“O.K.,” he said, “Bowers, you’re first. Get this cocksucker up to forty-five miles per hour and hold her there. I’ve got this gun in my right hand and a stopwatch in my left hand. When I fire, you hit the brakes. If you ain’t got the reflexes to stop her quick enough, you’ll be selling green bananas at noon at Seventh and Broadway…No, you fucker! Don’t watch my trigger finger! Look straight ahead! I’m going to sing you a little song. I’m going to lull you to sleep. You’ll never guess when this son of a bitch is going to go off!”
It went off right then. Bowers hit the brakes. We lurched and skidded and spun. Clouds of dust billowed up from under the wheels as we whizzed between huge concrete pillars. Finally the cab screeched to a stop and rocked back and forth. Somebody in the back seat got a nosebleed.
“Did I make it?” Bowers asked.
“I ain’t gonna tell you,” said Smithson, making a notation in his little black book. “O.K., De Esprito, you’re next.”
De Esprito took the wheel and we went through more of the same. The drivers kept changing as we ran up and down the L.A. riverbed, burning brakes and rubber and shooting off the pistol. I was last to try it. “Chinaski,” said Smithson.
I took the wheel and ran the cab up to fifty m.p.h.
“You set the record, eh Pops? I’m going to shoot your ass right off the map!”
“What?”
“Blow out the earwax! I’m going to take you, Pops! I once shook hands with Max Baer! I was once a gardener for Tex Ritter! Kiss your ass goodbye!”
“You’re ridin’ the god damned brake! Take your foot off the god damned brake!”
“Sing me a song, Pops! Sing me your little song! I’ve got forty love letters from Mae West in my dufflebag!”
“You can’t beat me!”
I didn’t wait for the gun. I hit the brakes. I guessed right. The gun and my foot hit at the same time. I beat his world record by fifteen feet and nine-tenths of a second. That’s what he said at first. Then he changed his tune and said that I had cheated. I said, “O.K., write me up for whatever you want, but just get us out of the L.A. River. It’s not going to rain so we won’t be able to catch any fish.”
72
There were forty or fifty of us in the Training Class. We all sat at little desks, rows of them bolted to the floor. Each desk had a flat area like an arm rest to the right hand side. It was just like the old days in a biology or chemistry class.
Smithson called roll.
“Peters!”
“Yep.”
“Calloway.”
“Uh huh.”
“McBride…”
(Silence).
“McBride?”
“Oh, ya.”
The roll call continued. I thought it was very nice that there were so many job openings, yet it worried me too—we’d probably be pitted against one another in some way. Survival of the fittest. There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer. Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i.e., almost everybody could be a writer. But most men, fortunately, aren’t writers, or even cab drivers, and some men—many men—unfortunately aren’t anything.
The roll call was over. Smithson looked around the room. “We are gathered here,” he began, then stopped. He looked at a black man in the first row. “Spencer?”
“Yes.”
“You took the wire out of your cap, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Now you see, you’ll be sitting in your cab with your cap down over your ears like Doug McArthur and some old woman with a shopping bag will walk up and want to take a cab and you’ll be sitting there like that with your arm hanging out the window and she’ll think you’re a cowboy. She’ll think you’re a cowboy and she won’t ride with you. She’ll take a bus. That stuff is all right in the army, but this is Yellow Cab.”
Spencer reached down on the floor, got the wire and put it back in his cap. He needed the job.
“Now most guys think they know how to drive. But the fact is very few people know how to drive, they just steer. Everytime I drive down the street I marvel at the fact that there isn’t an accident every few seconds. Every day I see two or three people simply run through red lights as if they didn’t exist. I’m no preacher but I can tell you this—the lives that people lead are driving them crazy and their insanity comes out in the way they drive. I’m not here to tell you how to live. You’ll have to see your rabbi or your priest or your local whore. I’m here to teach you how to drive. I’m trying to keep our insurance rates down, and to fix it so you can get back to your room alive at night.”
“God damn,” said the kid next to me, “old Smithson’s something, ain’t he?”
“Every man is a poet,” I said.
“Now,” said Smithson, “and, god damn you, McBride, wake up and listen to me…now, when is the only time a man can lose control of his cab and won’t be able to help it?”
“When I get a hard-on?” said some cracker.
“Mendoza, if you can’t drive with a hard-on we can’t use you. Some of our best men drive with hard-ons all day long and all night too.”
The boys laughed.
“Come on, when is the only time a man can lose control of his cab and won’t be able to help it?” Nobody answered. I raised my hand.
“Yes, Chinaski?”
“A man might lose control of his cab when he sneezed.”
“That’s correct.”
I felt like a star pupil again. It was like the old L.A. City College days—bad grades, but good with the mouth.
“All right, when you sneeze, what do you do?”
As I raised my hand again the door opened and a man entered the room. He walked down the aisle and stood before me. “Are you Henry Chinaski?”
