“Francesca.”
She laughed a little. “Well, anyway I don’t have to be jealous of that bum. The beer, Tommy, the beer.”
He went to get the beer gladly. From now on the waiting would not be so bad.
(1947)
PLEASURE
The taxi-drivers in front of the Coffee Pot said, “Hello, baby; hello, sweetheart; hi, kid; how you doin’, baby; hey, what’s your hurry, sweetheart?” She walked on. They kept it up until she turned her head slightly in their direction and called back at them, “Nuts!” She turned the corner, and her heels felt as though they were biting into the sidewalk, the way they always felt when she was angry. Every time she passed the Coffee Pot, every time she came near the taxi-drivers, she had her mind made up that she was not going to say a word to them. “I won’t give them that satisfaction,” she would say to herself. And every time she snapped back at them, it made her angry. Some evenings she would be on her way home in a good humor; tired, all right, but with a good day’s work behind her and that much more money earned. Then she would come to the Coffee Pot, and the same thing would happen over again, and she would get home full of hatred and with her feet hurting again.
Down the block she walked until she came to a house with a broken iron fence in front of the basement, and went up the stone steps and inside. She hesitated at the door, found it unlocked, climbed three flights of stairs, and entered her room. She walked with her hand in front of her in the dark until she touched the bulb in the light fixture. She turned the switch once and the light went on and off, then she turned it again and this time the light stayed on. She pulled down the shade in the single window, and undressed and hung up her clothes. She drank a glass of water and then filled the washbasin and washed her stockings and hung them across the newspaper on top of the radiator. Then she opened the small package she had brought in with her, and laid a cinnamon bun on the table.
Five months since she had been really hungry. July, August, September, October, November. Almost five months, not quite, and there had been plenty to eat every day. At the cafeteria where she worked, first as dishwasher, but now as a clean-up girl, they provided two meals a day, and her pay was sixteen dollars a week. Now and then there was a dime for her. Her job as clean-up girl consisted of wiping off tables, seeing to it that the people had water to drink, keeping the chairs in their places. She wore a maid’s uniform and cap, black with white collar and apron and black-and-white cap, and it looked all right. There was one mean-dispositioned old guy who often left a dime for her, and sometimes there would be people with kids whom she helped, and they would leave a dime. Never more than a dime, but a dime covered the “L” fare. When they first gave her the job of clean-up girl, she thought of herself as a sort of hostess, and finally one day she even said to the manager, “I guess I’m a sort of a hostess on this job.”
“How do you mean?” he had said.
“Why, I make them comfortable. You know,” she said. “Keep their glasses full, and see that they have napkins and stuff.”
“Yeah?” he had said. “Well, don’t get that idea. You’re still gettin’ dishwasher’s scale, and any funny business and back you go.” It was the first time she realized that the manager had sized her up. He had sized her up the same way the hack-drivers had sized her up. They just took one look at you, and they thought they knew all about you. She knew she didn’t look altogether American. Why should she? Her mother was Polish, her father was Polish; so why should she look American?
She opened the bureau drawer and took out the candy box in which she always kept six or seven dollars. She figured that if a sneak thief came in her room while she was at work, he would open the bureau drawer first and take a look at the cheap rings and necklaces and say the hell with that, and then he would open the candy box and take the six or seven dollars and beat it. Now she saw that the money was still there. She put it back in the drawer and opened the door of the built-in closet. She took out two cheap suitcases, and then she lifted a loose board in the floor and saw that the little red-enameled box was where she had left it. She opened the box and counted the money: one hundred and twenty dollars. Every week she made herself put five bucks in the box. Five in the box, plus three she paid for the room, plus fifty cents a week for the “L,” plus sixty cents a week cigarette money, plus fifty cents a week on the winter coat and another half a buck on the suit, and two bucks a week she sent her married sister—she wished she could account for the rest, but somehow she never could. She didn’t really have to buy papers, because people were always leaving them in the cafeteria, and there were always enough to go around among the employees, but she kept on buying them because the man at the “L” station was blind. And she went to the movies a couple of times a week. “There ought to be two hundred and forty bucks there,” she said, “instead of a hundred and twenty, if I’d of saved ten bucks a week.” She closed the box, locked it, and put it back under the flooring. “But what the hell, a person has to have some pleasure,” she said. And so saying, she lit a whole cigarette.
