“Uncle Buddy’s House”, Chapter 13: civil question

On the domestic front, our hero Buddy Best’s wife has left him, and his son has moved back home after losing his job and breaking up with his own wife; Buddy has also had to deal with a spot of school trouble concerning his stepdaughter Deirdre, and he has received a disquieting phone call from his former wife. However, Buddy’s career as a B-movie auteur continues...


(Click here to go to the preceding episode; latecomers may go here for the beginning of this “seedy epic of modern-day Hollywood” -- J.J. Hunsecker, nationally syndicated columnist.)

Down in Culver City next day they screened Iggy’s first rough cut of Triggerwoman II.

Everyone was quiet after the lights came up. Iggy was sitting between their editor Maxine and their composer Lenny, two rows in front of where Harvey and Buddy and Debbie Greenberg and Heather all sat together. Iggy turned around.

“Shit,” he said. “It’s not bad.”

“I know,” said Buddy.

Fucking Iggy, he’d taken only a slightly-better-than-average Harvey/Buddy script and somehow made something original and good out of it, the little prick.

“It’s really good,” said Harvey.

“Except for the Ancient Mariner,” said Heather, and then she looked a little abashed because she’d mentioned the bad actor who’d stolen Buddy’s wife. “Well, anyway, this is the best thing we’ve ever done.”

“Let’s go have lunch,” said Harvey. “We need to talk about this. What about Mi Ranchito?”

“Ah, fuck, not Mexican, I had Thai last night,” said Debbie, “you’re gonna kill my sphincter.”


They rendezvoused at the Sagebrush Restaurant and Bar because it was nearby and because there was a chance they could get a big table on the patio where they could smoke. They accomplished this and ordered some drinks.

“Guys,” said Heather, “we can’t just toss this one out there.”

“Just what I was thinking, Heather,” said Buddy.

“What, it’s that good?” said Iggy. He was tired, he’d been up all night in the editing room, and out here in the L.A. daylight he looked pale and you could see the circles under his eyes. Maxine the editor always looked that way. She was an old vet who’d worked at Columbia for about a hundred years and she didn’t say much.

“Yeah, it’s that good,” said Harvey. “Whaddaya think, Lenny?”

Today had been Lenny’s first exposure to the movie. He hadn’t even read the script.

“Is great.” Lenny was from Russia, or from Odessa, anyway, if that was still part of Russia. “Is definitely not your usual shit. Is a like a cross between Jean-Pierre Melville and Sergio Sollima. But definitely modern; Iggy, you got your own style now.”

Not everyone there caught the Melville and Sollima references, but anyway --

“So, you got any ideas, comrade?” said Buddy.

“Oh, yeah, already I got ideas, but the ideas I got I gonna need a bigger music budget.”

“What the fuck?”

“I hear some orchestral shit. We gonna need maybe twenty, thirty pieces some parts, lotsa strings -- maybe more.”

“Can’t you just use a synthesizer, Lenny? You know, samples?” said Debbie.

“Sure we can, but then it sound like shit. You want it sound good, you get real fucking musicians.”

“Excuse me, maestro.”

“Maybe we can get some more money from Sony,” said Buddy, although that would be a first. (A subdivision of Sony financed Harvey and Buddy‘s pictures with pre-sales for the overseas theatrical rights.)

“We should take it to the festivals,” said Heather. “Do you think we could get Sony to take it to Cannes?”

“Deadline for Cannes is April first, honey,” said Debbie.

“Fuck,” said Heather.

“Well,” said Harvey, “we could still maybe show it at Cannes, even if it’s not in competition.”

“Wow,” said Iggy. “Fuckin’ Cannes. When is Cannes?”

“It’s like mid-May,” said Debbie. “I think you gotta have your print in on like the tenth of May.”

“Shit, we can make that,” said Iggy.

“All right, all right, we’re getting ahead of ourselves a little here,” said Buddy.

“But, Buddy,” said Heather, “this is not just another straight-to-video piece of shit, we gotta get the word out on it and get it into the theatres, and I mean domestic theatres, art houses, platform it --”

“We meet with Sony Wednesday,” said Deb. She put her hand on Buddy’s thigh.

“You guys have to convince them,” said Heather.

Now Debbie was lightly stroking Buddy’s thigh. What up with that?

The handsome waiter was there, laying out the drinks.

“Okay,” said Harvey. “First thing, we gotta really make it good.”

“I can make it better,” said Iggy. “I mean Maxine and Lenny and me can make it better.”

