Penelope’s boots were on the floor at the foot of the bed where they had landed after she’d yanked them off. Each boot was resting on its side as if pointing in the opposite direction of the other. Two suitcases, a hairbrush, and a container of resin kept them company there. An open guitar case with no guitar inside leaned against the wall. Next to it, was another guitar case, this one closed, and next to it a black-bodied electric guitar with a bright red pick guard stood. The boom box on the dresser reigned like a monument over the landscape of the dresser’s surface amidst a litter of notebooks, pens, books, magazines, and a scattering of guitar picks and CD’s. A puppet hanging on the wall across from me seemed to be staring directly at me (giving me the evil eye). The bedside table made a creaking noise, though it managed to accommodate without collapsing, a large glass of water, a bucket of ice, a bottle of expectorant, a container of Tylenol, a box of Kleenex, and a small bong.
I had improvised myself a chaise lounge by plumping a pillow behind my back, and stretching out on a metal trunk, placed lengthwise against the wall parallel to the bed. A jumbo take-out coffee was within my reach, and a pack of cigarettes. Despite my temporary nursing assignment in the hotel’s newly opened respiratory unit, smoke from my thirteen or fourteen cigarettes in a row had accumulated near the ceiling, and formed images of prophets and depictions of the Creation worthy of Michelangelo.
Penelope was on the bed clothed, a quilt covering her up to the waist. I managed to read using the little light from the bathroom able to squeeze through the partially open door.
Penelope began to toss. She flipped from side to side, flopped over onto her back, and spread her arms out and pulled the cover up under her chin.
“Are you warm enough Penelope?”
Still from a distance well inside her slumber she responded, “Huh?”
“You warm enough? Need any more cover?”
“I’m alright,” she grumbled.
I continued to read. Three or four minutes later Penelope opened her eyes. She looked around, took notice of me, then began to pull herself up in bed until she was practically sitting. She lurched into a pitiful convulsion of coughing, during which she reached for a Kleenex, and held it to her mouth. She sighed, threw the Kleenex onto the table and leaned back against the pillow.
“You guys really are staying.”
“We really are. How are you feeling?”
“I’m feeling like death on a fucking cracker.” She had barely finished when she began sneezing like a winter nor’easter.
“Bless you.”
Afterwards, she wiped her nose on her sleeve and sighed again. “Thanks. What’s that you’re reading?”
“Novel. South of Heaven by Jim Thompson.”
“What’s it about?”
“It’s about a bunch of derelicts, alkies, ex-cons, and basic n’er do wells putting down a gas pipeline in a shithole part of Texas during the Twenties. Jim Thompson was a moderately famous, notorious crime writer who specialized in psycho psychology and lurid behavior, and particularly evocative noir atmosphere. He lived a kind of shitkicker life that…”
Penelope had been staring at me in an odd way, and finally she interrupted. “I know…I know who Jim Thompson is, got it ace? You’re not the only one who reads. I honestly believe you think you are. Don’t you…”
“All right, all right. I’ve got my hands up. I’m fucking surrendering.”
“Good. I think I’ve got the plot.”
“Good.”
“My eyes are going to be too heavy and tired for me to read for a while anyhow.”
“Hold on a second.” I was excusing myself to the bathroom, but since she’d resumed the violent flinging away of the insides of her lungs I didn’t wait for any kind of acknowledgement. When I had completed as precise as possible a repositioning of the door in order to allow just enough light to enable reading, I turned, and saw her head was tilted slightly to the side, and she was sleeping soundly. Before I could get the pillow scrunched up satisfactorily again to put behind me, someone knocked. I made an effort to walk to the door as quietly as I possibly could. When I opened it, Andrew was standing there.
“I’m here,” he said at a normal volume.
“Shhhhhhhsh.” I shooed him away from the door and out into the hall. “Keep it down. She’s sleeping. She woke up for a minute, but now she’s back asleep.”
“Oh.”
“Make sure she takes the Tylenol as close to six or six-thirty as possible. Give her three. The important thing is keeping the fever under control.”
“Check.”
“And make sure she stays warm. If the blanket's off her and she looks cold, put it back up over her. If she seems hot, and she wakes up, get her to chew on some ice.”
“Right.”
“And you know...if she's having any serious difficulty breathing...or if the fever seems to be getting way out of control, it's time to get her to the emergency room...we'll have no choice.”
“Gotcha. Now, can I ask you a question?”
“What?”
“Can I go in the room?”
“Yeah. But do it quietly.”
I was asleep no more than ninety seconds after I shoved the household appliances and pleasure-related contraband off my bed and laid down, and began using it as it was designed to be used. I woke up late in the morning, only doing so then because of a racket outside my window sounding as close as anything possibly could to a gas-powered leaf blower eating a pigeon. As there was no work that day, once up, I made soup, and assuaged my liquor-insulted physiology. No actual cooking was involved, though the hot water in the sink was required to run for a very, very long time. I sat at the window, looking out as I usually did at breakfast, this time casually searching the sidewalk below for pigeon feathers and oil spots. As I was slurping Ramen there was a knock at the door. When I opened it, a portly Hispanic man wearing a white shirt and a yellow tie introduced himself as a representative of the United States Department of the Census. And to think, the day had started out with soup. Once across the threshold of my cheery domicile he said, “this will only take twenty or thirty minutes of your time.” At this point I mentally recorded the following note to self: always ask who it is before you open the door. If the voice on the other side answers by informing you that he or she is a representative of the United States Bureau of the Census, tell them you would like to participate, but unfortunately you are currently bedridden with a life-threatening case of lice; or you’re in the process of putting black tar heroin addiction in your past, and are presently hurling your stomach contents every twenty seconds.
I pulled the hard-backed chair away from the desk, and scooted it into the meager patch of open floor space. I sat down on the bed across from him, resigned.
“Is this required? In other words, is there any kind of punishment for not complying with this?”
“Well…technically, there are fines…I believe a hundred dollars for failure to respond, and 500 for providing false information. I think it’s rare it’s ever enforced.”
“Uh huh.”
“I’ll be with you in just one moment.” He zipped open a black valise, and yanked out a stack of paper. He put a form on a clipboard he also took from inside the valise, and began jotting things on it with his pen. He verified my hotel room number then wrote some more on the form in silence. He lifted the pen, looked directly at me and asked, “How many people were living or staying in this room on April first of this year?”
I looked directly at him a little longer than was necessary, before answering, “One. You believe me, right?”
“Yes,” he said without smiling.
“Okay, is this hotel room: A. Owned by you or someone in this hotel room with a mortgage or loan? B. Owned by you or someone in this hotel room free and clear? C. Rented for cash rent? D. Occupied without payment of cash rent?” Then he looked across at me as he awaited my answer. Involuntarily
this time, I looked directly at him a little longer than was necessary before answering, “Usually C, but occasionally D.”
“I need for you to specify one or the other if you could.”
