Run With the Hunted (46 page)

“All right.”

“Then there's Barney, he's married but I like him. Of all the guys in the bar he's the only one who never tried to put the make on me. It fascinated me. Well, you know, I'm trying to sell my house. So he came over one afternoon. He just came by. He said he wanted to look the house over for a friend of his. I let him in. Well, he came at just the right time. The kids were in school so I let him go ahead.... Then one night this stranger came into the bar late. He asked me to go home with him. I told him no. Then he said he just wanted to sit in my car with me, talk to me. I said all right. We sat in the car and talked. Then we shared a joint. Then he kissed me. That kiss did it. If he hadn't kissed me I wouldn't have done it. Now I'm pregnant and I don't know who. I'll have to wait and see who the child looks like.”

“All right, Lydia, lots of luck.”

“Thanks.”

I hung up. A minute passed and then the phone rang again. It was Lydia. “Oh,” she said, “I wondered how
you
were doing?”

“About the same, horses and booze.”

“Then everything's all right with you?”

“Not quite.”

“What is it?”

“Well, I sent this woman out for champagne....”

“Woman?”

“Well, girl, really …”

“A girl?”

“I sent her out with $20 for champagne and she hasn't come back. I think I've been taken.”

“Chinaski, I don't want to
hear
about your women. Do you understand that?”

“All right.”

Lydia hung up. There was a knock on the door. It was Tammie. She'd come back with the champagne and the change.

It was noon the next day when the phone rang. It was Lydia again.

“Well, did she come back with the champagne?”

“Who?”

“Your whore.”

“Yes, she came back....”

“Then what happened?”

“We drank the champagne. It was good stuff.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, you know, shit …”

I heard a long insane wail like a wolverine shot in the arctic snow and left to bleed and the alone....

She hung up.

I slept most of the afternoon and that night I drove out to the harness races.

I lost $32, got into the Volks and drove back. I parked, walked up on the porch and put the key into the door. All the lights were on. I looked around. Drawers were ripped out and overturned on the floor, the bed covers were on the floor. All my books were missing from the bookcase, including the books I had written, 20 or so. And my typewriter was gone and my toaster was gone and my radio was gone and my paintings were gone.

Lydia, I thought.

All she'd left me was my t.v. because she knew I never looked at it.

I walked outside and there was Lydia's car, but she wasn't in it. “Lydia,” I said. “Hey, baby!”

I walked up and down the street and then I saw her feet, both of them, sticking out from behind a small tree up against an apartment house wall. I walked up to the tree and said, “Look, what the hell's the matter with you?”

Lydia just stood there. She had two shopping bags full of my books and a portfolio of my paintings.

“Look, I've got to have my books and paintings back. They belong to me.”

Lydia came out from behind the tree—screaming. She took the paintings out and started tearing them. She threw the pieces in the air and when they fell to the ground she stomped on them. She was wearing her cowgirl boots.

Then she took my books out of the shopping bags and started throwing them around, out into the street, out on the lawn, everywhere.

“Here are your paintings! Here are your books! AND DON'T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN! DON'T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!”

Then Lydia ran down to my court with a book in her hand, my latest,
The Selected Works of Henry Chinaski
. She screamed, “So you want your books back? So you want your books back? Here are your goddamned books! AND DON'T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!”

She started smashing the glass panes in my front door. She took
The Selected Works of Henry Chinaski
and smashed pane after pane, screaming, “You want your books back? Here are your goddamned books! AND DON'T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN! I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!”

I stood there as she screamed and broke glass.

Where are the police? I thought. Where?

Then Lydia ran down the court walk, took a quick left at the trash bin and ran down the driveway of the apartment house next door. Behind a small bush was my typewriter, my radio and my toaster.

Lydia picked up the typewriter and ran out into the center of the street with it. It was a heavy old-fashioned standard machine. Lydia lifted the typer high over her head with both hands and smashed it in the street. The platen and several other parts flew off. She picked the typer up again, raised it over her head and screamed, “DON'T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!” and smashed it into the street again.

Then Lydia jumped into her car and drove off.

Fifteen seconds later the police cruiser drove up.

“It's an orange Volks. It's called the Thing, looks like a tank. I don't remember the license number, but the letters are HZY, like HAZY, got it?”

“Address?”

I gave them her address....

Sure enough, they brought her back. I heard her in the back seat, wailing, as they drove up.

“STAND BACK!” said one cop as he jumped out. He followed me up to my place. He walked inside and stepped on some broken glass. For some reason he shone his flashlight on the ceiling and the ceiling mouldings.

“You want to press charges?” the cop asked me.

“No. She has children. I don't want her to lose her kids. Her ex-husband is trying to get them from her. But
please
tell her that people aren't supposed to go around doing this sort of thing.”

“O.K.,” he said, “now sign this.”

