The Comedy Writer (31 page)

“Or whenever you're ready.”

In Hollywood the good meetings are often worse than the bad ones. Fd never felt this low after a bad meeting. God, I was pissed. Fd been so close. I saw it in those horrible eyes. He'd really thought
about it. I'd gotten to him for a second. I stopped at a phone booth on the way home and called Levine. His assistant Sheri said he was on a conference call, but I said Fd wait. When Levine got on, I told him how close Fd been, how Fd almost had the guy. He told me to calm down, it was okay, I shouldn't take it so seriously. “But he was
right there.
The fuck.”

“They're all stupid,” he said. “What do you expect in a town where the sun shines three hundred and sixty days a year and there's a tanning salon on every corner?”

I wanted to show her that good deeds are rewarded, so I told her to dress up, we were going out to dinner. “It's a date!” she said and, after a little pirouette, she disappeared into the bathroom. I waited out on the front steps and one hour later she came down wearing a peach halter top and jeans, and trailing behind her a strong odor of ozone-shrinking sprays. Her bangs were puffed up more than usual and looked as soft as barbed wire, but that I didn't notice right away. The fading sunlight was striking her perfectly, causing the top half of her shirt to be bathed in light and the underside darkened by shadow. This made her breasts look tremendous and got me thinking about things I didn't want to think about. On the drive to the restaurant, she went right to the sperm sample cup.

“What's this?”

“Nothing you want to touch.”

“Huh?”

“Just put it down please.”

She took a sniff, tossed it into the backseat. We passed a billboard
that said HAVE HOPE, HELP, HEAL over a collage of four Absolut vodka bottles.

“So where we going?” she asked.

'It's a surprise.”

The place—Dominick's—was just around the corner, it turned out. I considered driving home and walking back, sparing myself the valet charge, but then I thought, Hell, I'll splurge. Fd heard about Dominick's when I worked at Ernesto's. The kitchen was slow and the bartender fast and after two stiff ones on an empty stomach, I was feeling pretty good. There was a warm, powdery smell pulling at me from across our little red vinyl booth. I hadn't been around that in a while. Doheny would crane her neck whenever someone fancy passed, and she moaned when a heaping tray of food went by. Dominick's was a good restaurant, but not that good, so it was kind of sweet when she leaned forward and said, “I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight?” She giggled and I raised my glass, and she definitely looked cute. She had a nice body. The peach tits. What was I afraid of? Fd seen her medical sheet from the shelter:
HIV-negative. Then I recalled the six-month incubation period.
Okay, Fd wear a rubber. I was single, she was single—who was I holding out for? No, it was wrong, dead wrong. What the hell was I thinking? We shared the chicken croquette appetizer, split a chopped salad, dusted a bottle of red wine, and I excused myself to go to the bathroom.

On the way back to the table, I almost got bowled over by a couple busboys running out the door after a deadbeat check-skipper. Odd, I thought, at a place like this. By the time the main courses were served, we were both stuffed and happy.

“Can I ask you a question and I want you to answer the truth?”

“The truth?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“No, I can't promise that.”

“Come on, I'm serious. Do you really have a girlfriend named Amanda?”

It was as if Doheny knew that the food and booze provided a kind of satisfaction that allowed me to be straight with her.

“No.”

“I knew it.
Amanda.
I never knew any
Amandas
growing up. It's like a soap opera name or something—I figured it was fake.”

“No, there was an Amanda. She's just not my girlfriend anymore. We broke up.”

“Really? She was really real?”

“Yeah.”

“Who broke up with—?”

“She dumped me.”

“Why?”

“No reason.”

“Come on, Henry, the truth, remember?”

And so I gave it to her.

“This is the truth: I didn't cheat on her, I didn't treat her bad, my personality didn't change, I didn't get into drugs, she didn't have another guy, we didn't even grow apart.”

“So … ? What? Come on, you're not telling me something.”

“Yeah, I am. That's just it. She … you know …” I could feel it all there on my face. “She just stopped giving a shit.”

“Huh? Giving a … ? She stopped
what?”

“She didn't love me anymore.”

“Oh.
Oh.
Wait a second, either something's missing or that's really pathetic.”

“Now you read me.”

Doheny managed to polish off her filet mignon and I found room for my sand dabs and we had another drink while I gave her a speech about novice scribes traditionally holding a second job, like my flipping burgers, and she said she was open to the idea. She told me she was starting a new book—a children's story about a bunch of cats who commit suicide. I told her it sounded interesting, but perhaps it would be better if the cats didn't actually complete the act. She said that was a cop-out, that kids should know the truth, and the truth was that suicide was real and there weren't any happy endings, just small victories leading up to the inevitable crushing defeat. She said if I wanted a happy ending, I should write my own goddamn children's story. All this she delivered in a chipper way, and she took my hand in hers, but I was saddened by her outlook. I asked for the check. Our waitress said it was already taken care of.

“What? By who?”

“A secret admirer.”

I looked around the room.

“A secret admirer?”

The waitress smiled and left and I noticed Doheny beaming at me.

“You?”

She blushed.

“But … ?”

“Come on, let's go.”

She tried to stand, but I grabbed her arm.

“Wait a second. Where'd you get the money?”

“Don't worry about it, I got it.”

