“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part 184: carpe diem

The Devil has transported our hero Arnold Schnabel into the pages of a novel called Ye Cannot Quench, a now-forgotten potboiler recounting a young woman’s adventures upon moving from West Virginia to the New York City of the mid-1950s...

Let us now rejoin Arnold (in the guise of his character, “Porter Walker”, romantic bohemian poet) at lunch in the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel, with our heroine Emily and her boss, the handsome young publisher Julian Smythe, with whom Arnold (sorry, “Porter”) has just closed a deal for the publication of his epic bohemian poem, The Brawny Embraces...

(Go here to read our preceding chapter; click here to return to the first chapter of this Gold View Award™-winning memoir.)

As I dipped the shrimp into the cocktail sauce and proceeded to swallow the thing with only the most rudimentary chewing I heard another swell of orchestral music, and I suspected that we were entering one of those sections of the story in which my presence was to be dispensed with.

I could feel myself dissolving away like an image on a movie screen.

I fought back.

I bit my lower lip, I breathed in deeply through my nose, I concentrated on the here-ness and the now-ness of where and when I was, in all its black-and-white immediacy.

“Lunch was splendid,” I heard Miss Evans’s magisterial voice from above, it sounded now like the voice of the Blessed Mother in The Song of Bernadette, “and fortunately Porter behaved himself for the rest of the --”

That’s where I would foil her.

“What does it mean?” I nearly shouted.

“I beg your pardon?” said Julian, holding the shell of a clam casino poised before his mouth.

“What does any of this mean?” I asked.

“What?” he said. “You mean what does lunch mean? Or just appetizers?”

“Porter,” said Emily, “don’t be a weirdo.”

“It’s all right, Emily,” said Julian. “Porter’s a poet after all.”

“What does any of this mean?” I asked. “This existence. This whole life. This planet.”

“I haven’t the faintest notion what any of it means,” said Julian. With a little cocktail fork he slid the clam and its thick hat of bacon into his mouth and chewed. “Personally I just live day to day.”

I heard Miss Evans’s heavenly voice rewrite herself in mid-sentence:

“ -- that is to say Porter behaved himself at least until after he had devoured his first shrimp.”

I was on a roll now.

“It can’t just be about shrimp,” I said. “Or clams.”

“Don’t forget the oysters,” said Julian, picking up one of those mollusks and poking it with his cocktail fork.

“Or oysters,” I said.

“Okay, then,” he said, transporting the oyster and its trappings into his mouth, “what’s it all about?”

“Porter,” said Emily, “stop talking nonsense and eat your food.”

“Oh, how are the shrimps, by the way, Porter?” asked Julian.

“Pretty good,” I said.

“Try some of these oysters and clams, old boy, they’re excellent.”

What could I do, I was still famished. I grabbed a cocktail fork, stabbed an oyster Rockefeller, and shoved it in. It was very good, and as I chewed I thought, Wait, why fight it? Why not disappear for a chapter or two? What do I care?

But the next second I felt, against all logic, that I must continue to fight for my existence, and a continuous existence at that; it might not be my real existence, but it was the only existence I had right now.

Indeed I felt, locked in my chest, that innate fear of oblivion which I have noticed in myself no matter how dull my life has been, that nagging desire to see another day no matter how poor its prospects, that fear of being nothing which has not only kept me alive through many dark nights but also awake, staring up into the oblivion which will someday claim me whether I like it or not.

I washed the oyster down with a gulp of the good beer.

But, wait, hadn’t I visited God’s house the previous day? Was that not proof of continued existence after death? A rather cold and bleak existence by all appearances, but better than nothing.

But then again what if yesterday’s visit was merely a fantasy, a dream? What if nothing existed on that far shore but nothing? If that were so then I would be nothing myself and unaware of the nothingness.

But still I was afraid.

And so it wasn’t so much the state of nothingness that I feared so much as the prospect of nothingness and the passage into nothingness.

The passage, that was the scary part, and the passage into the nothingness of not appearing on the printed page for twenty, thirty, who knew how many more pages, this awful passage was what I recoiled against now.

I wanted to live out each second of my (or Porter’s) life, and not be shuffled aside according to the artistic choice or whim of Miss Evans; yes, call it the sin of pride if you will, but I wanted not only to continue to live each moment as it came but I also wanted to live each of these moments with at least as much autonomy as I possessed in my other life, which wasn’t much, true, but better than none at all.

