At the Wagon Wheel no one has heard of relaxation. Get them in and out in forty minutes, from breadbasket and silverware to the last sip of coffee and the check, or else you will hear them moan and groan. And the tip will reflect it.
It isn’t anything I can fathom personally. If it was me putting that kind of dough on the table just to top up my belly, I would take my own sweet time. I’d make it a two-cigar finale, shoot the works. Paying four dollars for a steak I would wish to keep it company for a while, savor the flavor. But not these. They prefer to keep on the move, chew and flee.
So there is a mental strain to the waitering, plus of course myself and Owen are low men on the totem-pole, the temporary help. The triplets, the Three Maidens of the Apocalypse, are the incumbents. They get the best stations, bus-boys who know the job, top cut of every steer, and a fast deal in the kitchen. If we make out on tips it is because we swim upstream all night to get there. We are the other two, put on for the month of August, and the word is out that no one undergoes this ordeal twice.
The Incumbents do not even deign to say hello. We must sit with each other and chat, before and after the rush, while they sit next door sorting out their cigarettes and piles of cash. Both of us shy, and him a swish, but we get along. Turns out we both live in the borough of Manhattan. His place is in the Village—he waits on table there too, in a spaghetti palace two blocks from his flat.
Owen is wide open, a great confider of secrets. Gets very personal once past his shyness. For example he makes no attempt to hide his condition—a real hothouse flower who blooms every time he moves or opens his mouth to speak. Yet he is very sweet, asks after everyone in the kitchen, and makes regular customers who will insist on his tables to the annoyance of certain blue-haired biddies.
Last night he confided a Walkaway story, my first in months, and he was in it, though not the leading man. His kind will sometimes stick together I learned, they can marry without papers. Cannot have a child of course, but keep house, share a life, the same as man and woman can. He personally was married twice. The first ended in a divorce, also without papers, when he was young and just as glad to watch it go. The other time was the bitter pill.
A true love match this time he says, nine years in tandem with the man of his dreams, complete with lace curtains on the window and a pair of matching parakeets. Yet the object of his devotion flew the coop and he did it by doing it—no apology, no explanation, just gone. “I knew where he was, of course. I knew he was a weakling and a coward who couldn’t face me with bad news.” (This he confides without an inkling who else might fit the description.)
The bad news was a love match with a fruit they knew in common on Fire Island. Owen was too hurt, too jealous to spend a nickel confirming the damage. “Oh I knew,” he says, punishing himself as he likes to do. “I didn’t have to call anyone. If he wanted to talk he would have done it before he left.”
Never crossed his mind the companion was snatched, or lost all memory in a bar uptown, or fell off the bridge and drowned. But that’s what really happened, he was in the drink and floated up a week later near the Tappan Zee Bridge with his skull bashed in. Murder, and to this day unsolved.
“But I was overjoyed when I heard the report. Elated. Because it meant he loved me, do you see, he hadn’t let me down after all!” Even this Owen will confess to me unsolicited. Of course there came some guilt, and a load of grief, such that he believed at forty-two his life was over. He is a dramatist, Owen, apt to say such things as that for five years he has not been alive—“just walking through my part, speaking my lines without any real feeling, do you see?”
If you can have a love story without a happy marriage at the conclusion, then why not a Walkaway story with a corpse. Leave it in the hands of the official scorer. (Wiley would say “If it doesn’t curve, then it ain’t a curve-ball.”) A shame for Owen in any case. Emotional guy and sweet as they come, he looks half the time like Jesus with the nails in. He is crying for love and I hope he gets it.
Too bad Mickey Klutz couldn’t fix something up for him. I’m sure they have one of everything for sale up here, in a plain brown wrapper. Mickey could, in fact, but Owen couldn’t accept. He’s like me, wants a lover that is honestly come by. And in the meanwhile settles for the love of tourists, who crave his services and praise him twenty percent worth under the ash-tray.
