Ladies' Man (9 page)

A vibrator. A vibrator. Mother of Christ. How would she feel if she came home and caught me socking it to some inflatable love doll?

February. We had started living together in mid-June. That was just about nine months. And not once, not once did I ever ball with anybody else. I didn't even want to. Maybe if she was available to me I would be more turned on to other women. Things certainly seemed to work that way sometimes. I flashed again on her reaching out to me after I smashed her vibrator. I felt my heart break, and I wanted to go to her. Some damn fandango. I ordered a third martini and threw it back like I was washing down aspirin. The drinks were whipping my ass. When I got high I got friendly. I wanted to talk to somebody. Anybody. Make new friends. I turned to the guy sitting next to me, but he got up peeling off a payroll five and walked to the John. It was a pay toilet but Henna Red buzzed him in from under the cash register. I winked at her but she didn't catch my eye and I felt like a fool.

Sheesh. I lightly pounded the bar and stifled a belch. I was worried about some guy screwing La Donna and my real competition was Everready. Fuck it. She wanted to play around? Then me too. I was wasting my time with her. I was at the peak of my manhood. And I was good. And I wasn't just saying that the way every guy says it. I was goddamn good. And I was big. I was good, big and the best. And I was wasting it with her. Everyone said it. Every woman I was ever with tola me I was the best. I knew how to move, how to groove and I was a handsome bastard too. I had a nice frame, about six feet even. Hundred and sixty-five. Straight hair, dark skin, dark eyes, sensuous mouth, so I heard. Maybe when I quit door-to-door I could be a gigolo. Somebody put something good on the machine for a change and I winked for a fourth martini. Henna caught it that time. I could've made her.

Another guy got up, walked over to the John. He didn't know it worked by a buzzer and dropped a dime in the lock. The door wouldn't budge. He looked around helplessly but was too embarrassed to complain to the barmaids so he sat back down.

There was a bulldyke, two stools away. About fifty. Short gray hair combed back with a little swept pompadour. She was staring straight ahead, near as I could tell through her bulging wraparound shades. A shiner peeked out beneath her left shade and she mechanically moved her cigarette between the ashtray and her lips over and over again as if she was a life-sized coin bank. She wore a short-sleeved black sweatshirt and a black leather wrist strap with dull silver studs on one wrist, a Florentine gold ID bracelet with LUCILLE in gold oriental letters on the other. I would've bet I could've made her too.

I could've made the the world. I could've, just that day, made Charlene in the diner, at least two of those broads -from the coffee klatch and if I was really scrapin' that old but not
that
old German lady. That was four. Four that day if I wanted. And Gordon. Oh my God, Gordon. My heart took off around the rib cage. She wanted it too. She was in her nightgown at two-forty-five in the afternoon.

Outside it was dark. Nighttime. And nighttime was the right time. One seventy-five West Eleventh. Gordon. Time for love. I dropped a ten for the drinks and hit the streets. I was drunk. Piss me off. Not so bad I couldn't walk straight and not so bad I didn't know it, but still, I didn't dig boozy elation, I hailed a cab.

"Gordon."

"What?"

"One seventy-five West Eleventh."

Okay, what would I say? Hey! I lost your order. I thought maybe you could give it to me again. I lost her order. She didn't
give
me an order. La Donna, I could've, would've, given you the best. I thought of that vibrator again. Her thighs spread out like that. She had a beauty mark right between her asshole and her cunt. She told me her mother had said to her once when she was a kid that that was where God was marking a spot for a third hole when lucky for her he was called away on business. I had left my cigarettes in the bar. The cab pulled up in front of the brick building.

Just be straight, man. Tell her, listen, you know what was really going down this afternoon so disconnect the phone and let's
git
…
it
…
on
! Yes indeedy, I was almost to her door before I wigged. I couldn't say that. It wasn't my style. Go with the order story. Hey! I forgot "the order! What order? Oh Christ, yeah, ha ha, you didn't order anything. Well, since you're here why don't you come in and have a drink? Ring the bell, chooch. Heavy footsteps.

"Yeah?"

A middle-aged guy in a T-strap undershirt, dress pants and slippers. His nose came up to my chest but his shoulders were a yard across. John L. Lewis eyebrows, fistfuls of black back hair like bear fur peeking at me over his shoulders. Heavy glasses and Maurice de la Creep face crevices.

