There was nothing left for me after that but the beach -- the grey afternoon -- bells of cable cars over the lyme grass and a field of desiccated husks sprawling along the dunes. I was nineteen -- or -- twenty -- as I have said, again and again -- and will continue to say -- fully-clothed and shivering over the sand in delicate measured steps. For these last days: a pink pin-striped shirt, its too-narrow collar hung open -- exposed the manubrium -- the sternohyoid -- tiny speck of a mole -- I'd picked these things up, of course -- so much of it picked up like this -- without a thought. A gray vest with miniature pockets for the fingers -- a neatly-kept matching jacket and its liner of several tears -- unraveled seams -- pants suffered but at one time were something to see -- so I was told -- suffering -- I mean -- suffering in them -- and over distressed black shoes -- lavender spats -- particularly ludicrous -- hid the distresses in part but also the ankles, which remained bare. The merest of thoughts in all that space -- barges inching their way along the horizon -- an array of browns -- reds -- greens -- yellows -- flying flags off decks -- though I couldn't see them -- but knew them -- crawling as I would crawl -- in my own night-soaked hole -- they in their ocean light. Fog hugged the coast, and a sea-cold wind reached out of the waves -- in among a few timid surfers and a group of boys dancing the capoeira -- couples shuddered together on benches -- and the ragged stalk of a single, gnarly beachcomber. They were not much for swimming in the icy waters -- the dismal sky -- but a single girl on a towel turned her toes in the sand -- pale knobs of the heels moving about -- bare legs splayed over bits of bleached shell and strands of seaweed.
     It was the suit perhaps -- rime on the wingtips -- or -- wingtips themselves -- my body swaying there and its shadow cutting across her skin -- blonde against the nut sand -- and yet under the dim palatine sconces of the bar she warmed to taupe -- moleskin -- I am confusing it now -- bringing in the bar -- having just stood standing on the beach -- but ignore this -- it's not important -- a single shot to the head -- it falls -- bring her back -- crawl over the heel and around the ankle -- trace the malleolus -- the soleus -- run along a slender calf and behind the knee -- and then up along the back of the thigh where an elastic band dug into this taut skin drenched in the grey sun and encroaching sea.
     -Overdressed, she said. -Don't you think. And I kneeled -- or -- wanting to kneel -- stood shifting on the feet -- bring in the beachcomber, swinging his paddle -- spade turned over loam -- fill a canvas satchel with bits of soft metal and knotted driftwood -- bring in the surf, and shouts over the swells -- bring in the dead scent of the water -- of vapor down the cliff and oil on the road -- Pacific Coast Highway, I'll say -- my voice faintly telling her of the beach house -- an Italian sportscar -- wad of bills in the pocket -- showing a few -- or with the pronated flat of the hand patting the leg.
     She sat up holding a rainbow bikini top against the breasts -- face refused -- for the moment -- or -- later -- or -- not at all -- loose straps dangled over the arm, and I touched the clotted hair as I tied them -- wiry blonde and brown -- the notches of vertebrae running down the back -- thistledown planes of the rhomboideus -- the latissimus dorsi -- I'd chosen one of the professions -- a certain palaver -- shift of the hips and swagger of the head -- drifting then, as now -- impossibly high on the shoulders -- nose sunk into the nasal bone, the sinus -- ears dissolving against the processes -- a kind of wind-blown depilation -- this silent unctuous dot on its hair-thin stem -- and the body enfolded like this in moments of rapture -- of disease.
     There is no mystery to this -- nothing to tease out -- a clear thing stated clearly -- to purge these memories as the body purges itself on the earth is all I mean -- when the eyes go, we will say: And then he goes out -- but now -- nothing.

We rode east by cab to the foot of Market Street -- California and Drumm -- drifted beneath wires and yellow light -- in the yellow gown -- thinking this -- believing it in moments -- that she wore a gown -- all gauzy veils and sallow muslin -- a thin membrane of lanternlight -- rather -- she surely wore a pair of red sweatpants cut roughly at the knees -- the metallic rainbow bikini top -- a headband perhaps -- and -- maroon coatee around the shoulders.
