The John Fante Reader

by John Fante

  I was in rags the day that check arrived. My nondescript Colorado clothes hung from me in shreds, and my first thought was a new wardrobe. I had to be frugal but in good taste, and so I descended Bunker Hill to Second and Broadway, and the Goodwill store. I made my way to the better quality section and found an excellent blue business suit with a white pinstripe. The pants were too long and so were the sleeves, and the whole thing was ten dollars. For another dollar I had the suit altered, and while this was being taken care of, I buzzed around in the shirt department. Shirts were fifty cents apiece, of excellent quality and all manner of styles. Next I purchased a pair of shoes—fine thick-soled oxfords of pure leather, shoes that would carry me over the streets of Los Angeles for months to come. I bought other things too, several pairs of shorts and T-shirts, a dozen pairs of socks, a few neckties and finally an irresistible glorious fedora. I set it jauntily at the side of my head and walked out of the dressing room and paid my bill. Twenty bucks. It was the first time in my life that I had bought clothing for myself. As I studied my reflection in a long mirror I could not help remembering that in all my Colorado years my people had been too poor to buy me a suit of clothes, even for the graduation exercises in high school. Well, I was on my way now, nothing could stop me. Heinrich Muller, the roaring tiger of the literary world, would lead me to the top of the heap. I walked out of the Goodwill and up Third Street, a new man. My boss, Abe Marx, was standing in front of the deli as I approached.

  “Good God, Bandini!” he exclaimed. “You’ve been to the Goodwill or something?”

  “Goodwill, my ass,” I snorted. “This is straight from Bullock’s, you boob.”

  A couple of days later Abe Marx handed me a business card. It read:

  Gustave Du Mont, Ph.D.

  LITERARY AGENT

  Preparation and Editing

  of books, plays, scenarios, and stories

  Expert editorial supervision

  513 Third Street, Los Angeles

  No triflers

  I slipped the card into the pocket of my new suit. I took the elevator to the fifth floor. Du Mont’s office was down the corridor. I entered.

  The reception room lurched like an earthquake. I caught my breath and looked around. The place was full of cats. Cats on the chairs, on the valances, on the typewriter. Cats on the bookcases, in the bookcases. The stench was overpowering. The cats came to their feet and swirled around me, pressing my legs, rolling playfully over my shoes. On the floor and on the surface of the furniture a film of cat fur heaved and eddied like a pool of water. I crossed to an open window and looked down the fire escape. Cats were ascending and descending. A huge grey creature climbed toward me, the head of a salmon in his mouth. He brushed past me and leaped into the room.

  By now the whir of cat fur enveloped the air. An inner office door opened. Standing there was Gustave Du Mont, a small aged man with eyes like cherries. He waved his arms and rushed among the cats shrieking,

  “Out! Out! Go, everybody! Time to go home!”

  The cats simply glided off at their leisure, some ending up at his feet some playfully pawing his pants. They were his masters. Du Mont sighed, threw up his hands, and said,

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m from the deli downstairs. You left your card.”

  “Enter.”

  I stepped into his office and he closed the door. We were in a small room in the presence of three cats lolling atop a bookcase. They were elite felines, huge Persians, licking their paws with regal aplomb. I stared at them. Du Mont seemed to understand.

  “My favorites,” he smiled. He opened a desk drawer and drew out a fifth of Scotch.

  “How about some lunch, young man?”

  “No thanks, Dr. Du Mont. What did you want to see me about?”

  Du Mont uncorked the bottle, took a swig from it and gasped.

  “I read your story. You’re a good writer. You shouldn’t be slinging hash. You belong in more amenable surroundings.” Du Mont took another swig. “You want a job?”

  I looked at all those cats. “Maybe. What you got in mind?”

  “I need an editor.”

  I smelled the pungency of all those cats. “I’m not sure I could take it.”

  “You mean the cats? I’ll take care of that.”

  I thought a minute. “Well … what is it you want me to edit?”

  He hit the bottle again. “Novels, short stories, whatever comes in.”

  I hesitated. “Can I see the stuff?”

  His fist came down on a pile of manuscripts. “Help yourself.”

  I lifted off the top manuscript. It was a short story, written by a certain Jennifer Lovelace, entitled Passion at Dawn. I groaned.

  Du Mont took another swig. “It’s awful,” he said. “They’re all awful. I can’t read them anymore. It’s the worst writing I ever saw. But there’s money in it if you’ve got the stomach. The worse they are the more you charge.”

  By now the whole front of my new suit was coated with cat fur. My nose itched and I felt a sneeze coming. I choked it back.

  “What’s the job pay?”

  “Five dollars a week.”

  “Hell, that’s only a dollar a day.”

  “Nothin’ to it.”

  I snatched the bottle and took a swig. It scorched my throat. It tasted like cat piss.

  “Ten dollars a week or no deal.”

  Du Mont shoved out his fist. “Shake,” he said. “You start Monday.”

  —Dreams from Bunker Hill

  I WONDERED WHAT HEINRICH MULLER WOULD SAY about my integrity. Integrity! I laughed. Integrity—balls. I was a nothing, a zero. To hell with it. I decided to go shopping for a pair of pants. I still had over a hundred dollars. I would splurge and forget my troubles in profligate spending. What was money anyway?

