Further Adventures (7 page)

Yellow light from the control room window caught in her hair so it turned to dusty gold. She patted a loose curl back into place over her ear & giggled her Answer to some question or flattering remark from Mr. Silverstein. Then I knew for a fact how the famous portrait painter Rembrandt felt when he stood in front of a blank canvas he filled up before his eyes with one still single moment in the Life of her beautiful face. Annie’s bare neck could fit in my palm and her narrow back in my arm. She showed a blank glance over her shoulder & there I was staring at her but she raised her eyebrows just a look of happy pretend Surprise you know like she just made her Entrance at the surprise Birthday party she was not supposed to know about. She cupped her hands for a stage whisper, “Ain’t…Life…Grand?” Then the vacuum left there in the second she turned her face away. Playing like his naughty daughter Annie poked Mr. Argyll in his ribs such a flibbertigibbet!

David brushed by and in the side of his mouth these words: “Watch this one in the clinches.” And he jerked his thumb toward Annie.

“Don’t I know it!” Mr. Argyll nodded he wrapped both arms around his rib cage for protection.

Mr. Silverstein stood braver he was fearless his hands on his hips. “Stop abusing the staff young lady.” He frowned. “That’s my job.”

Therefore Annie poked Mr. Silverstein in the ribs instead and all the men over there started laughing very big. The bosses they Adored her. I had a picture of us in my mind Annie’s hand holding mine bridal
gown & groomal suit with Mr. Silverstein giving her away to me & Mr. Argyll in the pulpit & David Arcash for my Best Man.

David handed me his handkerchief. “You’re drooling. Wipe your lips.”

I dabbed around my mouth. It was dry my tongue also a desert in there.

“You can’t hide anything from me. I’m your pal,” said David. “You live in my apartment. I go through your dirty laundry.”

My throat closed up. “What’s that mean?”

“She’s going to some dinner tonight at her sister’s in Far Rockaway.” He encouraged me. “Ambush her. Who can identify you in Far Rockaway?”

On fast little steps Annie put on the steam to leave the Studio. “Night Ray,” was all she said & with the curtain of rosewater perfume she pulled behind her clinging around my head I knew all of a sudden I had 2 choices.

CHOICE NUMBER 1: Stay true to my Nature & lie down do nothing “Wait & See” if Annie is someday going to admit out loud the same feelings

OR

CHOICE NUMBER 2: Change my character for the better i.e. go on & make my move no matter what comes Heaven or Hell or High Water

I went after her in the next Elevator down to the Lobby. It felt like a month between floors but when the big brass doors opened up there she was buying a pack of Wrigley’s from Stan the Cigar Man.

“Annie!” I waved at her but I think she did not see me in the crowd that swamped me from behind when another Elevator spilled into the
lobby. A thick-necked man bulled in front of her to get in the revolving door and behind his back she showed her teeth her clenched smile mocking Good manners.

It was nighttime on the street and rain coming down into the bargain. Like a Notre Dame fullback I ran through it and caught up I felt like a masher. I asked her, “Want a hot dog?”

“Oh Ray it’s only you. Jeez.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m going to my sister’s for dinner but don’t let me stop you.” She raised the flat of her hand for a kind of salute. “I go this way. Gotta get to—”

“Far Rockaway,” I said in unison with her.

“—by eight…” She squinted her eyes at me trying to figure how I knew where she was going & what it meant if I did.

I did not want to let her go then & I told her so. I saw the muscles around her mouth go tight & she braced herself to listen to words she did not want to hear. “I see,” Annie sniffed. She did not see half of it but 10 Minutes later she was staring down the snout of the whole snorting buffalo.

I told her how I thought about her—how deep & regular—I told her how I did not want to lose my feelings by keeping them in I had to let them go loose—I said how I felt scooped out like a Halloween pumpkin when I pictured this place without her in it—I told her you are my Dream Girl what a relief to shout these facts! & be with somebody who knows what I am doing truly & truly WHO I AM because I care so much about her I do not need to force myself to hush my inner thoughts—

The more I said to Annie the easier it was to tell her more as if Lionel Horvath’s gunsels shoved me down a greasy chute nor I did not worry if it was a tropical lagoon at the bottom or a fiery furnace—“If I don’t come out with it I’d regret it for the rest of my Life,” I told
her—more than I would live to regret telling her come what may & I started to recite the sorry tale of Bernhardt’s ideas on the subject of helping another man button his fly but I stopped myself on Religious grounds also the picture of me pinned under Bernhardt Grym was not going to make me look like a very attractive man in Annie’s eyes—I told her I was sorry if this was a wild ambush out of nowhere nor it did not come out of any Unnatural Urge—I wanted to tell her all the events in my Life that led up to it also made a very Dramatic ending.

