Read Online And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks by William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac - Free Book Online Page B

sides, gathering bills from under people’s shoes and from outstretched hands. Leaving ten on the ground, he said, “Shoot it.” Someone faded him. The come-out was a seven. He doubled again, shooting the twenty.
    They were all taut and tense with purpose. The dice hit a board and bounced off, coming out a nine. The wrong bettors started laying the odds.
    “Six to four no nine.”
    “Ten no nine a three.”
    “Five he’s right on the come-out.”
    There was no small talk whatever.
    We walked on. Al said, “We might go see Mary-Ann. She’s pretty nice. Only trouble is, she’s got that godawful husband, and they never serve any liquor.”
    Phillip said, “Let’s go in George’s and have a drink.”
    “How about Betty-Lou?” I put in.
    “All right, let’s go there.”
    We walked toward Betty-Lou’s place, which is back the way we had come from, in irregular straggling groups.
    On the way, Phillip jumped up and pulled a branch off a tree. Al looked at me and said, “Isn’t he wonderful?”
    Betty-Lou lived in a cellar apartment. She was a southern girl and a Christian Scientist who was in radio and felt strongly about the future educational mission of radio. It seems that after the war you won’t be able to keep off all the culture that will be poured onto you out of radios because they’re going to make recordings of university lectures on all subjects and play them twenty-four hours a day.
    I told her it sounded awful to me, and she said I was “terribly cynical.”
    When we got there Betty-Lou had a visitor. He was a little man from Brooklyn who looked like a cabdriver. He wore a double-breasted suit and a loud tie in spite of the weather and was obviously on his best behavior. He had brought a bottle of California Burgundy and some sliced cold roast beef for Betty-Lou. Phillip greeted him in an offhand way and proceeded immediately to help himself to beef and wine. Al did the same and they both ignored the man from Brooklyn.
    Ryko and I sat down and lapsed into a gloomy silence. Phillip was still eating roast beef with one hand while he began pulling books out of the case and turning the pages with his greasy fingers. I pulled myself together and asked Betty-Lou a few questions about radio.
    After a few minutes the man from Brooklyn got up to leave. He shook hands with Ryko and me. He glanceduncertainly at Al and Phillip. Phillip was now shuffling through a stack of records and Al was sitting cross-legged on the floor looking up at him.
    The man from Brooklyn said, “Well I gotta be getting along.”
    Betty-Lou walked to the door with him and told him to come again.
    Phillip and Al were fooling with the phonograph and got it working, so they put on a record from
Swan Lake
.
    Suddenly a large brown rat ran out of the kitchen and into the middle of the room. He stood there indecisively for a moment, then gave a squeak and ran into the bathroom.
    Betty-Lou said, “Landsakes! There’s that old rat again.”
    She went into the kitchen and buttered a graham cracker with phosphorus paste. She broke the cracker up and scattered pieces of it around the kitchen and in the bathroom. I knew this wouldn’t do any good because rats get wise to phosphorus paste. And besides, there were so many holes in her apartment that all the rats in New York could come in.
    Presently two men and a girl arrived, and I started a dull conversation with one of the men. We were talking about the bad quality of Cuban gin, and high prices of liquor generally. He said his favorite drink was scotchand I said mine was cognac, but you couldn’t get it anymore. He said, “Yes, you can still get it.”
    I said, “Yes, at a dollar a shot.” I took a deep breath and went on to say that cognac apparently couldn’t be produced anywhere except in Cognac, France. “No brandy anywhere else tastes anything like it.”
    He considered this awhile and said, “California brandy is terrible.”
    I said, “I don’t like Spanish