shivers down my spine like some mean old rattler out there in the sagebrush just wait ing to sink his fangs into your leg well I was not about to be put down in my own Academy and so I said getting real tough you don't talk to me that way and get away with it you consider yourself warned or else Ill have you out of here so fast you wont know what hit you to which she just smiled prettily and cocked her pretty head at me and said ever so sweet you just try it you motherfucker and Ill take this whole place away from you lock stock and Em pathy class well I dont think no woman has ever spoke to me like that certainly no man would dare for fear of getting hisself beat to a pulp all I could say then was well you watch your step thats all and as for taking this place away from me I need to know a whole lot more about you than I do why I dont even know whether you was ever really mar nied to that fag Myron well I suppose I did go too far on that one for she hauled off and let me have it right in the kisser and I saw stars because this wasnt no girls slap no sir it was a goddam fist with what felt like a roll of quarters in it I nearly fell over it was such a jolt and the noise mustve been like a pistol going off for the kids all stopped pretending to be billboards and stared at us like we was putting on a show which is the way she handled it for cool as can be she said to the kids I quote now that is the classic stage slap delivered in such a way that though the person being slapped really seems to be hit hard he isnt its all fake later Ill show you how its done its a trick first used on stage by Miss Patricia Collinge in The Little Foxes so thank you Uncle Buck for the demonstration unquote and with that the bitch went back to teaching her class and I come straight back here to the office and canceled my ap pointment for massage I am too shook up and then phoned to Flagler and Flagler to ask if theres any report on her from the detective in New York they say the only thing theyve so far found is that Myron really was a fag quite well known in what they call the underground movie set and its thought he killed hisseif probably because of Myra about who they cant find out anything except there is no record of her marrying him in New York New Jersey or Con necticut they are meanwhile going to check the other forty-seven states it would be the happiest day of my life if I can find out she really wasn't married to him and put her in the damned hoosegow for fraud on the other hand the three wills are all in order worse luck for me so everything depends now on that marriage license dont forget Bobbie Deans yoghurt with prune whip 17 I am sitting in a booth at Schwab's drugstore in Hollywood where the young Lana Turner was discovered by an agent. Of course the present Schwab's does not in the least resemble the Schwab's of thirty years ago. Today's drugstore consists of two large rooms. The one where I am sitting contains booths while the other is occupied by drugstore, soda fountain and a large display of magazines and paperback books where out-of-work actors and actresses can be seen at any time of day or night furtively reading Silver Screen, or searching feverishly through the pages of novels looking for lurid passages whose crude imagery can be calculated to enliven sexual bouts with "loved ones" or, as one hippie said to another after sex, "I'll tell you who I was thinking of if you'll tell me who you were thinking of." It is curious how often the male (and sometimes the female) needs to think of those not present in the act. Even with Myron, I was always imagining someone else, a boy glimpsed at Jones Beach or a man observed briefly at the wheel of a truck or sometimes (yes, I may as well confess it) a slender blonde girl that used to live in the brownstone next door when we lived at the corner of i ith Street and Ninth Avenue. She studied at the Art Students League and though I never once spoke to her, 1 was constantly aware of her
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