A Strange Kind of Love

by Lawrence Block

  I could imagine the girls hating her and the boys laughing at her and saying cruel things behind her back, taking her whenever they could and even lining up on her and not one of them ever loving her or even liking her a little. I could imagine all this and I tried to picture her doing anything else but what she was doing or living anywhere else but in New York where people kept their noses out of other people’s business.

  I decided she made the right choice.

  “Why me for free?” I asked suddenly.

  “I like you,” she said. “But that isn’t it, not exactly. It’s just that the man I was with tonight was an old man and nothing happened with him, and I wanted a man and there you were in your silly towel. I liked you but then I like all men. It works for me all the time.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “I’m not a nymphomaniac,” she said proudly. “I used to think I was until this doctor who made love to me explained that a nymphomaniac never had an orgasm and that’s why she ran from man to man. I’m not like that, not at all. It happens for me every single time.”

  “Every time?”

  She nodded emphatically. “It never fails. The doctor said he never heard of anyone quite like me, and that made me very happy. He’s a good doctor, too.”

  “God,” I said. “Every time.”

  “Of course it has to be with a man I like,” she went on. “But I’m like that Will Rogers—I never met a man I didn’t like.”

  She left and I stretched out on the bed like a racehorse after a hard day at stud. I felt drained, but my emotions were untouched and for the first time that really bothered me. I started thinking about Marcia Banks and wondered how much she had to do with it.

  Was I falling in love with her?

  If I did I was one damned stupid fool. For one thing, she wanted a permanent deal with me like I wanted bubonic plague. She didn’t even want a real love affair, not that gal. The set-up she wanted was ideal—no strings, and nothing doing unless we were both in the mood and no hard feelings on either side.

  That would be perfect—it was the type of relationship I had always craved in the past. But now I wanted more than that for some nutty reason.

  The book had to wait—I was too tired to start worrying about a novel and too mixed up to dream up a plot.

  The bed was soft and the pillow even softer. It still smelled of Carol and the clean, fresh bath-smell of her pink skin.

  I fell right asleep.

  I slept like a log.

  But I dreamed about Marcia.

  Chapter Five

  THE NEXT MORNING I woke up, showered, shaved, and dressed. I found the same lunch counter on Columbus Avenue for another round of burnt toast and cold coffee, but this time the counterman was almost pleasant and the mangy dog was nowhere to be seen. This didn’t make the toast and coffee taste any better but it did get the day off to a better start.

  I had a second cup, not out of any overwhelming desire of the coffee but because I just didn’t much feel like looking at the typewriter until I ran out of excuses.

  The second cup of coffee was worse than the first. It ran into my stomach, tepid and bitter and I was suddenly out of excuses. I paid the check and headed back to the room.

  It was the same room. And, of course, the novel was in the same condition as when I had left it. Totally unplanned and totally unwritten—that was my book.

  I didn’t put a sheet of paper into the machine this time. I didn’t have the strength to go through the motions, not now. I sat on the bed and looked at the typewriter and the typewriter sat on the table and looked back at me.

  We stayed that way for thirty-six minutes.

  Nothing seemed to work. I went over old formulas trying to get an idea to jell. I let my mind ramble all over the place, trying to fix on a theme or an idea that might get me rolling. I thought about all the crap I had written and all the crap I had read but nothing added up to a story.

  I was in a rut, and the rut kept getting deeper, and there didn’t seem to be much chance of getting out of it.

  So I did the only sensible thing under those circumstances. I got up from the bed and got the hell out of the place.

  I went for a long walk. It’s a funny thing about walking—I never walked much in Hollywood or for that matter in any place but New York. New York is different. It’s a city where walking is a pleasure, where there’s always something new and something to see, where you can walk forever and never get lost and never walk past the same place twice.

  And everything’s close to the street, which is a help. With the price of real estate the way it is nobody can afford wide, wide sidewalks or lawns or anything like that. Everything there is to see is right next to you if you open your eyes. When you’re in the mood, even the storewindow signs make good reading.

  So I wandered. I wandered over to the park and down Central Park West about six blocks, but I don’t like to look at parks and I like hotels less. I cut back to Columbus Avenue and passed Puerto Rican slums and grocery stores with Spanish signs in the window and candy-stores with sideburned kids sitting on tall stools and sipping cokes with bored expressions on their faces.

  I passed hustlers getting in some noon-time hustling and cops getting in some noon-time handouts. I watched a husky bouncer flip a drunk out of a bar on his ear andremembered getting bounced a couple times myself—and wondered if that was how I broke my nose. I fingered the nose gently—maybe it was attractive, in a strange sort of a way.

  I can be an obnoxious drunk. I have a vague memory of a time in Hollywood in a high-tone bar on the Strip, arguing with everybody and shouting for the bartender at the top of my lungs. I got tossed out of there, too—but not with a bouncer giving me a heave into the gutter. There was a man on either side of me, holding my arms in a grip that looked gentle but hurt like hell even if I was drunk as a skunk, and left my arms aching when I woke up the next morning.

