It’s the weary butt-end of a strangely long and just plain strange Saturday night in August of 1963, and a man called Arnold Schnabel -- poet, brakeman and possible saint-- is finally wending his way home through the streets of the quaint seaside resort of Cape May, NJ, when he runs into the local inebriate Buddy Kelly, who, suddenly pointing past Arnold, indicates the approach of none other than the Dark Lord, also known as “Mr. Lucky”...
“Schnabel!” yelled Mr. Lucky, shaking his fist, forging, limping steadily closer.
“Why’s he yellin’ at ya, Arnold?”
I couldn’t very well tell Buddy that I had marooned Mr. Lucky two days in the past.
“He’s mad at me,” I said.
Mr. Lucky, attempting to charge I suppose, tripped on his dragging leg and fell forward, cursing like a sailor -- no, to say that does an injustice to the maritime profession now that I think about it. I had never heard anyone curse the way Mr. Lucky now curse as he struggled to get up, not even my old army drill sergeant when I would intractably start daydreaming during close-order drill and poke some other poor recruit in the face with the barrel of my rifle.
“Guy’s got a mouth on him,” said Buddy. “He a friend of yours?”
“No,” I said. “We only met tonight.”
He was back on his feet now, and he continued hobbling forward, cursing and calling my name, that steam or smoke still drifting up from his body and from his head, as if he had just been dipped in acid.
“What’s his *****ng problem?” asked Buddy.
This question was more than I could answer, then, now, or ever.
“It’s hard to explain, Buddy,” I said. “You should go home. I’ll deal with him. He’s just had too much to drink.”
“He looks like a ****in’ nut to me. And what’s that smoke or whatever it is comin’ off him?”
“Well, I don’t really know,” I said. “There must be some, uh, rational explanation.”
“You are doomed!” yelled Mr. Lucky, who was now about twenty feet away.
“What the ****,” said Buddy. “Now he’s scaring me.”
“So, really, you head on home,” I said.
“F*** that noise. This guy is a f**king lunatic.”
“No, stay out of it, Buddy,” I said.
“F*ck that. You’re my pal, Arnold.” That was news to me. “Anybody fucks with you they fuck with me.”
(Sorry, Mother, I just got tired of all those asterisks. Forgive me if you’re reading this.)
“Let me take care of him,” said Buddy, and, tossing away his cigar stub, he strode forward like a small human tank, and I’m afraid I let him do so, not out of cowardice but because I had been thinking about asterisks and ignoring the problem at hand.
Although I am by nature a peace-loving man the vicissitudes of my part-time avocation of bar-fly have put me in the presence of many fights and brawls, and I will state that the one thing every one of these altercations has had in common is their resistance to verbal description. What happened next was no exception.
Buddy and Mr. Lucky collided with much shouting and cursing on both their parts, Mr. Lucky performing gestures that seemed at least reminiscent of those judo moves I had seen in the movies, whereas Buddy simply plowed right in head-down like a pint-sized Marciano with the old piston-like one-two, one-two.
Despite my boxing experience in the army, I lack the killer instinct, and so I’ve never been a good man in a real fight. Nevertheless, I stepped forward. The multifarious double-beast that was Mr. Lucky and Buddy bashed into me, I fell over into the gutter, re-scraping my scraped knees. I got up again, and attempted to grab Mr. Lucky’s arm, but he threw me off with the strength of ten men and this time I staggered back into a wooden telephone pole, striking the back of my head against it, I saw a flash like a flash bulb popping in my face, I lost consciousness.
It seemed like only a second or two later, maybe it was, and someone was lifting me to my feet by my armpits and shoving me back again against the pole. It was Mr. Lucky.
“Thought you could fool me,” he said.
Ink-black blood oozed and bubbled from his nostrils and mouth. His breath smelled of feces, his eyes were black as tar, as empty as the night. The smoke or mist rose up from his shoulders, from out of his ears, from his bloodied nostrils and mouth.
Behind him Buddy’s body lay crumpled on the pavement.
I tried to pull away but Mr. Lucky grabbed the upper parts of my arms in his hands and pushed me back, harder, against the pole.
“You humans,” he said, “You’ll never learn.”
“Well, uh, maybe we could sign one of those contracts now,” I said.
“Oh, you would like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, sure,” I said. (And believe me, I was willing. Damnation seven years from now seemed a far better alternative than damnation in seven seconds.) “No hard feelings --”
“Perhaps not on your part.” He squeezed my arms tighter. Vice-like would not be inaccurate in describing his grip, cliché or not. “But do you know how I’ve spent the last half hour of your earthling time?”
