“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part 181: cracked

Our intrepid memoirist Arnold Schnabel has awoken one rainy morning to find that he has become a character in Gertrude Evans’s Ye Cannot Quench, a now sadly out-of-print novel of love and lust in the literary and bohemian milieux of 1950s New York...

(Click here to go to our previous thrilling episode, or start off the new year right and go here to return to the very first chapter of this Gold View Award™-winning 32-volume masterpiece.)

She jumped up from her seat, and thrust her cigarette out at me. I took it. I noticed she wore a wide-skirted dress with a belt, the dress was white with blue cross-hatchings.

“Okay, first things first,” she said, cocking her head. “Where is your coffee?”

A percolator did sit on the stove, but I had no certain idea where the coffee was if I had coffee, but on the other hand there were a couple of cabinets on the wall above the stove and the sink, so I took a wild guess.

“Try in those cabinets over there.”

She skipped over in the direction I had indicated.

For two seconds I considered smoking the remainder of her cigarette but instead I stubbed it out (in an ashtray on which were painted the words “At the Prince George Hotel -- where the service is swell!”) and I set about trying to get more completely dressed.

I walked the six feet to the dresser, opened the top drawer and found a clean pair of sweat socks, a clean pair of boxer shorts.

“Oh, Porter?”

She sounded like a wife on television. I was tempted to say “Yes dear” but I desisted and said only “Yes?”

“You have absolutely nothing edible or potable in these cabinets -- nothing but books and papers, notebooks and such.”

“Oh, sorry,” I said.

“And a mousetrap,” she said. “Fortunately with no mouse in it.”

I was looking at a door that I hoped opened onto a bathroom, or -- since the tub was out here next to the refrigerator -- at least to a toilet and maybe a sink.

Meanwhile Emily had opened the little refrigerator and was bending over peering inside.

“And nothing in this ice box except some cans of Rheingold beer,” she observed.

Not unlike her creator at times, she had subtly assumed a slightly English-sounding accent, even if she was from West Virginia.

“I guess I’m not much of a cook,” I said, my hand on the wobbly cut-glass door knob.

“Golly, I’ll say you’re not. And how, dear man, was I supposed to make breakfast?”

“Foolish of me,” I said, hoping to sound debonair, or at least like a fellow who couldn’t be expected to pay attention to such trivialities as the contents of his larder or refrigerator.

I opened the door, and revealed a room like a coffin stood on end, but equipped with a toilet bowl, a tiny sink, and even a cracked mirror.

“Get yourself freshened up and we’ll go out to eat,” she said.

“Good idea,” I said.

I went in, pulled the string on the overhead light, closed the door, and then got another shock.

I’ve never had a clear idea of what I look like. Of course I look at myself in the mirror every day when I brush my teeth and shave, but my face has always seemed so indistinct to me that its image seems to lose any memorability it might possess as soon as it passes through my eyes and into my brain. I know I have white skin and brown hair and blue eyes, but beyond that I could tell you nothing.

But this face was different.

It was the face of a sensitive and romantically handsome young poet, or, rather, the face of a sensitive and romantically handsome young actor playing a sensitive and romantically handsome young, well, you get the idea, a poet. In fact it was very much like the face of the younger Montgomery Clift, say from around the time of A Place In The Sun.

I needed a shave, and fortunately there was a safety razor on the sink, and a tube of shaving cream.

I took off my shirt, shaved, brushed my teeth.

I urinated, as quietly as one is able to urinate, and I thanked God or Josh that I had no need to do other than urinate.

I pulled the overhead chain and the toilet flushed, with the sound of a torpedo slamming into the boiler room of a battle ship.

As the aftershocks of the flush reverberated all around me I removed my blue jeans awkwardly in that confined space and pulled on the boxer shorts and the socks, then got back into the jeans and the plaid work shirt.

I opened the door and she was standing right outside. She held a little zippered pink rubber bag, a toiletries case I suppose. She touched my face.

“I’m not so sure I like you clean-shaven, Porter. I liked your stubble. Perhaps you should grow a beard. May I use your facilities?”

“Of course,” I said, and I made to get out of her way, her hand sliding down my face, along my chest and down my arm all the way to the tips of my fingers.

