Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man

by Lawrence Block

Dear Mr. Ribbentraub:

  Let me take this opportunity to wish you and yours a happy Fourth of July. Of course the Fourth will have come and gone by the time you read this, but it is that very day now as I write this, and I can honestly claim to be moved by the spirit that inhabited the breasts of our founding fathers when they struck a blow for liberty and freedom.

  While I might have wished you a Safe and Sane Fourth in any case, I must confess that the main purpose of this letter is to apprise you of the fact that I have permanently vacated premises at 74 Bleecker St. I am accordingly enclosing herewith two keys, one to the vestibule and the other to the apartment. Another set of keys remains in the possession of my wife, Mrs. Laurence Clarke. She may be reached c/o American Express, Cuernavaca, Mexico. I don’t know the zip code, nor do I know whether appeals to her for the return of her set of keys are likely to meet with success. I tend to doubt it, as I have had no luck thus far in persuading her to send me $1480, which she seems to have taken along, like the keys, quite by mistake.

  I trust you will cancel my lease forthwith and will retain my one month’s security deposit in lieu of back rent and any other obligation that is mine under the terms of the lease. While it might dismay you to do this, I can really see no alternative for you, as I am presently unemployed, have no job prospects in the offing, and retain no cash assets.

  As a sweetener, I have left all my furniture at 74 Bleecker St. Two appraisers have set a value of these goods, with one estimating their worth at $1480 and the other placing the figure at $520. Whichever figure one accepts, it seems fairly clear that you will be recovering furniture in excess of any monies owed you under the terms of the lease. I hereby deed this furniture to you in return for past and future favors.

  Should this be unsatisfactory to you, you might attempt to reach a more pleasing settlement through contact with my attorney. He is Roland Davis Caulder with offices at 437 Piper Blvd. in Richmond, Va. While I have heard that disbarment proceedings against Mr. Caulder are in the offing, I am sure he will be able to represent me in his present capacity at least for the next several months.

  I should advise you, however, that should you contemplate formal legal action against me, I would have no choice but to inform the appropriate authorities of the innumerable violations now in existence at 74 Bleecker St., and would further feel it incumbent upon me to notify Mrs. Ribbentraub of your liaisons with several tenants of those premises, among them my wife.

  I trust you will take this advice in the spirit in which it is offered.

  Best personal regards,

  Laurence Clarke

  P.S: It might profit you to plan on engaging a new superintendent for 74 Bleecker St. The present holder of that post is under consideration for an important editorial position at Whitestone Publications, Inc., and you can hardly expect him to let his unswerving personal loyalty to you stand in the way of such an excellent opportunity for advancement.

  L.C.

  17

  Cuernavaca

  Larry or Pancho or whoever you are today,

  You’ll have to forgive me for being a little drunk as I write this. But if I weren’t a little drunk, maybe more than a little, I couldn’t write to you at all.

  You bastard, you rotten bastard.

  All you want to do is ruin things for Steve and me. That’s fairly obvious. Just because we are two good people with a chance for happiness you have to be a little fox and spoil the vineyard. It makes me wonder why I ever thought I loved you in the first place. How could anybody possibly love a man like you? That is what I ask myself. Over and over I ask myself how could anyone ever love a man like you because you are no man at all, Larry, no man at all, you have no soul, and if someone cut you open there would be no heart in your body and that is how I feel about you, I swear it is.

  Since your only goal in life is to make people miserable I am going to tell you that you are succeeding. Not that Steve and I are miserable because we love each other too deeply ever to be miserable, but we are getting there, thanks to you.

  You are like a snake with an apple except you are not good enough to be a snake, you are more like a worm, a worm in an apple and even the apple is rotten and so are you, Larry, you rotten bastard.

  Because of you we find ourselves asking ourselves silent questions when we already know the answers, but you make it impossible for us to relax and enjoy our happiness because you plant little doubts in our minds and the doubts feed and fester like lilies that smell worse than weeds.

  I wish I were not drunk so that I could tell you just how much I hate you. And no matter what you do that you will not succeed.

  I want you to know that, Larry.

  If you have the slightest speck of human decency left within you, you will stop writing to us.

  Your wife,

  Fran

  18

  c/o Gumbino

  311½ West 20th St.

  New York 10011

  July 9

  Mrs. Laurence Clarke

  c/o American Express

  Cuernavaca, Mexico

  Fran(ces)ca mi amore:

  You ignorant cunt, if my letters bother you so much why did you just now open this envelope?

  Or is it possible that they bother you in a necessary way?

  Think about that.

  El Gringo

  19

  c/o Gumbino

  311½ West 20th St.

  New York 10011

  July 9

  Mr. Stephen Joel Adel

  c/o American Express

  Cuernavaca, Mexico

  Dear Steve:

  As you’ll note, I am no longer living at 74 Bleecker St. I’ve given up the apartment and have signed over the furniture to my erstwhile landlord, a George Ribbentraub. I mention this because it’s possible he may get in touch with Fran in order to recover her set of keys. If she has them on hand, you might suggest that she send them to him at Ribbentraub Realty Corp., 414 East 14th St. I don’t know the zip code.

