**THE COPULATING MERMAID OF VENICE, CALIFORNIA**

The bar had closed and they still had to make the walk to therooming
house, and there it was --- the hearse had driven up across the street where
the Stomach Hospital was.
"I think this is THE night," said Tony "I can feel it in my blood, I
really can!"
"The night for what?" asked Bill.
"Look," said Tony, "we know their operation well by now. Let's get one!
What the fuck? You got the guts?"
"Whatsa matta? You think I'm coward because that runtysailor whipped my
ass?"
"I didn't say that, Bill."
"You're the coward! I can whip you, easy-"
"yeah. I know. I'm not talking about that. I say, let's grab a stiff
just for laughs."
"Shit! Let's grab TEN stiffs!
"Wait. You're drunk now. Let's wait. We know the operation.We know how
they operate. We been watching every night."
"And you're not drunk, eh? You wouldn't have the GUTS otherwise!"
"Quiet now! Watch! Here they come. They've got a stiff. Some poor guy.
Look at that sheet pulled over his head. It's sad."
"I am looking. And it is sad-"
"Okay, we know the operation: if it's just one stiff, they toss him in,
light their cigarettes and drive off. But if it's two stiffs, they don't
bother locking the hearse door twice. They're real cool boys. It's just old
stuff with them. If it's two stiffs, they just leave the guy on the roller
there behind the hearse, go in and get the other stiff, then toss them in
together. How many nights have we watched it?"
"I dunno," said Bill, "sixty, at least."
"Okay, now there's the one stiff. If they go back for another --- that
stiff belongs to us. You game for grabs if they go in for another stifff?"
"I'm game! I got double your guts!"
"okay, then, watch. We'll know in a minute-Oops, there they go! They're
going in for another stiff!" said Tony. "You game?"
"Game," said Bill.
They sprinted across the street and grabbed the corpse by the head and
feet. Tony had the head, that sad head wrapped so tight in the sheet, while
Bill grabbed the feet.
Then they ran across the street, the pure white sheet of the corpse
floating in the momentum --- sometimes you could see an ankle, an elbow, a
thigh of flesh, and then they ran it up the room- ing house front steps, got
to the door and Bill said, "Jesus Christ, who's got the key? Look, I'm
scared!"
"We don't have much time! Those bastards are gonna be out soon with the
other stiff! Throw him in the hammock! Quick! We gotta find a goddamned
key!"
They tossed the stiff into the hammock. It rocked back and forth in the
hammock under the moonlight.
"Can't we take the body back?" asked Bill. "Good God oh Mother o
Mighty, can't we take the body back?"
"No time! Too late! They'd see us. HEY! WAIT!" yelled Tony. "I found
the key!"
"THANK JESUS!"
They unlocked the door, then grabbed the thing on the hammock and ran
up the stairway with it. Tony's room was closest. second floor. There was
quite a bit of bumping with the corpse along the stairway wall and railing.
Then they had it outside Tony's door and stretched it out while Tony
looked for his door key. They got the door open, plopped the stiff on the
bed and then went to the refrigerator and got hold of Tony's cheap gallon of
muscatel, had half a waterglass full each, then refilled, came back to the
bedroom, sat down and
looked at the stiff.
"Do you suppose anybody saw us?" asked Bill.
"If they had, I think the cops would be up here by now."
"Do you think they'll search the neighborhood?"
"How can they? How can they go knocking on doors at this time of the
morning, asking, 'Do you have a dead body?'"
"Shit, I guess you're right."
"Sure, I'm right," said Tony, "still, I can't help wondering how those
two guys felt when they came back and saw the body gone? It must have been
kind of funny."
"Yeah," said Bill, "it musta been."
"Well, funny or not, we've got the stiff. There he is, right on the
bed."
They looked at the thing under the sheet, had another drink.
"I wonder when they begin to stiffen up? I wonder when they begin to
stink?"
"That rigor mortis takes a bit of time, I think," said Tony.
"But he'll probably begin to stink pretty soon. It's just like garbage
left in the sink. I don't think they drain the blood until they reach the
mortuary."
