Mick Warren's imagination frequently ran wild, getting the best of him. His upstairs bed was wedged in a corner between two tall gothic windows. He would lay there looking up at the ceiling high overhead and then at the walls, several coats of mother-of-pearl enamel on ancient tongue-and-groove carpentry.
Below him outside the garden hydrangia moved toward the moon.
He could hear large insects beat against the screens.
Midsummer's Eve.
Her sibilant voice echoed through the halls of his throbbing brain.
Mick Mick Mick!
Tick tick tick. His Rolex watch.
He was afraid to look, afraid of what he might see. There! Writhing in the hydrangia, big as a python, but not a python. The woman---
Mick, invite me upstairs!
He heard the slap of her serpent's tail upon the stairwell wall.
He could still see her rising from the garden soil, breasts and belly moonlit, the black gash of mouth and the molten desire of eye.
Manhood fully aroused, he awaited her coming, and there she was, glistening in a silver mist at the bedroom door. Her bare feet were five-toed porcelain things. Yet she glided, not walked toward him, lithe arms outstretched, lips now ruby wet.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Monday, May 6, 2013
Pilgrimage
A short story published in Red Bass 1983. Dedicated to Jay Murphy, editor.
The Trailways hurtled through the mountains, its headlamps probing the night.
A sudden tilt woke me. Emerging from the comforting placenta of sleep, I was disoriented and distantly aware of pain. Through the entire length of me rushed this angry river of needles, pumping from my heart and telling me the end of the remission had come. I was a dead man.
Since Memphis the trip had seemed like a descent in a bathysphere, down into the bowels of the darkest sea.
I needed a drink.
There was a pint of Jim Beam in my grip bag.
"Hey, punk. You awake?" A voice full of tobacco cough from across the aisle.
"Who the fuck wants to know?"
"Me."
It was the old dude from the streetcorner. He had a beard like Walt Whitman. His long, frizzy gray hair was tied with a red bandana. His Goodwill clothes, a blazing assortment of wool, cotten and polyester, stank of urine and sweat.
"Hey, Mister Whitman."
"Hey, yourself."
"How did you get on the bus?"
"I got money."
"Evidently."
"You never see me panhandling."
"You asked me for a smoke."
"Ain't the same."
"OK. No argument. Excuse me. I've got to take a piss and wash up."
I took my grip bag. Walking back to the WC, I survived two bends and a climb.
You develope seaman's legs if you ride the bus a lot. I rode the bus a lot.
Hitchhiking used to be a good way to get around. Even up north during the winter. But that was long ago, before things got wired. Folks on the road are crazy now.
My grip bag was for two items. A pint of Jim Beam and my Colt .45 automatic. Everything else was incidental. Toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, a couple of Bic razors, shave cream, towel, rubbers.
Be prepared. The scout motto.
Inside the WC I sat down and had a drink.
Rocking and jolting, with chemicals sloshing beneath me. Confined in a space not much bigger than a coffin, I eased my mind and felt loose. I was a million light years from home, with no direction home, like a rolling stone---
Oh shit.
I had another drink and counted my dough from the VA.
There was enough money for whiskey, dancing, steak-and-eggs, books, movies, yeah, all-night movies. I prefer to snooze in theatres. Not flopjoints, bus stations or alleys.
Sometimes I hike into the country and sleep under the stars. But too often I wake up thinking I am in the bush with Charlie all around.
Ach!
After Hendersonville I would not need money.
Would not need a thing.
So what the hell? Spend like there is no tomorrow.
I was down to one clip of ball ammo.
Enough.
My traveling days were done.
Someone was rapping on the door.
I opened the door for a corpulent middle-aged woman wrapped in calico.
"Smells like a distillery in here!" she complained.
"Oh, shut up."
Without further words she locked herself inside. I wondered if she would rat on me to the driver.
Walt Whitman was waiting for me.
"Hey, punk."
"Hey."
"Sit here."
"Want to talk? Sure. But I need an aisle between us. Can't you go to the laundry once a year?"
"Hah! Guess I am pretty offensive."
I squeezed his mottled wrist and asked with my hardest poker face, "OK. Now level with me. You're really Howard Hughes. Right?"
It was a mistake to make him laugh. His breayh was green with decay.
"I like you, punk. Tell me. How come you wear your hair like that? Makes you look mean. You're not mean."
"Naw. Not really."
He should have seen me in 1968, riding in the bay of a Cobra gunship, raking the bush with an M-60 with all the glee of a kid in a video arkade. Back then, I mixed whiskey with Dexedrene.
"That's what you call a Mohawk, isn't it?"
My hair was falling out. So I had given myself a haircut and dyed it white.
"It's a Mohawk."
"It's a sensation. You could get arrested for disturbing the peace."
"I know. Hey now. That was some scene in Memphis, eh? I could not believe those guys. Stealing a live chicken and sneaking it into the bus station icking it into a microwave."
"Is that what the ruckus was all about?"
"The damned thing exploded."
"Some kinds of food will do that. I bet it was an awful mess."
"It needed to be hosed into a bodybag."
"You were in Viet Nam."
"Fucking mind-reader."
"I like to play detective. You know. Figure people out Not much else to do when you loiter. I figured you were in the war and got sick. I mean, with some disease."
"Agent Orange. I think it gave me leukemia. At any rate, something did."
"Terrible shame. Young guy like you. I'm sorry."
He left me alone with my favorite book.
I read from "Look Homeward, Angel," a dog-eared companion during this final stretch of travel. From a windy prairie, across the Mississippi, making it to Memphis for a month, then into these mountains---
There would be a gentle rolling fog through the sycamore and maple trees, down the lane past white fences and willows glistening with dew and up over swards of cold grass among the mullberry, blackberry and pine.
There would be the angel carved from Carolina stone, undramatic in that graveyard, dingy with age, no splendor or grace, no eyes turned toward God's heaven or fingers pointing the way.
I would lie there as Wolfe did so long ago, and I would breathe the autumn air and put into my mouth the blued muzzle of the .45.
Death, come swiftly!
The Trailways hurtled through the mountains, its headlamps probing the night.
A sudden tilt woke me. Emerging from the comforting placenta of sleep, I was disoriented and distantly aware of pain. Through the entire length of me rushed this angry river of needles, pumping from my heart and telling me the end of the remission had come. I was a dead man.
Since Memphis the trip had seemed like a descent in a bathysphere, down into the bowels of the darkest sea.
I needed a drink.
There was a pint of Jim Beam in my grip bag.
"Hey, punk. You awake?" A voice full of tobacco cough from across the aisle.
"Who the fuck wants to know?"
"Me."
It was the old dude from the streetcorner. He had a beard like Walt Whitman. His long, frizzy gray hair was tied with a red bandana. His Goodwill clothes, a blazing assortment of wool, cotten and polyester, stank of urine and sweat.
"Hey, Mister Whitman."
"Hey, yourself."
"How did you get on the bus?"
"I got money."
"Evidently."
"You never see me panhandling."
"You asked me for a smoke."
"Ain't the same."
"OK. No argument. Excuse me. I've got to take a piss and wash up."
I took my grip bag. Walking back to the WC, I survived two bends and a climb.
You develope seaman's legs if you ride the bus a lot. I rode the bus a lot.
Hitchhiking used to be a good way to get around. Even up north during the winter. But that was long ago, before things got wired. Folks on the road are crazy now.
My grip bag was for two items. A pint of Jim Beam and my Colt .45 automatic. Everything else was incidental. Toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, a couple of Bic razors, shave cream, towel, rubbers.
Be prepared. The scout motto.
Inside the WC I sat down and had a drink.
Rocking and jolting, with chemicals sloshing beneath me. Confined in a space not much bigger than a coffin, I eased my mind and felt loose. I was a million light years from home, with no direction home, like a rolling stone---
Oh shit.
I had another drink and counted my dough from the VA.
There was enough money for whiskey, dancing, steak-and-eggs, books, movies, yeah, all-night movies. I prefer to snooze in theatres. Not flopjoints, bus stations or alleys.
Sometimes I hike into the country and sleep under the stars. But too often I wake up thinking I am in the bush with Charlie all around.
Ach!
After Hendersonville I would not need money.
Would not need a thing.
So what the hell? Spend like there is no tomorrow.
I was down to one clip of ball ammo.
Enough.
My traveling days were done.
Someone was rapping on the door.
I opened the door for a corpulent middle-aged woman wrapped in calico.
"Smells like a distillery in here!" she complained.
"Oh, shut up."
Without further words she locked herself inside. I wondered if she would rat on me to the driver.
Walt Whitman was waiting for me.
"Hey, punk."
"Hey."
"Sit here."
"Want to talk? Sure. But I need an aisle between us. Can't you go to the laundry once a year?"
"Hah! Guess I am pretty offensive."
I squeezed his mottled wrist and asked with my hardest poker face, "OK. Now level with me. You're really Howard Hughes. Right?"
It was a mistake to make him laugh. His breayh was green with decay.
"I like you, punk. Tell me. How come you wear your hair like that? Makes you look mean. You're not mean."
"Naw. Not really."
He should have seen me in 1968, riding in the bay of a Cobra gunship, raking the bush with an M-60 with all the glee of a kid in a video arkade. Back then, I mixed whiskey with Dexedrene.
"That's what you call a Mohawk, isn't it?"
My hair was falling out. So I had given myself a haircut and dyed it white.
"It's a Mohawk."
"It's a sensation. You could get arrested for disturbing the peace."
"I know. Hey now. That was some scene in Memphis, eh? I could not believe those guys. Stealing a live chicken and sneaking it into the bus station icking it into a microwave."
"Is that what the ruckus was all about?"
"The damned thing exploded."
"Some kinds of food will do that. I bet it was an awful mess."
