The Bell Tolls for No One

  Irene walked in. Strictly from Frederick’s: spiked heels, ankle bracelet, peek-through panties, a bra that pushed the nipples out like burning cigar ends. She wobbled to the bed and fell down beside me.

  “Oh, shit!” I said, “too much! It’s so great that I have to have one more beer. Just one more beer, Irene!”

  “All right.”

  I drank the beer and stared at her spiked shoes, her calves, her ankles, her nipples. It would soon be mine, all mine. I finished the beer and threw my arms around her. Our lips met. An enormous fat tongue slashed through my teeth and into my throat. I sucked on her tongue. It was very wet. Then I bit into it and she pulled it out. I undid her brassiere and the breasts fell flat. As I sucked on one nipple I played with the other with my fingers. Valentino must have done this at his best, I thought, but I’m not going the entire route. I pulled her panties off and mounted.

  I must have drunk 15 or 16 beers. I pumped. I pumped and I pumped and I pumped. It wasn’t bad. I pumped for 15 minutes. She’d left her shoes on. I looked back and looked at her spiked shoes on her feet. I pumped 15 minutes more. I couldn’t climax. I pumped, hit, rotated, changed rhythms, used a part of it, used all of it and the springs sounded and sounded and Irene was under me and I looked at her and her eyes were rolled back into her head, she was showing me the backs of her eyes, no pupils no color. I gave it one last grand surge and charge. No good, no climax. I rolled off.

  “I’m sorry, Irene.” The lights were out. She got up and climbed over me.

  “I’ll be back.”

  She walked out. I heard her walking down the path and into the back door of the main house. I got dressed. Then I walked out, down the driveway, got into my car and drove home.

  Barry phone me the next day. “I’m sorry, man,” I said, “couldn’t make it.”

  “Wait. She loved it. She wants to see you again.”

  “What?”

  “I’m serious . . . .”

  Next thing I knew I got a letter from Barry. They were in Mexico. Marvelous maid service. Marvelous. Cleaned the house and did everything. Young girl. Sarah is jealous. Irene is horny. Just sold another novel. Marvelous fishing off the coast.

  I don’t know how many months went by. Somehow, as such things happen, I found myself living with a greyhaired woman, one Lila. Lila was of good body, and sometimes of excellent mind and other times no mind at all. Her front teeth were crooked and yellow and when she screamed at me the lips parted and she showed me all these teeth, quite frightening, but she was good in bed, well read, and kept her fingernails clean. The body was nice, as I said, but one of her weaknesses was going to all these meetings, Communist party meetings, poetry readings, and one day she came back all dressed in black, she said she was going to wear black until the Vietnam War ended, it was her way of protest and she covered that good body with all this black throwaway material purchased from the Goodwill, thriftshops, and elsewhere, she just flopped on all this black and it was very scruffy because when you protest you don’t do it in a slick black gown with the tits hanging, you suffer. So we both suffered and the Vietnam War had been going on for 40 years and it would go another 40. So I rather gave up on her but went on living with her, as one does . . .

  Then one day the doorbell rang. It was Barry and Irene. They’d come up out of Mexico. Barry was to edit a nudey mag in North Hollywood. Sarah was shopping in Van Nuys. Sarah was also working in watercolors. Not bad. Everybody sat down and I went in and broke out the beer. Irene crossed her legs high. She had on long spiked heels. And nylons held with blue ruffled garters. I’d never realized that her legs were so long. Irene looked at Lila. “Oh, aren’t you proud to be living with a great writer like Bukowski?”

  Lila stiffened her back and didn’t answer.

  I tried to keep from looking at Irene’s legs. They were glorious. She knew I was looking but refused to pull her dress down. “What are you wearing black for?” she asked Lila.

  “So many lives are wasted in useless causes,” said Lila.

  “You ain’t shittin’, honey,” answered Irene.

  Barry said they had to go but I insisted upon another round of beers. Irene hiked her dress higher. We were all looking at Irene’s legs. “You people all come out and see us now,” said Irene. Then they got up and left.

