Mercy (78 page)

walk with the city all glowing wet, all sparkling, for me, as if

it’s for me, the light’s for me and the rain’s for me and it’s

stoned out o f its fucking mind for me; and the buildings are

just pure glitter and the light’s coming down from heaven

luscious and wet; for me. The boy at the door can’t keep me

out because I stride in and I am aglow; he’s a mandarin

standing there with his little list and his leather jacket and his

pretensions and his snobbish good looks and I mumble words

I know he can’t hear and I never yet met a man who wasn’t

stupider than me and he’s trying to decide am I someone or not

and I am not fucking anyone but I am striding in my

motorcycle boots and I am wet and I am bound for glory at the

bar and I push m y w ay through the crowd and fuck him and

he’s watching me, he sees that I ain’t headed for a table which

would transgress the laws o f the universe, and it ain’t a girl’s

trick to sit somewhere she ain’t entitled because a man didn’t

pick her out already; he sees I want the bar and I suppose it’s

faintly plausible that a girl might want a drink on her own or it

confuses him enough that he hesitates and he who hesitates is

lost. I take out all the bills I have and he’s watching me do it

and I put it down in front o f me, a nice pile, substantial, and I

am firm ly sitting on a stool and I have spread m y elbows out

on the bar to take up enough space to declare I am alone and

here to drink and he don’t know I don’t have more money and

I order m y Stoli on the rocks and I ain’t making no move to

take m y change or m ove m y money so he relaxes as if letting

me there will not do monumental harm to the system that is in

place and that it is his jo b to protect and the bodies close in

around me to protect me from his scrutiny and the noise closes

in around me and I am swallowed up and I disappear and I am

completely cosseted and private and safe and I feel like some

new thing, just new ly alive, and there’s the placenta hugging

me and I’m wet with fucking life and I stare into m y fucking

drink, m y triumphal drink, I stare into it as if it’s tea leaves and

I’m the w orld ’s oldest, wisest gypsy, I got gold earrings down

to m y knees and I got foresight and hindsight and I am a reader

o f history, there’s layers o f history, vulgar and occult, in the

stu ff and if you lit a fire to it yo u ’d burn history up. And shit I

love it; a solitary human being covered all over by noise, a

dense noise that bubbles and burns and cracks all over you like

fire, small fire, a million tiny, exploding fires; or a superhuman embrace by some green, slim y, scaly monster, it’s big and all over you and messy, it’s turbulent and dramatic and

ever so much bigger than a man and its embrace is overwhelming, a descent, an invasion that covers the terrain, a

crush o f locusts but you aren’t repelled, only exhilarated at

how awesome it is, how biblical, how spectacular; like as i f it

took you back to ancient E gypt and you saw something

sublime in the desert and you had to walk across it but you

could; it wraps itself around you like some spectacular excess

o f nature not man, yo u ’re crawling with it but it ain’t bad and

it ain’t loathsome and there’s no fear, it’s just exactly extreme

enough and wild enough and it says it’s nighttime in human

history now in Am erika and Moses has his story and you have

yours and each o f you gets the whole universe to roll around in

because everything was made to converge at the point where

you are amidst all the rest o f life o f whatever kind, com position, or characteristics, it’s a great mass all around you, the blob, a loud blob, Jell-O , loud Jell-O , and yo u ’re some frail,

simple thing at the center and what you are to them doesn’t

matter because the noise protects you from knowing what you

are to them; noise has a beauty and noise has a function and a

quiet girl sometimes needs it because the night is long and life

is hard and pain is real and you stare into the glass and you

drink, darling, you drink, and you contemplate and you

drink; you go slow and you speed up and you drink; and you

are a deep thinker and you drink; and you have some hazy,

romantic thoughts and some vague philosophical leanings and

you drink; and you remember some pictures that flash by in

your mind and you drink; and there’s sad feelings for a fleeting

minute and you drink; and you choreograph an uprising, the

lumpen rise up, and you drink; and there’s Camden reaching

right out for you, it’s taking you back, and you drink; a man

nudges you from the right and you drink; he puts his face right

up close to yours and you drink; he’s talking about something

or other and you drink; you don’t look left or right, you just

drink, it’s worship, it’s celebration, you’d kneel down except

for that you might not be able to synchronize your movements, in your heart you kneel; and you drink; you taste it and

you roll it around your tongue and down on into your throat

and down on into your chest and you get fiery and warm and

you drink it down hard and fast and you sit stone still in

solemn concentration and you drink; the noise holds you

there, it’s almost physical, the noise, it’s a superhuman

embrace, bigger than a man’s, it’s swamp but not swam py, it’s

dry and dark and hot and popping, it’s dense and down and

dirty and you drink; the noise keeps you propped up, your

back upright and your legs bent and your feet firm ly balanced

on the stool, except the stool’s higher now, and you drink; and

yo u ’re like Alice, you’re getting smaller and it’s getting

bigger, and then you remember Humpty Dum pty was a

fucking eggshell and you could fall and break and D orothy got

lost in Oz and Cinderella was made into a pumpkin or nearly

such and there’s a terrible decline and fall awaiting you, fear

and travail, because the m oney’s gone, you been handing it

over to the big man behind the bar and you been drinking and

you been contemplating and the pile’s gone and there’s terrible

challenges ahead, like physically getting o ff the stool and

physically getting out o f the room and physically getting

home; it hardly seems possible that you could actually have so

many legs and none o f them have any bones that stand up

straight and you break it down into smaller parts; pay up so the

bartender don’t break your fingers; get o ff the stool; stand up;

walk, try not to lean on anyone, you can’t use the men as

leaning posts, you can’t volley yourself to the front sort o f

springing o ff one after the other, because one or another will

consider it affection; get to the door; don’t fall on the mandarin

with the list, don’t trip in front o f him, don’t throw up; open

the door on your own steam; get out the door fully clothed,

jacket, T-shirt, keys; once outside, you make another plan.

These are hard things; some o f them may actually be

impossible. It may be impossible to pay the bartender because

you may have drunk too much and it may be impossible to get

o ff the stool and it may be impossible to walk and it may be

impossible to stand up and it may be impossible to find the

door. It’s sad, yo u ’re an orphan and it’s hard to concentrate,

what with poor nutrition and a bad education; but sociology

w ill not save your ass if you drank more money than you got

because a citizen has to pay their bar bills. There’s tw o dollars

sitting on the bar in front o f you, the remains o f your pile like

old bones, fragments o f an archaic skeleton, little remnants o f

a big civilization dug up and yo u ’re eyeing it like it’s the grail