Time passed, and I too met a woman. Her name was Gina. She liked to drink and copulate. It was nice for awhile. Then I discovered that drinking and copulating was all there was to it. For some reason, this made me very sad. I began to question my place in the world; always a foolish thing to do. In any case, she broke it off, not me. She threw some things, smashed some plates, packed a bag, etc. As for her I can say with surety that I never saw her again.

I had just enrolled in college again at this time. Being a student is the only career I have ever been able to take seriously. But that was before Gina left me alone in my now weakened condition. Yes, I was weak...I had become so. It seemed to me at the time that it was instantaneous, but with the benefit of hindsight I can recollect that I had been made weak by support. Once it fell away, I was shown to myself: barely able to stand on my own two feet.

It was getting hot in Los Angeles. I had picked up a boy in a West Hollywood bar that I was trying to avoid. It was the beginning of the summer semester, and I had just received some checks from financial aid. It seemed the thing to do was to take the summer off. I would owe them the money, but what I would gain in vigor from the refreshing influence of milder climes was more than worth it...or so I decided.

I had already paid my rent for the rest of the month. I found a sub-letter on the bulletin board at the college. I packed up my things and stowed them away in the basement of my apartment building. I took with me only my ukulele, twenty empty notebooks, three shirts, three pairs of pants, three ties, one sport coat of wool and another of cotton and no underwear. Socks I could purchase as needed. In the pocket of my cotton sport coat was a one way ticket to Oakland Airport.  

I was flying out of Bob Hope. As the plane rose steadily higher over the valleys, a very pleasant thought occurred to me. Namely, that I had left behind the suburban. Once I landed, I would be in the urban entirely. I would stick to Oakland and San Francisco. I vowed not to pass through a single modern neighborhood. Victorian architecture would revive me...as surely as stucco had sickened me. When I got back I would see about moving into one of the old Victorians in South Central or Westlake. It was integral to my health that I absolutely must have bay windows to write in. This was the kind of silly romantic nonsense I was thinking to myself. Sometimes mania is all one has left.

There would be plenty of old houses to look at, but for now I could count more on window wells than on bay windows. I checked into the Menlo Hotel on 13th. I had always wanted to live on 13th street.....anywhere. I am not superstitious, but I know that others are. I looked rather more to the effect than to the cause in this idle wish of mine...now granted. They were cheap and dingy digs, co populated by the inevitable addicts and prostitutes and their inevitable noise and anger.

I walked down to De Laures’ newsstand and bought a pin joint for two dollars from a man standing outside the BART station, then returned to my room on the tenth floor of the hotel to smoke it. As it took effect, I looked out the window. As with all window wells in old hotels, there was a drop straight down to the lobby roof. There were windows, most of which had their shades drawn, and there were bricks. Maybe it was the pot...maybe so....but I began to cry. My tears were neither particularly mild, nor were they unreasonably effusive. They were middle of the road tears. These are the type of tears that hurt the most. In them there is no release. Also, they are nearly always harbingers of worse tears to come. Then worse and worse, until...

Was I a fool? What had I been thinking? I remembered now how lonely I had been up here before. Could I expect anything different this time around? I had, it seemed then, unconsciously fallen into some trap of fate. The East Bay. San Francisco. Slum hotel. No, it was too familiar. Not any kind of change at all really. More of a regression.

I relit my joint, which had gone out. Then I walked out towards Lake Merritt, where there were liquor stores. Then I walked back to the Menlo and drank myself to sleep.

* * *

The month of June 16th-July 15th was awful that year. I made no attempts to contact anyone, ran into no one, no one looked me up. I filled a couple of notebooks with frenzied fragments just for something to do. The writing was not going anywhere, and neither was I. It goes like that. Things that normally would have preoccupied me: going to shows, seeing movies at the Fox or the Paramount, didn’t interest me just then. I was waiting for something. That is how it felt anyhow, that I was waiting to feel better. I drank steadily, if not heavily. I could not handle myself drunk just then. I was afraid of what I might do.

My sleep came to me in little starts. I was dreaming very vividly. I got perhaps three hours of rest each morning, sometimes less. My dreams were busy but had no thread that I could follow. They never progressed into nightmares. As soon as they became at all unpleasant I immediately awakened. On these occasions I could not go back to bed, and did not even try. I spent my days in frantic activity, filling my notebooks. Perhaps a quarter of it at most was tolerable, and merely that. At night I lay on my bed, turning the lights off and on, trying either to wake up or to go to sleep.

It was the lack of sleep that was getting to me. One morning I left the hotel in search of a decent cup of coffee. I walked down Broadway a bit, until I came near the plaza. Just down the street a ways, I saw him. It was him! Exactly the man I had pictured when I thought of him, whom I had never seen face to face. It was Van Dopf!

