“This creature you’re on your way to, she attended O.L.M., but you wouldn’t know it today, to hear the propaganda. Her and the boss have arguments, and there’s a man that made a couple million dollars at least. Maybe he don’t have it all, but he made it. And she tells him about the economic system. Why, a day that he don’t net a thousand dollars he considers it a waste. He told me that, himself. A funny man. He’ll spend forty dollars for lunch any time it’ll net him five thousand. That’s what he says to me. I could listen to him by the hour. Orlando. Did you’ve a cousin living on Marion Avenue worked for Con Edison?”
“No, Orlando isn’t my real name. I took the name Orlando because my own name was too long. Too many c’s in it.”
“Pete Orlando. He lived on Marion Avenue near 196th Street. He had a job with the Consolidated Edison, and I used to bowl with him. You know what her name was before she took Coolidge?”
“Cuccinello. Mary Cuccinello. That had a lot of c’s in it too.”
“Fred Allen would have been just as funny with the name Sullivan.”
“Fred Allen? Oh, Fred Allen.”
“Don’t tell me you’re forgetting the great Fred Allen.”
“Oh, no, I used to listen to his program when I was a kid. That was on radio.”
“Senator Claghorn and Mrs. Nussbaum? Don’t you remember them? And the feud with Benny? Jack Benny? That was great entertainment. Who have they got like that today, I ask you? Well, maybe Bob Hope, if he was on oftener. But what do they consider funny nowadays? This young woman you’re on your way to, accidentally on purpose saying something dirty.”
“You think she did it on purpose?”
“Sure I do. I said to my wife, ‘You watch her. Before the night’s over she’ll say something dirty,’ and by God it wasn’t two minutes later she come out with the remark and they cut her off the air. They ought to have some way to fine them when they do that, a good big fine, five thousand dollars, and they’d soon put a stop to it. If they knew there was a fine hanging over them, there wouldn’t be them slips, so-called.”
“How did you know she was going to say something?”
“Because I had enough experience with her, driving her here and Boston and Philly. I know her ways.”
“What if I said I was in love with her?”
“Huh. Then I’d say God help you.”
“Your boss has been stuck on her for a long time.”
“Huh. You don’t know the first thing about it. Harry I. Browning knows what he’s doing, every minute of the time, whether it’s a girl friend or a client or who it is. Well, here we are. I’ll be parked along here somewhere.”
“You don’t have to wait.”
“The boss said you could use the car all afternoon and tonight, if you wanted to. I don’t mind waiting. I’ll be up talking to the other drivers up at River House, in case you don’t see me when you come out.”
“I don’t know when I’ll be out.”
“Well, you suit yourself about that, Mister. If you don’t want me to wait.”
“I don’t. Here. Thanks.” Nick Orlando gave the driver a ten-dollar bill.
4
“What made you so sure I’d let you in? What made you so sure I’d even be here?” said Mary Coolidge.
“I wasn’t sure, but I had a hunch you’d be here reading the new play. I know that much about you,” said Nick Orlando.
“Smart.”
“What is the play? What kind of a part have you got?”
“You don’t read the New York papers any more? You got to that stage, hey?”
“I been on location in Idaho. You know where Idaho is?”
“Yeah. Lana Turner comes from Idaho.”
“On location, living in a trailer. You weren’t in pictures long enough to spend much time on location.”
“The name of the play is A Pride of Lions,” she said, waving a script. “Nobody in Idaho will ever see it because there’s no picture in it.”
“Maybe that’s a good reason for going back to Idaho. Who wrote it?”
“You never heard of him. But you will. He’s a young Pakistani, or he was. He hung himself two years ago at Cambridge University, in England.”
“Well, that way you’re not gonna have any author-trouble at rehearsal. Who’s directing?”
“A brilliant, brilliant boy I discovered in an off-Broadway theater last winter. A brilliant, brilliant, brilliant boy.”
