Bedbugs (33 page)

“No fuckin’ way!” someone shouted.

Everyone turned to see Pete Coleman, staring at the ring with an expression of stark horror on his face.

“I’d recognize that ring anywhere! That’s my pa’s ring!” Gary stiffened as he glanced from Pete to the ring and back to Pete again. Then, clearing his throat, he nodded and said, “Oh—yeah, yeah. Sure. My mistake. Mine didn’t have a red stone in it.”

“What the hell’s going on here?” Earl said, glaring angrily at Gary. “First Frank coughs up a piece of bone, and now this!”

Gary shrugged. All of the hunters pressed close to the counter and watched as Johnny took a napkin and carefully wiped the ring clean before handing it over to Pete. Not a man in the room could describe the expression on Pete’s face as he turned the ring over and over in his hand, staring at it in disbelief. His face paled, and a distant, almost vacant glaze filled his eyes as if he was staring straight into the face of his dead father. His hands were shaking as he scanned the faces surrounding him. His lips trembled. He tried to say something, but the only noise that escaped his throat was a feeble little squeak that sounded like a mouse that had been stepped on.

“Hey, you know what it is?” Gary said, snapping his fingers in the air. “Your pa was in here for breakfast yesterday morning, right? I’ll bet what happened was his ring fell off and landed in the stew pot. I keep it right here under the counter when I ain’t usin’ it. I probably never even noticed it was there when I started making the stew last night.”

“Yeah—sure,” Earl said, nodding his head eagerly. “That’s gotta be what happened.”

“Tell you what,” Gary said, focusing his eyes on the Cafe’s front window, filled now with a wash of gray morning light. “The sun’ll be up soon. Why don’t you head on out and start lookin’ for your pa. I’m sure everyone who’s out today will keep an eye peeled for him, too. Right fellas?”

Everyone in the Cafe responded with loud affirmations.

“‘N I agree with what Ollie said,” Gary went on. “I’ll bet you a free breakfast tomorrow mornin’ that your pa shows up here later today, fit as a fiddle.” He held his hand out to Pete and continued, “Why don’t you leave his ring here with me, ‘n I’ll give it to him if I see him before you do.”

Pete hesitated a moment, then, his hand still shaking, he placed the ring in the fiat of Gary’s outstretched hand. Neither he nor anyone else in the restaurant noticed how quickly Gary clenched his hand over the ring; and no one saw the look of immense satisfaction that washed over Gary’s face as he watched the hunters, their bellies filled with a hearty breakfast of hunters’ stew, pay their tabs, file out the door, get into their trucks and Jeeps, and head out to the woods for another day of hunting. And not one of them suspected that they had already consumed Gary’s quota of game for the season.

—for Stanley Wiater

I’
d thought for days—maybe weeks—that someone was following me, but I didn’t realize until that last night in Paris how much I was haunting myself.

That’s why I’ve come back to the States. Back to the New Mexico desert. Back to where it all began all those years ago. To sort it all out if I can. To see if I can find that man, find that dead Indian I saw out here when I was a kid.

Maybe he has the answers I’m looking for.

I’m keeping this journal to help me remember and to help me work it all through. There have been too many times when things I’ve written in songs and poems have come too close to the truth.

Much too close.

Sometimes, I think I have no control over my life—never have . . . ever since when I was a boy, and that dying Indian’s soul entered my body, replacing . . . whatever was there originally—the
real
me. It’s as if I write about these things first, then I have to live them. Now that he’s left me, I don’t know who I am.

But it’s all there in the songs and poems. Listen to “Hyacinth House” on
L.A. Woman
. I give it all away—everything that happened in the apartment that hot July night in Paris.

In 1971, Pam and I had gone to Paris to get away from it all, y’know? The media circus that was all part of being a rock ‘n’ roll star—the “Lizard King.” Shit! I was burned out, and we both needed a break. To tell you the truth, we were seriously trying to patch things up between us, to make it good again. Problem was, when Pam wanted to make it better, I didn’t. When I did; she didn’t.

The
yin
and the
yang
of it all.

Maybe that’s why we were so compatible in our incompatibility.

Of course, since coming to the desert, I can see now with a newfound clarity that I never had before that I was the one who needed the break.

Oh, sure—Pam had her share of problems. No doubt about it. But I can’t help but think, even now, that I was the source of all of her problems. Maybe I’m making myself too important in her life.

Maybe not.

But yeah, the drinking and drugs had gotten out of hand.

Way out of hand!

And the writing?

Shit! The writing wasn’t coming at all. No poetry! No songs! Nothing!

I was looking for inspiration—or escape—in a bottle. Even then, part of me was warning me that I was overdoing it. I’ve read some of the things written about me since—that I had a death wish—that I was sick of my celebrity and wanted to die because I’d gotten everything I was after and found that it was all hollow—that I no longer wanted to be a rock star, just a “serious” poet.

Some of that may be true.

You certainly don’t make a lunch of a few Bloody Marys and a bottle of scotch unless you’re running away from
something
.

I see now, though, that I was also running
to
something. Maybe I needed one last hit of LSD that night in Paris to make it all clear to me. Maybe that’s when the Indian’s spirit left me so I could find out exactly who I used to be.

Who is this person inside me—this child who never got the chance to grow up?

That Friday night, July 2, I’d gone out to the movies—alone—to see
Pursued
, starring Robert Mitchum.

Pretty fuckin’ apt tide, now that I think about it.

Pam was off somewhere with those friends of hers, no doubt looking for something to shoot into her arm. I’d been drinking most of the day, so I was in no condition to care where she went. After the movie, I wandered down to the
Rock ‘n Roll Circus
to check out what was happening.

Can’t remember much about what I did there.

