Slot Attendant

by Jack Engelhard

  “Where were we?”

  “How you know everything.”

  “How everybody knows everything, right?”

  “Right.”

  He makes a joke. “Your mother-in-law has the goods on you every day when she checks the computer.”

  “Probably.”

  “I understand you’re married to a very beautiful wife.”

  “I hope this doesn’t get personal, Sir.”

  He knows he’s stepped over a line and switches back. “I underestimated you,” he says with a roughhouse smile. “The camera picked that up, too.”

  I didn’t have to ask. I knew what he was getting at, that brawl I had with Franco DeLima out on the loading dock. It was a mistake, it was juvenile, it was schoolyard – but it had to be done! Franco had youth and size on me, but I had the speed and the tricks, and the indignation, so he was no match. I took care of business. I also used Boris’ line: “I see ten feet under you,” and it worked.

  Stevenson says, “For all we know, you’re part of this ring.”

  Why else, he adds, would I be so evasive?

  “So catch me if you can.”

  “That’s a wise answer.”

  “Well I’m resenting this – this Third Degree.”

  “Resenting? You’re wasting my time, and you’re resenting?”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Maybe. But we know that kid has, and we’re going to nail him.”

  “He’s a good kid, Toledo. He’s getting married.”

  “So?”

  “The last thing he’d want is a stain.”

  “Or maybe he’s desperate. We know all about Maria. She wants a house, a car. You can’t get that at eight bucks an hour.”

  “I’m not an informer, Mr. Stevenson.”

  “You think you’re being honorable?”

  “It’s all we’ve got.”

  “No, freedom is all we’ve got. Staying out of prison is all we’ve got.”

  “I’m not going to jail.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “I suggest you find somebody else to do your snitching.”

  “I think you’ll come around.”

  “Don’t hold your breath.”

  It’s getting ugly. “Really, I was hoping you’d be different. I thought you were different.”

  “I once thought so, too.”

  “You’re all the same.”

  I can’t resist. “So are you.”

  He agrees that a wall of silence exists among his elites as well. It’s the same all over. Then the phone rings and he turns soft, obviously a child, his son, he’s talking to, and a loving father he is, or seems to be. He’s a father now, Dad, and likable. I remark, to myself, as I’m listening in, how different we are in the different places of our lives. In another place, this man and I could be friends. We would not be talking about informing, about going to jail. I would not be on the hot seat, my freedom at risk.

  We’d be talking sports. Those Eagles, those Phillies. I know he’s originally from Philadelphia.

  He’s telling his kid, as kindly as he can, that there is nothing he can do. He can’t just go over there and do that, especially in his position as a cop.

  After he hangs up, he confides that his kid is having trouble in school, with a bully. He’s taught his kid, of course, some of the tricks of fighting, but this bully is big, and won’t let up. As a father, there is nothing he can do, and as a cop, there’s especially nothing he can do, except report it all to the principal, again. These days all the rules protect the bullies, he says. All the laws protect the bullies.

  He’s lost in thought. Then: “It’s getting worse out there for the rest of us. The courts…”

  I know what he’s talking about.

  So he resumes, after he hangs up – he resumes that soft, or softer, approach. He wants to talk Literature.

  He loves Hemingway.

  Yes, I agree, Hemingway taught writers not to be afraid of writing.

  Somebody pokes a head in and says he’s needed outside. There’s new information on something. Stevenson excuses himself and steps out.

  I’m wondering about this new information, as I sit here, just a touch concerned. How would this play in Haddonfield?

  Sure to make the papers, if this goes on. Me, I don’t care, but Melanie! That would be devastating.

  I really do not give a damn what they do to me, as if they haven’t done it already, and the casino is the least of it all.

  New information, huh? Well, maybe it’s about me and maybe it isn’t. What did I do? Something wrong? Maybe.

  I know I once parked in a handicap spot at the 7/11, and didn’t even park, just ran in for a carton of milk Melanie forgot, and I kept the car running. But I’ve done worse. Plenty.