“C.”
“Fine.”
“How am I doing so far?”
“Fine.”
Next he wanted to know my name, which I provided, spelling it out slowly. Having completed the name section of the questionnaire he looked at me and inquired as to my gender. Normally, this might have offended me, at least a little, but in this hotel it wasn’t out of the question to do so, and probably the most thoroughly conscientious way to go. As he was writing down the response, another visitor started pounding the door.
“Oh shit. Is this how it works? There’s a good census cop and a bad census cop?”
“No,” he said flatly, “just me.”
I opened the door and found the Professor standing in the middle of the hall.
“You’re late,” he said. “I have to get downstairs and open up, and it’s your shift to stay with Penelope. Your shift was supposed to start at noon. You coming?”
“Yeah, I was planning to, but I’ve got company.” I moved aside so he could see inside the room.
“Who’s that?”
“Census taker.”
“No joke? Man, he must be the worst, or the unluckiest census taker in the United States to get sent to this place.”
“I doubt the guy they sent to Watts feels that way.”
“That’s true. So what about Penelope?”
“Go on down to work. I’ll be at Pen’s in a minute. I just need to clean up a little, and think of a way to lose the federal government.”
“All right. But don’t take forever.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Now listen,” he said. “She’s sleeping now, so you need to make your entrance as quiet as possible, and settle in without a lot of noise.”
“Aye aye.”
“Don’t wear headphones or anything, because you won’t be able to hear what her breathing sounds like, or anything else.”
“Right.”
“And you can’t smoke in there anymore.”
“Gotcha.”
“And don’t let her smoke either.”
“I won’t”
“Remember to give her THREE Tylenol. Do it as close to two or two-thirty as you possibly can.”
“Please go to work.”
“I’m going.”
After I’d closed the door, I asked the census taker if he would excuse me for just a minute. He signaled okay. I went into the bathroom and splashed water on my face, took my clothes off and washed myself as fast as I could, then dried and dressed. I dampened my hair, and quickly combed the coif into presentable style. Back in the room, I looked around for South of Heaven, snatched it up and turned to my local census representative and told him “I have an emergency. I’ll be back. You’re welcome to wait here as long as you would like.”
“I don’t know if,” were the last words I heard him say before I was out of earshot and dashing for the stairs.
I enthusiastically embraced a return to the oil fields of south Texas, with their intransigent soil, and their transient humanity saddled with dilapidated prospects. Penelope’s sleep was so sound she hardly stirred at all. I uncoiled myself, rose up off the trunk and interrupted my reading only a few times. Those times, when I helped her drink came after she’d awakened with obviously painful coughs, revealing an alarming congestion densely and thickly ensconced deep down in her chest.
I explained the severity of Pen’s condition to Andrew in the hallway before he began his shift. I told him I had been struck by an idea during my latest performance of the Florence Nightingale routine.
“I was thinking…where is the office this week?”
“Does this have something to do with your recreational activity between shifts?”
“Not this time Sherlock. Do you know?”
“Yeah. It’s...let’s see, 2…0…right, 208.”
“I’m thinking it’s possible he might have, or might know somebody who has some forged scripts…the kind prescriptions are written on; or know someone who is able to forge them. We don’t have time to wait, or the money to get them off the Internet… or a computer, for that matter. If we could get a hold of something for not a lot of dough…then it’s a way to get antibiotics without having to pay the expense of seeing a doctor.”
“I have no idea. If you want to ask him about it, there’s nothing to lose.”
“I think I will.”
“Let me know.”
Forsaking the elevator, I hit the door to the stairs running, and wended my way around the landings. At 208 I thumped at the door.
“Yeah?”
“Elmo. It’s Donovan.”
In his standard office apparel of sneakers, shirt and errant shirttail, he let me in.
“Hey buster. Howz ya doin’?”
“Good. Good.”
He shuffled back to his chair in front of the window. Along with the laptop on the bed, and the briefcase, which now was on the bed also, a small television was on the dresser. “What can I do for you?” he inquired as usual.
“I doubt it’s anything you would have yourself, but I figured if you didn’t, you might be able to steer me in the direction of somebody who does.”
“What is it you’re looking for?”
“There's a woman who lives here...a couple of us here hang out with her a little, who has the mother of all respiratory infections. She ought to go to the doctor and get a load of antibiotics, but nobody has the cash, not at the moment anyhow. I've heard of people who hit doctor's offices and boost those pads they write prescriptions on. Would you know by any chance anybody who might have one with a forgery for an antibiotic, willing to sell me one, or to forge me one…on your recommendation naturally...one script...so we can get this chick some medicine?”
He shook his head in the negative. “I hate to tell you, I know a person who deals in those, but there’s not much bread in underground antibiotics. You can get a prescription for them off the Internet without much trouble. That would be my suggestion.”
“We don’t have a computer, or a credit card, and if we need them it’s going to be in the next twenty-four hours, and by the time they send them here, even if we paid for the fastest delivery, it could be too late to keep her from getting really sick. But it’s not a bad suggestion…we might have to look into it if she takes a turn for the worse.”
“If anybody would bother with medicine like that, it’d cost you a whole lot more than to go to a doctor AND to pay the pharmacy for the medicine combined.”
“Really? Hmm.”
“You know what kind of shit you’re in for nabbing one of those things?”
“I can guess.”
“What they do to you for trafficking in that stuff is worse than what they do to you for trafficking in this stuff,” nodding at the briefcase as he spoke. “The people who heist those things don't take that kind of risk for chicken scratch. Besides, people want to use those scripts for heavy duty shit...when the cash isn't really a problem...maybe a shitload of Seconal, or maybe cyanide, to off somebody….a lot of the time, themselves. People get shit like liquid morphine...the really hard stuff that only the pharmaceutical companies can afford to make.”
“Fuck.”
“Fuck is right. Who is this woman, anyway?”
“Her name is Penelope. Cool girl. Good musician.”
“Like me.”
“Cool girl or good musician?”
“You knew I used to be in a band.”
“I thought you used to sell…wasn’t it furniture?”
“Yeah, I sold furniture, and before that I sold insurance, and before that I was doing music. I played bass in the Fisters.”
“That’s right. Hardcore punk.”
“Fuckin’ A.”
“Oh well.
Guess we’ll have to try a little longer to get her healed up without the meds.”
“I’d like to check out the girl’s music some time.”
“If the opportunity presents itself I’ll introduce you.”
“What kind of stuff is she doing?”
“Kind of raw…no Miles Davis pun intended. You might call it hard folk.”
Instead of listening to me, Elmo was zombified in front of the television. Pointing his finger, he said, “Another car chase on Channel Five.” He got quiet when he resumed staring, then forty or fifty seconds later exclaimed, “Is that the 101? Man, I have to get home on that sonofabitch.”
“Exposure to news on the local channels is without any question at all one of the lower circles of hell. All you do is watch this same car chase...that same dumb motherfucker keeps going and going...and he always gets caught.”
