Rumors of Bukowski's death had gone round on four occasions in recent months. Nobody knew for certain how it was happening, but Bukowski believed it to be malicious and wrote a poem about the jealous, failed writers he presumed were responsible for upsetting his family and friends.
your cowardice will
not be
missed
and you were
dead
long
before
me.
('an answer')
It was a long time since Hackford had seen Bukowski, and the sorrow he felt when he heard he might be dead reminded him how much he cared, so they arranged to meet at San Pedro. 'He had cancer. He talked about that,' says Hackford. 'He had been in the hospital once. He said, “It's slow-moving and I'm writing every day.”' Hackford brought champagne and two bottles of red wine over to the house and introduced Bukowski and Linda Lee to his girlfriend, the actress Helen Mirren, whom Bukowski had watched in Peter Greenaway's sexually explicit movie, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.
'Yeah, I saw you taking it all …' he said mischievously as he greeted her, 'lying there in that freezer …'
She laughed and they were soon emptying bottles like old times. They went out for Thai food, drinking beer at the restaurant, and came back to the house for more wine. 'I stumbled out of there at a quarter to six in the morning,' says Hackford. 'Helen and I and Hank had drunk seven bottles of wine – Linda had stayed on rum and coke – seven bottles of regular wine and a bottle of champagne.'
After the initial euphoria of being in remission, Bukowski gave up alcohol altogether and drank only herbal tea and mineral water. He had been cutting back ever since his bout of TB and found that he didn't miss the booze at all. He quit smoking, too.