Fridays at Enrico's by Don Carpenter Page B

to Cameron’s used bookstore and bought a typing book for a quarter and took it back to his room. Typing wasn’t hard, once he got the trick of balancing the little machine on his knees. He picked up a used music stand to hold the exercise book. After he got tired of the exercises he struck on the idea of retyping stories he particularly liked. This would give him practice and teach him a little bit about how other writers, real writers, did it.
    Marty’s girl worked the counter at Jolly Joan’s. She was beautiful, with big wide dark Jewish eyes, olive skin and high cheekbones, a real beauty, a girl who could be a movie star. She grinned across the counter at Marty and wiped the space in front of him with her wet rag.
    â€œHello, Marty,” she said, then smiled at Stan. He could not recall ever having a woman this good-looking smile at him directly. It was like a shot of morphine. “Is this your friend Stan?” He shook her hand. Thank God his own happened to be dry. “I’ve heard so much about you,” she said. She took their coffee orders and left. Great figure too, Stan noticed. He turned to Marty, who grinned at him.
    â€œYeah,” Marty said. “Her name’s Alexandra Plotkin.”
    â€œShe’s beautiful,” Stan said stupidly.
    â€œShockingly beautiful. It’s actually a problem. You know, big stalkers coming up to you and telling you how lucky you are to have such a girl. Of course she’s not really my girl, but I don’t tell them that.”
    Late that night Stan tried to write, but he couldn’t get Alexandra’s face out of his mind. Smiling at him. He gave up, put his typewriter in its cardboard box under the bed and tried to sleep. Sleep would not come for a long time, and he lay quietly, seeing her face hovering over him. Finally he must have slept, because he found himself in this big dark gloomy but beautifully furnished house, walking through the place in his stocking feet when he sees Alexandra standing in the middle of the floor, her arms at her sides. When he woke up he felt warm and pleasant, remembering how she looked in the dream. She was not Marty’s girl. She had smiled at him. Maybe shecould become his girl. Oh, Jesus. What a fool. He had to chuckle to himself, laying there like a jerk daydreaming. He held onto his prick for dear life, why didn’t he just jerk off? A mystery. Maybe he respected her too much. Maybe, though, some day, he might really have the chance to—he refused even to use bad language about her in his mind—sleep with her, make love to her.
    Even if he was willing, he wouldn’t know how. Whores teach you nothing about romance. He had an idea for a story. About a burglar who meets a girl. A silly story, because burglars weren’t the heroes of stories, but it was writing itself in his head while he lay there, and so he let it. Four days later he had the story down on paper, typed and everything. Reading it over he decided it was as good as a lot of the stories he had read. All it really needed was some educated person to help him fix up the grammar and spelling. He was a terrible speller, he knew. He’d have to get it typed by a professional. His own typing was too messy. He wondered how much he could get for the story from Ellery Queen or some other magazine. At the moment, sitting on the edge of the bed with his eleven pages in his hands, he recognized a great similarity between stealing and writing. Both were intensely private matters.
    The thought of showing his story to Marty frightened him. And he knew he had to ask Dick Dubonet to read it. Marty didn’t really know anything about this kind of writing. Sneering Dick Dubonet. Stan’s stomach tightened at the thought of Dubonet looking up from his pages with that expression of contempt. Stan didn’t think he could handle it. He would lose these new friends, and all that their friendship seemed to promise. On the