Читать книгу Singing My Him Song - Malachy McCourt - Страница 9

My friend Steve Epstein had little to do those days so he, as they say, hung out with me. I owed Epstein for letting me stay at his digs back in the city, and there were times in the Watermill when I didn’t present a bill to my pal. I would just add his bill to some nonparticular well-to-do type, or forget it altogether.

The summer was moving along slowly toward its end when my tenure at the restaurant suffered a similar fate. One night, Epstein arrived from the city with a girlfriend. I served them dinner and drinks for free, whilst neglecting to make out a tab. The boss, David Eaton, in a fit of sudden efficiency asked to see the tab I was keeping on Epstein. I said, “’Tis in my head.”

“Oh yeah,” sez Dave, “you write everyone else’s down but not Epstein’s?”

“Right,” sez I, thinking rapidly. “He drinks so little it’s easy to remember.”

“What about the lobster dinner he had with that broad, and the bottle of wine and the cognacs they had after dinner?”

“All in the noggin,” sez I, tapping the side of the head.

“I’m going to have you both arrested,” sez Dave. “You for stealing and Epstein for trespassing, as I know he slept on the couch in the accommodations we supplied strictly for your personal use. I’m calling the state police right now, and I know them well.”

I slithered over to Epstein and, speaking out of the side of my mouth as I’d seen Humphrey Bogart do in convict films, informed him that if we didn’t get our asses on the highway we were likely to be guests of the county.

I was trying to speak in an understandable code yet not give the game away to the man’s dinner companion. He was irritated, as he was making great progress with this young thing, and she had already indicated her readiness to have a mutual exploration of the nether regions of their respective bodies, but after I had pulled him into the kitchen and explained the situation the lust left him and fear of being stuck behind immovable bars took over.

What to do with the lust object? Give her money for the taxi and tell her your uncle is at death’s door and ’tis necessary to get to New York City to open it for him. I handed over to him my paltry tips to pass along as cab fare, then nipped out the back door and dashed up to the hovel on the roof to pick up the few belongings. I met Epstein in the parking lot, where he was waiting for me as the getaway drivers do in movies. We dropped the young bird off at a gas station where there was a telephone, and then began the flight from justice toward the forgiving arms of New York City. I kept the sharp eye out for the flashing lights of the law while he gunned the engine and got the car up to about ninety-five mph, which was stupid, as it would only draw the police’s attention.

It’s amazing what the imagination can do when you’ve had a few drinks and have a voluble tongue to convince the other person of the imminence of a frightful incarceration. I was convinced that the entire police fraternity of Long Island was being mobilized to get us heinous criminals who had cheated a restaurant, and had Epstein believing the same. We were bedeviled, too, by the sight of the gas tank needle doing its delicate dance and gently touching empty, with no gas stations open at that time of the morning. We stopped at every closed gas station and practically sucked out the gas remaining in the hoses. At one of them, we discovered a jerry can half full of blessed petrol, which we stole without so much as a “Sorry to have to do this.” I would have stolen it from an old-age pensioner to avoid another night of durance vile. ’Twas that plus faith plus talking nicely to the car, now named Matilda, that got Epstein and myself to civilization and safety.

I deposited the odd bits of clothing in a room in Epstein’s digs in Astoria, Queens, New York. The building was owned by the uncle and Epstein’s mother, and the lad was living rent-free. There’s nothing like a rent-free bed in a reasonably comfortable flat with a roommate who thinks you are the wittiest, wisest Hibernian he has ever encountered, and when I realized that the FBI was not coming after me for an unpaid dinner tab of $19.27 plus tax, I relaxed and circulated once more.

The atmosphere in the apartment was ripeish, to say the least, which I attributed to deficiencies in the housekeeping department, but upon inspection it seemed clean enough for a bachelor’s digs. The smell seemed to get worse, though, and finally my nose led me to the epicenter of this horrendous stink. Under the place of my repose, my bed, I discovered a dead crow decomposing and giving nourishment to a full complement of maggots and other guardians of the environment. That foul of the air took its last flight out my window, accompanied by larvae, worms, maggots, and other bosom buddies taking their first and last flight, startling a gossip of elderly women exchanging dark forebodings in front of the building, and giving them fodder for even darker words about the world of dead carrion that flies.

