Plexus (64 page)

It doesn't take long for the speakeasy to become a sort of private club and recreation center. On the kitchen wall is a long list of names. Beside the names is chalked up the sums owed us by our friends, our only steady customers.

Roberto and George Inness sometimes come to fence in the afternoon. If not, O'Mara, Ned and I play chess in the back room near the window. Should an important client, like Mathias, turn up, we duck through the window into the back yard, hop the fence and out into the next street
through a narrow lane, Occasionally Rothermel comes for a couple of hours in the late afternoon, to talk to Mona privately. He pays her ten or twenty dollars for the privilege.

If it's an off night, we drive the paying customers out early, put the tables together, and settle down to play ping pong. We hold regular tournament bouts. Cold snacks in between of course. Always washed down with beer, gin or wine. If we run out of liquor we go to Allen Street for sacramental wine. Usually the “championship matches” are between Arthur Raymond and myself. We run up fantastic scores. In the end I usually throw the game to him because he's such a hard loser.… Always daybreak before we turn in.

One evening Rothermel turns up with several of his bosom pals from the Jersey swamps. All judges and politicians. They order the best of everything of course.

Everything was going smoothly until Tony Maurer turned up with a beautiful model. For some reason Rothermel instantly took a violent dislike to him, partly because his hair was cropped close, partly because, in Rothermel's opinion, he was too glib. I happened to be serving Tony Maurer when Rothermel left his table in the backroom, determined to pick a quarrel. He was already quite crocked, to be sure. A nasty bird, even when sober. I stood to one side for a while, observing with admiration the cool way in which Tony Maurer parried Rothermel's thrusts. But when the latter grew outrageously insulting I decided it was time to intervene.

“You'd better get back to your table,” I said quietly and firmly.

“Who are you?” he snarled.

Boiling inside but outwardly cool as a cucumber, I said: “Me? I'm the boss here.”

Rothermel sniffed and snorted. I took him by the arm and turned him round, in the direction of the other room. “Don't manhandle me!” he yelled.

Fortunately at this juncture his friends came to my rescue. They dragged him back to the other room, as if he were a sack of wood. Then they returned to make apologies to Tony Maurer and to Mona.

“We'll get them all out of here soon,” I whispered to Tony Maurer.

“Please don't!” he begged. “I can handle the situation. I'm used to it, you know. He thinks I'm a Hun, that's what bothers him. Sit down a moment, won't you? Have a drink. You mustn't let things disturb you.” Here he tailed off into a long anecdote about his experience during the war—first as an intelligence officer, then as a spy. As I listened to him I could hear Rothermel's voice rising higher and shriller. It sounded as if he were having the tantrums. I signaled to Ned and O'Mara to quiet him.

Suddenly I heard him scream: “Mona! Mona! Where
is
that bitch? I'll fuck her yet, by Christ!”

I rushed to his table and shook him, none too gently. I looked quickly at his friends to see if they were going to make trouble. They seemed embarrassed and disconcerted.

“We'll have to get him out of here,” I explained.

“Certainly,” said one of them. “Why don't you call a cab and send him home? He's a disgrace.”

Ned, O'Mara and myself bundled him into his overcoat and pushed him out into the street. A light sleet had fallen; it was now covered with a thin coat of snow. Rothermel was unable to stand without support. While Ned went in search of a cab, O'Mara and I half-dragged, half-shoved him towards the corner. He was fuming and cussing; he was particularly venomous towards me, naturally. In the scramble he lost his hat. “You don't need a hat,” said O'Mara. “We'll use it to piss in.” Rothermel was now blind with rage. He tried to unhitch his arms in order to take a swing at us, but we held him tightly. Suddenly and instinctively we both let go at once. Rothermel stood swaying lightly, not daring to make a move for fear his legs would give way. We retreated a few steps and then, moved by a
common impulse, we began dancing around him like goats, making faces at him, taunting him, thumbing our noses, scratching our behinds like monkeys, capering and cavorting like zanies. The poor bugger was beside himself. He was actually bellowing now. Fortunately the street was deserted. Finally he could stand it no longer. He made a lunge for us, lost his footing and slid into the gutter. We picked him up, stood him safely on the sidewalk, and repeated our antics, this time to the tune of a little ditty in which we made shameful use of his name.

