Dancing in the Dark

Chapter Three: I Won’t Dance

On the way to Fred Astaire at R.K.O. on a Wednesday morning with a tankful of gas, and close to rich with four hundred dollars, I wondered about where I was going to get black-market potatoes for Mrs. Plaut and whether Preston Stewart and the former Anne Peters had spent all or part of the night together.

I drove, ignoring a small, strange clinking somewhere under the hood of the car. I listened to the radio. A cute voice urged, “Gimme a little kiss, will you, huh?”

I turned off the radio and thought about Arthur Forbes, Luna Martin, Fred Astaire, and my city.

In the twenties, with his honor Mayor George Cryer, who looked a little like Woodrow Wilson, presiding, there had been a boom, probably like no boom in American history.

In the twenties, Fred and his sister, Adele Astaire, were running across a stage in Los Angeles and waving their arms in the air. The audience loved it.

In the twenties, the University of California at Los Angeles sprang sprawling from the earth of Westwood. The Mulholland Highway was built. City Hall rose white and curious downtown. People moved in, speculated. Bought a house in the morning. Sold it at a profit that night. People had money and smiles on their faces. More than once at Beneva’s Pharmacy, half a block down from my dad’s grocery, I’d watched Mr. Pope line up the Coca-Colas on the counter for a group of real-estate salesmen. Then, one by one, he’d drop a five-grain Benzedrine tablet in their drink to, as Mr. Pope said, “perk ’em up and keep ’em on the happiness track.”

Fred and Adele were touring the country, with Fred singing “Fascinating Rhythm” and dancing to “S’Wonderful.”

In the twenties, there was money to be made and laws to be broken. Jazz and Prohibition hit Los Angeles. Bookmakers, gamblers, and prostitutes set up shop and handed out cards. Morality laws, alcohol laws, gangs moving in. Even in Glendale, where I was a kid cop, there were opportunities on the street to earn enough fast money to buy a house and make your wife happy. I had two partners when I was on the force. Both were on the take. Both thought they had good reasons. I was young and had a brother on the Los Angeles Police Department who would break your fingers if you tried to slip him green paper. But there weren’t many Phil Pevsners on the police force. It was a golden opportunity for Fingers Intaglia to change his name and come to the boom town as the official representative of Detroit’s Purple Gang and the son-in-law of Guiseppi Cortona.

In the twenties, Fred Astaire, wearing a striped beret and matching socks, was back on Broadway playing the accordion, leaping to “New Sun in the Sky,” and doing a dream ballet to “The Beggar’s Waltz.” The papers said he had bought a $22,000 Rolls Royce which he never drove.

Police captains grew rich; patrolmen and detectives didn’t do badly either. In 1923, in an attempt to purge the police department, the city of Los Angeles hired August Vollmer, then chief at Berkeley and hailed as the incorruptible father of modern police science, to head the department, clean it up. He had one year to do it. He started the Los Angeles Police Department school, and one of its first graduates was James Edgar “Two Gun” Davis, who two years later became L.A. Police Chief, followed by Roy “Strong Arm Dick” Steckel. There were raids in 1923, lots of them, but the big-buck bad guys had taken a one-year vacation, leaving the small operators-who had to keep making a living-to get their wares busted and one-way tickets out of town or into prison. Success for Vollmer, and then his term came to an end in September 1924. Just before his one-year term ended, billboards began springing up, reading, “The First of September will be the Last of August.” And it was. Things were back to normal, and people like Arthur Forbes, the former Fingers Intaglia, simply raised their prices and doubled their payoffs, and took over the operations of the smaller gangsters who were behind bars or back in Dayton or Troy terrorizing the locals. Arthur Forbes bought buildings and people and land and more cops.

Those with dollars in their pockets and those with no dollars, to work for those with dollars. The Mexican border was wide open.

Then the Depression hit. Latins, even if they were American citizens, were rounded up, herded on trains, shipped over the border, and told they would be jailed or shot if they returned. Illegal border checks, the bum’s brigade, were set up on the major highways and roads. And if the cop on the border didn’t like your face or your wife’s or the amount of money in your pocket, he could turn you back. Chinatown was shut down and leveled after a vigorous campaign by Harry Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times. The Chinese scattered, most of them going east, reverse Oriental Oakies. Union Station went up in their place, and in 1938 a new, much smaller seven-acre tourist attraction called China City went up fast, giving jobs to voters, none of whom were Chinese. You could get a phony rickshaw ride around China City for a quarter. A year after it opened, China City mysteriously burned down to the ground, putting the remaining Chinese who had become tourist attractions out of work.

