Women - Charles Bukowski [196]
“That doesn’t help.”
“Once a woman turns against you, forget it. They can love you, then something turns in them. They can watch you dying in a gutter, run over by a car, and they’ll spit on you.”
“Cecelia’s a wonderful woman.”
It was getting darker. “Let’s drink some more beer,” I said.
We sat and drank beer. It got really dark and then there was a high wind. We didn’t talk much. I was glad we had met. There was very little bullshit in him. He was tired, maybe that helped. He’d never had any luck with his poems in the U.S.A. They loved him in Australia. Maybe some day they’d discover him here, maybe not. Maybe by the year 2000. He was a tough, chunky little guy, you knew he could duke it, you knew he had been there. I was fond of him.
We drank quietly, then the phone rang. It was Cecelia again. The tornado had passed over, or rather, around. Bill was going to teach his class. I was going to read that night. Bully. Everything was working. We were all fully employed.
About 12:30 PM Bill put his notebooks and whatever he needed into a backpack, got on his bike and pedaled off to the university.
Cecelia came home sometime in the mid-afternoon.
“Did Bill get off all right?”
“Yes, he left on the bike. He looked fine.”
“How fine? Was he on shit?”
“He looked fine. He ate and everything.”
“I still love him, Hank. I just can’t go through it anymore.”
“Sure.”
“You don’t know how much it means to him to have you out here. He used to read your letters to me.”
“Dirty, huh?”
“No, funny. You made us laugh.”
“Let’s fuck, Cecelia.”
“Hank, now you’re playing your game.”
“You’re a plump little thing. Let me sink it in.”
“You’re drunk, Hank.”
“You’re right. Forget it.”
75
That night I gave another bad reading. I didn’t care. They didn’t care. If John Cage could get one thousand dollars for eating an apple, I’d accept $500 plus air fare for being a lemon.
It was the same afterwards. The little coeds came up with their young hot bodies and their pilot-light eyes and asked me to autograph some of my books. I would have liked to fuck about five of them in one night sometime and get them out of my system forever.
A couple of professors came up and grinned at me for being an ass. It made them feel better, they felt now as if they had a chance at the typewriter.
I took the check and got out. There was to be a small, select gathering at Cecelia’s house afterwards. That was part of the unwritten contract. The more girls the better, but at Cecelia’s house I stood very little chance. I knew that. And sure enough, in the morning I awakened in my bed, alone.
Bill was sick again the next morning. He had another 1:00 class and before he went off he said, “Cecelia will drive you to the airport. I’m going now. No heavy goodbyes.”
“All right.”
Bill put on his backpack and walked his bike out the door.
76
I was back in L.A. about a week and a half. It was night. The phone rang. It was Cecelia, she was sobbing. “Hank, Bill is dead. You’re the first one I’ve called.”
“Christ, Cecelia, I don’t know what to say.”
“I’m so glad you came when you did. Bill did nothing but talk about you after you left. You don’t know what your visit meant to him.”
“What happened?”
“He complained of feeling real bad and we took him to a hospital and in two hours he was dead. I know people are going to think he o.d.’d, but he didn’t. Even though I was going to divorce him I loved him.”
“I believe you.”
“I don’t want to bother you with all this.”
“It’s all right, Bill would understand. I just don’t know what to say to help you. I’m kind of in shock. Let me phone you later on to see if you’re all right.”
“Would you?”
“Of course.”
That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.
As sick and unhappy as he was, Bill just didn’t look like somebody who was about to die. There were many deaths like that and