by Sol Stein
His face turned hard. “I got bad news for you. I no do this no more fifteen years maybe. When you lend, you got to collect. You got to be stronger than the stupidos who collect for you. When my legs go, eye goes, pecker goes, I say, Aldo, retire.”
He read the utter disappointment in my face.
“Wait minute. Rule of life: After bad news, good news. My son Nick, he do this kind business. Clara!” She must have been close. He turned his head to her.
“Get me Nick, he home now, quick.”
As she dialed a number, the old man said to me, “You know Nick?”
“I just met him once when we were kids. In this room.” Clara handed him the phone. The old lion addressed Nick in Italian, orders to a subordinate. I recognized a few essentials, Louie, my name, the amount of money. There were raised voices on both sides, then Manucci said something sharp in Italian, and calmly handed me the phone. “He remembers you. Here, you and him talk.”
I took the phone.
“Hey,” Nick said,“long time. I saw your picture in the papers. You haven’t changed. How’re you doing?”
“Hello, Nick,” I said, aware of his father watching me. “How’s it with you?”
“My wife says I get a year older every year. You got to tell me your secret. We should get together. You heard my old man? He said when Louie Riller is dead a son of Louie Riller’s is like a son of his, real old country. That makes you my brother, right? That’s a big number you need. Want to come see me tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I said. “Of course. Thanks. When?” He set the time, asked for the name and phone number of my accountant so he could get some facts, told me his company was called The Venture Capital Corporation, and gave me the address.
The Seagram Building?
Before I left, the old man said two things. “If Nick no help you real good, you call me.” He looked at Clara, motioning her to move his wheelchair closer to me. “I have nice farm in Sicily I go every year till doctor—stupido first class—he say no more airplanes. You, Ben-neh, you stay on my farm no charge. No one look for bigshot Jew-producer in Sicily. One year, two years, everything calm down, you come back. Take wife. Take bambini. Leave mess for everybody else clean up.” He laughed.
“My bambini,” I said, “are in high school. They don’t know any language except English. My wife wouldn’t know what to do on a farm.”
“What’s matter? She not smart? She learn, no?”
“She might leave me.”
“That’s no wife.”
“Louie wouldn’t want me to run away.”
He sighed. “I forget what Turks you Jews are. Do one thing for me. One.”
He leaned his head very close to mine, as if to keep what he said from Clara, who was standing at a discreet distance.
“Ben-neh?”
“Yes, Mr. Manucci.”
“You come to my funeral, okay?”
I nodded, extended my hand to confirm the agreement. He closed both his hands around mine with hurting strength, his eyes blazing. “If you no there,” he said, “I jump from coffin, find you, cut your throat.” And just as suddenly he let go of my hands, roared with laughter. “You believe that?”
I nodded.
“You better believe, Clara call you. Go!” he said.
I nodded good-bye to Clara, but it was difficult to take my eyes off the old man’s face, which I was certain I would not see again until I joined the line in front of the bronze casket to pay my respects.
Outside, the air seemed fresh like after a lightning storm. I was breathing hope again.
I noticed the three boys sitting on the hood of my car, pretending they didn’t see me coming. I guess they thought I was someone from Manhattan who would beg them politely so they could hold their hands out for commerce to get their asses off my BMW. I unlocked the driver’s side, got in, turned on the ignition with a roar, and started forward, giving them a bare second to scoot off the car. I knew the ways of the street once. As I zoomed away, I caught a glimpse of their squashed bravado in the rearview mirror.
3
Ben
The Seagram, for all its copper-clad simplicity, was once for me the Taj Mahal of New York, a slab thrusting thirty-eight floors up from Park Avenue as much to capture the attention of the heavens as of the passersby below. In years past I’d thought of it as an enclave for companies that know how to use interior space for the benefit of business. I daydreamed then of having my offices in the Seagram Building, but I was expected by actors and investors to stick to the West Forties, close to Sardi’s and, of course, the theaters themselves. Over the years, whenever I lunched at the Four Seasons or took a late night supper at the Brasserie, I’d sneak an upward glance at the huge building that held them both. If no bombs fell, the Seagram would survive any person in it. Not bad, Louie would have said, for that pisher. Meaning Nick Manucci.