(1934)
PORTISTAN ON THE PORTIS
One night not so long ago I was having dinner with a friend of mine, Jimmy Shott, who used to be a good foot-in-the-door reporter until he accepted a lucrative position in the advertising game. Jimmy took me to an Italian place in the West Forties, and the idea was I would meet Damon Runyon. Well, Damon did not show, but just after Jimmy and I sat down in came two prize-fight managers. One of them was an older man, around fifty, who looked not unlike an uncle of mine. His name, and also the name of my uncle, is Mike. The other manager was Hymie, and he right away began talking fighters, and was very proud of one of his boys, who had won the decision in a preliminary to the Joe Louis exhibition in which Max Baer was the third man in the ring. At one time I covered a great many fights and I long ago learned that all you have to do to get along with fight managers is to nod and keep nodding and put on a slightly sleepy look and occasionally ask either a very dumb or a very smart question (and they are interchangeable). This went on while Jimmy and I ate the ravioli, and then Jimmy interrupted Hymie and asked him to give the wop waiter some double-talk, which isn’t pig-Latin, which isn’t anything. Hymie smiled, very pleased, and called the waiter. He dug his fork in a piece of veal and turned it over and over, and said to the waiter, “You portis on the portistan on the veal.”
“Sir?” said the waiter, bowing.
“Portis. Portis on the portistan on the veal portis, and the stamportis,” said Hymie, continuing to turn the veal over as though he had a sword with a red cape hanging from it, like a bull-fighter.
“I don’t understn’ sir,” said the waiter.
“God damn it! I said the portis on the portistan on the veal portis and the veal—call the head waiter!”
The head waiter already was on his way, and Hymie repeated. The head waiter shooed the waiter away and said, “Once again will you repeat it please?” Then Jimmy burst out laughing and the head waiter caught on and laughed too, but not heartily. He didn’t altogether get it, because Hymie, who is thirty-five years old, has the expression you think you see in the pictures of cops whose widows received yesterday the Departmental Medal of Honor. “Aah, what the hell,” said Hymie.
As we were getting ready to go, Hymie asked us if we should like to go to Newark to see some fights, and we said we should. He would only be a little while finishing his dinner and we waited. While we sat there smoking and drinking coffee he and I discovered that we had been in Hollywood at the same time, and of course we knew a lot of people in common. He knew bigger people than I did, and two of his pals—but the best—were an actor and a crooner. Every morning the crooner would call him and say: “What do you hear from the mob, Hymie?” And Hymie would reply: “The mains are coming to town. The semi-mains just took over Kansas City.” And the crooner would say: “What do you hear from Louie the Lug, Hymie?” And Hymie would say: “Louie the Lug? He??
?s from the opposition. A wrong gee, Bing. A wrong gee. Strictly an opposition guy.” And then: “We’re gunna straighten him out, Bing. I sent for my iron-rod gun moll, and we’re gunna straighten out Louie the Lug as soon as the mains get in town. The semi-mains just took over Kansas City.” This kind of conversation would go on every day, the crooner talking movie gangster slang to Hymie and Hymie replying in kind.
Hymie finished his dinner and said good night to Mike, who was leaving, and then the three of us went out and got in Hymie’s car, being joined by Tony, a friend of Hymie’s. We drove like hell through traffic and down the elevated highway to the entrance to the tunnel. Hymie paid the toll, handing the Port Authority cop a dollar, and as he got his change Hymie said, just above a whisper: “Wuddia hippum the mob?”
The cop paid no attention, and Hymie half turned around and said to me: “An opposition guy, John. We’ll let the semi-mains take care of him. We’ll get him straightened out.” By that time we had reached the cop who takes the toll tickets.
