Post Office by Charles Bukowski Page B

photos. It was the same over and over and over again. Vi stood in the kitchen doorway.
    “Don’t drink too much now! You know what we have to do!”
    “Don’t worry, baby, I’ll have something for you. Meanwhile, bring me a drink! I’ve had a hard day. Half scotch, half water.”
    “Get your own drink, bigshot.”
    I turned my chair around, flicked on the t.v.
    “You want another good day at the track, woman, you’d better bring Mr. Bigshot a drink. And I mean now!”
    Vi had finally bet my horse in the last race. It was a 5/1 shot who hadn’t shown a decent race in two years. I bet it merely because it was 5/1 when it should have been 20. The horse had won by six lengths, eased up. They had that baby fixed from asshole to nostril.
    I looked up and here was a hand with a drink reaching over my shoulder.
    “Thanks, baby.”
    “Yes, master,” she laughed.

13
    In bed I had something in front of me but I couldn’t do anything with it. I whaled and I whaled and I whaled. Vi was very patient. I kept striving and banging but I’d had too much to drink.
    “Sorry, baby,” I said. Then I rolled off. And went to sleep.
    Then something awakened me. It was Vi. She had stoked me up and was riding topside.
    “Go, baby, go!” I told her.
    I arched my back now and then. She looked down at me with little greedy eyes. I was being raped by a high yellow enchantress! For a moment, it excited me.
    Then I told her. “Shit. Get down, baby. It’s been a long hard day. There will be a better time.”
    She climbed off. The thing went down like an express elevator.

14
    In the morning I heard her walking around. She walked and she walked and she walked.
    It was about 10:30 a.m. I was sick. I didn’t want to face her. Fifteen more minutes. Then I’d get out.
    She shook me. “Listen, I want you to get out of here before my girlfriend shows!”
    “So what? I’ll screw her too.”
    “Yeah,” she laughed, “yeah.”
    I got up. Coughed, gagged. Slowly got into my clothes.
    “You make me feel like a wash-out,” I told her.
“I can’t
be that bad! There must be
some
good in me.”
    I finally got dressed. I went to the bathroom and threw some water on my face, combed my hair. If I could only comb that face, I thought, but I can’t.
    I came out.
    “Vi.”
    “Yes?”
    “Don’t be too pissed. It wasn’t you. It was the booze. It has happened before.”
    “All right, then, you shouldn’t drink so much. No woman likes to come in second to a bottle.”
    “Why don’t you bet me to place then?”
    “Oh, stop it!”
    “Listen, you need any money, babe?” I reached into my wallet and took out a twenty. I handed it to her.
    “My, you
are
sweet!”
    Her hand touched my cheek, she kissed me gently along the side of the mouth. “Drive carefully now.”
    “Sure, babe.”
    I drove carefully all the way to the racetrack.

15
    They had me in the counselor’s office in one of the back rooms of the second floor.
    “Let me see how you look, Chinaski.” He looked at me.
    “Ow! You look bad. I better take a pill.” Sure enough, he opened a bottle and took one. “All right, Mr Chinaski, we’d like to know where you’ve been the last two days?”
    “Mourning.”
    “Mourning? Mourning about what?”
    “Funeral. Old friend. One day to pack in the stiff. One day to mourn.”
    “But you didn’t phone in, Mr. Chinaski.”
    “Yeh.”
    “And I want to tell you something, Chinaski, off the record.”
    “All right.”
    “When you don’t phone in, you know what you are saying?”
    “No.”
    “Mr. Chinaski, you are saying, ‘Fuck the post office!’”
    “I am?”
    “And, Mr. Chinaski, you know what that means?”
    “No, what does it mean?”
    “That means, Mr. Chinaski, that the post office is going to fuck
you!”
    Then he leaned back and looked at me.
    “Mr. Feathers,” I told him, “you can go to hell.”
    “Don’t get fresh, Henry. I can make it tough on you.”
    “Please address me by my full name, sir. I ask for