By five o'clock Saturday morning, Lennox had walked himself to
exhaustion. He slipped into the apartment in 33 Knickerbocker Square
and went to bed. At nine o'clock he was shot out of bed as by a cannon.
He dressed, went downstairs, picked up his mail and left the house. Two
envelopes were from the Grabinett office. They contained his script fee
and his royalty for the "Who He?" show of December 18th, a total of
seven hundred and fifty dollars.
The banks were closed on Saturday. Lennox went to a bookie he knew
on 14th Street who also operated a check cashing office. There, he
converted his checks into fifties and twenties.
"Getting set for a big New Year's Eve, hey?" the bookie laughed.
"No," Lennox told him. "I'm going to be murdered tomorrow."
He stepped into the nearest saloon and had two brandy Alexanders.
"Startin' early, hey?" the bartender laughed.
"No," Lennox said. "I'm having my last fling. I'm going to be murdered
tomorrow."
On the way uptown he had a couple of more Alexanders and then breakfast
at Androuet's on Persian melon, coffee, and Croque Monsieur Roquefort,
which is a blend of Roquefort, Brie and cream, broiled on Virginia ham.
It is usually taken with wine. Lennox finished a bottle of Muscadet
and ordered another pot of coffee and a telephone. When the phone was
plugged in at his table, he called the East River Airport and chartered
a plane.
"You are celebrating the New Year en l'air, M'sieur Lennox?" his waiter
inquired in astonishment.
"No," Lennox answered. "I'm taking a last trip home."
It was cold and still on the East River. A heavy grey ceiling hung low
in the sky. As Lennox climbed from the dock to the pontoon of the tiny
Cub and then into the cabin, the pilot looked dubious.
"There's fog coming in at Montauk," he said. "I hope we can beat it."
He swung the Cub out into the river and taxied frantically toward the
59th Street bridge. Lennox wondered whether they were going under or
over the bridge when suddenly the buffeting of the chop ceased and they
shuddered their way sky-ward. Instantly The Rock was transformed into a
make-believe city ... a toy on a table.
They flew east over Long Island City and Jamaica and then northeast
from Freeport up Great South Bay, past Amityville and Babylon to the
Bay Shore Harbor where the Cub landed in Great Cove and taxied in.
"I won't be an hour," Lennox told the pilot.
He went to a white clapboard fish-house on the dock, phoned for a cab
and waited in the bar. There was an enormous coal fire glowing in the
fireplace grate and an enormous jolly proprietor glowing behind the
bar. He looked like a benevolent wrestler.
"If you were drinking your last bottle on earth," Lennox asked him,
"what would it be?"
"Irish," the wrestler answered promptly.
Lennox sampled the Irish until the taxi honked its horn outside the
fish-house. He got into the car and they drove through Bay Shore to
Islip and then down a bleak road to the Champlin Marshes.
"There's nothing down to the end of this road," the cab driver said,
"It's a dead-end."
"So am I," Lennox grunted.
The road ended in a small circle of pits and ruts. Around it was half a
mile of dry brown marsh reeds rustling listlessly in the light breeze.
Beyond the marsh was the steel grey of Great South Bay. A rotting
boardwalk led from the circle to a large shack built at the edge of a
narrow creek that wound out through the marsh to the bay. The house
was weathered silver, the windows had long since been burst in, the
shutters had been blown away.
Lennox got out of the cab and walked down the boardwalk to the shack.
When he reached the door, his hand automatically lifted high to grasp
the doorknob. His lips twisted at this memory of the childhood flesh.
He lowered his hand, pushed the door open and entered. For a paralyzing
moment he thought his dead father was standing inside the house. Then
he looked closer and saw that it was a stranger, a tall, thin man with
white hair, fussing with a camera on a tripod.
"God has answered my prayers!" the photographer exclaimed. "Can I
trouble you for just a moment, sir? Look here...." He pointed. The
seaward wall of the house had collapsed. The marsh, the sea and the sky
were framed in broken, silvery timber ends.
"A perfect L composition. Verticals on the left; horizontals below. The
eye is led in to the middle distance from any corner. Quintessential
desolation. But there's a fundamental weakness on the right. You see
it?" The photographer darted to a heavy square stud and rapped it
sharply at the precise spot where Jake's slicker used to hang. "This
must be broken. What I need is a shoulder. Someone outside, leaning
against this post, staring out to sea. We don't see him, of course.
Just the part of the back and the shoulder carrying the eye back to the
center. You don't mind?"
The photographer led Lennox to the stud, positioned him, and rushed
back to the camera, chuckling and twittering. Lennox stood there,
staring at the marsh, the creek, the remnants of the dock where his
father's clam boat had been moored. He was filled with hatred and shame.
"Thank you, sir. Thank you so much," the photographer called. "If you
only knew how many weeks I've been waiting for this light. And then to
have you come along just in time.... What brought you, h'mm? Are you an
angel or a photographer?"
