Whatever Lola Wants by George Szanto Read Free Book Online

Is she important to Carney’s story?”
    Important? No one more so. “Such impatience. Why don’t I tell you? Then you’ll know.”
    She gave me an “I’m sorry” smile, and pretended to glance over the edge.
    â€¢
    Again Bobbie’s silence. She stared out at them, her large brown eyes unblinking. Her darker brown hair covered her forehead, cut off in a hard line a half inch above her eyebrows. She stood. “That’s all.” Her brown sack dress hung to her knees, in front from her tits, behind from her ass. She walked off the makeshift stage.
    The applause came hard. Cries of, “More, Bobbie! More!”
    She reappeared, suddenly grinned, and Ginsberg saw the sister he should have had. The audience’s shouting fell away. She said, “There isn’t any.”
    â€œGo write some!” yelled Gary, and people laughed.
    She sipped bourbon. She’d arrived in San Francisco seven months back. And fitted in. First place she could say to herself, Here is home now. She missed her sister, Annette, sure, and her nephew, Carruthers. A little bit Annette’s husband; they sometimes talked easily, sometimes less so. Her father maybe but he was out of his head and if he ever came back in she had no idea what he’d be like. Her mother? Maybe she loved her mother but she sure didn’t miss her. Nobody else. Here they all knew why she couldn’t have stayed in Median. They’d all come from the same kind of place, Topeka and Dracut, Cincinnati, Medicine Hat, Amesville. The bourbon wasn’t much good. Surely Kenneth had better taste than this; why the hell did he serve this crap.
    She searched for him among bookshelves and displays. Never mind, if she wanted better bourbon she’d return to Median, to some Dennis who prided himself on his bourbon, needed his dentist’s salary to pay for it. Go all the way to New Hampshire for better bourbon? Too late for that. She held her nose and chugged it down.
    Ginsberg hugged her from behind. “Good,” he said. “Friggin’ good.”
    â€œFriggin’?”
    â€œShould I say ‘fuckin’ to a lady who says ‘fucking’?”
    â€œIs that what I am, a lady?”
    â€œHalf,” he said, and looked her up and down. “Less and less,” he added.
    She patted his scraggled cheek. She wondered what he’d be like in bed. She wondered the same about half the men here. Half of the other half she already knew about. She knew she’d never go to bed with Ginsberg, she wasn’t his sort of attachment. She’d tried it the other way herself, with Carla and a couple of times with little Martha but didn’t get off on it, she preferred men. She smiled. Female after all. Not feminine, thank god. The girls in her dorm tried to feminize her, makeup and satin; but for whom? Those little boys who arrived on Saturday afternoons from Brown, Yale, Dartmouth? Ridiculous. Which left only the professors. “Is it them we’re after?” she’d asked her roommate Libby.
    Libby blushed. “Bobbie, really.”
    Libby was truly clever in the bio lab, a smasho mind at work. But also so pretty, tease-curled hair and bitsy nose and bright red lips. For whom? Herself? More of a challenge to try a professor. Bobbie had been attracted enough to one, her history man. At the seminar table he was so wise and smart from the button of his jacket up. She’d wondered what he’d be like below the table, behind the zipper. She asked for an appointment, dressed feminine, met him in his office. She couldn’t get him to touch her first, so she touched him. In ten minutes he was all in love. Lucky he was married or he’d have been on her the whole semester. This way, if he didn’t accept her schedule, she’d write his wife a letter. She decided not to tell Libby about the history man, Lib would go all pink-cheeked and then distant and envious. Hard to live