The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories

  “Listen,” said Hyans, “I’ve got a girlfriend around here. Couple blocks north. Drop me off. She understands me.”

  I turned it north.

  “Listen,” I said, “don’t shoot the guy.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are the only one who will print my column.”

  I drove to the place, let him out, waited until the door opened, then drove off. A good piece of ass might smooth him out. I needed one too .…

  Next I heard from Hyans, he had moved out of the house.

  “I couldn’t stand it anymore. Why, the other night I took a shower, I was getting ready to fuck her, I wanted to fuck some life into her bones, but you know what?”

  “What?”

  “When I walked in on her she ran out of the house. What a bitch!”

  “Listen, Hyans, I know the game. I can’t talk against Cherry because the next thing you know, you’ll be back together again and then you’ll remember all the dirty things I said about her.”

  “I’m never going back.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I’ve decided not to shoot the bastard.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m going to challenge him to a boxing match. Full ring rules. Referee, ring, glove and all.”

  “OK,” I said.

  Two bulls fighting for the cow. And a bony one at that. But in America the loser oftentimes got the cow. Mother instinct? Better wallet? Longer dick? God knows what.…

  While Hyans was going crazy he hired a guy with a pipe and a necktie to keep the paper going. But it was obvious that Open Pussy was on its last fuck. And nobody cared but the twenty-five and thirty-dollar-a-week people and the free help. They enjoyed the paper. It wasn’t all that good but it wasn’t all that bad either. You see, there was my column: Notes of a Dirty Old Man.

  And pipe and necktie got the paper out. It looked the same. And meanwhile I kept hearing: “Joe and Cherry are together again. Joe and Cherry split again. Joe and Cherry are back together again. Joe and Cherry …”

  Then one chilly blue Wednesday night I went out to a stand to buy a copy of Open Pussy. I had written one of my best columns and wanted to see if they had had the guts to run it. The stand contained last week’s Open Pussy. I smelled it in the deathblue air: the game was over. I bought two tall six-packs of Schlitz and went back to my place and drank down the requiem. Always being ready for the end I was not ready when it happened. I walked over and took the poster off the wall and threw it into the trash: “OPEN PUSSY. A WEEKLY REVIEW OF THE LOS ANGELES RENAISSANCE.”

  The government wouldn’t have to worry anymore. I was a splendid citizen again.

  Twenty thousand circulation. If we could have made sixty — without family troubles, without police rousts — we could have made it. We didn’t make it.

  I phoned the office the next day. The girl at the phone was in tears. “We tried to get you last night, Bukowski, but nobody knew where you lived. It’s terrible. It’s finished. It’s over. The phone keeps ringing. I’m the only one here. We’re going to hold a staff meeting next Tuesday night to try to keep the paper going. But Hyans took everything — all the copy, the mailing list and the IBM machine which didn’t belong to him. We’re cleaned out. There’s nothing left.”

  Oh, you’ve got a sweet voice, baby, such a sad sad sweet voice, I’d like to fuck you, I thought.

  “We are thinking of starting a hippie paper. The underground is dead. Please show at Lonny’s house Tuesday night.”

  “I’ll try,” I said, knowing that I wouldn’t be there. So there it was — almost two years. It was over. The cops had won, the city had won, government had won. Decency was in the streets again. Maybe the cops would stop giving me tickets every time they saw my car. And Cleaver wouldn’t be sending us little notes from his hiding place anymore. And you could buy the L.A. Times anywhere. Jesus Christ and Mother in Heaven, Life was Sad.

  But I gave the girl my address and phone number, thinking we might make it on the springs. (Harriet, you never arrived.)

  But Barney Palmer, the political writer, did. I let him in and opened up the beers.

  “Hyans,” he said, “put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”

  “What happened?”

  “It jammed. So he sold the gun.”

  “He could have tried for seconds.”

  “It takes a lot of guts just to try it once.”

  “You’re right. Forgive me. Terrible hangover.”

  “You want to hear what happened?”

  “Sure. It’s my death, too.”

