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  "She's a flirt. She's impulsive. She'll leave you."

  "Maybe that's some of the attraction."

  "You want a whore. You're afraid of love."

  "You might be right."

  "Just kiss me. Would it be too much to ask you to kiss me?"

  "No."

  I stretched out next to her. We embraced. Dee Dee's mouth smelled of vomit. She kissed, we kissed and she held me. I broke away as gently as I could.

  "Hank," she said, "Stay with me! Don't go back to her! Look, I have nice legs!"

  Dee Dee lifted one of her legs and showed it to me.

  "And I have nice ankles too! Look!"

  She showed me her ankles.

  I was sitting on the edge of the bed. "I can't stay with you, Dee Dee-"

  She sat up and began punching me. Her fists were as hard as rocks. She threw punches with both hands. I sat there as she landed blows. She hit me above the eye, in the eye, on the forehead and cheeks. I even caught one in the throat. "Oh, you bastard! Bastard, bastard, bastard! I HATE YOU!"

  I grabbed her wrists. "All right, Dee Dee, that's enough." She fell back on the bed as I got up and walked out, down the hall and out the door.

  When I got back Lydia was sitting in an armchair. Her face looked dark. "You've been gone a long time. Look at me! You fucked her, didn't you?"

  "No, I didn't."

  "You were gone an awful long time. Look, she scratched your face!"

  "I tell you, nothing happened."

  "Take off your shirt. I want to look at your back!"

  "Oh, shit, Lydia."

  "Take off your shirt and undershirt."

  I took them off. She walked around behind me.

  "What's that scratch on your back?"

  "What scratch?"

  "There's a long one there… from a woman's fingernail."

  "If it's there you put it there…"

  "All right. I know one way to find out."

  "How?"

  "Let's go to bed."

  "All right!"

  I passed the test, but afterwards I thought, how can a man test a woman's fidelity? It seemed unfair.

  21

  I kept getting letters from a lady who lived only a mile or so away. She signed them Nicole. She said she had read some of my books and liked them. I answered one of her letters and she responded with an invitation to visit. One afternoon, without saying anything to Lydia, I got into the Volks and drove on over. She had a flat over a dry cleaner's on Santa Monica Boulevard. Her door was on the street and I could see a stairway through the glass. I rang the bell. "Who is it?" came a woman's voice through a little tin speaker. "I'm Chinaski," I said. A buzzer sounded and I pushed the door open.

  Nicole stood at the top of the stairs looking down at me. She had a cultured, almost tragic face and wore a long green housedress cut low in front. Her body seemed to be very good. She looked at me with large dark brown eyes. There were lots of tiny wrinkles around her eyes, perhaps from too much drinking or crying.

  "Are you alone?" I asked.

  "Yes," she smiled, "come on up."

  I went up. It was spacious, two bedrooms, with very little furniture. I noticed a small bookcase and a rack of classical records. I sat on the couch. She sat next to me. "I just finished," she said, "reading The Life of Picasso."

  There were several copies of The New Yorker on the coffee table.

  "Can I fix you some tea?" Nicole asked.

  "I'll go out and get something to drink."

  "That's not necessary. I have something."

  "What?"

  "Some good red wine?"

  "I'd like some," I said.

  Nicole got up and walked into the kitchen. I watched her move. I had always liked women in long dresses. She moved gracefully. She seemed to have a lot of class. She returned with two glasses and the bottle of wine and poured. She offered me a Benson and Hedges. I lit one.

  "Do you read The New Yorker?" she asked. "They print some good stories."

  "I don't agree."

  "What's wrong with them?

  "They're too educated."

  "I like them."

  "Well, shit," I said.

  We sat drinking and smoking.

  "Do you like my apartment?"

  "Yes, it's nice."

  "It reminds me of some of the places I've had in Europe. I like the space, the light."

  " Europe, huh?"

  "Yes, Greece, Italy… Greece, mostly."

  " Paris?"

