What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (11 page)

when you no longer see their name on the program

at Hollywood Park or Santa Anita

you figure they have retired

but it's not always the case.

sometimes women or bad investments

or drink or drugs

don't let them quit.

then you see them down at Caliente

on bad mounts

vying against the flashy Mexican boys

or you see them at the county fair

dashing for that first hairpin

turn.

it's like once-famous fighters

being fed to the rising small-town hero.

I was in Phoenix one afternoon

and the people were talking and chattering and talking

so I borrowed my lady's car

and got out of there

and drove to the track.

I had a fair day.

then in the last race

the jock brought in a longshot:

$48.40 and I looked at the program:

R.Y.

so that's what happened to him?

and when he pulled his mount up inside the winner's

circle he shook his whip in the air

just like he used to do at Hollywood Park.

it was like seeing the dead

newly risen:

good old R.Y.

5 pounds overweight

a bit older

and still able to

create the magic.

I hadn't noticed his name

on that $3,500 claiming race

or I would have put a small

sentimental bet on him

on his only mount of the day.

you can have your New Year's parties

your birthdays

your Christmas

your 4th of July

I'll take my kind of magic.

driving back in

I felt very good for R.Y.

when I got back they were still

chatting and talking and chatting

and my lady looked up and said,

“well, how did you do?”

and I said, “I had a lucky day.”

and she said, “it's about time.”

and she was right.

somebody else was killed last night

as I sit looking at 12 red dying roses.

I do believe that this neighborhood must

be tougher than Spanish Harlem in N.Y.

I must get out.

I've lived here 4 years without a scratch

and in a sense my neighbors accept me.

I'm just the old guy in a white t-shirt.

but that won't help me one day.

I'm no longer broke.

I could get out of here.

I could better my living conditions.

but I have an idea

I'll never get out of here.

I like the nearby taco stand too much.

I like the cheap bars and pawn shops and

the roving insane

who sleep on our bus stop benches

or in the bushes

and raid the Goodwill container

for clothing.

I feel a bond with these

people.

I was once like them even though I

now am a published writer with some

minor success.

somebody else was killed last night

in this neighborhood

almost under my window.

I'm sentimental:

even though the roses are

almost dead

somebody brought them to me

and must I finally throw them

away?

another death last night

another death

the poor kill the poor.

I've got to get out of this

neighborhood

not for the good of my poetry

but for a reasonable chance at

old age.

as I write this

the giant who lives in the back

who wears a striped black-and-yellow

t-shirt as big as a tent

(he looks like a huge bumblebee at

six-foot-four and 290 pounds)

walks past my window and claws

the screen.

“mercy, my friend,” I ask.

“there'll be no mercy,” he says, turning back

to his tiny flat.

the 12 dead roses look at me.

so big, with a cigar sticking out of his mouth

he listened patiently to the people

to the old women in the neighborhood who told him

about their arthritis and their constipation

or about the peeping toms who looked in at their

wrinkled bodies at night

breathing heavily outside the blinds.

he had patience with people

he knew something as he sat at the taco stand and

listened to the cokeheads and the meth-heads

and the ugly whores

who then listened carefully to him

he
was
the neighborhood

he was Hollywood and Western

even the pimps with their switchblades stood aside

when he walked by.

then it happened without warning: he began to get

thin. he came to my door and asked if I had some

oranges. he sat in my chair looking weak and sad,

he seemed about to cry. “I don't know what's wrong.

I can't eat. I puke it all up.” I told him to go

to the doctors. he went to the Vet's Hospital, he went

to Queen of Angels, he went to Hollywood

Presbyterian. he went to other stranger places.

I went to see him the other day. he had moved out of

the neighborhood. he sat in a chair. discarded

milk cartons were on the floor, empty beef stew

cans, empty Kentucky Colonel boxes, bags of

uneaten french fries and the stale stink.

“you need a good diagnostician,” I said.”

“it's no use,” he said.

“keep trying…”

“I've found,” he said, “that I can drink buttermilk

and it stays down.”

we talked some more and then I left.

now the old women ask me, “where is he? where is your

friend?”

I don't think he wants to see them.

I'll always remember him when there was trouble

around this place

running out of his apartment in back

himself large and confident

in the moonlight, long cigar in mouth

ready to right what needed to be set

right.

now it's simple and clear

that he waits as alone as a man can get.

even the devil has company, you know.

the old ladies stay inside

the taco stand has lost its lure

and when the police helicopter circles

over us in the night

and the searchlight invades our windows

illuminating the blinds it doesn't matter

like it used to matter. it's as simple

and clear as that.

she has fucked 200 men in ten

states.

5 have committed suicide

3 have gone entirely mad.

every time she moves to a new city

10 men follow her.

now she sits on my couch

in a short blue dress

and she seems

quite healthy and chipper

even looks innocent.

