Ladies' Man (6 page)

I got up at seven. La Donna was still sleeping and I slipped right back into the hunger. Anytime I got up before her I would lie in bed just in case when she woke up she might feel like it. She would always tell me she wasn't a morning person. I guess that meant opposed to an evening person, although I wasn't seeing much difference. I rolled on my side and started rubbing her back. Her skin felt toasty through her tank top. After a few minutes I rolled away from her as if I was playing hard to get. Since last night I'd rolled over so much I felt like a trained dog. I began drifting back
to
sleep when I heard her waking up. I rolled toward her. Her face was six inches off the pillow, sleep-smeared and dazed. She looked like she was just hatched. I rubbed her back again and threw my leg over her behind. She yawned, smiled, darted a kiss on my shoulder and did some rolling of her own—right out of bed. I watched her ruddy ass as she toddled across the bedroom to the bathroom.

Seven-twenty-seven. Work. I felt like crying. I had never shaken that elementary school dread of the morning.

"Up and at 'em, Kenny, it's seven-thirty."

I didn't answer. She started singing to herself. "I wish you bluebirds da da da," and headed for the kitchen.

Coffee, vanilla yogurt and a cigarette for me, tea, whole wheat toast with honey for her. "Do you know the way to San Jose," she declared, staring, hypnotized over her raised teacup, and absently blew the steam away from her face.

"Do I know what?" I tried to sound like don't bother me, I'm wrapped up in my own thoughts. She was in a good mood, and it pissed me off.

"Do you know the way to San Ho-Zay," she sang. "I think I'm gonna do that instead Sunday night. Or maybe this! 'If you see me walk-ing down the street and I start to cry, each time we meet, Walk on by-y-y.'"

I sulked harder. It seemed she had convinced herself that Fantasia was the greatest thing to come down the pike since sliced bread. It was like living with Blanche DuBois. But I didn't give a fuck anymore. I wasn't get-tin'; then I wasn't givin'.

"You were right. Eyes closed chin up worked the best" She hunkered down in her chair rolling her ass-bones against the seat and smiled at me.

"Oh yeah?" I muttered, looking away.

She reached across the table and grabbed yesterday's
Post
. She whistled as she read. I couldn't even make her squirm and I wanted her to writhe.

"You gonna see Bossanova today?"

"Madame Bassova, Basa
o
va." She looked up from the paper. "When are you gonna get that straight?" she asked with lightweight petulance.

"Sorry, sorry, Bas
so
va, Bas
so
va. I should know how to pronounce it by now, I guess. I write her name on enough checks,
that's
for sure."

Her head snapped up, and I immediately felt like a stone prick, subtlety up the ass, cards on the table, on the floor, in your eye. I tried to cover fast. "Is she doin' good with you?" I grinned like a mule eating shit. "That's such a goddamned weird building, the Ansonia. They got more wackos than Creedmore. You know, there must be twenty-five guys that call themselves maestro or professor and I bet ten Anastasia Romanovs." No good. She looked hurt and furious at the same time and I felt my chest break out in a constellation of heat rash..

She stared at me deadeye and her mouth got square and ugly. My brains were screaming Sorrysorrysorry-sorry.

"
What
is on your
mind
?" she asked in a hushed voice. I killed her mood, okay, and now that I was getting the chance for a showdown, all I felt besides two years old was apologetic and guilty. I felt sorry and convictionless—a self-centered bastard.

I sighed. "It's, I dunno. We, we don't make
love
anymore like we used to." I came down heavy on the word "love." I never called it making love in my life. She sat silent glaring at me with that cement face, her hands curled around her teacup. My shoulders slipped into a permanent hunch.

"You know, we used to be"—I sucked air through my teeth—"so
tight
around that, and, and I know you're going through whatever you're goin' through and you're close to a breakthrough and all that, but ah, shit, I dunno, I, ah, I need
sex
from you, I need some physical
attention
, you know?" I almost gagged on the word "breakthrough," tried hard not to coat it with sarcasm. In that moment I knew I was her enemy because I was lying to her, betraying her for a piece of tail for myself. She sucked as a singer, she was putting herself through agony for nothing, and that was the dead nuts.

"You know, La Di." I picked my words as delicately as I would have tiptoed through a cow pasture, even though I was already hip-deep in shit. "The need to get laid is an honorable need."

