All Gone (6 page)

“Why would I?”

“Some guys have. Even the ones I was in love with. Suddenly they don't want me. Maybe I can't blame them sometimes—the new ones I just meet overnight. They get scared their wife or girlfriend's coming home or that's just an excuse and they want me out because they've had enough of me or they suddenly feel guilty or even diseased sleeping with me. Or listen to this, they have to go to work extra early that morning they say and don't want me in their apartment alone. I don't want you doing that.”

“Tomorrow's Sunday. I've the weekend off. If you come to my apartment—though who knows what could happen by then. I might get drunk at the party, though I don't usually, and make a stupid scene about something else and you'll get embarrassed or frightened and leave without me and regret you ever met me.”

“You won't do that?”

“No. What I'm saying is anything can happen to spoil it but I doubt very seriously anything will. We'll go to the party and stick with the story. We'll talk, eat, drink, leave around the same time everyone else does, cab to my apartment if you still want to and light a fire and take a shower or anything like that but all reasonable, sane, comfortable, etcetera. Then we'll go to bed or even make love on the rug in front of the fire or wait till morning for that or not even in the morning—not ever—anything you want.”

“And you'll give me twenty-five more dollars when we get to your place?”

“That I can't do.”

“You have no more money at home?”

“I have but I don't want to give it.”

“But I need at least fifty to keep the landlady away. And I'm already sacrificing a lot by going to the party for just that single twenty-five. The other men. Those are the best hours of the best day of the week for that. By one o'clock I could make one-fifty if I work real hard and am lucky—a hundred at the very least.”

“I can't give you anything but the twenty-five I'll give now if you come to the party with me. It just wouldn't be the same thing giving you more at home.”

“Then I can't go.”

“Be reasonable. One evening.”

“No I can't.”

“Then don't.”

“I won't.”

She finishes her drink says goodbye and leaves. I go to the party and meet someone new and just as the party's ending I ask and she says yes and we cab to my apartment.

 

A friend of my sister calls and says “I was chatting with Lula just before and asked how you are and she said looking for work and I said ‘Yeah? Because something's come up in our real estate office he might be interested in, think I should call him?' and she said ‘I don't think so because Mort hates any kind of stuffy office work,' and I said ‘But it's mostly outside in the sun among the birds and city trees,' and she said ‘He still hates any kind of hard-core money-making work including artistic, but chance it and call him because this time who knows?' So I'm calling. You think you'd mind working for us full-time for a month if I tell you what it is?”

“I'd like some steady work after going through two jobs in a week.”

“Wonderful. We want someone to act as our rental agent for five recently renovated buildings in the Eighties on the West Side. They're all close together so no hardship for you to get to, one from the other not a block apart. What you have to do is hang around the buildings and sometimes in the office in one of the vacant apartments where there's a phone. So if people see our To Let signs on the buildings if you can't grab the more interested-looking prospectives off the street—you'll get the knack quick—they'll call and you can be right down and around the corner or wherever to show them around. No pay. But one-third the rental fee if you rent the apartment. If the tenant refuses to pay the fee, since they might be wise we also own the building we're acting as agents for, then fifty dollars for each apartment you rent and ten dollars more for a two- instead of a one-year lease. September's the key month for renting, so you can clear a thousand minimum for a few weeks work and probably earn more. Sound okay?”

I go to her office. It's in the old General Motors building, top floor. The furniture looks like wood but is formica, the bright orange carpet clashes with the dark furniture and walls. The reception room's unkempt: trash cans spilling over, ashtrays smelly and full, boxes of photocopy-machine paper on the chairs and couches, empty matchbooks and squashed soda straws on the floor. But the walls and pilasters are made of real oak from the old days and with decorations in the coffered ceiling around where the chandeliers must have hung looking like something out of a French chateau or New York turn-of-the-century townhouse.

“Meet Larry, my boss,” Penny says.

We go into his office. Larry's sitting in a big chair behind a wide desk with his back to me but swivels around and puts some legal papers down and we shake hands. He's about my age. “So sit down, sit down,” he says. “Like some coffee?”

“No thanks.”

“It's from a Mr. Coffee maker and special Jamaican blend. No sweat in making it.”

“Had a cup before I came.”

“It also makes hot water for tea.”

“Leave him alone,” Penny says. “He doesn't feel thirsty, don't bug him.”

“Who's bugging? I'm being polite.”

“I don't want any, thanks,” I say. “Nice place you have here. Looks like where the GM chairman of the board himself might have worked.”

“Hey man, very close. This suite was for their president. It's the penthouse. Where I sit is where he did. Let me show you his slide-away bar.” He presses a button under his desk and two cabinet doors open and a bar appears. “The liquor didn't come with it. Like a drink?”

“Too early.”

“Good for you. You passed my only test. Too early for me also and I don't want to employ a lush, especially for out there.”

“Sneaky,” Penny says.

“Why? I got rid of that other guy what's his name, Pigmi-gansky—”

“Parmiagiano.”

“Parmesan cheese, okay, but I got rid of him the same way, didn't I? And later we heard he was a lush and a half. Same job as yours he applied for, Mort, and nobody ever looked more refined on so little dough. Too bad too. He knew his stuff. Psyched this suite out immediately as the finest he's ever seen and knew all the names of the architect styles: New Renaissance, Neo-Smorgasbord. He said we have the best view in New York. You ever seen one like it?”

“Something like it. When I was in a paying play once, I went to a dentist on Central Park South to have a couple of teeth capped.”

“It couldn't've been anything like this. Here, take a look from this window. There's the lake. Way back there's Harlem. What are those twin towers off 110th? They really sunk a bundle into those beauties and are going to lose most of their teeth. You see, we're all attorneys here, Mrs. Rothblatt excluded—”

“Penny,” Penny says.