     I turned to her on the sidewalk -- pointed to the blank wall -- east -- said, -The lights of Monte Carlo are at least twice as bright as Las Vegas. I fumbled with her sleeve. -And you sit outside under the umbrella of a sidewalk café drinking espresso all year round because it's never cold. There is a juggler on every corner -- a clown -- an acrobat -- and the Mediterranean Sea floods the streets every seven years to wash away the great sins which accumulate in that time -- Venice, of course, it is the same -- but as it begins in the sea the body of its sins can become that much greater.
     The light persisted for a time -- undiminished -- the jeweler's window -- department store tableau -- and I began to offer window-promises, each more vagrant than the last -- to the squeal of brakes -- to the sound of a single note on the saxophone somewhere out of the Mission -- dying along sidewalks -- driving the feet forward.
     She encouraged this movement, I see now -- the agent of this -- hand pressing into mine -- a pair of legs stuck out of a doorway, twisted unnaturally on the cement -- a kind of grey along the curb -- and buildings the length of whole city blocks disappearing into Eddy Street -- led up the hill -- she leading -- or -- myself -- leading the both of us under the steady tutelage of her sweating arm to my spot up in the Tenderloin -- the bar of the Strand Hotel.
     Did she laugh gaily -- skip once or twice -- though hummed to herself something in a major key -- and for days afterward, I could hear the growling of dogs, and the premonition of blood -- a smell -- sometimes a taste -- closer now than before -- holding it in the palm -- claret and heavy -- scuttling in lines -- creases -- over the fingers -- and coming to feel I was holding a simple thing simply -- I thought to remember it -- or later remembering then how I felt walking arm and arm into the bar and thinking I should have known all along how it would go -- or -- knowing this now.

Coming together on the sand I hesitated to describe there for the sake of decorum -- for the sake of a kind of reticence observed in the evening hours -- knowing it would all come out later in boasts and brags.
     The drunks floated up from their stools -- first heads -- necks and shoulders -- chests and arms -- and then the whole thing of them sat right there -- saying nothing at first -- recording silently among themselves with nods and posturing their small deviations: tattoos and clubbed feet -- lost digits -- limbs -- it wasn't a night of it until someone pulled away the prosthetic for comparison and itching -- the gnarls of skin -- tubers -- and -- spurs coming off the bone.
     Scars were nothing -- to flash a scar was a sign of churlishness and depravity and as likely to get one tossed into the alley as any amount of drunkenness -- who among them didn't have a scar -- who didn't feel the impress of some new invasion each day.
     Rose -- Rose-darling -- that name I wedded to her -- sat wide-eyed and silent -- thin bare legs crossed over the oak floor -- toes dirty and curling on the edge of a low table. I wanted to touch them -- to lick them clean.
     -Buy me a drink, she said over again. -Tequila -- or gin.
     Later she drank whatever they all drank -- whatever the boys made out of whatever we had -- a kind of mash, I suppose -- feeding it to the dogs and laughing it up until Mary came in with the whip -- a kind of mash, or exactly that -- though I don't know -- did I know it then -- the impossibility of knowing anything there on the couch -- and though it seems I had gone into hiding there -- at that time -- my night spots -- my afternoons -- weeks at this -- I wonder now if in fact I had craved the four of them -- something like them -- to bring things to an end -- I am almost gleeful to bring the rest of them in -- sick at the way they have stayed with me all this time -- and wanting nothing more than to have them out -- rid for once and all -- this to be the last and then done.
     She twirled her hair between the thumb and finger -- a few sea-thick strands hanging down over the forehead -- eyes blue at first -- but then: hazel -- feeling certain of this, though perhaps another setting -- another time or light -- her fingers through the hair -- a kind of lulling -- someone else perhaps.
     I pulled a handkerchief from the inner pocket of the jacket and daubed the forehead -- having practiced this until it became habit -- one of a few constructed idiosyncrasies. I had been assured it was silk -- or -- sure of its silkiness, I had taken it -- or -- caused it in some way to become taken -- I am certain I did not find it. Spreading it out on my knee, its threadbare folds formed a series of sleek squares -- the monogram read: ASK -- and Rose guessed at my name for the better part of two days -- stroked the surface of the fabric -- these fine bones of her fingers -- and pulling the tongue in across her lower lip.
