She shook her head. "He won't listen. I know."
"Why not? I mean something happens to his wife--what's the matter with him?"
"He's an asshole," Mickey said. She heard Louis say, "Oh," but she wasn't listening to Louis; she continued to hear the word she had said out loud for the first time in her life and began wondering if she could improve on it.
"He's a pure asshole." No, "pure" didn't do anything for it. She said, "Do you know what I mean?"
"Sure," Louis said. "Unless what you really mean, he's a prick."
"He probably is at work, dealing with employees. But in life he's ... the other." Losing her nerve again she brought it back quickly. "An asshole."
"Well--" Louis didn't know what to say. "You got a nice house, you got plenty of money--"
"You mean so be grateful? You sound like my mother. Do you have a cigarette?"
"I'll look," Louis said. He pulled himself up and walked out of the living room.
Maybe they'd get along, Mickey thought. If her mother didn't know what Louis did for a living. (What did he do?) Tell mom he had an important position with GM, at the Tech Center. Her mother would say, "That's nice." Her dad would say, "Oh? I had some good friends at GM belonged to the Detroit Golf Club. Where do you play, Louis?"
"I couldn't find any regular ones. How about one of these?" He was holding several joints in the palm of his hand.
"Is that what I think it is?"
"Yeah, good stuff. I think Colombian."
"I've never smoked it before."
"Colombian? It's not that different you'd taste it." He let them roll out of his hand onto the coffee table.
"Do you smoke it all the time?"
"No, once in awhile," Louis said. "Or like if I'm with somebody, a girl, you know, and we want to get a little high first."
"Do you use other drugs?"
"No hard stuff, no. Coke maybe, but not as an every week thing. Maybe if it's there, somebody offers it."
"I'd like to try the grass," Mickey said.
As Louis got up he seemed to realize what she meant. "You never smoked before?"
"Uh-unh." She watched him pick up matches from the table and light the cigarette, the twisted end flaming for a moment. As he handed it to her she said, "What do you do?"
"You smoke it."
"I mean how?"
"The way you smoke your True greens. It'll work."
"Don't you use a--what do you call it, the thing you hold the joint with?"
"A roach clip? If you're poor. No, we got plenty of grass. It gets down, throw it away and have another. But I think one'll do the job."
Mickey inhaled the cigarette. She didn't like the smell. She handed it to Louis who took a drag, handed it back and picked up their empty glasses. She noticed, watching him as he walked out of the room, he didn't exhale. She drew on the cigarette and tried holding in the smoke. When Louis came back with fresh drinks she said, a little surprised or disappointed, "I don't feel anything."
"Well, you got time," Louis said. "You don't want to go home we can always sit around and get stoned."
She said, "I don't understand. You know it? There's so goddamn much I don't understand. Do you?"
"Be happy," Louis said. "What else you want?"
"What else do you want?" She reached out the joint and Louis reached out a hand and she passed him the cigarette.
"Money," Louis said. "That's all."
"Ooooh no," Mickey said. "That's what everybody thinks, but money has nothing to do with happiness. What about your health?"
"Well, say I had a yacht," Louis said, "great big cruiser. See, I could sit on the fantail there and throw up and have the maid bring me an AlkaSeltzer and it would beat the shit out of laying in the weeds down on Michigan Avenue. I know a guy I went to school with, he ended up down there drinking Thunderbird, no teeth, half his stomach taken out. I was down at one of those Ethnic Festivals, you know, on the river? I think it was the Polish or the Ukrainian Festival. I see him there, filthy dirty, staggering around, I couldn't believe it. I said to myself, I'm never gonna be like that, ever."
Mickey was surprised at the way Louis let the cigarette burn as he spoke, not worrying about wasting it. She said, "He could've had money and lost it because he was drinking."
"He didn't have shit," Louis said. "He worked at Sears in automotive service, putting on the new polyglass radials. He was frustrated because he didn't have any money."
"Why didn't he get another job?"
"Where?" Louis passed the cigarette to her and she kept it.
"I don't know. Where do people work? They work all over, do all kinds of things."
"You ever work?"
"Of course I worked."
"Where?"
"At Saks."
"How long?"
"Well, the last time"--the only time--"it was a little more than five weeks."
"Five weeks?"
"I was part-time. A flyer. Let me tell you something," Mickey said, "you talk about frustration--" "Five weeks--"
"Let me tell you, okay? You think you can sit quietly and not open your mouth and listen for a change?"
"Go ahead, tell me."
"God, I left my purse there."
"Richard'll go through it, see if you got any Tampax or a diaphragm."
"I was praying all these past four days I wouldn't get the curse. I'm overdue."
"Maybe you're pregnant."
"No way. God, I hate that expression. No way. I mean there isn't any possible way I could be. Well, he can have it--God, he was awful. He smelled. I know my wallet's at home on the kitchen table, with my car keys."
"So you had this terrible frustrating job--" "You weren't allowed to carry a purse," Mickey said. "You had to carry a Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag so this little snip in Security could look in it if you were walking around the store or you were leaving and make sure you weren't stealing anything."
"I bet there were ways," Louis said.
"She was a little snippy snitch," Mickey said. "Fat little company snitch, with acne."
"I can see her," Louis said.
"She'd say"--Mickey effected a snippy tone-- "'You have anything in that bag?' And pull it, almost pull it away from you, and look inside."
"I'd tell her to put it where the sun don't shine," Louis said.
"I'd say, 'No, I don't have anything in it. I carry it around empty, you dumb shit.' That's what I wanted to say."
"Why didn't you?"
"Why didn't I? I'd get fired."
"So, you were just working there for fun, were you?"
"I was proving something to myself."
"When was this, before you were married?" "Last year."
"Jesus Christ, you're living in that big fucking house, you drive your Grand Prix to work--"
"It wasn't for money, you dumb shit. No, it wasn't for that at all."
"What was it for?" He got up and left.
What was it for?
To get out in the world. No, he wouldn't accept that, Saks Fifth Avenue as the world, or even as a step into it. But it was.
He came back in with two fresh drinks. She didn't remember finishing the last one.
"I still don't feel it," Mickey said, "the grass. Maybe just a teeny bit."
"A teeny weeny bit?" Louis said.
"A teeny-weeny weeny weeny-weeny bit," Mickey said. "What got me the most wasn't the snitch with the acne or the other salesgirls in Young Circle who'd, you'd have a customer and they'd try and steal her after you practically broke your ass showing her clothes. The woman'd say, 'Oh, now, what goes with this?' Helpless, making you think for her. Or this fat fat broad would come in, 5-feet tall weighing about 200 pounds and she'd ask for, because she's only 5 feet or about 4-11?, she'd ask for petite." A nasal sound. "'Let me see what you have in Petite.' Petite, she couldn't get a petite over her left boob. The slobs you had to wait on--they'd take a bunch of dresses and things into the booth, walk out and leave everything on the floor. But the worst, you know what the very worst was? What really got me?"