William Vollmann: Whores for Gloria

still stood, talking and talking into the pay phone as if he had a direct line to the Whore of Wisdom, while the cars crawled slowly down the street with glowing red eyes and a cold wind turned the pages of newspapers on the sidewalk (for the air was eagerly reading the news), and the strap of Laredo's handbag (in which she kept her little back-up revolver) dug into her shoulder as she stood with bored patience watching the man leaning forward inside the phone booth as if that would somehow diminish the distance between him and the person he was talking to, and the soft bulk of the yellow pages padded his thighs; — once upon a time a man made a phone call, and the man was crying. Only Laredo and Leroy could see that he was crying. The person to whom he was talking would never have known it. His voice was very low and gende and even. His voice was patient and tender. The phone did not shake his hands.

Once upon a time a man made a phone call. — What else did the doctor say? the man asked gently. — Gloria? Gloria, what did the doctor say? Are you crying, Gloria? If I can buy you a plane ticket tonight will you come tonight? Yes, Gloria, you can take a taxi cab to the airport, can't you? Gloria? Gloria? I got some money. I can give you some money. — So is my little baby kicking inside you? Is it a girl or a boy? I didn't forget about you. I never forgot about you, Gloria. I never stopped thinking about you. Are you going to have my baby? I got lots of money now. I can take care of you, Gloria. When are you going to get the abortion? Are you smoking a lot of cigarettes? Gloria? Gloria, are you still there? How's it goin', Gloria? Gloria, I'll be waitin' for you.

The man hung up at last, very carefully and gently, as if the weight of the receiver inside the cradle might break something inside the woman. Then he turned the yellow pages with a frown and scratched the stubble on his cheeks and finally dialled another number. — Yeah he said I want to make reservations on the night plane tomorrow for Gloria Evans that's right from L.A. OK that's right OK ten o'clock you said? Whatever's cheapest. — How much? Eighty bucks? You're fucking kidding. — What do you mean watch my language just find something cheaper. . that's the best you can do? I heard that one before. Hey babe you got a beautiful voice what's your name how old are you? — Why you sweet young thing, you're old enough to be my mother so just pretend you're my mother; think of me and help me out. Can you- give me a discount; can I jerk off to you? Wow , you're NICE; you didn't even hang up on me! All right now babe I'm counting on you to make sure Gloria's on that plane because she can't take care of herself she needs help in everything she does so you take care of her then you take care of me. Let's get together. — Aw, come on! Hey, I'm clean — you just ask any whore in the Tenderloin! I've never cheated on any one of my women even when I was goin' out with all three of 'em at the same time.

The man laughed. He hung up. He winked at Laredo and sauntered off whisding. But Laredo was no fool. She knew that the pay phone had been broken for weeks. And she knew that the man was still crying.

When everything— EVERYTHING —about life makes you want to grin, and it just gets sunnier and funnier until after a while you can only see the teeth in the smiles and then you feel. . — well, not "on the edge", exactly, for the world has no edge; but as if you have always been over the edge, and the smiling and laughing is a sort of spastic reflex like crying or retching (really, it's all the same);—when you drink red wine in a cup and try to categorize the geometry of the gleam-patterns you see on the liquid's surface — and you may find, my friends, that you can almost do it: you agree with yourself upon the existence of a light-shape like the outline of a hemisphere drawn in concave at the equator; but another sip and it changes to a gleam-ring all around the rim of the wine circle; and another and it is reddish-black everywhere with the unsteady image of your face in it, your skin redder and your mouth blacker than the wine, and another and you see white specks swimming in the cup: they are not reflections at all, but bits of grease or rice or cereal, or maybe cheek-cells that got washed out of your mouth (the age-old question: is the imperfection, the filth, in you or in the glass?);—but then your attention is diverted forever by the ugly purple stain around the edge of the cup where your lips have been; when everything is so confusing that you can never be sure whether or not your whore is a woman until she pulls her underpants down; when nothing is clear, and whore-chasing is a merry-go-round of death (if you don't catch a disease that will kill you, why, you will go around again, not because you want to die but because until you do everything remains unclear); when you get drunken crushes on women whose drunken mothers used to try to stab them; when the names of streets are like Nabokov's wearisome cleverness; when only the pretty shapes of women have integrity and when you close your eyes still see them leaning and crossing their legs and milking their tits at you, THEN you may on occasion like Jimmy find yourself looking down a long black block, down the tunnels of infinity to a streedamp, a corner and a woman's waiting silhouette. — Or else like Jimmy you may have another drink.

