You Only Shoot The One You Love continued


"You have an accent," I said. "It is a very cute accent."

"You're the one with the accent. Bye now."

She went in.

"Hey!" I called but she didn't come back.

I stood there like a fool.

Nothing was happening. No commotion, nothing. I wondered if the idiot kid had made that cookie herself. They can be savants. In every other respect totally gone in the head but they can fall into math trance and invent the Pythagorean Theorem or something. Discover warp drive. This one could do a giant cookie it would take the whole family to eat. She was damaged. So am I. So is Carhart. We're all damaged in some way like we got dropped. Sacks of groceries that got dropped by a kid on his way home. There's a huge jar of strawberry jelly at the bottom of the bag which  is just neatly shorn in half as if by a diamond saw or something and the contents is drooling all over the other stuff, the frankfurters and bags of chips and oversized balloon bread, maybe a nice chop in shrink wrap which has been marked down because it's gone bad. Someone shot the pig in the head years ago, not meaning to, and hurriedly got the guts out and drained the pig whose name was David or something, loved that pig, drained him and butchered him into chops and hams and butt roasts and so on for all the dinner tables of this land which is my land, yours, too, and Carhart's and that gal who was shot's.

When I got back I asked him, "Why is it you shoot the one you love?"

He looked smug. Drunk and smug.

"She repul-sed me, the biddy. I took her out to this fancyass place, bought this wine I don't even understand and ordered stuff I don't even know what it is. I drank most of the wine and enjoyed the food I was eating, even though I didn't know what it all was, some white goo with meat under it, and it wasn't bad, and the wine was good. This biddy sits across from me, looking like some movie star who is married to a tall athlete only he left her for a trick he bought. You know these novus riches, they can't handle themselves, so now she is without love and I offer her mine before the meal is over but she says Look, I'm very flattered that a scholarly gent such as yourself would love me but I'm not lookin right now, I didn't even want to come here with you tonight only I didn't have anything in the fridge but a chicken pot pie you can microwave only I didn't want that, I wanted a steak, so I let you bring me here like this. I guess it's awful predatory, taking advantage of you like this but I really needed that steak, Carhart … That's what she said. She was using me, the biddy. She ain't so young. Beautiful, sure, and all her titties are in the right place and bet she doesn't wax her pussy,  which is ugly on a woman. I mean, I hate that, a little girl's pussy on a woman, you can't even call it a pussy any more without that nice bush, it's just a little girl's. Anyways, I just sort of accepted it. We had a dessert of some kind of perverted fruit with garlic ice cream or some crud which we pretended to like and left soon after."

"Are there any more questions, officer?" he asked me then, looking up with his sad doggy eyes.

I sat down across from him.

"Gimme some of that," I demanded, and he handed me the bottle.

I took a swig. Then I took a  bigger one.

"Morning drinking," I said. "I am not in the habit of that practice. Not since I lived alone at the Berkeley Inn. I sat there from when I got up until I passed out in the afternoon, drinking from the bottle just like you, only it was generic white wine that came in gallon jugs and I drank it like they do hard cider in those old movies. You know, with the bottle resting on your shoulder and you turn your head to take a swig."

He looked at me with interest. Sort of. Nothing much interests him.

"Were you a casualty of love such as I?

"Maybe," I told him. "I think I was just sort of a casualty. All I know is I didn't care any more. I was on unemployment and I lived in this ugly old hotel which burned down years ago. This was back a ways …"

I took another swig. Then I asked him, "Why do you shoot at that woman, Carhart? I mean, can't you just go out with her again, ask her out again? I mean No isn't always forever, is it? Could be she might yield to your blandishments, you know, cave in and let you have some of that shaved pussy."

"She ain't the type gets it on with a man on a first date," he said wistfully. "I think she is the type that wants flowers sent secretly, little cryptic emails signed, 'The Crucified', shit like that, and also dancing at places with sawdust on the floor. I hate dancing. Then she'd want to know what's in it for her, your bank account, what can you provide her with in the event you kick off, which you certainly are very soon because you are an old fart who don't take care of himself, you now, eating crap and hitting the bottle all the time. I mean I'm elderly. I even pay that joint a pile of dough to send you around. You, this morning drinker who takes my gun away. It's a frikkin toy gun, you degenerate. It just makes noise. I used it for the telescopic capacity which is useful in spying on her. I can't get none of her but I can look. You know, sometimes she comes out there in her bra and panties just to look at the moon and I watch her, watch for some beaver or something. She has nice breasts and then that hair which isn't dyed by the way, it's for real hair with the genuine red streaks which come up through the darkness and blaze like the flames of tresses for which Bathsheba of the Bath was known for. Remember that chick? In the Bible. And an old picture with Susan Hayward and Gregory Peck. I love that name. Peck. He's a pecker, you know, and she is a hayward tending lass. She wants you to confess all your sins and put your hands on the Arc of the Covenant and then just bang away innocently in the hayloft while all of the Kingdom watches and applauds. I told her that story and she laughed like a hyena. She spit her food in my face and I licked it off. I could taste both food and her. It was amazing. Her insides were on me. Some of herself was on me. I even got hard. What a strange life I have."

"Yeh. I would view it as strange."

"What do you know? You are almost as old as I am and here you are still changing diapers and emptying bed pans. I don't even need all that caregiving. It was my goddamn daughter. Maybe she is my daughter, I don't know. Can a man love his own daughter like that?"

I told him he was out of it, drunk and disgusting. He should sleep it off so I can just read for the rest of my shift.

"No, you are here now, so you must listen to me, gladiator. I am a Consul of Rome and you are a slave. A slave to  love such as I. Did you like her? I mean, did you see her out there?"

I thought about it. I thought about how I liked her, how beautiful she was. How she had told me that Carhart was always shooting at her: it was an act of love - I could hear that in her voice. I suppose I said something to him about it all but the next thing I knew it was Gonzales, shaking me, telling me I could go home.