Little Casino (9 page)

Fat Harry, a painting foreman for Aquatic Ship Scaling, Inc., fell into the water one day at the Navy Yard, and was crushed to death between the hull of the freighter,
John H. Derrenbacher,
and the pier. A Norwegian scaler, half-drunk on his scaffold in the steamy sunlight, heard his cries and looked down to see him, thrashing in the oily water, just as the ship was heaved up on a swell and rode into the pilings. There was nothing that the scaler could do, but for a moment he thought that Harry would somehow—what?—avoid the ship? But he more or less exploded in a red surge of blood. All but one of his bets lost that day. Presidential Greetings, in the third at Santa Anita, paid 3.24 to show.

Aquatic Ship Scaling won a Navy “E” that year.

One of the napkins that occasionally turned up at the table in the diner had the letter “D” embroidered, in blue, on one of its corners. The napkin could not have represented the diner, which was named, somewhat poetically, the Rondelle.

“Maybe it stood for Dolores.”

High priestess of the Navy Blue Jumper, temptress of the White Cotton Blouse, goddess of Black Lace Underwear.

While it is true that Ken Kling was a millionaire, it is also true that he played the horses, despite Fat Harry’s belief. That does not mean, however, that he was a horseplayer, that is, the great steeds and contests of the royal oval did not possess him, body and soul.

[It might be worth noting that one day, Fat Harry told the young man that his youngest son, Ralphie, who was studying accounting at Fordham, was engaged to a nice girl who, Harry was pretty sure, used to live on his block. He was absurdly relieved to learn that the girl was Charlotte Ryan.]

Erratum

The hulls of ships of the considerable tonnage of the freighter,
John H. Derrenbacher,
are customarily repaired, scaled, and painted in dry dock; so that the death of Fat Harry, in the manner here described, is highly improbable.

—Ed.

This is the life

H
E RINGS THE BELL AND SHE OPENS THE DOOR
. This is not her family’s apartment, but somebody’s apartment, one of remarkably opportune availability. Somebody has gone away to Miami or someplace. Without further ado, she makes him a drink, Cutty Sark on the rocks, and they sit on the couch. She’s a little drunk, or so he thinks. As soon as he kisses her, she takes off her cardigan and kisses him back. She looks curiously formal in her plain white brassiere and demure plaid skirt. There’s a grand piano in the enormous living room, and it has the effect of placing him
outside
this event, if that’s what it is. He touches her breasts tentatively, and she stands up and leads him into the bedroom. She sits against the headboard of the king-size bed, propped against pillows. This is the life. She tells him not to look at her, then pulls her skirt and half-slip up to her hips, and opens her thighs a little. She still has her penny loafers on. He sees that she still has her panties on, too, plain white cotton. He takes a condom, in utter despair, out of his pocket, and tears the foil wrapper open. Semper paratus. What is he supposed to do now? He lies, awkwardly, on top of her, cradled in her arms, straddling one of her thighs, the condom between thumb and forefinger. He has no idea if he should open his pants, but he does manage to touch her crotch with the back of his hand. She says that maybe they ought to go and have coffee, Ellen will be home soon. Actually, she says that she’s
afraid
that Ellen will be home soon. He doesn’t know who Ellen is. Home? What about Miami? But he says, OK, sure, Ellen. What a suave customer he is. Do you want to touch me again, there, touch me there? she says. Yes, he says, blushing. He sees that she’s sitting on a bath towel, another sad optimist.

“Without further ado,” eh? He turns a nice phrase, useless towel and all.

The Grand Piano
is yet another beautiful novel unknown to the barbarians who run things, and just as well. There are many things the existence of which should be kept hidden, lest they be soiled and cheapened.

The plaid skirt, the grand piano, the towel on the bed, etc., etc., are motifs, yes, but are they
bound
motifs?

The apartment was on Cortelyou Road.

The grand piano may figure large in subsequent tales, like a submerged bicycle, a loaded rifle on the wall, a container of yogurt. Then again, it may just be a touch of the authentic, a detail to do something or other. You know what I mean, right?

Ellen, years later, said that she entered her family’s apartment at about midnight to find her friend and some “dumb-looking guy” playing Monopoly.

The girl’s name was Linda, a name, incidentally, that one doesn’t hear much anymore.