But now we had Fred Astaire on the screen in the dark, smiling, dancing, Flying Down to Rio, singing, getting Ginger. He looked like one of us. He could dance as if he had found a way to defeat gravity and fatigue. And nothing bothered him. Getting off a train with Victor Moore, walking down the street in a tux with empty pockets, Fred could always see the bright side.

In L.A., the Arthur Forbeses were grabbing more land cheap and keeping whole precincts happy. People were hungry. There were lines at Clifton’s Cafeterias, the cafeterias of the golden rule, where all you had to do was refuse to pay your bill for any reason and you wouldn’t be charged.

And Fred Astaire tilted his little sailor cap over his right eye, hitched up his bell-bottom trousers, and danced around the deck of an R.K.O. battleship, telling us it was okay to “put all our eggs in one basket.”

What mattered was a job, any job. The county started to build sewers and highways, using federal and state funds and bonds bought generously by the people who still had money, people like Arthur Forbes who legally began to buy the city. But people were working. Working the sewer detail in a gas mask for the Los Angeles Department of Public Works was a great opportunity.

And Fred in a suit and tie and a pair of brown-and-white shoes leaped over a low railing onto a dance floor, took Ginger’s hand, started his feet tapping, and advised us with a smile to “Let Yourself Go.”

And there were disasters. Major floods in 1934 and 1938 from sudden ten-inch downpours that lasted only a few hours. The Los Angeles River went over its banks, driving people from their houses in a wild search for anything that would float. A major earthquake struck around Long Beach and Compton. And fires. Mostly fires. In 1938 the Baker Block, built in the 1870’s, a major tourist attraction, was hit hard by fire.

And Fred in elegant tie and tails, arms floating to the music like a magician, said, “The hell with it. Hum ‘The Picolino,’ dance ‘The Carioca’ and ‘The Continental.’ ”

When I got to the gate at R.K.O., a guy in a gray uniform, complete with black-leather strap over his shoulder and matching cap fixed evenly down to his eyebrows, walked out of the guard booth and motioned for me to roll down the window. The look on his well-shaved face made it clear that he didn’t like leaning down so far and he didn’t much understand who would be trying to get through the R.K.O. gate in a battered refrigerator on wheels.

“Yes, sir?” he said, but I somehow felt that the “sir” had a professional tinge of contempt.

“Name’s Peters, Toby Peters. I have an appointment with Fred Astaire.”

The guard nodded. His body and head squared, face flat and gray, the smell of retired cop on his Sen-Sen breath.

“Astaire’s gonna teach me to dance,” I explained.

The guard looked at me and nodded. A pro. No expression, just a brief blink of the eyes.

“I’ll check,” he said. “Meanwhile, please just sit where you are.”

Since my only option, now that there was another car behind me, was to crash through the gate, I sat. The clink under the hood had grown worse. The seat next to me smelled like cat and I sat inside wearing some reasonably clean trousers, a tieless white shirt that I had tried, with some success, to flatten out with Gunther’s iron.

The guard lumbered to the gate house and made a call as he watched me through the window. In my rearview mirror I could see Butterfly McQueen in a blue Buick, watching me with impatience. I shrugged. The guard came back.

“Stage Two,” he said. “You just. .”

“I know how to get there,” I said. “I did a few security jobs. That was a while ago, but I think I can find my way.”

“You were in the agency business and now you’re a dancer?” the guard said, brow furrowed.

“Life can be strange and wondrous,” I said.

“It can also be shit,” he whispered.

Butterfly McQueen hit her horn, and the guard pulled his head out of my window and waved me on.

I parked right next to the entrance to Stage Two between two piles of light stands and thick coiled wires. The on-stage light was out so I went in. I went through a bank of floor-to-ceiling dark curtains and came out on a black polished floor covered with footprints and scuff marks. Fred Astaire sat alone at a table in one corner. There was no furniture on the stage except for the large table on which sat a phonograph, a stack of records, and lunch. Astaire had a soup spoon in his hand. Another place was set across the table.

“Toby, I’m glad you came,” he said, rising and taking my hand. “I was afraid you’d changed your mind. Arthur Forbes. .”

Astaire was dressed in white slacks, a dark-blue, long-sleeved billowy shirt, and a small white scarf tied around his neck.

“Shall we dance?” I said.

He smiled and waved toward the table.

“Shall we eat first? I took the liberty of ordering. I don’t like eating in the commissary. I hope you haven’t had an early lunch?”

