Madcrap starred wistfully into his drink. “Just a fantasy, Nails, an unobtainable dream.”
Nails O’Leary looked intently at Madcrap, as if this strange new illness might consume him before her very eyes.
She decided to change the subject.
“What’d Louie want? He don’t come out of his office for nothin’ – unless it’s to count the take.”
Madcrap shook his head. “Aw, he’s just pissed ‘cause he thinks I’m laggin’ on a collection.”
“Are you?”
Madcrap thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I guess you could say I am.”
Nails knew Madcrap’s reputation for being tough and demanding on behalf of Louie The Lip.
“Why?”
The small man shrugged.
“You ain’t never dragged your heels before, Bernie. Why now?”
“I guess I’m just gettin’ soft. This Urbano, who owes Louie, has been workin’ real hard tryin’ to make a life for him and his daughter, and he’s had some bad luck. Louie won’t cut him no slack, so now he wants me to go teach him a lesson.” “You gotta problem with that?” Nails echoed Louie. “Yeah, I’ve got a problem with it.” Madcrap thought about the knife in his pocket and the delicate flesh it was designated to carve. “It ain’t right. The girl didn’t do nothin’ wrong. It was her old man what borrowed the money.” “You don’t want to do it, do you?” It was more a statement than a question.
“No, I don’t.”
“Then don’t.”
Madcrap knew Nails O’Leary was slow, even maybe a little dimwitted, but he didn’t think she was stupid. She knew exactly what would happen to anyone who crossed The Lip. Louie would never allow it to go unpunished, especially if he thought his reputation on the street had been damaged. Nails saw Madcrap’s startled expression and immediately reached out to apologize for holding out a shred of irrational hope.
“I’m sorry, Bernie. I shouldn’t a said that. I wasn’t thinkin’. You know you gotta do whatcha supposed to.
Madcrap Limmenkov continued to stare at the waitress, his
eyes still wide in wonder. It had never occurred to him to go
against orders. Oh sure, he’d bend the rules a little here and there, take a few shortcuts but, bottom line, Louie The Lip’s dirty little chores always got done.
“Get me another Scotch, will ya, Nails?” Madcrap tossed off the remainder of his glass and held it out. Nails didn’t like the expression clouding the collector’s eyes. She could tell he was thinking hard, real hard, and she knew that whenever she tried that, it usually got her into big trouble.
“Bernie — “
“Gimme a drink, Nails, and don’t worry about it.” Reluctantly, Nails slipped out of the booth. She paused for a moment, but decided to keep her mouth shut and do what she was told. She was used to that.
The establishment was getting crowded. Halfway to the bar, a table of hearty drinkers waylaid Nails with a monumental order. She’d learned a long time ago to take care of the full-paying customers before accommodating what Louie called the “discounts,” such as his friends and employees who drank cut-rate.
It was almost ten minutes before Nails returned with Madcrap’s drink on a tray, just like a regular customer. She sat back down in the booth.
“So whatcha gonna do, Bernie?”
Madcrap reached for his scotch and smiled. “I’m going to have this drink and then go see my girl.” Nails checked her watch. “You better make it quick.
Louie’ll be out to check the till in a few minutes.”
Madcrap sipped, relaxed. “I don’t think so.” That’s when Nails noticed the blood splattered cuffs of Madcrap’s usually impeccably clean shirt. She looked nervously over her shoulder at Louie The Lip’s closed office door. All was quiet. Suspicion darkened her brow as a thought swam up through the muddled murk of her mind.
“Say, Bernie, who the hell is this girl you’ve been talkin’ about?
Madcrap grinned. “Mae Urbano. Salvatore’s daughter.
FROM BEGINNING TO BEGINNING
This is for my daughter
In the beginning, as always, ours was a quiet love, an undemonstrative acknowledgment of importance to each other made most frequently in silence.
