Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man - Lawrence Block [6]
Jennifer is twenty-two, with a supple body and pale skin and long mahogany hair and trusting acidhead eyes. All of this makes her a yummy fuck but a verbal nothing. Going over to her place just for conversation is like going to a Chinese restaurant just for dessert. This is all right on grass—ten-minute silences aren’t bothersome then—but I felt not at all like getting high. I wanted to close the doors of perception, not open them.
And what’s deadlier than watching someone weave?
“Maybe some other time would be better,” I said.
“Actually, we could ball. Not balling during your period is just a hangup, you know. You probably wouldn’t want to go down on me, but—”
“It’s not that,” I said, truthlessly. “I’m uptight myself. I think the vibrations would be bad.”
Jennie is one of those young female persons who will accept any explanation that has the word vibrations in it. She agreed that we would make it another time, and I picked up the phone again and tried to think of somebody to call. Or someplace to go. Or something to do. And managed to think of none of these things.
I came very close to calling you, Lisa, as a matter of fact. The only thing that stopped me was that I didn’t want to hear your voice. I don’t mean that quite the way it sounds. I had some things to tell you, but I didn’t want you talking back to me while I tried to get it all out.
So I decided to write a poem, and set the typewriter upon the kitchen table, and rolled a sheet of paper into it, and spent a long time looking at it. Which made it as close as I had come to writing a poem in about a year and a half.
And then I thought, well, I can’t send Lisa a check, and I’d better tell her as much before her father sends his bloodhounds after me. Does the old bastard still raise bloodhounds? I’m sure he does.
So I started to write you a letter, and I seem to have gotten carried away. Ridiculous, isn’t it? All of this just to tell you that there’s no check in the envelope, when you found that out before you read a word.
Christ, Lisa, I’ve written twenty goddamn pages of this. I can’t believe it. This stupid letter is the first thing I’ve written in a year and a half. It is already longer than either of the two attempts I made at writing novels, and probably more cogent than either in the bargain.
All those months at Ronald Rabbit’s, with a desk and a chair and a typewriter and nothing but solitude, and I never wrote a fucking word. And here I am beating this typewriter to a pulp, the words just rolling straight from my brain through my fingers and onto the page. Pages. Page after page after page.
Lisa, Lisa, Lisa. We did have some good times, damnit. We truly did. And I think it’s nice we haven’t let the fact that we sort of hate each other keep us from loving each other a little.
Ah, Lisa. Here’s your letter, and I’m sorry there’s no check to go with it, but there isn’t, and God knows when there will be. You don’t have to answer this letter. You don’t even have to keep it. I have a carbon. I just never did get out of the habit of keeping carbons of things, and when I first put the sheet of paper in the typewriter I hoped it would turn out to be a poem. But maybe this is better. The world has enough poems, and maybe it needs more prose.
Anyway, I’ve solved a problem. When I started this I didn’t know what to do, and now I do. I’m going to tuck this into an envelope and go downstairs and mail it, and then I’m going over to the Kettle to get drunk.
You may be hearing more from me, Lisa.
With love (but without $850),
Larry
2
74 Bleecker St.
New York 10012
June 15
Mr. Stephen Joel Adel
c/o American Express
Monterrey, Mexico
Dear Steve:
Let me tell you in front, old pal, that I think you’re a total rat bastard and an unprincipled son of a bitch who ought to be tied up and horsewhipped.
Now that we’ve got all that out of the way, I thought I’d write and tell you and Fran how I’ve spent