  As I remember it, they flipped me out because I told one young “actor” that he was a pimp and his girl was a whore. It was the truth—maybe that’s why I got booted. You can say just about anything in Hollywood, as long as it’s not true. Hollywood is scared of the truth. It’s a great town—golden and beautiful on the outside, with about as much depth as a stage set. You know the ones—the storefronts with no stores behind them. That’s the town; that’s the people in it. A big front and no depth, no guts at all.

  I kept on walking. I’m no athlete, and I get tired if I so much as look at a tennis racket or a set of barbells. But I can walk forever or damned close to it. Walking is easier than stopping.

  I stayed on Columbus. It’s a nice street, if you like streets with lots of little things happening. I started to stop in a luncheonette for a malted and decided suddenly that the least thing I could possibly want was a malted. The more I thought about it, the less I wanted one. My stomach started to turn over at the very thought of letting a sugary, gloppy malted slide down my gullet.

  So I had a beer.

  I didn’t really drink that day, not exactly. I kept walking and each drink got almost walked off by the time I stopped for another. There was no real cumulative effect, When you’re drinking seriously, drinking to forget something or just trying to get good and blotto, then you have to stay in one place for at least five or six stiff ones. After that it doesn’t much matter what you do. Then you’re on the way to oblivion and every little slug helps you along.

  I started on beer and gave that up after awhile, switching to bar whiskey. Bar whiskey can’t compare to Scotch or even to rye, but the price makes a good deal of difference when you’re broke.

  So I drank bar whiskey and I kept walking like a foot-soldier. I got as far as Times Square without thinking about turning back. Times Square was fun for a change—lights blinking and people walking everywhere at once and men around ready to sell you anything from a woman to a book about somebody else and a woman. I took two turns around the Square—Eighth Avenue to 42nd Street, down the street to Seventh, back on th
e other side, and around again.

  In that time I managed to get propositioned by two hustlers—a skinny crone older than I was and a girl who should have been back in high school. Three little men knew girls who could show me a good time, but the odds were they were all working the 42nd Street con. This is a neat little gambit—they take you to one of the fleabag hotels on Times Square—take you up two flights of stairs, take your money, go up another flight of stairs without you and make off down the back exit. You wait around like a moron until you figure you’ve been had and leave.

  It’s a clever bit.

  And then there were the gay set—the flits looking for aman to carry off to their apartments. They stick to innuendo and subtlety as far as possible because the vice-squad boys give them a rough time—especially toward the end of the month when the bulls have a quota to make.

  It’s a wonderful place, Times Square. There’s no place in the world quite like it.

  It has bars, too. And I hit most of them.

  The day passed pleasantly. I burned up a dollar’s worth of quarters in a shooting gallery trying to knock over a row of ducks and sank another buck into ten games of Fascination—a silly habit-forming deal in which you roll a ball at a patch of holes and try to fill up a row before anybody else does. I lost, of course. I’ve never seen anyone win, although there’s a winner every time. It’s always some son of a bitch on the other side of the room.

  It was eight o’clock when I got hungry and grabbed a couple of franks and a cup of coffee at a corner stand. I wasn’t drunk, wasn’t tired—and I still didn’t much feel like writing.

  But it was time to go home.

  It’s funny—I’ll walk all over the place, but I never walk home if I can avoid it. If I have nothing to do I’ll walk ten miles and take the subway home, but there’s something about walking five miles and five miles back that doesn’t appeal to me.

  I went home on the D train. I walked into the house feeling good, but still not feeling like writing. I walked up the steps and through the door and into my room.

  I kissed Marcia hello. Then I unbuttoned my shirt and flipped it on the chair and turned on the overhead light and …

  And then I realized I had kissed Marcia hello.

  “Hello, Dan,” she said. She smiled at me.

  “Hello,” I said. “You look beautiful.”

  And she did. She was wearing toreador pants, black toreador pants that were good and snug on those sweet little hips and thighs and calves. Her blouse was dark green and cut simply, with a deep V in the neck that let me peek at the cleft between her breasts.

  “It’s a good night for me, Dan. How about you?”

  I nodded. I wanted to tell her that it was always a good night for me, that I was in love with her and that maybe it would always be a good night for us. That we should spend all our nights together. And our days, too.

  I wanted to tell her that I was in love with her, because I was drunk enough to realize it for certain and sober enough to know it wasn’t a delusion brought on by the alcohol.

  But I had the sense to keep my mouth shut.

  I reached for her and she melted into me. I could feel the heat in her, feel the blood pulsing through her little body and aching for me. Her clothes came off by themselves practically and we let them drop on the floor and stay there.

  Her mouth came against mine hungrily, greedily. Her hands moved up and down my back and her body gave a twist against mine.

  I wanted her and I needed her and I loved her. I loved her while we were standing there and I loved her when I pushed her down onto the bed, loved her so much it hurt with the sort of pain you don’t mind in the least.