“No,” I said, quite frankly.
“Crawling and scrabbling my way through the uncountable dimensions of time, through the lives and deaths of galaxies, through unending black holes, through exploding supernovas, through the chill silent endless reaches of universes not born and never to be born.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“But now I’m back, and I am taking you, Arnold, taking you down to the deepest and most foul burning pit of hell.”
“So we can’t make a bargain?”
“You’re joking, surely.”
“I could become one of your, uh, servants.”
“You coward.”
“I could do better than Jack Scratch,” I said.
“You probably could at that.”
“And I do have an inside track with Josh.”
“You mean Je-”
“He likes to be called Josh down here. Just like you like to be called Mr. Lucky.”
“Simply Lucky will do.”
“Why don’t we try a seven-year contract,” I said. “Then we’ll see how it works out. Maybe you could give me an extension if --”
“Don’t try to trick me, Arnold.”
“I won’t. I just don’t want to be dragged to hell.”
“Not yet, you mean.”
“Right. Not yet. Do you have any of those contracts on you?”
“I suppose I might.”
“Go ahead, bring one out. I’ll sign it.”
Keeping one hand firmly on my chest he reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out a scroll. It looked just like the other ones that he and Jack Scratch had tried to get me to sign. I suppose they all came from the same factory or workshop.
“All right. Seven years,” he said. “But I expect you to work for me.”
“Sure. But I get good luck during those seven years, don’t I?”
“You never give up, do you?”
“Well, I’m only human,” I said.
“This is our standard contract. You’ll get your seven years good luck, but only if you recruit me at least one victim a month during that time.”
“I can do that,” I said.
“You know," he said, “I think you can.”
Finally he took that hand of steel off my chest, and I was able to breathe a bit more freely.
He patted his pockets.
“Damn, I’ve lost my quill. Probably lost it when I was escaping the fire demons of Alpha Centauri.”
“Who?”
“Don’t ask,” he said. “Don’t even ask.”
“I have a pen,” I said.
“Get it out, then.”
I reached into my pocket and took out the fountain pen that Mr. Arbuthnot had given me.*
“You’ll need to draw some of your blood with that,” he said.
“Oh, sure,” I said, taking the cap off the pen. Its silvery nib sparkled in the streetlamp light.
“And no funny business.”
“No funny business,” I said, putting the cap back onto the shank of the pen.
He gave the scroll a flick, and it unfurled, revealing that now-familiar incomprehensible handwriting.
“Did you want to add that codicil about me bringing in one recruit a month?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about that. Just sign the damned thing.”
“Okay. Could you turn around?”
“I’m serious, Arnold, none of your tricks this time.”
“Of course not. Just turn around so I --”
“I will not turn around. Use the goddam telephone pole.”
“It’s awfully rough.”
“I don’t give a damn. Use it, before I change my mind.”
“Well, okay, give me the contract.”
“Here.”
He gave it to me. Again, it had that feel and even the dry warmth of an old person’s skin.
I turned and put the parchment against the coarse wood of the pole.
“Hurry it up,” said Mr. Lucky, over my shoulder. “Poke your wrist there and get some blood in the pen.”
“Right,” I said, but instead of poking my skin I quickly turned the paper around to its blank side and scrawled the words:
“Go to hell.”
“No, damn you!” howled Mr. Lucky as just as quickly I signed my name.
I turned.
He was gone, leaving only a whiff of foul smoke, the faint stench of burning compost, of backed-up sewers, of death.
He wasn’t so smart.
I tossed the parchment up into the air, it burst into flame, and its ashes and its sparks drifted away on the soft ocean breeze.
In our previous chapter our hero Buddy Best, having agreed over the telephone to dine with Cordelia -- offspring of the ham actor who has absconded with Buddy’s wife -- is gobsmacked with the revelation that the dowdy young woman he has met only once before has been transformed into a shimmering beauty...
(Click here to read the first chapter of this “steamy soap opera swarming with enough sin and snideness to make Jackie Collins swoon” -- (J.J. Hunsecker, in the Cape May Herald.)
“So,” said Buddy, an octave too high -- bring it down -- “how about a drink?”
She almost seemed puzzled by the question, but then she said:
“Okay.”
“What would you like?”
“A Diet Coke?”
“No,” said Buddy, before he could stop himself. “Come on, you don’t drink Diet Coke in a joint like this. Right Lou?”
“I don’t serve that shit,” said Lou.
“Well, okay --” she said.
“Uh --” Buddy suddenly realized he was spacing on her name -- Olivia? Rosalind? -- “what would you like?”
