Loving Women by Pete Hamill Read Free Book Online

And wished I hadn’t added that “I guess.” I didn’t need doubt. Or qualification.
    She was quiet for a moment, and then said, “How old are you?”
    And I said (taking it from a movie or a story or from somebody else), “Old enough.”
    She smiled again, showing those teeth.
    “Old enough for what ?”
    She giggled when she said that, and I thought of Turner: People laugh at sailors .
    “Old enough to tell you you’re beautiful.”
    She fumbled for a fresh cigarette and sighed. “Well, I sure don’t feel beautiful. But I guess I’ll take the compliment. Thank you, child.” She lighted another Lucky and offered me the pack and when I shook my head, she tucked them away. She held the cigarette in her left hand, which was bent almost at a right angle to her arm. “You got any vices, child?” I hated that “child.” It sounded as if she was playing with me. Keeping me at a distance by treating me like a kid. And I thought: Give her the worldly look, the Flip Corkin set of the mouth . I assumed it, and shrugged off her question in a weary way. She said “You got somethin wrong with your mouth?”
    Shit.
    “No. Why?”
    “Never mind.” She took a deep drag and leaned back and blew a perfect smoke ring, then a second smaller one. Just like the Camels sign in Times Square. And I thought, She’s performing for me. Maybe she’s trying to act as cool for me as I am for her .
    “Where’d you learn to do that ?” I said.
    “A sick damn cousin of mine. And I mean sick in the head. That girl knew everything bad there was to know. Started me smokin when I was eight.”
    “You’re kidding. Eight?”
    “Well, I tried it when I was eight. Just puffin and like that. I really started serious when I was nine.”
    I laughed and so did she.
    “Where you from?” I said.
    She paused. “Down here. From the South.”
    “Any special place?”
    “No.”
    She was avoiding an answer, pushing me back. She stared at her cigarette. Then in the back of the bus someone started to sing: “Should auld acquaintance be forgot …” She turned, as if to listen, then took a small nervous drag. “And ne’er be brought to mind?…” Others were joining in, and I was humming, and she started to sing too, very quietly, and tamped out the cigarette and closed her eyes. “For auld lang syne, my dears, for auld lang syne …” The bus was loud with the song now, with New Year’s Eve, with the sadness of the old words in a sad bus heading south. “We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet …” She opened her eyes. They were brimming. When she closed them, tears slipped down the sides of her face. “For auld lang syne …”
    She didn’t open her eyes again. Her hands clenched and unclenched. Then they were still. The bus grew quiet. We passed through an endless region of blackness. Then, on a long wide turn, she fell gently against me. Deep in sleep. And didn’t move. I could smell her hair. Clean and washed. She smelled a lot better than I did. There was a slight snore coming from her. Her right arm was flat and still on my thigh, lying there for a while, and then her hand took hold, hugging my leg in the dark. My heart moved quickly, pumping excitement through me. I was sure this was a signal, a moment of intimacy, a display of confidence and safety. I was desperate for the love of a woman. And here she was. We’d met in the dark on a New Year’s Eve and she was telling me from sleep that there were joinings that did not depend on words. I could feel her breath against my arm, the rhythmic rise and fall of her body. Old enough, I thought.

Chapter
    5
    A lmost as soon as she had appeared in my life, she was gone. I woke up suddenly in a world full of morning green. The woman’s seat was empty. I turned and saw other empty seats on the bus, and a black man with gray hair looking at me in a knowing way and Turner four rows in front, sleeping with his head against a window. But the woman wasn’t on the bus. She’d talked to