Betting on the Muse
Page 13
“No,” Harry said, “count me out.”
The barkeep turned and waddled back down to the guy at the end. They whispered a moment, then the bartender turned his head and looked back at Harry. The look was noncommittal. The first guy rolled the dice.
Harry belted his drink down.
The barkeep was moving from man to man. There was a high sense of glee in the place as each man rattled the container and spilled the dice out.
I wonder if a woman ever comes in here? thought Harry.
“Hey, barkeep!” Harry hollered.
The barkeep looked at Harry.
Harry raised his empty glass, winked, “How about a refill?”
The barkeep looked at Harry, inhaled, held it, then let it slowly come out. As he waddled toward Harry he snatched a bottle of scotch as if irritated. Then he stood there, pouring. Some of the scotch ran over his fat brown fingers as it poured into the shot glass. He dumped the shot in, added the water, then said to Harry, “You know, we got a great place here, everybody knows each other, everybody gets along.”
“What do I owe you?” Harry asked.
“Same as before.”
The barkeep took the money, made it down to the register, banged it open, slammed it shut. Then he went back to the dice. He moved along the bar, announcing the results of each roll. Finally he came down to the last patron, the guy dressed in the large jacket.
“Now, David,” said the barkeep, “all ya gotta do is beat a 4, because Pee Wee threw a 4. Roll ’em, David!”
David rattled the dice in the wooden cup and let them go.
“Holy shit!” screamed the barkeep, “SNAKE EYES!”
It busted up the whole bar: fat guys and thin guys started whooping it up and beating on the wood. One guy got going so bad he started to gag, couldn’t get his breath. He bent over the bar and they beat on his back until he could breathe again.
Then it got quiet and the guy in the jacket reached into his wallet and flipped out some bills.
“It’s all right,” he said, “next time somebody else will be whistling Dixie out of his butthole.”
The barkeep went about pouring refills. One of the fellows, one of the very thin ones, got up and put some money into the juke box. It was a song about “Bette Davis’ Eyes.”
“That Bette Davis, she was some woman,” said one of the fellows.
“She’s still alive,” said another.
“Oh yeah?”
“She still was some woman.”
“Yeah, but there was something evil about her.”
“She was still a great actress.”
“Maybe so.”
The barkeep walked down to Harry, stood there.
“You all right?” he asked Harry.
“Yes.”
“You had a fight with your woman?”
“Not really.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
“I got to tell you something, mister. We don’t like unhappy people around here. We get along.”
“I’m not unhappy.”
“Then what is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you don’t seem to be a friendly fellow.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to give that impression.”
“We get along here. We all know each other.”
“How about another drink?”
The barkeep waddled off, came back with the bottle: “You know, we don’t want trouble here. We’re all peaceful people.”
“O.K.,” said Harry, “only this time don’t add so much water.”
“O.K.,” said the barkeep, “by the way, what do you do?”
“What do I do? Right now, I’m drinking.”
The barkeep leaned back a little from the bar.
“HEY FELLOWS!” he yelled.
All the white t-shirts looked toward them, plus the big jacket.
“I asked this gentleman what he did and you know what he told me? He said he drank!”
One of the white t-shirts applauded. The others joined in.
“All right!” one of them yelled, “He’s one of us!”
The barkeep leaned toward Harry: “You play pool?”
“No, I was never any good at pool.”
The bartender leaned closer. His belly was almost crawling across the bar and into Harry’s drink.
“What’re you good at?”
Harry laughed. “Well, hell, I guess I just don’t excel at anything.”
The bartender leaned closer: “Where you from? Newark? Kansas City?”
“Santa Fe.”
“Wow! Santa Fe!”
The barkeep leaned back and raised his walrus head: “HEY YOU GUYS, THIS GUY IS FROM SANTA FUCK!”
The fellows didn’t seem to pay so much attention to that.
The barkeep leaned forward again. “How come you came to this bar tonight?”
“No real reason. Give me a refill.”
The barkeep poured it right into the glass, forgetting the water.
