Hot Water Music (14 page)

My father’s funeral was a cold hamburger. I sat across from the funeral parlor in Alhambra and had a coffee. It would be a short drive to the race track after it was over. A man with a terrible peeling face, very round glasses with thick lenses, walked in. “Henry,” he said to me, then sat down and ordered a coffee.

“Hello, Bert.”

“Your father and I became very good friends. We talked about you a lot.”

“I didn’t like my old man,” I said.

“Your father loved you, Henry. He was hoping you’d marry Rita.” Rita was Bert’s daughter. “She’s going with the
nicest
guy now but he doesn’t excite her. She seems to go for phonies. I don’t understand. But she must like him a little,” he said, brightening up, “because she hides her baby in the closet when he comes by.”

“Come on, Bert, let’s go.”

We walked across the street and into the funeral parlor. Somebody was saying what a good man my father had been. I felt like telling them the other part. Then somebody sang. We stood and filed past the coffin. I was last. Maybe I’ll spit on him, I thought.

My mother was dead. I had buried her the year before, gone to the race track and got laid afterwards. The line moved. Then a woman screamed. “No, no, no! He can’t be dead!” She reached down into the casket, lifted his head and kissed him. Nobody stopped her. Her lips were on his. I took my father by the neck and the woman by the neck and pulled them apart. My father fell back into the casket and the woman was led out, trembling.

“That was your father’s girlfriend,” said Bert.

“Not a bad looker,” I said.

When I walked down the steps after the service the woman was waiting. She ran up to me.

“You look just
like
him! You
are
him!”

“No,” I said, “he’s dead, and I’m younger and nicer.”

She put her arms around me and kissed me. I pushed my tongue between her lips. Then I pulled away. “Here, here,” I said in a loud voice, “get ahold of yourself!” She kissed me again and this time I worked my tongue deeper into her mouth. My penis was beginning to get hard. Some men and a woman came up to take her away.

“No,” she said, “I want to go with him. I must talk to his son!”

“Now, Maria, please, come with us!”

“No, no, I must talk to his son!”

“Do you mind?” a man asked me.

“It’s all right,” I said.

Maria got into my car and we drove to my father’s house. I opened the door and we walked in. “Look around,” I said. “You can have any of his stuff you want. I’m going to take a bath. Funerals make me sweat.”

When I came out Maria was sitting on the edge of my father’s bed.

“Oh, you’re wearing his robe!”

“It’s mine now.”

“He just
loved
that robe. I gave it to him for Christmas. He was so proud of it. He said he was going to wear it and walk around the block for all the neighbors to see.”

“Did he?”

“No.”

“It is a nice robe. It’s mine now.”

I took a pack of cigarettes from the night stand.

“Oh, those are his cigarettes!”

“Want one?”

“No.”

I lit up. “How long did you know him?”

“About a year.”

“And you didn’t find out?”

“Find out what?”

“That he was an ignorant man. Cruel. Patriotic. Money hungry. A liar. A coward. A cheat.”

“No.”

“I’m surprised. You look like an intelligent woman.”

“I loved your father, Henry.”

“How old are you?”

“Forty-three.”

“You’re well preserved. You have lovely legs.”

“Thank you.”

“Sexy legs.”

I went into the kitchen and got a bottle of wine out of the cupboard, pulled the cork, found two wine glasses and walked back in. I poured her a drink and handed her the glass.

“Your father spoke of you often.”

“Yes?”

“He said you lacked ambition.”

“He was right.”

“Really?”

“My only ambition is not to be anything at all; it seems the most sensible thing.”

“You’re strange.”

“No, my father was strange. Let me pour you another drink. This is good wine.”

“He said you were a drunkard.”

“You see, I
have
achieved something.”

“You look so much like him.”

“That’s just on the surface. He liked soft-boiled eggs, I like hard. He liked company, I like solitude. He liked to sleep nights, I like to sleep days. He liked dogs, I used to yank their ears and stick matches up their ass. He liked his job, I like to lay around.”