He was sweeping the sidewalk. I watched him for a while. He didn’t see me. The hair was silver, and exactly the right length. He was dressed all in black. His shirt fit him perfectly. Though it was only a T shirt, it was as if it had been made just for him. Now he was finished with the sidewalk. He turned around, and lifted up a gate in front of some storefront, then disappeared inside of it.

I walked up to the place. It seemed to be some kind of cafe’. I stood there for awhile studying the patio between the door and the gate. Boxes of all sorts of things were lined up along the walls... bric-a-brac, antiques... statues and hunting trophies, endless curiosities... perhaps it was not a cafe’ after all, but an antique shop. No, the sign had said cafe’... cafe’...what was it?

“CAFE VAN DUFF”

You can well imagine that I took this as a sort of sign. My mind was impaired. This is always the time when we think we see the world most clearly. With reason, goes doubt. I was standing there, staring up at the sign and trying to make sense of what God or fate or whatever might be telling me; when I noticed he was there behind the gate looking at me. It was then that I first saw what tremendously large blue/green eyes he had, and how friendly they were. He did not need to speak. He was waiting for me to do so. 

“I’m looking for a cup of coffee. Are you open?”

“No. Come on in. Bertrand. Bertrand Van Duff.” He stuck his hand out through the bars. I shook it lightly, and introduced myself.

He lifted the gate and led me inside to the bar. I sat down on a stool, leaning heavily against it. Looking back, perhaps he must have sensed I was impaired. He began to brew an espresso in the Northern Italian style. I watched as he made it straight into the demitasse. There must have been two centimeters of creamy brown head on the tiny four ounce shot. He slid it down the bar to me without spilling a drop, and smiled.

“I get this coffee from that company down by the Marina. It’s what they collect off the floor when they’re done grinding. Still...it’s fresher than any pre-ground coffee you can buy in a store.”

“How much do I owe you?”

"I told you, I get it off the floor of the factory. Besides, I’m not licensed to sell you anything. I’m not even licensed to be in business of any kind. The best thing about that is you can smoke in here.” He pulled a cigarette from his pack and lit up.

“So,” he said, as if it were the funniest thing in the world,” What do you do?” He barely suppressed his laugh, but I didn’t. When I was able to speak, I said: “I write”. This seemed even funnier for some reason. I was still giggling. But all of a sudden he got very serious. His eyes, which had been so friendly, so happy and welcoming, suddenly became very saddened and serious.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Then the sadness was gone and his face relaxed into a lazy grin. We both laughed like idiots for awhile.

“Knock knock,” he said.

“Who’s there?” I managed, between chortles.

“Open Sesame.”

“Open Sesame who?”

“No, open, says a me....”

Van Duff could make the worst joke in the world work. The joke would be how bad the joke was. It was all in the delivery. There was no such thing as a bad joke when you were with him.

“Would you like a beer?” he asked when I had finished the coffee.

“Sure, why not?” I was feeling better than I had in years. As good as I ever had, I suppose. Good laughter will do that for you. Anyways...he got me drunk on cheap Italian beer, and kept telling his jokes. His paintings were hanging in the back of the place, and he showed them to me one by one as I admired them.

“This I did two years ago....this one is new,” was all the explanation he gave about them. They were very difficult to describe. Abstract art often is. All you can say about it is if it looks good or not; it is not always so much about process as it may seem to be. His looked good. The whole room was like an art piece, you see. The gallery in the back and all the bric-a-brac in the front which he was mounting on the wall bit by bit; letting the composition take on its own form over time. The place was like stepping into Europe. It had the feel of a French, German, or Scandinavian local more than an American bar or cafe’.

Finally, I asked him if he had ever lived in Los Angeles. He said he never had, and that it wasn’t really his town.

“It’s like New York in that sense,” I said. “It’s nobody’s town, until you find your niche’. Then, it’s paradise. It takes some time just to get the layout of the place. I suppose it helps if you grow up there. But really, you’ve never even stayed there for a month or two?” He repeated that he had not. I was on the point of telling him about Bernard Van Dopf, but something held me back. For once, I was feeling good. Why ruin it by trying to solve the mystery?

We got drunker. Over a baguette with asiago, he explained himself to me a little more. He worked for the landlord, in exchange for the rent on the place. He was married, but his wife was living elsewhere for some reason. He often mentioned her though, and in reference to events which were undoubtedly quite recent. He was trying to save up enough for a liquor license so that he could open legitimately. I told him that success was assured. All anyone had to do was look at the place and they’d be hooked.

"Yeah,” he said. “The landlord has the same idea. I have to be careful with him... you know, keep track of what I owe. He’d love to have me out of here and open up the place himself just as it is if I get deep enough in debt to him.....I still like him though. His problem is just that he has too much money.”

