Free Legs by William Kennedy Page A

Louis Sobol, and so many others, whose business was to
muse and gossip on the ways of this incarnated flesh, had mythicized.
And as surely as Jack loved pistols, rifles, machine guns—loved
their noise, their weight, their force, the power they passed to him,
their sleekness, their mechanical perfections, their oily surfaces as
balm for his ulcerated gangster soul—so did he cherish the
weaponistic charms of Kiki. And as the guns also became his trouble
as well as his beloved, so became Kiki. She did not know such
ambivalence was possible when she met Jack, but her time alone with
The Goose on the mountaintop was the beginning of her wisdom, painful
wisdom which love alone could relieve.
    * * *
    A quick summer storm blew up and it started to rain
as Fogarty drove Kiki, Jack, and me back to Haines Falls after the
golf. There was talk of dinner, which I declined, explaining I had to
get back to Albany. But no, no, Jack wouldn't hear of my leaving.
Wasn't I done out of a champagne lunch by the canary scene? We went
to the Top o' the Mountain House to freshen up before we ate, and
Jack gave me the room The Goose had been using, next to Kiki's. Jack
joined Kiki in her room for what I presumed was a little mattress
action, and I pursued a catnap. But the walls were thin and I was
treated instead to a memorably candid conversation:
    "I'm going back to New York," Kiki said.
    "You don't mean it," Jack said.
    "' I don't care what you do. I'm not staying in
this prison with that goon. He never says a word."
    "He's not good at talking. He's good at other
things. Like you."
    "I hate having a bodyguard."
    "But your body deserves guarding. "
    "It deserves more than that. "
    "You're very irritable tonight. "
    "You're damn right I am."
    "You've got a right to be, but don't swear. It's
not ladylike."
    "You're not so particular in bed about
ladylike."
    "We're not in bed now."
    "Well, I don't know why we're not. I don't see
you for two days and you show up with a stranger and don't even try
to be alone with me."
    "You want a bed, do you? What do you want to put
in it?"
    "How's this? How does it look?"
    "Looks like it's worth putting money into."
    "I don't want money in it."
    "Then I'll have to think of something else."
    "I love to kiss your scars," Kiki said
after a while.
    "Maybe you'll kiss them all away," Jack
said.
    "I wouldn't want to do that. I love you the way
you are."
    "And you're the most perfect thing I've ever
seen. I deserve you. And you don't have any scars."
    "I'm getting one."
    "Where?"
    "Inside. You cut me and let me bleed, and then I
heal and you leave me to go back to your wife. "
    "Someday I'll marry you."
    "Marry me now, Jackie."
    "It's complicated. I can't leave her. She's in a
bad way lately, depressed, sick."
    "She goes to the movies. She's old and fat."
    "I've got a lot of money in her name."
    "She could run off with it, wipe you out."
    "Where could she run I couldn't find her?"
    "You trust her, but you don't trust me alone."
    "She's never alone."
    "What is she to you? What can she give you I
can't?"
    "I don't know. She likes animals."
    "I like animals."
    "No, you don't. You never had a pet in your
life."
    "But I like them. I'll get a pet. I'll get a
cat. Then will you marry me?"
    "Later I'll marry you."
    "Am I your real lay?"
    "More than that."
    "Not much more. "
    "Don't be stupid. I could lay half the town if I
wanted to—Catskill, Albany, New York, any town. Unlimited what I
could lay. Unlimited."
    "I want a set of those Chinese balls. The metal
ones."
    "Where'd you hear about those?"
    "I get around. I get left alone a lot now, but I
didn't always."
    "What would you do with them?"
    "What everybody does. Wear them. Then when
nobody's around to take care of me and I get all hot and bothered,
I'd just squeeze them and they'd make me feel good. I want them. "
    "Will you settle for an Irish set?"
    "Can I keep them with me?"
    "I'll see they don't get out of range. "
    "Well, see to it
then."
    * * *
    "Everything was