On my way to the refreshment stand next door for a brief respite from the hustle and bustle of hotel life, I checked in at the front desk for any messages before trotting out the door. There was one from my pimperary, which had left word of an assignment awaiting me the next day, a three-day job in fact. As usual, I was to call back in for location and times and rate of pay.
In the meantime, bleary-eyed from reading, but with no appetite for conversation, or even company, I chose to eschew the bar and sit at a table alone. Early evening was neither my customary, nor my favorite time for a visit. It generally featured the after work, or after looking for work, or after sleeping all day crowds. This night, seats at the bar were mostly taken, and about half of the tables already were in use. Mr. Orlov, another hotel resident, was seated at a table some distance away from the cluster of tables already occupied. My desire to likewise place a buffer between myself and other recreationists caused me to take possession of the table next to him. As the tables began to fill, both of us were soon surrounded.
De-carbonated in spirit, but benefiting from the anodyne effects of vodka and inner life I couldn’t help but eventually become susceptible to involuntary eavesdropping on the increasingly voluble conversations around me. The more vodka went down the hatch, the further into the well of my preoccupations I fell, and alternately, the more distracted by nearby conversations. The first I began to pay attention to, as one would expect, was that of a couple sitting at a table to the side, and a little in front of me.
“It’s amazing how attractive Marilyn Monroe still was when she killed herself…I mean, she didn’t look anywhere close to fifty-seven.”
“It’s too bad you know, the suicide machine invented by Dr. Spock wasn’t available for her to use, instead of a butcher knife.”
“Did you know there’s an artery that actually comes up out of the body…sort of like a subway train that comes up out of a tunnel, and runs on an elevated track, an artery right above your armpit near your back…it’s right there outside your body, an inch or two long. It’s really hard to get to, but you can just cut that thing in two and kill yourself…pronto.”
Mr. Orlov had brought along his portable tape recorder, which I could see was sitting on the table in front of him. I had seen him with the recorder before, carrying it with him as he walked, sitting in the bar, or at one resting place or another out front. His demeanor was a mixture of gentleness and weariness, and in my few encounters with him, he had been both polite and diffident. Each time he had been well spoken enough. I watched him for a moment. He was a thin man with thick, dark hair, sunken cheeks and the remnants of a poor complexion in youth. He was drinking the bar’s coffee, which was always free. Tonight, he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, with its effect of emphasizing the gawky slenderness of his arms, which were long, scrawny and pale.
Near me, conversation from the same couple was still as impossible to ignore as it had been before. The man, who had referred to himself more than once as a physician was saying to his companion, “My point is, that when they tried banning the sale of laxatives during prohibition it was entirely unsuccessful. On the other hand, it did lead to the process of extracting juice from prunes invented by Dr. Pasteur.”
“Yes, I remember all of that from my course in Early Twentieth Century American History at Duke.”
“And no one has ever died from ephedra use,” the man continued.
“Of course” the woman said, “it’s hypocritical to ban the sale of laxatives while allowing the sale of Columbian coffee in stores offering the sale of muffins. But since ephedra’s only use is as a date rape drug I see no reason why it should not be banned.”
“No, the Surgeon General’s office recommends it as a part of any sensible weight loss program. For people interested in losing weight, ephedra, along with ensuring that the largest meal of the day is the final one…and that the meal is eaten as close to one hour prior to bedtime as possible…those are the keys.”
Another conversation close by, slowly began to bleed into the one I had been listening to, until it had entirely superceded the first .The new one originated at the table over to the right, and slightly ahead of where the couple was sitting, the table directly in front of mine. The occupants were two men and a woman. The woman was saying, “It’s romantic to think in those terms, to go on believing art is able to have an effect. But I can think of no painting, or piece of writing that has ever done it, not on contemporaneous events, or on the politics of its time. For all the intensity and power De Kooning invested in Guernica, it had no effect whatsoever on the Spanish invasion of Poland.”
“It didn’t prevent England from stink-bombing Dresden near the end of World War Two,” offered one of the men.
“Updike wrote Slaughterhouse-Five about his presence in Dresden,” added the other man, “at the time it was stink-bombed, which didn’t prevent Hubert Humphrey from carrying out the Christmas bombing of Taiwan in 1972.”
“But,” said the first man suddenly excited, and directing his comments toward the woman now, “I think I have an example for you. I believe you could make a case that the movie about a Russian power plant, that the lessons of “The China Syndrome” may have, at the very least, prevented a recurrence of problems at the Chernobyl reactor in Outer Mongolia.”
“Perhaps,” the woman answered. “I got quite a bit out of The China Syndrome. I enjoyed the movie. But films like that in Russian with English subtitles take too much effort for me to watch most of the time.”
“What about Flaubert’s writings concerning the Dreyfus Affair?” the second man interjected.
“That wasn’t art, it was journalism,” the first man answered. “If you want to change the discussion to what artists have done as individuals to produce change in the world, I’m fine with that, but it’s a different discussion. Besides, the Dreyfus matter had to do with anti-Catholicism and anger toward Rome. I’ll give Flaubert credit for bringing to the fore the problem of hostility from the Jewish majority in France toward the Catholic minority.”
Nothing had gone into my stomach since the morning soup, and nothing solid the entire day. The relaxing effect of the vodka was certainly expedited on an empty belly. I felt a kind of alarming skepticism at just that moment, as to whether I would be able to get as relaxed as the day so far, as my world was making me feel I probably needed to be. I got up out of my chair, and approached the bar, as I did so flashing the refill sign to the Professor when I caught his eye. Standing waiting, I turned my head slightly to the right, as I followed the Professor to the vodka bottle, glancing down to see what looked to be a coarse mop of white hair that had grown in under my chin. Stu’s head was there, and he was standing so close to me we were nearly conjoined. The old guy said, ““Got one for you.”
“All right Stu. Let’s hear it.”
“What do you call the result of a meal shared by a Catholic priest, a Jewish Rabbi and a Protestant minister?”
I nodded my head. “Beats the hell out of me, Stu.”
“An ecumenical movement.”
&n
bsp; He grinned. I laughed. “Give Stu one on me,” I directed the Professor.
I returned to my seat, setting down my drink, laying a fresh pack of smokes beside it. Back at my table, back in the vortex I went after the vodka at even a more immoderate pace than before. I peered through the smoke sailing out of my mouth and quickly was entranced again by snatches of conversation near me, these coming from the table slightly to my right and closer beside me than the table where the other three continued to hold forth. The two men, each wearing a cap bearing the name of a soft drink company across the front, conversed over the tops of frosted mugs.
“I heard it while I was driving in. I was stuck in traffic, and there was nothing else to do but to sit there and listen to the radio. He said the reduction in the ozone layer above the Rock of Gibraltar has to do with greenhouse orchids being grown all over the place. That’s the cause.”