"Help you?" An arm like a crossbeam against the door frame.

"Yeah, no, is this the Jacuzzi residence?"

I didn't even have my sample case with me. I heard her talking to someone inside. The , apartment was smoky and smelled like someone was cooking garbage.

"Jacuzzi, uh-uh."

"Right, sorry." Down the stairs and out into the night stone sober and into another bar. It was a gay bar. Twenty guys in crew cuts and RAF mustaches turned their heads when I breezed in. I did a quick 180 degrees and headed out the door. And they didn't even know what they just missed. Because not only was it big, it was as thick as a woman's wrist.

I headed for another bar but changed my mind. Enough was enough. I tried walking around a little but it was too cold. I didn't have my gloves or a scarf. I went to a coffeehouse down by NYU that looked like something out of the House of Usher. Ten-watt bulbs, carved-oak tables and chairs, miniature busts of Dante and Beethoven and hanging on the walls large portraits so old and dingy you couldn't even tell if they were men or women. The guys hanging around were dead ringers for William Shakespeare. Two Arabic women in Gucci army fatigues yakking over cannolis. A girl reading a paper in the corner kept glancing up at me without raising her head, giving me the once-over as if she were wearing bifocals.

I almost sat down at her table but was too beat to get into anything more. I ordered an espresso with lemon peel, no sugar thank you, sat back, closed my eyes and tried to get my bearings. Seeing La Donna in the sack like that scared me.

That whole vibrator thing was very confusing to me. The more 1 thought about it the more stupid and embarrassed I felt. Big deal she was jerking off. If she was just fingering herself without the help of Con Ed, would I have wigged? Damn, I jerked off more than a monkey. But I wouldn't if she was into… What's the difference. She was alone and trying to get off and I blew in there like some heavy nineteenth-century wop and now she probably would have trouble coming for the next six months. Nice going.

It was sexist of me. I didn't wanna be sexist I felt much calmer—the only
thing
I couldn't or didn't want to think about was her
buying
the goddamn thing. Going into a drugstore and asking for it and
paying
for it with
my
money while I was whining and kvetching about having to fuck a milk bottle because my quote unquote girlfriend was having a hard time with sex. .

But on the other hand, the other hand, the other hand. Sitting in that dinge among the busts and the oak, I was beginning to feel like Hamlet. The fact of the matter was she was probably crying in bed alone uptown. I always promised her I would be there when she needed me, and I wasn't. She was under strain from Fantasia. I was under strain from chasing around some scuz who was into cooking garbage and balling apemen. Sex wasn't everything. We were adults. I'd just get her to wear sweatpants to bed and everything would be cool.

On the way uptown I bought her flowers. I had never bought flowers for a girl in my life. I couldn't smell them because my nose was stuffed up from running around without a hat, but they were nice—orange, red and pale blue. Maybe I would bring flowers home as a matter of course. The new me.

Out in the hallway I couldn't smell her, but my nose was so stuffed I wouldn't have been able to smell a corpse in a phone booth.

The apartment was dark. Without turning on any lights I tiptoed down the foyer. The bedroom door was open. No lights on in there either. I soft-stepped to the bed and sat on the edge. "La Di?" I reached out and touched sheets. No La Donna. I hit the light on the night table. The bed was unmade. I tossed the flowers on the crumpled blankets. There was a note pinned to my pillow and my insides hit a bump: "i can't believe I let you walk out ON ME." First line and I felt a . flush of love.

"I SHOULD HAVE KICKED YOU OUT. NOBODY EVER HUMILIATED ME LIKE THAT IN MY LIFE. I AM JUST AS ANGRY AT MYSELF FOR SITTING THERE AND TAKING IT AS I AM AT YOU FOR BEING YOUR USUAL SELF CENTERED SELF. GOODBYE."

My first reaction was to get an "oh my God" disaster rush like I had received a telegram that I had cancer. It passed. Then I felt scared, as if she were hiding somewhere in the dark apartment waiting to pounce on me.

