Fridays at Enrico's

  But had to think about, with Jaime’s novel in front of him. The same fucking reason he’d been awarded the Bronze Star. Not that he didn’t deserve it, every asshole who got off the boat in Korea deserved at least a Bronze Star, and if it had been up to Charlie, the Congressional Medal of Honor. But he’d gotten the medal because they didn’t want the American People thinking all their POWs had been such cowards. They hadn’t been cowards, of course, it just looked that way. And to the American military, appearances were everything. So the best-looking guys coming out in Operation Little Switch were given medals. There had been brave guys, of course. But the Chinese killed them right away. Charlie heard they made the condemned guys dig their own graves. He didn’t particularly believe this because the ground was too hard for anybody to dig in, much less men condemned for their defiance.

  Charlie defied nobody. All he did was lie there and cough up blood. When the guy next to him shit near his face it was three days before one of the Christers cleaned it up. Lots of school spirit in Kim Song. Everybody thought Charlie would die any day, so they pretty much left him alone. He saw things from where he lay. He saw a man getting raped while four other guys played pinochle a few feet away. He watched guys eat shit. Crazy guys, of course. Charlie never ate any shit. But he swallowed his own lung blood, to keep alive. For the nutritional value, don’t you see? The Vampire of Kim Song.

  He’d numbed over, to save his ass. It worked. He got out on Little Switch because he had TB. Nobody had said good-bye but Pippello, tall skinny fucker with gaunt hungry eyes, grinning and waving. Pippello had given him some free marijuana once. Usually they sold it, but Pippello had a little compassion in him somewhere, and came up to Charlie, squatted down and offered him the roach. “Fuck it,” was all he said when Charlie thanked him. The marijuana had been good. Two good hours in fourteen months.

  It was lying there in Kim Song, later in Tokyo Army Hospital’s TB ward, that Charlie had decided to become a writer. There seemed to be so much he wanted to say. Now he knew he would not say these things. Most had been said already. The rest didn’t need saying. If he quit, the world would lose nothing. Jaime would lose nothing. He’d been valuable as a potential novelist, but now he had no value, not even the Saxon Award value. He’d have to save up and give that back, because of course it wasn’t an award at all, but an advance on royalties disguised as an award. A returnable advance, he learned, reading the fine print. Which hadn’t meant anything at the time, since he was going to finish his novel and MacMillan would be paid back a thousandfold. That’s why he ran off with Linda, and that’s why he couldn’t possibly explain about the fucking. So he left it out. Confessing would only hurt Jaime anyhow, and he wanted his family. It was now all he had.

  39.

  Being rejected didn’t bother Stan Winger anymore. He had four stories with Mills circulating around the magazines, and while none of them had been accepted he kept getting all kinds of encouragement. It made him feel good, but it didn’t change anything. He still had to steal for a living. He wasn’t boosting rags these days, because the guy he worked for left town. So he was back breaking into houses, but the thrill was gone. Every time he went into a place the fear would start mounting as soon as he turned off the sidewalk, and would not end sometimes for a couple of days. No more sexual pleasure. He knew that was what it had been. Going through a window gave him a hard-on. But it was over. Now only fear. The only redeeming factor he could see was that he didn’t feel the urge to do terrible things, like crap on the dining room table or piss on the bed. He’d graduated from sexual punk amateur to professional thief. He was actually a jewel thief, though he’d take cash if he found it. His fences liked gold and stones, and even took Stan around to a couple of jewelry stores to explain to him the differences between costume jewelry and real jewelry. Stan learned how to judge the karat level of gold by heft. He learned how to tell the real stones from the fakes by looking at the edges of the facets for signs of wear.

  But it was taking a lot out of him. He was averaging only a few hundred a month, most of which he blew in Vancouver. Lots of houses didn’t pay out and he’d have risked his freedom for eight dollars worth of shit. He’d get home from a job with cold sweat sticking his clothes to his body and have to lie down for an hour before he could even shower. His writing suffered. He wasn’t putting in near enough time. Whatever progress he’d seemed to be making all disappeared. He’d type a page, taking an hour to do it, and the pull it from the little machine and wad it up, throwing it against the door in frustration. If he didn’t sell something soon he was going to quit or get thrown in jail.