Old Maxine just sat there smoking a cigarette. She didn’t get excited by much.

“I know you can,” said Harvey. “All right, look, Lenny, get to work, don’t worry about the budget right now, work with Iggy and write the score you want to write, we’ll see about the budget later.”

“You wanta save money on the music budget, lose the piece-of-shit rock songs,” said Lenny.

“I wouldn’t mind that,” said Buddy. He gently removed Debbie’s hand from his thigh, but he gave it a little squeeze before letting it go, just to show he wasn’t a complete asshole. “What do you think, Ig?”

“I am so over piece-of-shit rock songs on the track,” said Iggy.

The waiter stood there smiling with his pad on the back of his cocktail tray.

“All right,” said Harvey, “let’s order and we’ll talk. I shouldn’t but I’m gonna have the meatloaf.”

“Fuck!”

This was Iggy.

“What?” said Bud.

“If only the fucking Mariner wasn’t in it!”

“Yeah, well, life is tough, kid,” said Harvey.

Buddy’s cellphone started buzzing away in his pocket. He took it out, and because it was his home number he flipped the phone open.

“Hey, Dad.”

“What up?”

“Dad, call Liz, she’s freaking out or something.”

“What, call her now? I’m eating.”

“Well, I’m telling you she’s freaking.”

“She’s in Milwaukee?”

“Yeah, she’s in Milwaukee.”

“All right, give me her number.”

“You don’t know her number?”

“I don’t know her number, that’s why I’m asking.”

“You need to learn how to program your cellphone, dude.”

“I will, now what’s the number?”

Buddy went out onto the sidewalk to make the call.

“Dad?”

“Yeah, sweety, what’s going on?”

“What did Philip tell you?”

“He said you were freaking out.”

“I am not freaking out.”

“You sound freaked out.”

A male voice in the background told her to get off the fucking phone.

“Dad, I gotta go.”

Buddy didn’t say anything; a long second passed by.

Then the background voice yelled for her to hang the fucking phone up.

“All right,” said Buddy, “look, I’m coming out there, next plane.”

“No, it’s all right.”

“I’ll be there tonight.”

She or someone else hung up the phone.

Buddy stood there for half a minute and then he called the office and asked Marlene to get him on the soonest flight out to Milwaukee.

“Why are you going to Milwaukee?”

“I have to -- look, I just got to get to Milwaukee, okay, Marlene?”

“I only asked a civil question.”

Buddy took a breath, then let it out slowly.

“Hey, man,” she said, “is everything okay? Is Liz okay?”

“Um, I don’t know, Marlene. I don’t think so.”

“I’m sorry, Buddy. I’ll get right on it. First class, right? No connecting flight?”

This was Buddy. He hated to fly and if he had to fly he flew first class, preferably with no connecting flights, and with as many drinks as he could possibly cajole from the flight attendants, supplemented often with tranquilizers he would bum from friends.

“No, just get me the first flight you can and call me back. I’m gonna try and quick run home and get a bag and a change of clothes.”

“If you want I can pick you up and drive you to the airport.”

Buddy rarely drove his own car to the airport because after the return flight he was generally too incapacitated to drive it home.

“That’s all right, I think I’ll just take a cab.”

“I don’t mind picking you up, Buddy.”

“No, you better stay at the office.”

Buddy didn’t want to have to talk to Marlene, or to anybody.

(Continued here. Kindly look to the right hand side of this page for all other published episodes of Uncle Buddy’s House™, A Desilu Production starring Mike Connors as Buddy, and co-starring Gail Fisher as Marlene.)

“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part 162: “She laid her hand on me, and she moved through the fair…”

Our previous chapter ended with our memoirist Arnold Schnabel and his celestial friend “Josh” still in the process of trying to leave a somewhat disquieting little party in a weirdly large apartment above Cape May NJ’s happening hotspot the Pilot House (“Sway and Swing to The Soothing Sounds of Summer, with ‘Freddy Ayres and Ursula™’ -- as seen on WFIL TV’s ‘Chief Halftown’ Show!”) in the old port of Cape May, NJ, on this sultry Saturday night in August of 1963...

(Click here to go to the first chapter of this Gold View Award©-winning chef-d'œuvre, “Longer than the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita combined, and infinitely more rewarding than all of them.” -- Harold Bloom.

For a moment or two no one said anything else. I think we were all simply watching Magda walk away in her shimmering white gown. Halfway across that enormous room she began to look more like liquid than substance, and then as she moved even farther away she seemed more like mist than liquid.

