“Howzabout turning something else on…or maybe even better turn that damn thing off, I’ll put a quarter in the jukebox.” The bartender gave him a surly look, then sauntered to the set and turned it off. Valerie Lone continued to eat as the world was turned off.
The hippie put the quarter in the jukebox and pressed out three rock numbers. He returned to his barstool and the music inundated the room.
Outside, night had come, and with it, the night lights. One of the lights illuminated a twenty-three-foot-high billboard for the film Subter-fuge starring Robert Mitchum and Gina Lollobrigida; produced by Arthur Crewes; directed by James Kencannon; written by John D.F. Black; music by Lalo Schifrin.
At the end of the supplementary credits there was a boxed line that was very difficult to read: it had been whited-out.
The line had once read:
ALSO FEATURING MISS VALERIE LONE as Angela.
Angela had become a walk-on. She no longer existed.
Valerie Lone existed only as a woman in a very nice little restaurant and bar on the Sunset Strip. She was eating. And the long shadow had also begun to feed.
—Hollywood and Montclair, N.J., 1967
THE UNIVERSE OF ROBERT BLAKE
And this is what Robbie Blake learned that day…
On the bus, an old man in an overcoat—so hot for July, that shapeless, whatcolor rag—sat mumbling to himself, next to the window. Occasionally he would rub his palms against stubbled cheeks, a sound like new sandpaper to Robbie’s ears.
When the old man got up and left the bus, Robbie Blake saw a small dirty-white card thrust into the window-frame. He moved across the aisle and pulled the card out of its slot in the anodized aluminum frame. It said, very neatly:
BO BO THE CLOWN Available for Picnics, Clubs
and there was a number, an address. Robbie Blake replaced the card precisely, for even at six years of age, he knew a man has a right to advertise.
Later that day, looking out from behind the billboard at the side of the clothing store, Robbie saw a fat woman with a mustache, carrying a shopping bag at the end of either meaty arm. One of the bags burst as the fat woman passed Robbie’s waiting-place, and he watched carefully as she got down on her knees—in stages, like a great beast unhinging itself at a water hole—puffing, sighing. He watched her as she retrieved the packages of frozen foods, the asparagus, the oranges. There was something very natural about the fat woman. Something essential. Robbie Blake watched, and remembered.
A big truck with EMPIRE HAULING on its side went past, and Robbie dashed out from behind the billboard to catch the truck as it stopped by the corner. He pulled himself up onto the lowered tailgate and grasped the anchor chain firmly in both hands as the truck moved with the changing traffic light. Robbie rode along with the smell of his world whipping past; the smell of the rotting gourds in the sidewalk markets; the smell of oil and grease, rainbow puddles among the bricks; the smell of chemicals from some tiny manufacturing company on a side street. He looked and looked and everywhere people dashed and walked, doing things with paper and leather and words. He smiled at the gray sky that promised rain, and he stuck his tongue out when a policeman made a short move to haul him off the fleeing truck as it whipped through an intersection.
Finally, Robert Blake tired of his truck ride, and slid to the edge of the tailgate. When the truck paused for breath at another traffic light, Robbie bounced down and dogtrotted away, in a new place, with wonderful things to see. He saw a shop with bright and coppery bracelets, and a man in a great wide hat. The window of the shop said MEXICO ARTS and Robbie knew where Mexico was. It was someplace downtown, very far downtown in another country.
What it is, to be six years old, is to need to go to the bathroom frequently. That is part of it.
Robbie Blake needed to go to the bathroom, because he had had three papaya juices at ’Nrico’s stand, before he had stood behind the billboard, watching the fat woman who might have been his mother or somebody’s mother, maybe. So he looked for a place to go.
He saw a group of people going into, and coming out of, a big restaurant called FELLOWS’ RESTAURANT in red and blue neon lights that went on and off in the late afternoon gray. He decided if all those people were going in and coming out, that at least one of them must have had to go to the bathroom sometime or other, and if that was so, then there had to be a bathroom inside. (Never say “I have to go wee-wee” always say “I have to wash my hands,” Moms had said to Robbie.)