“Wine?”
“Great. What color?”
“Red?”
“Okay, Lou, bring us a bottle of Barolo, something good, something under a thousand bucks, okay?”
“Of course a.”
Lou smiled and went away.
She was wide-eyed. And opened-mouthed, showing a lot of very white teeth.
“A thousand?”
“I was kidding.”
“Oh. I’m so stupid. I’m sorry, I don’t get out much.”
Her eyes remained wide open, just as her mouth remained partially open, and it occurred to Buddy that this was perhaps their normal state, making her look more nutty than she really was. Or, maybe she really was just nutty and that was why her eyes and her mouth --
“So, you took a bus?”
“Yeah. I either ride my bike or take buses everywhere. I have a license but my father won’t let me drive his car. I don’t mind. I hate to drive. It’s dangerous, you know?”
“It sure is.”
“Do you think I could smoke here?”
“Why not? We’re outside, and besides, they’re Italian, they don’t give a shit.”
“What if someone complains?”
“Then we’ll deal with it.”
The waiter who had been so hard to find a minute before now stood with his tongue hanging out about three feet away. Buddy made a smoking gesture and pointed at the table.
Funny-name-girl already had her enormous shiny black purse open on her lap and she came up with a semi-crushed box of Marlboros. The waiter was there in two seconds with an ashtray, helping himself to a look at her breasts as he put it down. She got out a cigarette, and waiter-boy dashingly pulled a lighter out of his pants, bowed over her with his butt jutting out, begging to be kicked, and gave her a light.
“Thank you.” She exhaled luxuriously and then gave a start, staring at Buddy -- “Oh! would you like one?”
She thrust the box to within a few inches of Buddy’s nose.
“No thanks.”
She dropped the box into her purse, clicked it shut and put it on the floor, door, snore, core -- Cordelia --
“I just smoke one a day usually,” she said, Cordelia, that was her fucking name, “which means they’re usually pretty stale. And which also means I spend the entire day thinking about that one cigarette.”
The waiter was still standing there.
“Thanks,” Buddy told him, “we’re good now.” And finally, after just one more quick fond glance at Cordelia’s bosom, the guy went away.
Buddy wondered if she’d had sense enough to keep her sweater buttoned up on the bus, even if this was L.A., and because this was L.A. And he was trying not to be as obvious as Lou or the waiter, but just above and to the left of her left breast there was a tiny odd tattoo, about the size of a dime. It was green, red, blue...
“What is your tattoo there?”
“It’s Saturn.”
“Oh, of course.”
“It’s kind of weird ‘cause I did it myself.”
“Ah. I see.”
She pulled the edge of her cardigan over it. Too bad.
Lou came over with the Barolo, no five-minute wait this time. He jabbered on about the vintner and the vineyard and about how the wine was a little young but still drinkable (and thank God it was only a ‘97, with any luck it’d be under a hundred bucks). Finally he opened it and poured a little into Buddy’s glass, but Buddy waved him on. “That’s all right, Lou, pour away, I trust your judgment.”
Lou filled the glass, then sidled over next to Cordelia so as to appreciate the aerial view of her cleavage again while he filled her glass; as he lifted up the bottle with a show-bizzy little turn of the wrist he gave Buddy a nod of approval. He held onto the bottle.
“Where you meet such a beautiful young lady, Mr. Best?”
“Um -- well --”
“You very beautiful,” he said to Cordelia. “You Italian?”
“No.”
“You got such beautiful dark hair. You must have some Italian blood.”
“Well -- maybe -- I mean --”
“Italian or not, you beautiful anyway.”
“Thanks.”
“You make sure he treat you right.”
“Okay.”
“He treat you bad I get my friends to break his legs.”
“All right.”
“I mean it.”
“Okay,” she said. “Thanks.”
Lou finally put down the bottle and went off. Cordelia carefully stubbed out her cigarette, pushed aside the ashtray, and then leaned forward to whisper.
“He’s weird.”
“Yeah, he’s into this whole leg-breaking thing.”
“He’s like a character in some old movie. Do you think he’s always that Italian or is he just that way in his restaurant?”
“I’m not even sure he exists outside of this restaurant.”
She lifted her glass and tasted the wine. Her eyes expanded.
“Wow, that’s good.”
Buddy tasted his.
“Yeah, it’s okay.”
She looked slightly stricken, so Buddy amended:
“I mean, it’s really okay. Okay okay.”
“Okey-dokey,” she said, and she opened her menu.
“Oh my God, Mr. Best --”
“Buddy --”
“Buddy, it is expensive. I thought --”
“Yeah, I know, I’m an asshole.”
