Page:Big Sur (1963).djvu/176

RV 166 (BIG SUR166) sleep there, with Billie even, all night, bastard’s got my spot,” and I kick back to the porch—Poor Billie’s arms are outstretched to me: “Please Jack, come on, love me, love me”—“I CANT”—“But why cant you, if even well never see each other again let us our last night be beautiful and something to remember forever.”

“Like a big ideal memory for both of us, cant you give me just that?”—“I would if I could” I’m muttering around like a fussy old nut inside the cabin looking for a match—I cant even light my cigarette, something sinister blows it out, when it’s lit it mortifies my hot mouth anyway like a mouthful of death—I grab up another batch of bags and blankets and start piling myself up on the other side of the porch saying to Billie who’s sighing now realizing it’s hopeless “First I’ll try to take a nap by myself here then when I wake up I’ll feel better and come over to you”—So I try that, turning over rigidly my eyes wide open staring full fright into the dark like the time in the movie Humphrey Bogart who’s just killed his partner trying to sleep by the fire and you see his eyes staring into the fire rigid and insane—That’s just the way I’m staring—If I try to close my eyes some elastic pulls them open again—If I try to turn over the whole universe turns over with me but it’s no better on the other side of the universe—I realize I may never come out of this and my mother is waiting for me at home praying for me because she must know what’s happening tonight, I cry out to her to pray and help me—I remember my cat for the first time in three hours and let out a yell that scares Billie—“All right Jack?”—“Give me a little time”—But now she’s started to sleep, poor girl is exhausted, I realize she’s going to abandon me to my fate anyway and I cant help thinking she and Dave and Romana are all secretly awake waiting for me to die—“For what reason?” I’m thinking “this secret poisoning society, I know, it’s because I’m a Catholic, it’s a big anti-Catholic scheme, it's Communists destroying everybody, system-