Interstate (20 page)

Times
or the
Tribune
. He should have taken her out. She would have felt better about him and her folks would have thought he liked their girl. To a movie, not to a party, or the dark neighborhood hotel bar he and his friends occasionally went to with fake ID's and eventually she might have put out for him more than she did. He always had bags on him and they could have done it in the bedroom with the door locked and it would have been the first time with anyone but a paid whore. Though she told him a couple of times when she was jacking him off and he made some motion with his body that he wanted to stick it in her and started pulling off her panties or with his hand pushing her face close to his penis, “I want you to know the only guy I'm ever going to give head to or screw is my husband, if maybe a short time before with him when all the marriage arrangements have been worked out, and I'm not planning on getting married till after college. So don't expect even a lick from me and don't ever think I'll let you do it with your mouth to me either. That's also only for my husband or when he's my bona fide fiancé.” Then another girl. Renee, about three years later. She only wore black and her short hair was dyed black and she had black eye makeup and liner on and sometimes an inch-wide strip of black makeup or paint under her eyes and black lipstick when she wore lipstick or it looked like it. He was at a table in the college cafeteria when she put her tray down beside his and said “So how you like your soup?” smelling of incense and sweat and even her mesh hose and shoulder bag black and he said “I don't know; hot, I guess,” and she said “That a man; how's it taste?” and he said “It's something called mulligatawny and it tastes odd, not like soup,” and she said “That's the curry in it, Mr. Greenhorn, from India where they know how to make exotic sculptures and food. But who's dragooning you to eat it? You don't like, push it away. Tell me, you a bonebrain or do you have the force of the raw nerve and divine breath in you plus a bit of sybaritic responsibility?” and he said “I don't get what you're saying,” and she said “I didn't ask if you have a boner—you can't keep your freaking eyes off my voluminous bust, that I can say; you like, right?” or something like; anyway, he thought in the car, she said things like this in this way, “but I was saying, do you only think of lucubrating and calibrating and slide-ruling and laboratory tooling and scoring in your chosen boredom and becoming chairman of the Sanitation Department one day?” and he said “No, I like to read for enjoyment too and do other things, movies, run around; I'm not an engineering major and I haven't stared at what you said I did; I'm just eating here, my crackers and soup,” and she said “Tell me, if there was a contest in this sonofabitch dreary collitch for future statistics for the chick with the pinchiest waist and biggest tits, you think I'd have a chance and would you vote for me and shove your ballot in the box—I need every vote I can get,” and he said “Why do you want to think of that? You've other things going for you; you're obviously articulate, got brains, words at your command, et cetera,” and she said “Oh, come on with the line, Harold, come on, give it to me, give it to me, you fucking square—I want the truth; do you like chicks with big tits or not?” and he said “Big, small, they're all nice, I don't like you cursing at me, whatever they have,” and she said “Pigshit liar; maybe mine are so heroical they border on the grotesque, I'll accept that, like the David paintings with the French flags and rafts, but tell me, you'd take a no-tit chick over an above-average-size one, all other things being equal?” and he said “I haven't thought of it,” and she said “What fugging excrement,” and he looked around, people at their long table were looking, and he got up, “Excuse me,” and took his tray to another table and she sat down beside him with her tray and said “So I'm sorry, so I was crudely rude to you, oh poo-poo me and boo-hoo, so do you accept my apologonorrhea? and you're still eating your green soup you said you didn't like, you must be hungry and poor. Listen, Arthur, or whoever you art, I'll be straight with you. You look good, you don't smell, you're no dumbbell, you've a cute ass and lots of curly hair locks and a dimple in your chin like my favorite Jewish movie star and are no know-it-all or psycho blowhard, you've some dignity and ingenuity and a trace of guilelessness which I like and yet you're still complex and like sex preferably with chicks, that's obvious, and are artistically but not ostentatiously dressed and you didn't tell me to fuck off, which a sliver of me would've preferred—I detest noblesse politesse—so we should talk some more, for I believe we're mutually putting the make on each other. Come to my dump tonight—it's in the city and near a subway stop and then if you like, sit across the room and ogle at these all you want,” swelling her chest, “I don't care, even my derrière and legs, they're I swear not grotesque, so long as you yak a blue streak with me and do everything I want. If you turn out to be taciturn and uninteresting and half of what I thought, out you go, a deal?” and he said “After my last class I work in the Garment Center till seven, but you have your own place?