SUE ANN, RUBY, JENNY AND ME

When Sue Ann telephoned this morning she sounded worried about our luncheon date. That was fine with me because I didn’t want to see her. It was too complicated.

Sue Anne said: “If Don finds out about us he’s going to be jealous.”

“So far there isn’t much for him to find out.”

“I’m nervous. Sometimes he gets just crazy.”

“That’s the problem with husbands. They all want to keep their wives to themselves.”

“Maybe he wouldn’t mind. Oh, I don’t know.”

“Why don’t we have lunch next week? I said. I was thinking if I could put it off for a week I could put it off forever.

“Oh, Brad,” she said. “I want to see you today.”

“Let’s just have coffee then. It will be simpler that way. Don might not mind that.”

“Oh, what a good idea, I don’t feel so guilty about just coffee.”

A few minutes before one I left my room and walked over to Wilshire Boulevard. The bright sunshine, the blue sky, the breeze- it was a wonderful day. When I reached the coffee shop Sue Anne was already there, the blue eyes, the red hair, the body.

“What happened to your nose?” I said.

    “I walked into the door jamb in the hallway. I was so distracted just thinking about you.”

We chatted about this and that. She kept leaning toward me over the top of the table. I felt restless. I wanted to get away. I wanted to walk over to Jenny’s and play with Marissa. Marissa was only four but I was falling for her just as I had fallen for Jenny. I liked to just hang around their apartment when one of them was there – either one. Sue Anne had three daughters herself but it wasn’t the same. I knew it never could be.

“Stop referring to our relationship as one of brother and sister,” I said.

“It’s corny, isn’t it?”

“It’s not accurate. Not from my point of view anyhow.”

I could feel the erection coming on. I tried to not think about it.

“I wanted us to go for a ride. Don put a new stereo in the van. Don’t you want to hear it?”

“Not this afternoon. Maybe we can go for a drive next week. This afternoon I have a little typing to do.”

“I don’t want to interfere with you writing.”

“I know you don’t.” Outside the window the tops of the trees were blowing in the air. When I looked back at Sue Anne her clear blue eyes locked into mine. I couldn’t get away from them.

 She said: “I’d like to just kidnap you.”

“That made me laugh, I didn’t want to start laughing with her, having a good time. The erection was beginning to pound.

She said: “When I asked you to be like an older brother for me, you did exactly what I asked. It was really nice of you. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was.”

“You have to be careful what you ask of people.”

“Am I awful?”

“Sure you are.” 

Somehow I got myself out of it. I walked back to my room, masturbated, then walked over to Jenny’s and climbed the stairs. Unexpectedly, Jenny and I met in the hallway. There was something hesitant in her manner, as if her mind were on something and I had interrupted her train of thought.

I felt like I had come at a wrong time. That she didn’t want to see me. I warned myself to be carful and alert. She turned without speaking and walked into her bedroom. I followed and when we were there she turned and embraced me with her arms, with her legs, her entire body. She pressed her face to my face. I felt the warmth of her entire body passing from her into me. I felt the warmth in my own body rise to meet hers. It’s as if something were flowing, melting between us, saturating me.

She said: I want to stay here forever with you.”

“Let’s start now.”

“I have to take the kids to their grandmothers.”

“Do we have a few minutes?”

“We really don’t.”

“Worse luck.” I didn’t let on, but was annoyed.

“I was at your room just a minute ago. I left you a crazy note.”

“What did it say?”

“I’m not going to tell you.”

Jenny got the kids together with a minimum of argument and we all went down stairs together. They drove off in their station wagon and I walked back to my room. There in the typewriter was the note , written on a file index card in an erratic hand.

“Missed you all day with a very deep longing just to be near you. If I could just press up against you and then you would hold me. Well then maybe I could go about the rest of the day without this longing pulling on my insides. I don’t want anything right now but to be with you. I almost can’t get myself to leave.”

In the morning I’d felt lethargic and unable to type. Now I was wide awake and eager to work. It had been a nice change to get out to a restaurant during the day. A little company a little conversation, a little fresh air. Left to my own devices I don’t do anything. I type, I read, I take walks. That’s what I do. I was working on the diary when Sue Anne telephoned. She wanted to talk about how it would be for us to have an affair, how we could arrange it and so on.

“I think it would be safe enough,” she said. “I don’t think either of us would be careless, because if word got out by you Jenny would drop you like a hot potato. I think Don would kill me. I think he really would.”

