Wouldn't it be nice someday to live in the country with somebody you really liked?
Wouldn't it be nice just to get up all full of energy when it got light and go to sleep dog-tired when it got dark?
Wouldn't it be nice to have a lot of responsibilities and just go around doing them all day and not even realize they were responsibilities?
Wouldn't it be nice to just not think about yourself for whole days, whole weeks, whole months at a stretch? To wear old clothes and no make-up and not have to come on tough all the time?
Time passed. She whistled. 'Wouldn't that be something?'
'What now?'
'To be grown-up. You know?'
'Amazing,' I said.
'What is?'
'Almost three days, and I haven't heard the hillbilly routine, the Betty-Boop-dumb-cunt routine, the teeny- bopper bit-'
I was extending a compliment, she got insulted. 'They're not 'bits,' man, they're not routines- they're me! And if how I act isn't good enough for you, then tough tittie. Commissioner. Don't put me down, okay, just because we're nearing that fucking city where you're so important.'
'I was only saying you're smarter than you let on when you act like a broad, that's all.'
'Bullshit. It's just practically humanly impossible for anybody to be as stupid as you think I am!' Here she leaned forward to flip on 'The Good Guys.' And the weekend might as well not have happened. She knew all the words to all the songs. She was sure to let me know that. 'Yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah.' A remarkable performance, a tribute to the cerebellum.
At dark I pulled into a Howard Johnson's. 'Like let's eat,' I said. 'Like food. Like nourishment, man.'
'Look,' she said, 'maybe I don't know what I am, but you don't know what you want me to be, either! And don't forget that!'
'Groovy, man.'
'Prick! Don't you see what my life is? You think I like being nobody? You think I'm crazy about my hollow life? I hate it! I hate New York ! I don't ever want to go back to that sewer! I want to live in Vermont, Commissioner! I want to live in Vermont with you-and be an adult, whatever the hell that is! I want to be Mrs. Somebody-I-Can-Look-Up-To. And Admire! And Listen To!' She was crying. 'Someone who won't try to fuck-up my head! Oh, I think I love you, Alex. I really think I do. Oh, but a lot of good that's going to do me!'
In other words: Did I think maybe I loved her? Answer: No. What I thought (this'll amuse you), what I thought wasn't Do I love her? or even Could I love her? Rather: Should I love her?
Inside the restaurant the best I could do was say that I wanted her to come with me to the Mayor's formal dinner party.
' Arnold, let's have an affair, okay?'
'-Meaning?'
'Oh, don't be cautious. Meaning what do you think? An affair. You bang just me and I bang just you.'
'And that's it?'
'Well, sure, mostly. And also I telephone a lot during the day. It's a hang-up-can't I say 'hang-up' either? Okay -it's a compulsion. Okay? All I mean is like I can't help it. I mean I'm going to call your office a lot. Because I like everybody to know I belong to somebody. That's what I've learned from the fifty thousand dollars I've handed over to that shrink. All I mean is whenever I get to a job, I like call you up-and say I love you. Is this coherent?'
“Sure.”
'Because that's what I really want to be: so coherent.
Oh, Breakie, I adore you. Now, anyway. Hey,' she whispered, 'want to smell something- something staggering?' She checked to see if the waitress was in the vicinity, then leaned forward, as though to reach beneath the table to straighten a stocking. A moment later she passed her fingertips over to me. I pressed them to my mouth. 'My Sin, baby,' said The Monkey, 'straight from the pickle barrel… and for you! Only you!'
So go ahead, love her! Be brave! Here is fantasy begging you to make it real! So erotic! So wanton! So gorgeous! Glittery perhaps, but a beauty nonetheless! Where we walk together, people stare, men covet and women whisper. In a restaurant in town one night, I overhear someone say, 'Isn't that what's-her-name? Who was in La Dolce Vita ?' And when I turn to look- for whom, Anouk Aimee?- I find they are looking at us: at her who is with me! Vanity? Why not! Leave off with the blushing, bury the shame, you are no longer your mother's naughty little boy! Where appetite is concerned, a man in his thirties is responsible to no one but himself! That's what's so nice about growing up! You want to take? You take! Debauch a little bit, for Christ's sake! STOP DENYING YOURSELF! STOP DENYING THE TRUTH!
