Ladies' Man

by Richard Price

  Two hundred. My stomach was so tight it felt as if it were floating to my knees under its own power. Baby Mississippis rolled from my armpits. I held onto my hair, jerking my neck forward.

  Bullshit. Hypocrite. Bullshit. Weakling. Bullshit. Mindfucker.

  I started shouting “Huh! Huh!” with every sit-up. My lower back was red-hot.

  Teacher! Teacher! Teach who! With what! I was a tucking ding-dong salesman circle-jerking pussy-chaser. Teacher.

  La Donna. My mind clicked off. I rolled with the pain, my fist trembling in my hair, nausea jumping for the catch in my throat. Every sit-up took hours.

  “Hunhnh” My teeth were grinding, my face a black pocket of blood, my thighs rippling, my gut stretched and wrenched.

  Two hundred and fifty. Every time I dropped I banged my head on the floor. My prick was twitching from the inside, that crazy unreachable itch that made me want to squeeze it like a tourniquet. I couldn’t loosen my fingers from my hair. They knotted on me like rigor mortis.

  Fifty more. Fifty more. I couldn’t breathe in too deep. My diaphragm was surrounded by pulled and cramped muscles. I collapsed on my back, closed my eyes, grit my teeth and let it rip.

  “One! Two! Three! Rrrr! Nnnn!” I was snarling like a lion, my eyes unfocused. “Bastad! Bastad!” Pumping hard. Ripping myself apart. I was crying. Banging my head on my knees and crying. I couldn’t stop. “You bastad! Bitch bastad!”

  “Twenty-one cunt! Twenty-two cock! Bastad!” Grinding my teeth, I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t have the wind to cry anymore. I froze at twenty-six, my head stuck between my knees, my fingers snarled in my soaking hair. I growled and retched, spitting on the floor between my trembling legs.

  I was dead. I sat naked on a bench with other dead people in what seemed like a waiting room. I knew I was dead because my skin was the color of uncooked chicken—that and because a note was fastened to the skin on my chest with a long pin, and it didn’t hurt. I couldn’t read the note. Nobody talked. We were all dead.

  My eyes snapped open. I was sweating. I felt lightheaded with terror. The digital read four-twenty-eight. Sunday afternoon. I started whimpering. Stop the clock. Eat the clock. The clock was eating me up. Eat the clock. I jerked my head and my neck flamed, my mid-section flamed. I couldn’t get up. I was trapped. Paralyzed. I rocked my head to help myself breathe. I was alone. Dead. I wanted someone to help me.

  Slowly I rolled out of bed. I couldn’t stand up straight. The best I could manage was a hunched-over old man’s walk. Dead man’s walk. I was high on fear. I staggered out of the bedroom like the mummy going for a victim and headed for the living room phone. I had to call someone. Anyone. Emergency? Who? Who? Who. Madame one-and-only. La Donna. But I couldn’t. She said… She needs… But I’d changed. This last forty-eight hours had come around the horn like forty-eight years. I’m changed. I’m patient- I’m wiser. I can give like a bastard. I collapsed on the couch and picked up the receiver.

  “La Donna, this is Kenny. Don’t hang up baby look I know what you said but I’ve been through the wringer and I’ve straightened out.”

  I dialed her number, listened to the crackling of the line before the first ring.

  I’ve learned so many things, can share so many things, we’re both on the move, both growing. The phone ran three times. Each ring sounded like a human voice. By the fourth ring the tension started to dilute. I cradled the receiver under my jaw and stared at the descending reflection of winter sun on my wall.

  Hold on. Of course she’s not home. She’s at the showcase. Should I, shouldn’t I. No contest.

  Downstairs, the dying light had an unrealness to it that enhanced my weird, trancelike state. As the cab floated toward the East Side I kept touching my biceps as if to make sure I really existed.

  I briefly debated buying flowers for her, but I figured after the showcase they might be misconstrued as for a funeral. The show was at six. They didn’t even care enough to give them a respectable starting time.

  After I walked into the bar area I did a quick scan. No La Donna. The Mad Russian was at the bar, but I didn’t recognize anybody else. I decided to go inside the cabaret It would probably unnerve her to see me beforehand.

  I sat at the same table as last week, in the back, in the dark. Maybe she changed her mind and copped out It didn’t seem likely. The place was three-quarters full. It was ten of six. I should have gotten the flowers. I felt very calm even though I wasn’t sure what the hell I was doing. I kept running movies in my head of our contact to come. Rushing into my arms. Slapping my face. Laughing and kissing me. Walking away from me. Slugging me. Hugging me. Crying. I kept thinking that whatever would happen would involve crying. Win, lose or draw there would be tears.

  A half-hour later the emcee came on stage. A different, more subdued guy.

  First was the duck-talk kid, then the Russian. The audience was hooting and yowling. Two hundred-pound Annie Akins came on in a fringed miniskirt and a cowgirl hat and sang “Oklahoma.” They had her leaving the stage, in tears. I didn’t even hear La Donna’s name called. It seemed like all of a sudden there she was in front of the mike in dungarees and a floppy turtleneck. Even though I knew she couldn’t see past ringside, I slouched down against the wall and casually covered my face with the bridge of my hand as if the spotlight were on me. If I could have done it without anyone noticing, I would have belly-crawled out of there as though I were under fire in basic training. The piano player hit the first few notes of “Misty.” Eyes glistened and mouths were slightly open in anticipation of big yuks coming up. I zeroed in on two heavyset middle-aged guys in expensive suits. One guy wore a star sapphire pinky ring, the other had a cigarette going. The one with the ring had small dagger teeth. They were giving her the once-over. “Loo-ook at me-e.”

