He gestured toward the sallow man who nodded and said “Yes.”
“Listen,” said Gutierrez, “we were wondering if you’d consider joining us for a drink. I wanted to discuss an upcoming reading at The Lotus. There’s an open spot, maybe you might want it,” he said, smiling slyly and twisting the ends of his mustache. “It’s with Calista and Dallas. You know them, right?” Ram confessed he didn’t. “Well, do you know my work?” Ram again confessed ignorance. “Well, it’s time you caught up and got up to speed because if you’re going to be a part of this Refugio poetry scene—and you have no choice now after tonight because you certainly are—then you should at least know who the other major stars are.” Gutierrez smiled, his brown eyes twinkling, eroding the initial reticence Ram felt when the two men approached him. “Let us buy you a drink. In fact, you will let us buy you many drinks,” said Gutierrez, twisting his mustache and grinning widely.
“Sure,” said Ram. “Sure, I’d be honored.”
Outside, the sky was indigo blue with pulsing white stars and a haloed moon. The weather was still and warm, fragrant with night-blooming jasmine whose season had a few weeks left to run. The men headed east on Cedar, turned left on Meridian, and walked three blocks down, past Endymion. Gutierrez led the way, with Ram following and Burroughs bringing up the rear. “Well, here we are,” said Gutierrez, stopping in front of a white adobe two-story near the end of the mall, with red tiled steps leading upwards. They mounted the stairs under a black lacquered Chinese lintel and a sign in calligraphy-inspired black script—“The Teacup,” it read. “You first,” said Gutierrez, guiding Ram upwards with a salaam-like gesture.
When Ram entered the packed room, it was to an ovation of hoots and whistles. He blushed, nodded his appreciation, then felt an arm loop around his waist, the scent of her Je Reviens and gardenia buckling Ram’s knees. Vera kissed him wetly on the mouth and he could taste her lipstick. “What did I tell you? I knew you had it in you. Now look,” she said, gesturing toward the cheering bar audience. “Now all Refugio knows it too.”
His debut was duly noted in the three local alternative weeklies, and his reading at The Lotus with Tomas and the other poets was mentioned in the Refugio Sentinel, the legitimate daily newspaper. In the weeks and months that followed, Ram continued to produce poetry at an industrious rate—sometimes a poem a week, sometimes more, depending on the stimulus he felt. It seemed to come suddenly, from everywhere at once. The Jonestown suicides produced a poem called Unholy Communion and the San Francisco assassinations produced two more, the one called Fireman inspired horrified crowd reaction whenever he read it. The something in the air that he sensed during that trip to Miranda’s some months back, had now manifested itself in an accelerated cycle of chaos, collective madness, and cultural unease and dislocation. The former lassitude had been energized and a polar shift in the culture now became apparent. The world, which had seemed so slumberous two years before, now awakened violently and discordantly, manifesting itself in the new music and new films of the nascent cutting edge that Ram felt himself a part of.
Ram’s emergence as a poet was something Vera took pride in and supported. She wanted Ram to write more and did whatever she could to encourage him, taking a job as a bartender at The Teacup so Ram could have time to write during the day and not have to spend his creative energies pounding nails. She worked on some friends of hers who sat on the Refugio Arts Council, and was able to get Ram a small grant. She submitted his finished poems to literary journals and he began being published regularly and attracting attention. One afternoon, they were walking along the footpath bordering the San Gregorio when Vera asked Ram if he was happy with where his life was going. Ram raised his eyebrow, looked at her deeply, then pulled her to him and smiled. “Yeah, I am. I don’t know how it happened, but it did.”
Vera squeezed him, kissed him tenderly, then pulled back from Ram, holding his face in her hands. “You did it, Ram. There’s no mystery. You’re a great poet. I always knew that. Now everybody else does too.”
