She was dressed intelligently: black coat with a furpiece, black shoes, black skirt, a white blouse and a small purse.
'Hello,' I said.
92 JOHN FANTE
'What are you doing?' she said. 'Just sitting here.'
I was scared. The sight and nearness of that woman rather paralysed me; maybe it was the shock of seeing her so suddenly, maybe it was my own misery at that moment, but the nearness of her and that crazy, glassy glitter of her eyes made me want to jump up and beat her, and I had to steady myself. The feeling lasted for only a moment, and then it was gone. She started across the room with those dark eyes insolently watching me, and I turned my face towards the window, not worried by her insolence but about that feeling which had gone through me like a bullet. Now there was the scent of perfume in the room, the perfume that floats after women in luxurious hotel lobbies, and the whole thing made me nervous and uncertain.
When she got close to me I didn't get up but sat still, took a long breath, and finally looked at her again. Her nose was pudgy at the end but it was not ugly and she had rather heavy lips without rouge, so that they were pinkish; but what got me were her eyes: their brilliance, their animalism and their recklessness.
She walked over to my desk and pulled a page out of the typewriter. I didn't know what was happening. I still said nothing, but I could smell liquor on her breath, and then the very peculiar but distinctive odour of decay, sweetish and cloying, the odour of oldness, the odour of this woman in the process of growing old.
She merely glanced at the script; it annoyed her and she flipped it over her shoulder and it zigzagged to the floor.
'It's no good,' she said. 'You can't write. You can't write at all.'
'Thanks very much,' I said.
ASK THE DUST
93
I started to ask her what she wanted, but she did not seem the kind who accepts questions. I jumped off the bed and offered her the only chair in the room. She didn't want it. She looked at the chair and then at me, thoughtfully, smiling her disinterestedness in merely sitting down. Then she went around the room reading some stuff I had pasted on the walls. They were some excerpts I had typed from Mencken and from Emerson and Whitman. She sneered at them all. Poof, poof, poof! Making gestures with her fingers, curling her lips. She sat on the bed, pulled off her coat jacket to the elbows, and put her hands on her hips and looked at me with insufferable contempt.
Slowly and dramatically she began to recite:
What should I be but a prophet and a liar,
Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?
Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water,
What should I be but the fiend's god-daughter?
It was Millay, I recognized it at once, and she went on and on; she knew more Millay than Millay herself, and when she finally finished she lifted her face and looked at me and said, 'That's literature! You don't know anything about literature. You're a fool!' I had fallen into the spirit of the lines and when she broke off so suddenly to denounce me I was at sea again.
I tried to answer but she interrupted and went off in a Barrymore manner, speaking deeply and tragically; murmuring of the pity of it all, the stupidity of it all, the absurdity of a hopelessly bad writer like myself buried in a cheap hotel in Los Angeles, California, of all places, writing banal things the world would never read and never get a chance to forget.
94 JOHN FANTE
1
She lay back, laced her fingers under her head, and spoke dreamily to the ceiling: 'You will love me tonight, you fool of a writer; yes, tonight you will love me.'
I said, 'Say, what is this, anyway?'
She smiled.
'Does it matter? You are nobody, and I might have been somebody, and the road to each of us is love.'
The scent of her was pretty strong now, impregnating the whole room so that the room seemed to be hers and not mine, and I was a stranger in it, and I thought we had better go outside so she
'Hello,' I said.
92 JOHN FANTE
'What are you doing?' she said. 'Just sitting here.'
I was scared. The sight and nearness of that woman rather paralysed me; maybe it was the shock of seeing her so suddenly, maybe it was my own misery at that moment, but the nearness of her and that crazy, glassy glitter of her eyes made me want to jump up and beat her, and I had to steady myself. The feeling lasted for only a moment, and then it was gone. She started across the room with those dark eyes insolently watching me, and I turned my face towards the window, not worried by her insolence but about that feeling which had gone through me like a bullet. Now there was the scent of perfume in the room, the perfume that floats after women in luxurious hotel lobbies, and the whole thing made me nervous and uncertain.
When she got close to me I didn't get up but sat still, took a long breath, and finally looked at her again. Her nose was pudgy at the end but it was not ugly and she had rather heavy lips without rouge, so that they were pinkish; but what got me were her eyes: their brilliance, their animalism and their recklessness.
She walked over to my desk and pulled a page out of the typewriter. I didn't know what was happening. I still said nothing, but I could smell liquor on her breath, and then the very peculiar but distinctive odour of decay, sweetish and cloying, the odour of oldness, the odour of this woman in the process of growing old.
She merely glanced at the script; it annoyed her and she flipped it over her shoulder and it zigzagged to the floor.
'It's no good,' she said. 'You can't write. You can't write at all.'
'Thanks very much,' I said.
ASK THE DUST
93
I started to ask her what she wanted, but she did not seem the kind who accepts questions. I jumped off the bed and offered her the only chair in the room. She didn't want it. She looked at the chair and then at me, thoughtfully, smiling her disinterestedness in merely sitting down. Then she went around the room reading some stuff I had pasted on the walls. They were some excerpts I had typed from Mencken and from Emerson and Whitman. She sneered at them all. Poof, poof, poof! Making gestures with her fingers, curling her lips. She sat on the bed, pulled off her coat jacket to the elbows, and put her hands on her hips and looked at me with insufferable contempt.
Slowly and dramatically she began to recite:
What should I be but a prophet and a liar,
Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?
Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water,
What should I be but the fiend's god-daughter?
It was Millay, I recognized it at once, and she went on and on; she knew more Millay than Millay herself, and when she finally finished she lifted her face and looked at me and said, 'That's literature! You don't know anything about literature. You're a fool!' I had fallen into the spirit of the lines and when she broke off so suddenly to denounce me I was at sea again.
I tried to answer but she interrupted and went off in a Barrymore manner, speaking deeply and tragically; murmuring of the pity of it all, the stupidity of it all, the absurdity of a hopelessly bad writer like myself buried in a cheap hotel in Los Angeles, California, of all places, writing banal things the world would never read and never get a chance to forget.
94 JOHN FANTE
1
She lay back, laced her fingers under her head, and spoke dreamily to the ceiling: 'You will love me tonight, you fool of a writer; yes, tonight you will love me.'
I said, 'Say, what is this, anyway?'
She smiled.
'Does it matter? You are nobody, and I might have been somebody, and the road to each of us is love.'
The scent of her was pretty strong now, impregnating the whole room so that the room seemed to be hers and not mine, and I was a stranger in it, and I thought we had better go outside so she
Similar Books
