I don't, but I'd like to. I tell him who my boss is and he hunts him
up in the phone book and calls him. He says, "This is Rabelais Pettis.
I want to buy your Fifth Avenue Tavern. How much?... Sold!"
And so help me, the boss comes down and Rabelais hauls bills from
every pocket and lays it on the bar in a great big pile. Then he has
the boss sign the place over to me. Me, Mike Murphy. I figure tomorrow
when he wakes up broke I'll have to give it back. But tonight I own
it. I'm real proud.
But I don't get to enjoy it. He says, "Mike, let's do the town." Can
you refuse a guy who just gives you a thirty thousand dollar property?
We do the town. We do the girl shows, and he yells at all the dames
and tries to date the usherettes until we finally get pitched out. We
get pitched out of five before I steer him to a hash house.
"Phooey," he says. "We'll go to the Buster for a steak." That's our
fanciest place where the food starts at ten dollars. We have two of
the biggest steaks I ever saw with champagne and stuff, and so help
me, when Rabelais tries to date the floor show girls, instead of
getting pitched out, we walk out with two of the cutest kids I ever
hope to see. Only they're young enough to be our daughters or maybe
grand-daughters even.
Rabelais is big hearted if not big in any other way. He says to his
kid, a redhead a foot taller than he, "Do you have a fur coat?"
"No, Rabelais." She learns fast that he likes the name now.
"Ha," he says. "Then we'll get some."
"In the summer?" I asks.
"We'll make it winter," Rabelais says. "I'm tired of summer. Besides
in '56 there's a new bar in town and it's a pip."
Now the three of us are halfway sober and we just look at each other
and shrug. But Rabelais acts and talks normal enough. He calls a cab
and has us hauled to an old cottage in the suburbs. He waves the cabby
off with a twenty dollar bill. When we go inside, he points across the
way. "I live there. This is my secret laboratory."
We think he is kidding us some more because there isn't anything but
dust and cobwebs in the place. But he takes us to the basement and
there is a whole mess of junk lying around. There are bars and gears
and wires and some stuff that doesn't make any sense at all. It has
cobwebs and dust on it too.
"My super machines," he says. "They don't work."
The redhead looks a little as if she thinks he's nuts. But what can
she do? Already he's given her a hundred dollar bill just for fun.
"But," he says, leading us into another room, "this one does work."
There isn't anything in the room but a big metal plate on the floor
with a wooden bench on it and levers and rods in front of the bench.
"Climb on," Rabelais says.
We sit on the bench to humor him and he pulls one lever as far left as
he can, then another a little ways, then another, and a fourth. Then
he twists a rod to the right. The lights go out and a cold draft of
air comes in through a window. When the lights come on the air is
still cold. The girls are shivering.
"Three p.m., January 12, 1956," says Rabelais. "Let's go get fur
coats."
So we go out the way we came in and it's daylight. And there's snow on
the ground. The cottage is the same but the street is a highway now.
Rabalais hails the fanciest looking cab I ever see and we get driven
to town where he buys all of us fur coats in a store I never heard of.
Then we go to a dinner club that makes the Buster look like a greasy
spoon. None of us can say a word.
After he pays the check, Rabelais says, "I'm short of cash. Let's go
to the bank."
"Banks ain't open," I remind him.
"Mine is," he says and makes a phone call. Pretty soon a big fancy
limousine with a chauffeur drives up and we all pile in. I manage to
balk long enough to buy a newspaper. Sure enough, the date is January
12, 1956.
We go to the financial section and right past my tavern. It's all
lighted up and fancy looking and there's a big sign saying, "MIKE'S"
outside.