The rebel, p.8
The Rebel, page 8
“You know, Jimmy, I gotta ask you something, might as well be now. You like the title On the Road? It’s my book, my best book, it’s about being beat and free and on the road, and it’s going to blow everybody right out the fuckin’ door.”
“Yeah, sounds okay to me,” Jimmy said.
“I got other titles for it. Want to hear them?”
A woman at a nearby table told Jack to shut the fuck up; Kerouac gave her the finger.
“You really think this is a good time to talk about this?” Jimmy asked.
“Perfect time,” Kerouac said. “You got to do everything now, right the fuck now, or it’s gone forever, dead. You got to tell me which one you like best because this book’s going to change the world, man.” And he recited the titles, a poem of titles. “Well?” Kerouac asked. “Which one?”
“Souls on the Road ain’t bad,” Jimmy said.
“You like that better than On the Road?” Kerouac sounded suddenly angry.
“Dunno. Either one would be fine.”
“But which one?” Kerouac pulled Jimmy’s face close to his.
“Shit, man, I don’t fucking know,” Jimmy said, snapping away from Kerouac, thinking that he was going to have to fight him, maim him, kill him over the title of some book he hadn’t even read and probably would never read. He looked into Kerouac’s flower-blue eyes and wanted to pluck them out and put them in his own head, see through those eyes; and he put his arms around Kerouac, pulling him close, close enough to kiss and lick and smell, and said, “Leave it On the Road. Problem solved.”
Kerouac, his face large as a planet, beamed at him. “You see? You see? You are God.”
“Good for me,” Jimmy said, and he felt transparently, brilliantly stoned. Everything was bubbling and vibrating; and if he wanted to, if he cared to look hard enough and closely enough, he could see into the atoms that made up this entire gone scene vibrating around like Ping-Pong balls. He could see into everyone, into Jack, Pamela, Allen, himself. He could see with the clarity of God, if he wanted to. And he looked over to see how Rogers was doing, to include him, to thank him, to let him know that he was enjoying all this hugely, thank you Rogers thank you, everything’s going to be different, I promise, I won’t fuck you over, never ever again.
But Rogers wasn’t there.
Jimmy panicked. First his mother left him. Then Pier. Now Rogers. He knew he was thinking crazy; but he couldn’t stop himself. “Where’d Rogers go?” Jimmy asked Jack.
“Dunno. Probably taking a piss. You see him go?” he asked the Good Blonde, who shook her head and told him to shut up and listen to Allen and stop trying to be the center of the goddamn universe.
“He left a minute ago,” Pamela said to Jimmy. “I’m sure he’ll be right back.”
Good-bye, Rogers, Jimmy thought sadly. I’ll call you, I promise I will. And he took a pink pill that Pamela gave him, but it didn’t bring him up or pull him down; and then Ginsberg was done and everyone was standing and screaming and clapping and praying and dancing, and the air smelled like a fart and Jimmy had to get out, he couldn’t breathe—it was that worm curling and uncurling inside his chest—and then Jimmy was out of the café, no transition, no getting up and pushing your way out of the crowd, just one minute stoned and sitting and the next minute stoned and standing, outside, in the fog swirling, cement glistening rainy night.
Standing stone sober in the sleeting rain, but only for a moment because Pamela, efficient as a doorman in her soaking wet mink, managed to hail a taxi. “My house or yours?” she asked mischievously, as she wriggled against him in the backseat.
“Go to the Algonquin,” he told the cabdriver. “You know where that is?” The driver nodded and hunched forward. He looked to be in his sixties; he was a big man, overweight and sullen.
“You don’t want to come to my place?” Pamela asked.
“Don’t need your whatever walking in. I don’t fancy hiding on a ledge in this weather.”
“Who’s my whatever?”
“Your husband…lover…sugar poppa.”
“Go to hell, Jimmy.” And she ordered the cabdriver to take her to East Fifty-seventh Street.
“Whatever,” said the cabdriver.
