Short Stories: Five Decades (15 page)

“I want to tell you,” Mr. Grimmet said to McMahon, fixing him with his eye, “that we can save seven dollars a case on the private stock.”

McMahon started whistling the tenor aria from
Pagliacci
. He looked up at the ceiling and wiped a glass and whistled. Mr. Grimmet felt like firing him and remembered that at least twice a month he felt like firing McMahon.

“Please stop whistling,” he said politely. “We have a matter to discuss.”

McMahon stopped whistling and Mr. Grimmet still felt like firing him.

“Times’re not so good,” Mr. Grimmet said in a cajoling tone of voice, hating himself for descending to such tactics before an employee of his. “Remember, McMahon, Coolidge is no longer in the White House. I am the last one in the world to compromise with quality, but we must remember, we are in business and it is 1938.”

“Thesing’s private stock,” McMahon said, “would destroy the stomach of a healthy horse.”

“Mussolini!” the first waiter’s voice came out from the back of the restaurant. “Every day on Broadway I pass forty-five actors who could do his act better.”

“I am going to tell you one thing,” Mr. Grimmet said with obvious calmness to McMahon. “I am the owner of this restaurant.”

McMahon whistled some more from
Pagliacci
. Thesing moved wisely down the bar a bit.

“I am interested in making money,” Mr. Grimmet said. “What would you say, Mr. McMahon, if I ordered you to use the private stock?”

“I would say, ‘I’m through, Mr. Grimmet.’ Once and for all.”

Mr. Grimmet rubbed his face unhappily and stared coldly at the waiters in the back of the restaurant. The waiters remained silent and stared coldly back at him. “What’s it to you?” Mr. Grimmet asked McMahon angrily. “What do you care if we use another whisky. Do you have to drink it?”

“In my bar, Mr. Grimmet,” McMahon said, putting down his towel and the glasses and facing his employer squarely, “in my bar, good drinks are served.”

“Nobody will know the difference!” Mr. Grimmet got off his stool and jumped up and down gently. “What do Americans know about liquor? Nothing! Read any book on the subject!”

“True,” Thesing said judiciously. “The general consensus of opinion is that Americans do not know the difference between red wine and a chocolate malted milk.”

“In my bar,” McMahon repeated, his face very red, his wide hands spread on the bar, “I serve the best drinks I know how to serve.”

“Stubborn!” Mr. Grimmet yelled. “You are a stubborn Irishman! You do this out of malice! You are anxious to see me lose seven dollars on every case of liquor because you dislike me. Let us get down to the bedrock of truth!”

“Keep your voice down,” McMahon said, speaking with great control. “I want to remind you of one or two things. I have worked for you since Repeal, Mr. Grimmet. In that time, how many times did we have to enlarge the bar?”

“I am not in the mood for history, McMahon!” Mr. Grimmet shouted. “What good is a bar as long as the
Normandie
if it is not run on a businesslike basis?”

“Answer my question,” McMahon said. “How many times?”

“Three,” Mr. Grimmet said, “all right, three.”

“We are three times as big now as we were six years ago,” McMahon said in a professor’s tone, explaining proposition one, going on to proposition two. “Why do you think that is?”

“Accident!” Mr. Grimmet looked ironically up to the ceiling. “Fate! Roosevelt! The hand of God! How do I know?”

“I will tell you,” McMahon said, continuing in the professorial vein. “People who come into this bar get the best Manhattans, the best Martinis, the best Daiquiris that are made on the face of the earth. They are made out of the finest ingredients, with great care, Mr. Grimmet.”

“One cocktail tastes like another,” Mr. Grimmet said. “People make a big fuss and they don’t know anything.”

“Mr. Grimmet,” McMahon said with open contempt, “it is easy to see that you are not a drinking man.”

Mr. Grimmet’s face reflected his desperate search for a new line of defense. His eyebrows went up with pleasure as he found it. He sat down and spoke softly across the bar to McMahon. “Did it ever occur to you,” he asked, “that people come into this place because of the food that is served here?”

“I will give you my final opinion of Greta Garbo,” the first waiter’s voice sounded out defiantly. “There is nobody like her.”

