226
DON ZACHAR IA
in the mirror when I go home and run my hands along the welts
that you are going to make. No matter what, no matter how I
moan or beg you to stop, you must finish.
If
you don't, it be–
comes a bummer. Here, feel this." She rubs her hand over her cunt
and presses it to my mouth. "I'm sopping, aren't I? I've never been
so wet down there. I'm like a pool just from talking about it.
If
you do it right, lover, if you do it slowly, if you get into the right
mood, I'll come while you are whipping me. NOEL," she sits up,
"WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO YOU?"
I had started to come. Without a hand being laid on me I was
shooting allover the place: the bed, the phone, the ceiling, me,
just like that. · She goes into the bathroom and comes out with a
towel. Smiling, she backhands the towel to me.
o
DYING)
CANCER:
1.
The crab genus.
Ah,
J.
I insisted against every–
one's wishes that they open the coffin. Hands crossed, eyes tightly
shut, whiter than white, how very still she was. "Mr. Roth," J's
doctor is talking to me. He is a nice man I suppose, competent in
his field. Short and stocky, with, yes, a crew cut, but he confided
to me once that he liked Dylan, or was it Dylan Thomas? "It's
only a matter of days," he tells me. His walls are crowded with
degrees and a painting of three yellow flowers. "A week, perhaps
two, it's difficult to project." An image of Loie, my youngest
daughter, sipping morning tea is flashed on the wall next to the
flowers.
It
is there for a blink. She is making a funny face, her eyes
wide and mouth twisted. Ughy tea. Bittersweet stuff. "Try to keep
her out of the hospital as long as you can," J's doctor whispers.
Walter Rudd.
It
is very confusing because in looking back and
looking forward I cannot separate reality from some dreams I am
having. Not being able to separate dreams from reality is intimi–
dating; suggestive of mental problems that I care not to handle or
even think about. I know those policemen came over to my house
though. I still have that lieutenant's card in my drawer, and the
other day I looked at it. His name is Walter Rudd. Lieutenant
Walter Rudd. "I will," I respond, "keep her out of the hospital as
long as I can."
