“That’s fine,” I said.
“You’re not leaving?”
“Of course I’m leaving.”
Bonnie gnawed the middle of a forefinger. “Are you coming back?”
“Not unless I die or something,” I said, ripping one of my shirts off its hanger. “Then I’ll come back to HAUNT you.”
“Oh, Baby, Baby, I’m so sorry. I’ve hurt you.”
“Get out of my way. And stop calling me Baby. I’m not a Baby.” I grabbed my car keys and headed for the door.
“I bought you a gift,” she called. “I was keeping it a surprise. I have it in the bedroom.”
I had to turn. “Is everything you say a lie?”
“No, of course not.”
“You were never in a convent,” I said. “You’re not an actress. You don’t know where Minnesota is. You don’t have a gift for me.”
“I was too in a convent,” she retorted. “We had ham and scalloped potatoes every Saturday night. And we had someone to love us who would never betray us.”
“Who?”
“Jesus, you stupid ass.”
I yanked open the front door. The sunlight was cold and startlingly bright and made my eyes ache. But it was something real anyway. The room behind me was not. The girl in it was not. I shut the door on the room and the girl that were not real, and all the ham and scalloped potatoes, and plodded numbly down the stairs. It was chilly out, the air copper-thin; nothing to filter the sunlight except for the smell of geraniums and a vapor of eucalyptus dust. I heard the door open behind me. She came to the rail and looked down at me imploringly, bosoms spilling, arms spread, her big, dark eyes like holes in the universe. “I didn’t mean to call you a stupid ass. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t love Lance anymore. Give me another chance,” she said. “I promise I’ll never do it again. Please.”
I stopped, which was a mistake, and felt sorry for her, which was a mistake, and believed her, which was another mistake, but as she had said, I was a nice guy. And the part about Jesus got me, even if she was making it up. And I had nowhere to go except back to Woodchuck and Goldie’s place to explain to their leering faces how I had lost my girl. And my dress shoes were still in her closet. And my alarm clock was on her bed stand. And a family-pack of breaded veal cutlets I had bought at the store only a day before lay yet unopened in her freezer.
I decided to give her another chance.
A WEEK LATER GOLDIE, WOODCHUCK, AND JEBETS FINALLY showed up at my door. I’d been waiting for them. “How did you find me?” I said, like the weary fugitive holding out his wrists to the FBI.
“We went to the hospital,” said Jebets. “The dyke nurse told us.”
When Bonnie came around the corner, she sprang to life. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said. “Come in. Sit down. You didn’t tell me you had friends, Baby. And such handsome boys.”
They shuffled in self-consciously, their simpering expressions still articulating doubt about my ability to live with a woman, even a kidnapped geriatric held hostage in a wheelchair. I was the youngest of my group, the least physically mature, the least aggressive, the least athletic. I was the mascot. I was supposed to watch them succeed and clap exuberantly on the sidelines. I could tell they wanted to knock all the air out of my stomach with their elbows.
“Sit down anywhere,” I said.
Woodchuck and Goldie tumbled into the couch. Jebets folded himself into a sitting position, Japanese-style, before the coffee table.
I made introductions. Bonnie beamed. “Would you fellas like some wine?”
“Sure,” they all chimed. “I brought some dope,” added Goldie. “It’s Hawaiian.”
“Light it up, Sparky,” said Bonnie.
It was good pot and soon we were rendered useless. Bonnie flitted about the room, changing records, filling wine glasses, and dropping over at the waist to share her breasts like a tray of hors d’œuvres. “You boys hungry?” she said.
“Yeah, well OK.” They grinned at one another. What a party. With a girl and everything.
Smoked links were served.
“This is my kind of munchie,” Jebets announced, reminding me of the night the previous summer when he tossed off a pint of Four Roses whiskey in twenty-three seconds. (Just add alcohol, goes the saying). About twenty-three seconds later he was blowing long puddles of beans and wienies all over the kitchen floor, the miniature frankfurters perfectly intact.
“I’m a big wienie eater myself,” Bonnie agreed. “By that I mean to say I eat a lot of wienies. Not necessarily big wienies.” She smiled and squinted with her front teeth stuck out. “Though I like big wienies.”
My good friends laughed and gave me nervous side glances. Jebets, a devoted and outspoken breast man, stared unabashedly with the frustrated knit brow of the hound as Bonnie moved about the room. Eventually she was sitting on the floor next to him, their knees touching. She flirted with about as much subtlety as a Fifth Street prostitute.
When she checked over at me with that Aren’t I a Naughty Girl expression, I felt the tape of Lance began to replay. Slow-motion ruin. Dyspepsia. I lurched up, my face burning, and limped into the kitchen for more wine. On the counter a swarm of ants was plundering a clot of ketchup.
I heard Bonnie saying: “I had a small part in a movie with Eliot Gould. I have his autograph.”
“Really,” said Jebets. “Can I see it?”
“It’s at my mother’s house.”
“Where does your mother live? Maybe we could go over there.”
“Hey, do you want to go the store? We need some more wine.”
“I’m not old enough.”
“I am.”
“I’ll go,” shouted Woodchuck.
Bonnie grabbed Jebet’s hand. “No, sit down, Beaver. We’re gonna take my car. There’s only enough room for two.” She winked at me. “We’ll be back in a jiff.”
The door opened, blinding me with that patented Landis Street Heartbreaker Sunlight. Then they were gone. Woodchuck and Goldie sat on the couch staring at me sympathetically. An hour passed. “Well, we’d better go,” they said at last.
“You need a ride?”
“No, we got Goldie’s van.”
I saw my friends to the door. I watched Goldie’s orange Chevy van turn left out of the parking lot. Then I went into Bonnie’s bedroom, found her diary, broke the lock, and began to read. The handwriting was messy and purple with big juvenile loops and pitiful spelling. I sat on the bed and turned the pages. The name “Lance” appeared several hundred times, but my own was not mentioned once. There was not even an indirect reference to anyone who resembled me. I was not much, but to live with a woman twenty-four hours a day for more than a month and give her thousands of orgasms and not be mentioned once in her diary was unfathomable to me. She could’ve at least written: “I am living with a geek, I can’t remember his name, so I call him Baby,” but I was more anonymous than that. It was staggering to be such a nonentity. It was like being thrown down a time tunnel back into high school. I slammed the book shut and returned it broken-locked to its drawer. Then I repacked my Chiquita banana box, not forgetting my dress shoes and alarm clock this time, and drove down to the beach to spend a week or two with my best friend Dewy Daldorph, the devout Christian, who regardless of his phase—junior mafioso or tropical island smuggler—always treated me as if I were his brother.
Bonnie did not show up at Pine Manor the next day. I was braced