“But, I wouldn’t’ve minded a cheap place -- really --”
“Well, what the hell -- it’s pretty good here --”
“But I thought you preferred cheap places.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“So why --”
“I don’t know. I’m nuts.”
“You wanted to impress me.”
“Well -- I figured you probably don’t get much of a chance to, you know --”
“I don’t, really. Ever. Get a chance to. All I practically ever eat at are like pathetic greasy taco joints.”
“Yeah, so, what the hell --”
“Well, I think you’re really nice. It’s -- nice here.”
“Good.”
She was looking around with those eyes.
“It’s really nice,” she said.
(Buddy had a theory about expensive restaurants, which was that women actually liked them. A lot of men convinced themselves that they liked all this bullshit, but what they really liked was validating themselves by proving they had the money to spend on it; but women really did like these joints, it was in their genes. There were exceptions of course, like good old Madge or Shakira, she didn’t give a damn, give her some raw groats and turnips and she was happy, but Joan -- Christ, Joan and her restaurants -- how was the Mariner going to afford that bullshit? How many thousands of dollars had Buddy spent taking Joan to trendy restaurants? And it was all bullshit. But, here he was, like an asshole --)
“Hey,” she leaned forward over her menu and spoke low. “Don’t look, but who is that older guy at that table to your left. ‘Cause he’s been looking at us.”
Buddy glanced to his left.
“Don’t look!”
“It’s okay. That’s William Shatner.”
“Who is he?”
“Uh, he’s an actor. Star Trek? Captain Kirk?”
“Oh. I never saw that show.”
“Ah.”
“Is he still like a big star?”
“Well -- he’s -- sort of an icon.”
“Oh,” she said. “So why’s he looking at us?”
“He’s probably not looking at us, he’s looking at you.”
“Oh right. All the pretty women in here? Do you know him? Has he been in your movies?”
“Yeah, we did a picture once.”
“What was it called?”
“Um, Raging Fury.”
“Ah.”
“Y’know, Richard Gere’s over there to your left if you want to see a really big star.”
She glanced over. She didn’t seem too impressed. Or maybe she didn’t know who Gere was either.
“Have you made movies with him?”
“Uh, no. He’s a little out of my league. Or I’m out of his league.”
She turned to her menu again, with a grave expression.
“Oh my God, It is all so expensive though. Maybe I’ll just have a salad --”
“Oh, no, none of that,” said Buddy. “That’s not allowed. Here, give me your menu.”
She did this, and Buddy folded up both menus and laid them on the table.
“Okay, now we’re going to order like real Hollywood assholes.”
“How do you do that?”
“I got it from an Elmore Leonard book. The trick is not to look at the menu and just to torture the waiter with questions. Then he tells you stuff you could have learned just by looking at the menu in the first place. Then you ask him to ask the chef to make all sorts of adjustments on dishes that the chef has spent decades perfecting.”
“Oh, okay. But why?”
“It’s fun.”
She gnawed her lower left lip for a moment.
“Actually you just want me to order food I really want instead of just ordering the most inexpensive meal possible.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Okay. I usually order your way anyway,” she said.
(Kindly refer to the right hand column of this site to find an up-to-date listing of links to all other published episodes of Uncle Buddy’s House™, a Danny Thomas Production for the DuMont Network.)
In our previous episode our hero Arnold Schnabel at long last dragged the slightly inebriated Josh back to his suite in Cape May’s lovely Chalfonte Hotel; Josh immediately passes out on the couch and Arnold is about to take his leave when who should then enter but a man with a trumpet-case who introduces himself as “Gabriel”...
He laid his case on the table, then reached a hand into his inside jacket pocket.
“You should have seen him at the marriage feast at Cana, man. A scream and a half.”
He brought out a thin hand-rolled cigarette, and with his left hand he brought up a slim gold lighter from his side jacket pocket. He lit the cigarette, drew in a long slow drag, held in the smoke with his eyes closed, and slowly exhaled, slowly opening his eyes. It wasn’t tobacco he was smoking.
“You want a toke, Arnold?”
“No, I’d better not,” I said.
“It’s good stuff, man. Mellow. Help you sleep.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yea, verily, I say unto you. And dig: no hangover.”
“Well –”
He was holding out the reefer. It did look inviting, especially considering the no-hangover factor.
“Well, maybe just a puff,” I said.
The next moment I remember as a moment we were sitting in wicker rocking chairs out on the balcony, although I had no clear memory of going out there nor of how much time had passed.