I scanned the lobby for Ezra. I had warned him to be here on time. It was three fifty-five and he was late.
As I searched for The Venture Capital Corporation on the lobby directory, a gray-uniformed elevator starter asked, “Can I help you, sir?” If I’d been wearing my usual clothes—slacks and an open-throated shirt—he wouldn’t have called me sir.
“No, thanks,” I told the man in uniform. I’d just found the room number. What difference did it make if this fellow found out I was here to see Manucci? A voice behind me made me turn.
“Traffic,” Ezra said, glancing at his watch. “Let’s go.”
“No briefing?” I asked.
“If I interrupt, let me,” Ezra said. “Stick this memo in your case. If he wants facts, hand it to him. It’s sanitized.”
Ezra followed me into an already crowded elevator. As I watched the lighted numbers track our fast climb, I remembered how when I was a kid I would stir my anticipation of adventure by thinking of each floor of a building as a story.
Today, my story was on the thirty-second floor. The gilt lettering on the impressive, grained-wood double doors of suite 3218 had the name we were looking for. Those doors were nine feet high, not to admit giants but to give those entering a sense of the limitations of their size. I expected the entrance to be locked, but the knob turned readily. The reception room surprised me, a Max Ernst on one wall and a Zao-Wou-Ki on another. Coming from behind a desk, a young lady sheathed in silky polyester a mite too slinky for an office, with a touch of British accent said, “How good of you to be so prompt, Mr. Riller. Is this gentleman with you?”
“Mr. Hochman is my lawyer.”
“I see. I’ll tell Mr. Manucci’s secretary you’re both here.”
As she spoke on the intercom, I felt Ezra’s elbow in my ribs. He nodded toward the lithographs, and whispered, “I wonder who had the good taste to steal those for him.”
“You’ve seen too many gangster movies, Ezra.”
From across the room, the receptionist said, “Mr. Manucci is just finishing an overseas call. He won’t be a moment. Please have a seat.”
The coffee table displayed virgin copies of Forbes and Business Week.
“Can I get either of you a cup of coffee while you’re waiting?”
Ezra declined with a headshake.
“Just had some half an hour ago,” I said. “Thank you.”
She smiled. “I recognized you from your photographs, Mr. Riller. I still read the theater pages before the news.”
Her smile strained for my attention. My eyes wandered to her sheathed body, the indented waist, the arching hips.
Our family album contained sepia and gray photos of Louie with three or four women. Sometimes only one woman, gazing at him. Even after he married, the attention continued. Is it because of Louie’s example that I have never been able to do without the attention of women, which is, of course, a hazard through life?
“I’m an actress,” the receptionist said. “That is, I used to be.”
I knew what was coming.
“I had to earn a living.”
“May I know your name?” I asked.<
br />
“Gertrude Atherton.”
“I’ll remember that,” I said, as I always did, the shortest way to conclude that kind of conversation on a note of hope.
A sharp buzz caused her to pick up the phone. “Mr. Manucci’s secretary will be out in a second.”
And she was, standing just beyond a framed doorless doorway leading to the inner offices. As I walked through, an alarm went off, just as they do in airports.
As I stepped back, Miss Atherton laughed uncomfortably, holding out a plastic tray. “You must have quite a few keys or a lot of change. Could you drop them in here while you pass through?”
I put my key case, car keys, and a lot of change on the tray. “That’s what did it,” Miss Atherton said, her voice trying to make light of the procedure.
I passed through the portal. No alarm. Miss Atherton handed the tray to me so that I could repocket my things.
I passed the plastic tray to Ezra. “Very up to date,” I said.
Ezra put a metal pillbox next to his keys on the tray. “You should carry those pills for me, Ben. I only take them when I’m going to be around you.”