“It doesn’t sound like it would be worth it,” I said. My cock was swelling up again. “Where are you now?”

“I can’t come over now. Don will be home and I have to get supper.”

I didn’t want to have an affair with Sue Anne, I didn’t even want to talk to her, but when she talked about it my cock invariably got hard. It was out of my hands. I thought about the weaknesses in my character, how it seldom seemed worth the while to deny myself anything. It never seemed worth the while. I tried to get the mind onto the typing. Jenny telephoned.

“Just called to say hello,” she said in her softest voice. She had a wonderful telephone voice. “Now I’m going to say goodbye. Goodbye.”

I figured something was wrong. I called her back.

She said: “I’ve been trying to call you and your line was busy. Then I tried to call Sue Anne and her line was busy.”

I didn’t say anything.

Then I said: “It was Sue Anne alright. You’re a real detective. She’s feeling miserable.”

“You ought to just give it to her Brad. Maybe her cunt would relax and she wouldn’t be on the telephone to you all day.”

I didn’t say anything. I felt nervous at the tone in her voice.

Jenny said: “Listen, I shouldn’t have called you at all. Scratch this conversation, will you?”

A few minutes later, Sue Anne telephoned.

“I just feel worse and worse,” she said. “I need to be with you. Nothing in my life is worthwhile since I met you. What have you done to me? It’s the way you talk. I just feel seduced by how intelligent you are.”

“I’m not as smart as you think I am. Believe me. But I’m trying to type now. Don’t you have to get supper for Don?”

“I think you’re the smartest man I’ve ever met.”

“I hate this kind of conversation,” I said.

“I’m making a tamale pie while I’m talking. Pretty good huh?”

“Look I have to do some typing.”

At five-forty-five I got up from the typewriter, got the Bacardi dark off the top of the fridge and poured a water glass half full. I had a drink and turned on the radio to a rock station. I had a drink and showered, had a drink and shaved, another and dressed. I took a couple more drinks. When I was sober I never listened to rock, when I was drinking I liked it. At seven o’clock I knocked on Ruby’s door.

It was good to see her. Smallish, rather than big like Jenny, heavy lidded, shapely, pretty. Fifteen years younger than me. Lebanese and Jewish. She said. I suppose if you’re an expert you can tell the difference. We drove to Westwood and ate pizza and drank a bottle of Chianti. This year she was flying to Japan. Last year it was Mexico. We had the same little celebration last year. That time it had been understood that we were going to spend the night together but it hadn’t worked out. We talked about Japan, then Mexico, then her latest boyfriend.

“I’m really infatuated with this guy,” she said. “He’s back East on business and I really miss him.”

“Uh huh.”

“I guess that’s why I called you.”

“I see.”

She grinned beautifully. “Besides, we have a tradition going, don’t we?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Unless you think pizza’s a tradition”

She laughed beautifully.

I told her about the sexual fantasies I’d had about her the year before , how they’d gotten mixed up with visions about St Francis and a great black hog with fifty arms. She liked that.

“I didn’t know you thought about me that way,” she said.

I said: “Sometimes my sexual fantasies about you were so powerful I could have eaten you alive.”

She laughed excitedly.

“Eaten you alive.” I said.

She covered her face with her hands and laughed until there were tears on her face.

She tried to be serious: “Brad?”

I was laughing too. The cock was throbbing.

“Brad. Listen to me.” She looked around the dark restaurant to see if anyone was listening to us.

“Go right ahead,” I said. “Everyone can hear you.”

“Brad, I have my period.”

“Your period, Madam, is of no great significance to me.”

“My period is very heavy. I have to have a towel under me and I can’t move around much.”

I looked around at the other tables. “Did you people hear that?”

Ruby took my hand on the table top and held it and we laughed drunkenly.

I said: “Maybe by Saturday morning the worst will be over.”

“I have very heavy periods.”

“Will you stop telling me that?”

“Maybe it won’t be too bad by Saturday morning,”

Drinking and laughing we figured out the best time for me to arrive at her apartment on Saturday morning, considering the departure time of the airline and the rate of her flow and so on. I drove her home and we kissed in the hallway. My cock was swollen and she pressed her belly against it. She was very affectionate. It felt good to have my arms around her.