The cab pulled up and we bundled him in. We told the driver that he had the D.T.'s, gave him a phony address in Hoboken, and waved good-bye. When we returned his friends thanked us and apologized all over again. “He belongs in the asylum,” said one of them. With that he ordered a round of drinks and insisted on buying us steak sandwiches. “If you ever have any trouble with the flat-footed guys, just call on us,” said the bald-headed politician. He handed me his card. Then he suggested the name of a bootlegger from whom we could get credit, if we ever needed credit. And so we had a second round and a third round, always of the best Scotch, which could have been horse piss for all I cared about it.

Shortly after they left, Arthur Raymond fell into a violent quarrel with some young chap whom I had never seen before, insisting that the latter had insulted Mona. Duffy was the lad's name. Seemed like a decent chap, even if a little under the weather. “He'll have to apologize publicly,” Arthur Raymond kept insisting. Duffy thought this a great joke. At last Arthur Raymond could stand it no longer. He got up, twisted Duffy's arm, and threw him on the floor. Then he sat on Duffy's chest and banged his head against the floor.
“Will you or won't you?”
he repeated, banging the poor fellow's head mercilessly. At last Duffy mumbled a thick apology and Arthur Raymond lifted him to his feet. There was a dead silence, an unpleasant one for Arthur Raymond. Duffy searched for his coat and
hat, paid his bill, and left—without a word. Arthur Raymond sat alone at his table, head down, looking glum and shamefaced. In a few moments he got up and stalked out.

It was not until a few nights later, when he showed up with a pair of black eyes, that we learned that Duffy had waited for him outside and given him a good beating. Oddly enough, Arthur Raymond appeared to be happy over the trouncing he had received. It turned out that after the fracas Duffy and he had become good friends. With his usual false modesty he added that he had been somewhat at a disadvantage, always was when it came to fisticuffs, because he couldn't afford to ruin his hands. Anyway, it was the first time in his life that he had taken a beating. It had given him a thrill. With a touch of malice he concluded: “Everybody seems to be happy about it. Maybe I deserved it.”

“Maybe it will teach you to mind your own business,” said Mona.

Arthur Raymond made no reply.

“And when are you going to pay your bill?” she added.

To everyone's astonishment, Arthur Raymond replied: “How much is it?” Fishing into his pocket he brought up a roll of bills and peeled off the amount due.

“Didn't expect that, did you?” he said, looking around like a bantam cock. He got up, went to the kitchen, and crossed his name off the list.

“And now I've got another surprise for you,” he said, requesting that drinks be served all around. “A month from today I'm giving a concert. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Ravel, Prokofieff and Stravinsky. You're all invited to come—it's on me. My last appearance, so to say. After that I'm going to work for the Communist Party. And I don't care what happens to my hands. I'm through with this sort of life. I'm going to do something constructive.
Yes sir!”
and he banged his fist on the table.
“From now on I disown you all.”

As he sailed out he turned round to deliver this: “Don't forget the concert! I'll send you seats up front.”

From the time that Arthur Raymond delivered himself of this declaration things took a definite turn for the worse. All our creditors seemed to descend on us at once, and not only the creditors but the police and the lawyer whom Maude had engaged to collect the back alimony. It would begin, in the early morning with the iceman pounding furiously on our door and we pretending to be sound asleep or out. Afternoons, it would be the grocer, the delicatessen man or one of the bootleggers rapping on the front window. In the evening, trying to pass himself off as a client, would come a process server or a plain-clothes man. Finally the landlord began to dun us for the rent, threatening to haul us to court if we didn't pay up. It was enough to give one the jitters. Sometimes we felt so done up that we would close the joint and go to a movie.