Jazz music played in the living room, the sort of jazz that Elektra and her friends listened to. Apparently Gabriel had put a record on.
“He had his load on,” Gabriel was saying.
In a mild panic I glanced at my watch, but its radium dial read only five past three; so it was okay, I’d only lost ten minutes or so. I could spare that.
“So the man comes up to Josh, and he’s like, ‘We’re sorry, sir, we’re out of wine. You dig?'”
I paused, mulling, and then said, “Yes, I dig.”
My words felt like large wads of bubble gum, but apparently Gabriel understood them.
“No, man, I know you dig. I mean the old cat at the wedding said ‘You dig’. Pass the joint, brother.”
I passed him the reefer.
“Wait,” I said. “I thought it was Mary who told Je-”
“’Josh’, man. Be cool. He wants to be called Josh down here.”
“Sorry. But I thought it was Mary who told Josh about the wine running out.”
Now my words seemed like bubbles from bubble gum, floating through the warm dark air, but again I was understood.
“Not true, man. It was the old cat, the father of the bride. Don’t believe everything the Bible tells you, Arnold. Half that shit is bogus. Two thirds. At least. Where was I?”
“The old man told Josh they were out of wine.”
“Right. Dig. So Josh pulls out his pouch, and, as usual, he’s loaded with shekels. He reaches his hand in, pulls out a fistful. ‘Here,’ he says, ‘send somebody down to the wine-merchant, and tell him to bring back the good stuff this time. None of this Mogen David shit either.’ But the old cat, father of the bride, dig, he says, ‘O Lord, you don’t understand, we’ve already bought out the wine-merchant. There is like no wine to be had in all of Cana. But that’s cool, O Lord, we can, you know, brew up some frankincense tea --” But Josh won’t hear of it, ‘cause he’s got his load on, dig, and now he’s got his load on he wants to keep it on. So he says, ‘That pitcher, bring it here.’ ‘That pitcher of water, O Lord?’ ‘Yes, that one.’ One of the man’s sons brings it over. Old Josh he just waves his hand over the mouth of that pitcher, then he picks up his goblet. ‘Okay,’ he says, ‘now pour me a drink.’ The boy picked up the pitcher, gave it a shake, and then filled Josh’s goblet with the smoothest red wine you’ve ever tasted.”
It seemed as if I should say something here, but I couldn’t think of anything. Perhaps if I had been given an hour or two I might have come up with something.
But Gabriel continued.
“The thing is, Josh just didn’t want to call it a night. You’ve seen him in action.”
“Yes,” I said.
“His first miracle,” said Gabriel. “Thing was, his father and the uh --”
“The Holy Ghost?”
“Well, he goes by the the Holy Spirit now, but, you’re right, back then it was the Holy Ghost. Anyway, they had all agreed, the three of them ahead of time: no miracles. They figured if mankind couldn’t get the message without parlour tricks then the hell with ‘em, dig?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“But Josh forgot, ‘cause he wanted that wine. And so, well, after that first miracle, you know, man, you gotta give the crowd what they want. And next thing you know it’s raising Lazarus from the dead, multiplying the loaves and fishes, walking on the water, you name it.”
I was trying to get the energy up to say my goodnight and leave, but I didn’t want to seem rude, or as if I didn’t appreciate getting all this inside information.
“Now you take the last supper,” said Gabriel.
He looked at me with narrowed eyes from under his porkpie hat. He seemed to want just a little response before going on.
“You were there?” I managed to ask.
Now my words looked like the dialogue balloons in a comic book, floating there above and to the side of my head.
Gabriel filled his lungs, then passed the reefer back to me.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, exhaling a great cloud of smoke that blew away my word balloons. “I was leading the band again that night, same as at the Cana gig. Now don’t get me wrong, ninety-nine nights out of a hundred Josh is the most steady cat you can imagine –one, maybe two glasses of wine – cool as ice, but every one-hundredth time, I don’t know, the pressures just get too much for him. And that supper was one of those times. He knew what was coming.”
“The crucifixion?”
“Dig. Imagine having that bulls**t hanging over your head.”
“I’m sure I would drink too,” I said.
“So he gets his load on, and then all of a sudden he points at Judas, and he says, like, ‘You, man, you. I thought you were my brother. How could you, man?’ Judas is just getting ready to stick a piece of bread in his mouth, and he’s like, ‘What?’ And Josh just goes, ‘You, man.’ The band was on break. You could’ve heard a pin drop. Judas just puts his piece of bread down, gets up, and walks out. Everybody thought Josh was just being drunk and paranoid. Turned out he may have been drunk but he wasn’t paranoid."
