Tom Waits; Boho Blues

Tom Waits saves cigarette coupons. Moths fly from his change purse. The keys fall off his piano. Welcome to Miss Keiko's Chi Chi Club. . . it's showtime!
by Bart Bull
(published in Spin)

Tosca, Tuesday, late, Columbus near Broadway, San Francisco.

This is a fine bar, a lovely bar, loud but not too loud. The jukebox plays scratchy opera music. Francis Coppola is in back where the tables and booths are. He's listening to Lauren Hutton tell a story and when he laughs, so does everybody else. Sam Shepard stands up from his stool at the bar to pay his tab. His MasterCard falls to the floor, unnoticed except by the redhead standing nearby. She puts her foot on top of it and carries on her conversation. Shepard leaves. Lauren Hutton leaves. Coppola and his people leave. Almost everybody leaves. The bartender works a rag across the bar, and in the doorway behind him we see someone who looks just like Tom Waits. He peers in, squints, rubbing his head. A cigarette butt, stepped on but still glowing, trails smoke across the floor, left to right. He steps through the smoke and goes to the jukebox, searches. He finds a quarter in his pants, punches buttons. A tenor yelps. It's "Nessun dorma," from Puccini's "Turandot."

A pink paper cocktail umbrella, the kind that sprouts at the rims of colorful tropical drinks, blows across the floor at the foot of the stage, left to right, pushed by an invisible wind.

Tom Waits wears black tie and tails, red socks, and railroad boots. A big barrel-bellied woman sits next to him, one leg draped over his knee. She's wearing a red flamenco dress and a black mantilla, and her name is Val Diamond. She has eyeballs painted on her eyelids. She can see you with her eyes open; she watches you with her eyes closed. Polaroids are scattered on the stage at their feet.

TOM: I don't understand golf.
VAL: (mutters sympathetically)
TOM: It needs to have more sex. (Gleaming lightbulb appears directly over
his head.) Night golf!
VAL: Somebody won a lot of money golfing recently.
TOM: They get more money than boxers.
VAL: That doesn't seem right.
TOM: It doesn't seem right. Somebody gets beat up for an hour and somebody else hits a ball into a hole. Doesn't seem right.

From the floor, the DIRECTOR watches them through a little black lens, through his director's viewfinder. He hands the viewfinder to his assistant and walks off. The assistant stares carefully through the lens. Tom's zipper is at half mast.

It's dawn. Bats are hurrying back to the belfry, and below, one hand on the rope that rings the bell, Ken Nordine waits. Nordine, the word-jazzed Voice Of God as heard on Levi's commercials, has something he wants to say. This time it's Tom Waits' words and Ken Nordine's voice; sometimes it's the other way around. Here's how to tell: Tom Waits' voice sounds like he gargles with gravel; Ken Nordine's sounds like he's selling three truckloads of soft margarine in handy re-usable plastic tubs. There is no Devil (for our purposes here, at least), just God when he's drunk. Ken Nordine, God as we understand Him (for our purposes here), is not inebriated in the least, but he's willing to act (for our purposes here). He has something he'd like to say.

KEN NORDINE: (gritty voice) It's like Jack Nicholson said to me one time - Continuity is for sissies.

We're in a nightclub, an empty nightclub. A nearly empty nightclub, with a camera crew setting up in the back. Ken Nordine's butter-flavored voice is the only light.

KEN NORDINE: For our purposes here, perhaps some explanation is in order. Perhaps not. Welcome, in any case, to Miss Keiko's Chi Chi Club.

We see the stage now, bulbs flashing in sequence across the proscenium.

KEN NORDINE: Proscenium. Butter-flavored proscenium.

We see Tom Waits in a tuxedo, slumped in a chair at the center of the stage.

KEN NORDINE: We have a purpose here. We are filming a video here, a video to accompany the tune "Blow Wind Blow," from Tom Waits' new album, Frank's Wild Years.As Nordine speaks, we see Waits rise from his slump (as it were) and sit stiffly upright. His lips move precisely in time with Nordine's words, and his arms deliver florid gestures.

