Women - Charles Bukowski [103]
Since we didn’t have to wait for her baggage we drove right to my place. I parked out front and we walked through the court together. She sat on the couch while I poured her a drink. Iris looked over at my homemade bookcase.
“Did you write all those books?”
“Yes.”
“I had no idea you had written so many.”
“I wrote them.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know. Twenty, twenty-five….”
I kissed her, putting one arm around her waist, pulling her to me. The other hand I put on her knee.
The phone rang. I got up and answered it. “Hank?” It was Valerie.
“Yes?”
“Who was that?”
“Who was who?”
“That girl….”
“Oh, that’s a friend from Canada.”
“Hank, you and your god-damned women!”
“Yes.”
“Bobby wants to know if you and…”
“Iris.”
“He wants to know if you and Iris want to come down for a drink.”
“Not tonight. I’ll take a rain check.”
“She’s really got a body!”
“I know.”
“All right, maybe tomorrow.”
“Maybe….”
I hung up thinking that Valerie probably liked women too. Well, that was all right.
I poured two more drinks.
“How many women have you met at airports?” Iris asked.
“It’s not as bad as you think.”
“Have you lost count? Like your books?”
“Math is one of my weaker points.”
“Do you enjoy meeting women at airports?”
“Yes.” I had not remembered that Iris was so talkative.
“You pig!” She laughed.
“Our first fight. Did you have a nice flight?”
“I sat next to a bore. I made a mistake and let him buy me a drink. He talked my god-damned ear off.”
“He was only excited. You’re a sexy woman.”
“Is that all you see in me?”
“I see lots of that. Maybe I’ll see other things as we go along.”
“Why do you want so many women?”
“It was my childhood, you see. No love, no affection. And in my twenties and thirties there also was very little. I’m playing catch-up….”
“Will you know when you’ve caught up?”
“The feeling I have is that I’ll need at least one more lifetime.”
“You’re so full of shit!”
I laughed. “That’s why I write.”
“I’m going to take a shower and change.”
“Sure.”
I went to the kitchen and felt-up the turkey. It showed me its legs, its pubic hair, its bunghole, its thighs; it sat there. I was glad it didn’t have eyes. Well, we’d do something with the thing. That was the next step. I heard the toilet flush. If Iris didn’t want to roast it, I’d roast it.
When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity. The more rivers you crossed, the more you knew about rivers—that is, if you survived the white water and the hidden rocks. It could be a rough cob, sometimes.
Iris came out. She had on a blueblack one piece dress that appeared to be silk and it clung. She wasn’t your average American girl, which kept her from appearing obvious. She was a total woman but she didn’t throw it in your face. American women drove hard bargains and they ended up looking the worse for it. The few natural American women left were mostly in Texas and Louisiana.
Iris smiled at me. She had something in each hand. She held both hands above her head and began making clicking noises. She began to dance. Or rather, she vibrated. It was as if she were shot through with electric current and the center of her soul was her belly. It was lovely and pure, with just the faintest hint of humor. The whole dance, as she never took her eyes off me, had its own meaning, a good endearing sense of its own worth.
Iris finished and I applauded, poured her a drink.
“I didn’t do it justice,” she said.