Robbie Blake, just like all those other people—well, not quite; shorter, perhaps, but pretty much the same—strode purposefully to the restaurant, and went through the revolving door. It was cool inside, and hard to see very well, but he walked around, and listened to the people eating and talking to each other. He stared over the shoulder of a man cutting a baked apple with a fork, and smiled when the man tried to get a piece too big into his mouth. The man half-turned as Robbie smiled (was it a sound, not a smile?) and gave a snort of annoyance. Robbie moved on.
This was a fine world; a fine, fine place to be a little boy, with people eating and talking and taking too big bites of baked apples.
The bathroom was still very important, but in a world as nice as this, well, such things can wait a few minutes longer. After all, one can always cross one’s legs and stand hidden in a corner, waiting.
Robbie knew the words to look for, and when he saw the door that said GENTLEMEN, he recognized MEN and went inside. A man with a bow tie and a blue shirt was washing his hands, and he saw Robbie in the mirror, and he chuckled softly, saying, over his shoulder, “Pop, this one yours?” and Robbie saw another man, wearing a white jacket, with a towel ready to be handed to the man with the bow tie.
The man in the white jacket (oh, didn’t he look nice and important dressed up that way) gasped, and laid the towel down on the sink next to the fellow with the bow tie. He came to Robbie very quickly, and took him by the shoulder, and dragged him out of the room that said GENTLEMEN. He pulled him through another door, and Robbie suddenly smelled all the wonderful brown and green and pink smells of food. Food that called to him and said I am meat! I am tossed greens! I am something you don’t know, very nice! It was a kitchen, and Robbie wanted to faint with pleasure. Oh, such a grand world.
Then the man in the white jacket was kneeling in front of him, saying, “Boy, watchu doin’ here? You crazy or somethin’? You know you can’t come in here!”
Robbie did not understand. He smiled nicely at the man in the white jacket. “Hello,” he said, politely as Moms had taught him to do.
“Don’t be smilin’ at me that way, chile! I’m tellin’ you it’s trouble for you in here. They don’t allow it!”
Robbie was confused, but he mustered another, tinier smile, and said to the man in the white jacket, “I hadda use the bathroom.”
The man took Robbie to the swinging door that led back into the restaurant, and he pulled it open a crack.
“Look.” He pointed. “You see alla them people? They can use the bathroom, but not you. Now you g’wan get outta here befoah we all get hell!”
Robbie knew what was right. He was just like everyone here. He had a right to use the bathroom. He said so.
The man in the white jacket frowned and pulled the swinging door open again. “Now look, boy, I mean really look. You see them? They not the same’s you. They white. Now look at you, look at me. Are we white?”’
Robbie looked at his hand. It wasn’t white, that was true. He looked at the man in the white jacket. He wasn’t white, either. But what did that have to do with the bathroom? Did it mean he wasn’t ever allowed to go to the bathroom? It would be very unhappy and painful if that was so.
Then the man in the white jacket—who was very black and almost bald, except for a few curlicues of wispy whiteness that came out of his scalp—was hauling Robbie to the back door of FELLOWS’ RESTAURANT, and opening it into the alley, and putting Robbie outside in the growing darkness.
He paused, and be
nt down, and said, very softly, so the cooks and waiters and busboys rushing would not hear, “Boy, someway you haven’t been brought up right; din’t yoah parents tell you the way it is? You better learn, boy. You better learn.”
And he pushed Robbie gently, out onto a loading dock, and closed the door, the light narrowing to a splinter and then all gone, all gone. Robbie stood in the darkness and waited for something more to happen. But nothing more happened.
Then he turned, ran to the edge of the loading dock, jumped down, and walked very quickly to the end of the alley.
For a very long time Robbie stood in a doorway, nothing but his eyes seeing out, his body, his strange black body hidden. He watched everyone as they went by. He stared very carefully, as he had stared at the policeman, and the fat woman, and Bo Bo the Clown who was available (which seemed a nice thing to be).
After a very, very long time, he felt he understood.
Then he went home.
