The Blinds
I moved to Philadelphia for some peace and quiet after New York City. After paying a week’s rent in a roominghouse, I walked down the street to look for the nearest bar. Half a block. I walked in and sat down. It was the poor part of town and the bar was fifty years old. You could smell the urine and shit of one-half a century wafting up into the bar from the restrooms.
I ordered a draft. Everybody was talking, screaming up and down the bar.
It was unlike Los Angeles bars or San Francisco bars or New York bars or New Orleans bars or the bars of any of the cities I had been in.
It was 4:30 in the afternoon. Two guys were fighting in the center of the room. Everybody ignored them and kept on talking and drinking. The guy to the right of me was named Danny, the guy to the left, Jim. A bottle came looping through the air and just missed Danny’s nose. He grinned as it sailed past his cigarette. Then he turned in his seat and said to one of the fighters:
“That was pretty close, you son of a bitch! Come that close again, and you got a real fight on your hands!”
Then he turned away.
Almost every seat was taken. I wondered where they came from, these people, how they made it. Jim was quieter, older, very red-faced. He had a kind of gentle weariness created by thousands of hangovers. It was the bar of the lost and the damned if I had ever seen one.
There were women in there: one dyke who drank as if she didn’t enjoy it, a few housewives, fat, merry and a bit stupid, and two or three ladies who had come down from better times and were unattached. As I sat there one girl got up and left with a man. She was back in five minutes.
“Helen! Helen! How do you do it?”
She just laughed.
Another jumped up to try her.
“That must be good. I gotta have some!”
Helen was back in five minutes, sitting over her drink.
“She must have a suction pump for a pussy!”
They all laughed. Helen laughed.
“I gotta try me some of that,” said some old guy down at the end of the bar. “I haven’t had a hard-on since Teddy Roo-sevelt took his last hill.”
It took Helen ten minutes with that one.
“I want a sandwich,” said some guy. “Who’s gonna run me an errand for a sandwich?”
“I will,” I said. I walked over.
“O.k.,” he said, “I want a roast beef on a bun, everything on. You know where Hendrick’s is?”
“No.”
“One block west and across the street. You can’t miss it.”
He gave me the money. “Keep the change.”
I walked down to Hendrick’s. An old guy with a huge belly was behind the counter. “Roast beef on a bun, everything on, to go for some drunk down at Sharkey’s. And one beer for this drunk.”
“We don’t have any draft.”
“Bottle’s all right.”
I drank the beer and took the sandwich back and sat down. A shot of whiskey appeared in front of me. I nodded thanks and drank it down. The juke box played.
A young-looking fellow of about 22 walked down from behind the bar. He wasn’t the bartender.
“I need the venetian blinds cleaned around here.”
“You sure do. A filthier set of shafts I’ve never seen.”
“The girls clean their pussies with them. Not only that, but I’ve lost five or six of those slats up there too.”
“Probably room for more,” I said.
“No doubt. What do you do?”
“Run errands for sandwiches.”
“How about the blinds?”
“How much?”
“Five bucks.”
“You’re on.”
Billy Boy (that was his name—he’d married the female owner of the bar, a gal of about 45, and had taken over) brought me two buckets, some suds, some rags and sponges and I took two blinds down, laid them out and began.
“Drinks are free,” said Tommy the night bartender, “as long as you’re working.”
“Shot of whiskey, Tommy.”
I walked over to the bar, drank it down, then walked back to the buckets. It was slow work, the dust had settled into hard grime. I cut my hands several times and when I put them into the soapy water they stung and burned.
“Shot of whiskey, Tommy.”
I finally got one set of blinds finished and hung them back up. The patrons of the bar turned and admired my work.
“Jesus. Beautiful.”
“It sure helps this place.”
“They’ll probably raise the price of drinks.”
“Shot of whiskey, Tommy.”
I drank it at the bar, then turned to get another set of blinds. I took them down, pulled out the slats and laid them on the table. I beat Jim at the pinball machine for a quarter, then I emptied the buckets in the crapper and got fresh water. The juke box played.