     Around us, a blur of motion -- and -- music -- pushing toward us and striking us in some way -- seeming hopeful of something, but dying away -- a series of jazz fusion originals -- one could sense it there in the room -- falling against the far wall -- or -- sinking down into the barstools -- out of the tap -- into the drink -- out of the drink -- into the mouth -- into the body -- out through the anus -- nothing was too far away -- everything within reach -- and in reaching ruined -- no one was listening was the thing -- to what, I can't recall.
     Dim lamps hung overhead -- mad flickering -- a glossy bartop along one side and the narrow barman's trench behind -- a stadium of gleaming liquor bottles behind this -- a mirror running the length against the wall, corners mottled with patches of flaking foil. The barman's name escapes me -- though perhaps I have always suspected some deception -- a simple name inspired confidence and candor -- and every bartender in San Francisco was named Frank except this one, who was named something in many syllables rather than one -- I divulged nothing -- or -- it may have been a barmaid -- and I may have said a few things -- I will draw her out -- a thick black line following the arm, the shoulder, orbiting the head -- but here leave her.
     Rose leaned against my neck and whispered to me a girlish buzz of intimacies -- how many houses did my family own -- what kinds of cars -- did I play for keeps in the casinos -- I did -- but became suspicious of her part in all this -- these features as fine and delicate as any on the Island of Monaco -- gentle slope of the frontal eminence, skin taut over the superciliary -- zygomatic flare -- taupe, as I have said -- moleskin -- and a gloomy rouge through the cheeks -- seeing this kind of thing in Fresno six months before -- but more mesmerizing -- her hand on me.
     Five or six of us sat together on the couch -- I bought a round of whiskey sours.
     -The prince of bees! one of them shouted, waving at me a single moldy napkin -- lifting the glass. -The best part yet!
     -Yes, the prince! said another -- winking with the eye and draining the glass. -Best part gone!
     It had been discussed among us in recent months a baron had taken a room above the druggist -- a duchess had leaned out of a cab window on O'Farrell shouting obscenities -- and a king -- somewhere a king. So I began describing my native land as a series of hills at the foot of mountains -- caps of snow disappearing in the spring -- asphalt road winding among a succession of overgrown ramparts -- gold our currency at home, paper abroad -- holding in the fist in the pocket my dwindling bundle of bills -- the waitress stood over me -- one of her lips swollen purple and yellow, tiny dark thread of a scab disappearing into the mouth.
     -Pay as you go, she said.
     Saying to them then with my own mouth, -There was a tulip garden -- a sea of marigolds on the wind -- a high maze of hedges. The gardener swung a metal detector through the beds, picking out of the earth toys I played with as a child -- lead pellets for an air gun mixed with tiny hollow bones -- models painted metallic gold. Dapple-gray horses broke the paddock fence at least once each week -- caparisoned in the family crest -- trampling through flowers -- gardener and groom at constant odds.
     Rose-darling draped her leg over mine -- pale knee out from under the shredded red cloth -- hooking the toes of the foot in the dark crook of the far leg -- flexing against the plantis -- so that I quickly became erect -- and French kissing in the acrid air -- her tongue tasted of lemon whiskey -- and the nipple showing through a band of violet. I had mentioned a penthouse in the Mark Hopkins -- or -- the Fairmont -- how the flags snapped in the wind -- brick cobblestones filling the courtyard -- Sunday brunch in the Tea Room -- in the ears of waxen ladies and powdered gentlemen -- running whole countries from the dessert cart -- and Rose finally urging me up and out. We would have made it but for the band, who at that moment began a ludicrous tango -- some middle-aged lothario dropped a crisp hundred-dollar-bill onto the music stand -- moved through the parted crowd -- extended his hand to the couch.
