Post Office (13 page)

“Anything,” she said.

“Scotch and water do?”

“Sure.”

We drank the rest of the card. She brought me luck. I hit two of the last three.

“Did you bring a car?” I asked her.

“I came with some damn fool,” she said. “Forget him.”

“If you can, I can,” I told her.

We wrapped up in the car and her tongue flicked in and out of my mouth like a tiny lost snake. We unwrapped and I drove down the coast. It was a lucky night. I got a table overlooking the ocean and we ordered drinks and waited for the steaks. Everybody in the place looked at her. I leaned forward and lit her cigarette, thinking, this one’s going to be a good one. Everybody in the place knew what I was thinking and Mary Lou knew what I was thinking, and I smiled at her over the flame.

“The ocean,” I said, “look at it out there, battering, crawling up and down. And underneath all that, the fish, the poor fish fighting each other, eating each other. We’re like those fish, only we’re up here. One bad move and you’re finished. It’s nice to be a champion. It’s nice to know your moves.”

I took out a cigar and lit it.

“‘nother drink, Mary Lou?”

“All right, Hank.”

There was this place. It stretched over the sea, it was built over the sea. An old place, but with a touch of class. We got a room on the first floor. You could hear the ocean running down there, you could hear the waves, you could
smell
the ocean, you could feel the tide going in and out, in and out.

I took my time with her as we talked and drank. Then I went over to the couch and sat next to her. We worked something up, laughing and talking and listening to the ocean. I stripped down but made her keep her clothes on.

Then I carried her over to the bed and while crawling all over her, I finally worked her clothing off and I was in. It was hard getting in. Then she gave way.

It was one of the best. I heard the water, I heard the tide going in and out. It was as if I were coming with the whole ocean. It seemed to last and last. Then I rolled off.

“Oh Jesus Christ,” I said, “Oh Jesus Christ!”

I don’t know how Jesus Christ always got into such things.

The next day we picked up some of her stuff at this motel. There was a little dark guy in there with a wart on the side of his nose. He looked dangerous.

“You going with him?” he asked Mary Lou.

“Yes.”

“All right. Luck.” He lit a cigarette. “Thanks, Hector.”

Hector? What the hell kind of name was that? “Care for a beer?” he asked me. “Sure,” I said.

Hector was sitting on the edge of the bed. He went into the kitchen and got three beers. It was good beer, imported from Germany. He opened Mary Lou’s bottle, poured some of the bottle into a glass for her. Then he asked me:

“Glass?”

“No, thanks.”

I got up and switched bottles with him. We sat drinking the beer in silence.

Then he said, “You’re man enough to take her away from me?”

“Hell, I don’t know. It’s her choice. If she wants to stay with you, she’ll stay. Why don’t you ask her?”

“Mary Lou, will you stay with me?”

“No,” she said, “I’m going with him.”

She pointed at me. I felt important. I had lost so many women to so many other guys that it felt good for the thing to be working the other way around. I lit a cigar. Then I looked around for an ashtray. I saw one on the dresser.

I happened to look into the mirror to see how hungover I was and I saw him coming at me like a dart toward a dart-board. I still had the beerbottle in my hand. I swung and he walked right into it. I got him in the mouth. His whole mouth was broken teeth and blood. Hector dropped to his knees, crying, holding his mouth with both hands. I saw the stiletto. I kicked the stiletto away from him with my foot, picked it up, looked at it. Nine inches. I hit the button and the blade dropped back in. I put the thing in my pocket.

Then as Hector was crying I walked up and booted him in the ass. He sprawled flat on the floor, still crying. I walked over, took a pull at his beer.

Then I walked over and slapped Mary Lou. She screamed.

“Cunt! You set this up, didn’t you? You’d let this monkey kill me for the lousy four or five hundred bucks in my wallet!”

“No, no!” she said. She was crying. They both were crying.

I slapped her again.

“Is that how you make it, cunt? Killing men for a couple hundred?”

“No, no, I LOVE you, Hank, I LOVE you!”

I grabbed that blue dress by the neck and ripped one side of it down to her waist. She didn’t wear a brassiere. The bitch didn’t need one.