KEN NORDINE: But Frank's Wild Years is not merely an album. Frank's Wild Years is also a play, a stage production. Frank's Wild Years is two...

Val and Tom are holding breath mints in front of them. They click the packages together carefully.

KEN NORDINE: ...two mints in one. And the video from "Blow Wind Blow" is not merely a scene from the play, but an all-new and improved production. Tom is Frank, as it were, or perhaps he isn't, but in any case, he's a ventriloquist. He casts his voice into the rest of the cast. And the rest of the cast is ably portrayed by Val Diamond and a prosthetic leg.

Waits reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a pack of those personal details that reveal so much about a character's character. He smokes pre-war Lucky Strikes in the Raymond Loewy-designed green pack. Or Chesterfields, named after W.C. Fields' favorite son. In truth, they're Raleighs, and he takes a dramatic drag off the cigarette, makes nonchalant expressions as he holds it in, then looks off in another direction as Val, the ventriloquist's dummy, exhales a white cloud. Waits takes the pack, crumples it, flicks it into the wastebasket hidden in the wings. A pause, another pause, and then he leaps up, dumping Val to the floor, and we see him bent over the wastebasket, digging around for the cigarette pack. He finds it, tears a square off the back.

TOM: (turns to the camera) I save the coupons.

He sits back down. His lips keep moving.

KEN NORDINE: In truth, he doesn't smoke anymore. That would be too much like the old Tom Waits. And the old Tom Waits is over, done with, defunct, finito. Aesthetically, at least. He made his bed and he slept in it until it was past checkout time. Writing songs about dead-end kids on dead-end streets became a dead-end street. Damon Runyon demanded royalties.

Waits is making nonchalant expressions up on the stage. Val is staring baleful and blue-eyed, her eyelids clamped shut.

KEN NORDINE: And yet here we are in a nightclub, a nearly empty nightclub. Have you noticed the postage-stamp cocktail tables? The chains of garter snaps that decorate the walls? The black Naugahyde banquette booths? Once upon a time, this was Ann's 440 Club, where Lenny Bruce got that illustrious start of his. Ah, but that was along ago, and for more than 20 years this has been Miss Keiko's Chi Chi Club. Welcome. Have you met Miss Keiko yet?

A yellow spotlight comes on in the back of the club, illuminating a black and white photo. A signature in black felt-tip pen reads, "Miss Keiko - 1969." She stands forever on the toes of one foot, gazing over her shoulder, lifting her long dark hair above her bare back. Her costume is brief, her breasts are tassel-tipped projectiles. Tom Waits stands nearby, appraising the photograph.

TOM: (gravel-voiced) If I was a girl, I'd want to look like that.

Francis Coppola's sergeant-at-arms drops by to let Waits know that Francis is dining next door at Enrico's. He's willing to wait until the video crew takes a lunch break if Tom would care to come over and talk. There's a part for him in an upcoming project. Waits is sitting at the Chi Chi Club bar with a guy called Biff, waiting for the crew to set up the shot. Miss Keiko gazes down at them from over her shoulder.

TOM: Vegas. She worked the big rooms in Vegas. You know, I saw a guy go down with a heart attack at a crap table, and his wife was pounding on his chest, and the pit boss said, "New shooter coming up." I swear to God.

KEN NORDINE: (sounding godlike) Search me. Sounds like it could be true.

TOM: New dice, new shooter, keep it moving. Cold. Cold-blooded.

BIFF: How far away were you?

TOM: I was the new shooter.

BIFF: Were you wealthy when you left the table?

TOM: Nah. I gamble with scared money. I'm a tightwad. Moths in my change purse.

He gets up to get some cigarettes from the machine, although he doesn't smoke anymore. Moths burst forth from his change purse. He buys Raleighs. Doesn't smoke any.

TOM: So what do you think is suitable for manly footgear, Biff?

BIFF: Roman sandals. And beads to go with 'em.

TOM: I've been asking everyone I, uh, come into contact with, because I'm doin' a little survey. I'd say we're in a crisis in terms of American footgear.

