rhythm on me. She started pop-cracking on a seven count, then a nine, and finally a twelve.
It went up from there to a point where she was taking twenty breaths before it came, and finally—God, it seemed like about forty-eight hours later!—finally it stopped.
Maybe you’ve slept with someone like that; tried to sleep. One of those people who can’t get into dreamland good unless they’re lying all over you. Well, she was that way. And now that she’d got that goddamned pop-cracking out of her system, she started in on the other, scrounging around in the bed. It was hell.
I tried to make myself sleep; but it was no dice. I got to thinking about a guy I’d met that time I skipped out of New York. I couldn’t sleep, so I began thinking.
I’d been afraid to show myself on a train or bus or plane, so I’d started hitchhiking up toward Connecticut. I planned on getting up near the Canadian border, where I could jump across fast if I had to, and swinging west from there. Well, this guy picked me up, and he had a good car, and I knew he must have dough on him. But…well, it doesn’t make sense the way it turned out; he didn’t make sense, like you ordinarily think of a guy making it. Anyway…
He was a writer, only he didn’t call himself that. He called himself a hockey peddler. “You notice that smell?” he said. “I just got through dumping a load of crap in New York, and I ain’t had time to get fumigated.” All I could smell was the whiz he’d been drinking. He went on talking, not at all grammatical like you might expect a writer to, and he was funny as hell.
He said he had a farm up in Vermont, and all he grew on it was the more interesting portions of the female anatomy. And he never laughed or cracked a smile, and the way he told about it he almost made you believe it. “I fertilize them with wild goat manure,” he said. “The goats are tame to begin with, but they soon go wild. The stench, you know. I feed them on the finest grade grain alcohol, and they have their own private cesspool to bathe in. But nothing does any good. You should see them at night when they stand on their heads, howling.”
I grinned, wondering why I didn’t give it to him. “I didn’t know goats howled,” I said.
“They do if they’re wild enough,” he said.
“Is that all you grow?” I said. “You don’t have bodies on any of—of those things?”
“Jesus Christ!” He turned on me like I’d called him a dirty name. “Ain’t I got things tough enough as it is? Even butts and breasts are becoming a drug on the market. About all there’s any demand for any more is you know what.” He passed me the bottle, and had a drink himself, and he calmed down a little. “Oh, I used to grow other things,” he said. “Bodies. Faces. Eyes. Expressions. Brains. I grew them in a three-dollar-a-week room down on Fourteenth Street and I ate aspirin when I couldn’t raise the dough for a hamburger. And every now and then some lordly book publisher would come down and reap my crop and package it at two-fifty a copy, and, lo and behold, if I praised him mightily and never suggested that he was a member of the Jukes family in disguise, he would spend three or four dollars on advertising and the sales of the book would swell to a total of nine hundred copies and he would give me ten per cent of the proceeds…when he got around to it.” He spat out the window and took another drink. “How about driving a while?”
I slid over him, over behind the wheel, and his hands slid over me. “Let’s see the shiv,” he said.
“The what?”
“The pig-sticker, the switchblade, the knife, for Christ’s sake. Don’t you understand English? You ain’t a publisher, are you?”
I gave it to him. I didn’t know what the hell else to do. He tested the blade with his thumb. Then he opened the pocket of the car, fumbled around inside and brought out a little whetstone.
“Christ,” he said, drawing the blade back and forth
It went up from there to a point where she was taking twenty breaths before it came, and finally—God, it seemed like about forty-eight hours later!—finally it stopped.
Maybe you’ve slept with someone like that; tried to sleep. One of those people who can’t get into dreamland good unless they’re lying all over you. Well, she was that way. And now that she’d got that goddamned pop-cracking out of her system, she started in on the other, scrounging around in the bed. It was hell.
I tried to make myself sleep; but it was no dice. I got to thinking about a guy I’d met that time I skipped out of New York. I couldn’t sleep, so I began thinking.
I’d been afraid to show myself on a train or bus or plane, so I’d started hitchhiking up toward Connecticut. I planned on getting up near the Canadian border, where I could jump across fast if I had to, and swinging west from there. Well, this guy picked me up, and he had a good car, and I knew he must have dough on him. But…well, it doesn’t make sense the way it turned out; he didn’t make sense, like you ordinarily think of a guy making it. Anyway…
He was a writer, only he didn’t call himself that. He called himself a hockey peddler. “You notice that smell?” he said. “I just got through dumping a load of crap in New York, and I ain’t had time to get fumigated.” All I could smell was the whiz he’d been drinking. He went on talking, not at all grammatical like you might expect a writer to, and he was funny as hell.
He said he had a farm up in Vermont, and all he grew on it was the more interesting portions of the female anatomy. And he never laughed or cracked a smile, and the way he told about it he almost made you believe it. “I fertilize them with wild goat manure,” he said. “The goats are tame to begin with, but they soon go wild. The stench, you know. I feed them on the finest grade grain alcohol, and they have their own private cesspool to bathe in. But nothing does any good. You should see them at night when they stand on their heads, howling.”
I grinned, wondering why I didn’t give it to him. “I didn’t know goats howled,” I said.
“They do if they’re wild enough,” he said.
“Is that all you grow?” I said. “You don’t have bodies on any of—of those things?”
“Jesus Christ!” He turned on me like I’d called him a dirty name. “Ain’t I got things tough enough as it is? Even butts and breasts are becoming a drug on the market. About all there’s any demand for any more is you know what.” He passed me the bottle, and had a drink himself, and he calmed down a little. “Oh, I used to grow other things,” he said. “Bodies. Faces. Eyes. Expressions. Brains. I grew them in a three-dollar-a-week room down on Fourteenth Street and I ate aspirin when I couldn’t raise the dough for a hamburger. And every now and then some lordly book publisher would come down and reap my crop and package it at two-fifty a copy, and, lo and behold, if I praised him mightily and never suggested that he was a member of the Jukes family in disguise, he would spend three or four dollars on advertising and the sales of the book would swell to a total of nine hundred copies and he would give me ten per cent of the proceeds…when he got around to it.” He spat out the window and took another drink. “How about driving a while?”
I slid over him, over behind the wheel, and his hands slid over me. “Let’s see the shiv,” he said.
“The what?”
“The pig-sticker, the switchblade, the knife, for Christ’s sake. Don’t you understand English? You ain’t a publisher, are you?”
I gave it to him. I didn’t know what the hell else to do. He tested the blade with his thumb. Then he opened the pocket of the car, fumbled around inside and brought out a little whetstone.
“Christ,” he said, drawing the blade back and forth
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