"I was born and raised here," Lennox answered. "As a matter of fact, I
think I own this place."
"My dear sir! Am I trespassing?"
"Yes," Lennox said. "We both are."
He returned to the cab and drove back to the Bay Shore docks. There he
sampled the Irish again until the pilot hurried him into the plane. He
had been phoning up and down Long Island and the fog was closing in
rapidly. By twelve-thirty when they were over The Rock again, it had
covered the river.
"We can't get in here," the pilot muttered.
"What do we do? Head for Spain?"
"I'll settle for the Coney Island station," the pilot said. "How about
it?"
"Why not?" Lennox said. Suddenly he began to laugh. "Do you know, I've
never been to Coney Island in all my life? Why not now?"
"It's dead now."
"I'll be dead tomorrow. Why not catch up on everything I've missed?
What the hell am I so damned gloomy for? I'm going to enjoy."
The Cub circled and soared over the Upper Bay and sneaked down through
breaks in the heavy nacreous blanket. There was no chop on the water
off Coney Island, but there was a swinging groundswell as they taxied
in to the small station. It made the brandy and Irish fume pleasantly
inside Lennox.
He paid off the pilot, parted from him genially, found a saloon, and
requested to be served with "Dog's Nose," a drink he recollected from
Dickens. He was now in the first, or literary stage of drunkenness.
The bartender consulted his blue book and regretfully reported that
no such drink was listed. Lennox settled for a pair of Boilermakers
and wandered out to the desolate amusement park, empty, canvassed and
boarded up.
Lennox beamed. He took out his gimmick book and silver pencil, turned
to a clean page and wrote: "Blessed be the man who sells joy. He is
humanity's benefactor." He tore the page out, folded it and slipped it
under the shutter of a dormant shooting gallery. He strolled to the
ticket office of the roller coaster, wrote: "Better to be happy than
wise," and tucked it under the window.
To the Half Man Half Woman booth he donated "Pleasure is virtue's gayer
name." To the 25 CANNIBAL BEAUTIES 25 he contributed "Life is not life
at all without delight." And for the Giant Swing he wrote: "Pleasure
is the sovereign bliss of humankind." As he was tucking this fond
salutation under the door of the box-office, a thought struck him. He
opened the slip, considerately wrote "Alexander Pope 1688-1744" under
the quotation and replaced the message.
He left the amusement park, bought a pack of cigarettes and hailed a
cab. He told the driver to take him back to The Rock, and as they sped
along the Belt Parkway, he opened the pack and lit up.
"Look at me smoking. I'm intox'ated," he told himself, and laughed
immoderately, thinking of the dear Shroff.
The fog slowed the traffic and there was a slight jam as they
approached the tunnel to Manhattan Island. The car behind them lost its
temper and began an exasperating horn honking.
"That's rude," Lennox muttered. He called: "Stop, driver!"
The cab stopped its forward crawl, Lennox got out, went to the car
behind them, bowed politely, opened the engine hood and pulled the
wires off the horn. He marched back to the cab, got in, and with a
grand air ordered: "Drive on, coachman. Drive on!"
At Sabatini's he had three very dry Gibsons and entered the dining room
where he ordered oysters, turtle soup, Shrimps Livornese, marinated
asparagus, escarole and coffee. The dining room was half empty; very
few of the people in the business are around on Saturdays, and fewer
still on the afternoon before New Year's Eve. Lennox consumed his
oysters and soup and allowed his gaze to relax on a couple at the next
table. He didn't know the man, but the young lady was familiar.
She was a blonde, with enormous blue eyes and an exquisite pouting
mouth. She wore a black siren-type dress that exposed her neck,
shoulders and altogether too much cleavage.
"That's a Theda Bara dress," Lennox muttered in annoyance. "No ingénue
ought to be wearing it."
What annoyed him even more was the fact that the ingénue was behaving
like a road-company Theda Bara. She pouted, she hooded her eyes, she
undulated her shoulders and heaved her poitrine like the High Priestess
of the Python.
"Now where have I seen that corn-ball playing that routine before?"
Lennox asked himself. Suddenly he remembered. An ingénue in a velvet
gown trimmed with miniver, batting her eyes at Oliver Stacy over a
champagne glass. He began to laugh. The girl looked up, caught his
eye, and gave him a slinky undulation. Lennox arose and bowed. Then
he reached into his water glass, took out a lump of ice and dropped it
into her cleavage.
He didn't have to pick himself up off the sidewalk, but there was no
doubt he'd been thrown out of Sabatini's.
"Live dangerously," he chuckled and was afflicted with thirst. He
quenched it with a bottle of stout at the saloon in the network
building and then wandered upstairs to visit the studios.
He poked his head into rehearsals and waved affectionately to friends
and strangers. The last studio down the corridor was on the air with
some kind of radio mystery. Lennox tip-toed in, waved, and placed
himself alongside the sound table where the soundman stood with a gun
poised in his hand while a couple of gangster-type actors snarled at
each other on mike. Lennox watched the script over the soundman's
shoulder, and as the gunshot cue came up, on sudden impulse he snatched
the gun out of the soundman's hand.
