A day or so later I got a poem in the mail from Lydia. It was a long poem and it began:

Come out, old troll, Come out of your dark hole, old troll, Come out into the sunlight with us and Let us put daisies in your hair…

The poem went on to tell me how good it would feel to dance in the fields with female fawn creatures who would bring me joy and true knowledge. I put the letter in a dresser drawer.

I was awakened the next morning by a knocking on the glass panes of my front door. It was 10:30 am.

"Go away," I said.

"It's Lydia."

"All right. Wait a minute."

I put on a shirt and some pants and opened the door. Then I ran to the bathroom and vomited. I tried to brush my teeth but only vomited again-the sweetness of the toothpaste turned my stomach. I came out.

"You're sick," Lydia said. "Do you want me to leave?"

"Oh no, I'm all right. I always wake up like this."

Lydia looked good. The light came through the curtains and shone on her. She had an orange in her hand and was tossing it into the air. The orange spun through the sunlit morning.

"I can't stay," she said, "but I want to ask you something."

"Sure."

"I'm a sculptress. I want to sculpt your head."

"All right."

"You'll have to come to my place. I don't have a studio. We'll have to do it at my place. That won't make you nervous, will it?"

"No."

I wrote down her address, and instructions how to get there.

"Try to show up by eleven in the morning. The kids come home from school in mid-afternoon and it's distracting."

"I'll be there at eleven," I told her.

I sat across from Lydia in her breakfast nook. Between us was a large mound of clay. She began asking questions.

"Are your parents still alive?"

"No."

"You like L.A.?"

"It's my favorite city."

"Why do you write about women the way you do?"

"Like what?"

"You know."

"No, I don't."

"Well, I think it's a damned shame that a man who writes as well as you do just doesn't know anything about women."

I didn't answer.

"Damn it! What did Lisa do with…?" She began searching the room. "Oh, little girls who run off with their mother's tools!"

Lydia found another one. "I'll make this one do. Hold still now, relax but hold still."

I was facing her. She worked at the mound of clay with a wooden tool tipped with a loop of wire. She waved the tool at me over the mound of clay. I watched her. Her eyes looked at me.

They were large, dark brown. Even her bad eye, the one that didn't quite match the other, looked good. I looked back. Lydia worked. Time passed. I was in a trance. Then she said, "How about a break? Care for a beer?"

"Fine. Yes."

When she got up to go to the refrigerator I followed her. She got the bottle out and closed the door. As she turned I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to me. I put my mouth and body against hers. She held the beer bottle out at arm's length with one hand. I kissed her. I kissed her again. Lydia pushed me away.

"All right," she said, "enough. We have work to do."

We sat back down and I drank my beer while Lydia smoked a cigarette, the clay between us. Then the doorbell rang. Lydia got up. A fat woman stood there with frantic, pleading eyes.

"This is my sister, Glendoline."

"Hi."

Glendoline pulled up a chair and started talking. She could talk. If she was a sphinx she could have talked, if she was a stone she could have talked. I wondered when she'd get tired and leave. Even after I stopped listening it was like being battered with tiny pingpong balls. Glendoline had no concept of time or any idea that she might be intruding. She talked on and on.

"Listen," I said finally, "when are you going to leave?"

Then a sister act began. They began talking to each other. They were both standing up, waving their arms at each other. The voices pitched higher. They threatened each other with physical harm. At last-near the world's end-Glendoline did a gigantic twist of torso and flung herself out of the doorway through the large flapbang of the screen door and was gone-but still heard, ignited and bemoaning-down to her apartment in the back of the court.

Lydia and I walked back to the breakfast nook and sat down. She picked up her sculptor's tool. Her eyes looked into mine.

One morning a few days later I entered Lydia's courtyard as she was walking in from the alley. She had been over to see her friend Tina who lived in an apartment house on the corner. She looked electric that morning, much like the first time she had come over, with the orange.

"Ooooh," she said, "you've got on a new shirt!"

It was true. I had bought the shirt because I was thinking about her, about seeing her. I knew that she knew that, and was making fun of me, yet I didn't mind.

Lydia unlocked the door and we went inside. The clay sat in the center of the breakfast nook table under a wet cloth. She pulled the cloth off. "What do you think?"

Lydia hadn't spared me. The scars were there, the alcoholic nose, the monkey mouth, the eyes narrowed to slits, and there was the dumb, pleased grin of a happy man, ridiculous, feeling his luck and wondering why. She was 30 and I was over 50. I didn't care.

"Yes," I said, "you've got me down. I like it. But it looks almost finished. I'm going to be depressed when it's done. There have been some great mornings and afternoons."

"Has it interfered with your writing?"

"No, I only write after it gets dark. I can never write in the day."

Lydia picked up her modeling tool and looked at me. "Don't worry. I have a lot more work to do. I want to get this one right."

At her first break she got a pint of whiskey out of the refrigerator.

"Ah," I said.

"How much?" she asked holding up a tall water glass.

"Half and half."

She fixed the drink and I drank it right down.

"I've heard about you," she said.

"Like what?"

"About how you throw guys off your front porch. That you beat your women."

"Beat my women?"

"Yes, somebody told me."

I grabbed Lydia and we went into our longest kiss ever. I held her against the edge of the sink and began rubbing my cock against her. She pushed me away but I caught her again in the center of the kitchen.

Lydia's hand reached for mine and pushed it down the front of her jeans and into her panties. One fingertip felt the top of her cunt. She was wet. As I continued to kiss her I worked my finger down into her cunt. Then I pulled my hand out, broke away, got the pint and poured myself another drink. I sat back down at the breakfast nook table and Lydia went around to the other side, sat down and looked at me. Then she began working on the clay again. I drank my whiskey slowly.

"Look," I said, "I know your tragedy."

"What?"

"I know your tragedy."

"What do you mean?"

"Listen," I said, "just forget it."

"I want to know."

"I don't want to hurt your feelings."

"I want to know what the hell you're talking about."

"O.K., if you give me another drink I'll tell you."

"All right." Lydia took my empty glass and gave me half-whiskey, half-water. I drank it down again.

"Well?" she asked.

"Hell, you know."

"Know what?"

"You've got a big pussy."

"What?"

"It's not uncommon. You've had two children."

Lydia sat silently working on the clay. Then she laid down her tool. She walked over to the corner of the kitchen near the back door. I watched her bend down and pull her boots off. Then she pushed down her jeans and her panties. Her cunt was right there looking at me.

"All right, you bastard," she said. "I'm going to show you you're wrong."