Harry drained the glass.
“O.K., I had a fight with my woman.”
“You told me earlier that you didn’t have a fight with your woman.”
“I said, ‘not really.’”
“What’s that mean?”
“I mean, not really.”
“So you just came in here because there was nowhere else to go?”
“I’m not knocking your place. I just didn’t feel like going right home tonight.”
Then the barkeep leaned back and stood there. He didn’t look at Harry. He appeared to be looking at some place over Harry’s head and to the left. He seemed to be in a reverie.
Then he leaned forward, leaned against the wood and looked at Harry.
“You been in the service?”
With that question it seemed as if the entire bar became very quiet.
“You mean the armed forces?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Everybody here’s been in the service. Except for Pee Wee. He was too small.”
Harry didn’t answer.
The barkeep reared back and looked at the same spot over Harry’s head. Then he leaned forward again.
“How come you didn’t go?”
“I don’t know. I guess I fell somewhere between Korea and Vietnam. I was never the proper age. Besides, what does it matter?”
The barkeep’s stomach left the wood and he stood almost straight.
“Hey fellows!” he said in a loud voice. “HERE’S A GUY WHO SAYS ALL THE WARS WE FOUGHT IN DIDN’T MATTER!”
“He’s got a pussy for brains,” said one of the white t-shirts.
“All right,” said Harry, “I’m leaving.”
He got off his stool and started walking toward the rear exit. His car was in the parking lot back there. He was feeling all right. The drinks had helped.
As he neared the end of the bar, one of the white t-shirts stuck out a foot and tripped him. Harry lost his balance and almost crashed into the pinball machine. But he slammed his palms against the glass and righted himself.
Harry turned and walked over to the man who had tripped him. The man had nice blue eyes. On one of his thin arms was tattooed the message: BORN TO DIE. On the bar in front of the man stood half a drink. Harry reached over, picked the drink up, pulled the fellow’s t-shirt open at the neck and poured the drink in.
He was drunker than he thought. He found the car, got the key, opened the door, got in, locked the door and here they came. The white t-shirts and the big jacket. The bartender was not with them.
Harry started the engine. They were all over his car like a swarm of drunken killer bees. Two were on the hood. One was on the roof. Two were attempting to roll the car over.
Harry put it into reverse and slowly backed out toward the alley. Several of the drunks were now pushing against the rear of the car. In the rearview mirror Harry saw one of them fall under the wheels. He hit the brakes and rolled down the
window on the driver’s side.
“Jesus Christ, get out of the way!”
A long thin arm came in through the window and tried to pull the keys from the ignition. Harry took the arm and bent it hard against the steering wheel. He heard the snap, there was a scream and the arm vanished back out of the window. Harry rolled the window up and continued backing out.
He backed and made a left turn toward the boulevard. There was a face pressed against the windshield, eyes leering in. He saw the hands, their fingers, clutching at the glass, frog-like useless things. Harry knew that once he was on the boulevard he could shake him free.
He roared up the alley. The man fell off the hood. At the last moment he spotted the sacrificial lamb, a fat white t-shirt spreading its arms and blocking the alley exit. Harry veered to the right, ramming a brown slat fence. The fence broke apart. There were slats and pieces of wood flying everywhere…
Harry got back to his apartment, took off his clothing, his shoes. He sat there in his shorts for a few minutes and then walked to the refrigerator. Luck: 4 cans of beer left. He cracked one, brought it out and sat back down on the couch. He flicked the remote control, he got Johnny Carson.
Now, thought Harry, there is a man. If the whole world was like Johnny Carson there might be a chance.
Then he thought, that’s wrong, Carson gets along too well with just anyone. He likes everybody.
Harry swallowed the last gulp of that can of beer and then the phone rang.
It was Lisa.
“Where have you been? I’ve been phoning you for hours! Where have you been?”
“Nowhere, really.”
“You’ve been with some slut! I’m a woman! Women have a way of knowing these things! You’ve been with some slut!”