“It’s a disease of the mind,” I agreed. “…beyond a certain point, they can’t control themselves.”

When I left him it was starting to get dark outside. I returned to the Menlo and finally got some decent sleep.

* * *

We met a few more times in the month and a half before I split back to L.A. It was the same each time. He plied me with drinks, told me jokes, and listened to me talk about my writing a little. If I had money, eventually he said he would take a tip. More often than not I paid much less than I should have, if at all. He didn’t seem to care about this as long as I was well provided for. I had to sneak the money behind the counter, hide it in his cigarette pack. I felt I owed him more than I could pay for snapping me out of my blues.

Suddenly, the writing was taking off. I was able to be precise without being too careful. The screeds of self-pity gave way to the beginning of a novel which I finished shortly after returning south.

I hadn’t thought to take down Bertrand’s address; most likely the result of more drinking than ought to be advised. I do not advise it. I only say that it was fun, and if it had stopped being fun I would have stopped drinking. Besides, I was on vacation.

I didn’t have a phone number either. I’m not sure there actually was one back then. I promised myself I would look him up next time I was up north, and at least get his address. Shortly after that the Onyx closed, so I no longer had any reason to hang around on Vermont. Los Feliz Village began to fill up with people who were about the same age as me, who had graduated college and had plenty of money. Everything began to be more expensive. Plus, I had destroyed my situation with the financial aid people. I have not received a tax return since, in fact. They have taken it all. In short, I had to get a job. Publishing occasionally and being a student were not cutting it anymore. There were getting to be so many hip people that they all had to have a place to go. Los Angeles is a big place, but of course they took over the best of the old neighborhoods one by one. Wouldn’t you, if you had the choice?

Soon, the rents on the eastside were rivaling those of beach neighborhoods. I became a waiter. There was really no other choice if I did not want to be homeless.

I waited tables for about eight years all told. It was good money; much more than I was used to making, but it was not good for the writing. After running back and forth across the same tiny room all day, all I was good for was getting piss drunk. This precipitated a hangover, which made me sleep in, which in turn left me less time to write in the mornings. But I had money. I started to dress fashionably, and to get my hair cut a certain way. I never bought a car, but I am sure I would have eventually, had it continued.

In short, I became hip myself. I had a nice house with a vegetable garden. Crowds of people came over for all night into morning parties. Where any of them are now, or what they are doing, I have no idea.

It was somewhere right in the middle of this, perhaps four years later, that I returned to Oakland. Some old friends of mine were getting married, and small caravans were headed up there for what looked to be quite a party. Somewhere in the midst of this, I dropped in on Van Duff, bringing the bride with me. I was as drunk as a man at a wedding party should be, and so I don’t remember everything quite clearly. Bertrand has only made it more difficult for me. I do recall that he said that his wife was crying, and that he needed money. Perhaps I gave him some; perhaps it was my friend, the bride. I certainly had cash, back then. My mood was too festive, and my schedule too complicated to have stayed with him for very long. But I had kept part, if not all of my promise. I dropped in, but forgot to get a number or an address. He had still not opened, but said he was on the verge of getting his licenses sorted out. I congratulated him as sincerely as was possible, given my level of self-absorption in those times.

* * *

It was another four years before I saw him again. Once again it had to do with marriage; my own. My bride had never been to San Francisco, and we were going up there for the weekend; the only sort of honeymoon we could afford. I had quit working in restaurants and was now writing full time. Not that I was making a great living at it, but I was at least earning some money. We were getting by.

We were there from that Friday in July, until the Sunday of the same weekend. We spent all of Friday night, and Saturday morning and afternoon in San Francisco. After all, it was something to see; the most beautiful city in this country, perhaps. My wife had never seen it, and I showed her as much as was possible in that short time. That night we were scheduled to have dinner with a friend of mine who lived in Oakland; at a Vietnamese restaurant downtown which I knew from my days at the Menlo. The dinner was great, the friend better. When you get married everyone is always happy for you for a little while. People are ready to give you a second, sometimes even a third chance. There had been a lot of this, which could not be avoided, and so I was glad to see my old friend. Irrespective of my getting married, he was simply happy to see me, and to see that I had not much changed. Though he paid the usual polite, and in his case quite sincere due to the significance of marriage...respect to the arrangement, it was nice to feel that someone was addressing the actual me...not writing scenes about the future one who will take my place. I was not ready to give myself up entirely just yet. I have never been very successful in my attempts at rapid transformation. I prefer to mutate gradually.

After the dinner was over, I said to Hera, my wife: “Well, Van Duff was just down the street from here...would you like to go over and see if he’s still there?”