Jimmy and Pamela fell over each other laughing.
“Come with me to the Algonquin,” Jimmy said. “We’ll work it out from there.”
“Okay,” she said, while Jimmy brushed her shoulders with the tips of his fingers. Then he slid his hands along the material of her evening gown, pulled her forward while he unzipped the back of her gown, and snagging the spaghetti straps with his thumbs, pulled them down her thin arms, exposing her breasts. Pamela watched him with her big, curious blue eyes, then leaned back into the seat. “Well?”
“Well, what?” Jimmy asked, looking at her tiny breasts. They were apples, indeed; and in the staccato flashing of headlights and streetlights, they looked white, stark white like flour, and her nipples were large and brown, like crepe.
“You just going to expose me to everyone on Seventh Avenue?”
Jimmy pushed against her nipple with his index finger, as if pushing a button, and said, “You’re the whitest woman I’ve ever seen. Your skin’s beautiful.” He rested his head on her chest, playing doctor, listening to the fast lub-dub flutter of her heart, and then he licked her breasts, tasting salt and sourness—sweat and perfume—and he sucked on her nipples, which were erect. “You know that in the olden days the Aztec priests used to flay the skin off the people they sacrificed, and they’d have it tanned and turned into cloaks, which they’d wear.”
“And you’d like to wear me, is that it?”
“Yeah,” Jimmy said. “Something like that. I always wondered what it would feel like to have tits and be able to stick your fingers in…there.” She jerked back a bit when Jimmy slid his finger under her panties and inside her.
“You two exhibitionists or what?” asked the cabdriver.
“You a voyeur, or what?” Pamela shouted back.
“Yeah, that too, but we’re almost there, unless you want to get arrested.”
“You want to get arrested?” Jimmy asked Pamela.
“Yeah.” She unzipped Jimmy’s pants.
“If it’s your choice, would you suck somebody off or get sucked off?” Jimmy asked.
“What do you think?”
“Dunno.” Jimmy continued rubbing her clitoris. She was all bone, he thought, a long beautiful blond skeleton with tits.
“You’re a bullshit artist, Jimmy. Everybody wants to get pleasure, no matter how loudly they protest.”
“No, that ain’t true,” Jimmy said, pulling his hand away from her. “Some people want to give, some want to take.”
“And you and I are takers, is that it?”
“No. You’re a taker.” Jimmy grinned at her. “I’m a giver.”
The cab stopped in front of the Algonquin, and the young doorman who had flagged a cab earlier for them opened the door and stood gawking at Pamela—cool, unperturbed Pamela, who blinked her big eyes at him and asked him with her precise Radcliffe diction if he would kindly zip her up. Disconcerted, the doorman blinked at her. He closed his umbrella, which was straining and being pitched this way and that by the gusting wind, and obligingly zipped up her dress.
Jimmy paid the cabdriver, who, unlike the doorman, was taking everything in stride and enjoying himself hugely.
Pamela did not seem inclined to move.
“Well?” asked Jimmy.
“Well, what?”
“Uh, Mr. Dean?” asked the doorman, recovering his composure. The rain came down in sheets, soaking him, but it didn’t seem to occur to him to open up his umbrella.
“I’m going to my apartment, as I told you,” Pamela said to Jimmy. “Would you care to be my escort?” She smiled at him. Perfect white teeth.
“Come on,” Jimmy said. “We’re already here. I’ll buy you breakfast.”
“And go down on me, right?”
“Right.”
“Mr. Dean, I have a message for you,” the doorman insisted nervously, as he talked past Pamela.
But it was too late because a very angry and wet Pier Angeli was standing right behind him. She told the doorman to get out of her way, in Italian. Then she threw herself into the cab, her knees hitting the edge of the backseat, her left elbow striking Pamela hard in the chest as she went for Jimmy. She would have scratched the flesh off his face, if he had not reflexively blocked her with his arms. She tore his shirt, broke her nails, and drew blood. She screamed at him in Italian, and then, seemingly, brought herself under control. She pulled herself out of the cab and focused on Pamela. “Puttàna!” she said, and spat at her.
