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Breakfast at Tiffany's

She blew her nose in the last thing I had written. Crumbled it into a ball and threw it out the window. This is what had been on it:

GOONS
Eclectic, collective and full of fear
do you know any other limericks
we can sing while we drink
ourselves to death.

The mahogany bar with the stool
just right, a squeaky swivel at just
the best height.  Come over here
and let me feed you another piece
of broken glass.  Can't I just
have that stench sweated shirt
and ball it into a rat nest.  What happened
to those blonde curls that chained
me with those velcro promises.
Dirty nails; lipstick smeared on your
face.  Who do we see now when
we look passed the peanuts on a rack,
 the bottles filled with amber glue.

Connective, corrective and spit in your ear,
do you know of any other rhymes
we can sing while we think
ourselves to death.

I sipped the cold cup of coffee, dunked the stale doughnut stick; finally, the purple dawn sizzled on the ridge of mountain tops beyond the barren desert flatlands . I kept myself awake, avoiding the sight of her blond hair all crunched up on the headrest, mouth opened, white crust in the corners, driving like a two-handed driver's-ed student over the dotted middle line. The tat-tat-tat from the reflective markers the lest annoying sound during this road trip down a brutally, long blue-line asphalt wonder. No short-cuts for me-we're here to see America. Follow the blue roads on the map. It will be a Beat romance, me and my wide-opened mouth snoring doll to my side. But there's been absolutely nothing, void, dead, zero, blackness in between-- So much for the Middle Way.

"Fuck this," I shouted out the window.

The way the sound of it got gobbled up by the wind made me think about the origin of curse words: profanity; four letter bulldogs that could get the self-appointed guardians of language, the Mussolini of words, the Hiel! Hiel Hiel! heeling clicking purveyors of literary trends who sit in their stinking cubicles deciding which and what and whom would be blessed, graced, bestowed the honor of publication, in a huff. I was back to ruminating about the novel I submitted which began with that word. Starting a story with that: sorry, it's not for us--not our cup of tea. "TEA" --like they're Tories pulling indignantly on their ruffled, delusional, literary cuffs. And "Us?"

(The cowards never print their names.) Who the fuck is US?

And a poem, placing a limerick-- no less - at the front of a piece? What was I thinking? Poetry. It's like asking them to read the ingredients of laundry detergent before they rinse their dirty jock-straps.

I had enough driving; I needed to stretch. There was an EAT sign pointing to a human-built structure ahead. Do you notice how you don't give a shit if you leave the keys in a rental car?

I leaned against the opened car door and pulled on my cowboy boots. I put the paperback book in my back pocket. Across the gravel lot there was a food shack, decals of tacos in the window. I hadn't seen anything else for hours. It looked like it was going to be burritos for breakfast.

"You want to eat?" I slammed the door.

Linda grunted: "Are we there yet?"

Man, she had gone downhill fast. I left my wife for this? Two weeks ago we were making up dirty limericks in a bar on First Avenue, laughing, looking into each other's eyes. I thought she'd be a hot enema shot into the cold, impacted regularity of my life.

A bell attached to the food shack door. Some security system out here in the middle of nowhere. The smell of frying salsa peppers and onions made me sick. I went back to the entrance door, opened it again, whacked the bell with my hand. A woman, who had to have cow genes in her lineage, parted the drape, short and stocky hands mauling themselves on a towel.

"You have a bagel, a croissant, a doughnut, something normal for breakfast?"

"No Ingles." The women smiled.

I repeated myself, saying the words slower, making a circle in the air and eating it--like this was going to help. Man, I was at my breaking point.

"No Ingles."

Say that one more time, I thought. If I hear that one more time on this road trip; we weren't even into Mexico yet.

The women shouted toward the kitchen drape for help, hopefully calling for a translator. I expected to see her counterpart, a frail-framed Senor Moo-Moo Man with a gravy stained T-shirt to take his turn at bad English. I was tired of having to be racially fucking correct all the time. Stereotypes were there for a reason. That's part of what this bust was all about, wasn't it?

But what a surprise. A young woman, Mexican or Indian looking, dressed in a business suit, dark blue jacket and dress, carefully lifted the curtain not to muss her long, black, silky hair. I noticed her carrying a briefcase when she stepped around the counter. She was not smiling.

"My Aunt does not speak English. What is it you want?"

"Doughnut," I said. It felt like such a stupid word to say in front of a beautiful woman. I was sure I looked as bad as I felt. I spotted Linda rousing in the car. She stuck her dog face out the window sniffing at the colored sky.

"There's a truck stop seventy-three miles west of here. This is an ethnic cantina."

Her attitude was so haughty that I couldn't take it. She smelled good though, had a nice perfume on. "Well, excuse me for fucking breathing," I said. "This is still America the last time I checked."

She walked to the front door. Wow; some fine long legs in heels. Extra tight butt. She opened it, bell chiming.

Linda called out, getting the young Indian woman's attention, "Get me a chicken burrito!"

