Changing the Past (11 page)

“You're not Jewish?” asked Natalie. “Kellog's your real name?”

“My mother was Irish,” said Jackie.

“Close enough,” Natalie replied, winking. Jackie found her attractive, with her deep cleavage and drenched as she was in pungent perfume. In those days his taste was for women older than himself, with ample figures. It was only later on that he was principally attracted to young stuff, firm and trim. But Natalie never gave a sign of a like yen for him, and since she was the boss he certainly made no move towards her.

He did not want for cooze: women liked men who made them laugh, and his pudgy body and short height were not deterrents to romance. He found, to his initial amazement, that the kind of girl he had desired in vain while in high school, namely the leggy, high-breasted sort, preferably honey-blond (though the fairhaired at Rudner's were usually artificially so, with dark eyes: close enough), was no longer inaccessible to Jackie Kellog the featured performer, who had added cachet owing to his current lack of erotic interest in the type: the liaison with Marie in what was still his formative time had given him not only a leaning towards mature sexual partners but also a predilection for whores, with whom, uniquely amongst womankind, lust is decisively distinguished from love. Marie could service him on application, yet they remained friends; indeed, it was because they were friends that she could do him such favors, as one neighbor gives a ride to another whose car is in the shop, or lends him the lawnmower. This was not true of either the single or the married women at Rudner's, each of whom invariably found it necessary to excuse herself, after the first session in bed, as having first lost her heart to him before yielding her virtue—or insisting she had got helplessly drunk. This was still the era for that kind of female thinking.

Jackie was such a success at Rudner's that Natalie rebooked him for the rest of the summer, and though the resort was one of the more modest establishments in the area, the word somehow got out, and by the end of the season even Marty, a melancholy man by nature, was predicting better money for the summer to follow. But Jackie had to survive the intervening winter, nor was he by now inclined to limit his ambition to seasonal resorts, certainly not those on the next level above Rudner's, at which Marty assured him he could likely get a shot. The fact was that he had been approached by a big talent agency which booked acts for clubs in Las Vegas, Reno, and California, places beyond Marty's purview and at which he stupidly scoffed, unable to foresee the spectacular future of Nevada and Tahoe.

Jackie's career in that part of the world was in its own way as successful as that of the mobsters who came to flourish in Vegas in the years after the war. A hit in the lounges from the first, before long he was being hired to “open” for the headliners, perform as a prefatory act to that of the star, in the big nightclub rooms of the major hotels. He thus became a subordinate colleague of the most successful entertainers of that place and time, and discovered that people in the top ranks of show business are the most generous on the face of the earth. Tony Gamble was the greatest of them. He was then at the height of his career as singer, movie actor, pal of international statesmen, and had the nice habit of giving expensive presents to those around him at the end of every week of an engagement: gemmed cuff links, engraved cigarette cases, belts made from rare snakeskins, etc. And were he to hear of the medical problems of anyone in his entourage or crew, or finally anyone so much as employed anywhere in the hotel during his gig, Tony would insist on sending the unfortunates to his personal physicians and picking up the tab, including those for hospitalization and surgery.

That Tony was considered a living saint by the recipients of his generosity went without saying. But he was also notorious for abusing the women with whom he was intimate—in certain moods, always unpredictable, striking them so savagely in the face with a fist bearing many rings as to require reconstructive work by the finest practitioners, which of course was paid for by Tony as his apology. Were the ex-wives and mistresses and even, as time went on, the one-night stands not to accept this act of contrition, they were henceforth shunned absolutely. And if they had recourse to the law or, worse, to journalists inimical to Tony, they might well be subjects of a baleful interest on the part of certain thugs who sentimentally considered an attack on him as one on themselves.

Among Tony's virtues was a splendid record in giving encouragement to newcoming performers. He regularly made a tour of the lounges and the shows on lower levels than his own, and he loved Jackie Kellog's act as soon as he saw it, sending backstage to Jackie, that very night, a case of the limited-stock sour-mash bourbon specially bottled for himself, his caricature and signature on the label, and a gilt-edged pass to his own show and subsequent admission to his dressing room.

