Adios, Scheherazade

I opened the front door on the passenger side and there wasn’t anybody there. With the windows steamed up, and the night pretty dark as it was — the sky clear but moonless — I couldn’t see much of anything inside the car, except she wasn’t there.

Then she said, “Back here.”

“Oh,” I said, and shut the front door and opened the back door and got into the car.

It smelled funny. Musty, and green. I don’t know why, but the smell made me think of rabbits. And all I could see was her pale skin. Her dress was up around her waist and her panties were off and she was half lying, half sitting cattycorner on the back seat, her head below the level of the window, and her belly was narrow and flat and pale, and her pubic hair was dark and mysterious.

Things were kind of cramped back there, and I had a little trouble getting my pants and underpants off. I left them wrapped around my left ankle, and tucked my shirttail up inside my T-shirt, and then very awkwardly I mounted her, and for the first time in my life a girl touched my cock. She put her hand on it and pointed it to the right place — which was farther down and back than I’d thought it would be, as I remember — and of course the ways had been well greased, and I slid in, and sort of hunched over her with my back breaking, and she began to grunt, panting, breathing faster than I ever heard anybody breathe before or since, and her hands clutched at my sides and back as though she was afraid I would try to get away, and her hips moved so fast I couldn’t keep up. I tried to, but it was impossible, so what I did was half-time, stroke in on a complete pulsation of hers, stroke out on a complete pulsation, and so on.

I came in less time than it takes to tell about it, but so did she. At the time I wasn’t sure what was happening exactly, but my experience since then tells me she came four or five times in the short period of time I was inside her, and then I came, and abruptly she became practical — all women do after sex, no matter what the marriage guidebooks say — and started stuffing wads of tissues here and there. There was a blanket over the seat to protect that.

This is a terrible memory. That’s all right, it’s almost done. I’d just like to point out how after guy number 3 had his turn and we all drove back to drop her off again nobody remarked about the funny smell in the car, including the baby brother. That’s all. Including the baby brother.

And now I am going to get back to Brock Stewart. You think I’m not? I am.

At first he thought the place was totally empty, but then he saw the girl standing behind the counter, down at the far end, her white dress and fair hair blending with the decor behind her.

She came walking slowly toward him when he sat down, and he gave her an easy smile, noticing the sensual way she had of walking, the slightly pouty look to her lips, the way her blue eyes seemed to smolder as she looked at him through half-closed lids. And there was something faintly suggestive about the way she said, “What would you like?”

“To finish the book,” he said.

She smiled, lazily and without malice, and wiped the counter with a filthy damp rag. “Not a chance of it,” she said. “You won’t even finish this chapter.”

“I’ve got to,” he said.

“Why?” she said.

“Because,” he said, “if I don’t manage to succeed at something in the course of this horrible week I may kill myself. Everything is collapsing around me, I have to prove I am still capable of triumphing over adversity as a result of my own efforts.”

“Prove to who?” she said.

“To whom,” he said.

“All right,” she said patiently. “Prove to whom?”

“To me,” he said.

“Who made you judge?” she said. “I mean, whom made you judge?”

“For Christ’s sake,” he said, “you have to do, don’t you? You can’t just give up, can you?”

“Sure you can,” she said.

“Well, I’m not going to,” he said. “Who would I be if I gave up?”

“You mean where would you be.”

“No, I don’t. I mean who would I be? Whom would I be?”

“You’d be you,” she said.

“I can feel the ground crumbling away beneath me,” he said. “I’m terrified.”

She said, “What is the worst possible thing that can happen to you?”

“Everything stops,” he said.

“You mean, you die?”

“No,” he said. “I mean I don’t get the book done, and Betsy doesn’t come back, and I don’t live in that house any more, and all of the things that I have been and roles that I have played and personas that I have assumed will come to a stop.”

“And what is left,” she said, “will be you.”

“As naked as a shaved puppy,” he said. “And as defenseless, and as shivering, and as doomed. Who can I be if I don’t have somebody to be?”

“That makes no sense,” she said.

“I’m not asking for sense,” he said. “In the world of the New York Times there’s no sense, only a progression of events. If the progression of events stops, we are doomed. The same thing is true in my life. If the progression of events in my life stops, I am doomed.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “If the progression of events stops, another progression will start.”

“What progression?”