At ten o’clock I was at Jenny’s. The Ginzbergs were there. They’d come by for dinner and to talk business with Jenny. Jenny was wearing one of her ankle length skirts, an Indonesian print in oranges, reds, and gold. She was beautiful. I wanted to tell her haw much more she was to any other woman than I’d ever known. I wanted to tell her there were hardly any others on the planet even similar to her. That she was truly rare. I was drunk. I tried to remember why it was she had chosen me.

They were talking about the hopelessness of attempting to deal with black adolescents with ghetto mentalities. There were two psychologists and a sociologist among the three of them. Someone said the Negro was without hope in his own heart. I disagreed heatedly, drunkenly.

“When I was an adolescent,” I told them, “I had great dreams for the future. I didn’t have the least idea how I was going to realize them. I didn’t have any prospects at all. That wasn’t even a concern for me. I was at peace because I expected to be discovered. When you’re young everyone expects to get discovered, even Black people.”

I got a big laugh out of that from Jenny. The Ginzbergs smiled knowingly but Jenny really laughed.

I couldn’t wait for the Ginzbergs to leave so that Jenny and I could get at it. But when they left Jenny was suddenly distracted.

“I’m going to bed,: she said.

She didn’t say it in an inviting way. I felt very alert, and cautious, but the cock was swollen and throbbing. This time it couldn’t be denied. I followed her in the bedroom, careful not to touch her. We undressed without speaking. She got into bed. I got into bed. I waited.

She said: “You can’t guess what’s going on with me, eh?” Her face twisted into a crooked grin.

“No.”

“You can’t guess huh?”

Then I knew it was Sue Anne.

Jenny said: “I can’t take this business with that broad anymore. I know it’s stupid, but I’ve got to the point where I can’t control my emotions any longer. It’s just tearing my up.”

I remained quiet.

“I hate to talk like this. I’m so jealous of her, of all the attention she’s getting from you that I’m half out of my mind.”

“I won’t talk to her anymore,” I said. “She doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“I don’t want that. I know I’m wrong. I know we ought to be able to form a relationship that will allow us to see other people once in a while.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” I lied.

“What I really can’t stand is that she’s getting all this attention from you by being weak, throwing herself at you, crying for you to hold her up. She does everything I try not to do. Then she does it and gets things from you.”

“She doesn’t get very much.”

“I just hate myself when I think this way.”

We were silent. I could see how she was wrestling with herself, how she was trying to wrestle down powerful feelings of jealousy and anxiety and fear. It’s as if there were another, smaller body inside her body and it was thrashing around making her suffer. I didn’t know what to do. I felt awful. I felt like I couldn’t move.

Jenny said: “Sue Anne’s daughter came over this afternoon to ask me something. I can’t even remember what. It was when both of your lines were busy. I told the kid if her mother would stop yapping on the telephone all afternoon she could have asked me herself.”

I laughed. Jenny didn’t think it was funny.

“Later when I went over there, Sue Anne was wearing a bathing suit. She came to the door in it. She was modeling it like a show girl. She said she wanted to be sexy for Don when he came home.”

“That was thoughtful.”

“I could have slapped her face. It’s got to the point where I can’t handle my emotions around this.” Her voice cracked. “Ohh, I don’t know what to do.”

 She turned away from me and lit a cigarette. “Oh, I hate this,” she said vehemently.

I couldn’t make myself say anything.

She said: “I know you’re not going to desert me…”

When I heard her say I was not going to desert her a sob broke out of me. All of the sudden I felt in my heart, in my gut, how tortured she felt. I was aware finally in my own body the pain she was feeling in hers. I was aware I had brought it to her, that she had looked into the future and I wasn’t there.

“Hey, you goof,” Jenny said. “I’m the one that’s supposed to cry.”

The tears kept coming out.

Jenny said: “If I could cry I guess I’d feel better.”

I couldn’t stop crying.

“What’s going on with you, Brad?” she said caringly.

“When I think about having made you feel this way, I can’t take it.”

“You’re kind of a strange guy don’t you think?”

She began to cry a little. Not much. Two or three tears. She put her face on my chest and went to sleep. I was exhausted. I tried to go to sleep with Jenny’s face on my chest but my eyes kept opening up. For a few minutes I had forgotten about the cock but now it was throbbing again. I wanted to wake Jenny but I wasn’t sure I should. I considered the pros and cons one by one. I couldn’t decide.

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