“I lose interest in a man,”

she says,

“as soon as he begins to care for

me.”

I refill her drink

as she pulls her dress up,

shows me her black panties.

“don't these look sexy?” she asks.

I tell her that they do look sexy.

she gets up, walks across the room

through my bedroom and into the bathroom.

soon I hear the toilet flush.

her name is Nana and she has been living on

earth for the past

5,000 years.

poor Mimi Trochi

she is probably the most beautiful woman I know

and young too, still young, but

she keeps running into trouble,

twice in the madhouse,

shacked up and deserted

beyond counting

but she knows I am one of those rare old-fashioned men

and she comes to me for strength

but all I can give her are hot kisses,

and we are always interrupted by lightning or chance

or bad luck

and poor Trochi and I never seem to get beyond the

hot kisses,

and I am usually luckier that way,

and she certainly must be—if you want to call it luck—

with her several children to prove it.

for one of the handsomest women on earth

this all could be a puzzle

especially since she has a mind and a soul, but

Trochi simply chooses wrong,

she chooses indifference to begin with,

she believes indifference is strength, and

I have suffered right along with Mimi Trochi and

her indifferent men and

although I have never stuck it into her

she keeps coming back

with stories and sobs

looking more handsome than ever,

we don't even kiss anymore,

all those hot kisses gone forever,

I am just not indifferent enough.

“you had your chance,” she tells me,

showing me her newest baby.

I don't know what to do about it

so I phone my girlfriend and say,

“do come over. Mimi is here with her baby

and we are celebrating.”

my girlfriend comes over, picks up the baby and

tortures it in her loving way

just as she does me.

and then I tell Mimi that we must leave for dinner,

my girlfriend and I,

and Mimi says, well, all the traffic

now, it's 5 in the afternoon, could I stay a while?

and so we leave handsome Mimi Trochi

there and drive off,

and I don't worry too much

because I feel that Mimi does love me in her own

way,

and coming back the next morning

I find nothing missing,

only a small phone bill later,

a call to Van Nuys and a call to Pasadena,

hardly anything for a woman in her state,

you know how it usually is:

a call to New York or Philadelphia

or London or Paris or worse.

I have her phone number written down

and I am going to invite her to my New Year's party

if she's still in town

then.

that day we left her at my place

she said she was going to try to get a job

as a belly dancer

at the Red Fez. a Turk, she said, owned the Red

Fez and he was giving her some real

trouble

but might offer her the job

anyway.

having known Mimi Trochi this long

I was afraid to ask her

what the trouble was.

there's Barry in his ripped walking shorts

he's on Thorazine

is 24

looks 38

lives with his mother in the same

apartment building

and they fight like married folk.

he wears dirty white t-shirts

and every time he gets a new dog

he names him “Brownie.”

he's like an old woman really.

he'll see me getting into my Volks.

“hey, ya goin' ta work?”

“oh, no Barry, I don't work. I'm going to

the racetrack.”

“yeah?”

he walks over to the car window.

“ya heard them last night?”

“who?”

“
them!
they were playin' that shit all night!

I couldn't sleep! they played until one-thirty!

didn't cha hear 'em?”

“no, but I'm in the back, Barry, you're up

front.”

we live in east Hollywood among the massage parlors,

adult bookstores and the sex film theatres.

“yeah,” says Barry. “I don't know what this neighborhood

is comin' to! ya know those other people in the front

unit?”

“yes.”

“well, I saw through their curtains! and ya know what

they were doin'?”

“no, Barry.”

“
this!
” he says and then takes his right forefinger and

pokes it against a vein in his left arm.

“really?”

“yeah! and if it ain't
that
, now we got all these

drunks in the neighborhood!”

“look, Barry, I've got to get to the racetrack.”

“aw' right. but ya know what happened?”

“no, Barry.”

“a cop stopped me on my Moped, and guess why?”

“speeding?”

“no! he claimed I had to have a license to drive a Moped!

that's stupid! he gave me a ticket! I almost smashed him

in the face!”

“oh yeah?”

“yeah! I almost smashed him!”

“Barry, I've got to make the first race.”

“how much does it cost you to get in?”

“four dollars and twenty-five cents.”

“I got into the Pomona County Fair for a dollar.”

“all right, Barry.”

the motor has been running. I put it into first and pull

out. in the rearview mirror I see him walk

back across the lawn.

Brownie is waiting for him,

wagging his tail.

his mother is inside waiting.

maybe Barry will slam her against the refrigerator

thinking about that cop.

or maybe they'll play checkers.

I find the Hollywood freeway

then the Pasadena freeway.

life has been tough on Barry:

he's 24

looks 38

but it all evens out finally:

he's aged a good many other people

too.