Квентин Тарантино - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - The First Novel By Quentin Tarantino

“Are you joking?” her surprised face blurts out.

“No, I’m not,” he assures her. “I need to see something official that verifies you’re eighteen. Which you don’t have, ’cause you’re not.”

With that, Pussycat closes her legs and rises up into a sitting position, shaking her bushy head in disbelief. “Talk about a bring-down bummer, dude, that’s you.”

With her pants still off, she stretches out her long legs again and plops her huge feet back on the dashboard, placing her hands behind her head in the full recline position.

“Obviously I’m not too young to fuck you, but obviously you are too old to fuck me.”

Cliff sees this from a different perspective and imparts that perspective to Pussycat.

“What I’m too old to do is go to jail for poontang. Prison has tried to get me my whole life. But it ain’t ever got me yet. But the day it does get me, it ain’t gonna be because of you. No offense.”

So with finger fucking off the table, the young gal that calls herself Pussycat puts her pants back on, and the two chat together on the drive to Chatsworth, Cliff never revealing to his passenger he knows George Spahn personally or his real intention in giving her a ride.

He fishes for more information about these “friends” of hers that live at George’s ranch.

And she is only too happy to talk his ear off about them. Especially this dude named Charlie, who she is sure will dig Cliff.

“I can see Charlie really digging you,” are her exact words.

At first, Cliff is more interested in this gaggle of chicks in their twenties who believe in and practice free love. But the more she speaks of this Charlie character and the more she recounts his teachings, the less he sounds like a peace-and-love guru and the more he sounds like a pimp.

Yes, it looks like this Charlie fella took the pimpin’ playbook and ingeniously rewrote it for a generation of girls pissed off at their folks. As he watches Pussycat sincerely spew this fella’s horseshit, Cliff tries to imagine where she came from. If in the fifties he’d followed through with his intentions to give the pimping game a whirl, he never would have gotten close to a pretty, obviously educated gal like this one. But this whole hippie shit put the whole world outta whack. Now she’s offering up her snatch for a lift to Chatsworth.

Girls who, before, maybe gave you a hand job at the drive-in will now fuck you and your friend.

Where those French dudes supplied their girls with champagne, lipstick, pantyhose, and Max Factor, this Charlie dude supplies his with acid and free love and a philosophy that ties it all together .

It’s kinda brilliant , Cliff thinks. I’m kinda lookin’ forward to meeting this Charlie fella.

“So how’d you meet this guy?” Cliff asks.

“Charlie?”

“Yeah, Charlie.”

“I first met Charlie when I was fourteen,” Pussycat tells him. “I was living in Los Gatos, California, when my father picked him up hitchhiking.”

“Wait a minute,” a surprised Cliff asks. “You met Charlie through your father?”

“Yeah,” Pussycat says. “He picked him up on the side of the road, gave him a lift, then took him home for dinner.”

She continues, “So we had dinner. And we were definitely attracted to each other, so we snuck outta the house that night once everybody went to bed. And we fucked in the backseat of my dad’s car and then drove off.”

Wow , Cliff thinks, that’s a bold motherfucker. Steal a guy’s car and his hot little piece of ass fourteen-year-old daughter? Doesn’t just fuck her in the night. That would be plenty rude enough. But steals the guy’s car and runs off with her?

Guys get fucking shotgunned from fathers for pullin’ far less shit than that. That’s a free-of-charge fuckin’ murder right there, boy. No cop would arrest you, and no jury would convict you.

“So, what happened?” Cliff asks Pussycat.

“Well, we had two fun days on the road. But then Charlie told me I had to go back. Charlie said my parents probably got the cops looking for me. And if we go any further we’ll cross the state line and he can’t do that in a stolen car.”

This fuckin’ dude knows his shit , Cliff thinks.

The Los Gatos girl continues explaining to the Hollywood stuntman: “But Charlie said if I want to be with him, what I gotta do is go back home. Go back to school. Back to my room. Back to watching TV with my family. And then—marry the first jerk I meet. Because once I marry some jerk, I immediately emancipate myself from my parents.

“So I marry some bozo, then I send word to Charlie I’m emancipated. He sends word to me where I can meet him. I split from Dumb Shit and meet up with Charlie.”

Cliff never had much sympathy for guys who let girls jerk them around, but even he feels sorry for the poor sap that married this piece of work.

“And then what?” Cliff asks.

“ Then ,” Pussycat explains, “a life that consisted of merely existing transformed itself into a life of purpose.”

And it is at that point Debra Jo takes on the glassy-eyed look that all of Charlie’s girls take on if they’re allowed to babble on long enough.

“So all this happened because your dad picked up a hitchhiker?” Cliff confirms.

She laughs her big, loud spastic laugh. “I guess so! I never looked at it that way, but yeah, I guess.”

“So what does your father have to say about this turn of events?” a curious Cliff queries.

“Well, that’s kind of a funny story. My mom left my dad because of it.”

That’s funny? Cliff thinks.

“And my dad tried to blow Charlie’s head off with a shotgun.”

Well, it’s about fucking time , Cliff thinks.

“I take it he wasn’t successful?” Cliff says.

This giggle puss shakes her head from side to side.

Cliff asks, “What happened?”

“What happened,” Pussycat explains, “is Charlie is love. And you can’t kill love with a shotgun.”

“What does that mean in plain old American?” Cliff wants to know.

“It means Charlie turned my dad’s hate to love.” Pussycat goes on to describe, “Charlie told my dad he was ready to die, and if it was to be today, so be it. My dad calmed down. Charlie ended up turning my dad on that night. Then he had one of the girls with him—Sadie or Katie, I’m not sure which, I wasn’t there—suck his cock. And when they parted the next morning, they parted as friends.”

“Turning him on?” Cliff asks. “What does that mean?”

“They dropped acid.”

“Your dad dropped acid with the guy that ruined his life?”

“My dad dropped acid with the dude who showed him how groovy life could be,” she says. “Later my dad asked Charlie could he join the Family.”

“Holy shit, you gotta be fuckin’ kidding me!” Cliff exclaims.

Pussycat shakes her head no, she isn’t kidding. Then clarifies, “But Charlie thought that was too weird. He said, ‘Jesus Christ, we can’t do that, he’s Pussycat’s fucking father.’ So my dad isn’t a member of the Family, but he’s a friend of the Family . ”

After hearing Pussycat’s wild story, Cliff can’t help but have a level of respect for this Charlie fella. I mean, manipulating a bunch of hippie-girl runaways, that’s one thing. Cliff could probably do that. But Cliff never held much sway with irate shotgun-toting fathers.

So Cliff asks, to sum up, “Okay, let me get this straight: A dude picks up a hippie hitchhiking? He takes the hippie home for dinner with his wife and his fourteen-year-old daughter? The hippie fucks the fourteen-year-old girl and takes off with her in the dude’s car? The same car that gave him a lift? Because of the hippie, the daughter gets married at fifteen and then runs off with the hippie? The dude’s wife leaves him due to all the chaos he caused by giving that fucking hippie a ride? The dude tracks the hippie down with a shotgun, but instead of blowing his head off, he later drops acid and parties with the hippie? And then later asks to be one of the hippie’s disciples?”