The secretary led us past two closed doors to the corner office and gestured to the open door. Beyond it we could see sofas and chairs, a Dufy on the wall, and, as we stepped forward, in the distant corner a man coming toward us with an energetic stride. Not quite as tall as I was, a natural blond beginning to gray, in his face a strong elegance his father did not have. He looked as if he ought to be a Ford Foundation executive—until he spoke.
Pumping my hand, he said, “I’m pleased to see you.” His voice barely betrayed the gritty consonants of his childhood.
“We met,” I said, “at your father’s house.”
“I remember.” He shook Ezra’s hand as Ezra introduced himself.
“Let’s get away from the desk,” Manucci said and guided Ezra and me to a sofa facing an armchair. “Please understand, I don’t know anything about your business. I’m not prepared to put a contract in front of you today”—this at me in particular—“and you didn’t have to pay a lawyer to come. I’m seeing you because my father called.”
“I understand.”
“I need a briefing.”
I nodded. “Mr. Hochman prepared a short memo with the facts,” I said, opening my attaché and handing it to him. “I should explain that Mr. Hochman isn’t just my attorney. He’s a close friend.”
“Good,” Manucci said. “Maybe I should have brought a close friend.” He chuckled. “How about some coffee, with a little anisette, maybe?”
I remembered the Sunday morning long ago when Louie announced that for a change he wasn’t going to pay his respects to Aldo Manucci alone. Our family had been invited to Sunday dinner with their family, an honor, an event. My mother refused. Louie begged her not to be difficult, this was very important. Zipporah insisted that he was going out of fear of not going. “He makes a beggar out of you,” she said. Louie’s fury frightened me. “Manucci never makes me beg. You make me beg you to come with me. Do you think he invites customers for Sunday dinner? We are friends now, Italians, Jews, it doesn’t matter, our blood might yet cross.”
I remember, later that day, my mother wanting to tuck the cloth napkin under my chin to keep the spaghetti sauce off my grown-up shirt and my only tie. I took the napkin from her. I could do it myself. And I remember the food, veal, and eggplant, and zucchini—I remember asking its name—and at the end, a cheesecake totally unlike the ones Louie brought home from the Jewish bakery, and with it, coffee and anisette. A drop or two was poured into my cup, though I was only twelve, with my mother protesting and Aldo Manucci saying, “It’s all right, next year he’s a man according to you, right?”
My nod now gave Aldo Manucci’s son license to pour steaming black brew from the sterling silver coffee pot into the small, hand-painted porcelain cups. From the sideboard came the bottle of anisette.
“Just a drop,” I said.
“For flavor,” Manucci said.
What might he have become if his father hadn’t been a moneylender? Even when I was twelve I couldn’t imagine myself sitting at a workbench the way Louie did day after day, fashioning metal into jewelry. To escape Louie’s fate, I accepted proffered roles—stage manager and finally producer—instead of pursuing my own. Had Nick Manucci followed his father out of respect? Or did he have no choice?
“This is a little different than your father’s business,” I said.
“A little. Your father was a jewelry maker, right? Little rings, things like that.”
I nodded.
“Your father used to say what a creative kid I got. I’d have guessed you’d end up a writer, something like that.”
“Oh,” I said, “play producing can be fairly creative.”
The word fairly hung in the air.
Ezra said, “Mr. Riller once called producing secondhand fucking, remember, Ben?”
What the hell’s gotten into Ezra?
He had Manucci laughing.
“Mr. Manucci,” Ezra went on, “a producer is a rat just to the people he works with. If Ben had become a writer, he’d have to rat on everybody.”
Manucci guffawed. “Hey, this lawyer friend of yours is okay.”
As soon as Manucci lowered his eyes to look at the memorandum in front of him, Ezra gave me his Cheshire Cat smile.