The director behind the glass waved frantically. The actors shook their
scripts at him. The soundman struggled to get hold of the gun.
"Bang!" Lennox shouted. He beamed, put the gun down quietly and
tip-toed out.
"My girl doesn't approve of violence. Guns and such," he confided to
the bartender in the Greek's.
"The peaceful teep, huh, Jake?"
"A veritable dove of peace." He considered. "Chris.... What's the
difference between doves and pigeons?"
"There ain't no difference, Jake."
"There has to be. Otherwise wouldn't have two different names," Lennox
said. "That's relentless logic."
"No," Chris said. "I keep 'em. I ought to know. Doves is white pigeons.
You sure you want all this garbage in your old fashioned, Jake?"
Lennox nodded. "My system needs ascorbic acid. Where could I buy some
doves, Chris?"
"Down to the poultry market. Just ask for white pigeons," Chris added
stubbornly.
Lennox took a cab down to the poultry market which adjoined the
Chambers Street Food Market. In the former he purchased twelve doves
(white pigeons). In the latter he consumed six banana fritters and a
quart of a dangerous brew called Still Ale. The doves in their cage
refused the fritters and the ale, but they partook of breadcrumbs with
joy.
He carried them up to Greenwich Village, found Gabby's apartment house
and rang the downstairs bell. There was no answer. He located the
superintendent, bribed him, and was escorted up to Gabby's apartment by
that careful man to leave the cage within. Lennox was not permitted to
enter more than three steps where he was directed to put the cage down.
He did so, but opened the door. He was gratified to see the studio
living room fill with doves.
"Make her happy," he chuckled. "Make em all happy, huh? How?"
He thought it over in a basement bar where he drank Moscow Mules not,
he explained to the bartender, because he was sympathetic to the Soviet
cause, but because he admired the copper mugs. How to spread joy? Three
Mules led him to the light.
He went back to Sixth Avenue and entered the premises of a sign
painter. To him he entrusted four sheets of notebook paper on which he
had printed carefully.
"Want four signs in an hour," Lennox beamed. "Make 'em six feet by
three feet in black and red. Just do 'em freehand. Yes? Rush job for
very special friend of mine. Back in one hour."
He crossed Sixth Avenue to a large photographer's supply store and
bought one hundred flash bulbs which were packed in a large carton for
him. He took a cab up to Mason's apartment house. He phoned from the
corner. Irma answered.
"Irma," Lennox said urgently. "Mig wants you down at the theater right
away. He wants everybody. Hurry up!"
He waited. Ten minutes later Irma, her brother and his wife emerged
from the building and hurried off. This was not the first time they had
been summoned to attend Mig, but it was the first time that Mig hadn't
done the summoning.
"Chances are he'll be grateful I remembered for him," Lennox murmured.
"That is, if he remembers he didn't call 'em himself."
He went up to the Mason apartment and entered. There was no one there.
Carrying the carton with him, Lennox kindly removed all the light bulbs
and jammed a flash bulb into every socket in the apartment.
"Oh, it'll be a sunny New Year for Mig all right all right," Lennox
laughed. He returned to Sixth Avenue, poked his head into the sign
painter's to urge him on, then went to a large hardware store where he
purchased one hundred pounds of moth balls.
"What the hell do you want with so much?" the hardware man asked in
amazement.
"Not for me," Lennox explained patiently. "For a friend who's all the
time worrying about his property. Can't protect it enough. I'm afraid
he's forgot about moths."
"Crazy! Where you want this shipped?"
"Want to take it myself. Can I hire your assistant? Pay five dollars
for five minutes."
"I guess so. Alfred!"
Alfred shambled out of the back of the store and helped Lennox carry
the mothballs to the building where Tooky Ween had his office. They
went up on the freight elevator but were dismayed to discover that
Ween's office was closed for the day and locked.
"What we gone do now?" Alfred asked.
"Never admit defeat," Lennox said. "Go back to freight elevator. Was a
big piece cardboard there. Bring it."
Alfred brought the sheet of corrugated board. Lennox twisted it into a
funnel and inserted the narrow end into the mail slot in Ween's office
door.
"Now open the boxes," Lennox beamed.
Carefully and kindly, they funneled one hundred pounds of mothballs
into Ween's office.
"Won't have to worry about his property again," Lennox said.
He accompanied Alfred back to the hardware store where he purchased
a stapling gun. Then he paid for his four signs, rolled them up and
carried them to Grabinett's office. He nodded to the receptionist,
breezed past her and entered the twisting halls of the rat-nest. There
was no traffic. Lennox stopped, measured with his eye, and stapled the
first six by three sign to the wall. In garish red and black letters it
read:
40 FEET 40
TO THE OFFICE OF
_MELVIN GRABINETT_
The Man
of
V*i*s*i*o*n*!