It had been a full day, a surprising day—and one filled with learning things. Robbie Blake had learned what it meant to know, and what it meant to watch, and what it meant to live. Somehow, his education till then had been love and kindness from Moms, and respect from his sister and his three brothers, and no one had mentioned the Difference. But now he knew.
Robbie Blake had learned many things that day. He had learned which colors were right, and which were wrong; he had learned what color hands must be to open certain doors, and what color thoughts must be employed to exist in the fine, fine nice world. He had learned when to lower his eyes.
And most of all he had learned what it meant to be a nigger.
And most of all he had learned:
It is not enough for a little boy to know his place in the Universe.
He must also know which Universe is his.
And that is what Robbie Blake learned that day.
—New York City, 1962
G.B.K.—A MANY-FLAVORED BIRD
So garbled was my secretary’s mind, that early in the morning, that I had to call Western Union later in the day, and have them read me the telegram again; even then, in the clarity of a monotoned operator’s recitation, the message barely made sense. It read:
CAMPAIGN MATERIALIZING TO ROCKET YOUR FORTHCOMING MOVIE “THE LATTER LIFE OF GOD” INTO INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL GOLD MINE.
I had her read it again, and then asked if they would deliver the telegram itself to my hotel. She said Western Union would be pleased to accommodate, and then she said, “This telegram was sent from here in town, by night letter last night, sir.” I asked her if it was signed, and she said, “Yes, it’s signed G. Barney Kantor, American Association of Fan Clubs.”
More bewilderedly than I had any right to feel, I thanked the operator and racked the receiver. I sat there on the edge of the bed in my hotel room in Cleveland, and I tried to make some sense out of the histrionically phrased nonsense I had just heard.
True, one of my magazine short stories, “The Latter Life of God,” had been picked up by an independent outfit for production…but the script hadn’t even been written yet, which was why I was on my way to the Coast, having stopped off in Cleveland merely to see my sister and brother-in-law. Who the hell was G. Barney Kantor, and what the hell was the “American Association of Fan Clubs”?
“Bernice,” I yelled into the adjoining room, “do I know a G. Barney Kantor?”
Bernice, festooned with sheaves of press releases, with a pencil behind each ear, emerged from the other room and stood poised in the doorway, cocked onto one hip, thinking. “Not that I know. Is that the business with the telegram this morning?” I nodded. “Dumb sonofabitch whoever he is,” she snarled, “waking me up at eight jeezus o’clock! I’d like to get my hands on his throat!” She went back to her room, to that ever-waiting extension of her right hand, the ominously silent telephone, back to ponder arrangements for a local interview show I was going to do over Cleveland television.
It wasn’t that important, really, because I knew it had to be a gag, but the peculiar manner of phrasing struck a dim note in my mind, and though I had other things to worry about—the local tv appearances, finishing an article long overdue, the final payment of the option money—for some inexplicable reason my thoughts kept worrying the telegram and the name of G. Barney Kantor, like a dog with a rag doll.
And finally, it came back to me, who he was, and how I’d met him, and what image of him I’d relegated to the back part of my memories. And despite myself, I was forced to smile. After all this time, that he should remember me; I’d been just a kid when I’d met him, however briefly; I’d been perhaps sixteen, seventeen. Now, ten—no, thirteen—years later, Kantor was back in my life.
If anything had saved me from becoming a real flip, from wasting my life and what little talent I had, after my father died and my mother and I moved to Cleveland, it was the science fiction people. I had bought a pulp magazine whose cover had shown a huge robot firing bolts of flame (or something) from its fingertips, and almost immediately had become an aficionado. In due course I met the other science fiction fans in Cleveland, and we formed a club, the Solarians. Not only were they good people, and kind people, but there was a swirl of wonder about them, an unpredictability of imagination that turned my world of mourning sadness and widow’s tears into a golden time and space of hyperspatial rocket ships, alien life-forms and concepts of the universe that I’d never even suspected existed.
Inevitably, one of the Cleveland newspapers came to the club rooms to do a feature on us. It was the usual cheapjack yellow pap, tongue firmly in cheek and ridicule replacing reportage. The article appeared in all the editions of that day’s paper, and we were more mortified than flattered. Someone suggested iron filings in the reporter’s coffee cake. Saner heads prevailed, scolding me for such an uncharitable thought.