“Is he grateful, grateful, grateful?”
“Huh?”
“This brilliant, brilliant boy. You know what I like in a director is a director that will take direction, but they’re pretty hard to find.”
“This boy is creative.”
“Oh, then him and you are rewriting the play.”
“Wud you come here for, Nick? To rape me or just upset me?”
“I don’t know, What do you want me to do?”
“Go back to Hollywood is what I want you to do. You know what I see when I look at you? A dead man. Dead. You started out with something and then you sold out for a Hollywood Cadillac.”
“A Maserati. I got a special Maserati. Cadillacs are for Squaresville.”
“Then you oughta have one, because you’re cubic, man. That’s square to the nth degree. Cubic.”
“I read you, Maria. Loud and clear. What are you doing tonight?”
“Working, on this. We start rehearsals in two weeks.”
“Don’t tell me you’re not up in your part. I thought you were a perfectionist.”
“My part? You know how many lines I got in the first act? Four. The second act, ten. The third act, ten or eleven. The fourth act, two.”
“What happened to the fifth act? Were you running over? Who has the speaking parts in this play?”
“This play is almost pure pantomime.”
“Jevver see a picture, The Thief, with Ray Milland?”
“No, but I heard about it. Propaganda.”
“No dialog, though.”
“Don’t mention it in the same breath.”
“Then three or four years from now, after you finish your run in this play, you want to do Joan of Arc, you said.”
“I don’t know if we’ll be finished with it in three years.”
“We? You mean you and some writer are collaborating on a new one?”
“Not some writer. A. R. Lev.”
“Who?”
“A. R. Lev, my director in A Pride of Lions.”
“Oh, that A. R. Lev. I thought you were talking about A. R. Lev that works for J. P. Morgan and Company.”
“What’s with this dichotomy of yours all of a sudden? Ha’ past one you were like a high school teen-ager that I wouldn’t give a date. Now you sit here and all you are is destructive. What happened in the meanwhile?”
“I don’t know. I guess I finally figured out what a real jerk you are.”
“Then why are you sitting here in my apartment?”
“Yeah, but I’m not.” He got up. “I just wanted to have the pleasure of telling you. So long, Cuccinello.”
“Nicky! Don’t leave me?”
(1961)
FRANKIE
Frankie had bustled into the shop one afternoon when things were quiet. The usual rush of men who get their late shaves around noon had passed, and there were no haircuts in the shop. Frankie walked in and said: “Who’s the big shot here?” Dimello introduced himself, or rather said: “I am the propri’tor,” and Frankie said he had noticed there were only four barbers but there were six chairs. “I’m a first-class barber,” he said. “You gimme a job, straight commission? I’ll work union or scab; do’ make any difference.”
“Do you drink?” Dimello asked.
“Wuddia got? . . . Oh, you mean do I get drunk? Well, I get drunk, but I never missed a day in my life
from hangover. You do’ needa worry about that. You just gimme a job and you’ll be happy. I’m first class.”
Dimello took him on and Frankie proved an efficient barber. He never seemed to talk to people without their enjoying it. That, of course, was because he knew when not to start a conversation. He made a lot of money for the shop and he wasn’t there two weeks before he had a couple of regulars. He also had had a date with Betty, the manicurist.
Betty always had made it a rule never to go out with any of the barbers because she disliked Italians, but she liked Frankie’s teeth. Besides, he pestered her to death until she said she would go out with him. He didn’t know any girls in New York, he said, and he was getting lonesome, going to the moving pictures by himself. Betty hadn’t been out with a man less than ten years older than herself in God knows how long, and she couldn’t ever remember having been out with a kid ten years younger than she was. So she said she would go to the pictures with him. “How naïve,” she told Marline, her roommate. “Isn’t it naïve of me to be having a date with a kid twenty-five years old and going to the movies with him?”