Lennox went ten feet down the hall and stapled the next sign to the
wall:
ONLY 30 FEET MORE
TO THE OFFICE OF
_MELVIN GRABINETT_
The Showman's
S*h*o*w*m*a*n
At the corner of the hall he stapled:
NEXT RIGHT TURN
TO THE OFFICE OF
M G
E R
L A
V B
I I
N N
E
T
T
Alongside Grabinett's door he affixed the last sign:
O*F*F*I*C*E
O*F
MELVIN (BLINKY) GRABINETT
"Secret acts of kindness performed by stealth," Lennox murmured and
returned to the hardware store. "I need Alfred again," he said.
"What! More mothballs?"
"No. Got a hungry friend needs taking care of. Give me Alfred."
"He ain't gonna eat me, is he?" Alfred inquired.
Lennox beamed, patted Alfred and gave him another five dollars. He also
gave him the stapling gun, warning him that it was loaded. Then he
took him to a grocers and bought every package of Jello in the store.
They were packed into a carton which Alfred carried behind Lennox who
conducted him to the network building and up to the twentieth floor. It
was empty. They went into Audibon's office and put the carton down.
"They sure let you in easy," Alfred said.
Lennox nodded complacently and opened the door to Audibon's private
bath. He ran the hot water in the wash basin until it came out
scalding.
"What flavor would my hungry friend like in his toilet, Alfred?" he
asked genially.
"Strawberry?" Alfred ventured.
"And strawberry it shall be."
They plugged Audibon's toilet and filled it with strawberry gelatine.
They filled the floor of his enclosed shower with lime gelatine. "The
only specific for athlete's foot," Lennox insisted. They mixed a
potpourri of gelatine and filled his ink-stands, his Dresden china, the
glasses in the bar, the hollow globe of his ceiling light, and last of
all, the wash basin.
"I'm not given to boasting, Alfred," Lennox pronounced, reeling
slightly, "but I will venture to predict that my very good friend will
never be hungry again."
He offered to buy Alfred a malted, but Alfred had a New Year's date and
was anxious to get back to the store to finish work.
"So have I got a date," Lennox said, and parted wistfully from his
friend.
He walked home without incident except for a car which stopped for a
traffic light directly in the path of the pedestrians' crossing. Lennox
would have none of that. Refusing to detour around the car, he opened
the rear door, climbed through the back, opened the opposite door and
continued on his way.
He entered the apartment prepared to greet Cooper with brotherly
affection, but Cooper was not home. Lennox gave the Siamese and the
mink-dyed skunk a holiday meal of canned crabmeat, then bathed, changed
to dinner clothes and demolished the Canadian whiskey in the bar. He
stole a pack of cigarettes from Sam's cache in the storage closet, put
on his burberry and decided to have dinner in The Crystal Key.
The Crystal Key is a private house in the West Fifties which caters
both to Hipsters and Squares. It has a butler who looks like a magazine
advertisement. It has footmen in knee-breeches, waiters, French
chefs, a wine steward and even a cellar to go with the steward. It
has a resident book-maker. It employs a slightly known chanteuse who
entertains on the second, or dining floor. It provides a dozen young
hostesses who will drink, chat and dance intimately on the third or
supper room floor. It has a fourth and fifth floor for personalized
entertainment.
Lennox entered with his mind intent on dinner. He permitted an
attendant to take his coat, went into the bar on the street floor,
nodded to the bookie and the neighborhood cop drinking beer in a
corner, and ordered sherry. He began to laugh at himself. He recalled
that no matter what he wanted to drink when he entered The Crystal Key,
he always ended up ordering sherry. He gave the matter some thought,
blamed the knee-breeches, and went upstairs to dine.
It was fortunate there were no menus. Lennox could not have read a menu
even if there had been enough light. He was served hors-d'oeuvres,
mussel soup, saddle of lamb, pommes soufflés, a still burgundy, salade
fatigué, and something in a covered dish which he was too hazy to
investigate. His faculties were restored by the blinding discovery that
the gentleman seated two table down from him was Mr. Thomas Bleutcher
of Brockton, Mass. The young lady with him was not his daughter.
"The scoundrel!" Lennox muttered. "The lecherous dog. He richly
deserves a lesson."
He perceived that there was a brandy inhaler before him with a half
inch of cognac in the bottom. Quite defiantly, he drank the cognac off
without ceremony and devoted himself to the problem of disciplining Mr.
Bleutcher's morals.
"How to chastise the heart of old Four-Buckle Arctics?" he asked
himself. "Hit him in his carbohydrates? No. Where is his heart? In his
boots. Very funny, Mr. Lennox. Oh, very funny indeed." He shook with
laughter, slid under the table and began crawling on the floor toward
Bleutcher. The maitre d'hotel rushed toward him in dismay. Before he
could speak, Lennox lifted a finger to his lips and gave him an urgent
look. The maitre d'hotel hesitated for a moment in perplexity. Lennox
reached under Bleutcher's table and seized that unsuspecting man's
feet. With a violent yank, he tried to pull Bleutcher's shoes off.
