Spitting off tall buildings - By Dan Fante Page 0,46

and the Munchkins in the care of the twins.

At the rooming house, when we began fucking, Elizabeth made her pussy clamp down on my dick as if she’d decided to keep it inside her body forever.

A few afternoons later, we’d been madly humping and rolling around for half an hour, when I heard the floor creak across the room. I looked up and saw the twins standing a few feet from the bed. They’d been watching.

Connie talked first. ‘That’s sex, right? Intercourse? You guys are having sex.’

‘Right,’ I yelled. ‘Correct. Go away!’

‘And that’s what happens? That’s how you do it? You climb on her and then you both push and grunt?’

‘Pretty much. We’re not done yet. Go away!’

The girls looked at each other, then back over at the naked bodies of me and Elizabeth, then back at each other. They both yelled ‘Yuck’ at the same time.

Chapter Twenty-nine

THE FIRST WEEK of September, a week after Elizabeth and Sven and the Swedish magazine family had left town, we got a letter from Bert. He and Angel were back together at a motel outside Boulder. The insurance settlement money was long gone but so was Tall Jimmy. The twins’ daddy had been sober, off coke and in an out-patient program, for over a month. Angel was dancing again and Bert had found himself a night watchman job.

In the letter there was a money order for three hundred dollars, enough for bus fare and expenses for the twins to join their parents in Colorado.

The next day was a Tuesday. Thundershowers all morning. Big fat drops. Their Trailways bus was scheduled to depart at one o’clock that afternoon so they got me up early. I sipped beer until my shaking stopped, then helped them pack their stuff into cardboard boxes. They would have to leave their kittens with me until their parents got a big enough place for everybody. Leaving them was the hardest thing either of the girls had ever done.

At the International House Of Pancakes on Broadway we ordered the restaurant’s biggest pancake deal with a tall orange juice for each of us and a milkshake back. After breakfast we walked to Seventh Avenue and waited for passing cabs until we found a Checker because a Checker was the only taxi big enough to handle all the boxes.

When we got to Port Authority I located a shipping guy with a dolly who helped us arrange to send their stuff. Then we played video games until it was time to walk to the gate to wait for their bus to depart.

Of the two girls Carrie was my favorite. She had always reminded me of myself when I was her age; emotional, impulsive, more outgoing than her sister but more self-conscious too.

When the bus driver opened the doors and the kids were ready to get on, we hugged goodbye. I’d given them The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to keep them company on the trip.

Carrie was crying. She got back off the bus and ran up to me and hugged me again. It was hard for us both to let go. Then she handed me back the book. ‘You take it,’ she said. ‘Promise me you’ll find Oz.’

Out on the street after the bus left it had stopped raining. It was ten blocks back to my room. I had a pocket full of money and I could have taken a cab, but I decided to walk. The rain had cooled things off.

ALSO BY DAN FANTE

FICTION

86’d

Mooch

Chump Change

Short Dog: Cab Driver Stories from the L.A. Streets

POETRY

A Gin-Pissing-Raw-Meat-Dual-Carburetor-V8-Son-of-a-Bitch from Los Angeles: Collected Poems, 1983-2002

Kissed by a Fat Waitress: New Poems

DRAMA

Don Giovanni: A Play

The Boiler Room: A Play

First U.K. edition of this book was published in 2001 by Canongate Books Ltd.

First U.S. edition of this book was published in 2002 by Canongate Books Ltd.

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