“It has a curious name,” he said. Pause. “It’s called Being Fifty-nine Years Old.”
I wanted to laugh. But I didn’t. My experience with wits is that it is a mistake to encourage them in setting up jokes. They think they’ve done it all themselves. And they continue.
“You’re not fifty-nine,” I said. “The fact that we are exactly the same age was established in 1930 on Tiffany Street in the Bronx, and I am fifty-eight.”
“Four months past sunset and evening star,” Sebastian Roon said. “You’re on your way to fifty-nine, old boy, as surely as Leander was on his way to Hero when he dove into the Hellespont. Fifty-nine, Benjamin. Fifty-nine.”
“No,” I said firmly. “Fifty-eight.”
“You like looking backward more than you like looking forward,” Seb said.
I gave that a moment of thought. It was not easy, with my head going like Man O’ War breaking away from the barrier, but it was rewarding. Things suddenly came clear.
“Yes,” I said, “I do. Looking forward is for young people. Mariners. Olympic shot-putters. Pot smokers. Wampus baby stars. Black welterweights. Groupies. Professional football players. Vasco da Gama. Battling Siki. Charlie Paddock. Toby Wing. Mick Jagger. Jerry Rubin. Kids with years to waste. That’s what those years are for. To be wasted. That’s what being young is all about. You know that. We were young together. On Tiffany Street. At fifty-nine—no, damnit—at fifty-eight the view changes. It’s a matter of simple arithmetic. You don’t know my barber. A rare human being. Truly rare. Came to this country from Salerno about the time my father came from Austria. He had finally earned, after forty years of saving, he had in the bank the dough to nail down the title to his shop in the basement of the Crawford Hotel. I handled the closing for him. You would have thought he had been knighted. God, what a performance. Nothing beats pure joy. I wanted to sit there and watch him for the rest of the day. But Miss Bienstock would have disapproved. I wouldn’t take a fee, so he gave me a free haircut. Three weeks later the poor bastard was dead.”
I closed my eyes and counted four throbs inside my head. They came steadily, at carefully spaced intervals. I thought of the day Jack had been born. Elizabeth Ann had waited until the pains were steady, coming at regularly spaced intervals, before she would let me call a taxi and she rang up Artie Steinberg. What a wife. Sorry, I mean what a life. But I’m going to let it stand. I’ve been lucky. I’ve had both. I opened my eyes.
“Looking forward is great when you’re twenty,” I said. “It’s pointless when you’re sixty. You know what’s going to happen. Like everybody else, you know you’re trapped by the numbers. You know people are going to die. Including you. Meaning me. So why not look back? To the time when we were all going to live forever.”
“That’s what Jim Mennen said at lunch today,” Seb said.
“Jim who?” I said.
He gave it the eye spread he had used as Captain Hook in the Ina Claire revival of Peter Pan when he brought down the house with his malevolent pronunciation of the words: “Rrrrrich—dampppp—cake!”
“Do you mean to sit there, one of the most successful barristers in the Mecca of the Western World, and tell me you don’t know James V. Mennen?”
“What’s the V for?” I said.
I learned how to parry from Professor Simeon Tompkins who taught Evidence at N.Y.U. Law School. He also taught me his one joke: “Parry in haste, repeal at leisure.”
“Victor,” Sebastian Roon said. “James Victor Mennen is the president of the Anglo-British TV network.”
“Oh, him,” I said.
“What does that remark mean?” Seb said.
“I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t. So I concentrated. It helped. “Yes, I do know,” I said. “He’s always in those Broadway columns that Elizabeth Ann reads and quotes from every morning while we’re having coffee.”
“That’s right,” Seb said. “But he’s more famous for having boosted the ABTV common stock from forty-two, when he took over the presidency of the network three years ago, to one hundred and eight today when he took your chum Sebastian Roon to lunch.”
“Where?” I said.
“What?” Seb said.
“Where did Mr. Mennen take you to lunch?”
“Now what the hell difference does that make?”
“None,” I said. “Unless he took you to Shane’s on West Twenty-third Street.”
