Women - Charles Bukowski [224]
“Come with me,” she said.
“What?”
“I said, take me with you.”
“Wait a minute.”
I turned back to the blonde. “Listen, you’re beautiful but I can’t go with you. I don’t want to hurt your friend.”
“Fuck that son-of-a-bitch. He’s shit.”
The girl with dark hair pulled at my arm. “Take me with you now or I’m leaving.”
“All right,” I said, “let’s go.”
I found McIntosh. He didn’t look as if he was doing much. I guess he didn’t like parties.
“Come on, Mac, drive us back to the hotel.”
There was more beer. The dark girl told me her name was Iris Duarte. She was one-half Indian and she said she worked as a belly dancer. She stood up and shook it. It looked good.
“You really need a costume to get the full effect,” she said.
“No, I don’t.”
“I mean, I need one, to make it look good, you know.”
She looked Indian. She had an Indian nose and mouth. She appeared to be about 23, dark brown eyes, she spoke quietly and had that great body. She had read 3 or 4 of my books. All right.
We drank another hour then went to bed. I ate her up but when I mounted I just stroked and stroked without effect. Too bad.
In the morning I brushed my teeth, threw cold water on my face and went back to bed. I started playing with her cunt. It got wet and so did I. I mounted. I ground it in, thinking of all that body, all that good young body. She took all I had to give her. It was a good one. It was a very good one. Afterwards, Iris went to the bathroom.
I stretched out thinking about how good it had been. Iris reappeared and got back into the bed. We didn’t speak. An hour passed. Then we did it all over again.
We cleaned up and dressed. She gave me her address and phone number, I gave her mine. She really seemed fond of me. McIntosh knocked about 15 minutes later. We drove Iris to an intersection near her place of work. It turned out she really worked as a waitress; the belly-dancing was an ambition. I kissed her goodbye. She got out of the car. She turned and waved, then walked off. I watched that body as it walked away.
“Chinaski scores again,” said McIntosh, as he headed for the airport.
“Think nothing of it,” I said.
“I had some luck myself,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I got your blonde.”
“What?”
“Yes,” he laughed, “I did.”
“Drive me to the airport, bastard!”
I was back in Los Angeles for 3 days. I had a date with Debra that night. The phone rang.
“Hank, this is Iris!”
“Oh, Iris, what a surprise! How’s it going?”
“Hank, I’m flying to L.A. I’m coming to see you!”
“Great! When?”
“I’ll fly down the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.”
“Thanksgiving?”
“And I can stay until the following Monday!”
“O.K.”
“Do you have a pen? I’ll give you my flight number.”
That night Debra and I had dinner at a nice place down by the seashore. The tables weren’t crowded together and they specialized in sea food. We ordered a bottle of white wine and waited for our meal. Debra looked better than I had seen her for sometime, but she told me her job was getting to be too much. She was going to have to hire another girl. And it was hard to find anybody efficient. People were so inept.
“Yes,” I said.
“Have you heard from Sara?”
“I phoned her. We had had a little argument. I sort of patched it up.”
“Have you seen her since you got back from Canada?”
“No.”
“I’ve ordered a 25 pound turkey for Thanksgiving. Can you carve?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t drink too much tonight. You know what happens when you drink too much. You become a wet noodle.”
“O.K.”
Debra reached over and touched my hand. “My sweet dear old wet noodle!”
I only got one bottle of wine for after dinner. We drank it slowly, sitting up in her bed watching her giant t.v. The first program was lousy. The second was better. It was about a sex pervert and a subnormal farmboy. The pervert’s head was transplanted onto the farmboy’s body by a mad doctor and the body escaped with the two heads and ran about the countryside doing all sorts of horrible things. It put me in a good mood.
After the bottle of wine and the two-headed