  The Monels had generously taken him into their lives, treating him like a member of the family. Something nobody had ever done, not even the people who’d been paid to. Stan’s only regret was the need to keep his two lives apart. Charlie and Jaime knew he was a crook, he just didn’t want them finding out he was a lowlife too, who spent most of his time and money on poker, pinball, or girls. Working girls, of course. They were so much easier to deal with. They always gave you a smile, were always glad to see you, and there was never any nagging after-effect. Unless you caught the clap or something, which thank God Stan never had.

  But Charlie hadn’t been the big stable guy Stan had thought. The night Charlie failed to show up for Comp class Stan went down to Jolly Joan’s for coffee and found Marty Greenberg, looking more gaunt and Jewish than usual.

  “What’s the matter?” Stan asked, sliding onto the next stool.

  Marty looked at him blankly. His hair was thinning rapidly, even though he wasn’t yet thirty. He ran a hand over his scalp and smiled, not a good smile. “She left me,” he said. “Alexandra. She moved to San Francisco yesterday.”

  Stan thought a moment. “Remind me. Which one was Alexandra?”

  “She worked here days. Remember? I lived with her.”

  Stan remembered. The most beautiful of Marty’s women. The one who let Marty live with her without contributing anything but his good looks, such as they were. “She left you, huh?” Stan spoke with little compassion.

  Marty laughed. “Your reaction is similar to everyone’s,” he said. “Everybody is glad she left me and now I have to find a job. Well, fuck everybody, I’ve already found a job.”

  Marty had signed onto a ship, a gigantic U.S. government dredge, and would be leaving in a few days, to stand off the Astoria bar, sucking sand from the sandbar and moving it elsewhere. His friend Lev Lieberman had gotten the job a year ago when he flunked out of Reed, and now had passed it along to Marty. Lev himself was going to Israel to work on a kibbutz. Lev was a philosopher, like Marty. “Any job that connects you to humanity is a good job,” Marty insisted to Stan. “I don’t think of this as a shit job. It’s an opportunity to work among working men.”

  “Yeah,” said Stan, not convinced. Things fell into place, when Marty explained that the ship, the USS Breckenridge, had its home port in Sausalito. Which, by the strangest of coincidences, was just miles north of where Alexandra Plotkin had moved. After dredging the bar for a while, the Breckenridge would steam south for San Francisco, and spend some months off the Golden Gate. “Charlie didn’t show up for class tonight,” he said at last, to change the subject.

  “Didn’t you hear?” This time Marty’s smile was not so painful. “Charlie and Linda.” Apparently Dick Dubonet had been all over town looking for Linda and had discovered Charlie was missing too. “Wherever they are, I envy them both.”

  “Yeah,” said Stan, but his heart sank. Of course they were together, hadn’t Stan spotted that right away? This was the real world, not the fantasy world. And wasn’t he glad? No, he wasn’t. And not for himself. He was thinking about Jaime. Who’d been so kind to him. Charlie had done this to her, and she was going to be badly hurt. Stan felt terribly angry at Charlie, then had to stop himself. He was moralizing. How dumb. He was mad at Charlie because Charlie was doing something Stan didn’t have the guts to do. That was all there was to it. Any compassion he felt fo
r Jaime, or even for fucking Dick Dubonet, was incidental to his own cowardice. The truth was, he felt betrayed. Why had they done this to him? He had to laugh. Charlie and Linda weren’t thinking about him, but themselves. Which was how Stan had learned to get through life too. Yet it was disappointing to find that his idealist friends weren’t so ideal after all.

  “I hate to leave Portland,” Marty said. He laughed. “I never thought I’d say that.”

  Stan went home that night, thinking about Linda. Lying in bed after an hour of unrewarding effort at the typewriter, he felt an awful regret. That he had not been able to tell her how he felt. If only he had been able to tell her.

