86'd by Dan Fante Read Free Book Online Page A

big help…with that.”
    “You’re an evil pig.”
    “I’m attracted to you. Sexually. I love your tits.”
    “That’s absurd. Tell the truth. You have an erection and I happen to be in the room.”
    “C’mon, Portia? One drink.”
    “Absolutely no. Good night.”
    “Okay, good night…Hey, what about this: You stand there and watch and I’ll do the rest.”
    “Fuck off!”
     
    I couldn’t sleep. Two hours later, after the bleeding had finally stopped and I’d had a couple more drinks, and I was sure she’d fallen asleep, I went downstairs, tiptoed toward her snoring body, found her purse, then reached in and stole her supply of nicotine gum.

seven
    B efore dawn the next morning came the onset of the black dog. Madness. Shame. Jimmy screaming in my head. My eyes were not yet open but behind them the Voice was supplying my brain with poison. Nice, asshole. Now you’ve done it. You’re stuck with her. She’s got a ream of shit on you now. What happens when she pisses you off and you try to bump her? What then? Smooth, jerkoff. Well done.
     
    I felt like puking while at the same time my body screamed its demand for a drink.
    Ten minutes later, after half a bottle of Pepto, I was able to hold down two vikes and two fingers of whiskey. I could stand up.
    The unshaven madman’s face in the bathroom mirror told me everything I need to know: terror and humiliation.
    Then the flash of truth that all of it, my months of work, all my short stories, were gone. Lost. As dead as my dead computer. Then, over and over, the crazy rerun of the incident with Portia and the knowledge that there was a good chance I had permanently damaged myself with Dav-Ko. If the skinny English girl decided to, if she saw fit to spill her guts to Koffman, I’d be jobless and homeless too. The damage would be complete.
    When I peeled the tape and gauze away from my cut I discovered a quarter-inch-wide scab forming down the side of my neck. There was no bleeding, so no medical attention would be necessary. The hell with doctors.
    After a shower I was able to hold down another half a glass of whiskey. I could breathe again. The shakes were nearly under control.
    Pulling the sheets off the bed I discovered that a wide blood stain had leaked through on to the new mattress.
    Like a fumbling burglar covering his crime, I flipped the mattress to the clean side then picked up the lamp and broken glass, stuffing the pieces and all the bloody bedding into three plastic supermarket bags I’d saved for trash. There were a couple of bloody handprints on the wall above where I slept that wouldn’t come off. I scrubbed them as best as I could then covered the stains with a throw pillow.
    After dressing myself and putting on a new white limo-driver shirt and tie for the day I discovered the only good news in the last twenty-four hours; my collar actually did cover the neck wound.
    Downstairs in the kitchen it was almost six o’clock. Koffman and Francisco were not yet awake so I made a pot of strong coffee.
    Back in my room, sitting at the beast’s blank screen, I tried again in vain to recover my work. Nothing. Zip.
    I phoned my biker pal Eddy Dorobek, the guy who’d sold me his five-year-old laptop for a hundred bucks. Eddy was ahouse painter. He was always up early slapping color on the walls of his upscale West Side customers’ homes. He confirmed my computer’s death then made a last-ditch recommendation: that I call the technical support 800 number at Microsoft.
    After punching my way through their phone tree and ten minutes on hold, and another three fingers of whiskey, I got plugged in to Ramesh, a “second-tier specialist.” “No problem, sir,” Ramesh reassured me in his Hindyass-half-English accent: “Our rate is $3.95 per minute for service. How would you prefer to pay for this assistance: debit card or credit card?”
     
    That afternoon the kindness of David Koffman prevailed. After I explained the loss of my work and my