Read Online No Legal Grounds by James Scott Bell - Free Book Online Page A

first spoke to him.
“That won’t bring better words,” she said.
She was holding a tray with coffee cups and cocking her head at him. It was a head with dancing hazel eyes and a cascade of long flaxen hair. She was not one of the reed-thin soap actresses that sprouted like ragweed in Los Angeles asphalt. He liked that. Her look was at once more intelligent and knowing than the glimmereyed expressions of the actresses in waiting.
“Booze has a long history with writers.” Sam winked. “Greases the wheels.”
Linda — he would learn her name two nights later — shook her head. “That’s a joke. Kerouac ruined himself. Dylan Thomas. Need I mention Capote?”
She knew her stuff. Fascinating. “You think Kerouac would have been Kerouac without the booze?”
“Kerouac was a tragic figure whose lifestyle is romanticized by the college sophomore. In truth, the booze killed his writing and then him.”
“Where you getting all this?”
“Thinking about it. Seeing guys come in here juiced and reading their stuff and botching it and thinking they’re great. Don’t you do it.”
“Thanks for the career advice.” Sam was starting to get annoyed. He could map his own path to literary oblivion, thank you very much and see you later.
“Just a word to the wise,” she said.
Sam figured he could do without her wisdom and said nothing more. Linda slipped away, but Sam kept checking on her throughout the evening. She had an athletic grace around the tables, self-possession. This only annoyed him more and he kept sipping bourbon as if to spite her until it was time for him to read. Botching it! He’d show her what real poetry was made of.
He botched it. He knew as soon as he started reading that he had overdone the drink. He’d gotten to the point where he could handle quite a bit, but in his arrogance he’d taken the proverbial one too many. There is a lag time between drink and drunkenness, just enough time for a pigheaded poet to make his way to the microphone, fumbling for his poems.
He lost his place several times. He tried to laugh it off. The audience was not amused.
When he staggered off the stage he found there was no back way out. He had to leave by the front door, so the patrons could look at him all the way. The one face he didn’t want to see was hers. But she was there at the bar, facing him full-on. Through his bloodshot eyes he thought he saw more pity than scorn in her look.
He had to work the next night, pushing steaks to the studio crowd and old Burbank money. The night after he got someone to cover his shift so he could go back to the Ginkgo Leaf and find the waitress and spoon a mouthful of crow in her presence.
She was returning a tray to the bar when he stepped in front of her. She looked startled.
“You were right,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“About drinking and poetry.”
“Ah.”
“So I’d like to pay you for the advice.”
“I don’t want any — ”
“By taking you to dinner.”
She smiled and her eyes crinkled at the corners. “What if I have a boyfriend?”
“Do you?”
She didn’t. They went out the next Saturday. Sam chose a restaurant by the ocean on Pacific Coast Highway. He couldn’t really afford it, but he was determined to pull out all the stops. There was something special about this woman.
Linda had grown up in Acton, a little burg about thirty miles east of Los Angeles proper, a desert town where people still lived close to the land. Sam’s impression of the place was that the people there were strong and guileless, hanging on to a bit of the Old West ethic. That was Linda, he decided.
A month later he asked her to marry him. She gave him a polite no. He asked her every week after that, accompanied by flowers — for which he spent half his food money. Persistence paid off. After five weeks she said yes, and he could eat again.
He gave up poetry as a profession. He felt the first real stirrings of true adult responsibility. He wanted to make a life for his wife. He