The woman's profile was perfect. Looked like the model they used for Pocahantas the last time I took the kids to Disney. Unmade-up Linda's bow-wow face was going to ruin my plan to turn this brash encounter around. The strategy worked nearly all the time; I'd take out the paperback book I wrote, with my picture on it, let them see how clever I am-and then-after flipping the pages-- they wouldn't care what I had said. Although this copy I had with me was four years old and looking ragged after this trip. (I had hoped to have a new book out by this time but was getting blacklisted for lack of sales, unable to recoup their advance. The kiss-air agent stopped returning calls, since the options expired and nobody bought.) I pulled out the paperback. Walked toward her.

"I'm a writer. I'm doing research. Have you read my book?"

She looked at me like I was holding a used tampon. "There's a truck stop west."

"Get me a chicken burrito, extra sauce." Linda's voice was a pair of needle-nose pliers tugging at the skin of my ear drums.

"Your wife is calling you. Take her to the truck stop."

"My wife? My fucking wife! She's not my wife. She's just a girl from the writing workshop; that's what I'm reduced to. My wife is glamorous. My wife is classy. I live in a $400,000 house on Long Island. We have Chinese lanterns on the patio over the pool. My kids wear Cardigan sweaters and go to private schools. You see this piece of fucking trash." I wagged the book in her face. "I sold 10,000 copies of this book. My first book sold 150,000. They don't like the new thing I wrote, either. Too many curse words. Too graphic. The plot not intricate enough. Sentence style too short. Too chopped up. What ever the fuck they want to say. Critics, all of them."

"I want a chicken burrito, I'm' hungry."

"Oh, they want something safe. Something Miss F..ing Manners, some housewife in Orlando, with a mini-van stuck up her ass would read in bed after the brats are doped up on RingDings. Find a slot and shove them in: mass market, trade, mid-list, another word for losers with a capital L."

"Are you getting the burritos?" Linda started to open the car door.

"And then the literary magazines, the high-handed snotty literary presses. Okay, I said. My work's not commercial enough anymore, can't get the sales boys to ignore the numbers coming up on the computers. All right, I'll find a place for myself there. But no, these mothers are worse. Especially since I had some commercial success. They love to dig their elbow in your back. Just like the bullies used to do to them in the playground when they were nerd-ass kids--literary preliminary perusers. They love to whack you real hard; oh you can tell they sit there and relish stuffing in the little snotty rejection slips, like the cover letter you just wrote them, you were talking to the wall."

I need to eat. Get some burritos."

"Stay in that damn car." I turned back to the Indian Princess. "I remember when the editor of the first publishing house took me on a tour of the big glass building, when the sales numbers were up, showed me the slush pile room, like an unorganized lumber yard with tree trucks of unsolicited manuscripts stacked to the ceiling. There was a smirk on his face, as if by a brush of his hand he was saying, here, look at the clawing voices scratching at the barbwire fence of obscurity. Dumb fucking bastards he was saying."

"Burrito, burrito." Linda was going into the limerick, sing-song routine that was old after the first drunken night.

"You see. You see what reduction means." I pointed to Linda. "Reduction means driving in a rented car with the credits cards on max-- the wife cancels the ATM card-- with a writing student who loves to eat and fornicate in that order. I don't want to screw. I just want a doughnut for breakfast. I got a sore on my dick. When you get a sore on your dick romance is over. Believe me. Fuck, fuck, fuck, that's the word they can't stand; the sound of a muffler backfiring, a dirty carburetor. Don't you like the French word for intercourse?"

I hadn't noticed the Indian Princess's brothers or uncles piling out of the kitchen standing behind me. I don't know if they understood English or not, but they definitely didn't like the word dick. It was like the starting bell on a cock fight. I was in a choke hold before I could think, my windpipe totally obstructed. I got banged on the head with a heavy metal frying pan. I was gagging, my eyes bulging. Another one steps out and winds up before he belts me in the gut. Involuntarily, I keel forward, taking the guy with the choke hold over the top. I sucked in some air and tried to make it to the daylight of the door. A second smash on the head with the pan took me down. I looked at sneakers scuffling about and a pair of high heels off to the side. A sneaker stepped on my head, grinds it. My face was right next to the spine of my paperback book. I got a few more kicks to the ribs. I managed to my knees and started to crawl out. Another kick caught me in the eye. I saw Linda sitting in the driver seat. There was smoke coming out of the muffler. I heard Linda squealing away, making her getaway--alone-- in my rental car before my other eye got it. And then the lights went out.

The first thing I saw when I came to was a million bright dots. It took me a minute to figure out this was the night sky. I was freezing. I looked at them through a narrow slit in my left eye. The other one was closed. I turned my head and cringed. I thought I saw a giant with upraised arms ready to strike me again. But it was a huge Sequoia cactus they had rolled me against. I had more pain from the cactus spines in my side than the broken ribs. When my eye adjusted I looked down the length of my body. They had taken my cowboy boots. My bare feet was what made me so cold. I saw a square block on my chest, but couldn't feel it. I fell back asleep.