BIFF: Slip-on loafers.

TOM: Nah, can't go that route. You can't go down that road, for down that road danger lies.

BIFF: How come?

TOM: I don't like the name. Loafers. For a guy that works as hard as you do, it's just not right.

BIFF: You could call 'em slip-ons, but...

TOM: That's even worse. That's worse than loafers. You wouldn't want me to call you a slip-on.

BIFF: You got a point there.

TOM: Points. I always gravitate toward points. Things are getting better - ten years ago, you couldn't find any points. Things are getting better, in shoes and music both.

Lunch comes, lunch goes. Coppola waits impatiently at Enrico's; Waits tells Biff of movie roles he's been offered. Coppola's fingers tap the tabletop.

TOM: Satanist cult leaders. The Iceman. I could've been the Iceman in 'Iceman'.

BIFF: You turned that down?

TOM: Yep. Big mistake. Look where the guy that took it is today. I could've been the hitcher in 'The Hitcher', too.

BIFF: Jesus Christ! You turned that down? You could've had a career. You could be Boris Karloff by now.

TOM: Yep. Big mistake.

Coppola, alfresco at Enrico's, fumes silently. Fumes loudly. Fumes. Vows revenge. One week later, Waits wakes up in bed next to the oil-splattered head of a 350 Chevy. He shrieks.

A small pile of pink confetti blows across the floor in front of the stage, left to right, blown by a hand-held fan.

Tom Waits wears black tie and tails, red socks, and railroad boots. His sideburns are going grey. Val Diamond wears a red flamenco dress. Her ginger hair is piled high in Spanish columns. Her left leg is draped over his right knee. Black fishnet stockings.

TOM: You know who Dick Shawn is? Was?

VAL: The World's Second-Greatest Entertainer? The guy who did that show called "The World's Second-Greatest Entertainer"?

Although he doesn't smoke, smoke rises from an invisible Raleigh between his fingers. He taps his ashes absentmindedly. They fall onto the brim of the top hat at his feet.

TOM: I did a little show with him, played the Wall Street Wino. It never aired. He had a dozen midgets on it. Thirteen.

A pause.

TOM: He died onstage. His son was in the audience. He was in the middle of a bit about death, and he threw himself to the stage in a simulated heart attack. And it was real. And everybody in the audience was laughing. Not a bad thing to hear in your last moment.

More ashes, real as life, fall into the hat; real smoke rises from the invisible Raleigh.

TOM: Good way to go, I guess. Maybe now they'll air the show.


The Chi Chi Club is empty, near empty. One chair is at the center of the stage, one chair is set in the center of the floor below. From the chair on the floor, we hear the voice of Ken Nordine.

KEN NORDINE: Curious as it is that Tom Waits abandoned his signature style of writing, it's every bit as intriguing that he jettisoned the very sound of his established style at the same time. Once known as something of a jazzed-down beat generation throwback, as the romantic street poet of the least romantic of un-poetic streets, as a narrative storyteller of the most talented sort, as a truly gifted liar, he suddenly and abruptly ceased spinning yarns. And as he did, his music itself came unraveled. Or if not unraveled, then...

A long pause. Long.

KEN NORDINE: Perhaps someone else would be better qualified to discuss what happened to the music of Tom Waits. Perhaps it would pay to introduce Harry Partch.

A small spotlight illuminates the chair onstage.

KEN NORDINE: Harry Partch, sadly deceased, was an American original. An eccentric, that is; a tinkerer, a free spirit, an inventor of instruments and of himself. A nut, in other words. A Californian, like Tom Waits, and like Tom Waits, a man who lived the hobo's life long before he captured it in music. He invented his remarkable 43-tone musical scale, and he invented gorgeous and monumental instruments specifically for playing his odd and glorious music. You may have to grant him a certain grandiosity, a certain tendency toward the making of Major Pronouncements, a certain self-centeredness, a certain extreme certainty. Harry Partch received so little recognition during life, and he required so much of it. He called his musical scale "just intonation," and he felt entirely justified in doing so.

