Everyone in Venice Knows
A Short Story...in 2 or 3
installments
By Carol
Fondiller
(from the Beachhead archives: Nov.
1975, #71)
“Well, there I was,
trudging along W. Washington Blvd. at 11:30 PM. I had my purse filled with all
the personal belongings I could stuff into it – I left the rest of my
stuff in my Venice valises – 2 shopping bags. They were stored in the same
corner that some other ‘lady’ (he calls women
‘ladies’)...well, where this other lady had left her stuff. Sort of
an accumulation of lady leavings,” she giggled.
“Every time I thought I heard the
sound of a 350 Kawasaki motorcycle, I’d turn around and run back to his
garage. Maybe it was him. Oh
boy.”
Deborah’s eyes filled
with tears and she laughed. She was sprawled in a formerly overstuffed armchair
from which the stuffing’s hung out in cottony entrails. One of her legs
was dangling over the arm of the chair. The chair’s degfutter, a large
longhaired honey-colored Tom, was in her lap. Deborah, she hated being called
Debbie, “Debbie sounds so sorority, and sorority I’m not,”
stroked the cat, and drank the dank cold
coffee.
“I mean I really think
I’ve hit the apex or the nadir, whatever you call it, of total
annihilation – not everybody gets that, you know. It’s an experience
you savor, like hitting your elbow on a coffee table. I feel as if I’ve
been run over by a Mack
Truck.”
Sheila nodded
sympathetically, her Sasson-cut blonde hair bobbing in accord. She’d been
through this with Deborah before and of course, as with women who were friends a
long time, Deborah had baby sat Sheila through the emotional flotsam and jetsam
of the breakups of her various journeys on the stormy seas of love. Notably the
last one with Bob, who turned out to be married and a compulsive liar who
borrowed money and never returned
it.
“I mean I didn’t want
to look like the complete reject with my big purse, totting those damn shopping
bags, trudging along W. Washington with nothin’ but the bars open...And he
and she-it exchanging saliva in one of the back
booths...”
“She-it?”
asked Sheila as she groped about the small crowded room or her coffee
cup.
“Oh that’s my private
name for her. Every time Kevin talked about her, I’d think
‘she-it’,” said Deborah.
“Hey, thanks for the ear...really
appreciate it...she-it ...got a face like a ferret, and the soft moist eyes of a
predacious poodle – excuse the alliteration – hey, but I’m
really upset.”
She fished around
in her large handbag and came up with a cigarette. It was late afternoon quiet
now, and Sheila sat on the unmade bed in Deborah’s small messy room. She
glanced out the window and watched two longhaired bearded young men wrestle a
huge sideboard onto a U-Haul truck. Someone’s movin’ out, thought
Sheila. Wonder how much rent they
paid?
Sheila went into the kitchen to
reheat the coffee. As she turned on the flame, a cockroach burned itself in the
flames. Wonder what it’s protecting, she
thought.
Deborah called out –
”Hey, fill my cup too, OK?” She came into the kitchen and handed it
to Sheila.
“Wow...and the thing is
everyone in Venice knows about me and Kevin. Me and Kevin Barry
Mulcahy”
Silence. Deborah went back
into the room that served as living and bed room, sat on the bed legs, crossed
tailor fashion, and divined back and forth, her eyes closed, tears leaking
through her lashes. “Kevin Barry Mulcahy,” she murmured in a low
voice, Kevin Barry Mulcahy, Kevin Barry Mulcahy. In case it escaped your notice,
he ain’t Jewish.”
Silence.
Her big honey-colored cat stretched and yawned, mouth open like a whale waiting
for minnows to come in. He stretched again, lay down with a grunt on the shabby
chair.
“Oh boy! I sure know how
to pick ‘em – I mean I have an unerring instinct for emotional
sociopaths. Come here Clawswits. Come on baby big fat
cat”
The cat opened one eye,
stared at her, sat up and floated to the ground, his luxuriant tail held high
like a banner, then leapt on the bed onto her lap. Deborah stroked him and
nuzzled her face in his fur.