“I won’t be a mo,” she said.

She went in and shut the door behind her.

I saw a pair of work shoes by the bed, sat down and put them on. I realized that the night table had a drawer, it was only partly closed, I pulled it out farther by its little metal ring.

A sprinkling of small change and a few Transit Authority tokens; a pocket knife; scraps of note-paper and paper bar-napkins scrawled with observations philosophical, observational, poetic.

I also found a battered brown wallet. Not much help there. A New York chauffeur’s license for Porter Walker, a merchant seaman’s union card, a New York Public Library card, more of the scraps of paper with scraps of poetry and insight, four dollar bills, and that was about it. Not much to start a whole new existence on. But on the other hand I looked like Montgomery Clift.

The rain had continued to fall outside. I got up and walked to the other end of the room and looked through an open window with an adjustable screen in it. Outside about two or three stories down was a city street in the rain, not too much traffic. If my memory of Miss Evans’s novel served, then this would be a Saturday, sometime in the summer, sometime in the mid-1950s, somewhere in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood I only knew about from the Johnny Staccato TV show..

I wondered if somewhere else on this planet lived a railroad brakeman named Arnold Schnabel, a quiet bachelor who ushered at his church and lived with his mother and who wrote one bad poem every week like clockwork and which his neighborhood paper duly printed each week.

I wondered what would happen if I took the train down to Philadelphia, switched at the Reading Terminal, took the local to the Fern Rock station and walked to B and Nedro and knocked on my mother’s door. What if I myself opened the door? Would I, Arnold Schnabel, recognize myself in the handsome young man on the front steps? For that matter, would I, Porter Walker, recognize Arnold Schnabel in the fellow holding open the door?

I heard the toilet flush. From out here by the window it sounded far less cacophonous than it had inside the water closet, more like the sound of a milk truck crashing end over end down a rocky hill in the near distance.

I went back to the table, with its portable typewriter and its pile of typescript. So this was my epic poem. Without sitting down I picked up the top page, turned it over and read this:

Her body moist, young, ripe as a summer’s peach,
But, unlike a peach, shaped like a woman,
A woman bucking like a small and ardent
Bronco and emitting brief high yelps of pleasure
And digging her scarlet nails into my
Pale back, her eyes closed -- what is
She thinking in this moment, nay,
Multiple moments of ecstasy?

Having read at least as far as last night in Miss Evans’s novel, I could answer that question, she was thinking about some old boyfriend back in West Virginia.

The toilet door opened and I quickly put the sheet of paper back on its stack, face down.

“Well, are we ready?” she said.

The room was so small it only took her about two seconds to be a foot away from me.

She had done something with her hair, I couldn’t say what exactly, and she had applied dark lipstick, I assume it was red but I couldn’t say for sure because everything was still in black-and-white.

(Continued here, and possibly ad infinitum.)

(Please look to the right hand column of this page to find an ostensibly complete listing of links to all other previously broadcast chapters of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train To Heaven©.)

“Every January I retire to my bed for a month and do nothing but read Schnabel all day and every day. On February the first I emerge from my room revivified, whistling a happy tune, swinging my walking-stick, and ready for anything and everything the world throws my way.” -- Harold Bloom, on Oprah.

“Uncle Buddy’s House”, Chapter 31: out of the past

Life has gotten complicated for our hero, that C-List auteur Buddy Best. Somehow he has gotten involved -- alas (or maybe not alas), not to carnal fulfillment -- with Cordelia, the actress daughter of "the Ancient Mariner", the ham actor with whom Buddy's wife Joan has absconded. And Buddy's life is about to get even more complicated...

(Go here to read our previous thrilling episode, or click here to read the first chapter of this “shameless potboiler best left safely hidden under the towels in the bathroom” -- (J.J. Hunsecker, in The Saturday Evening Post.)

Buddy got caught in a traffic jam on Venice Boulevard, but that was all right, he listened to the latest news on Iraq for a few minutes, and then he put Don Giovanni back on. The sun had gone down and he had got to within two blocks of his house before Joan rang his cellphone. He considered letting his voicemail take it, then decided he might as well just get it over with. He turned off the Don and flipped open the cell.