  But that’s nothing to be overly concerned about, Steve. In a way my change of address is linked to the subject of this letter, but that will become more apparent as you read on, and as I write on.

  The thing that bothers me, Steve, and that has caused me to resume writing to you after having more or less determined to discontinue our correspondence, is that I have been given to understand that things are deteriorating between you and Fran.

  And this bothers me.

  To be frank, it bothers the hell out of me. Much as it hurt me to be deprived of my wife and my best friend in one swell foop, I was able to stand it because I was comforted by the thought that you were both involved in a total love relationship that transcended anything you could have had independent of one another.

  Now it seems that you aren’t getting along so well. Well, this sort of thing happens all the time, Steve. It seems to have begun rather quickly with you two, but maybe that’s all to the good. The sooner trouble rears its ugly head, the sooner you can reach out with your terrible swift sword and lop that ugly head clean off.

  Listen, old buddy, don’t bother to tell me that everything’s roses with you and Fran. I know better. As a matter of fact, I may know better than you do.

  Fran sent me a letter. Undated. (I wish you people would get in the habit of dating your letters. It only takes a second and simplifies things all around.)

  A depressing letter, Steve. I’m enclosing a Xerox copy of it so that you can read it for yourself and see how bad things really are. I wish I had Fran’s letter here so that I could refer to it, but Rozanne took it along to the office with some other documents so that she could Xerox them. I used to do my own Xeroxing, but Rozanne pointed out that I was taking unnecessary risks by so doing. This is simpler, and saves me the trip to and from West 44th Street.

  She’ll be back around five-thirty, and by then I should be done with this letter, and I’ll enclose the copy of Fran’s letter and get the works into the mail.

  Read Fran’s
letter, my oldest, dearest friend.

  Read it and weep.

  Done weeping? Good. Dry your tears, Steve, and sit back so I can do you a favor.

  And I’m not kidding about this, either.

  You know, both you and Fran have gone to great lengths to impugn my motives. It sort of tears me up to realize that both of you, two people to whom I have been very damned close, are so willing to believe I’m some kind of an ogre. I can’t understand it. Rozanne loves me, Jennifer loves me, the daughters of Lancaster think I’m the greatest thing since the Pill, but my wife and best friend can’t stand the written word of me.

  Well, I think it’ll be pretty obvious that I have no ulterior motive in writing this letter. My motive, and there’s nothing the least bit ulterior about it, is to give you some information that will make it easy for you to restore things between you and Fran to the way they once were. More than that, I think you can actually raise your relationship with Fran to new heights.

  What do I get out of this? Well, the satisfaction of having helped you both out. And the comforting knowledge that I haven’t lost my wife and best friend for nothing.

  I don’t know if you know anything about Rozanne. Among the things she took to the Xerox machine this morning were a few letters to and from her, including one which I sent a carbon copy of to Lisa. (You remember Lisa.) There’s no description of Rozanne in any of those letters, largely because I didn’t know what she looked like, except for her mammary endowment, which is the first thing anyone would think of noticing about her.

  I know you’ve always been partial to large breasts, Steve. That was one thing that surprised me about your running off with Fran, incidentally. Oh, she’s not flat-chested, not by any means, but a man wouldn’t take a look at Fran and automatically ask for a glass of milk. I always thought of her breasts as small but honest. For my own part, I’ve never cared that much either way. I like large breasts on large-breasted girls and small breasts on small-breasted girls. What I like, when all is said and done, is girls.

  But one look at Rozanne and a guy like you would begin to salivate. The easiest way to describe it for you, Steve, is like so—picture your ultimate unattainable ideal in tits, improve on it, and you’ve got Rozanne.

  (The hell you do. I’ve got Rozanne. You’ve got Fran, buddy.)

  Aside from her breasts, Rozanne is just an average beautiful girl. Long black hair, dark complexion, fierce eyebrows, deep, liquid dark-brown eyes, and a strong nose and chin. A slim, supple body that is far too slim and supple for those breasts (but who’s complaining, right?) tapering to a tiny waist and widening to a perfectly round ass. Hips designed for easy childbearing and joyful childconceiving. Good legs. Not great legs, but damned good legs. A nice little Italian girl from the Bronx. A nice little Italian virgin living all by her lonesome in Chelsea and working as secretary to a eunuch who, for some unaccountable reason, never had the gumption to flip her onto her desk and fuck her eyes out.

  That’s Rozanne. Now, to further set the stage, read the rest of the Xeroxed letters.

  Okay. Now you’re set for your lesson, even as Rozanne was set for hers. No more delaying tactics. We’ll get right to the point.

  After I wrote her the letter about Naughty Nasty Nancy, I figured one of two things would happen. Either I would hear from her almost immediately or I would never hear from her again. I figured either of the two developments would constitute a consummation devoutly to be wished.

