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with the short skirt and moist flower lips whose name was Lillian.
    The party ended and I went downstairs with Lilly. We undressed and sat propped against the pillows drinking vodka and vodka mix. There was a radio and the radio played. Lilly told me that she had worked for years to put her husband through college and then when he had gotten his professorship he had divorced her.
    “That’s shaggy,” I said.
    “You been married?”
    “Yes.”
    “What happened?”
    '“Mental cruelty,’ according to the divorce papers.”
    “Was it true?” she asked.
    “Of course: both ways.”
    I kissed Lilly. It was as good as I had imagined it would be. The flower mouth was open. We clasped, I sucked on her teeth. We broke.
    “I think you,” she said, looking at me with wide and beautiful eyes, “are one of the two or three best writers of today.”
    I switched off the bed lamp fast. I kissed her some more, played with her breasts and body, then went down on her. I was drunk, but I think I did O.K. But after that I couldn’t do it the other way. I rode and rode and rode. I was hard but I couldn’t come. Finally I rolled off and went to sleep. . . .
    In the morning Lilly was flat on her back, snoring. I went to the bathroom, pissed, brushed my teeth and washed my face. Then I crawled back into bed. I turned her toward me and started playing with her parts. I am always very horny when hungover—not horny to eat but horny to blast. Fucking was the best cure for hangovers. It got all the parts ticking again. Her breath was so bad that I didn’t want the flower mouth. I mounted. She gave a small groan. For me, it was very good. I don’t think I gave her more than twenty strokes before I came.
    After a while I heard her get up and walk to the bathroom. Lillian. By the time she came back I had turned my back to her and was nearly asleep.
    After 15 minutes she got out of bed and began to dress.
    “What’s wrong?” I asked.
    “I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to take my kids to school.”
    Lillian closed the door and ran up the stairway.
    I got up, walked to the bathroom, and stared for a while at my face in the mirror.
    At ten am I went upstairs for breakfast. I found Pete and Selma. Selma looked great. How did one get a Selma? The dogs of this world never ended up with a Selma. Dogs ended up with dogs. Selma served us breakfast. She was beautiful and one man owned her, a college professor. That was not quite right, somehow. Educated hotshot smoothies. Education was the new god, and educated men the new plantation masters.
    “It was a damned good breakfast,” I told them. “Thanks much.”
    “How was Lilly?” Pete asked.
    “Lilly was very good.”
    “You’ve got to read again tonight, you know. It’ll be at a smaller college, more conservative.
    “All right. I’ll be careful.”
    “What are you going to read?”
    “Old stuff, I guess.”
    We finished our coffee and walked into the front room and sat down. The phone rang, Pete answered, talked, then turned to me. “Guy from the local paper wants to interview you. What’ll I tell him?”
    “Tell him all right.”
    Pete relayed the answer, then walked over and picked up my latest book and a pen. “I thought you might want to write something in this for Lilly.”
    I opened the book to the title page. “Dear Lilly,” I wrote. “You will always be part of my life! . . .
    Henry Chinaski.”
    9
    Lydia and I were always fighting. She was a flirt and it irritated me. When we ate out I was sure she was eyeballing some man across the room. When my male friends came by to visit and Lydia was there I could hear her conversation become intimate and sexual. She always sat very close to my friends, positioning herself as near them as possible. It was my drinking that irritated Lydia. She loved sex and my drinking got in the way of our lovemaking. “Either you’re too drunk to do it at night or too sick to do it in the morning,” she’d say. Lydia would go into a