     A ludicrous scene -- ludicrous -- bring in the sea again -- the gardens -- the stables -- the dogs -- flash forward to Grunewald pulling up the planks and cleaning the pit -- dried blood confusing them -- putting them in a sanguine mood -- whereas fresh blood matted in the hair -- the paws and nails -- a muggy ferrous thing drifting through the barn -- Rose rested on the money tin -- jeers from the crowd -- kicks in the sunken flanks from owners -- set them at the ready.
     -He dragged her, I said to one of them, a tall one named Frank -- a kind of appeal -- with no object -- and no subject -- they were all named Frank, I believe -- and Frank squinted at me, knocked the tip of his nose with a finger -- into the filmy space between us -- grinned -- wavering.
     -Grabbed, I said again, looking out at them -- hands of the lothario moving over her.
     -Dragged, you mean, said Frank.
     I worked my hand out of the pocket with the bills -- a few left -- bring in the sportscar, where I kept a secret of cash for emergencies rolled around a seat spring -- bring in the penthouse -- the hotel safe.
     He jerked her among tables at the foot of the stage -- band losing its way around those austere predatory rhythms.
     -How about another, Frank said, lifting the glass and ringing it empty near the flat of his head -- its blank earless meatus -- a kind of gaping sphincter -- or -- tiny stricken mouth.
     I removed my jacket and laid it into Rose's empty place -- my pink shirt long wrinkled and stale against the skin -- undid its cuff and rolled up the sleeve. On my arm, a thick scar three inches long ran diagonally from the extensor digitorum longus, across the carpi radialus brevis, to the edge of the radialus longus -- out of Frank a tiny peep -- sat back in the chair and putting the empty glass to his lips -- his face in the head -- on the shoulders -- stirred up -- stirring them up -- I could see that. A wheelchair-bound woman drifted closer -- plastic foot turned at right angles to the leg -- and a man I knew as Giovanni -- maker of calzones -- focaccia -- hid his debilities in the shoes -- possibly the shins -- weaved limping from the bar and placed his foot on the table near the couch -- shoe smelling horrible -- and the foot waiting inside for its moment -- sock falling at my own shoes -- trailing evidence of rot -- decay -- only two toes -- baggy grey worms curling, rooted to a hoof of glabrous flesh.
     -Crabbing boat, Giovanni said, staring me down. -Bering Sea.
     A clattering of hooked metal tines -- wooden posts and latex fingers.
     -Better put that away, Frank said to me, still holding the glass -- eyes unwavering -- my scar -- arm. -Put that away and buy us another.
     I waved it about.
     -Plate glass, I said. -When I was ten.
     Another on the couch with us -- mustachioed -- leather pouch hung around his neck always -- bowing the head and squeezing one eye out of its dark socket -- between the fingers and pushing it at me.
     -Plate glass, I said again, offering the arm to the room -- mimicking the kind of disdain -- the haughtiness they feared -- a superiority of affect -- or -- an affected superiority -- finding the handkerchief and, in affectation, dusting off the scar -- presenting it to them for consumption -- ardor -- honor.
     Rose kissed the lothario as she had kissed me -- evidence on the cheek -- sucking in -- angle of the mandible glowing with sweat -- his hand disappeared somewhere behind her on its business -- operating -- making her -- I reasoned all this out -- reason still -- and the turned plastic shoe bumped into my shin -- and Frank who had seemed to shrink into his glass before stood over me -- someone else's hand on my shoulder -- a hook rubbed gently my seventh cervical vertebra -- coming down. I felt a kick -- or -- a strong shove -- Giovanni somewhere to my left -- Frank squaring off.
     -Better put that away now, prince. And with the glass high over the head. -Let's have us another.

They're rushing me -- the cohorts -- before I can get there -- the room and its sparse furnishings -- where through clouded windowpanes -- and -- up through the floor -- the walls -- the band failed away still.
     The sink ran hot and cold from separate taps -- bowl of it brown and pocked -- porcelain chipped -- I filled my hands half from each before throwing on the face -- or -- half with cold -- to avoid scalding them -- my smooth young palms -- pale and fading -- first cold -- then hot -- then the face -- learning it this way -- and watched the blood swirl into its hole -- leave splatters on the rim drying in tiny calamine drops.
