Adios, Scheherazade

Why didn’t I think of that before? Chapter 2 is the babysitter, we meet her necking with some guy at a drive-in, we find out she’s a real nymphomaniac and she’s had a sort of a secret letch for Paul. She screws with the guy at the drive-in, he takes her home, and there’s Paul. Then the third chapter is Paul’s point of view again, he’s there to ask her to tell his wife it was all false. He stumbles along, explaining and explaining, and gradually the baby-sitter seduces him.

That’s it! I’m saved, I’m saved, I can do it! Chapter 4 is the baby-sitter, she calls Beth but instead of telling her what Paul wants she says that she and Paul have been having an affair forever. She masturbates while she’s on the phone, we get our sex scenes from everywhere.

Chapter 5.

I’ll worry about that when I get to it. The point is, I can still do this. I can do Chapter 2, that’s no sweat, and I can do Chapter 3, and I can even do Chapter 4. By then I’ll have thought of Chapter 5.

There’s no reason I can’t do Chapters 2 and 3 today. It isn’t even three o’clock yet. I’ll take a little break now, make myself a cup of coffee, be back to work by three-thirty. There’s no reason on earth I can’t get Chapter 2 done by eight o’clock, take another break, go out to dinner with Rod or something, be back to work by ten, have Chapter 3 done by two in the morning. Go to bed, get up before noon, do 4 and 5 and 6 tomorrow. Then—

I can’t do it. The thing’s supposed to be in Thursday afternoon. That’s the day after tomorrow, and no matter how I push it I’ll never get farther than Chapter 6 by tomorrow night, which means four chapters left to do on Thursday. All in the daytime.

Impossible.

What if I talk to Rod? What if I ask Rod to talk to Samuel? Tell him I’ve been having problems, it’s not my fault, my wife left me, I’ve been run out of my house, I’m probably having a nervous breakdown — you know, I probably am — and so I’ll be a little late with the book. One day.

Now there’s somebody at the door. And the phone’s ringing again, I can hear it through the Vivaldi.

I’ve got to answer the phone.

Good Christ. It was Rod. He was calling from my house, he sounded upset, I’ve never heard him upset before in my life. Rod never gets upset, but he sounded upset on the phone. He said he’d talked to Birge and Johnny, they suspected I was at his place, they were coming in, they were probably here by now, I shouldn’t answer the doorbell. I said it was ringing right now. He said don’t answer it. He said call the police. I said I didn’t see how I could do that, they hadn’t done anything yet. He got more upset than before, he said CALL THE POLICE, he said I DON’T WANT THEM THERE WHEN I GET THERE, finally he said he’d call the police himself. I said fine, I hung up, I made myself a cup of coffee.

The doorbell stopped ringing, then the phone rang again. I almost answered it, thinking it might be Rod again, but then I realized it would have to be Birge and Johnny.

Rod thinks he’s upset. How can I think? How can I write? How can I do this stinking chapter about this stinking babysitter with all this stuff happening around me? Birge and Johnny. Betsy. And Rod acting peeved at me, as though the whole thing was my fault. He volunteered to go out there, it wasn’t my idea, he wanted to look at the lions close up, he wanted to be Edgar Rice Burroughs swinging from a real vine. Okay, baby, go ahead, but when you land on your ass don’t get mad at me.

I wonder what happened out there. He wouldn’t tell me. He said he was driving my car in and bringing my stuff, he said Birge and Johnny had spent the night in the house and ate a couple of meals there but hadn’t busted anything up, but he wouldn’t tell me what happened between them and him.

Obviously they mean to hang around till they get me, Christmas season or no Christmas season. With Thanksgiving safely out of the way, they should be busy driving Christmas trees and hot gifts down from the wild north country, but I suppose they figure first things first and I’m a first thing.

If they want to fight so bad, why don’t they go to Vietnam? They’re hawks, of course, that goes without saying, they want to bomb everything the other side of Hawaii.

No. I am not going to describe my own attitude toward Vietnam, that’s one digression I refuse to digress to. I’m a dove in ostrich’s clothing, but I suppose that’s just as obvious as Birge and Johnny being hawks.

Why don’t I write the chapter about the goddam babysitter? It’s a simple matter, a sex scene at a drive-in movie, I’ve done it ten or fifteen times already, winding up back at her house and the arrival of Paul. Simple. I could do it with my eyes closed.

If I could do it.

Why can’t I? For God’s sake, there’s no personal involvement with that, is there? I wouldn’t make the baby-sitter anything at all like the real Angie, there’s no connection at all.

Maybe I’m just too far into the habit of going off the tracks by now. How many of these things have I done?