Women (7 page)

“You know, I think I’ve always been in love with you.”

“What?”

“For years. You know, when I used to come and see you, first with Bernie and later with Jack, I would want you. But you never noticed me. You were always sucking on a can of beer or you were obsessed with something.”

“Crazy, I guess, near crazy. Postal Service madness. I’m sorry I didn’t notice you.”

“You can notice me now.”

Dee Dee poured another glass of wine. It was good wine. I liked her. It was good to have a place to go when things went bad. I remembered the early days when things would go bad and there wasn’t anywhere to go. Maybe that had been good for me. Then. But now I wasn’t interested in what was good for me. I was interested in how I felt and how to stop feeling bad when things went wrong. How to start feeling good again.

“I don’t want to fuck you over, Dee Dee,” I said. “I’m not always good to women.”

“I told you I love you.”

“Don’t do it. Don’t love me.”

“All right,” she said, “I won’t love you, I’ll almost love you. Will that be all right?”

“It’s much better than the other.”

We finished our wine and went to bed. . . .

18

In the morning Dee Dee drove me to the Sunset Strip for breakfast. The Mercedes was black and shone in the sun. We drove past the billboards and the nightclubs and the fancy restaurants. I slouched low in my seat, coughing over my cigarette. I thought, well, things have been worse. A scene or two flashed through my head. One winter in Atlanta I was freezing, it was midnight, I had no money, no place to sleep, and I walked up the steps of a church hoping to get inside and get warm. The church door was locked. Another time in El Paso, sleeping on a park bench, I was awakened in the morning by some cop smacking the soles of my shoes with his club. Still, I kept thinking about Lydia. The good parts of our relationship felt like a rat walking around and gnawing at the inside of my stomach.

Dee Dee parked outside a fancy eating place. There was a sun patio with chairs and tables where people sat eating, talking, and drinking coffee. We passed a black man in boots, jeans, and with a heavy silver chain coiled around his neck. His motorcycle helmet, goggles and gloves were on the table. He was with a thin blond girl in a peppermint jumpsuit who sat sucking on her little ringer. The place was crowded. Everybody looked young, scrubbed, bland. Nobody stared at us. Everybody was talking quietly.

We went inside and a pale slim boy with tiny buttocks, tight silver pants, an 8-inch studded belt and shiny gold blouse seated us. His ears were pierced and he wore tiny blue earrings. His pencil-thin mustache looked purple.

“Dee Dee,” he said, “what is happening?”

“Breakfast, Donny.”

“A drink, Donny,” I said.

“I know what he needs, Donny. Give him a Golden Flower, double.”

We ordered breakfast and Dee Dee said, “It will take a while to prepare. They cook everything to order here.”

“Don’t spend too much, Dee Dee.”

“It all goes on the expense account.”

She took out a little black book. “Now, let’s see. Who am I taking to breakfast? Elton John?”

“Isn’t he in Africa …”

“Oh, that’s right. Well, how about Cat Stevens?”

“Who’s that?”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Well, I discovered him. You can be Cat Stevens.”

Donny brought the drink and he and Dee Dee talked. They seemed to know the same people. I didn’t know any of them. It took a lot to excite me. I didn’t care. I didn’t like New York. I didn’t like Hollywood. I didn’t like rock music. I didn’t like anything. Maybe I was afraid. That was it—I was afraid. I wanted to sit alone in a room with the shades down. I feasted upon that. I was a crank. I was a lunatic. And Lydia was gone.

I finished my drink and Dee Dee ordered another. I began to feel like a kept man and it felt great. It helped my blues. There is nothing worse than being broke and having your woman leave you. Nothing to drink, no job, just the walls, sitting there staring at the walls and thinking. That’s how women got back at you, but it hurt and weakened them too. Or so I like to believe.

The breakfast was good. Eggs garnished with various fruits . . . pineapple, peaches, pears . . . some grated nuts, seasoning. It was a good breakfast. We finished and Dee Dee ordered me another drink. The thought of Lydia still remained inside of me, but Dee Dee was nice. Her conversation was decisive and entertaining. She was able to make me laugh, which I needed. My laughter was all there inside of me waiting to roar out:
HAHAHAHAHA
, o my god o my
HAHAHAHA
. It felt so good when it happened. Dee Dee knew something about life. Dee Dee knew that what happened to one happened to most of us. Our lives were not so different—even though we liked to think so.