Under a dripping awning with the rain splattering down around us in front of The Palm Bar & Grill. The doorway was landmarked by a potted palm outside it & in the lull of seconds I was waiting for Annie to reply all I wanted to do was trade places with that waterlogged tropical plant. Annie listened with her face turned down just chewing her gum slowly shaking her head slow too. Beads of water hung off the fringe of her hair they dripped off her chin.

“Boy Ray. You sure don’t pull any punches do you…”

I said, “I know I’m putting you on the spot. I’m on the spot too. We’re both on the same spot.”

“Getting soaked.” She wiped a dewdrop off of her nose with the heel of her hand. She tilted her head so I could see her little twist of a smile worry & embarrassment mixed. “I’m flattered,” finally she said. “I’m involved with a man already.” She kept her Voice flat & on the level but turned her face away from me to say it and when she turned back I probably was giving her a glass-eyed fishy stare. “Did you think I’d just be single?”

A trick question so I let it fade into the noise of traffic and scuffling feet.

“It’s not the way you think it is,” she informed me.

“How’s that?”

“You think if you tell me all this—how you feel for me and private
things about your life I’m going to see what a swell fella you are & what a lucky girl I am & how stupid I’ve been all along for not seeing Mr. Right was right under my nose the whole time. Then we kiss all lovey dovey find a love nest settle down have a baby or two get old and die.”

“Well…yeah. Mostly.”

“It isn’t like that.”

“No. Why not?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Sure I do.”

“You’ll be sor-rr-ry,” she sang & teased me.

I kept quiet and stood back to cue her I was ready to listen.

“He’s a much older gentleman.”

“How older?”

“Oh…” She shivered she knew that she was going to knock the wind out of me. “J.B.’s over 60.”

“Wowie.” Oh my oh yes.

Annie forced out a heavy sigh her Breath bloomed in the Air between us. “You want to hear any more?”

My tongue swole up like a meatloaf. Speechless she made me!

So she took over. “He’s a dreamboat to me. He sent me a bottle of fizz over when I was in a restaurant with my sis and her hubby for their anniversary. What did I care? It broke the ice. And after dinner he took us all out on the town. It was so
extravagant
Ray. I’m telling you—night clubs and floor shows a nightcap at some hoity-toity upstate German roadhouse. So it turns out he’s a honest to Jesus tycoon. Shipping business. His wife kicked the bucket seven years ago. No kids. A real sob story I mean a
real
one. In the morning in the back of his limousine he says to me I bring out certain feelings he thought he’d never have again. He sobbed a couple of times on my shoulder. That got my waterworks going. In the front seat his chauffeur is bawling his eyes out too. Jeez!
I didn’t even know he could
hear
us way up there. I get weak knees for a guy who’s strong enough to let go like that in front of a lady and a servant.”

What did it mean when she stroked the white hairs on his bare chest what was she thinking about? What did it look like his veiny old onionskin skin his hands like roots with hers smooth as Dove soap? Jesus Henry Christ Annie! Your boyfriend can remember what Life was like
before the telephone!
Before Radio shows! Your boyfriend was born in 1877! People put nickels that old in
coin collections!

“He’s tender to me. He leaves me alone when I want. Got a key to my own apartment & he doesn’t have a key to it. He never lies to me or cheats on me and I know he could if he wanted. He could get any chorus girl at Radio City but he only wants me. He doesn’t expect much back and he makes me feel secure for once in my life. He knows all about the rotten times I’ve had with men and my past and everything else. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t think about my past he just loves me up. I want to try being faithful for once.”

“I get the picture.” I was not going to talk her out of anything or into anything her heart was not up for Auction. “Can I buy you a cup o’java?”

She looped her arm through mine Annie said, “I really
am
flattered you like me so much. I feel like you just handed me a Valentine’s card. A month too early.”

