Never, never, no matter what else you do in your whole life, never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.
— Nelson Algren
Chapter 19: Living with crazy
The blowzy redhead with the Roman profile called me Monday after the Friday my judgment was so impaired by tequila I shared her bed. My secretary must have told her where we worked, all the lead she needed. She explained computers had come to state government, and she was a computer tech.
She read aloud my job description, pay grade, full name and address, social security number, marital status, number and ages of children. Hinted my wife might like to know where I slept after the bars closed Friday. But it wouldn’t be an issue if I’d stop by after work to discuss things.
Her blonde upstairs neighbor and the karate kid were there. He even had two new pipes for me as promised. They clearly regarded me as the redhead’s new squeeze. She asked why I was in a sweat suit. I said it was my weight-lifting night.“Not now it isn’t.” Bright smile. She wanted me to drive her south to a small rural town. Her upstairs neighbors had prior obligations, and she had a meeting down there. One of her hangups was fear of being alone in a car at night, a phobia unfamiliar to me. She said we’d take her Camaro to save me gas.
Don’t know what I expected, but not a request for a simple-enough favor. I thought we could talk privately and I could gauge any threat to my marriage. But all she wanted to talk about was my walking out on her. She didn’t feel scorned, she was intrigued. Most men were wusses, she said. But I took what I wanted and left, cold as ice. That was sexy. Not the time to say all I wanted was to sleep off tequila.
Her meeting was with a graying hayseed in work clothes, in a tavern full of men similarly dressed. He bought me a beer, then took her in back to “show her something.” They emerged with an air of business accomplished. We had a beer with him and left.
Her life turned out to have lots of these mysterious errands. It was awhile before I learned she was the below-suspicion drug conduit for senior state bureaucrats and legislators, her job protected by unseen powers.
I drove her home and left, without her demanding sex. That lasted two days. She called to say she was home ill, come see her. As if compliance were a foregone conclusion.
The upstairs blonde let me in, whispered the redhead’s cold and sniffles were withdrawal from a heavy cocaine night, and went back to her place. The redhead was in bed. She pushed back the covers, said being sick made her horny, do something. Trying to assert dominance? I needed to get on the road but her implied threat to my marriage still hovered.
She liked cold as ice? Okay, then. I coldly introduced her to my fingers with a touch of tongue. Reestablished dominance and made her pay, and pay, until she was limp and dazed from repeated orgasms. Perhaps sensitized by the drugs. First time in my life I used sex as a weapon.
When she nodded off, I washed my hands and face and walked out. It was like catnip. She called next day all lovey-dovey about how cruelly I withheld myself again.
If I still doubted she was crazy her next moves would have convinced me. Several times she invited me over to watch her apply makeup and dress for hot dates with other men. She was curious if it would provoke jealousy. Once she asked “Don’t you feel possessive at all?”
I got off one of my best lines: “You can’t possess the wind.”
She paused in the act of applying lipstick. “I’m not the wind! I have feelings. I could be falling in love with you.”
“Don’t kid yourself. And don’t try to kid me.”
She pouted. Then laughed. “Tough guy. See why I love you? Zip me up, will you?”
The months wore on. She never brought up her implied threat again. She began to invite me over when she had a date there. Arm around his waist, she would introduce me as an old friend and watch me like a hawk. It was almost funny, and I played along; never show a sociopath weakness.
She acquired a foster girl from California, daughter of a California jazz musician who wanted her far from street gangs. The teen would babysit the redhead’s small son while she partied and dealt. She and her ex shared custody, explaining his absence my tequila night.
The vivacious black girl fitted in quickly, and included me when she said we were the only real family she’d ever known, dismissing the random men who passed through. I found that saddening. The boy, precocious and talkative, had me teach him to throw a baseball. Sometimes when she was flush the redhead took us all to dinner, where servers treated us as a family.
On occasion when she wanted privacy for sex, I took her to the town hot tubs my roadhouse girl thought exotic and sexy as a change of pace from “tasting” me in the car. Tubs in private rooms rented by the hour, “massage” bed beside the tub, sauna and piped-in music.
The crazy redhead liked the novelty. What I remember most is her imperious demand for a hair drier for her tangled mane — and attendants rushing to find one. Quick to sense my impatience as she fussed with her damp mop, she asked what was wrong. I said other women I bring here aren’t fussy as you about their hair. Being her, that got a laugh. “Well, I’m special!”
When the boy was with his father and the teen had a date but she didn’t, she summoned me to her boudoir. Amoral John Thomas, sober, was fully on deck. I was astonished when, after she had a titanic orgasm, she demanded I stop. Just stop.
She needed to recover. Men get to rest after they come, why can’t I? She gave a whole new meaning to the term prick tease. I suspected it was a power play to reassert dominance — or to push me into losing control and, in effect, assaulting her.
No chance. In effect, I would tap my fingers and watch the clock while she gossiped on the phone or smoked a joint. Ironic, given my youthful reading of Agnar Mykle describing a woman doing that after a male’s orgasm. I always out-waited her, and then drove through the goalposts. Leaving her smug. Special was one word for her, all right. Bat-shit crazy was another.
The novelty wore off and once I had satisfied her, my erections went away. Another first for me. It didn’t bother me when she introduced the term erectile dysfunction. And it didn’t worry her, because she’d had hers and still considered me a satisfactory partner.
She told me about a local big shot, co-owner of a well-known nightspot, who seduced her when she was a slim young secretary. She called him the only man who could match me in bed — from which I gathered the bar she set was low. It was a story she told often: both married, they had a wild and wonderful affair before he died of a heart attack. Devastated, she ate herself fat and now could not lose weight. Her choked-up delivery seemed authentic.
But my preacher’s daughter knew the bar, and the guy. When I mentioned that I’d heard he died, she said oh no, he just retired, sold his interest, and moved away.
She even knew where he went. It wasn’t hard to find his phone number, which I tucked in my notebook. The redhead often said how possessive he was, unlike me. How he got jealous and refused to stay at a hotel when she showed him a fancy suite where she fucked another man. Said she knew I would just reserve the same suite and fuck her brains out, proving my superiority to even her dead lover. Did I say she was crazy?
Next time she waxed nostalgic about his refusal to bed her where she had screwed someone else, I said take heart. It’s not too late for him to redeem himself, here’s his phone number. Only time I saw her at a loss for words.
But later, she said she called him and they had a grand long talk about their glorious affair. Pretty talkative for a dead man was my thought. She never mentioned his death again. Or him. Crazy as a March hare.
No matter how many weeks I avoided her, she always showed up again. To lament her complicated life. To ask me to spend time with the teen and her son because they missed me. To have me drive her someplace after dark.
Once, to try to get me to intercede on a drunk-driving ticket and have her diverted into counseling instead of spending a night in jail. Unnecessary; powerful bureaucrats she ran drugs for interceded behind the scenes.