One night the old trio—Osiecki, O'Shaughnessy and Andrews—arrived with three girls from the Follies. This was towards midnight and they were already lit up like ocean liners. It was one of those nights when just our intimate friends were on hand. The Follies girls, beautiful, brittle, and extraordinarily vulgar, insisted on putting the tables together so that they could dance on the table tops, do the split, and that sort of thing. Osiecki, imagining himself to be a Cossack, kept spinning like a top, to our utter amazement. Hadn't improved a whit in the interim, of course. But he was jollier than usual, and for some queer reason fancied himself to be an acrobat. After a few chairs had been broken and some crockery smashed, it was suddenly decided that we all go to Harlem. Mona, Osiecki and I got into a cab with Spud Jason and his Alameda who was carrying on her lap a mangy little dog called Fifi. By the time we reached Harlem it had peed over everyone. Finally Alameda peed in her pants from excitement.

At Small's, which was then the rage, we drank champagne, danced with the colored folk and ate huge steaks
smothered with onions. Dr. Kronski was in the party and seemed to be enjoying himself hugely. Who was paying for it all I had no idea. Probably Osiecki. Anyway, we got home toward dawn and tumbled into bed exhausted. Just as we were falling asleep Alan Cromwell rapped at the window, begging to be allowed in. We paid no attention to him. “It's me, Alan, let me in!” he kept shouting. He raised his voice until it sounded as if he were screaming. Obviously he was soused to the gills and in a bad way. Finally a cop came along and dragged him away, giving him a few love taps with his night stick as he did so. Kronski and O'Mara, who were sleeping on the tables, thought it a hell of a good joke. Mona was worried. However, we soon fell back into a dead slumber.

The next evening Ned, O'Mara and myself hatched an idea. We had taken to sitting in the kitchen with a ukelele, humming and talking softly while Mona took care of the customers. It was the time of the Florida boom. O'Mara, always restless, always itching to strike it rich, got the idea that the three of us ought to light out for Miami. It was his belief that we could make enough in a few weeks to send for Mona and lead a new life. Since none of us had money to invest in real estate we would have to get it from those who had made it. We would offer our services as waiters or bellhops. We were even willing to shine shoes. Anything for a start. The weather was still good, and it would get better the farther south we traveled.

O'Mara always knew how to make the bait attractive.

Naturally Mona wasn't very keen about our project. I had to promise that I would telephone her every night, no matter where we might be. All I needed was a nickel to drop in the slot; the charges could be reversed. By the time the telephone bill arrived the speakeasy would be closed and she would be with us.

Everything was set to decamp in a few days. Unfortunately, two days before starting the landlord served us with a summons. In desperation I tried to raise at least
part of the money we owed him. On an impulse I looked up the son of one of my father's bosom friends. He was quite a young man but making good in the steamship business. I don't know what on earth possessed me to tackle him—it was like grasping at a straw. The moment I mentioned money he turned me down cold. He even had the cheek to ask me why I had singled
him
out. He had never asked me for any favors, had he? (Already a hardboiled business man. In a few years he would be a “success.”) I swallowed my pride and bored in. Finally after being thoroughly humiliated, I succeeded in extracting a ten-spot from him. I offered to write out a promissory note but he spurned this derisively. When I got back to the joint I felt so wretched, so beaten, that I almost set fire to the place. However.…

It was a Saturday afternoon when O'Mara and I set forth for Miami. It was high time. The air was thick with wet, heavy snowflakes—the first snowfall of the season. Our plan was to get on the highway outside Elizabeth, there to catch a car as far as Washington where we were to meet Ned. For some reason of his own Ned was going to Washington by train. He was taking the ukelele along—for morale.

It was almost dark when we bundled into a car outside Elizabeth. There were five darkies in the car and they were all liquored up. We wondered why in hell they were driving so fast. Before long we found out—the car was full of dope and the Federal men were on their tail. Why they had stopped to pick us up we couldn't figure out. We felt vastly relieved when a little this side of Philadelphia they slowed down and dumped us out.

The snow was falling heavily now and a stiff gale was blowing, an icy gale. Moreover, it was pitch dark. We walked a couple of miles, our teeth chattering, until we struck a gas station. It was hours before we got another lift, and then only as far as Wilmington. We decided to spend the night in that Godforsaken hole.

Mindful of my promise I called Mona. She held me on the phone for almost fifteen minutes, the operator butting in every so often to remind us that the toll was rising. Things were pretty black at her end: she was to appear in court the following day.