Women - Charles Bukowski [172]
She paused before the mirror and pulled in her stomach. Those huge breasts rose toward the glass. I could see her, back and front, simultaneously.
She walked over and climbed under the sheet.
We slowly worked into it.
We got into it, all that red hair on the pillow, as outside the sirens howled and the dogs barked.
45
Tammie came by that night. She appeared to be high on uppers.
“I want some champagne,” she said.
“All right,” I said.
I handed her a twenty.
“Be right back,” she said, walking out the door.
Then the phone rang. It was Lydia. “I just wondered how you were doing….”
“Things are all right.”
“Not here. I’m pregnant.”
“What?”
“And I don’t know who the father is.”
“Oh?”
“You know Dutch, the guy who hangs around the bar where I’m working now?”
“Yes, old Baldy.”
“Well, he’s really a nice guy. He’s in love with me. He brings me flowers and candy. He wants to marry me. He’s been real nice. And one night I went home with him. We did it.”
“All right.”
“Then there’s Barney, he’s married but I like him. Of all the guys in the bar he’s the only one who never tried to put the make on me. It fascinated me. Well, you know, I’m trying to sell my house. So he came over one afternoon. He just came by. He said he wanted to look the house over for a friend of his. I let him in. Well, he came at just the right time. The kids were in school so I let him go ahead…. Then one night this stranger came into the bar late. He asked me to go home with him. I told him no. Then he said he just wanted to sit in my car with me, talk to me. I said all right. We sat in the car and talked. Then we shared a joint. Then he kissed me. That kiss did it. If he hadn’t kissed me I wouldn’t have done it. Now I’m pregnant and I don’t know who. I’ll have to wait and see who the child looks like.”
“All right, Lydia, lots of luck.”
“Thanks.”
I hung up. A minute passed and then the phone rang again. It was Lydia. “Oh,” she said, “I wondered how you were doing?”
“About the same, horses and booze.”
“Then everything’s all right with you?”
“Not quite.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I sent this woman out for champagne….”
“Woman?”
“Well, girl, really…”
“A girl?”
“I sent her out with $20 for champagne and she hasn’t come back. I think I’ve been taken.”
“Chinaski, I don’t want to hear about your women. Do you understand that?”
“All right.”
Lydia hung up. There was a knock on the door. It was Tammie. She’d come back with the champagne and the change.
46
It was noon the next day when the phone rang. It was Lydia again.
“Well, did she come back with the champagne?”
“Who?”
“Your whore.”
“Yes, she came back….”
“Then what happened?”
“We drank the champagne. It was good stuff.”
“Then what happened?”
“Well, you know, shit…”
I heard a long insane wail like a wolverine shot in the arctic snow and left to bleed and die alone….
She hung up.
I slept most of the afternoon and that night I drove out to the harness races.
I lost $32, got into the Volks and drove back. I parked, walked up on the porch and put the key into the door. All the lights were on. I looked around. Drawers were ripped out and overturned on the floor, the bed covers were on the floor. All my books were missing from the bookcase, including the books I had written, 20 or so. And my typewriter was gone and my toaster was gone and my radio was gone and my paintings were gone.
Lydia, I thought.
All she’d left me was my t.v. because she knew I never looked at it.
I walked outside and there was Lydia’s car, but she wasn’t in it. “Lydia,” I said. “Hey, baby!”
I walked up and down the street and then I saw her feet, both of them, sticking out from behind a small tree up against an apartment house wall. I walked up to the tree and said, “Look, what the hell’s the matter with you?”
Lydia just stood there. She had two shopping bags full of