Women

"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 my books and a portfolio of my paintings.

"Look, I've got to have my books and paintings back. They belong to me."

Lydia came out from behind the tree-screaming. She took the paintings out and started tearing them. She threw the pieces in the air and when they fell to the ground she stomped on them. She was wearing her cowgirl boots.

Then she took my books out of the shopping bags and started throwing them around, out into the street, out on the lawn, everywhere.

"Here are your paintings! Here are your books! AND DON'T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN! DON'T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!"

Then Lydia ran down to my court with a book in her hand, my latest, The Selected Works of Henry Chinaski. She screamed, "So you want your books back? So you want your books back? Here are your goddamned books! AND DON'T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!"

She started smashing the glass panes in my front door. She took The Selected Works of Henry Chinaski and smashed pane after pane, screaming, "You want your books back? Here are your goddamned books! AND DON'T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN! I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!"

I stood there as she screamed and broke glass.

Where are the police? I thought. Where?

Then Lydia ran down the court walk, took a quick left at the trash bin and ran down the driveway of the apartment house next door. Behind a small bush was my typewriter, my radio and my toaster.

Lydia picked up the typewriter and ran out into the center of the street with it. It was a heavy old-fashioned standard machine. Lydia lifted the typer high over her head with both hands and smashed it in the street. The platen and several other parts flew off. She picked the typer up again, raised it over her head and screamed, "DON'T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!" and smashed it into the street again.

Then Lydia jumped into her car and drove off. Fifteen seconds later the police cruiser drove up. "It's an orange Volks. It's called the Thing, looks like a tank. I don't remember the license number, but the letters are HZY, like HAZY, got it?"

"Address?"

I gave them her address…

Sure enough, they brought her back. I heard her in the back seat, wailing, as they drove up.

"STAND BACK!" said one cop as he jumped out. He followed me up to my place. He walked inside and stepped on some broken glass. For some reason he shone his flashlight on the ceiling and the ceiling mouldings.

"You want to press charges?" the cop asked me.

"No. She has children. I don't want her to lose her kids. Her ex-husband is trying to get them from her. But please tell her that people aren't supposed to go around doing this sort of thing."

"O.K.," he said, "now sign this."

He wrote it down in hand in a little notebook with lined paper. It said that I, Henry Chinaski, would not press charges against one Lydia Vance.

I signed it and he left.

I locked what was left of the door and went to bed and tried to sleep.

In an hour or so the phone rang. It was Lydia. She was back home.

"YOU-SON-OF-A-BITCH, YOU EVER TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN AGAIN AND I'LL DO THE SAME THING ALL OVER AGAIN!"

She hung up.

47

Two nights later I went over to Tammie's place on Rustic Court. I knocked. The lights weren't on. It seemed empty. I looked in her mailbox. There were letters in there. I wrote a note, "Tammie, I have been trying to phone you. I came over and you weren't in. Are you all right? Phone me… Hank."

I drove over at 11 am the next morning. Her car wasn't out front. My note was still stuck in the door. I rang anyhow. The letters were still in the mailbox. I left a note in the mailbox: "Tammie, where the hell are you? Contact me… Hank."

I drove all over the neighborhood looking for that smashed red Camaro.

I returned that night. It was raining. My notes were wet. There was more mail in the box. I left her a book of my poems, inscribed. Then I went back to my Volks. I had a Maltese cross hanging from my rearview mirror. I cut the cross down, took it back to her place and tied it around her doorknob.

I didn't know where any of her friends lived, where her mother lived, where her lovers lived.

I went back to my court and wrote some love poems.

48

I was sitting with an anarchist from Beverly Hills, Ben Solvnag, who was writing my biography when I heard her footsteps on the court walk. I knew the sound-they were always fast and frantic and sexy-those tiny feet. I lived near the rear of the court. My door was open. Tammie ran in.

We were both into each other's arms, hugging and kissing.

Ben Solvnag said goodbye and was gone.

"Those sons of bitches confiscated my stuff, all my stuff! I couldn't make the rent! That dirty son-of-a-bitch!"

"I'll go over there and kick his ass. We'll get your stuff back."

"No, he has guns! All kinds of guns!"

"Oh."

"My daughter is at my mother's."

"How about something to drink?"

"Sure."

"What?"

"Extra dry champagne."

"O.K."

The door was still open and the afternoon sunlight came in through her hair-it was so long and so red it burned. "Can I take a bath?" she asked. "Of course." "Wait for me," she said.

In the morning we talked about her finances. She had money coming in: child support plus a couple of unemployment checks with more to come.

"There's a vacancy in the place in back, right above me."

"How much is it?"

"$105 with half of the utilities paid."