"Death to all whores who keep their legs closed against me!" I screamed.
A door opened and a man came running out of a ground floor apartment. He was the manager.
"Hey, there is no swimming allowed this time of night! The pool lights are off!"
I paddled toward him, reached the pool edge and looked up at him. "Look, motherfucker, I drink two barrels of beer a day and I'm a professional wrestler. I'm a kindly sou! by nature. But I intend to swim and I want those lights turned ON! NOW! I'm only asking you one time!"
I paddled off.
The lights went on. The pool was brilliantly lit. It was magic. I paddled toward the vodka, took it down from the pool edge and had a good one. The bottle was almost empty. I looked down and Valerie and Bobby were swimming in circles around each other underwater. They were good at it, they were lithe and graceful. How odd that everybody was younger than I.
We finished with the pool. I walked to the manager's door in my wet shorts and knocked. He opened the door. I liked him.
"Hey, buddy, you can flick out the lights now. I'm through swimming. You're O.K., baby, you're O.K."
We walked back to our apartment.
"Have a drink with us," said Bobby. "I know that you're unhappy."
I went in and had two drinks.
Valerie said, "Look, Hank, you and your women! You can't fuck them all, don't you know that?" "Victory or death!" "Sleep it off, Hank." "Goodnight, folks, and thanks…"
I went back to my bedroom. Cecelia was flat on her back and she was snoring, "Guzzz, guzzz, guzzz…"
She looked fat to me. I took off my wet shorts, climbed into bed. I shook her.
"Cecelia, you're SNORING!"
"Oooh, oooh… I'm sorry…"
"O.K., Cecelia. This is just like being married. I'll get you in the morning when I'm fresh."
81
A sound awakened me. It was not quite daylight. Cecelia was moving around getting dressed.
I looked at my watch.
"It's 5 am. What are you doing?"
"I want to watch the sun come up. I love sunrises!"
"No wonder you don't drink."
"I'll be back. We can have breakfast together."
"I haven't been able to eat breakfast for 40 years."
"I'm going to watch the sunrise, Hank."
I found a capped bottle of beer. It was warm. I opened it, drank it. Then I slept.
At 10:30 am there was a knock on the door.
"Come in…"
It was Bobby, Valerie and Cecelia.
"We just had breakfast together," said Bobby.
"Now Cecelia wants to take her shoes off and walk along the beach," said Valerie.
"I've never seen the Pacific Ocean before, Hank. It's so beautiful!"
"I'll get dressed…"
We walked along the shoreline. Cecelia was happy. When the waves came in and ran over her bare feet she screamed. "You people go ahead," I said, "I'm going to find a bar." "I'll come with you," said Bobby. "I'll watch over Cecelia," Valerie said…
We found the nearest bar. There were only two empty stools. We sat down. Bobby drew a male. I drew a female. Bobby and I ordered our drinks.
The woman next to me was 26, 27. Something had wearied her-her eyes and mouth looked tired-but she still held together in spite of it. Her hair was dark and well-kept. She had on a skirt and she had good legs. Her soul was topaz and you could see it in her eyes. I laid my leg against hers. She didn't move away. I drained my drink.
"Buy me a drink," I asked her.
She nodded to the barkeep. He came over.
"Vodka-7 for the gentleman."
"Thanks…"
"Babette."
"Thanks, Babette. My name's Henry Chinaski, alcoholic writer."
"Never heard of you."
"Likewise."
"I run a shop near the beach. Trinkets and crap, mostly crap."
"We're even. I write a lot of crap."
"If you're such a bad writer, why don't you quit?"
"I need food, shelter and clothing. Buy me another drink."
Babette nodded to the barkeep and I had a new drink.
We pressed our legs together.
"I'm a rat," I told her, "I'm constipated and I can't get it up."
"I don't know about your bowels. But you're a rat and you can get it up."
"What's your phone number?"
Babette reached into her purse for a pen.
Then Cecelia and Valerie walked in.
"Oh," said Valerie, "there are those bastards. I told you. The nearest bar!"
Babette slid off her stool. She was out the door. I could see her through the blinds on the window. She was walking away, on the boardwalk, and she had a body. It was willow slim. It swayed in the wind and was gone.
82
Cecelia sat and watched us drink. I could see that I repulsed her. I ate meat. I had no god. I liked to fuck. Nature didn't interest me. I never voted. I liked wars. Outer space bored me. Baseball bored me. History bored me. Zoos bored me.
"Hank," she said, "I'm going outside for a while." "What's out there?"
"I like to watch the people swim in the pool. I like to see them enjoying themselves."
Cecelia got up and walked outside.
Valerie laughed. Bobby laughed.
"All right, so I'm not going to get into her panties."
"Do you want to?" asked Bobby.
"It's not so much my sex drive that's offended, it's my ego."
"And don't forget your age," said Bobby.
"There's nothing worse than an old chauv pig," I said.
We drank in silence.
An hour or so later Cecelia returned.
"Hank, I want to go."
"Where?"
"To the airport. I want to fly to San Francisco. I have all my luggage with me."
"It's all right with me. But Valerie and Bobby brought us down in their car. Maybe they don't want to leave yet."
"We'll drive her to L.A.," said Bobby.
We paid our bill, got into the car, Bobby at the wheel, Valerie next to him and Cecelia and me in the back seat. Cecelia leaned away from me, pressed herself against the door, as far away from me as she could get.
Bobby turned on the tape deck. The music hit the back seat like a wave. Bob Dylan.
Valerie passed back a joint. I took a hit then tried to hand it to Cecelia. She cringed away from me. I reached and fondled one of her knees, squeezed it. She pushed my hand away.
"Hey, how you guys doing back there?" Bobby asked.
"It's love," I replied.
We drove for an hour.
"Here's the airport," said Bobby.
"You've got two hours," I told Cecelia. "We can go back to my place and wait."
"That's all right," said Cecelia. "I want to go now."
"But what will you do for two hours at the airport?" I asked.
"Oh," said Cecelia, "I just love airports!"
We stopped in front of the terminal. I jumped out, unloaded her baggage. As we stood together Cecelia reached up and kissed me on the cheek. I let her walk in alone.
83
I had agreed to give a reading up north. It was the afternoon before the reading and I was sitting in an apartment at the Holiday Inn drinking beer with Joe Washington, the promoter, and the local poet, Dudley Barry, and his boyfriend, Paul. Dudley had come out of the closet and announced he was a homo. He was nervous, fat and ambitious. He paced up and down.
"You gonna give a good reading?"
"I don't know."
"You draw the crowds. Jesus, how do you do it? They line up around the block."