Tales of Times Square: Expanded Edition (2 page)

Grove is too worried to finish his corned beef at the “new” Lindy’s, a failing tourist trap above 42nd Street wallpapered with faces of dead comedians who fraternized at the original landmark on 50th. He wants to get to the Actors’ Temple so they can start the prayers. (“Ya gotta have a minyan, nine men—with the rabbi is ten. Ya gotta promise ‘em.”)

“Hey, Izzy, baby!” shouts a black movie usher outside the RKO National, where
Enigma
is playing. They embrace. “All these people are my friends,” says Izzy, knocking on the box office window where an old broad looks up with a wave and a smile. This has been his neighborhood since he took his first job as an errand boy at the I. Miller Shoe Building after World War I. He walks up Broadway to the Gaiety deli, taps the glass, and both counter guys look up from their carving boards, waving.

“I remember when a pastrami sandwich cost thirty-five cents here, now it’s five dollars.” He crosses the street to True Value. “The locksmiths are my friends,” he says.

“Hey, Izzy!” yell both smiths, dropping their tools. The old fighter is making his rounds, reassuring himself that “Everybody knows Izzy Grove,” making sure he’s still part of the old crowd.

“I know Max Asness, who opened the Stage on Sixth Av’nya. The Colony record shop on 49th, they’re in business forty years, unnerstand, wanted to give me downstairs to sleep, but it ain’t livable. The owners of Howard Johnson’s, Morris and Jack Rubinstein, I know them forty-odd years, they never let me go hungry.

“I go to the Garden whenever there’s a fight. I walk in with pride, with dignity, I wash up before I go, I comb my hair, unnerstand, I have a good name, whaddamy gonna get mixed up with a tough guy? I see the former fighters that I knew from yesteryear, and I have to cry to tell ya, it’s pitiful. This is the only sport, that when a boxer retires, he gets nothing. If he’s hungry or he needs help, he can’t get it because there is no organization. At one time I was a member of the Veteran Boxer Association, but they had no strength, because fighters, they don’t come to meetings. But if I do get some real money, I will open up a house for former boxers that need financial assistance, medical supplies.”

Izzy can still throw a wallop, and since his seventieth birthday he claims to have kayoed three muggers: “Yeah, well lemme tell ya sompin’. I was ridin’ the subway, coming from the St. George Hotel, unnerstand? Coupla guys, one sits next to me here, one over here, and then one that goes through my pockets. I got up, unnerstand. I says, ‘Whaddaya doin’?’ The first fella I hit a left hook, unnerstand? Down he went. Second guy was a little tougher. It took me three or four punches to belt him out. The cops went through the trains, they couldn’t find the guys, unnerstand One’s black and one’s maybe Spanish. The
Post
found out about it at the police station, they took pictures and all.”

Eight bellhops in maroon uniforms surround Izzy as he enters the old Edison Hotel lobby. “How long you know Izzy Grove?” Iz asks the shortest hop, one with a carbuncle on his schnozz.

“Twenty-five, thirty years,” answers the hop. “We go back at least that long.”

“What fighters have we seen go through this lobby?” another bellhop inquires, then answers himself. “Jack Dempsey, Maxie Baer, Boomer Wilson, Benny Leonard. We seen ‘em all.”

“What killed Max Kramer?” asks the pimple-nosed hop, “between you and I, now we’re gentlemen.”

“... Aggravation,” answers Izzy.

“No. Too much sex. A chippy over the old Lincoln Hotel.
Boomba-da-boomba-da-boomba
,” goes the little bellhop, smacking his fist.

“This is my family, these are my friends, unnerstand?” says Izzy, a hankie to his eye. “Ge’elmen, you deem me the privilege of being in your company.”

Izzy pauses by the Edison Theater where
Oh! Calcutta!
has been in terminal revival. “I ran dances here, boy meets girl, back when it was a ballroom. I made about three hundred fifty marriages through my dances. Lonely Hearts. I’m the one who started the Over-Twenty-eight Singles business.”

How does Izzy feel about his beloved neighborhood, Times Square, turning into a porno wasteland?

“I don’t bother with that. It’s disgraceful, it’s distasteful, it is not polite society. I was a family man, I’m still a grandfather, unnerstand, I keep my head up in the air because my self-respect is not for sale.”

A little bus driver from the ShortLine depot, where Izzy sits a few hours each day, pokes his head out a bus at Izzy, jokingly: “C’mon, Izzy, ya going uptown, let’s go.”

“Get lost, ya prick, ya!” yells Izzy, suddenly angry. “I’ll drop ya, you ever talk to me again.”

