"Flip!" I said.
"Lift!" I said. Fastshoes won. I got the next. Then Jimmy won. I got the next two.
"Wait," I said, "I've got to piss!"
I walked over to the sink and pissed. We had finished the bottle of wine. I opened the closet door. "I got another bottle of wine in here," I told them.
I took most of the bills out of my pocket and threw them into the closet. I came out, opened the bottle, poured drinks all around.
"Shit," said Fastshoes looking into his wallet, "I'm almost broke."
"Me too," said Jimmy.
"I wonder who's got the money?" I asked. They weren't very good drinkers. Mixing the wine and the whiskey was bad for them. They were weaving a bit.
Fastshoes fell back against the dresser knocking an ashtray to the floor. It broke in half.
"Pick it up," I said.
"I won't pick up shit," he said.
"I said, 'pick it up'!"
"I won't pick up shit."
Jimmy reached and picked up the broken ashtray.
"You guys get out of here," I said.
"You can't make me go," said Fastshoes.
"All right," I said, "just open your mouth owe more time, say owe word and you won't be able to separate your head from your asshole!"
"Let's go, Fastshoes," said Jimmy.
I opened the door and they filed past unsteadily. I followed them down the hall to the head of the stairway. We stood there.
"Hank," said Jimmy, "I'll see you again. Take it easy."
"All right, Jim…"
"Listen," Fastshoes said to me, "You…"
I shot a straight right into his mouth. He fell backward down the stairway, twisting and bouncing. He was about my size, six feet and oneeighty, and you could hear the sound of him for a block. Two Filipinos and the blond landlady were in the lobby. They looked at Fastshoes laying there but they didn't move toward him.
"You killed him!" said Jimmy.
He ran down the stairway and turned Fastshoes over. Fastshoes had a bloody nose and mouth. Jimmy held his head. Jimmy looked up at me.
"That wasn't right, Hank…"
"Yeah, what ya gonna do?"
"I think," said Jimmy, "that we're going to come back and get you.. ."
"Wait a minute," I said.
I walked back to my room and poured myself a wine. I hadn't liked Jimmy's paper cups and I had been drinking out of a used jelly glass. The paper label was still on the side, stained with dirt and wine. I walked back out.
Fastshoes was reviving. Jimmy was helping him to his feet. Then he put Fastshoes' arm around his neck. They were standing there.
"Now what did you say?" I asked.
"You're an ugly man, Hank. You need to be taught a lesson."
"You mean I'm not pretty?"
"I mean, you act ugly…"
"Take your friend out of here before I come down there and finish him off!"
Fastshoes raised his bloody head. He had on a flowered Hawaiian shirt, only now many of the colors were stained with red.
He looked at me. Then he spoke. I could barely hear him. But I heard it. He said, "I'm going to kill you…"
"Yeah," said Jimmy, "we'll get you."
"YEAH, FUCKERS?" I screamed. "I'M NOT GOING ANYWHERE! ANYTIME YOU WANT TO FIND ME I'LL BE IN ROOM 5! I'LL BE WAITING! ROOM 5, GOT IT? AND THE DOOR WILL BE OPEN!"
I lifted the jelly glass full of wine and drained it. Then I hurled that jelly glass at them. I threw the son-of-a-bitch, hard. But my aim was bad. It hit the side of the stairway wall, glanced off and shot into the lobby between the landlady and her two Filipino friends.
Jimmy turned Fastshoes toward the exit door and began slowly walking him out. It was a tedious, agonizing journey. I heard Fastshoes again, half moaning, half weeping, "I'll kill him… I'll kill him…"
Then Jimmy had him out the doorway. They were gone. The blond landlady and the two Filipinos were still standing in the lobby, looking up at me. I was barefooted, and had gone five or six days without a shave. I needed a haircut. I only combed my hair once, in the morning, then didn't bother again. My gym teachers were always after me about my posture: "Pull your shoulders back! Why are you looking at the ground? What's down there?"
I would never set any trends or styles. My white t-shirt was stained with wine, burned, with many cigarettes and cigar holes, spotted with blood and vomit. It was too small, it rode up exposing my gut and belly button. And my pants were too small. They gripped me tightly and rose well above my ankles.
The three of them stood and looked at me. I looked down at them. "Hey, you guys, come on up for a little drink!"
The two little men looked up at me and grinned. The landlady, a faded Carole Lombard type, looked on impassively. Mrs. Kansas, they called her. Could she be in love with me? She was wearing pink shoes with high heels and a black sparkling sequinned dress. Little chips of light flashed at me. Her breasts were something that no mere mortal would ever see - they were only for kings, dictators, rulers, Filipinos.
"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.