Women: A Novel

  We had just split again and I had dropped off the head. I was drinking, a free man again. I had a young friend, Bobby, a rather bland kid who worked in a porno bookstore and was a photographer on the side. He lived a couple of blocks away. Bobby was having trouble with himself and with his wife, Valerie. He phoned one evening and said he was bringing Valerie over to stay the night with me. It sounded fine. Valerie was 22, absolutely lovely, with long blond hair, mad blue eyes and a beautiful body. Like Lydia, she had also spent some time in a madhouse. After a while I heard them drive up on the lawn in front of my court. Valerie got out. I remembered Bobby telling me that when he first introduced Valerie to his parents they had commented on her dress—that they liked it very much—and she had said, “Yeah, well how about the rest of me?” She had pulled her dress up over her hips. And didn’t have any panties on.

  Valerie knocked. I heard Bobby drive off. I let her in. She looked fine. I poured two scotch and waters. Neither of us spoke. We drank those and I poured two more. After that I said, “Come on, let’s make a bar.” We got into my car. The Glue Machine was right around the corner. I had been 86’d earlier that week but nothing was said when we walked in. We got a table and ordered drinks. We still didn’t talk. I just looked into those mad blue eyes. We were sitting side by side and I kissed her. Her mouth was cool and open. I kissed her again and our legs pressed together. Bobby had a nice wife. Bobby was crazy to pass her around.

  We decided on dinner. We each ordered a steak and we drank and we kissed while we waited. The barmaid said, “Oh, you’re in love!” and we both laughed. When the steaks came Valerie said, “I don’t want to eat mine.”

  “I don’t want to eat mine either,” I said.

  We drank for another hour and then decided to go back to my place. As I drove the car up on the front lawn I saw a woman in the driveway. It was Lydia. She had an envelope in her hand. I got out of the car with Valerie and Lydia looked at us. “Who’s that?” asked Valerie. “The woman I love,” I told her.

  “Who’s the bitch?” screamed Lydia.

  Valerie turned and ran down the sidewalk. I could hear her high heels on the pavement. “Come on in,” I told Lydia. She followed me in.

  “I came here to give this letter to you and it looks like I came at the right time. Who was she?”

  “Bobby’s wife. We’re just friends.”

  “You were going to fuck her, weren’t you?”

  “Now look, I told her I love you.”

  “You were going to fuck her, weren’t you?”

  “Now look, baby …”

  Suddenly she shoved me. I was standing in front of the coffee table which was in front of the couch. I fell backward over the coffee table and into the space between the table and the couch. I heard the door slam. And as I got up I heard the engine of Lydia’s car start. Then she drove off.

  Son-of-a-bitch, I thought, one minute I’ve got two women and the next I’ve got none.

  10

  I was surprised the next morning when April knocked on the door. April was the one on ATD who had been at Harry Ascot’s party and who had left with the speed freak. It was 11 AM. April came in and sat down.

  “I’ve always admired your work,” she said.

  I got her a beer and got myself a beer.

  “God is a hook in the sky,” she said.

  “All right,” I said.

  April was on the heavy side but not too fat. She had big hips and a large ass and her hair fell straight down. There was something about the size of her—rugged, like she could handle an ape. Her mental deficiency was attractive to me because she didn’t play games. She crossed her legs, showing me enormous white flanks.

  “I planted tomato seeds down in the basement of the apartment house I live in,” she said.

  “I’ll take some when they come up,” I said.

  “I’ve never had a driver’s license,” April said. “My mother lives in New Jersey.”

  “My mother’s dead,” I said. I walked over and sat next to her on the couch. I grabbed her and kissed her. While I was kissing her she looked right into my eyes. I broke off. “Let’s fuck,” I said.

  “I have an infection,” said April.

  “What?”

  “It’s sort of a fungus. Nothing serious.”

  “Could I catch it?”

  “It’s kind of a milky discharge.”

  “Could I catch it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Let’s fuck.”

  “I don’t know if I want to fuck.”

  “It’ll feel good. Let’s go into the bedroom.”

  April walked into the bedroom and started taking off her clothes. I took mine off. We got under the sheets. I began playing with her parts and kissing her. I mounted her. It was very strange. As if her cunt ran from side to side. I knew I was in there, it felt like I was in there, but I kept slipping sideways, to the left. I kept humping. It was exciting like that. I finished and rolled off.

  Later I drove her to her apartment and we went up. We talked for a long while and I left only after making note of the apartment number and the address. As I walked through the lobby I recognized the apartment house lock boxes. I had delivered mail there many times as a mailman. I went out to my car and drove off.

  11

  Lydia had two children; Tonto, a boy of 8, and Lisa, the little girl of 5 who had interrupted our first fuck. We were together at the table one night eating dinner. Things were going well between Lydia and me and I stayed for dinner almost every night, then slept with Lydia and left about 11 AM the next morning to go back to my place to check the mail and write. The children slept in the next room on a waterbed. It was an old, small house which Lydia rented from an ex-Japanese wrestler now into real estate. He was obviously interested in Lydia. That was all right. It was a nice old house.

  “Tonto,” I said as we were eating, “you know that when your mother screams at night I’m not beating her. You know who’s really in trouble.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Then why don’t you come in and help me?”

  “Uh-uh. I know her.”

  “Listen, Hank,” said Lydia, “don’t turn my kids against me.”

  “He’s the ugliest man in the world,” said Lisa.

  I liked Lisa. She was going to be a sexpot some day, a sexpot with personality.

  After dinner Lydia and I went to our bedroom and stretched out. Lydia was into blackheads and pimples. I had a bad complexion. She moved the lamp down near my face and began. I liked it. It made me tingle and sometimes I got a hard-on. Very intimate. Sometimes between squeezes Lydia would give me a kiss. She always worked on my face first and then moved on to my back and chest.

  “You love me?”

  “Yeh.”

  “Oooh, look at this one!”

  It was a blackhead with a long yellow tail.

  “It’s nice,” I said.

  She was laying flat on top of me. She stopped squeezing and looked at me. “I’ll put you in your grave, you fat fuck!” I laughed. Then Lydia kissed me. “I’ll put you back in the madhouse,” I told her. “Turn over. Let me get your back.”

  I turned over. She squeezed at the back of my neck. “Oooh, there’s a good one! It shot out! It hit me in the eye!”

  “You ought to wear goggles.”

  “Let’s have a little Henry!” “Think of it, a little Henry Chinaski!”

  “Let’s wait a while.”

  “I want a baby now!” “Let’s wait.”

  “All we do is sleep and eat and lay around and make love. We’re like slugs. Slug-love, I call it.”

  “I like it.”

  “You used to write over here. You were busy. You’d bring ink and make your drawings. Now you go home and do all the interesting things there. You just eat and sleep here and then leave first thing in the morning. It’s dull.”

  “I like it.”

  “We haven’t been to a party in months! I like to see people! I’m bored! I’
m so bored I’m about to go crazy! I want to do things! I want to DANCE! I want to live!”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “You’re too old. You just want to sit around and criticize everything and everybody. You don’t want to do anything. Nothing’s good enough for you!”

  I rolled out of bed and stood up. I began putting my shirt on.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I’m getting out of here.”

  “There you go! The minute things don’t go your way you jump up and run out of the door. You never want to talk about things. You go home and get drunk and then you’re so sick the next day you think you’re going to die. Then you phone me!”

  “I’m getting the hell out of here!”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t want to stay where I’m not wanted. I don’t want to stay where I’m disliked.”

  Lydia waited. Then she said, “All right. Come on, lay down. We’ll turn off the light and just be still together.”

  I waited. Then I said, “Well, all right.”

  I undressed entirely and got under the blanket and sheet. I pressed my flank against Lydia’s flank. We were both on our backs. I could hear the crickets. It was a nice neighborhood. A few minutes passed. Then Lydia said, “I’m going to be great.”

  I didn’t answer. A few more minutes passed. Then Lydia leaped out of bed. She threw both of her hands up in the air toward the ceiling and said in a loud voice: “I’M GOING TO BE GREAT! I’M GOING TO BE TRULY GREAT! NOBODY KNOWS HOW GREAT I’M GOING TO BE!”

  “All right,” I said.

  Then she said in a lower voice, “You don’t understand. I’m going to be great. I have more potential than you have!”

  “Potential,” I said, “doesn’t mean a thing. You’ve got to do it. Almost every baby in a crib has more potential than I have.”

  “But I’m GOING to do it! I’M GOING TO BE TRULY GREAT!”

  “All right,” I said. “But meanwhile come on back to bed.”

  Lydia came back to bed. We didn’t kiss each other. We weren’t going to have sex. I felt weary. I listened to the crickets. I don’t know how much time went by. I was almost asleep, not quite, when Lydia suddenly sat straight up in bed. And she screamed. It was a loud scream.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Be quiet.”

  I waited. Lydia sat there, without moving, for what seemed to be about ten minutes. Then she fell back on her pillow.

  “I saw God,” she said, “I just saw God.”

  “Listen, you bitch, you are going to drive me crazy!”

  I got up and began dressing. I was mad. I couldn’t find my shorts. The hell with them, I thought. I left them wherever they were. I had all my clothes on and was sitting on the chair pulling my shoes on my bare feet.

  “What are you doing?” Lydia asked.

  I couldn’t answer. I went into the front room. My coat was flung over a chair and I picked it up, put it on. Lydia ran into the front room. She had put on her blue negligee and a pair of panties. She was barefooted. Lydia had thick ankles. She usually wore boots to hide them.

  “YOU’RE NOT GOING!” she screamed at me.

  “Shit,” I said, “I’m getting out of here.”

  She leaped at me. She usually attacked me while I was drunk. Now I was sober. I sidestepped and she fell to the floor, rolled over and was on her back. I stepped over her on my way to the front door. She was in a spitting rage, snarling, her lips pulled back. She was like a leopardess. I looked down at her. I felt safe with her on the floor. She let out a snarl and as I started to leave she reached up and dug her nails into the sleeve of my coat, pulled and ripped the sleeve off my arm. It was ripped from the coat at the shoulder.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said, “look what you’ve done to my new coat! I just bought it!”

  I opened the door and jumped outside with one bare arm.

  I had just unlocked the door to my car when I heard her bare feet on the asphalt behind me. I leaped in and locked the door. I punched the starter.

  “I’ll kill this car!” she screamed. “I’ll kill this car!”

  Her fists beat on the hood, on the roof, against the windshield. I moved the car ahead very slowly so as not to injure her. My ‘62 Mercury Comet had fallen apart, and I’d recently purchased a ‘67 Volks. I kept it shined and waxed. I even had a whisk broom in the glove compartment. As I pulled away Lydia kept beating on the car with her fists. When I was clear of her I shoved it into second. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw her standing all alone in the moonlight, motionless in her blue negligee and panties. My gut began to twitch and roll. I felt ill, useless, sad. I was in love with her.

  12

  I went to my place, started drinking. I snapped on the radio and found some classical music. I got my Coleman lantern out of the closet. I turned out the lights and sat playing with the Coleman lantern. There were tricks you could play with a Coleman lantern. Like turning it off and then on again and watching the heat of the wick relight it. I also liked to pump the lantern and bring up the pressure. And then there was simply the pleasure of looking at it. I drank and watched the lantern and listened to the music and smoked a cigar.

  The phone rang. It was Lydia. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Just sitting around.”

  “You’re sitting around and drinking and listening to symphony music and playing with that goddamned Coleman lantern!”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you coming back?”

  “No.”

  “All right, drink! Drink and get sick! You know that stuff almost killed you once. Do you remember the hospital?”

  “I’ll never forget it.”

  “All right, drink, DRINK! KILL YOURSELF! SEE IF I GIVE A SHIT!”

