All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

stop her, Sally did it again. She bounced three times and made three really loud squeaks. Anybody could have told it was just someone bouncing on a bed, not two people making love, but apparently Mr. Fitzherbert was in no mood to make distinctions. He came out of the Chrysler roaring and began to kick our wall.
    “No fucking!” he yelled. “No fucking, you hear!”
    We didn’t say anything. The war of nerves was over andSally had stopped bouncing. But Mr. Fitzherbert was just warming up.
    “You hear me in there?” he yelled. “You hear? Cut out the fucking! Hear me? Dirty little students! Fuck all the time.
No respect for property!
”
    He screamed the last, and then was silent. I guess he was listening to hear if we were listening. I was ready to strangle Sally if she bounced again, but the damage was already done. Mr. Fitzherbert was going into a fit.
    “Come out and fight!” he yelled. “Stand up and fight! No more of that shit on my property! None of that while I’m around.”
    Then he began to bang the wall of the apartment with the door of the Chrysler. That’s what I’d been afraid he would do—he had done it the other time too. Bang bang bang bang! Things began to shake. It was a heavy door and a very light wall. Books began to fall out of the bookcases. Sally began to bounce again, out of bravura, I think. I just sat. Her bouncing was nothing compared to the beating Mr. Fitzherbert was giving the wall. My one picture, which was of an uncle of mine, fell off its hook—I heard the glass break when it hit my typewriter. I was afraid the door might bust through the wall, which meant that Mr. Fitzherbert might also bust through the wall. If he saw us both naked there was no telling what he might do. The reading lamp fell on the bed, and books kept thumping to the floor. Sally quit bouncing. It was such a flimsy apartment that it was possible to imagine the whole thing falling in on us, if Mr. Fitzherbert didn’t stop. I think that’s what we both did imagine. Of course the car door was hitting the wall about two feet from where we sat, but we could hear things falling in the kitchen too. And the shower suddenly started running—it had a hair-trigger mechanism, on hot, at least—and was a good place to get scalded. Mr.Fitzherbert went back to a four-beat rhythm and I could barely think. Sally hugged her knees.
    Suddenly he stopped. He leaned against the wall, right behind our bed. We could hear him panting. “Jesus,” he said, in an unhappy voice. In a minute he said “Jesus Christ,” and stumbled out of the garage. We saw him angle across the driveway toward his house. After so much noise, things seemed very quiet.
    “He didn’t shut his car door,” I said. “I better go shut it for him.”
    I put on some pants and went and shut it. When I came back in I turned on the light a minute, to survey the damage. Sally was still picking bugs off her belly. I inched into the bathroom and managed to turn off the shower without getting scalded. Steam was drifting into the bedroom.
    “You could have turned that off first,” Sally said. “The car door could have waited.” She flicked away a gnat and gave me one of her cool looks.
    “You could have sat still, too,” I said. “What’s the point of provoking Mr. Fitzherbert? He’s a nice man. I doubt if he ever gets laid. It’s no trouble to sit still for five minutes.”
    She wouldn’t argue with me—it was one of the most maddening things about her. She just ignored my reply. I picked up the picture that had fallen and broken, a picture of my Uncle Laredo riding the beautiful gray studhorse that he had called El Caballo. Only the glass that covered the picture had broken, but it still annoyed me. I felt very out of sorts with Sally. Making love hadn’t done us any good at all. I was as tense as could be. Her cool looks affected me strangely. One minute I felt like hitting her and the next minute I just felt small. I knelt on the floor and picked