“You’re awfully quiet all of a sudden, Porter,” said Julian. Having eaten one shrimp, he grabbed another and immersed it in cocktail sauce.

I picked up one of the clams.

“I think I’ve figured it out,” I said.

“What? The meaning of life?”

“Yes,” I said.

I poked the clam and bacon with my fork, stuck it into my mouth.

“Well, don’t hold out on us, old boy.”

Emily, chewing in a very lady-like manner, stared at me with her head cocked slightly to one side.

I chewed also, and picked up my glass. I swallowed the clam and whatever else had been congealed to it, washed it down with the excellent cold beer. And then, and not a moment before the audience would have been streaming down the aisles in droves to the popcorn stand, I spoke:

“It’s living each second,” I said.

“Living each second,” said Julian.

“Yes,” I said.

I picked up my beer bottle, but it was empty.

“Carpe diem,” said Julian.

“Seize the day,” translated Emily.

Julian gazed at me as he chewed his shrimp, and I could imagine him thinking that I had said just the sort of thing someone like me might be expected to say. I felt abashed. Even now that I was a character in a novel I kept saying idiotic things. Why couldn’t I be someone like that guy in The Fountainhead, the Gary Cooper guy, and say something a little more original than “living each second”?

“Living each second to the fullest, I suppose,” said Julian, smiling indulgently.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. I was already bored with the subject, or rather with my own inadequacy as a philosopher.

“Well, ya know, that’s where I disagree with you,” said Julian.

Well, here was a curve ball. Was Julian also kicking against the conventional constraints of Miss Evans’s novel?

Emily had put her cocktail fork down.

“Julian,” she said, “I mean, Mr. Smythe, how can you say such a thing? I mean, isn’t life meant to be lived to the fullest, are we not meant to savor each moment, and, and --”

Julian looked away from her, raising his empty-again martini glass.

Arnold Stang was right there, he must have been waiting just off camera, perhaps enjoying a quiet cigarette while he awaited his cue.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Smythe, another round?”

“No, Maxie.” (Ah ha, so at least he really wasn’t called Arnold Stang. That was something to hang onto.) “Bring us,” said Julian, “I don’t know, a good Chevalier-Montrachet maybe. Wine okay with you two?”

I shrugged. Wine, beer, as long as it had alcohol in it --

“Oh, no, I shouldn’t --” said Emily.

“Okay,” said Julian, “a bottle of Chevalier-Montrachet then, the ’49 if you have it, Maxie, and make sure it’s cold.”

“Right away, Mr. Smythe --”

“Oh, and while you’re at it, bring out -- oh -- how about a nice Pétrus, you still have any of that ’45 left?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, bring one of those babies too and let it air out a bit.”

“Right away, sir.”

Off he scurried.

“Oh, but Mr. Smythe,” said Emily, “I couldn’t possibly drink any wine. I have to go back to the office after lunch.”

“Ah, better lay off the wine, then, Emily,” said Julian, taking out his cigarette case again and clicking it open.

“Cigarette, Porter?”

“No, thanks,” I said, only because I was still shoveling down shrimps and clams and oysters as if I was afraid of never being fed again.

This time Julian neglected to offer Emily a cigarette.

“So here’s my trouble with the living each moment to the fullest gag,” he said, lighting himself up and inhaling deeply.

He certainly seemed to be living each moment to its fullest, but I let the thought remain unspoken.

“I’ve tried it,” he said, “just trying to squeeze the juice out of every damn moment, and I’ll tell ya, it gets very -- what’s the word -- tiring. Yes, tiring.”

“I can see how it would get that way,” I said.

“You change your mind awfully quickly, Porter.”

“He’s mercurial,” said Emily.

“Right,” said Julian. And, tilting his head slightly away from Emily, he gave me a wink.

Was he on to me? Did he know I was only an impostor? A real-life composer of bad sonnets, trapped in the body of a composer of bad epics?

Emily now began to speak again, about how if one lived each moment to the fullest it wouldn’t matter if one got tired, that this tiredness would be a rich tiredness, and that after a good night’s sleep one would rise up bursting with a hunger for the new day.

I ate, and nodded my head.

Julian smoked, and nodded his head, almost imperceptibly.

At one point I noticed his eyes close, and his chin was beginning to descend to his broad chest when Arnold Stang, or Maxie, showed up with a tray with two bottles of wine and six wine-glasses on it.

Julian’s head jerked up at once.