I walked out of there, got outside and drove toward the track. For two or three weeks I was looking over my shoulder. I was jumpy. Nothing happened. I never saw Mary Lou at the racetrack again. Or Hector.

Somehow the money slipped away after that and soon I left the track and sat around in my apartment waiting for the 90 day leave to run out. My nerves were raw from the drinking and the action. It’s not a new story about how women descend upon a man. You think you have space to breathe, then you look up and there’s another one. A few days after returning to work, there was another one. Fay. Fay had grey hair and always dressed in black. She said she was protesting the war. But if Fay wanted to protest the war, that was all right with me. She was a writer of some sort and went to a couple of writers’ workshops. She had ideas about Saving the World. If she could Save it for me, that would be all right too. She had been living off alimony checks from a former husband—they had had three children—and her mother also sent money now and then. Fay had not had more than one or two jobs in her life.

Meanwhile Janko had a new load of bullshit. He sent me home each morning with my head aching. At the time I was getting numerous traffic citations. It seemed that everytime I looked into the rear view mirror there were the red lights. A squad car or a bike.

I got to my place late one night. I was really beat.

Getting that key out and into the door was about the last of me. I walked into the bedroom and there was Fay in bed reading
The New Yorker
and eating chocolates. She didn’t even say hello.

I walked into the kitchen and looked for something to eat. There was nothing in the refrigerator. I decided to pour myself a glass of water. I walked to the sink. It was stopped-up with garbage. Fay liked to save empty jars and jar lids. The dirty dishes filled half the sink and on top of the water, along with a few paper plates, floated these jars and jar lids.

I walked back into the bedroom just as Fay was putting a chocolate in her mouth.

“Look, Fay,” I said, “I know you want to save the world. But can’t you start in the kitchen?”

“Kitchens aren’t important,” she said.

It was difficult to hit a woman with grey hair so I just went into the bathroom and let the water run into the tub. A burning bath might cool the nerves. When the tub was full I was afraid to get into it. My sore body had, by then, stiffened to such an extent that I was afraid I might drown in there.

I went into the front room and after an effort I managed to get out of my shirt, pants, shoes, stockings. I walked into the bedroom and climbed into bed next to Fay. I couldn’t get settled. Every time I moved, it cost me.

The only time you are alone, Chinaski, I thought, is when you are driving to work or driving back.

I finally worked my way to a position on my stomach. I ached all over. Soon I’d be back on the job. If I could manage to sleep, it would help. Every now and then I could hear a page turn, the sound of chocolates being eaten. It had been one of her writers’ workshop nights. If she would only turn out the lights.

“How was the workshop?” I asked from my belly.

“I’m worried about Robby.”

“Oh,” I asked, “what’s wrong?”

Robby was a guy nearing 40 who had lived with his mother all his life. All he wrote, I was told, were terribly funny stories about the Catholic Church. Robby really laid it to the Catholics. The magazines just weren’t ready for Robby, although he had been printed once in a Canadian journal. I had seen Robby once on one of my nights off. I drove Fay up to this mansion where they all read their stuff to each other. “Oh! There’s Robby!” Fay had said, “he writes these very funny stories about the Catholic Church!”

She had pointed. Robby had his back to us. His ass was wide and big and soft; it hung in his slacks. Can’t they see that? I thought.

“Won’t you come in?” Fay had asked.

“Maybe next week …”

   Fay put another chocolate into her mouth.

“Robby’s worried. He lost his job on the delivery truck. He says he can’t write without a job. He needs a feeling of security. He says he won’t be able to write until he finds another job.”

“Oh hell,” I said, “I can get him another job.”

“Where? How?”

“They are hiring down at the post office, right and left. The pay’s not bad.”

“THE POST OFFICE! ROBBY’S TOO SENSITIVE TO WORK AT THE POST OFFICE!”

“Sorry,” I said, “thought it was worth a try. Good night.”

Fay didn’t answer me. She was angry.

I had Fridays and Saturdays off, which made Sunday the roughest day. Plus the fact that on Sunday they made me report at 3:30 p.m. instead of my usual 6:18 p.m.