  “Well, it was Tuesday night, we were trying to get the paper ready. We had your column and thank Christ it was a long one because we were short of copy. It looked like we couldn’t make the pages. Hyans showed, glassy-eyed, drunk on wine. He and Cherry had split again.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Yeh. Anyhow, we couldn’t make the pages. And Hyans kept getting in the way. Finally he went upstairs and got on the couch and passed out. The minute he left, the paper began to get together. We made it and had forty-five minutes to get to the printer’s. I said I’d drive it down to the printer’s. Then you know what happened?”

  “Hyans woke up.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I’m that way.”

  “Well, he insisted on driving the copy to the printer’s himself. He threw the stuff in the car but he never made the printer’s. The next day we came in and found the note he left, and the place was cleaned out — the IBM machine, the mailing list, everything …”

  “I’ve heard. Well, let’s look at it this way: he started the goddamned thing, so he had a right to end it.”

  “But the IBM machine, he didn’t own it. He might get into a jam over it.”

  “Hyans is used to jams. He thrives on them. He gets his nuts. You ought to hear him scream.”

  “But it’s all the little people, Buk, the twenty-five-buck-a-week guys who gave up everything to keep the thing going. The guys with cardboard in their shoes. The guys who slept on the floor.”

  “The little guys always get it in the ass, Palmer. That’s history.”

  “You sound like Mongo.”

  “Mongo is usually right, even though he is a son of a bitch.”

  We talked a little more, then it was over.

  A big black kitty walked up to me at work that night. “Hey, brother, I hear your paper folded.”

  “Right, brother, but where did you hear?”

  “It’s in the L.A. Times, first page of the second section. I guess they are rejoicing.”

  “I guess they are.”

  “We liked your paper, man. And your column too. Real tough stuff.”

  “Thank you, brother.”

  At lunchtime (10:24 p.m.) I went out and bought the L.A. Times. I took it across the street to the bar over there, bought a dollar pitcher of beer, lit a cigar and walked over to a table under a light:

  OPEN PUSSY DEEP IN RED

  Open Pussy, the second largest underground newspaper in Los Angeles, has ceased publication, its editors said Thursday. The newspaper was 10 weeks short of its second anniversary.

  Heavy debts, distribution problems and a $1,000 fine on an obscenity conviction in October contributed to the demise of the weekly newspaper,” said Mike Engel, the managing editor. He placed final circulation of the newspaper at about 20,000.

  But Engel and other editorial staff members said they believed that Open Pussy could have continued and that its closing was the decision of Joe Hyans, its 35-year-old owner-chief editor.

  When the staff members arrived at the paper’s office at 4369 Melrose Ave. Wednesday morning they found a note from Hyans which declared, in part:

  “The paper has already fulfilled its artistic purpose. Politically, it was never too effective anyway. What’s been taking place in its pages recently is no improvement over what we printed a year ago.

  “As an artist, I must turn away from a work which does not grow … even though
it is a work of my own hand and even though it is bringing in bread (money).”

  I finished the pitcher of beer and went into my governmental job….

  A few days later I found a note in my mailbox:

  10:45 a.m., Monday

  Hank —

  I found a note in my mailbox this morning from Cherry Hyans. (I was away all day Sunday and Sunday night.) She says she has the kids and is sick and in bad trouble at – – – – Douglas Street. I can’t find Douglas on the fucking map, but wanted to let you know about the note.

  Barney

  A couple of days later the phone rang. It wasn’t a woman with a hot snatch. It was Barney.

  “Hey, Joe Hyans is in town.”

  “So are you and I,” I said.

  “Joe’s back with Cherry.”

  “Yeh?”

  “They are going to move to San Francisco.”

  “They ought to.”

  “The hippie paper thing fell through.”

  “Yeh. Sorry I couldn’t make it. Drunk.”

  “That’s OK. But listen, I’m on a writing assignment now. But as soon as I finish, I want to contact you.”

  “What for?”

  “I’ve got a backer with fifty grand.”

  “Fifty grand?”

