Women - Charles Bukowski [130]
To my surprise she followed me into the bedroom. I stretched out on the bed and felt her sit down. I closed my eyes and could tell she was pulling her boots off. I heard one boot hit the floor, then the other. I began to undress on the bed. I reached up and shut off the overhead light. I continued undressing. We kissed some more.
“How long has it been since you’ve had a woman?”
“Four years.”
“Four years?”
“Yes.”
“I think you deserve some love,” she said. “I had a dream about you. I opened your chest like a cabinet, it had doors, and when I opened the doors I saw all kinds of soft things inside you—teddy bears, tiny fuzzy animals, all these soft, cuddly things. Then I had a dream about this other man. He walked up to me and handed me some pieces of paper. He was a writer. I took the pieces of paper and looked at them. And the pieces of paper had cancer. His writing had cancer. I go by my dreams. You deserve some love.”
We kissed again.
“Listen,” she said, “after you stick that thing inside me, pull it out just before you come. O.K.?”
“I understand.”
I climbed on top of her. It was good. It was something happening, something real, and with a girl 20 years younger than I was and really, after all, beautiful. I did about 10 strokes—and came inside of her.
She leaped up.
“You son-of-a-bitch! You came inside of me!”
“Lydia, it’s been so long…it felt so good…I couldn’t help it. It sneaked up on me! Honest to Christ, I couldn’t help it.”
She ran into the bathroom and let the water run into the tub. She stood in front of the mirror running a comb through her long brown hair. She was truly beautiful.
“You son-of-a-bitch! God, what a dumb high school trick. That’s high school shit! And it couldn’t have happened at a worse time! Well, we’re shackjobs now! We’re shackjobs now!”
I moved toward her in the bathroom. “Lydia, I love you.”
“Get the hell away from me!”
She pushed me out, closed the door, and I stood out in the hall, listening to the bath water run.
5
I didn’t see Lydia for a couple of days, although I did manage to phone her 6 or 7 times during that period. Then the weekend arrived. Her ex-husband, Gerald, always took the children over the weekend.
I drove up to her court about 11 AM that Saturday morning and knocked. She was in tight bluejeans, boots, orange blouse. Her eyes seemed a darker brown than ever and in the sunlight, as she opened the door, I noticed a natural red in her dark hair. It was startling. She allowed me to kiss her, then she locked the door behind us and we went to my car. We had decided on the beach—not for bathing—it was mid-winter—but for something to do.
We drove along. It felt good having Lydia in the car with me.
“That was some party,” she said. “You call that a collating party? That was a copulating party, that’s what that was. A copulating party!”
I drove with one hand and rested the other on her inner thigh. I couldn’t help myself. Lydia didn’t seem to notice. As I drove along the hand slid down between her legs. She went on talking. Suddenly she said, “Take you hand off. That’s my pussy!”
“Sorry,” I said.
Neither of us said anything until we reached the parking lot at Venice beach. “You want a sandwich and a Coke or something?” I asked. “All right,” she said.
We went into the small Jewish delicatessen to get the things and we took them to a knoll of grass that overlooked the sea. We had sandwiches, pickles, chips and soft drinks. The beach was almost deserted and the food tasted fine. Lydia was not talking. I was amazed at how quickly she ate. She ripped into her sandwich with a savagery, took large swallows of Coke, ate half a pickle in one bite and reached for a handful of potato chips. I am, on the contrary, a very slow eater.
Passion, I thought, she has passion.
“How’s that sandwich?” I asked.
“Pretty good. I was hungry.”
“They make good sandwiches. Do you want anything else?”