"LA DONNA!" I barked, like, if you're out there don't fuck with me. I hit the overhead light switch in the bedroom. That gave me enough illumination and courage to dart into the living room and hit the switch in there. I screamed. What I thought was another person was my image in the living room closet full-length mirror. I'd forgotten about that mirror because it was on the inside of the door and I never used that closet. It was La Donna's, and it was pretty empty. As a matter of fact, the only things she'd left behind were her Frye boots and about six pounds of song sheets and music books. I didn't know if that was supposed to be symbolic of something but I just closed the door. Then 1 chained the front door. I took off my coat, draped it across one of the dinette table chairs, retrieved the flowers, put them in water and started to change the bed sheets. The vibrator still lay where I had murdered it. I got another rush of dread but I picked it up with a dish towel and dropped it out the bathroom window, plugging my fingers in my ears so I wouldn't hear the crash. It worked. I threw her letter in the garbage, fished it out and sent it for a one-shot flying lesson via the same window. I finished changing the sheets and checked the
Post
for the TV listings.
Death Wish
was on
Tuesday Night at the Movies
at nine,
the Honeymooners
at eleven and
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
was the cable TV homebox movie at eleven-thirty. Out of sight. The super had the heat coming up the pipes for a change. It was going to be a heavy TV night. But first, a little nappy.

I woke up sweating like I'd just broken a fever. I whipped my head right and left searching for who knows what in the darkness, then flopped back and let out a cranky moan. There was no one in the world but me, and the world was my dark apartment. The digital read 10:40.1 hit the light on its lowest wattage, made it to my feet and squinted around the room for something to bring me back to earth. I turned on the TV. Two guys were bouncing up and down in the cab of a truck eating sandwiches and talking with their mouths full. I hadn't had any dinner. And I hadn't done my sit-ups. First things first I fumbled around the bed for my sneakers, got my barbell from under the night table and dragged my jockey-shorted ass into the living room. I did my hundred and fifty in the dark and went into the kitchen. I stared into the refrigerator spaced out, nothing really registering, absently fingering the muscles and ravines of my cast-iron, flab-free gut. The only thing with any potential was an unopened round cardboard of Swiss Knight cheese wedges, which I carried into the bedroom. It was eleven o'clock.
The Honeymooners
! I hit the remote control on the cable box and breathed easy. I knew every one of
The Honeymooners
by heart. There was something comforting about that show, something safe. Just having them on was like taking a tenmilligram hit of Valium. I sat there wolfing down cheese slices while Jackie Gleason rolled those eyes in that hippo pus for the ten millionth time since I was five. Talk about anchors.

At twenty after eleven I started nodding out. I figured I could use a good night's sleep for a change so I turned off the TV and the light.

I sat up like a jack-in-the-box. It was 4:03.

I had had a dream that my father apologized for fucking me over when I was an infant. I asked, "What happened?" He explained that he used to bring me down to the playground on a walker so he could pick up young mothers. When he scored he parked me in the woman's living room while he did his business in the bedroom. One time when he left me in a lady's living room her cat scratched the hell out of my legs. The reason he was bringing the whole subject up was that he had just received a check from the lady to pay for the damages to my legs from twenty-seven and a half years ago. While he was telling me this my mother stood, arms folded, nodding solemnly by his side. The main sensation I woke up with was feeling sorry for my father because he was hanging out with ladies in the middle of the day when he should have been working or hanging out with men. It was just a dream, but sometimes when I sacked out those things came at me with everything but screen credits.

I couldn't get back to sleep. The whole package of cheese slices was lying in my gut like wet cement. Work in four hours. Suck-ass work. I started thinking about La Donna. I kept seeing her stretch out her arms to me and it started ripping me up. I touched my stomach—it still felt flat. Stop it. She was gone. Maybe she'd be back and maybe she wouldn't The more I analyzed it, the more I realized that vibrator incident was no accident. That little Tuesday afternoon flip of mine was called "Kenny Makes a Move." A few times in my life I made moves—always with the grace and finesse of a butcher hacking up a mastodon, but they were moves nonetheless. I wasn't saying that little scene was planned, but if I looked back at the big ones, the big moves, they all had the same MO. They seemed thoughtless and stupid or dangerous, but they always got me out of checkmate. I could remember at least three incidents where I had pulled some heavy number and changed my life. After high school I was still living at home. All my friends had split but I couldn't get it together to leave. College was depressing, an extension of high school, a subway commute. I was dying, but I was afraid to leave. Then one night my junior year I fucked this girl in my parents' bed when they were out After we finished I couldn't find the condom. I had tossed it somewhere and couldn't find it. When I came home from school the next day, the house turned into Guadalcanal. My old lady had found the condom that morning. It was in her slipper. By nightfall I had moved in with three guys from school living in Manhattan.