“Okay.” The little driver shrugs, confused.

“Get outta here,” the Ghetto Avenger continues, stalking toward the driver with his fist clenched. “Good-bye, get lost, spadoofa! When ya see me next, ignore me.”

“He’s a
pal
of yours, Izzy,” says another bus man, “take it easy.”

“Who needs ‘im?” mutters Izzy. “I got my own troubles.”

Grove can tell when the temple is open from a block away: “If the lightbulb is on, the rabbi’s in.” He stops before an In Memoriam wall listing hundreds of Jewish show-biz figures who prayed here. It is only recently that he began any sort of religious ritual. The rabbi offers support, but so far none of his leads for a cheap room have worked out. The courts want Izzy out immediately. Grove can’t afford more than the $60 he now pays: “I got relatives, whadda they gonna do. Where are they? I was in the papers. Where are they? Where? When I made money, unnerstand,
hey, yeah
, free tickets, the fights, afterwards somethin’ to eat. But I wanna pinpoint one thought. Quote me.
Yesterday’s cheers have a very short echo
.... Because when I was making money, it was a different story, I helped people. When I was broke, I didn’t have nothin’, I starved. All this hullabaloo—you don’t get nothin’, the world loves a winner. It’s one of these odd quirks of happenstance that befall mankind. Wheremy gonna go, howmy gonna live?”

AFTER
THE
DEATH
OF
BURLESQUE

A Schitzy Girl is Like a Melody

Kandi Barbour’s June engagement at the Melody Burlesk in Times Square is unique in that she refuses to strip. Several old heterosexuals mutter in chagrin as they amble out of the theater after the five o’clock headline act walked offstage with her dress still on. Some of these gents even hissed—a mild reaction from an audience that hastily applauds each shedding of a major undergarment, culminating in an ovation when crotch is finally splayed.

The Melody girls orchestrate their stripteases over five-song cassette soundtracks; the generous ones reach cunt by the fourth number, while the ones who fancy themselves jazz ballerinas wait till the fifth. In any case, all of them are skilled enough to create a steamy anticipation throughout the audience that can only be relieved when the last piece of cloth magically unveils snatcheroo. But Kandi teased the old dukes by flashing snippets of tit, then hiking her dress up and down. She’s taken their blood pressures on a wild-goose chase, and abandoned them with blueballs. As they sang in
Gypsy
, you gotta have a gimmick.

Al Kronish, founder and co-owner of the Melody, makes his way toward the dressing rooms, where women prepare privately to undress in public. “What’s wrong?” he asks, taking charge.

“What’s wrong?” snarls Kandi Barbour, smashing her head with her hairbrush in a vain attempt to comb it. “Anna friggin’ fuckin’ Turner, that’s what’s wrong! Why doesn’t she just fuck him right on stage?”

Al steps into the small headliner’s dressing room at the Melody. Panty hose, Maybelline lipsticks, and other girlie paraphernalia are scattered about the dresser. “Fuck who on stage?” he inquires.

“My boyfriend, that’s who!” she wails in genuine pain, flinging her hairbrush and makeup at the wall, barely missing Kronish. “She’s taking him away from me!”

“So why don’t you win him back?” advises Al. “Don’t act like this.” A police siren fades outside the window, two floors below on 48th and Broadway.

The Atlanta-bred Kandi Barbour is behaving like a black-sheep descendant of Scarlett O’Hara. This is the worst fit she’s thrown all week according to the old fellow in the audio booth, who circles his finger around his head, cuckoo style. Just that afternoon, she’d gone around announcing she had a brain tumor. And now she huffed and puffed in exasperation, stomping her foot and heaving her breasts into a black brassiere like a demon-possessed Kewpie doll.

“Who’re you here to photograph?” she demands of a photographer cautiously stationed outside her door. “Anna Turner?”

“
You
, I’m here to take pictures of
you
. Is that okay?” This seems to calm her for a moment. After all, she is this week’s top bill, a veteran centerfold queen and star of X-rated humdingers like
Neon Nights, Centerfold Fever, Screwples
. Anna Turner is merely one of six “Melody Favorites” appearing that week as an undercard to Kandi.

“Are y’all sure there ain’t any pictures of that fuckin’ Anna Turner in that camera? How do I know you won’t take some of her, how do I know you didn’t really come for her?”

“Because,” soothes Al Kronish, “you’re a beautiful woman, and any magazine would want your picture.” Al does not pander or condescend to Kandi, but meets her squarely in the mascaraed eye with logic. Besides, the photographer has never even heard of Anna Turner.

