Tomcat in Love by Tim O’Brien Read Free Book Online Page A

twenty-some years my junior, with a mentality to match, I found it relaxing to nod at her callow chitchat, to feel our knees in sporadic contact beneath the dinner table. I explained to her—in no uncertain terms—that my heart resided elsewhere, but this information only served to energize Carla’s already vigorous libido. After dessert, on some brash and flimsy pretext, the tart little lemon drop invited herself up to my room, where we spent an agreeable two hours discussing techniques of vengeance. My companion, I must say, was creative in this regard. She knew the ins and outs of physical reprisal; she had a keen, uncanny eye for the possibilities opened by the advent of AIDS. “The simpler the better,” Carla said at one point. “Envelopes, for instance. Nothing to it.”
    “Envelopes?” I said, and lifted an eyebrow. “Please elaborate.”
    My iron maiden nodded. “The self-addressed kind. All you do is, you brush a little poison on the flap. Arsenic, maybe. After that,it’s easy. Your victim licks the flap, puts on a stamp, and sends you back the evidence. A day later he’s in the morgue. You’re home free.”
    “Elegant,” I murmured.
    “You bet,” said Carla. “And I’ve got a million ideas just like it. Better ones.”
    She kicked off her shoes and sat beside me on the bed. For our night out, the sweet little assassin had dyed her hair a blinding shade of yellow. She wore a leather vest, leather skirt, leather earrings, a heavy chain belt at her waist.
    “Fingernail polish,” she continued grimly. “That’s another one. Two drops of cyanide in the bottle, maybe three, then sit back and watch your mark start biting her fucking fingernails. Zappo. Funeral time.” She glanced at my lower torso, then even farther southward. “Think of all the ridiculous shit people stick in their mouths.”
    It was appropriate, I reckoned, to change the subject. I waited a moment and then innocently inquired about the serpentine tattoo etched upon her abdomen.
    “Oh, that,” Carla said, and shrugged. “My ex-boyfriend’s idea. Like I told you, he’s history. Motorcycle wreck, piss-poor brakes.” She sighed and unzipped her leather vest. “All right, then, if you dig tattoos, I guess you can take a look. But no touchies. You’re an old, old man.”
    “Forty-nine,” I told her. (Accurately enough for the occasion.)
    “Right. Ancient. Hands off.”
    As it turned out, my companion amounted to a living mural of the flesh, and for some time I happily toured her bodily flora and fauna. I noted a honking goose at her left hip. A set of fangs on her inner thigh. Dragons (male and female) on the arches of her bony brown feet. A red rose at her breast.
    It was the rose, alas, that I impulsively plucked.
    Out of sorrow.
    Without the least carnal motive.
    (And who could fault me? I was the ill-fated Achilles, the rose my tender heel.)
    Within an instant I recognized my error, yet the volatile littlehellcat had already seized my thumb and forefinger. I will not repeat the girl’s language. Inventive obscenities. Strident free verse. The gist of it had to do with allegations of attempted rape—patently trumped up—along with several unwholesome phrases regarding my status as a dirty old man. (Which I most emphatically was not. I was clean as a whistle and far from elderly.)
    “No fucking touchies!” Carla yelled. “Didn’t I
tell
you that?”
    “Yes, of course, but I assumed—”
    “Assumed! Just because I was nice to you. An old fart! And now I suppose you want to bite it, don’t you? I suppose you want to
chew
.”
    I was perplexed. I shook my head diagonally.
    “So what does
that
mean?” said Carla. “Yes or no?”
    I nodded.
    “No,” I said.
    “Come on, don’t be such a namby-pamby.” She arched her back, aimed the rose at me. “Make up your mind. Which
is
it?”
    Here, I realized, was a sweetmeat with difficulties.
    I had no inkling as to the proper response—yea or nay, or both, or neither.