  “Yeh. Real money. He wants to do it. He wants to start another paper.”

  “Keep in touch, Barney. I’ve always liked you. Remember the time you and I started drinking at my place at four in the afternoon, talked all night and didn’t finish until eleven a.m. the next morning?”

  “Yeh. It was a hell of a night. For an old guy, you can drink anybody under.”

  “Yeh.”

  “So, when I clean this writing up, I’ll let you know.”

  “Yeh. Keep in touch, Barney.”

  “I will. Meanwhile, hang in.”

  “Sure.”

  I went into the crapper and took myself a beautiful beershit. Then I went to bed, jacked off, and slept.

  LIFE AND DEATH IN THE CHARITY WARD

  The ambulance was full but they found me a place on top and away we went. I had been vomiting blood from the mouth in large quantities and I was worried that I might vomit upon the people below me. We rode along listening to the siren. It sounded far off, it sounded as if the sound weren’t coming from our ambulance. We were on the way to the county hospital, all of us. The poor. The charity cases. There was something different wrong with all of us and many of us would not be coming back. The one thing we had in common was that we were all poor and didn’t have much of a chance. We were packed in there. I never realized that an ambulance could hold so many people.

  “Good Lord, oh good Lord,” I heard the voice of a black woman below me, “I never thought this would happen to ME! I never thought nothing like this would Lord …”

  I didn’t feel that way about it. I had been playing with death for some time. I can’t say we were the best of friends but we were well acquainted. He had moved a little close a little fast on me that night. There had been warnings: pains like swords stuck in my stomach but I had ignored them. I had thought I was a tough guy and pain to me was just like bad luck: I ignored it. I just poured whiskey on top of the pain and went about my business. My business was getting drunk. The whiskey had done it; I should have stayed on the wine.

  Blood that comes from the inside is not the bright red color that comes, say, from a cut on the finger. The blood from inside is dark, a purple, almost black, and it stinks, it stinks worse than shit. All that life giving fluid, it smelled worse than a beer shit.

  I felt another vomiting spasm coming on. It was the same feeling as throwing up food and when the blood came out, one felt better. But it was only an illusion ... each mouthful out brought one closer to Pappa Death.

  “O good Lord God, I never thought…”

  The blood came up and I held it in my mouth. I didn’t know what to do. Up there on the upper tier I would have wetted my friends down quite good. I held the blood in my mouth trying to think about what to do. The ambulance turned a corner and the blood began to dribble out the corners of my mouth. Well, a man had to maintain decencies even while he was dying. I got myself together, closed my eyes and swallowed my blood back down. I was sickened. But I had solved the problem. I only hoped we got someplace soon where I could let the next one go.

  Really, there wasn’t any thought of dying; the only thoughts I had were (was) one: this is a terrible inconvenience, I am no longer in control of what is happening. They narrowed down your choices and pushed you around.

  The ambulance got there and then I was on a table and they were asking me questions: what was my religion? where was I born? did I owe the county any $$$ from earlier trips to their hospital? when was I born? parents alive? married? all that, you know. They talk to a man as if he had all his faculties; they don’t even pretend that you are dying. And they are hardly in a hurry. It does have a calming effect but that’s not their reason: they are simply bored and they don’t care whether you die, fly or fart. No, they rather you didn’t fart.

  Then I was on an elevator and the door opened into what appeared to be a dark cellar. I was rolled out. They placed me on a bed and left. An orderly appeared out of nowhere and gave me a small white pill.

  “Take this,” he said. I swallowed the pill and he handed me a glass of water and then vanished. It was the kindest thing that had happened to me in some time. I leaned back and noticed my surroundings. There were 8 or ten beds, all occupied by male Americans. We each had a tin bucket of water and a glass on the night stand. The sheets seemed clean. It was very dark in there and cold, much the feeling of an apartment house cellar. There was one small light bulb, unshaded. Next to me was a huge man, he was old, in his mid fifties, but he was huge; although much of the hugeness was fat, he did give off the feeling of much strength. He was strapped down in his bed. He stared straight up and spoke to the ceiling.