Used my free night to dine in splendor and hear a little band concert in Congress Park. Corny stuff, Stars and Stripes plus a few show tunes, but it sounds nice to have some music in the sky. Made the acquaintance of two lovely young people from Virginia, Jim and Beth Longacre, who convinced me to ride out to the lake with them for a fireworks display. They had a cottage out there and a little boat, so what the hell, we rowed out on the water and watched a few flares go up on the other shore. (Upstate they set their sights lower, spectacle-wise.) Yet I loved their hospitality (he even drove me back, five or six miles from Saratoga Lake so twice that for him) and would gladly reciprocate if they weren’t here today gone tomorrow.
That accounted for my free time and otherwise the schedule protects me, as anticipated. Cannot mope or droop when you’re booked solid and yet I have noticed this: my best times of the day are times alone, the witching hour when work lets out and the early hours prior to post.
I’m sure a genius of any kind needs to be left alone. Give him room and he will uncover the secrets of life, crowd him and he will just do the laundry. Your solitude is where you get some answers.
The weather also helps. Air this good can infect a person happily, just as too much rain or slush depresses. In a country like Sweden where it is dark ninety percent of the time in winter, the people start jumping out of their windows. Like frogs leaving the lily pads, one after another—a downpour of jumpers. It’s just a detail yet one that matters. Look how many souls will uproot a life-history to get to Florida or California, where sunshine is fully guaranteed. (Though happiness is not, I’m sure.)
Home on the late side again tonight, and wakeful. More mental pictures of Caddy to sort through. I took a glass of beer with Owen in a place on Caroline, then a roundabout route home. Nights are cool, stars are clear, streets are wide and quiet. A soft peaceful time, with my pockets full of money and my cigar slow burning.
I didn’t want to subject my hosts to a Corona. Mrs. Miller says no cigar smoke, Mr. Miller gets himself in trouble arguing for my constitutional right to puff in the privacy of my room. He sticks up for me, so I’ll stick up for him, by abstaining. Or by smoking on the hoof, prior to my arrival.
Mrs. has become invisible to me. I keep strange hours, yes, but I never lay an eyeball on her anymore. Evidence that she exists—my room sparkles, sheets fresh every day. Also I have experimented along these lines: if I leave my window open, I come home and find it closed. Conversely, leave it closed and find it open. She is letting me know who is boss, that’s all, so now I shut it each day upon leaving, to insure I have plenty of fresh air in the room when I return at night.
With weather this perfect and continued luck at the windows I have my optimistic days. I can reason I’m in good shape, looking well and rested, so who knows? Maybe Caddy Moore looks up and says, Hey, who is this guy, he’s not so bad!
But I am not eager to test it. I am well aware that in these matters two and two don’t always make four. You might look like a candidate on paper, with all the best ideas, but you are not a candidate if you cannot bring in the vote. Doesn’t make a difference how good I look in my mirror, or sport a fat bankroll, or chance to make a funny remark in public. The fact remains I am ineligible for a girl like that the way a mule is ineligible for the Travers. Class tells. The $3000 horse can’t look the $5000 horse in the eye, and everybody knows it.
The way I see it now, it’s not so bad in Saratoga, and I’ll be back in New York soon enough. I might not win her, but until I go back there I haven’t lost her. And I know whatever I say or don’t say, she will be gone soon after and I’ll be staring at chilly weather
. When the chill comes down on us, I’ll be out of work again, but it’s not the money now. There are other factors (Caddy, and Jimmy estranged) to make me a little nervous contemplating my second winter at 10 Battersea. Maybe Florida for me too.
They do a lot of fishing up here, tourists and locals alike, My landlord Miller goes every Saturday, never misses he relates, with some buddies from Glens Falls. And for this coming Saturday he invited me. “Come along with us if you like.”
A nice gesture to make the offer. We were both glad when I told him no thanks. If I want to catch a fish, I know how: take a stroll down Fulton Street and catch it in a crate of ice. This method never fails and is a hell of a lot cheaper as well. My landlord’s free dinner that he nets—when you figure in his transport plus equipment (and these fellows don’t leave without first packing up the kitchen sink)—probably is costing him thirty dollars a pound amortized over life.