Frankie came for her and he was something to impress Marline, all right, with a graceful powder-blue suit that buttoned once just below his chest, and a little white stone in his solid-blue tie, and a white shirt with a collar that had long starched points. He was a little short for Betty, but he had an air about him and nice manners. “I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Burns,” he said to Marline. “I heard a lot about you at the shop.” He showed his teeth. “And it was all flattering.” Betty could see that Marline was impressed, all right. Maybe he was only a kid, but he was no mugg. Betty had a lone, favorite epigram which she now thought of: “Guys with gold in their pockets would be swell if they didn’t have a lot of gold in their mouth too.”
They went out and walked to Columbus Circle, at Frankie’s suggestion. On the way over Frankie said: “Got any special idea where you want to put on the feed bag?”
“No, no place special.”
“Oke. Because I was thinking about a Wop place I went to the other night where they got good wine. Me being a Wop I like good wine. Do you like wine? You’re Irish, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m half English and I have Spanish blood in me on my mother’s side. But I like wine, all right.” The fact of the matter was that Betty was no longer so entranced with the novelty of a tame movie. They went to a speakeasy and had a lot of wine, and they both got a little tight. Frankie suggested getting a couple of bottles of wine and going back to Betty’s apartment, but Betty knew that probably Marline’s friend would be there, so she said no. Frankie took her home and she wouldn’t let him come up, not even for a little while.
For the next couple of days he was polite and that was all. One day he said: “How’s Marline?”
“She’s fine.”
“Does she ever ask about little Frankie?”
“Not that I can recall. She’s innarested in a very dear gentleman friend.”
“Oh. Oh-ho-ho.” Frankie smiled. That night he called Marline, who had a date, but she mentioned the call to Betty. The next day at the shop Betty said: “Listen, little boy, it ain’t any of my concern, but just as a friend, if I were you I would lay off calling Marline.”
“She told you, eh?”
“We have no secrets from each other. She is my closest friend. And I just wanna advise you that Marline is innarested in a very dear gentleman friend. In fact she’s ingaged to be married.”
“So am I,” said Frankie, and laughed. He walked away, a few steps, and then he went back and said: “Of course you ain’t jealous by any chance, Betty?”
“Why, you little—!”
“I get it! I get it!” said Frankie.
After that he made Betty’s life a hell. She would be at work on some old punk’s nails or maybe trying to promote a date with one of the “Garden mob,” but Frankie never would let her get to first base. He would interrupt her conversations and look at the man with a we’re-both-men look of understanding, and the prospective date would smile at Frankie and begin to kid Betty, but it wouldn’t be the kind of kidding that leads to dates. The man would say slightly insulting things and laugh and glance around at Frankie, who would laugh too. God knows how many dates Frankie spoiled for Betty.
And when the shop was empty he would stand there, leaning against his chair, smoking a cigarette. He would look over at Betty, and not say a word for a few minutes; then he would say, “Pull your dress down, sweetheart; this here is a dignified shop, eh, Mr. Dimello?” Dimello, who liked Frankie, and liked Betty, too, would smile and mumble something that didn’t matter. Frankie was always making cracks, always tormenting her. But the time that she wanted to kill him was when she came home at four o’clock in the morning and found him there with Marline.
From then on he stopped making cracks, but worse than the cracks were the looks he would give her. Always smiles. Betty wanted to give up her job. She compromised by not living with Marline any more. She got to hating the shop, which she once had liked, and even when she was working on a man’s hands at some chair other than Frankie’s, she wouldn’t start a conversation, nor would she continue one that had been started. Her tips dwindled.
This went on for six or seven weeks. Then one day two large men with flat fat faces came in the shop. One of the barbers snapped to attention and indicated his chair, but the man who was in the lead didn’t even take off his hat. He walked straight to Frankie’s chair and said: “Now no fuss, Jimmie. Finish the man’s shave, becuss it’s going to be the last you’ll do for about ten years.”
