Pulp

I was sitting in my office, my lease had expired and McKelvey was starting eviction proceedings. It was a hellish hot day and the air conditioner was broken. A fly crawled across the top of my desk. I reached out with the open palm of my hand and sent him out of the game. I wiped my hand on my right pants leg as the phone rang.

I picked it up. “Ah yes,” I said.

“Do you read Celine?” a female voice asked. Her voice sounded quite sexy. I had been lonely for some time. Decades.

“Celine,” I said, “ummm…”

“I want Celine,” she said. “I’ve got to have him.”

Such a sexy voice, it was getting to me, really.

“Celine?” I said. “Give me a little background. Talk to me, lady.

Keep talking…”

“Zip up,” she said.

I looked down.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“Never mind. I want Celine.”

“Celine is dead.”

“He isn’t. I want you to find him. I want him.”

“I might find his bones.”

“No, you fool, he’s alive!”

“Where?”

“Hollywood. I hear he’s been hanging around Red Koldowsky’s bookstore.”

“Then why don’t
you
find him?”

“Because first I want to know if he’s the
real
Celine. I have to be sure, quite sure.”

“But why did you come to me? There are a hundred dicks in this town.”

“John Barton recommended you.”

“Oh, Barton, yeah. Well, listen, I’ll have to have some kind of advance. And I’ll have to see you personally.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” she said.

She hung up. I zipped up.

And waited.

She walked in.

Now, I mean, it just wasn’t fair. Her dress fit so tight it almost split the seams. Too many chocolate malts. And she walked on heels so high they looked like little stilts. She walked like a drunken cripple, staggering around the room. A glorious dizziness of flesh.

“Sit down, lady,” I said.

She put it down and crossed her legs high, damn near knocked my eyes out.

“It’s good to see you, lady,” I said.

“Stop gawking, please. It’s nothing that you haven’t seen before.”

“You’re wrong there, lady. Now may I have your name?”

“Lady Death.”

“Lady Death? You from the circus? The movies?”

“No.”

“Place of birth?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Year of birth?”

“Don’t try to be funny…”

“Just trying to get some background…”

I got lost somehow, began staring up her legs. I was always a leg man. It was the first thing I saw when I was born. But then I was trying to get out. Ever since I have been working in the other direction and with pretty lousy luck.

She snapped her fingers.

“Hey, come out of it!”

“Huh?” I looked up.

“The Celine case. Remember?”

“Yeah, sure.”

I unfolded a paperclip, pointed the end toward her.

“I’ll need a check for services rendered.”

“Of course,” she smiled. “What are your rates?”

“6 dollars an hour.”

She got out her checkbook, scribbled away, ripped the check out and tossed it to me. It landed on the desk. I picked it up. $240. I hadn’t seen that much money since I hit an exacta at Hollywood Park in 1988.

“Thank you, Lady…”

“…Death,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “Now fill me in a little on this so-called Celine. You said something about a bookstore?”

“Well, he’s been hanging around Red’s bookstore, browsing…asking about Faulkner, Carson McCullers. Charles Manson…”

“Hangs around the bookstore, huh? Hmm…”

“Yes,” she said, “you know Red. He likes to run people out of his bookstore. A person can spend a thousand bucks in there, then maybe linger a minute or two and Red will say, ‘Why don’t you get the hell out of here?’ Red’s a good guy, he’s just freaky. Anyway, he keeps tossing Celine out and Celine goes over to Musso’s and hangs around the bar looking sad. A day or so later he’ll be back and it will happen all over again.”

“Celine is dead. Celine and Hemingway died a day apart. 32 years ago.”

“I know about Hemingway. I got Hemingway.”

“You sure it was Hemingway?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Then how come you can’t be sure this Celine is the real Celine?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got some kind of block with this thing. It’s never happened before. Maybe I’ve been in the game too long. So, I’ve come to you. Barton says you’re good.”

“And you think the real Celine is alive? You want him?”