  I told Lila that I was going to take a bath. I went in there and locked the door. I hadn’t used soap in years. I mean, that way. Pink Lady Godiva.

  This time I climaxed.

  “Half of what you make goes to the house, the other half to you,” said Marty. It was the third girl he had interviewed that morning. The ad had stated that the job paid from $500 to a grand a week. This one was about 23, quite stately, even clean-looking, blonde, with pale blue eyes that stared and stared. She was dressed in a white blouse and black slacks.

  “You give head?” he asked the girl.

  “What?”

  “You gotta give head, are you any good at it?”

  “I guess.”

  “Most of the guys who come in here want head.”

  “I see.”

  “You better see. You work here, you produce. We’re one doughnut shop that does it well. We get few complaints. We take care of the cops and we take care of the customers. Once in a while we get a guy who complains. For that we take ALL of his money instead of part of it. Then we kick his ass a bit and set him back out on the street. Take your clothes off.”

  “What?”

  “Take your clothes off. Do you shave your box?”

  Marty lit his cigar and waited. She had on light green panties.

  “The panties too. Take off the panties. Put everything on that chair.”

  The girl stood there, naked.

  “Not too much breast but what the hell. And you ought to scrub your teeth more, they’re stained. You been to college?”

  “One year.”

  “One year. That’s nice. Where?”

  “Claremont.”

  “Claremont. That’s nice. Turn around. You got a black boy hustling you?”

  “No.”

  “It’s all right if you do, just keep him out of here. You got a wart on your ass.”

  “That’s a mole.”

  “Oh. Now all right, did I tell you to start getting dressed?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Don’t. I’m getting a hard. I think that wart did it.”

  “Mole.”

  “Mole. You’ll get the 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift. Can you piss?”

  “Of course.”

  “I mean, in a man’s mouth and on his chest, his legs, his balls and over his toes. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re a nice girl. Class. I like that one year of college. I got a daughter in college myself. How about shit?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You know what it is. We get lots of shitfreaks in here. Can you let a guy suck a turd out of your ass?”

  “I think so.”

  “You sure as hell better know ahead of time. You married?”

  “No.”

  “You live alone?”

  “I live with my mother.”

  “You and your mother, what are you hooked on, coke or H?”

  “We don’t take dope.”

  “You will. Look, I still got this hard. It’s busting out of my pants. You see it?”

  “I see it.”

  “You believe in God?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so. Nice girl.”

  “Can I get dressed now?”

  “Just leave your fucking clothes OFF! It’s not costing you anything, is it?”

  “No.”

  “We got an operation going here that nothing around Hollywood and Western can touch. We got something going for any type alive. We got guys who just like to come in here and watch television with a girl. We got a special room for that. Then we got two or three days shackjobs going. We got special apartments for that: stoves, bathtubs, the works. They even go
shopping together at Ralphs. We got two floors here and we use them all. We’re an institution here and we treat our help better than Mark C. Bloome. Sometimes you gotta slash a guy’s ass with something like this.”

  Marty reached into the desk drawer and pulled out the leather whip. He handed the whip to the girl. “That son of a bitch cost us 80 dollars and it has already brought joy to over two hundred men and boys. Let me see if you can handle that thing. Work out.”

  The girl raised the whip.

  “Hey! Not on ME, you cunt! Lay it into that chair over there.”

  She slashed the whip at the chair.

  “No, you flick the END. Try it again! Now that chair is a guy’s ass bent over. See him there? Bent over? See his bunghole? His balls are dangling. Flick his cheeks good! Enjoy it!”

  The girl flicked the whip at the chair.

  “That’s better. But we’re going to have to train you. You got to beat them until they’re bloody. They’ll beg you to stop but they don’t mean it. You’ll know when to stop. You’ll stop when they come. Most of them whack off but the real pros can come without touching their dicks.”

  The girl lashed at the chair again.