“No, on the 700 Club they said it was whorehouse gasses, unregulated whorehouse gasses.”
I stubbed the cigarette out and rattled the ice in my glass as a way of temporarily blocking out the sound. I stopped, let the sound back in, two women in business suits catching my eye before I’d caught a lick of their conversation. They were facing one another with unnervingly proper posture, sitting at the table directly next to me on my right. There was no question these dialogues were moving, or at the least, that I was only able to pluck them out of the bar’s cacophony in a circular fashion: conversations that moved in a precisely clockwise motion around me, me at the center, the middle of the swirl. It was not merely that I could only focus on a single discussion at one time. But that audibly isolated pieces of conversation were available only in that way.
One of the women next to me could be heard saying sharply to the other, “It’s easy to stop drinking. It isn’t even such a bad addiction, really…alcoholism. You’re only unable to stop if you’re incredibly weak.”
“And there’s no such thing as addictive and non-addictive personalities. It’s not just a genetic thing, or luck, or body chemistry that allows some people to enjoy things such as alcohol without developing uncontrollable dependencies. It’s just a matter of character, of using self-control…the way I do,” the other explained.
“Exactly. Whining about heroin’s addictiveness is simply a giant excuse. If you have the proper values, you’ll never end up in such a situation. Goodness, heroin is less addictive than popcorn. It’s just that people who enjoy eating a lot of popcorn are of a higher quality. Billy Graham was a regular heroin user before he became a Christian. And prayer was all he needed to end the habit.”
“Exactly. Junkies who find the Lord have no use for methadone. Besides, it doesn’t even work on Caucasians.”
“JFK wrecked that boat during World War II and he needed pain killers the rest of his life…that’s the kind of thing a real man never would have needed.”
“I’ve told you about my brother in-law, the really poor one, haven’t I?”
“Oh yes.”
“Well, he’ll spend money for Novocain when he goes to a dentist, but he never has enough to fix the broken glass in the windows of his house. The wind just blows through. If they simply have to freeze, that’s the way it is. He moans about it all the time, just for show. But I know for a fact he could care less.”
“The way some people live. If everybody worked as hard as my husband does, and as I do part-time, nobody would need to complain. I bet he’s barely made any investments at all in the market. Money is wasted on people like that. They barely pay any taxes at all, while people like my husband and I are paying upwards of seventy or eighty percent capital gains tax every time we liquidate.”
“He’s quite a specimen. You know he’s a courier, and hey…probably ten or twenty percent of the country has at least one prosthetic leg. He could have two. But he only has one, so that tells you something about the lack of ambition. You know how crumby the money for those kinds of jobs is.”
“That’s the sister who has to use coupons just to get groceries to feed them, isn’t it? People like that get a kick out of standing at the cash register handing over those coupons getting all the attention… everybody feeling so sorry for them.”
“I’m ashamed to go with her. I never would. All they eat is canned food, and reduced meat. They have no clue when it comes to choosing the best, or the highest quality.”
The overlapping of this conversation with a conversation from the table just behind me made both of them incomprehensible, until the overlapping stopped, and the one directly behind me prevailed. I edged around in my chair, crooked my head and got a peek. A large, black youth in a sweatshirt sat across from a man twice his age in a business suit, a de-facto price tag hanging off its sleeve that read: exquisite. The younger man was saying to the older man, “You see this blue? You know where I’m from, don’t ya? Blue on that block? You know what it about. I hear a brother works for the president…like, his butler and shit, was a Crip down there, too. Nigger did three in Pelican for settin’ a brother’s hair on fire.”
“You mean, the president on the TV show?”
“TV show?”
“So you were saying?” the older man said, abandoning the mission.
“My boy Pinkie, he the scariest killer down there, Holmes. Last night, he blowed a cartridge of M & M’s up their asses over at Twenty-second. Got two grandmas, three baby strollers, a dude in a wheelchair, two blind street vendors and a little brown dog. They knows who is boss now.”
“Yeah…good stuff. What I was saying was that any pissant actor can get ten, fifteen mil for doing any motherfucking lousy flick. You wanna live larger than that, you certainly can. If some pussies putting music out for other companies wants to settle for that let ‘em do it. And there’s another thing we can offer you in OUR contract, similar to life insurance…in this case, it’s jail insurance: you get in trouble, DA can’t lay a hand on you, can’t touch you…no sir. It’s one of the most popular aspects of the contracts we are currently offering. Rabid C and T-Bag…it’s the reason you see them handing out music awards instead of peeling potatoes in Corcoran.”
“Dang.”
Another perfectly good glass of vodka was shot to hell, so I got up and strolled myself to the bar again. As I passed Mr. Orlov on my return, I saw him speaking into his tape recorder. Then I watched from my seat as he maintained his hands cupped around the microphone, keeping his body hunched defensively around the recorder and his back to most of the other tables as he spoke. I couldn’t hear him, but even if I could have, I doubt he would have interrupted the flow of conversations from other tables. In fact, talk from tables one over from the circle of tables closest to me, the tables whose variety of pronouncements, declarations and persuasion already had reached my ears, and seemed to seek them out in fact, began to flood me, too. The first I heard from this outer circle was a man explaining to two women, “Bill Gates began the work on a water-resistant, floatable personal computer with me, over at Cal Tech. He first tested the product by sending it over the highest falls west of the Mississippi, which is the Rose Falls on the Pasadena River.”
“Oh,” said one of the women, “I know. I read about that in Popular Mechanics.”
“It works on the Pythagorean Theorem of quantum physics I think,” the other woman added.
“When Jefferson wrote the Magna Carter…” I heard, not from the table where the three were sitting, but the table in front of them, realizing that the spiral of conversation around me was speeding up.
“When I was a Cardinal in Rome, we went daily into the streets and fed the sick and homeless, mopped the public restrooms, and carried out the tradition of waxing the legs of prostitutes in the Piazza del Popolo,” a man was telling a woman at the table next in the ring of tables.
“I believe that is so beautifully addressed in the Bible, in a passage from the 23rd Psalm, where it speaks of Jesus chasing the lepers out of the temple,” the woman replied.
Irresistibly, my attention was hijacked away by things that were being said and things that were being done at the table directly in front of the table that was directly in front of mine. “How much are the plastic swizzle sticks,” asked a man of a woman carrying a tray that was held in front of her by a strap going around her neck and shoulders.
“Twenty-five dollars,” she told him.
“I’ll take one of those,” the man said.
“How much for a cocktail?” another man at the table asked.
“One cocktail, a single, twenty dollars. We have a special though, a double for seventy-five.”
“All right. Let me have a double Ocean Breeze.” Before I knew it, what was being said at the table adjacent to the one where this activity was taking place, had virtually leapt in front of the interaction at the other, and drowned it out.
“…same as during Vietnam,” I heard a woman telling another, “when General Westmoreland said to Ho Chi Minh through the press, “You light up my life all the way to the end of the tunnel.” And before another word was said, the talk from the table directly behind the table directly behind mine was rising above the talk from the table where the two women were discussing war and peace.