     Rose sat on the edge of the bed -- twenty-one, she had said, but I thought seventeen -- collar of her jacket fallen back off the shoulders -- bony glowing skin -- its contours -- none of the blemish and festering of my own skin -- paler again in the new light -- the ridge of clavicle and its gentle hollow above the ribs -- sinking in steps to the breasts -- the top a crumpled rainbow flag on the floor.
     Should I mention she went down on me with hunger -- pulled the head of my cock with her tongue, pushed her fingers into my anus -- that she pinned me down onto the bed, ground herself into my face -- able to hear only her breath -- and sweating -- and knowing this made things worse in the days to come -- makes things worse -- or -- rather -- is it best to say nothing.
     She found me on the sidewalk -- the alleyway -- crawling there -- or beginning there and crawling to the sidewalk -- deaf in the ears -- her face in streetlit shadows swung above me on a thread -- receding -- or -- the body falling into blood -- blood into concrete -- myself disappearing -- and coming the few feet to the sparse room in the hotel above the bar where I had fixed myself for weeks -- handing her the key -- its name in gold letters across the plastic ring -- The Strand.
     -My downtown residence, I said at one point -- bring in the room -- the taps -- the ministrations -- these difficulties I must apologize for -- wanting to go back to the sea -- but fuck all that now.
     We holed up for two days -- avoiding the bartender who lived two flights above -- and the rest of them -- groped each other through nights -- and in afternoons talked of race horses and derbies and the quickest way out of a hedge maze, which is to mark your starting point and then to make every right turn, only beginning to make left turns if you reach your starting point again -- the groom taught me this -- Frank was his name.
     She didn't say much about herself -- had been in the city for three months -- headed south -- eluded a mother and two uncles -- and lived on Polk Street near the theatres and sex shops -- having heard this so many times before I shut my ears to it now -- to it then.
     -Where have you been, she said. -Is your father a powerful man -- and the beach house -- and a chandelier -- and French doors -- and a marble portico.
     All of it -- yes -- and a long window set into the west-facing wall, Pacific from one end to the other -- I sat on a leather couch -- followed container ships out on the horizon, watching them crawl over the glass -- and when they disappeared from sight I slept -- ate -- sitting again to see what would happen next. I was an only child, and she approved of this -- the idea of it important to her in some way -- she clung to me -- kissed me.
     -Alan, she said, holding the handkerchief, its dim blotches of blood failing to come out despite my attempts.
     -Abraham.
     -Arnold.
     -You already said that one, I said. -I think you did.

I had been missing the bar somewhat -- and tiring of her -- not tiring exactly, but wondering -- growing uncertain -- when on the second night, there was a knock on the door -- this interruption -- impropriety -- I thought the fellows had come to make amends -- ply me for company and drinks.
     I had for those two days continued to greet the bartender in the lobby -- misremembering his name -- so -- nodding with the head -- who had as little to do with the trouble as anyone though perhaps had himself lifted and tossed me through the entrance onto the sidewalk -- the mustachioed man -- sharp heads of the metacarpals coming in around the teres major with such force I could not bear lifting my arm higher than the shoulder -- in the mornings sat outside on an empty paint tub smoking cigars -- nodding to me -- thinking now -- now -- if I could just go on nodding it would be all right. We had been ordering take-out from a place across the street -- kung pao chicken -- and -- beef with garlic sauce -- egg rolls -- fortune cookies meant everything and we read them on the bed wringing hands and bleating a kind of oscine nervousness. Everything about these days remains -- untenable though they are -- pressing further in rather than out, as I intend them. Her leg swung back from the knee -- over the body -- sponging off weeks of rancor -- of spit and tongues -- and the alleys of Polk Street -- of theatre cushions and shop corners and the pungent remnants of dissolute Millbrae salesmen -- done with that for once and all -- saying this to her with the mouth -- the phallus and its glands -- disinfecting from my limbs the sea and Monte Carlo -- fine meals in the Fairmont -- the odor of stables and the surprisingly leaden handshakes of jockies -- cleansed and new to each other -- I sat on the edge of the bed dragging a fingertip along the thigh -- the trochanter -- circling the small of the back -- and a blotch of eggplant flesh on my forearm encircling four tiny black dots where Giovanni had driven the fork. I said, -In the Himalayas, it takes four weeks to reach base camp -- but the rest of the climb can be made in a short-sleeve shirt without oxygen -- the apparent curvature of the earth from that height -- at that time -- a trick of the sun and the altitude. My finger followed the spine to the coccyx and down between the buttocks -- a growing murmur in the hallway -- scraping wallpaper and dust under soles -- the knock -- three sharp knocks -- the door rattling in its hinge -- shellac in brittle flakes coming to rest on the floor -- this voice through the keyhole I had never heard but suspected -- and suspect still -- having by now heard far too much of it. -Rosey? it said.