Pamela wiped at her face, as if she had been sprayed with acid, and screamed, “Get the fuck away from me!” She threw herself backward into Jimmy’s lap and kicked at Pier, catching her in the shoulder with a high heel. Pier slammed the door against Pamela and shouted, “Jimmy, chi è quella puttàna?” She laughed, then ran toward the sidewalk. Jimmy didn’t understand but could guess what she said.
Pamela recovered and told the cabdriver, “Please get me the fuck out of here.”
The cabdriver said, “Okay, lady, it looks like we’re done here.” He grinned at Jimmy and said, “You comin’ or goin’?”
“Just get me the hell away from here,” Pamela said, and she turned to Jimmy.
“I’ll have to explain another time,” he said to Pamela as he opened the door a crack and waited for a break in the traffic.
He had to reach Pier quickly and explain.
“Yeah, yeah, you bastard, you do that,” Pamela said. “You can find me in the phone book. Just look up Pamela, Number One New York. Ta-ta.”
Jimmy jumped out of the cab and chased after Pier, who was practically running down Forty-fourth Street. He caught up with her at Seventh Avenue, where she had to wait for the light to change. Her hair was plastered against her face. Her black skirt and white angora sweater seemed too large for her; they were wringing wet.
“Pier…”
“Bastardo,” she mumbled, out of breath.
Jimmy took her by the arm, but she pulled away from him violently. The traffic light turned green, and she ran to the opposite curb, knocking down an elderly man walking a small mottled black-and-white Skye terrier.
“Oh, my God, I’m sorry,” Pier said, as she helped the man up. “I’m so sorry…” His umbrella had been blown away into the street, and his dog was barking and snapping at her.
Wiping mud from his wet overcoat and straightening the brim of his hat, the man said, “You should slow down, miss. You’re going to kill somebody running like that. Are you all right? Don’t you have a coat? Now, there, there, stop crying.”
Jimmy retrieved the man’s umbrella. Mindful of the old man, Pier held on to his arm and turned away from Jimmy.
“I’m all right now, miss,” the old man said. “Really, I am.” He had a thin, tired-looking face, but his eyes were alive, intense. He took his umbrella from Jimmy. “Thank you, sir.”
Jimmy nodded, then said, “Pier, we got to talk, and you can’t stay out here in the cold and rain without a coat.”
“That’s what I told her.”
“Go away,” she said fiercely to Jimmy. “Go away.”
“You heard the lady,” the old man said, alert and wary. “I’ll shout for a policeman if you try anything smart. I will—”
“Pier—”
“Everything is fine,” Pier said to the old man. “Honest. And I’m so very sorry I knocked you down.”
“Are you sure you’ll be all right alone with him?”
“I’ll be fine.”
The old man looked sourly at Jimmy, shook his head, popped open his umbrella, and called to his dog, “Come on, Senator.”
As soon as the old man left, Pier rushed off again.
Jimmy quick-stepped along beside her, begging and pleading and explaining until she slowed down to a walk, but he couldn’t tell whether she had slowed down because of his exhortations or exhaustion. She was trembling, shivering in the cold and wet, and he draped his canvas coat over her shoulders. She pulled the coat around her and continued walking. She didn’t respond to any of his questions, didn’t acknowledge his presence. She was cold and dead to him, and he felt as if he would slip into blind panic; she was so close to him, right there breathing moving beside him, torturing him. He was going to lose her again. She was here and gone simultaneously. He’d fucked it up again, again, dammit…but it was her fault, her goddamn fault.