Seb laughed. “You are a silly ass,” he said. “Shane’s burned down the day Franklin Roosevelt closed the banks.”
“I know,” I said. “I just thought it would be nice if Mr. Mennen had not been aware of that, and wanted to take you to the place formerly frequented by Graham McNamee and Julius Tannen.”
“Jim Mennen probably doesn’t even know who Julius Tannen was,” Seb said. “He took me to lunch at The Huffing Hickey.”
“What’s that?” I said.
“A restaurant without lights on East Forty-sixth,” Seb said. “Where people go to discuss business deals if they don’t want to be seen doing it.”
“If they don’t want to be seen doing it, why do they go to restaurants?” I said.
“Where do you go?” Seb said.
“I don’t,” I said. “I ask the party of the second party to come to my office.”
“Ah, yes, you would,” Seb said. “Thus taking all the fun and games out of it. The idea is to go to a place that is known as a rendezvous for people who don’t want to be seen rendezvousing. Then you can issue indignant denials or demand retractions from gossip columnists who print that they saw you there.”
“Have you demanded any retractions?” I said.
“Not yet,” Seb said. “But I may.”
I could almost see inside his head. I could chart the course of his mind. He liked to talk about his affairs, or rather he liked to talk around them, but he hated to come to the point about them. Decisions frightened him. He had started to tell me whatever it was he had started to tell me, but now he was beginning to shy away. He wanted more time. Well, today he was not going to get it. Not from me. Not with my head throbbing.
“I’ve got to leave in a few minutes,” I said. “Tell me about this Jim Mennen thing, or call me tomorrow.” I waved to Madame Defarge. She came over, moving majestically, like the vessel that carried Charles Dana for two years before the mast. I handed her the martini. “Please take this damn thing away,” I said, “and bring me some Cutty Sark on the rocks.”
“But sir—” she said.
“Please don’t argue,” I said. “Just take this away and bring me some Cutty Sark on the rocks.”
She sniffed. Yes, she did. Will’s is that kind of club. Down at heel, but up on sniffs. She sniffed again and carried the martini away.
“My, but we’re getting touchy with the advancing years,” Seb said. “Aren’t we?”
I gave that a moment of thought, too. The result surprised me.
“I think I am,” I said. “Yes.”
“You mustn’t be,” Seb said. “It’s bad for the liver.”
“It’s not my liver,” I said. “It’s a touch of your malady. Time’s running out, and I keep wondering what I’ve done with the time I’ve had.”
“That’s what Jim Mennen said.”
“But I always thought he was a fairly young man?”
“He is,” Seb said. “Fortyish, I would say. But he was talking to a fairly oldish man. Me.”
“About what?” I said.
“He’s got an idea for a TV series,” Seb said.
All at once I remembered that Dr. McCarran had asked me to tell Seb that Mrs. McCarran wanted Seb to do some sort of TV series about which the McCarrans had heard from an ABTV executive in Philadelphia who was one of Dr. McCarran’s patients.
“Involving you?” I said.
“Jim Mennen was not buying my lunch at The Huffing Hickey to tell me about his idea for a TV series involving Johnny Carson,” Seb said. “Of course involving me.”
“In what way?”
“As ma
ster of ceremonies,” Seb said. “Or host.”
I closed my eyes. It did not help. I could see the damn thing. My dear old friend. This tall, lean, handsome Englishman with the prematurely white hair and the sexiest voice on the English-speaking stage. Prancing out in a fanfare of foolishly noisy music, holding a clipboard and screaming in an adenoidally Cockney twang: “Hellew everybody! We have an absolutely marvelous, wonderful, extraordinary, delightful and truly formidably super shew for yew tonight! Truly super! The absolutely marvelous and super Jukes Kallikak and his world-famous ocarina! The utterly delectable and absolutely marvelously super Chesty Uplift and her Four Things! Buzz Saw Sapling and her incredibly super collection of wildly super woodpecker holes! Plus many many more! Many many more indeed! All wildly and frighteningly and enchantingly super! So now, on with the shew! Okye, Billye!” I opened my eyes.
“Is that all Jim Mennen told you about the show?” I said.