"It needed to be hosed into a bodybag."
"You were in Viet Nam."
"Fucking mind-reader."
"I like to play detective. You know. Figure people out Not much else to do when you loiter. I figured you were in the war and got sick. I mean, with some disease."
"Agent Orange. I think it gave me leukemia. At any rate, something did."
"Terrible shame. Young guy like you. I'm sorry."
He left me alone with my favorite book.
I read from "Look Homeward, Angel," a dog-eared companion during this final stretch of travel. From a windy prairie, across the Mississippi, making it to Memphis for a month, then into these mountains---
There would be a gentle rolling fog through the sycamore and maple trees, down the lane past white fences and willows glistening with dew and up over swards of cold grass among the mullberry, blackberry and pine.
There would be the angel carved from Carolina stone, undramatic in that graveyard, dingy with age, no splendor or grace, no eyes turned toward God's heaven or fingers pointing the way.
I would lie there as Wolfe did so long ago, and I would breathe the autumn air and put into my mouth the blued muzzle of the .45.
Death, come swiftly!
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Roman a Clef
The lion stil rules the barrancas,
and the man there is always alone.
--SOUTH COAST
The Kingston Trio
Seamus took a greasy slug through the flab of his armpit, making a mess of his Armani greatcoat. A Colt .380 automatic.Inez Ibanez pulled the little surprise from a gilt party purse as calmly as she would one of her Prozac pills or her Dunhill lighter, and damned if it didn't go off.
Palid stone cold, her death mask sprouted terrible ropes of of Gorgon hair, shocked white. "You promised never to write about me!"
Bang!
At his age he was too existential to whine, but he sure felt like crying. What hurt the most was the ruin of an expensive and central part of his dress-for-success wardrobe.
*
Before donning the swishy Italian job, he practically lived in a black London Fog topcoat, going back 30 years.
I remember when he was a young man and most of his attire came from San Francisco's second-hand stores: good ol' flannels and denims, and boots needing just a dab of saddle soap. Comfort mattered, style didn't.
Thumbing down the Pacific Coast Highway or hiking into the Sierras, he was like a giddy drunk fool in a Kerouac novel, delighted with the wonderful minutia of life. He had bought yhe London Fog way back when folks still jabbered about James Dean in "East Of Eden." Seamus' red hair blazed high and wild against the gray Monteray sky. During his art history period at Berkeley, dating beatnik chicks in their Kansas Studebakers, he used the topcoat as a blanket on chilly wet oyster pirate nights.
After seeing an article in Rogue Magazine about Henry Miller and Big Sur, he thought: I should be writing. What got him going was the photo of the author, Hunter Thompson. Sitting at a small outdoor table with a pot of java and an Underwood-Olivetti portable typewriter, the future guru of gonzo journalism seemed to Seamus as the new ideal. Big Sur and Henry Miller were mere adjuncts to the thin balding man posing for the camera. The author was his own protagonist! What a concept!
Seamus knew one thing for sure. Any author trying such a stunt had better be pretty damned interesting. Otherwise he would be compelled to add fictions, trying to gain a subjectivity commonly found in novels. If he wasn't careful, he could easily become just another flakey dude reinventing himself, much like the Wizard of Oz.
Henry Miller's "autobiography," for example, would have you believe he was one of those lusty priapic chaps who fuck with their suits on, urging their penises, oops, pricks, into hot somnambulistic women during impromtu engagements of high opera. Ejaculations in the office, hall, elevator, etc. Spurting semen onto wool skirts and trousers.
Big Sur, as always, would be the place where the Unknown God created Symmetry and Chaos.
*
Seamus was too shy to talk to Ferlinghetti at the City Lights bookshop, but he bought a load of New Directions and Evergreen Review. He spotted Corso, but felt too intimidated to strike up a conversation. The guy seemed frail, but souped up.
He went to a jazzbar. A hipster blew heraldic raspberries through a conch shell. He scribbled on a napkin: "I dive into the Humboldt & swim with silver-finned women."
In those days he had a pale flat belly, hard like Paul Newman's in the new movie "Sweet Bird Of Youth." Erect, in a lotus position on pink bedsheets, he played to lovers on his penny-whistle a Celtic air, celebrating their dewy rose petals at dawn.
In espresso cafes his bait-and-hook book was "Being and Nothingness."
"L'etre et Neant. How quaint."
She spilled pinot noir. It soaked into the stuff he had arrayed, including a newly-bought lithograph of Feininger's "Halle Cathedral."
"Sorry," she said with a malicious lilt, and raided his mental space like a cat, her aura pulsing mightily in his ears. "What's this?" picking up the scrolled lightograph, "some kind of cubist thing?"
"Seems so."
"Don't know Feininger. Have you seen Picasso's etching of Apollinaire, or Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase?"
"No." Apollnaire who?
"Check them out."
"I will. Do you like them?"
"Not especially. I thought you might."
She paused to torder a drink from their table. Then she continued: "The cathedral is a work of art, rising from the mundane earth, sweeping itself up spirituallly as high as it can, leading the imaginations of its people toward heaven. Tourists take photos of it. Then along comes your artist. Cubist, whatever. He takes it all in, and, through his sensitivity, he expresses himself thus!"
"Tell me something I don't know."
"Excuse me?"
"Our class just covered Picasso's reply to Gertrude Stein, who disapproved of his portrait of her. 'It doesn't look like me,' she said, and he said, 'It will in thirty years.' Hah! He was after her Essence."
And so Seamus met Inez Ibanez, who traced her ancestry to the hildagos of Old California. His folks, however, arrived with the Irish horde that settled part of the Barbary Coast. Whenever he met one of her kind he would be awestruck, like a digger finding something in amber. Her ebony hair flowed the length of her spine, reminding him of the dorsal stripe on a tabby cat. Her chocolate eyes tugged at him with feline magnetism. He thought of those rare cougars that haunt the remaining barrancas.
They laughed over his choice of the Sartre tome on phenomenology to attract women. (Evidently, it had attracted her!)
"Anthropology is the current rage out here," she said. "If you have a thing for French intellectuals, try a copy of Levi-Strauss."
"Hmm." Blue jeans?
"Just a suggestion."
"At the moment I can think of no better company than you."
Suddenly she was blushing. Milky smooth olive skin, ruddy on proud cheekbones. What beauty!
"Let's walk," she said, and they walked to her place.
*
Three wharf cats queued along the plank railing glowered at Seamus as he prepared the filets he had brought home from the seafood restaurant where he assisted the chef. Inez' upstairs flat opened onto a deck overlooking the bay. She had a credit account with Sears, and she shopped like any other bourgeois American. So, the deck had things. Redwood chairs, picnic table and benches, and a Spanish barbacoa grill. He forgave her that extavagance because he loved to use it. Unlike most people with grills, he didn't crave beef. His cuisine came from the sea. Grilled shrimp and fish, tangy with herbs, peppers and spices, got his waterworks flowing as no marinaded steak or burger could. Inez came home, smelled it, and joined the cats.
"That's new," she declared, acknowledging his baseball cap. "San Francisco Giants."
"Yes, ma'am," he saluted, hoisting an Anchor Steam beer.
She marvelled at his organizational skills when creating a meal al fresco. He ranged between fastidious and persnickety, and if something was going wrong, like a sooty pot with his pasta boiling over and dousing the coals, he could be downright combative. He wore an apron she had given him. Emblazoned: EL JEFE, THE CHEF!
He tossed tidbits to the cats and handed Inez a beer.
"Have plans for tonight?" he asked, knowing she was deep into a literary, possibly publishable, project.
She shrugged. "Depends."
"Let's go to a game."
Her visage collapsed like Nob Hill masonry in a quake. She reminded him of a little girl about to be deprived of a highly valued treasure.
"You don't want to."
"Well--"
"It's OK," he said, feigning neutrality when he knew that feigning anything with her would be moronic.
She regained her usual poker face. Inscrutably pleasant. "I didn't say I didn't want to. Baseball means nothing to me, but I would enjoy going out with you."
"You're sure?"
"Yes! Now would you please serve the salmon?"
*
Truly, baseball was not a big deal. He merely wished to fulfill this fantasy of fondling her breasts during a game at Candlestick Park, with the fog drifting in from the bay and covering the outfield. Intimate couples huddling and snuggling, sharing parkas and ponchos. Willy Mays knocking the hide from a long gone ball, only to have it soar up, stall, and fall back to second base. Seamus feeling Inez' nipples rising like minnows in a quiet lake and nibbling the palms of his hands.
On the way to the game they wore turtle-necks and jeans. She took her Navy peacoat. He took his London Fog.
*
One night while pussy-footing through the flat in search of a misplaced book of poems by Gary Snyder, Seamus espied Inez on the sofa of her library. A lamp illuminated her casually clothed nakedness. She was lounging like a centerfold, with a bottle of Dry Sack, and scratching away on a yellow legal pad with her ancient Esterbrook fountain pen. Seamus crept close. His scalp ed and the wispy curls on the nape of his sunburned neck bristled with electric alarm. She seemed to be in a trance. He had heard of his Irish cousins doing this sort of thing, afterwards claiming they were mediums writing messages from the sidhe. Charletans and mountebanks all!
Inez, he knew, had been obsessed with a literary project: Shmuel HaNagid. Known to esoteric scholars as a Talmudist and a Hebrew poet, HaNagid was also a man of action, serving as vizier to the court of Granada and commander of its army in Moorish Spain. Her eyes gazed toward the center of her forehead. She did not see Seamus enter the room and examine the yellow legal pad. Nor did she hear him gasp.
The script was in Hebrew.