The voice that comes from the chair onstage is deep and rugged and rigorously resonant. It sounds much like John Huston's acceptance speech upon his being unanimously voted God.

HARRY PARTCH: As I understand it, this young Tom Waits fellow has had some small contact with members of the ensemble that serves the noble purpose of preserving my music and my instruments, the Mazda Marimba, the Marimba Eroica, the Cloud Chamber Bowls, and all the rest. This contact, however limited, can't have hurt him, although it's impossible to say how much it has helped since what I've heard of his stuff is not more than a literal-minded bastardization of the eternal principles behind my system of just intonation. He'd be best served to study a little closer if he cares to attempt any further homage. Still, there is some small sense of my own music's grandeur in the young fellow's stuff. Like me, he's interested in the largest and the smallest of sounds, and like me, he's heard the music of the highway and the resonant clang of the beer bottle tapped with a church key. IMAGINE the sound of a hundred Chinamen beating spikes into the ground with nine-pound sledgehammers, laying the rails of the transcontinental railway! And the scream of the steam whistle as a locomotive flies over those same spikes. Imagine the snores of hobos sleeping in the open boxcars. Imagine the contrapuntal snores of the conductor comfortably bunked up in the caboose. IMAGINE THE THUNDER, the mighty prairie thunder that wakes them all from their slumbers! And imagine the raw COURAGE a composer would need to even ATTEMPT to create such sounds! I wish the young fellow a great deal of luck. I admire his theatricality.

At the back of the club, at the bar, a light glows. Tom Waits and the guy called Biff are back there, a beer bottle in front of each of them. Tom is not smoking, yet smoke rises from between two of his fingers.

TOM: I traveled with a gas pump for years.

He tosses back a little beer.

TOM: I still have nightmare where the whole crowd is moving toward me and then the keys are falling off the piano and the curtain rips and my shoe comes off and I'm crawling toward the wings and the crowd is moving toward me, hurling insults at me. And car parts. I played cow palaces, rodeos, sports facilities, hockey arenas with the ice beneath the cardboard. It cools off the place. It's alright in August, but it's a bitch in February. But if you can appreciate the rich pageantry of it...

Biff tosses back a little beer.

TOM: Never have your wallet with you onstage. It's bad luck. You shouldn't play the piano with money in your pocket. Play like you need the money.

Tom tosses back a little beer.

TOM: I don't play the piano much anymore. I don't compose on it. It's hard. Because sometimes it feels like it's all made out of ice. It's cold. It's square, so much about it is square, you know, and music is round. And so sometimes I think it puts corners on your stuff.

Tom and Biff toss back a little beer. Behind them, we see a single chair and a single spotlight on the stage, and now we can hear that Harry Partch has never stopped talking.

HARRY PARTCH: (from afar) ...the wrongheadedness of the chromatic scale of the Western world and the deleterious effect it has had on untold generations of innocent ears...a gang of Irishmen headed due west with nine-pound sledgehammers of their own...

A pink balloon blows across the floor in front of the stage, left to right.

Tom Waits wears black tie and tails, red socks and railroad boots. Val Diamond wears a red dress and a black top hat. "Blow Wind Blow" is playing frantically in the background, sung by Alvin of the Chipmunks. When the soundman has re-cued it, the take begins.

A clapboard claps. A pink balloon blows across the floor, left to right.

TOM: Welcome to Miss Keiko's Chi Chi Club. It's showtime!

Two pump organs, an alto horn, a glockenspiel. A gravel voice grumbles, singing. The voice comes from Val's mouth, and her eyes, clamped closed, stare blue ahead. Tom Waits, ventriloquist, nonchalant, takes a deep, dramatic drag on his cigarette; a smoke puffs from Val's mouth. Her lips grumble his song. He unscrews her wooden leg, pulls a pint of liquor from within it, swigs. He caps the bottle, puts it back, screws her leg back on. His cigarette rests between her fingers, his song sings off her lips. He takes his hand out from behind her back to scratch his head, and she slumps, but he catches her before she falls. The song grumbles towards an end, and as it ends, she pulls a dry-cell battery out of his back. He slumps, slumps and flops. He twitches in rigor mortis. Confetti falls free from his hand, gathers in a little pile. A hand-held fan blows it, left to right.