Jimmy felt a hot flush of anger, the worm glowing in his chest again. The drugs waking up…“I don’t know what else I can say. I explained how everything happened.” The grandfather clock in the lobby of the Algonquin ticking inside his head. Two ticks, three ticks, four ticks, five. “You said you’d be here two days ago, and you didn’t come. You didn’t call. You didn’t answer your phone. What the hell was that, huh? What the goddamn hell was that? You just fuck me around and around, and I’m so stupid, I fall for it every goddamn time. Well, why don’t you just go back to your—” Jimmy caught himself. She’d go right back to that wop bastard if he told her to. Then he giggled.
“What’s so funny?” Pier asked, her voice broken, her breath short, as if she was a little girl who’d been crying so hard that now she couldn’t catch her breath.
“Well, she talks.”
“Fuck you, Jimmy Byron Dean, you son-of-a-bitch bastard. Leave me alone. Go away, you whore. You whore!”
“I was thinking about the old man you knocked down.”
“You think that was funny?” she asked. “You are a terrible man, Jimmy. That’s why I am finished with you.”
“I was thinking about what he called his dog. Senator. Don’t you think that’s funny?”
“No. Go away, leave me alone.”
“Where are you going?”
“Away from you.”
“You’re going to catch pneumonia.”
“I don’t care. I hope I do. I hope I die.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I couldn’t. My mother found out I was leaving. She called my husband and told him I was unfaithful. She beat me, and he beat me, and I’m not going back, not even for my baby, and you, you, you didn’t lose any time before you found a slut to—”
“Pier, I explained. I was…I don’t know.” He lowered his voice. “You should have called.”
“How could I call you when I was being beaten, answer me that?”
“Okay, but Pier, you’ve got to believe me, I’ve changed.”
“No, you haven’t. I gave up everything for you, and you…you…”
“I promise you…”
She shook her head, and Jimmy put his arm around her. “You have no right,” she said, weeping.
“What can I do to make it better?”
After a moment she said, “Tell me something you haven’t told anyone else before.”
He turned her around, and as they walked back to the Algonquin, he told her about his vision.
“I’d bet my ass that everybody in Los Angeles knows that story by now,” Pier said. “It’s true, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”
“Maybe only everyone in Sherman Oaks.” He grinned at her, but she wasn’t having any of it.
“Tell me something that’s not bullshit right now, or you’ll never see me again.”
“What I told you wasn’t bullshit. It’s important that you know about it.”
“It’s not enough,” she said as they approached the Algonquin. The rain had stopped; the street was black glass reflecting silver.
“Well, what do you want me to do?”
“I want you to give up everything for me, like I gave up everything for you.”
“Okay,” Jimmy said.
“Okay, what?”
“Okay.”
“Do you mean it?” Pier asked.
He looked at her, his head lowered, the bull glaring at the matador.
“Then you have to prove it.”
“Can we go inside?” Jimmy asked. They stood under the hotel awning. “I’ll buy you a drink.”
“And a hamburger,” Pier said. “But first you have to do what I say.”
“Okay.”
“Give me your address book.”
“I don’t have an address book.”
“Liar!” she said, anger burning in her face. “Yes you do.”
“I have…this.” And he pulled out a small, dog-eared, cardboard-covered spiral notebook, which contained his thoughts, doodles, poems, addresses, and phone numbers. She snatched it out of his hand and started to tear the pages out. “What are you doing?” he shouted, grabbing for the notebook.
“It’s the notebook or me,” Pier said, looking small and fragile and determined in his canvas coat. “Which is it?”
“You’re fucking crazy,” Jimmy said, as she tore out all the pages and threw them into the wet street.
“Now give me your wallet. Give me your fucking wallet or get yourself another girl. You can call your bleach-blond puttàna back. I’m sure she’ll fuck you for a quarter. Oh, my, Jimmy, did I tear up her address and throw it away? Oh, silly me.” She was goading him on, and it would be only a matter of minutes, seconds before he slapped her, and then she would be gone, irretrievably out of his life. She would slip into the slippery mirror streets and disappear, only to reappear like Alice on the silver screen, ten feet high and looking down at Jimmy gloating…you’ve lost me, you’ve lost me, you’ve lost me.