  Three days later he was walking down Alder Street, trying to decide whether to go up to the Blue Mouse and watch old black-and-white movies or drop into the Roundup and watch old westerns, when a pair of large men who were obviously cops came up to him. He knew what was going on before they opened their mouths.

  “Stanley Winger?” one of the cops asked.

  “That’s right,” Stan said.

  One of the cops smiled. “We have you for a lot of B and E.”

  “We’re clearin’ up a crime wave here,” said the other.

  “I’m afraid you’re it, Stanley,” said the first cop.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Stan said. He held out his hands for the cuffs, but the cop must have thought he was resisting, and knocked him down.

  40.

  A week after she ran away, Dick Dubonet got a postcard from Linda asking that her things be boxed and sent to her care of Whitney White, P.O. Box 139, Sausalito, California. Paranoid alarm bells went off at the mention of Sausalito, also the eventual destination of Marty Greenberg. But Dick had to convince himself that it was a simple coincidence. Everyone was going to California, that was all. The postcard ended, “I wish you well, love, Linda.” So final. He hadn’t even known there was a problem. Now he hated his own house because it reminded him of her. Everything did. He wouldn’t be able to go to the Caffe Espresso, Jerry’s, or even the Buttermilk Corner, without thinking of her and losing control.

  He knew why she’d run off with Charlie. Very simple. As a final, terrible insult to Dick. Like a wolverine, shitting on everything it could not eat. He’d never known such love or such hatred in his life. She could just sit him down over coffee and quietly tell him she was tired of their relationship, like a civilized woman. No, if she’d done that she would have had to listen to him begging and pleading for her stay, telling her how in his heart they were married, and he had always thought in her heart too. He could see her sitting there drumming her fingers, always impatient with his careful explanations. No wonder he had to order her around and make demands. She created the environment she hated, and then she left.

  Dick went onto the porch to look down at his little MG. He’d owned the car a long time. It wouldn’t reflect Linda, he hoped. Ironic if he couldn’t even drive around in his own fucking car without his heart breaking. But looking down he knew. The car would subtly smell of her. There would be little things of hers tucked away here and there, handkerchiefs, little wads of tissue, an old crumpled Camel pack, endless bobby pins. As he stood there, Isis came out and jumped onto the wooden rail, her tail up. She rubbed against Dick’s arm and purred loudly. Oddly, the cat did not make him suffer. He stroked her behind the ears. It was the middle of the morning. Dick should have been at his typewriter, but he’d made the classic mistake of going down to get the mail the second it arrived, an old writer’s habit. And look what it gave him. A nice fat morning kick in the balls. The air was clear and crisp and Mount Hood gleamed white in the distance. He thought about just packing his stuff and going to Aspen, getting on the ski patrol again, spend the winter among people blissfully free of ambitions, except of course sexual and sporting ambitions. He could just rent the house furnished and leave.

  No. The idea of spending another winter on the slopes offended him. He wasn’t a child anymore. Most of the skiers he knew were also surfers, going from one sport to the other without ever passing through reality. Boys and girls with tanned bland faces and empty minds. No. Dick was a grown-up now, time to face responsibilities. Go clean out all of Linda’s stuff, box it and mail it like a good little boy, then get to work on his novel. He wouldn’t even have to hide the fact that he was starting a novel. There was no one around to hide it from. Marty was out on the sandbar, working as a deck hand, an astonishing transition to everyone but Marty. Dick didn’t know Stan Winger that well, he’d been actually more Linda’s friend, and of course Dick wasn’t speaking to Charlie or Jaime. Out of embarrassment more than anything else. He could understand Linda running away, but Charlie’s sudden change into a bastard mystified Dick. To treat his wife so badly. He’d had to find out about Charlie’s return from Marty, who seemed to know every fucking thing that was going on around Portland. What was Dick going to do for information, now that Marty was afloat? He didn’t know. He knew only that everything had been great, and now everything was shitty.