“What d’ya hear from the mob?” said Hymie slowly.
The cop looked at him and then at the rest of us and said: “What mob?” but not liking it a bit.
Hymie gave the car the gas and we went down into the tunnel.
In New Jersey our troubles began the moment we left the Pulaski Skyway—the wrong way. We were in Newark, but not anywhere in Newark that we wanted to be. So every few blocks Hymie would stop and ask for directions. We were in a tough district, but that did not deter Hymie. After getting directions from boys hanging around poolrooms, from motormen and cops and women, Hymie would whisper to our informants: “Wuddia hippum the mob?”
He always got an answer. The young men who you could tell were mob timber would say they hadn’t heard anything for a couple of days, or give some answer which showed they were aware that there was a mob. The motormen would just laugh and not say anything, afraid to say the wrong thing. The same with the cops, except that they did not laugh. They were simply afraid to say the wrong thing (our car was black and shiny and new). Once we encountered a wise kid who wanted to give us some repartee, and Hymie said: “Hey, waaaaid a minute, waid a minute, there, wise guy. A wronggo. An opposition guy. Maybe we better straighten ’im out.”
“Hymie, we gotta get to them fights,” said Tony.
“Yeah, but first we oughta spray this wise guy with hot lead, from our Thompson sub-machine-gun iron. This is a wise guy.” But we drove on.
• • •
Hymie was in the corner for two boys or maybe three, all of them his brother’s fighters, his brother also being a manager in that neck of the woods. Hymie is a good man in a corner, and I remember his boy won in one fight, another fight his boy was robbed, and I forget the other. We were sitting in the second or third row, and between rounds Hymie would talk to his boy, but just as he was climbing down from the ring he would call over to us: “Wuddia hippum the mob?” And we would point to the opposing fighter and yell out: “An opposition guy!”
“A wronggo,” Hymie would say.
After the fights we went to the dressing-room while Hymie received. He also gave. He gave to the referee, who was on the take two ways. He slipped five bucks to one of the fight reporters (it is a pleasure to go out with someone like Hymie and find out which reporters, big or little, will accept cash gratuities). He picked Al Roth to beat Tony Canzoneri at the Garden (Canzoneri, of course, won). He spent a little time with the best of the boys he had seconded, trying, as he had done during the fight, to tell the boy that in short he would have no hands left if he persisted in punching Negroes in the head. After half an hour or so we left to continue our entertainment.
Our hosts were a handsome young man who was introduced only as Harry, and a man who looked like Warren Hymer, the movie actor, and was called Blubber. Harry told us that the week before he had organized the organ-grinders at two dollars a week per grinder. They took us to a very attractive bar and Harry called to the singer, Mabel or Melba, to come over and join us. “Sit with Hymie,” said Harry. She sat next to Hymie, and he began right away:
“You uh portistan on the portis the joint?”
“Wha’?”
“Portistan. On the portis. Harry said you’d portis on the portistan the joint. That’s what he told me.”
“Liss-sunn,” said Melba.
“Go on,” said Harry. “Answer him yes or no.”
“Well, if you say so,” said Melba.
“I said so,” said Harry.
“Well, then,” said Melba.
“Oh, I don’t want it that way,” said Hymie. “Listen, you, Melba or whatever your name is, if you portistan the stanportis—”
“I said I would didn’t I?” she said.
“Okay, then I buy you a corsadge. You be my gun moll.”
“Say, what is this?” said Melba.
“Sure. I buy you a corsadge and you put the shooting iron in it.”
“Do I have to?” she asked Harry.
“What he says,” said Harry.
“I tell you what I’ll do for you,” said Hymie. “I’ll turn over my beer racket to you. I gave it to my sister but I’ll take it back from her and give it to you if you’ll be my gun moll. How’d you like to be my gun moll?”