“Nope,” I said as he took his seat and I joined him.

“Chicken noodle soup,” Astaire said as I picked up my spoon. “The trick is in the noodles. The noodles must be wide and flat. I’m afraid the ice cream is starting to melt a little.”

“Looks fine,” I said, reaching for a bottle of Ruppert Beer near my soup. I opened it with a shining church key conveniently placed in front of my bowl and poured the beer into a tall glass. I drank the beer and tasted the soup.

“How do you like it?” Astaire said with a real interest.

“Flat noodles,” I said, holding up a spoonful.

“That’s the secret,” he confirmed solemnly.

I gave him the very short version of my background as we finished eating. He nodded, listened, asked a question about my brother, Phil, and what I thought of various people I’d worked with, for, and, once in a while, against.

“You ever run into Preston Stewart?” I asked.

“Preston. .” he nibbled his lower lip, looked down at the table, and then snapped his fingers. “Right. Tall, tennis-player tan. B pictures.”

“That’s the one.”

“Ran into him a few times,” said Astaire. “Not much conversation, but he seemed likable enough and, as I remember, he was remarkably informed about dance.”

“I’m ready,” I said, getting up.

Astaire rose, turned a knob to warm up the phonograph, and stepped out onto the scuffed, massive floor.

“I’m going to walk you through some basic steps,” he said. “I’ll keep it simple. Stop me if you don’t understand. When you give Luna Martin the lesson, just do what I’m doing.”

I nodded.

“Good,” he said, rubbing his hands. “Very good. Now I’ll just put on a record.”

The record he put on was ancient and scratched, but I recognized “Hindustan” and would have bet that it was Isham Jones.

“Now,” said Astaire, “do this. Two sliding steps forward and one short one to your left.”

He demonstrated. I mimicked.

“Not bad,” he said. “Now do the same thing to the music. Pick up the beat and you’ll be doing the fox-trot.”

“We have a problem,” I said.

“You have a wooden leg,” Astaire said over the steady sound of the music.

“No,” I said.

“You are going blind. You suffer from horrible vertigo when you dance. You are massively embarrassed and have what you hope is a temporary insane feeling that you can’t move.”

“None of the above,” I said. “I can’t hear a beat.”

“Even the deaf can hear the beat, feel its vibration,” said Astaire. “Try it.”

I tried.

“Listen,” he said. “I’ll say ‘beat, beat, beat, beat,’ and you put your left foot out on the beat.”

“Right,” I said.

When that didn’t work, he tried counting one-two-three-four.

Ten minutes and three records later I still hadn’t found the beat. I hadn’t heard it. I decided it was some mysterious thing that other people heard and I was cursed to never experience.

Astaire was rubbing his chin and watching my feet. “You are a challenge,” he said.

I shrugged.

“We’ll search for the beat until you find it,” he said. “This time, forget the music. Just listen for the beat. The music will take care of itself.”

We searched for ten minutes more when Astaire finally said, “Stop.”

I stopped. We had been trying to find the beat in a waltz. I had been given to understand that there were three.

“I suggest that if Miss Martin asks you to show her a step, turn off the music, claim a case of dancer’s arthritis, and walk through the step. There will be a mercifully small number of steps to go through.”

He showed me steps. Tango, swing, fox-trot, waltz. I drew little pictures in my notebook with comments like, “Hesitation step, follow the flow of dance, keep your arms up, don’t dance on your heels, and don’t look at your partner when you’re waltzing or doing the fox-trot.”

After almost two hours of this, Astaire said, “Enough” and took off a Sammy Kaye recording of “Brown Eyes.”

He stood at the table in silence, looking at me, tapping his slender fingers together.

“It won’t work,” he said. “I thought I could teach anyone, but. .”

“I can fake it,” I said. “It’s part of my job.”

“I’m beginning to think this is not a terribly good idea,” Astaire said, plunging his hands into his pockets and heading toward me.

“I’m a professional,” I reminded him.

“So is Arthur Forbes,” he said.

“We have a deal,” I reminded him. “But if you want your money back. .” I reached for my wallet. He held out his left hand to stop me.

“Go ahead,” he said with a sigh. “But be careful.”

“If ‘careful’ works,” I said.

“All right,” Astaire said, arms folded, tapping his fingers on his elbows. “Once more.”

We concentrated on the waltz. I led him around the floor and before I flattened too many of his toes, he said, “Okay, forget the beat. Confidence. Complete confidence and a smile. Back straight. Stomach in. Elbows up. Use the whole floor. It’s yours.”

