“Can’t you be more careful, Spoon? If you leave marks there it means I can’t wear any of my nice dresses.”
“Oh, right. Last night…?”
His face suddenly lit up and he pushed me down and started making passionate love to me.
Somehow I had managed to shift the blame. I never knew I could be so devious.
I sighed with a mixture of relief and pleasure as we made love, and I thought about the way Spoon’s jealousy hurt him and tortured me.
Whatever hurt Spoon hurt me, too. I was in love with the useless bastard!
Just the thought made me blush and I looked up at him. He stopped moving and stared back at me with a quizzical expression:
“What’s the matter?”
“I think I’m in love with you…”
I’m sure I must have looked really proud of myself, like I’d decided to make lobster for dinner or something.
“Naturally,” he said.
I wondered if maybe me and Spoon being together was just the way it had to be. Whatever the reason, there was no question that SPOON was stamped on my heart in big, bold letters.
We were lying on the grass in the corner of a park, sharing a joint. People passed by, completely unaware, never thinking for a moment that we might be smoking marijuana. From time to time Spoon would close one eye and blow smoke at Osbourne, then roll with laughter as Osbourne just stood there, paralyzed, like it was a whiff of catnip. I was wearing a heavy coat, and was twisting the tops off one bottle of beer after another.
We were having an Indian summer. The sun was strong. When I closed my eyes, the insides of my eyelids turned into the fresh, young leaves that grow on trees at the beginning of summer. I reached out my hand and fumbled for the stiff material of Spoon’s jeans. His eyelashes always tickled my cheek just before he kissed me, so I knew what he was up to. His Panama hat fell to the ground and Osbourne jumped on it and started playing with it. I wished Spoon would stop blowing my lips like he was playing a trumpet.
We stood at the bus stop in front of the park, munching hot dogs. I had put too much hot mustard on mine and it was making me cry. Osbourne was curled up inside Spoon’s jacket, asleep, when I heard a woman’s voice.
“Kim?”
It was Maria. I was surprised to bump into her so unexpectedly, but I didn’t let it show. I just stood there, rooted to the spot, as she looked Spoon up and down. I thought I would die of embarrassment It was humiliating to be seen with someone you love so much. Spoon, on the other hand, gave Maria a brief glance and went back to stroking Osbourne inside his jacket.
“Is this him?” she asked.
I nodded. I always counted on Maria to tell me what to do next, but I didn’t want her to pass judgment on Spoon as she had my other men.
“He’s a big one,” she said after a moment, then mumbled good-bye, caught a cab, and was gone. I felt a little sad, like I had just split up with a boyfriend. I felt like I deserved some kind of diploma, like I had finally graduated from her or something.
The bus arrived and we got on. Spoon sat in silence while I talked.
“She taught me everything I know, the same as you have. Don’t you a think she’s pretty?”
I winced at the triteness of my words and looked up at him.
“Not really.”
I felt a moment of panic. Spoon’s usual reaction to a beautiful woman was to whistle and shout obscenities at her.
“She is! Everyone says so.”
“Just shut up and leave me alone.”
Spoon looked out the window. His thick eyelashes were wet with tears. Now I felt sick, like I had swallowed a big lump of bread whole.
The lump refused to break up—it just got bigger and bigger.
The bus jerked to a halt and the seat lurched forward violently. I gulped and swallowed the lump back down, and prayed that the driver wouldn’t hit the brakes again. I was afraid that the lump would come bursting out from inside of me.
I set my gaze on Spoon as I stuffed my scrambled-egg breakfast into I my mouth. He had skipped his usual breakfast, a couple of aspirin I washed down with Tanqueray gin, and was looking over some papers that he held carefully in his hand as he talked on the phone to some embassy or other. And every now and then he would just shut his mouth or close his eyes and stop moving.
I wanted to say, Hey, your girl’s got eyes for nothing but you, but all I could do was sit there beside him, stealing the odd glance at his big, black face.
Spoon had told me not to play Chet Baker so early in the morning, but other than that he hadn’t said a word. He was usually so loud about everything, but recently he’d been really quiet. Who’d he think he was, a philosopher or something? He had even quit snorting coke. But he smoked all day long, his big body sprawled out on the couch. Spoon worried me.
His eyes, which always told me exactly what he was thinking, were full of anxiety. And what had happened at the bus stop was still gnawing at me. What was that all about, and why was I still so upset about it?
It was as though we had reached an important point in our depraved life together, and a bookmark had been thrust in between us to mark the event.
I was picking some egg from between my teeth with a toothpick when I hit a raw nerve in a bad tooth. It made me feel so depressed. The ache in my tooth hit another nerve somewhere in my mind.
I snatched the pile of papers from the table and flung them at Spoon, but they just fanned out in perfect order in front of me like a lost poker hand, and that made me even more angry. Spoon responded with a sharp slap across my face, and I suddenly realized the papers must be some kind of plan he was working on.
I fell to the ground with the force of the blow, but Spoon gave me no more than a glance as he gathered up my cards (he had certainly won that hand) and left the apartment without a word.
Alone in the room, I crouched down and clutched my hands to my chest. Then I rolled over onto the floor and started kicking my legs in the air, screaming and crying like some spoiled child. But it didn’t ease the pain in my heart. I tried calling out his name like I was just calling out the name of a kitchen implement: “Spoon!”
Just a tool for getting the food from the bowl to the mouth. I started kicking my legs in the air again.
“SPOON!”
This time I yelled like I was calling for my man, and hot tears flowed from my eyes. That made me feel a little better.
I had always stayed calm before, even when Spoon beat me half to death. Spoon and me, we were bound too close to each other and our relationship was something far too insincere to be called love. I knew there was no reason for me to worry about Maria, and that made me feel even worse because I knew I didn’t need a reason—Spoon had shown me exactly how he felt, and I could see the pain in his expression. Whenever Spoon hurt, I felt pain, too, and then neither of us could help the other because we were both hurting so badly.
On one hand, I was pleased that Spoon was attracted to Maria—at least he had good taste. But it made me feel more jealous than I had ever felt before. What an ungrateful bastard he was! How could he leave his glass before drinking the last drop? I wanted to despise him because he had no manners, but it only made me hate myself.
I had to go and look for him, so I stood up, combed my hair, and put my coat on. I wandered around town like a sleepwalker, searching for him, starting with the places he was least likely to be: the bars, the discos, and the record shops we had been to together. I even went to one of his friends’ apartments where Spoon sold drugs. But I couldn’t find him anywhere, so I decided to follow my instincts, and turned my steps toward Maria’s apartment in Jiyugaoka. Despite the fact that he shouldn’t know where she lived, like a madwoman, I was drawn there by my intuition.