Why, I wonder. I guess there were just too many echoes, it was as if he was Howard talking to me, or even a male version of me talking to me. I don’t know. He brought me down very badly and I didn’t see anyone else that afternoon and didn’t go to the bars that evening.
Around ten the phone rang. It was Liz asking me to come on up if I had nothing better to do. What I had plenty of was nothing better to do, and I went.
She gets this sensational grass from one of her steady Johns. He’s something in advertising or public relations and he’s also a constant pot-smoker, and he’ll come over now and then and get high with her and leave her a couple of ounces of grass because he buys in quantity and has it to spare, and then she’ll fuck him for free. Tit for tat, you might say.
“Come on,” she said. “We’ll get high.”
“I don’t know.”
“You look like you could stand it.”
“I could. I’m so low.”
“Anything special?”
“I don’t know. Looking in mirrors. I don’t know. I had a trick that was a real bringdown.”
“Something he made you do?”
“Something he said.”
“I know the type.”
“No, it wasn’t like that. He didn’t bad mouth me. It was, oh, he got me thinking. I don’t want to talk about it, it’ll just get me deeper into it.”
“So we’ll get high and cure all that.”
“The last time I got high all I got was low.” The last two times, actually. I had bad-tripped, thought I was dying, having a heart attack, everything. Very scary. “The mood I’m in, who knows where it’ll go?”
“I will guarantee a good trip.”
“How?”
“Simple. First we smoke, then we take us some ups. Nothing easier.”
“I thought speed and grass were a bad combination.”
“Then so are carrots and peas. Believe me, Jan, would I do you a bad turn?”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Because we love each other like sisters, right?”
“Right.”
“And even more.”
“Right.”
“And believe me, I am very anxious to ball you. I am very anxious to do something related to sex that doesn’t have a man or a dollar involved in it. Let’s smoke.”
“Sure.”
“Gimme a cigarette.”
I told her she only likes to smoke with me because I have the cigarettes. I gave her one and she dumped all the tobacco out and replaced it with grass. We smoked it in deep desperate drags. I started to feel it almost instantly and knew it was going to be good.
We got giggly high and laughed about everything. Liz got us each a small handful of pep pills and we washed them down with wine. They were Dexamyls, with the Dexedrine balanced by a tranquilizer so you don’t get too paranoid or jittery. I swallowed them and drank a little wine and smoked a tobacco cigarette and sat there waiting for the ups to hit. They hit like little bombs going off in the forehead. Kapow! Kapow!
We just couldn’t stop making love. We haven’t been doing it much lately. Most of the time neither of us seems to have any real desire. A librarian doesn’t want to spend the night with a good book. Mailmen don’t go hiking on the weekends.
But a good orgy once in a while is nice. And oh, it was nice last night. We were behind all that grass and we had the speed to focus everything, and there was nobody around but the two of us, nobody taking advantage, nobody to be taken advantage of, no money changing hands, no worries, none of that shit. Just the two of us in bed making lazy girl sex.
She has this vibrator she uses on Johns. It fits on the back of your hand and vibrates. (So what else would a vibrator do, dimwit?) We took turns giving each other massages. I used the vibrator on her breasts and behind and she came like constantly and then did the same to me. It’s a fantastic thing. You can’t help responding, it’s an involuntary reaction whether you want it or not. Really fantastic.
All squirmy and loving together.
I love eating her. I love it sinfully much. Her thighs around my head and my hands holding onto her ass and my mouth just gobbling away. Like an infant at the breast. And her mouth on me at the same time, circulating sex back and forth, back and forth.
I get this image in my head of the Yin and Yang symbol, each half feeding into the other. Yin and Yang and Sixty-nine.
Now it’s the next afternoon and I still haven’t gotten to sleep. We were at each other all night and with all that speed we couldn’t get to sleep at all. I think it should wear off sometime tonight. In a minute I’ll go out and earn my daily bread. A guy called, he’s coming over at four-thirty, the usual quarter trick, but I ought to be able to turn a couple before then and one or two after he goes. Get the money home before the pills wear off and it’s time to crash.
September 6
I know it’s just a reaction to the speed. At least I have the intelligence to know that much. But what good does it do me to know it?
I wish I were dead.
Was dead. Were dead. Who the hell cares?
I just drag myself around. All I can think of is what a fucking mess I’ve made of my life. What a complete mess.
Jason Silverblatt called. I couldn’t talk with him. I simply couldn’t bring myself to talk with him. I can manage a trick because that’s automatic, but I couldn’t talk to my lawyer. I told him to call back sometime.
I wonder if he’ll waste his time with me. Lawyers must be used to dealing with crazy people. They must have this sort of thing all the time.
Something Liz said. I should get a good settlement from Howard because I gave him the best years of my life. What a worn-out expression!
But it’s probably true. The best years of my life. The best years of my life are over now.
What’s left?
September 9
I’m a little better.
Silverblatt says we can get alimony of around ten thousand dollars a year or we can get a full cash settlement of somewhere between twenty-five and fifty thousand dollars. That seems much too high to me. Why should Howard have to pay me that kind of money? It would be different if I had his children. But I don’t. And I’m fully capable of supporting myself. In fact I think I can probably earn more than he does.
I didn’t know what to say. Silverblatt also said he thought we should settle as soon as possible, and should go for the cash, because if Howard happened to smarten up and find out what I am doing for a living and spend a little money on detectives he could probably divorce me right off the bat and not pay me a cent.
I suppose I’ll tell him to take the money. But I don’t even know what I’ll do with it.
September 12
Liz says a John of hers is perfect if I come into a lot of cash. He’s a broker and he does fantastically for her, and another John took some of her cash and put it into an apartment house in Borough Park that she never sees but gets money from four times a year.
September 23
Went shopping, bought clothes I’ll probably never wear. Why bother?
Oh, it’s something to do. I didn’t feel like a movie.
Wow, what a glamorous life.
October 2
Saw David on the street today. I don’t think he saw me, or if he did he didn’t recognize me, which is possible. I have changed since I knew him.
I really thought he and Arnold were dead. That Eric had killed them. I couldn’t ever figure out a reason why that might have happened, but I believed it.