When I’m Good And Ready

If I got to go get a roscoe I’ll get me a roscoe and then what? But I don’t need no roscoe for you. This place is nothing but a dunghill, but I’m the cock on top of it, brother. You don’t wanna come down here into my chicks. Ask anybody. You got a razor? I like it when they got a razor or some knuckles. Nothing but a minute’s work and then the Man don’t care what I done to you. But you don’t look like you could do nothing anyway.

You see that car out front? That’s me, brother. I go where I please and I do what I want and there’s no bud dee can tell me different. You cats always be measuring yourself to other peoples but I’m the only yardstick here and you better know it. You don’t know what you don’t know and that’s bad for your health if you get a notion. Why don’t you slide on down the rail and let me be. There’s high test and wimmins enough for everybody after I’m through and gone.

When I’m good and ready.

A Chance Like That

I can’t believe I gotta sit through this.

Boss says go I go. Says this fathead’s playin’ way past payin’ now. He ain’t got no use exceptin’ what he can learn to the others. He shoulda knowed that eventually you gotta pay the band.

Oh, he’s gonna wail until I shut him up. Sidle up next to him in the alley and take his elbow like we’s on a date, only I leaves fingerprints in him right off so he knows what’s what. All the way in the car he’s gonna walk Spanish and tell the side of my head that he’s got the lettuce stashed and all I gotta do is let him go get it. He knows I’m hard-boiled but he thinks we’re still talkin’. Talkin’s over, you lizard. I got sent ’cause I got no conversation in me.

He’s such a swell with the broads when he’s gamblin’ with other people’s dough and drinking champagne and wine. He’s gonna look a lot different under the lights I’m gonna show him. Man’s gotta learn. He ain’t gonna like it but he should get down on his knees and thank me because I’m sent from heaven and I make you repent first so you can meet your maker baptised. Who else is gonna give a man a chance like that?

A Lucky Fellow

I wake up every morning and the room’s a little smaller. Walls are creeping in. The ceiling’s thinking it over. I limp to the window and it’s a porthole that looks on nothing but icebergs.

It’s a good room, though. The landlord drinks a bit and you can fool with him. The old ladies he worries like a dog worries a shoe, hair trigger, ’cause they haven’t anything but money for him, and they ain’t got any of that very often, either. But you find a pint for him now and then, or lift a couple cigars off the counter at the station when the worker bee’s making change and you’re jake for another month with the guy.

I tried quitting the smokes, but what’s the use? It’s the only currency in the world now. The only manners a man can have. I got smart and got matches and always kept ’em on me, and the swells never seem to have one and they’ll give you a coffin nail for a light every time. Get the empty packs from the barrels and fill ’em back up and pretty soon you’re rolling in it.

Once upon a time you could go to the railyard with a gunney and pick up the steam coal that bounced from the cars. Just pennies at the coal and ice, but just pennies is all you need in this world. Now the kids don’t bother with school anymore and they’re too close to the ground to have a chance against. They waste the money on their mothers. Until they grow up and the army harvests them like they did their dads a man’s got to find another way.

I’m a lucky fellow. There’s always another way for a lucky fellow.

Vibes

I could never quite explain it, coming or going.

She had some bizarre vibe going on — a hybrid of drum majorette and back-alley abortionist. Dancing at a funeral. Her smile was a poster pasted over her brick face. She had no future and no past in her. She was immediate, and all her wants and mine were in the present and that’s that. I don’t even know hold old she was, and never thought of asking, either. We never asked each other anything anyway. It was always jarring when she revealed herself to you and there wasn’t a mark on her, perfectly pink, an unknown to the sun. She was like a giant, obscene infant.

I was no better. I wished I was much worse, but she was all I could muster in that department. She brought out all the ‘paying for drinks with the toll change, and driving home the long way’ that I had in me, and used it all up, too. She was my nemesis and my abbess. I fought her and submitted to her. Prayed to her and cursed her.

If she turned up dead and the cops showed up at my door I’d ride the lightning for a dead cert. I wouldn’t be able to tell them anything about me and her that another person could knit into a likely story. How to explain a woman that would open the door for you wordlessly at three AM, whether you had a bouquet or a rattlesnake in your hand?