West, Richard M.

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Her face is a blur now,but the eyes were green & I remember her voice:"Have you ever read Alexander Pushkin?" she asked."Oh yeah," I said. "Sure, sure."& I bought her a glass of Pellegrino's Marsala.We went north to the mountains & read Pushkin together;then we went south again & lived on a canalthat reminded her of Petersburg before the revolution.One night when her Slavic soul barely flickered, she said: "Amore, you will not understand this ..."but I did, I did& then she went home to Sausalito, or some such place where there were still Russian tea rooms & I didn't hear from her for yearsuntil somehow she found my number & calls me at 3 A.M.: "I am living in Venice, California," she says,"in a motel off the highway. I am divorced, my daughter works in a whorehouse & my son is currently on drugs.”"I'm sorry to hear that," I say."How is it with you?" she asks."I have taken up needlepoint," I say."I am very good at butterflies.""There is this red neon sign," she says,"right outside my window. It keeps me awake all night.""Turn to the wall," I tell her."The light flashes on the WALL," she says."Close your eyes," I suggest."That's all very easy for you to say, isn't it?" she snarls 8s hangs up& I decide to request an unlisted number in the morning.THE NEANDERTHAL MANWe just came in off a night patrol & were sitting around the command post at dawn drinking coffee laced with a little grappa when our new lieutenant99loosened his Italian silk scarf, wiped a trickle of blood from his cheek & said:Do you fellows knowthat this is the very same townwhere Lt. Frederic Henrymet that beautiful English nursein A Farewell to Arms?I was only a dumb corporal at the time,but this news didn't exactly stun me to numbness;I already knew that the officersalways got the best looking women,but this Farewell to Arms thing was something else, it really had me puzzled:I thought I had hit every goddam saloon in that lousy burg.THE RAT IN A TRAPI'm drinking a lousy local Chablisat this progressive cocktail partywhere the white stuffin the silver bowlisn't sugar,you know,when this bronzed incendiary,who is also a female advertising exec,swoops over & froths:"Darling! What are you into these days?""I'm working for REDCOM XXII in Seattle,"I tell her."Wonderful!" she gushes. "Is that one of those new politically progressive ecology magazines?""No,” I say. "It's the naval warfare Readiness Command.""Oh, dear," she fizzles. "Whatever do you do there?""I'm an administrator," I say,"in the Recruiting Directorate."100

The Neanderthal Man

https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/wormwood/wormwood_a1988v28n4i112/wormwood_a1988v28n4i112p99.pdf

The Neanderthal Man

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