Something came over me when I didn’t have to worry about the beat. The “Missouri Waltz” scratched away on the phonograph and something inside me said, “What the hell.” I danced. I flowed. I led. I made my boxes, did progressives, turned Astaire. And then the music stopped.

“Not bad,” he said.

I was trying to catch my breath. I leaned over.

“I don’t know what I did,” I said.

“That, I could tell,” said Astaire. “But you pretended. You got carried away. Confidence will take you across any ballroom.”

“Hearing the beat would also help.”

“By pure luck you’ll get it about a quarter of the time,” Astaire said.

“I guess I’ll have to count on pure luck,” I said, straightening up.

“See this floor?” he said, looking down. “When we dance on a floor like this, we have to keep stopping so a crew can come in and clean up the foot marks. They all show on film. So you dance your routine and stop and wait while the ground crew comes in on their hands and knees with buckets and towels.”

There was a moral here but I wasn’t getting it.

“You are polishing my floor. I am sitting around waiting. You have the dirty job. I dance.”

“I also get paid,” I reminded him.

“So do I,” he said. “Which makes it much easier to watch young men endlessly polish the floor. Good luck, Toby. You have my number. Call me at home.”

We shook hands and he escorted me to the stage door.

“I think I’ll stay here for a while,” he said. “A few steps I want to try. Besides, I want to be sure I can still find the beat.”

The next day was Thursday, the day I met Luna Martin, Fingers Intaglia, and the Beast of Bombay, whose hand print was probably indelibly welted to my ass. Driving Lou Canton back to Glendale in agony and listening to him complain didn’t help my disposition.

I spent most of the rest of the day finding backup. I’d been told gently by Jeremy’s wife, Alice, that I was not to call on him for help again. Or, as she put it in a calming voice as we stood on the stairway of the Farraday Building while she gently rocked Baby Natasha, “If you so much as suggest that you might need his help for one of your dangerous, silly cases, I’ll personally tear off three of your toes.”

It was an effective warning. Alice, at nearly three hundred pounds, could do the job. But what made it effective was the specific number, three, the choice of an inspired imagination or someone who had thought long and hard about what might be effectively said and done.

Gunther Wherthman was my second choice. Tiny, easy to spot, maybe, but smart and loyal. Except Gunther was up north. That left Shelly, a less than formidable body, but a body.

I stopped at a diner called Mack’s on Melrose, ordered a tuna on white toast with a pickle and fries from an ancient waitress in a uniform left over from the Dr. Kildare series. Near the cash register was a display of emergency first-aid supplies-aspirin, Band-aids, Ex-Lax, and an ugly-looking pain salve in a purple jar. I picked up the jar. Then I called the office.

Violet answered, “Dr. Sheldon Minck’s office.”

“This is the office of Minck and Peters,” I corrected. “Can I help you?”

“Is this a joke?” she asked.

“Mrs. Gonsenelli, this is Mr. Peters. I thought we agreed that you would answer the phone with ‘Minck and Peters, can I help you?’ ”

“Dr. Minck changed that,” she said. “He says he pays the phone bill and you should. .”

“Put him on,” I said.

“He’s with a patient.”

“Let the patient bleed to death,” I said pleasantly. “It’ll be more humane than what Shelly must be putting him through.”

“I’ll tell him,” she said, and the phone clicked against the top of her little table.

I imagined her drawing up tight and wedging through the thin space between the desk and wall. Voices and then, “I’ve got a patient, Toby,” he said. “A new thing I’m trying. Killing the nerves. I’ve got to get back to him.”

Beyond and behind Shelly came the moan of the Lusitania as it finally sank into the Atlantic.

“Minck and Peters,” I said.

“It’s not good for business.”

“Yours or mine?”

“Mine,” he said. “You should have your own line.”

“Hard to get with a war on.”

“Then you pay half the phone bill,” he said, obviously playing to the alert Violet Gonsenelli.

“It’s built into my rent.”

“Built into. . who said that? When? How? Why? You make things up. I’m a victim here.”

More moans from the patient beneath the sea.

“One dollar a month more,” I said.

“One dollar? You must be. .”

“. . making my final offer,” I said.

“One dollar,” Shelly agreed.

“Don’t hang up. I may need your help, Shel.”

“Help?”

“I may need some people to protect a client.”

“Astaire?”

“Yes.”

“Fred Astaire? You want me to become a private investigator for a while and protect Fred Astaire?”