Bleutcher disappeared under the table as if dropped through a trap
door. The table went over with a crash, and the hostess toppled with
it. Lennox arose triumphantly from the screaming and shouting with one
black kid chiropractic oxford in his hand. He still had it, concealed
under his coat, when he was deposited on the street outside The Crystal
Key one minute later. It was fortunate for Lennox that the policeman
had returned to his beat; otherwise he might have been seriously hurt.
He weaved downtown, searching for a phone. In the forties he passed a
theater, entered the lobby and politely requested to be directed to a
booth. He was informed that the telephones were inside the theater. He
puzzled this out and with a flash of logic that delighted him, reasoned
that he needed a ticket to make the phone call. There were no tickets
left but he was sold standing room admission. Lennox tip-toed into the
theater, went down to the men's lounge and called The Brompton House.
After some hanky-panky, Olga answered the phone.
"Your father," Lennox said, "is a rogue."
"My father," Olga replied, "is a pain in the ass."
"No longer. You are revenged." Lennox described his triumph. Olga began
to scream with laughter.
"Does he know it was you?" she asked.
"Couldn't say. What are you doing up in the hotel?"
"Having dinner in the suite. I got so fed up with him I played sick.
What are you going to do about it?"
Lennox hesitated and then thought: "Oh, what the hell!" He said: "I was
thinking of bringing his shoe back."
"Lovely. Wait for me downstairs in the bar."
"How long?"
"I'll be able to sneak out an hour after he gets back."
"He'll be back any minute.... Unless he's going to hop into New Year.
Bunion and Over."
"Metatarsal," she said and hung up.
Lennox shook his head in disgust with himself. Then he brightened and
went upstairs. There was a good broad arm-rest for standees in the back
of the house. He leaned against it and tried to focus on the stage.
Some kind of mood piece was in progress, filled with long, poetic
pauses. Lennox napped comfortably until the applause at the end of the
act woke him up.
He was thirsty. He had two stingers in the saloon alongside the
theater, one with green mint and one with white to determine whether
his palate had lost its famed sensitivity.
"I am happy to announce," he announced to the bartender, "that my
palate has lost none of its famed sensitivity." He pointed to the
glasses. "That is Spearmint '34. A very good year. That is Wintergreen
'26. Its pert bouquet is unmistakable to a palate of famed sensitivity."
Lennox walked east to The Brompton House. New Year's horns were
beginning to blare in the streets with the sound that boys make when
they blow through blades of grass pressed between their thumbs. Lennox
paced massively. He had reached the Gibraltar stage of drunkenness, a
mixture of Johnsonian gravity and pathological lying.
In the bar of The Brompton House, jammed by the overflow of
respectables from the grill room, he ordered a pitcher of French 75s
and two glasses. Olga was nowhere in sight, but Lennox knew better than
to trust to his sight. He tapped a handsome bald gentleman with leaden
complexion and kindly features who was seated alongside him.
"Would you be good enough to lend me your stool, sir? Just for a
moment."
The gentleman got off the stool. Lennox mounted it and teetered on
top, four feet above the crowd. He whistled shrilly with two fingers,
waited for Olga to notice him if she were present, and then climbed
down again.
"Thank you very much, sir."
"May I ask why you did that?" the gentleman inquired. He looked exactly
like a Roman Tribune and had a melodious southern drawl.
"One if by land, two if by sea," Lennox answered significantly. "Our
identification code. You wouldn't expect us to sing the Internationale
for a signal, would you? Not here."
The leaden-faced gentleman stared. Lennox nodded darkly,
drank a 75 and offered a glass to his companion. "To the
_counter_-counter-revolution," he said. "This year is yours. Next year
is ours."
"How do you mean?"
"This country's been living in a dream," Lennox sneered.
"Communists.... Tcha! They're our decoys. We use them for red herrings
to conceal us. The real us. We are the danger."
"Who are the danger?" the man asked intently.
"Us. We.... Us."
"Can you name names?"
"Can I not? Lennox. Mason and Dixon. Mason and Slidell. Lewis. Clark.
But above all, Lennox. Lennox is the man. He pulls the strings. He
controls the Eastern Cell."
"Cell!" the gentleman exclaimed.
"Indeed yes. The movement is beautifully organized ... from here
through Washington, London, Paris, Rome ... straight up to our central
headquarters--"
A pair of hands blindfolded him. "Guess who," Olga said.
"Goody Twoshoes," Lennox answered. He removed her hands from his eyes
and continued. "Our headquarters on Mars. We're all Martians. We're
going to--"
He stopped. The strange gentleman had already removed himself, Lennox
searched dazedly and saw him in a corner, unaccountably scribbling in
a notebook. He shrugged, flexed his right arm to feel for his own
gimmick book, then contemplated Olga. She had, in truth, poured herself
into an evening gown; or better still, someone had painted it on her
body and only given it one coat. Lennox handed her a 75.