For a moment McMahon looked straight into Mr. Grimmet’s eyes. A slight, bitter smile played at one corner of his mouth. He breathed deeply, like a man who has just decided to bet on a horse that has not won in fourteen races. “Shall I tell you what I think of the food that is served in your restaurant, Mr. Grim-met?” McMahon asked flatly.

“The best chefs,” Mr. Grimmet said quickly, “the best chefs in the City of New York.”

McMahon nodded slowly. “The best chefs,” he said, “and the worst food.”

“Consider,” Mr. Grimmet called. “Consider what you’re saying.”

“Anything a cook can disguise,” McMahon said, talking now to Thesing, disregarding Mr. Grimmet, “is wonderful here. Anything with a sauce. Once I ate a sirloin steak in this restaurant …”

“Careful, McMahon,” Mr. Grimmet jumped off his stool and ran around to face McMahon.

“What can be done to disguise a sirloin steak?” McMahon asked reasonably. “Nothing. You broil it. Simply that. If it was good when it was cut off the steer, it’s good on your plate. If it was bad …”

“I pay good prices!” Mr. Grimmet yelled. “I’ll have no allusions …”

“I would not bring a dog into this restaurant to eat sirloin steak,” McMahon said. “Not a young dog with the teeth of a lion.”

“You’re fired!” Mr. Grimmet pounded on the bar. “This restaurant will now do without your services.”

McMahon bowed. “That is satisfactory to me,” he said. “Perfectly satisfactory.”

“Well, now, everybody. Boys!” Thesing said pacifically. “Over a little thing like private stock rye …”

McMahon began taking off his apron. “This bar has a reputation. It is my reputation. I am proud of it. I am not interested in remaining at a place in which my reputation will be damaged.”

McMahon threw his apron, neatly folded, over a towel rack and picked up the little wooden wedge on which was printed, in gold letters, “William McMahon,
In Charge
.” Mr. Grimmet watched him with trouble in his eyes as McMahon lifted the hinged piece of the bar that permitted the bartenders to get out into the restaurant proper.

“What is the sense,” Mr. Grimmet asked as the hinges creaked, “of taking a rash step, Billy?” Once more Mr. Grimmet hated himself for his dulcet tone of voice, but William McMahon was one of the five finest bartenders in the City of New York.

McMahon stood there, pushing the hinged piece of the bar a little, back and forth. “Once and for all,” he said. He let the hinged piece fall behind him.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Billy,” Mr. Grimmet went on swiftly, hating himself more and more, “I’ll make a compromise. I will give you five dollars more per week.” He sighed to himself and then looked brightly at McMahon.

McMahon knocked his shingle thoughtfully against the bar. “I will try to make you understand something, Mr. Grimmet,” he said, gently. “I am not as fundamentally interested in money as I am fundamentally interested in other things.”

“You are not so different from the test of the world,” Mr. Grimmet said with dignity.

“I have been working for twenty-five years,” McMahon said, knocking the shingle that said, “William McMahon,
In Charge
,” “and I have constantly been able to make a living. I do not work only to make a living. I am more interested in making something else. For the last six years I have worked here night and day. A lot of nice people come in here and drink like ladies and gentlemen. They all like this place. They all like me.”

“Nobody is saying anything about anybody not liking you,” Mr. Grimmet said impatiently. “I am discussing a matter of business principle.”

“I like this place.” McMahon looked down at the shingle in his hand. “I think this is a very nice bar. I planned it. Right?” He looked up at Mr. Grimmet.

“You planned it. I will sign an affidavit to the effect that you planned it,” Mr. Grimmet said ironically. “What has that got to do with Thesing’s private stock?”

“If something is right here,” McMahon went on, without raising his voice, “people can say it’s William McMahon’s doing. If something is wrong here they can say it’s William McMahon’s fault. I like that, Mr. Grimmet. When I die people can say, ‘William McMahon left a monument, the bar at Grimmet’s Restaurant. He never served a bad drink in his whole life.’” McMahon took his coat out of the closet next to the bar and put it on. “A monument. I will not have a monument made out of Thesing’s private stock. Mr. Grimmet, I think you are a dumb bastard.”

McMahon bowed a little to the two men and started out. Mr. Grimmet gulped, then called, his words hard and dry in the empty restaurant. “McMahon!” The bartender turned around. “All right,” Mr. Grimmet said. “Come back.”