She made a right turn into a far-off hall, and then she disappeared.

“Well, good night, everyone,” I said, touching Josh’s arm.

“Stay for another bowl, Arnold,” said Mr. Arbuthnot, his finger tamping a refill into the hashish pipe’s bowl. “What’s your damn hurry?”

“It’s Josh,” I said. “He really should go home.”

“Yeah, I entirely agree,” said Josh.

“Wait,” said Ursula, and she glided up from her seat with an amazing gracefulness for a woman of her years. She came over and stood before Josh, whose arm I still held. She had lit another cigarette in her black holder, and she held it up with one hand, smoke drifting from one dry and cracked corner of her scarlet mouth.

“Be careful with her, young fellow.”

“With Magda?” said Josh.

“Who else am I talking about? Jean Harlow maybe?” She put her free hand on Josh’s shirt. “Don’t f**k with her,” she said. “If you do I promise you, you’ll regret it.”

“Ha ha,” said Mr. Arbuthnot, “I’d listen to her if I were you, my good man!”

“What a dame,” said Mr. Jones, gazing at Magda admiringly and then lighting a cigarette with a Pilot House match.

“Now, Ursula,” said Freddy, from his seat, sipping his absinthe, “be nice. I’m sure we have nothing to fear from this nice gentleman.”

“Maybe not, Freddy,” said Ursula, still fingering the cloth of Josh’s shirt. “But he has something to fear, I tell you that.”

Josh took a drag of his Pall Mall

“I assure you I shall behave with perfect decorum towards your granddaughter,” he said.

She took her hand away from his shirt and gave him a slight tap on the cheek.

“No need to go too far,” she said. “No woman wants a perfect man. They may say they do but they lie. They want a man with just a soupçon of, of -- oh, my --”

Josh had taken her hand in his, and now he bowed his head and kissed it.

“You are some kind of charmer,” said Ursula.

“Good night, madame,” said Josh.

I pulled him along and away.

“Good night, everyone,” I said.

“Good night, fellas,” said Freddy.

“Now the party really begins,” said Mr. Arbuthnot.

“What a pair of lightweights,” said Mr. Jones. “Let’s put some more music on! How about some hot jazz?”

We made it to the stairhead, and I let Josh go first. As we went down we could hear the cackling laughter and badinage of the old people.

Josh stumbled on one step, I reached down and grabbed his arm, but then he waved his hand that he was okay, and continued on down.

At the bottom of the stairs, with his hand on the door knob, Josh turned to me.

“I’m in trouble, aren’t I?” he said.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t think I’m qualified to answer that, Josh.”

“Okay, fine. But if you had to say, just off the top of your head without thinking about it, if you had to -- am I in trouble, or not?"

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m in trouble,” he said.

He dropped his cigarette to the tiled floor, which was already well-littered with butts. He ground it out with the sole of his sandal. “Well, okay, let’s go.”

He opened the door and went out into the hallway, and I followed, shutting the door behind me.

Another song was on the jukebox now, a girl asking some boy to go out with her.

Just as Josh was about to leave the hallway and go out into the main part of the bar he stopped and held me back with his hand.

“Wait,” he said. “Step back.”

I went backwards a couple of steps and Josh came with me.

“All right,” he said. “Carefully -- carefully take one step and then lean forward and look down to the right, down at the end of the bar. Just a quick look.”

I did as he told me.

Down at the far end of the bar sat and stood, in order, Mrs. DeVore, seated, her husband Bob standing to her left, and to his left sat Miss Evans, with Jack Scratch seated next to her; standing in between Scratch and Miss Evans was St. Thomas. And standing between Miss Evans and Mr. DeVore was a tall dark handsome gentleman in an ash-colored suit. He had a moustache and very dark shiny hair.

“See that tall guy?” asked Josh.

“Yes, I said.

Josh pulled me back.

“The nerve of that guy.”

“Who is it?” I asked.

“He has other names,” said Josh. “But for our purposes, let’s just call him Lucifer.”

I had been afraid Josh would say something like that.

(Continued here, and indefinitely, if not infinitely. And kindly turn to the right hand side of this page to find what one hopes is a listing of links to all other available chapters of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train To Heaven©, recently voted “most sublime memoir ever” by the Knights of Columbus, Olney Chapter, Philadelphia PA.)

