Nowhere (26 page)

Gee, what a nice place the New York sidewalks would be if most people were kept always at the movies!

But when I went to make that matutinal cup of coffee that forms the bedrock on which is mounted the day to come, my mood changed abruptly. The hot plate was still plugged into the socket that hung from the ceiling, but its coils were quite cold, which meant that they had been burned out or the fuse had blown. The fusebox for all the circuits in this wretched building was in a cellar the door to which was locked to keep, as the super said, surely comprising me in his term, “the assholes out.” I could easily gain entrance using the all-purpose skeleton key I had provided myself with from Krachlich’s Third Avenue hardware store (which offered a full range of burglar’s aids), but the fusebox itself was locked more elaborately. Not to mention that Mr. Rat, his stout wife, and their multitudinous offspring made their home down there and at any moment would be, as McCoy might have said in his vivid vintage lingo, tying on the breakfast feedbag.... Funny how one can become attached to a supposititious personage, but then, I am in life a lonely man. I wish I could again afford a regular girlfriend: the incessant bickering keeps one on the qui vive. Almost every day I read somewhere that a bachelor’s life expectancy is alarmingly short.

I can’t function in the morning without my caffeine fix, I don’t care what the doom-crying nutritionists say. Unless I wanted to mix my instant coffee with the tepid water from the lavatory tap, I had to go out to breakfast. I searched my pockets for the money I remembered was not there: I found only a crumpled business card, which I hurled to the desk in frustration. I went through the spare clothing I maintained in a heap on the studio couch, then to the garments that hung on the nails driven here and there into the woodwork. But could locate not so much as a single verdigrised relief of Honest Abe.
Merde!

I went back to the desk and picked up the card so that I might ball it and fling it cursing, an event from which, like most of us, I get a wan satisfaction, and I glanced at it and—good gravy!—saw the legend thereupon:
Our American Cousin Productions, 1 Shubert Alley, NYC,
a 944 number, and
Norman Rasmussen, President.

But before I could even begin to reconcile reality with dream, my telephone rang. I answered it warily, and this time heard a tenor voice with a local accent.

“There’s supposed to be a bomb in your building. Better get out.”

I snorted derisively. “Sure there is.”

“Whadduh yuh,
arguing?
Bomb squad’s onna way. Get out right now.”

“Who are you?”

“Getcherass outa there and you can have my shield numbuh.”

“You’re a cop?” But the distinctive Celtic-tinged speech of the NYPD, even when the speaker himself is Italian or Jewish, was unmistakable. “All right, I’m leaving. But tell me this, officer: why do people do this sort of thing?”

“C’mon,
willyah?
”

I abandoned my attempt to elicit some judgment on these terrorists, if only a pungent epithet, but I suppose cops say “scumbag” only on TV these days. Alas, I had lingered too long in what proved a vain pursuit: I was still in the doorway downstairs when the bomb went off, projecting me onto the sidewalk, where however my fall was cushioned by the small but firm body of Bobbie, my friendly neighbor streetwalker.

“Jesus, Rus!” she protested, rising quickly and dusting her clothing, a slack suit in a subdued color, with her hands.

I got up slowly and looked at my building. It was still standing, nor could I see any flame or smoke. “It’s different from the dream,” I said.

“Are you on something?” Bobbie asked, anxiously peering at my eyes.

“A bomb just went off in there! Didn’t you hear it?”

“You’re kidding. That was a backfire over on Madison.” Bobbie went into her purse. “Take a look at my new ad, Rus. How you like the writing?”

I accepted the newspaper clipping and read: “Virgin college girl newly arrived in town. Need quick money to pursue Ph.D., and therefore must sell maidenhead to highest bidder.” This was followed by the address of a mail-collection service in Chelsea.

“It’s clever, Bobbie, but do you think it will fool anybody?”

“You’ll see,” she said. “I’ll get all kinds of answers. The kinda people who read
Crotch
like stuff like that. The kinda people who go to prostitutes are
romantics,
Rus! If you don’t know that, you don’t know much.”

“Do you ever see any articles in there by a man named McCoy?”

She sneered. “I never look at the front part of that piece of shit. I read good stuff, Rus: Harlequins, Barbara Cartland, you know.”

“I guess it was a quixotic question, Bobbie. Looks like you’re just getting in from a hard night. How about buying me a cup of coffee?”

“Sorry, I don’t buy nothing except for Smoke.”

