by Ed Gorman
Goldman’s car was gone. Meaning this gink didn’t have sense or courtesy enough not to block her when she came back home.
The car was a forest-green Mg. It looked dashing in the way of many things British. That’s one thing the Brits have got all over us, the dashing stuff. We have better cooking, prettier girls, and a higher class of rock stars. But they’ve got a corner on the dashing stuff.
I parked at the curb and walked around back.
He was sitting on my steps, smoking a cigarette with one hand, patting his hair with another. Maybe there was an invisible photographer somewhere about to take his picture.
America’s favorite unknown literary genius.
Just ask him.
When he looked at me, he frowned. “This wasn’t easy for me to come here. I want you to know that.”
He sounded as if he wanted me to pin a medal for valor on him.
“You could always leave,” I said. “Like right now, for instance.”
“Let’s get one thing straight. I think you’re a two-bit hayseed lawyer who works for a fascist judge in an intolerable little burg.”
“Ok, now I’ll tell you what I think of you.”
“You didn’t let me finish. You see me as an untalented, spoiled, rich boy who is cheating on a very sweet young woman who was stupid to fall in love with me in the first place and is even dumber to stay with me now that she knows the truth. At least part of the truth.”
“Part of the truth?”
He looked suitably miserable for what he was about to say, a stage figure in his inevitable white button-down shirt and chinos.
“The truth is I’ve never been faithful. The day after our wedding night-in Paris, thanks to the largesse of my parents-I screwed the maid.”
“The maid?”
“She was eighteen. You wouldn’t have believed her tits.”
“And Kylie was-” his-out shopping.”
“The old screw-the-maid-with-the-big-titswhile-the-ll-woman-is-out-shopping routine. And you are ashamed of yourself, of course.”
“Of course. You think I’m proud of it?”
“Yeah, I do. Because there was a little smirk in your voice when you told me about it. You like being the conqueror, and you know what? The big lug just can’t help himself. He’s just a charming rogue, isn’t he? There’s just enough of me like you to recognize it, Chad. But where I’m not like you is that I’d never do it while I was married. I’d at least get a divorce before I went back to chasing.”
He was wringing his hands now. He didn’t know how to wring his hands worth a damn. His hand-wringing made him look prissy.
“That’s why I’m here.”
“I’m not following.”
“I’m here to ask you a favor.”
You know how things come clear all of a sudden and you just know, almost word for word, what you’re about to hear, but you reject it because you don’t think that anybody would have the arrogance to ask?
“Don’t ask me,” I said.
I dug out a Lucky and got it going.
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
“Sure, I do.”
“All right, what is it?”
“You’re going to ask me to go find Kylie and tell her that you’ve decided you’re in love with your little undergrad after all and that it’s time-painful as it is, and you’re sorry as all hell-ffget a divorce.”
I had to give him his courage.
Without hesitation, he said, “That’s not an easy thing to ask a guy.”
He wanted another medal.
“You didn’t ask a guy, dip-shit. I asked a guy.”
“Well, I guess that’s sort of right. But I would’ve asked if you hadn’t asked yourself first.”
“You are a living, crawling, slimy piece of shit.”
“You think I don’t know it? I know I’m a bastard. And I don’t even know why. I just keep falling in love. It’s not just getting pussy, McCain. It really isn’t. I really, truly fall in love. But it never lasts very long.”
“You fell in love with the maid?”
“You’re not gonna believe this-I damned near asked her to marry me.”
And I felt sorry for him. I wasn’t even sure why. But every once in a while you see somebody the way they really are-it only takes a second of seeing them that way-and then you can’t hate them quite as much as you did. It’s a curse.
Then he did me a favor and went back to his whining. “I’m jeopardizing my inheritance here, you know.”
I was running out of medals to pin on this guy.
“It’s funny,” he said. He took out his pack of Viceroys. “My parents were against me marrying her because she was Jewish. They’re not anti-Semitic or anything-Kylie’s folks weren’t all that hot about me marrying her, either-j that they’re pretty strict Catholics and everything -but now-I mean, I’ve kept them up on developments and everything-now they’re taking her part in this. They’ve really gotten to love her.”
“That isn’t hard to do.”
Sudden anger. “You bastard. You did screw her that night she was here, didn’t you?”
I could have told him the truth. But why? His ego needed some grief. In my best mature voice, I said, “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“God,” he said, miserably. “You can’t trust anybody these days.” And then-ffgive him at least a smidge of credit here-he said, “I guess that’s pretty ironic coming from me, huh?
About not being able to trust anybody, I mean.”
“I won’t tell her for you, Chad.”
He started talking to himself. Angled his head away. Took a deep drag on his smoke and began to ramble. “You know what I’m really scared of? Looking into her eyes when I tell her. You ever see her eyes when you hurt her feelings?
She looks like this devastated little girl.”
He was right.