So, two drunks, they went on drinking the muscatel; they even forgot at
times about the body, and they spoke of those vague and important other
things in their rather inarticulate way. Then it was back to the body again.
The body was still there.
"What we gonna do with it?" asked Bill.
"Stand it up in the closet after it stiffens up. It seemed pretty loose
when we were carrying it. Probably died about a half and hour ago or so."
"So, okay, we stand it up in the closet. Then what do we do when it
starts to stink?"
"I never thought about that part," said Tony.
"Think about it," said Bill, pouring a good one.
Tony tried to think about it. "You know, we might go to jail for this.
If we get caught."
"Sure, so?"
"Well, I think we made a mistake, but it's too late."
"Too late," repeated Bill.
"So," said Tony, pouring a tall one, "if we are stuck with this stiff
we might as well have a look at him."
"Look at him?"
"Yeah, look at him."
"You got the guts?" asked Bill.
"I dunno."
"You scared?"
"Sure. No training in this sort of thing," said Tony.
"All right. You pull the sheet back," said Bill, "only fill my glass
first. Fill my glass, then pull the sheet back."
"Okay," said Tony.
He filled Bill's glass. Then walked over.
"All right," said Tony, "here GOES!"
Tony pulled the sheet straight back over the body. He kept his eyes
closed.
"Good GOD!" said Bill, "it's a woman! A young woman!"
Tony opened his eyes. "Yeah. Was young. Christ, look at that long
blonde hair, goes way down past her asshole. But she's DEAD! terribly and
finally dead, forever. What a shame! I don't understand it."

"How old you figure she was?"
"She doesn't look dead to me," said bill.
"She is."
"But look at those breasts! Those thighs! That pussy! That pussy: it
still looks alive!"
"Yeah," said Tony, "the pussy, they say: it's the first thing to come
and the last thing to go."
Tony walked over to the pussy, touched it. then he lifted a breast,
kissed the damned dead thing. "It's so sad, everything is so sad --- that we
live all our lives like idiots and then finally die."
"You shouldn't touch the body," said Bill.
"She's beautiful," said Tony, "even dead, she's beautiful."
"Yeah, but if she were alive she wouldn't even look at a bum like you
twice. You know that, don't you?"
"Sure! And that's just the point! Now she can't say, 'NO!'"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"I mean," said Tony, "that my cock is hard. VERY HARD!"
Tony walked over and poured a glassful from the jug. Drank it down.
Then he walked over to the bed, began kissing the breasts, running his
hands through her long hair, and then finally kissingthat dead mouth in a
kiss from the living to the dead. And then he mounted.
It was GOOD. Tony rammed and jammed. Never such a fuck as this in all
his days! He came. Then rolled off, toweled himself with the sheet.
Bill had watched the whole thing, lifting the gallon muscatel jug in
the dim lamplight.
"Christ, Bill, it was beautiful, beautiful!"
"You're crazy! You just fucked a dead woman!"
"And you've been fucking dead women all your life --- deadwomen with
dead souls and dead pussies --- only you didn't know it!
I'm sorry, Bill, she was a beautiful buck. I have no shame."
"Was she that good?" asked Bill.
"You'll never believe it."
Tony walked to the bathroom to take a piss.
When he got back, Bill had mounted the body. Bill was going good.
Moaning and groaning a bit. Then he reached over, kissed that dead mouth,
and came.
Bill rolled off, hit the edge of the sheet, wiped off.
"You're right. Best fuck I ever had!"
Then they both sat in their chairs and looked at her.
"Wonder what her name was?" asked Tony. "I'm in love."
Bill laughed. "Now I know you're drunk! Only a damn fool falls in love
with a living woman; now you gotta get hooked on a dead one."
"Okay, I'm hooked," said Tony.
"All right, you're hooked," said bill, "whatta we do now?"
"Get her the hell outa here!" answered Tony.
"How?"
"Same way we got her in --- down the stairway."
"Then?"
"Then into your car. We drive her down to Venice Beach, throw her into
the ocean."
"That's cold."
"She won't feel it any more than she felt your cock."