I reached over and grabbed Maria. I worked her lips open, got my mouth inside of hers and began to suck the air out of her lungs. I spit down her throat and ran my finger up the crack of her ass. We broke apart.

“He kissed me gently,” said Maria. “He loved me.”

“Shit,” I said, “my mother was underground only a month before he was sucking your nipples and sharing your toilet paper.”

“He loved me.”

“Balls. His fear of being alone led him to your vagina.”

“He said you were a bitter young man.”

“Hell, yes. Look what I had for a father.”

I pulled up her dress and began kissing her legs. I began at the knees. I got to the inner thigh and she opened up for me. I bit her, hard, and she jumped and farted. “Oh, I’m sorry.” “It’s all right,” I said.

I fixed her another drink, lit one of my dead father’s cigarettes and went into the kitchen for a second bottle of wine. We drank another hour or two. The afternoon was just turning into evening but I was weary. Death was so dull. That was the worst thing about death. It was dull. Once it happened there wasn’t anything you could do. You couldn’t play tennis with it or turn it into a box of bonbons. It was there like a flat tire was there. Death was stupid. I climbed into bed. I heard Maria taking off her shoes, her clothes, then I felt her in bed beside me. Her head was on my chest and I felt my fingers rubbing her behind the ears. Then my penis began to rise. I lifted her head and put my mouth on hers. I put it there gently. Then I took her hand and placed it on my cock.

I had drunk too much wine. I mounted her. I stroked and stroked. I was always on the verge but I couldn’t arrive. I was giving her a long sweaty neverending horsefuck. The bed jerked and bounced, jiggled and moaned. Maria moaned. I kissed her and kissed her. Her mouth gasped for air. “My god,” she said, “you’re REALLY FUCKING me!” I only wanted to finish but the wine had dulled the mechanism. Finally I rolled off.

“God,” she said. “God.”

We began kissing and it started all over again. I mounted once more. This time I felt the climax slowly arriving. “Oh,” I said, “oh, Christ!” I finally made it, got up, went to the bathroom, came out, smoking a cigarette and went back to the bed. She was almost asleep. “My god,” she said, “you really FUCKED me!” We slept.

In the morning I got up, vomited, brushed my teeth, gargled, and cracked a bottle of beer. Maria awakened and looked at me.

“Did we fuck?” she asked.

“Are you serious?”

“No, I want to know. Did we fuck?”

“No,” I said, “nothing happened.”

Maria went into the bathroom and showered. She sang. Then she toweled and came out. She looked at me. “I feel like a woman who’s been fucked.”

“Nothing happened, Maria.”

We got dressed and I took her to a cafe around the corner. She had sausage and scrambled eggs, wheat toast, coffee. I had a glass of tomato juice and a bran muffin.

“I can’t get over it. You look just like him.”

“Not this morning, Maria, please.”

While I was watching Maria put scrambled eggs and sausage and wheat toast (spread with raspberry jam) into her mouth I realized that we had missed the burial. We had forgotten to drive to the cemetery to watch the old man dropped into the hole. I had wanted to see that. That was the only good part of the thing. We hadn’t joined the funeral procession, instead we had gone to my father’s house and smoked his cigarettes and drunk his wine.

Maria put a particularly large mouthful of bright yellow scrambled egg into her mouth and said, “You must have fucked me. I can feel your semen running down my leg.”

“Oh, that’s just sweat. It’s very hot this morning.”

I saw her reach down under the table and under her dress. A finger came back up. She sniffed it. “That’s not sweat, that’s semen.”

Maria finished eating and we left. She gave me her address and I drove her there. I parked at the curbing. “Care to come in?”

“Not just now. I’ve got to take care of things. The Estate.”

Maria leaned over and kissed me. Her eyes were large, stricken, stale. “I know you’re much younger but I could love you,” she said. “I’m sure I could.”

When she got to her doorway she turned. We both waved. I drove to the nearest liquor store, got a half pint and the day’s
Racing Form
. I looked forward to a good day at the track. I always did better after a day off.

My mother had died a year earlier. A week after my father’s death I stood in his house alone. It was in Arcadia, and the nearest I had come to the house in some time was passing by on the freeway on my way to Santa Anita.

