I felt being in that girl’s room I didn’t know where I really was. Felt all tight. Felt like I might hurt somebody if that man didn’t come off his ledge of air. Iris was looking at me as if I was some screwball. After a while, she breathed deeply, asked, with that little shrug again, “Don’t you want to make it?”
“Can’t you make it?” She asked.
She had put her hand on my crotch again, but I battered it away, maybe harder than I should of because she took it up to her mouth as if to suck on the fingers, and I got real distraught then, said, “Iris, I want to help you.”
I was inside her room again. No longer in the air out on the street, just feeling very panicky. Iris she wouldn’t stop trying. Kept coming on. “You can’t make it, can you? I can help you. Let me help you.”
Then she brought her head over me as if to go down on me and it was like this rag had fallen right across my lap. I jumped away from her.
We’re standing several feet apart. My fly is still open. You can see the white of my underwear showing through, kind of dirty gray. I don’t like certain people to get that close. Didn’t like her pulling all those tricks on me. Said, “Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it!”
Said, “Fuck it!”
Because, you see, I was very angry at her for pulling those tricks on me when I was trying to help her.
Said, “Don’t you understand anything?”
She looked down at the rug. Looked real shamed-faced. She was just a naughty kid, I guess.
After a moment, I sat down beside her again. She seemed real pained now. She wasn’t going to cause me any more trouble. I felt like crying.
There was this long silence, and then she put her arm around my shoulder and it felt nice and warm and cozy. She said, “You don’t have to make it, Mister.”
I felt so warm and cozy, collecting myself, felt like I’d been understood, finally, in part, not the whole thing, the whole message. Still, words to that effect. Iris still didn’t understand how I was trying to help her.
Slowly I said, “Iris, do you know why I came here today?”
She spoke very thoughtfully, slowly, and looked back at me. “I think so. I tried to get in your cab one night and now you want to come and take me away.”
“Don’t you want to go?”
“I can leave anytime I want.”
I didn’t believe her. I mentioned that night again.
“I was stoned,” Iris protested. “That’s why they stopped me. When I’m not stoned, I got no place else to go. They just protect me from myself.”
Well I tried acting as if I understood. To seem compassionate. Tried to smile at her but I could see that I wasn’t getting anywhere and that made me very, very sad. My smile came out as a little tiny wrinkle in my lip, a shrug. I said, “Well, I tried.”
“I understand, Mister,” Iris said back to me. “It means something, really. I value that, Mister.” I was on my feet. Asked, “Iris, what do you value?”
“That,” she shrugged at me. “I really do value that, Mister.”
You reach out to people and you really can’t expect much more I guess.
I asked, “Can I see you again?”
Iris seemed pleased. She was smiling again, faintly, and there were these little red spots in her cheeks. “That’s not hard to do.”
“Really,” I said. “I mean really. This is nothing for a person to do . . .”
She seemed like she wanted to keep the peace, said, “All right. We’ll have breakfast. I get up about one o’clock. Tomorrow.” I was thinking there was something I had to do tomorrow, something that couldn’t wait, but Iris she got impatient and interrupted me then: “Well, you want to or not?”
“O.K.,” I said. Because I could always do that thing, I knew. “It’s a date, Iris. I’ll see you here, then.”
As I turned away from her, she was smiling, real pleased with herself. I said, “Iris?”
“Yes?”
“My name’s Travis.”
“Thank you, Travis. I value that too, really . . .”
As if she was trying to tell me something that she was still human somewhere underneath all that only she couldn’t be gotten to that easily right now with me. She shook her head. Said, sadly, “I really do value that, Travis. Thank you”
“So long, Iris.
Sweet Iris.”
Well, she was just such a kid really. I figured she couldn’t really be spoiled that much. She would have to have a heart somewhere. Such a kid.
I closed the door to room #2. Stood in that corridor. There were tears crowding my eyes. I felt a little more like myself. Good old self again.