He wrote it down in hand in a little notebook with lined paper. It said that I, Henry Chinaski, would not press charges against one Lydia Vance.

I signed it and he left.

I locked what was left of the door and went to bed and tried to sleep.

In an hour or so the phone rang. It was Lydia. She was back home.

“YOU-SON-OF-A-BITCH, YOU EVER TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN AGAIN AND I'LL DO THE SAME THING ALL OVER AGAIN!”

She hung up.

Two nights later I went over to Tammie's place on Rustic Court. I knocked. The lights weren't on. It seemed empty. I looked in her mailbox. There were letters in there. I wrote a note, “Tammie, I have been trying to phone you. I came over and you weren't in. Are you all right? Phone me.... Hank.”

I drove over at 11
AM
the next morning. Her car wasn't out front. My note was still stuck in the door. I rang anyhow. The letters were still in the mailbox. I left a note in the mailbox: “Tammie, where the hell are you? Contact me.... Hank.”

I drove all over the neighborhood looking for that smashed red Camaro.

I returned that night. It was raining. My notes were wet. There was more mail in the box. I left her a book of my poems, inscribed. Then I went back to my Volks. I had a Maltese cross hanging from my rearview mirror. I cut the cross down, took it back to her place and tied it around her doorknob.

I didn't know where any of her friends lived, where her mother lived, where her lovers lived.

I went back to my court and wrote some love poems.

—
W
OMEN

I cut the middle fingernail of the middle

finger

right hand

real short

and I began rubbing along her cunt

as she sat upright in bed

spreading lotion over her arms

face

and breasts

after bathing.

then she lit a cigarette:

“don't let this put you off,”

and smoked and continued to rub the

lotion on.

I continued to rub the cunt.

“you want an apple?” I asked.

“sure,” she said, “you got one?”

but I got to her—

she began to twist

then she rolled on her side,

she was getting wet and open

like a flower in the rain.

then she rolled on her stomach

and her most beautiful ass

looked up at me

and I reached under and got the

cunt again.

she reached around and got my

cock, she rolled and twisted,

I mounted

my face falling into the mass

of red hair that overflowed

from her head

and my fattened cock entered

into the miracle.

later we joked about the lotion

and the cigarette and the apple.

then I went out and got some chicken

and shrimp and french fries and buns

and mashed potatoes and gravy and

cole slaw, and we ate. she told me

how good she felt and I told her

how good I felt and we ate

the chicken and the shrimp and the

french fries and the buns and the

mashed potatoes and the gravy and

the cole slaw too.

I drove home. The apartment looked the way it always had—bottles and trash everywhere. I'd have to clean it up a bit. If anybody saw it that way they'd have me committed.

There was a knock. I opened the door. It was Tammie. “Hi!” she said.

“Hello.”

“You must have been in an awful hurry when you left. All the doors were unlocked. The back door was wide open. Listen, promise you won't tell if I tell you something?”

“All right.”

“Arlene went in and used your phone, long distance.”

“All right.”

“I tried to stop her but I couldn't. She was on pills.”

“All right.”

“Where've you been?”

“Galveston.”

“Why did you go flying off like that? You're crazy.”

“I've got to leave again Saturday.”

“Saturday? What's today?”

“Thursday.”

“Where are you going?”

“New York City.”

“Why?”

“A reading. They sent the tickets two weeks ago. And I get a percentage of the gate.”

“Oh, take me
with
you! I'll leave Dancy with Mother. I want to go!”

“I can't afford to take you. It'll eat up my profits. I've had some heavy expenses lately.”

“I'll be
good!
I'll be
so
good! I'll never leave your side! I really missed you.”

“I can't do it, Tammie.”

She went to the refrigerator and got a beer. “You just don't give a fuck. All those love poems, you didn't mean it.”

“I meant it when I wrote them.”

The phone rang. It was my editor. “Where've you been?”

“Galveston. Research.”

“I hear you're reading in New York City this Saturday.”

“Yes, Tammie wants to go, my girl.”

“Are you taking her?”

“No, I can't afford it.”

“How much is it?”

“$316 round trip.”

“Do you really want to take her?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“All right, go ahead. I'll mail you a check.”

“Do you mean it?”

“Yes.”

“I don't know what to say....”

“Forget it. Just remember Dylan Thomas.”

“They won't kill
me
.”

We said goodbye. Tammie was sucking on her beer.

“All right,” I told her, “you've got two or three days to pack.”

“You mean, I'm
going?
”

“Yes, my editor is paying your way.”

Tammie leaped up and grabbed me. She kissed me, grabbed my balls, pulled at my cock. “You're the sweetest old fuck!”

New York City. Outside of Dallas, Houston, Charleston, and Atlanta, it was the worst place I had ever been. Tammie pushed up against me and my cock rose. Joanna Dover hadn't gotten it all....