Ham On Rye

56

I saw a vacancy sign in the window in front of a rooming-house, had the cabby pull up. I paid him and walked up on the front porch, rang the bell. I had one black eye from the fight, another cut eye, a swollen nose, and my lips were puffed. My left ear was bright red and every time I touched it, an electric shock ran through my body.

An old man came to the door. He was in his undershirt and it looked like he had spilled chili and beans across the front of it. His hair was grey and uncombed, he needed a shave and he was puffing on a wet cigarette that stank.

"You the landlord?" I asked.

"Yep."

"I need a room."

"You workin'?"

"I'm a writer."

"You don't look like a writer."

"What do they look like?"

He didn't answer. Then he said, "$2.50 a week."

"Can I see it?"

He belched, then said, "Foller me…"

We walked down a long hall. There was no hall rug. The boards creaked and sank as we walked on them. I heard a man's voice from one of the rooms.

"Suck me, you piece of shit!"

"Three dollars," I heard a woman's voice.

"Three dollars? I'll give you a bloody asshole!"

He slapped her hard, she screamed. We walked on.

"The place is in back," the guy said, "but you are allowed to use the house bathroom."

There was a shack in back with four doors. He walked up to #3 and opened it. We walked in. There was a cot, a blanket, a small dresser and a little stand. On the stand was a hotplate.

"You got a hotplate here," he said.

"That's nice."

"$2.50 in advance."

I paid him.

"I'll give you your receipt in the morning."

"Fine."

"What's your name?"

"Chinaski."

"I'm Co

He slipped a key off his key ring and gave it to me.

"We run a nice quiet place here. I want to keep it that way."

"Sure."

I closed the door behind him. There was a single light overhead, unshaded. Actually the place was fairly clean. Not bad. I got up, went outside and locked the door behind me, walked through the back yard to an alley.

I shouldn't have given that guy my real name, I thought. I might have killed my little dark friend over on Temple Street.

There was a long wooden stairway which went down the side of a cliff and led to the street below. Quite romantic. I walked along until I saw a liquor store. I was going to get my drink. I bought two bottles of wine and I felt hungry too so I purchased a large bag of potato chips.

Back at my place, I undressed, climbed onto my cot, leaned against the wall, lit a cigarette and poured a wine. I felt good. It was quiet back there. I couldn't hear anybody in any of the other rooms in my shack. I had to take a piss, so I put on my shorts, went around the back of the shack and let go. From up there I could see the lights of the city. Los Angeles was a good place, there were many poor people, it would be easy to get lost among them. I went back inside, climbed back on the cot. As long as a man had wine and cigarettes he could make it. I finished off my glass and poured another.

Maybe I could live by my wits. The eight-hour day was impossible, yet almost everybody submitted to it. And the war, everybody was talking about the war in Europe. I wasn't interested in world history, only my own. What crap. Your parents controlled your growing-up period, they pissed all over you. Then when you got ready to go out on your own, the others wanted to stick you into a uniform so you could get your ass shot off. The wine tasted great. I had another.

The war. Here I was a virgin. Could you imagine getting your ass blown off for the sake of history before you even knew what a woman was? Or owned an automobile? What would I be protecting? Somebody else. Somebody else who didn't give a shit about me. Dying in a war never stopped wars from happening.

I could make it. I could win drinking contests, I could gamble. Maybe I could pull a few holdups. I didn't ask much, just to be left alone.

I finished the first bottle of wine and started in on the second. Halfway through the second bottle, I stopped, stretched out. My first night in my new place. It was all right. I slept.

I was awakened by the sound of a key in the door. Then the door pushed open. I sat up on the cot. A man started to step in.

"GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!" I screamed. He left fast. I heard him ru

People did that. They rented a place, stopped paying rent and kept the key, sneaking back to sleep there if it was vacant or robbing the place if the occupant was out. Well, he wouldn't be back. He knew if he tried it again that I'd bust his sack. I went back to my cot and had another drink. I was a little nervous. I was going to have to pick up a knife. I finished my drink, poured another, drank that and went back to sleep.

57

After English class one day Mrs. Curtis asked me to stay.

She had great legs and a lisp and there was something about the legs and the lisp together that heated me up. She was about 32, had culture and style, but like everybody else, she was a goddamned liberal and that didn't take much originality or fight, it was just more Franky Roosevelt worship. I liked Franky because of his programs for the poor during the Depression. He had style too. I didn't think he really gave a damn about the poor but he was a great actor, great voice, and he had a great speech writer. But he wanted us in the war. It would put him into the history books. War presidents got more power and, later, more pages. Mrs. Curtis was just a chip off old Franky only she had much better legs. Poor Franky didn't have any legs but he had a wonderful brain. In some other country he would have made a powerful dictator.

When the last student left I walked up to Mrs. Curtis' desk. She smiled up at me. I had watched her legs for many hours and she knew it. She knew what I wanted, that she had nothing to teach me. She had only said one thing which I remembered. It wasn't her own idea, obviously, but I liked it:

"You can't overestimate the stupidity of the general public."

"Mr. Chinaski," she looked up at me, "we have certain students in this class who think they are very smart."

"Yeh?"

"Mr. Felton is our smartest student."

"O.K."

"What is it that troubles you?"

"What?"

"There's something… troubling you."

"Maybe."

"This is your last semester, isn't it?"

"How did you know?"

I'd been giving those legs a goodbye look. I'd decided the campus was just a place to hide. There were some campus freaks who stayed on forever. The whole college scene was soft. They never told you what to expect out there in the real world. They just crammed you with theory and never told you how hard the pavements were. A college education could destroy an individual for life. Books could make you soft. When you put them down, and really went out there, then you needed to know what they never told you. I had decided to quit after that semester, hang around Stinky and the gang, maybe meet somebody who had guts enough to hold up a liquor store or better yet, a bank.

"I knew you were going to quit," she said softly. '"Begin' is a better word."

"There's going to be a war. Did you read 'Sailor Off The Bremen'?"

"That New Yorker stuff doesn't work for me."

"You've got to read things like that if you want to understand what is happening today."

"I don't think so."

"You just rebel against everything. How are you going to survive?"

"I don't know. I'm already tired."

Mrs. Curtis looked down at her desk for a long time. Then she looked up at me.

"We're going to get drawn into the war, one way or the other. Are you going to go?"