Spitting off tall buildings - By Dan Fante Page 0,16

crazy, begging. Lick me anywhere I said. A complete fuck monster.

Me and Shi closed up the front-desk grating and walked down the hall to Room 113, which was the room Mistofsky and Shi always used to have their private conferences.

Mistofsky was waiting for us, sitting on one of two desk chairs by the window. He motioned to me and my supervisor to sit down on the beds, then he handed Shi an envelope. Without looking at it Shi passed the envelope on to me. ‘Bruno,’ Shi whispered, ‘I speak on behalf of Mister Mistofsky and myself, in my position as General Manager of The East End Hotel. You are terminated. Effective today.’

I opened the envelope. The check in it was for my last full week, plus three days. Through Wednesday.

I looked at each of their faces. ‘Why’m I being fired?’

Mistofsky glared. ‘You know why. Your supervisor tells me that you’ve been fraternizing with a hotel guest. Miss Von Hachten. More than once. Please do not attempt to deny this.’

I didn’t talk.

‘You have until Wednesday to remove your belongings and yourself from my hotel. Under the circumstances, that’s more than generous. Anymore questions?’

I thought about it but I didn’t have any.

Chapter Seven

I MOVED BACK to the rooming house on West Fifty-first Street. Not my old room, but one floor up, same line, directly above where I lived before.

After a week it happened; a depression, covering me like a wet black towel. Staying drunk stopped it but I kept going too long, feeding another need; wanting to be out of control. Wanting oblivion.

It was a four-day. I slipped in and out of blackouts. I’d find myself walking down Broadway or in a record store arguing with the clerk about an album in the Blues Section, then the next thing I’d be in a porno movie looking down at some guy sucking my dick.

I remembered seeing the cuts on my arms and I remember the ride by cab to the emergency room but I don’t remember harming myself. One of the gashes was deep enough to need minor surgery to repair the tendon. The other ones were okay to just stitch up.

I lied to the admissions guy so they let me go the next day. I copped to being drunk but said I’d fought off a mugger. I was sent home with a supply of tape and gauze and some pills for the pain.

I promised myself that I’d quit this time for sure. Scared shitless by my own madness.

And I did. I stayed completely sober and without any alcohol of any kind for three days.

Early on the morning of the fourth day I was awake. Sweating. Uneasy. Five a.m. Sitting on the side of my bed, smoking cigarettes and waving my gray legs one at a time above the shadows on the linoleum, I knew. I was thirty-four years old and I knew; alcohol had become my medicine, the thing that kept me in balance. It was my wedge against my attacking, endlessly filibustering, condemning mind.

I realized that I was unable to stop. And at the same moment that realization came I also was aware that, if I continued, sooner or later I’d be out of control again, that one night in a blackout I’d find the razor again or maybe jump in front of the Eighth Avenue bus or a speeding cab. Considering both conditions, both sides, weighing out the pros and cons, I came up with what was the only decision possible; I had to drink. The rest was the tradeoff.

I got up, locating my pants in the street-light, my shoes and my shirt and my thick coat. Then I walked. Up Eighth Avenue, along Central Park South, Fifty-ninth Street, until 6 a.m. when the bars reopened.

Chapter Eight

THERE WERE A bunch of jobs in a row after that. Four. #1: Driver for a bootleg airport shuttle service operating out of the midtown hotels, #2: Peddling belts at lunchtime on Fiftieth Street by the Time-Life Building and around Times Square, #3: A ticket-taking gig at an after-hours club on Forty-sixth Street, and #4: A wacko stint as a window cleaner.

I liked the airport shuttle service best because I got to drive around the city and because they paid in cash at the end of each shift. Everything I earned was off-the-books with no deductions to the government.

I’d seen their advertisement under ‘Drivers’ in the Times and got hired on the spot because the morning of the day I walked in, one of