  "Oh yes, I liked Paris. London, no."

  Then she told me about herself. Her family had lived in New York City. Her father was a communist, her mother a seamstress in a sweatshop. Her mother had worked the front machine, she was number one, the best of all of them. Tough and likeable. Nicole was self-educated, had grown up in New York, had somehow met a famous doctor, married, lived with him for ten years, then divorced him. She now received only $400 a month alimony, and it was difficult to manage. She couldn't afford her apartment, but she liked it too much to leave.

  "Your writing," she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledge hammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness…"

  "Yeah," I said.

  I put my drink down and looked at her. I cupped her chin in my hand and drew her towards me. I gave her the tiniest kiss.

  Nicole continued talking. She told me quite a few interesting stories, some of which I decided to use myself, either as stories or poems. I watched her breasts as she bent forward and poured drinks. It's like a movie, I thought, like a fucking movie. It seemed funny to me. It felt as if we were on camera. I liked it. It was better than the racetrack, it was better than the boxing matches. We kept drinking. Nicole opened a new bottle. She talked on. It was easy to listen to her. There was wisdom and some laughter in each of her rales. Nicole was impressing me more than she knew. That worried me, somewhat.

  We walked out on the veranda with our drinks and watched the afternoon traffic. She was talking about Huxley and Lawrence in Italy. What shit. I told her that Knut Hamsun had been the world's greatest writer. She looked at me, astonished that I'd heard of him, then agreed. We kissed on the veranda, and I could smell the exhaust from the cars in the street below. Her body felt good against mine. I knew we weren't going to fuck right away, but I also knew that I would be coming back. Nicole knew it too.

  22

  Lydia 's sister Angela came to town from Utah to see Lydia 's new house. Lydia had made a down payment on a little place and the monthly payments were very low. It was a very good buy. The man who sold the house believed he was going to die and he had sold it much too cheap. There was an upstairs bedroom for the children, and an extremely large backyard filled with trees and clumps of bamboo.

  Angela was the oldest of the sisters, the most sensible, with the best body, and was the most realistic. She sold real estate. But there was the problem of where to put Angela. We didn't have room. Lydia suggested Marvin.

  "Marvin?" I asked.

  "Yes, Marvin," said Lydia.

  "All right, let's go," I said.

  We all climbed into Lydia 's orange Thing. The Thing. That's what we called her car. It looked like a tank, very old and ugly. It was late evening. We had already phoned Marvin. He had said he'd be home all evening.

  We drove down to the beach and there was his little house by the shore. "Oh," said Angela, "what a nice house."

  "He's rich, too," said Lydia.

  "And he writes good poetry," I said.

  We got out. Marvin was in there with his saltwater fish tanks and his paintings. He painted pretty well. For a rich kid he had survived nicely, he had come through. I made the introductions. Angela walked around looking at Marvin's paintings. "Oh, very nice." Angela painted too, but she wasn't very good.

  I had brought some beer and had a pint of whiskey hidden in my coat pocket which I nipped on from time to time. Marvin brought out some more beer and a mild flirtation began between Marvin and Angela. Marvin seemed eager enough but Angela seemed in
clined to laugh at him. She liked him, but not well enough to fuck him right away. We drank and talked. Marvin had bongo drums and a piano and some grass. He had a good, comfortable house. In a house like this I could write better, I thought, my luck would be better. You could hear the ocean and there were no neighbors to complain about the noise of a typewriter.

  I continued to nip at the whiskey. We stayed 2 or 3 hours, then left. Lydia took the freeway back.

  " Lydia," I said, "you fucked Marvin, didn't you?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "The time you went over there late at night, alone."

  "Goddamn you, I don't want to hear that!"

  "Well, it's true, you fucked him!"

  "Listen, if you keep it up I'm not going to stand for it!"

  "You fucked him."

  Angela looked frightened. Lydia drove over to the shoulder of the freeway, stopped the car and pushed the door open on my side. "Get out!" she said.