“Ah, Maxie, you’re a life-saver. Let’s have some of that Montrachet first.”

Maxie set to work opening a bottle of white wine.

“Emily began to feel ever so slightly left out,” said Miss Evans from on high. “The two men -- intense young poet and devil-may-care young titan of publishing -- seemed to be about to bond with each other in a way she, a mere woman, never could. With either of them. She felt the tears well up in her grey eyes.”

Suddenly Emily pushed her chair back, grabbed her purse, and stood up.

Both Julian and I half-rose, but she waved us back down.

“I simply must powder my nose. Please, enjoy your wine, gentlemen.”

Off she went. I couldn’t be sure, but I think she may have been in a huff.

Maxie had gotten the cork out of the bottle, and now he poured a small amount into a glass he had placed in front of Julian.

“Oh, please, pour away, Maxie, and fill up my friend’s glass too.”

Maxie did this, then he put the bottle down and proceeded to open the other bottle, a red wine.

“Try your wine, Porter,” said Julian.

I tasted it, Julian watching me.

“What do you think?”

“Not bad,” I said.

Julian smiled and tasted his wine.

“Not bad at all,” he said. He leaned forward a bit towards me.

“Would you like me to decant the Pétrus, Mr. Smythe?” said Maxie.

“No, just leave it, thanks, Maxie,” said Julian.

Maxie put the bottle down and went away. Julian leaned a little closer, tapped his cigarette ash into the ashtray, some of the ash got onto the table cloth.

His lips started to move but his voice was drowned out by Miss Evans’s narration:

“In the ladies’ room Emily locked herself into a stall, sat down, took from her purse the lace handkerchief her grandmother had embroidered for her, and proceeded to burst into bitter tears.”

So, I had succeeded in continuing to exist even though the main narrative had moved elsewhere, and so had Julian. This was a triumph. Now I only had to get rid of that annoying voice from above.

“I’m sorry, Julian,” I said. “My mind wandered. What did you say?”

(Continued here, no one knows why.)

(Please look to the right hand side of this page for an often-current list of links to all other published chapters of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train To Heaven©. “A book for all seasons.” -- Harold Bloom, on Oprah.)

“Uncle Buddy’s House”, Chapter 34: cigarettes and coffee, bourbon and beer...and Diet Coke...

Buddy Best, Hollywood hack and aging ladies’ man, has somehow managed almost to have an affair with Cordelia, the actress daughter of the “Ancient Mariner”, the ham actor who has alienated Buddy’s wife’s affections; let us rejoin Buddy as he returns to his house on North Ivar Avenue in Hollywood, California, on a warm spring evening in that faraway year of 2003...

(Click here to go to our preceding episode, or click here to return to the first chapter of Uncle Buddy’s House©. “If The National Enquirer were a novel, then this would be it.” -- J.J. Hunsecker, in Family Circle.)

It was a long workday, and Buddy didn’t get home till after nine. Liz was sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop and coffee mug and a cigarette. Ming was curled up asleep on the table.

“Hey, Liz.”

“Hi, Dad.” She stubbed the cigarette out into an ashtray full of butts. “Did you eat? I could make you something.”

“No, I’m good, I went to Hoy’s with the crew, I should have called.” He came over and kissed her on the cheek. “What about you?”

“I had a tempeh sandwich. There’s some coffee that’s not too ancient if you want some.”

“No, thanks. Working on your book?”

“Sort of. Trying to get started.”

“Great. Where’s Big Phil?”

“He’s out somewhere, enjoying his bachelor life.”

“Good.”

Buddy glanced at the fridge but didn’t go to it. He sat down across from Liz. She tapped out something and then looked up.

“So how’s work?” she said.

“Good. Things are happening with this movie we’re in post
on --”

“This is like, Triggerwoman Something?”

“It was, yeah, Triggerwoman II, but now it’s -- uh -- we need a new title.”

He rubbed Ming’s head. She woke up and showed him her crotch.

“So what is it that’s happening?” said Liz.

“Well, the Sony guys saw a cut today with music, not the full-blown score because we need more money to do it the way the composer wants to do it --”

“Uh-huh --”

“And, it’s like pulling teeth with these motherfuckers, but now they’re gonna up the music budget, and also they’re open to a domestic theatrical release, instead of, you know, straight to video and cable --”

“Cool.”

“Yeah, but dig this, first we’re gonna try to go to some festivals, maybe Cannes if we can finish in time --”

“Oh my God, Cannes --”

“I know, can you believe it? I’ve never even been to a festival --”

“Oh my God, I want to see this movie.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty good for the crap we do.”

Buddy took off his glasses, folded them and put them in his shirt pocket. Beer beer beer. Or whiskey whiskey whiskey. Either one. Or both --

“When is the Cannes festival?”

“May, middle of May.”

“Wow, will you be ready by then?”

“It’s gonna be tight, but we’re used to working quick. What we’re not used to is having the budget to try to do it right. I mean they’re even giving us some money to do some CGI effects on the action scenes --”

“Whoa, look at you --”

“Yeah, it’s nuts. We used to do post in a couple of weeks, now it’s turning into this big fucking deal.”

“And aren’t you guys making another movie this summer?”

“Yeah, August, supposedly --”

He touched Ming’s belly, she resented that, got up, leapt from the table and left the room.

“So, you’re just as busy as a bee,” said Liz.

“Yeah, what the hell, it keeps me out of the pool halls --”

She caught him glancing longingly at the refrigerator.

“Dad, you can have a beer, if that’s what you want. It doesn’t bother me.”

“Okay, to tell the truth I could use one.”

He started to get up but she beat him to it, waving him back down with one hand. She opened up the fridge and took out an Anchor Steam.

“Bad news. It’s the last one, Dad.”

“That’s better than none.”

She popped the cap, got out one of his big beer glasses, poured it in, and brought it over to him. She was taking this housekeeping thing seriously.

“Thanks, kiddo.”

He took a drink and damn it was good. She sat down and lit a cigarette with her Bic lighter.

“I should have stocked up more for you. But you drink different brands, right?”

“Oh, yeah, I like to mix it up. But don’t worry about that, Liz, I can buy my own beer.”

“I don’t mind. If you tell me what you want I can get it for you.”

“Yeah, but half the time I don’t know what I want till I’m in the shop. And the AA gang probably wouldn’t like you hanging out in liquor stores.”

“That’s true,” said Liz. “Um, Dad --”

“What?”

“Joan was here. With -- Stephen.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. They took Deirdre out to dinner.”

“Ah. How was Deirdre?”

“She was -- Deirdre.”

Buddy didn’t say anything right away. Somehow during the course of the day he had managed to forget all about the Deirdre situation. What an asshole he was.

“Is she, uh, moving in with them tonight?”

“I don’t know. I think that’s one of the things that they’re supposedly talking about over dinner.”

“Right.”

Buddy fell quiet again.

“It’s fucked up, isn’t?” said Liz.

“Yeah,” said Buddy.

A couple of seconds ticked past.

“I guess there’s nothing, like, you can do, right? If Joan wants to take her.”

Buddy looked at his beer and didn’t say anything.

“Dad?”

He was quiet for a few more seconds, then --

“Joan’s her mother, I’m only the stepfather,” he said. “No, forget it. It’s tough for Deirdre, but, fuck it, life is tough. And maybe it’s better she’s with her mother.”

“Give me a fucking break,” said Liz.

She sat back, smoking, and Buddy wanted one of her cigarettes, even though they were only Camel Lights.

The house phone on the wall rang and Liz popped right up to grab it.

“Hello,” she said. She listened for a few seconds, smoking her cigarette, and then said, “Oh, look, uh, Mr. Best is here right now but he prefers not to take unsolicited phone calls, so, uh, sorry. Yeah. Okay. Sorry.” She hung it up. “Fucking telemarketers,” she said. “I hate them.”

“They’re just trying to make a buck,” said Buddy.

“I still hate them.” She stood there by the phone, smoking. “How’s your beer?”

“Good.”

“You want a whiskey or something?”

“What are you trying to do, send me to AA?”

“No, I just thought, you know, long day and all.”

“I’m cool with the beer right now,” said Buddy, although come to think of it a bourbon would be nice.

“So this Stephen guy is weird, isn’t he?” said Liz, her voice going a little high.

“Oh, you met him.”

“Yeah. I’m gonna have a Diet Coke. This coffee is getting to me.” She went to the fridge, took out the jeroboam of Diet Coke. “What’s his deal, anyway?” she said. “This Stephen?”

“His deal? He’s a retard.”

“I could tell that. So that’s just it? He’s a retard?”

“Yeah, that about sums it up.”

With her cigarette between her lips she poured herself a good tall stiff one of the Diet Coke.

