I went into the bends. I got drunker and stayed drunker than a shit skunk in Purgatory. I even had the butcher knife against my throat one night in the kitchen and then I thought, easy, old boy, your little girl might want you to take her to the zoo. Ice cream bars, chimpanzees, tigers, green and red birds, and the sun coming down on top of her head, the sun coming down and crawling into the hairs of your arms, easy, old boy.

When I came to I was in the front room of my apartment, spitting into the rug, putting cigarettes out against my wrists, laughing. Mad as a March Hare. I looked up and there sat this pre-med student. A human heart sat in a homey fat jar between us on the coffeetable. All around the human heart—which was labeled after its former owner “Francis”—were half empty fifths of whiskey and scotch, clutters of beerbottles, ashtrays, garbage. I’d pick up a bottle and swallow a hellish mixture of beer and ashes. I hadn’t eaten for 2 weeks. An endless stream of people had come and gone. There had been 7 or 8 wild parties where I had kept demanding—"More to drink! More to drink! More to drink!" I was flying up to heaven; they were just talk– ing—and fingering each other.

“Yeh,” I said to the pre-med student, “what do you want with me?”

“I am going to be your own personal physician.”

“All right, doctor, the first thing I want you to do is to take that god damned human heart out of here!”

“Uh uh.” “What?”

“The heart stays here.”

“Look, man, I don’t know your name—” “Wilbert.”

“Well, Wilbert, I don’t know who you are or how you got here but you take 'Francis’ with you!”

“No, it stays with you.”

Then he got his little playbag and the rubber wrap-around for the arm and he squeezed the ball and the rubber inflated.

"You’ve got the blood pressure of a 19 year old," he told me.

“Fuck that. Look, isn’t it against the law to leave human hearts laying around?”

“I’ll be back to get it. Now, breathe in!”

“I thought the post office was driving me crazy. Now you come along.”

“Quiet! Breathe in!”

“I need a good young piece of ass, doctor. That’s what’s wrong with me.”

“Your backbone is put of place in 14 areas, Chinaski. That breeds tension, imbecility, and, often, madness.”

“Balls I” I said...\n
I don’t remember the gentleman leaving. I awakened on my couch at 1:10 p.m. in the afternoon, death in the afternoon, and it was hot, the sun ripping through my torn shades to rest on the jar in the center of the coffee-table. “Francis” had stayed with me all night, stewing in alcoholic brine, swimming in the mucous extension of the dead diastole. Sitting there in the jar.

It looked like fried chicken. I mean, before you fried it. Exactly.

I picked it up and put it in my closet and covered it with a torn shirt. Then I went to the bathroom and vomited. I finished, stuck my face against the mirror. There were long black hairs sticking out all over my face. Suddenly I had to sit down and shit. It was a good hot one.

The doorbell rang. I finished wiping my ass, got into some old clothes and went to the door.

“Hello?”

There was a young guy out there with long blonde hair hanging down around his face and a black girl who just kept smiling as if she were crazy.

“Hank?”

“Yeh. Who you 2 guys?”

“She is a woman. Don’t you remember us? From the party? We brought a flower.”

“Oh balls, come on in.”

They brought in the flower, some kind of red-orange thing on a green stem. It made a lot more sense than many things, except that it had been murdered. I found a bowl, put the flower in, brought out a jug of wine and put it on the coffeetable.

“You don’t remember her?” the kid asked. “You said you wanted to fuck her.”

She laughed.

“Very nice, but not now.”

“Chinaski, how are you going to make it without the post office?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll fuck you. Or let you fuck me. Hell, I don’t know.”

“You can sleep on our floor anytime.” “Can I watch while you fuck?”

“Sure.”

We drank. I had forgotten their names. I showed them the heart. I asked them to take the horrible thing with them. I didn’t dare throw it out in case the pre-med student needed it back for an exam or at the expiration of the med-library loan or
whatever.

So we went down and saw a nude floor show, drinking and hollering and laughing. I don’t know who had the money but I think he had most of it, which was nice for a change, and I kept laughing and squeezing the girl’s ass and her thighs and kissing
her, but nobody cared. As long as the money lasted, you lasted.

They drove me back and he left with her. I got into the door, said goodbye, turned on the radio, found a half-pint of scotch, drank that, laughing, feeling good, finally relaxed, free, burning my fingers with short cigar butts, then made it to the bed, made it to the edge, tripped, fell down, fell down across the mattress, slept, slept, slept...

***

In the morning it was morning and I was still alive. Maybe I’ll write a novel, I thought. And then I did.