“Did Violet catch all of that? Is she impressed?”

“I think so,” said Shelly as his patient let out an “agggggghhhhhhh.” “I don’t care if it’s dangerous. When do you need me?”

“Nine tomorrow morning,” I said. “Ballroom of the Monticello Hotel on Sunset.”

“I’ll cancel my morning patients. Should I bring my gun?”

“You don’t have a gun, Shel.”

“I understand,” Sheldon said seriously. “I’ll be there. Violet wants to talk to you.”

He handed her the phone and walked away, calling to the moaning patient, “Jesus Christ, can’t you take a little pain without acting like a baby?”

“Mr. Peters?”

“Yes, Violet.”

“Jimmy Bivins is five-to-six to beat Tami Mauriello Friday. I’ll take Bivins and give you four-to-six on six dollars with an extra two dollars that say the fight goes the distance.”

“Our Ortiz-Salica bet still on?”

“I’ve got Ortiz, two dollars.”

“You’re on on the Bivins fight,” I said and hung up.

I lined up Pook Hurawitz and Jerry Rogasinian, both bit actors and part-time stunt men who could be counted on for a good show if you paid them. They both looked like what they frequently played, gangsters who helped fill out the gang and never uttered a word. I was type-casting them.

Pook asked who we were working for. He upped his price to twenty bucks a day from the fifteen I offered him. I could have gotten Rogasinian for fifteen but I was sure they’d talk about what I was paying them so I just offered the twenty. Jerry was grateful.

“Jerry, you ever work on a film with Preston Stewart?” I asked after we had agreed to terms.

“Twice,” he said. “On Hell in Himalaya I was one of the Sherpa carriers. And on Night of Destiny I played a cab driver. Had one word. Preston comes to me on the curb and says, ‘You free?’ and I answered, ‘Sure.’ ”

“What’s Preston Stewart like?”

“Good guy,” Jerry said. “No star crap. Drank coffee with the rest of us. Joked around. Polite to the women. Good guy. Why?”

“I think he’s going to marry my ex-wife.”

“I take it back,” Jerry said. “Stewart was an asshole.”

“Too late, Jerry. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I hung up the phone and went back to the counter to eat my sandwich and drink a Pepsi.

“Toast is cold,” the waitress said, hands on hips, challenging me to blame her or deny it. “Why don’t you sit down?”

“Cold toast is fine,” I said. “Can’t sit. I was spanked by a giant from India.”

“Want me to do it again?”

“Nope. I’m in enough pain already.”

“No,” she said. “I meant, do you want me to give you fresh toast?”

“I’m all right. I could use a little ketchup.”

She nodded. “You’re Tobias Pevsner, aren’t you?” she said, handing me the bottle of Heinz.

“Right,” I said, pouring ketchup and looking a little more closely at her.

A distant aunt? A former client? She sagged under an oversized white starched uniform; tight curls of white hair crept out from under her Nurse Duncan cap. Her skin was pale and her lips colorless.

“Anita Maloney,” she said.

“Anita?”

“Tobias,” she said. “You took me to the senior prom. You tried to get under my pink crinoline dress and into my cotton panties.”

There was one other customer at the counter, a round man wearing a delivery cap. He had three folds of skin on the back of his neck. He ate slowly, mechanically, from a bowl that looked as if it contained the same swill that the Count of Monte Christo was forced to gulp down in the Chateau Des Ifs. He tried not to look at me and Anita. I forced myself to look at Anita. She was a year, maybe two years younger than me and she looked like someone’s angry grandmother.

“Anita,” I said, putting down my sandwich. “How the heck have you been? You look terrific.”

“You look pretty much the same,” she said, eyeing me. “A few more kicks in the face. A few more pounds. Eat your food before it gets too cold.”

I ate and shook my head in an isn’t-it-a-small-world shake.

“So. .” I said with a mouthful of tuna, “how the heck have you been?”

“Life story fast?” she asked, leaning forward.

“Sure,” I said.

“Married Ozzie Shaw. Remember him?”

“Football team, straight A’s?”

“That’s him,” she said with a grin.

“How is he?”

“Dead,” she said. “That’s why I’m grinning and happy to be on my feet behind a counter hauling grease.”

“I gather it was a less than happy union.”

“Liar, womanizer, hitter, shiftless. And those were his good points.”

I smiled, keeping my mouth shut as I chewed, and looked over at the man with the extra-thick neck. He was still shoveling.

“We had one kid, Lonny,” she said. “Here.”