“Real bad, buster.”

“Belane. Nick Belane.”

“All right, Belane. I want to make
sure
. It’s got to be the
real
Celine, not just some half-assed wannabe. There are too many of those.”

“Don’t we know it.”

“Well, get on it. I want France’s greatest writer. I’ve waited a long time.”

Then she got up and walked out of there. I never saw an ass like that in my life. Beyond concept. Beyond everything. Don’t bother me now. I want to think about it.

It was the next day.

I had cancelled my appointment to speak before the Palm Springs Chamber of Commerce.

It was raining. The ceiling leaked. The rain dripped down through the ceiling and went “spat, spat, spat, a spat a spat, spat, spat, spat, a spat, spat, spat, a spat, a spat, a spat, spat, spat, spat…”

The
sake
kept me warm. But a warm what? A warm zero. Here I was 55 years old and I didn’t have a pot to catch rain in. My father had warned me that I would end up diddling myself on some stranger’s back porch in Arkansas. And I still had time to make it. The Greyhounds ran every day. But busses constipated me and there was always some old Union Jack with a rancid beard who snored. Maybe it would be better to work on the Celine Case.

Was Celine Celine or was he somebody else? Sometimes I felt that I didn’t even know who
I
was. All right, I’m Nicky Belane. But check this. Somebody could yell out, “Hey, Harry! Harry Martel!” and I’d most likely answer, “Yeah, what is it?” I mean, I could be anybody, what does it matter? What’s in a name?

Life’s strange, isn’t it? They always chose me last on the baseball team because they knew I could drive that son-of-a-bitch out there, all the way to Denver. Jealous chipmunks, that’s what they were!

I was gifted, am gifted. Sometimes I looked at my hands and realized that I could have been a great pianist or something. But what have my hands done? Scratched my balls, written checks, tied shoes, pushed toilet levers, etc. I have wasted my hands. And my mind.

I sat in the rain.

The phone rang. I wiped it dry with a past due bill from the IRS, picked it up.

“Nick Belane,” I said. Or was I Harry Martel?

“This is John Barton,” came the voice.

“Yes, you’ve been recommending me, thank you.”

“I’ve been watching you. You’ve got talent. It’s a little raw but that’s part of the charm.”

“Great to hear. Business has been bad.”

“I’ve been watching you. You’ll make it, you just have to endure.”

“Yeah. Now, what can I do for you, Mr. Barton?”

“I am trying to locate the Red Sparrow.”

“The Red Sparrow? What the hell is that?”

“I’m sure it exists, I just want to find it, I want you to locate it for me.”

“Any leads for me to go on?”

“No, but I’m sure the Red Sparrow is out there somewhere.”

“This Sparrow doesn’t have a name, does it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, a name. Like Henry. Or Abner. Or Celine?”

“No, it’s just the Red Sparrow and I know that you can find it.

I’ve got faith in you.”

“This is going to cost you, Mr. Barton.”

“If you find the Red Sparrow I will give you one hundred dollars a month for life.”

“Hmm….Listen, how about giving me all of it in a lump sum?”

“No, Nick, you’d blow it at the track.”

“All right, Mr. Barton, leave me your phone number and I’ll work on it.”

Barton gave me the number, then said, “I have real confidence in you, Belane.”

Then he hung up.

Well, business was picking up. But the ceiling was leaking worse than ever. I shook off some rain drops, had a hit of
sake
, rolled a cigarette, lit it, inhaled, then choked out a hacking cough. I put on my brown derby, turned on the telephone message machine, walked slowly toward the door, opened it and there stood McKelvey. He had a huge chest and looked like he was wearing shoulder pads.

“Your lease is up, punk!” he spit out. “I want your dead ass out of here!”

Then I noticed his belly. It was like a soft mound of dead shit and I slammed my fist deep into it. His face doubled over into my up-coming knee. He fell, then rolled off to one side. Ghastly sight. I walked over, slipped out his wallet. Photos of children in porno-graphic poses.

I thought about killing him. But I just took his Gold Visa Card, kicked him in the ass and took the elevator down.

I decided to walk to Red’s. When I drove I always seemed to get a parking ticket and the lots charged more than I could afford.

I walked toward Red’s feeling a bit depressed. Man was born to die. What did it mean? Hanging around and waiting. Waiting for the “A train.” Waiting for a pair of big breasts on some August night in a Vegas hotel room. Waiting for the mouse to sing. Waiting for the snake to grow wings. Hanging around.

Red was in.

“You’re lucky,” he said, “you just missed that drunk Chinaski.

He was in here bragging about his new Pelouze postage scale.”

“Never mind that,” I said. “You got a signed copy of Faulkner’s
As I Lay Dying
?”

“Of course.”

“What’s the toll?”

“2800 dollars.”

“I’ll think about it…”

“Pardon me,” said Red.

Then he turned to a fellow thumbing through a first edition of
You Can’t Go Home Again
.

“Please put that book in the case and get the hell out of here!”

It was a delicate-looking little fellow, all hunched over. Dressed in what looked like a yellow rubber suit.

He put the book back into the case and walked past us toward the street, his eyes clouding with moisture. And it had stopped raining. His yellow rubber suit was useless.

Red looked at me.

“Can you believe that some of them come in here eating icecream cones?”

“I believe worse than that.”

Then I noticed somebody else was in the bookstore. He was standing near the back. I thought I recognized him from his photos.

Celine. Celine?

I walked slowly down toward him. I got real close. So close that I could see what he was reading. Thomas Mann.
The Magic Mountain
.

He saw me.

“This fellow has a problem,” he said, holding up the book.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“He considers boredom an Art.”

He put the book back in the case and just stood there looking like Celine.

I looked at him.

“This is amazing,” I said.

“What is?” he asked.

“I thought that you were dead,” I told him.

He looked at me.

“I thought that you were dead too,” he said.

Then we just stood there looking at each other.

Then I heard Red.

“HEY, YOU!” he yelled, “GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”

We were the only two in there.

“Which one to get the hell out?” I asked.

“THE ONE THAT LOOKS LIKE CELINE! GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”

“But why?” I asked.

“I CAN TELL WHEN THEY’RE NOT GOING TO BUY!”

Celine or whoever it was began to walk out. I followed him.

He walked up toward the boulevard, then stopped at the newsstand.

That newsstand had been there as long as I could remember. I recalled standing there two or three decades ago with 3 prostitutes.

I took them all to my place and one of them masturbated my dog.

They thought it was funny. They were drunk and on pills. Then one of the prostitutes went to the bathroom where she fell and banged her head against the edge of the toilet and bled all over the place. I kept wiping the stuff up with big wet towels. I put her to bed and sat with the others and finally they left. The one in bed stayed for 4

days and nights, drinking all my beer and talking about her two children in East Kansas City.

The fellow—was it Celine?—was standing at the newsstand reading a magazine. When I got closer I noticed that it was
The New
Yorker
. He put it back in the rack and looked at me.

“Only one problem there,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“They just don’t know how to write. None of them.”

Just then, a cab came idling by.

“HEY, CABBY!” Celine yelled.

The cab slowed and he leaped forward, the back door opened and he was inside.

“HEY!” I yelled at him, “I WANT TO ASK YOU SOMETHING!”

The cab was brisking toward Hollywood Boulevard. Celine leaned out, stuck out his arm, gave me the finger. Then he was gone.

First cab I had seen around those parts in decades. I mean, an empty one, just lolling by.

Well, the rain had stopped but the pain was still there. Also, there was now a chill in the air and everything smelled like wet farts.

I hunched over and moved toward Musso’s.

I had the Gold Visa Card. I was alive. Maybe. I even began to feel like Nicky Belane. I hummed a little passage from Eric Coates.

Hell was what you made it.