The night Samantha was born, while her dear mother slept in the valley of exhaustion, I held the tiny child in my arms like a schoolboy cradling a dozen uncrated eggs. When I pushed aside the cotton blanket, I could feel the velvet skin of her small chest and beneath it the rapid pulse of her heart. It was so fast, like a frightened bird beating for escape against the bars of her frail young life. For Samantha and I, life was a constant commencement of new beginnings: first steps, fumbling words, erupting teeth, scrapes and bruises, disappointments and accomplishments. I stood on the corner the day her mother took her to school for the first time, afraid to join them because it would be too difficult to leave her there in the care of strangers. But she survived this new beginning, as did I.
The time she fell from a swing and broke her arm, I rushed to her side, anxious to cuddle her from pain, but she bravely pushed me away.
“I’m a big girl now, Daddy. I can walk by myself.” Silently, I swallowed my concern and drove to the doctor’s office with my precious cargo courageously wincing beside me.
That dank gray day her mother died was not as brutal as
the rainy one on which we buried her. Samantha stood beside
me in the cemetery, twelve-year-old eyes filled like winter lakes waiting to drown the world in her sorrow, but she bore up quietly, gallantly refusing the arm I offered, enduring her grief alone as we both faced another new beginning in our two lives. There was a mettle in the child that solidified into a steel backbone as the years passed. Walking proudly through our divergent days, my beautiful daughter was the definition of independence as we moved from one new beginning to another. It was never in my mind to take that self-reliance from her. No matter how much I ached to have her rely on me, I could never tell her of this parental need.
The low-cut dress was much too expensive; her hair was piled and swirled around her head, coifed into a too-adult mound; the heels of her new shoes stilted a bit too steeply. But I praised her taste and complemented her appearance as she flitted nervously through the house in a delightful cloud of perfume, preparing for her senior prom. I tried not to resent or suspect the handsome young lad poised at our door in his rented tuxedo. I thought he was a bit too old for her on that night of slight excesses, but what could I say? Samantha had chosen him for this special event, silently reminding me that at this stage in her life, each beginning for her would be a small ending for me. It was the nature of things. I knew I had to let go, but it was hard.
I suppose public officials are schooled in the craft of imparting bad news, but the policeman who hastily called was either too tired or, perhaps, had become inured to the carnage that too often litters our streets with shattered hopes and fractured dreams.
The boy had been drinking and driving. He was going to be okay. But Samantha...
I wanted to laugh at the officer’s panic, which was starting to become mine, and the doctor’s diagnosis, which surely must have been precipitous.
Samantha lay quietly under a blanket in a room filled with plastic tubes and the low-pitched hum of electronic engines. Her perfection was evident even from outside the window of the Intensive Care Unit. There wasn’t a mark on my lovely child.
“It’s not what you see,” the young doctor assured me sadly. “It’s what you can’t see: internal injuries.” He shook his head as if he too regretted the circumstance that brought us together in this sterile atmosphere of invisible pain. “You’d better go to her; there’s no telling how much longer...” His voice trailed off, reluctant to remind me how brittle life is, and this one in particular.
The air that washed across the alabaster skin of my daughter was vacuumed, clean and cool. The rhythm of pulsating machine
s measured life in green numbers and jagged lines. The neat white blanket, pulled up under her chin, contradicted the twisted fragile mortality that lay beneath. I didn’t know how long it had been since I had actually touched my precious child. Perhaps as long ago as those treasured midsummer nights when she was still nursing at her mother’s breast and afterward I would take her out to the darkened living room to rock her back to sleep as I sang Christmas carols, the only songs whose words I could ever remember.
But now I regretted the years of cool consent to her self-reliance, the months of inarticulate affection as she grew into a young woman, the days of passive acceptance when she thought she knew everything. And all the missed opportunities when I could have said I loved her.
I rested the back of my hand in the hollow of her throat and felt the faint pulse of life as it slowly ebbed. The despair that filled my own heart waxed and waned with its every diminishing beat. I remembered that day so many years earlier when I had clumsily held Samantha in my arms and felt her heart would burst free from her throbbing breast in exaltation of new life. Now that ancient fear became a reality.