She reached under her apron and came up with a pocket-sized cardboard folder. She took out a photograph and slid it forward next to the plate.

There was the Anita Maloney I knew. I didn’t recognize Ozzie, who had his arm around her shoulder. The kid standing between them was maybe five or six.

“Cute,” I said, sliding the photograph back. “Ozzie changed.”

“That’s not Ozzie,” she said, putting the photograph back. “That’s Charlie, Lonny’s husband. He’s in the army. Prisoner of war. Japs. The boy is my grandson, Mal.”

“Great-looking kid,” I said.

“That’s not the end of my story,” she said with a smile that suggested much more. “But we’ll save that. What’s your short-and-sweet tale? I heard you married Anne Mitzenmacher. How’s your brother?”

“Anne and I were married and divorced, no kids,” I said, dipping fries in ketchup and wondering how I’d escape. “And Phil’s a captain with the L.A.P.D. Three kids.”

“You still a cop? I heard you were a cop.”

“Not for a long time,” I said. “I’m a private investigator.”

“Like Mike Shayne?”

“A little,” I said, looking at my wristwatch.

“You got a card? I’ve got something you might help with.”

I found a withered edged card in my wallet and handed it to Anita. She looked at it and put it into the pocket of her white uniform. There was no check and I didn’t want to wait for one. I pulled out two bucks, plenty for the drink, sandwich, and salve, and the most generous tip Anita Maloney was likely to get in her entire career, at least from a sober customer.

“Generous,” she said, picking up the bills and my plate.

“You know where I can get some potatoes?” I asked.

“Potatoes?”

“Five pounds.”

Anita shrugged and disappeared into the kitchen. I exchanged looks with the eating machine. Anita was back almost instantly with a paper bag.

“This is about five pounds,” she said, handing the bag to me. “Thirty cents.”

“Thanks, Anita,” I said, reaching into my pocket for change.

“You left more than enough,” she said, holding up the two dollar bills. “Maybe we can get together some time and talk about Glendale,” she said. “Here, I’ll write down my phone number.”

She pulled out a pencil and scribbled her name and number on a napkin and handed it to me.

“It’d be fun,” I said, folding the napkin and stuffing it into my pocket.

“I clean up real good,” she said.

“That makes one of us,” I said over my shoulder, heading for the door. “Take care, Anita.”

The eating man’s stomach gurgled. He pulled out a red-and-white package of Twenty Grand cigarettes and looked around for matches.

Getting back into my Crosley was as close to hell as a human is likely to get. My rear end wept with electric bursts. I drove home trying not to think about the pain or about Anita Maloney. There had been a thirtieth reunion of my high-school class not long ago. I hadn’t gone. I told myself I never had anything in common with my classmates and I hadn’t liked Glendale High. I knew now that I didn’t want to look at their faces, to see dopey Gregg Lean with no hair and a big belly, and Anita Maloney, without saying a word, telling me to go look in the mirror.

I was back at Mrs. Plaut’s boardinghouse and halfway up the stairs when I heard behind me, “Mr. Peelers.”

I turned with a smile, paper bag in hand.

“Mrs. Plaut.”

“My manuscript.”

“I’ll finish it this afternoon. Here are the potatoes you wanted.”

“Needed, not wanted,” she said, meeting me halfway and taking the bag in her thin arms. She smelled the potatoes and, satisfied, looked up at me.

“I will go to my chambers now,” she said, “and listen to Tommy Riggs and Betty Lou and Elmer Davis and ‘The Week’s War News.’ By then I would think you will have finished my chapter.”

“You are too generous, Mrs. P.,” I said.

“Sarcasticisms?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

My voice must have dropped from the usual scream with which I normally addressed Mrs. Plaut because she answered with, “I can rewind my own clocks, thank you. I have since the Mister died, and I’ll probably find a way to do it after I die.”

“I’d bet on it,” I said. “Mrs. Plaut. How old would you say I am?”

“How?. .”

“Old.”

“Young,” she said. “Everybody looks young. You look maybe a little older than most. Sixty.”

“I’m not even fifty,” I said.

“Fifty, sixty, what’s the difference,” she said with a shrug, turning her back on me and heading down the stairs, potato booty in hand, humming “Glow Worm.”

I headed to my room, pushed open the door, and went to my cupboard. Dash was sitting in the open window, ignoring me, fascinated by something in the yard.

“Hello to you too,” I said, fixing myself a very generous bowl of Kix and milk even though I wasn’t hungry. “Care to join me?”