Harry hung up the phone, took the thing off the hook.
He had three cans of beer left.
With them and if he was careful he might make it to morning.
this dirty, valiant game
I see e. e. cummings drinking a
rum and tonic while sitting on
the front porch of a white
house.
I see Ezra at St. Liz
accepting visitors as a confirmation
of his existence.
I see Hart Crane on an
ocean steamer
rejecting the advances of
literary ladies while
lusting for the cabin
boy.
I see Hemingway cleaning
his shotgun
while thinking of his
father.
I see Dostoevsky at the
roulette wheel
losing everything to
Christ.
I see Carson McCullers
dunking her beautiful
soul
in
whiskey.
I see Li Po
that wino
laughing at the
futility of word
following
word.
I see Sherwood
Anderson
swallowing the
toothpick that killed
him.
I see William
Saroyan
written-out,
sitting in his Malibu
beachfront home
waiting
vainly
for the luck to
return.
I see Timothy
Leary
going from
table to table
at parties
hoping to be
recognized.
I see Chatterton
purchasing the
rat poison,
I see Pascal
getting into the bath-tub
of warm water
with the
razor.
I see Ginsberg
gone
from Howling to
mewing
as a professor in
Brooklyn.
I see Henry
Miller
long stopped
writing,
putting advertisements
in a
college newspaper
for
secretaries.
I see Richard
Brautigan,
the age he high-
lighted past,
his books no
longer selling,
his love affairs
rotting, I can
see him blowing
himself away in
that mountain
cabin.
I see the
necessity of
creation, the love
of it, the danger of
it.
I can see where
creation often
stops while the
body still lives
and often
does not care
to.
the death of life
before life
dies.
Tolstoy sitting alone
in the
road.
all days night
forever.
flowers frozen in
blood
urine
wine.
stay out of my slippers, you fool
it’s not good, some of the days we have, horrible
dead-dog-in-the-
street days.
son-of-a-bitch, going on sometimes seems rather
useless.
read in the paper the other day,
a man fell into a meat grinder and was ground
up.
makes you think a bit about the gods.
like some things seem almost planned, worked out
on some
drawing board.
it’s fate, they say.
this man was born to die being ground to bits in
a meat
grinder.
that was his main purpose.
they allowed him to do a few things first.
he’ll be replaced.
somebody will take his job.
somebody will take your job
and mine.
your place and mine.
and the trees will shed their leaves
and the whores will sing in their showers
and the cats will sleep throughout the day
and the 20th century will click into the 21st
and somebody will throw away your shoes
and your belt and your old clothes and your
new clothes.
somebody will sleep in your bed.
somebody will throw a handful of dirt upon
you.
I get like this when I read about a man being
ground to death in a meat
grinder.
how do you feel?
what do you know?
get the hell out of my face!
the voice
we had a table outside
by the water,
it was a Saturday night,
all the tables were
filled.
we had finished eating,
we were drinking and
watching the freighters
and passenger ships
going by on their way to the sea
and Frankel was
talking.
I became very
conscious of his loud
voice.
I wasn’t too
interested in what
he was saying
and neither were
the others,
but Frankel kept on,
he even got
louder,
he laughed, waved
his hands;
little pieces of
saliva flew from
his mouth.
heads were turning,
looking at us.
Frankel had been
told
in some distant
past
that he had a
great sense of
humor,
that he should
have been a
stand-up
comic.
he had 3 or 4
good lines but
we had
heard them all
before.
I finished my
drink, set it
down, managed
to reach out,
grab one of
Frankel’s
flying hands.
I interrupted him
in mid-speech.
“listen, your voice,
can you lower it
just a
bit?”
“huh?
oh sure…”
then he went
on.
he kept it low
for some
moments,
then,
something he
was saying
excited him,
and he was
back at full
volume.
we paid the bill
and got him
out of
there.
going back
Frankel
was in another
car
following us.
“I hope I didn’t
hurt his feelings,”
I said to my
wife.
“I was about to
tell him
myself,” she
answered.
back at our