"And how about your cock?" asked Bill.
"She didn't feel that either," answered Tony.
There she was, double-fucked, dead-laid on the sheets.
"Let's make it, baby!" screamed Tony.
Tony grabbed the feet and waited. Bill grabbed the head. As they rushed
out of Tony's room the doorway was still open. Tony kicked it shut with his
left foot as they moved toward the top of the stairway, the sheet no longer
wound about the body but, more or less, flopped over it. Like a wet dishrag
over a kitchen faucet. And again, there was much bumping of her head and her
thighs and her big ass against the stariway walls and stairway railings.
They threw her into the back seat of Bill's car.
"Wait, wait, baby!" screamed Tony.
"What for?"
The muscatel jug, asshole!"
"Oh, sure."
Bill sat waiting with the dead cunt in the back seat.
Tony was a man of his word. He came running out with the jug of muski.
They got on the freeway, passing the jug back and forth, drinking good
mouthfuls. It was a warm and beautiful night and the Moon was full, of
course. But it wasn't exactly night. By then it was 4:15 a.m. A good time
anyhow.
They parked. Then had another drink of the good muscatel, got the body
out and carried it that long sandy dandy walk toward the sea. Then they got
down to that part of the sand where the sea reached now and then, that part
of the sand that was wet, soaked, full of little sand crabs and airholes.
They put the body down and drank from the jug. Now and then an excessive
wave rolled a bit over all of them: Bill, Tony, the dead Cunt.
Bill had to get up to piss and having been taught nineteenth century
morals he walked a bit up the shore to piss. As his friend did so, Tony
pulled back the sheet and looked at the dead face in the seaweed twist and
swirl, in the salty morning air. Tony looked at the face as Bill was pissing
offshore. A lovely kind face, nose a little too sharp, but a very good
mouth, and then with her body stiffening already, he leaned forward and
kissed her very gently upon the mouth and said, "I love you, dead bitch."
Then he covered her with the sheet.
Bill finished pissing, came back. "I need another drink."
"Go ahead. I'll take one too."
Tony said, "I'm going to swim her out."
"Can you swim good?"
"Not too well."
"I'm a good swimmer. I'll swim her out."
"NO! NO!" screamed Tony.
"Goddamn it, stop yelling!"
"I'm going to swim her out!"
"All right! All right!"
Tony took another drink, pulled the sheet aside, picked her up and
carried her step by step toward the breakers. He was drunker than he
figured. Several times the big waves knocked them both down, knocked her out
of his arms, and he had to get to his feet, run, swim, struggle to find the
body. Then he'd see her --- that long long hair. She was just like a
mermaid. Maybe she was a mermaid. finally Tony floated her out beyond the
breakers. It was quiet. halfway between moon and sunrise. He floated with
her some moments. It was very quiet. A time within time and a time beyond
time.
Finally, he gave the body a little shove. She floated off, half
underwater, the strands of long hair whirling about the body. She was still
beautiful, dead or whatever she was. She began to float away from him,
caught in some tide. The sea had her.
Then suddenly he turned from her, tried to swim back toward the shore.
It seemed very far away. He made it in with the last stroke of his strength,
rolling in with the force of the last breaker. He picked himself up, fell,
got up, walked forward, sat down beside Bill.
"So, she's gone," said Bill.
"Yeh. Shark meat."
"Do you think we'll ever be caught?"
"No. Give me a drink."
"Go easy. We're getting close to the bottom."
"Yeah."
They got back to the car. Bill drove. They argued over the final drinks
on the way home, then Tony thought about the mer- maid. He put his head down
and began to cry.
"You were always chickenshit," said Bill, "always chickenshit."
They made it back to the rooming house.
Bill went to his room. Tony to his. The sun was coming up. The world
was awakening. Some were awakening with hangovers. some were awakening with
thoughts of church. Most were still asleep. A Sunday morning. And the
mermaid, the mermaid with that dead sweet tail, she was well out to sea.
While somewhere a pelican dove, came up with a glittering, guitar-shaped
fish.

-charles bukowski -