Great barmen, like great hairdressers, are reputed to have what are known as followings; that is, they attract coteries of bods who like the way a bartender talks about sports, or mixes a martini, or in the case of the lasses, the bit of flattery and name recognition. ’Twas said that I had such a following. I wasn’t being unduly modest when I said I didn’t believe it, as I honestly wondered who in the name of Allah would follow me anywhere. But if Epstein believed this, as apparently he did, and if his uncle was going to finance my reentry into the bar biz, as apparently he would, who was I to say nay, and the search for a suitable premises began.

We found an out-of-the-way spot at 118 East Eighty-eighth Street called the Dublin Bay Café, apparently owned by a Dublin man name Larry Luby. We broached the idea of purchasing the joint but the man did not seem able to say yes or say no. He mumbled something about having to consult with somebody or other, that he didn’t really own the place.

The real, but concealed, owners were a couple of shadowy speculators, a husband-and-wife team, smallish stout people named Joey and Tessie who, despite appearances, were brilliant at deal-making in real estate, saloons, diners, jukeboxes, and cigarette machines. Tessie did a wonderful good-kindly-mother act, whereas Joey did a lot of growling and talked about cutting people’s balls off and other sporting events of that nature. Because of some legal difficulty with the SLA (that would be the State Liquor Authority, and not the Symbionese Liberation Army, though the one often seems no more reasonable to deal with than the other), they were prohibited from being licensees in any premi wherein liquor was vended.

So we negotiated with them, and settled upon an agreeable price, and all that was needed was the check from Steve Epstein’s uncle, which we were assured was a routine matter and would be taken care of as soon as said uncle returned from whatever trip he was off on. But the weeks began to pile up and so did the pressure from the stout people to conclude this deal. I never did figure out whether Epstein was in a fantasy world about raising the money for the purchase of the place all along, or if his uncle just changed his mind in the end. Finally, though, Epstein confessed that his uncle had no intention of financing a saloon for his dopey nephew and his drunken Irish pal.

’Twas left to me to inform the other folk that there was no money in the coffers and the deal was off. They weren’t too perturbed, as they immediately had an idea for me. They would shift Mr. Luby to another location, and put me on the Dublin Bay license. I would move into one of the three studio flats in the building. Fine with me, and I immediately took over and changed the name to Himself and did the bit of renovation to make the joint more publike.

While all this was going on, Diana’s telephone number remained imprinted on the brain, but I was hesitant to call her, as I was sure she wouldn’t remember me. There was many a night I’d take out that matchbook cover and look at the RIverside-9 number, go for the phone, and then find a list of reasons not to call. She wouldn’t remember me. She wouldn’t be interested in me. There was the vaguest possibility she’d remember me, but suppose she said, “Why are you calling me?” or said she was deeply involved with someone, or demanded—angrily, of course—to know who gave me her number. So, even though my mind was slowly letting go of its obsession with my now ex-wife, Linda, and it came back again and again to a vision of Diana, with all its lovely promise, I never called. I’d say bollox on it and have another evening at the drink as we fixed up the new saloon, Himself.

I’d applied to that wonderfully corrupt agency, the State Liquor Authority, to be the official licensee of Himself and was eagerly awaiting approval, as the only blot on my record was the disorderly conduct charge from having barged into Linda’s apartment in a somewhat violent manner a couple of years prior. They’d been handing out licenses fairly freely to the Mafia all over the city, and failing to take them back even if the licensee had someone garroted on the premises or put explosives in the toilet to blow the shit out of an enemy. So, imagine my astonishment when the official envelope arrived to inform me that I was turned down.

It was due to the fact that I had been on another license, five or six years previously, that had been revoked. While still a partner in my first bar, Malachy’s, I’d briefly gone into partnership for a minute sum of money with one Lew Futterman in an establishment in Greenwich Village.

Lew, a progressive young fellow, whom I’d met during my rugby-playing career, had noticed that there was no place in all of New York City where couples who were not of the same race could get together to have a beverage and a bite of food without being given bad tables near the kitchen, along with insults and sullen service from waiters and bartenders. He had the logical and commercial idea that were we to open a spot where the miscegenationists could gather, not alone would we be doing God’s work, we could make pots of money in the process, because, you see, black folks’ money is the precise color of white folks’ moola, and has exactly the same value.

I needed a bit of capital for this venture, so I spoke to the missus on the subject, as Linda’s parents were well set, and there were indications of a trust fund lurking in some vault. She approached the parents and they, in concert, simultaneously, not to mention together, rose to their full respective heights with an “Aha! We told you he was a fortune hunter, this Mick, and he wants to destroy your fortune while making his.”