“No, no,” Seb said. “He’s got it all very clear in his head.”
“Well,” I said, “at least that’s concrete.”
“Don’t be cynical,” Seb said. “Mennen is quite bright. He’s been thinking about the Bicentennial.”
“The what?” I said.
“My dear chap,” Sebastian Roon said: “Does it take an Englishman to remind you that in nineteen seventy-six this nation, one and indivisible, will be two hundred years old?”
It certainly did not. In restless moments on trains and planes, when Bleak House did not work, I closed my eyes and thrust myself back to Miss Bongiorno’s Elocution Class in J.H.S. 64. At once, across the years, came the booming, resonant, lovely voice of the beautiful, white-haired old lady. Standing up in front of the class, head thrown back, eyes shining. Bellowing—well. Well, yes. Bellowing. Miss Bongiorno liked volume. Bellowing: “When—in—the—course—of—human—events—”
“It slipped my mind,” I said.
“According to Jim Mennen it seems to have slipped the minds of most Americans,” Seb said. “Which caused him to do some thinking, and he came up with the idea for this series. He wants to call it One Nation Indivisible. And he wants me to be the star because I’m a rather well-known Englishman who has lived here for forty years.”
“What’s an Englishman got to do with America?” I said.
“Why, you bloody chauvinistic ass,” Sebastian” Roon said. “We lost the damn place to you. Remember?”
There she was again. Miss Bongiorno. Inside my head. Reciting—no, bellowing—Burke’s “Conciliation with the Colonies.”
“It was before my time,” I said.
“It was before the time of all contemporary addicts of the boob tube,” Seb said. “That’s what Jim Mennen feels will make it go. I mean to say, most Americans have heard of Bunker Hill. But they don’t really know the details of what happened. The way most Englishmen know about Guy Fawkes, but what do they really know? A schoolboy jingle. Remember, remember the ninth of November. Anyway, Mennen feels I’d be very good for this, and I think, if you don’t mind my saying so, I think Mennen is right.”
“So does Mrs. McCarran and Dr. McCarran,” I said.
“What’s McCarran got to do with it?” Seb said.
“After we finished talking about Jack and the draft board, Dr. McCarran said he hoped you would do this TV show.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Seb said.
“Why?” I said.
“He’s a man I met during the war,” Seb said. “The same sort of thing you met with him today about Jack. I never realized he was interested in my career.”
“Maybe he’s not,” I said. “Maybe it’s Mrs. McCarran.”
Pause. Seb’s scowling absorption in the stem of his martini glass had become total.
“Good Lord,” he said finally, in a very soft voice.
“I think she’s very sick,” I said. “Anyway, Dr. McCarran hinted she was. She may be dying. There was something in his voice when he talked about her. He added that she would be eased if you did this TV series.”
“Good Lord,” Seb said.
“You’ve said that,” I said.
“And I’ll say it again,” Seb said. “Good Lord.”
“You mean you don’t remember her?” I said
“Not very clearly,” Seb said.
“The way you don’t remember Hannah Halpern?” I said.
“Benjamin,” Seb said. “I don’t expect a lawyer to be charitable, but neither do I expect him to hit below the belt”
“I am merely bringing you a message from Dr. McCarran in Philadelphia,” I said. “He told me his wife would be pleased if you agree to do this Jim Mennen TV series’. If you don’t mind my making a guess, I would say that, because of her illness, it’s the only way she feels she will ever see you again, but that’s only a guess, as I said.”
“Good Lord,” Seb said.
“You’ve got to stop saying that,” I said.
“I don’t see why,” Seb said. “I don’t think I even remember the girl.”
“She remembers you,” I said. “She and McCarran seem to have heard about the series from one of his patients. A man who is some sort of executive with the ABTV affiliate in Philadelphia. And she seems to feel you’d be absolutely right for this TV series.”
“She is absolutely right,” Seb said. “Just as Mennen is.”
When Seb wanted to do something, he always felt the person who wanted him to do it was right, and Seb always wanted to do it for the same reason.
“Seb,” I said. “Are you broke?”
