Удушье (Choke)

The feeling is less like an ending than just another starting point.

And still leaning in the doorway, not just eye juice but tears, rolling black mascara tears, burst out of Nico's eyes, and she smears them away with her hand. Nico says, she shouts, 'Well, I'm not!' And out of the sleeve of her coat, her bra drops on the floor.

Nodding at her, I say, 'And this is Nico.'

And Nico says, 'You people can all get fucked.' She snatches up her bra and she's gone.

It's then everybody says, Hello Victor.

And the group leader says, 'Okay.'

He says, 'As I was saying, the best place to find insight is to remember where you lost your virginity....'

Chapter 40

Somewhere north-northeast above Los Angeles

, I was getting sore, so I asked Tracy if she'd let up for a minute. This is another life­time ago.

With a big hank of white spit looped between my knob and her lower lip, her whole face hot and flushed from choking, still holding my sore dog in her fist, Tracy settles back on her heels and says how in the Kama Sutra, it tells you to make your lips really red by wiping them with sweat from the testicles of a white stallion.

'For real,' she says.

Now there's a weird taste in my mouth, and I look hard at her lips, her lips and my dog the same big purple color. I say, 'You don't do that stuff, do you?'

The doorknob rattles and we both look, fast, to make sure it's locked.

This is that first time, what every addiction is about getting back to. That first time that no subsequent time is ever as good as.

Nothing's worse than when a little kid opens the door. What's next worst is when some man throws open the door and doesn't understand. Even if you're still alone, when a kid opens the door you have to, fast, cross your legs. Pretend it's all an accident. An adult guy might slam the door, might yell, 'Lock it next time, ya moron,' but he's still the only one blushing.

After that, what's worse, Tracy says, is being a woman the Kama Sutra would call an elephant woman. Especially if you're with what they call a hare man.

This animal thing refers to genital size.

Then she says, 'I didn't mean that to sound the way it did.'

The wrong person opens the door, and you're in their night­mares all week.

Your best defense is unless somebody is on the make, no mat­ter who opens the door and sees you sitting there, they always as­sume it's their mistake. Their fault.

I always did. I used to walk in on women or men riding the toilet on airplanes on trains or Greyhound buses or in those little single-seat either/or unisex restaurant bathrooms, I'd open the door to see some stranger sitting there, some blonde all blue eyes and teeth with a ring through her navel and wearing high heels, with her g-string stretched down between her knees and the rest of her clothes and bra folded on the little counter next to the sink. Every time this happened I'd always wonder, why the hell don't people bother to lock the door?

As if this ever happens by accident.

Nothing on the circuit happens by accident.

It could be, on the train somewhere between home and work, you'll open a bathroom door to find some brunette, with her hair pinned up and only her long earrings trembling down alongside her smooth white