“Yes.”
He snatched my cabbie’s cap from my head, almost angrily. Everybody looked at me. Smithson’s face was expressionless and impartial.
“Follow me,” said the man.
I followed him out of the study hall and into his office.
“Sit down.”
I sat down.
“We ran a check on you, Chinaski.”
“Yes?”
“You have eighteen common drunks and one drunk driving.”
“I thought if I put it down I wouldn’t get hired.”
“You lied to us.”
“I’ve stopped drinking.”
“It doesn’t matter. Once you’ve falsified your application, you’re disqualified.”
I got up and walked out. I walked down the sidewalk past the Cancer Building. I walked back to our apartment. Jan was in bed. She was wearing a torn pink slip. One shoulder strap was held together by a safety pin. She was already drunk. “How’d you make out, daddy?”
“They don’t want me.”
“How come?”
“They don’t want homosexuals.”
“Oh, well. There’s wine in the fridge. Get yourself a glass and come on to bed.”
That I did.
73
A couple of days later I found an ad in the paper for a shipping clerk in an art supply store. The store was very close to where we lived but I overslept and it wasn’t until 3 p.m. that I got down there. The manager was talking to an applicant when I arrived. I didn’t know how many others he had interviewed. A girl gave me a form to fill out. The guy seemed to be making a good impression on the manager. They were both laughing. I filled out the form and waited. Finally the manager called me over.
“I want to tell you something. I already accepted another job this morning,” I told him. “Then I happened to see your ad. I live right around the corner. I thought it might be nicer to work so close to home. Besides, I paint as a hobby. I thought I might get a discoun
t on some of the art supplies I need.”
“We give 15% off to employees. What is the name of this other place that hired you?”
“Jones-Hammer Arc Light Company. I’m to supervise their shipping department. They’re on lower Alameda Street just below the slaughterhouse. I’m supposed to report at 8 a.m.”
“Well, we still want to interview some more applicants.”
“It’s all right. I didn’t expect to take this job. I just dropped in because it was nearby. You have my phone number on the application. But once I go to work at Jones-Hammer, it wouldn’t be fair for me to leave them.”
“You’re married?”
“Yes. With one child. A boy. Tommy, age 3.”
“All right. We’ll let you know.”
The phone rang at 6:30 p.m. that evening. “Mr. Chinaski?”
“Yes?”
“Do you still want the job?”
“Where?”
“At the Graphic Cherub Art Supply.”
“Well, yes.”
“Then report at 8:30 a.m.”
74
Business didn’t seem to be too good. Outgoing orders were few and small. The manger, Bud, walked back to where I was leaning against the shipping table smoking a cigar. “When things are slow you can go get yourself a cup of coffee at the cafe around the corner. But be sure you’re back here when the trucks come by for the pickups.”
“Sure.”
“And keep your squeegie rack filled. Keep a good supply of squeegies.”
“All right.”
“Also keep your eyes peeled and see that nobody comes in from the back and steals our stock. We got a lotta winos roaming these alleys.”
“O.K.”
“You got plenty of FRAGILE labels?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t be afraid to use plenty of FRAGILE labels. If you run out, let me know. Pack the stuff good, especially the paints in glass.”
“I’ll take care of everything.”
“O.K. And when things get slow you walk down the alley and get yourself a cup of coffee. It’s Montie’s Cafe. They got a waitress there with big tits, you ought to see them. She wears low-cut blouses and bends over all the time. And the pie is fresh.”
“O.K.”
75
Mary Lou was one of the girls in the front office. Mary Lou had style. She drove a three year old Cadillac and lived with her mother. She entertained members of the L.A. Philharmonic, movie directors, cameramen, lawyers, real estate agents, chiropractors, holy men, ex-aviators, ballet dancers and other entertainment figures such as wrestlers and defensive left ends. But she had never married and she had never gotten out of the front office of Graphic Cherub Art Supply, except now and then for a quickie fuck with Bud in the ladies’ room, giggling, with the door bolted after she thought the rest of us had gone home. Also, she was religious and loved to play the horses, but preferably from a reserved seat and preferably at Santa Anita. She looked down on Hollywood Park. She was desperate and she was choosey at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn’t have quite enough going for her to become what she imagined herself to be.
One of her jobs was to bring a copy of the orders back to me after she had typed them. The clerks picked up another copy of the same orders out of the basket to fill when they weren’t waiting on customers, and I’d match them up before I packed the stuff. The first time she came back with some orders she wore a tight black skirt, high heels, a white blouse, and a gold and black scarf around her neck. She had a cute turned-up nose, a marvelous behind and fine breasts. She was tall. Class.
“Bud tells me you paint,” she said.
“A bit.”
