Crackpot, p.35
Crackpot, page 35
A guy had a right to spend his own money any way he damn well pleased, didn’t he? He could just imagine telling that to old man Popoff.
“Yes David, and might I ask what you’re thinking of doing with all that money? I am, in a sense, your guardian; not that I want to pry, but perhaps I can give you the benefit of my own experience in discussing your purchase. Remember, money spent cannot be retrieved. What is it you think you want the money for, David?”
“I want to fuck my goddam head off!”
His own money, his own business, his own life, and he sure wasn’t a thief to be taking what was his. He wasn’t even worried about being caught anyway, as he kneeled there. All he was worried about, listening in the murky office, were the funny knocking sounds he was expecting, in spite of himself, from behind the closet door. He was crazy to think his money would still be here in the desk. He was crazy in the head. With his luck, the money was back there behind the door, in the big black safe with the gold mermaid, and hanging up behind the door, guarding it, a funny, sour smell, a dress he’d taken hold of, movement, limp and heavy at the same time, swaying under his hand.
Mamma!
Crisp to his fingers, cutting memory, forestalling flight, a fat little package, real. Unafraid now, with cash-cold nerves, he slipped open the envelopes, one by one, abstracted the notes and bills, folded up empty sheets, inserted them, wound the elastic band around the thick-as-before package and thrust it deep into the drawer where he had found it. That much belonged to them. He had taken his own from the now ghost-less room, and considered calmly that it might be years before Popoff noticed. And if he noticed, so what? Cocky now, let him prove something. What right had Popoff to leave his money lying around where any randy old thief could lay his mitts on it anyway?
Ralphie was right. Just knowing that he could have it whenever he wanted it, just being able to slide his hand along the crude money belt he now wore next to his skin, just touching it made him feel healthier than he’d ever felt before, so healthy he could even put it off, bide his time, wait for exactly the right moment, the particular evening when Ralphie and the other guys were ho-oh-yo humming about their loads like a chorus of Volga boatmen.
“Be my guests.” David, cool.
Ralph the spokesman, puzzled: “Since when?” screwing up his eyes at David.
“Not funny,” Spook the pessimist.
From Gordie the Fortz, dumb Gordie, eyes shining, mouth open but afraid to express hope, too loyal to express doubt, a long, low enquiring fart.
“Well,” David suave, shrugging, “if you gentlemen won’t join me, will you excuse me?”
“Where’ll you get the jack?” This from Ralphie, sudden.
Negligent, a flash of green. He would have gone alone this first time had he known the ropes. But he did not want to make a fool of himself.
“Your Royal Highness!” Ralphie’s reaction was worth it. “Gentlemen, make way for a Prince of a fellow! Henceforth, we will guard your bawdy with our very lives. Yessir your Majesty, we are your soldiers upright, hard and true. For your sake we will plunge into battle, this very evening, and to a man we’ll fall, and even as we die we’ll gasp, ‘The King is dead! Vive le roi!’ Forward, gentlemen, I say! Hardon ahead!”
If they had been able to they’d have carried him into that chippy’s house on their shoulders. And the way he felt he would have dived down into her from way up there, voom! and disappeared right up to his happy, wiggling toes.
Ralphie led them through the back lane to the rear entrance, pointing out the shed she called her summer residence. “See,” for Pipick’s benefit, “the kitchen blind’s up and the light’s on. That means she’s free. She’ll pull the blind down till we’re finished. Sometimes if you come and she’s got the blind down you might as well forget it for awhile.”
“I like a well-organized whore,” remarked the young Prince approvingly, and didn’t even have to watch for the effect of his words. He could feel them looking at him respectfully. Inside of himself he could feel himself looking at himself respectfully too. Like the hero of a goddam book. Prince David Pipick Ben Zion MacFuck, the fastest trigger in the West!
Unfortunately, it turned out to be true.