“And that reminds me of the quote,” a bearded man in spectacles was saying with absolute solemnity to a younger man, also with a beard and spectacles, “by Immanuel Kant when he said, ‘golf is a good walk spoiled,’ only seconds before he was killed by Schopenhaur on the back nine at Pebble Beach.”
I was able to hear the squeak of a chair, and turned to see Mr. Orlov get up out of his seat and begin walking slowly in the direction of the john. I heard a voice waft above the drone of others, from somewhere I couldn’t place, which said, ““My show is syndicated on one-hundred and thirty stations.”
Aware of a jostling beside me, I turned to see a man I had never seen before standing at Mr. Orlov’s table, peering down at his tape recorder. Another man joined him, a friend it appeared. The first man was reaching down, and when I heard sounds coming out of the tape recorder I realized what was going on. The first man stopped the tape, pressed another button, and I could hear the machine as the tape rewound. The first man switched the tape to PLAY again, he and the other man sharing a snicker when he did. “My show is syndicated on one-hundred and thirty stations.” Initially, I bent forward in my chair a little in order to better hear. But there wasn’t a need. The words were loud enough. It was Mr. Orlov’s voice I could hear next: “…beginning a diary entry. Still the same day as previous entry. The spool is turning, so I know there’s energy still left in the batteries. I can’t replace them. I just finished my appointment at Robinsons-May. I...I was humiliated by the man who does the hiring. I've already talked about how hot it's been for about...about a week, now. During this week, the two clean shirts I still had left both got soiled with perspiration. I guess the shirt I'm wearing smells, because the man at the store said to me that in the future I should wear deodorant, implying that he could smell me. No one's ever said anything like that to me before. I had two dollars and sixty-five cents this week. There still isn't near enough altogether to have enough that I could use on laundry. I was going to wash the shirt I was going to wear today in the sink, but I was afraid it would still be wet by the time I was supposed to go. I'm going to soak all of my shirts, but one, in the sink after I finish this. Still…I guess the harm is done. When he said that to me, it almost felt like I had been hit with a fist. It shocked me, because, you don't expect someone to say anything like that to your face. It was embarrassing, extremely embarrassing. I've never been humiliated like that before. Ever. I don't remember anything ever like that, feeling so humiliated like that. What else can I say? That reminds me, I should finish reading the essay by Isaac Babel, stop walking around so much, and finish reading the essay. If all my shirts are soaking, I'll just stay inside and read. And sleep I guess. I wonder if in the larger scheme of things my trouble is really significant in any way, compared to others’? It is worthwhile to wonder...the kind of thing I should really think about. Nothing is ever worse than being too self-important. Of course, that sounds silly, when you say it in a city like this I guess. I guess it makes me silly, to say something as ridiculous as that. I ought to finish reading the essay.”
I tilted my glass, turning it almost upside down above my mouth in order to get the last of its contents pouring into my mouth, and rolling down my throat. I thrust my chair back demonstrably, and the two tampering with the tape recorder went skipping out of the bar, like junior high school girls dismissed from cheerleading practice early. After hearing what I’d heard I had the strongest desire to locate my head on the platform of a drill press, where it would be several seconds and a spinning bit away from removal of consciousness.
I went out into the street and down to the market for a pint of vodka before I returned to Pen’s. I’d promised Andrew to spell him for a little while, to do a mini-shift in the middle of his regular one so that he could watch a show about an Antarctic explorer on the History Channel. We conferred in the middle of the hall outside of the room before I went in.
“She’s been in a deep, deep sleep for hours, so whatever you do, don’t wake her up,” he said.
“Not a chance.”
“Take her temperature as soon as she gets up,” he instructed.
“You can count on me,” I said.
I tiptoed into the room and made myself comfortable on the trunk against the wall. I pulled the vodka bottle out of the paper sack, the crinkling causing Penelope to open her eyes and look at me a little startled. I sat motionless, in case the moment of wakefulness should pass and Penelope’s eyelids should droop back down. But she was awake, and it was the real thing.
“You had to wake up some time,” I said in a sheepishly softened voice.
“Very profound,” she said.
“Yeah well.” I cracked the seal of the vodka, removed the cap and refreshed myself.
“Jesus, I feel a lot better,” she told me.
“Before I forget it, let me take your temperature.”
“You don’t have to take my fucking temperature. I can put a thermometer in my mouth.” She poked around on the bedside table until she found it. “I already can tell my fever is gone,” she added.
“That’s good news.”
“I’m starving too.”
“Let me see,” I said, on my feet again, and opening the plastic bags at the end of the bed. “When we bought expectorant and Tylenol we thought ahead and bought you cans of food.”
“The canned stuff…yum.”
I knelt down and ferreted through the selection. “We’ve got soup…um, beans…here’s some chili.”
“Looks like it’s going to be a Hormel evening.”
“Only if I can find a hot plate to warm it up. I wouldn't make you eat cold Hormel chili even if you weren't sick...or already sick.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Hang on. I'm gonna go looking for a hot plate.”
“You guys are really troopers…no kidding.”
“Yeah…troopers.”
I spurted out of the room, dashed down the hallway, then took to the stairs two at a time to the next floor. When I reached the door of the gaunt tweaker whose room was across the hall from mine I banged hard. The door flew open, the gaunt man standing there in his tee shirt waving the machete in his right hand.
“Hey,” he blurted.
“Sorry man. I wouldn't bother you, except a friend of mine...this girl who lives upstairs is pretty sick. I was hoping to heat her up some food. You wouldn't happen to have a hot plate would you?”
“Is this that same crazy fucking coconut we carried outta here screaming like a tortured animal?”
“No, fuck no. This is somebody else.”
“I don't have a hot plate. You want a hot plate? That what you said?”
“Yeah. A hot plate. To cook on...you know.??
?
“Yeah, I know. My buddy Jimmy down the hall, he's got one. Try him. He might let ya borrow it.” He pointed down the hall. “Next floor up, last one on the right.”
“The long-haired guy?”
“That’s the dude.”
“Thanks boss. I’m really sorry to bother you.”
“No problem.”
I reversed course, climbed back up the stairs, and knocked where the man upstairs had told me to knock. Jimmy opened the door but didn’t say a thing.
“Jimmy, right?” I asked him.
“You’re lookin’ for Jimmy?”
“Yeah. You’re Jimmy?”
“Yeah. Jimmy.”
“Your buddy down the hall told me he thought you had a hot plate you might be able to loan me for a while. I want to cook this friend of mine who's sick a little something hot to eat. You think that might be okay?”
“Yeah...alright. Come in a minute. I gotta unplug it.”
I followed him into the room, which, in terms of order, even for the Essex, was something of a living cubist painting.
“Smokey in here,” I said.