  They semismiled. One nudged the other, whispered. I. fantasized jumping up and doing flamenco on their faces.

  “I’m as help-less, as a kitten up a tree.” I imagined them doing a Pat and Mike on her, a salt and pepper. Her begging for more, them switching ends. Cigarettes and hundred-dollar bills.

  Somebody coughed to my right. I wheeled my head so fast I pinched a nerve at the base of my neck! If anybody wanted to heckle I’d pounce. I swear I’d pounce. Nobody heckled. My neck burned.

  “With my heart-rt in my han-nd, I get mis-ty, calling your name.”

  I scanned the crowd like a prison spotlight. Laugh, somebody. Just giggle. I felt as taut as the top knot of a shillelagh. She was looking away from me. She was playing to ringside, to the curtain, to the piano player. Nobody laughed. I made myself sit back and tried to relax a little. She wasn’t bad. Not great, not bad. But “not bad” wasn’t good enough. She wasn’t going to make it in a million years.

  The audience applauded for real. It wasn’t hysterical applause, and there was a mood of slight disappointment in the room because she was no clown, show. She smiled and slightly dipped her head in acknowledgment. She looked happier than I had seen her in months. I wanted to feel relieved and happy for her, but I felt somewhat deflated, like when that suicidal girl called in to the talk show to say she was “okay now.” I felt sad. Bullshit. I didn’t feel sad. My jaw felt sore. I was grinding my teeth for I don’t know how long.

  La Donna, run for the hills. She smiled in my direction. I looked at her eyes; she couldn’t see me. She didn’t know I was there. I tried to think what she ever did to me that was so villainous that she deserved my “love.” I put my hand in front of my face again and stared at my shoes. I imagined myself a crack running back, the sixth Temptation, a lean stud, a hungry hawk. My shoes.

  When I looked up again, Ronnie Landau was singing “September Song.” The chubby kid wasn’t that bad, except his voice kept breaking into sobs like a cantor every now and then. He got some nice applause too. More power to him. Next was a professional comedian named Frank Allen who, I must admit, was very funny. Very few people can make me laugh.

  I finally left the club at seven-fifteen.
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  I took a cab home. Halfway through the park I panicked. I felt an agonizing sensation of time wasted, love wasted. I felt terrified of my loneliness. Terrified of my apartment My haunted house. I had the driver drop me off by a phone on Columbus Avenue.

  I was struck again by the limbo weirdness of a winter Sunday. It was night now. And windy. The streets were as empty as if an air raid drill was in effect, the storefronts were black mouths. Six blocks of traffic lights turned green for the benefit of one car. I dropped a dime and dialed La Donna. Hung up before the first ring. But what about me? What about now? What about this goddamn twilight zone street? I had to make a call, make a connection. Who? La Donna, Kristin, Jackie di Paris, Little Flower, Donny. Glue nose. Blue shoes. Red lips. Swivel hips. Cheeseburger George. Donny. What list. What friends. Donny. Donny.

  “Hey, Kenny, what’s shakin’? How’d it go last night?”

  “How did what go?” I was so relieved to hear his voice I didn’t even say hello. I had just said ”Donny!” when he answered, like “Gotcha!”

  “The chick.”

  “What chick!” I couldn’t even concentrate on the words. I just wanted to drink from the sounds of a voice.

  “The chick you jumped out of the cab…”

  “Oh. Oh.” That bullshit felt like sixty-three years ago. I had to play through the lie. “It was okay.”

  “So what’s up, Kenny?”

  Do you want to have dinner? Do you want to be my friend? Do you want to save my goddamn life? What if he never goes away? What if he hits on me? What if he doesn’t want to be my friend? What if I die holding the phone? I pretended I had a gun pointed at my head.

  “You wanna have dinner, kid?”

  “Sure, where?”

  Where. Where. American Three Brothers Greeks China.

  “American Brothers?”

  “Where?”

  “Three Brothers?”

  “Where’s that?”

  “By me up here… I’ll go down there, okay?”

  “Kenny, whata you talking about? You wanna go to Victor’s?”

  “Sure, sure.” Yeah, Victor’s, Victor’s.

  “What time you wanna meet?”

  “Time?” I glanced at a bank clock, but I couldn’t concentrate on the numbers. A haze of ragey urgency cut my visibility.

  “Time?” I repeated. “It’s seven-thirty.”

  “C’mon, stupid, I know it’s seven-thirty. What time you wanna eat?”

  I frowned as I stared at the clock. It could have just as easily been the control panel of an F-104.

  “You wanna eat about nine, Kenny? How about nine, does that sound good?”

  “Nine?” I repeated in a daze.

  “You need more time, we can eat at ten.”

  “Hold on,” I mumbled. I rested the receiver against my neck and drummed my fingernails on the metal phonebook shelf. An empty bus came gliding and rocking by on the nighttime street.

  “No.” I breathed deep. “Eight. I’ll meet you there at eight.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Richard Price was born in New York City and spent his first eighteen years in a Bronx housing project. He received a B.S. in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University in 1976. He has conducted fiction workshops at New York University and other colleges, and he has also taught urban studies seminars. His first novel, The Wanderers, was published in 1974 and has recently been made into a major film. His second novel, Bloodbrothers, published in 1976, has already been made into a movie. Mr. Price lives on New York. City’s Upper West Side.

  Table of Contents

  CONTENTS

  MONDAY

  TUESDAY

  WEDNESDAY

  THURSDAY

  FRIDAY

  SATURDAY

  SUNDAY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR