While Drowning in the Desert

Chapter 7

I love the desert.

The desert is not boring, as some would have you believe. Although I am, as are most private eyes, a connosieur of boredom. Boredom is our business, as we spend most of our time waiting for other people to do interesting things (boring), or poring over paperwork (boring), or writing post-investigation reports (very boring). But I basically like boredom, because in this business if something boring isn’t happening it usually means that something scary is. So boring is good.

So is the desert, even though it’s not boring.

Normally a long desert drive is a thing of joy and beauty to me. I love the colors-the muted, subtle shades of tans, browns, and lavenders. I revel in the enormous expanse of open blue sky. I worship the sheer, vast emptiness, the solitude, the quiet.

But after one hour on this particular drive on Interstate 15 through the Nevada desert I was ready to reach down my throat with a pair of pliers and pull my own lungs out. If I’d had a gun I would have shot myself so I wouldn’t have to live with the memory of an hour trapped in a car with Nathan Silverstein, aka Natty Silver.

It started about five minutes into the drive when he said, “Ask me who’s on first.”

“No thanks.”

“Ask me who’s on first!”

“No.”

He started to pout.

Now, I know about pouting. Not for nothing has Karen been known to refer to me as The Incredible Sulk. I am a marathon pouter, a deep Celtic brooder of the darkest sort. But I was a piker compared to Natty Silver. Natty Silver’s unhappiness hung in the confined air of the car like a thick gray cloud. No-not a cloud, something more solid. It filled the car like some sort of toxic Jell-O that hardened around my feet then jiggled up to my neck until I was choking in misery.

Natty could pout.

I broke.

“Who’s on first?” I asked, hating myself for the craven, belly-up dog that I was.

“Right,” he answered happily. “Right’s on first?”

“No, who’s on first,” he said triumphantly.

I chuckled appreciatively and stopped.

He said, “So what’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter.”

“So?”

“So nothing.”

“What, you don’t know the bit?”

“I know the bit,” I said. “It’s an old Abbott and Costello routine.”

“Abbott and Costello didn’t invent that sketch,” Nathan said contemptuously. “Phil Gold and I were doing ‘Who’s on First’ when Lou Costello was shitting his diapers!”

“Okay.”

“I taught Lou Costello ‘Who’s on First’!”

“When he was in diapers?” I asked.

“When he was so wet behind the ears he needed a towel,” Natty said. “It was at Minsky’s. Minsky’s, now there was a burlesque house. Those Minskys knew burlesque. They knew naughty from dirty. Until the Decency League shut them down Minsky’s was the cleanest burlesque house in the world. A classy place, and the girls were not hookers. But speaking of hookers, you heard the one about the hooker who says to eighty-six-year-old Mr. Birnbaum, ‘I’m here to give you super sex.’ Birnbaum says, ‘I’ll take the soup.’”

I was doing about seventy. If I opened my door and rolled out now, how badly could it hurt?

“Now, Arthur Minsky loved good pastrami,” Nathan said, “and he knew deli. You could not put inferior delicatessen in front of Arthur Minsky, who by the way, was a gentleman. A refined man. Arthur Minsky would not allow filth in his theaters and he knew the difference between naughty and dirty. I remember one time Eileen the Irish Dream wanted to respond to an unkind review which intimated that she was not a natural redhead, with a visual display that she was, and Arthur put his foot down.

“Of course, Eileen was a nasty piece of work. A tramp. Kept company with a no-goodnik mobster from the Schultz gang named Benny the Blade. Wore spats. Trash.

“So one day Arthur sends out the new kid, an Irish kid. Stupid like you. Arthur sends the kid to Wolffs to get him a pastrami on rye with Russian mustard. Wolff’s had great pastrami, wonderful pastrami. Wolff knew delicatessen. In those days you could go to a deli and get a sandwich would choke a horse for twenty-five cents and it was good deli. Not this trash they serve you today. They just opened a deli in Palm Desert. Two Jews from Los Angeles open a deli and charge seven bucks for a sandwich which is trash. Stringy fat. It got caught between my teeth, right here. I was with Murray Koppelman. Do you know Murray? Had a for-shit comedy show on CBS? ‘Murray, Murray, Murray’ they used to sing? Murray would come out surrounded by shiksas with legs to their chins and roll his eyes. Audience would scream, I don’t know why. I do know why, free tickets, that’s why, and some boob holding up a card says Laugh. We didn’t have these cards in burlesque. Our audience was waiting to see girls take off their clothes. We had to be funny. If you held up a card that says Laugh in a burlesque house, they would throw garbage at you and they would be right.

“I saw that happen one afternoon to a magician. The Great Bandolini. Magicians always had to give themselves Italian names, I don’t know why. You never saw a magician named ‘The Great Lefkowitz.’ Anyway, Bandolini had an act where he would pull doves from his coat. You’ve seen the act. First he opens his coat, no doves. He says some words in Italian, opens the coat again, and bingo-doves. Except, this one afternoon he is coming in from Philadelphia on the train and the porters lose the case that has Bandolini’s doves in it. What’s Bandolini going to do? He goes to talk to Myra DeLovely who had a striptease act called Myra DeLovely and her Doves of Love, in which Myra stripped and the doves landed in strategic spots to prevent the Decency League from shutting her down. Bandolini asks can he borrow the doves to make them appear out of his coat. Myra is reluctant, but a good sport, and she says okay.

“What nobody thinks about is that these doves are not trained to sit quietly hiding in the secret pockets of the coat. Bandolini gets onstage, opens the coat, and says, ‘No doves’-except that there are doves. There are doves rustling around, cooing, flapping their wings. The audience boos, the doves get spooked and fly into the house. The doves are flying around the ceiling, very upset, and you know what a nervous dove does. So now you’ve got Bandolini yelling, the audience booing, and the doves are shitting all over them. Myra comes out screaming at Bandolini, hitting him. Audience starts throwing garbage. Tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, even liverwurst they threw. Bonbons they threw.

“Myra slips on a bonbon, throws her hip out of joint. A very bad injury for a burlesque girl. Nowadays she’d sue, of course, but people didn’t sue in those days. Myra goes to a doctor in Gramercy Park, Dr. LaFramboise, a Frenchman. This LaFramboise puts her hip back into joint and his own joint… You get the idea. Myra gets in a family way and the doctor acts like a mensch and marries her. They have a daughter who grows up to be a singer, except this girl cannot carry a tune in a bucket. The girl cannot sing! Myra and LaFramboise don’t know what to do! What to do with a daughter who is a singer who can’t sing?! Fortunately she marries the son of LaFramboise’s accountant, a kid named Koppelman. Koppelman and this girl who can’t sing produce a son who can’t get a laugh except when they hold up a card that says Laugh and that turns out to be the for-shit comic, my good friend Murray Koppelman. ‘Murray, Murray, Murray.’

“So Murray says, ‘Nate, you have a string of fat stuck between your teeth.’ I think it’s one of Murray’s stupid jokes, because without his writers, let’s face it, Murray Koppelman is not funny. So I say, ‘Murray, what? This is funny? Food-in-your-teeth jokes?’ He says he’s serious, so I turn to this lady at the next table and ask, ‘Do I have a string of fat stuck between my teeth?’ and she says, ‘Yes, you do. You do have a string of fat stuck between your teeth, right here,’ and she shows me on her teeth!

“The woman had a beautiful mouth. I said, ‘Do you go to Dr. Kaufman?’ She says, ‘No, I go to Dr. Millman.’

“‘Millman?’ I say. ‘Millman is a crook!’ She says, ‘Millman is my nephew!’ I say, ‘Sol Millman?’ She says, ‘No, Sam Millman.’ And I say, ‘That’s good. I was thinking of Sol Millman who is the crook’-so I covered myself there. But that Sam Millman is a crook who will take the gold right out of your mouth. Now Kaufman, there’s a dentist.

“Kaufman is the dentist who fixes my teeth after I crack one with a fork trying to get the string of fat out which is what comes from cheap pastrami. Now at Wolff’s they would never give you stringy, fatty pastrami. Wolff knew delicatessen. He knew good delicatessen from drech. Arthur Minsky always sent out to Wolff’s. Nothing else would do for Arthur Minsky who was a man of refinement. A gentleman, Arthur Minsky.

“So the Irish kid comes back with the sandwich and puts the bag on Arthur’s desk. Arthur is in the middle of telling Eileen the Irish Dream that never again will she remove her g-string on the runway of Minsky’s no matter what any critic writes and Benny the Blade starts yelling that Eileen has to redeem her honor because she has been slandered and Arthur says that any man who wears spats should perhaps not open his mouth on matters concerning taste.

“They are having this discussion when the Irish kid who was stupid like you sets the sandwich down on Arthur’s desk, and Arthur is arguing with Benny as he bites into the sandwich and he’s saying, ‘Benny, excuse me, I don’t tell you how to run numbers, please do not tell me how to run-This is salami!!’

“Arthur can’t believe it, Eileen can’t believe it, Benny can’t believe it, even I can’t believe it because I am sitting there waiting to talk to Arthur about what we’re going to do with Phil Gold, who is out again on a bender, and who am I supposed to do ‘Who’s on First’ with?

“Arthur starts to laugh, Eileen starts to laugh, Benny the Blade starts to laugh and then I start to laugh and this Irish kid says, ‘What?’ and Arthur says, ‘This is the last time I send a goy to get deli.’ He tousles the kid’s hair and tells him, ‘I said pastrami, not salami.’ This kid didn’t know the difference between-”

“DON’T YOU EVER SHUT UP?!”

Okay. I’m not proud of it. But that’s what I yelled. No excuses. I just lost it.

I know, I know. How could I be so mean to a sweet old man like Nathan Silverstein who was merely indulging in some old memories to kill a little time on a long car trip? All I can say in my own defense is that you weren’t in the car with him.

Well, he shut up, all right. After I screamed, he turned those watery little eyes to me, looked very hurt, then slowly turned face forward and maintained a total, dignified silence.

Which was worse than the monologue.

Not at first. At first it was wonderful, sweet silence. Blessed solitude with a slight underlay of guilt, but I was willing to live with that.

At first. Then it grew heavier. And heavier. As the miles between Nevada and California peeled away the weight of the guilt pressed down on my shoulders like two anvils. How could I be so mean to a sweet old man like Nathan Silverstein who was merely indulging in some old memories to kill a little time on a long car trip?

So after half an hour of total silence I asked, “Who’s on first?”

Silence.

“Who’s on first?” I repeated.

He just stared straight ahead.

“Please,” I wheedled. “Please,” I whined.

But after almost twenty-four hours of almost unceasing irritation I finally got my wish: Nathan Silverstein wouldn’t talk to me.

After about one hour of silence torture later I pulled over into one of those gas station-cum-junk food places.

“Do you have to use the bathroom?” I asked.

No answer.

“Do you?” I repeated.

Same response.

“Well, I do,” I said. “So I tell you what: I’ll go in and use the bathroom, then I’ll come back out and if you want to go in, you can. How’s that?”

Nathan just stared ahead. For a second I thought he was dead except that I could see his frail little chest breathing.

“Okay, here I go,” I said.

I went in and stood at the urinal wondering if and when Nathan was ever going to forgive me. I really did feel awful. I felt like hell.

Until I came back out and saw Nathan driving away.

The rotten old bastard had taken the car.