Ah, but there is (let us bow our heads), there is 'my dignity' to consider, my good name. What people will think. What I will think. Doctor, this girl once did it for money. Money! Yes! I believe they call that 'prostitution'! One night, to praise her (I imagined, at any rate, that that was my motive), I said, 'You ought to market this, it's too much for one man,' just being chivalrous, you see… or intuitive? Anyway, she answers, 'I have.' I wouldn't let her alone until she explained what she'd meant; at first she claimed she was only being clever, but in the face of my cross-examination she finally came up with this story, which struck me as the truth, or a portion thereof. Just after Paris and her divorce, she had been flown out to Hollywood (she says) to be tested for a part in a movie (which she didn't get. I pressed for the name of the movie, but she claims to have forgotten, says it was never made). On the way back to New York from California, she and the girl she was with ('Who's this other girl?' 'A girl. A girl friend.' 'Why were you traveling with another girl?' 'I just was!'), she and this other girl stopped off to see Las Vegas. There she went to bed with some guy that she met, perfectly innocently she maintains; however, to her complete surprise, in the morning he asked, 'How much?' She says it just came out of her mouth-'Whatever it's worth, Sport.' So he offered her three hundred-dollar bills. 'And you took it?' I asked. 'I was twenty years old. Sure, I took it. To see what it felt like, that's all.' 'And what did it feel like, Mary Jane?' 'I don't remember. Nothing. It didn't feel like anything.'
Well, what do you think? She claims it only happened that once, ten years ago, and even then only came about through some 'accidental' joining of his misunderstanding with her whimsy. But do you buy that? Should I? Is it impossible to believe that this girl may have put in some time as a high-priced call girl? Oh Jesus! Take her, I think to myself, and I am no higher in the evolutionary scale than the mobsters and millionaires who choose their women from the line at the Copa. This is the kind of girl ordinarily seen hanging from the arm of a Mafiosa or a movie star, not the 1950 valedictorian of Weequahic High! Not the editor of the Columbia Law Review! Not the high-minded civil-libertarian! Let's face it, whore or no whore, this is a clear-cut tootsie, right? Who looks at her with me knows precisely what I am after in this life. This is what my father used to call 'a chippy.' Of course! And can I bring home a chippy. Doctor? 'Momma, Poppa, this is my wife, the chippy. Isn't she a wild piece of ass?' Take her fully for my own, you see, and the whole neighborhood will know at last the truth about my dirty little mind. The so-called genius will be revealed in all his piggish proclivities and feelthy desires. The bathroom door will swing open (unlocked!), and behold, there sits the savior of mankind, drool running down his chin, absolutely gaa-gaa in the eyes, and his prick firing salvos at the light bulb! A laughingstock, at last! A bad boy! A shande to his family forever! Yes, yes, I see it all: for my abominations I awake one morning to find myself chained to a toilet in Hell, me and the other chippy-mongers of the world- 'Shtarkes,' the Devil will say, as we are issued our fresh white-on-white shirts, our Sulka ties, as we are fitted in our nifty new silk suits, 'gantze k'nockers, big shots with your long-legged women. Welcome. You really accomplished a lot in life, you fellows. You really distinguished yourselves, all right. And you in particular,' he says, lifting a sardonic eyebrow in my direction, 'who entered the high school at the age of twelve, who was an ambassador to the world from the Jewish community of Newark -' Ah-hah, I knew it. It's no Devil in the proper sense, it's Fat Warshaw, the Reb. My stout and pompous spiritual leader! He of the sumptuous enunciation and the Pall Mall breath! Rabbi Re-ver-ed! It is the occasion of my bar mitzvah, and I stand shyly at his side, sopping it up like gravy, getting quite a little kick