“Hi --”

“Okay, Buddy, just what kind of sick shit are you up to?”

Buddy gave this question some thought.

“Answer me, you sick asshole.”

“I’m trying to think of an answer.”

“Are you fucking her?”

At least this he could answer, and -- a bonus -- he could answer truthfully:

“No.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Did you try to fuck her?”

After only about three seconds of silence on Buddy’s part he said:

“Hey, how was your trip?”

“What?”

“Your trip. To Brittany. How was it.”

“How was my trip? It was nice. Except it rained all the time. And it was cold.”

“Ah. Too bad.”

Now it was she who didn’t say anything.

“What’s that noise?” said Buddy.

“It’s the ocean. I’m walking on the beach. I had to get out of that house. Stephen is very upset. And so is she, apparently. She’s in her room and won’t come out.”

Buddy had parked the car in front of his house now.

There was more ocean noise and then she said, “How’s Deirdre?”

“Deirdre’s good.”

Cordelia’s sunglasses, still on the dash. Buddy picked them up and put them in his shirt pocket.

“Philip and Liz are living with us now, too,” he said.

“What?”

“Yeah -- a lot has been going on.”

“So it seems. Well, look, I’ve thought about it and I want Deirdre to move in here and I don’t want to hear any shit about it.”

The ocean --

“Well?” she said.

“You’re her mother.”

“That’s right.”

“Okay then.”

He got out of the car.

“What are you doing, Buddy?”

“I’m getting out of the car.”

“Oh. Are you going into the house?”

“Yep.”

“Is Deirdre home?”

“She was when I left.”

“Okay. Let me talk to her.”

“Ah-ight.”

“But, Buddy, wait, first --”

“Yeah, babe.”

“Just what the fuck were you doing with that girl? That’s all I want to know.”

“It’s -- it’s a long story, Joan.”

“I’m sure it is a long story, so give me the short version.”

Buddy opened the door. “Buddy?” said Joan. Philip and Liz and Deirdre were sitting on the couch in the dark living room, watching a movie. Out of the Past. He took the phone away from his ear. “Buddy,” he could hear Joan saying again. He walked over to Deirdre and handed her the phone.

“Your mom wants to talk to you.”

“Mom? From France?”

“No. Venice. Venice, California.”

She unfolded her legs and put the phone to her head.

“Mom? What? He’s right here, who do you think handed me the phone? Well who do you want to talk to, him or me?” She looked at Buddy, making her eyes go wide, and Buddy waggled his hand from side to side, mouthing No. “Mom. Mom, wait, let me take this in my room. Mom, wait.”

Now she rolled her eyes, and got up and headed for the stairs. “Mom,” she was saying, “I haven’t talked to you in like three whole weeks, so please don’t immediately start being insane, okay?” And so on until she faded out as she went into her room and shut the door.

Liz and Philip looked at Buddy.

“I’m gonna get a beer,” he said. “Anybody want anything?”



They had finished Out of the Past and had started Gentlemen Prefer Blondes when Deirdre came down. She handed Buddy his cellphone, the phone was very warm, she stood there and looked at the TV screen for a bit and then said, “Is that Marilyn Monroe?”

“Yeah,” said Buddy.

“Who’s the other one?”

“Jane Russell.”

“Huh.”

She headed into the kitchen. Liz and Philip looked at Buddy. Buddy got up and went into the kitchen.

“Whatcha doin’?” he said.

“Getting a Diet Coke,” said Deirdre. “Do you want a beer?”

“I’ve got one working here.”

She stood holding her glass of Diet Coke, leaning back against the counter, and she sighed.

“I really hate her,” she said.

“She’s -- doing what she thinks is right,” said Buddy.

“Right for her.”

“Y’know, Deirdre, I’m -- no great prize either.”

“No one said you were.”

True.

“I mean, you know,” he went on, “your mom just -- wants to -- love, and, uh, be loved.”

“Oh, please, do you write dialogue like that for your movies?”

“I -- try not to.”

“So I guess I have to move in with them, right?” Buddy didn’t say anything. “She wants me to meet Stephen tomorrow night.” She looked at Buddy, but he couldn’t think of anything to say to this either. “And, Uncle Bud, Cordelia is his fucking daughter?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Liz told me you were in bed with her.” What could Buddy say? The I didn’t fuck her quibble was not going to work here. “That is so -- weird,” said Deirdre. “I mean, she’s nice and all, but, dude --”

And now Deirdre was at a loss for words.

“It -- wasn’t a planned-out thing,” weaseled Buddy, and then, fuck it, bring out the quibble -- “And besides, we didn’t -- we’re not --”

“What?”

No, he couldn’t say it, and it didn’t really matter because even if they hadn’t he had wanted to, and he would have if Philip and Liz hadn’t come home, or at least he would have if she had found a condom, unless she changed her mind, but --

“Is everything okay, Deirdre?”

This was Liz, in the kitchen doorway.

“Liz,” said Deirdre, “did you know that Cordelia is the Ancient Mariner’s daughter?”

“The whose daughter?”

“The Ancient Mariner. My mom’s boyfriend.”

“The --”

“It’s Uncle Buddy’s nickname for him.”

“Oh. And why is he called the Ancient Mariner?”

“Because he’s fucking gay, that’s why.”

“And -- Cordelia is his daughter?”

“Yeah. Isn’t that funny?”

Followed by a dramatic pause and then:

“Oh my fucking God,” said Liz. “Dad -- what are you doing?”

“We -- we just had dinner,” said Buddy. “She wanted to talk. About her father.”

“Is he really gay?”

“Not that I know of.”

“But -- wait -- you and Cordelia were having more than dinner, Dad.”

“Well, this was a couple of nights ago --”

“Oh, okay, a couple of nights ago. But what about today?”

Buddy finished his glass of beer and went to the refrigerator.

“This is too weird,” said Liz. “I thought I was fucked-up.”

“Oh, who cares?” said Deirdre.

Buddy took out another Anchor Steam, opened it, poured it into his glass, too quickly, and the head foamed over. He put the glass on the counter top. Fuck it.

“Oh, Dad,” said Liz, and she went to the sink for a sponge.

Philip was in the doorway. The movie was still playing behind him.

“What’s up, family meeting?”

Liz picked up Buddy’s beer glass and sponged the counter-top under it, and even gave the beer-glass a little wipe.

“Cordelia is this Ancient Mariner’s daughter,” said Liz.

“Oh,” said Philip, after a moment. “That’s strange. That’s really -- weird.”

“Here’s your beer, Dad,” said Liz.

“Thanks,” said Buddy.

Liz tore some paper towels off of the roll, dropped them onto the floor where the beer had overflowed, and with her bare foot she rubbed the towels around.

“Let’s just watch the movie,” said Deirdre.

“So you got this from Joan,” said Liz.

“Yeah,” said Deirdre, sounding bored.

“What else did Joan say?” said Liz.

Now Philip was going past her to the fridge.

“She wants me to move in with her. And the Mariner.”

“Oh. And do you want to?”

“No, of course I don’t want to. I don’t want to move down to Venice and live with some flaming gaybo I don’t even know.”

Philip got out an Anchor and popped it open.

“Well, you know Cordelia,” he said.

“Oh, yeah, great. Look, let’s just go in and watch the movie, okay? I can’t think about this now. I’m supposed to see my mom tomorrow. Maybe I can talk her out of it. Okay, whatever. I want to watch the movie. Come on, Uncle Buddy, I’m not mad at you. Let’s watch the movie.”

“Okay,” said Buddy.

So they went in. Marilyn was just starting in on “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend”. They watched the movie.

(Continued here, if only because of ironclad contractual obligations.)

(Please refer to the right hand column of this page for an up-to-the-minute list of links to all other published chapters of Uncle Buddy’s House™, currently “in development” at American International Pictures.)

“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part 180: postscript

In our previous chapter our memoirist Arnold Schnabel awoke on a rainy Sunday morning to find a naked woman sleeping in his bed, one who had not been there when he had gone to sleep...

(Click here to return to the first chapter of this Gold View Award™-winning chef-d'œuvre, which the noted scholar Harold Bloom has called “the ne plus ultra of 20th century literature -- oh, hell, of any century’s literature!”.)

She slept obliviously, her hip rising up and dipping down to her slim waist, her arm crossed down across her bosom, her face hidden from the rain-dappled light by tousled dark hair.

And then I noticed some other odd things.

For starters, I was naked too, I who had never in my born days gone to bed without wearing at the very least my boxer shorts.

Also, it now dawned on me that either I had suffered a thrombosis in my sleep which had struck me colorblind, or once again I had found myself in a world of black-and-white, or, more accurately, a world composed of varying tones of grey, with highlights here and there of black or white.

The next thing I noticed was that this was not my narrow army-surplus cot but a regular medium-sized bed with cast-iron piping at the head and foot.

Then, finally, it dawned on me that this was not at all my humble attic room; it was a small room, granted, but not my room. The walls were largely covered with mostly-unframed drawings and paintings and posters. There was a cluttered old wooden chest of drawers with an oval mirror; a table with a portable typewriter on it and a straw-covered Chianti bottle with a candle stuck in it; a small refrigerator with a toaster on top of it; a stove; and just this side of the refrigerator was a claw-foot bathtub. On a wooden crate sat one of those record players that fit in their own little suitcase. In lieu of shelves were more of the wood crates stacked along the walls, the crates packed with books and records, magazines, papers, notebooks.

Next to the bed was an old scarred end-table with a tasseled lamp, a chipped glass ashtray overflowing with butts, some of them stained with red lipstick, an opened pack of Pall Malls and a Zippo lighter, a pile of paperback books, a bottle of ink, a tortoise-shell fountain pen, and a couple of marble-covered copybooks of the sort I write these memoirs in. Lying on top of one of these copybooks was a lined sheet of paper apparently torn from it or one of its fellows. I reached over the sleeping girl and picked up the paper, held it to the soft rippling light coming in from the small window:

See if you can get yourself out of this one, wiseguy!

Catch you later today, maybe.

Heh heh.

All the best,

Your pal,

Lucky

P.S. Fuck you.

(I have included that last line unexpurgated only in the interests of historical accuracy. I apologize in advance to you, dear Mother, if you have glanced into this copybook in which now I write, and, once again I respectfully ask you, for your own sake, please not to look into these writings of mine while “straightening up my room”.)

I folded up the sheet of paper, folded it again, and once more for good measure. Then, reaching over the sleeping girl, I slipped the paper into the copybook.


“Mmmpff,” said the girl, and brushing her hair from her eyes she turned onto her back and opened her eyes.

“Oh no,” she said.

“Pardon me?”

I didn’t know what else to say.

“We shouldn’t have,” she said. “I shouldn’t have.”

She reached down, grabbed the sheet, and pulled it up over her body, or at least up far enough to cover her breasts.

“You probably think I’m hideously hypocritical,” she said.

“No,” I said.

In fact I was thinking (among many other things) that she looked remarkably like the actress Natalie Wood, say around the time of Marjorie Morningstar.

“After all I practically threw myself at you,” she said.

“You did?”

“You don’t think I did?”

“Well, um, let me ask you this -- uh --”

I didn’t know her name.

“What?” she said.

I had to think quickly.

“By the way,” I said, “how do you prefer to be addressed?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I mean, do you have a nickname, or some diminutive --”

“LIke ‘Em’, or ‘Emmie’?”

“Uh, yeah --”

“No, I despise all those variations. Just call me Emily.”

“Emily.”

“Yes. Just Emily. What about you? What do you prefer to be called?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you, Porter. Mr. Porter Walker. Such a lovely name, a poet’s name.”

“Damn it.”

“What? What is it, Porter?”

Damn that Lucky. Damn him to hell. Which on second thought seemed a redundant thing to say.

“Porter, what is it?”

“Oh, never mind,” I said.

How could I tell her that she was only a character in a novel, in Miss Evans’s novel, and that I had become a character in it as well. And that the Devil himself had stuck me here.

“Porter, talk to me.”

At least she was the main character.

“You’re so mysterious, Porter, so moody.”

Holding the sheet over her bosom with one hand (and not very efficiently, either), she reached over and picked up the pack of Pall Malls from the end table. Well, at least they were my brand, in case I decided to take up smoking again, which the way things were going seemed quite possible.

“Mr. Walker! Mr. Walker!”

This was a heavily-accented woman’s voice, yelling from somewhere outside the room’s door.

“Yes?” I called somewhat tentatively. “Who is it?”

“It’s me, you meshuggenah, Mrs. Morgenstern! You’re wanted on the telephone!”

“Oh, okay,” I called. “I’ll be right there.”

So even in this world I was besieged by women.

“Who is it do you think?” asked Emily, lighting a cigarette with the Zippo, which was either the one I owned in my other life or one very much like it.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I said, and truer words I have never spoken.

“You’d better get it. It may be important.”

I’ve not had a vast experience with the female sex, granted, but I have never understood the prompt readiness of the few women I have known to answer the telephone. I’ve never wanted to answer a telephone’s ring in my entire life. (Or in any of my lives.)

Emily, calmly smoking her cigarette, and still holding the sheet over her bosom, but less and less efficiently, obligingly pulled her legs up so that I could get out of the bed. I was so disconcerted that I barely had the presence of mind to be embarrassed by my nakedness, but still I was embarrassed. Fortunately I saw a pair of blue jeans on the floor by the bed, and I pulled them on without bothering to look for my boxer shorts. I saw a plaid workman’s shirt on the floor a few feet farther away and I put that on, too.

“Hurry back, Porter,” said Emily.

“Okay,” I said.

Where else was I going to go?

I went to the door through which Mrs. Morgenstern’s voice had passed, and into a rather dingy corridor. Not surprisingly, I didn’t see any telephone. But I heard voices down the hall, so I went toward them. I came to an open door, looked in to see a family sitting around a table, eating.

“Come in already,” said the woman who was at the table, her voice matching that of the disembodied Mrs. Morgenstern. I had imagined a middle-aged shrew for some reason, but she proved to be in her thirties. Also at the table was a man of about the same age, wearing a t-shirt, and a little boy and girl.

“Porter!” said the man. “The poet! Write any immortal poetry yet today?”

He also had a heavy accent.

“No,” I said, “not yet.”

“Ya lazy bum ya.”

“Get the phone, Porter,” said the woman.

“Where is it?” I asked.

Both the children burst into uproarious laughter.

“Don’t be funny, Mr. Wiseguy,” said Mrs. Morgenstern. “The phone is where it always is.”

Desperately I looked around the apartment, which, sadly, did not look too much bigger than mine, and I saw a black telephone on a small lace-covered table, the receiver off the hook.

I walked over, very much aware that I was barefoot, and picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” I said.

“Walker! That you?”

“I suppose so,” I said.

“I got one question. What’s your excuse?”

“My excuse?” Who was this, one of Lucky’s agents? “For what?”

“For what? For bein’ an hour late for work, asshole!”

“An hour?”

“You expect that cab to drive itself?”

“No,” I said.

“All right, tell ya what, Mr. Intellectual, don’t bother comin’ in at all, ever! You’re fired, got me? You still owe me for three gallons of gas, but tell ya what, we’ll make that your severance pay. And do not bother comin’ round askin’ for no second chance, neither.”

“Uh, okay,” I said.

“Fuck you very much, and goodbye!”

He hung up, whoever it was. I put the receiver back on its cradle.

“Everything okay, Porter?” said Mr. Morgenstern, or at least I presumed he was Mr. Morgenstern.

“Yes, fine,” I said.

“You want some kasha?”

“No thanks,” I said. “Thanks for the use of the phone.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“You want a sweet roll, Mr. Walker?” said Mrs. Morgenstern. “Cup of coffee?”

“No thanks,” I said.

I said thanks again to Mr. Morgenstern, and good morning to all, walked over to the door, went out and closed the door.

I headed back to my room.

Emily was still there, of course, but at least she had gotten dressed. She was sitting at the table reading from a sheath of typed paper, smoking a cigarette.

“Everything okay, Porter?”

“No, not really,” I said. “I got fired.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re too talented to be driving a cab. I’ve been reading your poem, you know, for my boss at Smythe’s.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes.”

She laid the sheet of paper she’d been reading face down on the stack in front of her and patted the stack’s sides to make it a nice neat cuboid.

“I think it’s the finest poem of our time.”

I said nothing.

“Would you like me to make you some breakfast, Porter?”

What could I say? I was ravenous.