No idea who was playing that night.

The only clear memory I have was feeling like someone was watching me. I’d been feeling like that for days . . . weeks, thinking I was being followed. I kept looking around, trying to see who it was, but I could never catch even a glimpse of him . . . not until I got back to the flat that night.

Shit like that happened a lot back then. People would recognize me and follow me around. The new album had been released in April and had done pretty good. It had some great reviews, some of our best, and the first single had a good run in the top ten. The rest of the band was excited about what we were going to do next, but I wasn’t ready to come back to the States.

Not yet.

I had to die first.

But shit, I should have been thrilled to have someone recognize me, what with all the weight I’d put on over the past few months. I’ve lost most of that weight now, and I feel a hell of a lot better.

One thing I do remember clearly from that night was scoring a hit of acid while I was there. I must have scored a bit of heroin then, too. I think maybe Peter might have given it to me. I took the acid first, and before long, the music, the people, and the night were all blending together into a riot of sounds and colors.

Like a vision of Hell.

Something straight out of a Bosch painting.

After tripping my brains out for an hour or so, I snorted the heroin to help bring me down. Never could stand to take a needle. Then, sometime around midnight, I guess, some friends piled me into a cab and sent me back to the flat.

Pam was there when I finally made it up the stairs. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, nodding out but looking like she wasn’t feeling any pain.

I was.

My head felt like it was encased in cement. The slightest sound was magnified so loud it hurt my ears. I thought I must be going crazy and vowed to stop taking acid. It wasn’t doing me any good anymore, anyway. The world seemed so far away, like I was looking through a foot-thick plate-glass window. I thought maybe I’d fallen through some kind of hole in reality. Maybe—I remember thinking and laughing about it—I’ve finally broken on through to the other side.

I went over to Pam, and before I knew what was happening, we were naked and fucking our brains out on the bed. Time and reality lost all meaning. They always did whenever Pam and I connected. That didn’t happen often enough. Too bad for both of us we didn’t realize until too late that it was us, not the drugs, that made us feel that way.

When we were finished—who knows when?—Pam started drifting off to sleep with a contented smile on her face.

God, it breaks my heart to think of how seldom I saw her smile like that! I was still feeling like shit, so I told her I was going to take a bath, thinking that would help bring me all the way down. I ran the water—hot—and eased on down into the tub, feeling every pore in my body open up to the gentle, lapping water.

I was floating in space, dreaming . . . watching the muffled explosions of color behind my eyelids. I have no idea how long I lay there with my head back and my arms resting on the sides of the tub. I might have been there for hours . . . or days, for all I know. It was still dark outside, and the water had turned ice cold when I opened my eyes and saw myself standing there at the foot of the tub.

For a moment, I thought I was looking at my own reflection in the mirror that hung on the bathroom wall. Then I realized that whoever this was—me or someone else—he was wearing a white button-down shirt, tan chinos, and a pair of beat-to-shit Frye boots just like I had been wearing earlier that evening. I was confused as hell, thinking for a moment that maybe I hadn’t yet undressed and gotten into the tub.

“Hey, what the fuck’re you doing here?” I asked.

A small voice in the back of my head was telling me that this wasn’t really me; it was just someone who
looked
like me. I didn’t have enough energy to get nervous or to wonder how the fuck he’d gotten into the flat.

He smiled and said nothing as he stared down at me, lying there in the tub. The acid was still worming its way through my brain, so I was having one hell of a time trying to figure out which was the real me—the one in the tub or the one standing there beside the bidet.

“Are . . . you . . . me?” I asked, faintly surprised that his lips didn’t move when I spoke.

He nodded his head slowly and answered, “I
want
to be.”

 
“You’re the one who’s been following me around, right?”

Again, he nodded.

“I want to be you,” he said, running his fingers through the tangle of his long, dark hair.

I know now that there’s a term for something like this.
Schizophrenic dissociation
. This guy might not have really looked like me, but the LSD was twisting reality into all sorts of new shapes. I finally understood that I wasn’t really talking to myself there in the bathroom. This guy—I never asked his name—was my ultimate fan. For all I know, he might have even had plastic surgery to alter his face to look as much like mine as possible. He had long, curly hair like mine; he was dressed like me; and he acted like me—even to the point of embracing my supposed death wish. I sensed that in him right away: that he had come here either to kill me or to die.

I don’t know what possessed me, but I nodded toward the bedroom door and said, “Pam’s in there. If I’m going to die, go in there first and say good-bye to her for me.”

He looked at me, momentarily confused. Then his smile widened and he said, “Do you mean, make love to her?”

I rolled my head lazily back and forth, and answered, “Naw! Just fuck her!”

I laid back in the bathtub and listened while he went into the bedroom. I heard him take off his clothes, rouse Pam, and then—for several minutes—all I heard was the squeaking of bedsprings and soft moaning. When he was finished, he came back into the bathroom, his naked body—thinner and stronger-looking than mine—glistening with sweat.

“Here,” I said, standing up and stepping out of the bathtub to make room for him. “Why don’t you get in?”

Without a word, he walked over to the tub, stepped into the icy water, and lay down.

Naked and dripping water from my face and hair, I leaned over him and stared long and hard at his face, unable to rid myself of the impression that I was gazing at myself in a mirror. His dark eyes were large, glistening as he looked up at me.

“Relax, now,” I said, caressing the back of his head. “Close your eyes and relax . . . I’m going to die now.”

He heaved a heavy sigh, then closed his eyes and slumped back against the tub edge. When I saw that he was completely relaxed, I went over to the sink and took a fresh razor blade from the cabinet. Moving back to the bathtub, I handed him the blade and said, “If you hold your wrist under water, it won’t sting as much.”