The Cool School (14 page)

“Here’s mud,” he said. We drank. “Harry,” he said, “I think you and Julia need yours freshened up a bit.”

He called for two more Scotch and sodas. He looked at the crowd around us. “I’m crazy about this place,” he said. “I just stumbled on it tonight.”

Porter and I looked at each other, and Porter made a questioning gesture with his eyebrows. Then he slapped Harry on the shoulder. “Hey, old sport. What have you been up to?”

Goodwin was watching and listening and smiling. I could not help noticing again how well-dressed and set up he was.

“That is an ambiguous question, old sport,” Harry said to Porter.

I felt Harry was doing this just for fun, not for any other reason. Goodwin had handed Harry his new drink and was watching him and Porter.

“I don’t know exactly how to answer you,” said Harry. “When you say what am I up to do you mean what am I capable of doing? Or do you mean to what point have I risen? The assumption being I am low and going up. You see, old sport, it’s very ambiguous.”

Goodwin laughed. “That’s very clever, Harry. I had never thought of it that way.”

“Take it any way you like,” Porter said.

“All right. To be honest, Porter, I haven’t been up to anything. I’ve been pretty low.”

“Won’t you have another drink?” Goodwin asked me, looking at Porter too.

“No thanks,” Porter said.

“Are you sure? Come on. Have another.”

“Don’t be dull,” Julia said. “Have another drink, Porter.”

“I’m not a drinking man,” Porter said. “It makes me dizzy and confused.”

“Are you afraid somebody is going to put something over on you when you are tight?” Harry asked him.

“No. I just don’t like feeling confused.”

“I’m not afraid of feeling confused,” said Harry.

“But you will have one, won’t you, Blake,” Goodwin said to me.

“Sure. Blake will have one. He’s not afraid of getting dizzy.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“That’s the boy, Blake. Stay with us,” Julia said. “Don’t let us down.”

“Or bring us down.”

“Oh. I get it,” Goodwin said. “I get that one. It’s a jive expression. Right?”

“You’re in,” Porter said.

“He’s a very solid citizen,” Harry said. “He makes four hundred a week.”

“What do you do?” Goodwin asked Porter.

“I write fiction.”

“Really? I used to write fiction, when I was in college.”

“And?”

“It was pretty good. I gave up writing because nobody bought my stories. But it was good. Now I wish I had kept at it.”

“You’re doing all right,” Julia said.

“Oh yes. I do all right. Harry, when do you expect to finish your book?”

“Are you writing a book, Harry?” I asked.

Goodwin answered me. “Didn’t he tell you? He told me he’s doing a book on the end of the Renaissance. Aren’t you, Harry?”

“I’m not only doing it, I’m living it. Which reminds me. What happened to that underground man you came in with?”

“He’s casing the joint,” Porter said. “He’ll be back.”

“What do you mean by the underground man?” Goodwin asked.

“The man who will do anything. He’s a spiritual desperado.”

“He means Max Glazer,” Porter said. “He’s a very smart guy. Really very hip.”

“I didn’t say he wasn’t. He is a desperado, though. Do you know what his ideal is? His ideal is to look like a street corner hoodlum and be the finest lyric poet in America at the same time.”

“He sounds remarkable,” Goodwin said. “I would enjoy meeting him.”

“Don’t say it that way,” Julia said. “You’ll meet him.”

“There’s a booth. Let’s get it.”

We pushed through the crowd on our left and got to the empty booth just ahead of some other people. “Very sorry,” Goodwin said to them, smiling nicely. They did not say anything and went away.

“Tell me some more about the underground man, Harry,” Goodwin said.

“I’m writing a book about him too.”

“It seems that you are writing these books with your mouth, Harry,” said Porter.

“It is a new literary form,’” Harry said. “Anyway, about the underground man. Max. His favorite reading is Andrew Marvell and the
Daily Mirror
comics. You might say he is the Neanderthal man of the new world.”

“Here he is,” Julia said.

Goodwin stood up. We all looked at him as he did this. He held out his hand to Max. “You’re Max Glazer, aren’t you? My name is Goodwin, Russell Goodwin. We’ve been talking about you.”

Max did not return Goodwin’s greeting, though he did shake his hand gently. He made a surprised expression and smiled at us.

“Sit down, Max,” Goodwin said, and gave Max his seat in the booth.

