Women

I7

Dee Dee had a place in the Hollywood Hills. Dee Dee shared the place with a friend, another lady executive, Bianca. Bianca took the top floor and Dee Dee the bottom. I rang the bell. It was 8:30 pm when Dee Dee opened the door. Dee Dee was about 40, had black, cropped hair, was Jewish, hip, freaky. She was New York City oriented, knew all the names: the right publishers, the best poets, the most talented cartoonists, the right revolutionaries, anybody, everybody. She smoked grass continually and acted like it was the early 1960's and Love-In Time, when she had been mildly famous and much more beautiful.

A long series of bad love affairs had finally done her in. Now I was standing at her door. There was a good deal left of her body. She was small but buxom and many a young girl would have loved to have her figure.

I followed her in. "So Lydia split?" Dee Dee asked.

"I think she went to Utah. The 4th of July dance in Muleshead is coming up. She never misses it."

I sat down in the breakfast nook while Dee Dee uncorked a red wine. "Do you miss her?"

"Christ, yes. I feel like crying. My whole gut is chewed up. I might not make it."

"You'll make it. We'll get you over Lydia. We'll pull you through."

"Then you know how I feel?"

"It has happened to most of us a few times."

"That bitch never cared to begin with."

"Yes, she did. She still does."

I decided it was better to be there in Dee Dee's large home in the Hollywood Hills than to be sitting all alone back in my apartment and brooding.

"It must be that I'm just not good with the ladies," I said.

"You're good enough with the ladies," Dee Dee said. "And you're a helluva writer."

"I'd rather be good with the ladies."

Dee Dee was lighting a cigarette. I waited until she was finished, then I leaned across the table and gave her a kiss. "You make me feel good. Lydia was always on the attack."

"That doesn't mean what you think it means."

"But it can get to be unpleasant."

"It sure as hell can."

"Have you found a boyfriend yet?"

"Not yet."

"I like this place. But how do you keep it so neat and clean?"

"We have a maid."

"Oh?"

"You'll like her. She's big and black and she finishes her work as fast as she can after I leave. Then she goes to bed and eats cookies and watches t.v. I find cookie crumbs in my bed every night. I'll have her fix you breakfast after I leave tomorrow morning."

"All right."

"No, wait. Tomorrow's Sunday. I don't work Sundays. We'll eat out. I know a place. You'll like it."

"All right."

"You know, I think I've always been in love with you."

"What?"

"For years. You know, when I used to come and see you, first with Bernie and later with Jack, I would want you. But you never noticed me. You were always sucking on a can of beer or you were obsessed with something."

"Crazy, I guess, near crazy. Postal Service madness. I'm sorry I didn't notice you."

"You can notice me now."

Dee Dee poured another glass of wine. It was good wine. I liked her. It was good to have a place to go when things went bad. I remembered the early days when things would go bad and there wasn't anywhere to go. Maybe that had been good for me. Then. But now I wasn't interested in what was good for me. I was interested in how I felt and how to stop feeling bad when things went wrong. How to start feeling good again.

"I don't want to fuck you over, Dee Dee," I said. "I'm not always good to women."

"I told you I love you."

"Don't do it. Don't love me."

"All right," she said, "I won't love you, I'll almost love you. Will that be all right?"

"It's much better than the other."

We finished our wine and went to bed…