Women (21 page)

The next day I drove down to the train station to pick Tammie and Dancy up.

“You’re looking good,” Tammie said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“We’re going to live at Mother’s. You might as well drive us there. I can’t fight that eviction. Besides, who wants to stay where they’re not wanted?”

“Tammie, I moved most of your things. They’re in cardboard cartons at my place.”

“All right. Can I leave them there a while?”

“Sure.”

Then Tammie’s mother went to Denver, to see the sister, and the night she left I went to Tammie’s to get drunk. Tammie was on pills. I didn’t take any. When I got into the fourth 6-pack I said, “Tammie, I don’t see what you see in Bobby. He’s nothing.”

She crossed her legs, and swung her foot back and forth.

“He thinks his small talk is charming,” I said.

She kept swinging her foot.

“Movies, t.v., grass, comic books, dirty photos, that’s his gas tank.”

Tammie swung her foot harder.

“Do you really care for him?”

She kept swinging her foot.

“You fucking bitch!” I said.

I walked to the door, slammed it behind me, and got into the Volks. I raced through traffic, weaving in and out, destroying my clutch and gear shift.

I got back to my place and started loading the cartons of her stuff into my Volks. Also record albums, blankets, toys. The Volks, of course, didn’t hold too much.

I speeded back to Tammie’s. I pulled up and double-parked, put the red warning lights on. I pulled the boxes out of the car and stacked them on the porch. I covered them with blankets and toys, rang the bell and drove off.

When I came back with the second load the first load was gone. I made another stack, rang the bell and wheeled off like a missile.

When I came back with the third load the second was gone. I made a new stack and rang the bell. Then I was off again into the early morning.

When I got back to my place I had a vodka and water and looked at what was left. There was the heavy rattan chair and the stand-up hair dryer. I could only make one more run. It was either the chair or the dryer. The Volks couldn’t consume both.

I decided on the rattan chair. It was 4 am. I was double-parked in front of my place with the warning lights on. I finished the vodka and water. I was getting drunker and weaker. I picked up the rattan, it was really heavy, and carried it down the walk to my car. I sat it down and opened the door opposite the driver’s side. I jammed the rattan chair in. Then I tried to close the door. The chair was sticking out. I tried to pull the chair out of the car. It was stuck. I cursed, and pushed it further in. One leg of the rattan poked through the windshield and stuck out, pointing at the sky. The door still wouldn’t close. It wasn’t even close. I tried to push the leg of the chair further through the windshield so that I could close the door. It wouldn’t budge. The chair was jammed in tight. I tried to pull it out. It wouldn’t move. Desperately I pulled and pushed, pulled and pushed. If the police came, I was finished. After some time I wearied. I climbed in the driver’s side. There were no parking spaces in the street. I drove the car down to the pizza parlor parking lot, the open door swinging back and forth. I left it there with the door open, the ceiling light on. (The ceiling light wouldn’t shut off.) The windshield was smashed, the chair leg poking out into the moonlight. The whole scene was indecent, mad. It smacked of murder and assassination. My beautiful car.

I walked down the street and back to my place. I poured another vodka and water and phoned Tammie.

“Look, baby, I’m in a jam. I’ve got your chair stuck through my windshield and I can’t get it out and I can’t get it in and the door won’t close. The windshield is smashed. What can I do? Help me, for Christ’s sake!”

“You’ll think of something, Hank.”

She hung up.

I dialed again. “Baby. . . .”

She hung up. Then next the phone was off the hook: bzzzz, bzzzzzz, bzzzz. . . .

I stretched out on the bed. The phone rang.

“Tammie. . . .”

“Hank, this is Valerie. I just came home. I want to tell you that your car is parked in the pizza parlor with the door open.”

“Thanks, Valerie, but I can’t close the door. There is a rattan chair stuck through the windshield.”

“Oh, I didn’t notice that.”

“I appreciate your phoning.”

I fell asleep. It was one worried sleep. They were going to tow me away. I was going to get booked.

I awakened at 6:20 am, got dressed and walked to the pizza parlor. The car was still there. The sun was coming up.