  He lifted Isis and stroked her, looking out over Portland. He loved this place. Tears came to his eyes at the beauty of Oregon, the city below, the endless rolling forests and mountains. The great hunting and fishing. He and Charlie had talked of taking a hunting trip, getting enough meat for everybody, big venison feasts. Tears rolled down his face now as he thought about the time they all went crawdad hunting on the Tualatin River, the big drunken crawdad feast afterward. Just standing there, Dick was so filled with emotion about the beauties of the past that he wanted to raise his fists in the air and scream, a high endless scream of love and despair. But he didn’t. After a while he went into the house, washed his face, blew his nose, and sat back down to work.

  PART THREE

  The Golden Gate

  41.

  Charlie sat on the first stool in the corner, looking out the big open window of the no name bar at the people walking on Bridgeway. A warm day, lots of people out. Sausalito was getting popular. Charlie preferred it to Mill Valley, where he lived. Downtown Mill Valley was dull, just stores, but Sausalito had its waterfront, boat yards, yacht harbors, bars, restaurants, incredible views of the bay and San Francisco, everything you could ask for if you had your afternoons off. It had been a Portuguese fishing village before they built the Golden Gate, and there were still a few commercial salmon boats harbored just north of town. Charlie liked to buy his salmon right off the boat, pick up a whole fish for a few dollars, gut it, split it and grill it on his backyard barbecue. He was hungry just thinking about it. Charlie liked to eat.

  His mood was strange. He’d gotten another manic phone call from Bill Ratto, begging for some new material. Charlie dreaded the thought of putting himself back in Kim Song, just to come up with even more “transition material” for his editor. Easier to sit here in beautiful Sausalito and drink beer, dreaming of walking down to the fisherman’s dock and picking up a nice little salmon. Kim Song was far away and long ago. Almost fifteen years.

  Charlie spotted two men he knew, walking down Bridgeway together. He hadn’t seen either for years, and he’d never seen them together. Kenny Goss, an intense young writer he’d known in North Beach years ago, when they’d both hung out mornings at Caffe Trieste, drinking espresso with the Sicilian scavengers. And walking along with him, dressed in a blue workshirt and faded black workboots, Marty Greenberg, the Jewish intellectual from Portland, looking tanned, balding, and competent.

  “Gentlemen,” he said as they passed the window. They stopped and stared. Charlie grinned and ran his fingers through his beard. “It’s me, Charlie Monel. I grew a beard.”

  “I knew it was you,” Marty said with a grin. “I was just trying to think if I owed you any money.”

  The two entered the bar and Charlie joined them at the front window table. “I didn’t know you guys knew each other,” Charlie said. Kazuko the barmaid came up and took an order for three beers.

  “Nice-looking girl,” Marty said.

  “Don’t waste your
time,” Charlie said. “Her old man’s a junkie. She’s devoted to him. All her time and money go right into his bloodstream.”

  “Obviously, you’re a regular here,” Marty said. He explained that he and Kenny were shipmates, deckhands on the Breck, home-ported about a mile up the road. They were fresh in off the sandbar, pay in their pockets.

  “Like Dobbs and Curtin in Sierra Madre,” Charlie joked. He was delighted to run into them. The hardest part about being a successful writer was how to fill the time. Successful in the sense that he had a book in the works.

  “Charlie’s been working on this huge novel for years,” Marty explained to Kenny, who hadn’t said much up to now.

  “I know,” Kenny said.

  “Kenny and I go way back,” Charlie said. “We’re fifties beatniks, aren’t we?” He lifted his bottle at Kenny, who gave a brief smile. He’d always been such a serious guy. “How’s the writing going?” Charlie asked him, just to be polite.

  “Okay.” Kenny was obviously embarrassed by the question.

  “You still married?” Marty asked him.

  “You bet,” Charlie said. He’d assumed they knew all about Jaime, but after a few minutes realized they didn’t. Such was fame. Of course these guys spent most of their time out dredging sand. “Jaime’s book was on the New York Times best-seller list for two weeks,” Charlie said. Proudly.

  “Only two weeks?” Marty said.

  Charlie told them all the happy news. Jaime’s book had been bought by the second publisher who saw it, Harcourt Brace & World, for a thousand dollars, and then like lightning she sold parts of it to several magazines, made a gigantic paperback sale, and then another big sale, to Paramount.