All of this was background, however, for the new magic soon to enter our lives, in the person of G. Barney Kantor.
So. On this night that lives in memory, an otherwise undistinguished meeting night, Al Watson (in whose apartment we held meetings) reported a phone conversation he’d had earlier that day. He seemed enthusiastic and genuinely pleased. “So he said his name was Kantor, with a ‘K,’ and that he was prepared to, uh, how did he put it, ‘Lift us from the realm of mediocrity and anonymity to the heights of public awareness.’”
We all stared at Al, and Al beamed back at us. (We sometimes cocked a quizzical eyebrow at Al; he was a member of the Fortean Society, as well as a practitioner of dianetics.) “Isn’t that swell?” he asked. “This guy says he has contacts all over the world, and he’s coming over this evening to meet us and find out our potentialities for greatness.”
Ben Jason, one of the more lucid minds present, had the intemperate presence to ask, “Our potentialities for what? Is that another of his remarks?” Al nodded.
We stared at one another, prepared to believe the wildest things.
None of this prepared us, as it turned out, for the actual physical presence of G. Barney Kantor.
At nine-thirty the doorbell rang, and we scurried, rearrangingourselves into positions of respectability and sober world-view sanity, as Al went to answer the door. All we could see when the door was opened was Al, standing there with his hand outstretched in greeting, and then a convulsive widening of the eyes, and the tiniest gasp of disbelief and consternation. We heard Al mumble welcoming words, and then he stepped aside, and for the first time I saw G. Barney Kantor.
As a writer I am affronted by the sterility of imagination and talent that forces some authors to describe their characters as “looking exactly like Gregory Peck, with bigger ears.” This recourse to mass consumption identity has always struck me as highly suspect and just short of auctorial bankruptcy. Yet I am compelled, in describing G. Barney Kantor, to take the shortest route to total recognition, by stating simply that G. Barney Kantor looked, looks, will always look, precisely like Groucho Marx.
Kantor entered the room, and for an instant I
thought his brothers would follow him. He stalked, not walked, in that indescribable half-crouch Marx has patented for the “Captain Spaulding, the African explorer” number (did someone call him schnorer?); his moustache was a black, rectangular brush, his hair was wild and manelike. He wore glasses. He smoked a thick, obscene-looking black hawser of a cigar. He was midway between massively impressive and downright comical.
After the first shocking moment wore off, it was possible to detect small ways in which G. Barney Kantor was not Groucho Marx, but so studiedly had Kantor sought to mock the Brother’s appearance, at no time during the fantastic evening were we free of the impulse to burst into laughter.
(I was later to learn that the RKO Palace Theater in Cleveland occasionally hired Kantor as a sandwich man, strictly on his appearance.)
“A decidedly good evening to you, fellow roamers of the vast, uncharterated Universe!”
No bull, no flummery, that is the way G. Barney Kantor talked. Silver fleeting words of sometimes meaning that were here and gone before you could assemble them in precisely their proper order. Flamboyant phrases slapped together to give a general impression of garrulity, pompousness, absolute phoniness. It has always confused me how people could be gullible enough to be taken in by Kantor, for in the first words from his mouth, it has seemed to me, any rational person could detect sham and the quicksilver maneuverings of the born con man.
Stunned as we all were by this brash and obviously hammy individual from out of nowhere, Ben Jason again made his mark by stepping forward, shaking Kantor’s hand and introducing himself. Then he led Kantor around the room, introducing him to Honey Steel, Frank Andrasovsky, Earl Simon and after all the others, finally, me.
“This is Walter Innes,” Ben said. “Walter, Mr. Kantor.” I took his hand. It was the handshake of the man who is testing the flesh of your body to see if you have worked for a living, or are subsisting on gratuities from a wealthy family. A fleeting thought passed me, and I was glad I wasn’t wearing any rings. “Walter is the editor of our club magazine,”—Ben beamed at me; Walter, the mascot—“and quite a promising little writer, too.”
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