  “All right, that’s enough. We haven’t finished paying for the furniture yet. What’s your social security number?”

  “651-90-2010”

  “Phone number?”

  “614-8965”

  “Address?”

  “4049 Fountain.”

  “Name?”

  “Helen Masterson.”

  “Helen, touch my dick.”

  “What?”

  “Just come over here and touch my dick. I won’t take it out from under the cloth. Just come on over here and touch it with one of your fingers. That’s all you’ve got to do.”

  Helen walked over, reached down and touched Marty’s penis.

  “O.K. you’re hired. Get dressed. You start tomorrow evening.”

  Helen got dressed and went to the door, opened it. There was another girl sitting out there. Marty saw her. “Come on in, dear, and close the door behind you.”

  Helen walked outside and she was on Hollywood Boulevard. She walked down to Western, crossed the street, and found a telephone near the taco stand. She dialed the number 614-8965.

  “Ma?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Helen. Ma, I got the job.”

  “Oh Helen, I’m glad. And I think I got a job too. I filled out an application for The House of Pies.”

  “Great, Ma.”

  Helen hung up. Then she walked over to the taco stand and ordered a chili burrito and a large coke.

  Lucille was not a bad sort, I mean compared to most who had lived with me. Like the others she drank, lied, cheated, stole and exaggerated, but as a man goes on he stops looking for the whole cloth, he’ll settle for a piece of rag. And then he’ll pass that on to the next while scratching his ear.

  But, generally, while things are working just a little, a wise man will tend to accept the moment because if you don’t you just get a bag with you in it and when you shake it you only hear one sound. Boy, you’ve got to poop up some guts now and then to find out where the sun lays it down.

  Lucille would tell little stories about the south. Well, not the real south but the south of Arizona and New Mexico, Midwest south. We’d sit up in bed drinking our wine and she’d talk: “My god, it was terrible. That convent. Those bitches. We were all little girls and they’d starve us. The richest church in the world, the Catholic Church, and they’d starve us.”

  “I like the Catholic Church, they give a good show, all those robes, that Latin, drinking the blood of Christ . . . ”

  “We were so hungry, so very very hungry. We’d climb out the windows at night and go into the garden and dig up these radishes, they’d be surrounded with dirt and mud, and we’d eat it all, the dirt, the mud, the radishes . . . we were so hungry. And when we got caught we were punished terribly . . . Those bitches in their black hoods and dresses . . . ”

  “Don’t spill the wine on the sheets, it’s harder to get off than beet juice.”

  Lucille, like the rest of them, had come out of a long and unhappy marriage. They all told me stories of their long and unhappy marriages and I’d lay there next to them thinking, “Now what am I supposed to do?”

  It was never quite clear to me so I drank very much with them and fucked them often and listened to their speeches but I don’t think I did much for them. I gave them an ear and a cock, I did listen and I did fuck, whereas most men only pretended to listen. I guess I had an ace but I had to listen to an awful lot of shit and then weigh and measure it, and when I got through with that, the substance I had left could be blown away with one nostril pinched off. But I was a kind man. They all admitted that: I was a very kind man.

  “Those radishes tasted so good, mud, sand and all . . . ”

  “Put your hand on my cock. Rub my balls.”

  “Are you still Catholic?”

  “No way. You got a hair caught in your ring. You’re killing me. I hate women who wear rings, especially turquoise. It proves they’re in with the devil, that they’re witches . . . Touch the head of my cock.”

  “You’ve got the biggest balls of any man I’ve ever met.”

  “I could say something about you, too, but I don’t think I will . . . ”

  Outside of that, Lucille had a minor weakness. She’d get drunk on the wine and spread herself across the bed while I was sitting on a chair and she’d start in: “You’re a fag, a shoetree, a pimpernel . . . you murdered the Frogs at Verdun, you shaved the hairs off of Joan of Arc’s pussy and stuck them into your ears like flowers . . . You eat your own shit like your American heritage . . . you think Beethoven is a wart out of lower Seville . . . your mother made you smear her panties with beeswax while she had her hysterectomy . . . ”

  She kept it on and on, this certain night I’m talking about. I dropped to my knees: “Lucille, my love, you know that I’m a kind man, you’ve admitted as much. I’m begging you upon my knees to please shut up. Please, I beg you! There are certain truths in your wallfly buzzings; there are also certain minor exaggerations. I beg you to cease, little buttercup!”

