We landed. The people got up and stood in line, waiting to get out. I sat there. I shook Tammie and pinched her. "It's New York City, Red. The rotten apple. Come around. Cut out the shit."

The stewardess came back and shook Tammie.

"Honey, what's the matter?"

Tammie started responding. She moved. Then her eyes opened. It was only the matter of a new voice. Nobody listened to an old voice anymore. Old voices became a part of one's self, like a fingernail.

Tammie got out her mirror and started combing her hair. The stewardess was patting her shoulder. I got up and got the dresses out of the overhead compartment. The shopping bags were up there too. Tammie continued to look into the mirror and comb her hair.

"Tammie, we're in New York. Let's get off."

She moved quickly. I had the two shopping bags and the dresses. She went through the exit wiggling the cheeks of her ass. I followed her.

61.

Our man was there to meet us, Gary Benson. He also wrote poetry and drove a cab. He was very fat but at least he didn't look like a poet, he didn't look North Beach or East Village or like an English teacher, and that helped because it was very hot in New York that day, nearly 110 degrees. We got the baggage and got into his car, not his cab, and he explained to us why it was almost useless to own a car in New York City. That's why there were so many cabs. He got us out of the airport and he started driving and talking, and the drivers of New York City were just like New York City--nobody gave an inch or a damn. There was no compassion or courtesy: fender jammed against fender, they drove on. I understood it: anybody who gave an inch would cause a traffic jam, a disturbance, a murder. Traffic flowed endlessly like turds in a sewer. It was marvelous to see, and none of the drivers were angry, they were simply resigned to the facts.

But Gary did like to talk shop. "If it's O.K. with you I'd like to tape you for a radio show, I'd like to do an interview."

"All right, Gary, let's say tomorrow after the reading."

"I'm going to take you to see the poetry coordinator now. He has everything organized. He'll show you where you're staying and so forth. His name is Marshall Benchly and don't tell him I told you but I hate his guts."

We drove along and then we saw Marshall Benchly standing in front of a brownstone. There was no parking. He leaped in the car and Gary drove off. Benchly looked like a poet, a private-income poet who had never worked for a living; it showed. He was affected and bland, a pebble.

"We'll take you to your place," he said.

He proudly recited a long list of people who had stayed at my hotel. Some of the names I recognized, others I didn't.

Gary drove into the unloading zone in front of the Chelsea Hotel. We got out. Gary said, "See you at the reading. And see you tomorrow."

Marshall took us inside and we went up to the desk clerk. The Chelsea certainly wasn't much, maybe that's where it got its charm.

Marshall turned and handed me the key. "It's Room 1010, Janis Joplin's old room."

"Thanks."

"Many great artists have stayed in 1010."

He walked us over to the tiny elevator.

"The reading's at 8. I'll pick you up at 7:30. We've been sold out for two weeks. We're selling some standing-room tickets but we've got to be careful because of the fire department."

"Marshall, where's the nearest liquor store?"

"Downstairs and take a right."

We said goodbye to Marshall and took the elevator up.

62.

It was hot that night at the reading, which was to be held at St. Mark's Church. Tammie and I sat in what was used as the dressing room. Tammie found a full-length mirror leaning against the wall and began combing her hair. Marshall took me out in back of the church. They had a burial ground back there. Little cement tombstones sat on the earth and carved on the tombstones were inscriptions. Marshall walked me around and showed me the inscriptions. I always got nervous before a reading, very tense and unhappy. I almost always vomited. Then I did. I vomited on one of the graves.

"You just vomited on Peter Stuyvesant," Marshall said.

I walked back into the dressing room. Tammie was still looking at herself in the mirror. She looked at her face and her body, but mostly she was worried about her hair. She piled it on top of her head, looked at it that way and then let it fall back down.

Marshall put his head into the room. "Come on, they're wait-ing!"

"Tammie's not ready," I told him.

Then she piled her hair up on top of her head again and looked at herself. Then she let it fall. Then she stood close to the mirror and looked at her eyes.

Marshall knocked, then came in. "Come on, Chinaski!"

"Come on, Tammie, let's go."

"All right."

I walked out with Tammie at my elbow. They started applauding. The old Chinaski bullshit was working. Tammie went down into the crowd and I started to read. I had many beers in an ice bucket. I had old poems and new poems. I couldn't miss. I had St. Mark's by the cross.

63.

We got back to 1010. I had my check. I'd left word that we didn't want to be disturbed. Tammie and I sat drinking. I'd read 5 or 6 love poems about her.

"They knew who I was," she said. "Sometimes I giggled. It was embarassing."

They had known who she was all right. She glistened with sex. Even the roaches and the ants and the flies wanted to fuck her.

There was a knock on the door. Two people had slipped through, a poet and his woman. The poet was Morse Jenkins from Vermont. His woman was Sadie Everet. He had four bottles of beer.

He wore sandals and old torn bluejeans; turquoise bracelets; a chain around his throat; he had a beard, long hair; orange blouse. He talked, and he talked. And walked around the room.