“I’ll get a chair from the dining room.” He shouldered through the crowd and went back to the dining room.

“I don’t dig this guy,” Max said. “What’s his story? Is he a fruit or something?”

“He’s not a fruit,” said Julia. “He’s just lonely.”

“Julia and I met him at the bar,” Harry explained. “He was alone
and he asked us if he could buy us a drink. Just like that. He makes four hundred dollars a week.”

“He is an uptown operator, Max,” Porter said. “But he might be good for laughs.”

“You’re a cool son of a bitch, Porter,” Julia said.

“Are you so hot?”

“Oh nuts to you.”

“Even though the guy is uptown, he’s an interesting sociological study,” Porter said to Max.

“You don’t say.”

“What are you drinking?” Max asked me.

“Scotch. He’s been standing everybody liquor. You can’t stop him.”

“Who would want to? Give me a drink, will you?”

I let Max take a drink from my glass. Goodwin came back with a chair. He sat down on the outside. “You will have a drink, won’t you, Max?” he asked.

Max said he would. Goodwin ordered from a waiter passing us with his hands full of empty beer glasses. He was one of the good waiters.

“Subito, subito,” he said. He liked to speak Italian every now and then. He thought it was amusing. He spoke it with a sharp northern accent. Everyone liked him. He was never sullen. The place was very noisy now. The bartenders were shouting for the dining room waiters to pick up their drinks. People were standing in both doorways talking and drinking and looking all around. You could not tell whether they were on their way in or on their way out.

A headache was beginning to work up the back of my neck and head and I was feeling the drinks. I was thinking about Grace’s abortion and about the big fight and about going away for a few days to Harry Lees’s father’s place up on the Cape. And about a job. Goodwin’s being there made me think about the job. An uptown job. There were no other jobs. They were all uptown. And you had to go uptown to keep them too. I did not want to do that.

“You’ll have another drink, won’t you, Blake?” Goodwin asked me.

“No thanks, Goodwin. I’ll nurse this one.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. Thanks anyway.”

Max smiled at me. “Why do you play tag this way with corruption, Blake?”

“I’m not playing tag. I just don’t want another drink.”

He kept on smiling. The others were watching him. “That isn’t what I’m talking about. You know that.”

“What are you talking about, Max?” Goodwin asked.

“I’m talking about your buying Blake a drink. Blake feels it’s corrupt to let people buy for him. And he feels nervous because you’re buying it the way you are.”

He was right. And he was not stopping there.

“How am I buying it, Max?” Goodwin asked him.

Max laughed softly. “You’re buying in,” he said.

“Oh nuts, Max,” Julia said. “Why do you have to get so salty when people want to have fun?”

Goodwin’s smile had gone now. He was looking in his drink. Harry was looking at me. We were both thinking the same thing. I guess Goodwin had it coming to him. Here or someplace else.

“You’re right, Max,” Goodwin said, looking up. “You’re quite right. That’s what I’ve been doing.”

“I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it,” Max said. “I just said that’s what you’re doing and that’s what Blake was feeling bad about. Blake thinks things like that are bad.”

“How long have you known everything?” I said.

“Let’s forget it,” Lees said. “I’ll tell a dirty joke.”

“Why should you feel bad about this?” Max asked Goodwin. “You get in however you can. In this case you buy in. One way is as good as another.”

“You really think you have everybody taped, don’t you, Max?” I said.

He smiled and shook his head and patted my arm. “Slow down, man. Slow down. Don’t take everything so personally.”

“Do you dislike me for doing this?” Goodwin asked, looking at Porter now.

Porter shrugged. “I don’t know you well enough to either like you or dislike you, old man.”

“Come on. Let’s drop it,” Julia said. “Tell the dirty joke, Harry. Or whistle ‘Dixie.’ Do something.”

Harry told the dirty joke. It was not so dirty. But it was funny. It involved a Jewish man catching something from a hustler in Atlantic City. Porter laughed very loud when it was over, laughing that ha-ha-ha, loud laugh. Goodwin laughed too. The joke seemed to have relaxed him.

“How do you make four hundred a week?” Max asked Goodwin.

“I am an account executive at an advertising agency.”

“You must live pretty well.”

“Well, I guess I do.”

“Let me guess. You live on the upper East side and you probably have a charge account at Abercrombie & Fitch.”

“You’re doing very well.”