This Sunday I went in and they put me in the station papers section, as usual per Sundays, and this meant at
least
eight hours on my feet.

Besides the pains, I was beginning to suffer from dizzy spells. Everything would whirl, I would come very close to blacking out, then I would grab myself.

It had been a brutal Sunday. Some friends of Fay’s had come over and sat on the couch and chirped, how they were really great writers, really the best in the nation. The only reason they didn’t get published was that they didn’t—they said—send their stuff out.

I had looked at them. If they wrote the way they looked, drinking their coffee and giggling and dipping their doughnuts, it didn’t matter if they sent it out or jammed it.

I was sticking in the magazines this Sunday. I needed coffee, two coffees, a bite to eat. But all the soups were standing out front. I hit out the back way. I had to get straight. The cafeteria was on the second floor. I was on the fourth. There was a doorway down by the men’s crapper. I looked at the sign.

It was a con. I was wiser than those mothers. They just put the sign up to keep clever guys like Chinaski from going down to the cafeteria. I opened the door and went on down. The door closed behind me. I walked down to the second floor. Turned the knob. What the fuck! The door wouldn’t open! It was locked. I walked back up. Past the third floor door. I didn’t try it. I knew it was locked. As the first floor door was locked. I knew the post office well enough by then. When they laid a trap, they were thorough. I had one slim chance. I was at the fourth floor. I tried the knob. It was locked.

At least the door was near the men’s crapper. There was always somebody going in and out of the men’s crapper. I waited. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes! Didn’t ANYBODY want to shit, piss or goof-off? Twenty-five minutes. Then I saw a face. I tapped on the glass.

“Hey, buddy! HEY, BUDDY!”

He didn’t hear me, or pretended not to hear me. He marched into the crapper. Five minutes. Then another face came by.

I rapped hard. “HEY, BUDDY! HEY. YOU COCK-SUCKER!”

I guess he heard me. He looked at me from behind the wired glass.

I said, “OPEN THE DOOR! CAN’T YOU SEE ME IN HERE? I’M LOCKED IN, YOU FOOL! OPEN THE DOOR!”

He opened the door. I went in. The guy was in a trance-like state.

I squeezed his elbow.

“Thanks, kid.”

I walked back to the magazine case. Then the soup walked past. He stopped and looked at me. I slowed down.

“How are you doing, Mr. Chinaski?”

I growled at him, waved a magazine in the air as if I were going insane, said something to myself, and he walked on.

Fay was pregnant. But it didn’t change her and it didn’t change the post office either.

The same clerks did all the work while the miscellaneous crew stood around and argued about sports. They were all big black dudes—built like professional wrestlers. Whenever a new one came into the service he was tossed into the miscellaneous crew. This kept them from murdering the supervisors. If the miscellaneous crew had a supervisor you never saw him. The crew brought in truckloads of mail that arrived via freight elevator. This was a five minute on the hour job. Sometimes they counted the mail, or pretended to. They looked very calm and intellectual, making their counts with long pencils behind one ear. But most of the time they argued the sports scene violently. They were all experts—they read the same sports writers.

“All right, man, what’s your all time outfield?”

“Well, Willie Mays, Ted Williams, Cobb.”

“What? What?”

“That’s right, baby!”

“What about the Babe? Whatta ya gonna do with the Babe?”

“O.K., O.K., who’s your all star outfield?”

“All time, not all star!”

“O.K., O.K., you know what I mean, baby, you know what I mean!”

“Well, I’ll take Mays, Ruth and Di Maj!”

“Both you guys are nuts! How about Hank Aaron, Baby? How about Hank?”

At one time, all miscellaneous jobs were put on bid. Bids were filled mostly on a basis of seniority. The miscellaneous crew went about and ripped the bids out of the order books. Then they had nothing to do. Nobody filed a complaint. It was a long dark walk to the parking lot at night.

I began getting dizzy spells. I could feel them coming. The case would begin to whirl. The spells lasted about a minute. I couldn’t understand it. Each letter was getting heavier and heavier. The clerks began to have that dead grey look. I began to slide off my stool. My legs would barely hold me up. The job was killing me.

I went to my doctor and told him about it. He took my blood pressure.