The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories

  part of each day we would spend in the park looking at the ducks. you’ve got to believe me, that when your health is down from continual drinking and lack of decent food, and you’re tired of fucking while trying to forget, you can’t beat the ducks. I mean, you’ve got to get out of your place, because you can get the deep blue blues and it soon might be you out the window. it is easier to do than you might imagine. so Linda and I would sit on a bench and watch the ducks. the ducks didn’t worry worth a damn — no rent, no clothes, plenty of food — just float around shitting and quacking. nobbling, nibbling, eating all the time. once in a while one of those from the hotel would catch a duck at night, kill the thing, take it to their room, clean it and cook it. we thought about it but never did it. besides they were very hard to catch; you just get so close and SLUUUSH!!! a spray of water and the motherfucker would be gone! most of the time we ate small pancakes made of flour and water, or now and then we would steal some corn from somebody’s garden — one guy specialized in a corn garden — I don’t believe he got to eat a one of them, then there was always a bit of stealing from an outdoor market — I mean there was a vegetable stand in front of a grocery store — this meant an occasional tomato or two or a small cucumber, but we were petty thieves, small time, and we needed mostly luck. the cigarettes were easiest — a walk at night — somebody always left a car window down and a pack or half-pack of smokes on the dashboard. of course, the wine and the rent were the real problems and we fucked and worried about it.

  and like all the days of final desperation, ours arrived. no more wine, no more luck, no more anything. no more credit with the landlady or the liquor store. I decided to set the alarm clock for 5:30 a.m. and walk down to the Farm Labor Market, but even the clock didn’t work right. it had broken and I had opened it to repair it. it was a broken spring and the only way I could get the spring to work again was to break a portion of it off, hook it up again, lock up the works and wind it up. now if you want to know what a short spring does to an alarm clock or I guess any kind of clock, I’ll tell you. the shorter the spring is, the faster the minute and hour hands go around. it was some crazy clock, I’ll tell you, and when we were worn out with fucking to stop from worrying we used to watch that clock and try to tell what time it really was. you could see that minute hand moving — we used to laugh at it.

  then one day — it took us a week to figure it — we found that the clock moved thirty hours for each actual twelve hours of time. also it had to be wound every 7 or 8 hours or it would stop. sometimes we’d wake up and look at the clock and wonder what time it was. “well, shit, baby,” I’d say, “can’t you figure out the thing? the clock moves 2 and one half times as fast as it should. it’s simple.”

  “yeah, but what time did it say when we last set the clock?” she’d ask.

  “damned if I know, baby, I was drunk.”

  “well, you better wind it or it’ll stop.”

  “o.k.”

  I’d wind it, then we’d fuck.

  so the morning I decided to go to the Farm Labor Market I couldn’t set the clock. we got hold of a bottle of wine from somewhere and drank it slowly. I watched that clock, not knowing what it meant, and being afraid of missing the early morning, I just lay in bed and didn’t sleep all night. then I got up, dressed and walked down to San Pedro street. everybody seemed to be just standing around waiting. there were quite a few tomatoes lying in the windows and I picked up two or 3 of them and ate them. there was a làrge blackboard: COTTONPICKERS NEEDED FOR BAKERSFIELD. FOOD AND LODGING. what the hell was that? cotton in Bakersfield, Calif? I thought Eli Whitney and the cotton gin had put all that out of the way. then a big truck drove up and it turned out they needed tomato-pickers. well, shit, I hated to leave Linda in that bed all alone like that. she could never stay in bed too long alone by herself like that. but I decided to try it. everybody started climbing into the truck. I waited and made sure that all the ladies were on board, and there were some big ones. everybody was in, and then I started to crawl up. a large Mexican, evidently the foreman, started putting in the tailgates — “sorry, senor, full up!” they drove off without me.