ELEVEN
To put it at least partly in Hoda’s vernacular, the poor kid got so hot with trying to grab her all over all at once, he came at her in such a rush, once they’d got the mattress on the floor and she’d slipped out of her loose kimono that had come open anyway when she bent over with the mattress, that she hardly had a chance to lie down when he was already on her, and so uncontrollably excited with it all, that he’d barely crossed the threshold when he tripped his load. Nothing unusual. To her. How could she know the desolation, after all that dreaming, all that planning, all those risks, to have scarcely had the chance to begin to savour heaven, and to suffer such a rude and sudden, such an ignominious loss of his voom voom? She had tried, actually, to ease him into it, recognizing a novice simply from the look of him, and a special occasion from the fact that his friends, and particularly the greedy little Ralphie, allowed him to go first while she was still fresh, and that with such elaborate expression of respect. She had talked to him soothingly, in a voice which he found surprisingly pleasant to listen to, deep and strong and chuckly. But her flesh told against her efforts to calm him. She was fat, all right, all massive and floppy under that loose kimono; he couldn’t stop looking. When they put the mattress on the floor, just like he had heard they always did, he tried to carry it from the bed by himself, to prevent himself from reaching out and grabbing with both hands, too soon, though he was entitled to, because he was paying for it and could do anything he wanted, but it wouldn’t have been nice when she maybe wasn’t ready yet, and he wanted her to like him, a little.
“Easy, easy,” murmured Hoda in his ear, but he couldn’t help it. All that butter flesh; he had barely time to gasp out, dutiful, chivalric, desperate, “I love you!” and it was gone, his voom voom burst away from him. Gone! But he didn’t want to go yet! He wanted to lie there, rubbing and nuzzling and listening to her comforting him, and believing her words when she said it sometimes happened that way, believing her so long as she let him lie there.
Hoda murmured on, automatically, stroking the head on her breast, letting him cuddle awhile, recognizing his disappointment, and his fear that she would send him out too soon so that the other boys might catch on to what had happened, and recognizing, also, perhaps something of other unfulfilled needs, in the way he was still clinging to her and rocking desperately in her arms, remembering too, the “I love you!” that had broken from him, and thinking of how these kids said the oddest things. What private dreams burst out of them at times! She was genuinely touched by them, the young ones especially, the novices, like this one. One thing, however, she had learned long since; she couldn’t afford to let herself get too sympathetic, couldn’t let him nurse his disappointment for too long at her bosom, not more than his money’s worth, anyway. Her other customers were waiting. And so, per force, the boy had finally to take his badly bruised self-esteem with him from the room in which she still lay on the mattress he had so chivalrously tried to arrange all by himself, and little Ralphie Pan had come skipping in immediately after, with all his bag of tricks, to have his quota of fun.
Cringing inwardly, David maintained his superior little smile in face of the questioning smiles of his friends, and even summoned up enough art to raise an ironic eyebrow in the direction of the little room into which Ralph the Flash had disappeared. Then, with the air of one who had private thoughts, no doubt of pleasures recently experienced, to consider, he seated himself and looked around him, avoiding conversation. He noticed, for the first time, the woven straw walls, with the large damp stains on them, and scuffed at the woven straw carpet underfoot. Funny place. It reminded him of something, at first he couldn’t think what. Then he remembered. “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.” What made him think of it was the sound of coughing from behind another door. That must be the blind old coot who was supposed to yell things at the guys in Yiddish. But he wasn’t yelling now. He sounded as though he had a bad cold. Savagely, David wished he would yell anyway, or start choking or something, so they could interrupt and call her away and spoil things for Ralphie. He was immediately ashamed of himself for thinking that. But why the hell were they making so much noise? She hadn’t laughed that way when he was with her. Nor had she said anything like what he heard now, distinctly, “You stop that!” and she burst out giggling again, in her deep, nice, low, chuckly voice. Why was he so mad? You weren’t supposed to be furious with jealousy over a whore. It wasn’t her. It was Ralphie enjoying himself like that, and her giggling and letting him, and Ralphie still doing things and spending so much time, while she had sent him out practically right away. Who was paying anyway? He knew he was being a poor sport, and told himself to stop being silly. But he had had hardly any time, and because he had gone off so quickly didn’t mean that he wanted to quit already. She needn’t think that he was just a one-shot deadhead. Why the hell didn’t Ralphie get out and give the other guys a chance? Shnorrer. Did he think they had all night? That was an idea. All night. Fix Ralphie. Fix the chippy. Fix himself up most of all. How could a guy do anything when they were all waiting outside and she just wanted to hustle him out so she could take the other guys? He didn’t have a chance, especially if he had never done it before and was a little nervous right from the start. That wasn’t the way he was, and he could prove it to her.