*
Early the next morning he hefted his big mug of java out to the deck. Ideas whirled in his mind like debris in a cyclonic wind. The moment felt right for banging out an article. He jogged back to the closet where he stowed his gear and pulled out his Underwood-Olivetti
Ho! Typing his thoughts, jamming the keys. Chugging java with noisy amounts of air. Shouting with joy.
Until Inez emerged from behind the veil.
"Good morning."
Wearing a turquoise Navaho necklace and nothing else, smelling of nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla, she belonged on the cover of a Mickey Spilane. The wildness of her pubic bush drove him crazy.
*
A year scudded by. Rogue Magazine rejected his article on the odd people of Venice, California. Dear Seamus, the subject has been done to death and, by the way, Hunter Thompson is somewhere working on a book about motorcycle clubs.
He was crushed. He'd had this dream of being awarded a column, joining hip science fiction writer Albert Bester and horror-meister Robert Bloch. He would be the, uh, Hunter Thompson-type guy.
Then one day the postman with a feathery crewcut and a dainty beard arrived early. Seamus stopped typing and hustled down to the mailbox. Instead of good news from Hollywood, he found a notification from the university saying he was being booted out as a no-show.
Bye-bye, Berkeley.
*
Inez and Seamus dropped acid the winter afternoon they reconciled after their first major spat. A weather system from the Pacific Rim finallt arrived, and they walked an hour in the rain. She wore a vaquero's slicker. He had his London Fog. Chinatown was a neon trip. They bought enough Take-ee Out-ee to feed a family of twelve. He picked up his paycheck from the restaurant, and joked with his boss about adding stir-fry to the mindset of mainstream America. McSlivers! Easy to chew beef cuts and crisp legumes in a tangy ginger sauce. Rice on the side. Sold with a goofy hero from Kung Foo.
"I think you're high on that new junk," the burly chef said. "Get outta here!"
They laughed, hugged, and broke, each with an enormous erection.
Meanwhile Inez was perusing occult magazines at a kiosk. Seamus caught up with her and squeezed her ass.
Up the hill homeward, they delighted in the way colors left traces.
"Promise you will never write about me."
He pulled away. "What?"
"Writers always betray the people closest to the them."
"Stop this!"
"Am I going read in the New Yorker that before we make love I take a vibrator into the bathroom?"
"Doubt it, " he replied, meaning he didn't write material suitable for the New Yorker. "You do WHAT?"
When they arrived they found that Nasruden, her Persian cat, had shat Day-Glo turds into the seething magic carpet. On a normal day the carpet was a synergetic shag thing that invited you to writhe on it like a snake. Seamus began to clean up Nasruden's mess. Then he pressed his ears into the blowing, waving, undulating fibers, and listened to the carpet. He was a teenager again, and the Monterey grass sighed in gusty commotions above his head, and Inez stalked him like a cougar, her golden tail swishing.
*
Seamus had sent a thunderous story to the Paris Revue. Alas, when the postman handed it back to him, the little fellow had tears in his blue eyes.
Pink elfin pug face. "I'm really sorry, Seamus. I know you were counting on it."
"David, do you have a moment? I'd like you to hear this."
"Sure."
The postman sat crosslegged. He listened to Seamus orate from the rejection letter: Your submission has a raw, dangerous quality. It reminds us of that Bo Diddley song
Seamus beamed. "Isn't that great?"
"It sure is."
The writer began to sing and bop around. David felt his wee cock swell inside his snug jockey briefs and secrete a drop of semen.
"WHO-O-O-O do ya luv, CHILE? Who do you love?"
Hoo-doo.
*
Inez split. Blythely tooling off in a VW Microbus to the Eselen Institute at Big Sur.
"She's sleeping with her hypnotist," Seaumus told David. "I'm sure of it."
The postman shared in his friend's agony. He asked, "Is there anything to this regression to past lives?"
"Doubt it."
The hypnotist taught Inez to travel the inner planes.
It was inevitable. She took a trip and failed to return.
Not to Eselen, anyway.
Hillbilly bourbon replaced the happy java.
Although Inez was gone, her fangs continued to shred meat from his frenzied bones.
*
When they greeted, their handshake consisted of a gentile fingertip exchange, mincing and delicate as the poetry of Omar Khayyam. The Moor welcomed Inez, his silver glance dipping into her fluid mind like a spoon. "Come this way."
He led her through a dark, cool hall of geometric tiles. It opened onto a sunlit courtyard with a tall date tree and an odalisque of shade palms. All was exactly as she had envisioned it. Scholarly men in Eastern finery were discussing Seneca of Cordoba and Marcus Aurelius, Aristotle and Heraclitus, the Kabbalah and Moses de Leon, employing mathematical concepts, talking airily of atomic matter and angelic worlds, mentioning now and then the prehistoric black stone from space, enshrined in the Kaaba.
The Moor introduced Inez to Shmuel HaNagid, a gap-toothed man who smiled with robust cheer.
"My dear Inez, at last we meet!"
-30-
and the man there is always alone.
--SOUTH COAST
The Kingston Trio
Seamus took a greasy slug through the flab of his armpit, making a mess of his Armani greatcoat. A Colt .380 automatic.Inez Ibanez pulled the little surprise from a gilt party purse as calmly as she would one of her Prozac pills or her Dunhill lighter, and damned if it didn't go off.
Palid stone cold, her death mask sprouted terrible ropes of of Gorgon hair, shocked white. "You promised never to write about me!"
Bang!
At his age he was too existential to whine, but he sure felt like crying. What hurt the most was the ruin of an expensive and central part of his dress-for-success wardrobe.
*
Before donning the swishy Italian job, he practically lived in a black London Fog topcoat, going back 30 years.
I remember when he was a young man and most of his attire came from San Francisco's second-hand stores: good ol' flannels and denims, and boots needing just a dab of saddle soap. Comfort mattered, style didn't.
Thumbing down the Pacific Coast Highway or hiking into the Sierras, he was like a giddy drunk fool in a Kerouac novel, delighted with the wonderful minutia of life. He had bought yhe London Fog way back when folks still jabbered about James Dean in "East Of Eden." Seamus' red hair blazed high and wild against the gray Monteray sky. During his art history period at Berkeley, dating beatnik chicks in their Kansas Studebakers, he used the topcoat as a blanket on chilly wet oyster pirate nights.
After seeing an article in Rogue Magazine about Henry Miller and Big Sur, he thought: I should be writing. What got him going was the photo of the author, Hunter Thompson. Sitting at a small outdoor table with a pot of java and an Underwood-Olivetti portable typewriter, the future guru of gonzo journalism seemed to Seamus as the new ideal. Big Sur and Henry Miller were mere adjuncts to the thin balding man posing for the camera. The author was his own protagonist! What a concept!
Seamus knew one thing for sure. Any author trying such a stunt had better be pretty damned interesting. Otherwise he would be compelled to add fictions, trying to gain a subjectivity commonly found in novels. If he wasn't careful, he could easily become just another flakey dude reinventing himself, much like the Wizard of Oz.
Henry Miller's "autobiography," for example, would have you believe he was one of those lusty priapic chaps who fuck with their suits on, urging their penises, oops, pricks, into hot somnambulistic women during impromtu engagements of high opera. Ejaculations in the office, hall, elevator, etc. Spurting semen onto wool skirts and trousers.
Big Sur, as always, would be the place where the Unknown God created Symmetry and Chaos.
*
Seamus was too shy to talk to Ferlinghetti at the City Lights bookshop, but he bought a load of New Directions and Evergreen Review. He spotted Corso, but felt too intimidated to strike up a conversation. The guy seemed frail, but souped up.
He went to a jazzbar. A hipster blew heraldic raspberries through a conch shell. He scribbled on a napkin: "I dive into the Humboldt & swim with silver-finned women."
In those days he had a pale flat belly, hard like Paul Newman's in the new movie "Sweet Bird Of Youth." Erect, in a lotus position on pink bedsheets, he played to lovers on his penny-whistle a Celtic air, celebrating their dewy rose petals at dawn.
In espresso cafes his bait-and-hook book was "Being and Nothingness."
"L'etre et Neant. How quaint."
She spilled pinot noir. It soaked into the stuff he had arrayed, including a newly-bought lithograph of Feininger's "Halle Cathedral."
"Sorry," she said with a malicious lilt, and raided his mental space like a cat, her aura pulsing mightily in his ears. "What's this?" picking up the scrolled lightograph, "some kind of cubist thing?"
"Seems so."
"Don't know Feininger. Have you seen Picasso's etching of Apollinaire, or Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase?"
"No." Apollnaire who?
"Check them out."
"I will. Do you like them?"
"Not especially. I thought you might."
She paused to torder a drink from their table. Then she continued: "The cathedral is a work of art, rising from the mundane earth, sweeping itself up spirituallly as high as it can, leading the imaginations of its people toward heaven. Tourists take photos of it. Then along comes your artist. Cubist, whatever. He takes it all in, and, through his sensitivity, he expresses himself thus!"
"Tell me something I don't know."
"Excuse me?"
"Our class just covered Picasso's reply to Gertrude Stein, who disapproved of his portrait of her. 'It doesn't look like me,' she said, and he said, 'It will in thirty years.' Hah! He was after her Essence."
And so Seamus met Inez Ibanez, who traced her ancestry to the hildagos of Old California. His folks, however, arrived with the Irish horde that settled part of the Barbary Coast. Whenever he met one of her kind he would be awestruck, like a digger finding something in amber. Her ebony hair flowed the length of her spine, reminding him of the dorsal stripe on a tabby cat. Her chocolate eyes tugged at him with feline magnetism. He thought of those rare cougars that haunt the remaining barrancas.
They laughed over his choice of the Sartre tome on phenomenology to attract women. (Evidently, it had attracted her!)
"Anthropology is the current rage out here," she said. "If you have a thing for French intellectuals, try a copy of Levi-Strauss."
