She would stand just outside my door. Every night. I'm inside, trying to do my work, chain-smoking Camels and drinking Colt 45 from the bottle, trying to concentrate, trying to write. And she won't stop blabbing in her singsong chatter. "Chico goes up to the guy and says, 'Kneel down!' So he does, and Chico takes out his buck knife and cuts the guy's ear off. I swear it. I saw the guy. He was looking for the ear where Chico threw it."
Blah-blah-blah. Shut up!
"I took this one guy down this alley and he wouldn't put on a rubber, you know? He says he don't have to. Tells me he's a priest. And I'm like, 'Baba, I don't care if you da pope, you wear a rubber when I suck your dick.' You know?" (She pronounced it "chew-no.") "Would not do it. So I split, took his $20, said, 'Go do 20 Hail Marys and 10 Our Fathers and I'll see you next payday, Daddy.'"
I can't think. Her voice is floating through my front door like used tissue paper. Pounding into my skull. Filling it up. Filling my head up with her slut babble. So I go up to the door. There's a crack that runs down the side, where the door doesn't quite fit into the molding. I shut out the lights on my side and I peek through this crack. At first I don't see her, she's so close. Wham. There she is, lighting a cigarette, her face only inches from mine, standing on my storefront doorstep on the other side of the door. She's talking to her girlfriend. Two loud hookers. Of course, know-it-all that she is, she has no idea I'm in here. Red lipstick, olive skin, smoking a Parliament. A clueless whore. And then I thought, why not? I'm inches from her face, why not? And I did it. Jerked it right there, looking right in her eyes. She never knew. Now that's intimacy.
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