Charles Bukowski - Factotum

"All right, it's all right. Go ahead."

Jan lifted the hat off and holding on with one hand she began kissing where the hat had been. Her eyes looked deep into mine. The tip of it entered her mouth. I fell back, damned.

I arrived at the bicycle warehouse at 10:30 a.m. Starting time was 8. It was morning break time and the coffee wagon was outside. The warehouse crew was out there. I walked up and ordered a coffee, large, and a jelly doughnut. I talked to Carmen, the manager's secretary, of boxcar fame. As usual Carmen was wearing a very tight knitted dress that fit her like a balloon fits the trapped air, maybe tighter. She had on layers and layers of dark red lipstick and while she talked she stood as close as possible, looking into my eyes and giggling, brushing parts of her body against me. Carmen was so aggressive that she was frightening, you wanted to run away from the pressure. Like most women, she wanted what she couldn't have any longer and Jan was draining all my semen and then some. Carmen thought I was playing sophisticated and hard to get. I leaned back clutching my jelly doughnut and she leaned into me. The break ended and we all walked inside. I visualized Carmen's lightly shit-stained panties draped over one of my toes as we lay in bed together in her shack on Main Street. Mr. Hansen, the manager, was standing outside his office: "Chinaski," he barked. I knew the sound: it was over for me.

I walked toward him and stood there. He was in a newly-pressed light tan summer suit, bow tie (green), tan shirt, with his black-and-tan shoes exquisitely shined. I was suddenly conscious of the nails in the soles of my scruffy shoes pressing up into the soles of my feet. Three buttons on my dirty shirt were missing. The zipper in my pants was jammed at half mast. My belt buckle was broken.

"Yes?" I asked.

"I'm going to have to let you go."

"O.K."

"You're a damned good clerk but I'm going to have to let you go."

I was embarrassed for him.

"You've been showing up for work at 10:30 for 5 or 6 days now. How do you think the other workers feel about this? They work an eight hour day."

"It's all right. Relax."

"Listen, when I was a kid I was a tough guy too. I used to show up for work with a black eye three or four times a month. But I made it into the job every day. On time. I worked my way up."

I didn't answer.

"What's wrong? How come you can't get in here on time?"

I had a sudden hunch that I might save my job if I gave him the right answer. "I just got married. You know how it is. I'm on my honeymoon. In the mornings I start getting into my clothes, the sun is shining through the blinds, and she drags me down onto the mattress for one last fling of turkeyneck."

It didn't work. "I'll have them make out your severance check." Hansen strode toward his office. He went inside and I heard him say something to Carmen. I had another sudden inspiration and I knocked on one of the glass panels. Hansen looked up, walked over, slid back the glass.

"Listen," I said, "I never made it with Carmen. Honest. She's nice, but she's not my type. Make out my check for the whole week."

Hansen turned back into the office. "Make out his check for a week." It was only Tuesday. I hadn't expected that-but then he and Alabam were splitting 20,000 bicycle pedals down the middle. Carmen walked up and handed me the check. She stood there and gave me an indifferent smile as Hansen sat down at the telephone and dialed the State Employment Office.

I still had my thirty-five dollar car. The horses were hot. We were hot. Jan and I knew nothing about horses, but we lucked out. In those days they carded eight races instead of nine. We had a magic formula-it was called "Harmatz in the eighth." Willie Harmatz was a better than average jock, but he had weight problems, like Howard Grant does now. Examining the charts we noticed that Harmatz usually jumped one in on the last race, usually at a good price.

We didn't go out there every day. Some mornings we were just too sick from drinking to get out of bed. Then we'd get up in the early afternoon, stop off at the liquor store, stop off for an hour or two at some bar, listen to the juke box, watch the drunks, smoke, listen to the dead laughter-it was a nice way to go.

We were lucky. We only seemed to end up at the track on the right days. "Now look," I'd tell Jan, "He isn't going to do it again… it's impossible."

And there would come Willie Harmatz, with the old stretch run, looming up at the last moment through the gloom and the booze-there would come good old Willie at 16 to one, at 8 to one, at 9 to two. Willie kept saving us long after the rest of the world had become indifferent and had quit.

The thirty-five dollar car nearly always started, that wasn't the problem; the problem was to turn the headlights on. It was always very dark after the eighth race. Jan usually insisted upon taking a bottle of port in her purse. Then we drank beer at the track and-if things were going well-we drank at the track bar, mostly scotch and water. I already had one drunk driving rap and I'd find myself driving along in a car without headlights, hardly knowing where I was.

"Don't worry, baby," I'd say, "the next hard bump we hit will turn the lights on." We had the advantage of broken springs.

"Here's a dip! Hold your hat!"

"I don't have a hat!"

I'd floor it.

POW! POW! POW!

Jan would bounce up and down, trying to hold on to her bottle of port. I'd grip the wheel and look for a bit of light on the road ahead. Hitting those bumps would always turn the lights on. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later, but we'd always get the lights on.

We lived on the fourth floor of an old apartment house; we had two rooms in the back. The apartment was built at the edge of a high cliff so that when you looked out the back window it seemed as if you were twelve floors up instead of four. It was very much like living on the edge of the world-a last resting place before the final big drop.

Meanwhile, our winning streak at the track had ended, as all winning streaks end. There was very little money and we were drinking wine. Port and muscatel. We had the kitchen floor lined with gallon jugs of wine, six or seven of them, and in front of them were four or five fifths, and in front of the fifths were lined up three or four pints.

"Someday," I told Jan, "when they demonstrate that the world has four dimensions instead of just three, a man will be able to go for a walk and just disappear. No burial, no tears, no illusions, no heaven or hell. People will be sitting around and they'll say, 'What happened to George?' And somebody will say, 'Well, I don't know. He said he was going out for a pack of cigarettes.'"

"Listen," said Jan, "what time is it? I want to know what time it is."

"Well, let's see, we set the clock by the radio at midnight last night. We know that it gains 35 minutes every hour. It says 7:30 p.m. right now but we know that's not right because it's not dark enough yet. O.K. That's 7 and one half hours. 7 times 35 minutes, that's 245 minutes. One half of 35 is 17 and one half. That gives us 252 and one half minutes. O.K., that's 4 hours and 42 and one half minutes we owe them so we set the clock back to 5:47. That's it 5:47. It's dinner time and we don't have anything to eat."

Our clock had been dropped and broken and I had fixed it; I took the back off and found something wrong with the main spring and the fly wheel. The only way I could get the clock to run again was to shorten and tighten the main spring. This affected the speed of the clock's hands; you could almost watch the minute hand moving.

"Let's open another jug of wine," said Jan.

We really had nothing to do but drink wine and make love.