A bit of tenacity extracted the necessary quids from the claws of the parent trustees, and Futterman and self were in business across the street from the Village Gate, in our new premi, which had a seafaring theme: ropes, lanterns, bits of nets, portholes, and it went under the agnomen “Port of Call.”

Having dashed into this venture without careful thought or preparation, and without informing my partners in Malachy’s of this new demand on my time, I found myself hoping that I could help run this place without anyone finding out I was connected to it. Futterman had the opposite thought: He was depending on my then celebrity and popularity to draw other folks besides the mixed daters. But before long, my other partners were in a rage because I’d brought disgrace on them with this questionable endeavor, and I was rarely to be seen uptown at Malachy’s anymore. I was rarely seen downtown either, for that matter. On the pretext of drumming up business, I was anywhere but in the Port of Call or Malachy’s.

The Port of Call was successful, at first, too; there was plenty of money flowing over the bar. Then the screws were applied. The local residents rose in high dudgeon over the dirty goings-on in this saloon, and a complaint campaign was begun. By way of their pressure on the local precinct, we had as many as five visits a night from the police, and there was hardly a night we didn’t get a ticket: no soap in the bathroom, no toilet paper in the ladies’ room, cigarette butts on the floor, serving minors, insufficient lighting, improper display of license.

Then came the health crowd: cook’s head uncovered, a fly on the ceiling, temperature in the fridge too high, meat uncovered, spot of grease on the wall. And the Fire Department: extinguishers not full and in the wrong place, “Exit” sign not bright enough, curtain in bathroom not fire-retardant. We could have had a ticker-tape parade with the tickets we received at the behest of the Mafia chieftains who lived in the vicinity, but Futterman fought on. Myself, I had no stomach for this battle. It scared the shit out of me, and my partners in Malachy’s were putting pressure on me to resign, as they said I was endangering our license, so I opted out. Futterman gave me back the initial investment, and we shook hands and parted.

’Twasn’t long after that that the mob decided to wage open warfare, and there was a miniriot in the area, the local thugs revolting against the huge black peni being inserted into virginal white vaginas. They smashed the windows of the Port of Call and tried to set fire to the interior, and it was downhill after that. Shortly thereafter, the State Liquor Authority, a perennially corrupt crowd of yahoos, revoked the license, and that was that for the P of C.

When I resigned from the business, I neglected to inform the SLA in writing, so when the Port of Call license was revoked, I was still a licensee, and thus a criminal in the eyes of the Authority. This made me unworthy to be an owner of a saloon in this great and fair city of New York, as I was informed when I applied for my new license.

The real owners of Himself, Joey and Tessie, said we couldn’t pull out now, as all our publicity had indicated I was the boss man, so I’d just say I was the owner. My so-called vast following would then trek their way by the thousands, and once more I would be the wise and wealthy lord of all I surveyed, the Malachy of yore.

At the suggestion of one Paul Fagan, another scion, whose family, according to rumor, owned Hawaii and half of the Pacific, I decided to have a formal launch for Himself. There wasn’t the extra capital about for such a do, but our cook, Sudia Masoud, a capacious lady of devout Muslim leanings, assembled the sandwiches of cold cuts, and then hordes of black-tied lads and evening-dressed ladies descended on the bar. It was an inelegant joint, not a bit suitable for this gathering of Fagan’s society friends, so there was naught to do but get pissed drunk and pretend that it was some kind of joke that called for getting dressed up in evening wear.

Once opened, Himself had the small problem that nobody could find it on an obscure side street of the Upper East Side. And when it comes to running a saloon, the presence of the owner on the premises, whether the real owner or not, is the key to the bit of success. Not far away on Second Avenue, Elaine Kaufman founded the famous Elaine’s, still a hangout for the most famous authors and journalists in American letters. To this day, thirty-four or so years since she opened it, there is hardly a night that Elaine is not present to look after her business.

Not so myself. During the renovations of Himself, and after it opened, I was off again, tearing around the city on the usual quest for surcease from the little black demons that used my soul as a venue for their daily outings. The thought of spending the rest of my working life trapped in the confines of a bar was impinging on the consciousness and causing unrest.

When I wasn’t running about the city, I’d sit in my monastic room, with the mattress on the floor, the one sheet, one pillow, and the one blanket on the chair, and cogitate on the uselessness and stupidity of it all. Here I was, an intelligent, well-read fellow, curious about the world, good company, easy in society, maybe not handsome, but good-looking enough, with a good sense of humor, with this doomed life’s prospect.