I watch him slumped, staring ahead, the glass half
raised and tilted.
Eli commands: "Let's take a cab, I am bushed. But first, go back there
and pay for all the drinks. Surely you don't expect me to pick up the
tab as well?"
I leave him standing in the middle of the thoroughfare and return to
Pierre, the catatonic. I place a note of a hundred francs in front of
him but do not say a word. He waves his hand in feeble, interrupted,
protest.
Eli catnaps on the back seat of a waiting cab.
"To the hotel" - I tell the driver. Eli wakes.
He growls:
"It is the last time I am here to save your ass, you hear me?"
Standing at the entrance of our plain hotel, he grabs my shoulders and
turns me around ferociously to face him.
He stares at me the way he did at Pierre:
"This is the last time, you hear me? There will be no more"
I nod, he smiles, and we embrace.
Death of the Poet
by Sam Vaknin
The poet succumbed at eight o'clock AM.
Five minutes prior to his death, he made use of a stained rotary dial
phone, its duct-taped parts precariously clinging to each other. His
speech was slurred but his interlocutor - a fan - thought it nothing
extraordinary.
Sighing ostentatiously, she reluctantly agreed to come to him, volubly
replacing her receiver in its cradle.
Pages:
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129