  “You sucked off Henry VIII and smeared buttermilk up his ass. You drew the loop around the Louisiana French. You hate Henry Fonda!”

  “Don’t say that about Fonda or I’ll smash your teeth in!”

  “You murdered the golden-haired children of the Valencia of my dreams!”

  “No, no, that was your husband!”

  “It was both of you! Bring me more wine!”

  “Yes, my love.”

  This particular night Lucille went on and on. I am a kind man but you must understand voice intonation to understand anything. There is this particular poisonous sound that can be vent loose, it is a sound that itches and scratches and bullies and pukes and mewks. It continues in this same relentless and never-ending tonality, and no matter what one says to it or how one attempts to appease it, it goes on and on and on. Sometimes babies can do this to you, or women, or sometimes men.

  The hours went on and Lucille went on. I don’t know how many times I asked mercy or how many warnings I gave. But it does happen, finally. I walked toward the bed and I told her as I approached: “All right, buttercup, this is it.”

  But Lucille continued to wail away, on her back, belly distended with cheap wine, a one-inch ash on her cigarette, the neon signs of central L.A. turning her white, then pink, then yellow, then blue . . . I picked up the end of the bed and closed her into the wall and sat back down. I poured a drink, lit a fresh cigarette and crossed my legs.

  Lucille was gone. There was nothing in front of me but brown paneled woodwork. Cliché or not, I had to admit to a definite sense of peace. I remembered Lucille when I had first met her legs, her eyes, her lips, her very round ears, and her slurred tongue. Not knowing a person at all was much better, always, than knowing all of them. One might at least endow them with magics that cou
ld never exist, and then, after living with them, blame them for the magics that had never arrived.

  I drank my drink and began to hear sounds behind the woodwork: “God o mighty, please help me! Help me!”

  “You’ll be all right, baby. Relax. I can see the Goodyear blimp from here. It’s flashing lights. Let me read you the message . . . ”

  “Let me out, I BEG YOU! I’M DYING!”

  “Oh, fuck,” I said and walked over and pulled the bed down. There she was. My flower.

  “Oh, shit, I think my arm’s broken!”

  “Now don’t give me a goddamned bunch of trouble. Let me pour you a wine. Care for a cigar?”

  “I tell you my arm’s broken. It’s broken!”

  “For Christ’s sake, be a man! Here’s a drink! Drink up.”

  “It hurts, it hurts, o my god how it hurts!”

  “Stop your goddamned yollering or I’ll put you right back into that wall next to your asshole!”

  Nothing seemed to frighten her. It was disgusting. I took another big hit of Tokay and took the elevator down. I walked down the street a bit and found the back of a super-market. There were some wooden crates stacked up against the side of the building. I took a piss in the moonlight then walked over to the wooden crates. I began ripping boards off, slats. A curved nail came up and caught the inside of my wrist as I was ripping a board off. A little trickle of blood ran down my arm. I cursed. Shit, what a man wouldn’t do for a whore.

  I got back upstairs with my bundle of shit. First we had some Tokay and cigarettes. Then I got up and took off the top bedsheet and like some large lion of anger, cheap cigar rolling in the center of my mouth, I ripped that bedsheet up, and then cracking boards across my knee for correct size. I got that arm all wrapped up like Dr. Keene. Then I sat down and turned on the radio. Shostakovich’s 5th. Great. I had always been a lover of the masses. I drank down one-third a bottle of Tokay and looked for the Goodyear blimp.

  “O, my god,” said Lucille.

  “Shut up. I told you to shut up. I’m not going to tell you to shut up much longer.”