“Penny. You know each other. And we're in lots of different businesses here, so I thought this suite and the park and Queens and Brooklyn and all the bridges at their feet would impress our clients, and it works. Everything in life is show, right?”

“I don't know.”

“What're you talking about? You're an actor Penny says. You said it yourself about your capped teeth. So you most of anybody knows from shows and clothes and the impression you make is the impression people keep. Maybe now you can't afford that kind of show. ‘Between jobs' you people like to say, which is why you're here and we get the benefit from it—but with us, more scratch we put out for show, more we get back, but proportionately. Same with any effort except sex sometimes and sitting on the toilet, present feminine company excluded.”

“Mort knows. Women don't go potty. Tell him what he came here for.”

He tells me about my job, hours and duties. “More time you work at it, more money you make and quicker you get your commissions from us. One September we had a guy who practically slept on the street to rent our apartments and he rented all of them in a week what would have taken anyone else a month. A real hustler. Remember Gatbar?”

“Gainsborough. He's in jail now,” Penny says.

“Not for anything he did for us. He was a clean Gene all the way, not a light bulb was missing. Did I cover everything, Pen?”

“You better show Mort the apartments so he knows what he's selling and where his office is at.”

“Where's the keys, Mrs. Rothbrains?”

She takes them out of her purse, a ring of about two hundred keys.

“We haven't got them all marked yet,” he says, “but the super's going to do that today.”

“Marked yet? That's a laugh.”

“Everything to her's a laugh. I ought to get you replaced with a TV laugh track. You know, can you for canned laughter. Hey, to me that's funny, no?”

“Wonderful. I showed a prospective an apartment today but actually couldn't because after going through the ninety-ninth key that didn't fit the front door, she left. Can you blame her? You got to get each door key marked or you're going to rent zero this year.”

“That's what I said. Joe the super. I guess we can take a cab over. Think I can be back for the Danube case by four?”

“It shouldn't take you any longer than that,” Penny says. “Mail these on the way?” She gives him a packet.

“I'm paying her but she acts like my boss. Hey, you pay me from your salary from now on, all right?”

“Great, if you triple mine.”

“A raise? I'll give you a raise. Sure I'll give you, a triple one. And next week I get to play the boss. Alternate weeks, got it?”

“Wonderful. Don't get lost.”

We get a cab. In it he says “You know, I also was an actor once. Not seriously for the movies like you maybe, but commercials. I'm married but was seeing this actress, an unbelievable beauty. Boobs out to here and waist my thumb and middle finger went around and I'm stubby. I won't mention her name because she's right on top and making a million now and might not like it because acting people can gossip, I know that. I've seen you guys on panel shows. But at one party we're at there's a television ad man who says to me am I an actor or model? I said ‘Me, you kidding?' and he said it's because I might look like one. That I have just the right face they need, rough and ugly, and would I like to audition for a shampoo ad. I asked if it pays and he said ‘plenty.' ‘Then you've hired me, baby,' and I took this film test and the ad got the okay from the soap company and was seen network to network twenty times a night for I don't know how many months and I'm still getting residuals from it, three years later. They still put it on. Same product but a little changed with an XYZ formula now in it, but still with me sudsing my hair like King Kong. Gave me enough to live on for two years if my expenses weren't so irrationally high. You like money?”

“I need it to live on. I like it all right.”

“I love it, that's how much I like it. More than anything except the health you can't buy with it. But for the health care you can buy with it I love it for that reason also and everything else it buys. That's not original thinking, I know, but for me it's true. But why be original? Play in, I say, play in. But I respect you. I'm not kidding. You're a serious artist Penny says—an actor but artist, right? And I respect all serious people for what they do no matter how many years it takes them. Me, it has to come quick. That's why I'm both lawyer and in real estate and a businessman, but what I'm most serious and do best at is being a baker. Making bread. Bread: money. No? Hey, good thing my seriousness isn't in selling jokes.”

We stop in front of one of his buildings. He tries to get into the apartment that will also serve as my office till I rent it. After going through the entire key ring and some of the keys two and three times each and in both key positions and on both locks, he whacks the key ring against the knob and says “I'd kick the shit out of this door if it wasn't mine,” and we go outside. Joe the super comes by on his bike.

“I'll get them all marked by tomorrow,” Joe says.

“Tonight,” Larry says. “Then get your ass out here early tomorrow morning to give my keys to Mort.”

“Tonight. You bet. Meet me here at ten on the spot, Mort.”

“Nine,” Larry says.

“Nine. Good. I'll get them all etched in with my stamp machine I got. For instance, that one on your ring I can see is already 3B for number 57 down the block. So some of the keys will be no problem.”

“How do you know it's 3B's?” Larry says.

“By the grooves and lock make. See, I got an exact one of each myself,” and he jangles a ring of about two hundred keys on his belt. “Some are already marked of mine and the most aren't because I don't have to. I got those memorized by heart.” He aligns a key on his ring with one of Larry's. They do look alike.

“Let's get in there then. I want to show Mort at least one apartment before we go.”

Joe tries to get into 3B with Larry's key. It doesn't work. He tries his own. Goes in but doesn't turn.

“I was sure this was the right one. Maybe the last tenant changed the lock. That bum. Burglarized by his own friends he also steals from us everything from spigots and bathroom tiles. Junkies. That's why we got him out and the first-floor tenant's also vacant. Nobody wanted to live in the same building with him.”

“Let's try that one,” Larry says. “It's a duplex, our highest rental, and at least it's open.”

The front door of IB has no cylinder in it so Joe just pushes it open. The place is a mess. Holes in the plaster walls, some floor planks ripped out, a closet door hanging by a mangled hinge, the banister to the windowless playroom below, which makes it a duplex, lying on the stairs.