  But jail, may just be the career move I need. They publish sinners. Sylvio made his bones on O.J. type tell-alls. Confess, repent, and you’re on TV. Crime pays. Crime publishes. They love scoundrels. They love it when you done bad and then repent. America loves rehab.

  Detective Stevenson steps back in and keeps on eyeing me and shaking his head. I’m waiting for my rights to be read, and the handcuffs.

  “You can go for now.”

  “Thanks.”

  He keeps eyeing me as I go for the door.

  “This isn’t over,” he says.

  “I’m sure.”

  “But you can go.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But don’t go too far.”

  Chapter 16

  Sylvio has heard from the other publisher. Hey, says Sylvio as I’m in his office after inviting myself over.

  Hey, says Sylvio, not bad.

  This publisher likes Smooth Operator. Are we talking contract? Not so fast. All he wants, this publisher, are a few changes, and then yes, we can talk. Nothing major, nothing drastic, nothing that departs from my “vision.” The publisher wants the man, the hero, turned into a woman. Just a suggestion. He wants the locale switched from Cincinnati to New York.

  “That should be no big deal, right?” says Sylvio as he’s on the phone with someone else but still talking to me as well.

  The publisher wants more description, less dialogue. Wait. Maybe it’s the other way round. The publisher wants more dialogue and less description. After all, show, don’t tell. We’ll find out, if we get that far. Wait. The publisher wants less of both or more of both, yes, more description, less dialogue. Sylvio is quite positive. Also – less interior dialogue.

  “He wants the weather,” says Sylvio.

  That means more interior dialogue.

  What else?

  He wants a new beginning, a new ending, a happy ending. I can do new beginnings, but endings are tough. I had my ending pretty much as it should be, vague.

  A novel, really, should never END. It should go on, as unwritten.

  As for a new opening I had this in mind, “Call me Ishmael,” but that’s been taken.

  What else?

  He wants the ages of my characters reduced by 10 years, make it more hip, more accessible to younger readers.

  You really can’t identify with anyone over 25, according to the publisher. Beyond a certain demographic (I think it’s age 41) Americans are as good as dead. On the other hand, the publisher also wants more old people, as the young don’t read. Only old people read. So he wants my young people younger and my old people older. He also wants more people in the middle, as this generation still reads, though some don’t.

  He wants more sex. He wants two or three more female characters, since only women buy books. Only women read. Men watch football.

  What else?

  I mention a second marriage but nothing about the first, how and why they got divorced. The publisher says I must explain. No I mustn’t. This isn’t a biography. This is a novel. If I go into the first marriage and the divorce it will throw the entire novel off its rhythm and take it into new territory that has nothing to do with the story. It will bring up things that don’
t belong.

  “You’re the writer,” says Sylvio.

  Also, I say they fell in love, but why…the publisher wants to know what made them fall in love.

  “I don’t know,” I tell Sylvio.

  “What do you mean?”

  “How do I know what makes people fall in love? There’s no REASON. People fall in love, period. There doesn’t have to be a reason. There shouldn’t be a reason.”

  “I’m just telling you what the publisher wants.”

  What else?

  He wants no religious or ethnic references. No Jews, no Arabs, no Christians. He does want an African American, as that’s how it is these days.

  Above all, he wants a yarn.

  “Can you do all or some of that?” says Sylvio. “If you can, we maybe got a sale.”

  “I can give more sex.”

  “I know you can. You’re good at sex.”

  That is true. I am very good at sex. One reader once told me that The Ice King was the best sex she ever had.

  “I don’t know if I can change Cincinnati into New York. The locale is one of the characters.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  “People in the Midwest think and act differently from people in New York. It’s miles apart in more ways than traffic.”

  “He thinks nobody cares about Cincinnati.”

  “Faulkner wrote about a county that never really existed and what about Atlanta? Did anybody care about Atlanta until Margaret Mitchell came along?”

