Come on In! - Charles Bukowski [9]
a piece of ass?”
“god, I don’t know, man, 10 years
I guess.”
“10 years? how old are you?”
“50.”
“well, listen, I’ve been shacked with this
crazy woman, you know, and I’ve told her all
about you and I thought I might send her
over to your place some night, she could cook
you dinner or something. how about it?”
“please do not project your troubles
upon me,” I told him.
“I didn’t think it would work,”
he said with a grin.
the supervisor walked up behind us and
stood there.
“listen, I’ve warned you guys about
talking!”
“about talking when?” I asked.
“listen,” he said, “just keep it up and I’ll
fry your ass!”
“you win,” I said.
the supervisor walked away.
interesting things like that happened there
almost every night!
strangers at the racetrack
I do not want to meet
them or
their wife
or look at
photographs of
their
children.
this is
serious business
this is
war
all
the
time.
I look into
their
maledict
eyes,
excuse myself
and walk
away.
and as
Rome burns and as
the odds
flash on the
tote board
Lady Luck
smiles,
crosses
her
legs
and
applauds
my
grit.
will you tiptoe through the tulips with me?
the sky is broken like a wet sack of
offal.
the air stinks, I walk into a building,
wait for the elevator, it arrives, I get in and
join 3 people with new shoes and
dead eyes.
we rise toward the tenth floor.
one of the people is a big woman
with long brown hair.
she begins to hum a little song.
I hate it.
I press the button and get off the
elevator 2 floors
early.
I wait for the next elevator.
it arrives.
it’s empty.
it’s a beautiful elevator.
I go up two floors, get out and
walk down the hall looking for
room 1002.
I find it.
I go in.
I tell the receptionist that I have a
2 o’clock appointment.
she tells me to be seated, that
they will be with me
soon.
I sit down.
there is only one other person in
the waiting room.
it is the big woman who was humming
the little song on the
elevator.
now she is silent.
she wears a green dress and
pretends to read a
magazine.
I look at her legs.
not good legs.
I get up and walk out, walk down
the hall.
I find a water fountain,
bend over, drink some
water.
then I walk back to
1002.
the woman in the green
dress is gone
but where she was
sitting on that chair
there is her green dress,
nicely folded, her shoes
and her panty
hose.
her purse is gone.
the receptionist slides
back the glass partition
and smiles at me:
“we’ll be with you
soon!”
as she slides the
partition closed
I get up and walk out of there,
fast.
I take the elevator down.
soon I am at the first floor and
then I am outside on the
street.
as I walk away from the
building I look back.
flames are rising from
the windows of the tenth
floor and spreading up.
nobody on the street seems
to notice.
I decide to have lunch.
I look for a place to eat.
I walk along humming the
same little song that the big
woman hummed.
it’s now about 95 degrees on a hot
Wednesday afternoon in
August
exactly one
year from
yesterday.
the novel life
one night I started
shivering, I got ice cold, I shivered and
shook for 2 and one half hours, the whole
bed jumped, it was like an
earthquake.
“you’re panicking,” said my girl. “breathe deeply
and try to relax.”
“I’m not panicking,” I said. “death doesn’t
mean shit to me. this is coming from some
place that I don’t understand.”
all during the freezing and shaking,
my only thought was, well, I’ve written my 5th
novel but I haven’t made the final revisions yet.
it’s not fair that I die
now.
then I got well and revised my 5th novel and
it’s supposed to be out next spring, so you
know I won’t die, be killed, or catch a fatal
disease until then.
even in midlife I never
dreamed I’d write a novel
and here I’ve written 5, it’s a bloody
miracle, a shout from the heart,
far from the school yards of hell
which started the luck
and far from
the world of hell that followed and
which kept it
going.
thanks for your help
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