“I was on the pipe,” he declared, in a manner that was the obvious antithesis of defensive.
“Sorry to interrupt.”
“Don’t matter. I can go back.”
Jimmy unplugged the hot plate, lifted it up and handed it to me. I was carrying it cradled under my elbow, the cord dangling down behind me. As I headed for the door I said, “I’ll get it back to you pretty quick.”
“Ain’t no hurry.”
As I neared the door, I glanced down and noticed the crack pipe resting on the table. Noticing me noticing it Jimmy picked up the pipe and said, “Here. Have a hit. It’s already loaded.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Catch a bolt.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” I lifted up the glass pipe, put it to my lips, and let Jimmy graciously supply the flame. I drew in the smoke and held it.
“You getting’ it?” he asked.
Hissing out a faint residue of dingy smoke, I answered, “Definitely.”
“Feelin’ it now?” he queried again.
“Nice.”
“Go ahead and do one more.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, here.” He once again was my provider of fire. “Got it?” he needed to know, yet again.
“Excellent,” I said blowing out the smoke, doing my best to grin from ear to ear as visual confirmation. “Thanks. I'll get your hot plate back as soon as I warm up the food for my friend upstairs.”
“Ain’t no hurry.”
My hand was inches away from the door when Jimmy yelled out to me, “Hey man.”
“Yeah?”
“You got a pot to cook in?”
“Uh...no I don't, as a matter of fact.”
He went over and picked up a white-enameled saucepan from the table where the hot plate had been and brought it to me. “Here you go.”
“I really appreciate it.”
“Dude, no problem.”
I tried to stay on top of the chili while it was warming, stirring it around every forty or fifty seconds. Penelope was under the covers again scrunched up on her side. I found myself tapping out a little rhythm on the side of the metal saucepan with the metal spoon: rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat. Penelope wallowed over onto her other side, finally twitching over again and resting on her back.
“Jesus.”
I realized what I was doing and stopped. “Oh. Sorry.”
“Boy, you came back awfully perky,” she said.
“Yeah,” unable to suppress a chuckle. I picked the spoon up again and started to stir the chili. I noticed that after ninety seconds or so the spoon was tapping on the side of the hot plate again, and then tapping on the rim of the pan, going back and forth. I heard a groan, and turned to see Penelope twisting herself over onto her stomach, holding the pillow over her head with two hands. I checked myself again, and decided the time had arrived to remove the chili from the source of heat. I put the pan on the floor and went over to unplug the hot plate. I got a coffee mug from Penelope’s dresser, ladled some chili in, and walked it over and served it to her in bed.
I stood at the window, looking out, and tapping on the glass with a pencil while Penelope ate her chili. Someone turned, or pressed a switch in the room above us, and music thundered overhead like the wrath of Buckethead.
“Not a quiet place left on the face of the Earth,” I snarled.
“Holy God,” she exclaimed, looking up at the ceiling, the spoon in her hand frozen beside her.
“People who like to have a little quiet are the last fucking abused minority…or, one of the last.”
Penelope didn’t say anything, but she raised her spoon in solidarity.
“Wait,” I announced. I walked to the door and flung it open, stomped to the end of the hall and took to the stairs again. I got to the door of the room manufacturing the offending decibels and pounded it with my fist. A lanky black man wearing a black tank top, a thick gold chain around the neck and red boxers lapping at his knees, opened the door. Behind him I could see two women, a raven haired woman and a brunet beside her visible sitting on the end of a bed, one of them Asian, wearing only panties; the other white, and completely nude.
“What is it, bro?”
“It’s your music, bro. It’s too fucking loud. A friend of mine who lives downstairs, in the room right below yours, is pretty sick, and she's trying to get some rest. With your music playing at that volume it’s going to be impossible.”
“Hmmm.” He rubbed the side of his face with his hand as he stood there. He glanced back toward the bed where the women were, turned back to me, and said, “Tell you what, blood, why don't we step out in the hall a minute.”
I stepped back, and he slipped out the door and shut it behind him.
“Thing is my man, we weren’t gonna be playin’ no music much longer anyways. We wus partyin’ a little before we get ourselves back to business. Lemme ask you, you real busy right at the moment, bro? Shoot. Wait here.” He turned around and went back into the room. Not too many seconds after that the music was switched off. He opened the door, shut it behind him, and joined me in the hall again.
“Thanks. If my friend wasn’t sick, you wouldn’t be seeing me.”
“Naw…is awright. I get what your situation is. I tell you what, though…my thing is this,” and he lowered his voice a little, “I gotta uncle, see…he distributes these tapes we make, amateur video…adult shit, ya know?”
“Um hmm.”
“You just shoot it on a video camera. You’d be surprised all the money’s in it, man.”
“I don’t think anybody would be surprised,” I said with a laugh.
“Yeah… it’s good,” he conceded through a reticent grin. “Thing is, if you was interested, for the hell of it, cause I can’t be payin’ nothin’, you could help me out runnin’ the camera a li’l while. Might be some fun…gettin’ to watch you know.”
“Running the camera in amateur porn, huh? That’s a career choice I’ve overlooked in the past.”
“I’m just saying…” he answered, before I interrupted him.
“So this is on the job training basically, sort of an internship without pay, that it?
“Exactly.”
“What would I be doing specifically, should I accept the offer?”
“I already got Saffron and Belinda together, and me gettin' it down with Saffron, but if you was to help me, I could get the three of us, me and them at once...see what I'm saying?”
“I do. But it’s my own busy season at the moment, and besides, I’m looking after a sick friend.”
“Either way. If you wanna come in anyhow, I got some righteous chronic make the hair stand up on da backya neck…some smooth wine cooler, too.”
This warranted a pause for consideration. I couldn’t be expected to provide high quali
ty health care if I didn’t take the occasional break.
“I’ll stay a couple of minutes.”
“Yo.” He took a big stride toward the door and opened it, then stood in front of it to let me go inside first. The two girls on the end of the bed stopped talking and stared. He closed the door, looked over at the girls, then turned to me, and asked, “Hey what’s your name?”
“Donovan.”
“Donovan. All right. Glad to have ya, Donovan.”
“What’s yours?”
“Mine? I go by Flipper.”
“Flipper?”
“Yeah. Flipper. F-L-I-P-P-E-R. Flipper.”
“Okey doke.”
My initial survey of the room revealed skirts, boots and bras strewn on the floor on one side of the bed, a backpack, a tote bag and a gym bag dumped on the other.
“Whose room is this?” I asked, as I looked around.
“Mine,” the white girl told me, “for a week, just a week.”
“Oh.”
“That’s Belinda,” Flipper told me, after which Belinda duly smiled.
“And Saffron.” The Asian girl simply nodded.
When Flipper took the pipe in hand and began to scoop vegetable matter into the bowl, Belinda shouted, “FLIIIIIIIPPPPP-ERRRRRRR. Hand me that pipe, sweetie,” and laughed heartily at her own hilarity.
