A Strange Kind of Love Page 6

  I drank that air. It’s cleaner in the morning than any other time, and I flung the window open and breathed as deeply as I could, and expelled all the air from my lungs and breathed in again. It felt good. I took half-a-dozen deep breaths like that and went back to work.

  It wasn’t the way it was when I was a kid in the Village. Once I could write twenty-four hours straight without a break for anything but a cup of coffee and a hunk of apple pie. I was dog-tired by 6:30 now, too tired to look at the typewriter without flinching. I straightened out the pages and cleared off the table—twenty pageswritten, and the book well under way. The first chapter was out of the way and there was no reason why the book shouldn’t sail smoothly the rest of the way.

  I fell on the bed and slept for ten hours straight.

  The next day—or the same day; when you stay up nights it’s hard to keep them straight—the next day I didn’t see Marcia. She wouldn’t talk to me.

  And I lay around all day and night without writing a word.

  The same thing happened the day after that. Then the next day we made love in my room more perfectly than ever and I knocked off another chapter, and the day after that we made love again and I wrote a chapter and a five-thousand-word crime yarn that went right into a mailbox.

  It went on like that. When she was in the mood for love, I was in the mood for words and the pages piled up beautifully.

  When she wasn’t in the mood, I lay around the room reading. I couldn’t even keep my mind on the book those days, and there were too many days like that. The money was running low and there were no two ways about it—the book had to get finished. I wondered vaguely whether Lou would manage to sell the pulp yarn or not. He might; he might not. But the book mattered.

  One time I told her. She laughed and said I was crazy; then she said I would have to do a lot of writing on certain days, that she just couldn’t help the way she felt.

  And the rotten thing was that none of it made sense. I’m not the kind of guy who believes in this write-when-the-mood-strikes-you stuff. You have to be able to knock it out whether you’re hungry or tired or whatever. It’s the only way to get books finished.

  But I couldn’t do it. I loved her too much, loved her in a way I never had loved anyone before. She made the routine with Allison seem empty and even a little bit silly. She made everything I ever did seem silly and hollow inside, everything but her.

  Without her the words barely got on the page, and what words did get written weren’t worth the effort. It was like pulling teeth to write them and I tore up those pages—they were terrible. The dialogue was empty and unreal and the prose looked like it had been translated from Persian to English by somebody who couldn’t speak either language.

  After awhile I gave up. I waited for the good days, and the good days were heaven.

  Usually I try a book with the publishers when there are three chapters done. This book didn’t go that way. For some reason I didn’t want to stop writing and finish up an outline of the remainder. It was a different book from all the others, even though I was just trying to write another hunk of garbage and grab off a nice chunk of gold.

  I kept at it. What I did seemed better than anything I had written before, even though I’m a pretty badjudge of my own stuff. I went on for a week, and at the end of the week I had about sixty-five pages of manuscript typed. Two more chapters would do it—one hundred pages and an outline.

  I wasn’t going to re-write it. Somebody asked me once how many times I re-wrote things, how much polishing I gave them, and was shocked when I said everything went out straight from the typewriter. Oh, a publisher will ask for revision once in awhile and sometimes Louwould send a script back, but I don’t see any reason not to do a thing right the first time.

  So the book was getting done, but I couldn’t manage to drag myself out of the dumps on the bad days. It was a very straight way to write a book, and I wondered what other guys went through the same sort of thing.

  At the end of a week Marcia came in and read the first sixty-five pages. I watched her while she read and for some reason I was nervous, my eyes on her while she turned the pages and read the words that I had written. I even noted each change of expression on her face and tried to guess what made her smile or frown or raise an eyebrow.

  When she finished it she gave me a long look and I returned the look. Then she said, “It’s awfully good, Dan.”

  “It’s just a book.”

  “No, I think it’s more.”

  I never gave a damn what anybody thought about a book of mine except Lou—who always judged my stuff perfectly—or a publisher—who decided whether or not to buy it. But it made me happy that she liked it. Hell, I was in love with her. Love explains a lot of damned fool things.

  “Your hero,” she said. “Tony. He’s not a bad man, is he?”

  “He’s not supposed to be.”

  “I know. But he’s a gangster. It must be hard not to make him seem … bad, rotten.”

  I shrugged. “Gangsters have to be people, too.”

  “That’s right. But it’s good that you can do it. What happens to Tony next?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  She smiled. “Won’t you give me a hint?”

  “Nope. Come back tomorrow and you’ll see.”

  She smiled again, wider this time. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe.”

  I wanted to slap her. I wanted to tell her that I needed her, that I could never make it without her. I wanted to take her clothes off and push her down on the bed and beat her, wanted to raise bruises on the tan skin and make her scream her little lungs out.

  That’s what I wanted to do.

  So I took her clothes off and pushed her down on the bed.

  But I didn’t slap her. There were other things to do.

  Chapter Six

  SHE WAS GONE WHEN I opened my eyes in the morning. I couldn’t remember her leaving. The last thing I remembered was her head against my chest and her hair touching my skin with the smell of her hair in my nostrils.