Silence, then a hoarse whisper from a death mask. "Well, then go out and get laid." Not even a blink.

"Baby, I don't want nobody but you," and that Was the gospel truth. I relaxed slightly because I had said something honest. "I dunno." I shrugged and smiled weakly. "Maybe Tin just more sexually oriented than you."

"Well, I just guess the hell you
are
!" she hissed and charged into the bedroom. The door slammed like a stinging slap. I was in a comfortably frightened state of shock. I stared at my coffee; my fingers felt puckered and dry. I felt like my life would go on forever. Suddenly the door flew open and La Donna stood hunched over, face red, knotted fists at her side.

"I'm
very
sexually oriented!" she bawled and started crying so hard and bitterly that I thought she was going to vomit.

So, the day started off like shit. Once she began crying like that the worst part would be over, but the whole thing was starting to feel like a routine, the same goddamn soap opera every day. We hugged, kissed, I felt better, she felt better, I made promises, she made promises, I fell madly in love again. I didn't know what she was feeling on that score. For me the fight always had the same origin. She would make me feel undesired and I would want to bust her hump for it; then when I did I felt guilty and horrible, she got trembly and self-righteous, the tears, etc. Sometimes it wasn't even so much about fucking. I just wanted to feel like she considered me hot stuff. And I would sell our souls down the river for a taste of that feeling. But as I trudged down Broadway, dragging my sample case to the bus stop, I was never so clear on the monotony of it all. And the sad fact was that I realized one of the reasons I didn't change channels was because everything else felt like a rerun.

In the beginning it was the best. I hated to think about how good things used to be before this singing bullshit started. I used to go up to her bank, she worked at a Portuguese bank on Fifth Avenue, and surprise her with bag lunches. And in the lunch I'd hide a little present. Once I got crazy and put a pair of jade earrings inside the baked strawberry farmer's cheese and she almost cracked a tooth. And it was hard for me to -come uptown because my turf was the Village, which during lunchtime traffic was not exactly around the corner.

And I got her to read. She was never a big reader, but I had the touch. Knew exactly what books to turn her on with. She was into women, so I threw her some Flannery O'Connor, some Shirley Jackson, a little Willa Cather. On weekends we'd go tip to a friend's cabin in Lake Mohegan, grab groceries, jump in the sack and fuck like fiends. Weekend after weekend, watch a little tube, make a little fire, eat a little steak, read a little literature. With luck, the sun would never shine and we'd be surrounded by this cozy leafy gray for two whole days.

The last time we did that was October. Five months ago. Now it was too cold. I was too busy, she was too busy, who knows. And she hadn't cracked a book since then either. Nor had I, come to think of it. And now everything sucked. The bubble had popped once again like it always did. She was off playing Don Quixote of the cabarets while I was running ragy dialogues through my head.

I must have lived with four La Donnas in the last six years and sometimes I thought I was destined to have twice as many in the next six. I seemed to float from one bad, heavy relationship to another, like a trapeze artist swinging from one suspended bar to the next with no net below. And I wasn't saying I was any prize either. I would be just as bad for them as they would be for me. But as bad as all my La Donnas were, what preceded them was a hundred, a thousand times worse; the sad case of Kenny Solo—Kenny living alone. Two years of a howling loneliness, a hunger that wouldn't let me sleep, wouldn't let me relax. For two goddamn years almost every night I would go to bars, to diners, looking for ladies. That's not true. I would just go through the motions mainly so at some point I could go home satisfied that I had at least tried. And that was seven nights a week. Every night I would drive myself out of the house with a crazy feeling of "I'm missing it. It's all happening
now
. She's out there right
now
, you jerk."

Before Kenny Solo, I was- Kenny Groupo. I lived a year with guys. That was another nightmare. Purple walls, gummed stars on the ceiling, no toilet paper, Pork Chop Hill mounds of dishes in the sink. Communal towels that smelled like rat death and assholes; no privacy, no privacy.

And before that I lived with my parents.

I felt like I hadn't found it yet I hadn't made my move yet.