“Naw…now we got to serve up our new guest first,” he said, tamping down the bowl, and handing it to me. I took my hit, then walked the pipe over and handed it to Belinda.
“Thanks, sweetie.”
Flipper said, “Check on this,” and I walked over, and watched as he put some ice in a cup, took a bottle out of the mini-fridge and poured the cup full of Bartles and Jaymes Fuzzy Navel Cooler. As I took the cup I detected the sensations on my scalp that are the early signs of the process of vivisection indicative of higher quality marijuana.
“Tasty,” I said, after a small sip.
Flipper went over and sat on the bed with the girls, so I followed him over. The bud was so powerful, I was almost certain I was hallucinating, unless Colonel Sanders happened to be in the room. I wasn’t paying much attention to the other three, when I spotted the camera sitting in the corner behind the door. Suddenly, feeling a surge of community spirit, above and beyond the other surges, I decided to repay my comrade in THC, Flipper, for his hospitality by operating the camera a while. Flipper was profuse in his delight. Though buzzing like a florescent light, I comprehended the instructions he gave on the use of the camera. Flipper pulled his shirt off and dropped his boxers, and approached the bed.
“Ya’ll start,” he instructed, aping Kurosawa no doubt. “Saffron, let’s see…lay back…Belinda, get down on her, then I’ll come in on you from behind. Dig?” Belinda didn’t answer, but she and Saffron complied with the instructions given. Once the girls got going Flipper turned to me and said, “Kick it.”
Flipper performed the scene he had informed me out in the hall he meant to perform. He had instructed me before I turned the camera on to hold it steady as possible, then to turn it off, move as quickly as possible to another place for another angle, and then turn the camera back on, and begin to film again, which is what I did. In the tradition of great cinematographers, I used every technique I was capable of to enhance the quality of the production. After fifteen or twenty minutes Flipper and his partner in the scene Belinda, collaborated to produce a poignant money shot.
Job done, I relaxed smoking a cigarette, sipping B & J and interpreting a dried dollop of guacamole Rorschach on the refrigerator door. Saffron was in the corner next to the bed talking to Flipper. He turned, and walked to the bathroom door, took his wallet out of the pants hanging on the hook there and removed some bills. He walked back over, and handed the bills to Saffron. Then he stepped over to the music box and cranked the music way up again.
Saffron came in my direction, and poured herself a cup of Bartels and James. She leaned back against the refrigerator and said to me, “My shift is over. What about yours?”
“I guess that’s up to the director over there…the auteur on the bed.”
She smiled and said, “I have homework to do, but I really don’t want to do it.”
“You’re still in school?”
“Not in high school, if that was what you meant. Glad I look young. Shocking I know, but I’m a part-time college student.”
“A little surprising, but shocking, in this town?”
“Probably true as far as this town.”
“Everybody has to make some dough.”
“Definitely true.”
“Where are you going to school?”
“USC.”
“Hmm. That’s impressive.”
“It is? Where did you go, if you did?”
“Brenda’s University of Cosmetology. Class of February.”
“Right,” she said smiling, and turned and poured another cup of J & B.
“I’ve never asked anybody this question before, but what the fuck, I’ve always wanted to…what’s your major?”
“It’s not such a bad question. Mine is Eastern religions,” she said, “and philosophy.”
My eyes must have been unusually glazed, or maybe spinning counterclockwise, because she asked, “Did you like the pot?”
“Pffft,” I blurted, and burst into guffaws. “I’m so far off the ground, floods, fires and earthquakes aren’t a worry.”
“Yeah, it’s prime.”
“Eastern religions, huh? Understanding the Buddha and such.”
“Yes, well, Hinduism, Buddhism, a number of philosophies. We’re studying Sanskrit at the moment. But we deal with metaphysics, get into wave structure, Quantum Theory, Cosmology.”
There was a thudding at the door. Flipper strutted over and answered it. Initially, he stood in such a way as he talked, that he blocked the view, making it impossible to see the person to whom he talked. Then he slouched for a moment, and I could see Andrew looking in. He saw me the moment I saw him.
“Hey,” he said over Flipper’s shoulders, causing Flipper to turn around and see who was receiving a greeting. Andrew brushed by Flipper and a foot away from me, bellowed, “Why are you STILL HERE? Penelope said you came upstairs an hour ago.”
“I’m working.”
“Working? At what? Drinking out of a cup? I know you have experience at it, but…”
“Naw,” Flipper told him, “he volunteered to help.”
Andrew looked around bewildered. “Volunteered to help with what?”
Flipper nodded at the camera sitting at the end of the bed. “Cameraman.”
Andrew looked at it and said, “Huh? Him? For what?”
“Andrew,” I said pedantically, “guys, girls, a bed, a camera…and Saffron here,” looking directly at her, “not wearing anything under her robe?”
He just stared at me for nearly a minute and a half, and the other three of us stared at him. “Oh,” he finally said.
“Might have sumpin’ for YOU to do,” Flipper said to Andrew.
“I can’t really stay much longer, so you can fill in for me if you want,” I said.
“Yeah,” Flipper said with a big smile, “that right.”
“Who’s stayin’?” Andrew asked.
I shrugged.
“Belinda’s in the bathroom,” Saffron volunteered to no one in particular.
“Look here,” Flipper told him, putting his arm on his shoulder, ”look here at this camera,” gradually walking him over beside the bed.”
Saffron tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hey. You want to do something?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Like what?”
Just then, Belinda moseyed out from the bathroom after scrubbing up. Flipper waved her over to Andrew and himself, and said, “Belinda. Com ‘ere. This is Andrew.” Belinda strolled over uncovered and joined them.
Saffron thought about my question a second before she said, ?
??Go somewhere.”
“Okay, make a suggestion.”
She paused again and asked, “Do you like watching movies?”
“If they’re decent movies.”
“We could rent some videos and take them to my apartment. I’ll let you pick them out. We could get two, two I haven’t seen that you think I’d really like. I’m trying to see good movies that I missed, you know?”
Flipper, his voice loud enough for us to hear, was telling Andrew, “I wuz plannin’ just on doing the girls together, then each of ‘em by herself, then you know, me hittin’ it with ‘em both. Maybe we be gettin’ you in the act,” he offered, gesturing toward the bed.
Deciding the time was beyond right, Saffron and I proceeded to leave.
“Give me a minute to dress,” she said. She grabbed her tote bag off the floor, and took it into the bathroom to change. While she did, I went to inform the rest of our intent. I got only the slightest farewells, the three clearly dedicated to strategizing the following scene.
Saffron reappeared, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket. We waved, shot out the door, and shimmied down to the lobby in the elevator. After leaving the Essex we walked down the block to get to Saffron’s beige Saturn.
“It’s too late to buy it, but I’ve got a little booze at my place,” she told me once we were in the car.
“I’m still skiing on the ganja,” I said. “But it’s good to know.”