“Yes, thank you,” I said.

(Continued here, an army of hungry fans demands it.)

(Kindly look to the right hand column of this page for what is allegedly an up-to-date listing of links to all other published chapters of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train To Heaven©, absolutely free of charge as per the mandate of the Arnold Schnabel Society {executors of the Arnold Schnabel estate} and their expressed wish to “share the joy”.)

“Uncle Buddy’s House”, Chapter 30: scoundrel!

Let us rejoin Buddy Best, fair-to-middling film-maker, as he drives home the fair and talented actress Cordelia, daughter of that ham actor Buddy refers to only as “the Ancient Mariner”, who has absconded on a vacation in Brittany with Buddy’s wife, the middling-to-fair actress Joan...

(Click here to read our previous embarrassing episode, or click here to read the first chapter of this “merciless exposé of the vile mores of contemporary Hollywood” -- (J.J. Hunsecker, in The Catholic Standard & Times.)

On Venice Boulevard, visor down against the setting sun, windows open --

“So where’s this dance class?”

“Oh, forget the dance class.”

“Okay. You just want to go home then?”

“Yeah,” she said. “That pizza made me sluggish.”

She had her sunglasses on, and she stared straight ahead.

He pulled up in front of the Mariner’s house. He looked at her. She unbuckled her seatbelt, but then she seemed to be thinking about something. He waited. She took her sunglasses off and hooked them onto the front of her dress. Then she looked at him and said, “Turn the car off and let’s just sit here a minute.”

“Okay,” said Buddy.

As soon as he had turned off the ignition and unhooked his own seatbelt she got close to him and kissed him on the mouth. Okay. He took her sunglasses off of her dress and laid them on the dash. She took his glasses off and laid them next to her sunglasses.

“You taste like pizza and beer,” she said.

“You taste like pizza and Diet Coke and cigarettes,” he said.

“Do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

She put her head on his shoulder and her hand on his thigh. Her hair seemed thicker and curlier than it had earlier in the day, and he put his nose into it. She put her hand on his thigh. She raised her face and they kissed again. She pulled her face back and looked into his eyes.

“This Joe guy said not to get my hopes up because he couldn’t say, but he did ask me if I was available to fly up to Canada tomorrow night if he did cast me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So maybe I’ll be going to Canada tomorrow.”

Her hand was still there.

“Okay,“ said Buddy. “But -- look, don’t forget, with Joe, you’re gonna have to --”

She pulled her hand away and gave him a little rap on the chest.

“Buddy, I told you I can handle him. I’ve had weirdo dudes hitting on me since I was thirteen. I attract weirdos,” she said. “But I appreciate your saying something.”

She settled into him again, her head on his shoulder, her hand maybe unfortunately again on his thigh.

“I don’t suppose you have an agent?” said Buddy.

“No.”

“All right. Look, if Joe offers you a part, ask him what he’s going to pay you, and before you agree to anything, give me a call.”

“Okay.”

He put his hand on her thigh.

“Are you in SAG?”

“Yepper.”

She lifted her head up.

“Okay, just give me a call before you --”

“Ssshh.”

“Well, it’s just --”

“Ssshhh.”

“Sorry.”

They kissed again. He slid his hand further up her thigh and under her dress. He kept going. Her hand tightened on his thigh. She moaned into his neck. All right. Okay. This was insane, but so what. Sometimes, no matter how incredibly stupid it was, you really just had to say fuck it all, you only live once, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead and go for it.

But then a cab pulled up and parked about six feet in front of them. The Ancient Mariner got out on the sidewalk side and Joan got out the other side. The Mariner had his beret on.

Buddy took his hand out from under Cordelia’s dress. She pulled her face away from his neck and looked at him.

“Why’d you stop?” she said, and then she turned and saw. “Oh, God,” she said. She sank down. “Oh God,” said her voice, coming up from under her head, which was pressed against his lap, which was the last place on earth he wanted her head to be at this juncture.

The taxi driver had popped his trunk from inside the cab, and now he came out to help the Mariner with the luggage. Joan had now noticed Buddy’s car and Buddy in it, and she stood there staring at him.

“Oh shit,” said Cordelia’s muffled voice.

