Then he said, “You’re man enough to take her away from me?”
“Hell, I don’t know. It’s her choice. If she wants to stay with you, she’ll stay. Why don’t you ask her?”
“Mary Lou, will you stay with me?”
“No,” she said, “I’m going with him.” She pointed at me. I felt important. I had lost so many women to so many other guys that it felt good for the thing to be working the other way around. I lit a cigar. Then I looked around for an ashtray. I saw one on the dresser.
I happened to look into the mirror to see how hungover I was and I saw him coming at me like a dart toward a dartboard. I still had the beerbottle in my hand. I swung and he walked right into it. I got him in the mouth. His whole mouth was broken teeth and blood. Hector dropped to his knees, crying, holding his mouth with both hands. I saw the stiletto. I kicked the stiletto away from him with my foot, picked it up, looked at it. 9 inches. I hit the button and the blade dropped back in. I put the thing in my pocket.
Then as Hector was crying I walked up and booted him in the ass. He sprawled flat on the floor, still crying. I walked over, took a pull at his beer.
Then I walked over and slapped Mary Lou. She screamed.
“Cunt! You set this up, didn’t you? You’d let this monkey kill me for the lousy 4 or 5 hundred bucks in my wallet!”
“No, no!” she said. She was crying. They both were crying. I slapped her again. “Is that how you make it, cunt? Killing men for a couple hundred?”
“No, no, I LOVE you, Hank, I LOVE you!”
I grabbed that blue dress by the neck and ripped one side of it down to her waist. She didn’t wear a brassiere. The bitch didn’t need one.
I walked out of there, got outside and drove toward the track. For two or three weeks I was looking over my shoulder. I was jumpy. Nothing happened. I never saw Mary Lou at the racetrack again. Or Hector.
7
Somehow the money slipped away after that and soon I left the track and sat around in my apartment waiting for the 90 days’ leave to run out. My nerves were raw from the drinking and the action. It’s not a new story about how women descend upon a man. You think you have space to breathe, then you look up and there’s another one. A few days after returning to work, there was another one. Fay. Fay had grey hair and always dressed in black. She said she was protesting the war. But if Fay wanted to protest the war, that was all right with me. She was a writer of some sort and went to a couple of writers’ workshops. She had ideas about Saving the World. If she could Save it for me, that would be all right too. She had been living off alimony checks from a former husband—they had had 3 children—and her mother also sent money now and then. Fay had not had more than one or two jobs in her life.
Meanwhile Janko had a new load of bullshit. He sent me home each morning with my head aching. At the time I was getting numerous traffic citations. It seemed that everytime I looked into the rear view mirror there were the red lights. A squad car or a bike.
I got to my place late one night. I was really beat. Getting that key out and into the door was about the last of me. I walked into the bedroom and there was Fay in bed reading the
I walked into the kitchen and looked for something to eat. There was nothing in the refrigerator. I decided to pour myself a glass of water. I walked to the sink. It was stopped-up with garbage. Fay liked to save empty jars and jar lids. The dirty dishes filled half the sink and on top of the water, along with a few paper plates, floated these jars and jar lids.
I walked back into the bedroom just as Fay was putting a chocolate in her mouth. “Look, Fay,” I said, “I know you want to save the world. But can’t you start in the kitchen?”
“Kitchens aren’t important,” she said.
It was difficult to hit a woman with grey hair so I just went into the bathroom and let the water run into the tub. A burning bath might cool the nerves. When the tub was full I was afraid to get into it. My sore body had, by then, stiffened to such an extent that I was afraid I might drown in there.
I went into the front room and after an effort I managed to get out of my shirt, pants, shoes, stockings. I walked into the bedroom and climbed into bed next to Fay. I couldn’t get settled. Every time I moved, it cost me.
The only time you are alone, Chinaski, I thought, is when you are driving to work or driving back.
I finally worked my way to a position on my stomach. I ached all over. Soon I’d be back on the job. If I could manage to sleep, it would help. Every now and then I could hear a page turn, the sound of chocolates being eaten. It had been one of her writers’ workshop nights. If she would only turn out the lights.
“How was the workshop?” I asked from my belly.
“I’m worried about Robby.”
“Oh,” I asked, “what’s wrong?”
Robby was a guy nearing forty who had lived with his mother all his life. All he wrote, I was told, were terribly funny stories about the Catholic Church. Robby really laid it to the Catholics. The magazines just weren’t ready for Robby, although he had been printed once in a Canadian journal. I had seen Robby once on one of my nights off. I drove Fay up to this mansion where they all read their stuff to each other. “Oh! There’s Robby!” Fay had said, “he writes these very funny stories about the Catholic Church!”
She had pointed. Robby had his back to us. His ass was wide and big and soft; it hung in his slacks. Can’t they see that? I thought.
“Won’t you come in?” Fay had asked.
“Maybe next week…”
Fay put another chocolate into her mouth.
“Robby’s worried. He lost his job on the delivery truck. He says he can’t write without a job. He needs a feeling of security. He says he won’t be able to write until he finds another job.”
“Oh hell,” I said, “I can get him another job.”
“Where? How?”
“They are hiring down at the post office, right and left. The pay’s not bad.”
“THE POST OFFICE! ROBBY’S TOO SENSITIVE TO WORK AT THE POST OFFICE!”
“Sorry,” I said, “thought it was worth a try. Good night.”
Fay didn’t answer me. She was angry.
8
I had Fridays and Saturdays off, which made Sunday the roughest day. Plus the fact that on Sunday they made me report at 3:30 p.m. instead of my usual 6:18 p.m.
This Sunday I went in and they put me in the station papers section, as usual per Sundays, and this meant at
Besides the pains, I was beginning to suffer from dizzy spells. Everything would whirl, I would come very close to blacking out, then I would grab myself.
It had been a brutal Sunday. Some friends of Fay’s had come over and sat on the couch and chirped, how they were really great writers, really the best in the nation. The only reason they didn’t get published was that they didn’t—they said—send their stuff out.
I had looked at them. If they wrote the way they looked, drinking their coffee and giggling and dipping their doughnuts, it didn’t matter if they sent it out or jammed it.
I was sticking in the magazines this Sunday. I needed coffee, 2 coffees, a bite to eat. But all the soups were standing out front. I hit out the back way. I had to get straight. The cafeteria was on the 2nd floor. I was on the