  I got out. The car drove off. I walked along the shoulder of the freeway. I took the pint out and had a nip. I walked along about 5 minutes when the Thing pulled up alongside me. Lydia opened the door. "Get in." I got in.

  "Don't say a word."

  "You fucked him. I know you did."

  "Oh Christ!"

  Lydia drove back on to the shoulder of the freeway and pushed the door open again. "Get out!"

  I got out. I walked along the shoulder. Then I came to an offramp that led to a deserted street. I walked down the offramp and along the street. It was very dark. I looked into the windows of some of the houses. Apparently I was in a black district. I saw some lights ahead at an intersection. There was a hot dog stand. I walked up to it. A black man was behind the counter. There was nobody else around. I ordered coffee. "Goddamned women," I said to him. "They are beyond all reason. My girl let me off on the freeway. Want a drink?"

  "Sure," he said.

  He took a good hit and handed it back.

  "You got a phone?" I asked. "I'll pay you."

  "Is it a local call?"

  "Yes."

  "No charge."

  He pulled a phone from underneath the counter and handed it to me. I took a drink and handed him the bottle. He took one.

  I called the Yellow Cab Co., gave them the location. My friend had a kind and intelligent face. Goodness could be found sometimes in the middle of hell. We passed the bottle back and forth as I waited for the cab. When the cab arrived I got into the back and gave the cabby Nicole's address.

  23

  I blacked out after that. I guess I had consumed more whiskey than I thought. I don't remember arriving at Nicole's. I awakened in the morning with my back to somebody in a strange bed. I looked at the wall facing me and there was a large decorative letter hanging there. It said "N." The"N" was for "Nicole." I felt sick. I went to the bathroom. I used Nicole's toothbrush, gagged. I washed my face, combed my hair, crapped and pissed, washed my hands and drank a great deal of water from the bathroom faucet. Then I went back to bed. Nicole got up, did her toilet, came back. She faced me. We began to kiss and fondle one another.

  I am innocent in my fashion, Lydia, I thought. I am faithful to thee in my fashion.

  No oral sex. My stomach was too upset. I mounted the famous doctor's ex-wife. The cultured world traveler. She had the Bronte sisters in her bookcase. We both liked Carson McCullers. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. I gave her 3 or 4 particularly mean rips and she gasped. Now she knew a writer firsthand. Not a very well-known writer, of course, but I managed to pay the rent and that was astonishing. One day she'd be in one of my books. I was fucking a culture-bitch. I felt myself nearing a climax. I pushed my tongue into her mouth, kissed her, and climaxed. I rolled off feeling foolish. I held her a while, then she went into the bathroom. She would have been a better fuck in Greece, maybe. America was a shitty place to fuck.

  After that I visited Nicole 2 or 3 times a week in the mid-afternoons. We drank wine, talked, and now and then made love. I found I wasn't particularly interested in her, it was just something to do. Lydia and I had made up the next day. She would question me about where I went in the afternoon. "I've been to the supermarket," I'd tell her, and it was true. I'd go to the supermarket first.

  "I've never seen you spend so much time at the supermarket." I got drunk one night and mentioned to Lydia that I knew a certain Nicole. I told her where Nicole lived, but that "not much was going on." Why I told her this was not quite clear to me, but when one drinks one sometimes thinks unclearly…

  One afternoon I was coming from the liquor store and had just reached Nicole's. I was carrying two 6-packs of bottled beer and a pint of whiskey. Lydia and I had recently had another fight and I had decided to stay the night with Nicole. I was walking along, already a bit intoxicated, when I heard someone run up behind me. I turned. It was Lydia. "Ha!" she said. "Ha!"

  She grabbed the bag of liquor out of my hand and began pulling out the beer bottles. She smashed them on the pavement one by one. They made large explosions. Santa Monica Boulevard is very busy. The afternoon traffic was just beginning to build up. All this action was taking place just outside Nicole's door. Then Lydia reached the pint of whiskey. She held it up and screamed up at me, "Ha! You were going to drink this and then you were going to FUCK her!" She smashed the pint on the cement.

