Adios, Scheherazade

A little later I called San Franciso information and tried to get a phone number for Hester, but they had no phone for either Hester Harsch or anybody named Blench at that address. She didn’t figure to have a phone, anyway, she’s too much of a gipsy. It’s a big day for her, I think, when she’s got a tent.

Finally Friday night I called Betsy in Monequois again, and Birge answered. She had gotten there by that time and told her story, because when I said who I was and asked if I could talk to Betsy, Birge said, “Why don’t you come on up here and talk to her?” The invitation in his voice was the kind only a suicidal masochist could have accepted. I said, “It isn’t the way she thinks, Birge, honest to God.” He said, “Come on up and explain it, Ed.” I said, “You’ve got to know me better than that, Birge, none of that stuff in the book was true.” He invited me again, and I said some more, and he kept inviting me, and after a while I realized he wasn’t listening to me at all, he was just letting me talk and every time I’d come to a stop he’d invite me to come up and talk to him where he could see me face to face, and then I’d say something else that would bounce off his mind like a tennis ball off a brick wall, and he’d make that invitation again. Finally I hung up.

Friday night I started to drink. I also tore up all the stuff I’d done, all those useless chapters that had caused the whole trouble, and threw them away. Then later on I rooted through the ripped-up pieces and found the few little bits I thought I could use, and put them on the desk, and threw the rest into the garbage. And meanwhile I kept on drinking.

About one o’clock in the morning I drove the Buick into the city and parked it on West 47th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues and went walking around looking for a whore. I found one up across the street from the Americana Hotel, a skinny black panther with her hair piled up in a big airy bouffant on top of her head, hardened into place with several quarts of hair spray. She had eyes so full of obvious contempt for me and everybody else in the world that I almost turned around right there and went back home to Sargass and stuck my head in the oven. Except it’s electric. Also, I agreed with her eyes’ opinion of me.

I think she was young, she had the young-old look of the really tough alley cats. She had a very soft seductive voice, like radio weather girls, and she was smiling a little private smile the whole time. It took me a while to realize the smile didn’t have anything to do with me, it was just the expression she wore. I mean wore, the way you wear a sweater, or a hat. She wore that smile, it had nothing to do with her real face or her real feelings or anything else. It was something she put on before going out, and kept in the refrigerator in between times.

I said how much and she said twenty and I thought we were supposed to bargain so I said that seems a lot for a quickie and she did a little kissing thing with her eyes and mouth and said, “Bye-bye.”

I said, “Wait a minute,” because her eyes had lost their focus on me and she was looking away down the street as though there wasn’t anybody standing in front of her at all. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I didn’t say no.”

The eyes refocused on me. Nothing ever changed about the smile. She was wearing a thin, I mean narrow, black coat with a gray fur collar, and black slacks, stretch pants, and silver high heels which were mostly straps on top. And black stockings under the stretch pants, the things they call panty hose that are stockings that come all the way up to the waist. Just a little showed, at her ankle. Also, she had very long fingernails with silver nail polish. I suppose they were false nails. I know for sure the eyelashes were fake.

Whores are supposed to be blowsy and sort of loose, like rag dolls, but this one was as lean and hard and self-controlled as a rifle. Except that’s supposed to be a male symbol, isn’t it? The similes that keep coming to mind are all feline: cat, panther, cheetah. The old joke about a pussy with teeth. Panther is the one that works best, I suppose. Because of the color, naturally, but also because panthers seem somehow leaner and bonier and more stripped down to the essentials than other cats. And panthers are silent most of the time, they move around graceful and silent. And they’re deadly. And their expression is very cynical. Unlike tigers, for instance, who seem always to be either vaguely irritated by body lice or vaguely surprised to discover that they are tigers. Panthers are irritated, but there’s nothing vague about it, and nothing will ever surprise them.