When the others were through, and had given the final hikings and hitchings up to their trousers, preparatory to leaving, which are roughly equivalent to the movement of hand or cuff or napkin across the mouth when other appetites have been satisfactorily sated, King David remained, casually seated, one leg balancing easily across the knee of the other. “You guys go ahead,” said the Prince. “I’m staying a while.” It was gratifying, the surprise, particularly in Ralphie’s eyes, and the envious, respectful grins that followed. He could tell from the shrewd, speculative calculation in his good buddy’s look that Ralphie was wondering whether he could cut himself in on this. But the intention died on contact with David’s cold stare, a look that said simply, “Try it and I’ll kick your head in.”
The whore waited till the others were gone before she said quietly, “You know it’ll cost you more to solo.”
“I’ve got more,” he said sullenly, and turning away from her he fiddled, tugging up his shirt and fooling with his hand in his belt. “How much for all night?” he asked, over his shoulder.
“Nobody stays all night,” said Hoda. “I got responsibilities. Anyway, don’t you have to get home too? Won’t your folks worry about you?” All she needed was that the cops should come round to her place looking for somebody’s kid they sent out an alarm for. Oh sure, at this stage of her life that was all she had to get mixed up in. No, about this Hoda was very firm. Not all night, but, as she pointed out, they had plenty of time. While Pipick was still turned away, fiddling with his money belt, she went into the other room where the intermittent coughing was coming from, and murmured in there, her voice making to and fro with the voice of the cougher. By the time she re-emerged he had her sum counted out. “All right,” she said. “Make yourself at home. Only you’ll have to wait a minute. I’ve got to make my father some tea. Do you want a cup of tea?”
“No,” said Pipick. “No thank you.” But when she was pouring, and glanced at him enquiringly, gesturing with the tea pot, he took one anyway.
“Lemon?” she said. “Sugar?” just as though he was her guest.
“Thanks,” he said, “thanks,” and hesitated.
“Go on, take as much sugar as you want,” she said, divining. She poured a cup for herself and took one into the other room, from which he could hear her voice, alternately urging and soothing. Pipick blew and drank. Hoda came and sat down to her cup of tea. “He gets this bronchitis,” she explained, and Pipick had the feeling of being in someone else’s life, like, not only visiting a whore, and that he had to show he knew it, somehow. “Uhh huh,” he said.
“Yeh,” she continued, “sometimes he worries me.”
“Uh huh,” said Pipick. He was beginning to get nervous, but he didn’t want her to know he didn’t know how to make what was going to happen next happen next.
“Say, do you want a cookie?” asked Hoda. She reached back from where she was sitting, to the little cupboard beside the stove and dipped her hand into a box, pulling out a handful, and offered him her hand. “I’m a good cookie-maker. No?” She proceeded very quickly to chew down her whole handful, while Pipick watched her mouth, to prevent himself from dropping his eyes any further down to where her robe had come apart when she had reached back for the cookies.
“All right,” said Hoda, still chewing, as she rose. “Come on?”
Pipick jumped up and followed her into the little room.
“Close the door,” she said. “Relax,” she said. “You got to learn to take it easy.”
Pipick felt quick anger rising in him. Did she think he didn’t know how?
“It’s your money,” she went on, as though again divining his reaction. “I want you to get the most out of it. Trouble is, with these one-two-three in-and-out deals, you don’t have much chance to develop your style. You know, guys have said to me, ‘Hoda, I never knew what it could be like really till I did my first solo with you.’ Guys I knew well. Trouble was they could never afford anything but a shag before. One-two-three-in-out. It’s the capitalist system. You don’t have any money, you’ve even got to fuck on the fly. You got a little money, you got time to develop a little style, to find out how you really like it, to get the taste, like. This lousy way of life we got here, it cripples people. Would you believe it, I got some customers who don’t even know any better? They think that’s the only way, like they was going to the toilet or something. They come in, flip open the fly, whang whang, in-out, pay the shot, and they’re gone again. They probably wouldn’t recognize me if they saw me in the street, unless they happened to have a hard-on. Cripples. They’ve been stunted, see, by the system, from childhood, poor guys.”