Wrap. The crew ascends to the stage, leaves nothing behind but a steamer trunk and a sousaphone. Tom sits on the trunk; the sousaphone sits on its side. A member of the crew grabs it and leaves.

TOM: Aw, bring the sousaphone back.

It comes back. Waits climbs inside it, adjust the mouthpiece. It makes hideous bleats, like someone is forcing it to watch its mother being turned into a coffee table. Waits' cheeks puff out, his face turns red. He hoists it off like a weight lifter. He leaves the stage with it under his arm, his tuxedo tails flapping behind. He puts his little finger in his ear and wrings it vigorously.

TOM: What should I do with this thing?

No answer. "Nessun dorma," from Puccini's 'Turandot."

Tom Waits — After A One Night Stand

"Tom may be a bit. . . ." and there were many long moments before he finished the sentence. The road manager — his name was John — had a molded golden eighth-note on a chain around his neck.

".... A bit cranky...." he said at last.

Out of the elevator, take a left, first door on the right. John held the door open. Tom Waits was piled up on the chair next to the bathroom door and a couple of the guys in the band were on the couch. It was sometime after one in the morning. Waits had just played two shows in front of two half-empty houses, and he had to pull his fingers out of the ropy lengths of his hair to shake hands. Then he headed for the bathroom.

While Waits was out of the room, I took inventory of the pile of stuff dumped in front of his chair. There were matchbooks and a couple of packs of cigarettes, an obscure brand, smaller than most, called Delicados. Phone numbers with and without names scrawled on scraps of paper. A torn-off piece of the Greater New Orleans Yellow Pages. Half-buried beneath was a silver-scaled hip-flask, the kind with curved sides to hide the bulge. It was all great material to toss in to a story about Tom Waits, and listing it helped keep me from dozing off to the lull of the musicians' voices from the couch. I hadn't been getting all that much sleep lately myself, and it was beginning to tell. I felt slow.

Earlier that day, I'd gotten a message from a woman, a photographer who wanted to do some photos of Tom Waits.. "I'm not into taking pictures of rock stars or anything," she told me. "it's just that Tom Waits . . . he seems different." So okay, I can understand that, but I had a photographer already. I told her I'd see how Waits was, and if he really wanted his picture taken, I'd give her a call back.

Waits came back into the room, sat down and pulled off his shirt. His face was younger than any of his photos seemed to reveal; he was obviously tired and restless and none too thrilled with the prospect of answering some guy's questions while another guy stared at him through a camera lens. You could feel it — anybody could have.

My first thought was to call it, call a halt to the whole thing right there, get the hell out, get gone, go home. Can't do that, though. You've hung on this long, gone this far, so you might as well try to get him to open up, give you enough quotes to throw a story together, and get out of here. Try and start a conversation with him.

Except the answers came back in words of one syllable or less. I was trying to draw him out somehow, trying to get him to say things I could quote him on but no dice. Time to try a new tack. "I'd like to talk about Kerouac," I told him. Obviously Waits had been influenced by Jack Kerouac, and one of the songs on his latest album, "Jack & Neal" was loosely biographical. Besides, Kerouac is about as close as I come to having a hero.

"Okay, so you wanna talk about Kerouac." He'd pulled a deeply worn brown leather jacket from the floor onto his lap and was lost in contemplation of its every wrinkle.

Dead end. Things were beginning to look a little grim. "Anything at all you want to talk about?"

Waits jumped all over that one. "No. No! That's your job. You're the journalist. I've just gotta stay here and answer the questions but you're the one that's gotta ask the questions."

I was tired. My feelings were hurt and I had no more use for this guy, no desire whatsoever to pull an interview out of the shambles. "Look, if you don't wanna do it, let's not do it." I slapped my notebook shut and stood up.

"Well, I don't want you to ask me what I want to be asked — I can do that all by myself." He pointed to my notebook. "You obviously came prepared with some questions but . . ."

