“How’d that happen?” wonders Billie and at the same time we both look at the fishbowl and both the goldfishes are upsidedown floating dead on the surface of the water.
I’ve been sitting in that chair by that fishbowl for a week drinking and smoking and talking and now the goldfish are dead.
“What killed them?”—“I dont know”—“Did I kill the because I gave them some Kelloggs corn flakes?”—“Mebbe, you’re not supposed to give them anything but their fish food”—“But I thought they were hungry so I gave them a few flicks of corn flakes”—“Well I dont know what killed them”—“But why dont anybody know? what happened? why do they do this? otters and mouses and every damn thing dyin on all sides Billie, I cant stand it, it’s all my goddam fault every time!”—“Who said it was your fault dear?”—“Dear? you call me dear? why do you call me dear?”—“Ah, let me love you” (kissing me), “just because you dont deserve it”—(Chastised):- “Why dont I deserve it”—“Because you say so. . .”—“But what about the fish”—“I dont know, really”—“Is it because I’ve been sitting in that crumbling chair all week blowing smoke on their water? and all the others smoking and all the talk?”—But the little kid Elliott comes crawling up his mommy’s lap and starts asking questions: “Billie,” he calls her, “Billie, Billie, Billie,” feeling her face, I’m almost going mad from the sadness of it all—“What did you do all day?”—“I was with Ben Fagan and slept in the park. . . Billie what are we gonna do?”—“Anytime you say like you said, we’ll get married and fly to Mexico with Perry and Elliott”—“I’m afraid of Perry and I’m afraid of Elliott”—“He’s only a little boy”—“Billie I dont wanta get married, I’m afraid. . .”—“Afraid?”—“I wanta go home and die with my cat.” I could be a handsome thin young president in a suit sitting in an oldfashioned rocking chair, no instead I’m just the Phantom of the Opera standing by a drape among dead fish and broken chairs—Can it be that no one cares who made me or why?—“Jack what’s the matter, what are you talking about?” but suddenly as she’s making supper and poor little Elliott is waiting there with spoon upended in fist I realize it’s just a little family home scene and I’m just a nut in the wrong place—And in fact Billie starts saying “Jack we should be married and have quiet suppers like this with Elliott, something would sanctify you forever I’m positive.”
“What have I done wrong?”—“What you’ve done wrong is withhold your love from a woman like me and from previous women and future women like me—can you imagine all the fun we’d have being married, putting Elliott to bed, going out to hear jazz or even taking planes to Paris suddenly and all the things I have to teach you and you teach me—instead all you’ve been doing is wasting life really sitting around sad wondering where to go and all the time it’s right there for you to take”—“Supposin I dont want it”—“That’s part of the picture where you say you dont want it, of course you want. . .”—“But I dont, I’m a creepy strange guy you dont even know”—(“Cweepy? what’s cweepy? Billie? what’s cweepy?” is asking poor little Elliott)—And meanwhile Perry comes in for a minute and I pointblank say to him “I dont understand you Perry, I love you, dig you, you’re wild, but what’s all this business where you wanta kidnap little girls?” but suddenly as I’m asking that I see tears in his eyes and I realize he’s in love with Billie and has always been, wow—I even say it, “You’re in love with Billie aint ya? I’m sorry, I’m cuttin out”—“What are you talkin about man?”—It’s a big argument then about how he and Billie are just friends so I start singing Just Friends like Sinatra “Two friends but not like before” but goodhearted Perry seeing me sing runs downstairs to get another bottle for me—But nevertheless the fish are dead and the chair is broken.
Perry in fact is a tragic young man with enormous potentials who’s just let himself swing and float to hell I guess, unless something else happens to him soon, I look at him and realize that besides loving Billie secretly and truly he must also love old Cody as much as I do and all the world bettern I do yet he is the character who is always being put away behind bars for this—Rugged, covered with woe, he sits there with his black hair always over his brow, over his black eyes, his iron arms hanging helplessly like the arms of a powerful idiot in the madhouse, with the beauty of lostness pasted all over him—Who is he? in fact?—And why doesnt blonde Billie washing the homey dishes there acknowledge his love?—In fact me and Perry end up we’re both sitting with hanging heads when Billie comes back in the livingroom and sees us like that, like two repentant catatonics in hell—Some Negro comes in and says if I give him a few dollars he’ll get some pot but as soon as I give him five dollars he suddenly says “Well I aint gonna get nothin”—“You got five dollars, go out and get it”—“I aint sure I can get any”—I dont like him at all—I suddenly realize I can leap up and throw him on the floor and take the five dollars away from him but I dont even care about the money but I am mad about him doing that—“Who is that guy?”—I know that if I start fighting him he has a knife and we’ll wreck Billie’s livingroom too—But suddenly another Negro comes in and turns out a sweet visit talking about jazz and brotherhood and they all leave and me and Jacky are alone to wonder some more.