  it was almost 9 p.m. by then and the walk back to the hotel took an hour. I passed all the well-dressed stupid-looking people. and was almost run over once by an angry man in a black Caddy. I don’t know what he was angry about. maybe the weather. it was a hot day. when I got back to the hotel I had to walk up the stairway because the elevator was right by the landlady’s door and she was always fucking with the elevator, shining the brass, or just plain-ass snooping.

  it was 6 floors up and when I got there I heard laughing from my room. that bitch Linda hadn’t waited too long to get started. well, I’d whip her ass and his too. I opened the door.

  it was Linda and Jeanie and Eve. “Sweetie!” said Linda. she came up to me. she was all dressed in highheels. she gave me a lot of tongue when she kissed. “Jeanie just got her first unemployment check and Eve is on the dole! we’re celebrating!”

  there was plenty of port wine. I went in and took a bath and them came out in my shorts. I always like to show off my legs. I had the biggest most powerful legs I had ever seen on any man. the rest of me wasn’t too much. I sat in my torn shorts and put my legs up on the coffee table.

  “shit! look at those legs!” said Jeanie.

  “yeah, yeah,” said Eve.

  Linda smiled. I was poured a wine.

  you know how such things go. we drank and talked, talked and drank. the girls went out for more bottles. more talk. the clock went round and round. soon it was dark. I was drinking alone, still in my torn shorts. Jeanie had gone to the bedroom and passed out in the bed. Eve had passed out on the couch and Linda had passed out on a smaller leather couch in the hall that led to the bathroom. I still couldn’t understand that Mexican closing those tailgates on me. I was unhappy.

  I went into the bedroom and got into bed with Jeanie. she was a large woman, and naked. I began kissing on her breasts, sucking at them. “hey, what you doing?”

  “doin? I’m going to fuck you!”

  I put my finger into her cunt and moved it back and forth. “I’m going to fuck you!”

  “no! Linda would kill me!”

  “she’ll never know!”

  I mounted and then very SLOWLY SLOWLY QUIETLY so the springs would not rattle, so there would not be a sound, I slid it in and out in and out EVER SO SLOWLY and when I came I thought I would never stop. it was one of the best fucks of my life, as I wiped off on the sheets the thought occurred to me — it could be that Man has been fucking improperly for centuries.

  then I went, sat down in the dark, drank some more. I don’t remember how long I sat there. I drank quite a bit. then I went over to Eve. Eve of the dole. she was a fat thing, a little wrinkled, but had very sexy lips, obscene sexy ugly lips. I began kissing that terrible and beautiful mouth. she didn’t protest at all. she opened her legs and I entered. she was a little female pig, farting and grunting and sniffling, wiggling. when I came it wasn’t like with Jeanie — long and trembling — it was just splot splot and then over. I got off. and before I could get back to my chair I could hear her snoring again. amazing — she fucked like she breathed — nothing to it. each woman fucked just a bit differently, and that’s what kept a man going, that’s what kept a man trapped.

  I sat and drank some more thinking of what that dirty son of a bitch in control of the tailgate had done to me. it didn’t pay to be polite. then I began to think about the dole. could an unmarried man and woman get on the dole? of course not. they were supposed to starve to death. and love was a kind of dirty word. but that was something of what it was between Linda and I — love. that’s why we starved together, drank together, lived together. what did marriage mean? marriage meant a sanctified FUCK and a sanctified FUCK always and finally, without fail, got BORING, got to be a JOB. but that’s what the world wanted: some poor son of a bitch, trapped and unhappy, with a job to do. well, shit, I’d move down to skidr
ow and move Linda in with Big Eddie. Big Eddie was an idiot but at least he’d buy her some clothes and put some steaks in her belly which was more than I was able to do.

  Elephant Legs Bukowski, the social failure.

  I finished off the bottle and decided I needed some sleep. I wound up the alarm clock and crawled in with Linda. she awakened and began rubbing up against me. “oh shit, oh shit,” she said, “I don’t know what’s the matter with me!”