  A day or two after I mailed the letter, my phone rang. I picked it up, and the conversation went something like this:

  “Hello?”

  “Hello.”

  “Aha!”

  “I got your letter.”

  “I hoped you would.”

  “How can you write letters like that? I mean, how can you do it?”

  “It’s a talent, I guess.”

  “It was here waiting for me when I came home from the office. I must’ve read it three times, maybe more.”

  “Did you masturbate?”

  “Can’t you talk nice to me?”

  “I could, but you get more of a kick out of it when I talk nasty.”

  “How do you know so much about me?”

  “Intuition, I suppose.”

  “I never met a man like you.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “Can I—”

  “Yes?”

  “I can’t say it.”

  “You want help?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want to come over here, don’t you?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Come right over.”

  “Shall I, uh—”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, couldn’t you at least meet me somewhere, or something?”

  “I’m not sure I would recognize you. Come up to my apartment, Rozanne. It’ll save time.”

  “I guess so.”

  “I’ll expect you in a half hour.”

  “All right, if I can get a cab.”

  “A half hour. Don’t be late.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  She was early. I took a shower first, dried off, and fished around in the closet until I found a robe. It was practically new. I don’t think I had ever worn it. Lisa gave it to me for my birthday once, or maybe it was Fran. (That gave it to me, I mean. Not that Lisa gave it to Fran. An ambiguous construction that I wanted to clear up.) I wonder if any man ever bought a bathrobe for himself. Or if any man ever wore the bathrobe his wife bought him.

  I put the robe on with nothing under it and waited for her to turn up. She turned up, knocking timidly at the door. I opened it, and there she was.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Why, hello.” I said. She was wearing a knit dress. It was red, and so tight that it looked like a blush. “You look good enough to eat,” I said, and her face turned the same shade as the dress. “Come in,” I said, and she came in, and I closed the door and locked it. She winced as I turned the lock, as if it meant she couldn’t change her mind now. Which was precisely what I had been thinking.

  “Now what?” she said. “Do I just lift up my skirt and you’ll do it or what?”

  “Is that what you think you want?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I’m new at this.”

  “You silly,” I said, and kissed her.

  She really didn’t want to respond to the kiss, Steve. She wanted to get eaten and have an orgasm, but she was so tense she couldn’t have had a Coke, let alone an orgasm. So I took a lot of time kissing her, and then I put some music on the radio, good old WPAT, nice mood music that you could fuck to without listening to.

  (What do you do for music to fuck by in Cuernavaca?)

  And we gradually worked our way to the bed, and I gradually got her out of her dress and paid the proper sort of homage to various parts of her anatomy. She kept saying that she knew she could really trust me, and I kept earning that trust by taking my time with her, being very gentle, very gentle, ever so gentle.

  The poor kid had never really relaxed with sex before. She always dated these louts who would kiss her hard enough to bruise her lips, then grab her tits to test their grip, then make a beeline for her twat. She never had a chance to enjoy necking because she was too hung up with fears of what it would lead to.

  Now she had her chance, and she was making the most of it. As I ran my tongue along the undersides of those incredible breasts and listened to her purr and throb, as I stroked the satin skin on the insides of her taut thighs, I thought how incredible it was that this girl had managed to maintain her hymen to the ripe old age of twenty-six.

  “You can trust me,” I said from time to time.

  “I know I can trust you,” she said now and again.

  “I swear on my mother’s life that I shall not penetrate your quim today, even if you decide you want me to.”

  “You’re a gentleman, Larry.”

  “Of course you can change your mind at some future date, but not today. You walked into this apartment
a virgin. You’ll walk out of here a virgin.”

  “A gentleman. Oh, do that some more, it’s wonderful. A real gentleman. I never met anyone like you before, never in my whole life. Oh, God, do you know what it does to me when you do that?”

  I had a fair idea.

  One thing, Steve. I meant that oath, and the fact that my mother died several years ago doesn’t detract from it a bit. I used that wording for the impression it would make, not out of some perverse streak. (You and Fran seem all too willing to believe I have a perverse streak.)

  Anyway, the oath couldn’t have been any more binding had I had a living mother. I was determined not to violate that maidenhead. Rozanne was providing me with a rare enough pleasure anyway, the pleasure of slow seduction.

  I didn’t realize until then just how much I’d grown to miss that pleasure. That’s one of the unfortunate by-products of the sexual revolution, Steve. There’s no more working up to it. A girl either fucks or she doesn’t, and the two of you decide it in front, and if she does, you both get into bed and you do it, and if she doesn’t, you go away and that’s it.

  Even with the daughters of Lancaster, the most precious angels on earth, there was no gradual pursuit. They knew the game and enjoyed playing it, and they didn’t have to be conned into anything. There were some things they had to be shown, owing to relative inexperience on their part, and it’s always fun to play teacher, especially with such willing and adept pupils, but it’s not the same thing.

  Don’t get me wrong. I approve of the change in morals. Seduction as a steady diet is a bore. Artificial as hell, and hard on the nervous system.