The Harlot in the Hallway

Part 6 of “Alabaster Christ”. Read the whole novella here. 

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“You know what I am, Hap?” Poe said after the lingering silence when both men were baiting their lures with quaking hands and unrealiable fingers – ”Cheap wine epilepsy,” Old Hap always called it.

“I am a shadow of a wound,” Poe continued, casting his fishing line from their perch at the end of the Santa Monica Pier. Poe and Hap were hoping to catch some jacksmelt or mackerel for their breakfast. How they would cook the fish once it was caught was always a troublesome matter.

“You know how a wound slowly fades away, Hap?”

“I’ve been cut before,” the wizened old man said lazily through lips parched and burned by continual exposure to the elements, particularly by the hot, sand-riddled wind that sometimes blows down at the beach. “Reckon I know what you mean by a shadow of a wound. Like a scab, you mean.”

“The wound is coming back to life, Hap. It’s reversing itself. In the last couple of days I’ve become less of a slowly-fading wound and more of a bleeding, freshly-drawn wound. Does that make sense?”

“What you’re saying,” Hap said paternally, “is that the Sero-whatchamacallit is working. Where the hell’d you get that stuff anyway? I thought the clinic doctor turned you away.”

Poe inhaled deep of the sea air. “It’s called Seroquel. I had a bottle of it stashed in a bag under that trash can, the one at the McDonald’s over on Third. I don’t know what made me remember it but I did. I was probably trying to hide it from someone.”

“Always a good idea to hide your medications when you’re living on the streets, Poe,” Hap lectured. “I’ve seen fools steal someone’s heart medication thinkin’ it would get them high. Aspirin, even.”

“Hap?” Poe said after a lingering silence. The fish were not biting today. “I think I know who I am.”

“You’re Poe!” Hap said irritably.

“I remembered last night,” Poe said dreamily. “Poe is my nickname. My name is Victor Potemkin. I think. I lived in Fresno and I had –”

Hap interjected. “Yeah, yeah. You had a dog named Kerouac and a coupla goldfish. We’ve rode this range before.”

“But my name,” Poe said excitedly. “I might’ve remembered my real name.”

“Prove it. You ain’t got no I.D.”

“You want proof?”

“I want proof, goddamnit. Just when I got used to callin’ you Poe all these months you’re now telling me I have to call you by some Russkie name. Poe suits you better.”

Poe could easily prove to Hap that he was indeed Victor Potemkin and prove it to himself at the same time.  He walked briskly to the Main Library at Santa Monica Boulevard and Seventh Avenue, feeling a genuine bounce in his step for the first time in God-knows-how-long. How long had it been since he stopped taking his medications? How long had he been living on the street? Months, Hap said a few minutes ago. How many months? How did he even get here in the first place? Like many, he didn’t know the answer to those questions. But he was fairly certain that he was Victor Potemkin from Fresno, California.

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“P-O- …” His eyes nervously darted over the author’s names on the spines of the books.

Poe, Edgar Allan.

Pomidor, Bill.

Porter, Joyce.

Poe wondered who the hell Joyce Porter was, what with nineteen titles on the library shelf in the Mystery section.

Post, Melville Davisson.

And there, shouldering up to unknown Melville Davisson Post was Victor Potemkin, represented by no less than twenty slim volumes with titles like “The Sun-Drenched Suicide” and “City of Heaven, Streets of Hell.” An uncertain hand pulled one of the mystery novels off the shelf. It looked old but he didn’t think to check the copyright page; instead he flipped the book over in his hands and there, on the backcover, Poe stared at a picture of himself. A much younger man in this photo, that much was obvious, but Poe was indeed Victor Potemkin, formerly of Fresno, formerly the author of “Ripe As A Melon Gets” and “The Harlot in the Hallway.”

“I’ll be goddamned,” Poe said with a hushed gasp.

Poe looked up just as a familiar face drifted past the Mystery stacks. An old man. A worrisome look on his face. It was the doctor, Poe suddenly realized, the shrink from the Mental Health Clinic in Venice, the guy who couldn’t give Poe his meds even if Poe could remember what the meds were or what psychological malady he was being treated for. Before. Before he fled Fresno. Before he stopped being Victor Potemkin. He wanted to share this thrilling news with the doctor.

“I found my meds, I got back on them, and I know now who the hell I am!” he wanted to shout. Poe didn’t know how he was going to reclaim that life but that was another matter. Baby steps.