  I yanked myself out of bed, showered, cut myself shaving, and marched out the door for breakfast. It was raining outside—a thin, lazy drizzle that made you uncomfortable without actually getting soaked. There wasn’t much point in running through it, so I walked slowly to my favorite Columbus Avenue greasy spoon and gobbled toast and swilled coffee and thought about the book.

  When I got back to my room and sat behind the typewriter, the words came easier than ever before. There was something almost mechanical about it, as if the typewriter and I formed a single unit, as if thoughts worked their way from my brain down through my shoulders and arms into my fingers, and from the tips of my fingers to the keys of the typewriter. The thoughts seemed to go directly to the page in front of me, and the typewriter was no more or less than an extension of my own body, just like a third arm or a second head.

  I knocked out five pages one after the other that way,almost without thinking what I was doing. It should have been a ticklish situation—a confrontation between Tony and a man he had ruined long ago when he was on the way up and the man stood between him and the top spot. It was a spot in the book where everything had to be just right or the book would fall on its face.

  If the reader didn’t believe it, if it didn’t seem real and if every word and gesture wasn’t natural and authentic, my characterization wouldn’t come across properly. Pretty soon no one would give much of a damn what happened to Tony.

  Every book has a spot like that, a crucial point where the book stands or falls. And usually writing that scene is pure murder. But today it was the easiest writing I had ever done.

  I’ve felt almost like a machine in the past. I’ve had that feeling grinding out garbage when I didn’t care at all about what I was doing and when I was just slamming more of the same old formula on paper. But this was different, because I did care and it wasn’t easy, formularized writing.

  After five pages I stopped, separated the first copy from the car
bon sheets and held the pages in my hand. I glanced out the window—it was still raining, and a little harder than before. I watched the rain and I watched the people running through the streets, and then I picked up the five pages I had written and began reading through them. I didn’t trust myself—it had been too easy writing them, and I was pretty sure they must have turned out lousy.

  I was wrong. God, I was wrong. I read through the five pages and I realized that this was the best stuff I had ever written in my life—that if I was ever going to write anything good, anything really worthwhile, now was the time.

  I picked up the manuscript and started in on it, wanting to see if the rest of the book was as good. It read like a dream. It was good, really good—and there was a reason for it.

  The book meant something.

  I remembered the first book—the heavy manuscript that I worked so hard on in my room in Greenwich Village, the script that everybody in the world bounced back at me. That one had meant something too, but there was one hell of a difference. That first book meant something to me, but it was a poorly-written piece of garbage, a hunk of crap that wouldn’t mean anything to anybody else in the world.

  But the book I was working on now—it was good. It was a book that was coming from within me, a book about me but not fouled up by being a whole lot of obviously autobiographical mouthwash.

  To tell you the truth, I was scared. Petrified.

  You see, since that first book I hadn’t written a thing that was real, a thing that was trying to be more than just a salable piece of merchandise. And even though this book started out to be a salable hunk of junk, it was turning out to be a lot more.

  If I was ever going to write a good book, now was the time.

  I went at it again with the rain tapping on the window and my fingers keeping time on the typewriter keys. I felt good and the typewriter seemed to be singing a song while I beat out the pages on it.

  Marcia was right—it was a good book. I finished the chapter in a blaze of white heat and read it, and it was holding up. I had almost one hundred pages done—plenty for Lou to get me an advance.

  So I sat down and typed up an outline of the remainder. The outline was no sweat—I knew what was going tohappen from there on in, so I just put down the details carefully enough so the publisher would know what the hell was happening.

  I didn’t feel like writing any more of the book, but the writing was coming too easily for me to stop there. I sat down at the typewriter again and put the paper in the roller, waiting for something to happen. And something happened.

  Inside of an hour I had finished a five-thousand-word crime yarn—a lousy little thing, but one that ought to sell right off the bat for a fast fifty bucks. I hadn’t even stopped to think about it. It rolled right out, and I had the pages clipped together and in an envelope in no time. I’d mail it in; the novel was too bulky to mail, and I could wait and take it down to Lou in a day or so.

  I mailed the script at a post office on Amsterdam and came back through the rain to my place. I wanted to see Marcia, wanted to tell her about the pulp yarn and what I had discovered about the book. And I needed her, if only to have her sit by me and talk to me.

  I needed her if I wanted to get the book done, for that matter.

  When I knocked on her door there was no answer. I knocked again and tried the knob, but it was locked.

  “Marcia?”

  There was silence, and I started to call again when her voice said, “Not today, Dan. Today is one of the days I don’t want to see you.”

  My heart fell halfway through my stomach.

  “Look,” I said. “Look, I just want you to read what I’ve got done. That’s all.”

  There was a pause. “No,” she said. “No, not today.”

  I felt myself getting mad. “Just read it,” I said. “You don’t even have to see me. I’ll shove the damn thing under the door if you want!”

  “But I don’t want to read it. Don’t you understand?”

  “Aren’t you interested in the book?”