I didn't know until later that I had slept through an entire day because when I opened my eyes it was still night. This time I could manage to sit up. Extracted myself from the cactus needles. It was amazing; there was absolutely no pain. I was numb. That block on my chest was my paperback book. It tumbled to the sand. I knew instinctively what I had to do. I checked my pockets and rightfully expected to find my wallet missing. I had some coins left and a book of matches from the motel Linda and I last stayed in. I started ripping the pages out of my paperback and piled them into a mound. It was cold, but there was no wind. I started a fire. I used the book cover with my picture on it to fan the flames. From the light of the small fire I saw hundreds of dried sagebrush close by. Within crawling distance there was enough tinder to keep the fire going through the night. I wasn't afraid; it was remarkable.

It turned out that the Sequoia was my salvation. The needles had dripped in an ooze that was both antibiotic and anesthetic. When the pain would rise from a wound I would snap off a needle and rub the sticky end to the cut. The throb would soon ease and this incredible peace returned again. I ate the fermented fruit gathered around the base. I followed the cactus' circular, stretching path of shade during the day. I spent seven sunrises next to that Sequoia before I was able to travel.

By that time, my full vision had returned. But everything looked different. I looked at my book cover with my picture on the back, wondering who that person was. I didn't have amnesia. I remembered arguing with the photographer the publisher sent out to my place in the Hamptons. I remember throwing a drink in his face for making me sit in the same pose forever. But who was this person in the photo? Why was he that way? I looked at the book jacket one last time before I threw it into the dwindling fire. It was slow, but I made my way to the crest of the sand ridge.

It was sunrise and the most spectacular sight I had ever seen. This fine filtered purple light, like living threads of color, wove along the mountain tops in the distance. Everything, even in the quite stillness of the desert, seemed to be bursting with life, filled with promise and hope. By noon I made my way to a road. The very first truck, a flat bed with worn wooden slats on the side, stopped for me. He was an old Mexican farmer wearing a straw cowboy hat. He motioned for me to climb on back.

He took me back to his place, a small house surrounded by a yard full of darting chickens. His wife had very soothing hands when she bandaged my ribs. They fed me. The next morning I went outside and found a rake. I cleaned up the yard. I opened some old cans of paint in the shed and whitewashed the fence. I stayed with them that way for nearly three months. I learned some Spanish. The old man called me Hijo Viejo, which meant his old son. The wife called me Rubio, for the color my hair had turned in the desert light. My arms had grown thick, recalling the trade I had done to feed myself through college. I built the old man and his wife a small barn. Not a fancy one, but functional. I had forgotten the swing of a hammer against the vibration of a nail. The smell of pine cut with a hand saw. I would sit in the shade at lunchtime with a glass of ice tea and watch the white chickens near the red wheel barrow. That's where it started; the initial cascading of words, like boxcars hooked to make a train, chugging through an image, taking me to new places. William Carlos Williams. I had completely forgotten the exhilaration of language, the slight of hand, the parenthetical phrase, the tumbling back, the well placed conjunction, the perfect omission, the skillful breaking of rules. In the silence around the farmhouse I heard language again. I had become a recorder of human grunts--that's what I had written-- a cataloger of utterances from lost souls. I had sold out-- then been sold myself.

I thought one day it would be good to see my own children again. Ask my wife to forgive my wrongs. But I wasn't nervous. For some reason I felt everything would turn out the way it was supposed to be. I talked to the old man. He said the first week of every quarter a social worker comes to sign papers to renew their benefits. The social worker could give me a ride to the bus station.

We said our good-byes before hand. I came from the barn when I heard the social worker's car. I waited on the porch until they signed their papers. I stood when the screen door opened. The old man introduced me to the social worker. She was the Indian Princess from the burrito shack.

She held out her hand, as beautiful as I remembered. She said her name was Tiffany.

"Thanks for offering a lift," I said. She didn't recognize me.

Riding in her car I looked at the desert, the color variations of brown. She tried to make idle conversation, but I just looked out at the Sequoias.

"Have you had breakfast?" she asked. "The bus does not arrive for three hours."

I told her I hadn't eaten.

"My aunt owns a cantina up the road. It's about the only place to get something to eat." She turned and smiled. "I hope you like burritos."

"Chicken burritos?"

"Yes, my Tia makes them great."

"You know," I said. "That's exactly what I need." I asked her if she would be kind enough to give me a piece of paper. And then I wrote this:

DINER STOP
The high peaks are buildings
in dry light. There are cacti--
Roadside. Near: RED: Blue.
The pulsating strip with its ray
coming a needle in my vein.
Hot, humid air.
My cowboy boots make no dust--
Gravel sounds.
Have you ever seen a morning moon
so bright? A sliver really.
She asleep in the seat.
It's been running. Pushed back
silent she lies. Blond on headrest.
Laid so far back you begin to
see the meaning of the early
fossil fog. The echo of apes
in the canopy of trees.
Now she will not wake for me again. She
will never see burrito making.
Or taste life's surprise. 

I waited in the desert for a bus. Saw its silver reflecting as it approached in a dry dust cloud. Fuck...it was pretty good to be alive.

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