  Lydia hung up and so did I. Something told me she wasn’t as worried about my possible death as she was about her next fuck. But I needed a vacation. I needed a rest. Lydia liked to fuck at least five times a week. I preferred three. I got up and went into the breakfast nook where my typewriter stood on the table. I turned on the light, sat down and typed Lydia a 4-page letter. Then I went into the bathroom, got a razorblade, came out, sat down and had a good drink. I took the razorblade and sliced the middle finger of my right hand. The blood ran. I signed my name to the letter in blood.

  I went down to the corner mailbox and dropped the letter in.

  The phone rang several times. It was Lydia. She screamed things at me.

  “I’m going out DANCING! I’m not going to sit around alone while you drink!”

  I told her, “You act like drinking is like my going with another woman.”

  “It’s worse!”

  She hung up.

  I kept drinking. I didn’t feel like sleeping. Soon it was midnight, then I AM, 2 AM. The Coleman lantern burned on….

  At 3:30 AM the phone rang. Lydia again. “Are you still drinking?”

  “Sure!”

  “You rotten son of a bitch!”

  “In fact just as you called I was peeling the cellophane off this pint of Cutty Sark. It’s beautiful. You ought to see it!”

  She slammed down the phone. I mixed another drink. There was good music on the radio. I leaned back. I felt very good.

  The door banged open and Lydia ran into the room. She stood there panting. The pint was on the coffee table. She saw it and grabbed it. I jumped up and grabbed her. When I was drunk and Lydia was insane we were nearly an equal match. She held the bottle high in the air, away from me, and tried to get out of the door with it. I grabbed the arm that held the bottle, and tried to get it away from her.

  “YOU WHORE! YOU HAVE NO RIGHT! GIVE ME THAT FUCKING BOTTLE!”

  Then we were out on the porch, wrestling. We tripped on the stairs and fell to the pavement. The bottle smashed and broke on the cement. She got up and ran off. I heard her car start. I lay there and looked at the broken bottle. It was a foot away. Lydia drove off. The moon was still up. In the bottom of what was lef
t of the bottle I could see a swallow of scotch. Stretched out there on the pavement I reached for it and lifted it to my mouth. A long shard of glass almost poked into one of my eyes as I drank what remained. Then I got up and went inside. The thirst in me was terrible. I walked around picking up beer bottles and drinking the bit that remained in each one. Once I got a mouthful of ashes as I often used beer bottles for ashtrays. It was 4.14 AM. I sat and watched the clock. It was like working in the post office again. Time was motionless while existence was a throbbing unbearable thing. I waited. I waited. I waited. I waited. Finally it was 6 AM. I walked to the corner to the liquor store. A clerk was opening up. He let me in. I purchased another pint of Cutty Sark. I walked back home, locked the door and phoned Lydia.

  “I have here one pint of Cutty Sark from which I am peeling the cellophane. I am going to have a drink. And the liquor store will now be open for 20 hours.”

  She hung up. I had one drink and then walked into the bedroom, stretched out on the bed, and went to sleep without taking off my clothes.

  13

  A week later I was driving down Hollywood Boulevard with Lydia. A weekly entertainment newspaper published in California at that time had asked me to write an article on the life of the writer in Los Angeles. I had written it and was driving over to the editorial offices to submit it. We parked in the lot at Mosley Square. Mosley Square was a section of expensive bungalows used as offices by music publishers, agents, promoters and the like. The rents were very high.

  We went into one of the bungalows. There was a handsome girl behind the desk, educated and cool.

  “I’m Chinaski,” I said, “and here’s my copy.”

  I threw it on the desk.

  “Oh, Mr. Chinaski, I’ve always admired your work very much!”

  “Do you have anything to drink around here?”

  “Just a moment….”

  She went up to a carpeted stairway and came back down with a bottle of expensive red wine. She opened it and pulled some glasses from a hidden bar. How I’d like to get in bed with her, I thought. But there was no way. Yet, somebody was going to bed with her regularly.