Pipick was surprised at how talkative and friendly she was. If you wanted a girl to do it for free, you had to do a lot of talking, more than he’d ever been able to manage so far. But when you paid them, they sure got talkative; it saved a lot of trouble trying to think of something to say. And it was interesting. He didn’t know much about politics and what the system could do to a guy’s sex life. But he wasn’t surprised. They were all a rotten lot, directors and boards of governors and no doubt prime ministers as well.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, you know,” said Hoda. “You have to. If it’s your profession, what you do all the time for a living, you should think about it, think what it means. You’re spending your life; it shouldn’t just be all wasted. Why do you think it’s called making love? When something’s not there you’ve got to make it, see? Why do you want to make it? Because it’s not there, and you need it, see? So what the hell good is it to come rushing in and out, just like that, whang whang? I figured it out, once. Guys do that, one, maybe because they can’t afford to solo, like kids, see? Or else they do it because they don’t want to make love, really. They just want to forget that feeling they got that maybe it would be nice to make love. They want to kill love instead of making love. If they kill it they think they won’t need it anymore. I don’t know, that’s what I think anyway. Me, in the long run I don’t care. I see so many, what do I care if they want or not? Sometimes the ones who want to make love are a bigger pain than the quickies. They try to pretend they’re doing a lot more than just making a little love. They try to pretend they know how to make more than just a little love at a time. It’s a lie. Nobody knows that; well, God, maybe. Sometimes all the love you get even though you’re making like crazy is just a shiverful, a flash of feeling between you. You know that radium stuff that you hear so much about? How hard it is to get it, and how little of it you get in all them rocks up North? But look how worthwhile it is. With that little bit you can see right through everything. Sometimes I think, what’s going to happen when I get up there and the Almighty says to me, ‘All right, Hoda, what have you been doing all these years?’ And I’ll say, ‘Well, Lord, I made a little love.’ And he’ll say, ‘Not bad, Hoda. I ain’t done much more myself.” Hoda laughed and laughed again. David laughed too, though he was a little shocked at the way she thought she was buddy buddy with God, considering.
“So why don’t you take all your clothes off?” continued Hoda amiably. “You might as well be comfortable. What’s your name, kid?”
Pipick hesitated.
“I mean not your whole name, just a name to call you by. It’s more personal, like. Don’t worry, I don’t want to know your secrets.”
“David,” he said, and hesitated still. “My clothes, like,” he said.
“Sure,” she said genially, “you work better without them. Who needs ’em? What’s the matter, you ain’t shy, are you? Listen, believe me, I’ve seen everything you’ve got. There ain’t nothing you can show me I haven’t seen before, believe you me. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve seen. What the hell, it’s just people.”
Pipick still hesitated. First of all there was his navel. She thought she had seen a lot, but he couldn’t believe she had ever seen anything like it before, for a big guy like him to have a belly button that stuck out of him instead of being neatly tucked away in a little trough like most guys had. Even the skinny ones, who had bump-outs, never had anything as silly-looking as his. And then there was his money belt. He wasn’t going to take that off, not with any whore. How did he know what she had put in the tea? Suddenly he’d find himself getting sleepy, and when he woke up she’d hustle him out, and next time he took a look all his money would be gone. And what could he do about it? Complain to old Popoff? Sure. Look, my money that I pinched from your desk, that whore took it away from me. But he had such a great yearning to roll all of his naked flesh around on all of her naked flesh, and to really make love like she was talking about, not like the other guys did with her. Not like Ralphie, for instance; that was something that Ralphie didn’t know anything about, with his showing off, and making her giggle, and boasting. Ralphie was a whang whang, not a lovemaker. To make love you took your clothes off and stayed. He hadn’t expected her to be so talkative and friendly. Maybe she really liked him.