Then that time keeper came walking down that hallway with my .38 in his hand and he glanced at his watch and handed me the .38. Said, “I think this is yours, cowboy.”
I was so furious at him seeing me like this. I reached in my jacket pocket and found that same old rumpled twenty-dollar bill. He had his hands cupped as if he was drinking from a pond of water and I just dropped the bill into his hand and said, “Here’s this twenty bucks old man. You better damn well spend it right.”
Then I turned to walk away because I knew he didn’t understand a word I meant. Going down the stairs I heard him jabbering at me again: “Come back anytime you want, cowboy. But without the rod—please.”
Late Breakfast
At breakfast the next morning in this coffee shop at 1:30 in the afternoon, Iris was wearing such a nice maroon sweater and clean pressed faded jeans. Her face was freshly washed, hair combed out, she looked no different than any young girl in the big city. Like I was her big brother taking her out for a treat on the town.
We had ham and eggs, large glasses of orange juice, coffee. She told me all about herself. How she and Sport had gotten together. Where her home was. Pittsburgh. I felt nothing was impossible, people can talk to one another if they make the effort. I thought Iris and I could make the effort to befriend each other. I wasn’t afraid of Sport or that old man. I said, “Pittsburgh. Well, I ain’t ever been there, but it don’t seem like such a bad place.”
“Why do you want me to go back to my parents? They hate me.” Iris’ voice was rising again. She was definitely on edge. “Why do you think I split? There ain’t nothing there.”
I ordered more coffee. Said, “You can’t live like this. It’s hell. If you ain’t sick now, you’ll soon get hooked or die or something or other. Girls need protection.”
Iris made a joke out of that: “Didn’t you ever hear of women’s lib?”
Well how could I tell her that I needed to help her. How could I tell her that she was all that stood between me and something horrible that was going to happen. I didn’t want her to believe she was my last hope on earth because she looked so young and clean sitting opposite me with this slab of bright orange formica between us. Like a pretty young heiress at the breakfast table. Like one of those high school girls I pick up on Saturdays to take to their dance classes, or to meet a beau. Iris looked truly innocent, for a whore.
I said, “This ain’t no place for a young girl to live. Young girls are supposed to dress up, go to school, play with boys, you know, that kind of stuff. To that effect.”
“God, are you square,” Iris swore at me softly.
I could feel myself getting angry. Said, “At least I don’t walk the streets like a skunk pussy. I don’t screw and fuck with killers and junkies.”
“Who’s a killer?” She motioned to me with her eyes to lower my voice. “Who is a killer?” she demanded softly.
I told her Sport looked just like a killer to me.
“He never killed nobody,” Iris said. “He ain’t much, but he never killed nobody.”
“How do you know?” I looked at her hard, but she looked away. I said, “He’s a dope shooter, too.”
“What makes you so high and mighty?” Iris demanded. “Did you ever look at your own eyeballs in the mirror? You don’t get those lines from Coca-Cola. I know that muc
h.”
“He’s worse than an animal,” I told Iris. “Jail’s too good for scum like Sport.”
She looked at me then as if there was no use denying anything anymore and then she took a knife and buttered a little crust of toast and popped it into her mouth. Said, “Well, the scene around here ain’t that much anymore. I could tell you that. A year ago, it was fantastic. Everybody was crashing, cruising, hanging out at the Fillmore, getting stoned. It was unbelievable—rock stars everywhere. But now, all the kids have split or got sick or busted. I think I’ll move to one of them communes in Vermont. That’s where all the smart ones went. I stayed here. Now only the little kids are coming in. They don’t know nothing. They get the clap in two weeks or OD. Just makes your stomach sick.”
I told Iris I’ve never been to a commune. I didn’t know. But I’d seen pictures in a magazine and they didn’t look very clean to me. Not too.
“Why don’t you come with me?” she asked.
