Hot Water Music by Charles Bukowski Read Free Book Online Page A

too.”
    I found the car and drove on back up Sunset. When I got to Alvarado I turned south and drove down nearly to Eighth Street. I parked, got out, found a liquor store and bought a fifth of whiskey. Then I walked into the nearest bar. There she was. My redhead with the brutal face. I walked up, patted the fifth. “Let’s go.” She finished the drink and walked out behind me. “Nice evening,” she said. “Oh, yeah,” I answered.
    When we got to my place she went to the bathroom and I rinsed out two glasses. There’s no way out, I thought, there’s no way out of anything.
    She came into the kitchen, put herself up against me. She had put on fresh lipstick. She kissed me, working her tongue around in my mouth. I lifted her dress and got a handful of panty. We stood under the electric light, locked. Well, the state would have to wait a little longer for their income tax. Maybe Governor Deukmejian would understand. We broke, I poured two drinks and we walked into the other room.

900 POUNDS
     
     
    Eric Knowles awakened in the motel room and looked around. There were Louie and Gloria wrapped around each other on the other half of the king-size bed. Eric found a warm bottle of beer, opened it, took it into the bathroom and drank it while under the shower. He was damned sick. He’d heard about the warm beer theory from experts. It didn’t work. He stepped out of the shower and vomited into the toilet. Then he stepped back into the shower. That was the trouble with being a writer, that was the main trouble—leisure time, excessive leisure time. You had to wait around for the buildup until you could write and while you were waiting you went crazy, and while you were going crazy you drank and the more you drank the crazier you got. There was nothing glorious about the life of a writer or the life of a drinker. Eric toweled off, got into his shorts and walked into the other room. Louie and Gloria were awakening.
    “Oh, shit,” said Louie, “my god.”
    Louie was another writer. He didn’t pay the rent with it like Eric did, Gloria paid Louie’s rent. Three-fourths of the writers Eric knew in Los Angeles and Hollywood were supported by women; those writers were not as talented with the typewriter as they were with their women. They sold themselves to their women spiritually and physically.
    He heard Louie in the bathroom vomiting and hearing it started Eric going again. He found an empty paper bag and each time Louie heaved Eric heaved. It was some close harmony.
    Gloria was rather nice. She had just hooked on as an assistant professor at a northern California college. She stretched out on thebed and said, “You guys are something else. The vomit twins.”
    Louie stepped out of the bathroom. “Hey, are you makng fun of me?”
    “No way, kiddo. It was just a hard night for me.”
    “It was a hard night for all of us.”
    “I think I’ll try the warm beer cure again,” said Eric. He twisted the top off a bottle and tried it again.
    “That was something, the way you subdued her,” said Louie.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, when she came at you over the top of the coffee table, you did it all in slow motion. You weren’t excited at all. You just got her by one of her arms, then the other, and rolled her over. Then you got on top of her and said, ‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’”
    “This beer is working,” said Eric. “You ought to try it.”
    Louie twisted the top off a bottle and sat down on the edge of the bed. Louie edited a little magazine, Riot of the Rats . It was a mimeo. As a little magazine it was no better or worse than the rest of them. They all got very tiresome; the talent was thin and inconsistent. Louie was now on his 15th or 16th issue.
    “It was her house,” said Louie, thinking about the night before. “She said it was her house and for us all to get out of there.”
    “Diverging viewpoints and ideals. They always cause trouble and there are always diverging