“Uncle Buddy’s House”, Chapter 12: phone call

The life of a C-list Hollywood film-maker is not all glamour and glitz. Recently our hero Buddy Best has had his wife stolen by a pretentious ham actor, his son Philip has moved back home after losing his job and breaking up with his own wife, and Buddy’s stepdaughter Deirdre has gotten into a spot of trouble at the convent school. But life’s rich soap opera never ends...

(Click here to go our previous chapter or here to go to the beginning of this Tinseltown epic. “Every bit as tawdry as the films of its hero.” -- J.J. Hunsecker, nationally syndicated columnist.)

A couple of days passed by. The house got messier and messier, but Buddy cut down on the drinking. He began to sleep better, and to feel oddly happy to be alive. He went to the gym once with Philip. He talked to his mother on the phone and got the lowdown on his family back east, and his mother told him she had never trusted Joan. He called his old divorce lawyer and set up a meeting for the following week. He took Deirdre to see Bernd Weikl in The Flying Dutchman; she had gone to the opera with Joan a few times when Buddy was on location and couldn’t make it, but this was the first time Buddy had taken her, and they had a great time. Philip got all his shit put away in his old room, but there was still the problem of finding a job for him. Buddy’s script for his next project (Return to Death Island Part III) was a bit too long, so one night at dinner he invited Philip to shorten it by ten pages.

“I know nothing about screenplays, Dad.”

“All the better. You know how to use a computer though. Read the script through a couple of times and make some notes. Then go through it and cut out anything that’s boring or slows it down. I’ll give you a C-note a day. I got other shit to do.”



That night Buddy’s first wife (Shakira, formerly Madge) called, from the ashram up in the mountains. Buddy and Deirdre were sitting in the living room, watching Susan Hayward in I Want to Live.

“Shakira baby, what up?”

“How are you, Buddy?”

“Groovin’.”

Buddy got up and headed into the kitchen.

“Good, Buddy. But I wish people would tell me things.”

Oh.

“I called Liz and left a message yesterday and she didn’t call me back so I thought I’d call Philip to see if he’d talked to her lately and I found out from Cynthia that they’ve broken up and that he’s living with you.”

“Uh yeah, he is.”

“And then Cynthia told me that Joan left you for another man?”

“Oh, right.”

Instead of saying, “Good, she’s a cheap whore and she broke up our marriage,” Madge said:

“And when did this happen?”

Buddy got a glass out of the cabinet.

“I don’t know, couple of weeks ago.”

“I wish someone would tell me these things. We do have a telephone here now, you know.” Right. One phone for the whole fucking ashram, and that was the head monk’s cellphone. Mr. I-will-inform-her-that-you-called. “I feel so out of the loop, Buddy. Just call me.”

Buddy got some ice out of the freezer and put it in the glass.

“I’m surprised the head honcho’s even letting you use his phone this late.”

“I’m using the pay phone at the gas station down the road.”

That was weird. The gas station was like two miles from the ashram.

Buddy poured some Rebel Yell into his glass.

“So, everything okay with you, Madge? And Mookie and Om?”

“I just want to be kept informed, Buddy. I do still love all of you, you know.”

“Except Joan.”

“Joan is a woman who needs to grow. Maybe this will help her to grow.”

Yeah, right --

“Did Joan take Deirdre?”

“No. Not yet anyway.”

Madge took a beat here.

“And how is she?”

“Deirdre?”

“Yes.”

“She’s good.”

No need to go into the whole lesbo business.

“But what about Liz?” said Madge.

“Um, what about her?”

“Have you talked to her?’

“Uh, not recently, no.”

“You have a phone, Buddy. You should stay in touch with her.”

“Yeah, you’re right. So,” said Buddy, “Om and Mookie? Everything okay?”

“Yes. They’re okay.”

Did this mean that he, Buddy, was not okay, or was there some other meaning here?

“We’re --”

She paused. Buddy could hear the wind blowing through the trees on her end.

“-- okay,” she said.

Right, whatever.

“Is Philip there? Can I talk to him?”

“He’s out, Madge, sorry.”

“Where is he?”

“He went to play basketball with his friends.”

“This late?”

“Well, I’m sure they went out for some beers afterwards.”

“Cynthia told me he got fired.”

“Uh, yeah, he did, but don’t worry about it, he’s doing some work for me now.”

“Oh, that’s nice.”

“Yeah.”

Philip and Liz were a sadness in Madge’s life. When she left Buddy she took the kids to live with her and Om up in the ashram in the mountains, but Philip and Liz didn’t like it there. After a few months Madge relented and agreed to let them spend the school year in Hollywood with Buddy, with the proviso that they spend vacations with her, but within a couple of years she was lucky if they spent three weeks out of the year there.