  At the Goodwill I selected and tried on three pairs of pants. Somehow they did very little for me. I looked at myself in the long, mirror, and there I was—the cipher, the zero. Shameful in the presence of Heinrich Muller, the lion of literature.

  Walking across Third and Hill to Angel’s Flight, I climbed aboard the trolley and sat down. The only other passenger was a girl across the aisle reading a book. She was in a plain dress and without stockings. She was rather attractive but not my style. As the trolley lurched into motion she moved to another seat. No ass at all, I thought. An ass, yes, but without the splendor of Jennifer Lovelace’s. Without nobility, without the grandeur of a thing of beauty. Just an ass, a plain common ass. It was not my day.

  I got off the cable car at the top of Angel’s Flight and started down Third Street toward my hotel. Then I decided on a cup of coffee and a cigarette in the small Japanese restaurant a few doors ahead. The coffee erased my gloom and I walked on to my hotel. The landlady sat behind the desk in the lobby. The first thing I noticed was a copy of The American Phoenix. It was exactly where I had placed it three weeks ago. Annoyed, I walked boldly to the desk and picked it up.

  “You haven’t read it, have you?”

  She smiled, hostile. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Why not?” I said.

  “It bored me. I read the first paragraph and that was enough for me.”

  I put the magazine under my arm.

  “I’m moving out,” I said. “Real soon.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  I walked away and down the hall. As I turned the key in my door I heard the click of a lock across the hall. The door opened and the girl from the trolley stepped out. She still carried the book. It was Zola’s Nana. She smiled in greeting.

  “Hi!” I said. “I didn’t know you lived here.”

  “I just moved in.”

  “You work around here?”

  “I suppose you’d call it that.” She made a sensual glance.

  “Would you like to see me?”

  “When?”

  “How about right now?”

  I didn’t want her. Nothing of her lured me, but I had to be manly. These situatio
ns could only be resolved in one way.

  “Sure,” I said.

  She turned on the tiny flame of sensuality in her eyes and pushed open her door.

  “What are we waiting for?” she said.

  I hesitated. Lord help me, I thought, as I crossed the hall and entered her room.

  She followed me inside and closed the door.

  “What’s your name, honey?”

  “Arturo,” I said. “Arturo Bandini.”

  She held out her hands and removed my coat.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “A fin.”

  She guided me around to face her and began unbuttoning my shirt. Hanging it over a chair she crossed to the bathroom.

  “See you in a minute.”

  She entered the bathroom and closed the door. I sat on the bed and pulled off my clothes. I was naked when she emerged. I tried to hide my disappointment. She was clean and bathed but somehow impure. Her bottom hung there like an orphan child. We would never make it together. My presence there was insanity. She grasped my rod and led me to the bathroom. She washed and soaped my loins and her fingers kneaded my joint determinedly, but there was no response. I could only think of Jennifer Lovelace and the gallantry of her flanks. Then she toweled me off and we went back to the bedroom and lay on the bed. She spread herself out naked and I lay beside her.

  “Go ahead,” she said. I traced one finger through her pubic hair.

  “Do you mind if I read?” she said. “Hand me my book.”

  I gave her the book and she opened it to her place and began to read. I lay there and wondered. Good God, what if my mother were to walk in? Or my father? Or Heinrich Muller? Where would it all end? She nodded toward a bowl of apples at the bedside.

  “Want an apple?” she asked.

  “No thanks.”

  “Give me one please.”

  I handed her an apple. And so she read and ate.

  “Come on, honey,” she coaxed. “Enjoy yourself.”

  I swung my legs out of bed and stood up.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, her voice hostile.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll pay you off.”

  “Would you like me to suck you?”

  “No,” I said.

  She slammed the book shut.

  “Do you know what’s the matter with you, sonny? You’re queer. That’s what’s the matter with you. You’re a fag. I know your kind.”

  She grabbed my coat, pants, underwear, shoes and socks, raced to the door and threw it all in the hall. I stepped out and began gathering my things.

  “I owe you five bucks,” I said.

  “No, you don’t. You don’t owe me a thing.”

  I groped through my coat pocket for the door key. Down the hall, watching me with her arms folded, was Mrs. Brownell, the landlady. I turned the key and jumped into my room.

  I felt relieved, saved, rescued. I went to the window to look at all of the great city spread below me. It was like a view of the whole world. Far to the southwest the sun struck the ocean in bars of heavenly light. A message from God. A sign. The infant Jesus in the manger, the light from the Star of Bethlehem. I fell on my knees.

  “Oh blessed Infant Jesus,” I prayed. “Thank you for saving me this day. Bless you for the surge of God’s goodness that moved me from that room of sin. I swear it now—I will never sin again. For the rest of my life I will remember your glorious intercession. Thank you, little Son of God. I am your devoted servant forever henceforth.”

  I made the sign of the cross and got to my feet. How good I felt. How recharged with the feelings of my early boyhood. I had to get in touch with Jennifer Lovelace.