“Oh,
you feel like a cashmere coat, Cawswits, you really do. Boy, my eyelids are
puffy and my eyeliner and mascara are running...bet my eyes look like a giant
panda’s.” She sniffed as Sheila handed her the coffee.
“Cream’s in the freezer, sugar’s on the desk.” Sheila
stuck her tongue out at
Deborah.
“Look kiddo, just
because you’re depressed...” She opened the refrigerator which was
in the living bedroom because the kitchen was too small to hold it, and rummaged
among the empty cat food tins and moldy lettuce and found the half-and-half and
handed it to Deborah.
Deborah poured
some of it into her coffee. She found the teaspoon on her desk which had
accumulated tobacco shreds, spilled sugar and particles of marijuana. She wiped
off the spoon on her T-shirt, poured the sugar in and stirred. Her Cupid’s
bow mouth was surrounded by heavy lines that came down from her beaky nose to
her chin enclosing her mouth like parentheses.
In six years she’d be forty-two
and jowly she thought. Her nearsighted eyes peered out peered out from large
round thick-rimmed glasses. Her brown hair was thick, curly, and course, each
strand standing out as if they were antennae. She had broad shoulders, big
breasts, thick thighs, and short stocky legs...a real peasant build.
“ I knew it was all over when
she showed up without eye makeup,” she said as she dabbed at her own
eyes.
“Huh?” said Sheila.
“Run that by me
again”
“Well, when she came
back from her journey to find herself to see Kevin, she had on really heavy eye
makeup. He really attacked her. He told her she looked hard. I could tell he
really got to her. Her eyes got teary. She made fun of his paintings – she
was wearing tight pants, tight blouse, wedgies, the whole bit. The next day she
showed up in jeans, a loose muslin blouse and no
makeup.”
Deborah untangled her
legs from her tailor position and got another cigarette. “I see what you
mean,” said Sheila. Deborah lit her cigarette and inhaled it all the way
to her belly button. She coughed. “Whew. Care for some grass?”
Sheila shook her head no.
“Me
neither. Any way when she-it showed up without make up, I knew. When I told
Kevin that I knew she wanted to get together with him, he got angry, exploded,
told me all he wanted to do was to go on drinking and painting, and he
didn’t want any petty bull-shit personal relationships to keep him from
proceeding, and he didn’t want to cement any more emotional bricks in a
relationship with her, and that I was crazy.
Well, I shut up. But I knew she was
not through with Kevin yet. I might not be awfully bright, but perception is my
beat.” Deborah took another puff of her cigarette, lay down and stared at
the flaking ceiling enriched with dusty brown cobwebs. Deborah liked her ceiling
– it was almost as baroque as the ceiling of a European church.
“What’s – uh shee-it’s real name?” asked Sheila
after a long, long silence.
Her eyes
teared from the cigarettes that Deborah had been chain smoking. But she realized
Deborah was smoking to prevent over-eating, and what the hell, she knew she
drove Deborah crazy when she played hard rock full blast when she was in the
dumps, and ear drums were just as vulnerable as eyes. “Oh God, her name is
Ronnie Rudnick – that’s a name – and her dog’s name is
Leah – she and I got to know each other intimately – the dog and me,
that is.
Seems that when Ronnie
returned from her quest for life from Florida, where according to Kevin
she’d been getting down with anything that was over 12 years old and over
five inches, she was broke and had to crash with her sister, who is allergic to
dogs. So naturally little Ronnie Rudnick asked Kevin to keep the dog.”
Deborah’s voice imitated Ronnie’s soft sweet voice. “Oh I hope
she won’t bee too much of a bother. I’d really appreciate you taking
care of little Leah – I’ll walk
her!’Ugh!”
Deborah got up and poked around the room,
picking her way through the newspapers, empty cups and clothes that carpeted the
floor. “Then you know what happened – the old ‘We’re
going out to have a few drinks, to talk about old times’ ploy. I mean, the
night before, an ex-lover of mine came over to talk to me at our booth in the
Drop-Inn.”
