Shirley came to town with a broken… and met the Chicano who smoked long slim cigars and they got a place together on Beacon street

her shoes themselves would light my room like many candles. she walks like all things shining on glass,

twitching in the sheets— to face the sunlight again, that’s clearly trouble. I like the city better when the

here things are tough but they’re mostly always tough. basically I’m just trying to get a… with the female. when you first meet them their eyes

I kept getting letters from a lady who lived only a mile or so away. She signed them Nicole. She said she had read some of my books and liked them. I answered one of her letters and she...

my first and only wife painted and she talked to me about it: it’s all so painful

another bed another woman more curtains another bathroom another kitchen

she wrote me for years. “I’m drinking wine in the kitchen. it’s raining outside. the children are in school.” she was an average citizen

this is important enough: to get your feelings down, it is better than shaving or cooking beans with garlic. it is the little we can do

well, first Mae West died and then George Raft, and Eddie G. Robinson’s been gone long time,

I got his ashes, she said, and I… out to sea and I scattered his ash… they didn’t even look like ashes and the urn was weighted with

the blue pencil of the wave shots of yellow road a steering wheel an insane woman sitting next to you

Somehow the money slipped away after that and soon I left the track and sat around in my apartment waiting for the 90 days’ leave to run out. My nerves were raw from the drinking and th...

Luckily I had auto insurance that paid for a rental car. I drove Katherine to the racetrack in it. We sat in the sundeck at Hollywood Park near the stretch turn. Katherine said she didn...