“And you read the
New Yorker
regularly and think it is really terrific. And you often tell your friends you heard something funny the other day which you think you will send to the
New Yorker.”

“Go on.”

“Your idea of a vacation is to go to Fire Island and you probably listen to WQXR very often. You see all the shows at the Museum of Modern Art.”

“You are batting a thousand. Go on.”

“You see all the French movies and you think they are much better than the American movies.”

“You’re doing great.”

“You still think you would like to live in Paris for a year. Because that is where things happen.”

“I do, too.”

“What are you doing down here?”

“Oh, looking around.”

“Pretty expensive looking, isn’t it? One way or another.”

“That is what the four hundred is for, Max.”

Max smiled and finished his drink. “You’re O.K., Goodwin, you’re O.K.”

“Thanks, Max.”

“Underground Max,” I said. “Working overtime.”

“You’re underground too, Blake, old boy. You’re the Arrow Collar man of the underground.”

“Would anyone like to hear another joke?” Harry asked. “This is getting too serious for me.”

“By all means another joke, Harry,” Julia said.

“Jokes drag me,” Porter said. “One joke was enough. Tell something else, but not a joke.”

“That is your trouble, Porter,” said Harry. “You are a one joke man. Spread out. Be a two joke man.”

“Don’t let it worry you, old sport,” Porter said, laughing and slapping him on the back. “I leave the clowning to the clowns.”

“I’ll tell you about the time I got drunk in Boston and a couple of jokers put me in the dumb-waiter. I fell asleep. The next morning a lady tenant in the building pulled the dumb-waiter down to put her garbage on. She saw me and screamed and fainted. She thought I was a dead body.”

“Wonderful, wonderful,” Julia said, shrieking.

“What was it like? Back in the womb?” Porter asked.

“Yes, and I liked it.”

“It is amazing,” Goodwin said. “Did it really happen, Harry?”

“No. I made it up.”

“Well I’ll be damned.”

“Are you disappointed?” Porter asked him. “Do you want everything to be true?”

“Perhaps I’m naïve.”

Goodwin signaled to the waiter as he passed and asked for another round. “Just this last one,” he said, smiling at us.

“Don’t apologize,” Julia said.

“Let’s make it quick, though,” Porter said, “because I have to be leaving. I have to finish some work.”

“All right, man, all right,” Max said. “Take it easy.”

The waiter brought the drinks. None for me or Porter. I wanted to go home. They drank up. Porter was looking nervously around the bar. Afraid he would miss something or somebody. Max was looking at Julia. Examining her nearsightedly. Goodwin and Harry were talking about clubs. I was the first to get up.

“You may not believe me,” Goodwin said, getting up with the others, “but I’ve really enjoyed this. I want to get together with you again. How about coming up to my place next week for dinner? Will you?”

“We would love to, Goodwin,” Max said.

Goodwin wrote his name and address down on the back of a card he took from his wallet. “Next Tuesday, say at eight,” he said. Then he left a big tip for the waiter. I knew none of us would go to Goodwin’s house.

“They’ll think you’re crazy,” Julia said about the tip.

“I don’t care,” Goodwin said, smiling. “I’m driving uptown. Can I give anybody a lift?”

We all said we were walking. All except Julia. She said he could give her a lift. Harry looked at her, surprised.

“But I thought I was going to walk you home,” he said.

“Forgive me, darling,” she said. “But I’m tired, really beat. Honestly.”

Lees cocked his head and looked that way at Julia. “O.K.,” he said.

“Some other time, Harry,” she said.

We left. Outside Goodwin and Julia got into his Buick convertible.

“Next Tuesday then,” Goodwin said. “Don’t forget.”

We said we wouldn’t. Julia waved good-bye and they drove off. Lees just watched them, not waving.

“She can drop dead,” he said.

“Don’t take it so hard,” Porter said. “She’s just a tramp.”

Max said he was going to a movie, a double feature on Forty-Second Street. There was nothing else to do. Porter said that must be
the fourth movie he had gone to in the last week. Max said so what. He liked movies.

Porter and Max were going in the same direction. We said so long and they walked off.

“I’ll walk home with you, O.K.?” Harry said to me. “I have a lot of time to kill.”

“Sure. Come on.”

I did not feel like passing by the Mills Hotel and the bruise-faced drunks there so instead of going up Bleecker as I usually did we went south toward Houston Street. We walked for a while without talking.