Ladies' Man by Richard Price Read Free Book Online Page B

Lake Mohegan, grab groceries, jump in the sack and fuck like fiends. Weekend after weekend, watch a little tube, make a little fire, eat a little steak, read a little literature. With luck, the sun would never shine and we'd be surrounded by this cozy leafy gray for two whole days.
    The last time we did that was October. Five months ago. Now it was too cold. I was too busy, she was too busy, who knows. And she hadn't cracked a book since then either. Nor had I, come to think of it. And now everything sucked. The bubble had popped once again like it always did. She was off playing Don Quixote of the cabarets while I was running ragy dialogues through my head.
    I must have lived with four La Donnas in the last six years and sometimes I thought I was destined to have twice as many in the next six. I seemed to float from one bad, heavy relationship to another, like a trapeze artist swinging from one suspended bar to the next with no net below. And I wasn't saying I was any prize either. I would be just as bad for them as they would be for me. But as bad as all my La Donnas were, what preceded them was a hundred, a thousand times worse; the sad case of Kenny Solo—Kenny living alone. Two years of a howling loneliness, a hunger that wouldn't let me sleep, wouldn't let me relax. For two goddamn years almost every night I would go to bars, to diners, looking for ladies. That's not true. I would just go through the motions mainly so at some point I could go home satisfied that I had at least tried. And that was seven nights a week. Every night I would drive myself out of the house with a crazy feeling of "I'm missing it. It's all happening
now
. She's out there right
now
, you jerk."
    Before Kenny Solo, I was- Kenny Groupo. I lived a year with guys. That was another nightmare. Purple walls, gummed stars on the ceiling, no toilet paper, Pork Chop Hill mounds of dishes in the sink. Communal towels that smelled like rat death and assholes; no privacy, no privacy.
    And before that I lived with my parents.
    I felt like I hadn't found it yet I hadn't made my move yet.
    Something was scaring me about getting down. But something was coming. Sometimes I would wake up high as a kite about some intangible something. Sometimes I would walk down the street and feel all of a sudden like I could burst out of my skin with joy. Little rushes, tastes in my mouth. Something was in the air with me. Something was coming for sure. Something
had better
be in the air with me; I was thirty goddamn years old.
     
    Riding downtown I had a fantasy of coming home and La Donna telling me she was pregnant. "Kill it," I would say.
     
    I was not in the mood to walk around all day, kissing ass, hawking room spray to shut-ins. And if I wasn't in the mood to do what I had to do I was a goner. My job would turn into a nightmare. One thing I had learned in the last few years was that people picked tip where you were coming from immediately, and if you were knocking on doors with a look on your face like who flung it and left it you would have so many slammed doors in your kisser you'd get windburn. And I had a face like a neon sign, too.
    The bus left me off by the diner. The minute I swung open the door I got hit with that diner smog and that pain-in-the-ass crackle-hiss soundtrack of frying eggs and home fries. I started down the narrow aisle between the red vinyl booths and counter stools, my sample case, like a bad conscience, smacking into my calf with every step.
    "Kenny, you look like shit." Cheeseburger George the grill man looked up from pushing around his cholesterol disasters.
    "Thank you, George, have a nice day."
    The Bluecastle House boys were sitting at our table in the far corner. Al Fiorita, Jerry Gold and Maurice de la Creep, sitting there in their jackets and ties squinting and wheezing from a combination of cigarette and griddle grease smoke. They hadn't seen me come in. Fat Al was in the middle of a story. Charlene blocked my path taking an order