Dan Wakefield - Home Free

“Unemployment.”

“Oh. Well, I’m sure you’ll find something soon.”

“I’m not looking.”

“Oh?”

“I get along.”

“On unemployment?”

“I do a little hooking on the side. Not rugs, darling. You know. Hooking as in hooker, prostitute, one of those chicks who open their legs and let men stick their pricks in for money. My own fee, unless there are extenuating circumstances—”

Everything came apart at once. Gene yelled, “Shut up, goddam you!” at the same time Bitsy, whose mouth had already been open in astonishment, let out a scream through it, Barnes dropped the carafe he was trying to pour more wine with, a waitress and the hostess came rushing to the scene. Lottie stood up and Gene stood up to grab her, knocking against the table and propelling Bitsy’s lobster into her lap.

From then on Gene just tried to keep hold of Lottie’s wrist, and tried not to see all the people staring at them.

Somewhere in there with Barnes trying to soothe Bitsy out of her hysterics Gene made some signal to him with his hand or expression or both that he and Lottie were splitting, he knew there wouldn’t be any argument.

The argument was him and Lottie back at his place. He had never seen or heard her like that. Yelling. Transformed.

“Just like I thought, you gutless little prick, you’re ashamed of me, ashamed of me and how I live because of some birdbrained little piece of fluff who will never know her ass from her elbow and your stupid friend trying to cop a little young blond pussy that’s why he’s living there in that ridiculous playpen that kindergarten for grown-ups that Republican right-wing Chamber of Commerce bunch of pigs in their pen all that’s what I left what I split from spit on and I’ll spit on it again anytime I see it hear it look at it feel it touch it you’re one of them yourself goddam you the only way you ball me’s on top like it says in the Boy Scout manual I’ve had boring lays in my time but nothing to—”

“Goddam you, how the hell you ever got paid twenty-five dollars for a trick is something the goddam Better Business Bureau oughta look into, any poor john who—”

“Why you poor pathetic excuse for a cock you’ll never touch me again unless you pay and I’ll charge you extra for being such a goddam lousy lay goddam I’m bored no wonder I’m bored with you as an excuse for a lover who wouldn’t—”

He left, quick. He had to get out before he hit her. He saw it, he saw he would hit her and she would hit back and God knows where it would end and how bad.

He left quick and walked quickly, straight down Ocean Front Walk to Uncle Phil’s.

“What’s a matter?” Uncle Phil asked when he looked at him.

“I need some peace of mind,” Gene said.

“You sure?”

“Yeh. Just a snort, you know.”

“Sure.”

Gene sat down. Phil went to the kitchen. When he came back he had the mirror and a little packet.

“First one’s always free,” he said.

“I know,” said Gene.

Uncle Phil started tamping out the little mound of white stuff.

“I know you know,” he said, “but I have to say it.”

“How come?”

Uncle Phil looked up at Gene and grinned.

“Tradition,” he said.

Gene thought about it. How after he snorted the skag he went back to his pad and found Lottie still there. She wanted to fight some more. But she couldn’t because there was no one to fight with. Gene wouldn’t, couldn’t. He wasn’t mad at her. At anyone. Ever. He was a man of peace. A man of peace of mind. He sat down on the floor against the wall, smiling. She tried to goad him but nothing worked. He only smiled, beatifically. He told her how he had gained peace of mind and first she looked shocked and then sort of interested, admiring even. Maybe it made her think he wasn’t one of those Republican Chamber of Commerce type freaks after all. He giggled a lot, everything seemed funny to him. Not hilarious, just funny. Gently funny. Smily. Smile. Soon she was doing it. Smiling. She said she was sorry. He said it didn’t matter. It didn’t. Nothing did.

“Really,” she said, “how do you feel? What does it feel like?”

“Peace,” he said, smiling like the Buddha.

Then he said he had to sleep.

The next day he woke with a terrible hunger. That, and an aching feeling through his whole body, an exhaustion that felt like all his vital juices had been depleted. Lottie was still there. There was only a hot plate in Gene’s place but she said she’d go get him something, make him some eggs or something. He said to get everything she could. He couldn’t move very fast. She put on a pair of his jeans and one of his shirts and went to the grocery. She came back with two big bags of groceries and started cooking. It was like feeding a maw. He had two quarts of milk and one of orange juice, eight scrambled eggs, four peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, a wedge of Monterey Jack cheese, and a quart of chocolate ice cream. Eating it, every once in a while he giggled.

By night, except for the huge tired he felt, he was back to more or less normal.

No more peace of mind.

All gone.

He felt completely at home at Uncle Phil’s now. He liked the people who came there. He felt like he was one of them. There was one particular song on the American Pie album that seemed to be about them all. It was called “Crossroads.” One of the things Don McLean said in the song was how Gene felt, like he was all knotted in the gut and nobody could figure out why.

That’s how everyone seemed at Uncle Phil’s. They didn’t complain about their condition they just accepted it, they did whatever they could to make it feel better. They were in fact far out in a literal way, out along the edge of their own minds, of their own survival. With Uncle Phil farther out, farther along than anyone else. Once when he was offering a batch of some crazy goofballs he’d just concocted to anyone who wanted to try one, the black guy known as Ace shook his head and said, “I’m not like you, Uncle Phil. I don’t wanna obliterate reality. I just wanna modify the sombitch.”

There was a big swarthy guy named Rodney who’d been offered a graduate assistantship in anthropology at Berkeley and he had to decide whether to take that or go into the family business. The family business happened to be the Mafia.

“At least it’s good bread,” Uncle Phil said.

“Yeh, but there isn’t any future in it anymore. Another few years it may not be able to function efficiently.”

“How come?” Gene asked.

“Because the whole thing is based on the ultimate threat—they can kill you.”

“So? They still can, can’t they?”

“Sure. But fewer people care anymore.”

“That’s heavy,” Gene said.

Rodney sighed.

“It’s sure as hell bad for business,” he said.

The people around Uncle Phil’s represented a wide variety of businesses.

Pepper, who was Uncle Phil’s old lady, was in show business. That’s what Uncle Phil called it, anyway.

She worked at a place called the Nutrient Center. It was on the second floor of a run-down office building about four blocks away. The center got its customers by placing an ad in the L.A. Free Press every week that said simply “The Nutrient Center. Consultation by Rhonda.” Enough readers figured it was some kind of kinky sex trip that they went out to Venice and had a consultation. It went like this. When a customer came, Herb, who ran the Nutrient Center, called up Pepper, who hopped on her bike and went over. She would sit on a chair in the back of the room partitioned off by a curtain. If the customer wanted a $5 consultation, Pepper sat there and read a chapter from a book called Nutrition and the Inner Mind . If the customer popped for a $15 consultation, she did the same thing only with her clothes off. That was it. Herb was always on the other side of the curtain so the customer couldn’t get any other ideas about further types of consultation. Pepper said none of the customers yet complained. Some even returned for more consultations, even though they all were the same.