“And I don’t want to put that hurt in her eyes anymore. I’ve been doing it night after night for a month now. I haven’t just walked away, McCain. You have to give me that, anyway. I know I’ve gone back and forth between the two of them but it’s only because I don’t want to hurt Kylie. Hell, I’ve known for a long time that we had a shit marriage. We never should’ve been married in the first place. We’re just too combustible.”
He was starting to persuade me and he knew it.
“She’ll still want to see you,” I said.
He looked at me, done with his reverie.
“Oh, I know. But she’ll know the situation.
I won’t explain that to her because you’ll already have covered it.” Then: “I won’t even care if you sleep with her.”
“You pimping for her now? I hate to tell you this, Chad, but you don’t have the right to hand her out like candy.”
“You jerk. You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t know what you mean. Now get off my steps.”
“So you’ll do it?”
“You slimy, crawling, stinking piece of shit.”
“So you’ll do it, McCain? Will ya, please?
Will ya?”
“You vain, pompous, arrogant-”
“So you’ll do it?”
“Yeah,” I said, “you rotten bastard, I’ll do it.”
She wasn’t home and she wasn’t home and she wasn’t home. I kept trying her every ten minutes. I wanted to get it over with. I dragged the phone with its long extension cord over to the couch so that I could lie down and watch “Science Fiction Theater.” It had been on back when I was still a teenager. It was funny how I was already nostalgic for a pastime. How can you be nostalgic when you’re only twenty-four? But it was the old shows and the old songs and the old sights-the way the shadows of the trees played on the river; the deserted baseball park where you could see advertisements on the fence for businesses that didn’t exist anymore; the Catholic school where I’d pined so arduously for the beautiful Pamela far across town at public school-mch as I liked Kerouac and art film
s and Evergreen Review and Lenny Bruce-I already missed the simpler times behind me. And “Science Fiction Theater” with the ultimate father figure, Truman Bradley, was part of those simpler times.
She called.
“He isn’t here.”
“I know. You need to come over here.”
“What?”
“Please. Just get in your car and come over.”
“Oh, God, this is going to be bad, isn’t it, McCain?”
“Please, Kylie. Just come over.”
“He couldn’t even face me himself, could he?”
“Right away,” I said. “Please.” And hung up.
She was at my door in under ten minutes. Her knock was exceptionally loud. I learned this was because she knocked on the door with a full fifth of Jack Daniels. In her other hand she carried a suitcase. A big one.
No sign she’d been crying. No sign of trembling. No sign of anger. This was scary.
I took her suitcase.
“You want a drink?” I said.
“Please. You mind if we put on some music?”
“Anything in particular?”
“You pick.”
“Been listening to this blues guy. Oscar Brown, Jr.”
“Fine,” she said.
She got her drink and she got Oscar Brown, Jr.
She sat at one end of the couch with her lovely legs stretched out across my lap. She wore blue walking shorts and a white T-shirt.
“He tell you he was leaving me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He say he was in love with her?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He say he couldn’t face me because he “didn’t want to put any more hurt” in my eyes?”
“Yeah. Some kinda bullshit like that. He probably thinks it’s a good line.”
“He does. He thinks all his lines are good lines.”
“And by the way, thanks for telling me what I was supposed to tell you. I was sorta nervous about how I’d say it.”
“I almost told him I was pregnant.”
“You’re pregnant?”
“No. But it would’ve made him suffer. This way he just gets to walk away.”
She finished her drink in three gulps. Then swung her legs off me and stood up.
“You ready for another one?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“I’m going to make a stiff one.”
“The night’s young.”
She actually smiled. “Yes, McCain, and so are we.”
She poured about half a glass full of sour mash, ran a silver slip of tap water into it, added a couple ice cubes from the fridge, and then came back, bringing those wonderful long legs with her.
When they were once again inhabiting my lap, she said, “Tonight’s the night we sleep together, McCain.”
“Probably not.”
“C’mon, McCain, I’ve got to sleep with you tonight.”
“Because he’s sleeping with her tonight.”
“No, because I want to sleep with you.”
“You like me. I like you. We’re friends. That part’s true. But the reason you want to sleep with me is because of her.”
“Well, maybe part of the reason.”
“Most of the reason.”
“Maybe fifty percent of the reason,” she said.
“Maybe eighty percent of the reason.”
“Maybe fifty-five percent of the reason.”
We listened to Oscar Brown, Jr.
“Boy, this drink’s really getting to me,” she said.
“That’s probably more booze than you’ve had in your entire life-right there in that one drink.
Nobody says you’ve got to drink it.”
She set it down on the coffee table.
“Wow. I’m woozy.”
She laid her head back against the arm of the couch. Closed her eyes.
“Would you dance with me?” she said.
“I thought you were woozy.”
“I’m all right now.”
“You’re a dancer, huh?”
“Not really. I mean, I used to dance with my sister sometimes when we watched “American Bandstand.” And I danced in high school the few times the boys would ask me. They wanted to slow-dance with girls with big breasts so that let me out.” Pause. “I want you to hold me, McCain, I really need you to hold me, and dancing’s a good way to do that.”