  “whatza matta, baby? you sick? you want me to call the General Hospital?”

  “oh no, shit, I’m just HOT! HOT! I’M SO HOT!”

  “what?”

  “I said, I’m burning up hot! FUCK ME!”

  “Linda.. .”

  “what? what?”

  “I’m so tired. no sleep for two nights. that long walk to the Labor Market and back, 32 blocks in the hot sun … useless. no job. fucking-ass tired.”

  “I’ll HELP you!”

  “whatcha mean?”

  she crawled halfway down the couch and began licking at my penis. I groaned in weariness. “honey, 32 blocks in the hot sun . .. I’m burned out.”

  she kept working. she had a sandpaper tongue and knew what to do with it.

  “honey,” I told her, “I’m a social zero! I don’t deserve you! please relent!”

  like I say, she was good. some can, some can’t. most just know the old-time headbob. Linda began with the penis, left off, went to the balls, then off the balls, back to the penis again, barberpole, a wonderful amount of energy, ALWAYS LEAVING THE HEAD OF THE COCK, ITSELF. UNTOUCHED. Finally she had me moaning to the ceiling telling her all various sorts of lies about what I would do for her when I finally got my ass straightened out and stopped being a bum.

  then she came and took the head, put her mouth about a third of the way down, gave this little nip-suck of tooth pressure on, the wolf-nip and I came AGAIN — which made four times that night and I was completely done. some women know more than medical science.

  when I awakened they were all up and dressed — looking good — Linda, Jeanie and Eve. they poked at me under the covers, laughing. “hey, Hank, we’re going down to look for a live one! and we need an eye opener! we’ll be down at Tommi-Hi’s!”

  “o.k., o.k., goodbye!”

  they all left, wiggling ass out the door.

  all Mankind was doomed forever.

  I was just about asleep when the extension phone rang.

  “Yeah?”

  “Mr. Bukowski?”

  “yeah?”

  “I saw those women! they came from your room!”

  “how do you know? you have 8 floors and about ten or twelve rooms to a floor.”

  “I know all my roomers, Mr. Bukowski! we have all respectable working people here!”

  “yeah?”

  “yes, Mr. Bukowski, I’ve been running this place for twenty years and never, never have I seen such goings on as at your place! we’ve always had respectable people’here, Mr. Bukowski.”

  “yes, they’re so respectable that every two weeks some son of a bitch climbs up onto the roof and takes a header straight into your cement entranceway between those phony potted plants.”

  “you’ve got until noon to get out, Mr. Bukowski!”

  “what time is it now?”

  “8 a.m.”

  “thank you.”

  I hung up. found an alka-seltzer. drank it out of a dirty glass. then found a touch of wine. I opened the curtains and looked out at the sun. it was a hard world, no news there, but I hated skidrow. I like little rooms, little places to make some kind of fight from. a woman. a drink. but no day by day job. I couldn’t put it together. I was not clever enough. I thought of jumping out the window but couldn’t do it. I got dressed and went down to Tommi-Hi’s. the girls were laughing down at the end of the bar with two guys. Marty the bartender knew me. I waved him off. no money. I sat there.

  a scotch and water arrived in front of me. a note.

  “meet me at the Roach Hotel, room 12, at midnight. I’ll have the room for us.

  love, Linda.”

  I drank the drink, got out of the way, tried the Roach Hotel at midnight the desk clerk said, “nothing doing. no room 12 reserved for a Bukowski.” I came at one a.m. I’d been in the park all day, all night, sitting. same thing. “no room 12 reserved for you, sir.”

  “any room reserved for me under that name or under the name of Linda Bryan?”

  he checked his books.

  “nothing sir.”

  “do you mind if I look into room 12?”

  “there’s nobody there, sir. I told you, sir.”

  “I’m in love, man. I’m sorry. please let me have a look!”

  he gave me one of those looks reserved for 4th class idiots, tossed me the doorkey.

