Fat City (New York Review Books Classics) by Leonard Gardner

Fat City (New York Review Books Classics) by Leonard Gardner

Author:Leonard Gardner [Gardner, Leonard]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781590178935
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2015-09-08T00:00:00+00:00


15

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be without that man?”

“Uh,” said Billy Tully.

“And he didn’t mean it. He just gets so nervous. You don’t know what you have to take when you’re interracial. Every son-of-a-bitch on the street has to get a look at you. And Earl’s really a peaceable man. He’s even-tempered. He didn’t hurt that guy and he didn’t want to. Just a little nick on the back of the neck. He wouldn’t any more try to assult somebody than you’d get up on that stool and try to fly. He couldn’t. He’s just not made that way. He’s the sweetest-natured man in the world.”

“He’ll get out,” said Tully, glancing at her in the mirror, her eyes darkly circled, nose dented, mouth bracketed with lines, her lips red and sorrowful and with a fullness, for an instant there beyond the reflected bottles, like the fullness of his wife’s lips. He turned to her, but her face was down and her lips, blocked from his view by her mass of curly hair, could not be like his wife’s because his wife would not have worn that hairdo. His wife had had taste, which had the effect of disqualifying the woman beside him. He turned back to his drink with a pleasurably melancholy sense of fidelity. Impressed by the breadth of his love, he resigned himself. Hopefully he had come to sit by this woman, Oma, whom he remembered as having once intrigued him, but now he felt only indifference. As she talked on, he looked wearily down the lighted bar, lined with beer bottles, glasses, brown bare arms and hot-sauce bottles filled with salt. He had spent the day picking peaches.

“He’s so jealous. I wouldn’t put it past him to be out already, spying on every move I make.”

Tully glanced at the open doorway. Mournful Mexican howls came from the jukebox. On a calendar above the ranks of Thunderbird and Silver Spur, a bare-breasted Aztec maiden lay sleeping at the feet of a warrior, flanked by two giant bottles of Cerveza XX, against a background of snow-capped volcanoes.

“He won’t let me talk to people. He’s so possessive. He’d never let me out of his sight. And he’d get so mad at me. You know when we talked last time, you and me, way back then? You know what he did to me afterwards? He raped me.”

Tully turned to the brown eyes, the lids puffy, eyebrows a short stubble under bluish penciled lines.

“He just picked me up and threw me on the bed. Well, don’t look at me like that. I’m not ashamed to say it. I’ve never been ashamed of the act of love. I believe it’s a part of life.”

Tully was regaining his interest. “Sure, why not? I mean, after all, if people like each other.”

“I don’t mean free love. I got no use for that.”

“Well, free, depends what you mean free. If it’s not free can you call it love?”

“I mean real love. I’m talking about love, not just sex.



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