Ram’s life began to change. His opinion was sought—on the street, in print, and on the radio—and he was asked to lend his name in support of or opposition to various causes, both local and national. Although he still maintained contact with Tor on Orcas Island, Ram lost touch with most of the Endymion crew except for Phil Sussman, the only one of his Endymion friends who Vera truly liked and could talk with. His relationship with Fran grew increasingly frosty and eventually the brothers quit communicating entirely, only seeing each other on rare occasions at their mother’s house in Sagrada or Peter’s house at Christmas. Ram was disappointed in his and Fran’s growing distance with each other, but Vera said it was a necessary step in his evolution. “You always had to suck up to him for his approval, Ram,” she told him more than once. “He doesn’t know who you really are. He never bothers to call and congratulate you whenever you publish something. You don’t need him. You don’t need his approval.”
It was true what she said. Fran never once called to congratulate Ram—not even when City Lights Books published two of Ram’s poems in an anthology of new West Coast poets. Fran thought Ram was lost to his ego and to the vision of what Vera wanted for him, or from him; that now that Ram was a literary figure, he was more acceptable to her and her circle, a judgment not far from the mark. When Vera introduced Ram at parties or theater premieres, it wasn’t necessary for her to explain him or justify to her friends why she was with him. His reputation preceded him, and it made things easier for Vera and their relationship deepened as a result of it. He came to rely on Vera’s counsel, and as he gave himself over to his impulses, Vera didn’t disapprove of wherever they might take him, and sometimes, they took him far away.
He felt an obligation to explore his time and place and his place as a poet in it. He read voraciously and seriously for the first time since his days at college, exploring unlit tunnels in philosophy, history, physics, and literature, alighting on new personal avatars when he came upon Bergson, Montaigne, Yeats, and the Latin Americans. It took him nearly a month to read and comprehend Carlos Fuentes’s Death of Artemio Cruz, and when he’d fully digested it, Ram wrote a narrative poem titled Compound Eye, published in an eponymously titled chapbook nominated for a Worth Bingham prize. The civil war in Lebanon was then at its height, and to better understand it, Ram immersed himself in a study of the Crusades, resulting in Saladin, in Italian sonnet form, which he felt was one of his best. The poem was a study in power, austerity, and combined spiritual/secular messianism lessened by Ram with a dollop of sexuality that audiences in San Francisco and Refugio responded to with a blind fervor, not unlike the followers of Jim Jones, which was precisely the point of Ram’s poetic analogy:
From the arid steppes near Armenia,
Beneath an august Georgia mountain
Was Saladin the light of newborn Islam
Beckoned to Damascus to battle the Infidels.
As Ram plumbed the depths of these literary and intellectual explorations, he also gave himself over to exploring the depths of some of his own appetites, indulging himself freely and more deeply in alcohol and cocaine, and holding court in the bars of Refugio. Within a year, his legend had begun to spread.
On a warm spring afternoon, Vera Dubcek entered the Oak Room on the arm of George Rogers. The falling sun slanting through the casement windows painted stripes across the room, with dust motes dancing in the lit patches. Vera scanned the room but Ram was nowhere to be seen. Then she heard his laughter followed by cackles coming from downstairs. “Come on, George,” she said, turning Rogers around and guiding him down to the wine cellar.
The room was off-limits to the general public, but management made an exception for Ram and his friends. When they entered the brick cellar room, Vera held Rogers back from entering, hushing him and encouraging him to watch Ram hold court to a table of cohorts. Among the group were Tomas Gutierrez and Mad Michael Menninger. He was holding forth on religion and salvation.
&n
bsp; “The way I see it, everybody gets a ticket to heaven when you’re born—that’s a guarantee… until you get rrreligion! And Heaven is one of those ocean liners like the Titanic or the Lusitania where liveried servants—the Angels—greet you with tropical drinks with little garnishments in them when you’re piped on board. Then these angels direct you to various decks where you can dance to Duke Ellington or Bix Beiderbecke or Charlie Parker, or play shuffleboard, ping-pong, cribbage, or chemin de fer… Or you can sit alongside the pool, coolly taking it all in on a chaise lounge, where angels come and wrap you snugly in a woolen blanket from Abercrombie and Fitch.” Ram paused, took a drink of whiskey from a shot glass, belched loudly, and continued. “So how did you get on board? Well, simple. When you got your guaranteed ticket at birth, you were also given a set of snappy luggage. Now, if you didn’t encounter a religion such as Catholicism, like I did, and learn all about how to sin, all you had to carry to the liner is this luggage, a simple little two-piece set. If, however, you happen to transgress against the zillion and ninety-five sins that all these different religions have marked down on their ledgers, then you’re given another piece of luggage. Cosmetic cases, shaving kits, and garment bags for the venial stuff, and big American Tourister-sized bags for the mortal sins.”
