More Notes of a Dirty Old Man (25 page)

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Authors: Charles Bukowski,David Stephen Calonne

BOOK: More Notes of a Dirty Old Man
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After a while Robert came along. He stood there looking at me.
“It was great,” he said, “she loved it. I fucked her, then I made her suck me off, then I sodomized her. She loved it.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Yeah, she did.”
“Let’s get out of here—”
“She’s waiting for you, Hank. She wants more.”
“Cut the crap. You haven’t killed her, have you?”
“No, she’s just laying out there waiting for more, her legs spread.”
“Let’s go.”
The big kid was still stretched out. We got into Robert’s car and started back toward town. Everything was still quiet and dark, except for the gentle hum of the motor. It might have been as if nothing had happened. The trees acted as if everything were the same, and the asphalt road acted as if nothing had ever happened—only the moon seemed to know—and there was a covering over Robert now, like a slime, it climbed all over him, into his eyes, his ears, his mouth; it was under his armpits, it was between his toes, it seeped and crawled him and it had nothing to do with morals, with right or wrong; it was something else, something very ugly and unexplainable covered him.
“See you found a bottle,” he said.
“Yeah. I got lucky.”
“Even if you didn’t have the guts to fuck that bitch you shoulda jacked-off over her body.”
“Yeah, I guess I missed my chance.”
We were getting back into town, into the poor section. Robert reached somewhere and then tossed a stack of bills into my lap.
“Your half. That kid was loaded.”
“Thanks, you’re very honest.”
“Got to be. We got a good thing going.”
I gave him my address. Like a good thug, he knew the city, he got me right there. We pulled in front of the room-inghouse. The whole neighborhood had been asleep for at least five hours.
“Listen,” he said, “the night’s not over. I’d like you to meet my mom.”
“I’m sure she’s great, Robert, but I just want to go in and get some rest.”
I got on out. Then Robert was off in his car.
I got the key out, opened the front door, then walked up the stairway and at the first turn I saw the framed painting of Jesus. He looked pained, like a young guy whose girl had just left him to run off with the dope dealer.
I got into my room, pissed in the sink, got out of my clothes except for the undershirt, got into the unmade bed with all that money and my wine bottle. I had never seen that much money. I bunched the pillow up and sat there in the dark sucking on the wine bottle.
Things went by, things went by fast, things went by so fast that they never took form.
A mouse came out, it clambered up the hot plate, then ran up the handle of my coffeepot, hung there halfway on the handle and looked at me. I could see it in the lightening dark, the lightning dark. It looked at me and I looked at the mouse and it didn’t like me there in its room. Then, in a tick, it was gone.
I was alone again, I always felt better being alone. When you’re alone, the only problem is yourself. It’s nicer that way. You stay out of trouble. I was really a nice guy. I knew that.
I finished off the wine bottle, threw it to the floor, un-bunched the pillow, rolled on my belly and, ass-up to the demented ceiling, I slept.
Let’s begin by saying this is a work of fiction and then let’s go on from there. I first met Steve Cosmos in Paris, at least that’s the name he was going under then and the name I remember best. Cristina and I were in Paris because the editors had dragged my ass over there to do interviews for the press. Also, I was writing a screenplay for Jean Sasoon, the French director, and we were staying at his Paris apartment along with his wife, the actress of some fame, who simply went under the name of Barbette. All the whole thing meant was much eating and drinking, drinking and eating, and drinking and drinking. I didn’t understand it but I didn’t care.
Anyhow, Jean Sasoon loved to talk about Steve Cosmos. Sasoon loved freaks and Cosmos was a freak, and I was a freak, that’s why I was around.
So, this night who walks in but Cosmos himself, one of the ten most wanted men on the Continent. Mostly he did things to banks and gambling casinos, but he had many little sidelines.
We shook hands.
“Aha!” he said. “I saw you on TV and you got drunk and gave those shits what they had coming.”
“I understand you take from the shits what you got coming,” I said.
Cosmos laughed. “Oh, yes, it’s an almost continuous thing.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Cristina.
Cosmos looked. “Ah, what a
charming
girl! Are you with Chinaski?”
“No, he’s with me.”
Sasoon had gone to the kitchen where he was preparing something.
“
Ah!
” said Sasoon, a quite culinary “Ah,” as if he had devised some magic and delicate blending of cookery. Cosmos, being French, ran into the kitchen to view and taste the moment, perhaps add something to it?
Cristina and I glanced at each other. We had met the great man. I refilled our wineglasses.
Cosmos had a gentle style and grace, you could see that right off. Strange white-blond hair, very straight back, a pink boy’s face, a face full of pranks and laughter. His eyes were very large and round.
Then Barbette came in from somewhere. She saw Cosmos and started right in on him vocally. She kept on and on. A concerned tirade. Cosmos gave small answers, acted astonished, smiled, laughed. My French is worse than my German and I have almost no German, but what it was, she was telling him:
“You were seen in a bank today. I have a source. What were you doing in the bank?”
“Walking around.”
“Don’t you know your posters are out everywhere? They are looking for you!”
“But I was there and they couldn’t see me.”
“Why don’t you hide low? Why do you stick your butt in their faces? You’re a fool! What are you trying to do? Do you think you’re God? For a man who has been around as much as you, you have the brain of a grasshopper, of a snail! Do you think I would enjoy you in jail?”
“No, neither of us.”
“Then why are you such a fool? Why—”
Barbette went on and on.
Cosmos bent his head to the right, stuck his left thumb into his left ear and let his tongue loll out. The message was clear: All existence was stupid and it really didn’t matter what any of us did.
Barbette got it, laughed. The lecture was over. Everybody was back to speaking English.
Sasoon turned from his steaming and delicious pots.
“The guy, the other night, he lost all his money at roulette because he played honest and he came out onto the grounds drunk and fell full-length into the lake in his tuxedo, came up dripping mud and slime!”
“Ah!” said Cosmos, “what an ending, yet I’m still here.”
After eating we really got into the wine, fine French wine, it really rolled on down and in, you can drink it forever. Corks were pulled and pulled, cigars lit.
Cosmos kept repeating, quite seriously, through a smile:
“I have no interest in the police. They only have an interest in me.”
I heard from Cristina later that I was the fool: putting my arms about the shoulders of Cosmos and Sasoon, saying over and over and
over
:
“You guys are my buddies! I really
like
you guys! You guys are my buddies! We all got
class!
”
What Cristina meant about the fool part was the repetition: they had to keep hearing it. But it’s difficult in this life to ever meet exceptional men, and along with the good French wine this put me out of balance.
I
do
remember other portions. Cosmos had a trick to pull elsewhere. We all managed to get into Sasoon’s car and we drove small dark streets under Cosmos’ direction. Finally, along a tall row of hedges Cosmos said, “Stop here.”
He stepped out.
“Now leave.”
As we drove off, some of us looked back. Cosmos had pulled the neck of his trenchcoat upwards, and as he walked off he looked over his shoulder as if there was something there following him. He was right: it always was.
 
