Free Ladies' Man by Richard Price

anymore. Or maybe what needed to go was just the bullshit. Keep La Donna, throw out the bullshit. That could be wild. It used to be wild. We were quite a pair once. We used to be really good with each other. But maybe it was too late for that Maybe all the good times had been fired by infatuation, and that was long gone. The only things left were my sex hunger and our rage. Cut it short. Stop the dying. Cut La Donna. Cut door to door. Get a degree. Teach. Make it work with La Donna. Cut La Donna. Kenny on the fence. Make your move. Make your move.
    The sun had punched out about three, and the streets were gray. Everything was the color of iron. Old snow, sidewalks, cars. The cab pulled up in front of my building. The super had taken the canvas canopy off the front of the building and the ugly frame skeleton looked like shit, too.
    The minute I stepped out of the elevator onto our floor I smelled La Donna. When I was a kid living in the projects every floor had a distinct odor that I asso-dated with the families living there. You could have taken me up an elevator, blindfolded, ducked my head into any hallway, let me sniff and I could have told you what floor we were on. So I knew La Donna was home. I hung out in the hallway, sitting on the interior ledge of the hallway window, which faced three sides of the building, and the square made a cold ten-story drop into an enclosed concrete courtyard. There was one foil left in my jacket pocket and I flipped it out the window like a baseball card. It spun over and over itself, supped into a dead float and slapped the ground with a distant tinny noise. Next came me, knees bent, palms pressed together like I was praying, then springing up, arms out in a breast stroke. Neeearroww babooom! .Not yet, at any rate.
    "Yo! I'm home!" I put my case down in the foyer and locked the door. No answer. Big surprise, I was alone. But then I heard my electric razor from down the bathroom end of the apartment. What the hell would that mean? A guy? I got goose pimples. The bitch was with another guy. Another guy in my house. I turned to sneak out, then stopped myself. What the hell was I doing? I grabbed an umbrella out of the hall closet and holding it against my chest like a rifle I stalked down the hall toward the bathroom. My heart was pulsing like a frog gullet. Leaning against the wall, I caught my breath, then ducked in front of the bathroom, screamed "Yah!" and thrust the umbrella inside like a bayonet. The bathroom was empty.
    The buzz was coming from the bedroom, leaking from under the closed door. Two plus two, it was the alarm clock. Thank God. My pits were drenched. I opened the bedroom door and froze.
    La Donna was lying on the bed wearing only a blue T-shirt. One hand rested behind her head, and the other was ramming a vibrator up her cunt. She was concentrating so hard she didn't even notice me standing in the doorway. Look up, bitch, c'mon, look up.
    "Kenny!" She screamed like she was trying to shout me out of the path of a Mack truck. Her face went all Os and she grabbed the vibrator with both hands. I didn't want to see that long thing come out of her. I didn't know whether to kill her or fuck her.
    "What…"I started pumping my head up and down like Jackie di Paris. "What's that?" My knees were shaking.
    She was so goddamn freaked she couldn't even turn it off. She didn't even close her legs, I couldn't take my eyes off her hands, her thighs, the glint of white plastic coming at me through her fingers.
    "Kenny." Pathetic, twisting her face in misery.
    "TURN THAT GODDAMN THING OFF!" I had never screamed at her, but I did then. I kicked the corner of the bed. I felt like I wasn't allowed to move out of my spot. She covered herself with the blanket. Her shoulders jerked down as she pulled out the vibrator. The buzz was splitting my head. I threw the blanket off her, grabbed the goddamn thing out of her hands. It slipped out of my fist and fell on the floor, buzzing and revolving like a