Yet I also knew with another part of me, that if I ever let go and dropped into the flow of those shiny new bicycles, I was done, finished, that I’d never be able to make it. So I just lay back and let the wheels and the spokes and the colors soothe me.
A man with a hangover should never lay flat on his back looking up at the roof of a warehouse. The wooden girders finally get to you; and the skylights—you can see the chicken wire in the glass skylights—that wire somehow reminds a man of jail. Then there’s the heaviness of the eyes, the longing for just one drink, and then the sound of people moving about, you hear them, you know your hour is up, somehow you have to get on your feet and walk around and fill and pack orders…
37
She was the manager’s secretary. Her name was Carmen—but despite the Spanish name she was a blonde and she wore tight knitted dresses, high spiked heels, nylons, garter belt, her mouth was thick with lipstick, but, oh, she could shimmy, she could shake, she wobbled while bringing the orders up to the desk, she wobbled back to the office, all the boys watching every move, every twitch of her buttocks; wobbling, wiggling, wagging. I am not a lady’s man. I never have been. To be a lady’s man you have to make with the sweet talk. I’ve never been good at sweet talk. But, finally, with Carmen pressing me, I led her into one of the boxcars we were unloading at the rear of the warehouse and I took her standing up in the back of one of those boxcars. It was good, it was warm; I thought of blue sky and wide clean beaches, yet it was sad—there was definitely a lack of human feeling that I couldn’t understand or deal with. I had that knit dress up around her hips and I stood there pumping it to her, finally pressing my mouth to her heavy mouth thick with scarlet lipstick and I came between two unopened cartons with the air full of cinders and with her back pressed against the filthy splintering boxcar wall in the merciful dark.
38
We all doubled up as both stock and shipping clerks. We each filled and shipped our own orders. Management was all for pinpointing errors. And since only one man was responsible for each order from start to finish, there was no way to pass the buck. Three or four goofed up orders and you were out.
Bums and indolents, all of us working there realized our days were numbered. So we relaxed and waited for them to find out how inept we were. Meanwhile, we lived with the system, gave them a few honest hours, and drank together at night.
There were three of us. Me. And a guy called Hector Gonzalves—tall, stooped, placid. He had a lovely Mexican wife who lived with him in a large double bed on upper Hill Street. I know because I went out with him one night and we drank beer and I frightened Hector’s wife. Hector and I had walked in after a drunken evening in the bars and I pulled her out of bed and kissed her in front of Hector. I figured I could out-duke him. All I had to do was to keep an eye out for the steel. I finally apologized to both of them for being such an asshole. I could hardly blame her then for not warming to me and I never went back.
The third was Alabam, a small-time thief. He stole rear-view mirrors, screws and bolts, screwdrivers, light bulbs, reflectors, horns, batteries. He stole womens’ panties and bedsheets off of clotheslines, rugs out of hallways. He’d go to the markets and buy a bag of potatos, but at the bottom of the sack he’d have steaks, slices of ham, cans of anchovies. He went by the name of George Fellows. George had a nasty habit: he’d drink with me and when I was almost to the point of helplessness, he’d attack me. He wanted badly to whip my ass but he was a thin fellow and cowardly to boot. I always managed to rouse myself enough to give him a few to the gut and the side of the head which would send him bounding and staggering down the stairway, usually with some small stolen item in his pocket—my washrag, a can opener, an alarm clock, my pen, a can of pepper, or perhaps a pair of scissors.
The manager of the bike warehouse, Mr. Hansen, was red-faced, sombre, green-tongued from sucking Clorets to get the whiskey off his breath. One day he called me into the office.
“Listen, Henry, those two boys are pretty dumb, aren’t they?”
“They’re all right.”
“But, I mean, Hector especially…he is dumb, really. Oh, I mean, he’s all right, but I mean, do you think he’ll ever make it?”
“Hector is all right, sir.”
“You mean it?”
“Of course.”
“That Alabam. He’s got weasel-eyes. He probably steals six dozen bike pedals a month, don’t you think?”