—I don't know anyone who does,” and she said “Own john, own bed, own radiator, own linen closet, own electric coffeepot, own toilet paper rolls, own night light, I got it all,” and gave her address and subway directions to it and said to bring a creamy cake dessert and two India Pale Ales. Her mother answered the door; they lived in the same apartment on the top floor of a six-story walkup but once in the entrance hall there were two other doors with front door locks and peepholes on them. Never saw anything like it. Her mother, very small, almost a dwarf, maybe a couple of feet shorter than her daughter who was tall, yelled out “Renee, a gentleman visitor,” and she opened the door, said “Thanks, Mom, and how's it going today?” and her mother said “You know, the same, I'm dying, but am I going to complain, and if I do, who to?” and Renee said “Good, for it's a pain in the tush when you do,” and to him “Did you meet my
madre
?” and he said “I said hello,” and her mother said “I said good evening too, that's what she's told me I'm supposed to do,” and went into her place and they went into Renee's. “Strange setup,” he said or something like, probably looking out the peephole and she said “Mom pays for the rent for both of us; it was that and turning this into two flats or my moving out and probably starving on the streets till I got my degree and with not only no comforts but few pleasures. For she knows I like reefers and strong beer and this here with plenty of men,” her big toe poking his penis through the pants, “so it's what we came up with where she also wouldn't have to live and die alone. You smoke ‘em?” and he said he never had and she said “Then let's light up; I love virgins, they'll always remember me,” and he said “I'm not a virgin,” and she said “I know that, dummy, I was talking about tea—gosh, and I had you pegged as a semisophisticate who I could make whole but you're too far behind,” and they smoked and had the cake and ale and she said “Let's go straight to bed, no staring till after; I love the feel of feasting on some rooster's coxcomb while I'm naked and high and he's also supping me. You do do that, I hope, or else out you go. And that foreplay's my final play, you know. I never want to get pregnant from something I don't especially like doing and ruin my body while also bringing some piglet into this hideous world with people like you and me, and I'm also not one for postcoital snoozes and snores and morning-mate coffee and toast,” and he said “Fine for now, but we'll see,” and she said “Oh, I'm telling you, Bernard, that's the law. Don't so much as unzip your fly now if you think we're going any further than what I said. To me, it's the only thing, not simply out of necessity but choice.” In bed he said how come no black pillowcases and sheets, for she had black window curtains and towels and washrags, and she said “Those they don't make yet but they will. It's one of my life assignments to put them in every bedding department and store.” Saw her in her flat about a dozen times over three or four years and it never went further than she'd said. She screamed a lot during it and yanked his hair and pulled back his ears and dug her black fingernails into his rear till he snarled for her to stop and later he said “Don't you think your mother will mind about the noise?” and she said “Let her install soundproofing in my room, for there's no other way I can do this.” Doing it in her room and the business about the noise and how she acted to her mom and stuff made him think of Lenore just as thinking of Lenore before had made him think of Renee. “Had”? Just “made”? There were others. Renee became a window dresser for New York department stores and could have been the designer behind black bed linen a number of years ago when it was the rage, and maybe it still is or has come back. Of course he never could have remembered exactly what happened with those three, Honey, Lenore and Renee, but what they did and said and the circumstances and some of his thoughts then went something like the way he put it. Women he'd only call to have sex. If they wanted to go out to a restaurant or bar or movie first, fine, if he had the money or could borrow it from them, and he always insisted on paying and paid back, just so long as they knew how the evening would end up. Wasn't nice, he knew, but if they didn't like it they could have said no, and none of the women he went with saw themselves as easy playthings. And he used to call some of them at one or two in the morning if he was a little high and lonely and wanted to have sex and a few would let him come over at that hour or would cab