“How about some Nat King Cole?”
“Perfect. I need to go to the bathroom first, though.”
I had an album of ballads by Cole. It was Mathis or Cole or Darin when I wanted ballads. Hearing Bobby Rydell ruin a Jerome Kern song wasn’t something I dealt with very well.
I heard the glass smashing in the bathroom and a terrible thought filled my mind. The jagged glass from the Skippy peanut-butter jar I kept my toothbrush in-ripping across her wrists.
I lunged for the door.
She’d been emotional, after all-suicidally so.
The door swung open and there she was.
“Dammit, I broke your glass, McCain. You had it sitting right on the edge of the sink and I thought it wouldn’t fall off. But you had some kind of greasy stuff all over it.”
“Hair oil. I probably picked the glass up after I put the hair oil on.
Greasy kid stuff, as they say in the ads.”
“Hair oil, then. Anyway, when I picked it up, it slid right through my fingers. Get me a dustpan and a broom and I’ll clean it up.”
She fixed me with a sharp eye. “And it wasn’t because I was drinking, either.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Yeah, but it’s what you were thinking.”
“Guilty as charged, I guess.”
She looked so bedraggled and exasperated just then, her hair sort of mussed and her face damp from the heat and her clothes a little mussed, she just looked so damned sweet and lost and sad and nice and girly and true and just plain wonderful that I leaned forward and touched my lips to hers.
I forced my eager arms to stay put.
I said, “I’ll get the broom and the dustpan.”
A few minutes later, we were dancing.
“This is nice,” she said.
“It sure is.”
We were listening to “Lost April” and it was great, dancing there in the living-room of my apartment. I turned the light off. A quarter moon hung in a pane of glass and a coyote cried in growing flower-scented darkness. This was kind of a medical procedure for both of us. A healing, if you will. It had been way too long since I’d held a woman and way too long since this particular woman had been held by a man she trusted. It wouldn’t last long-dawn would turn us back into our real selves-but for now we were shadowshapes and nothing more.
“Is it all right if I kiss your neck, McCain? Because if I don’t I’ll start crying about you-know-who.”
“Well, in that case, because it involves you-know-who, I guess I don’t have much choice do I?”
One tiny little peck on my neck and I set a land speed record for getting an erection.
We got tighter.
I thought of Groucho’s old gag line, “If I held you any tighter, I’d be behind you.”
And then we were kissing. And I do mean kissing.
And thrusting. And rubbing. And stroking. And kissing and thrusting even harder. And then rubbing and stroking even harder.
“I want to if you want to,” I said.
“Well, I want to if you want to,” she said.
All this said in great swooping gasps on both our parts.
And then we started dancing at a slight eastward angle, toward the bed.
I could see over her shoulders into the bedroom.
Tasha, Crystal, and Tess seemed to sense what was about to happen.
They jumped off the bed as if it were a sinking ocean liner.
And then we reached the bed and then-“Thanks,” she said when we were all finished.
“Are you crazy. Thank you!”
“I’m not
that great a lover, McCain.”
“Well, neither am I.”
“You were pretty good.”
“Well, look who’s talking. You were pretty good yourself.”
“At least we’re being honest.”
“Honesty is always the best policy.” I guess that’s the myth of Stranger Sex. The fury of it is great but sex is actually better -at least for me-af you’ve been together a few times. Get to know what to do, what not to do, when to do it, when not to… need I go on?
But I was already wondering if we hadn’t been a mite hasty about being perfectly honest about our first experience. We’d been expecting a Technicolor and Cinemascope musical.
What we’d gotten was a nice, lusty B second feature in black-and-white on a regular-size screen. And no reassurance.
And I think we both needed reassurance.
“You’re not telling me I am a great lover and I’m not telling you you are a great lover.”
“Yeah, but you did say I was pretty good, Kylie.”
“Oh, you were pretty good, all right. In fact, you were very good.”
“Well, that’s what I meant to say to you, too. Not that you were merely pretty good. But that you were very good.”
“And so were you, McCain. Not just very good. Very, very good.”
Now, that was more like it. Two verys.
“You got a smoke?” she asked.
“I thought you only smoked filters.”
“I’m being European tonight, McCain. Like Simone Signoret or somebody like that.
European movie stars never smoke filters.”
“There’s nothing more alluring than lung cancer.”
I got us cigarettes and got them going and gave her hers.
“God, that breeze feels good,” she said, inhaling with epic depth.
We lay inches apart on the bed. Letting the breeze balm us.
“I ever tell you what he did to me the first time I ever met him at a dance?”
“I guess not.”
“Could you stand to hear about it?”
“Sure.”
She rolled over and kissed me on the cheek. Her breast felt swell against my arm.
“Thanks for putting up with me.”
“So tell me.”
“Well, we met at this dance in
Manhattan, see. And we danced like every other dance together. Fast and slow. And it was obvious there was something going on. You know? So I said, “Be sure and save the last dance for me.” And he kissed me. Right there in the middle of the floor.