"I came prepared with some questions but man, you know -- I'm not gonna. . . I don't want to sit here and beat my head against the wall." I don't know which one of us was glaring harder.

"Well, I'll . . . y'know, I'll answer your questions."

It got no better. I asked a long and vague and rambling question about his stage persona as opposed to her personal identity, the image of Tom Waits as a late night bar-crawler, and how it related to his actual life — something like that, probably even less coherent -— and now he thought I was calling him a drunk.

"I'm not a drunk," he said, sucking hard on his Delicado, then shooting smoke out the corner of his mouth. "I'm not a lush. I work real hard all year. If I was a drunk I don't think I'd have five albums out, I don't think I'd be able to stay on the road eight months out of the year." He was pissed.

"No, what I mean is—" I was trying to get things back on track. " .—do people expect you to be Tom Waits the hard-living bar room character, do they meet you and immediately try and drink you under the table?"

He waved his cigarette in the air, a little streak of smoke in the room. "That's a line in a song. What does—"

"And it's an old phrase. What I'm saying is do people expect you to be just like the characters you write about, do they react to you or do they react to your image?"

"I don't know. Are you reacting to me or are you reacting to my image?"

"Hey, I don't know — that's why I'm asking?"

"Do I look like a drunk?""

I nearly hesitated too long. It would have been so easy to say yes, to say yes and piss him off good and well and just get the hell out of there. With his hanked-off hair, his pale drawn face, his ragged black slacks and his battered black shoes, he could have blended right into the scenery on the corner of any metropolitan Tailspin Alley . . . but the clothes and the hair were matters of choice and the paleness of the face was plainly exhaustion, not alcohol. I hedged. "How should I know? What's a drunk look like?"

Waits dumped back in his chair." Look, why don't you ask me something about what I do, about writing songs or traveling on the road eight months out of the year. I've written a lot of songs." His voice was tight and pinched now, the coarse threads of his usual growl stretched taut. "Do you know anything about the tunes I've written, the . . ."

Up yours, Jack. "Yeah.. . ."

"They're not just about drunks. They're about murder and car wrecks and love and. . . and. . ." He sucked at his cigarette. "I write about a lotta different things."

Okay, all right, let's talk about the songs. That's only fair. "Okay, it seems as though your songs are all very American, very American subjects . . ."
"Which one?" he snarled. "Which song?"

"Your songs in general, your songwriting . . ."

"Which one?" We were glaring again. "Do you know 'em?"

"Yeah, I know 'em. It doesn't matter whether it's 'The Heart of Saturday Night' or 'Ol' '55' or . . ."

"That's two . . ."

". . . or 'Pasties And A G-String. -- look," I yelled. "What do you want? You want me to list all the titles."

He was memorizing the ceiling. "Yeah."

I shut the notebook again and reached down to pick up my tape recorder.

"I can do it." he said in a low voice, just less than a whisper.

"Yeah, well, you know, that's great. . . that's swell. . ."

"And if you can do it, we all have to do it." It was John, the road manager. He'd come back into the room without me noticing it, and now he was making a valiant effort to josh Tom along, to lighten things up. "We will all write the Tom Waits songbook on the blackboard." Then he left us.

"Listen," I said, "let's just call it."

Waits pushed his hand through his hair. "Look, I don't know what you want from me. I'm not a geek, I'm not a drunk, I'm a regular guy —"

"Hey, wait a minute, wait a—"

".—I take shits, I've got a girlfriend, I live in a hotel—"

" —minute, wait a minute. You know, I don't . . . Either I . . . Either I did a really poor job of explaining myself or you took it the wrong way. I don't know which but I wasn't saying any of that shit. I was just trying to find out if the whole thing about Tom Waits being certain things, being a person who spends all his time in bars and stuff, if that really fits."

