An American Dream (14 page)

“Lover!” said Sam.

“The people I’m with got a ghost writer working now. Story of a kid who goes bad, turns straight, goes bad again.” Romeo blinked his eyes. “It’s the fault of the company he keeps. Bad influences. Cheap whiskey. Broads. He don’t make champion. That’s the price he pays.”

Romeo was not bad-looking. He had curly black hair which he wore long and thick on the sides and he had had his nose bobbed once he retired from the ring. His eyes were dark and flat in expression, flat as Chinese eyes. He had put on weight. He would have looked like a young prosperous executive in Miami real estate if it had not been for the thick pads of cartilage on the sides of his temples which gave him a look of still wearing his headgear.

“Who puts up the money for this movie?” Cherry asked.

“Couple of guys,” said Romeo.

“Mutt and Jeff,” said Sam.

“You don’t believe me?” Romeo asked.

“They ain’t going to make a movie of you,” Gary said.

“If they get a good enough actor to play my part they going to make a very good movie,” said Romeo.

“Say, Romeo,” I called out, “I got an idea.” I said this from my seat fifteen feet away, but the words were out. I stood up and walked toward them. My idea was unfortunate, but it was the best I could muster. I kept hoping something better might reach my mind.

“You,” said Romeo, “got an idea.”

“Yes,” I said, “when they make your movie, I’ll play your part.”

“You can’t,” Romeo lisped, “you’re not sufficiently queer.”

Romalozzo had been famous for his tricky left hook. I had just walked into it. A snicker began with Gary, passed on to Sam, reached Cherry and the two girls. They stood at the bar laughing at me.

“I owe everybody a drink,” I said.

“Bartender,” shouted Romeo, “five Bromo-Seltzers.”

Gary slapped Sam on the back. “Our boy gets better and better.”

“Talent is in its infancy,” said Romeo. “When they get done with this movie, the class, the fanciest broads in town will say, ‘We had Romalozzo for dinner last night.’ ”

“Yeah,” said Sam, “and that Guinea ate all the pizza.”

“Caviar foie. Hey, Frankie,” Romeo yelled to the bartender, “bring some caviar foie with the Bromo-Seltzer.”

Cherry laughed again. She had an unusually large laugh. It would have been perfect and merry and a gain to anticipate if it had not been for a suspicion of something mulish and bragging, a bit of small-town Southern jackass in the sound. I realized what a tension had begun in me that she be perfect.

“Romeo,” Cherry said, “you’re the funniest man I’ve met today.”

“It ain’t me,” said Romeo, “it’s my friend. My new friend.” He looked at me with his flat eyes. “Sam, isn’t this my new friend?” he asked.

Sam looked at me with even eyes. “Well, Romeo, he’s not my friend,” Sam said after a little pause.

“Maybe he’s your friend, Gary?”

“Never saw the gentleman before,” Gary said.

“Sweetie,” said Romeo to one of the girls, “is he yours?”

“No, but he’s cute,” said Sweetie.

“Then, Honey, he must belong to you,” Romeo said to the other girl.

“Not unless we met in Las Vegas five years ago. I think,” said Honey, trying to be helpful, “that we may have met at the Tropicana sometime like five or six years ago, do I care to count, ha ha.”

“Shut up,” said Gary.

The mulatto with the plump mandarin face and the goatee was staring at me from his table. He looked like one of those jungle crows who sit high on a tree and watch the lions and the lion cubs take blood, foam and flesh from the entrails of a wounded zebra.

“I guess,” said Romeo, “he’s nobody’s friend.”

“He’s yours,” said Sam.

“Yes,” said Romeo. “He’s mine.” He looked at me. “What do
you
say, pal?”

“You didn’t ask the lady,” I said.

“You mean the lady who was entertaining us? The lady who was singing?”

I didn’t answer.

“Since you’re my friend,” said Romeo, “I’ll fill you in. This lady is my escort for the evening.”

“I’m surprised,” I said.

“It’s a fact.”

“I’m really surprised,” I said.

“Buddy, you played out your string,” said Romeo. “Now beat it.”

“You couldn’t think of a more agreeable way to ask me to leave?”

“Move on.”