She said she would. I had told her about Van Duff...though never about Van Dopf. Actually, I had told no one about that ridiculous episode. No one knew of it but Julio, and I hadn’t seen him since the Onyx. We walked down 13th to Broadway and walked the short distance from there to the cafe’. Not only was it still there, but it was just as I had left it...or rather, found it. That is, Van Duff himself was sweeping the sidewalk in front; just as he had been the first time I came there.

“Bertrand!” I said. He looked at me quizzically. “Do you remember me?”

“Yes. Actually I do. La Lido. The writer. You bailed me out, man. You remember? You remember you went to the atm?”

“No,” I said. I had never had a bank account. This was one of the things which made me doubt his version of the story, though I couldn’t say for sure. When he mentioned the part about how his wife had been crying, I remembered that. But I couldn’t swear I had given him money. It seemed plausible, but I was somewhat embarrassed that I couldn’t remember. I told him my memory of it was not too clear, that I had had a lot to drink on the occasion he alluded to; not to mention now. But he kept on it, throughout the night. It was his birthday, if you can believe that. There were burlesque dancers, a real New Orleans Jazz band, and perhaps three hundred people crammed into a room designed for a capacity of a hundred. Obviously, he had gotten his permits...though if he didn’t stop letting people in the door at some point he was bound to lose them. He kept introducing me to people throughout the night, telling them all how I had saved him that time.... that time I could not remember. He kept upping the amount. If he had said a hundred I could have believed it. But soon enough it was two hundred, then three. Was he just drunk? Mistaken? ...Or simply making a fool out of me? But I remembered what he had said about his wife crying. I did remember that. It all became even more confusing to me when he insisted on paying Hera and I a hundred dollars for helping him set up the cafe’ before opening. I did refuse at least twice, but the fact is I needed the money.

Still...the incongruity of the story....the giving of gifts on one’s birthday. For the second time, I felt as I had with Julio. On both occasions, the similar names...and that haircut....painter...lover...man about town. Now it was all coming true, right before my eyes. Besides this, I was smashed. I must have had ten of Bertrand’s special greyhounds made with grapefruits pressed right there at the bar. What could I do? If he was an impostor, I did not want to denounce him. He gave me too much pleasure. Besides, like most people who are having their birthday, he was much too busy talking to everyone to be able to really talk to anyone. There was nothing I could do. The party kept on until closing time. We stayed after hours with a more intimate group. Eventually, he had to go to bed. We said goodnight.

“Relax...” I said to myself. “...who cares? It’s only paper. What ever it is, I must go along with it...sure...I gave him a thousand...a million!” Besides, I didn’t want to spoil my wife’s time. But later we argued, and I did spoil it.

* * *

Upon our return to Los Angeles, I gave the episode quite a bit of thought. I had nearly convinced myself that it didn’t matter...when I saw him again. Not Van Duff, Bertrand- but Van Dopf, Bernard. It was not on Vermont this time, but on Hollywood Boulevard; outside of a tiny Armenian cafe’ where they made good espresso.

He asked me for a quarter. I remember it was exactly that amount. Though in the midst of working, I admired how specific he was. Besides, I was nearly broke anyhow. What difference was one quarter going to make? I looked up briefly as I handed it to him, then returned to my work. I couldn’t get back to it though. A sentence I had thought myself to be master of suddenly began asserting itself; rebelling against my good government. Really, it was my memory beginning to jog me...as opposed to the reverse instance so commonly cited. It was him!

I ran after him. “Excuse me, sir! Sir!!!” I said...over and over, but it was no use. Yet he did not increase his pace. I was nearly at him.

"Now,” I told myself. “Now we will see!”...quite aloud, as I remember.

“Bernard Van Dopf!” I yelled, grabbing him by the coat. (I must remember not to let such things excite me so. It might be worse next time.)

He spun around, and looked at me in the eye. The resemblance was perfect from behind, but now I was confronted with the infuriating fact of him having grown out his beard.

“So!” I yelled. “Now you grow beards in order to torment me! I know your game! Where is Julio? Where is Van Duff? What have I done to you that you must mock me like this!?!? Answers, man. I WANT ANSWERS!!”

Well, he was scared out of his wits, as you can well imagine. I was quite a bit taller than he. I am never conscious of my size, which is above average, though not terribly so.

“What do you want to know?” he asked me. He probably thought I wanted my quarter back.

“Is your name Van Dopf?” I said. “Tell me, I must know. (I was starting to be more than a little ashamed of how I had acted)...I’m so sorry...It’s just...well, I really want to know.”

“Did you say ‘Van Dopf’?” he asked, unbelieving. I nodded. “Who the hell ever heard of a name like that? Are you lame in the head? My name is Van Doff. Bertold Van Doff. Now, if you’ll excuse me...”