Dreaming of Babylon. Richard Brautigan

was pretty good at fixing her hot water heater, too.

      The coffee she served was always very weak and the doughnuts slightly stale because she bought day-old stuff at a bakery a few blocks away on California Street.

      I’d have coffee with her sometimes because I didn’t have much to do, anyway. Things were just as slow then as they are now except for the case I just got but I had saved up a little money that I’d gotten from being in an automobile accident and settling out of court, so I could still pay my rent, though I’d given up my office a few months before.

      In April 1941 I had to let my secretary go. I hated to do that. I spent the five months she worked for. me trying to get her in the sack. She was friendly but I barely got to first base with her. We did some kissing at the office but that was about it.

      After I had to let her go, she told me to buzz off.

      I called her up one night and her parting shot at me over the telephone went something like this: “. . . and besides not being a good kisser, you’re a lousy detective. You should try another line of work. Bellboy would suit you perfectly.”

       CLICK

      Oh, well . . .

      She had a lard ass, anyway. The only reason I hired her was because she would work for the lowest wages this side of Chinatown.

      I sold my car in July.

      Anyway, here I was with no bullets for my gun and no money to get any and no credit and nothing left to pawn. I was sitting in my cheap little apartment on Leavenworth Street in San Francisco thinking this over when suddenly hunger started working my stomach over like Joe Louis. Three good right hooks to my gut and I was on my way over to the refrigerator.

      That was a big mistake.

      I looked inside and then hurriedly closed the door when the jungle foliage inside tried to escape. I don’t know how people can live the way I do. My apartment is so dirty that recently I replaced all the seventy-five-watt bulbs with twenty-five-watters, so I wouldn’t have to see it. It was a luxury but I had to do it. Fortunately, the apartment didn’t have any windows or I might have really been in trouble.

      My apartment was so dim that it looked like the shadow of an apartment. I wonder if I always lived like this. I mean, I had to have had a mother, somebody to tell me to clean up, take care of myself, change my socks. I did, too, but I guess I was kind of slow when I was a kid and didn’t catch on. There had to be a reason.

      I stood there beside the refrigerator wondering what to do next when I got a great idea. What did I have to lose? I didn’t have any money for bullets and I was hungry. I needed something to eat.

      I went upstairs to my landlady’s apartment.

      I rang the doorbell.

      This would be the last thing in the world that she would expect because I’d spent over a month now trying to elude her like an eel but always being caught in a net of curses.

      When she answered the door she couldn’t believe that I was standing there. She looked as if her doorknob had been electrified. She was actually speechless. I took full advantage of it.

      “Eureka!” I yelled into her face. “I can pay the rent! I can buy the building! How much do you want for it? Twenty thousand cash! My ship has come in! Oil! Oil!”

      She was so confused that she beckoned me to come into her apartment and pointed out a chair for me to sit down in. She still hadn’t said a word. I was really cooking. I could hardly believe myself.

      I went into the apartment.

      “Oil! Oil!” I continued yelling, and then I started making motions like oil gushing from the ground. I turned into an oil well right in front of her eyes.

      I sat down.

      She sat down opposite me.

      Her mouth was still glued shut.

      “My uncle discovered oil in Rhode Island!” I yelled across at her. “I own half of it. I’m rich. Twenty thousand cash for this pile of shit you call an apartment building! Twenty-five thousand!” I yelled. “I want to marry you and raise a whole family of little apartment buildings! I want our wedding certificate printed on a NO VACANCY sign!”

      It worked.

      She believed me.

      Five minutes later I had a cup of very weak coffee in my hand and I was munching on a stale doughnut and she was telling me how happy she was for me. I told her that I would buy the building from her next week when the first million dollars’ worth of oil royalties arrived.

      When I left her apartment with hunger abated and another week’s housing assured, she shook my hand and said, “You’re a good boy. Oil in Rhode Island.”

      “That’s right,” I said. “Near Hartford.”

      I was going to ask her for five dollars so that I could buy some bullets for my gun but I figured I’d better let well enough alone.

      Ha-ha.

      Get the joke?

       Babylon

      Uh-oh, I started dreaming of Babylon as I walked back down the stairs to my apartment. It was very important that I not dream of Babylon just as I was starting to get some things worked out. If I got started on Babylon whole hours would pass without my knowing it.

      I could sit down in my apartment and suddenly it would be midnight and I would have lost the edge on getting my life back together again whose immediate need was some bullets for my gun.

      The last thing in the world that I needed right now was to start dreaming of Babylon.

      I had to hold Babylon back for a while, long enough for me to get some bullets. I made an heroic effort as I walked down the stairs of the musty, seedy, tomb-like smelling apartment building to keep Babylon at arm’s reach.

      It was touch and go there for a few seconds and then Babylon floated back into the shadows, away from me.

      I felt a little sad.

      I didn’t want Babylon to go.

       Oklahoma

      I went into my apartment and got my gun. I should clean this thing someday, I thought, as I put it into my coat pocket. Also, I should probably get a shoulder holster. That would be an authentic touch that might help me get more cases.

      When I left my apartment to go out into San Francisco to hustle some bullets, my landlady was standing at the top of the stairs, waiting for me.

      Oh, God, I thought. She’s come to her senses. I waited for a huge tirade of curses to bombard my ears and bring my life back to hell on earth again, but it didn’t happen. She just stood there watching me as I walked out of the building with a frozen smile on my face.

      Just as I was opening the front door, she spoke. Her voice was almost child-like. “Why not oil wells in Oklahoma?” she said. “There’s a lot of oil in Oklahoma.”

      “Too close to Texas,” I said. “Salt water flows under the highway.”

      That finished her off.

      There was no reply.

      She looked like Alice in Wonderland.

       Cactus Fog

      There was no place that I was going to get any money to buy bullets, so I decided to go where there are always bullets: a police station.

      I walked down to the Hall of Justice on Kearny Street to see a detective that I knew down there and once had been very good friends with to see if I could borrow some bullets from him.

      Maybe he would loan me six until I met my client and got an advance.