  “Actually, nobody even cared about the South,” Sylvio agrees.

  “So there,” I say.

  “What about changing the man into a woman?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “I was afraid you’d say that,” says Sylvio.

  “Question. What’s this about a yarn? What is a yarn?”

  “A yarn is a yarn.”

  “I really don’t know what a yarn is, Sylvio.”

  “A yarn is a story…”

  “That says nothing.”

  “You’re trying to say something.”

  “Yes. I’m not trying to teach or to preach, but yeah, I’m trying to say something.”

  “Like what?”

  “That’s for the reader to figure out. The writer is the last two know.”

  “Well, he wants a yarn.”

  “I don’t do yarns, Sylvio. The Ice King wasn’t a yarn, either, and it did all right.”

  As of right now, this publisher sees the movie, not the book. It is photographic, too photographic.

  Meanwhile, Sylvio has submitted Smooth Operator around Hollywood and the word back is that they see the book but not the movie, not photographic enough.

  New York says my book is perfect for Hollywood. Hollywood says my book is perfect for New York.

  So we’re back to Roe Morgan, our last chance, again. But that’s the business, one last chance to the next.

  I have begun to get nauseous at the very name Roe Morgan, the very name. Maybe it’s from the moment he said No Thanks. That probably did it for me. But Sylvio assures that the door is still open with Roe Morgan. He, Sylvio, is selling me as part of a package deal along with that other writer Roe Morgan has the hots for. I am the loss leader in this deal. Roe Morgan is not asking for changes. That’s something. Sylvio, who seldom gets personal, tells me not to despair. We are still very much in the hunt.

  Sylvio says, “Have you thought about golf?”

  “Golf?”

  “Those books sell. Golf is big.”

  “Golf?”

  “Give it some thought.”

  But for perhaps the first time I think Melanie is despairing. “What happens if that falls through?”

  We’re having donuts and coffee after she’s picked me up from the bus station at Mount Laurel. I had fallen asleep on the bus and am still drowsy. We’re at the Dunkin Donuts in Cherry Hill, where Melanie had just gone for her regular medical check-up. I love those glazed donuts and that coffee.

  I hate it when Melanie starts despairing. I’m always tottering myself and without her spiritedness, who knows? She does snap back awfully fast, though, and that’s good for both of us. I wonder sometimes if I’m manic depressive. I think I would like that, as it would be something to talk about and wear around at parties. I don’t drink or take drugs, and these are flaws if you’re an artist. I do smoke, a pipe, of course, but that’s not serious enough unless you light up around non-smokers, which is practically everybody these days. People need you to be recovering from something. I’m not manic depressive, either. If I am, one good phone call, and I’m cured.

  When Melanie is down, it’s like an affliction that I’ve caused by my failure to produce, and that’s a guilt nobody needs.

  She says, as she begins to brighten, that we should take in a movie at the Loews while we’re here, it’s been so long, so long since we’ve taken in a movie, or done anything, what with my hours being what they are and me being so tired even on my days off. We don’t do anything, go anywhere. “You want a date, huh?”

  “What’s wrong with that?” she says.

  “Nothing.”

  “You used to be so romantic.”

  “When?”

  “When you were courting me.”

  “I was courting you?”

  “You sure were.”

  “Didn’t we go to bed that first date?”

  “Second date. You’re thinking of someone else, or all of them.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “Second date,” she insists.

  “So that’s not courting. Courting is when you’ve got chaperones and all that business.”

  “You were romantic.”

  “First date.”

  “Second date, Jay. I wasn’t that easy.”

  “Second date is playing hard to get these days, right?”

  “I think so. That’s our culture. Our parents never KISSED until the fourth date.”

  We sit there, and we’re enjoying ourselves, and trying to remember the last movie we saw together.

  “Was it The Ice King?” she says. “Our movie?”

  “That far back?”

  “I think it was,” she says.

  “Can’t be.”

