Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski [79]
“I’ve got a good mind to phone Mr. Ferris.”
“I’ll do better next time, Miss Meadows.”
I placed the goods on her counter and then handed her the form to sign. She scratched her signature furiously on the paper, then instead of handing it back to me she threw it into my green cart.
“Christ, I don’t know where they find people like you!”
I pushed my cart over to the elevator, hit the button and waited. The doors opened and I rolled on in.
“How’d it go?” the albino asked me.
“I feel thirty pounds heavier,” I told him.
He grinned, the doors closed and we descended.
Over dinner that night my mother said, “Henry, I’m so proud of you that you have a job!”
I didn’t answer.
My father said, “Well, aren’t you glad to have a job?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah? Is that all you can say? Do you realize how many men are unemployed in this nation now?”
“Plenty, I guess.”
“Then you should be grateful.”
“Look, can’t we just eat our food?”
“You should be grateful for your food, too. Do you know how much this meal cost?”
I shoved my plate away. “Shit! I can’t eat this stuff!”
I got up and walked to my bedroom.
“I’ve got a good mind to come back there and teach you what is what!”
I stopped. “I’ll be waiting, old man.”
Then I walked away. I went in and waited. But I knew he wasn’t coming. I set the alarm to get ready for Mears-Starbuck. It was only 7:30 p.m. but I undressed and went to bed. I switched off the light and was in the dark. There was nothing else to do, nowhere to go. My parents would soon be in bed with the lights out.
My father liked the slogan, “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”
But it hadn’t done any of that for him. I decided that I might try to reverse the process.
I couldn’t sleep.
Maybe if I masturbated to Miss Meadows?
Too cheap.
I wallowed there in the dark, waiting for something.
47
The first three or four days at Mears-Starbuck were identical. In fact, similarity was a very dependable thing at Mears-Starbuck. The caste system was an accepted fact. There wasn’t a single salesclerk who spoke to a stockclerk outside of a perfunctory word or two. And it affected me. I thought about it as I pushed my cart about. Was it possible that the salesclerks were more intelligent than the stockclerks? They certainly dressed better. It bothered me that they assumed that their station meant so much. Perhaps if I had been a salesclerk I would have felt the same way. I didn’t much care for the other stockclerks. Or the salesclerks.
Now, I thought, pushing my cart along, I have this job. Is this to be it? No wonder men robbed banks. There were too many demeaning jobs. Why the hell wasn’t I a superior court judge or a concert pianist? Because it took training and training cost money. But I didn’t want to be anything anyhow. And I was certainly succeeding.
I pushed my cart to the elevator and hit the button.
Women wanted men who made money, women wanted men of mark. How many classy women were living with skid row bums? Well, I didn’t want a woman anyhow. Not to live with. How could men live with women? What did it mean? What I wanted was a cave in Colorado with three-years’ worth of foodstuffs and drink. I’d wipe my ass with sand. Anything, anything to stop drowning in this dull, trivial and cowardly existence.
The elevator came up. The albino was still at the controls. “Hey, I hear you and Mewks made the bars last night!”
“He bought me a few beers. I’m broke.”
“You guys get laid?”
“I didn’t.”
“Why don’t you guys take me along next time? I’ll show you how to get some snatch.”
“What do you know?”
“I’ve been around. Just last week I had a Chinese girl. And you know, it’s just like they say.”
“What’s that?”
We hit the basement and the doors opened.
“Their snatch doesn’t run up and down, it runs from side to side.”
Ferris was waiting for me.
“Where the hell