  “… and he was such a nice boy, such a clean nice boy, he needed the job, he said he needed the job, and I said, ‘I like your looks, boy, we need a good fry cook, a good honest fry cook, and I can tell an honest face, boy, I can tell character, you work with me and my wife and you got a job here for life, boy …’ and he said, ‘All right, sir,’ just like that he said it and he looked happy about gettin’ that job and I said, ‘Martha, we got us a good boy here, a nice clean cut boy, he ain’t gonna tap the till like the rest of those dirty sons of bitches.’ Well, I went out and got a good buy on chickens, a real good buy on chickens. Martha can do more things with a chicken, she’s got that magic touch with chicken. Col. Sanders can’t touch her with a 90 foot pole. I went out and bought 20 chickens for that weekend. We were going to have a good weekend, a chicken special. 20 chickens I went out and got. We were going to put Col. Sanders out of business. A good weekend like that, you can pull 200 bucks clear profit. That boy even helped us pluck and cut those chickens, he did it on his own time. Martha and I didn’t have no children. I was really taking a liking to that boy. Well, Martha fixed the chicken in the back, she got all that chicken ready … we had chicken 19 different ways, we had chicken coming out of our assholes. All the boy had to do was cook up the other stuff like burgers and steak and so forth. The chicken was set. And by god, we had a big weekend. Friday night, Saturday and Sunday. That boy was a good worker, and pleasant too. He was nice to be around. He made these funny jokes. He called me Col. Sanders and I called him son. Col. Sanders and Son, that’s what we were. When we closed Saturday night we were all tired but happy. Every damned bit of chicken was gone. The place had been packed, people waitin’ on seats, you never saw anything like it. I locked the door and got out a 5th of good whiskey and we sat there, tired and happy, having a few drinks. The boy washed all the dishes and swept the floor. He said, ‘All right, Col. Sanders, when do I report tomorrow?’ He smiled. I told him 6:30 a.m. and he got his cap and left. ‘That’s a hell of a nice boy, Martha,’ I said and then I walked over to the till to count the profits. The till was E
MPTY! That’s right, I said, ‘The till was EMPTY!’ And the cigar box with the other 2 days profit, he found that too. Such a clean cut boy … I don’t understand it … I said he could have a job for life, that’s what I told him. 20 chickens … Martha really knows her chickens … And that boy, that dirty chickenshit, he ran off with all that damned money, that boy . ..”

  Then he screamed. I’ve heard a great many people scream but I’ve never heard anybody scream like that. He rose up against his straps and screamed. It looked as if those straps were going to break. The whole bed rattled, the wall roared the scream back at us. The man was in total agony. It wasn’t a short scream. It was a long one and it went on and on. Then he stopped. We 8 or ten male Americans, ill, stretched in our beds and enjoyed the silence.

  Then he began talking again. “He was such a nice boy, I liked his looks. I told him he could have the job for life. He made these funny jokes, he was nice to be around. I went out and got those 20 chickens. 20 chickens. On a good weekend you can clear 200. We had 20 chickens. The boy called me Col. Sanders …”

  I leaned out of bed and vomited out a mouthful of blood …

  The next day a nurse came out and got me and helped me on a rolling platform. I was still vomiting up blood and was quite weak. She rolled me on the elevator.

  The technician got behind his machine. They poked a point into my belly and told me to stand there. I felt very weak.

  “I’m too weak to stand up,” I said.

  “Just stand there,” said the technician.

  “I don’t think I can,” I said.

  “Hold still.”

  I felt myself slowly beginning to fall over backwards.

  “I’m falling,” I said.

  “Don’t fall,” he said.

  “Hold still,” said the nurse.

  I fell over backwards. I felt as if I were made of rubber. There was no feeling when I hit the floor. I felt very light. I probably was.

  “Oh god damn it!” said the technician.

  The nurse helped me up and stood me up against the machine with this point jamming into my stomach.

  “I can’t stand,” I said, “I think I’m dying. I can’t stand up. I’m sorry but I can’t stand up.”