"No thanks."

Tammie went in and I heard her spooning it out of the pot. She was in there a long time. Then she came out.

"Could you lend me a five until Friday?"

"No."

"Then lend me a couple of bucks."

"No."

"Just give me a dollar then."

I gave Tammie a pocketful of change. It came to a dollar and thirty-seven cents.

"Thanks," she said.

"It's all right."

Then she was gone out of the door.

Sara came by the next evening. She seldom came by this often, it was something about the holiday season, everybody was lost, half-crazy, afraid. I had the white wine ready and poured us both a drink.

"How's the Inn going?" I asked her.

"Business is crappy. It hardly pays to stay open."

"Where are your customers?"

"They've all left town; they've all gone somewhere."

"All our schemes have holes in them."

"Not all of them. Some people just keep making it and making it."

"True."

"How's the soup?"

"Just about finished."

"Did you like it?"

"I didn't have too much."

Sara walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door.

"What happened to the soup? It looks strange."

I heard her tasting it. Then she ran to the sink and spit it out.

"Jesus, it's been poisoned! What happened? Did Tammie and Arlene come back and eat soup too?"

"Just Tammie."

Sara didn't scream. She just poured the remainder of the soup into the sink and ran the garbage disposal. I could hear her sobbing, trying not to make any sound. That poor organic turkey had had a rough Christmas.

100

New Year's Eve was another bad night for me to get through. My parents had always delighted in New Year's Eve, listening to it approach on the radio, city by city, until it arrived in Los Angeles. The firecrackers went off and the whistles and horns blew and the amateur drunks vomited and husbands flirted with other men's wives and the wives flirted with who ever they could. Everybody kissed and played grab-ass in the bathrooms and closets and sometimes openly, especially at midnight, and there were terrible family arguments the next day not to mention the Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl game.

Sara arrived early New Year's Eve. She got excited about things like Magic Mountain, outer space movies, Star Trek, and over certain rock bands, creamed spinach, and pure food, but she had better basic common sense than any woman I had ever met.

Perhaps only one other, Joanna Dover, could match her good sense and kind spirit. Sara was better looking and much more faithful than any of my other current women, so this new year was not going to be so bad after all.

I had just been wished a "Happy New Year" by a local idiot news broadcaster on t.v. I disliked being wished a "Happy New Year" by some stranger. How did he know who I was? I might be a man with a 5-year-old child wired to the ceiling and gagged, hanging by her ankles as I slowly sliced her to pieces.

Sara and I had begun to celebrate and drink but it was difficult to get drunk when half the world was straining to get drunk along with you.

"Well," I said to Sara, "it ain't been a bad year. Nobody murdered me."

"And you're still able to drink every night and get up at noon every day."

"If I can just hold out another year."

"Just an old alcoholic bull."

There was a knock on the door. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was Dinky Summers, the folk rock man and his girl friend Janis.

"Dinky!" I hollered. "Hey, shit, man, what's happening?"

"I don't know, Hank. I just thought we'd drop by."

"Janis this is Sara. Sara… Janis."

Sara went out and got two more glasses. I poured. The talk wasn't much.

"I've written about ten new pieces. I think I'm getting better."

"I think he is too," said Janis, "really."

"Hey look, man, that night I opened your act… Tell me, Hank, was I that bad?"

"Listen, Dinky, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I was drinking more than I was listening. I was thinking of myself having to go out there and I was getting ready to face it, it makes me puke."

"But I just love to get up in front of the crowd and when I get over to them and they like my stuff I'm in heaven."

"Writing's different. You do it alone, it has nothing to do with a live audience."

"You might be right."

"I was there," said Sara. "Two guys had to help Hank up on stage. He was drunk and he was sick."

"Listen, Sara," asked Dinky, "Was my act that bad?"

"No, it wasn't. They were just impatient for Chinaski. Everything else irritated them."

"Thanks, Sara."

"Folk rock just doesn't do much for me," I said.

"What do you like?"

"Almost all the German classical composers plus a few of the Russians."

"I've written about ten new pieces."

"Maybe we can hear some?" asked Sara.

"But you don't have your guitar, do you?" I asked.

"Oh, he's got it," said Janis, "it's always with him!"

Dinky got up, went out and got his instrument from the car. He sat down cross-legged on the rug and began tuning that thing. We were going to get some real live entertainment. Soon he began. He had a full, strong voice. It bounced off the walls. The song was about a woman. About a heartbreak between Dinky and some woman. It was not really too bad. Maybe up on stage with people paying it would be all right. But it was harder to tell when they were sitting on the rug in front of you. It was much too personal and embarrassing. Yet, I decided he was not really too bad. But he was in trouble. He was aging. The golden curls were not quite as golden and the wide-eyed innocence drooped a little. He would soon be in trouble.

We applauded.

"Too much, man," I said.

"You really like it, Hank?"

I waved my hand in the air.

"You know, I've always dug your stuff," he said.

"Thanks, man."

He jumped into the next song. It also was about a woman. His woman, an ex-woman: she'd been out all night. It had some humor but I wasn't sure if it was deliberate. Anyhow, Dinky finished and we applauded. He went into the next.

Dinky was inspired. He had a lot of volume. His feet twisted and curled in his tennis shoes and he let us hear it. Actually, it was him somehow. He didn't look right and he didn't quite sound right, yet the product itself was much better than what one usually heard. It made me feel low that I couldn't praise him without reservation. But then if you lied to a man about his talent just because he was sitting across from you, that was the most unforgivable lie of them all, because that was telling him to go on, to continue which was the worst way for a man without real talent to waste his life, finally. But many people did just that, friends and relatives mostly.

Dinky rocked into the next song. He was going to give us all ten. We listened and applauded but at least my applause was the most restrained.

"That 3rd line, Dinky, I didn't like it," I said.

"But it's needed, you see, because…"

"I know."

Dinky went on. He sang all his songs. It took quite some time. There were rests in between. When the New Year finally came in Dinky and Janis and Sara and Hank still were together. But thankfully the guitar case was closed. A hung jury.

Dinky and Janis left about 1 am and Sara and I went to bed. We began hugging and kissing. I was, as I've explained, a kiss freak. I almost couldn't handle it. Great kissing was seldom, rare. They never did it well in the movies or on t.v. Sara and I were in bed, body rubbing, and with the heavy good kissing. She really let herself go. It had always been the same in the past. Drayer Baba was watching up there-she'd grab my cock and I'd play with her pussy and then she'd end up rubbing my cock along her cunt and in the morning the skin of my cock would be red and raw with rubbing.