"I go to bars, I do all kinds of things. I do everything that you do. Except maybe a little more. And a little more often." He rubbed at his nose. "I travel a great deal, all over the United States and, uh, I'm in a nightclub every night. I play bars, mainly, still play bars. And it's got its moments, you know, and then again, you know . . . some nights, it's a pain in the ass. I get pissed off, I get tired, I get . . . y'know. . ." His voice dropped off, still high-pitched and tight, just above a whisper. "Just a regular guy. . . Right now I'm pissed-off, I'm tired. . . We had two half-houses out there, with a lame promoter who's obviously—" here he pointed to his forehead "—operating with an unfurnished apartment. I mean, the guy seems like he must be about a quart low to me," he said bitterly. "He had a very lame sound department and a real antiseptic little environment here . . .

"You know, I'm tired. I been on the bus. I don't sleep. I just got up. I haven't had a night off in three weeks. I've been entertaining and talking to journalists and getting my picture taken and playing in nightclubs and it gets to be a little too much." His voice was beginning to sound like a record being played while someone slowed it down with their thumb.

"I'm on my way home. I can't wait to get home and just get twelve hours of sleep . . . some twelve-year-old scotch and a twelve-year-old girl. That's what I want."

I wasn't so pissed off any more. He was so obviously exhausted,. "Well, let's do one of two things then: Let's either start all over again and if I've been antagonistic, I'll cool out, or else let's just, you know, maybe we're better off just letting you get your sleep, whatever you prefer — but be honest."

"Alright . . . why'ntchya go out and come back in, and we'll start all over again. We'll shake hands, you can introduce yourself, tell me who you write for and all that." He looked over at the photographer. "You can just turn your back."

So I went out the door, shut it. There was reason to listen for the sound of the lock clicking but I opened the door again. Waits had his head turned away. "For Christssake what a fuckin' damn — " [big jolly fake voice] "— Oh, hel-lo....."

Things loosened considerably. Tom started unreeling tales about buying hundred-dollar cars and testing them out by driving them to Arizona. "I've broke down in Gila Bend, Buckeye, Tucson . . . uh. . . Camp Verde -- know that joint? Spent a night in Stanfield. On New Year's Eve. New Year's Eve. I went to a church, Pentecostal church, you know, holy rollers? And this old lady, Mrs. Anderson, put me up. I was in the back of this church -- it was real cold and, uh, my car was busted and I had it at the gas station and she had me come to this four-hour marathon New Year's Eve church service, so I could stay inside. And afterwards they took up a collection -- the whole church took up a collection and gave me all the money to get my car fixed so I could get out of town. About fifty bucks -- I got a new water pump."

"Yeah, I used to come here a lot -- but I haven't been here for a while. I think the last time I was here was two albums ago. That's why I was really disappointed that nobody showed up." He was scratching under his chin with a matchbook.

It wasn't twenty minutes later that we wrapped it up. We made our goodbyes, apologized back and forth for our initial fracas and then the phnotographer and I headed for the door. "Okay, you take it easy now," said Tom.

But as it turned out Waits and John the road manager came around the corner while Tim and I were still waiting for the elevator. "Looks like we're all going up together," said John nervously. I think he was concerned that Waits and I might start screaming at each other again.

No one said much as the elevator went down. No one says much in elevators anyway. I took one last look at Waits as he slumped back in the corner. He had his leather jacket on now and he'd acquired a matchstick between his teeth. It took us a moment to re-establish where we were when we got to the ground level but then we were all walking the same direction — me and the photographer to my car and Tom and John to the highway cruiser bus that was dieseling at the curb.

It was cold. I stuffed my hand into my pocket for my keys and pulled them out with a piece of paper that fell to the ground. As I bent to get it, I knew what it was, it was the phone number of the photographer who'd wanted me to ask permission so she could take pictures of Tom Waits too. I'd forgotten all about that.

"Later," called Waits, and the bus door closed.

Aphorism Number Nine; Continuity (One of a Series; Collect 'em All)

"Continuity is for sissies."

Jack Nicholson, to Tom Waits, to Bart Bull in SPIN

Aphorism Fourteen; An observation on appearances; (one of a series; collect 'em all)

"If I was a girl, I'd want to look like that."

Tom Waits, to Bart Bull