“I don’t think so, sir. I’ve never seen him take anything.”
“Chinaski?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I’m giving you a ten dollar a week raise.”
“Thank you, sir.” We shook hands. That’s when I realized that he and Alabam were in cahoots and splitting it right down the middle.
39
Jan was an excellent fuck. She’d had two children but she was a most excellent fuck. We had met at an open air lunch counter—I was spending my last fifty cents on a greasy hamburger—and we struck up a conversation. She bought me a beer, gave me her phone number, and three days later I moved in to her apartment.
She had a tight pussy and she took it like it was a knife that was killing her. She reminded me of a butterfat little piglet. There was enough meanness and hostility in her to make me feel that with each thrust I was paying her back for her ill-temper. She’d had one ovary removed and claimed that she couldn’t get pregnant; for only one ovary she responded generously.
Jan looked a lot like Laura—only she was leaner and prettier, with shoulder length blonde hair and blue eyes. She was strange; she was always hot in the morning with her hangovers. I was not so hot in the mornings with mine. I was a night man. But at night she was always screaming and throwing things at me: telephones, telephone books, bottles, glasses (full and empty), radios, purses, guitars, ashtrays, dictionaries, broken watch bands, alarm clocks…She was an unusual woman. But one thing I could always count on, she wanted to fuck in the mornings, very much. And I had my bicycle warehouse.
Watching the clock on a typical morning, I’d give her the first one, me gagging and spewing just a bit, trying to hide it; then getting heated, coming, rolling off. “There, now,” I’d say, “I’m going to be fifteen minutes late.” And she’d trot off to the bathroom, happy as a bird, clean herself, poop, look at the hair under her arms, look in the mirror, worry more about age than death, then trot and get between the sheets again as I climbed into my stained shorts, to the noise of the traffic outside on Third Street, rolling east.
“Come on back to bed, daddy,” she’d say.
“Look, I just got a ten dollar raise.”
“We don’t have to do anything. Just lay down here beside me.”
“Oh shit, kid.”
“Please! Just five minutes.”
“Oh, fuck.”
I’d get back in. She’d pull the covers back and grab my balls. Then she’d grab my penis. “Oh, he’s so cute!”
I’d be thinking, I wonder when I can get out of here?
“Can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you mind if I kiss him?”
“No.”
I heard and felt the kisses, then felt little licks. Then I forgot all about the bicycle warehouse. Then I heard her ripping up a newspaper. I felt something being fitted over the tip of my dick. “Look,” she said.
I sat up. Jan had fashioned a little paper hat and fitted it over the head of my dick. Around the brim was a little yellow ribbon. The thing stood fairly tall.
“Oh, isn’t he cute?” she asked me.
“He? That’s me.”
“Oh no, that isn’t you, that’s him, you have nothing to do with him.”
“I don’t?”
“No. Do you mind if I kiss him again?”
“All right, it’s all right. Go ahead.”
Jan lifted the hat off and holding on with one hand she began kissing where the hat had been. Her eyes looked deep into mine. The tip of it entered her mouth. I fell back,
damned.
40
I arrived at the bicycle warehouse at 10:30 a.m. Starting time was 8. It was morning break time and the coffee wagon was outside. The warehouse crew was out there. I walked up and ordered a coffee, large, and a jelly doughnut. I talked to Carmen, the manager’s secretary, of boxcar fame. As usual Carmen was wearing a very tight knitted dress that fit her like a balloon fits the trapped air, maybe tighter. She had on layers and layers of dark red lipstick and while she talked she stood as close as possible, looking into my eyes and giggling, brushing parts of her body against me. Carmen was so aggressive that she was frightening, you wanted to run away from the pressure. Like most women, she wanted what she couldn’t have any longer and Jan was draining all my semen and then some. Carmen thought I was playing sophisticated and hard to get. I leaned back clutching my jelly doughnut and she leaned into me. The break ended and we all walked inside. I visualized Carmen’s lightly shit-stained panties draped over one of my toes as we lay in bed together in her shack on Main Street. Mr. Hansen, the manager, was standing outside his office: “Chinaski,” he barked. I knew the sound: it was over for me.
I walked toward him and stood there. He was in a newly-pressed light tan summer suit, bow tie (green), tan shirt, with his black-and-tan shoes exquisitely shined. I was suddenly conscious of the nails in the soles of my scruffy shoes pressing up into the soles of my feet. Three buttons on my dirty shirt were missing. The zipper in my pants was jammed at half mast. My belt buckle was broken.
“Yes?” I asked.
“I’m going to have to let you go.”
“O.K.”
“You’re a damned good clerk but I’m going to have to let you go.”
I was embarrassed for him.
“You’ve been showing up for work at 10:30 for 5 or 6 days now. How do you think the other workers feel about this? They work an eight hour day.”
“It’s all right. Relax.”
“Listen, when I was a kid I was a tough guy too. I used to show up for work with a black eye three or four times a month. But I made it into the job every day. On time. I worked my way up.”
I didn’t answer.
“What’s wrong? How come you can’t get in here on time?”
I had a sudden hunch that I might save my job if I gave him the right answer. “I just got married. You know how it is. I’m on my honeymoon. In the mornings I start getting into my clothes, the sun is shining through the blinds, and she drags me down onto the mattress for one last fling of turkeyneck.”
It didn’t work. “I’ll have them make out your severance check.” Hansen strode toward his office. He went inside and I heard him say something to Carmen. I had another sudden inspiration and I knocked on one of the glass panels. Hansen looked up, walked over, slid back the glass.
“Listen,” I said, “I never made it with Carmen. Honest. She’s nice, but she’s not my type. Make out my check for the whole week.”
Hansen turned back into the office. “Make out his check for a week.” It was only Tuesday. I hadn’t expected that—but then he and Alabam were splitting 20,000 bicycle pedals down the middle. Carmen walked up and handed me the check. She stood there and gave me an indifferent smile as Hansen sat down at the telephone and dialed the State Employment Office.
41
I still had my thirty-five dollar car. The horses were hot. We were hot. Jan and I knew nothing about horses, but we lucked out. In those days they carded eight races instead of nine. We had a magic formula—it was called “Harmatz in the eighth.” Willie Harmatz was a better than average jock, but he had weight problems, like Howard Grant does now. Examining the charts we noticed that Harmatz usually jumped one in on the last race, usually at a good price.
We didn’t go out there every day. Some mornings we were just too sick from drinking to get out of bed. Then we’d get up in the early afternoon, stop off at the liquor store, stop off for an hour or two at some bar, listen to the juke box, watch the drunks, smoke, listen to the dead laughter—it was a nice way to go.
We were lucky. We only seemed to end up at the track on the right days. “Now look,” I’d tell Jan, “He isn’t going to do it again…it’s impossible.”
And there would come Willie Harmatz, with the old stretch run, looming up at the last moment through the gloom and the booze—there would come good old Willie at 16 to one, at 8 to one, at 9 to two. Willie kept saving us long after the rest of the world had become indifferent and had quit.
The thirty-five dollar car nearly always started, that wasn’t the problem; the problem was to turn the headlights on. It was always very dark after the eighth race. Jan usually insisted upon taking a bottle of port in her purse. Then we drank beer at the track and—if things were going well—we drank at the track bar, mostly scotch and water. I already had one drunk driving rap and I’d find myself driving along in a car without headlights, hardly knowing where I was.
“Don’t worry, baby,” I’d say, “the next hard bump we hit will turn the lights on.” We had the advantage of broken springs.
“Here’s a dip! Hold your hat!”
“I don’t have a hat!”
I’d floor it.
POW! POW! POW!
Jan would bounce up and down, trying to hold on to her bottle of port. I’d grip the wheel and look for a bit of light on the road ahead. Hitting those bumps would always turn the lights on. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later, but we’d always get the lights on.