  “I know,” she says. “I’m sure we’ve gone out since. Can’t be that far back.”

  Melanie’s connection to the movies dates back even before our movie. She was named after what’s-her-name in Gone with the Wind.

  Well, of course we’ve seen other movies. I usually pick the ones that got the worst reviews, upon my conviction that the world and everything in it is upside-down. I use the same method of handicapping in choosing what books to read and what horses to bet. I don’t always win but I make my point. I have read reviews of movies, say Woody Allen movies, where the critic says I’ll be rolling in the aisle, and this has never happened. I have never rolled in the aisle.

  “So the publisher can see the movie but not the book, and the producers can see the book but not the movie. Ridiculous,” she says.

  Same thing happened with The Ice King. First New York saw it as a movie and Hollywood saw it as a book. Finally, after many tries, someone saw the book as a book and someone saw the book as a movie, and both turned out to be winners. Until then they were all wrong. Maybe they’re wrong again.

  I give her my mantra. “Is it possible that I am right and everybody else is wrong?” Again!

  “That’s more like it,” Melanie says. “That’s the talk I like to hear.”

  Yes, maybe I am right and the rest of the world is wrong. This happens.

  Golf?

  We drive over to the Loews multiplex to see something with Tom Hanks, and maybe catch a double-feature, which everybody does, I think, by sneaking into the neighboring plex. I like Tom Hanks most times. I did not like him in Saving Private Ryan. I think he was miscast by Spielberg. Should have been an unknown. I always knew it was Tom Hanks, an actor, and not a real soldier. Anyway, we buy the oversized popcorn
and a Pepsi and walk over to the usher to get our tickets ripped up, and the usher is a kid, well, around 22, and he gives me the up and down and practically gasps.

  He says, “I know you. You’re the author.”

  Melanie starts beaming. But I am sure he is thinking of someone else. Been years since I made the papers, certainly television, and certainly any new book cover. For sure, I’m guessing, he thinks I’m Tom Wolfe, though I am not wearing a white suit and am not nearly that age. I know that Melanie is in for a huge letdown and am already kicking myself for letting her talk me into this.

  “You’re Jay Leonard,” he says.

  He says he reads me all the time, on the Internet, and knows The Ice King, movie, and book. He asks for my autograph.

  I do that and he says, “Thank you.”

  “No,” I say, “thank YOU.”

  As we’re walking into the theater, Melanie, smiling high and wide, says, “See!”

  “See what?”

  “Tell me you’re not pleased.”

  I’m thinking F. Scott Fitzgerald and that movie about him, of his later years, from the story by his lover Sheila Graham, Beloved Infidel. Gregory Peck plays Scott and Deborah Kerr is Sheila in this movie that nobody thinks is all that terrific except me, particularly that scene where they find out that a play has been adapted from one of his novels and is being produced off Hollywood, and out they go, Scott in his tux, Sheila in her evening gown, and Scott, of course, has been forgotten and unpublished for years, so this is a big moment, and Sheila is so determined to make him happy, and when they get there, instead of arriving at a major theater, the place is a basement of some sort, and it’s all a bunch of kids who are doing the play. Sheila asks a group of them if they know F. Scott Fitzgerald and they giggle and someone says, “I thought he was dead.” I can watch that scene a hundred times, and probably have.

  “Go ahead,” says Melanie. “Tell me you’re not pleased.”

  “I’m pleased, Mel. I’m pleased.”

  “Remember, it’s only the moments that count. This was a moment.”

  Chapter 17

  Knock it all you want, there is nothing like working for a big company. Those Benefits! They’ve got you covered. Need root canal? Ten dollars. From dentist to dentist, from doctor to doctor, from hospital to hospital, just whip out that card and it’s magic. That time when I was attacked by migraines, I whipped out that card, at the hospital, and I was in. I am a hypochondriac, but only about money, and since getting coverage I don’t worry about getting sick. I can get sick as much as I please.