218
DON ZACHARIA
at the nape of her neck and run my fingers up and down that
strange valley that is formed in certain women. Nothing is as it
appears at first.
"The telephone is ringing," she says.
"I don't hear it."
"The telephone is ringing. Listen--there, it just rang."
I listen very intently. "I still don't hear it."
"I'm getting bored. Do vou have any porny movies?"
"In my life there have been two women who have known me.
One being my late past dead wife, and the other a girl from Balti–
more who married a chiropractor.
If
they were in this room now
they would both say in unison that nothing is as it appears at
first. "
I run my fingers through her thick red curly hair. I am always
touching her hair; in restaurants, in theaters. Sometimes as we
walk together I will reach out and with my fingers gather in its
texture. I love doing it. Twice at nighttime she has let me fall
asleep with my lips buried in her hair. I have been afraid to ask her
to do it again. She, probably, knowing her, would make a whole
thing out of it, and honestly, it's nothing, just a pleasant kind of
feeling. I notice for the first time that it is darker at the roots and
it occurs to me that even though I have fucked her four dozen or
so times and sucked her off AT LEAST half of that again, for a
million dollars I didn't know the color of her pubic hairs. Do I
shut my eyes? Good God! I get out of bed, unnerved, and go into
the bathroom and rinse my mouth out with a super size bottle of
Scope.
"What are you doing," she asks .
"I'm rinsing my mouth out with Scope."
"Why?"
"Like that."
"Do you feel you did something dirty with it, Noel?"
I spit. "Jesus, really Jesus. Sometimes I've noticed, particu–
larly after I've screwed you, you get very hostile toward me." I
smile at myself in the mirror. "Every night," I go on, "for that last
twenty years I have rinsed my mouth out. I don't think I have ever
missed."
