Mario Puzo - Fools die

Osano came to LA for a movie deal and called me to have dinner. I brought Janelle along because she was dying to meet him. When dinner was over and we were having our coffee, Janelle tried to thaw me out about my wife. I shrugged her off.

“You never talk about that, do you?” she said.

I didn’t answer. She kept on. She was a little flushed with wine and a little uncomfortable that I had brought Osano with me. She became angry. “You never talk about your wife because you think that’s dishonorable.”

I still didn’t say anything.

“You still have a good opinion of yourself, don’t you?” Janelle said. She was now very coldly furious.

Osano was smiling a little, and just to smooth things over he played the famous brilliant writer role, caricaturing it ever so slightly. He said, “He never talks about being an orphan too. All adults are orphans really. We all lose our parents when we grow into adulthood.”

Janelle was instantly interested. She had told me she admired Osano’s mind and his books. She said, “I think that’s brilliant. And it’s true.”

“It’s full of shit,” I said. “If you’re both going to use language to communicate, use words for their meaning. An orphan is a child who grows up without parents and many times without any blood relationships in the world. An adult is not an orphan. He’s a fucking prick who’s got no use for his mother and father because they are a pain in the ass and he doesn’t need them anymore.”

There was an awkward silence, and then Osano said, “You’re right, but also you don’t want to share your special status with everybody.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. Then I turned to Janelle. “You and your girlfriends call each other ‘sister.’ Sisters mean female children born of the same parents who have usually shared the same traumatic experiences of childhood, who have imprints of their same experiences in their memory banks. That’s what a sister is, good, bad or indifferent. When you call a girlfriend ‘sister,’ you’re both full of shit.”

Osano said, “I’m getting divorced again. More alimony. One thing, I’ll never marry again. I’ve run out of alimony money.”

I laughed with him. “Don’t say that. You’re the institution of marriage’s last hope.”

Janelle lifted her head and said, “No, Merlyn. You are.”

We all laughed at that, and then I said I didn’t want to go to a movie. I was too tired.

“Oh, hell,” Janelle said. “Let’s go for a drink at Pips and play some backgammon. We can teach Osano.”

“Why don’t you two go?” I said coolly. “I’ll go back to the hotel and get some sleep.”

Osano was watching me with a sad smile on his face. He didn’t say anything. Janelle was staring at me as if daring me to say it again. I made my voice as cold and loveless as possible. And yet understanding. Very deliberately I said, “Look, really I don’t mind. No kidding. You two are my best friends, but I really feel like just going to sleep. Osano, be a gentleman and take my place.” I said this very straight-faced.

Osano guessed right away I was jealous of him. “Whatever you say, Merlyn,” he said. And he didn’t give a shit about what I felt. He thought I was acting like a jerk. And I knew he would take Janelle to Pips and take her home and screw her and not give me another thought. As far as he was concerned, it was none of my business.

But Janelle shook her head. “Don’t be silly. I’ll go home in my car and you two can do what you want.”

I could see what she was thinking. Two male chauvinistic pigs trying to divvy her up. But she also knew that if she went with Osano, it would give me the excuse never to see her again. And I guess I knew what I was doing. I was looking for a reason really to hate her, and if she went with Osano, I could do it and be rid of her.

Finally Janelle went back to the hotel with me. But I could feel her coldness, though our bodies were warm against each other. A little later she moved away, and as I fell asleep, I could hear the rustle of the springs as she left our bed. I murmured drowsily, “Janelle, Janelle.”

JANELLE

I'm a good person. I don’t care what anybody thinks, I’m a good person. All my life the men I really loved always put me down, and they put me down for what they said they loved in me. But they never accepted the fact I could be interested in other human beings, not just them. That’s what screws everything up. They fall in love with me at first and then they want me to become something else. Even the great love of my life, that son of a bitch, Merlyn. He was worse than any of them. But he was the best too. He understood me. He was the best man I ever met and I really loved him and he really loved me. And he tried as hard as he could. And I tried as hard as I could. But we could never beat that masculine thing. If I even liked another man, he got sick. I could see that sick look on his face. Sure, I couldn’t stand it if he even got into an interesting conversation with another woman. So what? But he was smarter than I was. He covered up. When I was around, he never paid any attention to other women even though they did to him. I wasn’t that smart or maybe I felt it was too phony. And what he did was phony. But it worked. It made me love him more. And my being honest made him love me less.

I loved him because he was so smart in almost everything. Except women. He was really dumb about women. And he was dumb about me. Maybe not dumb, just that he could live only with illusions. He said that to me once and he said that I should be a better actress, that I should give him a better illusion that I loved him. I really loved him, but he said that Wasn’t as important as the illusion that I loved him. And I understood that and I tried. But the more I loved him the less I could do it. I wanted him to love the true me. Maybe nobody can love the true me or the true you or the true it. That’s the truth-nobody can love truth. And yet I can’t live without trying to be true to what I really am. Sure I lie, but only when it’s important, and later, when I think the time is right, I always admit I told a lie. And that screws it up.

I always tell everybody how my father ran away when I was a little girl. And when I get drunk, I tell strangers how I tried to commit suicide when I was only fifteen, but I never tell them why. The true why. I let them think it was because my father went away, and maybe it was. I admit a lot of things about myself. That if a man I like buys me a real boozy dinner and makes me like him, I’ll go to bed with him even if I’m in love with somebody else. Why is that so horrible? Men do that all the time. It’s OK for them. But the man I loved the most in the whole world thought I was just a cunt when I told him that. He couldn’t understand that it wasn’t important. That I just wanted to get fucked. Every man does the same thing.

I never deceived a man about important things. About material things maybe I mean. I never pulled the cheap tricks some of my best friends pull on their men. I never accused a guy of being responsible when I got pregnant just to make him help me. I never tricked men like that. I never told a man I loved him when I didn’t, not at the beginning anyway. Sometimes after, when I stopped loving him and he still loved me and I couldn’t bear to hurt him, I’d say it. But I couldn’t be that loving afterward and they’d catch on and things would cool off and we wouldn’t see each other again. And I never really hated a man once I loved him no matter how hateful he was to me afterward. Men are so spiteful to women they no longer love, most men anyway, or to me anyway. Maybe because they still love me and I never love them afterward or love them a little, which doesn’t mean anything. There’s a big difference between loving somebody a little and loving somebody a lot.