"Anybody got a smoke?" I asked. "I'm out of smokes."
The little dark fellow standing to one side of Mrs. Kansas made a slight motion with one hand toward his jacket pocket and a pack of Camels jumped in the lobby air. Deftly he caught the pack in his other hand. With the invisible tap of a finger on the bottom of the pack a smoke leaped up, tall, true, singular and exposed, ready to be taken.
"Hey, shit, thanks," I said.
I started down the stairway, made a mis-step, lunged, almost fell, grabbed the bannister, righted myself, readjusted my perceptions, and walked on down. Was I drunk? I walked up to the little guy holding the pack. I bowed slightly.
I lifted out the Camel. Then I flipped it in the air, caught it, stuck it into my mouth. My dark friend remained expressionless, the grin having vanished when I had begun down the stairway. My little friend bent forward, cupped his hands around the flame and lit my smoke.
I inhaled, exhaled. "Listen, why don't you all come up to my place and we'll have a couple of drinks?"
"No," said the little guy who had lit my cigarette.
"Maybe we can catch the Bee or some Bach on my radio! I'm educated, you know. I'm a student…"
"No," said the other little guy.
I took a big drag on my smoke, then looked at Carole Lombard - Mrs. Kansas. Then I looked at my two friends.
"She's yours. I don't want her. She's yours. Just come on up. We'll drink a little wine. In good old room 5."
There was no answer. I rocked on my heels a bit as the whiskey and the wine fought for possession. I let my cigarette dangle a bit from the right side of my mouth as I sent up a plume of smoke. I continued letting the cigarette dangle like that.
I knew about stilettoes. In the little time I had been there I had seen two enactments of the stiletto. From my window one night, looking out at the sound of sirens, I saw a body there just below my window on the Temple Street sidewalk, in the moonlight, under the streetlight. Another time, another body. Nights of the stiletto. Once a white man, the other time one of them. Each time, blood running on the pavement, real blood, just like that, moving across the pavement and into the gutter, you could see it going along in the gutter, meaningless, dumb… that so much blood could come from just one man.
"All right, my friends," I said to them, "no hard feelings. I'll drink alone…"
I turned and started to walk toward the stairway.
"Mr. Chinaski," I heard Mrs. Kansas' voice. I turned and looked at her flanked by my two little friends.
"Just go to your room and sleep. If you cause any more disturbance I will phone the Los Angeles Police Department."
I turned and walked back up the stairway. No life anywhere, no life in this town or this place or in this weary existence…
My door was open. I walked in. There was one-third of a cheap bottle of wine left.
Maybe there was another bottle in the closet? I opened the closet door. No bottle. But there were tens and twenties everywhere. There was a rolled twenty lying between a pair of dirty socks with holes in the toes; and there from a shirt collar, a ten dangling; and here from an old jacket, another ten caught in a side pocket. Most of the money was on the floor.
I picked up a bill, slipped it into the side pocket of my pants, went to the door, closed and locked it, then went down the stairway to the bar.
55
A couple of nights later Becker walked in. I guess my parents gave him my address or he located me through the college. I had my name and address listed with the employment division at the college, under "unskilled labor." "I will do anything honest or otherwise," I had written on my card. No calls.
Becker sat in a chair as I poured the wine. He had on a Marine uniform.
"I see they sucked you in," I said.
"I lost my Western Union job. It was all that was left."
I handed him his drink. "You're not a patriot then?"
"Hell no."
"Why the Marines?"
"I heard about boot camp. I wanted to see if I could get through it."
"And you did."
"I did. There are some crazy guys there. There's a fight almost every night. Nobody stops it. They almost kill each other."
"I like that."
"Why don't you join?"
"I don't like to get up early in the morning and I don't like to take orders."
"How are you going to make it?"
"I don't know. When I get down to my last dime I'll just walk over to skid row."
"There are some real weirdos down there."
"They're everywhere."
I poured Becker another wine.
"The problem is," he said, "that there's not much time to write."
"You still want to be a writer?"
"Sure. How about you?"
"Yeah," I said, "but it's pretty hopeless."
"You mean you're not good enough?"
"No, they're not good enough."
"What do you mean?"
"You read the magazines? The 'Best Short Stories of the Year' books? There are at least a dozen of them."
"Yeah, I read them…"
"You read The New Yorker" Harper's? The Atlantic?"
"Yeah…"
"This is 1940. They're still publishing 19th Century stuff, heavy, labored, pretentious. You either get a headache reading the stuff or you fall asleep.".
"What's wrong?"
"It's a trick, it's a con, a little inside game."
"Sounds like you've been rejected."
"I knew I would be. Why waste the stamps? I need wine."
"I'm going to break through," said Becker. "You'll see my books on the library shelves one day."
"Let's not talk about writing."
"I've read your stuff," said Becker. "You're too bitter and you hate everything."
"Let's not talk about writing."
"Now you take Thomas Wolfe…"
"God damn Thomas Wolfe! He sounds like an old woman on the telephone!"
"O.K., who's your boy?"
"James Thurber."
"All that upper-middle-class folderol…"
"He knows that everyone is crazy."
"Thomas Wolfe is of the earth…"
"Only assholes talk about writing…"
"You calling me an asshole?"
"Yes…"
I poured him another wine and myself another wine.
"You're a fool for getting into that uniform."
"You call me an asshole and you call me a fool. I thought we were friends."
"We are. I just don't think you're protecting yourself."
"Every time I see you you have a drink in your hand. You call that protecting yourself?"
"It's the best way I know. Without drink I would have long ago cut my god-damned throat."
"That's bullshit."
"Nothing's bullshit that works. The Pershing Square preachers have their God. I have the blood of my god!"
I raised my glass and drained it.
"You're just hiding from reality," Becker said.
"Why not?"
"You'll never be a writer if you hide from reality."
"What are you talking about? That's what writers do.'"
Becker stood up. "When you talk to me, don't raise your voice."
"What do you want to do, raise my dick?"
"You don't have a dick!"
I caught him unexpectedly with a right that landed behind his ear. The glass flew out of his hand and he staggered across the room. Becker was a powerful man, much stronger than I was. He hit the edge of the dresser, turned, and I landed another straight right to the side of his face. He staggered over near the window which was open and I was afraid to hit him then because he might fall into the street.
Becker gathered himself together and shook his head to clear it.
"All right now," I said, "let's have a little drink. Violence nauseates me."
"O.K.," said Becker.
He walked over and picked up his glass. The cheap wine I drank didn't have corks, the tops just unscrewed. I unscrewed a new bottle. Becker held out his glass and I poured him one. I poured myself one, set the bottle down. Becker emptied his. I emptied mine.