She sighed one last time, sweet air vibrating against my fingertips as it whispered in her throat.
And we both embarked on another new beginning.
RADZINSKY’S LUNCH
The truth was, whenever Radzinsky said, “the truth of the matter is,” you could count on it being as far from the truth as possible.
When Pete Radzinsky told us he’d had lunch that day with Marilyn Monroe, and ended his tale with, “...so help me, God,” we all knew that it had to be a bald-faced lie; but he told a good story.
Paddy Ryan snorted, “You know, Radzinsky, you’re so full of it, if you tilt your head and it’ll run out your ear.” Radzinsky raised a liver-spotted hand in solemn pledge. “I swear to God; it’s the truth.”
“Marilyn Monroe’s been dead for almost forty-five years, Radzinsky,” Solly Molina stated.
“That’s what everyone thinks,” Radzinsky said, shaking his large mane of white hair. “It’s just like Elvis and some of those other guys who got tired of being hounded all the time; she faked her death and she’s living in North Hollywood.” “And she just walked into Nate N Al’s today and sat down next to you to have a pastrami sandwich,” I said sarcastically. “Chicken salad, hold the extra mayo,” Radzinsky replied matter-of-factly. “She’s put on a few pounds, and really has to watch it.”
Paddy and Solly both laughed and I just shook my head in incredulity.
Pete Radzinsky, Paddy Ryan, Solly Molina, and I were in Tom Bergen’s on Fairfax, just down the street from CBS, having our usual Thursday night round of drinks. The four of us had been in the business since Hector was a pup. We’d all come out from New York in the ‘60’s. I was still pounding out B movie scripts, rewriting other guys’ novels for TV movies-of-the-week. Paddy moved from one sitcom to another; Solly was part of the army that wrote Leno’s stuff over in Burbank, and Radzinsky freelanced his script-doctoring talents wherever he could get a gig.
“No, honest. It was Marilyn. She goes by her original name, Norma Jean. But she still thinks and talks like Marilyn. You know what she said when we were about half way through lunch?”
We all shook our heads, none of us wanting to dignify this nonsense with verbal approval.
“She said: ‘Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.’” I think I had heard that famous quote attributed to Monroe years ago, but I didn’t want to ruin Pete’s story.
A week later, we all regretted the good laugh we’d had at Radzinsky’s expense when he was killed, hit by a taxi on Rodeo Drive.
“I had to go and look at the spot,” Solly Molina said that next Thursday. “I couldn’t believe it; how many taxis are you going to find on any given day in LA. This ain’t New York, for chrissake! Besides, you can’t go fast enough on Rodeo without running out of street. Since I was over there, I went into Nate N Al’s for a corned beef on rye. Had lunch with Radzinsky’s Marilyn.”
“Marilyn Monroe?” Paddy asked, bemused. “One and the same. Radzinsky was right. She’s alive and well.”
“And eating at Nate N Al’s?” I added.
“Uh-huh. Nice lady. Won’t talk about the Kennedy’s, but willing to tell Billy Wilder stories ‘til the cows come home.” Paddy and I looked at each other over the rims of our glasses and our eyebrows wondered about Solly’s mental stability.
Solly Molina died halfway through Leno’s monologue on Monday night. Someone said Jay had screwed up one of Solly’s jokes and Solly was so pissed, he choked on a roast beef sandwich.
Paddy Ryan and I faced each other over a very empty table in the bar at The Biltmore.
“What the hell’s going on?” he moaned. “Two weeks and two gone. I know we’re a bunch of old farts, but this is ridiculous.”
“That’s what comes from having lunch with Marilyn Monroe,” I said grinning.
“You think?”
“I was kidding, Paddy. They were putting us on about Monroe. It’s just coincidence that they died a week apart.” “I don’t know. They both seemed pretty serious. I think I’ll stop in at Nate N Al’s and check it out.” “Tell La Monroe I said, ‘hi,’” I chortled. Now, Paddy Ryan wasn’t that old, and a heart attack was probably a very logical conclusion to his profligate lifestyle, but coming on top of Pete Radzinsky’s and Solly Molina’s recent passings, it was more than I could tolerate. After three funerals in as many weeks, I decided to go to Nate N Al’s myself.
