Run With the Hunted (36 page)

“Is there anything new?”

“Not since you were here last week.”

“How did your poetry reading come out?”

“It was all right.”

“The crowd that goes to poetry readings is a very phoney crowd.”

“Most crowds are.”

“You got any candy?” Max asked.

“Candy?”

“Yeah, I got a sweet tooth. I've got this sweet tooth.”

“I don't have any candy.”

Max got up and walked into the kitchen. He came out with a tomato and two slices of bread. He sat down.

“Jesus, you don't have anything to eat around here.”

“I'm going to have to go to the store.”

“You know,” said Max, “if I had to read in front of a crowd, I'd really insult them, I'd hurt their feelings.”

“You might.”

“But I can't write. I think I'm going to carry around a tape recorder. I talk to myself sometimes when I'm working. Then I can write down what I say and I'll have a story.”

Max was an hour-and-a-half man. He was good for an hour-and-a-half. He never listened, he just talked. After an hour-and-a-half, Max stood up.

“Well, I gotta go.”

“O.K., Max.”

Max left. He always talked about the same things. How he had insulted some people on a bus. How once he had met Charles Manson. How a man was better off with a whore than with a decent woman. Sex was in the head. He didn't need new clothes, a new car. He was a loner. He didn't need people.

Joe went into the kitchen and found a can of tuna and made three sandwiches. He took out the pint of scotch he had been saving and poured a good scotch and water. He flicked the radio to the classical station. “The Blue Danube Waltz.” He flicked it off. He finished the sandwiches. The doorbell rang. Joe walked to the door and opened it. It was Hymie. Hymie had a soft job somewhere in some city government near L.A. He was a poet.

“Listen,” he said, “that book I had an idea for,
An Anthology of L.A. Poets
, let's forget it.”

“All right.”

Hymie sat down. “We need a new tide. I think I have it.
Mercy for the Warmongers
. Think about it.”

“I kind of like it,” said Joe.

“And we can say, ‘This book is for Franco, and for Lee Harvey Oswald and Adolf Hitler.' Now I'm Jewish, so that takes some guts. What do you think?”

“Sounds good.”

Hymie got up and did his imitation of a typical old-time Jewish fat man, a very Jewish fat man. He spit on himself and sat down. Hymie was very funny. Hymie was the funniest man Joe knew. Hymie was good for an hour. After an hour, Hymie stood up and left. He always talked about the same things. How most of the poets were very bad. That it was tragic, it was so tragic it was laughable. What could a guy do?

Joe had another good scotch and water and walked over to the typewriter. He typed two lines, then the phone rang. It was Dunning at the hospital. Dunning liked to drink a lot of beer. He'd done his 20 in the army. Dunning's father had been the editor of a famous little magazine. Dunning's father had died in June. Dunning's wife was ambitious. She had pushed him to be a doctor, hard. He'd made it to chiropractor. And was working as a male nurse while trying to save up for an eight or ten thousand dollar x-ray machine.

“How about coming over and drinking some beer with you?” asked Dunning.

“Listen, can we put it off?” asked Joe.

“What'sa matter? You writing?”

“Just started.”

“All right. I'll take a rain check.”

“Thanks, Dunning.”

Joe sat down at the machine again. It wasn't bad. He got halfway down the page when he heard footsteps. Then a knock. Joe opened the door.

It was two young kids. One with a black beard, the other smooth-shaven.

The kid with the beard said, “I saw you at your last reading.”

“Come in,” said Joe.

They came in. They had six bottles of imported beer, green bottles.

“I'll get an opener,” said Joe.

They sat there sucking at the beer.

“It was a good reading,” said the kid with the beard.

“Who was your major influence?” asked the one without the beard.

“Jeffers. Longer poems.
Tamar. Roan Stallion
. So forth.”

“Any new writing that interests you?”

“No.”

“They say you're coming out of the underground, that you're part of the Establishment. What do you think of that?”

“Nothing.”

There were some more questions of the same order. The boys were only good for one beer apiece. Joe took care of the other four. They left in 45 minutes. But the one without the beard said, just as they left, “We'll be back.”

Joe sat down to the machine again with a new drink. He couldn't type. He got up and walked to the phone. He dialed. And waited. She was there. She answered.

“Listen,” said Joe, “let me get out of here. Let me come down there and lay up.”

“You mean you want to stay tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Again?”

“Yes, again.”

“All right.”

Joe walked around the corner of the porch and right down the driveway. She lived three or four courts down. He knocked. Lu let him in. The lights were out. She just had on panties and led him to the bed.

