Ham On Rye

Fastshoes was reviving. Jimmy was helping him to his feet. Then he put Fastshoes' arm around his neck. They were standing there.

"Now what did you say?" I asked.

"You're an ugly man, Hank. You need to be taught a lesson."

"You mean I'm not pretty?"

"I mean, you act ugly…"

"Take your friend out of here before I come down there and finish him off!"

Fastshoes raised his bloody head. He had on a flowered Hawaiian shirt, only now many of the colors were stained with red.

He looked at me. Then he spoke. I could barely hear him. But I heard it. He said, "I'm going to kill you…"

"Yeah," said Jimmy, "we'll get you."

"YEAH, FUCKERS?" I screamed. "I'M NOT GOING ANYWHERE! ANYTIME YOU WANT TO FIND ME I'LL BE IN ROOM 5! I'LL BE WAITING! ROOM 5, GOT IT? AND THE DOOR WILL BE OPEN!"

I lifted the jelly glass full of wine and drained it. Then I hurled that jelly glass at them. I threw the son-of-a-bitch, hard. But my aim was bad. It hit the side of the stairway wall, glanced off and shot into the lobby between the landlady and her two Filipino friends.

Jimmy turned Fastshoes toward the exit door and began slowly walking him out. It was a tedious, agonizing journey. I heard Fastshoes again, half moaning, half weeping, "I'll kill him… I'll kill him…"

Then Jimmy had him out the doorway. They were gone. The blond landlady and the two Filipinos were still standing in the lobby, looking up at me. I was barefooted, and had gone five or six days without a shave. I needed a haircut. I only combed my hair once, in the morning, then didn't bother again. My gym teachers were always after me about my posture: "Pull your shoulders back! Why are you looking at the ground? What's down there?"

I would never set any trends or styles. My white t-shirt was stained with wine, burned, with many cigarettes and cigar holes, spotted with blood and vomit. It was too small, it rode up exposing my gut and belly button. And my pants were too small. They gripped me tightly and rose well above my ankles.

The three of them stood and looked at me. I looked down at them. "Hey, you guys, come on up for a little drink!"

The two little men looked up at me and gri

"Anybody got a smoke?" I asked. "I'm out of smokes."

The little dark fellow standing to one side of Mrs. Kansas made a slight motion with one hand toward his jacket pocket and a pack of Camels jumped in the lobby air. Deftly he caught the pack in his other hand. With the invisible tap of a finger on the bottom of the pack a smoke leaped up, tall, true, singular and exposed, ready to be taken.

"Hey, shit, thanks," I said.

I started down the stairway, made a mis-step, lunged, almost fell, grabbed the ba

I lifted out the Camel. Then I flipped it in the air, caught it, stuck it into my mouth. My dark friend remained expressionless, the grin having vanished when I had begun down the stairway. My little friend bent forward, cupped his hands around the flame and lit my smoke.

I inhaled, exhaled. "Listen, why don't you all come up to my place and we'll have a couple of drinks?"

"No," said the little guy who had lit my cigarette.

"Maybe we can catch the Bee or some Bach on my radio! I'm educated, you know. I'm a student…"

"No," said the other little guy.

I took a big drag on my smoke, then looked at Carole Lombard - Mrs. Kansas. Then I looked at my two friends.

"She's yours. I don't want her. She's yours. Just come on up. We'll drink a little wine. In good old room 5."

There was no answer. I rocked on my heels a bit as the whiskey and the wine fought for possession. I let my cigarette dangle a bit from the right side of my mouth as I sent up a plume of smoke. I continued letting the cigarette dangle like that.

I knew about stilettoes. In the little time I had been there I had seen two enactments of the stiletto. From my window one night, looking out at the sound of sirens, I saw a body there just below my window on the Temple Street sidewalk, in the moonlight, under the streetlight. Another time, another body. Nights of the stiletto. Once a white man, the other time one of them. Each time, blood ru

"All right, my friends," I said to them, "no hard feelings. I'll drink alone…"

I turned and started to walk toward the stairway.

"Mr. Chinaski," I heard Mrs. Kansas' voice. I turned and looked at her flanked by my two little friends.

"Just go to your room and sleep. If you cause any more disturbance I will phone the Los Angeles Police Department."

I turned and walked back up the stairway. No life anywhere, no life in this town or this place or in this weary existence…

My door was open. I walked in. There was one-third of a cheap bottle of wine left.

Maybe there was another bottle in the closet? I opened the closet door. No bottle. But there were tens and twenties everywhere. There was a rolled twenty lying between a pair of dirty socks with holes in the toes; and there from a shirt collar, a ten dangling; and here from an old jacket, another ten caught in a side pocket. Most of the money was on the floor.

I picked up a bill, slipped it into the side pocket of my pants, went to the door, closed and locked it, then went down the stairway to the bar.

55

A couple of nights later Becker walked in. I guess my parents gave him my address or he located me through the college. I had my name and address listed with the employment division at the college, under "unskilled labor." "I will do anything honest or otherwise," I had written on my card. No calls.

Becker sat in a chair as I poured the wine. He had on a Marine uniform.

"I see they sucked you in," I said.

"I lost my Western Union job. It was all that was left."

I handed him his drink. "You're not a patriot then?"

"Hell no."

"Why the Marines?"

"I heard about boot camp. I wanted to see if I could get through it."

"And you did."

"I did. There are some crazy guys there. There's a fight almost every night. Nobody stops it. They almost kill each other."

"I like that."

"Why don't you join?"

"I don't like to get up early in the morning and I don't like to take orders."

"How are you going to make it?"

"I don't know. When I get down to my last dime I'll just walk over to skid row."

"There are some real weirdos down there."

"They're everywhere."

I poured Becker another wine.

"The problem is," he said, "that there's not much time to write."

"You still want to be a writer?"

"Sure. How about you?"

"Yeah," I said, "but it's pretty hopeless."

"You mean you're not good enough?"

"No, they're not good enough."

"What do you mean?"

"You read the magazines? The 'Best Short Stories of the Year' books? There are at least a dozen of them."

"Yeah, I read them…"

"You read The New Yorker" Harper's? The Atlantic?"

"Yeah…"

"This is 1940. They're still publishing 19th Century stuff, heavy, labored, pretentious. You either get a headache reading the stuff or you fall asleep.".