Something was scaring me about getting down. But something was coming. Sometimes I would wake up high as a kite about some intangible something. Sometimes I would walk down the street and feel all of a sudden like I could burst out of my skin with joy. Little rushes, tastes in my mouth. Something was in the air with me. Something was coming for sure. Something
had better
be in the air with me; I was thirty goddamn years old.

Riding downtown I had a fantasy of coming home and La Donna telling me she was pregnant. "Kill it," I would say.

I was not in the mood to walk around all day, kissing ass, hawking room spray to shut-ins. And if I wasn't in the mood to do what I had to do I was a goner. My job would turn into a nightmare. One thing I had learned in the last few years was that people picked tip where you were coming from immediately, and if you were knocking on doors with a look on your face like who flung it and left it you would have so many slammed doors in your kisser you'd get windburn. And I had a face like a neon sign, too.

The bus left me off by the diner. The minute I swung open the door I got hit with that diner smog and that pain-in-the-ass crackle-hiss soundtrack of frying eggs and home fries. I started down the narrow aisle between the red vinyl booths and counter stools, my sample case, like a bad conscience, smacking into my calf with every step.

"Kenny, you look like shit." Cheeseburger George the grill man looked up from pushing around his cholesterol disasters.

"Thank you, George, have a nice day."

The Bluecastle House boys were sitting at our table in the far corner. Al Fiorita, Jerry Gold and Maurice de la Creep, sitting there in their jackets and ties squinting and wheezing from a combination of cigarette and griddle grease smoke. They hadn't seen me come in. Fat Al was in the middle of a story. Charlene blocked my path taking an order from two ugly Catholic School girls in maroon stadium coats. I could see Charlene's bra and slip outline' through her waitress whites. She was emaciated and tall. Sunlight blasted through the wispy ringlets of her teased hair. Charlene always reminded me of mummies—she had high cheekbones, pinched lips and weird middled-aged skin, taut and glossy, as if she preserved it in diaphragm jelly. I touched her back. "Excuse me." I leaned toward the girls. "Do you mind if I borrow your waitress for a few minutes?" I gently squeezed Charlene's shoulder. "I need to have sex with her." Charlene, clucked, slapping my arm with her order pad. The girls giggled and snorted into their fists, and I moved on down the line.

"So anyways, I ast this guy if he got a couple of minutes, you know, so, ah, we could talk about mis." Al winked up at me and continued. "An' he says to me, 'Bawh? Ah doan hayv tahm to shake man dick after ah take a pee, an you wan a coupla minutes? Hayl no!'" Jerry and Maurice broke up. Al basked in their laughter, sat fat and sassy like a vanilla pimp in his Windsor knot, matching cuff links and tie pin.

"Hey." He raised an arm to me, still glowing, "Death of a salesman!"

"Death of a salesman you." I smirked sliding in next to Jerry. Some joke. I parked my case under the table and poured myself some coffee.

"Hey." Al nudged me. "Maurice got a joke. Maurice, tell him your joke."

Maurice chortled as he scratched furiously at his head, loosening enough dandruff to snow in Buffalo. Poor Maurice. He was the ugliest, grossest dude I've ever met. Nose hair, face creases, and bad breath. Thirty years a Bluecastle House man. They sent him into neighborhoods with lots of half-blind, senile people. He was a living memo to me to find some other line of work, and fast.

"What's the Greek national anthem?" he gloated.

"How the hell…"

"Never leave your buddies' behind!" He almost screamed with glee. Al and Jerry started laughing again, not with Maurice, as the saying goes, but at him.

"Don't fuckin' tell
me
, tell Cheeseburger George." I nodded toward the grill.

"Cheeseburgers." Maurice chuckled. "When I was in Italy, all the whores called the white soldiers Cheeseburgers, the niggers were Hamburgers. They'd say, "No cheese-a-boorgers joos a ham-a-boorgers.' They loved niggers."

"They only said that when
you
were around, Maurice." Al winked at us.

"No, they had a special name for Maurice." Jerry wiped his lips. "Alpo."

Maurice half-cursed, half-laughed, along with everybody.

"Kenny, guess what?" Jerry lightly slapped my arm. "You know that coconut room spray? I sold six cans yesterday to a synagogue on Essex Street."

"Okay, boys and girls." Al emptied two huge cardboard boxes of ketchup-sized foils onto the table. I stared with disgust at the familiar blue-green wrappers.