"Hmm." Blue jeans?
"Just a suggestion."
"At the moment I can think of no better company than you."
Suddenly she was blushing. Milky smooth olive skin, ruddy on proud cheekbones. What beauty!
"Let's walk," she said, and they walked to her place.
*
Three wharf cats queued along the plank railing glowered at Seamus as he prepared the filets he had brought home from the seafood restaurant where he assisted the chef. Inez' upstairs flat opened onto a deck overlooking the bay. She had a credit account with Sears, and she shopped like any other bourgeois American. So, the deck had things. Redwood chairs, picnic table and benches, and a Spanish barbacoa grill. He forgave her that extavagance because he loved to use it. Unlike most people with grills, he didn't crave beef. His cuisine came from the sea. Grilled shrimp and fish, tangy with herbs, peppers and spices, got his waterworks flowing as no marinaded steak or burger could. Inez came home, smelled it, and joined the cats.
"That's new," she declared, acknowledging his baseball cap. "San Francisco Giants."
"Yes, ma'am," he saluted, hoisting an Anchor Steam beer.
She marvelled at his organizational skills when creating a meal al fresco. He ranged between fastidious and persnickety, and if something was going wrong, like a sooty pot with his pasta boiling over and dousing the coals, he could be downright combative. He wore an apron she had given him. Emblazoned: EL JEFE, THE CHEF!
He tossed tidbits to the cats and handed Inez a beer.
"Have plans for tonight?" he asked, knowing she was deep into a literary, possibly publishable, project.
She shrugged. "Depends."
"Let's go to a game."
Her visage collapsed like Nob Hill masonry in a quake. She reminded him of a little girl about to be deprived of a highly valued treasure.
"You don't want to."
"Well--"
"It's OK," he said, feigning neutrality when he knew that feigning anything with her would be moronic.
She regained her usual poker face. Inscrutably pleasant. "I didn't say I didn't want to. Baseball means nothing to me, but I would enjoy going out with you."
"You're sure?"
"Yes! Now would you please serve the salmon?"
*
Truly, baseball was not a big deal. He merely wished to fulfill this fantasy of fondling her breasts during a game at Candlestick Park, with the fog drifting in from the bay and covering the outfield. Intimate couples huddling and snuggling, sharing parkas and ponchos. Willy Mays knocking the hide from a long gone ball, only to have it soar up, stall, and fall back to second base. Seamus feeling Inez' nipples rising like minnows in a quiet lake and nibbling the palms of his hands.
On the way to the game they wore turtle-necks and jeans. She took her Navy peacoat. He took his London Fog.
*
One night while pussy-footing through the flat in search of a misplaced book of poems by Gary Snyder, Seamus espied Inez on the sofa of her library. A lamp illuminated her casually clothed nakedness. She was lounging like a centerfold, with a bottle of Dry Sack, and scratching away on a yellow legal pad with her ancient Esterbrook fountain pen. Seamus crept close. His scalp ed and the wispy curls on the nape of his sunburned neck bristled with electric alarm. She seemed to be in a trance. He had heard of his Irish cousins doing this sort of thing, afterwards claiming they were mediums writing messages from the sidhe. Charletans and mountebanks all!
Inez, he knew, had been obsessed with a literary project: Shmuel HaNagid. Known to esoteric scholars as a Talmudist and a Hebrew poet, HaNagid was also a man of action, serving as vizier to the court of Granada and commander of its army in Moorish Spain. Her eyes gazed toward the center of her forehead. She did not see Seamus enter the room and examine the yellow legal pad. Nor did she hear him gasp.
The script was in Hebrew.
*
Early the next morning he hefted his big mug of java out to the deck. Ideas whirled in his mind like debris in a cyclonic wind. The moment felt right for banging out an article. He jogged back to the closet where he stowed his gear and pulled out his Underwood-Olivetti
Ho! Typing his thoughts, jamming the keys. Chugging java with noisy amounts of air. Shouting with joy.
Until Inez emerged from behind the veil.
"Good morning."
Wearing a turquoise Navaho necklace and nothing else, smelling of nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla, she belonged on the cover of a Mickey Spilane. The wildness of her pubic bush drove him crazy.
*
A year scudded by. Rogue Magazine rejected his article on the odd people of Venice, California. Dear Seamus, the subject has been done to death and, by the way, Hunter Thompson is somewhere working on a book about motorcycle clubs.
He was crushed. He'd had this dream of being awarded a column, joining hip science fiction writer Albert Bester and horror-meister Robert Bloch. He would be the, uh, Hunter Thompson-type guy.
Then one day the postman with a feathery crewcut and a dainty beard arrived early. Seamus stopped typing and hustled down to the mailbox. Instead of good news from Hollywood, he found a notification from the university saying he was being booted out as a no-show.
Bye-bye, Berkeley.
*
Inez and Seamus dropped acid the winter afternoon they reconciled after their first major spat. A weather system from the Pacific Rim finallt arrived, and they walked an hour in the rain. She wore a vaquero's slicker. He had his London Fog. Chinatown was a neon trip. They bought enough Take-ee Out-ee to feed a family of twelve. He picked up his paycheck from the restaurant, and joked with his boss about adding stir-fry to the mindset of mainstream America. McSlivers! Easy to chew beef cuts and crisp legumes in a tangy ginger sauce. Rice on the side. Sold with a goofy hero from Kung Foo.
"I think you're high on that new junk," the burly chef said. "Get outta here!"
They laughed, hugged, and broke, each with an enormous erection.
Meanwhile Inez was perusing occult magazines at a kiosk. Seamus caught up with her and squeezed her ass.
Up the hill homeward, they delighted in the way colors left traces.
"Promise you will never write about me."
He pulled away. "What?"
"Writers always betray the people closest to the them."
"Stop this!"
"Am I going read in the New Yorker that before we make love I take a vibrator into the bathroom?"
"Doubt it, " he replied, meaning he didn't write material suitable for the New Yorker. "You do WHAT?"
When they arrived they found that Nasruden, her Persian cat, had shat Day-Glo turds into the seething magic carpet. On a normal day the carpet was a synergetic shag thing that invited you to writhe on it like a snake. Seamus began to clean up Nasruden's mess. Then he pressed his ears into the blowing, waving, undulating fibers, and listened to the carpet. He was a teenager again, and the Monterey grass sighed in gusty commotions above his head, and Inez stalked him like a cougar, her golden tail swishing.
*
Seamus had sent a thunderous story to the Paris Revue. Alas, when the postman handed it back to him, the little fellow had tears in his blue eyes.
Pink elfin pug face. "I'm really sorry, Seamus. I know you were counting on it."
"David, do you have a moment? I'd like you to hear this."
"Sure."
The postman sat crosslegged. He listened to Seamus orate from the rejection letter: Your submission has a raw, dangerous quality. It reminds us of that Bo Diddley song
Seamus beamed. "Isn't that great?"
"It sure is."
The writer began to sing and bop around. David felt his wee cock swell inside his snug jockey briefs and secrete a drop of semen.
"WHO-O-O-O do ya luv, CHILE? Who do you love?"
Hoo-doo.
*
Inez split. Blythely tooling off in a VW Microbus to the Eselen Institute at Big Sur.
"She's sleeping with her hypnotist," Seaumus told David. "I'm sure of it."
The postman shared in his friend's agony. He asked, "Is there anything to this regression to past lives?"
"Doubt it."
The hypnotist taught Inez to travel the inner planes.
It was inevitable. She took a trip and failed to return.
Not to Eselen, anyway.
Hillbilly bourbon replaced the happy java.
Although Inez was gone, her fangs continued to shred meat from his frenzied bones.
*
When they greeted, their handshake consisted of a gentile fingertip exchange, mincing and delicate as the poetry of Omar Khayyam. The Moor welcomed Inez, his silver glance dipping into her fluid mind like a spoon. "Come this way."
He led her through a dark, cool hall of geometric tiles. It opened onto a sunlit courtyard with a tall date tree and an odalisque of shade palms. All was exactly as she had envisioned it. Scholarly men in Eastern finery were discussing Seneca of Cordoba and Marcus Aurelius, Aristotle and Heraclitus, the Kabbalah and Moses de Leon, employing mathematical concepts, talking airily of atomic matter and angelic worlds, mentioning now and then the prehistoric black stone from space, enshrined in the Kaaba.
The Moor introduced Inez to Shmuel HaNagid, a gap-toothed man who smiled with robust cheer.
"My dear Inez, at last we meet!"
-30-
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Man from Algiers
The Man from Algiers was published as County Line in 1982 or 83 in Three Sisters literary magazine out of Georgetown University. Stupidly I gave all my complimentary copies away to friends. A surviving manuscript is missing final pages. So this is a re-write with an original ending.
Willie Riggs was leaning like a blond Narcissus againt the blue mirror finish of his swamp-crawler Ford. He drank the last of his gone-warm beer and flattened the can into the sand. It was ten o'clock on a slow autumn night and he and a circle of friends were shooting the breeze behind the Red Rooster lounge on Highway 27.
Some out-of-town salesman interjected a piece of narrative comedy and Riggs inwardly groaned.
"There was a Puerto Rican, a Cuban and a Jew and they all jumped off the Empire State Building at the same time--"
To cover his discomfort Riggs drew a slim jay from his snap-down shirt pocket and fired it up for general distribution.
"--so who hit first?"
Someone coughed. "Who cares?"
Riggs saw his darling crooking her finger at him from the rear door of the lounge, so he sauntered toward her with a toothy grin eating his face. He heard the salesman deliver a punchline and then the obligatory guffaws. His Justin boots clomped onto the boards of the rear deck.
"Hey, there--"
"Willie Riggs, what are you doing? Prodding around like a dirty old bull."
