The Most Beautiful Woman in Town (6 page)

“just a little quarter-turn through the wringer.”

“WHAT?”

“oh, it's fine for the blues or for extemporaneous thinking. stuff like that.”

“will it work?”

“it beats aspirin.”

“o.k., get rid of the asshole.”

Barney Anderson was sent down the stairway. Bagley got up and walked toward the nearest wringer. “these old gals — West and Dietrich, still flashing tits and legs, hell it don't make sense, they were doing that when I was 6 years old. what makes it work?”

“nuttin'. stretchers, girdles, powder, lights, false flesh coverings, padding, pudding, straw, horseshit. they could make your grandmother look like a 16 year old.”

“my grandmother's dead.”

“they could still do it.”

“yeah, yeah, I guess you're right.” Bagley walked toward the wringer.

“just a quarter turn now. can I trust you?”

“you're my partner, ain't you, Bag?”

“sure, Dan.”

“how long we been in business together?”

“25 years.”

“so, o.k., when I say a QUARTER-TURN, I mean a QUARTER-TURN.”

“whatta I do?”

“just slip your hands in the rollers, it's like a washing machine.”

“in there?”

“yeah. here we go! whoopee!”

“hey, man, remember, just a quarter of a turn.”

“sure, Bag, don't you trust me?”

“I gotta now.”

“you know, I been fucking your wife on the sly.”

“you rotten son of a bitch! I'll kill you!”

Danforth left the machine running, sat down behind Bagley's desk, lit a cigarette. he hummed a little tune, “lucky lucky me, I can live in luxury, because I've got a pocket full of dreams … I got an empty purse, but I own the universe, because I've got a pocketful of dreams…”

he got up and walked over to the machine and Bagley.

“you said a quarter-turn,” said Bagley. “it's been a turn and a half.”

“don't you trust me?”

“more than ever, somehow.”

“still, I been fucking your wife on the sly.”

“well, I guess it's all right. I get tired of fucking her. every man gets tired of fucking his own wife.”

“but I want you to want me to fuck your wife.”

“well, I don't care but I don't know if I exactly
want
you to.”

“I'll be back in about 5 minutes.”

Danforth went back, sat in Bagley's swivel chair, put his feet up on the desk and waited. he liked to sing. he sang songs: “I got plenty of nuthin' and nuthin's plenty for me. I got the stars, I got the sun, I got the shining sea . ..”

Danforth smoked two cigarettes and went back to the machine.

“Bag, I been fucking your wife on the sly.”

“oh, I want you to, man! I want you to! and ya know what?”

“what?”

“I'd kinda like ta watch.”

“sure, that'd be o.k.”

Danforth went to the phone, dialed a number.

“Minnie? yeah, Dan. I'm comin' over ta fuck ya again. Bag? oh, he's comin' too. he wants ta watch. no, we're not drunk. I just decided to close shop for the day. we've made it already. with the Israel-Arab thing and all the African wars, there's nothing to worry about. Biafra is a beautiful word. anyhow, we're coming over. I want to bunghole you. you got those big cheeks, jesus. I might even bunghole Bag. I think his cheeks are bigger than yours. keep tight, sweetie, we're on our way!”

Dan hung up. another phone rang. he picked it up. “jam it you rotten motherfucker, even the points of your tits smell like wet dogturds in a Westerly wind.” he hung up and smiled. walked over and took Bagley out of the machine. they locked the office door and walked down the steps together. when they walked outside the sun was up and looking good. you could see through the thin skirts of the women. you could almost see their bones. death and rot was everywhere. it was Los Angeles, near 7th and Broadway, the intersection where the dead snubbed the dead and didn't even know why. it was a taught game like jumprope or dissecting frogs or pissing in the mailbox or jacking-off your pet dog.

“we got plenty a nuthin',” they sang, “and nuthin's plenty for we …”

arm and arm they made the underground garage, found Bag's 69 Caddy, got in, each lit a dollar cigar, Dan driving, got it out of there, almost hit a bum coming out of Pershing Square, turned West toward the freeway, toward freedom, Vietnam, the army, fucking, large areas of grass and nude statues and French wine, Beverly Hills…

Bagley leaned over and ran down Danforth's zipper as he drove.

I hope he leaves some for his wife, Danforth thought.

it was a warm Los Angeles morning, or maybe it was afternoon, he checked the dashboard clock — it read 11:37 a.m. just as he came. he ran the Caddy up to 80. the asphalt slipped underneath like the graves of the dead. he turned on the dash t.v., then reached for the telephone, then remembered to zip up. “Minnie, I love you.”

“I love you too, Dan,” she answered. “is that slob with you?”

“right beside me. he just caught a mouthful.”

“oh, Dan, don't
waste
it!”

he laughed and hung up. they almost hit a nigger in a pickup truck. he wasn't black at all, he was a nigger, that's all he was. there wasn't a nicer city in the world when you had it made, and only one worse when you didn't have it made—the Big A. Danforth hit it up to 85. a motorcop smiled at him as he drove by. maybe he'd call Bob later that night. Bob was always so funny. his 12 writers always gave him those good lines. and Bob was just as natural as horseshit. it was wonderful.

he threw out the dollar cigar, lit another, ran the Caddy up to 90, straight at the sun like an arrow, business was good and life, and the tires whirled over the dead and the dying and the dying-to-be.

ZYAAAAAUUUUM!

3 WOMEN

we lived right across from McArthur park, Linda and I, and one night while drinking we saw a man's body fall past our window. It was an odd sight, something like a joke, but it wasn't any joke when his body hit the pavement. “jesus christ,” I told Linda, “he plopped right apart like an old tomato! we are just made of guts and shit and slimy stuff! come ‘ere! come 'ere! look at 'im!” Linda came to the window, then ran to the bathroom and vomited. she came out. I turned and looked at her. “honest ta christ, baby, he's just like a big spilled bowl of rotten meat and spaghetti, dressed in a ripped suit and shirt!” Linda ran back in and heaved again.

I sat and drank the wine. soon I heard the siren. what they really needed was the Sanitation Dept. well, what the fuck, we all had our troubles. I never knew where our rent was coming from and we were too sick from drinking to look for work. everytime we worried, all we could do about our worries was to fuck. that made us forget for a while. we fucked a lot, and lucky for me, Linda was a good lay. that whole hotel was full of people like us, drinking wine and fucking and not knowing what next. now and then one of them jumped out of the window. but the money always seemed to arrive for us from somewhere, just when all seemed like we'd have to eat our own shit, once $300 from a dead uncle, another time, a delayed income tax refund. another time I was riding on a bus and on the seat in front of me where these 50 cent pieces. what it meant or who had done it, I didn't know, still don't understand. I moved one seat up and began stuffing the half bucks into my pockets. when the pockets got full, I pulled the cord and got off at the next stop. nobody said anything or tried to stop me. I mean, when you're drunk, you've got to be lucky, even if you're not one, you've got to be lucky.

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 skidrow 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.