Buddy heard a truck go by up there in the mountains. Then:

“What’s Deirdre doing?”

“She’s watching a movie on the DVD.”

“Can you put her on?”

“Sure, no problem. Hang on.”

Buddy pressed the mute button and went back into the living room.

“Shakira wants to talk to you.”

Why? mouthed Deirdre.

“It’s okay, I got it on mute. I don’t know, she wants to talk to you.”

Deirdre rolled her eyes but she picked up the remote, stopped the movie, and held out her other hand for the phone.

To give her some privacy Buddy went out to the pool with his Discman, Disc One of Nabucco (Tito Gobbi, Elena Suliotis) and his bourbon. When the disc ended he went inside for another drink and a cigar; he could see Deirdre lying on the couch in the dark in the living room, and he could tell she was still talking to Madge. He went back out and listened to Disc Two, and when he came in again Deirdre was back to watching I Want to Live. She also seemed to be doing some sort of math homework.

Buddy sat down and he asked her what she and Madge had been talking about.

“She just wanted to talk.”

“Right,” said Buddy.

“She ran out of change so I called her back on my cell, but it was after nine so it won’t cost extra.”

”That’s cool,” said Buddy.

(Do we sense something foreboding this way coming? Please go here for our next exciting episode. Kindly look to the right hand side of this page for all other published chapters of Uncle Buddy’s House™. Based on a untrue story. All names changed to avoid financially crippling lawsuits.)

“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part 161: come forth

In our previous chapter our diarist Arnold Schnabel found himself attempting gently to extricate his intoxicated friend (and alleged savior) “Josh” from the clutches of the husband-hungry Magda in the well-appointed kitchen of an oddly vast apartment above the Pilot House (“Featuring ‘Mambo Mania Mondays’ with ‘Freddy Ayres and Ursula™’ -- as seen on Sally Starr’s ‘Popeye Theatre’on WFIL TV!”) in the ancient seaport of Cape May, NJ, on a sultry night in August, 1963...

(Click here to go to the beginning of this Gold View Award©-winning masterpiece, which the noted critic Harold Bloom has called, “as rich and compendious as life itself, but not half as boring”.)

We finally left the kitchen, Magda leading the way, and there across the expanse of the living room we saw Mr. Jones cutting merry capers to the pounding African drum music while Freddy and Ursula and Mr. Arbuthnot cheered him on from their comfortable seats.

“Now do you see why I want to get married?” said Magda. “Every night these hooligans with their shenanigans.”

As we approached, Mr. Jones continued to thrash wildly about, much as if he were a marionette whose strings were being pulled by a puppeteer in the grips of an epileptic fit, a puppeteer who now suddenly collapsed unconscious, because so did Mr. Jones, landing spread-eagled on his back on the parquet floor, his straw hat tumbling from his head, spinning for a moment like a top and finally plopping to a rest a foot-and-a-half from the old boy’s tiny egg-like skull.

“Oh, dear,” said Magda.

“Jonesie, stop playing,” yelled Mr. Arbuthnot, who then took another draw on the little hashish pipe.

“I don’t think he’s playing,” observed Ursula, taking the stub of a reefer from Freddy.

“Oh, great, and we’re on in five minutes,” said Freddy. He took a sip from his glass of murky absinthe.

The old people remained seated while Josh and Magda and I went over to Mr. Jones. He lay still, apparently not breathing, mouth wide open as if screaming. His glasses had remained on his head and beneath them his bulging eyes showed only their yellowed bloodshot whites. He indeed looked more like a cast-aside marionette than anyone who had ever been alive in the least.

“I think he’s dead,” said Magda. “I’d better turn off the gramophone.”

And off through the pounding of those tribal drums she walked toward the record player, not quickly, but then she didn’t look like she ever did anything quickly.

“Josh,” I whispered, keeping my face turned away from the surviving old people, “can’t you do something?”

“His time has come, Arnold. And at least he died happy. And drunk.” He took a drag of his cigarette. “And high, I might add.”

I confess I felt little pity for Mr. Jones. He was eighty-three years old after all, and had earlier expressed a bold willingness to drop dead at any moment. And as Josh had just said, the old fellow had died happy, probably, or whatever passed for happy for him. So he was okay. But --

“But we’ll never get out of here at this rate,” I said, continuing to whisper. “We’ll have to stay, and talk to the police. Maybe even to a coroner or a medical examiner. We’ll be up all night.”