Manucci, looking up, said, “Understand, you didn’t give me too much time. My father caught me at home yesterday evening. Lucky I was able to get my accountant at his house. He got in pretty early this morning to make some calls. According to this,” he tapped the memo, “your record is exemplary.” He let the word lie there for a moment. “Fourteen hits out of seventeen times at bat. Anybody else come close besides DiMaggio?”
Ezra and I laughed, as the circumstances required. I noticed how the creases in Manucci’s trousers were more sharp-edged than good taste would have permitted. Ben, I could hear Louie saying, you are a snob like your mother. The important creases are in the brain, not in the pants.
I must make Nick comfortable with me, the way Louie would have made his father comfortable. I must bring him into my world because that is where he would be putting his money. Lightly, lightly, I said, “DiMaggio wouldn’t have made it in the theater. In our business, if you bat three hundred, you’re dead.”
Manucci nodded. Did that mean he was buying in? My heart was a bird flapping its wings, too big for its cage.
“Merrick,” I said, “is the Babe Ruth of Broadway. Actually, I was involved in eighteen productions. In my first, I was one of three co-producers.”
I watched Manucci’s laugh subdue into a genial smile. Louie had always said, If a man’s face improves when he smiles, it might be possible to trust him.
“Was it a flop?” Manucci asked. “The first one.”
That first production had me bounding out of bed in the morning, my happiness manic as I helped put director, cast, costumes, and set in place. And all the time Louie’s voice was like a megaphone in my head. Don’t get so excited about a business deal. A business deal is not a woman. I wanted Louie to shut up. Theater wasn’t business.
Manucci was studying me over the top of his porcelain cup. “You were going to tell me if your first one was a flop.”
Pay attention, Louie was shouting, as if your life depended on it.
Shut up, Pop, life doesn’t depend on any one deal.
If this doesn’t work out, what will you do, sell suits? Stop daydreaming, the man is waiting for your answer.
“That first play ran five months, Mr. Manucci. It sold out only on Saturdays. We didn’t advertise much. Word-of-mouth kept it going. The ticket brokers didn’t send us people. People who saw it sent us people. We made a small profit.”
“How small?”
“Maybe fifteen percent on the investment. I’m guessing. It was a long time ago.”
“If you made a profit on your first one, you’ve got a right to be proud.”
He�
��s not asking me the name of the play.
You’re not looking for a cultural companion, pisher. Talk to him in the language he understands. Money.
“If a play’s a smash, you can make four, five hundred percent,” I said.
Manucci wasn’t smiling. How many hundred percent did he make on his loans?
“What was the name of that play?” Manucci asked.
For a moment I couldn’t remember. I glanced over at coach Ezra.
“It was called A Long Way to Tipperary,” Ezra said.
“World War One?” Manucci asked.
“No,” I said. “The hero is first-generation Irish. His father came from Tipperary.”
“I hope you don’t mind my questions, Mr. Riller.”
It’s his ball game, Louie was saying, let him pitch.
I thought, You’re wrong, Louie. We take turns pitching or it’s no ball game.
“Mr. Manucci,” I said, “I hope you don’t mind a question from me.”
“Be my guest.”
“From your first business deal, did you learn anything?”
Manucci thought a moment. Smiling at the memory, he said, “The first time I lent anybody big change I learned never pay attention to a guy’s suit. This guy wore a terrific suit. He hadn’t paid for it. He took a long, long time to pay me.”
I was aware of Ezra laughing along with Manucci now, an audience of two waiting for my response.
“From the Tipperary run,” I said, “I learned that if you build a better mousetrap, without lots of publicity nobody knows about it. Even the mice stay away.”
Ezra nodded. I was keeping the mood light.
“I also learned that it’s too late to start promoting after you open. If you want a smash, you’ve got to set it up that way from the start, at least one name actor for the theater parties, roll the publicity long before you’re in production, feed the gossip columns, and when you open in New York, advertise as if you were Ford launching a new car.”
“Like the Edsel?”
I let him relish his crack for a moment.
“Like the Mustang,” I said. “You have to get behind whatever you’re launching.”
“Even if it’s a lemon.”