Pain is strange. A cat killing a bird, a car accident, a fire. . . . Pain arrives,
BANG
, and there it is, it sits on you. It’s real. And to anybody watching, you look foolish. Like you’ve suddenly become an idiot. There’s no cure for it unless you know somebody who understands how you feel, and knows how to help.

We went back to the car. “I know just where to take you to cheer you up,” said Dee Dee. I didn’t answer. I was being catered to as if I was an invalid. Which I was.

I asked Dee Dee to stop at a bar. One of hers. The bartender knew her.

“This,” she told me as we entered, “is where a lot of the script writers hang out. And some of the little-theatre people.”

I disliked them all immediately, sitting around acting clever and superior. They nullified each other. The worst thing for a writer is to know another writer, and worse than that, to know a number of other writers. Like flies on the same turd.

“Let’s get a table,” I said. So there I was, a $65 a week writer sitting in a room with other writers, $1000 a week writers. Lydia, I thought, I am getting there. You’ll be sorry. Some day I’ll go into fancy restaurants and I’ll be recognized. They’ll have a special table for me in the back near the kitchen.

We got our drinks and Dee Dee looked at me. “You give good head. You give the best head I ever had.”

“Lydia taught me. Then I added a few touches of my own.”

A dark young boy jumped up and came over to our table. Dee Dee introduced us. The boy was from New York, wrote for the Village Voice and other New York newspapers. He and Dee Dee name-dropped a while and then he asked her, “What’s your husband do?”

“I got a stable,” I said. “Fighters. Four good Mexican boys. Plus one black boy, a real dancer. What do you weigh?”

“158. Were you a fighter? Your face looks like you caught a few.”

“I’ve caught a few. We can put you in at 135. I need a southpaw lightweight.”

“How’d you know I was a southpaw?”

“You’re holding your cigarette in your left hand. Come on down to the Main Street gym. Monday am. We’ll start your training. Cigarettes are out. Put that son of a bitch out!”

“Listen, man, I’m a writer. I use a typewriter. You never read my stuff?”

“All I read is the metropolitan dailies—murders, rapes, fight results, swindles, jetliner crashes and Ann Landers.”

“Dee Dee,” he said, “I’ve got an interview with Rod Stewart in 30 minutes. I gotta go.” He left.

Dee Dee ordered another round of drinks. “Why can’t you be decent to people?” she asked.

“Fear,” I said.

“Here we are,” she said and drove her car into the Hollywood cemetery.

“Nice,” I said, “real nice. I had forgotten all about death.”

We drove around. Most of the tombs were above ground. They were like little houses, with pillars and front steps. And each had a locked iron door. Dee Dee parked and we got out. She tried one of the doors. I watched her behind wiggle as she worked at the door. I thought about Nietzsche. There we were: a German stallion and a Jewish mare. The Fatherland would adore me.

We got back into the M. Benz and Dee Dee parked outside of one of the bigger units. They were all stuck into the walls in there. Rows and rows of them. Some had flowers, in little vases, but most of the blooms were withered. The majority of the niches didn’t have flowers. Some of them had husband and wife neatly side by side. In some cases one niche was empty and waiting. In all cases the husband was the one already dead.

Dee Dee took my hand and led me around the corner. There he was, down near the bottom, Rudolph Valentino. Dead 1926. Didn’t live long. I decided to live to be 80. Think of being 80 and fucking an 18 year old girl. If there was any way to cheat the game of death, that was it.

Dee Dee lifted one of the flower vases and dropped it into her purse. The standard trip. Rip off whatever wasn’t tied down. Everything belonged to everybody. We went outside and Dee Dee said, “I want to sit on Tyrone Power’s bench. He was my favorite. I loved him!”

We went and sat on Tyrone’s bench next to his grave. Then we got up and walked over to Douglas Fairbanks Sr.'s tomb. He had a good one. His own private reflector pool in front of the tomb. The pool was filled with water lillies and pollywogs. We walked up some stairs and there at the back of the tomb was a place to sit. Dee Dee and I sat. I noticed a crack in the wall of the tomb with small red ants running in and out. I watched the small red ants for a while, then put my arms around Dee Dee and kissed her, a good long long kiss. We were going to be good friends.

