In the middle of a rainy evening while he ate Chinese takeout the black woman lay naked, fat-breasted and snoring on his bed, her teeth gaping like a vampire's, her stockings still on, her hand seeming to twitch because it lay on her twitching belly, her hair down around her neck. Beside her sat the old lady on the nod, so peaceful and luminous-faced, dreamy, turning a cigarette in her hand, cross-legged, eyes closed. Suddenly she winked at him. She put a finger to her lips. Then she slid her middle finger all the way up the black woman's cunt, pulled it out, and began to suck. — The black woman opened one eye. — Not even at the bottom of my list! she scolded, and then they both laughed.
It was drizzling very steadily outside. He was warm and sleepy. He lay down between them, and the old lady put his head so sweetly in her lap. Half asleep already, he imagined being her good Daddy now to undo everything and taking her to the beach. She sat on her towel with the soles of her feet tucked behind her, and she was watching the lotion sink into her arms. Just before her stood a red bucket filled with ocean. He had caught the water for her. The water waited inside the bucket, waited to be poured out, and if he and she should die, it would wait for a wind to blow the bucket over or for the red plastic to be cracked by time. She watched the ocean glisten on her fingers. The ocean shimmered faintly through the translucent bucket's sides.
She took the yellow bucket and put an ocean inside it and poured it into the red bucket.
The whore who'd been raped with the vacuum cleaner came in, smiling shyly, with a packet of white powder. — Excuse me, she whispered. I don't smell, do I? I'm sorry I haven't taken a shower today.
Outside the hotel window an Indian girl was saying: Pay me, and a white man said: It's in the car. I'll get it, I promise. No, don't come with me, bitch, you just stand there and wait. I'm going around the corner. I said you just stand there and wait! — Inside, an Indian girl — an Ojibway, this one — threw herself down on the bed, groaning. She'd been hit by a car when she was drunk. When they took her to the hospital she waited almost as long as the Indian girl outside the window, and then she said to the doctor: Excuse me! — What? said the doctor. — When are you gonna see me? — When I'm not busy, said the doctor shortly. — You're not busy now; you're just pokin' your nose in a bunch of goddamned papers! she shouted. What would you care if I just left? — You're right, yawned the doctor. I wouldn't care one bit. — So she got up and hobbled out and got drunk, permitting her leg to solve itself, which was why she'd staggered the dozen blocks to the hotel room so slowly, almost giving up; which was why she'd limped up the two flights of steps above the poolroom, squeezing the handrail until it groaned like her. Her face was yellow with pain, which was why she fell down on his bed while he bolted the door, and then she said: Turn out the fuckin' light.
As he neared her, she grabbed him with a thick arm that was all muscle and ground his mouth against hers so that she could breathe into him her life of gin and beer and bad food, and she locked the crook of her elbow around his neck to pull him more irrevocably under her tongue while her other hand snatched one of his and put it on the crotch of her jeans. — Make love to me, she begged. Fuck me good. Just don't touch my leg.
He was hers now and she inhaled sharply so that her breasts became as the upturned crescents of a buffalo's horns, and then she said: I broke up with my boyfriend. 'Cause he's jealous.
You lonely? he said.
Right now I'm having fun.
After that she was moaning: Please make me come.
Three hours later she sighed happily and said: You know what? I like your attitude. I like your goddamn attitude! I like the way you make love.
I like the way you make love, too, he said. I like you.
She kissed him. — If there was more guys like you I'd stay in town. It's so
They lay there for awhile. She was naked from the knees up but she'd never taken off her bluejeans or shoes because of her leg. Her skin was not truly red except on her face and hands where she'd been changed by the sunlight. The rest of her was a pale yellow ocher. She pulled his face down and kissed him.
I gotta go, she said.
How soon will you forget me?
I always remember everyone, she said.
Then she said: You want to come with me now? Come walk with me?
At that he felt a sudden uprush and was ready to go anywhere with her, but then his caution became the wise hard old yellow skull behind his face and his caution said: Where do you want to walk to?
To get a bottle.