The famous restaurant on Beverly Drive was just as I remembered: large, well lit, crowded and permeated with the smells of good chicken soup and hot pastrami. Actors, agents, writers and wannabe’s filled the Naugahyde booths, and I had to wait twenty minutes before some sweet young thing with casting couch aspirations could seat me.
There was no way, I thought, that anyone with any claim to fame could possible sneak in and out of Nate N Al’s without causing a stir; and if the appearance of the famous or infamous were rare enough, it would generate a mention by Liz Smith or Army Archerd in their respective columns. That’s probably why I was startled when she slipped unobtrusively into the booth across from me and blessed me with one of her famous pouting smiles framed in bright red lipstick. The small black mole on glistening white skin winked at me, and waterfalls of platinum blond hair cascaded about her shoulders — It was Monroe.
Solly was right, she had put on a few pounds, but then she always tended toward the chunky; that was one of her endearing charms. Still, she looked pretty damn good for a woman who would have been almost eighty — if she hadn’t been dead for over forty years!
I was alarmed when she sat down, apprehensive as she addressed me by name, and even more disturbed when, in that familiar little girl voice, she calmly ordered a “chicken salad, hold the extra mayo” as if it were the most normal request in the world.
But when I looked over her shoulder and saw Paddy Ryan, Solly Molina and Pete Radzinsky out on the sidewalk, waiting for me to join them — that’s when I really panicked.
A HOUSE IN THE SUBURBS
“The primary purpose of the female of the species is to nurture and raise the offspring of the male,” Howard Allwood frequently told the masculine sales contingent at his auto dealership. Then with a sly smile and a rapid shift of eyes to insure one of the few female employees was not within earshot, he would add: “And of course, a little of the ol’ push-push.” This latter addendum was usually punctuated with the appropriate hand gestures to leave no doubt as to what he referred.
Heavy with child and tired of the daily drudgery of hauling her growing girth downtown by bus to her secretarial job - her husband, the auto dealer, discouraged the high expense of driving and parking downtown - Carla Allwood prayed that she would never have to work again.
When Howard and Carla’s first child, Leo, was born, Howard could do no less than support his own oft-
phrased contention regarding women and insist that his wife stay home to properly care for, nurture and raise his son. Even though it meant an adjustment to the level of their income, Harry decided that it was his primary responsibility to secure for his son the best possible environment in which to be raised.
After some serious thought, he also felt that the child’s developmental welfare could be appropriately attended to only by a move out of the city.
The reduction of income, along with the increased expense
of a new mortgage, would just have to be compensated for by a
Winter Dreams more economical approach to this new suburban lifestyle by his wife, who no longer contributed monetarily to the benefit of the relationship.
The rim of the bowl, which is the Los Angeles basin, is lined with small communities where pavement and long backyards dissolve into the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains and the Angeles National Forest. Their varying degrees of wealth and luxury are in direct proportion to age and accessibility to the metropolitan area where most of the homeowners are compelled to make the vast amounts of money necessary to support the dubious splendors of semi-isolated weekend barbecues.
The tract in the foothills north of La Crescenta was just old enough and just far enough from downtown Los Angeles to be within Howard and Carla’s newly reduced budget. The house was not especially large, however the pie shaped wedge of land, whose point upon which it was situated, was certainly big enough to support a small herd of sheep. In fact, Carla facetiously pointed out that it might not be a bad idea to buy a few goats just to keep the weeds in the “back forty” from inundating the small lawn and patio close to the house. A long rambling fence, an ugly amalgam of wood, chicken and barbed wire strung on metal posts, defined the rear of the property. None of which were effective in either the elimination or suppression of the wild brush and its covert population of rodents and other annoying varmints. The homes of the neighbors were all relatively close, occupying the hub of the wheel that widened out toward the uninhabitable hillsides behind them.