  Nicole's door was open and Lydia ran up the stairway. Nicole was standing at the top of the stairs. Lydia began hitting Nicole with her large purse. It had long straps and she swung it as hard as she could. "He's my man! He's my man! You stay away from my man!"

  Then Lydia ran down past me, out the door and into the street.

  "Good god," said Nicole, "who was that?"

  "That was Lydia. Let me have a broom and a large paper bag."

  I went down into the street and began sweeping up the broken glass and placing it in the brown paper bag. That bitch has gone too far this time, I thought. I'll go and buy more liquor. I'll stay the night with Nicole, maybe a couple of nights.

  I was bent over picking up the glass when I heard a strange sound behind me. I looked around. It was Lydia in the Thing. She had it up on the sidewalk and was driving straight towards me at about 30 m.p.h. I leaped aside as the car went by, missing me by an inch. The car ran down to the end of the block, bumped down off the curb, continued up the street, then took a right at the next corner and was gone.

  I went back to sweeping up the glass. I got it all swept up and put away. Then I reached down into the original paper bag and found one undamaged bottle of beer. It looked very good. I really needed it. I was about to unscrew the cap when someone grabbed it out of my hand. It was Lydia again. She ran up to Nicole's door with the bottle and hurled it at the glass. She hurled it with such velocity that it went straight through like a large bullet, not smashing the entire window but leaving just a round hole.

  Lydia ran off and I walked up the stairway. Nicole was still standing there. "For god's sake, Chinaski, leave with her before she kills everybody!"

  I turned and walked back down the stairway. Lydia was sitting in her car at the curbing with the engine running. I opened the door and got in. She drove off. Neither of us spoke a word.

  24

  I began receiving letters from a girl in New York City. Her name was Mindy. She had run across a couple of my books, but the best thing about her letters was that she seldom mentioned writing except to say that she was not a writer. She wrote about things in general and men and sex in particular. Mindy was 25, wrote in longhand, and the handwriting was stable, sensible, yet humorous. I answered her letters and was always glad to find one of hers in my mailbox. Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious.

  Then Mindy sent some photographs. If they were faithful she was quite beautiful. We wrote for several more weeks and then she mentioned that she had a 2 week vacation coming up.

 
Why don't you fly out? I suggested.

  All right, she replied.

  We began to phone one another. Finally she gave me her arrival date at L.A. International.

  I'll be there, I told her, nothing will stop me.

  25

  I kept the date in mind. It was never any problem creating a split with Lydia. I was naturally a loner, content just to live with a woman, eat with her, sleep with her, walk down the street with her. I didn't want conversation, or to go anywhere except the racetrack or the boxing matches. I didn't understand t.v. I felt foolish paying money to go into a movie theatre and sit with other people to share their emotions. Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateur drunks, the bores. But parties, dancing, small talk energized Lydia. She considered herself a sexpot. But she was a little too obvious. So our arguments often grew out of my wish for no-people-at-all versus her wish for as-many-people-as-often-as-possible.

  A couple of days before Mindy's arrival I started it. We were on the bed together.

  " Lydia, for Christ's sake, why are you so stupid? Don't you realize I'm a loner? A recluse? I have to be that way to write."

  "How can you learn anything about people if you don't meet them?"

  "I already know all about them."

  "Even when we go out to eat in a restaurant, you keep your head down, you don't look at anybody."

  "Why make myself sick?"

  "I observe people," she said. "I study them."

  "Shit!"

  "You're afraid of people!"

  "I hate them."

  "How can you be a writer? You don't observe!"

  "O.K., I don't look at people, but I earn the rent with my writing. It beats tending sheep."

  "You're not going to last. You'll never make it. You're doing it all wrong."

  "That's why I'm making it."

  "Making it? Who the hell knows who you are? Are you famous like Mailer? Like Capote?"

  "They can't write."