I was sitting on the edge of the bed. "I can't stay with you, Dee Dee-"

She sat up and began punching me. Her fists were as hard as rocks. She threw punches with both hands. I sat there as she landed blows. She hit me above the eye, in the eye, on the forehead and cheeks. I even caught one in the throat. "Oh, you bastard! Bastard, bastard, bastard! I HATE YOU!"

I grabbed her wrists. "All right, Dee Dee, that's enough." She fell back on the bed as I got up and walked out, down the hall and out the door.

When I got back Lydia was sitting in an armchair. Her face looked dark. "You've been gone a long time. Look at me! You fucked her, didn't you?"

"No, I didn't."

"You were gone an awful long time. Look, she scratched your face!"

"I tell you, nothing happened."

"Take off your shirt. I want to look at your back!"

"Oh, shit, Lydia."

"Take off your shirt and undershirt."

I took them off. She walked around behind me.

"What's that scratch on your back?"

"What scratch?"

"There's a long one there… from a woman's fingernail."

"If it's there you put it there…"

"All right. I know one way to find out."

"How?"

"Let's go to bed."

"All right!"

I passed the test, but afterwards I thought, how can a man test a woman's fidelity? It seemed unfair.

21

I kept getting letters from a lady who lived only a mile or so away. She signed them Nicole. She said she had read some of my books and liked them. I answered one of her letters and she responded with an invitation to visit. One afternoon, without saying anything to Lydia, I got into the Volks and drove on over. She had a flat over a dry cleaner's on Santa Monica Boulevard. Her door was on the street and I could see a stairway through the glass. I rang the bell. "Who is it?" came a woman's voice through a little tin speaker. "I'm Chinaski," I said. A buzzer sounded and I pushed the door open.

Nicole stood at the top of the stairs looking down at me. She had a cultured, almost tragic face and wore a long green housedress cut low in front. Her body seemed to be very good. She looked at me with large dark brown eyes. There were lots of tiny wrinkles around her eyes, perhaps from too much drinking or crying.

"Are you alone?" I asked.

"Yes," she smiled, "come on up."

I went up. It was spacious, two bedrooms, with very little furniture. I noticed a small bookcase and a rack of classical records. I sat on the couch. She sat next to me. "I just finished," she said, "reading The Life of Picasso."

There were several copies of The New Yorker on the coffee table.

"Can I fix you some tea?" Nicole asked.

"I'll go out and get something to drink."

"That's not necessary. I have something."

"What?"

"Some good red wine?"

"I'd like some," I said.

Nicole got up and walked into the kitchen. I watched her move. I had always liked women in long dresses. She moved gracefully. She seemed to have a lot of class. She returned with two glasses and the bottle of wine and poured. She offered me a Benson and Hedges. I lit one.

"Do you read The New Yorker?" she asked. "They print some good stories."

"I don't agree."

"What's wrong with them?

"They're too educated."

"I like them."

"Well, shit," I said.

We sat drinking and smoking.

"Do you like my apartment?"

"Yes, it's nice."

"It reminds me of some of the places I've had in Europe. I like the space, the light."

" Europe, huh?"

"Yes, Greece, Italy… Greece, mostly."

" Paris?"

"Oh yes, I liked Paris. London, no."

Then she told me about herself. Her family had lived in New York City. Her father was a communist, her mother a seamstress in a sweatshop. Her mother had worked the front machine, she was number one, the best of all of them. Tough and likeable. Nicole was self-educated, had grown up in New York, had somehow met a famous doctor, married, lived with him for ten years, then divorced him. She now received only $400 a month alimony, and it was difficult to manage. She couldn't afford her apartment, but she liked it too much to leave.

"Your writing," she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledge hammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness…"

"Yeah," I said.

I put my drink down and looked at her. I cupped her chin in my hand and drew her towards me. I gave her the tiniest kiss.

Nicole continued talking. She told me quite a few interesting stories, some of which I decided to use myself, either as stories or poems. I watched her breasts as she bent forward and poured drinks. It's like a movie, I thought, like a fucking movie. It seemed funny to me. It felt as if we were on camera. I liked it. It was better than the racetrack, it was better than the boxing matches. We kept drinking. Nicole opened a new bottle. She talked on. It was easy to listen to her. There was wisdom and some laughter in each of her rales. Nicole was impressing me more than she knew. That worried me, somewhat.

We walked out on the veranda with our drinks and watched the afternoon traffic. She was talking about Huxley and Lawrence in Italy. What shit. I told her that Knut Hamsun had been the world's greatest writer. She looked at me, astonished that I'd heard of him, then agreed. We kissed on the veranda, and I could smell the exhaust from the cars in the street below. Her body felt good against mine. I knew we weren't going to fuck right away, but I also knew that I would be coming back. Nicole knew it too.

22

Lydia 's sister Angela came to town from Utah to see Lydia 's new house. Lydia had made a down payment on a little place and the monthly payments were very low. It was a very good buy. The man who sold the house believed he was going to die and he had sold it much too cheap. There was an upstairs bedroom for the children, and an extremely large backyard filled with trees and clumps of bamboo.

Angela was the oldest of the sisters, the most sensible, with the best body, and was the most realistic. She sold real estate. But there was the problem of where to put Angela. We didn't have room. Lydia suggested Marvin.

"Marvin?" I asked.

"Yes, Marvin," said Lydia.

"All right, let's go," I said.

We all climbed into Lydia 's orange Thing. The Thing. That's what we called her car. It looked like a tank, very old and ugly. It was late evening. We had already phoned Marvin. He had said he'd be home all evening.

We drove down to the beach and there was his little house by the shore. "Oh," said Angela, "what a nice house."

"He's rich, too," said Lydia.

"And he writes good poetry," I said.

We got out. Marvin was in there with his saltwater fish tanks and his paintings. He painted pretty well. For a rich kid he had survived nicely, he had come through. I made the introductions. Angela walked around looking at Marvin's paintings. "Oh, very nice." Angela painted too, but she wasn't very good.

I had brought some beer and had a pint of whiskey hidden in my coat pocket which I nipped on from time to time. Marvin brought out some more beer and a mild flirtation began between Marvin and Angela. Marvin seemed eager enough but Angela seemed inclined to laugh at him. She liked him, but not well enough to fuck him right away. We drank and talked. Marvin had bongo drums and a piano and some grass. He had a good, comfortable house. In a house like this I could write better, I thought, my luck would be better. You could hear the ocean and there were no neighbors to complain about the noise of a typewriter.

I continued to nip at the whiskey. We stayed 2 or 3 hours, then left. Lydia took the freeway back.

" Lydia," I said, "you fucked Marvin, didn't you?"