Of course I am not so dull I don’t understand the difference. He went and got it himself, so it feels free. There are easier ways to make money than handicapping the horses too, but the sport is worth a little something, if not always measured in cash.
May be true that I have no complaints here, nor do I intend to complain. Yet I also had no complaints when I was still in Brooklyn. Complaint is not necessarily the unit of measure. Even Linda said it to me, “You don’t complain.” That’s my policy.
In Brooklyn with Tanya I never felt the least bit unhappy. Looking back I can say this: my happiness was complete yet very small. Like a kid with electric trains, who has one perfect oval of track that the locomotive goes round and round perfectly—no tunnels or hills, or bridges, and crossovers.
You might choose a large unhappiness over a small happiness, sometimes. Maybe anything beats No Complaints. Jail, torture, death. Because No Complaints is a jail, it is torture, it is a death. To have No Complaints is to be finished, and limping home to your grave. Nothing matters.
You can convince yourself, and especially when you have No Complaints, that on the contrary everything matters. That the tiniest trivial detail is crucial to you. And so you sit at your desk and wait for the telephone to ring, because what if someone wishes to order ten cases of beer, and someone else twenty, and what if you might hit five hundred cases for the week. So don’t step out, you could lose a commission. Step up onto the roof for five minutes and put your face up to the sun, inhale the saltwater, could cost you a dollar and fifty cents, watch out!
It keeps you going, but only like I say, round and round. These things do not matter as much as you think—you might be happier digging a ditch. You nurture and protect what’s yours until one fine day you get a wake-up call and find you have nothing worth protecting—No Complaints.
No fault of Tanya’s. I had no complaints with her and I’m sure I love her very much, right this very minute sitting here. But I could live another thirty years on earth and the idea of all those years taken one day at a time (which is how it is usually done) with nothing to complain about—
So yes I started gambling more, and sat by the telephone a little less. The simple fact is my business kept growing. If you run away from someone—a girl, a puppydog, a client—they will chase you down the block. It’s when you do the chasing they go the other way. To me success and failure are the same joke, exactly.
It’s the Grand Finale tomorrow, scrambled egg and Spearmint at the Last Breakfast. Miller insisted and I caved in, such a nice man. I can measure up one time, as a social grace.
Meanwhile a decision—definite, maybe. It is to stop pushing Caddy from my thoughts, and stop pretending I have nothing to lose, even if I have no chance to win. Acknowledge the reverse, plenty to lose and it’s time to lose it.
Forget about No Complaints, shoot the moon is the correct answer. I must let her know my feelings, let her laugh at me if she likes but get my money down with no undercutting. Shoot the moon and when I miss it, complain.
*My guess is that Oscar meant to check his spelling of the word prerogative. I don’t blame him, I checked it too, and wondered if he kept a dictionary in his flat. Very few words in the daybooks are misspelled, insofar as I can discover, whereas a fair number have been lined out and corrected.
—Walter Ford, Jr.
*As an investments counselor, I might say in my uncle’s defense that, even setting aside the enjoyment factor, a career in informed parimutuel wagering does not strike me as “sick,” fiscally. The takeout does hurt but the rate of return can certainly be comparable to a money market bond or conservative prime stock. Given Oscar’s genuine expertise, I would have to declare his “portfolio” at least relatively sound.
—Walter Ford, Jr.
III
The Leaning Side
Autumn 1956–
So I traveled back to New York just as I came away one month back, in the safekeeping of my friend the hedonist. A livelier session from me this time, and always lively the Duke. But the highlight is Mickey Klutz Forgives All, as fate takes a hand. He informs,
“Oscar, you had more sense than I gave you credit for. That Vicki gave me the clap.”
So it’s a social disease for the Duke of Kent! Call it the common touch. And I said to him, Well well, we know that the Lord He moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.
“So did she, my dear fellow, so did she. It wasn’t how she moved that got me down.”