  —Dreams from Bunker Hill

  I PICKED UP THE PHONE. The caller was Harry Schindler, the movie director. He was an old friend of H.L. Muller. He had obtained my address from Muller, and was anxious to talk to me.

  “What about?”

  “Have you ever written for pictures?”

  “No.”

  “That’s fine,” Schindler said. “Would you like a job?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Writing a screenplay.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Nothing to it,” Schindler said. “I’ll show you. Meet me at Columbia Pictures tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.”

  I went back to Mrs. Brownell’s living room and sat down. She had obviously overheard the telephone conversation.

  “I may have a job in the movies.”

  “At least you’ll be clean,” she said. I noticed her derriere. It was still contracted. I ate quickly and went back to my room.

  —Dreams from Bunker Hill

  FRANK EDGINGTON AND I BECAME BUDDIES. He loved the flip side of Hollywood, the bars, the mean streets angling off Hollywood Boulevard to the south. I was glad to tag along as he took in the saloons along El Centro, McCadden Place, Wilcox, and Las Palmas. We drank beer and played the pinball games. Edgington was a pinball addict, a tireless devotee, drinking beer and popping the pinballs. Sometimes we went to the movies. He knew all the fine restaurants, and we ate and drank well. On weekends we toured the Los Angeles basin, the deserts, the foothills, the outlying towns, the harbor. One Saturday we drove to Terminal Island, a strip of white sand in the harbor. The canneries were there and we saw the weatherbeaten beach houses where Filipinos and Japanese lived. It was an enchanting place, lonely, decrepit, picturesque. I saw myself in one of the shacks with my typewriter. I longed for the chance to work there, to write in that lonely, forsaken place, where the sand half covered the streets, and the porches and fences hung limp in the wind. I told Frank I wanted to live there and write there.

  “You’re crazy,” he said. “This is a slum.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. “It gives me a warm feeling.”

  At the studio we indulged another of Frank Edgington’s obsessions—child games. We played pitch, old maid, Parcheesi, and Chinese checkers. We played for small stakes-five cents a game. When Frank was alone he worked on a short story for the New Yorker. When I was alone I sat in my office hungering for Thelma Farber. She was impregnable. Sometimes she even denied me a hello, and I was thoroughly squelched and breathing hard. Harry Schindler ordered his old films and Thelma and I sat in the projection room watching them unroll. I tried to sit next to her and she promptly moved two seats away. She was a bitch, unreasonably hostile. I felt like vermin.

  After two weeks I picked up my first paycheck, $600. It was a staggering sum. Three hundred dollars a week for doing nothing! I knocked on Schindler’s door and thanked him for the check.

  “It’s okay,” he grinned. “We want you happy. That’s the whole idea.”

  “But I’m not doing anything. I’m going crazy. Give me something to write.”

  “You’re doing fine. I need you in case of emergency. I got to have a backup man, someone with talent. Don’t worry about it. You’re doing a great job. Keep up the good work. Cash the check and have fun.”

  “Let me write you a western.”

  “Not yet,” Schindler said. “Just do what you’re doing and leave the rest to me.”

  Suddenly I choked up. I wanted to cry. I turned and walked out, brushed past Thelma and into my office. I sat at my desk crying. I didn’t want charity. I wanted to be brilliant on paper, to turn fine phrases and dig up emotional gems for Schindler to see. Choking back my sobs I hurried down the hall to Edgington’s office, and flung myself into a chair.

  “What the hell’s the matter?” Edgington asked.

  I told him. “They won’t let me write,” I said. “Schindler won’t assign me anything. I’m going crazy.”

  Edgington threw his pencil across the room in disgust.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you? There are writers in this studio who go months without scratching out a line. They earn ten times as much as you do, and they laugh all the way to the bank. Your trouble is that you’re a fucking peasant. If there’s so much you don’t like about this town, stop jerkin
g off and go back to that dago village your people came from. You make my ass tired!”

  I stared at him gratefully. Then I began to laugh.

  “Frank,” I said. “You’re a wonderful person.”

  “Go and sin no more.”

  I went downstairs to Gower Street, up to Sunset, and across Sunset to the Bank of America, where I cashed my check. I walked out with a new sensation, a feeling of bitter joy. Down Sunset half a block was a used car lot. I found a second-hand Plymouth for $300 and drove away. I was a new person, a successful Hollywood writer, without even writing a line. The future was limitless.

  —Dreams from Bunker Hill

  A FEW NIGHTS LATER Edgington invited me to dinner. “Best restaurant in town,” he said. We left my car in the studio parking lot and drove off in Frank’s Cadillac. He went up Beverly Boulevard to Doheny and pulled into the parking lot of an adjacent restaurant. It was Chasen’s. Before we entered Frank straightened my tie.

  “This is a high-class joint,” he said. “I don’t want you to embarrass me.”

  We walked inside. There was a small outer bar, and beyond that the main dining room. We straddled bar stools and ordered drinks. As usual Frank knew everybody. He shook hands with Dave Chasen and introduced me.

  “Nice to know you,” Chasen grinned, then turned hastily to welcome a man and two women entering from the street. They stood talking a moment.