“Oh, I think that’s marvelous. We have such interesting people working here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we have a janitor, an old man, Maurice, he’s from France. He comes once a week and cleans the store. He paints too. He buys all his paints and brushes and canvas from us. But he’s strange. He never speaks, just nods and points. He just points to things he wants to buy.”
“Uh huh.”
“He’s strange.”
“Uh huh.”
“Last week I went into the ladies’ room, and he was there, mopping up in the dark. He’d been in there an hour.”
“Uh.”
“You don’t talk either.”
“Oh yes. I’m all right.”
Mary Lou turned and walked away. I watched the buttocks work on that tall body. Magic. Some women were magic.
I had packed a few orders when this old guy came walking down the aisle. He had a grubby grey mustache that drooped around his mouth. He was small and bent. He was dressed in black, had a red scarf tied around his throat, and he word a blue beret. Out from under the blue beret came much long grey hair, uncombed.
Maurice’s eyes were the most distinctive thing about him; they were a vivid green and seemed to look out from deep within his head. He had bushy eyebrows. He was smoking a long thin cigar. “Hi, kid,” he said. Maurice didn’t have much of a French accent. He sat on the end of the packing table and crossed his legs.
“I thought you didn’t talk?”
“Oh, that. Balls. I wouldn’t piss on a fly for them. Why bother?”
“How come you clean the crapper in the dark?”
“That’s Mary Lou. I look at her. Then I go in there and come all over the floor. I mop it up. She knows.”
“You paint?”
“Yes, I’m working on a canvas in my room now. As big as this wall. Not a mural. A canvas. I am painting a man’s life—from his birth through the vagina, through all the years of his existence, then finally into the grave. I look at people in the park. I use them. That Mary Lou, she’d make one good fuck, what?”
“Maybe. It could be a mirage.”
“I lived in France. I met Picasso.”
“Did you really?”
“Shit, I did. He’s O.K.”
“How’d you meet him?”
“I knocked on his door.”
“Was he pissed?”
“No. No, he wasn’t pissed.”
“Some people don’t like him.”
“Some people don’t like anybody who is famous.”
“And some people don’t like anybody who isn’t.”
“People don’t count. I wouldn’t piss on a fly for them.”
“What’d Picasso say?”
“Well, I asked him. I said, ‘Master, what can I do to make my work better?’”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“What’d he say?”
“He said, ‘I can’t tell you anything about your work. You must do it all by yourself.’”
“Ha.”
“Yes.”
“Pretty good.”
“Yes. Got a match?”
I gave him some. His cigar had gone out.
“My brother is rich,” said Maurice. “He has disowned me. He doesn’t like my drinking. He doesn’t like my painting.”
“But your brother never met Picasso.”
Maurice stood up and smiled.
“No, he never met Picasso.”
Maurice walked back down the aisle toward the front of the store, cigar smoke curling back over his shoulder. He had kept my book of matches.
76
Bud came back pushing three one gallon cans of paint on the order wagon. He put them on the packing table. They were labeled crimson. He handed me three labels. The labels said vermillion.
“We’re out of vermillion,” he said. “Soak off these labels and paste on the vermillion labels.”
“There’s quite a difference between crimson and vermillion,” I said.
“Just do it.”
Bud left me some rags and a razor blade. I soaked the rags in water and wrapped them around the cans. Then I scraped off the old labels and glued on the new ones.
He came back a few minutes later. He had a can of ultramarine and a label for cobalt blue. Well, he wa
s getting closer…
77
Paul was one of the clerks. He was fat, about 28. His eyes were very large, bulging. He was on pills. He showed me a handful. They were all different sizes and colors.
“Want some?”
“No.”
“Go ahead. Take one.”
“All right.”
I took a yellow.
“I take ’em all,” he said. “Damn things. Some want to take me up, some want to take me down. I let them fight over me.”
“That’s supposed to be rough on you.”
“I know. Say, why don’t you come to my place after work?”
“I’ve got a woman.”
“We’ve all got women. I’ve got something better.”
“What?”
“My girlfriend bought me this reducing machine for my birthday. We fuck on it. It moves up and down, we don’t have to do any work. The machine does all the work.”
“It sounds good.”
“You and I can use that machine. It makes a lot of noise but as long as we don’t use it after 10 p.m. it’s O.K.”
“Who gets on top?”
“What difference does it make? I can take it or give it. Top or bottom, it doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“Hell no. We’ll flip for it.”
“Let me think it over.”
“All right. Want another pill?”
“Yeah. Give me another yellow.”
“I’ll check with you at closing time.”
“Sure.”
Paul was there at closing.
“Well?”
“I can’t do it, Paul. I’m straight.”
“It’s a great machine. Once you get on that machine you’ll forget everything.”
“I can’t do it.”
“Well, come on over and look at my pills anyhow.”
“All right. I can do that.”
I locked the back door. Then we walked out the front together. Mary Lou was sitting in the office smoking a cigarette and talking to Bud.
Factotum Page 13