He reached into his inside jacket pocket again, and brought out a whiskey flask. He held it out in my direction, but I shook my head no, decisively. He shrugged, unscrewed the cap, took a drink. He re-capped the flask and put it away.
"And then," he said, "he starts talking about the bread being his body, the wine being his blood. And everybody’s just staring at him, like, ‘Man, what the hell are you talking about, brother, because you sure ain’t making any sense.’ You dig?”
“Do you mean doIdig?” I asked. “Or was that everyone asking the, uh, silent question to, uh –”
“That time I was asking you, Arnold.”
“Oh.”
And now I forgot what the question was. I also didn’t care. But to be polite I told him I dug.
“Dig it,” he said. “Nobody knew what the hell he was talking about.”
I realized that I had been holding the reefer, and it was lit, but that I had not been smoking it. So I took a drag as Gabriel continued to talk. He had a very soothing voice, a gentle and rolling voice, and it seemed to flow in harmony with the jazz music and the warm night's breeze, the night sky, that enormous dark ocean out there...
And then I wondered, wasn’t this music keeping the other guests of the hotel up? I was thinking of suggesting to Gabriel that we turn the record off, or at least lower the volume, when he said, again:
“You dig?”
I didn’t want to admit that I hadn’t been paying attention, so again I said I dug.
“And so that was it, man,” he said. “The meaning of life, and of the whole universe. He said it just that once, and he made everyone there swear not to tell anyone and not to put it into the gospels. You won’t tell him I told you, will you?”
“No, no,” I said, and truer words I’ve never spoken.
“Thanks, man. I mean, it’s probably cool anyway, ‘cause I know he digs you.”
I stood up. The rocker I had been sitting in rocked against the back of my legs. The ocean beyond the rooftops moved like something breathing in the darkness, and the warm dark breeze smelled of the ocean. I remembered going over on the troop ship in 1943, standing on the deck at night, the ship and the whole convoy blacked out, I remembered looking out at the emptiness all around, this convoy of dark boats filled with human beings hell-bent on killing other human beings, I remembered wishing that I was back on the railroad, riding the trains back and forth through the countryside, and at the end of my trips going back to my mother’s house at B and Nedro by the factory. That was all I wanted then, just to go back to Olney and my job, to my mother and my neighborhood.
“You okay, man?” said Gabriel.
“Oh, sure,” I said. “But I should take off.”
“Sleep tight, man. I’m gonna sit out here and smoke some more of that joint if you’ll pass it over.”
I hadn’t realized I was still holding it. Oddly enough, even though I was pretty sure that we had been smoking it all this time, the reefer hadn’t burned down at all. I gave it to Gabriel.
We shook hands again.
“I’ll probably catch you tomorrow, man,” he said.
“So you’re staying here?”
“Oh, sure, I have my own room in there. It’s kind of my job, to keep an eye on Josh.”
“Okay. Well, good night, then,” I said.
“I’ll be jamming with those cats at the Mug again tomorrow night if you want to drop by.”
“Maybe I will,” I said.
“You know your way out?”
“Oh, sure.”
I went back in, Josh was still sound asleep on the couch. I made it to the door, and out.
Once I closed the door I noticed that the jazz music was no longer audible.
Like a ghost I floated down the stairs, through the lobby and down the front steps.
I turned up Howard. Soon I would be home, at last. It had certainly been an interesting day, but I was glad to bring it to a close.
I turned left on Columbia, turned right when I got to Stockton. The old town was finally quiet. They had probably thrown out the last of the revelers from Sid’s, from the Pilot House and the Ugly Mug and from the King Edward Room, perhaps even from Pete’s Tavern. Nearly everyone had drunk their fill and had finally collapsed into their beds if not into a convenient flower bed.
I turned left on Hughes, and a shuffling small figure made itself visible coming up the sidewalk from the other direction. It was too late to turn and run, or to jump behind a bush and hide. I continued forward, prepared for another demonic encounter, or as prepared as I could hope to be.
Fortunately it was only Buddy Kelly, someone I think I’ve mentioned in these pages before, but if I haven’t, then I’ll say he is a local fellow, a mechanic, somewhat troll-like in appearance, but an amiable-enough sort. It had been odd to find him in the company of Mr. MacNamara and Dick and Daphne and Steve at the VFW the night before last, but after all this is a democracy we’re living in, ostensibly, and those in the upper echelons of society are free to associate at will with those of the lower, although those of the lower do not enjoy the same freedom to associate at will with those above them.
“Arnold!” yelled Buddy, and he pumped my hand. His grip was powerful, despite his short stature, and he was quite drunk.
