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Hours later, he was still staring at the page in the Remington. Now the page looked like this:
WHITE TRASH GOTHIC
CHAPTER ONE
There was a knock at the door.
Writer's block again! he screamed at himself. It's HER fault!
The ashtray had become a pyramid of butts. Through the walls he could hear muffled and distorted sounds: creaking, giggles, rapid footfalls and doors slamming. A whorehouse, he chided himself. I'm trying to write the most important American novel of the Twentieth Century in a whorehouse... He'd believed the grim reality of the place and people would alight his deepest creative visions—to saturate every page with human truth, but...
Just another subjective desert, a terra dementata not worthy of artistic interpretation. Or perhaps he was being too hard on himself. It was only his first night.
I pray God...
He needed to convert this experience into the genius of a Bergman film, with the insights of a Steinbeck novel, and the imagery of a Stevens poem.
He needed... something...
He opened the smudged shade before him, to be looked back at by a desolate night. A lopsided full moon hovered over the junkyard. He cracked the window to let in some air, then without conscious impulse looked at his watch.
It was midnight.
Outside, a wolf howled.
The Writer got up from the desk and sighed. I need a drink, he thought. Then he turned out the light and left the room.
Dicky stopped in his tracks at the Crossroads' front door. He looked up at the moon and could've sworn he heard a wolf howl. There ain't no wolves here... I hope... Inside, the loud bar was milling with ex-cons, fugitives, ‘shine-runners, alkies, and sundry redneck scum. Dicky felt at home. When he scratched his nose, he took an inadvertent sniff and almost gagged. Dang! Dicky had neglected to wash his hands after dragging the last of the clean rags back to the massage parlor. The redolence of old sperm and excrement seemed imbued on his palms. He wended through the overall'd mass to the bathroom and scrubbed up. Probably wastin' my time. Balls is talking big bullshit sayin' he's gonna give me the green fer my new trannie. On the wall someone had written: THE BIGHEAD'LL GET YOU IF YOU DON'T WATCH OUT, but Dicky scoffed at the backwoods myth. Beneath it someone else had written, much more recently, THE EMERGENT EVOLUTION OF NATURE DEVELOPS BY ELEVATING LEVELS OF SPACE AND TIME THROUGH MATTER, THE END RESULT OF WHICH EQUALS GOD.
Dicky read it as best he could, got a headache, and left the bathroom.
Doreen, one of the bar's working girls, attempted to entice potential customers by playing Nine Ball with herself. She leaned over extra-long to take shots, allowing her low-cut top to droop so that anyone looking could see her breasts, but nobody ever looked. Poor stupid gal just don't get it, Dicky thought. Her breasts dangled like two stuffed white socks, with a cow teat at the end of each. Another prostitute, Cora Neller, was rack-skinny from meth—and from the booze she chugged to take the edge off when she didn't have meth. Her legs looked like flesh-covered dowel-rods sticking out of her cut-off jeans. When she sat down and crossed her legs, patrons often groaned, for there was so much gap-space inside her cut-offs that her vagina could be fully viewed: flaccid lips surrounding a scary black hole, like a hundred-year-old man's agape mouth. "Hey, Cora!" someone yelled. "Don't'cha git too close to the pool table. Someone's liable ta mistake ya fer a cue stick!" The whole bar ripped laughter; in fact, Doreen laughed so hard, her dentures fell out and landed in the corner pocket. "Fuck all'a ya, ya queers!" Cora shouted back. "You's kin all suck my Daddy's ass-hair!"
"Yeah!" someone shouted back, "like you been doin' since you was four!"
This was the cream of the crop at the Crossroads.
Dicky plopped his girth on the stool right next to Balls.
"Hey, Balls."
"Shee-it, man. Yer late. Thought ya lost yer confer-dance in me."
"Naw, after I'se got off work 'bout six, I hadda take me a long nap—"
"Shee-it. All that hard work warshin' cum-rags at the jack shack's got Dicky all wored out, but you ain't gonna have to work there no more." Then Balls cracked a sneering smile and slapped Dicky on the back.
"You got it?"
"I tolt ya I'd git it, didn't I?" Balls slipped an envelope over—a fat envelope.
It took a few minutes but Dicky counted the money, his hands trembling. "Well shee-it in a picnic basket, Balls! I just cain't believe it!" There was twelve hundred dollars in the envelope, in mostly ratty fifties and twenties.
Balls nodded. "So's when'll you git'cha that new trannie?"
"I'll pick it up tomorrow'n have it dropped the next day."
"And then the day after that, you'n me'll be runnin' moonshine, right?"
"Right!"
"As partners." Balls shot Dicky a solemn glance. "Right?"
"Dang right, Balls!" Dicky was nearly crying in his joy. All that money in his hand? What a fine friend Balls was, and not three days out of the poky. That brand-spanking-new M-22 Rock Crusher would make his motorhead dreams come true. A 427 El Camino with a radical trans was just the ticket. That fucker will fly...
Dicky simmered down, as some logic seeped into the conversation. "Hey, Balls... If you're flat broke after gettin' out'a the joint... how'd you come up with twelve-hunnert bucks faster than shit through a buzzard?"
Balls grinned. "Aw, now, don't you worry 'bout that none, Dicky-Boy." Balls snapped his finger at an ancient barkeep in suspenders. He wore a ballcap with a patch that read: LIQUOR IN FRONT, POKER IN BACK. "Hey, bartender! I gotta stand on my head'n flap my balls ta git a pitcher in this joint?"
The barkeep frowned his way over. "You look like a con, son. I gots ta see some green first."
"Shee-it," Balls muttered through his grin. He snapped a twenty down.
Then the barkeep noticed Dicky. "Aw, shee-it, Dicky, I didn't see ya walk in. Damn shame what happened at yer place."
Dicky scratched his head. "My place?"
"Yeah. June's jack shack. Ain't that where ya work?"
"Uh, well... "
"I guess ya ain't heard. 'bout seven o'clock, some fella walked in there and knocked the place over."
"Ya don't say?" Balls offered.
"Shore as shit," the keep replied. "Took the whole week's till, he did."
Dicky was astonished. "Yer shittin' me. Man, I was workin' there myself earlier."
"The fucker had a big gun too, and terrorized the livin' shit out'a all them poor girls. Made 'em all strip nekit so's he could gander their pussies'n tits."
"What a scumbag," Balls offered. "World's goin' ta shit, I'll tell ya."