“Cordelia, get up,” said Buddy. He put his hand on her head.

“No,” said the voice, out from under all that thick dark hair swirled out over his lap.

The Mariner was looking at Joan. He followed her gaze, saw Buddy, and did a pantomime of someone being struck by a lightning bolt.

Joan walked toward Buddy, marching faster with each step.

“Buddy,” she said, loudly, as she marched, “are you stalking me?”

Now she was almost at the driver’s window.

“Are you fucking stalking me?”

She was leaning over outside his window. She looked in, then she screamed and staggered back as if she’d been shot in the chest.

“Oh my God! Oh my God!”

The bold Mariner still hung back by the trunk of the cab. The driver, who had been pulling out luggage, stopped what he was doing and watched the crazy white people.

“Joan,” called the Mariner, in his somewhat shaky stage voice. “Come here.”

“He’s fucking got a girl in there! He’s fucking getting a blowjob sitting outside your house! He is sick! Sick! Sick!”

“Joan,” intoned the Mariner, dropping down an octave.

Joan had a new leather bag hanging from her shoulder. She opened it, stuck her hand in it, and pulled out her cellphone.

“Joan,” hailed the Mariner again. “What are you doing?”

“Calling the police!”

“Now, Joan,” said the Mariner.

Buddy could hear and feel Cordelia laughing now, and sobbing. She was gripping his right thigh, and her tears were wetting the crotch of his pants and his rapidly shrinking erection.

“Joan,” said Buddy, “get out of the street, there’s a car coming.”

Which there was, and she stepped forward as the car drove past.

“I’m having you arrested, Buddy Best, you and that whore whoever she is.”

Cordelia let out a big “Oh! Fuck! Fuck this,” sat up, struggled with the door handle on her side -- neither sobbing or laughing now, but breathing quickly -- got the door open and jumped out without closing the door. She ran a couple of steps toward the Mariner’s barn and Buddy yelled, “Wait! Cordelia!”

She stopped and turned. He held out her red backpack. She staggered back to the car, leaned in, grabbed the pack, and then, still leaving the car door open, she ran toward the house again.

“Oh my God,” said Joan. “Oh my fucking God.”

She was backing up into the road again, her hands together in a praying position.

“Joan,” said Buddy, “watch the fucking traffic.”

Shocked and pretend-shocked as she was she nonetheless stepped forward again to let another car go by.

The Mariner got tired of being upstaged and now he approached Buddy’s car from the passenger side. He came around the open door and bent over to look in at Buddy.

“You, sir --” he quavered, resonantly.

The taxi driver had gone back to unloading the baggage onto the sidewalk.

“You, sir --” said the Mariner again.

“What?” said Buddy.

That fucking beret.

“You, sir -- are a scoundrel!”

He was leaning down, but not close. Not conveniently close enough for Buddy to give him a quick pop on the nose.

Joan marched back to the cab. The driver closed the trunk and stood there hoping to get paid. Joan turned and yelled:

“Stephen! Come here.”

Still bent over, the Mariner turned to look at her, and then turned back to Buddy. He looked like he had frozen up on his next line.

“Close the door, Stephen,” said Buddy.

The Mariner quivered slightly but didn’t change his basic position.

“Stephen! I told you to come here!” yelled Joan.

The Mariner straightened up, still quivering, and, without shutting the door, he started walking back towards Joan and the luggage. Fuck him.

Buddy slipped over and pulled the door shut. There was Cordelia over there on the porch of the Mariner’s house, hunched over and rummaging in her backpack, her hair obscuring her face. Finally she drew out what would be her keys, she unlocked the door, opened it and went inside, slamming the door behind her.

Buddy took his glasses off the dash and put them on. Cordelia had forgotten her sunglasses, oh well. He buckled on his seatbelt, started up his car, checked his rearview mirror, and pulled the fuck out of there.

(Continued here, because things only get worse from here on out.)

(Kindly go to the right hand column of this page for a rigorously up-to-date listing of links to all other published chapters of Uncle Buddy’s House™; a Quinn Martin Production, starring Brian Keith as Buddy; featuring Anjanette Comer as Cordelia, and guest-starring Sebastian Cabot as the Ancient Mariner and Julie London as Joan.)