Kevin was as gracious
as a hangover. He didn’t say a word, just hung his head down, stared at
his beer, and moved away from me. Oh Jesus! Jesus! Well we left, and the minute
we got to his garage, he started calling me a flaky Venice female, that I should
go back to the Drop-Inn and maybe I could ball my ex-lover, who was repulsive,
and how could I get in bed with a pig like that, that this guy was a jammer. You
know where he got the expression jamming?
During World War II he was a radio
operator and the enemy would try to interfere with the messages he was sending
by jamming the frequency. – Oh Jesus – Well, he went on with his
insults, and I crept into bed – he was kicking his easel now, and really
revving up. I held back my replies and told him I was really tired, and
I’d heard his insults before and when he got some new ones would he wake
me up – well, he calmed down, and apologized, said he was tired and he
really loved me, and he held me and made love to me – Got I felt it was
all worth it!
The next day I had to go
to court in downtown L.A. You know what that’s like – you have to be
down there at 9 A.M. – hurry up and wait. Sit there and listen to other
people’s cases – well we got home by 6 that evening and all I wanted
to do was go to sleep with him beside me – really! So what happens? Little
Ronnie Rudnick appears, fresh as a daisy, squeaky clean, eyes aglow with
adoration, greeting her doggie, and looking moisty at Kevin – then he
looks at me and says, ‘Ronnie and I are going to the Drop-Inn for a few
drinks, be back in an hour, O.K.?’ Well what could I say? I wanted to say
‘Hell no, let the bitch do it on her time not mine. I want you here with
me,’ but that sounded as if I were possessive and that’s a cardinal
sin, so I said, ‘Go ahead on.’
Well, they left, little Ronnie on my
seat on his cycle – sorry that’s the way I think. “I think I
knew then that this was the turning point – I mean when she first came
back into town she was hard and brittle, belittled his paintings, ‘Oh,
Kevin Barry you haven’t really done anything since last year!’
That’s when she left him to find herself in Florida.
Christ! He talked about her all the
time. Ronnie this, Ronnie read her plays at the Church in Ocean Park, Ronnie and
the Women’s Center, how well Ronnie could macrame’, how she learned
to run a computer in two hours, how she could tap dance, quote quantum theorems
while analyzing the role of women in 12th Century Wales, and go down on all the
crowned heads of Europe at the same time. Shit.”
Deborah lowered her voice which was
getting louder and more nasal. She punched the wall with her fists. “Damn!
Why me, God?” she wailed. “Oh shit – you know he and I were
seen everywhere together. he was the only dude I ever danced the dirty boogie
with at Honky Hoagies – we necked in public – I love him.
I told him his garage was a
magicians’s eyre filled with his invocations and his tools of magic
– I let myself be vulnerable to him because he said trust me. And I did.
He got angry, when I said I couldn’t let go, because of my experiences
with other man.” A put-put whine of a small engine went by, Deborah looked
out of the window, then turned back.
She smiled sheepishly –
”Sorry, I thought it was Kevin’s cycle, and I had a quick daydream
about how he would shout that he changed his mind – well that wasn’t
even a cycle – it was a Datsun – ” She shrugged her shoulders.
“‘I’m not other men,’ he said, ‘and I resent the
bullshit that’s put on me because of other men!’ And I felt he was
right.
Any way, off they went. An
hour, then two then three, then I got loaded – I mean so loaded that I
couldn’t move. Then the night sounds of good ol’ Venice – I
mean here I am in this garage, right? People stomping by arguing, cars whizzing
by, fire engines, police sirens, gun shots – I mean it’s his place,
right? His books, his TV’s on the blink, his records not mine. His
paintings pulsating and glowing on the walls, right?
And I am so stoned and so paranoid
that every sound scares the hell out of me. And I try to sleep, right?
Then Leah, her dog crawls in bed with
me – there they are in Venice re-acquainting themselves with all their old
friends they knew as a couple, talking short hand to one another – you
know how people talk when they’ve been with one another for a long time
– there they are falling in love all over again, and I am sleeping with
her fucking dog! She’s a nice dog but it’s her dog – this
wonderful talented terrific person’s dog. Well, all I did was cry and
imagine her asking him for a friendly fuck for ol’ time’s
sake.”
to be
continued...
Posted: Sat
- July 1, 2006 at 02:08 PM