I reached in and grabbed the rattan. It still wouldn’t budge. I was furious, and began pulling and yanking, cursing. The more impossible it seemed, the madder I got. Suddenly there was a cracking of wood. I was inspired, energized. A piece of wood broke off in my hands. I looked at it, tossed it into the street, went back to my task. Something else broke off. The days in the factories, the days of unloading boxcars, the days of lifting cases of frozen fish, the days of carrying murdered cattle on my shoulders were paying off. I had always been strong but equally lazy. Now I was tearing that chair to pieces. Finally I ripped it out of the car. I attacked it in the parking lot. I smashed it to bits, I broke it in pieces. Then I picked up the pieces and stacked them neatly on somebody’s front lawn.

I got in the Volks and found an empty parking space near my court. All I had to do now was find a junkyard on Santa Fe Avenue and buy myself a new windshield. That could wait. I went back in, drank two glasses of ice water and went to bed.

71

Four or five days passed. The phone rang. It was Tammie.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Listen, Hank. You know that little bridge you cross in your car when you drive to my mother’s place?”

“Yes.”

“Well, right by there they’re having a yard sale. I went in and saw this typewriter. It’s only 20 bucks and it’s in good working order. Please get it for me, Hank.”

“What do you want with a typewriter?”

“Well, I’ve never told you, but I’ve always wanted to be a writer.”

“Tammie. . . .”

“Please, Hank, just this one last time. I’ll be your friend for life.”

“No.”

“Hank. . . .”

“Oh, shit, well, all right.”

“I’ll meet you at the bridge in 15 minutes. I want to hurry before it’s taken. I’ve found a new apartment and Filbert and my brother are helping me move. . . .”

Tammie wasn’t at the bridge in 15. minutes or in 25 minutes. I got back in the Volks and drove over to Tammie’s mother’s apartment. Filbert was loading cartons into Tammie’s car. He didn’t see me. I parked a half a block away.

Tammie came out and saw my Volks. Filbert was getting into his car. He had a Volks, too, a yellow one. Tammie waved to him and said, “See you later!”

Then she walked down the street toward me. When she got near my car she stretched out in the center of the street and lay there. I waited. Then she got up, walked to my car, got in.

I pulled away. Filbert was sitting in his car. I waved to him as we drove my. He didn’t wave back. His eyes were sad. It was just beginning for him.

“You know,” Tammie said, “I’m with Filbert now.”

I laughed. It welled out of me.

“We’d better hurry. The typer might be gone.”

“Why don’t you let Filbert buy the fucking thing?”

“Look, if you don’t want to do it just stop the car and let me out!”

I stopped the car and opened the door.

“Listen, you son-of-a-bitch, you told me you’d buy that typer! If you don’t, I’m going to start screaming and breaking your windows!”

“All right. The typer is yours.”

We drove to the place. The typer was still there.

“This typewriter has spent its whole life up to now in an insane asylum,” the lady told us.

“It’s going to the right person,” I replied.

I gave the lady a twenty and we drove back. Filbert was gone.

“Don’t you want to come in for a while?” Tammie asked.

“No, I’ve got to go.”

She was able to carry the typer in without help. It was a portable.

72

I drank for the next week. I drank night and day and wrote 25 or 30 mournful poems about lost love.

It was Friday night when the phone rang. It was Mercedes. “I got married,” she said, “to Little Jack. You met him at the party that night you read in Venice. He’s a nice guy and he’s got money. We’re moving to the Valley.”

“All right, Mercedes, luck with it all.”

“But I miss drinking and talking with you. Suppose I come over tonight?”

“All right.”

She was there in 15 minutes, rolling joints and drinking my beer.

“Little Jack is a nice guy. We’re happy together.”

I sucked at my beer.

“I don’t want to fuck,” she said, “I’m tired of abortions, I’m really tired of abortions. ...”

“We’ll figure something out.”

“I just want to smoke and talk and drink.”

“That’s not enough for me.”

“All you guys want to do is fuck.”

“I like it.”

“Well, I can’t fuck, I don’t want to fuck.”

“Relax.”

We sat on the couch. We didn’t kiss. Mercedes was not a good conversationalist. She wasn’t interesting. But she had her legs and her ass and her hair and her youth. I’d met some interesting women, God knows, but Mercedes just wasn’t high on the list.