“Me?” She seemed to mean it with her eyes. “Oh, I could never go to a place like that.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t get along with people like that, you know . . .”
“People like what?”
“Well, you know, people like that just wouldn’t, you know . . . be like me . . .”
Again, I saw that man fluttering in the breeze. Said, “Besides, I got to stay here.”
Iris asked why.
“Because I have something important to do. I can’t leave.”
“What’s so important?”
I told her it was top secret, I couldn’t say. Told her I was doing something for the army. The cab thing was just part time.
Iris wanted to know if I was a Narc.
“Do I look like a Narc?” I asked her.
“Yeah.”
She grinned and that made me grin, and then she broke into laughter: “God, I don’t know who’s weirder you or me.”
Avoiding the issue again, I asked, “What are you going to do about Sport and that old bastard?”
“When?”
“You know when.”
She looked away and starting drumming away at the table with her fingertips.
Time passed.
I felt Iris had to tell me some more. Else, I couldn’t say another thing to her.
Finally, she glanced from her fingertips and the drumming stopped. Asked, “Do you really think that I should go to the commune?”
Well, I told her I thought she should go home but if that didn’t work out, she should go there to that commune. Told her I thought it would be great for her a young person like her.
“You have to get away from here, quick, before you’re beat up or killed. This city’s a sewer, you got to get out of it.”
Again Iris asked, “Sure you don’t want to come with me?”
I lied again. “I can’t. Otherwise, I would.”
Iris said, “I sure hate to go alone.”
I told her I would give her the money to go. I didn’t want her to take any from those guys.
She said, “You don’t have to.”
“I want to—what else can I do with my money?”
Iris asked, “When will I see you again?”
“I’ll come by day after tomorrow. But if I can’t make it,” I said, “I’ll send you a letter. You may not see me again, for a while.”
Iris asked, “What do you mean a while?”
I tried not to alarm her, said my work might take me out of New York. But I don’t think she bought that. She was looking at me very strangely then and I assured her I meant what I said, that I would be in touch with her soon. I paid the check, of course. Said I had to get on now, but I would he in touch with her soon. Would drop by or write. I left her there. Couldn’t stand to tell her more.
Too much on my mind.
God’s Lonely Man
Maybe it would have been different if I could have convinced her to go away right then and there but when she wouldn’t my life had to go on. I felt it pointing in that one direction that there was no other choice for me. I left Iris and went directly to the range. I had the Magnum in the trunk of the car in that bag and the .38 and the other little gun and I kept shooting. I must have shot a hundred times, bam, bam, bam, bam. To that effect just like that. The burning smell in my nostrils.
Home again I wrote in this journal: “Loneliness has followed me all my life. The life of loneliness pursues me wherever I go: in bars, cars, coffee shops, theaters, stores, sidewalks. There is no escape. Not to love is to die. All my work hides my essential unemployment.”
Wrote: “I am not a fool. I will no longer fool myself. I will no longer let myself fall apart, become a joke, an object of ridicule. I am not a square. There is no longer any hope. I cannot continue this hollow empty fight. I must sleep. What hope is there for me?”
I drove most of that night watching the world go by. Everybody matched up in pairs, me without. God for a friend to have a friend in my life. I . . . wandered from store to store in the morning to make acquaintance of the shopkeepers. Wandered about all over, on my feet, to be noticed, smiled at, exchange a pleasant word or two. Went to the bank. Just wandering along on my feet. I went to the bank, as I say, got five crisp hundred-dollar bills. Folded them up in a letter, put them in an envelope, addressed it to Iris.
“Dear Iris, this money should be enough for your trip. Take the trip immediately. Do not delay. By the time you read this I will be dead. Travis.”
I cleaned the apartment. Put everything neat and orderly. Shaved, changed my clothes. Went out in the street again.
