Music for Chameleons by Truman Capote Read Free Book Online Page A

the Jews at the club, and it was me that cut down on the sex— way down, what with my blood pressure and all. But she never complained. Weread the Bible together, and night after night she would read aloud from magazines, good magazines like Reader’s Digest and The Saturday Evening Post , until I fell asleep. She was always saying she hoped she died before I did because she would be heartbroken and destitute. It was true I didn’t have much to leave. No insurance, just some bank-savings that I turned into a joint account, and I had the trailer put in her name. No, I can’t say there was a harsh word between us until she had the big fight with Hulga.
    “ ‘For a long time I didn’t know what the fight was about. All I knew was that they didn’t speak to each other any more, and when I asked Ivory what was going on, she said: “Nothing.” As far as she was concerned, she hadn’t had any falling-out with Hulga: “But you know how much she drinks.” That was true. Well, like I told you, Hulga was a waitress at the club, and one day she comes barging into the massage room. I had a customer on the table, had him there spread out buck-naked, but a lot she cared—she smelled like a Four Roses factory. She could hardly stand up. She told me she had just got fired, and suddenly she started swearing and pissing. She was hollering at me and pissing all over the floor. She said everybody at the trailer park was laughing at me. She said Ivory was an old whore who had latched onto me because she was down and out and couldn’t do any better. And she said what kind of a chowderhead was I? Didn’t I know my wife was fucking the balls off Freddy Feo since God knows when?
    “ ‘Now, see, Freddy Feo was an itinerant Tex-Mex kid—he was just out of jail somewhere, and the manager of the trailer park had picked him up in one of those fag bars in Cat City and put him to work as a handyman. I don’t guess he could have been one-hundred-percent fag because he was giving plenty of the old girls around there a tickle for their money. One of them was Hulga. She was loop-de-do over him. On hot nightshim and Hulga used to sit outside her trailer on her swing-seat drinking straight tequila, forget the lime, and he’d play the guitar and sing spic songs. Ivory described it to me as a green guitar with his name spelled out in rhinestone letters. I’ll say this, the spic could sing. But Ivory always claimed she couldn’t stand him; she said he was a cheap little greaser out to take Hulga for every nickel she had. Myself, I don’t remember exchanging ten words with him, but I didn’t like him because of the way he smelled. I have a nose like a bloodhound and I could smell him a hundred yards off, he wore so much brilliantine in his hair, and something else that Ivory said was called Evening in Paris.
    “ ‘Ivory swore up and down it wasn’t so. Her? Her let a Tex-Mex monkey like Freddy Feo put a finger on her? She said it was because Hulga had been dumped by this kid that she was crazy and jealous and thought he was humping everything from Cat City to Indio. She said she was insulted that I’d listen to such lies, even though Hulga was more to be pitied than reviled. And she took off the wedding ring I’d given her—it had belonged to my first wife, but she said that didn’t make any difference because she knew I’d loved Hedda and that made it all the better—and she handed it to me and she said if I didn’t believe her, then here was the ring and she’d take the next bus going anywhere. So I put it back on her finger and we knelt on the floor and prayed together.
    “ ‘I did believe her; at least I thought I did; but in some way it was like a seesaw in my head—yes, no, yes, no. And Ivory had lost her looseness; before she had an easiness in her body that was like the easiness in her voice. But now it was all wire—tense, like those Jews at the club that keep whining and scolding because you can’t rub away all