“God,” he moaned.

“What is it?”

“Well, it's all unexplainable in a way or
almost
unexplainable.”

“Just take off your clothes and come to bed.”

Joe did. He crawled in. He didn't know at first if it would work again. So many nights in a row. But her body was there and it was a young body. And the lips were open and real. Joe floated in. It was good being in the dark. He worked her over good. He even got down there again and tongued that cunt. Then as he mounted, after four or five strokes he heard a voice …

“Mayer … I'm looking for a Joe Mayer …”

He heard his landlord's voice. His landlord was drunk.

“Well, if he ain't in that front apartment, you check this one back here. He's either in one or the other.”

Joe got in four or five more strokes before the knocking began at the door. Joe slid out and, naked, went to the door. He opened a side window.

“Yeah?”

“Hey, Joe! Hi, Joe, what you doin', Joe?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, how about some beer, Joe?”

“No,” said Joe. He slammed the side window and walked back to the bed, got in.

“Who was it?” she asked.

“I don't know. I didn't recognize the face.”

“Kiss me, Joe. Just don't lay there.”

He kissed her as the Southern California moon came through the Southern California curtains. He was Joe Mayer. Freelance writer.

He had it made.

—
H
OT
W
ATER
M
USIC

neatly in tune with

the song of a fish

I stand in the kitchen

halfway to madness

dreaming of Hemingway's

Spain.

it's muggy, like they say,

I can't breathe,

have crapped and

read the sports pages,

opened the refrigerator

looked at a piece of purple

meat,

tossed it back

in.

the place to find the center

is at the edge

that pounding in the sky

is just a water pipe

vibrating.

terrible things inch in the

walls; cancer flowers grow

on the porch; my white cat has

one eye torn

away and there are only 7 days

of racing left in the

summer meet.

the dancer never arrived from the

Club Normandy

and Jimmy didn't bring the

hooker,

but there's a postcard from

Arkansas

and a throwaway from Food King:

10 free vacations to Hawaii,

all I got to do is

fill out the form.

but I don't want to go to

Hawaii.

I want the hooker with the pelican eyes

brass belly-button

and

ivory heart.

I take out the piece of purple

meat

drop it into the

pan.

then the phone rings.

I fall to one knee and roll under the

table. I remain there

until it

stops.

then I get up and

turn on the

radio.

no wonder Hemingway was a

drunk, Spain be damned,

I can't stand it

either.

it's so

muggy.

at high noon

at a small college near the beach

sober

the sweat running down my arms

a spot of sweat on the table

I flatten it with my finger

blood money blood money

my god they must think I love this like the others

but it's for bread and beer and rent

blood money

I'm tense lousy feel bad

poor people I'm failing I'm failing

a woman gets up

walks out

slams the door

a dirty poem

somebody told me not to read dirty poems

here

it's too late.

my eyes can't see some lines

I read it

out—

desperate trembling

lousy

they can't hear my voice

and I say,

I quit, that's it, I'm

finished.

and later in my room

there's scotch and beer:

the blood of a coward.

this then

will be my destiny:

scrabbling for pennies in dark tiny halls

reading poems I have long since become tired

of.

and I used to think

that men who drove buses

or cleaned out latrines

or murdered men in alleys were

fools.

I took my girlfriend to your last poetry reading,

she said.

yes, yes? I asked.

she's young and pretty, she said.

and? I asked.

she hated your

guts.

then she stretched out on the couch

and pulled off her

boots.

I don't have very good legs,

she said.

all right, I thought, I don't have very good

poetry; she doesn't have very good

legs.

scramble two.

George was lying in his trailer, flat on his back, watching a small portable T.V. His dinner dishes were undone, his breakfast dishes were undone, he needed a shave, and ash from his rolled cigarette dropped onto his undershirt. Some of the ash was still burning. Sometimes the burning ash missed the undershirt and hit his skin, then he cursed, brushing it away.

There was a knock on the trailer door. He got slowly to his feet and answered the door. It was Constance. She had a fifth of unopened whiskey in a bag.

“George, I left that son of a bitch, I couldn't stand that son of a bitch anymore.”

“Sit down.”

George opened the fifth, got two glasses, filled each a third with whiskey, two thirds with water. He sat down on the bed with Constance. She took a cigarette out of her purse and lit it. She was drunk and her hands trembled.

“I took his damn money too. I took his damn money and split while he was at work. You don't know how I've suffered with that son of a bitch.”