“Women,” she said. She put the bottle back in the fridge and slammed the door. Taking the cigarette out of her mouth she took her soda glass in both hands and took a drink. She breathed once, twice, and then drank again. “What a stupid cunt,” she said. She looked at Buddy. “Joan.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, Joan. What’s her problem?”

“How the hell would I know?”

She started pacing around with her glass of Diet Coke.

“Women are fucked-up, man.” Pacing. “Fucked up.”

More pacing.

“Hey, Liz, sit the fuck down, you’re making me nervous.”

“Sorry.” She sat back down, drawing her legs up Indian-style. She stubbed out her cigarette thoroughly. “Well,” she said, “he’s a retard and she’s a retard. But, Dad --”

“Yeah --”

“Where are you going with this Cordelia thing?”

Whoa, snuck up on him.

“I’m not going anywhere with it.”

“Are you going to continue -- seeing her?”

“I -- I’m not really seeing her now, Liz. It -- we -- anyway, she just got a movie job, she’s going on location for about six weeks.”

“Oh. That’s good. I mean for her that’s good. When does she leave?”

“Tonight. She already left.”

“Oh. Where to?”

“Canada. Vancouver and around there.”

“Oh. That’s really great for her. Is it much of a part?”

“It’s the female lead.”

“Oh my God, that’s so great. Is it a big movie?”

“Nah, it’s like the crap we do, except there’s probably a few more mil in the budget, a vampire picture. But Christopher Lambert’s starring in it.”

“Oh I love him.” She lit up another cigarette. At this rate Liz would be dead of cancer at thirty. “That’s really great for Cordelia,” she said, exhaling. What the hell, one addiction at a time.

“Yeah, It’s a good break,” said Buddy.

She looked at her computer screen for a bit.

“Did you set it up for her, Dad?”

“I helped her get the audition.”

“Uh huh.”

She tapped something on her keyboard.

“Listen, Liz --”

She tapped something more and then she looked at him.

“Yes?”

“There’s nothing going on with her and me. It was just -- I don’t know, things got a little out of hand.”

“I’ll say.”

Buddy blinked a couple of times, defensively, and then realized he was doing it and took a drink of beer and that was the last of the beer, fuck it. Of course he did have whiskey, and there were a couple of bottles of red wine on the rack, but...

“So, do you like her?”

Buddy took a beat here.

“Yeah, I like her. I mean, what’s not to like?”

“But I mean do you really like her?”

“Liz, what did I just finish -- there’s nothing --”

“You’re in love with her.”

“What?”

“You’re in love. I saw the way you were looking at her.”

“All right, you’re really being a woman now.”

“What do you expect me to be, a man?”

“Okay, let’s just talk about something else.”

“You’re in love with her.”

“Oh, fuck you, Liz.”

“Dad, I can’t believe you said ‘fuck you’ to me.”

“Sorry.”

“You are in love.”

“Okay. Just for that I’m having a bourbon.”

“Let me!” She got up. “On the rocks?”

“Yeah, with just a little water. Thanks.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Neither of them said anything while she fixed the drink. She put it in front of him.

“Thanks, Liz.”

“You’re welcome, Dad.”

She sat down again in her chair, drawing her legs up. She smoked her cigarette and looked at Buddy.

“But I still can’t believe you went to bed with Joan’s boyfriend’s daughter. That is really fucked-up, Dad.”

“Yeah, well -- anyway, we -- um -- she and I --”

“What?” said Liz.

“Never mind.”

“Don’t do that. I hate that when people do that. What?”

“We didn’t -- uh -- have -- like --”

“You didn’t fuck her?”

“No. I didn’t.”

“But that’s only because Philip barged in, right?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess.”

“What do you mean, you guess?”

Okay, he wasn’t going to go into the whole searching-for-a-condom plot twist.

“So in other words you might as well have,” said Liz.

“Might-as-well-have isn’t quite the same as doing it. At least not in my book.”

She did something on her computer and then closed the lid. She looked at Buddy.

“Well, who am I to be critical, right? Little Miss Fuck-Up. You want to watch a movie, Dad?”

“You’re not a fuck-up, Liz.”

She stubbed out the cigarette, in the ashtray with about twenty other stubs.

“Dad, by any reasonable definition I’m a fuck-up.”

“No --”

“No, Dad, but listen, that doesn’t mean I have to keep being a fuck-up all my life, right?” She looked right at him. “Right?”

“Right,” said Buddy.

