The next day Valerie came over and she and Iris left together for Frederick's. The mail arrived about an hour later. It contained another letter from Tanya:
Henry, dear…
I walked down the street today and these guys whistled. I walked on past them without response. The ones I really hate are the car wash guys. They holler things and stick out their tongues like they could really do something with their tongues, but there isn't really a man among them who could do it. You can tell, you know.
Yesterday I went into this clothing store to buy a pair of pants for Rex. Rex gave me the money. He can never buy his own things. He just hates to. So I went into this men's clothing store and picked out a pair of pants. There were two guys in there, middle-aged and one of the guys was real sarcastic. While I was picking out the pants he came up to me and he took my hand and put it on his cock. I told him, "Is that all you've got, poor thing!" He laughed and said something wise. I found these real nice pair of pants for Rex, green with thin white stripes. Rex likes green. Anyhow, this guy says to me, "Come on back into one of the try-on booths." Well, you know, sarcastic guys always fascinate me. So I went into the booth with him. The other guy saw us go in. We started kissing and he unzipped. He got a hard-on and put my hand on it. We kept kissing and he lifted my dress and looked at my panties in the mirror. He played with my ass. But his cock never got real hard, just half-hard, it just stayed half-hard. I told him he wasn't shit. He walked out of the booth with his cock out and zipped up in front of the other guy. They were laughing. I came out and paid for the pants. He bagged them. "Tell your husband you took his pants into the try-on booth!" he laughed. "You're nothing but a fuck-ing fag!" I told him. "And your buddy is nothing but a fucking fag too!" And they were. Almost every man is a fag now. It's really difficult for a woman. I had a girlfriend who married a guy and she came home one day and found him in bed with another man. No wonder all the girls are having to buy vibrators these days. It's rough shit. Well, write me.
yours,
Tanya
Dear Tanya:
I got your letters and your photo. I am sitting here alone the day after Thanksgiving. I have a hangover. I liked your photo. Do you have any more?
Have you ever read Celine? Journey to the End of the Night, I mean. After that he lost stride and became a crank, bitching about his editors and his readers. It's a real damn shame. His mind just went. I think he must have been a good doctor. Or maybe he wasn't. Maybe his heart wasn't in it. Maybe he killed his patients off. Now that would have made a good novel. Many doctors do that. They give you a pill and send you back out on the street again. They need money to pay for what their educations cost them. So they pack their waiting rooms and run the patients in and out. They weigh you, take your blood pressure, give you a pill and send you back out on the street feeling worse. A dental surgeon may take your life savings but usually he does something for your teeth.
Anyhow, I'm still writing and I seem to be making the rent. I find your letters interesting. Who took that photo of you without your panties on? A good friend, no doubt. Rex? You see, I'm getting jealous! That's a good sign, isn't it? Let's just call it interest. Or concern.
I'll watch the mailbox. Any more photos?
yours, yes, yes,
Henry
The door opened and it was Iris. I pulled the sheet out of the typewriter and laid it face down.
"Oh, Hank! I got the slut-shoes!"
"Great! Great!"
"I'll put them on for you! I'm sure you'll love them!"
"Baby, do it!"
Iris walked into the bedroom. I took the letter to Tanya and stuck it under a pile of papers.
Iris walked out. The shoes were bright red on viciously high heels. She looked like one of the greatest whores of all time. There were no backs on the shoes and her feet showed through the see-through material. Iris walked back and forth. She had a most provocative body and ass anyhow, and walking on those heels pushed it all sky-high. It was maddening. Iris stopped and looked back at me over her shoulder, smiled. What a marvelous chippy! She had more hip, more ass, more calf than I'd ever seen before. I ran out and poured two drinks. Iris sat down and crossed her legs high. She sat in a chair across the room from me. The miracles in my life kept occurring. I couldn't understand it.
My cock was hard, throbbing, pushing against my pants.
"You know what a man likes," I told Iris.
We finished our drinks. I took her by the hand into the bedroom. I pushed her on the bed. I pulled her dress back and got at her panties. It was hard work. Her panties got caught on one shoe, got hooked on the heel, but I finally got them off. Iris's dress was still covering her hips. I raised her ass and pushed the dress up under her. She was already wet. I felt her with my fingers. Iris was almost always wet, almost always ready. She was a total joy. She had long nylon stockings with blue garters decorated with red roses. I put it into the wetness. Her legs were raised high in the air and as I caressed her I saw those slut-shoes on her feet, red heels jutting like stilettoes. Iris was in for another old-fashioned horse fuck. Love was for guitar players, Catholics and chess freaks. That bitch with her red shoes and long stockings-she deserved what she was going to get from me. I tried to rip her apart, I tried to split her in half. I watched that strange half-Indian face in the soft sunlight that filtered weakly through the blinds. It was like murder. I had her. There was no escape. I ripped and roared, slapped her across the face and nearly tore her in half.
I was surprised that she was able to get up smiling and walk to the bathroom. She looked almost happy. Her shoes had come off and were lying by the side of the bed. My cock was still hard. I picked up one of the shoes and rubbed my cock with it. It felt great. Then I put the shoe back on the floor. When Iris came out of the bathroom still smiling, my cock went down.
96
Not much happened during the rest of her stay. We drank, we ate, we fucked. There were no arguments. We took long drives down along the shore, ate at seafood cafes. I didn't bother with writing. There were times when it was best to get away from the machine. A good writer knew when not to write. Anybody could type. Not that I was a good typist; also I couldn't spell and I didn't know grammar. But I knew when not to write. It was like fucking. You had to rest the godhead now and then. I had an old friend who occasionally wrote me letters, Jimmy Shannon. He wrote 6 novels a year, all on incest. It was no wonder he was starving. My problem was that I couldn't rest my cock-godhead like I could my typer-godhead. That was because women were available only in streaks so you had to get as much in as possible before somebody else's godhead came along. I think the fact that I quit writing for ten years was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me. (I suppose that some critics would say that it was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to the reader, too.) Ten year's rest for both sides. What would happen if I stopped drinking for ten years?
The time came to put Iris Duarte back on the plane. It was a morning flight which made it difficult. I was used to rising at noon; it was a fine cure for hangovers and would add 5 years to my life. I felt no sadness while driving her to L.A. International. The sex had been fine; there had been laughter. I could hardly remember a more civilized time, neither of us making any demands, yet there had been warmth, it had not been without feeling, dead meat coupled with dead meat. I detested that type of swinging, the Los Angeles, Hollywood, Bel Air, Malibu, Laguna Beach kind of sex. Strangers when you meet, strangers when you part-a gymnasium of bodies namelessly masturbating each other. People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or to love. So they became swingers. The dead fucking the dead. There was no gamble or humor in their game-it was corpse fucking corpse. Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience down through the centuries. Some morals tended to keep people slaves in factories, in churches and true to the State. Other morals simply made good sense. It was like a garden filled with poisoned fruit and good fruit. You had to know which to pick and eat, which to leave alone.