  “Of course I am. Don’t shout, Dan.”

  I lowered my voice. “Then—”

  “Your book’s too real,” she said. “It’s you in it, and I don’t want to know you. Not today, I mean. And reading your book would bring me close to you, and that’s something I don’t want,”

  “You were pretty goddamn close to me last night.”

  “I know,” she said. “That’s part of the reason. Dan, maybe I’m not right for you. Maybe you need somebody different, somebody who can love you and be with you all the time. I’m not that kind of person. I—”

  “Marcia.”

  “Let me finish. I’m not, Dan. I don’t want to be dependent on anyone—not you or anybody else. I don’t want to be close to people.”

  “You want to live in a little shell,” I said savagely. “You’re afraid—”

  “That’s it. I’m afraid, Dan. And I’m going to stay afraid. Dan, maybe you should find somebody else. Maybe you should stay away from me.”

  I almost told her that I didn’t want anyone else, that I never really wanted anyone else and that I sure as hell never would want anyone else. But that would have been a mistake, so I went to my room without saying anything more.

  A mistake. The whole damned thing was a mistake, the whole stupid bit from the minute I walked into my room that first day.

  I was in love with her.

  Hopelessly, thoroughly in love, like it says in the lousy books I used to write.

  I read for a few hours in my room but my mindwouldn’t stay on what I was reading. I found myself reading the same paragraph five times over, and at that point I tossed the book against the wall and slipped on a beat-up sportjacket.

  It was still raining outside. It was drizzly and damp, and after I walked a few blocks I realized that my feet were wet and I was damned uncomfortable.

  For a minute I wondered why in hell I was wandering around in the rain like an idiot. Didn’t I have enough sense to come in out of the rain?

  Of course I did.

  Then what did I want?

  I knew what I wanted. I wanted Marcia with her head on my pillow and her body naked and twisting under me.

  But I couldn’t get that. So what else did I want? What did I want that I could find out in the rainy streets? What was I looking for?

  I found what I was looking for on the corner of Broadway and 103rd Street. She was leaning in a doorway and she went “Sssss!” when I walked past her.

  She was about as subtle as a Sherman tank.

  She was built a good deal better than a Sherman tank, however. She wasn’t beautiful, and her face was no better than passable. But this is something that has never mattered with me when it comes to whores. A whore is a means to an end. A whore is a woman who takes another woman’s place when the other woman isn’t around. A whore—sometimes—is a vaguely refined and extremely expensive masturbatory device.

  A whore doesn’t have to be beautiful.

  I stopped in the doorway and smiled at her—the strange and totally insincere sort of smile that a man flashes at a whore. She smiled back and it was the same kind of smile.

  “Hi,” she said. “You want to come with me?”

  I nodded.

  “Ten dollars,” she said.

  I could have argued her down to eight, maybe to seven. That’s what you’re supposed to do. You can bargain with hustlers the same way you can bargain with landladies and pawnbrokers. But I’ve never been able to talk down a whore. There’s something of an insult in the idea—as if you’re telling a girl her body isn’t worth ten dollars or whatever she’s charging. You can tell a guy his watch is lousy, but you can’t tell a girl she’s not put together properly.

  At least I can’t. I went down to Tiajuana with another screenwriter a few years back and we wound up on crib row—a street just like all the Mexican streets described in all the sin city articles in the magazines.

  There was a girl who wanted t
wo dollars and my buddy talked her down to a buck. But I gave her three.

  So I didn’thassel. I followed her instead into the hotel on the corner, past the desk and into the elevator. On the way the room clerk flashed me a sleepy smile, but I didn’t bother smiling back at him.

  We were the only passengers in the elevator. The car stopped on the sixth floor and I followed her down the hallway to a room. She opened the door and we stepped inside.

  She turned on the light and I got a better look at her. She wasn’t really bad-looking—a few years younger than I am, with faded yellow hair and a decent build. Her teeth were a little crooked and there were crowfeet around her eyes and lines around the corners of her mouth.

  She might have been quite attractive once.

  “Ten dollars,” she said. I took out my wallet and gaveher the money. There wasn’t a hell of a lot of money left.

  “You aren’t the law, are you?” She didn’t seem particularly worried.

  “If I were, you’d be arrested by now.”

  She shook her head. “Not without exposing my privates,” she said. “That’s the first a cop can pull out his badge.”

  “Would I tell you if I were a cop?”

  She shrugged. “No,” she said. “But you aren’t. I can usually tell. Not every time, but most times.”

  I nodded. I tried to think of something bright and clever to say but I couldn’t think of anything. I started to wish the whole routine were over and done with.

  “The hell,” she said. “You ain’t a cop. If you are, the hell with it.”

  She tossed her raincoat on a chair and pulled her dress over her head. There was nothing underneath the dress. Then she walked over to the bed and lay down on it.

  I undressed quickly, placing my clothes on the chair on top of hers. I didn’t particularly feel like looking at her and for some reason I didn’t want her to look at me. For a second I thought about the possibility of picking up a dose of clap. There was a good chance of it.