“Okay then,” she said. “Now let’s watch a movie. Do you want to?”

“You know me, I always want to watch a movie. What do you want to see?”

“Let’s just rent something trashy.”

“That’s good for me,” said Buddy.

(Click here to go to our next thrilling episode.)

(Hie thee hence to the right hand column of this page to find what might be an up-to-date list of links to all other previously broadcast episodes of Uncle Buddy’s House™, as aired on the Dumont Radio Network, Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 8 PM, starring William Bendix as Buddy Best.)

“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part 183: bullfighter

The bad news for our memoirist Arnold Schnabel is that his nemesis the Devil (AKA “Mr. Lucky”) has transported Arnold into a now-obscure novel of 1950s New York (Ye Cannot Quench by Gertrude Evans, author of numerous other steamy potboilers such as Fear Not The Dragon; Swiftly To The Dawn; As The Curtain Falls; Two Days and Two Nights in Marrakesh; Love But The Stranger).

The good news is that Arnold (or his “character” the romantic poet Porter Walker, and with the help of the novel’s plucky heroine Emily) has just closed a deal for his new epic with the dashing young publisher Julian Smythe...

(Click here to review our previous chapter, or go here to return to the very first chapter of this Gold View Award™-winning masterpiece.)

Arnold Stang came over just then with a tray and the fresh round of drinks. He laid Emily’s and Julian’s drinks down, and Julian picked up his martini.

“Porter, may I propose a toast. To your book: may it garner a swell review from Orville Prescott, and may it be chosen for the Book of The Month Club.”

Arnold Stang reached around me and filled my glass with Pilsener. He smelled of sweat, and despair.

“To Porter’s book,” said Emily, raising her Old Fashioned. “To his wonderful poem, the bra, knee and braces!”

“What?” I said.

“To your poem, the bronny 'n' braces,” said Emily, looking puzzled.

“That last part, is that some, uh, Scottish toast, or --”

“It’s the title of your poem!”

“Oh,” I said. “Right.” The Brawny Embraces. “The brawny embraces. I mean, The Brawny Embraces.”

“You’re a very strange fellow, Porter,” said Julian. “Now lift your glass.”

He didn’t have to ask me twice, and we all drank. Brawny Embraces, I repeated silently, in my echoing brain, The Brawny Embraces, I must remember that.

“Where’d you get that title anyway?” asked Julian, seeming not so much interested as trying to be polite.

“Oh,” I shot back, always one for the clever rejoinder.

“The Brawny Embraces,” he said.

“Yeah, uh --”

“He got it from Walt Whitman,” said Emily. “How does it go, Porter?”

Walt Whitman, another immortal writer I hadn’t read.

“Well, uh, let’s see --” I said, stalling. One never knew, an atom bomb might fall the next second and then I’d be off the hook.

Fortunately Emily, her eyes glinting, began to recite:

“’Unfolded out of the strong and arrogant woman I love,’” she said, “’only thence can appear the strong and arrogant man I love.’”

She stared at Julian.

“Well, shall we order then?” said Julian.

He raised his hand and Arnold Stang was right there, pad and pencil at the ready.

After a firm interrogation of Stang (and with brief consultations with Emily and me) Julian ordered our food for us, and then as Arnold Stang hustled off I could have sworn I heard a wave of background music, like in a movie, some sweeping orchestral assault, and then I heard the unmistakable voice of Miss Evans herself, speaking as if from the heavens in her Katharine Hepburn voice.

“Emily cast stolen glances over her drink and through the redolent cigarette smoke at both Walker, strangely triumphant in his contract negotiations, and at Julian, radiating power as always but now strangely vulnerable in a way she could not quite define to herself. Was it that he, now that he was not in the offices of Smythe & Son, but in a hotel restaurant, seemed not so much the dashing son of the firm’s owner but just another perhaps too-handsome young fellow, perhaps all too aware of his possible inadequacies?”

While the above narration was being spoken Julian’s lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear a word he said.

This was a bit much.

I was prepared to deal with being a character in Miss Evans’s novel, at least for a while until I figured out a means of escape, but I was hardly prepared to listen to her prose.

I decided I must fight back. I must assert myself and fight against Miss Evans’s characterization and her plot line.

I could start by attempting to override her narration.

“May I interrupt for just a moment,” I said.

Julian seemed taken aback. So did Emily.

“Porter --” said Emily.

“No, it’s perfectly all right,” said Julian. “I suppose I was going on a bit. You’re probably not even interested in cars anyway, are you, Porter?”