There is a problem with writers. If what a writer wrote was published and sold many, many copies, the writer thought he was great. If what a writer wrote was published and sold a medium number of copies, the writer thought he was great. If what a writer wrote was published and sold very few copies, the writer thought he was great. If what the writer wrote never was published and he didn't have the money to publish it himself, then he thought he was truly great. The truth, howevet, was that there was very little greatness. It was almost nonexistent, invisible. But you could be sure that the worst writers had the most confidence, the least self-doubt. Anyway, writers were to be avoided, and I tried to avoid them, but it was almost impossible. They hoped for some sort of brotherhood, some kind of togetherness. None of it had anything to do with writing, none of it helped at the typewriter.

"I sparred with Clay before he became Ali," said Morse. Morse jabbed and shuffled, danced. "He was pretty good, but I gave him a workout."

Morse shadow-boxed about the room.

"Look at my legs!" he said. "I've got great legs!"

"Hank's got better legs than you have," said Tammie.

Being a leg-man, I nodded.

Morse sat down. He pointed a beer bottle at Sadie. "She works as a nurse. She supports me. But I'm going to make it someday. They'll hear from me!"

Morse would never need a mike at his readings.

He looked at me. "Chinaski, you're one of the two or three best living poets. You're really making it. You write a tough line. But I'm coming on too! Let me read you my shit. Sadie, hand me my poems."

"No," I said, "wait! I don't want to hear them."

"Why not, man? Why not?"

"There's been too much poetry tonight, Morse. I just want to lay back and forget it."

"Well, all right. . . . Listen, you never answer my letters."

"I'm not a snob, Morse. But I get 75 letters a month. If I answered them that's all I would ever do."

"I'll bet you answer the women!"

"That depends. ..."

"All right, man, I'm not bitter. I still like your stuff. Maybe I'll never be famous but I think I will and I think you'll be glad you met me. Come on, Sadie, let's go. . . ."

I walked them to the door. Morse grabbed my hand. He didn't pump it, and neither of us quite looked at the other. "You're a good old guy," he said.

"Thanks, Morse. ..."

And then they were gone.

64.

The next morning Tammie found a prescription in her purse. "I've got to get this filled," she said. "Look at it." It was wrinkled and the ink had run.

"What happened here?"

"Well, you know my brother, he's a pill head."

"I know your brother. He owes me twenty bucks."

"Well, he tried to get this prescription away from me. He tried to strangle me. I put the prescription in my mouth and swallowed it. Or I pretended to swallow it. He wasn't sure. That was the time I phoned you and asked you to come over and kick the shit out of him. He split. But I still had the prescription in my mouth. I haven't used it yet. But I can get it filled here. It's worth a try."

"All right."

We took the elevator down to the street. It was over ioo degrees. I could hardly move. Tammie started walking and I followed along behind her as she weaved from one edge of the sidewalk to the other.

"Come on!" she said. "Keep up!"

She was on something, it appeared to be downers. She was woozy. Tammie walked up to a newsstand and began staring at a periodical. I think it was Variety. She stood there and stood there. I stood there near her. It was boring and senseless. She just stared at Variety.

"Listen, sister, either buy the damned thing or move on!" It was the man inside the newsstand.

Tammie moved on. "My god, New York is a horrible place! I just wanted to see if there was anything about the reading!"

Tammie moved along, wiggling it, wobbling from one side of the pavement to the other. In Hollywood cars would have pulled over to the curbing, blacks would have made overtures, she would have been approached, serenaded, applauded. New York was different; it was jaded and weary and it disdained flesh.

We were into a black district. They watched us walking by: the redhead with the long hair, stoned, and the old guy with gray in his beard walking behind her, wearily. I glanced at them sitting on their stoops; they had good faces. I liked them. I liked them better than I liked her.

I followed Tammie down the street. Then there was a furniture store. There was a broken down desk chair out in front on the sidewalk. Tammie walked over to the old desk chair and stood staring at it. She seemed hypnotized. She kept staring at the desk chair. She touched it with her finger. Minutes went by. Then she sat down in it.

"Look," I told her, "I'm going back to the hotel. You do whatever you want to do."

Tammie didn't even look up. She slid her hands back and forth on the arm rests of the desk chair. She was in a world of her own. I turned and walked off, back to the Chelsea.

I got some beer and took the elevator up. I undressed, took a shower, propped a couple of pillows against the headboard of the bed and sucked at the beer. Readings diminished me. They were soul-sucks. I finished one beer and opened another. Readings got you a piece of ass sometimes. Rock stars got ass; boxers on the way up got ass; great bullfighters got virgins. Somehow, only the bullfighters deserved any of it.

There was a knock on the door. I got up and opened it a crack. It was Tammie. She pushed in.

"I found this dirty Jew son-of-a-bitch. He wanted $12 to fill the prescription! It's 6 bucks on the coast. I told him I only had $6. He didn't care. A dirty Jew living in Harlem! Can I have a beer?"

Tammie took the beer and sat in the window, one leg out, one arm out, one leg in, one holding on to the raised window.

"I want to see the Statue of Liberty. I want to see Coney Island," she said.

I got myself a new beer.

"Oh, it's nice out here! It's nice and cool."

Tammie leaned out the window, looking.

Then she screamed.