42
We lived on the fourth floor of an old apartment house; we had two rooms in the back. The apartment was built at the edge of a high cliff so that when you looked out the back window it seemed as if you were twelve floors up instead of four. It was very much like living on the edge of the world—a last resting place before the final big drop.
Meanwhile, our winning streak at the track had ended, as all winning streaks end. There was very little money and we were drinking wine. Port and muscatel. We had the kitchen floor lined with gallon jugs of wine, six or seven of them, and in front of them were four or five fifths, and in front of the fifths were lined up three or four pints.
“Someday,” I told Jan, “when they demonstrate that the world has four dimensions instead of just three, a man will be able to go for a walk and just disappear. No burial, no tears, no illusions, no heaven or hell. People will be sitting around and they’ll say, ‘What happened to George?’ And somebody will say, ‘Well, I don’t know. He said he was going out for a pack of cigarettes.’”
“Listen,” said Jan, “what time is it? I want to know what time it is.”
“Well, let’s see, we set the clock by the radio at midnight last night. We know that it gains 35 minutes every hour. It says 7:30 p.m. right now but we know that’s not right because it’s not dark enough yet. O.K. That’s 7 and one half hours. 7 times 35 minutes, that’s 245 minutes. One half of 35 is 17 and one half. That gives us 252 and one half minutes. O.K., that’s 4 hours and 42 and one half minutes we owe them so we set the clock back to 5:47. That’s it 5:47. It’s dinner time and we don’t have anything to eat.”
Our clock had been dropped and broken and I had fixed it. I took the back off and found something wrong with the main spring and the fly wheel. The only way I could get the clock to run again was to shorten and tighten the main spring. This affected the speed of the clock’s hands; you could almost watch the minute hand moving.
“Let’s open another jug of wine,” said Jan.
We really had nothing to do but drink wine and make love.
We’d eaten everything there was to eat. At night we took walks and stole cigarettes off dashboards and out of the glove compartments of parked cars.
“Should I make some pancakes?” asked Jan.
“I don’t know if I can get another one of them down.”
We were out of butter and lard so Jan fried the pancakes dry. And it wasn’t pancake batter—it was flour mixed with water. They came out crisp. Real crisp.
“What kind of a man am I???
? I wondered aloud. “My father told me I’d end up like this! Surely I can go out and get something? I’m going to go out and get something…But first, a good drink.”
I filled a water glass full of port wine. It was vile tasting stuff and you couldn’t think about it while you drank it or you’d heave it right up. So I’d always run another film up there in the movie of my mind. I’d think of an old castle in Scotland covered with moss—drawbridges, blue water, trees, blue sky, cumulus clouds. Or, I’d think of a sexy lady pulling on a pair of silk stockings very very slowly. This time I ran the silk stockings film.
I got the wine down. “I’m going. Goodbye Jan.”
“Goodbye, Henry.”
I walked down the hall, down the four flights of stairs, very quietly past the manager’s apartment (we were behind in the rent), and into the street. I walked down the hill. I was at Sixth and Union Streets. I crossed Sixth Street, walked east. There was a small market there. I walked past the market, then I turned and approached it again. The vegetable stand was out front. There were tomatoes, cucumbers, oranges, pineapples, and grapefruit out there. I stood looking at them. I looked into the store; one old guy in an apron. He was talking to a woman. I picked up a cucumber and stuck it in my pocket and walked off. I was about fifteen feet away when I heard:
“Hey, mister! MISTER! You come back with that CUCUMBER or I’m going to call the COPS! If you don’t wanna go to JAIL you bring that CUCUMBER BACK!”
I turned and made the long walk back. There were three or four people watching. I pulled the cucumber out of my pocket and put it back on top of the stack of cucumbers. Then I walked west. I walked up Union Street, up the west side of the hill, walked back up the four flights of stairs and opened the door. Jan looked up from her drink.
“I’m a failure,” I said. “I couldn’t even steal a cucumber.”