to his place if he paid for it and met them in front of his building. He'd look out one of his street windows or lie in bed usually playing with himself while listening for a cab to pull up and then jump up and throw on a bathrobe or pants and shirt and run down the three flights of stairs. If they lived close and said they were on their way, he'd say “When you say ‘on my way,' does that mean in two minutes or ten or fifteen or what?” and if they said in two, he'd wait in the building's vestibule, usually reading a magazine or book, or if it was a nice night, sit on the wrought-iron fence on the little garden wall bordering the sidewalk. But most after a while called him a horny bastard and said not to phone again if all he was looking for was to make it with them, but he still called and gradually there was just about no one to have sex or go out with. Sure, lots of dates and encounters over the years and several one-or two-night flings and a few brief romances which he thought might turn into something more but for years nothing that lasted till he met Lee. Doesn't know why it was different with her. Used to call her at one or two in the morning sometimes too, even when he wasn't drunk, just wanted to get laid, and most of those times she said to come over or phone her at work the next day if he wanted to see her tomorrow night. A few times she called him around those hours, or maybe no later than twelve, asking if she could drop by for the night or if he wanted instead to cab to her place. If he said it was late or he was tired, she'd say something like “Listen, sweetie, it's no problem; I suddenly felt like I needed your company and that even a little sexual release would be nice, but we can see each other at a more sensible hour tomorrow or whenever,” and he always ended up saying he'll come by or she can. Talking to her, he got excited, and she probably even intended him to, or he just didn't think it a good thing—manli-hood, something—not giving in, and that if he could ask it of her, why not she of him? Maybe it was that, her calling him to come over those few times, and that she put up with his late-calling crap, or only gave him a slight scolding for it because it was two o'clock, three and she was sleeping, but never said never call again if it was just to get laid. Next day if he had come over she usually even said she was glad he did. So she was different in that way, more accommodating and less reproachful than other women he'd known or just not as harsh in the way she carped and blamed, and as pretty and sweet in other ways and well-built and intelligent and quick-witted and good-humored and lots of other good things and better in bed than most of the others but not as good as one or two for a short time, though almost anybody can be hot stuff for a couple of nights with someone new, but over the long run, the best. Dozen-plus years and they still go at it almost every day and lots of times twice in an hour or so, something when it happens now often surprises him that he's still able to. Second's never as good as the first anymore when it's done so soon after, and maybe never was—he forgets—but that he's still up to it with the same woman after so long and finishes more than half the times he starts and never any other woman since they met, is something. Maybe also it was just time to marry and have kids if he was ever going to, for he'd always said he wanted them, and there were no serious disagreements between them when they were seeing each other and he was actually making an okay living then when he never had before. Glad he did marry, and especially the kids. And continuing to go out on dates at that time and trudging around to different apartments and too often being rejected on the phone after a couple of dinners or in their living rooms or foyers after they'd been kissing and fondling awhile and he had most of the woman's clothes off, just wasn't in him anymore. But some of the others? Vicki, last one or maybe the one before the last before Lee, in Boulder when he was there being interviewed for a job he didn't get, woman around twenty years younger than he but that didn't stop her from inviting him to her place and it for sure didn't stop him from accepting, “Breakfast,” she said, “nothing fancy: orange juice and health bread and scrambled eggs and then I'll get you to your plane,” flat-chested he thought when he first saw her when she picked him up at the airport to drive him to her boss, but when she took off her shirt it turned out she'd been self-conscious of her large breasts and did everything she could to conceal them, like loose-fitting clothes and a special bra that seemed to strap half her breasts to her sides, in fact she almost put her shirt back on when he said “My goodness, your breasts.” Wait. He's lost his train again. He was thinking of women just jerking him off years ago, though how the thought started he doesn't know, and who was the last woman he slept with before Lee? when Margo said she was starving and wanted to stop. “We can't while Julie's sleeping.” “She's not, are you, Julie?” Margo said, probably shaking or pinching her for Julie said “What, what?