The Black Rose

On one of those days when at two in the afternoon it was still morning because Jimmy had woken up with the dry heaves and the thought of a beer almost gave him the wet heaves, so he was sitting in the Black Rose drinking watery orange juice and nasty tomato juice and a whore came up to ask him for a quarter to do her laundry and it was more of an effort to get rid of her than to give her the quarter and the electronic sign-strip over the video screen said CECILY-CECILY — CECILYand Cecily stood behind the bar and said Hey, baby to Jimmy sofdy when he came in and he was not sure whether he had been there a long time or whether he had just gotten there but Cecily was looking so chubby and adorable in her sweater (but Jimmy knew that Cecily was a man) and Cecily trudged back and forth pouring bucketfuls of crushed ice into the beer cooler and men in cowboy hats sat in the back shadows nodding to the country music while outside the sunshine was so hot and bright that the pissy reek of Jones Street gave Jimmy ONE (1), TWO (2), THREE (3) dry heaves — on one of those early afternoon mornings, then, Jimmy decided to get drunk — not just drunk enough to enjoy life (here he grinned, and Cecily smiled back), not just drunk enough to fuck Cecily for instance up the ass without a rubber, not just drunk enough to hear bees buzzing round his ears and wake up in another bad place he'd never seen before with crushed bugs on the walls and men maybe standing over him looking down at him with their teeth drawn away from their lips, and puke cold and sticky all over his face again, puke being the concretization of Jimmy's disgust with Jimmy whose eyes would be burning and throat burning and stomach squirming like a guilty squid and every muscle aching, and the dry heaves inside him just like heartbeats, just like yesterday;—no, he wanted to be drunk enough to scientifically establish the existence of the whores that he could see all around him. (Jimmy had always liked whores.) So he started drinking. This kind of drunkenness required more alcohol than the buzzing kind; but the alcohol must be spaced out. He had his first Budweiser and he had his second. He had his first Corona with a lemon slice and that was all for the Coronas because they were more expensive; maybe that was why Cecily chose them when he said buy you a drink Cess? — What was her markup? Ten twenty thirty percent. And he tipped her, too. Jimmy would sooner go without than leave no tip. His friend Code Six who knew all the jokes thought Jimmy was soft that way but Jimmy always said they have to make a living too and if I tip them they'll look out for me. — They'll look out for you, all right, said Code Six. You and your wallet. If your wallet's got pimples they'll pop it for you. — You sure you don't want another Corona, baby? said Cecily. — Thanks anyhow, said Jimmy. You know how it is when you're hungover. That lemon kind of set your teeth on edge. — If Jimmy had been anyone else Cecily might have said aw come on I'll give it to you without the lemon but Cecily never pushed Jimmy because he was generous. He was not her best customer but he was a good one. — He had a shot of whiskey and his third Budweiser. Once when Cecily wasn't working she bought Jimmy another shot of whiskey, but he was not sure whether that was this time or last time; anyhow, here was the shot sitting in front of him on a new napkin, and he didn't see any of his money on the bar anymore so he must not have paid for it. More beautiful than the gleam of quarters on the bar was the feeling that there was something else that he would remember later, and more beautiful than that was the way Cecily took care of him, whisking away his napkin every time he crumpled it and rushing him a fresh one, or sweeping away his crumbs, or lighting his cigarette for him. Energy came into him with each beer, more energy each time so that everything seemed happier and happier, more and more energy leaping inside him like the bad bald men leaping into other bars with their Bomber T-shirts to make everyone cheer.

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