It was about a year later when we saw Cosmos again. I had finished the screenplay and Sasoon came to America to try to hustle up a backer. A producer. He rented a house on the beachfront down at Venice. Don’t get lost. I’m speaking about Sasoon: he rents the house.
Rented
the house. (I hate fucking with tenses, it makes me tense.)
All right. Sasoon had Cosmos with him. They had purchased two expensive motorcycles and two old, long, cheap, gas-eating cars which they considered “class,” or as they put it: “great buys.” Here in L.A., we might refer to them as “Mexican Specials,” which is not racist, only accurate. I’ve driven any number of Mexican Specials but never by choice, and I don’t believe the American-Mexicans do either.
The house was next to a house next to an oil well. The house had 12 separate rooms, each with its own bed, and next to each room was another room with a shower and toilet. This was good for Sasoon, a ladies’ man, and he often stocked up with four or five women in each room but he never did fill all 12, although one night he got up to 11. His excellence with the ladies backfired when he was looking for producers because he usually ended up in bed with the producers’ wives and this pissed them to no good end.
I met many famous people in that house: producers, actors, directors. The problem with the famous when you meet them is that they don’t seem to be very much. They just stand around and sit around with their shoes on and usually don’t do or say much. In fact, they appear to be dull. (I usually take my shoes off.)
I wasn’t much luckier with the producers than Sasoon was. He had pointed one out to me who was interested in producing my screenplay. I was with Cristina one night and I was leaning against the bar at Musso’s and this producer, let’s call him Medicino, well, Medicino saw me at the bar and left his table and walked up and said, “Hello, Chinaski.”
“Oh, Mr. Medicino.”
He got into it. He was going to produce a movie. It was about a writer from the ’60s, now dead. I couldn’t read this writer. No knock against this writer: I can’t read any of the writers. This is all right, it’s the way it is with me. Then the bad part came: he told me what he was going to title the movie.
“Wait,” I said, “you’re not joking: you’re really going to call this thing
The Heart’s Boomerang
?”
“Yes, I like that title.”
“Listen, you use that title and I’ve got to equate you with some guy in a circle-jerk singing ‘God Bless America.’”
I was stunned: Mr. Medicino whirled and walked back to his table without a word. No fuckin’ sense o’ humor.
“Well,” said Cristina, “there goes your screenplay.”
“Let’s ask the orchestra to stand,” I said, and nodded the barkeep over for refills.
 
Cosmos, down at Venice, was more cheerful. We shook hands and grinned upon meeting again.
“I hear you go to the racetrack,” he said.
“Every day. Sometimes at night, too. On a good day I’ll listen to some Mahler and play eighteen races.”
“You going tomorrow?”
“If I’m alive, of course” . . .
The next day he was there.
“You play the daily double?” he asked.
“No.”
“The pick-six?”
“No.”
“Exactas?”
“No.”
“What do you bet?”
“Straight win.”
“No place, no show?”
“Straight win only.”
“You can’t win any money that way,” Cosmos said.
I didn’t answer.
 
Cosmos didn’t win the double. He showed me his losing tickets after the race, almost proudly. He had studied the racing form intently but there was no pattern to his betting: 6-2, 4-7, 7-3, 8-9, 10-4, 8-3. Each was a $10 ticket. He was $60 out.

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