All the muscular gum of sex is such a bore, but Billie and I have such a fantastic sexball anyway that’s why we’re able to philosophize like that and agree and laugh together in sweet nakedness “Oh baby we’re together crazy, we could live in an old log cabin in the hills and never say anything for years, it was meant that we’d meet”—She’s saying all kinds of things as an idea begins to dawn on me: “Say I know Billie, let’s leave the City and take Elliott with us and go to Monsanto’s cabin in the woods for a week or two and forget everything”—“Yes I can call up my boss right now and get a coupla weeks off, Oh Jack let’s do it”—“And it’ll be good for Elliott, get away from all these sinister friends of yours, my God”—“Perry aint sinister.”
“We’ll get married and go away and have a lodge in the Adirondacks, at night by the lamp we’ll have simple suppers with Elliott”—“I’ll make love to you always”—“But you wont even have to because we both realize we’re bugs . . . our lodge will have truth written all over it but tho the whole world come smear it with big black paints of hate and lies we’ll be falling dead drunk in truth”—“Have some coffee”—“My hands’ll grow numb and I wont be able to handle the axe but still I’ll be the truth man. . . I’ll stand by the drape of the window night listening to the babble of all the world and I’ll tell you about it”—“But Jack I love you and that’s not the only reason why, dont you see that we’re meant for each other from the beginning, didnt you see that when you came in with Cody and started calling me Julien for that silly reason you told me about where I look like some old buddy you know in New York”—“Who hates Cody’s guts and Cody hates him”—“But dont you see what a waste it is?”—“But what about Cody? you want me to marry you but you love Cody and in fact Perry loves you too?”—“Sure but what’s wrong with that or all that? there’s perfect love between us forever there’s no doubt about it but we only have two bodies”—(a strange statement)—I stand by the window looking out on the glittering San Francisco night with its magic cardboard houses saying “And you have Elliott who doesnt like me and I dont like him and in fact I dont like you and I dont like myself either, how about that?” (Billie says nothing to this but only stores up an anger that comes out later)—“But we can call Dave Wain and he’ll drive us to Big Sur cabin and we’ll be alone in the woods at least”—“I’m telling you that’s what I wanta do!”—“Call him now!”—I tell her the number and she dials it like a secretary—“O the sad music of it all, I’ve done it all, seen it all, done everything with everybody” I say phone in hand, “the whole world’s coming on like a high school sophomore eager to learn what he calls New things, mind you, the same old sing-song sad song truth of death . . . because the reason I yell death so much is because I??
?m really yelling life, because you cant have death without life, hello Dave? there you are? know what I’m callin you about? listen pal . . . take that big brunette Romana that Rumanian madwoman and pack her in Willie and come down to Billie’s here and pick us up, we’ll pack while you’s en route, honey’s on, and we’ll all go spend two weeks of bliss in Monsanto’s cabin”—“Does Monsanto agree?”—“I’ll call him right now and ask him, he’ll say sure”—“Well I thought I’d be painting Romana’s wall tomorrow but maybe I’d a just got drunk doin that anyway: sure you wanta do all this now?”—“Yes yeh yeh, come on—” “And I can bring Romana?”—“Yes but why not?”—“And what’s the purpose of all this?”—“Ah Daddy, maybe just to see you again and we can talk about purposes anywhere: you wanta go on a lecture tour to Utah university and Brown university and tell the well scrubbed kids?”—“Scrubbed with what?”—“Scrubbed with hopeless perfection of pioneer puritan hope that leaves nothing but dead pigeons to look at?”—“Okay I’ll be right out . . . first I gotta get Willie’s tank filled up and an oil change too”—“I’ll pay you when you get here”—“I heard you were eloping with Billie”—“Who told you that?”—“It was in the paper today”—“Well we’ll start off by getting into Willie again and dont bring Ron Blake, we’ll be just two couples dig?”—“Yeh—and lissen I’ll bring my surf castin rod and catch some fish down there”—“We’ll have a ball—and listen Dave I’m grateful you’re free and willing to drive us down there, I’m down in the mouth, I’ve been sitting here for a week drinking and the chair broke and the fish died and I’m all screwed up again”—“Well you shouldnt oughta drink that sweet stuff all the time and you never eat”—“But that’s not the real trouble”—“Well we’ll decide what the real trouble is”—“That’s right”—“Methinks the real trouble is those pigeons”—“Why?”—“I dunno, remember when we were in East St. Louis with George, and Jack you said you’d love those beautiful dancing girls if you knew they would live forever as beautiful as they are?”—“But that’s only a quote from Buddha”—“Yeh, but the girls didn’t expect all that”—“How ya feeling Dave? what’s Fagan doing tonight”—“Oh he’s sitting in his room writing something, calls it his GOOFBOOK, has big wild drawings in it, and Lex Pascal is drunk again and the music is playing and I’m real sad and I’m glad you called”—“You like me Dave?”—“I aint got nothin else to do, kid”—“But you really have somethin else to do really?”—“Lissen never mind, I’ll be up, you call Monsanto right away tho because we also gotta get the corral gate keys from him”—“I’m glad I know you Dave”—“Me too Jack”—“Why?”—“Maybe I wanted to stand on my head in the snow to prove it but I do, am glad, will be glad, after all that’s right there’s nothing else for us to do but solve these damn problems and I’ve got one right here in my pants for Romana”—“But that’s so sick and tired to call life a problem that can be solved”—“Yes but I’m just repeating what I read in the dead pigeon textbooks”—“But Dave I love you”—“Okay I’ll be right over.”
