“Maybe,” she says, “there’s something wrong with me—anything’s possible. Like when I’m screwing I scream, I moan, sometimes I even bark like a goddamn dog, but I’ll let you in on a secret.” She looks up at me, her eyes clown-sad. “I’ve never come in my life,” she says, “except maybe once in the seventh grade.”

She kicks off her shoes. “No kidding aside, my troubles began even earlier. When I was a little baby I cried and cried. They finally found out my arm was broke. I was so fat they hadn’t noticed.”

I sit down beside her.

“I went through a stage,” she says, “it went on for years. I was so nervous I pulled out my eyelashes. Don’t you want any beer?”

I take the flagon and drink.

“I started screwing regularly in high school,” she says. “I mean for money, to save up and buy a fur jacket which I wouldn’t do it now what with all the stink about killing live animals and I agree. But I never did buy it, that is, because I was sure I’d die before I wore it out even a little. I always had this panicky feeling whenever I was screwing in the back of a car that somebody invisible was up front. You’re a good listener,” she says. “Shit, I wish I had brought more beer.”

She takes off her glasses, holds them to the light, runs her tongue across each lens front and back, and squints around for something to clean them. She settles on the patch of gauze at her crotch.

“The best job I ever had,” she says, “was working for this guy on Forty-second Street with a hair lip. He had a sign outside: SEE AND TALK TO LIVE NUDE GIRL—$1. All I had to do was sit there. Everything else in my whole life has been a hard hustle.” She settles against my shoulder. “But it’s kind of all worked out in the end. Maybe not for you, Juddie, but Abdul gave me a place to live and I don’t have to do anything I don’t want, not even talk to some pimply-faced kid.”

I put my arm around her. She sighs contentedly. “Sometimes,” she says, “I used to wonder if Elvis was really alive.”

We sit there I don’t know how long. Darkness falls. I rock her in my arms and she goes to sleep.

THIRTY
MUCH IN DEMAND