I was ready to go. There was very little keeping me. But there was something. It was the glitter of light in Cherry’s eyes, bright and prideful. That fed the anger to stare back into Romeo’s eyes. For she had been using me—so I understood it now. And felt an icy rage against all women who would use me. It was still another relative of insanity—I who had visited so many members of the clan
tonight—but now I said, “I’ll move on when the lady asks me to move, and not before.”

“The condemned man ate a hearty meal,” said Gary.

I did not take my eyes from Romeo’s eyes. We locked one stare into the other.

“You’re going to get hurt,” said his eyes. “I have something going for me,” said my eyes back. His expression turned dubious. The odds were not established for him. He had no ideas in his eyes, only pressure. Maybe he thought I had a gun.

“You invite this guy over?” asked Romeo.

“Of course I did,” said Cherry, “and you gave him one bitch of a greeting.”

Romeo laughed. He laughed with a big flat dead sound at the center of his amusement, a professional laugh, the professional laugh of a fighter who has won a hundred fights and lost forty, and of those forty, twelve were on bad decisions, and six were fixed, and for four he went in the tank. So it was the laugh of a man who has learned how to laugh through all sorts of losses.

“Say,” said Cherry, “this gentleman’s a celebrity. He’s Mr. Stephen Richards Rojack whose television program you are all familiar with, click?”

“Yeah,” said Sam. “Click,” said Gary. “Sure I know it,” said one of the girls, Sweetie, with the happiness of a dull pupil answering a quick question in class. “I’m impressed to meet you, Mr. Rojack,” said Sweetie. She
was
sweet. Sam looked sick at being there with her.

“And now since Mr. Rojack is very special to me,” said Cherry, putting one perfumed run of four fingertips on the back of my neck, “we’re going to go in the corner and have a few drinks.”

“You’re on again in fifteen minutes,” said the bartender.

“I didn’t hear you,” said Cherry. She gave a silvery smile as if the terrors of men were about as admirable as the droppings of hippopotami.

We took a little table with a lamp shaped like a candle about ten feet from the isolated stand with its deserted piano and empty microphone. Sitting next to her, I seemed to feel not one presence in her, but two, an ash-blonde young lady of lavender shadows and curious ghosts, some private music, a woman with a body one might never be allowed to see in the sun; and then the other girl, healthy as a farmer, born to be photographed in a bathing suit, brisk, practical, clean, the kind who looked to sex for exercise.

“You’re still angry,” she said to me.

“Yes.”

“You didn’t have to get mad,” she said. “They were just putting you on.”

“So were you. If I had walked away, you’d be here with Romeo.”

“I might be.”

“And feeling no different.”

“That’s evil to say,” she said in a little Southern girl voice.

“Evil says what evil sees.” I didn’t know exactly what I was saying, but it pleased her immensely. We could have been adolescents. She flickered the backs of her fingers under my chin, her green eyes looking full of pepper in the glow of the candle, glints of brown and gold and yellow. In this light she was a pure cat, cat’s eyes, cat’s nostrils, cat’s knowing mouth. “Mr. Rojack, can you tell funny jokes?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me one now.”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“When?”

“When we’re about to leave.”

“You’re rude. In fact …”

“Yes?”

“Ass,”
she said with a Southern bray, and we beamed at each other like two jewelers finding a gem for a partner. Then we leaned
forward and gave a kiss. With all that booze I came near to passing out. For a draft of something sweet and strong came off her mouth and spoke of what she knew, of small Southern towns and the back seats of cars, of expensive hotel suites and years of listening to good jazz, of simple honest muscle in her heart and the taste of good wines, jukeboxes and crap tables, stubborn will, something compromised, inert, and full of gas, something powerful and dull as her friends, the smell of bourbon, too, the raw red promise, so much I closed my eyes and fell back into a swoon for an instant or two, she was too much for me—it is the truth—it was exactly as if I’d been sparring with a bigger man and got hit with a full right hand, not a bare fist but a hand in a boxing glove, and went out of consciousness for a second and took another slow second to come back because punishment was ahead. It was not the nicest kiss I ever had, but it was certainly the most powerful, there was something in it of the iron motor in the hearts of a good many men she must have kissed.

“You’re such a sweet kisser,” she said.

Yes, we could have been adolescents. I had not felt this peculiar mixture of promise and respect, a little awe (as if I were walking blindfolded and might at any moment fall down a flight of stairs: but there were cushions at the bottom—part of the game), the expectation that life had something to offer which few people knew anything about, the happiness that there was a body next to me which was feeling just about the sweet way I felt, sweetness itself. I was afraid to make a move.