Frankie turned around and grinned. “Well, Murph, it took yuz long enough. How’s every little thing in Phillie?”
Frankie finished the man’s shave and then took off his own white coat. He went up to Dimello and whispered a few words, and Dimello reached in his pocket and gave Frankie a couple of twenties. Frankie shook hands with him and was just about to leave. He remembered Betty. “How about a little goodbye kiss, sweetheart?”
Betty looked dumb for a second, and then said: “Why not?” Frankie kissed her.
“Always give the ladies a break,” he said, and departed.
(1932)
GOOD-BYE, HERMAN
Miller was putting his key in the lock. He had two afternoon papers folded under one arm, and a package—two dress shirts which he had picked up at the laundry because he was going out that night. Just when the ridges of the key were fitting properly, the door was swung open and it was his wife. She was frowning. “Hello,” he said.
She held up her finger. “Come in the bedroom,” she said. She was distressed about something. Throwing his hat on a chair in the foyer, he followed her to the bedroom. She turned and faced him as he put down his bundle and began taking off his coat.
“What’s up?” he said.
“There’s a man in there. He came to see you. He’s been here for an hour and he’s driving me crazy.”
“Who is he? What’s it all about?”
“He’s from Lancaster, and he said he was a friend of your father’s.”
“Well, has he been causing any trouble?”
“His name is Wasserfogel, or something like that.”
“Oh, hell. I know. Herman Wasservogel. He was my father’s barber. I knew he was coming. I just forgot to tell you.”
“Oh, you did. Well, thanks for a lovely hour. Hereafter, when you’re expecting somebody, I wish you’d let me know beforehand. I tried to reach you at the office. Where were you? I tried everywhere I could think of. You don’t know what it is to suddenly have a perfectly strange man—”
“I’m sorry, darling. I just forgot. I’ll go in.”
He went to the living room, and there sat a little old man. In his lap was a small package, round which he had wrapped his hands. He was looking down at the package, and there was a faint smile on his face, which Miller
knew to be the man’s customary expression. His feet, in high, black shoes, were flat on the floor and parallel with each other, and Miller guessed that this was the way the little old man had been sitting ever since he first arrived.
“Herman, how are you? I’m sorry I’m late.”
“Oh, that’s all right. How are you, Paul?”
“Fine. You’re looking fine, Herman. I got your letter and I forgot to tell Elsie. I guess you know each other by now,” he said as Elsie came into the room and sat down. “My wife, Elsie, this is Herman Wasservogel, an old friend of mine.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Herman.
Elsie lit a cigarette.
“How about a drink, Herman? A little schnapps? Glass of beer?”
“No thank you, Paul. I just came; I wanted to bring this here. I just thought maybe you would want it.”
“I was sorry I didn’t see you when I was home for the funeral, but you know how it is. It’s such a big family, I never got around to the shop.”
“Henry was in. I shaved him three times.”
“Yes, Henry was there longer than I was. I was only there overnight. I had to come right back to New York after the funeral. Sure you won’t have a beer?”
“No, I just wanted to bring this in to give to you.” Herman stood up and handed the little package to Paul.
“Gee, thanks a lot, Herman.”
“What’s that? Mr. Wasserfogel wouldn’t show it to me. It’s all very mysterious.” Elsie spoke without looking at Herman, not even when she mentioned his name.
“Oh, he probably thought I’d told you.”
Herman stood while Paul undid the package, revealing a shaving mug. “This was my father’s. Herman shaved him every day of his life, I guess.”
“Well, not every day. The Daddy didn’t start shaving till he was I guess eighteen years old, and he used to go away a lot. But I guess I shave him more than all the other barbers put together.”
“Damn right you did. Dad always swore by you, Herman.”
“Yes, I guess that’s right,” said Herman.
“See, Elsie?” said Paul, holding up the mug. He read the gold lettering: “‘J. D. Miller, M.D.’”