“Well, frankly, no,” I said.

“I suppose you don’t even have a car.”

Somehow I doubted it.

“No,” I said.

“Ah, but soon, old man, as soon as you cash that check! Get yourself a nice used Jag XK120 or something --”

“No, I don’t think so,” I said.

“No?”

“No.”

“But wouldn’t you like to hit the road, like our friend Kerouac?”

“Not really,” I said.

“No interest in bumming around the country, the highways and byways?”

“No," I said. "Not especially, I mean."

“Porter’s already done all that!” piped Emily.

“Really?” said Julian. He clicked open his cigarette case and offered it to Emily, who had let her cigarette burn out in the ashtray. She took another.

“Yes,” said Emily. “He’s hitch-hiked all over the country, and ridden the rails.”

“Rode the rails,” said Julian. He took out a cigarette for himself. “You mean like in the movies?”

“Yes,” said Emily. “And he worked as a dishwasher, a lumberjack, a cotton-picker.”

“No kidding,” said Julian, forgetting to offer me a cigarette, but perhaps it was just as well. “That’ll make excellent jacket-copy.”

He lit Emily’s cigarette with his gold- or silver-plated lighter.

“Porter was also a bullfighter in Mexico.”

“Really?” said Julian.

“And a gaucho in Argentina.”

He lit his own cigarette.

“Those are the sort of cowboy fellows, right?”

“Yes. He also sailed all over the world in a tramp steamer.”

“Fascinating.”

I confess I was just about to reach into his still-open cigarette case and help myself to one, but Julian idly closed it up and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

“And he went up into the Himalayas and studied at the feet of a yogi,” said Emily.

“Terrific,” said Julian, gazing around at the restaurant, probably hoping to find a writer without such a romantic personal history.

“It’s all in his poem,” said Emily.

“I look forward to reading it,” said Julian. “So, Porter, what was it you were going to say?”

I drew a blank, a complete blank. I had nothing prepared, not a thing in mind.

But now I felt guilty, both for interrupting him while he was apparently happily talking about cars, and for myself having such an interesting past.

“I -- just wanted to say that I’m very happy to be published by your firm, Mr. -- uh --” I couldn’t remember his last name. Smith? No, no, it was Smy--

“Please, call me Julian, Porter.”

“Julian,” I said. “I’m very happy that you’re publishing my book.”

“Well, I’m glad, Porter. That’s nice of you to say that. Even if you do drive a hard bargain.”

“I don’t care about the money,” I said. “You don’t have to give me a -- a what do you call it --”

“Advance?”

“Yes, an advance. You can skip that.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Suddenly I remembered that I didn’t have a job.

“Well, uh, maybe just a small stipend,” I said, improvising. “Just till the book starts making money. If it makes any money.”

“You are indeed a strange fellow, Porter. Tell me, what do you think a fair stipend would be?”

“I don’t know, really,” I said.

“Well, what’s your rent?”

“My rent --”

“Fifty dollars a month,” said Emily, who knew a lot more about me than I did.

“Fifty a month,” said Julian. “Not bad for this town. All right, how about if we let you have fifty a week for, say, the next three months, just till the royalties start streaming in.”

“That should be fine,” I said.

“And this stipend will be against your royalties of course.”

“Oh, of course,” I said. “With the slide rule.”

“Sliding scale.”

“That’s what I meant to say,” I said.

“Well, all right then,” said Julian. Then, “What? You look as if something else is on your mind.”

“I wonder if I could have it in cash?” I asked. I was concerned, because it had just occurred to me that I probably didn’t have a bank account.

“Sure, Porter. Just roll by the offices every Friday after four and the cashier will take care of you.”

“Great,” I said.

“Good. Deal. Let’s shake on it before you change your mind again.”

We shook on it.

“Now you can concentrate on your writing, Porter,” said Emily.

Right, I thought. But what I really intended to concentrate on was getting out of all this. I was already missing my old life. I never knew I had it so good. And I missed Elektra. I hoped she wasn’t waiting for me, wondering where I was.

“Emily gazed through half-lowered lashes at Porter,” said Miss Evans’s voice from on high. “Such a mercurial fellow! But she wondered, would success spoil him? Would the moody passionate poet grow fat and complacent?”

Fortunately, Arnold Stang arrived with appetizers for the table just then: a shrimp cocktail, oysters Rockefeller, and clams casino.