"What's this?" she asked.
"Paint remover," he said.
She drank it cautiously, finished it with appreciation and held out her
glass for more. They emptied the pitcher and went over to Beekman Place
to look in on a party thrown by one of Olga's friends. It was in a
square apartment house, in a square apartment, and it turned out to be
a Square party ... the men in one room telling dirty jokes, the women
in another room shrieking with laughter and pulling up their skirts as
they loaded up on martinis.
"This is from hunger," Lennox muttered to Olga. "Leave us blow."
"We'd better," she giggled. "It's the wrong apartment."
So it was. They went downstairs to the right apartment which was
identically square. The party was also identically Square.
"I liked the first one better," Lennox said.
They left and went uptown to the West side where Johnny Plummer owned
a house opposite the Museum of Natural History. His party was more
party-line than anything else. They were required to pay five dollars
each as they entered ... in aid of some nebulous cause. No scotch was
served in order to boycott Great Britain. Everyone sat around in tweeds
and dirndls and sang the songs of the People to the accompaniment of an
accordion and a mandolin. Lennox tried to drink up his five dollars in
straight gin, but Olga gave him the out sign within half an hour.
"My turn now," she said and took him to the East side and a
cosmopolitan-type party conducted in French, Dutch, Italian, Flemish
and Swedish. This one, Lennox loved. He ate lobster stewed in absinthe,
drank aquavit, learned Swedish massage, how to cut diamonds, when to
hear an opera entitled "Teresa's Teats," where Kafka was buried, who
was whose mistress at the party, and the particular sexual foibles
of each of the guests. But Olga was party-hopping and impatient. She
dragged him out.
"I liked it there," he complained.
"Too respectable. Where next?"
They went to Charlie Hansel's place in the Village. It was filled with
ballet dancers; fag boys doing petit point in corners, sway-backed
girls waddling with duck feet like pregnant women. They all talked shop
to each other. They talked to nobody else.
"Out," said Lennox, yanking open the door and marching into a closet.
Olga rescued him and guided him to fresh air. He was properly grateful
and offered to kiss her in the taxi. She permitted this token of
gratitude and startled him with her lips and tongue. He was relieved
when the cab deposited them at the front door of a red brick converted
stable, now a photographer's studio.
"Do I know him or do you?" Lennox inquired as he lurched in. He
stared around the giant studio and rubbed his eyes. "Must be getting
bloodshot," he mumbled.
It was the reddest damned party he had ever seen. Everyone wore fireman
red costumes, from Santa Claus down to a snake-like woman with tangled
black hair who wore fireman red Dr. Dentons with a drop seat. She
turned out to be the hostess. A small man with a guilty face whom
Lennox surprised searching the pockets of the guests' coats was the
host. There was an insidious brew called Fish-House Punch, composed
of sugar, Jamaica rum and peach brandy in an enormous crystal bowl.
Lennox had three glasses and was returning for a fourth when he saw the
hostess unbutton her drop seat and bathe her bottom in the punch bowl.
"Out!" he said to Olga.
"It is out," she laughed.
"I'm r'sponsible for your moral health. _In colo parentis._ Feel
strongly this's no place for you."
"No. I like it here. It's not too respectable."
"Oh?" Lennox said. "You want disrespectable party? Come on. Got
jus'place fyou."
He took her to Kay Hill's apartment. Olga entertained him in the cab,
and when he was able to focus on her he perceived that she was a damned
beautiful girl. They took the elevator up and rang Kay's doorbell.
There was so much noise inside that they had to ring three times.
The door opened. Kay stood there wearing a fringed green stole and
nothing else.
"Come on in!" she screamed in honest Canarsie accents.
She pulled them in, slammed the door, turned to the foyer table on
which a dozen scotch bottles stood, and picked up a black grease
pencil. She wrote JAKE across one white label and handed the bottle to
Lennox. She wrote OLGA on another and handed it to Olga. They both had
swigs. Kay led them down an endless Early American hall, past various
doors, and into a Colonial bedroom. A naked girl was seated at the
dressing table feebly trying to hook on her brassiere.
"Coats there," Kay said, pointing to a black mound of clothes on the
four-poster bed. She turned and left.
Lennox reeled and looked at Olga. "Out?" he asked.
She took off her coat and threw it on the bed. Lennox had no intention
of losing his coat in that grab-bag. He lurched into the bathroom and
carefully hung his burberry in the shower. As an afterthought, he
turned the water on. When he came back to the bedroom, both girls were
gone.
He had a solid drink from his private bottle and wandered down the
hall, caroming from wall to wall. He peeped into rooms. A seven-man
poker game was in progress in various stages of undress. Three
partially draped girls were decorating an oil painting with their
lipsticks. Two couples in underwear and aprons were cooking something
in the kitchen. Lennox investigated the pot. It contained onions,
potatoes and a cookbook.
