Her voice was young and sexy.

"I have written some good stuff."

"I know. I know. Have you really had all those affairs with women?"

"Yes."

"Listen, I write too. I live in L. A. and I'd like to come see you. I'd like to show you some of my poems."

"I'm not an editor or a publisher."

"I know. Look, I'm 19. I just want to come over and visit you."

"I'm tied up tonight."

"Oh, any night would do!"

"No, I can't see you."

"Are you really Henry Chinaski, the writer?"

"I'm sure I am."

"I'm a cute chick."

"You probably are."

"My name's Rochelle."

"Goodbye, Rochelle."

I hung up. There I had done it--that time.

I walked into the kitchen, opened a bottle of vitamin E, 400 I. U. each, and downed several with half a glass of Perrier water. It was going to be a good night for Chinaski. The sun was slanting down through the Venetian blinds, making a familiar pattern on the carpet, and the white wine was chilling in the refrigerator.

I opened the door and walked out on the porch. There was a strange cat out there. He was a huge creature, a torn, with a shining black coat and luminous yellow eyes. He wasn't frightened of me. He walked up purring and rubbed against one of my legs. I was a good guy and he knew it. Animals knew things like that. They had an instinct. I walked back inside and he followed me.

I opened him up a can of Star-Kist solid white tuna. Packed in spring water. Net wt. 7 oz.

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CHARLES BUKOWSKI is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).

During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office (1971), Factotum (1975), Women (1978), Ham on Rye (1982), and Hollywood (1989). Among his most recent books are the posthumous editions of What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999), Open All Night: New Poems (2000), Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli, 1960-1967 (2001), and Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001).

All of his books have now been published in translation in over a dozen languages and his worldwide popularity remains undiminished. In the years to come Ecco will publish additional volumes of previously uncollected poetry and letters.