“I like what I see in you, kid,” Tony said when Jackie had used the privilege last-named. “All I know is you make me laugh my ass off—and hey, I'm not all that great an audience.” It was between shows, and Tony was drinking Coke and chain-smoking king-sized cigarettes. There were three of his people with him in the dressing room, two men and one woman, and others came and went incessantly. “Get him what he wants,” he told the woman, a motherly sort in middle age, and to Jackie, “What do you want?”

At this time Jackie still drank little, did not smoke, and took no pills but an occasional aspirin. He was brought a Coke of his own.

“I got friends,” Tony said, his clip-on bow tie unfastened and dangling down the ruffled front of his shirt. One of his helpers had removed the tuxedo jacket. There were great circles of damp under his armpits. Glancing at himself in the mirror, Tony saw these and saying, “I can't stand sweat!” ripped the shirt off himself, buttons flying. The woman brought him a new shirt. As Jackie was to learn, Tony never had any item of apparel laundered or dry-cleaned: he wore brand-new garments every time he performed; it was his fetish.

“I gotta lotta friends,” he went on as the woman was buttoning the new shirt on him. “That's my only religion: friends. If you're a friend of mine, you share all my other friends. We all love one another. Wanna be my friend?…Good, I like that. You want a sandwich or anything?”

Jackie was not hungry at the moment, and he was too heavy anyway (190 with a height of 5' 5”), but neither did he wish to offend against Tony's legendary hospitality, and therefore when Tony recommended the tuna-fish sandwich (made to the great man's own specifications: the fish minced and mixed with raw egg yolk, chopped scallions, horseradish, and mayo and served with Bibb lettuce and tomato on one of the onion rolls specially flown in from New York to wherever Tony was performing), Jackie believed it politic to order one of his own.

“Jackie,” Tony said, “I make quick decisions. I want you to open for me tomorrow night. Comic I got now—what's his fuckin' name?—uh, Joey: he's a bum. He ain't ever been funny, and he's a lush besides.” From the side of his mouth he spoke to the larger of his two male assistants, “Get rid of him, Sid.” “Sure, Tony,” said this man and started briskly to leave the room. “Hey, Sid,” Tony added. “Pay him for the whole gig and add an extra five big ones for his trouble. That's for his family—he gets his fuckin' legs broke if he plays it on the tables.” “Sure, Tony,” said Sid, departing.

“It's just,” said Jackie, “that I had to sign a contract where I am now,” which was the lounge of another hotel than the one at which Tony Gamble was currently engaged.

“Dint I say I got friends everyplace?” asked Tony. “Dint I just say that?” He addressed the remaining male in his entourage. “Billy, call up Jerry and tell him I need the kid as of yesterday. Be nice. Send him a nice present, a case of something—no, wait a minute, he don't drink any more. He can always use cooze. Call up Minxie, tell her to do me a personal favor and fly up here.”

The man frowned behind his tinted glasses. “She's on location in New Mexico, Tony.”

Tony stuck a pugnacious jaw towards him. “Did I ask you for that information, asshole?”

“No, Tony.”

“Then call her.” The man left in haste. Jackie remembered reading in the gossip columns that Minxie Morrow, then one of the most promising of the latest crop of starlets, was a pal of Tony Gamble's.

“So that's taken care of,” Tony told Jackie. “I want you to start next show, which is…?” He snapped his fingers at his female helper, the woman wearing octagonal eyeglasses. She said, “The midnight.”

“You forget my name?” asked Tony. “Sorry, Tony,” said she. Tony addressed Jackie, “The midnight.”

“Tonight?”

“When do you think, you shmuck, next Groundhog Day?” Tony cried jovially. Then he frowned. “Do what you been doin', only nastier. Draw blood, you know? People love that. Be a good contrast for when I come on with the ballads. People like to laugh, and they like to cry. That's what we do, kid, get the feelings out of them. You might say we're kinda doctors.” He threw back his head and chortled. “Or whores!”