The living room was insane. Some guests were dressed, some were naked,
the rest were any stage between. Everyone carried an individual scotch
bottle. Lennox searched for his charge. He spoke to three different
women before he finally realized he was speaking to Olga. Then he
realized he was having difficulty speaking. He was pleased to see that
she had not undressed. He was relieved to see that her companion also
was dressed.
"What?" Lennox asked.
"I said," Oliver Stacy repeated, "You're holding that bottle
upsidedown."
"Am I? Scout's Honor?" Lennox peered. "It's empty," he said with
delight. He flung the bottle from him. "Who's that talking to Olga
Bunion?"
"I'm right here," Olga said.
"I'm talking to her," Stacy said.
"Could you excusr minute? Most say something utmust p'ortance. Utmust!"
Lennox took Olga's arm and tacked up the corridor. She stopped him in a
corner and pressed the body against him.
"What did you want to say?" she asked.
"Wanted warn you."
"You wanted to warn me?"
He nodded. "Men'll temptyr chastity t'night. Mustnt succumb whilem your
chaperone. Your honors my honor. See?"
She laughed and explored his mouth with her mouth. "You big old bear
you," she said.
"Listen," he said. "Listen. I'm rsponsible fyou but you maket pretty
tough fme...."
Lennox staggered around a door-jamb and fell backwards into a room,
carrying Olga with him. They landed on a soft hooked rug. It was some
kind of sewing room with a dress form, blanket chest and cutting table.
It was empty. Lennox tried to get up.
"Why do you keep running?" Olga asked. "Are you afraid of me?" She
kissed him again. For the first time he returned the kiss. His hands
got busy with the tight sheath of the dress, trying to expose the body.
"Stop it," Olga said.
Lennox grinned and continued his attempt to extract her body from the
dress. She pulled his hands away.
"I said stop it," Olga repeated. "Don't spoil it."
"Don't worry. Won't hurt th'dress. Zit'zip or hook?"
"You're making everything nasty. Stop!"
"Oh no. Make everything lovely."
"Stop pawing me like that. What do you think you're going to do?"
"What comes natal to a fella." He kissed her again and slid his hands
along her legs. She struggled violently, bruising his lips against his
teeth. She was breathing heavily. Lennox pinned her arms back with
his left arm while he gently slid her dress bodice down to her waist.
She screamed and bit his hand savagely. He let her go and sat up in
bewilderment.
"Why allv sudden?" he asked faintly.
She scrambled to her feet and backed away, hastily pulling the
dress bodice up into place. He squinted at her. She was shocked and
terrified, and gooseflesh showed on her arms. Suddenly he realized what
she was and the mistake he'd made.
"Oh. My. God." Lennox whispered. "You're justa baby. A tease. Virgin
tease, yes? Noodnick, not nympho. Throw your body 'round. Don' know
whatyr doing. Use dirty words. Don' know what they mean. A baby
makin'like a woman. Yes?"
"You're disgusting!" she spat.
"No. Decoyed. Mowss-trapped. Shoulda known. You smell like babies."
"Let me out of here!" she hissed. She edged past him. He burst out
laughing and flipped his hands up under her skirt. She screamed again
and ran, slamming the door behind her. Lennox sat on the floor and
laughed. Then he wept. He climbed to the edge of the blanket chest and
sat with his arm around the dress form.
"Love on'y you, Gabby. On'y wantbe with you. On'y you, sweetheart."
The door of the sewing room burst open. A nude woman in a green stole
berated him blurrily. Something about a bitch girl pulling a crying jag
on some anonymous named Stacy and sneaking out to alley cat with him.
The woman in the stole considered herself robbed. She blamed Lennox. He
arose with dignity.
"Bringum backal ive," he said. He tottered to the foyer, picked up
a bottle of scotch and wondered about his coat. He went back up the
Early American hall to the Colonial bedroom and peered into the mound
of clothes on the four-poster. He pulled coats, hats and trousers off
the top. A left hand was revealed, thrusting up stiffly out of the
coke-black mass. Lennox let out a hoarse cry and backed away. He turned
and ran blindly out of the apartment, trying to erase the memory of
maggots.
Yorkville was blazing with holiday lights. Festoons of red, white and
green bulbs arched over the streets. Lennox blinked and blundered
into a Hofbrau on Third Avenue which was aswarm with _gemütlich_-type
celebration. A sign of burnt leather hung over the bar between
moose antlers. It read: _Wein-Weib-Gesang!_ Underneath it hung its
translation: Whiskey. Women. Swing.
"No. No. No." Lennox said indignantly. "Should be wine-women'n song.
Yes?" He gazed up and down the bar trying to count the customers. "Want
t'buy set-ups f'the house."
"Drinks?" the bartender inquired in a genuine low Dutch dialect.