     She sat up with a kind of recognition I couldn't guess at -- refused to see -- dressed quickly and jumped for the door -- still groped for pants and shirt -- my sluggish limbs.
     And now they enter -- fill out this space -- at my whim I think -- arriving no sooner than I choose to allow them -- though the sense of this adheres to nothing -- and -- forever reconstructed -- my whim -- my time -- my convenience -- breaking down under a collection of ill manners and pomade -- blackened fingernails and bootheels and the salmon-colored scarf -- bringing with them then all that would come later -- turpentine stinging the nostrils -- and the brain -- apple crates rancid in the sun -- the slick sensation of gun oil between the fingertips.
     Mary stepped into the room -- and Rose flushed -- trembling and eager -- stepping one bare foot onto another -- off the chill floorboards -- stood perched on the leg -- how wounded I felt watching the face fall -- her hopes however set in the end against my own narrow concerns vanishing -- how I felt then! -- Mary circled around -- Ben closing the door -- Grunewald standing apart. How to tell it from here -- the delicacies crushed under it -- the fragile limbs -- a touch of the thumb, and-
     -I knew it, Mary said.
     The boys stony -- silent -- Rose confused.
     -What did I tell you? Mary said to the boys.
     Ben nodded -- lit a cigarette -- the matchstick burned on the floor igniting bits of dust around it and blacking the wood before going out. Grunewald stood near the dresser -- unflinching -- staring at me. Mary continued to circle.
     -Look at this place, she said.
     My downtown place -- just for fun, of course -- a bit of slumming -- the beach become drab and unbearable after awhile. She pulled the salmon scarf from the neck -- this kind of ragged mustard skin -- slinging it over the shoulder -- plucking paint chips from the molding with a fingernail and kicking at a hole in the plaster above the baseboard -- turned to Rose.
     -He's got a beach house, Rose said, looking at me -- my pants half snapped -- and -- shirt untucked -- unbuttoned. The shoes lay under the bed and the jacket lay in a heap on the chair, threads from its tattered lining dangling over the floor -- losing track of the handkerchief -- and -- never finding it afterward.
     I looked for something heavy -- a throwing thing -- but there was nothing -- sparse, as I said before -- and here make their exit -- or -- ushering them out -- done with it -- as I have intended all along -- extras -- day players -- and then they go out.
     But they will somehow refuse me -- linger in this end -- so that I will be the one to go first.
     That Grunewald finally grabbed my arm and Ben the other -- that Mary picked through the pockets and pulled out the last of the money -- counting it -- laughing and letting it fall -- dangled the salmon scarf over my eyes -- pinched lightly three times on the thigh -- kissed in the mouth, her tongue tasting of death pushing its way over the teeth -- my bitten lip bleeding on the chest -- and drawing a face in blood over the sternum -- the pectorale -- that Rose slapped me once across the cheek -- stood at the window -- looked up at me stricken and silent -- and that a thin strand of hair hung over the center of her face, dividing it into two symmetrical pieces: I deny it all, of course. None of it remains -- will remain -- nor that I pleaded to take me with them -- and eventually left in the open bed of the pickup truck under Rose's uncertain stare -- Rose-darling -- out of the beach and into the fog -- out of the fog and into the startling light of Marin County on our way up the coast -- having already begun to craft further exits for them -- from what waited for me -- from what was to come.