Lydia, I thought.
All she'd left me was my t.v. because she knew I never looked at it.
I walked outside and there was Lydia's car, but she wasn't in it. "Lydia," I said. "Hey, baby!"
I walked up and down the street and then I saw her feet, both of them, sticking out from behind a small tree up against an apartment house wall. I walked up to the tree and said, "Look, what the hell's the matter with you?"
Lydia just stood there. She had two shopping bags full of my books and a portfolio of my paintings.
"Look, I've got to have my books and paintings back. They belong to me."
Lydia came out from behind the tree-screaming. She took the paintings out and started tearing them. She threw the pieces in the air and when they fell to the ground she stomped on them. She was wearing her cowgirl boots.
Then she took my books out of the shopping bags and started throwing them around, out into the street, out on the lawn, everywhere.
"Here are your paintings! Here are your books! AND DON'T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN! DON'T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!"
Then Lydia ran down to my court with a book in her hand, my latest, The Selected Works of Henry Chinaski. She screamed, "So you want your books back? So you want your books back? Here are your goddamned books! AND DON'T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!"
She started smashing the glass panes in my front door. She took The Selected Works of Henry Chinaski and smashed pane after pane, screaming, "You want your books back? Here are your goddamned books! AND DON'T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN! I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!"
I stood there as she screamed and broke glass.
Where are the police? I thought. Where?
Then Lydia ran down the court walk, took a quick left at the trash bin and ran down the driveway of the apartment house next door. Behind a small bush was my typewriter, my radio and my toaster.
Lydia picked up the typewriter and ran out into the center of the street with it. It was a heavy old-fashioned standard machine. Lydia lifted the typer high over her head with both hands and smashed it in the street. The platen and several other parts flew off. She picked the typer up again, raised it over her head and screamed, "DON'T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!" and smashed it into the street again.
Then Lydia jumped into her car and drove off. Fifteen seconds later the police cruiser drove up. "It's an orange Volks. It's called the Thing, looks like a tank. I don't remember the license number, but the letters are HZY, like HAZY, got it?"
"Address?"
I gave them her address…
Sure enough, they brought her back. I heard her in the back seat, wailing, as they drove up.
"STAND BACK!" said one cop as he jumped out. He followed me up to my place. He walked inside and stepped on some broken glass. For some reason he shone his flashlight on the ceiling and the ceiling mouldings.
"You want to press charges?" the cop asked me.
"No. She has children. I don't want her to lose her kids. Her ex-husband is trying to get them from her. But please tell her that people aren't supposed to go around doing this sort of thing."
"O.K.," he said, "now sign this."
He wrote it down in hand in a little notebook with lined paper. It said that I, Henry Chinaski, would not press charges against one Lydia Vance.
I signed it and he left.
I locked what was left of the door and went to bed and tried to sleep.
In an hour or so the phone rang. It was Lydia. She was back home.
"YOU-SON-OF-A-BITCH, YOU EVER TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN AGAIN AND I'LL DO THE SAME THING ALL OVER AGAIN!"
She hung up.
47
Two nights later I went over to Tammie's place on Rustic Court. I knocked. The lights weren't on. It seemed empty. I looked in her mailbox. There were letters in there. I wrote a note, "Tammie, I have been trying to phone you. I came over and you weren't in. Are you all right? Phone me… Hank."
I drove over at 11 am the next morning. Her car wasn't out front. My note was still stuck in the door. I rang anyhow. The letters were still in the mailbox. I left a note in the mailbox: "Tammie, where the hell are you? Contact me… Hank."
I drove all over the neighborhood looking for that smashed red Camaro.
I returned that night. It was raining. My notes were wet. There was more mail in the box. I left her a book of my poems, inscribed. Then I went back to my Volks. I had a Maltese cross hanging from my rearview mirror. I cut the cross down, took it back to her place and tied it around her doorknob.
I didn't know where any of her friends lived, where her mother lived, where her lovers lived.
I went back to my court and wrote some love poems.
48
I was sitting with an anarchist from Beverly Hills, Ben Solvnag, who was writing my biography when I heard her footsteps on the court walk. I knew the sound-they were always fast and frantic and sexy-those tiny feet. I lived near the rear of the court. My door was open. Tammie ran in.
We were both into each other's arms, hugging and kissing.
Ben Solvnag said goodbye and was gone.
"Those sons of bitches confiscated my stuff, all my stuff! I couldn't make the rent! That dirty son-of-a-bitch!"
"I'll go over there and kick his ass. We'll get your stuff back."
"No, he has guns! All kinds of guns!"
"Oh."
"My daughter is at my mother's."
"How about something to drink?"
"Sure."
"What?"
"Extra dry champagne."
"O.K."
The door was still open and the afternoon sunlight came in through her hair-it was so long and so red it burned. "Can I take a bath?" she asked. "Of course." "Wait for me," she said.
In the morning we talked about her finances. She had money coming in: child support plus a couple of unemployment checks with more to come.
"There's a vacancy in the place in back, right above me."
"How much is it?"
"$105 with half of the utilities paid."
"Oh hell, I can make that. Do they take children? A child?"
"They will. I've got pull. I know the managers."
By Sunday she was moved in. She was right above me. She could look into my kitchen where I typed my things on the breakfast nook table.
49
That Tuesday night we were sitting at my place drinking; Tammie, me and her brother, Jay. The phone rang. It was Bobby. "Louie and his wife are down here and she'd like to meet you." Louie was the one who had just vacated Tammie's place. He played in jazz groups at small clubs and wasn't having much luck.
But he was an interesting sort.
"I'd rather just forget it, Bobby."
"Louie will be hurt if you don't come down here."
"O.K., Bobby, but I'm bringing a couple of friends."
We went down and the introductions went around. Then Bobby brought out some of his bargain beer. There was stereo music going, and it was loud.
"I read your story in Knight," said Louie. "It was a strange one. You've never fucked a dead woman, have you?"
"It just seemed like some of them were dead."
"I know what you mean."
"I hate that music," said Tammie.
"How is the music going, Louie?"
"Well, I've got a new group now. If we can hang together long enough we might make it."
"I think I'll suck somebody off," said Tammie, "I think I'll suck off Bobby, I think I'll suck off Louie, I think I'll suck off my brother!"
Tammie was dressed in a long outfit that looked something like an evening dress and something like a nightgown.