Len Levinson - Without Mercy

She moved her head back and looked at him as though the little wheels in her head were spinning fast. “Is that what you’re going to do, Danny?”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do, Francie. I work like a dog and when I have a chance I come over here.”

“If you meet somebody you like more than me you’ll leave me?”

“That’s what people do, isn’t it?”

She punched him in the ribs. “You son of a bitch!”

He grabbed her slim wrist before she did it again. “Your problem is that you can’t deal with the truth. People leave each other when they find somebody they like better. Isn’t that what you did with your husband?”

“Yes, but—”

“And the guy after him?”

“Yes, but—”

“You’ll do the same thing to me, or I’ll do it to you. Or maybe neither of us will find anybody better and we’ll keep on like this for the rest of our lives.”

“Do you really think that might happen?”

“Why not? I’m not looking for anybody. I’m too busy. I’m glad that I’ve got you so I don’t have to look for anybody else.”

She pressed her breasts against him. “I love it when you talk to me like that.”

“All you want me to do is tell you how wonderful and beautiful you are.”

“Is that so hard?”

“No, but this is.” He moved her hand down and pressed it against his erection.

“What’s this, Danny?” she asked ingenuously, squeezing it.

“You know very well what it is.”

“Can I have it?”

“Sure.”

She caressed it while kissing his lips, cheeks, nose, and chin. “Oh, you’re such a sexy man,” she sighed.

He unzipped his fly and took it out.

“It’s so big,” she said, wrapping her hand around it.

“I’ll bet you say that to all the guys.”

“I do not!”

“Sure you do.”

“It really is big, and it feels so good.”

“It’s missed you.”

“Has it really?”

“Yes, and it wants to do it to you.”

She giggled. “Do what to me?”

“You know.”

“Tell me.”

“Why is it that you always want me to talk dirty?”

“I don’t know. Tell me.”

“It wants me to fuck you.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“What else?”

“Guess.”

“Does it want me to suck you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“If I suck you, will you suck me?”

“You know that I don’t like to do that so much, Francie.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t explain it.”

“Afraid it’ll bite you?”

“I’m not afraid it’ll bite me. Why don’t we take our clothes off?”

“Okay.”

“Did you put your diaphragm in?”

Embarrassed, she burrowed her face into his shoulder. “Yes.”

“Is it in right this time?”

“I think so.”

“You’re the only girl I ever met in my life who didn’t know how to put her diaphragm in right.”

“I can’t help it, Danny.”

“Why don’t you get your act together, Francie?”

“I do have my act together.”

They kissed, rubbing against each other, touching, moaning, getting dizzy. Across the room Ziggy ran on his treadmill. Somebody was yelling in the next apartment, and a car horn blew on the street below.

“Your diaphragm isn’t in right, Francie.”

“It isn’t?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“How can you tell?”

“Because it’s supposed to be in deeper than it is right now.”

“Why don’t you fix it for me?”

“I don’t know where it’s supposed to go.”

“I did it the way my gynecologist told me to do it. Of course, she was very busy at the time.”

“You wouldn’t be trying to get pregnant by any chance, would you?”

She widened her eyes. “NO!”

“It seems to me that a woman who didn’t want to get pregnant would be more careful about the way she put in her diaphragm.”

“What would I want to get pregnant for?”

“I don’t know. Maybe so that I’d have to marry you?”

“I wouldn’t do such a thing so that you’d marry me.”

“Maybe not consciously, but in your unconscious little female mind I think you might. You can’t deny that you’d like to get married to me.”

“I don’t deny it. I’m in love with you. But you’re not in love with me.”

“I told you that I don’t believe in that baloney anymore.”

“I wish I’d met you before you met your two wives. Why is it that I keep meeting men who’ve been destroyed by other women?”

“I don’t know, Francie. Why don’t you fix your diaphragm?”

“I’m embarrassed.”

“Then go to the bathroom and fix it.”

She pulled up her underpants, stood, and walked across the living room to the bathroom. Pausing at the bathroom door, she gave him a wink, then went inside.

Jackie Doolan’s clothes were tattered and his bare feet could be seen through the holes in the tops of his shoes. He’d cut the holes himself with his knife because the shoes had been too tight. Now they felt real good as he shuffled along East Ninth Street in an old tenement neighborhood for the next constellation of garbage cans in front of the building straight ahead. It was ten o’clock in the evening.

Jackie Doolan was fifty-five years old and a chronic alcoholic. He’d been on the bum for twenty years and functioned quite resourcefully at that level. One of his survival strategies was the ransacking of garbage cans for leftover bits of food and other items that he could wear or sell, stuffing them into the burlap bag slung over his shoulder. His vision wasn’t too good and his brain was pickled but he could distinguish a sardine from a piece of cat shit at twenty paces.

A streetlamp shone over his shoulder as he stopped in front of the garbage cans and put down his burlap bag. His nose had been broken in a street fight many years ago and his face was streaked with filth. Perched on the back of his head was a battered old fedora that he’d found in a trashcan last week. His grimy matted hair fell down over his wolfish eyes.

He lifted the lid off the garbage can and saw a paper bag full of garbage. Opening the top of it, his face lit up at the sight of a piece of fat with some meat on it. With his greasy fingers he brushed cigarette ashes off the lump of food and popped it into his mouth, chewing with the few teeth he had left. It was tender and juicy; must have come from an expensive piece of meat. He sifted through the rest of the garbage, finding a few more pieces of fat and some bones. Taking a plastic baggie out of his pocket, he put the meat into it, then dropped the baggie into his burlap sack.

He lifted the garbage bag out of the pail and saw another bag beneath it. At its top were some cigarette butts that only had been smoked halfway down. With trembling hands he put one of the butts to his lips, took a book of matches out of his pants pocket, lit up, and took a puff, holding the butt daintily in his fingers. His head swam for a moment as the nicotine hit his blood stream, so he inhaled again deeply, savoring the feeling. If only he could find cigarettes more often, he thought, it wouldn’t be so bad.

He blinked and saw a paper bag leaning against the iron fence in back of the garbage can. He probably wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t fallen down. You never know what’s going to bring you good luck, he thought with a silly grin. Reaching over, he pulled the bag toward him and opened it up. There were banana peels and tin cans inside. He pawed at the stuff gingerly, so as not to cut his fingers on the cans, and perceived that there were some rags underneath.

Standing, he emptied the tin cans and banana peels into another garbage can, then sniffed the rags at the bottom of the bag. They didn’t smell of paint or turpentine. Might be good for something. He reached into the bag, grabbed the rags, and pulled. The bag nearly slipped out of his arm and he realized it was one big piece of cloth, not little rags. Peering inside the bag, he could see that the cloth was wool with big red and black squares. Impatient to see the booty, he tore open the bag and held the cloth in the air. It was a jacket, a nice jacket like lumberjacks and dockworkers wore. But there must be something wrong with it: nobody would throw away a nice jacket like this. He held it in the light of the streetlamp. There were no tears and no holes. It didn’t smell too bad and was perfectly fine except for the stain on the left sleeve. A stain wouldn’t hurt anything.