Jimmy said have you seen Luna today? and Regina said making a face no I have NOT seen Luna and a couple of the Transformers begged her to turn on the stage lights (but not Phyllis because Phyllis was in jail) and so Regina flipped the switch and the Transformers started dancing to the music of the jukebox with the light-bubbles from the disco ball whizzing through them and Jimmy sat looking at a bottle behind the bar with a giant die on top of it and then Luna came in and all the Transformers yelled Luna! Luna! and Regina said well you asked for Luna there she is she'll manipulate you to death and Jimmy said politely I'm looking forward to it and Regina said if that's what you want and Luna danced and came and hugged Jimmy and she was wearing a wig that he had given her and she felt his pocket and saw that he had her sunglasses and said oh you kept them how sweet and Jimmy said yes I'll keep them forever unless of course you want them back and Luna said yes let me borrow them for fifteen minutes and Luna said now come home with me baby and we'll smoke a little pot together and Luna's dick was very big in the crotch of her leotard and Jimmy said OK but before Luna was ready he got restiess again. . These days he couldn't do any one thing.
In the park across the street it was hot and stinking, but finally a breeze came to liven up the flies, and pigeons showed up and pecked at stains, and a tired old woman in red sat cleaning her glasses with a dirty tissue. The earpieces hung limp, like the legs of some dying crustacean.
Code Six's Lincoln had finally been towed away.
Jimmy walked up the street to Geary and Jones and stood looking at the High Tide bar with its sign-lights spilling out of a neon cocktail glass. He stumbled and shook his head. Then he went back to the Black Rose and ordered another beer.
Jack and Dinah
There's the bastard, said Jack.
Beat his ass! shouted Dinah. Knock him down and give it to him!
Jimmy looked around thinking he was still in the Black Rose but he had somehow gotten to Hyde Street where he was all alone except for men leaning up against the walls and Jack hit him once lightly to knock him to the ground and Jimmy remembered as if it were just last night the time when he had had to defend all women from the fat boy at the dildo store on Turk and Larkin and he was strong from giving up Nicole for Gloria so that he lifted the fat boy easily a foot or two off the floor and punched him, but now for some reason he had no strength left as Jack knelt down on his chest looking both ways like a child about to cross the street before he began to hit Jimmy in the face and for Jimmy it was as if he were rocking and rattling with the motion of a train and then Dinah was bending over him too and doing something to him and something in Dinah's hand went click-click and Dinah was doing something else to him and it was like being in one of the little dark theaters on Larkin Street that he used to go to where a whore would sit on his lap and ride him up and down so that he rocked and rattled painfully trying to look around her hair that smelled like phony strawberries and hear around her grunting breaths as she cut the crotch of his jeans and Jack was saying come on come on look at him he's pissed his pants but for Jimmy the screen in that theater curved like the inside of a woman's breast and the curtain swept aside showing a film about a train ride which he thought at first was a Western the way the boxcars rolled through the desert but then Louisiana began to flash by and Jack said come on and Dinah said I have to get his money now or I'll get vi'lent. I have to cut his wallet out of him. I have to.
Remembering the porno message
Later, a week later, when he came out of San Francisco General with a pair of hand-me-downs and a bag lunch, it was beginning to get dark as Jimmy walked down Ellis Street scuffing his feet and kicking old newspapers and he saw a black couple who smelled of innocence kissing in a doorway so seriously and he thought how sad the way men can talk to women with such calm deep love in their voices like steady rivers and then they forget the beauty of the river like I did he said to himself and now I can only hear it roaring all the time in my ears like gravel of static; and he remembered how once when he kicked the broken pay phone that he used to call Gloria from, two dollars in quarters came spewing out of it like puke and he used the money to call a lesbian porno message and the phone clicked and licked like a girl unsnapping her dress and Jimmy held his dick in his hand listening and the message moaned Biting your tongue off . . but there was a bad connection and so after that Jimmy heard only a long crackle of static until finally he heard a thousand people are WATCHING . . and then came more static and then Jimmy heard I lift up your skirt, and you're kissing me and telling me: SUCK ME, SUCK ME, SUCK ME . . and then there came another crackle of static and Jimmy was frantic, thinking that he was missing all the best parts.
The Coral Sea
They called him Scarface now, like he was in the movies. Jimmy said well boys I was decorated in the service of my duty and they said yaah the Purple Pecker Award! and Jimmy leaned against the bar rocking and blinking stupidly. A guy said aw leave ole Gramps alone. At the Black Rose they said Jimmy's not the same anymore but at the Coral Sea they hadn't noticed anything so Jimmy liked the Coral Sea better.
Gloria
Then one day it came to him and he said well now if everything is upside down you can't have what you love if you have to have what you can't ever love if happy stories are sad then sad stories must be happy. That's all there's left to get: sad stories.
Candy
Jimmy got a beef stick and leaned up against a building chewing it and watching the whores. He saw one whom he had fucked and for a very long time he said to himself now what was her name? I remember how the cop called her Chrissy when he pulled her over but she was going by some other name oh hell what's it matter the names change almost as fast as the people around here. He saw a fat old whore standing between two cars, and every time a car slowed down or hinted in any way that it might be preparing to park she walked out into the street smiling with her hands on her hips. Jimmy watched her for about half an hour. He decided that he sort of liked her. Every couple of minutes she ducked down and checked her make-up in the side mirror of a parked car and then spread it like syrup upon the fat pancake of her face and Jimmy almost loved her because she was such a loser. Finally she decided to move to another corner and turned toward him and Jimmy said well how's it going and she said not bad you wanna date and Jimmy said sure and she said well I thought you was waiting for a bus or something and Jimmy said yeah you were so beautiful I was just standing watching you.
How much you wanna spend? the whore said practically.
I'll give you twenty dollars to take me up to your place and tell me some sad stories and then later I'll buy your panties off you you're just my wife's size she's been looking for a pair like yours not that I've seen them yet of course but I can tell you have good taste I know my wife will be very happy.
My name's Candy, she said. What's yours?
Jimmy.
Well Jimmy let me have the twenty right now 'cause I kind of owe a guy some money.
Here you go, said Jimmy, thinking shit well there goes that.
But she actually came back, smiling at him and saying see you can trust me I'm people .
I guess so, said Jimmy. He didn't really want to say much to her on the street.' There were too many people around.
Now listen Jimmy said Candy I don't want to hurt your feelings or anything but I have to tell you what I tell all the elderly gentlemen: my time is VALUABLE so if you can't get it up I'm not gonna wait forever you see what I'm saying?
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