The beer flowed and the joints went around. Mercedes still had the same job with the Hollywood Institute of Human Relationships. She was having trouble with her car. Little Jack had a short fat dick. She was reading Grapefruit by Yoko Ono. She was tired of abortions. The Valley was nice but she missed Venice. She missed riding her bicycle along the boardwalk.

I don’t know how long we talked, or she talked, but much, much later she said she was too drunk to drive home.

“Take off your clothes and go to bed,” I told her.

“But no fucking,” she said.

“I won’t touch your cunt.”

She undressed and went to bed. I undressed and went into the bathroom. She watched me coming out with a jar of Vaseline.

“What are you going to do?”

“Just take it easy, baby, take it easy.”

I rubbed the Vaseline on my cock. Then I turned out the light and got into bed.

“Turn your back,” I said.

I reached one arm under her and played with one breast and reached over the top and played with the other breast. It felt good with my face in her hair. I stiffened and slipped it into her ass. I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her ass toward me, hard, sliding it in. “Oooooohh,” she said.

I began working. I dug it in deeper. The cheeks of her ass were big and soft. As I slammed away I began to sweat. Then I rolled her on her stomach and sunk it in deeper. It was getting tighter. I nudged into the end of her colon and she screamed.

“Shut up! Goddamn you!”

She was very tight. I slipped it even further in. Her grip was unbelievable. As I rammed it in I suddenly got a stitch in my side, a terrible burning pain, but I continued. I was slicing her in half, right up the backbone. I roared like a madman and came.

Then I lay there on top of her. The pain in my side was murder. She was crying.

“Goddamn it,” I asked her, “what’s the matter? I didn’t touch your cunt.”

I rolled off.

In the morning Mercedes said very little, got dressed and left for her job.

Well, I thought, there goes another one.

73

My drinking slowed down the next week. I went to the racetrack to get fresh air and sunshine and plenty of walking. At night I drank, wondering why I was still alive, how the scheme worked. I thought about Katherine, about Lydia, about Tammie. I didn’t feel very good.

That Friday night the phone rang. It was Mercedes.

“Hank, I’d like to come by. But just for talk and beer and joints. Nothing else.”

“Come by if you want to.”

Mercedes was there in a half hour. To my surprise she looked very good to me. I’d never seen a mini-skirt as short as hers and her legs looked fine. I kissed her happily. She broke away.

“I couldn’t walk for two days after that last one. Don’t rip my butt again.”

“All right, honest injun, I won’t.”

It was about the same. We sat on the couch with the radio on, talked, drank beer, smoked. I kissed her again and again. I couldn’t stop. She acted like she wanted it, yet she insisted that she couldn’t. Little Jack loved her, love meant a lot in this world.

“It sure does,” I said.

“You don’t love me.”

“You’re a married woman.”

“I don’t love Little Jack, but I care for him very much and he loves me.”

“It sounds fine.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

“Four times.”

“What happened? Where are they tonight?”

“One is dead. The other three are with other men.”

We talked a long time that night and smoked any number of joints. Around 2 am Mercedes said, “I’m too high to drive home. I’d total the car.”

“Take your clothes off and go to bed.”

“All right, but I’ve got an idea.”

“Like what?”

“I want to watch you beat that thing off! I want to watch it squirt!”

“All right, that’s fair enough. It’s a deal.”

Mercedes undressed and went to bed. I undressed and stood at the side of the bed. “Sit up so you can see better.”

Mercedes sat on the edge of the bed. I spit on my palm and began to rub my cock.

“Oh,” Mercedes said, “It’s growing!”

“Uh huh. . . .”

“It’s getting big!”

“Uh huh. . . .”

“Oh, it’s all purple with big veins! It throbs! It’s ugly!”

“Yeh.”

As I kept beating my cock I moved it near her face. She watched it. Just as I was about to come I stopped.

“Oh,” she said.

“Look, I’ve got a better idea. . . .”

“What?”

“You beat it off.”

“All right.”

She started in. “Am I doing it right?”

“A little harder. And spit on your palm. And rub almost all of it, most of it, just not up near the head.”

“All right. . . . Oh, God, look at it. ... I want to see it squirt juice!”