But when Poe caught up with the Doctor — Dr. Miller? — on the main floor of the library, the old man was listening with rapt attention outside the open door to a conference room. A sandwich board outside the door announced that within the room, the Studio City Women’s Poetry Guild was conducting some sort of shindig.

Poe leaned back in an aisle, unnoticed by Dr. Miller, and listened in on what had so captured the doctor’s attention. In the conference room, a middle-aged woman who, to Poe, looked totally insipid, stood at a lectern and announced that her name was Emily and enthusiastically told the group of twenty-or-so that she would be reading an original work titled “Paul Newman’s Eyes.” She took a long drink of water, cleared her throat, and began:

Paul Newman’s eyes

They are not a disguise

Hidden inside them is something so wise

Something so wise that causes the vanquished in me to rise

Like a river seeking its level

Or a lover meeting her devil

A quick scan of the faces in the conference room compelled Poe to dub them a lot of moronic imps, especially by the way they held on to this Emily’s every daft word, and the ladies proved his judgment sound when they wildly applauded the end of the alleged poem.

Poe shrunk into the shadows of the aisle he was loitering in and watched as Emily stood down from the lectern and headed for the exit. She looked flushed. Like she was overheated, needed some hydration, and indeed she was heading for the public drinking fountain when Dr. Miller gently grabbed her by the elbow.

“Emily?” the kind old man greeted her.

“Dr. Miller!” the bad poetess seemed genuinely pleased to see him. “My God! What’re you doing here?”

Poe fell further back into the shadows, preferring to remain unobserved, pretending to examine a book on marine biology while he listened stealthily.

“I stopped by to pick up a book after duty at the clinic,” Poe heard Dr. Miller explain.

“A biography on Paul Newman?” Emily squeaked. “How funnnnnnny. I was just reading a –”

“Yes, I know. I listened.” He smiled to conceal his lie: “It was a good poem.”

“You think? Really?”

“Funny timing, huh?” Dr. Miller said in a weak voice.

“God, I wish you were still my analyst. I can’t find anyone good since you retired. Honest to God. And I’ve shopped around. Trust me.”

Dr. Miller continued to pursue his point. “I say it’s funny because I’ve had this dream — more than once now, actually — about Paul Newman.” He chuckled nervously. “I thought that maybe reading a book about Paul Newman would help me understand the import –”

The Doctor, Poe noticed, was becoming unsure of his words.

“Symbolism,” Dr. Miller was saying as Poe picked up a book on sea mammals. “Dream symbolism. I think, though, I’ve broken it down to it’s most symbolic element. That would be brown. I just figured that out a few moments ago while I was searching for this book. In the dream Paul Newman is looking terrific for an old man, despite stories to the contrary that I heard on CNN — that’s when the dream began, you see — and I encounter him in an airport and he’s all in brown: a brown suit, brown beard with salt-and-pepper in it, and a brown overcoat and hat.”

Poe was intrigued.

“Brown?” Emily chirped. “Brown is symbolic of earth. I saw that on a History Channel special the other night! Oh, what a double coincidence this is!”

“Indeed. I guess I won’t be needing this silly book any longer.”

“No!” Emily said with an airy laugh. “Brown. Earth. Soil. It’s a death harbinger — oh my God, I finally found a use for that word; I came across it in a book a few weeks ago, looked it up and thought, ‘Emily, that’s a word you should use more often instead of saying things like ‘I had a hunch’, I mean, how stupid is that? — so, yeah, it’s a dream about death, about Paul Newman dying which, he’s 83 you know, is bound to happen sometime soon.”

Even through the books and the metal shelving, Poe could feel Dr. Miller’s discomfort growing; he bets that the doctor wishes he had never even broached the subject. With her. This woman. This bad poetess.

“Well, I really must be going,” the Doctor insisted after a momentary pause. Poe listened to their parting pleasantries. He wondered where he would sleep tonight. Tomorrow he would have to figure out how to get back to Fresno and, once there, how to reclaim what was his. Even if he didn’t want it. Anyone who could write a book with a title like “The Harlot in the Hallway”, he figured, and put his real name on the cover, must have an interesting life.

“Maybe I’m a mentally deranged alcoholic writer,” Poe said to himself with a smile as he descended the library steps. “That’s an identity that’s as good as any, maybe better than some, even.”