next.

  Dinky was inspired. He had a lot of volume. His feet twisted and curled in his tennis shoes and he let us hear it. Actually, it was him somehow. He didn’t look right and he didn’t quite sound right, yet the product itself was much better than what one usually heard. It made me feel low that I couldn’t praise him without reservation. But then if you lied to a man about his talent just because he was sitting across from you, that was the most unforgivable lie of them all, because that was telling him to go on, to continue which was the worst way for a man without real talent to waste his life, finally. But many people did just that, friends and relatives mostly.

  Dinky rocked into the next song. He was going to give us all ten. We listened and applauded but at least my applause was the most restrained.

  “That 3rd line, Dinky, I didn’t like it,” I said. “But it’s needed, you see, because …”

  “I know.”

  Dinky went on. He sang all his songs. It took quite some time. There were rests in between. When the New Year finally came in Dinky and Janis and Sara and Hank still were together. But thankfully the guitar case was closed. A hung jury.

  Dinky and Janis left about 1 AM and Sara and I went to bed. We began hugging and kissing. I was, as I’ve explained, a kiss freak. I almost couldn’t handle it. Great kissing was seldom, rare. They never did it well in the movies or on t.v. Sara and I were in bed, body rubbing, and with the heavy good kissing. She really let herself go. It had always been the same in the past. Drayer Baba was watching up there—she’d grab my cock and I’d play with her pussy and then she’d end up rubbing my cock along her cunt and in the morning the skin of my cock would be red and raw with rubbing.

  We got to the rubbing part. And then suddenly she took a hold of my cock and slid it into her cunt.

  I was astounded. I didn’t know what to do.

  Up and down, right? Or rather, in and out. It was like riding a bicycle: you never forget. She was a truly beautiful woman. I couldn’t hold back. I grabbed her golden red hair and pulled Sara’s mouth to mine and I came.

  She got up and went to the bathroom and I looked up at my blue bedroom ceiling and I said, Drayer Baba, forgive her.

  But since he never talked and he never touched money I could neither expect an answer nor could I pay him.

  Sara came out of the bathroom. Her figure was slight, she was thin and tan, but totally entrancing. Sara got into the bed and we kissed. It was an easy open-mouthed love kiss.

  “Happy New Year,” she said.

  We slept, wrapped together.

  101

  I had been corresponding with Tanya and on the evening of January 5th she phoned. She had a high excited sexy voice like Betty Boop used to have. “I’m flying down tomorrow evening. Will you pick me up at the airport?”

  “How will I recognize you?”

  “I’ll wear a white rose.”

  “Great”

  “Listen, are you sure you want me to come?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, I’ll be there.”

  I put down the phone. I thought of Sara. But Sara and I weren’t married. A man had a right. I was a writer. I was a dirty old man. Human relationships didn’t work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death—in a cesspool. The most one could hope for in a human relationship, I decided, was two and one-half years. King Mongut of Siam had 9,000 wives and concubines; King Solomon of the Old Testament had 700 wives; August the Strong of Saxony had 365 wives, one for each day of the year. Safety in numbers.

  I dialed Sara’s number. She was in.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “I’m glad you called,” she said, “I was just thinking of you.”

  “How’s the old health food Inn doing?”

  “It wasn’t a bad day.”

  “You ought to raise your prices. You give your stuff away.”

  “If I just break even I don’t have to pay taxes.”

  “Listen, somebody phoned me tonight.”

  “Who?’

  “Tanya.”

  “Tanya?”

  “Yes, we’ve been writing. She likes my poems.”

  “I saw that letter. The one she wrote. You left it lying around. She’s the one who sent you the photo with her cunt showing?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she’s coming to see you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hank, I’m sick, I’m worse than sick. I don’t know what to do.”

  “She’s coming. I said I’d meet her at the airport.”

  “What are you trying to do? What does it mean?”

  “Maybe I’m not a good man. There are all kinds and degrees, you know.”

