Charles Bukowski - Factotum

This particular evening I sat there and something just broke in me, I could feel it breaking, something churned and rose in me and I got up and walked down the four flights of stairs and into the street. I walked down from Third and Union Streets to Sixth Street and then west along Sixth toward Alvarado. I walked along past the bars and I knew she was in one of them. I made a guess, walked in, and there was Jan sitting at the far end of the bar. She had a green and white silk scarf spread across her lap. She was sitting between a thin man with a large wart on his nose, and another man who was a little humped mound of a thing wearing bifocals and dressed in an old black suit.

Jan saw me coming. She lifted her head and even in the gloom of the bar she seemed to pale. I walked up behind her, standing near her stool. "I tried to make a woman out of you but you'll never be anything but a god damned whore!" I back-handed her and knocked her off her stool. She fell flat on the floor and screamed. I picked up her drink and finished it. Then I slowly walked toward the exit. When I got there I turned. "Now, if there's anybody here… who doesn't _like_ what I just did… just say so."

There was no response. I guess they liked what I just did. I walked back out on Alvarado Street.

At the auto parts warehouse I did less and less. Mr. Mantz the owner would walk by and I would be crouched in a dark corner or in one of the aisles, very lazily putting incoming parts on the shelves.

"Chinaski, are you all right?"

"Yes."

"You're not sick?"

"No."

Then Mantz would walk off. The scene was repeated again and again with minor variations. Once he caught me making a sketch of the alley on the back of an invoice. My pockets were full of bookie money. The hangovers were not as bad, seeing as they were caused by the best whiskey money could buy.

I went on for two more weeks collecting paychecks. Then on a Wednesday morning Mantz stood in the center aisle near his office. He beckoned me forward with a motion of his hand. When I walked into his office, Mantz was back behind his desk. "Sit down, Chinaski." On the center of the desk was a check, face down. I slid the check face down along the glass top of the desk and without looking at it I slipped it in my wallet.

"You knew we were going to let you go?"

"Bosses are never hard to fathom."

"Chinaski, you haven't been pulling your weight for a month and you know it."

"A guy busts his damned ass and you don't appreciate it."

"You haven't been busting your ass, Chinaski."

I stared down at my shoes for some time. I didn't know what to say. Then I looked at him. "I've given you my time. It's all I've got to give-it's all any man has. And for a pitiful buck and a quarter an hour."

"Remember you begged for this job. You said your job was your second home."

"… my time so that you can live in your big house on the hill and have all the things that go with it. If anybody has lost anything on this deal, on this arrangement… I've been the loser. Do you understand?"

"All right, Chinaski."

"All right?"

"Yes. just go."

I stood up. Mantz was dressed in a conservative brown suit, white shirt, dark red necktie. I tried to finish it up with a flair. "Mantz, I want my unemployment insurance. I don't want any trouble about that. You guys are always trying to cheat a working man out of his rights. So don't give me any trouble or I'll be back to see you."

"You'll get your insurance. Now get the hell out of here!"

I got the hell out of there.

I had my winnings and the bookie money and I just sat around and Jan liked that. After two weeks I was on unemployment and we relaxed and fucked and toured the bars and every week I'd go down to the California State Department of Employment and stand in line and get my nice little check. I only had to answer three questions:

"Are you able to work?"

"Are you willing to work?"

"Will you accept employment?"

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" I always said.

I also had to turn in a list of three companies where I had applied for work during the previous week. I took the names and addresses out of the phonebook. I was always surprised when one of the unemployment insurance applicants would answer "no" to any of the three questions. Their checks were immediately withheld and they were walked into another room where specially trained counselors would help send them on their way to skid row.

But in spite of the unemployment checks and the backlog of racetrack money, my bankroll began to vanish. Both Jan and I were totally irresponsible when we were drinking heavily and our troubles kept arriving by the carload. I was always running down to Lincoln Heights jail to bail Jan out. She'd come down in the elevator with one of the dyke matrons at her elbow, almost always with either a black eye or a cut mouth and very often with a dose of the crabs, compliments of some maniac she'd met in a bar somewhere. Then there was bail money and then court costs and fines, plus a request by the judge to go to A.A. meetings for six months. I too gathered my share of suspended sentences and heavy fines. Jan managed to extricate me from a variety of charges ranging from attempted rape to assault to indecent exposure to being a public nuisance. Disturbing the peace was one of my favorites too. Most of these charges did not involve actually serving any time in jail-so long as the fines were paid. But it was a huge continual expense. I remember one night our old car stalled just outside of MacArthur Park. I looked into the rearview mirror and said, "O.K., Jan, we're in luck. We are going to get a push. He's coming up right behind us. There are some kind souls in this ugly world." Then I looked again: "Hold your ASS, Jan, he's going to HIT us!" The son of a bitch had never slackened speed and he hit us straight on from the rear, so hard that the front seat collapsed and we were thrown flat. I got out and asked the guy if he had learned to drive in China. I also threatened his life. The police arrived and asked me if I cared to blow up their little balloon. "Don't do it," said Jan. But I refused to listen. Somehow I had the idea that since the guy had been in the wrong in hitting us, that I couldn't possibly be intoxicated. The last I remember was getting into the squad car with Jan standing by our stalled car with the collapsed front seat. Incidents such as this-and they came along one after the other-cost us a lot of money. Little by little our lives were falling apart.