My mouth watered.

I grabbed a shrimp and tried not to listen to Miss Evans’s narration.

(Continued here, and, at this rate, for at least seventeen more years.)

(Kindly go to the right hand column of this page for a scrupulously current listing of links to all other available chapters of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train To Heaven©. “Probably the greatest memoir in the English language since Erroll Flynn’s My Wicked, Wicked Ways” -- Harold Bloom, in The Christian Science Monitor.)

“Uncle Buddy’s House”, Chapter 33: the part

The time: the spring of 2003.

The place: Hollywood, USA.

Our hero: Buddy Best, producer, writer, director, the man responsible for such cinematic classics as Blunt Force Trauma, Song of a Dead Man, Vampire University, Kiss Me Then Kill Me, and Shadow of the Sun.

(Click here to read our previous episode, or go here to read the first chapter of Uncle Buddy’s House©, recently short-listed for the long list of the possible short-listed nominees for the J.J. Hunsecker Award for Best Novel Adapted From a Motion Picture Adapted From a Novel.)

The next morning, Friday, at around eleven o'clock he was in Harvey’s office with Harvey, Iggy, Heather, Debbie, Lenny, the whole mob, and his cellphone vibrated in his pocket. He took it out, didn’t recognize the number, but then --

He excused himself and went out into the outer office.

“Hello,” he said.

“It’s me,” she said.

“Hi.”

“I got the part. I got the lead.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No.”

There was good old Marlene sitting there at her desk, with her eagle eye.

“Hold on,” said Buddy.

He went into his office and shut the door.

“So,” he said, “get the fuck outa here.”

“No, I have it if I want it. Well, it’s not really the lead, Christophe is the lead, but I have the lead female. But I told weirdo Joe I needed to make a phone call before saying yes.”

“A phone call?”

“To you, you big dummy.”

“Oh, right. So -- you’re still there, where, at Paramount?”

“Uh-huh. I’m at this place called Stage 18 and I’m using one of their phones.”

“Okay. So, what’s he offering you?”

She told him, and to be honest it was a hell of a lot more than Buddy would have paid her.

“Take it,” he said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Take it. I mean, if you had an agent maybe you could get more --”

“But I don’t have an agent, and this way I’m not giving the agent a percentage.”

“That’s true. So go for it.”

“Okay then. Now I’m a movie star.”

“Yeah, you sure are. So. How’d you like Christopher, I mean Christophe?”

“Oh, he was nice.”

“Great. Did you tell him you know me?”

“No.”

“Oh, well --”

“Buddy, let’s have lunch. I mean if you’re free.”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to see each other any more.”

“It’s just lunch. I mean for-real lunch, to celebrate. And I’m buying.”

“Well, I’d love to have you buy me lunch, but unfortunately I’ve got this supposedly important business lunch I gotta go to, and after that we’re showing these people a cut of our movie -- anyway, I’m tied up all afternoon. But look, let’s have dinner, and you can buy.”

“I can’t, Buddy, I have to go to Canada tonight if I say yes.”

“Tonight?”

“Yeah. Shooting starts Monday and I’ll have to go up for costume fittings and stuff over the weekend. He wants me on a seven-twenty flight, and, you know, you’re supposed to get there early at the airport. Plus I have to go back to Stephanie’s and get my things. And I have to stop by the coffee shop and tell them I’m not working there anymore, and --”

“Well, what the hell,” said Buddy. “Where you going exactly, Vancouver?”

“Yeah, we’ll be shooting there and out in the country in different places.”

A moment’s silence.

“How long you up there for?”

“Six weeks. Well, six weeks starting Monday.”

“Wow, that’s real Hollywood. We usually shoot our shit in four weeks, tops.”

“Yeah. Well, I guess I better get off. They’re waiting for me.”

“Okay --”

“I’ll call you,” she said. “Can I call you?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay.”

“Uh, bring some warm clothes.”

“I will.”

“Call me from there, okay?

“Of course I will, dumdum.”

“All right --”

She’d hung up.

Buddy folded up his phone.

He stood there for a minute, then he went back in to his job.

(Continued here, and until there’s not a dry eye in the house.)

(Kindly go to the right hand column of this page for an up-to-date listing of links to all other published chapters of Uncle Buddy’s House™, as featured on The Schlitz Playhouse, Tuesdays at 9PM (EST) on the Dumont Television Channel. “Schlitz -- the beer that made Milwaukee famous!”)