32
WE PACK UP LITTLE ELLIOTT’S PATHETIC WARMCLOTHES and put food together and get the hamper all set and wait for Dave to come sadly in the night—And we have a big talk—“Billie but why did the fish die?” but she knows already they probably died because I gave them Kelloggs cornflakes or something went wrong, one thing sure is that she didnt forget to feed them or anything, it’s all me, all my fault, I’d as soon be rusted by autumn too-much-think than be dead-fisher cause of those poor little hunks of golden death floating on that scummy water—It reminds me of the otter—But I cant explain it to Billie who’s all abstract and talking about our abstract soul-meetings in hell, and little Elliott is pulling at her asking “Where we going? where we going? what for? what for?”—She’s saying “And all because you think you dont deserve to be loved because you think you caused the death of the goldfish tho they probably just died on their own accord”—“Why would they do that? why? what kind of logic is that for fish to have?”—“Or because you think you drink too much and therefore every time you’re feeling good on a little booze you give up and say your hands hang helpless, like you said last night when you were holding me with those hands blessing my heart and my body with your love, O Jack it’s time for you to wake up and come with me or at least come with somebody and open your eyes to why God’s put you here, stop all that staring at the floor, you and Perry both you’re crazy—I’ll draw you magic moon circles’ll change all your luck”—I look her dead in the eye and it is blue and I say “O Billie, forgive me”—“But you see you go there talkin guilty again”—“Well I dont know all those big theories about how everything should be goddamit all I know is that I’m a helpless hunk of helpful horse manure looking in your eye saying Help me”—“But when you make those big final statements it doesnt help you”—“Of course I know that but what do you want?”—“I want us to get married and settle down to a sensible understanding about eternal things”—“And you may be right”—I see it all raving before me the endless yakking kitchen mouthings of life, the long dark grave of tomby talks under midnight kitchen bulbs, in fact it fills me with love to realize that life so avid and misunderstood nevertheless reaches out skinny skeleton hand to me and to Billie too—But you know what I mean.
And this is the way it begins.
33
IT SOUNDS ALL SO SAD BUT IT WAS ACTUALLY SUCH A GAY NIGHT as Dave and Romana came over and there’s all the business of packing boxes and clothes down to the car, nipping out of bottles, getting ready in fact to sing all the way to Big Sur “Home On the Range” and “I’m Just a Lonsome Old Turd” by Dave Wain—Me sitting up front next to Dave and Romana for some reason maybe because I wanted to identify with my old broken front rockingchair and lean there flapping and singing but with Romana between us the seat is pinned down and no longer flaps—Meanwhile Billie is on the back mattress with sleeping child and off we go booming down Bay Shore to that other shore whatever it will bring, the way people always feel whenever they essay some trip long or short especially in the night—The eyes of hope looking over the glare of the hood into the maw with its white line feeding in straight as an arrow, the lighting of fresh cigarettes, the buckling to lean forward to the next adventure something that’s been going on in America ever since the covered wagons clocked the deserts in three months flat—Billie doesnt mind that I dont sit in back with her because she knows I wanta sing and have a good time—Romana and I hit up fantastic medleys of popular and folk songs of all kinds and Dave contributes his New York Chicago blue light nightclub romantic baritone specialties—My wavering Sinatra is barely heard in fact—Beat on your knees and yell and sing Dixie and Banjo On My Knee, get raucous and moan out Red River Valley, “Where’s my harmonica, I been meanin to buy me a eight dollar harmonica for eight years now.”
It always starts out good like that, the bad moments—Nothing is gained or lost also by the fact that I insist we stop at Cody’s en route so I can pick up some clothes I left there but secretly I want Evelyn to finally come face to face with Billie—It surprises me more however to see the look of absolute fright on Cody’s face as we pour into his livingroom at midnight and I announce that Billie’s in the jeep sleeping—Evelyn is not perturbed at all and in fact says to me privately in the kitchen “I guess it was bound to happen sometime she’d come here and see it but I guess it was destined to be you who’d bring her”—“What’s Cody so worried about?”—“You’re spoiling all his chance to be real secretive”—“He hasnt come and seen us for a whole week, that’s in a way what happened, he just left me stranded there: I’ve been feeling awful, too”—“Well if you want you can ask her to come in”—“Well we’re leaving in a minute anyway, you wanta see her at least?”—“I dont care”—Cody is sitting in the livingroom absolutely rigid, stiff, formal, with a big Irish stone in his eye: I know he’s really mad at me this time tho I dont really know why—I go out and there’s Billie alone in the car ov
er sleeping Elliott biting her fingernail—“You wanta come in and meet Evelyn?”—“I shouldnt, she wont like that, is Cody there?”—“Yah”—So Willamine climbs out (I remember just then Evelyn telling me seriously that Cody always calls his women by their full first names, Rosemarie, Joanna, Evelyn, Willamine, he never gives them silly nicknames nor uses them).