I blinked. “
'Oon't worry about it?'
The whole reason you've been staying with me is because you're broke. Now you're telling me you're not?”

She seemed hurt. “That's the whole reason I've been staying with you, because I'm broke? What am I, a charity case?”

“Well … yeah. Why the fuck do you think you've been staying?”

“Don't swear. I got the money today.”

“Where?”

“None of your beeswax.”

“Yes, it is my beeswax! If you've got dough, I want to know about it!”

“Shhh. You're embarrassing me.”

“I don't give a damn! I want to know where the money came from!”

When she didn't respond, I said, “All right, you got money? I want you out tonight.”

She started filling up. “I don't have any more money, I just had money for dinner.”

“Oh, that's convenient. What'd the fucking dinner fairy come along and give you just enough?”

She was meek and I was making a scene, but I didn't give a shit because I knew what she'd done and I wasn't going to let her get away with it. I called the waitress over.

“Did you ever get the people who ran out on the bill?”

“No.”

“Give it to me, I'll pay.”

Doheny said, “What are you doing?”

The waitress said, “That's not necessary, sir.”

The manager or owner, a tall middle-aged woman, appeared. “Can I help you?”

“Yes,” I said, “I want to pay for the table that ran out.”

“Why?”

“Because I don't think that they did run out. I think they paid cash, and I think my date here stole it.”

Doheny sprung out of the booth. “I did not!”

I pulled the tall woman aside. “Just give me the bill.”

Doheny slammed her hands on the table and burst out crying. This was more of a scene than I counted on. The tall woman leaned into me and whispered, “It's okay. Please don't worry about it.”

Her voice breaking, Doheny said, “Henry, stop it! I didn't steal any money!”

“Listen,” I insisted, “I want to pay. At least give me
my
bill because she used the stolen money to pay for it.”

“No, she didn't,” said our waitress. “She paid with a credit card.”

“Really?” An interesting twist. I turned to Doheny. “You have a credit card now?”

“That's right. Gus let me use his to buy you dinner because I talked to him today and I told him we were going out, so he dropped off his credit card and told me to charge it to him because he said he wanted to take you to lunch, but you wouldn't let him!”

The tall one was giving me a pretty good dressing down in the parking lot when Doheny stepped out and came to my defense. She was all out of tears by now and had just been treated to a shot by a table full of patrons. It wasn't my fault, she said, she'd given me many reasons to doubt her. The woman called me an asshole and asked Doheny if she needed a ride home, but she said it was okay, she was with me, and the tall woman walked inside, disgusted.

Back home, Doheny kept apologizing. I got her a dish of frozen yogurt, but she wouldn't touch it. She put it down and got in bed,
and when I joined her, she said she was a jerk for embarrassing me in front of an entire restaurant. “Stop it,” I said, “I'm the one who should be apologizing'

“No, I should've told you about Gus, but I wanted to surprise you.”

“No, no, please, I'm an asshole to make such a scene, you didn't do anything wrong.”

“You're not an asshole, Henry. I just never gave you any reason to trust me … I never gave anyone any reason to.”

She rolled over and I thought she was crying again, and when I touched her back, I knew she was. “It's true about happy endings, you know,” she said. I wanted her to stop crying, so I put my arm around her. She felt tiny. Nice. Smooth and clean. The thought crossed my mind and I knew it was wrong, not to mention what it would do to my karma, and then I thought, Wait a minute, maybe it would be
good
for my karma, I was just being affectionate, and I considered it some more, and the alcohol said,
Do it I
, and my gut said, You're an idiot! That's just the alcohol talking!, but I knew it was more than that, and she turned her head, our mouths meeting and my hand sliding under her panties in the back and then curling around to her pussy and as she gasped I crawled out of my underwear and slid up to her face and I wiped her tears with my cock. She licked the wet salt and placed her mouth around me and looked up. The visuals were always the best part and, visually, this was seventy millimeter. She said the words and I moved between her legs.

It felt great to slip into her warmth. She placed her hands on my butt and pulled me into her. I held myself up and she lifted her head to watch me slide in and out. I put one of her legs between mine and leaned into her on an angle that jazzed up the friction. It felt like I was wearing the bark off my cock, but it was working for her so I
didn't stop and our bodies slapped together, making embarrassing sounds from each other's sweat. As she neared orgasm, she got loud and yappy (imagine a chihuahua with a mousetrap on his balls) and I heard a couple windows in the next apartment building close, or maybe open, so I stuffed my fingers in her mouth, which, not surprisingly, she really took to. When I was ready, I pulled out and stuffed it in her mouth, and even when I was tender, she continued to squeegee the last drops until I gently pushed her head away. Finally she gasped, as if so lost in the moment she'd neglected even air.

'That was a lot,” she said.

“It's been a while.”

“No kidding. You could've wall-papered the whole room with that one.”

shooting the bird who perches on the muzzie of your gun, but what hunter could keep from doing it?”

This I'd read in my little John Barth book and, after fucking the stuffing out of Doheny, I was that sad poacher. Happily, her three-quarters of the bed was empty when I awakened. Maybe she'd taken last night's talk to heart and gone looking for a job. Then a titter, a squeak really, and when I lifted my head I saw her sitting in a chair in the middle of the room. Staring at me. Just sitting there, buck naked, legs crossed, a shit-eating smile smeared across her happy mug,
staring at me.