The tuna sandwiches arrived. Tony took a sharklike bite out of his and chewed briefly, then grimaced at the woman, who automatically put out her hand, and he spat the mouthful into her palm. In view of this incident, Jackie assumed he was correct in not touching his own sandwich, which he hadn't wanted in the first place, and now he was sick with anxiety about going into a big room to open for the major attraction in Vegas, for that was the era when Tony Gamble had no peer as a popular performer. Going in without preparation, furthermore, and the place was enormous. Whereas his current act was proportioned to much more intimate dimensions, and while space is not quite so important to comedy as timing (which is of the essence, never more than a millisecond separating success from failure), it could be crucial with a style of the kind that Jackie had been developing in recent months. He had nearly eliminated the telling of set jokes in favor of insulting ad libs directed to individuals in the audience that he wandered through after a brief time on stage. This was ideally suited to the lounges. It seemed to him that you might easily get lost in a big main room, not to mention that, for optimum effect, the victim must be close enough to the other patrons so that they can see the butt of the derision. Obviously that could not be the case with many people in a large audience.

And Jackie was by now sufficiently experienced in the ways of the world to be sure that though this was all Tony Gamble's idea, it would not be like Tony to take any responsibility if he failed. Tony might in fact be offended, and take some ugly vengeance: he had heard such stories. Therefore when Tony dismissed him now, Jackie went to his new hotel room (arranged for him by Gladys, Tony's gray-haired aide, and she had also had his clothes transferred from the other place), and he spent an hour and a half drinking black coffee and vomiting into the toilet bowl. When he went downstairs to perform, his eyes were red, his complexion was ashen; his voice had been roughened by the puking; his guts were wracked with gas pains; his nerves hummed with caffeine; his ankles had turned elastic and could not bear his weight. He ran with sweat and yet his spine was a column of ice. In the wings he all but pissed his pants despite having urinated thrice within the previous quarter hour, and he had double vision.

All he heard of the introduction was the second syllable of his last name, but it was enough not only to restore his faculties but to raise them to a higher plane. For years afterward people bragged of being present at Jackie Kellog's premier performance in the big time.

It was true he could not roam through the audience in such a large room. What he could do was pick targets for his scorn from the stage—and if need be, these could be altogether imaginary. You could assume that in any large assemblage there would be overweight people; persons with large noses, mouths, ears; husbands with unattractive wives; wives whose husbands belched at the dinner table and farted in bed and wore underwear yellowed at the crotch; women who were frigid or pretended to be; men over fifty who desired girls under twenty; and those of either sex who were addicted to unhealthy and/or immoral pleasures (with the exception of gambling, which for obvious reasons could not be derided), and even the unnatural.

When it came to the last-named, you could not of course have focused on individuals in any event, and thus Jackie's act on stage had an advantage over the more intimate performances, for at such a distance he could pretend to notice a sexy dress or spectacular piece of jewelry and commend the wearer: “You have perfect taste,
sir
.
”

But his boldest stroke, a product of the inspiration which was his when in the heat of a performance, owing nothing to reason, was to poke fun at, of all people, Tony Gamble. Looking at his watch, “Tony's gonna be out here in a few minutes—that means he's only got enough time left to
shtup
three more starlets…. J'ever notice those guys who hang around Tony—you know, the ones whose hands hang down to their knees? He's worked out a good deal with them: he pays ‘em as high as they can count: which means they all make ten bucks a week—except the guy who shot off a pinky while cleaning his gun, he gets nine…. But Tony's big-hearted. He gives a lot of wine to his friends. He sent a bottle the other day to the vet who takes care of his dog. The vet returned it with a note that said, ‘Your horse has diabetes.'”

Tony could be sent into homicidal rage by the mildest criticism from a newspaper columnist, and he had once actually kicked the rump of a maître d' who grinned at him when he was himself scowling. But he was so delighted by Jackie that he brought the comic out on stage during his own show, hugged him, and said to the audience, “How about this guy, ladies and gendemen? You listen to Tony: this young man's going to the top. And would old Tony lie to you?” The phrase drew extra applause, echoing as it did a line from the lyrics of his current No. 1 single, “Too Many Lies, Too Little Love.” Then he seized Jackie and kissed him on the lips, a Tony Gamble trademark when publicly saluting his male friends and, given his notorious heterosexual activity, unassailable though provocative. Jackie seized the microphone at this point, and asked, “Does this mean you'll only have your pals break
one
of my arms?” Tony guffawed, flashing the teeth that were blindingly white in a face that was kept tanned to the brink of négritude. He was darker than the most prominent of the black girl singers of the day, when their fashion was to be pale—a fact that was more grist to Jackie's mill in future performances.