I don’t seem to get anywhere, but I’ve been a lot of places.
Shallow? I’m not being fair to myself.
Honestly do believe the end is near.
And there’s been so so much to bear in the last few years I’m numb.
This earthquake is just the latest.
Reagan and terrorists, cocaine, street gangs, baby seals and spotted owls and dolphins and old growth and elephant ivory and rhinoceros tusk, Bhopal or Chernobyl, South Africa or Noriega or AIDS or the deficit or the stock market or cellulite.
The cable bill.
It’s always something, isn’t it?
Worked from six to ten with Rachel, a certified school teacher. Just do whatever she says.
First night he memorized the beers – thirteen on draft, nine bottled, three canned, six “imports.”
This could be a tougher job than he had originally anticipated. Found that to be true about most all endeavors.
He was a writer.
He was a writer and the bar paid ten dollars an hour, better than the community’s newspaper editor.
Plus there were the benefits.
Tonight, five dollars in tips, two pints of RC cola, a pint of Widmer ale and some cashews.
And a new friend.
She smiled at him and gave him a buck.
“Walk away slowly,” she said.
Sitting at the bar at Jake’s watching Native American transients panhandle on the sidewalk outside.
The irony of ‘it pays to get here early.’ A cheese burger costs $5.95.
Later.
“Would you like to sit with me?”
“Be enchanted, young lady.”
So, he was now at the Calico Cat on Sandy Boulevard, a place his buddy called a titty bar.
As in breasts. Actually, totally nude, because what the hell. Free speech.
He’s dressed like some middle-aged Chicano drug lord on Miami Vice.
Looks like he sells women, too.
Six foot-three, one-eighty, a body like a jungle panther, lean with dark skin and high cheekbones.
A large ruby stud in his left earlobe.
She put her hand gently on his knee.
You look like an Indian? Are you an Indian? Cause you look like an Indian. Whoo- whoo.
Yeah. I’m an Indian.