“Yeah, okay,” she says, agreeing to let him photograph her next set. Then the door to the dressing room slams with Kronish trapped inside, and all hell breaks loose as more of Kandi’s girlie products are heard crashing into the wall.

A few doors over, wiry, redheaded stripper Anna Turner is slipping on her black gown and white gloves, about to go on. Anna shrugs off Kandi’s tantrum with little concern: “She’s a space cadet and I’m a space commander. She fell into a black hole years ago and hasn’t found her way out. But if she looks at me wrong, I’ll punch her lights out in one second.”

Anna chuckles fearlessly, then reveals the root of this current fuss: “I know most major rock stars and music people in New York. So I got Kandi and me a double date with the Dire Straits.” As the plot unfolds, Anna explains how Kandi wanted the Straits’ lead guitarist, Mark Knopfler, for herself, over drummer Pick Withers. As the English group tours the States, Knopfler weighs in as a heavier catch on the groupie fish scale, what with Steely Dan sessions and his guitar-man-of-the-moment soloing from 1978’s “Sultans of Swing.” In any case, Kandi was unable to land Knopfler. When she later ran into Anna Turner at a party, Anna was with her own boyfriend who, coincidentally, bore a striking resemblance to Mark Knopfler. To make a case study short, Kandi took Anna Turner’s boyfriend for Knopfler, thereby believing that Anna had, in effect,
stolen
the Dire Straits’ guitarist from her clutches. And this accounted for the Southern belle’s present mental anguish.

Two hours later, Kandi Barbour is back for her 8:20 set, after a respite at Bernard’s bar across the street. The profoundly bored emcee in the one-way glass audio booth, who takes charge of the girls’ soundtracks, mumbles her entrance through buzzy speakers—“The lovely and exciting Miss . . .” Kronish is out in the aisle, relaxed as usual, but with the slightest trace of anxiety. Kandi prances out on the T-runway, cute and peppy as ever, sashaying in a floppy maroon gown with black shawl. From the neck up, she has the loveliest face in all the porn parade; an angelic Barbie doll, perfect makeup coordination and waves of black hair that bounce over her eyes. But below the neck is an odd set of hooters that leave some in confusion as she treats the old boys with flashes of them by her second song. They’re large, but with imprecise areola borders, appearing to contain too much nipple tissue; although, granted, magazines do receive fan mail from staunch Barbour nipple aficionados.

Onstage, Kandi marches about in circles, dabbing her finger in guys’ faces. She’s hardly removed a stitch by the third number. “I can’t believe it,” says Kronish, pacing, in a slow burn. Finally she fishes ‘em out, the photog’s flashbulb goes off, and she freezes in utter disgust on the T-runway.

“Who the fuck are you?” she demands. As the poor photographer reminds her that she granted permission in her dressing room, some schmuck in the first row decides to play hero. He asks if she’d like him to “take care of the bastard.”

“Who are you insulting, me or him?” responds Kandi to the offer. The Protector of Women insists most definitely
him
, and approaches the photographer like a beach bully about to kick sand in someone’s face.

“The lady don’t want you takin’ her pitcher,” he says, rolling up a sleeve. At this point, Kronish heads over and the theater’s 400-pound bouncer radars in to keep the peace. The guy is about to make a lunge for the camera when he spots the bouncer.

“Say, am
I
gonna be in any of those pitchers?” he asks, changing the nature of his concern. “Are you the manager?”

“Sir, I guarantee you will not be in any of them,” says Kronish, “it’s just not allowed.”

“Well, what the fuck is this, I paid seven dollars to sit here?” The cameraman and the bouncer reassure him his pictures are not being taken. “Well, just leave the little lady alone,” he warns. “And no more pitchers.” Maybe, just maybe, he’d won himself a date, this middle-aged grease monkey in shining armor, who would steal Kandi Barbour from the Dire Straits. But Kandi is unaware of his chivalry as he returns to his seat. She dances another minute, then freezes again. Her pain is more comical now—she breaks the “fourth wall,” stagewise, once more, by stopping her striptease cold and bellowing for Al Kronish to come over.

“I’ve got my period,” she whispers in his ear when he reaches the stage, and she holds her floppy maroon dress tight between her legs. After a minute of urgent, unheard deliberation, she’s back in business, and finally strips, though she hides her puss with the dress. Kronish is reeling a bit from this unusual evening at his theater, where smooth-sailing professionalism is rarely interrupted. It has been a rough week for Kandi Barbour.