—get off me, that hurt.” “Margo, leave her alone, she needs her sleep.” “I wasn't sleeping,” Julie said groggily. “I was only resting with my eyes shut.” “Boy, I've heard that before,” he said. “It's true. It gives me as much rest as sleep does and later makes my eyes see better too which sleep doesn't do.” “That's foolish,” Margo said and he said “Who knows, maybe she has a point. It might've even, that later-see-better stuff, been something studied and proven by scientists, only we haven't read it in the papers yet. I'm sure some major experiments start like that, from what people said they'd experienced, and maybe just one person. Have any scientists been eavesdropping on your conversations, Julie?” and she said no. “Daddy's only kidding you,” Margo said and he said “I am, somewhat, but I'm not discounting—making little of what she said. We might have a great budding scientist in our midst and one principally interested in the differences between deep rest and light sleep and the benefits and limits of each,” and Julie said “I don't want to be a scientist. I want to be a poet, do you think that's a good thing to be?” and he said “Poetry? Fits your wistfulness and sensitivity. And what could be better doing and more beneficial to everyone? So sure, if it comes to you, become one—meet my daughter the poet—though you'll have to do other things for a living, like marrying a doctor or best-selling author—only kidding. And you don't marry for a living; you do it out of love, like poetry, because someone's been called to you, right? In fact, for our driving pleasure today do one in your head now and recite it to us, I'd love hearing it,” and she said “I'll try, I've never made up one in a car,” and he said “Take a few minutes, make it a special one,” and turned the radio on. A reverend, or preacher or Christian healer, anyway, obvious by the snake-oily voice and every other sentence with the word “Christ” in it or reference to Him—He'll move things, stand by Him, He's with us, believe in His ways and words and your luck and fortune, spiritual and otherwise, will rise, as He did—that it was, oh, lost the train there too and anyway not interested in what he was thinking about this hustler, “Come my little pretty,” pulling the girl's pants down, they used to joke as kids, “and let me put “Christ” in you,” for that's what he sounds like, asking for dough now in that universal reverend-rabbi-probably-imam voice, since he's never heard one, the whole thing for dough—money and sex, and don't forget power, so like just about everyone else when they have the chance and no different than selling soda and cars on TV, right? though being a man of God—but what's he going on about?—this might be the one decent preacher of them all, just as to my kids most times or let's say lots I'm the best daddy that ever lived, and moved the dial up the band and back—wait, do those two con nect? some other time, but what do they all do, go to a special religious speech school to talk that way? how can people fall for it? or maybe it's just if enough do it's worth the air time—and all he could find was another preacher or healer, must be the area they're driving through and also the scarcity of stations or low or short frequencies of them if that's the word, and then some hillybilly music as one of his professors said it, another fake, for though corrected by students with their laughs—he was German—he said it that semester a half-dozen times more—20th Century Intellectual History, Part One, maybe his favorite college course overall, though Two, and he never looked forward to a course more, was a dud, forgets why, maybe became a strain to make out his speech in that huge lecture hall and also got tired of his crowd-pleasing ways, and dropped it—“Love will get you down,” singer was singing, “but love will get you up too, so risk it, for life's” something, incomprehensible, followed by a plucking instrument and backup caterwauls from a group. Double entendre? Why not, simple enough, and nobody's got gonads like these guys, and just another kind of preaching for dough, no? and turned it off. “Daddy, I liked that,” Margo said, “you finally had something good,” and he said “So okay, listen to it on your own radio at home with your door closed and the sound low,” and she said “We won't get it, we'll be too far away and the program will be off,” and he said “So what can I say? Rough. No, that wasn't nice, I'm sorry,” and she said “It's all right, at least you admitted it. But if I can't listen to the music, there's nothing to do, so we have to stop,” and he said “I'm not going to ask this, for if I do you'll say yes even if the real answer's no, but do you have to go to the bathroom?—be honest,” and she said “Not yet,” and he said “Then if a rest stop doesn't come up soon, we'll stop,” and she said “What's that mean?”