  “That’s no answer. What about you, what about me? How about us? I hate to sound like a soap opera but I’ve let my feelings get involved….”

  “She’s coming down. Is this the end for us, then?”

  “Hank, I don’t know. I think so. I can’t handle it.”

  “You’ve been very kind to me. I’m not sure I always know what I’m doing.”

  “How long is she going to be staying here?”

  “Two or 3 days, I guess.”

  “Don’t you know how I’ll feel?”

  “I think so….”

  “O.K., phone me when she’s gone, then we’ll see.”

  “Right.”

  I walked into the bathroom and looked at my face. It looked terrible. I clipped some white hairs out of my beard and some from the hair around my ears. Hello, Death. But I’ve had almost 6 decades. I’ve given you so many clean shots at me that I should have been yours long ago. I want to be buried near the racetrack … where I can hear the stretch run.

  The next evening I was at the airport, waiting. I was early so I went to the bar. I ordered my drink and heard somebody sobbing. I looked around. At a table in the rear a woman was sobbing. She was a young Negress—very light in color—in a tight blue dress and she was intoxicated. She had her feet up on a chair and her dress was pulled back and there were these long smooth sexy legs. Every guy in the bar must have had a hard-on. I couldn’t stop looking. She was red hot. I could visualize her on my couch, showing all that leg. I bought another drink and went over. I stood there trying not to let my hard-on show.

  “Are you all right?” I asked. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Yeah, buy me a stinger.”

  I came back with her stinger and sat down. She had taken her feet off the chair. I sat next to her in the booth. She lit a cigarette and pressed her flank to mine. I lit a cigarette. “My name’s Hank,” I said. “I’m Elsie,” she said. I pressed my leg against hers, moved it up and down slowly. “I’m into plumbing supplies,” I said. Elsie didn’t answer.

  “The son-of-a-bitch left me,” she finally said, “I hate him, my god. You don’t know how I hate him!”
br />   “It happens to almost everybody 6 or 8 times.”

  “Probably, but that doesn’t help me. I just want to kill him.”

  “Take it easy now.”

  I reached down and squeezed her knee. My hard-on was so strong it hurt. I was damn near ready to come. “Fifty dollars,” Elsie said. “For what?”

  “Any way you want it.”

  “Do you work the airport?”

  “Yeah, I sell Girl Scout cookies.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought you were in trouble. I have to meet my mother in 5 minutes.”

  I got up and walked away. A hooker! When I looked back Elsie had her feet up on the chair again, showing more than ever. I almost went back. God damn you anyhow, Tanya.

  Tanya’s plane made its approach, landed without crashing. I stood and waited, a little bit behind the crush of greeters. What would she be like? I didn’t want to think about what I was like. The first passengers came through and I waited.

  Oh, look at that one! If that were only Tanya!

  Or her. My god! All that haunch. Dressed in yellow, smiling.

  Or that one … in my kitchen washing the dishes.

  Or that one … screaming at me, one breast fallen loose.

  There had been some real women on that plane.

  I felt somebody tap me on the back. I turned and behind me was this very small child. She looked about 18, thin long neck, a bit round-shouldered, long nose, but breasts, yes, and legs and a behind, yes.

  “It’s me,” she said.

  I kissed her on the cheek. “Got any baggage?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s go to the bar. I hate waiting for baggage.”

  “All right.”

  “You’re so small….”

  “Ninety pounds.”

  “Jesus….” I’d slice her in half. It would be like a child rape. We went into the bar and took a booth. The waitress asked for Tanya’s I.D. She had it ready. “You look 18,” the waitress said.

  “I know,” Tanya answered in her high Betty Boop voice. “I’ll have a whiskey sour.”

  “Give me a cognac,” I told the waitress.

  Two booths over the high-yellow was still sitting with her dress pulled up around her ass. Her panties were pink. She kept staring at me. The waitress arrived with the drinks. We sipped them. I saw the high-yellow get up. She wobbled toward our booth. She put both hands flat on our table and leaned over. Her breath stank of booze. She looked at me.