But the Duke is never down. He is so pleased to be seated at life’s banquet table, as he calls it, that the truth is he’s probably happy to have a dose of the clap. It’s part of the fruit that falls from the tree of life, and the Duke wants it all—one big picnic on the grass to him.
I honor this quality in my friend. It is the quality I wish for myself, to risk a little something now and again. I’m no moralist, just fogbound, an islander by background. It’s plain enough to see that the Duke’s misery gives him more to laugh about than all my virtue and my No Complaints.
“Mickey, I owe you an apology in that case.”
“Yes, Oscar?”
“It wasn’t Vicki’s fault, the problem you are having. She got it from me, that day beneath the grandstand.”
“What! You mean it? That’s wonderful, Oscar!”
I thought he would know a joke when he heard one. Instead he was tickled to hear I had mated with this mare, not to mention the idea I had mated with worse previously in order to have something communicable. He was so thrilled over his role in having helped to corrupt me after all that I had to own the truth and stop him.
“Mickey, no, it’s only a joke. You know me, I never did anything with her.”
“I thought I knew you. What’s the story, Oscar? Did you or did you not partake of that jeune filly’s charms?”
“I did not. Just kidding you. I was sure you’d get steamed up about it, and then I would break the news.”
“Get mad? Dammee, sir! I’d happily share a germ with you anytime, so long as good sound recreation was enjoyed by all concerned. I selected that girl for you particularly, you know—I had you very specifically in mind when I enlisted her talents.”
“A very pretty girl. A Miss Rheingold.”
“Oh yes? She never said a word about that to me.”
“Oh oh, here we go again. Not a real Miss Rheingold.* I mean that I thought of her that way—a beauty contestant. You know, a gorgeous girl.”
“At least we can agree on something. The filthy bitch. She gave me some Senatorial clap, I’ll bet.”
“Counselors and Kings, I’m sure. The top of the line.”
Tuesday after lunch. A gap to fill time-wise. No brass bands to welcome me back. Jimmy said the word hello, a nice soft cold shoulder. Bulkitis has the plywood over his wicket, and a note posted—Back After Labor Day.
I can use the time to fix things up at home, put my affairs in order and get a shine on my trinkets. Spring cleaning on the final day of August—Bon Ami and elbow grease, a little patching plaster, and a splash or two of white paint.
Don�
�t wait for the landlord to attend to these matters, because he can wait longer, till Christmas of the year 2000.
A shopping spree, for more improvements. I picked up a two-burner hotplate to increase my culinary range plus a few pictures to decorate the walls. (A lot faster than with patching plaster.) This idea stems from The Wagon Wheel, though my scenes are French, not the Wild West. French and Dutch countryside, fifty cents apiece up near Washington Square—you shop for yourself in a big bin.
Ordered a telephone, as Fish, unlisted, and they said, Fine, we will bring it right over. Just like that.
Jimmy Myers is the mystery. He won’t come up on his own and resists when I try inducements. I cornered him in the park today and put it to him: help me spruce the place up and I’ll pay good wages. Some fresh paint and lemon oil, come on. Got a verbal agreement from him, but then no show. It’s like he was my ten-year-old pal in July and now one month later he’s sixteen, and alienated.
Best not to push it. Wait him out. After all, he wasn’t at the Spa being offered bubble bath, he was down here sweltering in the streets. Could be the heat, and he needs a freshening. But it feels terrible to me. May, June, July, we were reading together, strolling in the neighborhood—now I can’t imagine such a closeness.
Clubhouse reunion, as the meeting begins tomorrow. Wally Wiley passed the month up in the Adirondacks with his offspring, the legal eagles, including various dogs and grandchildren. (I lost count listening.)
“So what did you do to keep busy?”
“I did nothing, that’s what. Read a magazine, have a smoke, drop a fishing line in the water. That’s it. That’s what they do up there.”
“Nice to take it easy.”
“Awful, Oscar, the worst. The whole month I had to pretend I was a sane person, that’s what put the strain on me. Because I lost all my marbles the first few days. But I made a deal with Noel, my boy, and I had to keep to it.”
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