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and I would watch television together until midnight, sometimes one or two a.m. All the time she was making these little dolls which she sold at her place. She was very good at it. And she made hats. The hats were good too. Very unusual.
    “Business ain’t what it used to be. People don’t even carry money anymore. Everything is credit and travelers checks. I can barely make it. Want a little nip of whiskey?”
    “O.K. Shirley, thanks.”
    It was the same every night. I could lay around and play poet. I’d never have to leave. All I had to do was lay it into her. But she was so fat. So fat. I didn’t have the desire.
    “Have another little nip.”
    “O.K., Shirley, thanks.”
    “Do you ever hear them people next door?”
    “No.”
    “Oh, that’s right, they’re on vacation. Wait until they get back. The minute he gets home he starts hollering at her, calling her a whore, all sorts of things. Then he beats her. Then he fucks the shit outa her. You can hear the whole walls shake.”
    “Jesus.”
    “Every night, the same thing.”
    “Ummm, ummm. Well, Shirley, I have to go to bed now. See you tomorrow.”
    “Sure, baby.”
    Then I’d go to bed. Alone. About noon I’d go over and take the editor the pages I’d signed. When I finally got finished the stack of pages was 7 feet high. But I didn’t finish until my last night in town. Sometimes I’d drink over at the editors and tell them some bullshit stories. They liked them. The roaches ran up and down the walls and Bukowski was everywhere.
    I met their fiction editor in a bar one night in the Quarter. They introduced me. He was deaf and dumb. We wrote messages on paper napkins all night. He came on good. We wrote messages on those napkins until I drank him under, then I made my way back to Shirley’s place. Another night, I am sitting in a bar with a guy at the piano playing and clowning, then he grabbed the mike and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have with us tonight, the poet, Charles Bukowski.”
    I waved and the bastards applauded. I’m sure they never heard of me. Later, back in the crapper while taking a leak, some guy walked up to me.
    “Are you the Charles Bukowski they announced up front?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well, would you mind telling me where you have been published and when?”
    “Fuck you, buddy!” I zipped up, washed my hands and walked out.
    I never stuck it into Shirley. Night after night, I never. It looked like back to Los Angeles for me. At least in the Quarter I was a half-celebrity. Back in L.A. I was just another guy without money. Louise stood on a corner trying to sell paintings while the great editor rolled Bukowski off the press. And the roaches lazed in the sun. It was a quiet and easy time. I signed the last of the pages while drinking at their place and when I was done, we had a stack seven feet tall. 3500 Bukowski signatures and drawings. I had done it. The book was going to go for $7.50. CRUCIFIX IN A DEATHHAND. And how.
    I said goodbye to Shirley the next day in her shop. She looked genuinely sad. The long t.v. nights of drinking while she made the dolls and hats in the kitchen were over. The good dinners were over. The easy New Orleans life was shot for me. I couldn’t stick it in. “I’ll never forget the roses and you,” she said. “I’ll write about you some day, Shirley,” I threatened her. I squeezed her hand and left her there with her boiling strawberries and some rich bitch trying on one of her 25 dollar hats that cost her a dollar to make. The rich bitch looked good, but she was for somebody else.
    The great editor and his wife took me down to the train station. In the baggage room they had this long wooden partition. It looked like a bar. I hit the wood and hollered, “I wanna buy drinks for everybody in the house!”
    Two young girls there started laughing.
    “That was really funny,” one of them said.
    Balls.
    I packed into the train and the great editor and his wife waved to me through the