About a half mile away, we turned left into the lot of a twenty-four hour market and video emporium, the outside of the building wrapped in a mesh of multi-colored strung lights.
“I have a card for here,” she told me, putting the car in a space.
There were more people inside than one would expect, with the hour well beyond last call, though there was ample elbowroom. I didn’t feel like staying in this big, jellybean decorated box the entire night searching out the right choices. I did however, want to meet the criteria Saffron had stipulated, which was seeing some of the finer movies she had yet to see; meaning older ones I presumed, that due to youth or inattention had been missed. Staying away from Recent Releases, I found a couple of relative jewels in the drama section. “These two,” I said showing her Altman’s “Nashville,” and Warren Beatty’s “Reds.“
“I’ve heard of both of those. They’ll be interesting. See, they’re exactly the kind of thing I had in mind.”
When Saffron took her membership card out as we approached the counter I asked if Saffron was her actual name. She smiled, and answered, “No. But let’s use it anyway,” she added.
In the car on the way to her place we started to talk a little about our origins. When I asked how long she had been in the United States, she told me, “Since birth.” She had come to California from Wisconsin, she said. I described part of my journey out of the South, looking for political asylum, and cultural liberation in cities of the North before the final bounce into sunny paradise.
In some ways her apartment had the look of a place too civilized for me to be inside. A possible exception, though not one necessarily was the large collection of video porn. “Research,” she said as I checked it out. “In this case, it really is.” There were things mostly reflective of a college student’s fixations, copies of paintings and CD’s. There also were antiquities, artifacts and amenities one would expect to find in the home of a college dean, or an Upper East Side of Manhattan patroness. But this wasn’t so far afield, considering her eventual goal was to be a college professor.
“Which of the two should we watch first?” she wanted to know.
“Let me think about it for a couple of minutes.”
“You do that while I make us drinks.”
She returned from the kitchen carrying the glasses, and set them down on the table in front of the couch. I was standing in front of it with a movie in each of my hands, while evaluating the two, as though I were determining each one’s actual weight.
“Let’s go with Reds,” I told her as we stood there facing one another. I explained that Reds was, “a great depiction of early Twentieth Century hell raising and freestyle living…all the Bohemian virtues.”
“I’m into that.”
“Oh yeah, Henry Miller is in it.”
“Henry Miller the writer?”
“Yeah.”
“Henry Miller’s a trip. What’s he doing in a movie?”
“He’s part of a kind of chorus of real people who give descriptions of, and stories about the time and the place and the people in the movie.”
“Neat. Give it to me.”
I handed her the movie and she walked it over and shoved it in. I sat on the couch, but after putting the movie in she continued walking to another part of the room. There, she bent over a small machine that appeared to be a humidifier, doing something that made a clicking sound. As she turned to join me the machine in the corner began to hum.
I was telling Saffron before we started the movie about Emma Goldman, radicalism, the Village, John Reed and Louise Bryant and other subjects of interest in the film.
“Jack Nicholson plays a mean Eugene O’Neill…literally, a mean Eugene O’Neil.” Just as I said it, I noticed a sort of mist floating out of the corner coming from the machine. Looking at it I said to Saffron, “Humidifier?”
“Nope.”
“What is it?”
“Don’t worry. It’s fine.”
“You say so.”
Before we started Reds Saffron, expressed an interest in Nashville all of the sudden. She was familiar with Altman, and a fan of Short Cuts, the Player and Kansas City.”
“Did you see Cookies’ Fortune?” I asked.
“I luuuuuuved Cookie’s Fortune,” she said.
“McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and The Long Goodbye ought to be on your list. They’re like Nashville, from way back there in the Seventies. ”
“I tend to work my way back in time, usually,” she said. “Doing this is a deviation from my normal habit.”
“The negative effects of jumping out of sequence ought to be minimal,” I told her.
“I’ll get around to the other two…Mrs. Miller and Mr. somebody, and the Long something. What’s the big deal about Nashville though? I mean, besides being good, why is it so highly rated by all these critics?”
“I don’t know if critics were unanimous about it or not. Nashville is where Altman really started piling up the characters and story lines, turning things he did in MASH, like people talking over the top of each other into signatures of an Altman film.”
“And you have been involved in movies in some way in the past?”
“Nope.”
“So you see everything?”
“Not for a long, long time. Well that’s wrong. There was never a time when I saw everything. There have been times when I saw a lot…a lot of things of interest at the time they came out.”
“You just happen to have this avid interest in movies and coincidentally to live in LA.”
“I swear on the King James. I’m really not all that interested in movies in general. But yeah… it’s just coincidence, like you say, and really not that uncommon a coincidence here, do you think?”
“No, it’s not.”
The mist, gradually dispersing from the machine in the corner, now had completely enveloped the room. It had a taste, and it tickled my throat some as I breathed it in.
She asked, “Both movies are kind of long aren’t they?”
“Yeah. Both of them are three hours or longer. That’s the only reason I got them. Gives us a whole six hours,” I said, with what was the best rendition I had of a sweet smile.
“All right, let’s start Reds.”
We started the movie, and when the geezers recalling the era of Jack Reed began their recollections, I mentioned to Saffron that this was the chorus I had told her about. Since the speakers are not identified, it
fell to me to attempt to name as many of them for Saffron as I could. As we watched, I noticed the mist, which seemed more like steam to me as it thickened throughout the room was not so much tickling the throat, as irritating it more strongly, then increasingly had the texture and taste of smoke, rather than steam. At the same time I felt a wave of balminess wash across me.
Around the time the characters were gathered together at the beach in Provincetown, a scene in particular where a group of them are rehearsing an O’Neil play, Saffron said, “I like it so far.”
“You don’t see movies about this group of real people, or people like them, do you?” I said. “Course in all fairness, there’s not really a public uproar for that kind of movie. But back when Beatty made it, there wasn’t any independent film alternative to really speak of. And Beatty could have blown this thing about a thousand ways; but instead he did an excellent job…I think you’re going to like the rest.”
“Me too. Now shut up.”
The feeling I had, the sensation I experienced was progressing from a covering of balm to a wholly benign regard for my surroundings. When Paul Sorvino and Warren Beatty were shouting at one another in a union hall, the feeling had escalated to what might be called a feeling of utter peace. My throat and lungs had ceased to sting.
I watched a snowball fight, and had the urge to light a cigarette, then decided I was much too contented to do it. I saw the beginning of Intermission but not the end. There was snow again, and I felt, not only suffused with contentment, I felt what only can be described as dreamy. I had a glimpse of Diane Keaton and an icy body of water. There was ice again and Finland.
I awoke, and Saffron was leaned peacefully against the far side of the couch sound asleep. The television screen was filled with snow, the movie now ended, the tape itself already burped out of the VCR. Light was faintly detectable behind the window shades. I grabbed my cigarettes off the table, and softly closed the door.
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