The second set went slower. I cut my hands some more. The patrons stopped joking with me. It was simply work. The fun was gone. I doubted that those blinds had been cleaned in ten years. I was a hero, a five-dollar hero, but nobody appreciated me. I won another quarter at pinball, then Billy Boy hollered at me to go back to work. I walked back to the venetian blinds. Helen walked by. I called her over. She was on her way to the women’s crapper.
“Helen, I’ll have five bucks when I’m finished here. Will that cover?”
“Sure, but you won’t be able to get it up after all that drinking.”
“Baby, you don’t know a real man when you see one.”
She laughed. “I’ll be here at closing time. If you can still stand up then, you can have it for nothing.”
“I’ll be standing tall, baby!”
Helen laughed again and walked back toward the crapper.
“Shot of whiskey, Tommy.”
“Hey, take it easy,” said Billy Boy, “or you’ll never finish that job tonight.”
“Billy, if I don’t finish you keep your five.”
“It’s a deal,” said Billy. “All you people heard? Those blinds gotta be finished by closing or no pay.”
“We heard, Billy, you cheapass.”
“We heard you, Billy.”
“One for the road, Tommy.”
Tommy gave me another whiskey and I drank it and walked back to the blinds. I began to feel sullen. Everybody else was sitting down drinking and laughing and I was scrubbing the grime off of venetian blinds. But I needed the five. There were three windows. After any number of whiskeys, I had the three sets of blinds up and shining.
I walked up, got another whiskey and said, “O.k., Billy, pay up. I finished the job.”
“You’re not finished, Hank.”
“Why not?”
“There’s three more windows in the back room.”
“The back room?”
“The back room. The party room.”
I walked back there with him. There were three more windows.
“But, Billy, nobody ever comes back here.”
“Oh yeah, sometimes we use this room.”
“I’ll settle for two-fifty, Billy.”
“No, you gotta do ’em all or no pay.”
I walked back, got my buckets, dumped the water, put in clean water, soap, then took a set of blinds down. There wasn’t anybody in the back room. I pulled the blinds apart, put them on a table and looked at them. I went in for another whiskey, brought it back, sat down. My desire was gone.
Jim walked back on his way to the crapper, stopped.
“What’s the matter?”
“I can’t make it, Jim. I can’t go another blind.”
“Wait a minute.”
When Jim came out of the crapper he went to the bar and brought his beer back. He began cleaning the blinds.
“That’s all right, Jim, forget it.”
Jim didn’t answer. I went to the bar and got another whiskey. When I came back again I noticed one of the old girls taking the blinds down from the other window.
“Careful you don’t cut yourself,” I said as I sat down.
A few minutes later there were four or five people back there, men and women, and they were all working at the blinds, talking, and laughing. Pretty soon everybody at the bar was back there, even Helen. It didn’t seem to take very long. I worked in two more whiskeys. Then it was finished. Billy Boy came back.
“I don’t have to pay you,” he said.
“Hell, the job’s finished.”
“But you didn’t do it.”
“Don’t be a cheapass, Billy,” somebody said.
“All right. But he had twenty drinks of whiskey.”
Billy reached for the five, I had it and we all walked back to the bar.
“All right,” I announced, “a drink for everybody! Me too.”
I laid down the five.
Tommy went around pouring the drinks. Some nodded to me, some said thanks.
I said, “Thank you, too.”
I drank my drink and Tommy picked up the five.
“You owe the bar $3.15,” he said.
“Put it on the tab.”
“O.k. Name?”
“Chinaski.”
“Chinaski. You heard the one about the Polack who...”
“I heard it.”
The drinks came my way until closing time. On the last drink I looked around. 2 A.M. closing. Helen was gone. Helen had slipped out. Helen had lied. Just like those bitches, I thought, afraid of the long hard ride...
I got up and walked back toward my roominghouse. It was a short walk and the moonlight was bright. My footsteps echoed; it almost sounded as if somebody was following me. I looked around. It wasn’t true. I was quite alone.
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