“He’s the chap who drives the ornate Caddie, wears the big white sombrero?”

“That’s my lover-boy. I hope you don’t have no criticism.”

“Not me,” said I. “He has about him the aura of a Renaissance wit. That’s all too rare these days.”

“You want to panhandle, you go along Gramercy North. That’s where the Jewish doctors are.”

“Hey, that’s an idea.”

She frowned. “I don’t know, Rus, sometimes I think it oughta be better than this. But then I think,
Where?
” She shook her head as if to clear it, then sighed, took the ad from me, put it in her purse, and came out with a quarter. “Here you go.” I was genuinely touched. “Gee, Bobbie, that’s nice of you.”

“What the hell. Support the arts!” She gave me a wink and a smile and assumed a sprightly stride as she crossed the street to her hotel.

The bomb destroyed only the WC on my floor, as it happened, and the super, speaking for the absentee slumlord (frankly, I had always assumed they were the same individual), refused to install another, so long as there was a “perfectly good crapper in the cellar.”

An anonymous caller informed TV newsperson Jackie Johansen that the bombing was the work of a group which deplored the detonation of explosives on the premises of persons who had no responsibility for the supposed injustices suffered by the bombers. As there was really no other means by which to attract the notice of the press to this organization, the world should expect more of the same.

I haven’t yet got in touch with Norman Rasmussen: I started the new play but soon ran into a problem with the second act.

Thomas Louis Berger (1924–2014) was an American novelist best known for his picaresque classic,
Little Big Man
(1964). His other works include
Arthur Rex
(1978),
Neighbors
(1980), and
The Feud
(1983), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Berger was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Thomas Charles, a public school business manager, and Mildred (née Bubbe) Berger. Berger grew up in the town of Lockland, Ohio, and one of his first jobs was working at a branch of the public library while in high school. After a brief period in college, Berger enlisted in the army in 1943 and served in Europe during World War II. His experiences with a medical unit in the American occupation zone of postwar Berlin inspired his first novel,
Crazy in Berlin
(1958). This novel introduced protagonist Carlo Reinhart, who would appear in several more novels.

In 1946, Berger reentered college at the University of Cincinnati, earning a bachelor’s degree two years later. In 1948, he moved to New York City and was hired as librarian of the Rand School of Social Science. While enrolled in a writer's workshop at the nearby New School for Social Research, Berger met artist Jeanne Redpath; they married in 1950. He subsequently entered Columbia University as a graduate student in English literature, but left the program after a year and a half without taking a degree. He next worked at the
New York Times Index
; at
Popular Science Monthly
as an associate editor; and, for a decade, as a freelance copy editor for book publishers.

Following the success of Rinehart in Love (1962), Berger was named a Dial Fellow. In 1965, he received the Western Heritage Award and the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters for
Little Big Man
 (1964), the success of which allowed him to write full time. In 1970,
Little Big Man
was made into an acclaimed film, directed by Arthur Penn and starring Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway.

Following his job as
Esquire
’s film critic from 1972 to 1973, Berger became a writer in residence at the University of Kansas in 1974. One year later, he became a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Southampton College, and went on to lecture at Yale University and the University of California, Davis.

Berger’s work continued to appear on the big screen. His novel
Neighbors
(1980) was adapted for a 1981 film starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. In 1984, his novel
The Feud
(1983) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; in 1988, it too was made into a movie. His thriller
Meeting Evil
 (1992) was adapted as a 2012 film starring Samuel L. Jackson and Luke Wilson.

In 1999, Berger published
The Return of Little Big Man
, a sequel to his literary classic. His most recent novel,
Adventures of the Artificial Woman
, was published in 2004.

Berger lived in New York’s Hudson Valley.

In 1966, two years after he wrote
Little Big Man
, Berger stands at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, the site of Custer’s last stand in 1876. This was Berger’s first visit to the famous battlefield.

This black-and-white image became the readers’ vision of Berger: dark and esoteric. (Photo courtesy of Gerry Bauer.)

A snapshot of Berger with his friend Zulkifar Ghose, taken in midtown Manhattan in the summer of 1974. (Photo courtesy of Betty Sue Flowers.)

This marked-up manuscript page comes from a story called “Gibberish,” from Berger’s original short story collection
Abnormal Occurrences.

In this 1984 letter to his agent, Don Congdon, Berger tells Congdon that he was mentioned on
The David Susskind Show
, a television talk show.