They kissed and went inside.
The juke was playing Tom T. Hall's song about building whiskey castles.
"Jane, bring that cowboy of yours over here!" shouted the bartender. He was a stocky bald man with a tremendous brown beard. Checkered flannel shirt, western cut. A huge Copenhagen belt buckle was lodged beneath his belly.
"Hi, Prescott. Let me buy you a beer."
"Cowboy, you're too poor to do that."
"Hell I am!"
Prescott pulled his beard and winked at Jane. "What you got in the fridge at home?"
"Cold cat pebbles."
"You win, Cowboy. Thanks for the beer."
The corners of Rigg's face crinkled and he said, "You're welcome, Prescott."
He snaked an arm around Jane and pressed his hand into her belly. In her ear he said, "Love you."
"Liar."
"Not always."
"Mmm. Love you too."
Prescott winked at the two of them and went to the bin where the booze was stored in glittering parade formation. He took down a bottle of Austin Nichols for Jane and drew tall draughts for himself and Riggs.
Riggs looked around and noticed a few new things. One of them was a poster he resented. It showed GIs raising the flag Iwo Jima style and jamming the staff into the rectum of the Ayatolla's Suribachi ass.
"Prescott, is that your idea of humor?"
"What?"
"That!"
"Damn straight it is!"
"That kind of thinking won't solve anything."
Prescott frowned, contemplating. "Sorry, Cowboy."
The men sipped their beers in silence. Ignored, Jane turned from them and attacked the juke with a fistful of quarters. She unbuttoned her trim blouse to display compressed cleavage, and shook free her auburn curls. She selected a hard series of kicker classics, skipping Elvis Costello and Dire Straits. Dolly, Tanya, Waylon and Merle.
"Punch our song, Darling!" Riggs called.
Jane turned toward him and slammed her denim buttocks against the juke. Oh, that irked her for some reason. She thought: sticking out my tongue would be too girlish. Giving him the finger would give him an excuse to call me a bitch. Dammit! I'll just sashay up to him with a song!
"You don't have to call me darling, Darling--"
She wrapped her arms around Riggs and hauled him away from the rail.
"Jane?"
"It's all right. Come on. Let's dance."
*
Into the middle of their intimate two-step the juke dropped a bomb.
The Bee Gees.
Riggs grinned sheepishly as Jane swung away from him and began a clogger's improvisation of disco. She mocked his lethargy. "I didn't punch that song. Honest!"
"Must be Prescott's mischief then."
Riggs glanced toward the bar where Prescott was removing his poster from the wall.
"Well, look at that. Prescott's honoring my wishes."
"He's a good man. You shouldn't have braced him. He told me the VFW boys gave him that poster. They ordered it from Hustler magazine."
"Crock."
"Maybe the Vietnam Vets then."
"Fuck that shit."
Ice was forming upon their conversation.
Riggs was relieved to hear a particular Mo Bandy song. It sounded like Hank Williams: "Take me back to yesterday once more--"
He marshalled Jane and felt her firm buttocks move like magic beneath his wooden hands. She broke from his embrace and clicked-clacked toward the bar.
Riggs was left on the empty dance floor with nothing to do but to rearrange his hard penis.
Jane felt light-headed. She heard herself tell Prescott to stop removing the Ayatolla.
Prescott heard Jane yammering. He saw Riggs. The cowboy seemed to be absently counting the nailheads in the dance floor.
Riggs was thinking he should buy a six-pack from the Junior Mart and visit Sue Ann.
Sue Ann.
Sue Ann!
Sue Ann had astounding breasts and people said she resembled Dolly Parton.
To her dismay Jane witnessed Riggs walk out of the Red Rooster lounge and into the cooling night.
"I don't believe it. I don't believe it."
Prescott noticed Jane's mounting alarm. He knew from knowing her for five years that her basic fear was of being left alone by someone.
Jane downshifted into a blue mood. "Prescott! Gimmee a double!"
"Never mind the Wild Turkey, Jane. Go after him!"
"Hell you say! Just do your job and pour me a drink."
"Sure--"
"Men don't listen to a thing I say and you're no damned different."
Prescott lost his patience. He banged the bottle down and then sloshed an unmeasured round into her Texas Tumbler. He plunked in an ice cube. Its splash surprised him.
Jane felt threatened.
Everywhere men were cruel and superficial and--and--
Prescott was saying, "SORRY, Jane. Sorry."
"No, you're not. Just go away."
As the booze wrapped warm hands around her brain, Jane embarked upon that familiar voyage into self-pity.
*
Sue Ann was watching the third installment of "Shogun" when she heard the flat thunder of Riggs' huge truck. Having abandoned the washboard red clay road, the machine prowled through the pine forest and sped across the great meadow, coming at last to her acre of land. The truck remounted the road and halted at her bone-white picket gate. High beams flooded her living room. She killed the TV and lumbered up from her Lazy-Boy, her bosom swinging to and fro. She arched her back, listening to her retrievers, Missy and Gad-about, barking their stupid hellos.
"Hey, you dogs--" Riggs sounded drunk.
Drawing tight her terry kimono, Sue Ann smiled, admitting that Riggs would be better company than Richard Chamberlain on TV. He would want to drink her Southern Comfort and fuck. He would listen to anything she had to say. And she could finally tell someone about the horror of breast cancer.
I want a man's opinion. I want to hear what he has to say.
She hailed her dogs. "You let Willie-Boy alone!"
"Yeah, dogs. It's me! Willlie-Boy!"
Sue Ann stood on the porch, commanding him. "Hey, hard case. If you must take a leak, then be so nice as to come inside."
"Inside?"
"Yes. I have all the facilities."
"I was only admiring the moonlight upon your meadows."
"My meadows?"
"Come on. Let me into one of your facilities."
*
Prescott lit a Camel and settled into the swivel chair behind the cash register and fiddled with a cardboard advertisement for Stroh's. He liked Jane, but after an eternity of doing business with drunks he knew when to leave her alone.
Maybe it's best she doesn't run after Riggs, he thought. They would have had a row. Could even break things off permanently. Now all she will do is drink herself cross-eyed and start crying over some bullshit thing.
There was a break in the steady stream of people from the parking lot.
Prescott finished his smoke.
Jane pouted. "Press-Baby. Another double!"
He told himself to simply pour her the drink and refrain from giving her unsolicited advice.
While serving he thought to ask: "How're you doing, Jane?"
Resentment burned in ugly bands across her face.
Prescott sighed. "I think you misunderstood me."
"Uh-huh. Yeah."
"All I meant was easy conversation. Have you found a job? You know I care about you."
"I don't want to talk about it. And I don't want to talk to you. Here's my money. Leave me alone."
Jane's voice fluttered around the room like a wounded bird. Prescott shook his head and returned to his chair. He was genuinely pleased when the front door opened for a customer.
It was someone new, but vaguely familiar. A swarthy man in sharpest black. Three piece HS&M. His skin was purple beneath the tricky lights, and his shirt collar was sharp and white.
"Yesser, what'll it be?"
"The best martini in the South. Skip the lighter-fluid."
"Coming up. Learned my trade on Toulouse Street."
"Good to hear. Good to hear." A melody in his words. "N'Awlins, eh? Just got in from Algiers myself."
The swarthy face split into a smile, its edge as friendly as a crescent moon. It asked: "Could you tell me my how I might find my ex-wife? No hassle, understand? Works for you. Name's Sue Ann."
*
Lost in reverie, Jane chewed her swizzle stick. She was angry. Not because her lover was an insensitive lout, but because he had departed so quickly after being rebuffed. She wanted him with her now, to do with him as she pleased. She would have given him all the sugar he wanted. All in good time.
"Pressy! Another!"
Three sheets to the wind.
Jane found herself addressing a bartender without facial color. White as the proverbial ghost.
"God, Prescott. Are you all right?"
"I was going to asky you the same thing."
"Well, you look like somebody just shot J.R. Ewing."
Prescott chuckled. "See that fellow over there?"
"Um. Yeah?"
"That, my friend, is Sue Ann's ex."
"The one who--
"Who pounded that fool into raw hamburger few years back."
"Walter Reardon was no fool."
"He was seeing Sue Ann."
"Sue Ann told me he was a cigarette vendor who hung around after loading the machine."
"Yeah, well, I think he was a fool."
"Oh, Pressy, leave the gossip to me. Will you?"
Jane ventured a sidelong scrutiny of Sue Ann's ex. Slab-chested, athletic and well-maintained, with the agility of a prize-fighter.
Just look at those spiffy clothes!
*
A full moon crept over the great meadow and gained slanted entry into Sue Ann's bedroom through stilled lace curtains. Willie Riggs could not keep his mouth from the most sought-after breasts in the county. Sue Ann moaned as his tongue darted around her sand-dollar areole and swabbed her nipples. His spent penis remained within her. He delighted in the way she held it, kneading it as if it were a joint of white dough.
"Hon, oh, hon, oh, hon," was the cowboy's refrain.
Sue Ann's own moaning was far from the theatrics of past fucks. Her mind spun like a bottle kicked across some bleak tarmac.
Cancer. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.
*
The juke fell silent, but Jane continued to croon into her drink. "Could I have this dance for the rest of my life? Ooo-ooo-oh."
"Hi."
"I beg your pardon."
"May I talk with you?"
"Sit right there, big grown-up man."
"Name's Martin."
"Martin Carcosa."
"You know me?"
"Know of you."
"The bartender said you might help me."
"Oh?"
"I'm trying to find a friend of yours. Sue Ann Breedlove."
"Yeah?"
"I have this letter from her."
"Mmm?"
"Here." He unfolds it and presses it upon the bar.
"Did you show this to Prescott?"
"No. It's something you should read."
"Me?"
"Yes. Because, because you're a woman."
"You're fucking wierd."
"Please."
Dear Martin,
The doctor's report scares me to death. My breasts may have to come off. I don't know
where to turn. Even God won't help me. All is forgiven.
Sue Ann
"That's it?"
"You haven't the faintest idea."
"Sorry."
"Look. This address is old. Tell me where she is now."
"Not sure I want to."
"You're not sure of anything."
"Just fuck off!"
"Cunt!"
"Let go! Let, let go my arm!"
Prescott did not see all of it. But what he did see caused him to freeze-up with like a blown V-8. Martin Carcosa was squeezing Jane's arm and she was shouting. Then he released her with a snarl. He raised the most fearsome fist Prescott had ever seen. The knuckles were as large as riverbed nuggets, and Carcosa whirled his entire frame and spiked that fist into the wall. The panelling split. Carcosa withdrew his fist unhurt and hurled himself like a tornado from the bar.
Prescott stammered, "Jane? Are you all right. Hey!"
*
The cool air ignited his lungs. Having left by way of the rear door, he encountered people partying in the parking lot. Someone complained after being jostled: "Hey, mister! Watch it!"
"Watch yourself." Not breaking a stride.
"Let the Gypsy go," a voice twanged like a taut wire. "He spoiling for a fight."
Carcosa quickened his pace and veered toward the front of the building. His Toyota was locked and he ripped a stitch in his hip pocket while digging for his keys.
That first voice had followed him. "Hey, mister!"
Someone grasped his shoulder.
He exhaled. Without turning, he asked, "You a cop?"
"No--"
"Then you better unhand me. Sure as hell."
The grasp slid away.
He climbed into his car and shut the door. He gravel-popped onto Highway 27 and cursed himself for being a fool.
*
Jane had lost consciousness. Too much booze and terror had taken their toll within her sloppy brain. Her little chin struck the cushioned edge of the bartop and her saucy hip knocked over the barstool. She hit the floor with a loud Bop! Prescott watched her disappear from view and heard the thump of her skull on the hard floor. When he reached her he saw worming rivulets of blood beneath her auburn curls. Afraid to touch her, he dialed for paramedics and deputies.
"Dammit, yes! He's a kung-fu maniac!"
*
The Pines Motel had a red neon sign, a flagstone patio and rusted shell-shaped chairs that could be seen from the highway. Its pink stucco walls were hidden by azalea. The only outside light was a garish illumination suspended above the phone booth and soda machines.
Martin Carcosa wrenched his Toyota onto the broken macadam drive and halted beside the gloomy office.
He pressed the buzzer. Inside someone stumbled into furniture and switched on a table lamp. Through the window Carcosa watched a paunchy man with crewcut gray hair approach him, wearing a tee-shirt and boxer shorts.
"What is it? What is it?"
"Open up. I want a room."
"Eh. Just a minute."
Light spilled upon the flagstones as the man opened his door. Carcosa detected the reek of whiskey sweat.
"Uh."
"Raymond, how're you doing?"
"Uh."
"You are going to rent me a room."
"Wha?"
"Hope you don't have any dead people laying around."
"Yeah. I mean no."
"Just kidding."
"Hey! I know you."
"Sure you do. Remember me and Sue Ann Breedlove?"
"Sue Ann. Why yeah."
"Thought you would. Look, I need a room."
"I aint even got my trousers on."
"I should smile. You don't."
"Let me look at you."
"I'm Martin Carcosa."
"Well, Sir. I got me a gold buyer in seven. I can give you eight. It's next to me and has heat."
"That's swell. How about a drink?"
"Nah. Nah. Appreciate it. But, nah."
From his car Carcosa procured a fifth of I.W. Harper. To Raymond he said, "What do you mean, no?"
Raymond rubbed his paunch and smiled the smile of a lonely man surprised by the advent of company. He drank with his guest and then said, "I'll be getting your room ready."
Blue lights suddenly flickered through the blinds.
They flickered on the fake mahogany wall with its framed lithograph of airborne mallards.
"What the hell?"
"Obviously the cops."
"You done something?"
"Kind of," Carcosa replied. He opened his billfold. "Nothing I can't take care of."
*
Through a brace of pines the sun ebbed like warm butter. Pervading the crisp cloudless morning was an oppressive stink from the cellulouse mill ten miles upwind. Blue jays began their haggling.
Willie Riggs snored into Sue Ann's armpit. She was awake and his breath tickled her, but no laughter was possible. He had given her a gob of semen.
Br-r-r-ring!
The phone added a calamity she welcomed. And she was off and jiggling down the hall. She picked up the receiver, entering the crackle of on-going conversation. Then: "Sue Ann, are you there?"
The voice startled her. It was Martin Carcosa and he sounded vexxed.
"Martin?"
"I've been arrested."
"What's going on?"
"They say I created a scene at the Red Rooster. Scared some people. And some damned woman is in the hospital."
"Martin!"
"I was only asking her how to find you!"
"Who is in the hospital?"
"Name is Jane Davis."
"Oh, my God."
"Drunk. Passed out. She fell of her barstool and cracked her head. The bartender swears I hit her."
*
The gold buyer in seven tapped his white gold wedding ring upon the office door and shouted loud enough for everyone at the Pines Motel to hear him. "Get up in there!"
Raymond opened his door. Hank Junior tee-shirt and blue checkered boxers. "What the flaming fuck do you want this early on a Sunday morning?"
"It's not Sunday! It's Monday!"
"What's the problem?"
The gold-buyer was a sandy-haired guy far too old for his mod moptop. His sunburnt neck bulged above his collar and tie. His azure summer suit made him look like a cherub from the Moral Majority. Cerulian eyes, moist with faith in Christ.
"This dump is bad for my business."
Raymond stifled a laugh. "How's that so?"
"It attracts nothing but riff-raff."
"I could NOT agree with you more."
"I paid you for a month. I'm checking out. You owe me a refund. Two days."
"I don't owe you a fucking thing."
Wiping away spittle with the back of his hand, the gold-buyer screamed. "I don't believe this!"
Raymond began to doubt the business acumen of the gentleman.
"Look, mister. I've been a nice guy. Now, you may have figured me for stupid. But I'm a nice guy."
"What are you driving at?"
"Well, look. You may think I don't know about that floozie you've been keeping in your room. Linda Ruiz. Migrant-worker whore--"
"I have done God's work. She has been born again into my personal ministry."
"Do tell? You two take a shower together?"
The gold-buyer knitted his eye-brows. Raymond offered bait. "Look, I like having your trade in my motel. Tell me, what's REALLY bothering you?"
"Well--"
"C'mon. You've been a real flash in the pan here." Carny-smile.
"It's the cops."
"Cops make you nervous? Aintcha honest?"
"Legal as can be."
Raymond stifled a guffaw.
"I aint innerested in yer busness. Cops don't give a tin whistle either."
"Do they come here often? Like the other night?"
"Freak occurence. HEY? Whaddyathink? This is a highway motel. Climb down!"
"Yeah OK."
"Come in and have a friendly drink. That guy they arrested left behind some nice straight Kentucky."
"Just one."
"Just one."
Livid in his memory: helping the dark Spanish woman with tanglewood hair from the bed just in time. She muttered something about her children; then sat spread-assed on the floor and, with a profound sob, released a stream of urine. The Quaaludes and beer had been shockingly effective.
Pouring drinks, Raymond smirked. "So, how is Linda Ruiz in the sack? Hot tamale, eh?"
*
Sucking a lemon drop, the hospital admissions clerk sat with brown suede boots upon his supervisor's desk and watched the clock, a huge and noisy device that dominated the far wall.
Twenty minutes to go.
Then his supervisor, luscious Mary Beth Hendry, would return from dinner-break. Or, more exactly, shared moments with that Jew Boy radiologist from Miami. God! He hated Jews!
Suddenly his office door banged open and Sue Ann Breedlove stormed in with a fury he had never seen in her.
"Tell me Jane Davis' room number!"
"Uh. Three Ten."
She found Jane alert, sipping Coke and watching TV.
"Jane, dammit! What's this shit about Martin beaating you up?"
"Don't know what you're talking about. He only squeezed my arm."
"I'll have the cops come for your statement."
"Why? Oh, I hate cops!"
"Because you were out cold when you were brought in, my friend."
*
old manuscript ends here.
*
Breakfast for Martin Carcosa at the county jail had been from MacDonalds. Scrambled eggs and hashbrowns. Coffee with four jots of creamer. His belly rumbled like a Jamaican steel drum.
A sandpaper voice: "Hey, Bruce Lee! Be nice to the lady. She just sprung you."
Holy Mother of God! There she stood. Sue Ann. In a white Swiss blouse and faded blue jeans. Her smiling face fresh as a morning glory.
"Martin?"
"Yes, ma'am!"
The hick screw swung open the door and withdrew completely.
Carcosa had half risen from his cot when she embraced him, feeling the anxcious muscles of his upper back and shoulders move like mercury. He embedded a tremendous kiss to her mouth. Years fell away and again they were lovers wriggling within the donut hole of an inner-tube floating down the chilly Ichetucknee! People floated by in tubes of their own, unmindful of Martin's laughter and Sue Ann's squealing during fellatio.
(more to come)
Willie Riggs was leaning like a blond Narcissus againt the blue mirror finish of his swamp-crawler Ford. He drank the last of his gone-warm beer and flattened the can into the sand. It was ten o'clock on a slow autumn night and he and a circle of friends were shooting the breeze behind the Red Rooster lounge on Highway 27.
Some out-of-town salesman interjected a piece of narrative comedy and Riggs inwardly groaned.
"There was a Puerto Rican, a Cuban and a Jew and they all jumped off the Empire State Building at the same time--"
To cover his discomfort Riggs drew a slim jay from his snap-down shirt pocket and fired it up for general distribution.
"--so who hit first?"
Someone coughed. "Who cares?"
Riggs saw his darling crooking her finger at him from the rear door of the lounge, so he sauntered toward her with a toothy grin eating his face. He heard the salesman deliver a punchline and then the obligatory guffaws. His Justin boots clomped onto the boards of the rear deck.
"Hey, there--"
"Willie Riggs, what are you doing? Prodding around like a dirty old bull."
They kissed and went inside.
The juke was playing Tom T. Hall's song about building whiskey castles.
"Jane, bring that cowboy of yours over here!" shouted the bartender. He was a stocky bald man with a tremendous brown beard. Checkered flannel shirt, western cut. A huge Copenhagen belt buckle was lodged beneath his belly.
"Hi, Prescott. Let me buy you a beer."
"Cowboy, you're too poor to do that."
"Hell I am!"
Prescott pulled his beard and winked at Jane. "What you got in the fridge at home?"
"Cold cat pebbles."
"You win, Cowboy. Thanks for the beer."
The corners of Rigg's face crinkled and he said, "You're welcome, Prescott."
He snaked an arm around Jane and pressed his hand into her belly. In her ear he said, "Love you."
"Liar."
"Not always."
"Mmm. Love you too."
Prescott winked at the two of them and went to the bin where the booze was stored in glittering parade formation. He took down a bottle of Austin Nichols for Jane and drew tall draughts for himself and Riggs.
Riggs looked around and noticed a few new things. One of them was a poster he resented. It showed GIs raising the flag Iwo Jima style and jamming the staff into the rectum of the Ayatolla's Suribachi ass.
"Prescott, is that your idea of humor?"
"What?"
"That!"
"Damn straight it is!"
"That kind of thinking won't solve anything."
Prescott frowned, contemplating. "Sorry, Cowboy."
The men sipped their beers in silence. Ignored, Jane turned from them and attacked the juke with a fistful of quarters. She unbuttoned her trim blouse to display compressed cleavage, and shook free her auburn curls. She selected a hard series of kicker classics, skipping Elvis Costello and Dire Straits. Dolly, Tanya, Waylon and Merle.
"Punch our song, Darling!" Riggs called.
Jane turned toward him and slammed her denim buttocks against the juke. Oh, that irked her for some reason. She thought: sticking out my tongue would be too girlish. Giving him the finger would give him an excuse to call me a bitch. Dammit! I'll just sashay up to him with a song!
"You don't have to call me darling, Darling--"
She wrapped her arms around Riggs and hauled him away from the rail.
"Jane?"
"It's all right. Come on. Let's dance."
*
Into the middle of their intimate two-step the juke dropped a bomb.
The Bee Gees.
Riggs grinned sheepishly as Jane swung away from him and began a clogger's improvisation of disco. She mocked his lethargy. "I didn't punch that song. Honest!"
"Must be Prescott's mischief then."
Riggs glanced toward the bar where Prescott was removing his poster from the wall.
"Well, look at that. Prescott's honoring my wishes."
"He's a good man. You shouldn't have braced him. He told me the VFW boys gave him that poster. They ordered it from Hustler magazine."
"Crock."
"Maybe the Vietnam Vets then."
"Fuck that shit."
Ice was forming upon their conversation.
Riggs was relieved to hear a particular Mo Bandy song. It sounded like Hank Williams: "Take me back to yesterday once more--"
He marshalled Jane and felt her firm buttocks move like magic beneath his wooden hands. She broke from his embrace and clicked-clacked toward the bar.
Riggs was left on the empty dance floor with nothing to do but to rearrange his hard penis.
Jane felt light-headed. She heard herself tell Prescott to stop removing the Ayatolla.
Prescott heard Jane yammering. He saw Riggs. The cowboy seemed to be absently counting the nailheads in the dance floor.
Riggs was thinking he should buy a six-pack from the Junior Mart and visit Sue Ann.
Sue Ann.
Sue Ann!
Sue Ann had astounding breasts and people said she resembled Dolly Parton.
To her dismay Jane witnessed Riggs walk out of the Red Rooster lounge and into the cooling night.
"I don't believe it. I don't believe it."
Prescott noticed Jane's mounting alarm. He knew from knowing her for five years that her basic fear was of being left alone by someone.
Jane downshifted into a blue mood. "Prescott! Gimmee a double!"
"Never mind the Wild Turkey, Jane. Go after him!"
"Hell you say! Just do your job and pour me a drink."
"Sure--"
"Men don't listen to a thing I say and you're no damned different."
Prescott lost his patience. He banged the bottle down and then sloshed an unmeasured round into her Texas Tumbler. He plunked in an ice cube. Its splash surprised him.
Jane felt threatened.
Everywhere men were cruel and superficial and--and--
Prescott was saying, "SORRY, Jane. Sorry."
"No, you're not. Just go away."
As the booze wrapped warm hands around her brain, Jane embarked upon that familiar voyage into self-pity.
*
Sue Ann was watching the third installment of "Shogun" when she heard the flat thunder of Riggs' huge truck. Having abandoned the washboard red clay road, the machine prowled through the pine forest and sped across the great meadow, coming at last to her acre of land. The truck remounted the road and halted at her bone-white picket gate. High beams flooded her living room. She killed the TV and lumbered up from her Lazy-Boy, her bosom swinging to and fro. She arched her back, listening to her retrievers, Missy and Gad-about, barking their stupid hellos.
"Hey, you dogs--" Riggs sounded drunk.
Drawing tight her terry kimono, Sue Ann smiled, admitting that Riggs would be better company than Richard Chamberlain on TV. He would want to drink her Southern Comfort and fuck. He would listen to anything she had to say. And she could finally tell someone about the horror of breast cancer.
I want a man's opinion. I want to hear what he has to say.
She hailed her dogs. "You let Willie-Boy alone!"
"Yeah, dogs. It's me! Willlie-Boy!"
Sue Ann stood on the porch, commanding him. "Hey, hard case. If you must take a leak, then be so nice as to come inside."
"Inside?"
"Yes. I have all the facilities."
"I was only admiring the moonlight upon your meadows."
"My meadows?"
"Come on. Let me into one of your facilities."
*
Prescott lit a Camel and settled into the swivel chair behind the cash register and fiddled with a cardboard advertisement for Stroh's. He liked Jane, but after an eternity of doing business with drunks he knew when to leave her alone.
Maybe it's best she doesn't run after Riggs, he thought. They would have had a row. Could even break things off permanently. Now all she will do is drink herself cross-eyed and start crying over some bullshit thing.
There was a break in the steady stream of people from the parking lot.
Prescott finished his smoke.
Jane pouted. "Press-Baby. Another double!"
He told himself to simply pour her the drink and refrain from giving her unsolicited advice.
While serving he thought to ask: "How're you doing, Jane?"
Resentment burned in ugly bands across her face.
Prescott sighed. "I think you misunderstood me."
"Uh-huh. Yeah."
"All I meant was easy conversation. Have you found a job? You know I care about you."
"I don't want to talk about it. And I don't want to talk to you. Here's my money. Leave me alone."
Jane's voice fluttered around the room like a wounded bird. Prescott shook his head and returned to his chair. He was genuinely pleased when the front door opened for a customer.
It was someone new, but vaguely familiar. A swarthy man in sharpest black. Three piece HS&M. His skin was purple beneath the tricky lights, and his shirt collar was sharp and white.
"Yesser, what'll it be?"
"The best martini in the South. Skip the lighter-fluid."
"Coming up. Learned my trade on Toulouse Street."
"Good to hear. Good to hear." A melody in his words. "N'Awlins, eh? Just got in from Algiers myself."
The swarthy face split into a smile, its edge as friendly as a crescent moon. It asked: "Could you tell me my how I might find my ex-wife? No hassle, understand? Works for you. Name's Sue Ann."
*
Lost in reverie, Jane chewed her swizzle stick. She was angry. Not because her lover was an insensitive lout, but because he had departed so quickly after being rebuffed. She wanted him with her now, to do with him as she pleased. She would have given him all the sugar he wanted. All in good time.
"Pressy! Another!"
Three sheets to the wind.
Jane found herself addressing a bartender without facial color. White as the proverbial ghost.
"God, Prescott. Are you all right?"
"I was going to asky you the same thing."
"Well, you look like somebody just shot J.R. Ewing."
Prescott chuckled. "See that fellow over there?"
"Um. Yeah?"
"That, my friend, is Sue Ann's ex."
"The one who--
"Who pounded that fool into raw hamburger few years back."
"Walter Reardon was no fool."
"He was seeing Sue Ann."
"Sue Ann told me he was a cigarette vendor who hung around after loading the machine."
"Yeah, well, I think he was a fool."
"Oh, Pressy, leave the gossip to me. Will you?"
Jane ventured a sidelong scrutiny of Sue Ann's ex. Slab-chested, athletic and well-maintained, with the agility of a prize-fighter.
Just look at those spiffy clothes!
*
A full moon crept over the great meadow and gained slanted entry into Sue Ann's bedroom through stilled lace curtains. Willie Riggs could not keep his mouth from the most sought-after breasts in the county. Sue Ann moaned as his tongue darted around her sand-dollar areole and swabbed her nipples. His spent penis remained within her. He delighted in the way she held it, kneading it as if it were a joint of white dough.
"Hon, oh, hon, oh, hon," was the cowboy's refrain.
Sue Ann's own moaning was far from the theatrics of past fucks. Her mind spun like a bottle kicked across some bleak tarmac.
Cancer. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.
*
The juke fell silent, but Jane continued to croon into her drink. "Could I have this dance for the rest of my life? Ooo-ooo-oh."