The salt of the earth

T
HE GREEK, IN HIS RENTED WHITE DINNER
jacket and black tuxedo trousers, was throwing up on himself in front of the Shore Road Casino. Fat George had lost, somewhat surrealistically, half his tie and was sitting in a garbage can accompanied by a quart bottle of Rheingold, the pride of New York. Sal was attempting, in the best of humor, to persuade the short-order cook in the Royal to scramble him three eggs for the price of two, and Rocco waited outside, admiring his reflection in the plate-glass window. Nothing, but nothing, like a pearl-gray fedora! The Lion’s Den was jammed with what Donnie called “revelers,” and Whitey, in the spirit of revelry, was fucking Chickie in the telephone booth. In another telephone booth, a few doors away, Bromo Eddie was making random calls with the aid of a safety pin as substitute for legal tender, employing a method known and used by many citizens, though heartily condemned by Ma Bell: “It raises the costs for all, la-da, it raises the co-oosts for alll!”—of course it does! Carmine felt that Whitey shouldn’t be doing what he was doing, people had to
use
that goddamn phone booth, for Christ sake. What if somebody needed an ambulance, too? Had he no home? Couldn’t he fuck Chickie in the park under some bush or some damn plant? Donnie noted Carmine’s objections in a spiral notebook on whose cover he had written, “Local Color.” The other Sal was studying a menu in the diner, although Anna, his companion for the evening, was adamant about ordering the Cheeseburger à la Deluxe, to wit: “I am not eating any fucking soup, Sally!” Red punched Mickey just for the hell of it and then arrogantly appropriated his beer. The police were called by a citizen fed up with something or other noise or some girl who was being bothered or too loud and the neighborhood was gone to the dogs. And fuck the cops too! “Drunken boat,” he said. And then again, “drunken boat.” The bars closed at four, and at least thirty revelers sat in the breathless park with cardboard containers of beer until seven-thirty, then walked back to the Lion’s Den and waited for the doors to open, although the joint really had but one door. “Poetic license,” he said. “He who catches the early bird, catches the early bird,” Donnie said. “It’s the same as a drunk’s coat,” Fat George said. He smelled, of course, but not too badly, of garbage. Yet his chums reasoned well that a little garbage never hurt a Greek olive peddler. That was the God’s honest truth, and so they swore on their mothers! Cheech and Nickie stood at the saloon door and watched the girls on their way to the subway and work, work, work! Idle pleasures, indeed. Mary passed and told Nickie that he was a bum. Dolores passed and told Cheech that he was a disgraceful bum. Georgene passed and told Nickie that he ought to be ashamed of himself, to look at himself at eight o’clock in the morning. There was no chance that
he’d
ever pass the police test! They were all impossibly beautiful in their high heels and pleated skirts. Not for the likes of “you bums,” Donnie yelled from the end of the bar. Tommy Azzerini passed and told Nickie and Cheech that they talked like a coupla guys with paper assholes, although they had not addressed him. Nickie offered to knock him on his ass and Tommy said, in effect, oh, buy me a beer, for Christ sake, you guinea bastard. Pat exited his apartment building, pale, shaking, and, just an inch or so removed from a fine bout with the horrors, carefully made his way to Carroll’s for a double Three Feathers and a large beer chaser; ahead lay another day of honest labor for the youthful Irish American. The salt of the earth, the coat of the drunk, the boat of the revelers, the indisposed and lazy, the insulted and injured, the hurt, the forgotten, the salt in your stew. The sail in your dreamboat. The Greek arrived, smelling of vomit, looking, as he drolly put it, for “the party.” Many were called, oh many, and none were chosen. Pat sat back in the cab as it made its way to Joralemon Street and his, as he liked to put it, “place of business,” and amused the cabbie mightily by unsuccessfully attempting to touch the trembling flames of many matches to his cigarette. Cabbies take their laughs where they can get them, disgraceful bums that some of them are. Others, however, are the salt of the earth, good family men, the cream in your coffee, and were or will be ready to serve their country when called. “Not as fucking asshole officers, though,” Fat George opined.

It has never been determined why Plato Makarios Costas was in rented dinner jacket and trousers, nor what he was doing in front of the Shore Road Casino. (It is, perhaps, unnecessary to note that these garments were rented.)