A car pulled up in the driveway. It was Marina. I could tell from the sound, that inept sound; it was like a dragon flopping down for the last time, gasping, dead. The tires were just about flat by now. The car door slammed and she splatted into the house, feet too tired for heels, she'd taken them off while she was driving.
I looked out my bedroom window. There was the BMW, more or less in the middle of the driveway. If I wanted to go out, I'd have to knock her up and ask her to move the car.
"Oh. Sooree," she would say, and rush out as if it was an emergency, as if her kid was in jail again, or her husband had come back to get something he'd forgotten when he left five years ago.
When I couldn't wait any more for lunch, I went out and rang her bell. Her front door was right across from mine. I waited a bit and rang again. Finally she opened up.
"What's a matter? You look drunk," I told her. "Are you drunk?"
She said that she wasn't and went to move her car.
I drove over to the usual place in Menlo. Had the usual burger combo and a beer.
I thought about Marina. The last time I took her to dinner I was sure she'd put out. She didn't, of course. At the door that turn of the cheek for a kiss on the left, then on the right, that European thing which says only friends. Later I watched her out by the pool. She was wearing her gauzy house dress, you could see right through the thing, and she was ghost dancing around the pool, crazily weaving, holding the long trains of the dress out to the sides like fantastic wings, and she was singing, singing, crazy. She's crazy. All those post Soviets are crazy. She looks at you with diamond eyes which never seem to smile but they do, they do, I can tell. I can feel her burning into me with dark sex, turning me to marble. She danced around the pool, she danced around the pool. She was singing. Should I go out there? Should I take her in the night, I wondered. Take her by force until she gave in, scratching and biting and pushing into me as we humped around in the grass skirt surrounding the pool? I liked her tits, her belly, the sleek curves of the woman. I liked the little freckles on her arms, I wanted to lick them off.
The first time I took her out, we even made plans for a trip somewhere. Los Angeles, she said, or Baton Rouge. She wanted to dance, swim, eat frog legs. She wanted me to read to her from Keats. No way, but I said I'd do it. I'd do anything. I wanted to hump her, hump her around the pool. I wondered if she was sleepwalking when she went out there at night. Could I take her while she was asleep like that? Just sweep her up and gently lie her down in the grass and just slobber all over her and finally slide it in and hump. What am I saying, she probably hates sex. That's why her husband left her. She wouldn't give him any, I was sure of it. Yet her eyes said Yes. And the way she smiled at me. She only smiled at me.
When I got back, the car was gone. Her son was home with his ugly music. He was an ape boy. Liked the thud of subwoofers and trance dance clicks and pops. I could kick him for it. Cut his face off. I was always friendly when we spoke, however, and he treated me like a peer. I was so honored by this. The little shit.
I went in and turned on the humidifier, which is just loud enough to cover up his crystal delirium. I thought about Marina. Her mouth. Her mouth. Gonna kiss that sumbitch. Gonna kiss it and lick her face. I will turn her to jelly with my love moves.
She was back now. I saw her standing in the driveway. She was looking at nothing. The music had stopped when she drove up.
I called to her, "Hey, babe!"
"How. Are. You?" she said, not even looking up.
I disappeared from view. That'll show her.
I had an impulse to go for my gun. I thought to shoot at her for fun. Watch her cringe and run. She wouldn't be able to get the door open, her son always did something to the door. She'd jerk and jerk. "Leonid! Leonid!" He wouldn't come. Meanwhile there was more firing. Bullets ricocheted around the driveway, crapping up the paint job on her car, on her son's car, which was a stupid Hummer that deserved to die. Night would fall suddenly. Night would fall. I would ask her in, the gun still in my hand, and I'd take her right there in the hall. She'd be all Fuck me, Fuck me, and I'd hump her into the dust.
I am a man on the make, a man of appetites. I followed her to work next day. She did research for some biotech firm with a screen out front which flashed a lot of dancing baloney and said that you need, want, must have. She walked in the door, swinging her giant handbag. Her ass was fine today, so fine. She worked upstairs, almost in the middle. I could see her in the window, her head moving side to side as she looked at the screen, looked down at her desk, back to the screen. I imagined her fingers, insect dancing in quicktime over the keys. Did she play the piano for Mr. Gorbochev? Did she? Did she? I could see the fool sticking his tongue in her ear under White Nights and a devil moon she called Salonika. The bitch was folded in with the Commissars, Archons of the Holy Proletariat. She was a Whore of the People, and I wanna get me some! She looked down at me and I licked my car window. Then I drove away.
In the White Night I went in with a bottle. She was watching Asian TV. Zip kids dancing. Buzzers going off. Winning bells. Zip characters flashed on boards. She watched, hypnotized. I knew where the corkscrew was. I knew where everything was, even her diaphragm. I poured her a glass of her favorite, cheapo Chardonnay from down to the Jordanian market. Also I brought piroshki. She had crystal glasses from the old country. She wore tape on her specs, three pair, one for distance, one for the middle, another for close-ups of skin moulds, the diseases of birds, megaliths of the Paleoterrific. When she drove into the sun, she wore her shades right on top of the others. She liked the crazy color shift.
I brought her wine. I looked at her.
"What is this crap?" I asked.
"Television, I don't know."
I emptied my glass and filled it again. She'd hardly touched hers. What a bore.
I asked her questions. Did she know that she was my girl friend? My favorite girlfriend?
"I am?" she said, not interested at all.
I drank a lot and plied her with questions.
She told me she was just an ordinary person. She liked ordinary things. When she came home from work she cooked dinner for herself and her son and then she watched TV.
"I am very ordinary," she said, watching the zip characters, the dancing fools, the flashing lights.
I poured her another glass. "You want a piroshki?" I offered. She didn't. Neither did I. They'd rot on the counter.
I asked her some more questions. Sometimes she'd answer. She was moving further and further away into TV land, down rainy streets, tracking dealers, way on into Chinatown where a vast man with a hookah waited behind beaded curtains. There was smoke everywhere and a time to die clicking off, minute by minute, from the face of an antique clock. It was time to die. My time. I should take her in my arms and stab her to death, so that when I kissed her my mouth would fill with blood. I felt that I was smitten, hypnotized by her. A kind of blurred room claimed the space. She sat there as the smog rose around her lazy body, as the thick light starred her glasses. I wanted to put the moves on her but I was too heavy.
I told her that I knew where she worked. That I had followed her there. She nodded. I told her that I followed her everywhere, that I watched her through high powered telescopes. I even aimed my rifle at her sometimes when she drove in. She mumbled something. She didn't care what I said. I think she was going to sleep.
I asked her, "Anybody ever throw a dead cat on your porch?"
When she failed to respond, I got up heavily and left, taking the bottle and the crystal glass home with me. I left the piroshki for the ants, the cat named Steve, her son, and the ravages of time.