Ram paused here, surveying his audience. They were quiet, smiling and rapt. When he was satisfied he still commanded their attention, he continued. “Now, at the end of the world when God comes to call and judge, everybody’s in New York City. The whole fucking world is in New York City, all the souls of all time, past, present, and future. Everybody’s there in the Big Apple. So when Gabriel blows his horn, everybody heads for the docks. Now those with the little cases have maps to the proper dock, which is tucked away in some remote corner of the waterfront where you wouldn’t think it would be. And all the street signs have been removed, but those with just the little cases also have x-ray specs and the Good Lord has seen fit to leave radiographic impressions etched on corner buildings so they can find their way. For the rest of us, it’s all chaos and frenzy until we finally catch on to the smaller crowd’s general direction and begin following them. The only problem is that most of us now have so much fucking luggage that we can’t keep up. The two-piece carriers make it on time, climb a gangway festooned with confetti, and pick up noisemakers and champagne flutes when they come on board. When they’re all on board, the liner pulls out. God is the captain, played by Wilfred Hyde-White or Edmund Gwynn, or maybe Gregory Peck, or my personal choice, Redd Foxx, and everybody gets to dine at the captain’s table from time to time. Some of the less overburdened of us make it to the dock—just in time to see the ship pull out, big Cunard motherfucker, remember? The passengers are all throwing flowers to us and waving to those of us they recognize. Now there’s a huge chain-link fence topped by barbed wire that horizontally divides the docks. Those of us with the steamer trunks or multiple American Touristers have to stay on the city side of the fence, while the garment baggers and cosmetic cases are on the ocean side of it. But none of the steamer trunk multiple Tourister crowd has even got to the dock while the ship’s smoke is still on the horizon. They’ve been dragging these trunks and suitcases all through Manhattan on unmarked streets. They have to live in cardboard boxes and subsist on day-old bread and tap water. This, my friends, is Hell.” Ram said softly, gesturing with his drink. “However, those of us who make it to the Purgatory side across the fence, sleep under what looks like a circus big top, and the old boy—the Good Lord—has seen fit to provide us with catering from fast food franchises that we wash down with draft beer and jug wine. Oh yeah, one more thing,” Ram said, pausing to enhance the effect, “those of us on the Purgatory side are privy to the rumor that the liner’s going to return one day.”
The room exploded. Those in attendance pounded the table with their palms; calling, “Here, here.” A waitress from upstairs came down to see what the commotion was about, then rolled her eyes and smiled, seeing it was Ram and company. She asked them to keep it down a bit and took their orders for new drinks upstairs. At that point, Vera and Rogers entered the room and caught Ram’s eye.
“Vera, Peach,” Ram drawled smilingly when he saw them. “Come join us.”
Ram kissed Vera’s hand and took Rogers’s hand and pumped it. “When did you get into town, Peach, and what brings you here?”
“I got down here a couple hours ago. Vera told me to come over and said we’d find you here, said you’re never hard to find. I guess she’s right,” Rogers said, grinning widely.
“Well, I’m not hiding now. No need to right now, but I still remember how to do it,” Ram said winking.
“You can’t ever hide from me, my love,” Vera said smiling.
Rogers said nothing, looking from Ram to Vera, his smile warm but uncertain.
“Want a drink?” Ram asked, coming back to the present.
“I still have some work to do,” said Rogers. “I have to make a few calls on some bookstores. What about dinner?”
