“You’ve gone crazy.”
“I just don’t want all these people thinking I am supporting you. All the neighbors…”
“God damn the neighbors! What do we care what they think? We never did before. Besides,
“No, Hank, it’s over. I can’t stand it!”
I got up and walked over to her.
“Now, come on, baby, you’re just a little upset tonight,”
I tried to grab her. She pushed me away.
“All right, god damn it!” I said.
I walked back to my chair, finished my drink, had another.
“It’s over,” she said, “I’m not sleeping with you another night.”
“All right. Keep your pussy. It’s not that great.”
“Do you want to keep the house or do you want to move out?” she asked. “You keep the house.”
“How about the dog?”
“You keep the dog,” I said. “He’s going to miss you.”
“I’m glad somebody is going to miss me.” I got up, walked to the car and I rented the first place I saw with a sign. I moved in that night.
I had just lost 3 women and a dog.
2
The next thing I knew, I had a young girl from Texas on my lap. I won’t go into details of how I met her. Anyway, there it was. She was 23. I was 36.
She had long blonde hair and was good solid meat. I didn’t know, at the time, that she also had plenty of money. She didn’t drink but I did. We laughed a lot at first. And went to the racetrack together. She was a looker, and everytime I got back to my seat there would be some jerkoff sliding closer and closer to her. There were dozens of them. They just kept moving closer and closer. Joyce would just sit. I had to handle them all one of two ways. Either take Joyce and move off or tell the guy:
“Look, buddy, this one’s taken! Now move off!”
But fighting the wolves and the horses at the same time was
too much for me. I kept losing. A pro goes to the track alone. I knew that. But I thought maybe I was exceptional. I found out that I wasn’t exceptional at all. I could lose my money as fast as anybody.
Then Joyce demanded that we get married.
What the hell? I thought, I’m cooked anyhow.
I drove her to Vegas for a cheap wedding, then drove her right back.
I sold the car for ten dollars and the next thing I knew we were on a bus to Texas and when we landed I had 75 cents in my pocket. It was a very small town, the population, I believe, was under 2,000. The town had been picked by experts, in a national article, as the last town in the USA any enemy would attack with an atomic bomb. I could see why.
All this time, without knowing it, I was working my way back toward the post office. That mother.
Joyce had a little house in town and we laid around and screwed and ate. She fed me well, fattened me up and weakened me at the same time. She couldn’t get enough. Joyce, my wife, was a nymph.
I took little walks through the town, alone, to get away from her, teethmarks all over my chest, neck and shoulders, and somewhere else that worried me more and was quite painful. She was eating me alive.
I limped through the town and they stared at me, knowing about Joyce, her sex drive, and also that her father and grandfather had more money, land, lakes, hunting preserves than all of them. They pitied and hated me at the same time.
A midget was sent to get me out of bed one morning and he drove me all over, pointing out this and that, Mr. so and so, Joyce’s father owns that, and Mr. so and so, Joyce’s grandfather owns that…
We drove all morning. Somebody was trying to scare me. I was bored. I sat in the back seat and the midget thought I was an operator, that I had worked my way into millions. He didn’t know it was an accident, and that I was an ex-mail carrier with 75 cents in my pocket.
The midget, poor fellow, had a nervous disease and drove very fast, and every so often he’d shake all over and lose control of the car. It went from one side of the road to the other and once scraped along a fence for 100 yards before the midget got control of himself.
“HEY! EASY THERE, BUSTER!” I yelled at him from the back seat.
That was it. They were trying to knock me off. It was obvious. The midget was married to a very beautiful girl. When she was in her teens she got a coke bottle trapped in her pussy and had to go to a doctor to get it out, and, like in all small towns, the word got around about the coke bottle, the poor girl was shunned, and the midget was the only taker. He’d ended up with the best piece of ass in town.
I lit up a cigar Joyce had given me and I told the midget, “That’ll be all, buster. Now see that I get back. And drive slowly. I don’t want to blow this game now.”
I played the operator to please him.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Chinaski. Yes, sir!”
He admired me. He thought I was a son of a bitch.
When I got in, Joyce asked, “Well, did you see everything?”
“I saw enough,” I said. Meaning, that they were trying to knock me off. I didn’t know if Joyce was in on it or not. Then she started peeling my clothes off and pushing me toward the bed. “Now wait a minute, baby! We’ve already gone twice and it’s not even 2 p.m. yet!” She just giggled and kept on pushing.
3
Her father really hated me. He thought I was after his money. I didn’t want his god damned money. And I didn’t even want his god damned precious daughter.
The only time I ever saw him was when he walked into the bedroom one morning about 10 a.m. Joyce and I were in bed, resting up. Luckily we had just finished.
I peered at him from under the edge of the cover. Then I couldn’t help myself. I smiled at him and gave him a big wink.
He ran out of the house growling and cursing.
If I could be removed, he’d certainly see to it.
Cramps was cooler. We’d go to his place and I’d drink whiskey with him and listen to his cowboy records. His old lady was simply indifferent. She neither liked or hated me. She fought with Joyce a lot and I sided with the old lady once or twice. That kind of won her over. But gramps was cool. I think he was in on the conspiracy.
We had been at this cafe and eaten, with everybody fawning over us and staring. There was gramps, grandma, Joyce, and I.
Then we got in the car and drove along.
“Ever seen any buffalo, Hank?” gramps asked me.
“No, Wally, I haven’t.”
I called him “Wally.” Old whiskey buddies. Like hell.
“We have them here.”
“I thought they were just about extinct?”
“Oh, no, we got dozens of ’em.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Show him, Daddy Wally,” said Joyce.