I was unknown to the neighbors. The funeral was over, and I walked to the sink, poured a glass of water, drank it, then went outside. Not knowing what else to do, I picked up the hose, turned on the water and began watering the shrubbery. Curtains drew back as I stood on the front lawn. Then they began coming out of their houses. A woman walked over from across the street.

“Are you Henry?” she asked me.

I told her that I was Henry.

“We knew your father for years.”

Then her husband walked over. “We knew your mother too,” he said.

I bent over and shut off the hose. “Won’t you come in?” I asked. They introduced themselves as Tom and Nellie Miller and we went into the house.

“You look just like your father.”

“Yes, so they tell me.”

We sat and looked at each other.

“Oh,” said the woman, “he had so
many
pictures. He must have liked pictures.”

“Yes, he did, didn’t he?”

“I just love that painting of the windmill in the sunset.”

“You can have it.”

“Oh, can I?”

The doorbell rang. It was the Gibsons. The Gibsons told me that they also had been neighbors of my father’s for years.

“You look just like your father,” said Mrs. Gibson.

“Henry has given us the painting of the windmill.”

“That’s nice. I
love
that painting of the blue horse.”

“You can have it, Mrs. Gibson.”

“Oh, you don’t mean it?”

“Yes, it’s all right.”

The doorbell rang again and another couple came in. I left the door ajar. Soon a single man stuck his head inside. “I’m Doug Hudson. My wife’s at the hairdresser’s.”

“Come in, Mr. Hudson.”

Others arrived, mostly in pairs. They began to circulate through the house.

“Are you going to sell the place?”

“I think I will.”

“It’s a lovely neighborhood.”

“I can see that.”

“Oh, I just
love
this frame but I don’t like the picture.”

“Take the frame.”

“But what should I do with the picture?”

“Throw it in the trash.” I looked around. “If anybody sees a picture they like, please take it.”

They did. Soon the walls were bare.

“Do you need these chairs?”

“No, not really.”

Passersby were coming in from the street, and not even bothering to introduce themselves.

“How about the sofa?” someone asked in a very loud voice. “Do you want it?”

“I don’t want the sofa,” I said.

They took the sofa, then the breakfast nook table and chairs.

“You have a toaster here somewhere, don’t you, Henry?”

They took the toaster.

“You don’t need these dishes, do you?”

“No.”

“And the silverware?”

“No.”

“How about the coffee pot and the blender?”

“Take them.”

One of the ladies opened a cupboard on the back porch. “What about all these preserved fruits? You’ll never be able to eat all these.”

“All right, everybody, take some. But try to divide them equally.”

“Oh, I want the strawberries!”

“Oh, I want the figs!”

“Oh, I want the marmalade!”

People kept leaving and returning, bringing new people with them.

“Hey, here’s a fifth of whiskey in the cupboard! Do you drink, Henry?”

“Leave the whiskey.”

The house was getting crowded. The toilet flushed. Somebody knocked a glass from the sink and broke it.

“You better save this vacuum cleaner, Henry. You can use it for your apartment.”

“All right, I’ll keep it.”

“He had some garden tools in the garage. How about the garden tools?”

“No, I better keep those.”

“I’ll give you $15 for the garden tools.”

“O.K.”

He gave me the $15 and I gave him the key to the garage. Soon you could hear him rolling the lawn mower across the street to his place.

“You shouldn’t have given him all that equipment for $15, Henry. It was worth much more than that.”

I didn’t answer.

“How about the car? It’s four years old.”

“I think I’ll keep the car.”

“I’ll give you $50 for it.”

“I think I’ll keep the car.”

Somebody rolled up the rug in the front room. After that people began to lose interest. Soon there were only three or four left, then they were all gone. They left me the garden hose, the bed, the refrigerator and stove, and a roll of toilet paper.

I walked outside and locked the garage door. Two small boys came by on roller skates. They stopped as I was locking the garage doors.

“See that man?”

“Yes.”

“His father died.”

They skated on. I picked up the hose, turned the faucet on and began to water the roses.