"Set-ups." Lennox displayed his bottle. He lurched playfully up and
down the bar, pouring drinks for his friends into their beer, their
rye, their cognacs, their wine glasses. He was quelled with difficulty.
Accord was restored when he planked fifty dollars down on the bar and
requested demon rum for his playmates.
"What happened to your hand?" someone inquired.
Lennox lifted both hands. The left was encrusted with blood. "My
pitching hand!" he wailed. "My bread'n'butter hand. Don't anybody
rec'nize me? Lefty Jordan, the Big Train?"
Nobody recognized him. He left the Hofbrau in a state of high dudgeon
and staggered down Third Avenue until he reached the Irish bars in the
sixties. He entered The Poplin crying: "Hoch Der Kaiser!" The clients
of The Poplin were equally exuberant and traded drinks with Lennox
generously.
"Lissen," he kept repeating. "Lissen. Lissen. Lissen."
Nobody listened and he was content. Somebody asked him his name.
"Lefty," he said. "Jus' call me Lefty. Om inna shoe business. Make
shoes f'left foot only."
He vacated The Poplin and continued down Third Avenue until he reached
the fag bars in the fifties. He entered The Fantasy and elbowed his
way through the buzzing and the hissing and the sibilation to the bar
where he fell into easy conversation with the languid boys around him.
He informed them that he was Leftwich, a wealthy shoe manufacturer from
Brockton, Mass. They were not impressed. They went on gossiping and
name-dropping and Lennox fancied he heard something familiar.
"Anybody here jus' mention 'Who He?'" he asked.
"Oh _that_ thing," a voice drawled. "The original Rigor Mortis, from
the picture of the same name."
"You're so right so right so right," Lennox agreed. "I watch it up in
Brockton. Come'ome fr'm hard day inna factry. See nothin' but puke.
That show's vomit. That show's.... Alla fault of a lousy stinkin' louse
who writes it. Lousy phoney. Name of Lennox. Anybody here know'm?"
Somebody said they knew him intimately and he was a big queen.
"No-no-no," Lennox said. "He'sa whore. Thinksee writes clever with his
fancy filth from's stinkin' sewer mind. People like me don't think
hesso clever. Plain people like Lefty Leftwich witha feet onna ground.
Want heart and soul and meaning. Y'unnastan? Heart. And. Soul. And.
Meaning ... not garbage outa fancy barrel. Faker sells hisself out f'ra
buck and sells us out too, Y'unnastan?"
No one was paying any attention. Lennox went on raging to the bored
backs. "I know'm. Me. Plain old Lefty Leftwich from Brockton, Mass.
Know allabout'm from way back. He could write from's guts ifee wasn't
so busy pimpin' f'pennies." Lennox began to shake his fists in fury.
"Lousy sewer Lennox! Fancy filthy fraud! Sells hisself downa river soee
can live fancy'n'elegant like a duke or a marquiss. Betrayal. Why don't
somebody honest tell'at corpse where to get off? Why don't someone
kill'm an' make room frhonest writers?"
He elbowed his way from the bar, left The Fantasy and continued down
Third Avenue. Below 42nd Street he made up his mind and turned east. He
came to a dim stationery and candy store with K N O T T spread across
the window in an arc of brass letters. He entered and staggered against
the marble soda fountain, peering blearily at the faded woman who was
just closing up.
"Wanna write a letter," he said. "Spehshul d'liv'ry letter. Wanna best
paper'n'envelope inna house. Pen too. Teach'm a lesson."
The faded woman looked at Lennox, recognized him, and without a word
produced a sheet of blue paper, a blue envelope and a cheap fountain
pen which she filled. She took a three cent stamp and a special
delivery stamp out of a cash box and affixed them to the envelope.
Lennox picked up the pen, paper and envelope, placed five dollars on
the counter and staggered out.
He entered the Baroque through the side door, stared around wildly and
located an empty chair at the table behind the telephone booth. He
swam to the chair through the smoke and the noise and sat down. With
his breast pocket handkerchief he mopped the table dry. He looked up.
Seated across the table from him was a blonde who appeared to be a
Swede farm girl. She was looking at him.
"Hiya Goldilocks," he said.
"Hiya," she said. "Long time no see."
"Jus' got in from Brockton."
"Where?"
"Brockton, Mass."
"Since when?"
"Since always," he said. "Live'air all my life. Inna shoe business.
Permit me innaduce myself. Lefty Leftwich."
"What the hell!" she exclaimed. "You got three names?"
"Lefty. Leftwich." Lennox counted on his fingers. "Is on'y two."
"Skip it, Lefty." She laughed and covered her teeth with her hand.
"Scuse me, Goldilocks. Gotta 'portant letter to write."
She watched with increasing interest as he placed the paper and
envelope on the table, unscrewed the pen, took it in his left hand and
began to write in a sick, hysterical scrawl: Dear Who He.... This is
your last warning. I'm going to kill you, you fancy filth, you penny
pimp, you garbage from a fancy barrel....