“Hello, Buddy,” I said.
“Damn, you look like s**t, Arnold.”
I had completely forgotten my scraped knees and elbow and hand. I’d also forgotten the pain attendant upon these contusions, but now that Buddy had brought attention to them I became aware again of the pain.
“Out on a spree?” he asked.
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“Ha ha!”
Did I mention he was smoking a cigar? Well, he was.
He wouldn’t stop shaking my hand, so I put my left hand on his right and managed to prize it away from mine.
“Well, good night, Buddy.”
“Wait! The major was looking for you, pal,” he said, as if pretending to give me a warning, or perhaps giving me a warning under the pretence of pretending to do so.
“Who is the major?” I asked.
“Major MacNamara.”
“Oh. Mr. MacNamara?”
“Him.”
“What did he want, do you know?”
“He wanted to know what you did with his daughter.”
“His daughter?”
“Daphne. His daughter.”
“Oh. Daphne.”
I flipped back through the chapters of my memory about four hundred pages, and finally hit on the appropriate passage.
“I left her at Pete’s Tavern,” I said. “But it was okay. She was with that old guy, Tommy?”
“Mrs. Biddle’s friend.”
“Right,” I said. “And they were with this nun, Sister Mary Elizabeth.”
“A nun, huh?”
“Yes,” I said. “But she was dressed in civilian clothes.”
“Well, that’s okay then. I mean priests go out in civvies some times, right?”
“That’s true,” I said. “In fact, come to think of it there was a priest in civilian clothes there, too.”
Why was I dragging Father Reilly into this? I didn’t have time to recount my entire night to Buddy. I needed my sleep.
“Who’s this joker?” said Buddy.
“Pardon me?”
Buddy pointed past me.
“That joker. He looks in worse shape than you do, Arnold.”
I turned. Halfway down the block but determinedly shambling toward us, dragging one leg, came Mr. Lucky, his ash-colored suit rumpled and torn, and a pale mist or smoke swirling up from his head and shoulders.
(Continued here, and well into the middle of the century at least.)
Our hero Buddy Best has agreed to have dinner with the enigmatic Cordelia, the daughter of the Ancient Mariner, the preposterous ham actor whom Buddy’s wife Joan has run off with...
(Go here to see our previous chapter, or here to go to Chapter One of this “searing indictment of the loose morals that run rampant in contemporary Hollywood” (J.J. Hunsecker, in the Olney Times.)
Buddy got there first. He slipped the maitre d’ a twenty and got one of the good tables on the back patio.
Lou the owner came over to chat.
“You expecting a Mrs. Best?”
“No, not tonight, Lou. A young lady.”
“Ah, a young lady, sure.”
Lou smiled slightly and touched the wing of his nose with his finger.
“No, it’s not like that, Lou. Mrs. Best and I have separated. We’re getting divorced I think.”
“Oh? You sad?”
“Devastated.”
“No!”
“No, just kidding, Lou. I’m okay, really. Hey, how about a glass of --”
“So this a young lady, she the reason you and Mrs. Best, uh --”
“No, no, not at all.”
“Ah, but life a goes on, and now you have dinner with a nice young lady.”
“Right. Um, how about a --”
“Man not made to sleep with a just a one woman. Is bad for the health, I firm believe that. You look at me, Mr. Best, twenty-eight year I been married and I always got a girl on the side.” He slid his eyes back and forth around the room, as if to make sure he wasn’t being eavesdropped on by private detectives. Then he made a series of quick short jabs with his right fist. “Is natural. Good for man, good for woman.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right, Lou. Hey, ya know what I could go for --”
“I know I’m right. So why you get a divorce? Why don’t you just keep you young lady friend, and, you know --”
“Well, you’re not really following me here, Lou, this young lady was not my lady friend. She isn’t my lady friend. She isn’t why I’m getting divorced.”
“So why you getting divorced?”
“Well, I’d really rather not get into it now, Lou, it’s kind of complicated. Hey, do you think you could get me a glass of wine? Something white to start, a little Frascati maybe --”
“Sure -- so you wife she leave you for anudder mudderfucker?”
“Uh, yeah, Lou, she did.”
“She didn’t!”
“Well, no, she did --”
“Porco dio!”
“So, you know, if not a Frascati, maybe --”
“Mudderfucker.”
“What?”
“Mudderfucker. Any man who sleep with another man wife.”
“Well, you know, it happens, Lou --”
Lou slid his eyes side to side again, looking for the detectives. Then he leaned forward and down toward Buddy, who had rarely wanted a glass of wine more than he did at this exact moment.