19

Dee Dee had to pick up her son at the airport. He was coming home from England for his vacation. He was 17, she told me, and his father was an ex-concert pianist. But he’d fallen for speed and coke, and later on burned his fingers in an accident. He could no longer play the piano. They’d been divorced for some time.

The son’s name was Renny. Dee Dee had told him about me during several trans-Atlantic telephone conversations. We got to the airport as Renny’s flight was disembarking. Dee Dee and Renny embraced. He was tall and thin, quite pale. A lock of hair hung over one eye. We shook hands.

I went to get the baggage while Renny and Dee Dee chatted. He addressed her as “Mommy.” When we got back to the car he climbed into the back seat and said, “Mommy, did you get my bike?”

“I’ve ordered it. We’ll pick it up tomorrow.”

“Is it a good bike, Mommy? I want a ten-speed with a hand brake and pedal grips.”

“It’s a good bike, Kenny.”

“Are you sure it will be ready?”

We drove back. I stayed overnight. Renny had his own bedroom.

In the morning we all sat in the breakfast nook together waiting for the maid to arrive. Dee Dee finally got up to fix breakfast for us. Renny said, “Mommy, how do you break an egg?”

Dee Dee looked at me. She knew what I was thinking. I remained silent.

“All right, Renny, come here and I’ll show you.”

Renny walked over to the stove. Dee Dee picked up an egg. “You see, you just break the shell against the side of the pan . . . like this . . . and let the egg fall out of the shell into the pan . . . like this. . . .”

“Oh …”

“It’s simple.”

“And how do you cook it?”

“We fry it. In butter.”

“Mommy, I can’t eat that egg.”

“Why?”

“Because the yoke is broken!”

Dee Dee turned around and looked at me. Her eyes said, “Hank, don’t say a goddamned word. . . .”

A few mornings later found us all in the breakfast nook again. We were eating while the maid worked in the kitchen. Dee Dee said to Renny, “You’ve got your bike now. I want you to pick up a 6-pack sometime today. When I get home I want a Coke or two to drink.”

“But, Mommy, those Cokes are heavy! Can’t you get them?”

“Renny, I work all day and I’m tired. You get the Cokes.”

“But, Mommy, there’s a hill. I’ll have to pedal over the hill.”

“There’s no hill. What hill?”

“Well, you can’t see it with your eyes, but it’s there. . . .”

“Renny, you get those Cokes, understand?”

Renny got up, walked to his bedroom and slammed the door. Dee Dee looked away. “He’s testing me. He wants to see if I love him.”

“I’ll get the Cokes,” I said.

“That’s all right,” said Dee Dee, “I’ll get them.”

Finally, none of us got them. . . .

Dee Dee and I were at my place a few days later picking up the mail and looking around when the phone rang. It was Lydia. “Hi,” she said, “I’m in Utah.”

“I got your note,” I said.

“How are you doing?” she asked.

“Everything’s all right.”

“Utah’s nice in the summer. You ought to come up here. We’ll go camping. All my sisters are here.”

“I can’t get away right now.”

“Why?”

“Well, I’m with Dee Dee.”

“Dee Dee?”

“Well, yes . . .”

“I knew you’d use that phone number,” she said. “I told you you’d use that number!”

Dee Dee was standing next to me. “Please tell her,” she said, “to give me until September.”

“Forget her,” Lydia said. “To hell with her. You come up here and see me.”

“I can’t drop everything just because you phone. Besides,” I said, “I’m giving Dee Dee until September.”

“September?”

“Yes.”

Lydia screamed. It was a long loud scream. Then she hung up.

After that Dee Dee kept me away from my place. Once, while we were at my place going over the mail, I noticed the phone off the hook. “Never do that again,” I told her.

Dee Dee took me for long rides up and down the coast. She took me on trips to the mountains. We went to garage sales, to movies, to rock concerts, to churches, to friends, to dinners and lunches, to magic shows, picnics and circuses. Her friends photographed us together.

The trip to Catalina was horrible. I waited with Dee Dee on the dock. I was really hungover. Dee Dee got me an Alka-Seltzer and a glass of water. The only thing that helped was a young girl sitting across from us. She had a beautiful body, long good legs, and she wore a mini-skirt. With the mini-skirt she wore long stockings, a garter belt, and she had on pink panties under the red skirt. She even wore high heeled shoes.

“You’re looking at her, aren’t you?” asked Dee Dee.

“I can’t stop.”

“She’s a slut.”

“Sure.”