Mario Puzo - Fools die

“I still love you,” I said.

“You don’t love me as much,” she said.

“I love you enough to want to make love to you and not just fuck you,” I said.

“You’re really sly,” she said. “You’re innocent sly. You just admitted you love me less as if I tricked you into it. But you wanted me to know that. But why? Why can’t women have other lovers and still love other men? You always tell me you still love your wife and you just love me more. That it’s different. Why can’t it be different for me? Why can’t it be different for all women? Why can’t we have the same sexual freedom and men still love us?”

“Because you know for sure whether it’s your kid and men don’t,” I said. I was kidding, I think.

She threw back the covers dramatically and sprang up so that she was standing in bed. “I don’t believe you said that,” she said incredulously. “I can’t believe that you said such an incredibly male chauvinistic thing.”

“I was kidding,” I said. “Really. But you know, you’re not realistic. You want me to adore you, to be really in love with you, to treat you like a virginal queen. As they did in the old days. But you reject those values that surrendering love is built on. You want us to love you like the Holy Grail, but you want to live like a liberated woman. You won’t accept that if your values change, so must mine. I can’t love you as you want me to. As I used to.”

She started to cry. “I know,” she said. “God, we loved each other so much. You know I used to fuck you when I had blinding headaches, I didn’t care, I just took Percodan. And I loved it. I loved it. And now sex isn’t as good, is it, now that we’re honest?”

“No, it isn’t,” I said.

That made her angry again. She started to yell and her voice sounded like a duck quacking.

It was going to be a long night. I sighed and reached over to the table for a cigarette. It’s very hard to light a cigarette when a beautiful girl is standing so that her cunt is right over your mouth. But I managed it and the tableau was so funny that she collapsed back onto the bed, laughing.

“You’re right,” I said. “But you know the practical arguments for women being faithful. I told you women most of the time don’t know that they have venereal disease. And remember, the more guys you screw, the more chance you have of getting cervical cancer.”

Janelle laughed. “You liaaarr,” she drawled out.

“No kidding,” I said. “All the old taboos have a practical basis.”

“You bastards,” Janelle said. “Men are lucky bastards.”

“That’s the way it is,” I said smugly. “And when you start yelling, you sound just like Donald Duck.”

I got hit with a pillow and had the excuse to grab and hug her and we wound up making love.

Afterward, when we were smoking a cigarette together, she said, “But I’m right, you know. Men are not fair. Women have every right to have as many sexual partners as they want. Now be serious. Isn’t that true?”

“Yes,” I said just as seriously as she and more. I meant it. Intellectually I knew she was right.

She snuggled up to me. “That’s why I love you,” she said. “You really do understand. Even at your male chauvinistic pig worst. When the revolution comes, I’m going to save your life. I’m going to say you were a good male, just misguided.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

She put out the light and then her cigarette. Very thoughtfully she said, “You really don’t love me less because I sleep with others, do you?”

“No,” I said.

“You know I love you really and truly,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“And you don’t think I’m a cunt for doing that, do you?” Janelle said.

“Nope,” I said. “Let’s go to sleep.” I reached out to hold her. She moved away a little.

“Why don’t you leave your wife and marry me? Tell me the truth.”

“Because I have it both ways,” I said.

“You bastard,” She poked me in the balls with her finger.

It hurt. “Jesus,” I said. “Just because I’m madly in love with you, just because I like to talk to you better than anybody, just because I like fucking you better than anybody, what gives you the balls to think I’d leave my wife for you?”

She didn’t know whether I was serious or not. She decided I was kidding. It was a dangerous assumption to make.

“Very seriously,” she said. “Honestly I just want to know. Why do you still stay married to your wife? Give me just one good reason.”

I rolled up into a protective ball before I answered. “Because she’s not a cunt,” I said.

– -

One morning I drove Janelle to the Paramount lot, where she had a day’s work shooting a tiny part in one of its big pictures.

We were early, so we took a walk around what was to me an amazingly lifelike replica of a small town. It even had a false horizon, a sheet of metal rising to the sky that fooled me momentarily. The fake fronts were so real that as we walked past them, I couldn’t resist opening the door of a bookstore, almost expecting to see the familiar tables and shelves covered with bright-jacketed books for sale. When I opened the door, there was nothing but grass and sand beyond the doorsill.

Janelle laughed as we kept walking. There was a window filled with medicine bottles and drugs of the nineteenth century. We opened that door and again saw the grass and sand beyond. As we kept walking, I kept opening doors and Janelle didn’t laugh anymore. She only smiled. And finally we came to a restaurant with a canopy leading to the street and beneath the canopy a man in work clothes sweeping. And for some reason the man sweeping really faked me out. I thought that we had left the sets and come into the Paramount commissary area. I saw a menu pasted in the window and I asked the workman if the restaurant was open yet. He had an old actor’s rubbery face. He squinted at me. Gave a huge grin then almost closed his eyes and winked.

“Are you serious?” he said.

I went to the restaurant door and opened it, and I was really astonished. Really surprised to see again the sand and grass beyond. I closed the door and looked at the workman’s face. It was almost maniacal with glee as if he had arranged this trip for me. As if he were some sort of God and I had asked him “Is life serious?” and that’s why he had answered me, “Are you serious?”

I walked Janelle to the sound stage where she was shooting and she said to me, “They’re so obviously fake. How could they fool you?”

“They didn’t fool me,” I said.

“But you so obviously expected them to be real,” Janelle said. “I watched your face as you opened the doors. And I know that the restaurant fooled you.”

She gave my arm a playful tug.

“You really shouldn’t be let out alone,” she said. “You’re so dumb.”

And I had to agree. But it wasn’t so much that I believed. It wasn’t that really.‘ What bothered me was that I had wanted to believe that there was something beyond those doors. That I could not accept the obvious fact that behind those painted sets was nothing. That I really thought I was a magician. When I opened those doors, real rooms would appear and real people. Even the restaurant. Just before I opened the door, I saw in my mind red tablecloths and dark wine bottles and people standing silently waiting to be seated. I was really surprised when there was nothing there.

I realized it had been some kind of aberration that had made me open those doors, and yet I was glad I had done so.

I didn’t mind Janelle laughing at me and I didn’t mind working with that crazy actor. God, I had just wanted to be sure; and if I had not opened those doors, I would have always wondered.