  “be back within 5 minutes or you’re in trouble.”

  I opened the door, switched on the lights — “Linda!” — the roaches, seeing the light, all ran back under the wallpaper. there were thousands of them. when I put out the light you could hear them all crawling back out. the wallpaper, itself, seemed to be just a large roachskin.

  I took the elevator back down to the desk clerk.

  “thanks,” I said, “you were right. nobody in room 12.”

  for the first time his voice seemed to take on some kind of kindness.

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  “thanks,” I said.

  when I got outside the hotel I turned left, which is east, which was skidrow, and as my feet moved me slowly toward there I wondered, why do people lie? now I no longer wonder but I still remember, and now when they lie I almost know about it while they are doing it, but I’m still not as wise as that desk clerk in the roach hotel who knew that the lie was everywhere, or the people who dove past my window while I was drinking port on warm afternoons in Los Angeles across from McArthur park, where they still catch, kill, eat the ducks, and, the people.

  the hotel is still there and the room we stayed in and if you care to come by some day I will show it to you. but there’s hardly sense in that, is there? let’s just say that one night I fucked or got fucked by 3 women. and let that be story enough.

  3 CHICKENS

  Vicki was all right. but we had our troubles. we were on the wine. port. that woman would get drunk and get to talking and she would make up some of the vilest imaginable stuff about me. and that tone of voice: shoddy and lisping and grating and insane. it would get to any man. it got to me.

  once she was screaming these insanities from the fold-down bed in our apartment. I begged her to stop. but she wouldn’t. finally, I just walked over, lifted up the bed with her in it and folded everything into the wall.

  then I went over and sat down and listened to her scream.

  but she kept screaming so I walked over and pulled the bed out of the wall again there she lay, holding her arm, claiming it was broken.

  “your arm can’t be broken,” I said.

  “it is, it is. oh, you slimy jackoff bastard, you’ve broken my arm!”

  I had some more drinks but she just kept holding her arm and whining. I finally had enough and telling her I’d be right back I went downstairs and outside and found some old wooden boxes behind a grocery store. I found good sturdy slats, ripped them off, pulled out the nails, got back on the elevator and rode back to our apartment.

  it took about 4 slats. I bound them around her arm with rippings from one of her dresses. she quieted down for a couple of hours. then she started in again. I couldn’t take it anymore. so I called a taxi. we went to the General Hospital. as soon as the taxi left I took the boards off and threw them into the street. then they x-rayed her CHEST and put her arm in a cast. can you imagine that? I suppose if she broke her head they’d x-ray her ass.

  anyhow, she used to sit in the bars after that and say, “I am the only woman who has been folded into a wall in a wall bed.”

  and I wasn’t so sure of THAT either, but I let her go on saying it.

  now, another time
she angered me and I slapped her but it was across the mouth and it broke her false teeth.

  I was surprised that it broke her false teeth. and I went out and got this super cement glue and I glued her teeth together for her. it worked for a while and then one night as she sat there drinking her wine she suddenly had a mouthful of broken teeth.

  that wine was so strong it undid the glue. it was disgusting. we had to get her some new teeth. how we did it, I don’t quite remember, but she claimed they made her look like a horse.

  we’d usually always have these arguments after we drank awhile, and Vicki claimed I’d get very mean when I was drunk but I think that she was the one who was mean. anyhow, sometime during the argument she’d get up, slam the door and run outside to some bar. “looking for a live one,” as the girls would say.

  it always made me feel bad when she left. I’ve got to admit it. sometimes she wouldn’t come back for 2 or 3 days. and nights. it wasn’t a very nice thing to do.

  one time she ran out and I sat there drinking the wine, thinking about it. then I got up and found the elevator and rode on down to the streets too. I found her in her favorite bar. she sat there holding a kind of purple scarf. I’d never seen the purple scarf before. holding out on me. I walked up to her and said quite loudly: