Threesome - Lawrence Block [12]
Around two in the afternoon I cabbed up to 83rd Street to see Marcia.
Marcia is Marcia Goldsmith, a long-legged low-voiced brittle brilliant young lady slightly reminiscent of Elaine May, but a little less overpowering, thank God. She and I have collaborated on several non-books, she doing text and I providing pictures. A non-book is the sort that sits next to the cash register on the way out of the store, and it’s just sixty-four pages of one-line gags and art work, and you could read it in ten minutes flat and never want to look at it again, but what the hell, it’s only a buck and there are few enough laughs in this world, so you buy it.
The non-book on which we were presently working was called The World is Coming to An End Because Book. That was the working title, which we thought we might amend to Chicken Little Was Right, which I have seen on buttons but not as a title. The premise was that we would have about thirty or forty ways in which the world was coming to an end, all of them ostensibly humorous, and that the increasing public consciousness of pollution and the environment question and all that would make people welcome the book as a sort of tragic relief.
I wasn’t that crazy about the idea myself, but Marcia was coming up with some good lines, and the theme did suit my drawing style. The world is coming to an end because pretty soon there won‘t be any place left to throw old razor blades—and a view of the Grand Canyon filled to the top, and a little guy standing there with razor in one hand and blade in the other.
Well, can’t every line be a boffo, you know.
So I went up to Marcia’s place and she poured me a drink the size of Lake Erie, but purer, and I showed her what artwork I’d come up with during the week, plus a few gag ideas I had thought of—some she loved, most she hated—and she gave me a batch of new ideas which I would take back to Massachusetts, see which ones I liked in graphic terms, and work up some roughs.
This much we probably could have done on the phone. But then I took her face between my hands and kissed her wide mouth, and she laughed throatily and gave me a lot of tongue and thrust with her hips and wiped her loins across mine.
Surprise, Priss!
Or is it? Did you know, or take for granted? Well, surprise, anyway. What you wrote held surprises for me. Sauce for the goose and all that. When one gets on one of these truth trips, it’s like going to a hotel in Paris. You have to take the bidet with the suite.
It was the best sort of casual shtupping. We both liked each other a lot, but in the deeper sense neither of us really gave a double damn about the other, and we only balled each other because it felt good. No jealousy, no intrigue, no hang-ups. Just some friendly fucking. And in this chill dreary world, where the fucking you get is never worth the fucking you give, friendly fucking is treasure enough.
In bed, after we had spent some minutes handling and nibbling at various portions of one another, I said, “Hey, may I ask a personal question, Marsh?”
“Do we know each other well enough for that? Mmm, I like your body, I groove on you. What do you want to know?”
“Ever make it with a girl?”
“Well, I like that. Just because I’m an aggressive castrating bitch, you figure I’ve got to be a dyke as well. You’re full of compliments.”
“Forget I said a word,” I said, and grabbed her.
We went into a friendly clinch, but then she broke away from me, raised herself up on one elbow, draped her breasts over me, and poked her eyes into my eyes.
“Why?” she demanded.
“I wondered.”
“I know you wondered, you wouldn’t have asked if you hadn’t wondered. Why?”
“I’m not really sure.”
“Meaning you’re not really sure you want to say. Yes, I have, as a matter of fact. It’s better than ham.”
“Oh, you know that one?”
“Honey, doesn’t everyone?”
“I suppose.”
“Hey, do you have a lesbian hang-up?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. What the hell is a lesbian hang-up, anyway?”
“What you got, I think. Hey.”
“What?”
“I got a