Pulp - Charles Bukowski [3]
Red looked at me.
“Can you believe that some of them come in here eating icecream cones?”
“I believe worse than that.”
Then I noticed somebody else was in the bookstore. He was standing near the back. I thought I recognized him from his photos. Celine. Celine?
I walked slowly down toward him. I got real close. So close that I could see what he was reading. Thomas Mann. The Magic Mountain.
He saw me.
“This fellow has a problem,” he said, holding up the book.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“He considers boredom an Art.”
He put the book back in the case and just stood there looking like Celine.
I looked at him.
“This is amazing,” I said.
“What is?” he asked.
“I thought that you were dead,” I told him.
He looked at me.
“I thought that you were dead too,” he said.
Then we just stood there looking at each other.
Then I heard Red.
“HEY, YOU!” he yelled, “GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”
We were the only two in there.
“Which one to get the hell out?” I asked.
“THE ONE THAT LOOKS LIKE CELINE! GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”
“But why?” I asked.
“I CAN TELL WHEN THEY’RE NOT GOING TO BUY!”
Celine or whoever it was began to walk out. I followed him.
He walked up toward the boulevard, then stopped at the newsstand.
That newsstand had been there as long as I could remember. I recalled standing there two or three decades ago with 3 prostitutes. I took them all to my place and one of them masturbated my dog. They thought it was funny. They were drunk and on pills. Then one of the prostitutes went to the bathroom where she fell and banged her head against the edge of the toilet and bled all over the place. I kept wiping the stuff up with big wet towels. I put her to bed and sat with the others and finally they left. The one in bed stayed for 4 days and nights, drinking all my beer and talking about her two children in East Kansas City.
The fellow—was it Celine?—was standing at the newsstand reading a magazine. When I got closer I noticed that it was The New Yorker. He put it back in the rack and looked at me.
“Only one problem there,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“They just don’t know how to write. None of them.”
Just then, a cab came idling by.
“HEY, CABBY!” Celine yelled.
The cab slowed and he leaped forward, the back door opened and he was inside.
“HEY!” I yelled at him, “I WANT TO ASK YOU SOMETHING!”
The cab was brisking toward Hollywood Boulevard. Celine leaned out, stuck out his arm, gave me the finger. Then he was gone.
First cab I had seen around those parts in decades. I mean, an empty one, just lolling by.
Well, the rain had stopped but the pain was still there. Also, there was now a chill in the air and everything smelled like wet farts.
I hunched over and moved toward Musso’s.
I had the Gold Visa Card. I was alive. Maybe. I even began to feel like Nicky Belane. I hummed a little passage from Eric Coates.
Hell was what you made it.
4
I looked up Celine in the Webster. 1891-1961. It was 1993. Saying he was alive, that would make him 102 years old. No wonder Lady Death was looking for him.
And that fellow in the bookstore had looked between 40 and 50. So, that was it. He wasn’t Celine. Or maybe he’d found a method to beat the aging process. Look at the movie stars, they took the skin from their ass and stuck it on the face. The skin on the ass was the last to wrinkle. They all walked around in their later years with buttock faces. Would Celine do that? Who would want to live to be 102? Nobody but a fool. Why would Celine wish to linger? The whole thing was crazy. Lady Death was crazy. I was crazy. The pilots of airliners were crazy. Never look at the pilot. Just get on board and order drinks.
I watched two flies fucking, then decided to call Lady Death. I unzipped and waited for her voice.
“Hello.” I heard her voice.
“Ummm…,” I said.
“What? Oh, it’s you Belane. You getting anywhere on the case?”
“Celine is dead, he was born in 1891.”
“I’m aware