“What about him?” Her eyes narrowed, and I got the impression she wasn’t quite as drunk as she made out. She’d been drinking, certainly, and it was getting to her, but she had been riding it a little, either for my benefit or because it felt good. “What about him? Is he in some kind of trouble?”
“It’s possible.”
“It’s that girl who was murdered, isn’t it? The one with the big tits.”
“Cherry Bounce, yes.”
“Cherry Bounce my ass,” she said. “That little bitch must have given her cherry the bounce when she was eleven years old. Was he fucking her?”
“No.”
“That’s a surprise. Maybe her tits weren’t big enough. Were they big ones?”
“Well. Uh. Yes, uh, they were.”
“Then I’m surprised he could keep his hands off them,” she said. She took another swig of gin and asked if I was sure I didn’t want to drink. I was sure, and said so. “He’s a tit man, Haskell is. Always has been. A health freak and a tit freak. That’s why he runs around the way he does. Oh, hell, if you were thinking about keeping his secret, he hasn’t got any secret to keep. The two of us play a game. He pretends I don’t know he runs around and I pretend the same, but all it is is a game.”
She flopped into a chair. “He can’t fool me. All the health crap he eats, all the vitamins he takes, the man’s got more energy than Con Edison. He used to make it with me twice a night and once every morning. Rain or shine, three times a day. He was wearing me out. And now he hasn’t made it with me in almost three years.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Because of these,” she said, cupping her enormous breasts in her hands.
“I don’t get it.”
“Neither do I,” she said. “Used to get it three times a day and now I don’t get it at all. Because of these. They used to be the reason he married me, and now—”
“Uh—”
“The hell of it is that I love the bastard. And he loves me. But I don’t turn him on anymore. Because he’s a tit man and that’s all there is to it.”
“You lost me,” I said.
She stood up. “C’mere,” she said. I stepped closer to her. She put the index finger of her right hand to the tip of her left breast. “Feel,” she said. “Christ sake, don’t just stand there. Grab yourself a handful. Go on, dammit!”
I cupped her breast with my hand.
“Don’t be shy. Give it a little squeeze.”
I gave it a little squeeze.
“Feel good?”
“Uh, yes.”
“Now the other one.”
“Look, Mrs. Henderson—”
“Althea, dammit.”
“Look, Althea—”
“Shut up. Feel the other one, will you?”
I followed orders.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Uh—”
“Both feel the same?”
“Sure.”
“Not from this end they don’t. Wait right here. Don’t go away.” I waited right there and didn’t go away and she came back with a hat pin about four inches long. “Stick it in my tit,” she said. “The left one.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Look, Mrs. Henderson, Althea, maybe I should come back some other time. I—”
“Oh, hell,” she said, and plunged the hatpin into her left breast. My stomach flipped a little but she didn’t seem to feel a thing. She drew out the pin. There was no blood on it. Her eyes challenged me and I began to get the picture.
“Foam rubber,” she said. “The other one’s real. Until a couple of years ago they were both real and Haskell was crazy about them. Then I had to have a mastectomy because some knife-happy surgeon decided I had the big C. Turned out it was benign but by that time he’d already done his cutting. Only half a woman now. Used to turn Haskell on. Now all I turn him is off. Still loves me, I still love him, but he takes all his vitamins and drinks his carrot juice and eats his alfalfa and walks around horny as a toad and I don’t do him any good. That’s why he needs his topless dancers.”
I stood there wondering why floors never open up and swallow you when you want them to. She went out to the kitchen for more gin. I thought she was lucky she wasn’t too drunk when she did her trick with the hatpin or she might get the wrong breast by mistake and it would probably hurt. When she came back I managed to steer the conversation back in its original direction. I asked her what she had been doing the night before last, and what her husband had been doing.
“He was working late at the store,” she said. “Do you believe that?”
“Well—”
“And I was drinking carrot juice and counting my nipples. Do you believe that?”
“Althea—”
“He was chasing women in New York. And I was here, sitting in front of the television set and drinking scotch. Not gin. I never drink gin after four in the afternoon. Only a pansy would drink gin after four in the afternoon.”
“I see. Can you prove it?”
“Prove it? Hell, everybody knows only a pansy would drink gin in the nighttime. What’s there to prove?”
“Can you prove you were home watching television?”
“Oh,” she said. She thought it over. “You think I went into New York and stuck a pin in that girl’s tit. What was her name again?”
“Cherry Bounce.”
“Why the hell would I do a thing like that? I don’t go around sticking pins in tits all the time like some kind of a nut. I just did it now to prove a point. Lessee. Kids are at camp so they can’t gimme an alibi. Oh, sure. My neighbor from down the street was over here. Got here about nine o’clock, left when Johnny Carson went off the air. Marge Whitman, lives just down the street. She’s in the same boat as me. Well, not exactly. She’s got two tits but she’s got a pansy for a husband. Leaves her out here and spends his night picking up sailors on Times Square, the fucking pansy. Drinks gin all night long, the goddamn fruit.”
I got the Whitman woman’s address and started backing toward the door. She asked me where I was going. “I have some other calls to make,” I said.
“I turn you off too, don’t I?”
“No, not at all, but—”
“You’re a tit man like my husband.”
“Not exactly.”
“You don’t like tits?”
“I like them fine, but—”
“You’re not a pansy are you?” I shook my head. “What do you drink in the evening?”
“Whiskey, usually. Sometimes a beer. Why?”
“Not a pansy,” she said. And then she took her blouse off, and then she took her bra off, and I just stood there. She had one absolutely perfect breast, and where the other had been there was smooth skin with an almost imperceptible scar from the incision.
“Sickening, isn’t it?”
“No, not at all.”
“Deformed.”