The storekeepers were all grinning failure in front of their cramped little displays: Everybody was selling out, everybody looked sad: Business was slow. Life was something you shrugged at. Something you put up with. The books you might have read. The kids you might have loved. All the money you would have made if your mother had been kinder to you. The fun you could have had with a friend. From under their soft gray mustaches they produced little yellow plums of phlegm and recipes for happiness. They kidded me with gossip on the high cost of living, and the uncertain weather. Palantine was speaking in Brooklyn. No more time.
I thought long live death it’s all any of us believes in anyway.
Thought long live death.
Thought nobody can help anybody Palantine can’t help. He can’t be helped
Storekeepers couldn’t they couldn’t be helped they couldn’t.
Words to that effect. You don’t take the kid who steals coins from your newsstand and make him your cashier.
Hitler is a bum tiddle yum, tum, tum. To that effect. A little diddy from my childhood acres of truth to that. To that effect . . .
So then I refixed the metal gliders for the Colt .25 on my forearm and split the little kangaroo and the kukaburra too . . .
Lickety split splat just like that after fitting the .38 into my holster. Checking out the Magnum in the back of my belt.
Still had on this Army jacket. Couldn’t stop sweating. Sang as I drove an old Aussy song I learned in Nam about a kangaroo:
“I was traveling with my sheep
all me mates was fast asleep.
No moon or stars were shining in the sky.
I was dozing I supposed
and me eyes had hardly closed
when a very strange procession passed me by.
First there came a kangaroo
with his swag a blanket’s blue
he had with him a dingo for a mate.
They was traveling pretty fast
But they shouted as they passed
We gotta be getting on it’s getting late . . .”
Later, me high on the bridge to Brooklyn under the big stone archways as in a church back home I loved
In spider web riggings caught like a fly. I loved being so
Loved the brown sun on the water, that brown light
Propelled girder by girder in this yellow tube toward the mouth of my death
To bestow m
y blessings of death on this man I loved. Admired. The Senator, Charles Palantine, and this great nation America which taught me how to kill and said, Do not
To finally open that door to so much hate in myself, so much anger, and be inside, loving myself there, was different than Melio with his grocery store. A matter of poise. I wasn’t thinking do or don’t. First time in my life, Unreal. To be in motion going somewhere at last in time. History, as a cut-out almost two dimensional.
There is an Assassin
Brooklyn looked like yellow teeth sticking up from the bite of the river. Rushing past the Squibb Buildings and The Watchtower I was pushed, shoved, poked, and prodded, past the strollers arm in arm, blared at, then honked. Stalled and stuttering, in the heat, down the ramp, and onto the long stunted boulevard Atlantic Avenue.
No love in my life except death.
I thought Betsy would be terrified. Disappointed in me, too. That, for once, this was a manly feeling.
I thought she did not, could not, love him as a man, the Senator, but as her idol. Her Lord. Some God . . . The Senator and next President to be except for me pay to the order of Travis Bickle.
Didn’t see Betsy anywhere, though, and felt so sad but sadder still for Betsy. Not to know me as I really was. Ever.
Thought Palantine would surely recognize me and love me, as his assassin. I had some respect for him, or why else kill?
We would share this out-of-the-way passion. No more corruption. I would make sure. The garbage gets collected because he is a friend to man.
He speaks at a union hall on the corner of the street near a Pinchi Paints and a White Tower with maybe five-hundred supporters and fans, many old timers, women, the dinge, and a Dixieland jazz band under flatstraw hats to play him to the rostrum.
Grandstands built out of sections of board painted gray. For the VIPs. Borough President and Councilmen. Stuff like that. All in straw hats. The crowd cheering, laughing, gnattering. Even from a block away they seem restless for his love. Gray mice in a cage of shadows.
S.S. men everywhere in metallic suits.
Me parking three blocks away when I see his limo glisten. It moves a little at a time into the crowd, like hot lava, S.S. men running along both sides for protection. Cameras clicking, whirr of TVs, and those men with big weapons like BARs on their shoulders that are only movie cameras.
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