Free Crazy Cock by Henry Miller Page A

unseeing expression on the figures huddled at the railing, Tony Bring would lean forward involuntarily and wait with drunken heart to detect a gleam of recognition in her luminous eyes.
    But tonight, this niche in which Hildred, like a patron saint, was accustomed to sit enshrined was vacant. He went inside and ordered food. There was a roach in the food but he was too hungry to wait for another order. Presently Earl Biggers came along, his massive form wedging through the tables like a piece of granite slipping down a mountainside. With him was a coarse-looking woman who posed as a French
vedette
. He recognized her immediately from the description Hildred had once given him. As Hildred said, there was a certain something about the mouth and eyes which, in spite of the woman’s coarseness, made her attractive. It was common knowledge that she had a passion for robust, athletic males. She had also the foulest tongue of any woman on the American stage—a compliment of the first magnitude considering the competition to which she was subjected.
    He watched intently as she trained her large, wicked eyeson the assembly. One could hardly call them eyes, since they were not so much instruments for perceiving objects as huge, revolving drums of light which, skillfully directed, threw an argent flood over the frieze of faces. If one of the loose remarks which were constantly passing her lips awakened a response her nostrils dilated and quivered, precisely like a mare’s in heat.
    Someone showed her a book. “I read it,” she said, and the enamel of her teeth gleamed lasciviously.
    â€œDid you like it?” she was asked.
    â€œDid I like it? Say, when I got through with that book I was playing with myself.”
    Earl Biggers was blushing. “You’re a darling,” she said. “You’re so big and healthy you’re going to spoil if you don’t do something about it,” and she squeezed his legs under the table.
    At this moment a rather notorious female with a monocle in her eye walked in. Biggers pointed her out as the mistress of a prominent Broadway actress.
    â€œIs that so?” she blurted out, loud enough for all to hear. “Say, I’d like to meet that dame. That’s one thing I haven’t tried yet.”
    The one to whom this remark had been obliquely directed, far from considering herself insulted, commenced thereupon to preen herself. Tony Bring looked at the cockroach he had laid to one side. He lost his appetite.
    H ILDRED WAS already undressed when he walked in. Her face was cold-creamed and there was a cigarette dangling from her lips.
    â€œWhere have you been?” she asked. She seemed upset.
    Before he had time to answer, she added: “God, I don’t know what to do. . . . Vanya’s disappeared!”
    â€œThat’s wonderful,” he said. “I hope she’s drowned herself. . . . And
you,”
he added, “do you know what I think about you? I think you’re crazy. I think if I had any sense I ought to strap you down and beat the piss out of you. I think I’m crazy, too, for tolerating all that I have. I swear to Christ if that woman appears again I’ll mutilate her. And I’ll fix you, too, mark my words. You’ve been driving me nuts with your goddamned Vanya this and Vanya that. Vanya be damned! She’s disappeared, you say? Good. I hope she’s croaked. I hope they don’t even find a toenail. I hope she’s stuck in a sewer and her body full of rats. I wouldn’t care if all New York got poisoned so long as she’s out of the way and done for. . . .”

6
    Y ES, SHE had disappeared. As completely as if the earth had opened up and swallowed her. Hardly had the news gone around when it was announced that she was in Taos, but this was immediately contradicted by a rumor that she had been seen in an opium dive on Pell Street. Then, one day, a letter arrived. “Dear Hildred,” it ran.