“Oh,” said Josh. “That does sounds tedious. Okay, let’s see what I can do. If he’s still on the porch dealing with Peter then we’ve got a chance.”

The African drum music abruptly disappeared with a sharp loud scritch as Magda finally lifted the needle from the record.

In a silence sullied only by the faint wheezing and puffing of the surviving old people, Josh got down in a crouch, laid his hand on Mr. Jones’s heart, lowered his face to Mr. Jones’s, and blew softly into the dead man’s open mouth.

“What is he doing?” said Ursula.

“It’s artificial respiration, dear,” said Freddy.

“That’s not how they do it. I saw it on Dr. Kildare.”

“You’re doing it all wrong, young fellow,” said Mr. Arbuthnot. “Put your mouth right on his, just like he was Theda Bara and you were John Gilbert!”

Josh ignored the elders and blew softly again into Mr. Jones’s gaping puppet’s mouth.

And then the wooden doll shuddered, shook, rattled, and finally gasped, and Mr. Jones’s eyes flicked down from under their blinking lids, gaping.

He shook his head and sat bolt upright.

Josh, still squatting by his side, put one hand gently on the old boy’s back.

“Oh, splendid, well done!” said Mr. Arbuthnot.

“Amazing,” said Ursula, and she took a drink from her glass of absinthe.

“How are you, Jonesie?” called Freddy.

“Never felt better,” said Jones. “Did I pass out?”

“Like a light,” said Mr. Arbuthnot. He took another draw on the hashish pipe.

“We thought for sure you were a goner,” said Ursula.

“Thought you’d thrown a thrombosis for sure,” said Freddy, kissing out the last possible threads of smoke from the reefer stub.

“Oh, he just fainted, didn’t you old timer?” said Josh, patting him on the back.

“Don’t patronize me, you young pup, I just saw you pass out like a dead cod not ten minutes ago!”

“Ha ha, you tell him, Jonesie,” said Ursula.

Josh reached over, picked up Mr. Jones’s hat from the floor and placed it on the codger’s head; then he stood up, and, putting his cigarette in his mouth, he got behind Mr. Jones and pulled him to his feet.

“Hey, watch the threads, Ted!” said Mr. Jones.

“Jones,” said Mr. Arbuthnot, “be polite. This young fellow was the one who brought you round.”

“Oh, you did?” said Mr. Jones to Josh. “Well, ‘for this much thanks’, as the bawdy bard put it.”

He offered his wizened child-sized hand, and Josh shook it.

“So he’s not dead after all,” said Magda, having finally walked back to our group from the phonograph. “You sure looked dead,” she said to Mr. Jones.

“You must understand, my dear lady, that for me to look dead is no great feat. Often my landlady will peer over my sleeping form and awaken me with the greeting, ‘Are you alive, Mr. Jones?’”

“I get your drift,” said Magda.

Mr. Jones turned to Josh.

“You were in my dream.”

“Pardon me?”

“I just now realized I had a dream while I was passed out, and you were in it.”

“That’s understandable,” said Josh.

“I was on a porch of a great house with some disagreeable bearded fellow. He wouldn’t let me into the house. Then you came up and told the man there’d been a mistake, and that you were taking me back.”

“And I did, didn’t I?” said Josh, smiling.

“Well, I think we’d better be going,” I said.

“This one,” said Magda, “can’t wait to leave.”

“No, we should go,” said Josh.

“Tomorrow, then,” said Magda. “Noon.”

“Right,” said Josh. “Noon. Downstairs.”

“Is this a budding romance?” said Mr. Jones.

“Mind your own business, you walking corpse,” said Magda.

“At last she gets a date,” said Ursula.

“It was just a question of time,” said Freddy, who was puffing on the hashish pipe now. “And meeting the right fellow.”

“Have we time for another bowl?” said Mr. Arbuthnot, reaching into his jacket pocket.

“I think just,” said Freddy. “Then we must go down for our last set.”

“I bid you all good night,” said Magda.

She extended her hand to Josh. He kissed it. She cocked her head slightly, then turned and slowly walked away.

Mr. Jones whistled.

“If only I were fifty years younger,” he said.

(Continued here, and until hell freezes over. Please look to the right hand side of this page to find what sometimes is an up-to-date listing of links to all other published chapters of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train To Heaven©, deemed “acceptable, with severe reservations, for adults” by The Catholic Standard & Times.)