McMahon gestured toward Thesing.

“Any liquor you say,” Mr. Grimmet said in a choked voice. “Any goddamn whisky you want!”

McMahon smiled and went back to the closet and took his coat off and took the shingle out of his pocket. He went back of the bar and slipped on his apron, as Thesing and Grimmet watched.

“One thing,” Mr. Grimmet said, his eyes twitching from the strain, “one thing I want you to know.”

“Yes, sir,” said McMahon.

“I don’t want you to talk to me,” Mr. Grimmet said, “and I don’t want to talk to you. Ever.”

Thesing quietly picked up his hat and stole out the door.

“Yes, sir,” said McMahon.

Mr. Grimmet walked swiftly into the kitchen.

“I will tell you something about debutantes,” the first waiter was saying in the rear of the restaurant, “they are overrated.”

McMahon tied the bow in his apron strings and, neatly, in the center of the whisky shelves above the bar, placed the shingle, “William McMahon,
In Charge
.”

I Stand by Dempsey

T
he crowd came out of Madison Square Garden with the sorrowful, meditative air that hangs over it when the fights have been bad. Flanagan pushed Gurske and Flora quickly through the frustrated fans and into a cab. Gurske sat on the folding seat, Flanagan with Flora in the back.

“I want a drink,” he said to her as the cab started. “I want to forget what I saw tonight.”

“They were not so bad,” Gurske said. “They were scientific.”

“Not a bloody nose,” Flanagan said. “Not a single drop of blood. Heavyweights! Heavyweight pansies!”

“As an exhibition of skill,” Gurske said, “I found it interesting.”

“Joe Louis could’ve wiped them all up in the short space of two minutes,” Flanagan said.

“Joe Louis is overrated,” Gurske said, leaning across from the little folding seat and tapping Flanagan on the knee. “He is highly overrated.”

“Yeah,” Flanagan said. “He is overrated like the S. S.
Texas
is overrated. I saw the Schmeling fight.”

“That German is a old man,” Gurske said.

“When Louis hit him in the belly,” Flora said, “he cried. Like a baby. Louis’ hand went in up to the wrist. I saw with my own eyes.”

“He left his legs in Hamburg,” Gurske said. “A slight wind woulda knocked him over.”

“That is some slight wind,” said Flanagan, “that Louis.”

“He’s built like a brick privy,” Flora remarked.

“I woulda liked to see Dempsey in there with him.” Gurske rolled his eyes at the thought. “Dempsey. In his prime. The blood would flow.”

“Louis would make chopmeat outa Dempsey. Who did Dempsey ever beat?” Flanagan wanted to know.

“Listen to that!” Gurske pushed Flora’s knee in amazement. “Dempsey! The Manassa Mauler!”

“Louis is a master boxer,” Flanagan said. “Also, he punches like he had a baseball bat in his both hands. Dempsey! Eugene, you are a goddamn fool.”

“Boys!” Flora said.

“Dempsey was a panther in action. Bobbing and weaving.” Gurske bobbed and weaved and knocked his derby off his small, neat head. “He carried destruction in either fist.” Gurske bent over for his hat. “He had the heart of a wounded lion.”

“He certainly would be wounded if he stepped into the ring with Joe Louis.” Flanagan thought this was funny and roared with laughter. He slapped Gurske’s face playfully with his huge hand and Gurske’s hat fell off.

“You’re very funny,” Gurske said, bending over for his hat again. “You’re a very funny man.”

“The trouble with you, Eugene,” Flanagan said, “is you don’t have no sense of humor.”

“I laugh when something’s funny.” Gurske brushed his hat off.

“Am I right?” Flanagan asked Flora. “Has Eugene got a sense of humor?”

“He is a very serious character, Eugene,” Flora said.

“Go to hell,” Gurske said.

“Hey, you.” Flanagan tapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t you talk like that.”

“Aaah,” Gurske said. “Aaah—”

“You don’t know how to argue like a gentleman,” Flanagan said. “That’s what’s the matter with you. All little guys’re like that.”

“Aaah!”

“A guy is under five foot six, every time he gets in a argument he gets excited. Ain’t that so, Flora?”