“Ass,” she said now, “you came over like you had a cricket in each pocket.”

“I was scared.”

“Of what?”

“Voodoo.”

“You voodoo. You bongo nutty. I didn’t introduce you because you weren’t my friend no more. You were King Creep.”

“I guess I was.”

“Awful!”

The bartender came over. “It’s time for you to go on.”

“Not singing any more tonight.”

“I’ll have to call Tony,” he said.

She had the expression on her face of a soldier who has found a fresh peach on an autumn tree and has stopped to eat it. In a minute he will begin to march again. “Call Tony,” she said, “and bring us two doubles.”

“I don’t want to make a call to him.”

“Frank, I wish you would call Tony. I don’t care about that. I really don’t. But don’t make me feel bad that I’m making you feel bad.”

Frank merely looked at her.

“Besides, Mr. Rojack doesn’t like my singing. It makes him want to puke.”

We all laughed.

“He likes it,” said Frankie. “He gave me the evil eye every time I rattled a glass.”

“Mr. Rojack is indiscriminate in his use of the evil eye,” said Cherry, “whoops!” And the glass on which she was sipping flew out of her hand.

“You’re really not going to sing, are you?” asked Frank, looking at the broken glass on the floor. When she shook her head, he walked away.

“Thanks a lot, Cherry,” he said.

“Well,” said Cherry, “that breaks one beautiful mood.” She struck a match and blew it out. Then looked in the ashtray for a divination. “Bad turns ahead.”

“You think I’m crazy?”

“Oh, no.” She laughed happily. “You’re just spoiled.” We kissed again. It was within easy distance of the first kiss. Something might actually be waiting for us.

“
I
think I’m crazy. My wife is dead. I’ve drawn a blank.”

“Something wrong behind you and you don’t want to look?”

“Exactly.”

“I’ve been feeling that way for a week.”

The accompanist, a Negro, went to the piano. As he went by Cherry, he shrugged. Then he picked out a moody chord, dropped onto two or three other moody chords, and went off into something fast and sulky.

“Maybe you were in love with her,” said Cherry, “and that’s why you don’t get anything back. It’s the women who can hardly wait to be widows that scream at the funeral.”

The phone was ringing. “Mr. Rojack, for you,” Frank called out, and nodded at a booth off the bar. As I passed, I noticed that Romeo Sam, Gary, the girls, all were gone.

“Rojack?”

“Yes.”

“Roberts.”

“You still up?”

“Yes, buddy, I’m still up.”

“Where are you?”

“In Queens. I was just going to bed.” He paused with that righteous arrest of time which is common to authority.

“Who’d you get a call from?”

“Higher up.”

“And what did they say?”

“Rojack, don’t give me any more of that upper-class zazz. I know where you were born.”

“You do? I don’t know where you were born.”

“You son of a bitch,” said Roberts, “you’re loaded.”

“Well, so are you,” I said. “You’re boozing.”

“Yes.”

“I thought you never drank.”

“Once a year,” said Roberts.

“I’m honored to be your occasion.”

“You upper-class finks,” said Roberts.

“We’re very bad,” I said.

“Listen, get out of the place you’re in,” said Roberts. “You’re not one hundred percent safe.”

“I may not be safe, but I’m certainly not suffering.”

“That girl you’re with.”

“Yes.”

“Know who she is?”

“Poison. Pure poison.”

“Better believe it, buddy.”

“Roberts, it takes all kinds to make a world.”

“Ever hear of Bugsy Siegel?”

“Of course I’ve heard of Bugsy Siegel. How can you be a self-respecting drinker if you haven’t heard of Bugsy Siegel?”

“Well, Rojack, the little girl you’re with now could have opened a school for Bugsy Siegel.”

“Then, why,” I asked, “is she singing in an after-hours joint and making one hundred fifty a week?”

“I can’t say more,” said Roberts.

Now I was angry. “I thought you had to give your attention to Eddie Ganucci.”

“Your case is taking some turns.”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t tell us everything about your wife.”

“Everything?”

“Either you know what I’m talking about or you don’t.”

“Obviously I don’t.”

“Let it go.”

“This new information—is it good or bad?”

“Come to the precinct at five-thirty this afternoon.”

“That’s all you care to tell me?”