“I’m fine with that if Vera is.”
“I already asked her,” Rogers said laughing. “She said okay, but only if we do Szechuan. She said you know a good place for Szechuan.”
“The New Riverside, off Izquell.”
“Will you make the reservation then?”
“I will, for when?”
“How does seven sound?”
“Sounds good to me. Okay with you, baby?”
Vera put her hand on Ram’s chest, looking him in the eye and smiling wickedly.
“I guess that’ll give us enough time. I want to take him home first. He needs to be properly dressed and not smell like a barfly.”
“Do I?”
“Yes. You’re a bit disgusting right now, Ram. Say goodbye to your friends and George will drop us home. You can get your car after dinner.”
Ram threw down the remains of his drink, gathered his papers, put them in his satchel, and took leave of his comrades, whispering a long goodbye to Mad Michael who didn’t want to see him go.
“Aargh, Vera, where are you taking the lad?”
“None of your business, you bad man.”
“Will we meet later then?”
“Not tonight,” said Vera. “We have something to discuss at dinner with Ram’s friend.”
“Final at The Teacup then?”
“Not tonight. But I tell you what I will do,” she cooed, sliding up next to him. “You come down to The Teacup on Friday afternoon and I’ll tell you everything that happened. I’ll even buy you a couple tequilas.”
Michael grinned. “I will do just that, my darling. See you on Friday then. And you, my prince, we’ll meet again anon,” Michael said, bowing.
“Until that time, Michael.”
“Until that time, Ram.”
When they emerged into the open air, a blue dusk was falling, the wisps of cirrus cloud across the setting sun offsetting the blue with a dark orange hue. On the ride home, Ram fell asleep on Vera’s shoulder and she and Rogers had to help him out of the car and steer him inside, depositing him on the couch while Vera drew a bath for him. “He’ll be fine by dinner,” said Vera to Rogers reassuringly. “This has become sort of normal for him now in the afternoons.”
“Does he know anything about what we talked about the other tonight?”
“Not yet,” said Vera. “I thought it best if he heard it from you.”
“Pick you up at seven then?”
“Umm-hmm,” said Vera, walking out with George to the car, kissing him on the cheek, and thanking him for the ride. When she came inside, Ram was snoring. She struggled to remove his boots, then slipped his socks and T-shirt off. She managed to get him to walk to the bathroom, then stuck his head under the shower until he’d awakened enough to remove his pants and get in the tub. When he was comfortably ensconced there, Vera went out and made a pot of ginger and chamomile tea, bringing it in on a tray and served in small demitasses. When Ram finished his second cup, Vera slipped her dress off
and climbed into the tub beside him, kissing him until Ram was fully aroused, then riding on top of him until he came. Ten minutes later, Ram was on the bed, snoring again.
The sky was deeper blue now, with a small bone-colored crescent of waxing moon. Ram was fully refreshed now, having drank enough detoxicant tea to render him sober. He was nattily casual in clean, faded blue jeans and a predominantly red Hawaiian shirt, topped off with a vintage, pearl gray Borsalino that Vera had found for him at a San Francisco garage sale with Miranda. Rogers was dressed in chinos and blue broadcloth button-down with a gray tweed jacket, his usual working attire. Accompanying them, her hand looped through each of their arms as they made their entrance into the restaurant, Vera looked absolutely devastating in a tight dark-green jersey dress that accentuated her form, a long red silk scarf wrapped twice tightly around her neck, its tail ends falling nearly to the floor, and a light, long, yellow linen coat draped loosely over her shoulders. The hostess escorted them to their table, where Ram stood behind Vera, removing her coat and handing it to the hostess. When they took their seats, the other patrons finally took their eyes off the trio, whom they’d been watching since they walked through the door. The waitress came and took their drink order—Heinekens for Ram and George, a Dubonnet up with a twist for Vera. She looked about the room and saw her friend Heidi waving at her from a nearby table. Vera pretended not to see her. When the drinks arrived, Rogers raised his bottle in toast.
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