Again he became absorbed in the stem of his glass.
“No,” he said at last. “I’m getting sixteen hundred a week for this silly piece of bumf I’m prancing about in now, and it’s silly enough to look as though it will go through the year. We’re not selling out, but we’re doing quite well, and should be for another four or five months. Then twofers will carry us for another four or five. My TV residuals on the assorted rubbish I’ve done in the last dozen years come to a nice bit of featherbed to fall back on. So all in all I’m probably as unbroke as I’ve been since my uncle had his heart attack in the offices of Maurice Saltzman & Company on that horrendous Sunday morning in nineteen thirty.”
“Then it’s not because of money that you want to do this TV series?”
“I didn’t say I want to do it,” he said.
“Seb,” I said. “I’ve just had my head hammered in front of Penn Station. It’s throbbing. But it’s still working. I don’t know, however, for how long. While it is, tell me whether you want to do this series or not, and we can go on from there.”
Through the scowl that cut deep into his cheeks the dimples that had won him his place in the hearts of the American housewife, Sebastian Roon continued to inspect the contents of his glass.
“Yes,” he said finally, “I do.”
“Why?” I said.
“I’m getting on,” he said. “I’ve been here in America for forty years. I think—” Pause. “No,” he said. “I know. I’d like to go home.”
It’s one of those words. To me it meant the apartment where Elizabeth Ann was at the moment trying to decide what I would like for dinner. To Robert Frost it was the place where, when you came back, they had to take you in. To lesser poets, who strive for the colorful image, it was where you hung your childhood. To Sebastian Roon—
My God, I thought. He means Blackpool!
“To England?” I said. He nodded. The fact that he didn’t speak, just nodded, told me something. “Seb,” I said. “You mean for good?”
“Why not?” he said. “I’m getting on for sixty. Retirement age, you know.”
The words jolted me. If Seb was getting on for retirement age, how about Benny Kramer? We had been the same age on Tiffany Street. Forty years later the arithmetic had to be the same here in Will’s on 48th Street.
“What has that got to do with this Jim Mennen TV series?” I said.
“I’ve had a good life here in this country,” Seb said. “I’v
e always loved you Americans, and you’ve always been good to me. I have no complaints. But...”
Pause. If you’re going to pause on a word, you can’t do better than the word but. One syllable. With all the impact of a called strike whacking into a catcher’s mitt. It gives you more than a pause. It gives you an audience. I leaned forward.
“But what?” I said.
“Declining years, failing powers, fear of losing favor with the public, all that sort of thing,” Seb said. “I haven’t given much thought to England since I arrived here in nineteen thirty. But now, the last few months, I don’t know. England’s been increasingly much on my mind.”
“I still don’t understand what that has to do with Jim Mennen’s TV series.”
“I’m not broke,” Seb said. “As I’ve explained, at the moment I’m almost detestably solvent. But I don’t have any capital to retire on.”
It came home to me. Suddenly and chillingly and with the rancid flavor of selfishness. He was my friend. I loved him. And behind my back he had been planning in secret to go away from me. The unpleasant day suddenly became more unpleasant. I realized the depth of the hurt, and why it hurt. At my age, I did not want to lose people.
“You plan to retire to England?” I said. I forced myself to repeat his words: “For your declining years?”
Sebastian Roon nodded. “I’d like to,” he said. “I haven’t realized for years that it would come to that, but I suppose, underneath, it’s been crouching in my mind for some time, waiting to pounce.” He hesitated, took a sip from his glass, then said quietly: “Benjamin, I want to go home to die.”
He was not a man who spoke in riddles. Seb didn’t always say what he meant. When he meant what he said, however, I had never had any trouble understanding the words. Now, for the first time, I did have trouble. I believed him. I accepted the fact that he believed he wanted to go home to die. What I could not grasp was why? Dying was no picnic. Why go to the trouble and expense of arranging to have it happen to you in a place like Blackpool?
“Any special place in Blackpool?” I said.
“Islington Crescent,” Seb said.
“Why?” I said.
“It’s the street on which I was born,” Seb said.
Tiffany Street Page 14