"Hi."
"I beg your pardon."
"May I talk with you?"
"Sit right there, big grown-up man."
"Name's Martin."
"Martin Carcosa."
"You know me?"
"Know of you."
"The bartender said you might help me."
"Oh?"
"I'm trying to find a friend of yours. Sue Ann Breedlove."
"Yeah?"
"I have this letter from her."
"Mmm?"
"Here." He unfolds it and presses it upon the bar.
"Did you show this to Prescott?"
"No. It's something you should read."
"Me?"
"Yes. Because, because you're a woman."
"You're fucking wierd."
"Please."
Dear Martin,
The doctor's report scares me to death. My breasts may have to come off. I don't know
where to turn. Even God won't help me. All is forgiven.
Sue Ann
"That's it?"
"You haven't the faintest idea."
"Sorry."
"Look. This address is old. Tell me where she is now."
"Not sure I want to."
"You're not sure of anything."
"Just fuck off!"
"Cunt!"
"Let go! Let, let go my arm!"
Prescott did not see all of it. But what he did see caused him to freeze-up with like a blown V-8. Martin Carcosa was squeezing Jane's arm and she was shouting. Then he released her with a snarl. He raised the most fearsome fist Prescott had ever seen. The knuckles were as large as riverbed nuggets, and Carcosa whirled his entire frame and spiked that fist into the wall. The panelling split. Carcosa withdrew his fist unhurt and hurled himself like a tornado from the bar.
Prescott stammered, "Jane? Are you all right. Hey!"
*
The cool air ignited his lungs. Having left by way of the rear door, he encountered people partying in the parking lot. Someone complained after being jostled: "Hey, mister! Watch it!"
"Watch yourself." Not breaking a stride.
"Let the Gypsy go," a voice twanged like a taut wire. "He spoiling for a fight."
Carcosa quickened his pace and veered toward the front of the building. His Toyota was locked and he ripped a stitch in his hip pocket while digging for his keys.
That first voice had followed him. "Hey, mister!"
Someone grasped his shoulder.
He exhaled. Without turning, he asked, "You a cop?"
"No--"
"Then you better unhand me. Sure as hell."
The grasp slid away.
He climbed into his car and shut the door. He gravel-popped onto Highway 27 and cursed himself for being a fool.
*
Jane had lost consciousness. Too much booze and terror had taken their toll within her sloppy brain. Her little chin struck the cushioned edge of the bartop and her saucy hip knocked over the barstool. She hit the floor with a loud Bop! Prescott watched her disappear from view and heard the thump of her skull on the hard floor. When he reached her he saw worming rivulets of blood beneath her auburn curls. Afraid to touch her, he dialed for paramedics and deputies.
"Dammit, yes! He's a kung-fu maniac!"
*
The Pines Motel had a red neon sign, a flagstone patio and rusted shell-shaped chairs that could be seen from the highway. Its pink stucco walls were hidden by azalea. The only outside light was a garish illumination suspended above the phone booth and soda machines.
Martin Carcosa wrenched his Toyota onto the broken macadam drive and halted beside the gloomy office.
He pressed the buzzer. Inside someone stumbled into furniture and switched on a table lamp. Through the window Carcosa watched a paunchy man with crewcut gray hair approach him, wearing a tee-shirt and boxer shorts.
"What is it? What is it?"
"Open up. I want a room."
"Eh. Just a minute."
Light spilled upon the flagstones as the man opened his door. Carcosa detected the reek of whiskey sweat.
"Uh."
"Raymond, how're you doing?"
"Uh."
"You are going to rent me a room."
"Wha?"
"Hope you don't have any dead people laying around."
"Yeah. I mean no."
"Just kidding."
"Hey! I know you."
"Sure you do. Remember me and Sue Ann Breedlove?"
"Sue Ann. Why yeah."
"Thought you would. Look, I need a room."
"I aint even got my trousers on."
"I should smile. You don't."
"Let me look at you."
"I'm Martin Carcosa."
"Well, Sir. I got me a gold buyer in seven. I can give you eight. It's next to me and has heat."
"That's swell. How about a drink?"
"Nah. Nah. Appreciate it. But, nah."
From his car Carcosa procured a fifth of I.W. Harper. To Raymond he said, "What do you mean, no?"
Raymond rubbed his paunch and smiled the smile of a lonely man surprised by the advent of company. He drank with his guest and then said, "I'll be getting your room ready."
Blue lights suddenly flickered through the blinds.
They flickered on the fake mahogany wall with its framed lithograph of airborne mallards.
"What the hell?"
"Obviously the cops."
"You done something?"
"Kind of," Carcosa replied. He opened his billfold. "Nothing I can't take care of."
*
Through a brace of pines the sun ebbed like warm butter. Pervading the crisp cloudless morning was an oppressive stink from the cellulouse mill ten miles upwind. Blue jays began their haggling.
Willie Riggs snored into Sue Ann's armpit. She was awake and his breath tickled her, but no laughter was possible. He had given her a gob of semen.
Br-r-r-ring!
The phone added a calamity she welcomed. And she was off and jiggling down the hall. She picked up the receiver, entering the crackle of on-going conversation. Then: "Sue Ann, are you there?"
The voice startled her. It was Martin Carcosa and he sounded vexxed.
"Martin?"
"I've been arrested."
"What's going on?"
"They say I created a scene at the Red Rooster. Scared some people. And some damned woman is in the hospital."
"Martin!"
"I was only asking her how to find you!"
"Who is in the hospital?"
"Name is Jane Davis."
"Oh, my God."
"Drunk. Passed out. She fell of her barstool and cracked her head. The bartender swears I hit her."
*
The gold buyer in seven tapped his white gold wedding ring upon the office door and shouted loud enough for everyone at the Pines Motel to hear him. "Get up in there!"
Raymond opened his door. Hank Junior tee-shirt and blue checkered boxers. "What the flaming fuck do you want this early on a Sunday morning?"
"It's not Sunday! It's Monday!"
"What's the problem?"
The gold-buyer was a sandy-haired guy far too old for his mod moptop. His sunburnt neck bulged above his collar and tie. His azure summer suit made him look like a cherub from the Moral Majority. Cerulian eyes, moist with faith in Christ.
"This dump is bad for my business."
Raymond stifled a laugh. "How's that so?"
"It attracts nothing but riff-raff."
"I could NOT agree with you more."
"I paid you for a month. I'm checking out. You owe me a refund. Two days."
"I don't owe you a fucking thing."
Wiping away spittle with the back of his hand, the gold-buyer screamed. "I don't believe this!"
Raymond began to doubt the business acumen of the gentleman.
"Look, mister. I've been a nice guy. Now, you may have figured me for stupid. But I'm a nice guy."
"What are you driving at?"
"Well, look. You may think I don't know about that floozie you've been keeping in your room. Linda Ruiz. Migrant-worker whore--"
"I have done God's work. She has been born again into my personal ministry."
"Do tell? You two take a shower together?"
The gold-buyer knitted his eye-brows. Raymond offered bait. "Look, I like having your trade in my motel. Tell me, what's REALLY bothering you?"
"Well--"
"C'mon. You've been a real flash in the pan here." Carny-smile.
"It's the cops."
"Cops make you nervous? Aintcha honest?"
"Legal as can be."
Raymond stifled a guffaw.
"I aint innerested in yer busness. Cops don't give a tin whistle either."
"Do they come here often? Like the other night?"
"Freak occurence. HEY? Whaddyathink? This is a highway motel. Climb down!"
"Yeah OK."
"Come in and have a friendly drink. That guy they arrested left behind some nice straight Kentucky."
"Just one."
"Just one."
Livid in his memory: helping the dark Spanish woman with tanglewood hair from the bed just in time. She muttered something about her children; then sat spread-assed on the floor and, with a profound sob, released a stream of urine. The Quaaludes and beer had been shockingly effective.
Pouring drinks, Raymond smirked. "So, how is Linda Ruiz in the sack? Hot tamale, eh?"
*
Sucking a lemon drop, the hospital admissions clerk sat with brown suede boots upon his supervisor's desk and watched the clock, a huge and noisy device that dominated the far wall.
Twenty minutes to go.
Then his supervisor, luscious Mary Beth Hendry, would return from dinner-break. Or, more exactly, shared moments with that Jew Boy radiologist from Miami. God! He hated Jews!
Suddenly his office door banged open and Sue Ann Breedlove stormed in with a fury he had never seen in her.
"Tell me Jane Davis' room number!"
"Uh. Three Ten."
She found Jane alert, sipping Coke and watching TV.
"Jane, dammit! What's this shit about Martin beaating you up?"
"Don't know what you're talking about. He only squeezed my arm."
"I'll have the cops come for your statement."
"Why? Oh, I hate cops!"
"Because you were out cold when you were brought in, my friend."
*
old manuscript ends here.
*
Breakfast for Martin Carcosa at the county jail had been from MacDonalds. Scrambled eggs and hashbrowns. Coffee with four jots of creamer. His belly rumbled like a Jamaican steel drum.
A sandpaper voice: "Hey, Bruce Lee! Be nice to the lady. She just sprung you."
Holy Mother of God! There she stood. Sue Ann. In a white Swiss blouse and faded blue jeans. Her smiling face fresh as a morning glory.
"Martin?"
"Yes, ma'am!"
The hick screw swung open the door and withdrew completely.
Carcosa had half risen from his cot when she embraced him, feeling the anxcious muscles of his upper back and shoulders move like mercury. He embedded a tremendous kiss to her mouth. Years fell away and again they were lovers wriggling within the donut hole of an inner-tube floating down the chilly Ichetucknee! People floated by in tubes of their own, unmindful of Martin's laughter and Sue Ann's squealing during fellatio.
(more to come)
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