Dash turned to look at me and the Kix and then turned back to the apparently fascinating show in the yard.

I ate cereal standing and read Mrs. Plaut’s manuscript, page by page. It began:

Aunt Bess had an uncommon fondness for Cousin Leo. Uncommon. They were not kin. Aunt Bess was married to Uncle Seymour who sold junk to Indians. He was very bad at selling junk to Indians. He got into the business too late. By the time he heard about it and moved West, the Indians had considerable experience in being sold junk. As it was, some of the Indians sold the junk they had bought from white men back to Uncle Seymour. Should you conclude by this that Uncle Seymour was not acute, you would be right. Uncle Seymour had a son by the name of Leo who had been born to Uncle Seymour’s first wife, Hannah, who, it is reported, had a left eye that looked no place that much made sense. So, my mother’s sister Bess who was no Disraeli but neither was she a fool washed her hands of Uncle Seymour and ran away to Mexico with Cousin Leo who was pleasant to look at but not much higher of sense than Calvin Burkett who everyone knows is and will ever be an idiot boy. Uncle Seymour did not follow them. Instead, he took his junk wagon and headed to Texas where he was certain to find someone less acute than the Indians.

In Mexico, Aunt Bess and Cousin Leo built a cabin near Juarez with an eye toward raising corn and chickens and children. This in spite of the fact that Aunt Bess was a full fifty-five years of age and Cousin Leo someone in the vicinity of twenty. No one, not even his own father, knew for sure and apparently the age of Cousin Leo was of no interest to any member of the family until I began these researches.

It was then that Pancho Villa the dreaded bandit entered their peaceful though profitless lives. The bandit saw Aunt Bess in the market bargaining for tripe and was immediately enamored of her. Aunt Bess had a pleasant face and large body parts.

The dreaded bandit kidnapped Aunt Bess from the market and he rode away with her dragging tripe and screaming, “I am being kidnapped by the dreaded bandit Pancho Villa.” Now since everyone could plainly see this including Cousin Leo who stood watching there was little to comment on at the moment, though Cousin Leo later reported that a woman said in English for his benefit that Pancho Villa was known to have the taste of a snout hog. Three days later Aunt Bess had not returned to the village so Cousin Leo, whose Spanish was on the minimum and lacking in refinement, donned a hat of ala ancha (which means wide brimmed), sold what he was able of the small farm including the chickens and the house and set off in search of his paramour.

It was at this juncture that Cousin Leo’s story strains even family good will. In his travel which took him to a mountain village where Pancho Villa was reported to be staying Cousin Leo in search of someone who could speak English wandered into a drinking establishment which in Mexico is called a cantina or at least was when Cousin Leo chanced into one. There at a table dealing cards in a game of poker was a painted woman of uncertain age with a wild left eye.

Mother? Leo inquired and sure enough the woman dealing poker in that cantina was his mother Hannah. There is no report from Leo-his story having been told to me by his daughter, also Hannah-that mother and son embraced. After the hand of cards was dealt Hannah did inquire of Uncle Seymour and learned the story of her son and her husband’s second wife. Since Hannah’s Spanish and connections in the town were more than adequate and she was up for something like adventure after having dealt poker for more than ten years she and Leo set forth in search of Aunt Bess. In the mountains they came upon a quartet of banditos who claimed they were in the army of the dreaded Villa. They had a powwow on whether to ravish Hannah and dispatch Leo but Hannah’s Spanish and advanced age saved the day. She claimed to have some information of military import for Villa’s ears only.

To make a long story a short story they were led into the presence of Villa his own self. Villa, a portly man of no great beauty, was seated upon a rock sucking out the marrow of what appeared to be the bone of a goat. Though his view of the dreaded bandit had been but fleeting Cousin Leo was as certain as his poor mind would allow that this was not the man who had taken Aunt Bess. As it turned out he was correct. It had been an underling of Villa who had taken Bess. Oh the ignominy. Villa readily agreed to exchange Aunt Bess for Hannah which suited Hannah though she knew the adventure would be short lived. Bess was returned to Leo but the union did not last. She abandoned him in Puerto Del Sol claiming she had forgotten her comb and had to go back to the Villa camp to recover it.

Cousin Leo sat in the town square of Puerto Del Sol for seven days exhausting his money and the patience of the town folk and singing various hymns particularly “Rock of Ages” to pass the time. He was driven out by stick and stone, running down the road with one hand upon his wide brimmed hat to keep from losing it and screaming as he ran, “Life is too much work for a simple man.” Cousin Leo found himself in Stickney, California, married a woman named Leona who was if the story is to be believed for I have never met her of even less wit than Cousin Leo, who opened a hat shop and made a living.