“You know I know people, Mr. Best.”
“People?”
“I know people who know people.”
“Pardon me?”
“You like I get this guy’s legs broke for you. Cheap. Like a couple hundred bucks. Hundred bucks a leg.”
Lou pursed his lips and nodded his head a few times.
“You doin’ the best thing. Dinner with nice young lady --”
He slid his eyes around the room again, then once more made a quick series of short jabs with his fist.
“Boom," he said. "Boom."
“So,” said Buddy, “how about that Frascati?”
“I get you a nice Avellino,” said Lou. “Is better.”
After only five minutes the glass of wine came and it wasn’t cold enough but it was wine. Some irritating song by Sting played and Buddy sipped his wine and looked around at all the other assholes who obviously had too much money to spend or else they wouldn’t be here. There were a few big shots: like Richard Gere, whom Buddy had met once on the Sony lot; Buddy gave him an index-finger salute and Gere waved back, although Buddy would have bet his house that Gere didn’t have the slightest fucking idea who he was. Tony Scott; a couple of years back at some party Buddy had had a chat about spaghetti westerns with him, but Scott was deep into a confab with a young actor whose name Buddy couldn’t quite summon -- Stephen Dorff? Skeet Ulrich? Buddy did the reciprocal-wave thing with Tom Rothman, who had been his boss for a few months back in the early 90s; Rothman was there with some agent and what Buddy thought might be a novelist guy he had seen for a few minutes on Charlie Rose once, Dave Eggers or David Foster Grant or whatever the hell his name was...
And, ah, someone Buddy actually knew to talk to, good old Bill Shatner, looking tanned and fit, sitting with what looked like a table of out-of-towners. Buddy went over to say hi. Shatner wasn’t a bad sort -- and besides, if they couldn’t get Delon or Lambert or Franco Nero, he just might be good for that head bad-guy part in their untitled August project. Sure enough, Bill asked Buddy when he was going to give him some work again, and Buddy asked Bill when he was going to lower his asking price. Bill introduced the yokels; they were his relatives from Canada. Buddy told Bill he’d stay in touch, then he said his wine was getting warm (or warmer, he should have said), told the relations it was nice meeting them, and went back to his table.
Okay, he’d done his little B-list schmoozing. He knew Bill Shatner, look out.
Buddy sat there, a middle-aged Hollywood hack, surrounded by other Hollywood hacks and the jackals of the hacks, and the jackals of the jackals -- what the fuck was he doing here? Oh, right. Waiting for the nut-bird to show up. And twenty minutes later he was regretting he hadn’t brought a book -- and trying and failing to catch the eye of someone who might possibly bring him another glass of wine, or, better still, a bottle -- when Lou himself -- not the maître d’ -- brought out this curvy brunette in a shiny pale green dress and an unbuttoned off-white cardigan and carrying an enormous shiny black purse in both hands, and Buddy thought, Okay, now that little number I wouldn’t mind waiting for, and then he realized he was doing just that, as Lou delivered her to his table with a sweep of his hand.
“I’m so sorry I’m late. I got off at the wrong stop. Thank you so much.”
The last sentence was to Lou, who was old-schoolishly pulling her chair out for her. And Buddy saw Lou glance down her décolletage as she sat down. And he didn’t blame him. Taking off and putting away his glasses to see better Buddy saw that her dress left uncovered almost one-third of her bosom, which was not only larger and more shapely than what he would have expected if he had thought about it at all beforehand, which he hadn’t -- but then again it had pretty much been hidden by that modestly-tailored potato sack the one other time they had met -- but which, if he was any judge, and Buddy considered himself a judge, was also -- amazingly for the circles Buddy moved in, amazing for L.A., really, and amazing anyway -- real.
Buddy had stood up, he was old-school too, and now he sat down again, forcing himself to look not at her body but at her face, which was magically resolving into that of the daughter-of-the-Mariner chick from a few months back, but with make-up and red lipstick.
(Please look to the right hand side of this page for an up-to-date listing of links to all other available episodes of Uncle Buddy’s House™, a Selmur Production. Minors must be accompanied by actual parent or legitimate guardian.)
It’s the weary butt-end of a strangely long and just plain strange Saturday night in August of 1963, and a man called Arnold Schnabel -- poet, brakeman and possible saint-- is finally wending his way home through the streets of the quaint seaside resort of Cape May, NJ, when he runs into the local inebriate Buddy Kelly, who, suddenly pointing past Arnold, indicates the approach of none other than the Dark Lord, also known as “Mr. Lucky”... 