I answered her with my undertaker’s smile. “No. A month too late.”

“Cut it out.” She yanked me toward the bar & grill door but pulled up short of the potted palm tree. “If I tell you something will you keep it secret?”

“Not unless you want me to.”

“Am I dumb or does that mean yes?”

“I don’t fall for dumb bunnies.”

“Keep this between you and me Ray promise? You know how ever since I started on the show somebody’s been sending me a dozen roses every week? And how I got a double bouquet for my birthday?” The water in the lagoon started to hum…“My gentleman friend sends them by limo. J.B. Pierpont sends them…”

The sidewalk shuddered & heaved under my feet! That sea monster reared up on its watery haunches it roared fell & crushed me under! So this is how it feels in the bull’s-eye of a Natural Disaster!

I lunged up I pushed myself on Annie’s lips I whispered her name…because she was making it all up about J.B. Pierpont ha ha ha Tycoon and Senior Citizen Romeo ha ha ha! Therefore Annie told me her inner thoughts i.e. what kind of Romance she was hoping for all along here it was the same kind I was right there to give her! Ain’t Life Grand?!

“Stop it! Stop it Ray! Are you crazy?” I astonished her she was pushing me away. “Control yourself!”

Do I tell her I am the Mystery Man who sends her flowers every week and so the story she told me about her older gentleman is a ridiculous Lie now she does not have to pretend with me. Would this make her jump overboard? Or swoon in my arms or despise me from now on because Ray Green was the name of another man who tricked her who made her reveal her naked desires in public? Or let her keep her pride? I let her go.

“You pig!” she screeched at me she punched me too.

“I’m sorry.” I backed away from her. “Ow. My eye. Annie? I’m sorry!”

I watched her run fast & far from me and climb into a bus she was wiping her lips back & forth on her sleeve.

The second David Arcash switched on the light in the Green Room he saw my black eye. “Who did that to you?” My face was marble my heart was flint. It took him 5 seconds to guess Whodunnit. “She belted you? Annie did?”

“I need your advice,” I said very feeble.

“You need to go a few educational rounds with Pigmeat.”

“It wouldn’t help.”

Hand on my shoulder. “Now you know. She’s a dumb twist. Now you found out. There there. Now forget about it. Don’t send her any more flowers.”

“It isn’t finished in my mind.” I showed him the full glory of my shiner. “Would the Green Ray forget about it?”

“My advice to the lovelorn is forget about that squirrelly twist.”

“Annie isn’t squirrelly. She had a right to sock me.”

“My kind of female. What did you do—jump her?”

“I’m as bad as Bernhardt.”

“Nah.”

“Almost.”

“Nah. You need to practice 12 hours a day to get that bad. I’ll say it again. Annie LaSalle is very easy to please. She only wants one thing in her life Ray—fame & fortune.”

“I want to give her more.”

“You can’t even get a good table at a midtown automat. Name one maitre d’ who knows you’re on the Radio. Where’s a doorman who ever heard your name?”

“It isn’t all she cares about.”

“You either. Except she
does
.”

“Close your mouth David.”

“Oh—you’d never fall for a gold digger right? With all of your intimate experience of the opposite sex you can tell what a girly’s after the minute you lay eyes on her.”

I did not believe how David could punch me so far below the belt. “I know something. The what not the how.”

“Right. You’re right. What do I know about Annie? Ask Aunt Eunice,” he joked at me.

“I will.”

“Don’t waste the stamp. Eunice can’t tell pee from lemonade.”

“No I’ve heard her get right to the heart of a problem not just lonelyhearts either. She solves all kinds for all kinds of different listeners.”

“Yeah,” David smirked. “You know who writes her answers? Lamont Carruthers. Also the questions. He writes all of our shows too.”

“Maybe you can boost me up in front of Annie. Mention I’m dying.”

“I’m not telling you the news. You got eyes and ears. Annie is a sound effect with tits. She wants the public attention. The star treatment. Just craves it. You say she’s no dumb twist. O.K. I’ll bite. So she’s a smart twist. Now what?”

“I need to be smarter.”

I worked on my problem by the Science of the Mind. I worked on it with all my Psychological powers and it all boiled down to 3 Simple Steps:

Step 1: