Sombrero Fallout. Richard Brautigan

all wearing white uniforms. They looked as if they had just gotten off work.

      She was beautiful.

      Her hair was combed into a bun on top of her head in the classic Japanese style. The drink in front of her had barely been touched. She was listening to the other women talk. One of them was talking a lot and enjoying the drink in front of her.

      The Asian woman was very quiet.

      He stared at her and she looked back for a few seconds and then returned to listening to the women talk.

      He wondered if she had recognized him. Sometimes women did and it was to his advantage. His books were popular and easily obtained in bookstores.

      He turned back to the bar and ordered another drink. He would have to think this one over. He was a very shy person when he was sober. He had to be drunk before he could make a pass at a woman. As he sipped his drink, he wondered if he was drunk enough to go over to the table where the Asian woman was sitting and try to get to know her. He turned around again to look at her but she was already looking at him. It rattled him and he turned back around again to the bar and his ears were burning with embarrassment.

      No, he was not drunk enough to make a pass at her.

      He motioned to the bartender who came over.

      ‘Another one?’ the bartender said, looking at the one that was only half-empty in front of him.

      ‘A double,’ he said.

      The bartender’s face remained expressionless because he was a very good bartender. He went and got the whiskey. By the time he was back, the humorist had finished the glass that had been half-full. A minute later the double was half-gone. The humorist with two sips had changed it into a single.

      He could feel the Asian woman looking at him.

      She’s read my books, he thought.

      Then he drained the glass in front of him.

      It was as if the whiskey had fallen into a bottomless well without making a sound. Its only presence now was the energy for him to get up and walk over to the table where the woman sat and say, ‘Hello, may I join you?’

      BREATHING

      The other two women stopped talking and looked up at him.

      The Asian woman was very carefully looking at him.

      He’d never had an Asian woman look that carefully at him before. Her eyes were dark and narrow. For a second because her eyes were so narrow he wondered if she could see as much as a Caucasian could. The thought vanished upon the thinking of it but it was to return many times during the two years that he knew her. It was just that he wondered sometimes if she could see everything that was in a room or wherever they were. Maybe she was only seeing 75 percent of what was going on.

      It was the kind of thought that a child would have.

      He’d never had any experience with an Asian woman other than just seeing them around San Francisco: Chinatown, Japantown, etc. He’d never had one of them look very carefully at him. There was also something else in her eyes that he had seen before in the eyes of other women when they looked at him.

      He knew what it was.

      He relaxed slightly.

      ‘Please do,’ she said.

      Then he sat down.

      He knew by the expression in her eyes that everything was going to work out. Her breathing had changed slightly. She was breathing a little faster. The increase in her breathing pleased him.

      The cocktail waitress came over and he ordered a round of drinks. Then they exchanged names at the table.

      She was Japanese.

      HUMOR

      The other two women didn’t like him.

      They hadn’t read his books. That made a big difference in meeting him. He was not a good-looking man. He had an attractive but very erratic personality. He allowed his moods to dominate him and they were very changeable. Sometimes he would talk too much and at other times he wouldn’t talk at all. He always talked too much when he drank. When he wasn’t drinking he was very shy and formal around people and it was hard to get to know him. Some people thought that he was very charming and others thought that he was a total asshole. The truth lay somewhere in between and it was very close to the halfway mark.

      He had a national reputation as a humorist which was very funny in itself because when you met him one of the first things you noticed about him was that he had no sense of humor.

      Whenever other people were laughing at something, he usually looked puzzled. Sometimes very intelligent people thought this was very funny in itself and got a second laugh after the first which would always make him look more puzzled and then he would feel very uncomfortable. He was very perceptive but that was one of the things in life that he could never figure out. It never dawned on him that people were laughing at him because he had no sense of humor. He thought that he was a very funny fellow because the books he wrote were funny. He didn’t know that around other people he often looked puzzled when they were laughing. Intellectually he was able to dismiss this by thinking that other people were laughing at an in-joke.

      Not having a sense of humor was one of the main character weaknesses that he possessed. He would have enjoyed life a little more if he had been able to laugh at it.

      Oh, yes: another interesting thing: When he was writing things that later on people would praise as some of the best humor of the century, he didn’t laugh when he wrote them. He didn’t even smile.

      The other two women didn’t like him.

      Good for them.

      Too bad for the Japanese woman.

      She liked him.

      FUTURE

      ‘I’ll get the sombrero for you, mayor,’ the unemployed man said and bent over to pick up the sombrero. It was his last chance to get a job on this planet and he did not believe in God. It was nothing personal but he just knew that there was no employment waiting for him in heaven because there was no heaven.

      This sombrero lying in the street was his final hope.

      ‘No, I’ll get it,’ the mayor’s cousin said, suddenly realizing that if he didn’t pick up the sombrero he would never be mayor. He would have no political career. The Presidency of the United States would be beyond his reach. He would never rub elbows with bigwigs in Washington nor give the Fourth of July speech here in town.

      The sombrero was the key to his entire future.

      The mayor was amused by the sudden intensity of the two men wanting to please him, though he didn’t know what their reasons were. The mayor was a great small-town politician.

      ‘No!’ the unemployed man yelled. ‘I’ll get the sombrero!’

      ‘Don’t touch that sombrero!’ the cousin yelled back.

      Both men who were reaching for the sombrero suddenly stopped, surprised by their own vehemence, and took a good look at each other.

      The mayor was about to say, ‘Stop it, you two. What’s wrong with you? Are you both idiots? It is only a sombrero.’

      That would have ended it right then and there. Life is that simple and the National Guard would not have to have been called out nor paratroopers and tanks brought in, along with Air Force support. There would not have been that speech the President gave on television condemning the activity that was to happen nor would the United States have been denounced in the United Nations by a special committee of Third World countries.