_Jan and I were at Los Alamitos. It was Saturday. Quarter Horse Racing was a novelty then. You were a winner or a loser in eighteen seconds. At that time the grandstands consisted of row after row of simple unvarnished planks. It was getting crowded when we got there and we spread newspaper on our seats to show that they were taken. Then we went down to the bar to study our racing forms…_

_Along about the fourth race we were $18 ahead not counting expenses. We placed our bets for the next race and went back to our seats. A small gray-haired old man was sitting in the center of our newspapers. "Sir, those are our seats." "These seats aren't reserved." "I know these seats aren't reserved. But it's a matter of common courtesy. You see… some people get here early, poor people, like you and me, who can't afford reserved seats, and they lay newspapers down to indicate that the seats are taken. It's like a code, you know, a code of courtesy… because if the poor aren't decent to one another nobody else is going to be." "These seats are NOT reserved." He spread himself just a bit more on the newspapers we had placed there. "Jan, sit down. I'll stand." Jan tried to sit down. "Just move it a bit," I said, "if you can't be a gentleman, don't be a hog." He moved a little. I had the 7/2 shot in the outside post. He got bumped at the start and had to make a late run. He came on in the last second to hang a photo on the 8/5 favorite. I waited, hoping. They put up the other horse's number. I'd bet $20 win. "Let's get a drink." There was a tote board inside. The odds were up on the next race as we walked to the bar. We ordered drinks from a man who looked like a polar bear. Jan looked into the mirror worrying about the sag in her cheeks and the pouches under her eyes. I never looked into mirrors. Jan lifted her drink. "That old man in our seats, he's got nerve. He's a spunky old dog." "I don't like him." "He called your card." "What can a guy do with an old man?" "If he had been young you wouldn't have done anything either." I checked the tote. Three-Eyed Pete, reading 9/2, looked to be as good as the first or second choice. We finished our drinks and I went $5 win. When we got back to the stands, the old man was still sitting there. Jan sat down next to him. Their legs were pressed together. "What do you do for a living?" Jan asked him. "Real estate. I make sixty thousand a year-after taxes." "Then why don't you buy a reserved seat?" I asked. "That's my prerogative." Jan pressed her flank against him. She smiled her most beautiful smile. "You know," she said, "you've got the nicest blue eyes?" "Uh huh." "What's your name?" "Tony Endicott." "My name is Jan Meadows. My nickname is Misty." They put the horses into the gate and they broke out. Three-Eyed Pete got the first jump. He had a neck all the way. The last fifty yards the boy got out the whip, spanking ass. The second favorite made a tiny last lunge. They put up the photo again and I knew that I had lost. "You got a cigarette?" Jan asked Endicott. He handed it to Jan. She put it in her mouth; and with their flanks pressed together, he lit her cigarette. They looked into each other's eyes. I reached down and picked him up by the shirt collar. He sagged a bit but I kept holding him up by his shirt collar. "Sir, you are in my seat." "Yes. What are you going to do about it?" "Look down between your feet. See the opening under your seat? It's a thirty-five foot drop to the ground. I can push you through." "You don't have the guts." They put up the second favorite's number. I had lost. I got one of his legs down and through, dangling. He struggled and was surprisingly strong. He got his teeth into my left ear; he was biting my ear off. I got my fingers around his throat and choked him. There was one long white hair growing out of his throat. He gasped for air. His mouth opened and I pulled my ear out. I pushed his other leg through. A picture of Zsa Zsa Gabor flashed in my brain: she was cool, composed, immaculate, wearing pearls, her breasts bulging out of her low cut dress-then the lips that would never be mine said, no. The old man's fingers were clinging to a plank. He was hanging from the underside of the grandstand. I lifted one hand off. Then I lifted the other. He dropped through space. He fell slowly. He hit, bounced once, higher than one would expect, came down, hit again, took a second small bounce, then lay there motionless. There wasn't any blood. The people about us were very quiet. They bent over their racing forms. "Come on, let's go," I said. Jan and I walked out the side gate. People were still filing in. It was a mild afternoon, warm but not hot, gently warm. We walked outside past the track, past the clubhouse, and looking through the chain link fence at the east end we saw the horses come out of the stalls, making the slow circle to parade past the stands. We walked to the parking lot. We got into the car. We drove off. We drove back to the city: first past the oil wells and storage tanks, and then through open country past the small farms, quiet, neat, the stacked hay golden and ragged, the peeling white barns in the late afternoon sun, tiny farmhouses sitting in front on higher ground, perfect and warm. When we got to our apartment we found there was nothing to drink. I sent Jan out for something. When she came back we sat and drank, not saying much._