  But I didn’t tell her.

  Not just then.

  I told her when it happened. It happened so beautifully and she moaned my name in a long, beautiful “Daaaan” that hit me in the belly and made everything even better.

  When the Dan died out I said, “I love you.”

  Then neither of us said anything. Not for a long time while we lay there with the light on and our eyes drinking each other in.

  Then I said, “We’re a good thing, the two of us.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Really good.”

  “Mmmmmmm.” She took my arm in her two little hands and was running her lips up and down it, planting tiny kisses as she went. They weren’t sexy kisses at all. They were quiet, peaceful kisses, and they were nice.

  She was nice.

  “You’re nice,” I said.

  “So are you.”

  I closed my eyes for a minute. “Why does it just have to be some of the time? Why can’t it be every night? It would be good to wake up with you next to me in the morning.”

  “Dan.” There was a slight edge to her voice.

  “I mean it, Marcia. We’re good—you know damned well we’re good.”

  “Dan.”

  I waited.

  “Dan,” she said, “I don’t want it to be like that. I don’t want to care about anybody—can’t you understand that? You should, especially after what you went through with Allison.”

  “We’re different.”

  “Everybody’s always different. It always seems different when it’s going smoothly and nothing gets in the way. But something always gets in the way. It never fails.”

  I waited for a minute. “Look,” I said. “Look, baby, I could get corny. I could feed you the bit about it being bigger than both of us and it would sound pretty terrible,but that’s part of it. It really is. It’s not something you can turn off and on like an electric light. It’s more than that.

  “I can’t love you one night and not the next.”

  Her eyes had a sad, worried look in them. “I don’t want you to love me, Dan. I don’t want you to care about me at all.”

  “Don’t you care about me?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then—”

  “But I’m not possessive about you,” she cut in. “And I don’t want you to be possessive about me. Damn it, I won’t let you.”

  We talked some more, but it was just more of the same. Then she got up and dressed and I watched her dress, watched her cover the beautiful body with the black pants and the dark green blouse, watched her while she bent over and kissed me, watched her walk out of the room with her little behind wiggling so slightly.

  Then I closed my eyes.

  It was only about ten minutes later when I woke up. I didn’t wake up when you come right down to it because I didn’t really fall asleep. I went into what was almost a trance—the kind of state where your mind wanders all over the place and you don’t really think. Your mind sort of feels things and everything gets very loose, very easy.

  I got up from the bed and walked across the room to the table. I sat down at the table, stuck paper in the typewriter, typed the regular heading in the corner and started to write a book.

  That’s exactly how it happened. One moment there was nothing; ten minutes later there was a book in my head ready to put itself on paper. It was that simple.

  The book was going to be about me, about my life from the time of the crack-up to Hollywood to a time in the future when everything would be good again and I would be on top where I belonged. But it wasn’t until I had page 1 finished and page 2 in the typewriter that I realized that the book was about me. It hadn’t come to me that way.

  The lead was me, but nobody would be able to tell that. The lead was a gangster, a tough slum brat who worked his way into the rackets and climbed the ladder to the top. He got there by guts and brains—by being smarter than the others and by having the nerve to take chances and the stomach to kill anybody in his way. He started in the numbers game as a runner and went all the way up—straight to the top.

  Then he fell on his face—because of a woman. The woman would be Allison, in a way—but not in a recognizable way. The woman would mess up his life and the organization would slip away from him until he was facing a prison rap and out of control
of his own mob.

  And then the book would begin—with the hero on the bottom, crawling his way up to the top. It would end with him on top and satisfied, with everything under control.

  It all fell into place, every last drop of it. I could feel it, could feel the pace and drive and force of it. When a book is going well it works that way. Everything unfolds itself and you can plan the whole thing in your head while you’re doing a crossword puzzle or watching the blonde across the street combing her hair. You can even see how the chapters will break and how long the book will run and how the ending is going to come.

  I even had the last line of the book in my head before I wrote the first one.

  The writing wasn’t that easy. I write fast—grinding out pulp teaches you to write fast or else you look for another way to make a living. But sometimes you have to spend half an hour staring at the typewriter in order to get ascene exactly right. Sometimes one word can stop you, and you have to let your mind spin around until the right word comes up. Sometimes you make so many typographical errors on a page that it’s easier to throw out the page then to go on.

  It must have been close to midnight when I started typing. I lost all track of the time. I just kept typing, and I didn’t give a whoop in hell if some other poor slob had to work the next morning and was having trouble sleeping.

  To hell with the other poor slobs. I was a poor slob and I had my own end to look out for.

  I typed until the sun came out and then I stood by the window and watched New York come back to life. New York never quite goes to sleep, but when the sun comes up over the Hudson the city gets an extra burst of vitality, even if you can’t see the Hudson with all the buildings in the way and even if you can’t see the sun most of the time with all the smoke and smog in the air.