“She’s too dumb,” said Harry. “She don’t know what you’re talking about. Let’s eat. I want a steak. Who else wants a steak?”
The waiter came over (he didn’t have to come very far) for our order, and Hymie said: “Listen, you donkey, Melba is going to be my gun moll so I want a steak, but I want a small portis with a portis on top, see? Then garnish it with a stanportis and a portis medium—”
“Medium well done, sir?” said the waiter.
“Hey, I don’t even think you’re listening. Now get this, a small steak with a portis, but Melba wants a portistan portis on the ubbadate stanportis steak, without the prawn portis. And a cup of tea, on account of Melba’s going to be my gun moll, aren’t you, Stupid?”
“Ha ha,” she said.
“Oh, a wronggo,” said Hymie.
“What’s that, a wronggo?” said Harry.
“You hear him? Say, what are we, in the provinces or something? You don’t know what wronggo is? Wait till the mains hear that. The mains and the semi-mains. They just took over Bushwick from the opposition and what they’re gonna do, they’re gonna take over this territory next week.”
“No,” said Blubber.
“He’s nuts,” said Harry. “Don’t pay no attention to him when he’s like this.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Melba.
“Not you,” said Harry. “You’re his gun moll.” At that Harry burst out laughing, the only time he laughed all night.
(1935)
THE PORTLY GENTLEMAN
Every evening before going to the theater he would eat a meal that for most men would have been dinner, but Don Tally called it a snack. Sometimes it would be a filet mignon covered with sauce Bearnaise, with a side order of hashed-in-cream potatoes; other times it would be four double lamb chops which he would pick up in his fingers and gnaw to the bone. When it was the lamb chops he would have a finger bowl brought to the table and his ablutions were a small theatrical performance even though he might be alone. His hands never forgot that they belonged to an actor—and that was the way it was; he did not consciously make a business of the elaborate dipping and drying of his hands. The hands did it themselves, with a separate instinct.
Whether he ate the filet or the lamb chops or the minute steak, and no matter what side dishes he consumed, his dessert was always the same: chocolate ice cream bathed in Kirsch, with half a dozen Maraschino cherries soaking in the bottom of the dish. Even at Palmedo’s, which was not an expensive restaurant, the dessert cost him two-fifty. “Don’t you think you could bring that down a little? Two-fifty for a chocolate sundae?” he once said to Palmedo. r />
“It will never be less,” said Palmedo. “I would charge you more if I thought it would make you give them up.”
“It might, but I doubt it,” said Don Tally.
“I doubt it also. But I don’t doubt that it will kill you. Even you, Don. My God, fellow, you will get the diabetes. I like to see a man eat, even those cream potatoes, my nice rich sauces. But seven times a week you cannot eat that mess.”
“I can and do, Alfredo Palmedo. I only weigh two-ninety, and that’s exactly ten pounds over a year ago. Do you know what I eat after the show?”
“Yes, a thick steak. Is good for you.”
“What you don’t understand, my devoted boniface, is how much energy I burn up in the theater. A man my size needs a lot of fuel to do two dances and a song eight times a week. The meat and potatoes keep me going, but the ice cream and Kirsch get me started. You wouldn’t understand that.”
“I understand that you eat that slop even when you are not in a show. That’s what I understand.”
“I know you love me, Alfredo. As soon as your hair gets completely white we can go steady.”
“You, you, you! Some day I hit you, Don. I positively.”
“If you do, I’ll cry. And I’m a horrible sight when I cry.”
“Aah, you make for me disgust,” said Palmedo, and walked away. Whenever Palmedo was driven to the personal insult he would stay in the kitchen until Don Tally left for the theater, and on such occasions when Don Tally asked for the bill, the waiter would say, “No check. Maison. The boss says no check, Mr. Tally.”
“I cannot insult a man and take his money,” Alfredo once, and only once, explained.
“We ought to work out some kind of an arrangement,” Don Tally said. “I’ll let you call me a son of a bitch, and you can give me my dessert for—oh—sixty cents. How’s that?”