Read Online An American Dream by Norman Mailer - Free Book Online

explosion, furious, treacherous and hot as the gates of an icy slalom with the speed at my heels overtaking my nose, I had one of those splittings of a second where the senses fly out and there in that instant the itch reached into me and drew me out and I jammed up her ass and came as if I’d been flung across the room. She let out a cry of rage. Her coming must have taken a ferocious twist. And with my eyes closed, I felt low sullen waters wash about a dead tree on a midnight pond. I had come to the Devil a fraction too late, and nothing had been there to receive me. But I had a vision immediately after of a huge city in the desert, in some desert, was it a place on the moon? For the colors had the unreal pastel of a plastic and the main street was flaming with light at five A . M . A million light bulbs lit the scene.
    It had been when all was said a bitch of a brawl. She lay for a minute half in sleep, half in stupor, and her tongue licked idly at my ear. Like a mother cat she was teaching a new kitten how to listen. “Mr. Rojack,” she said at last with her gutty fleshy Berlin speech, “I do not know why you have trouble with your wife. You are absolutely a genius, Mr. Rojack.”
    “A doctor is no better than his patient,” said I.
    There was a wicked look of amusement in her face. “But you are a
vache
,” she said. “You must not pull my hair. Not even for that.”
    “
Der Teufel
asked me to visit.”
    “Der Teufel!”
She laughed. “What can a rich man like you know about
der Teufel?
”
    “Doesn’t
der Teufel
like the rich?”
    “No,” she said, “God protects the rich.”
    “But at the end I could not have paid my respects to God.”
    “Oh, you are dreadful,” she said, and pinched me a good mean German pinch where my belly was soft. Then she started uneasily.
    “Do you think your wife heard?” she asked.
    “I doubt it.”
    “Are the walls so good?” She sat up now, her tricky breasts lolling nicely. “No, I feel not so easy now,” she said, “your wife could come in on us.”
    “She would never do something like that. It’s not her style.”
    “I think you know a woman better than that,” said Ruta. She pinched again. “You know, at the end, you stole something from me.”
    “Half.”
    “Half.”
    We liked each other. That was fine. But again I could feel a stillness from the room above. Ruta was nervous.
    “When you walked in on me,” she said, “you looked pretty.”
    “So did you, I fear.”
    “No, but I never do something like that. At least,” she added with a malicious grin, “not unless I lock the door.”
    “And tonight you didn’t.”
    “No, I was asleep. After I let you in, I went to sleep. I was thinking how unhappy you looked. When you came to visit.” She put her head to one side as if to inquire whether I had been alreadywith my wife in the bed above her, and then didn’t ask. “Of course,” she said, “you and Mrs. Rojack had a reconciliation.”
    “Of sorts.”
    “What a bad man you are. That’s what woke me up—making your reconciliation with Mrs. Rojack. I was awake, and I was so excited—I can’t explain it.” Her bold pointed spiteful nose made everything she said seem merry.
    “How old are you?”
    “Twenty-three.”
    She was probably twenty-eight. “You’re a charming twenty-three,” I said.
    “And you are still a
vache
.”
    Her fingers were beginning to play with me.
    “Let’s sleep another minute,” I said.
    “Yes.” She started to light a cigarette, then stopped. “Your wife thinks you’ve gone home.”
    “Probably.”
    “I hope the walls are good.”
    “Let’s try to sleep,” I said. I wanted the light out. I had a rendezvous in the dark. Something was waiting for me. But the moment I turned the switch, it was very bad. The darkness came over like air on a wound when the dressing is removed. My senses were much too alert. Everything which had passed from her body to mine was now alive inside, as if a horde of