Women - Charles Bukowski [240]
She came in with her bottle and sat down.
“Do you miss me?” she asked.
“You’ll never know.”
“I think I’m going to get my job back at the Play Pen.”
“Great.”
“Some good tippers come in that place. One guy he tipped me 5 bucks each night. He was in love with me. But he never asked me out. He just ogled me. He was strange. He was a rectal surgeon and sometimes he masturbated as he watched me walking around. I could smell the stuff on him, you know.”
“Well, you got him off….”
“I think the soup is ready. Want some?”
“No thanks.”
Tammie went in and I heard her spooning it out of the pot. She was in there a long time. Then she came out.
“Could you lend me a five until Friday?”
“No.”
“Then lend me a couple of bucks.”
“No.”
“Just give me a dollar then.”
I gave Tammie a pocketful of change. It came to a dollar and thirty-seven cents.
“Thanks,” she said.
“It’s all right.”
Then she was gone out of the door.
Sara came by the next evening. She seldom came by this often, it was something about the holiday season, everybody was lost, half-crazy, afraid. I had the white wine ready and poured us both a drink.
“How’s the Inn going?” I asked her.
“Business is crappy. It hardly pays to stay open.”
“Where are your customers?”
“They’ve all left town; they’ve all gone somewhere.”
“All our schemes have holes in them.”
“Not all of them. Some people just keep making it and making it.”
“True.”
“How’s the soup?”
“Just about finished.”
“Did you like it?”
“I didn’t have too much.”
Sara walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door.
“What happened to the soup? It looks strange.”
I heard her tasting it. Then she ran to the sink and spit it out.
“Jesus, it’s been poisoned! What happened? Did Tammie and Arlene come back and eat soup too?”
“Just Tammie.”
Sara didn’t scream. She just poured the remainder of the soup into the sink and ran the garbage disposal. I could hear her sobbing, trying not to make any sound. That poor organic turkey had had a rough Christmas.
100
New Year’s Eve was another bad night for me to get through. My parents had always delighted in New Year’s Eve, listening to it approach on the radio, city by city, until it arrived in Los Angeles. The firecrackers went off and the whistles and horns blew and the amateur drunks vomited and husbands flirted with other men’s wives and the wives flirted with who ever they could. Everybody kissed and played grab-ass in the bathrooms and closets and sometimes openly, especially at midnight, and there were terrible family arguments the next day not to mention the Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl game.
Sara arrived early New Year’s Eve. She got excited about things like Magic Mountain, outer space movies, Star Trek, and over certain rock bands, creamed spinach, and pure food, but she had better basic common sense than any woman I had ever met. Perhaps only one other, Joanna Dover, could match her good sense and kind spirit. Sara was better looking and much more faithful than any of my other current women, so this new year was not going to be so bad after all.
I had just been wished a “Happy New Year” by a local idiot news broadcaster on t.v. I disliked being wished a “Happy New Year” by some stranger. How did he know who I was? I might be a man with a 5-year-old child wired to the ceiling and gagged, hanging by her ankles as I slowly sliced her to pieces.
Sara and I had begun to celebrate and drink but it was difficult to get drunk when half the world was straining to get drunk along with you.
“Well,” I said to Sara, “it ain’t been a bad year. Nobody murdered me.”
“And you’re still able to drink every night and get up at noon every day.”
“If I can just hold out another year.”
“Just an old alcoholic bull.”
There was a knock on the door. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Dinky Summers, the folk rock man and his girl friend Janis.
“Dinky!” I hollered. “Hey, shit, man, what’s happening?”
“I don’t know, Hank. I just thought we’d drop by.”
“Janis this is Sara. Sara…Janis.”
Sara went out and got two more glasses. I poured.