Aunt Bess and Aunt Hannah emerged in Mexico City some months after Leo’s departure and running as the Gringa Sisters were elected to the newly formed Godless government of Mexico.

There is more. Oh time triumphant! Would that I endure to tell the whole of my tale.

• •

I laid the pages of Mrs. Plaut’s manuscript flat on my small table, looked to Dash for support and guidance, and went to the phone in the hall to call Carmen, the cashier at Levy’s. I invited her to a movie. I told her that I was in pain and needed a gentle hand to cover my sore spots with salve. She said her son had chicken pox. Mrs. Plaut wasn’t around so I left the manuscript in front of her door with a note saying, “Brilliant work. The plight of Cousin Leo particularly touched me. Villa was a cad.”

I walked downtown carrying a pillow under my arm and a look on my homely face that challenged anyone to ask me why I was carrying a pillow. It wasn’t more than a mile, and walking was better than trying to get back in the Crosley. I went to the movies by myself, sat on the pillow, and saw Across the Pacific, with Bogart and Mary Astor. The newsreel told me that the Office of War Information had asked deferments for Kay Kayser, Edgar Bergen, Red Skelton, Bob Hope, Nelson Eddy, Freeman Gosden, and Lanny Ross so they could contribute to the war effort by entertaining the troops. I couldn’t keep sitting so I got up and watched most of the show from the back of the theater, leaning against the wall. The manager, who recognized me as a more-or-less regular, came over to ask me in a whisper if there was something wrong with the seats.

“War wound acting up,” I said.

“I’ve still got a piece of metal shaped like a small fish in my back from the Marne,” he said sympathetically.

I picked up a couple of hot dogs at The Pup and brought them home to share with Dash. Mrs. Plaut hadn’t touched the manuscript that still lay in front of her door. I went to my room, gave Dash a dog without the bun, dropped my pants and underwear carefully, and did my best to swab the salve on my behind. At first it hurt. It stung. It cried. It made me wish I could say something in Indian that even Gunther might now know but that would be the major verbal attack in the long and violent life of Kudlap Singh, the Beast of Bombay. I danced around the room for a few minutes and it began to feel better. In about five minutes, I felt well enough to get stomach-down on my mattress to listen to Milton Berle and “We, the People.” Mrs. Lou Gehrig was the guest.

Then I listened to “Amos and Andy.” Kingfish was taking it easy at home when his wife, Sapphire, came in and complained about the Kingfish not earning a living. She threatened to leave him unless he found a way to buy a car. Kingfish and Andy joined forces to make the investment. Before they got six blocks from the dealer in their 1926 Overland Roadster, the car broke down and they opened the trunk. There Andy and Kingfish found a body. Lawyer Algonquin J. Calhoun told them to sell the car. They tried to stick Shorty the barber with it, but he couldn’t drive. Eventually, they discovered that the body was a mannequin. The boys had escaped the electric chair.

The world was right again.

I went to bed early and slept badly. Because of my bad back, I’m not supposed to sleep on my stomach, but I had no choice. Sometime in the night I got up, staggered to the bathroom in the hall, bare-assed and not caring even though Mrs. Plaut had one female roomer, Miss Reynal, a pretty enough woman, a little younger than myself but too skinny to rouse my interest. I wiped the salve off my throbbing behind, made it back to my room unseen, placed a pillow beneath me, and eased myself onto it, facing the ceiling. Not good, but better than the alternative.

I slept and dreamed of my senior prom. Everyone there was a kid but me. I was the same me I saw in the mirror every morning. I didn’t belong at a senior prom with Anita Maloney, who looked the same as she had on that warm May night thirty years ago. Everyone was looking at me, everyone but Anne, who was a girl again and dancing with Koko the Clown, who gave me a big, lecherous open-mouthed grin and a wink.

I woke up with Dash sleeping on my chest, my tongue twice its normal size, and my behind still screaming.

The next day, Friday, I took the pillow from my sofa, the one that had “God Bless Us Every One” sewn in red on it, placed it on the seat of my Crosley, and found that I could drive with less discomfort than I had the day before. With Shelly, Pook Hurawitz, and Jerry Rogasinian as backup, I returned to the Monticello Hotel for a final try at convincing Luna Martin that Fred Astaire wasn’t coming, not ever.

As it turned out, it wasn’t necessary to convince her.