Ask the Dust (The Saga of Arturo Bandini #3)

by John Fante

Yes, it’s true: but I have seen houses in Bel-Air with cool lawns and green swimming pools. I have wanted women whose very shoes are worth all I have ever possessed.

The girl lay back, her hands behind her neck, her legs over the bed. I shall smell lilacs in Connecticut, no doubt, before I die, and see the clean white small reticent churches of my youth, the pasture bars I broke to run away.

I tossed my shoulders and swaggered away, whistling with pleasure. In the gutter I saw a long cigaret butt. I picked it up without shame, lit it as I stood with one foot in the gutter, puffed it and exhaled toward the stars. I was an American, and goddamn proud of it.

I knew she would return. I did not wait. I lived my life. I wrote a few pages. I read a few books. I was serene: she would come back. It would be at night. I never thought of her as a thing to be considered by daylight. The many times I had seen her, none had been in the day. I expected her like I expected the moon.

I was drunk that night, Camilla, drunk on seventy-eight cent whiskey,

I watched you dress. I felt your kiss on my forehead as you said goodbye, and that nauseated me too. Then you climbed out the window and I heard you stagger up the hillside, the grass swishing and little twigs breaking under your uncertain feet.