by Robert Riche
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” Wayne Newton chortles, as though this is the funniest gag of the evening (which I have the feeling it may very well be). The greeting is followed up by a couple of unfunny jokes about husbands not being with their wives, but the wives not being with their husbands, either. Which sends the audience into paroxyms of laughter, and me to a healthy quaff of my champagne. Morrie is grinning at the stage, and so is Diana. Dr. Feigenweiser looks like someone has just told him he has been cuckolded, and Tony is nudging Morrie and ostentatiously holding his nose.
We are then treated to a medley of 1940s swing band standards, designed to send chills up and down the spines of those in the audience over 50. Dr. Feigenweiser is looking very uncomfortable, and I notice that Tony now is chuckling and whispering in Morrie’s ear. Morrie, stiffening, there is no doubt of it, keeps his eyes aimed at the stage, a determined grin frozen on his face.
“Ra-cing witha moo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-n
High abova silver—”
“You fucking son of a bitch!” Wayne’s chorus is suddenly interrupted by Morrie screaming at Tony, at the same time leaping up abruptly from his chair, causing it to be knocked over, and toppling the champagne bucket, which, however, by moving quickly I am able to catch before it crashes to the floor.
“Whatsa matter?” Tony says, the facsimile of a grin on his face.
“Vas is los?” Dr. Feigenweiser is saying beside me.
“Cut it out, you guys!” I’m on my feet now, in between Morrie and Tony, facing Morrie. “Morrie! Cut it out!”
“Racing witha moo-oo-oo-oo-oo-n—”
“I’ll kill the sonofabitch!” Morrie cries. And before the two Yankee stadium wine stewards who are rushing to our pod can get to us, Morrie has hauled back and thrown a haymaker which misses Tony but catches me on the left ear, hard enough so that more lasers go off, and instead of Wayne Newton, I hear a sudden loud ringing in the ears, which it occurs to me also could be the sound of Diana screaming at Tony, who ducks and steps back from her—all of this happening in an instant—and in doing so, suddenly tumbles backward over the balustrade of the loge into the arms of the waiting and grinning Krauts in the loge below, just as the wine stewards do finally reach us and roughly collar Morrie and me, one on each of us.
“Outside, you guys! Come on!” And there certainly is no arguing about it with them, as it turns out, I was right, they are basically not wine stewards, but bouncers. As we are bum rushed by some kind of jiujitsu hold around the neck, I catch a glimpse of Tony resting on his backside in the laps of the Krauts, grinning at us, and waving cheerily.
“You bastard!” Diana shouts at him, as Wayne Newton finally gives up, fearing perhaps that a riot is breaking out. “Somebody’s husband must have found somebody’s wife!” he calls out. The audience roars with laughter, and Morrie and I are rushed up the steps, with Diana pulling at the bouncers and shouting at them that it isn’t our fault, and Dr. Feigenweiser trying to keep up, puffing and wheezing and muttering, “Nicht gut, nicht gut.”
Just before we reach the exit a hand reaches out of one of the topmost loges, and briefly I catch a glimpse in the dark of Loretta and Aldo Bellagamba, Loretta managing to touch me on the arm and saying, “Hey, lover, let’s get together after for a nightcap!”
“All right, you guys, you feel better?” The bouncers have Morrie and me up against a wall, about three feet apart from each other now, one each holding us by the neck, looking more than ever as though they wouldn’t mind throwing some kind of crippling punch now that we are out of sight of witnesses.
“We’re not fighting,” I say to the guy holding me.
“I’ll say you’re not.”
“He was trying to separate them!” Diana puts in, to my everlasting gratitude.
“This guy?” says my bouncer. There is definitely a twinge of disapointment in his voice.
“Ja, iz all right now, chentlemens,” says Dr. Feigenweiser.
“Who’re you?” says my bouncer.
“A very highly placed scientist in our nation’s defense effort,” I manage to croak out at him. “Will you let go of my neck?”
The goon decides maybe he better let up. “No more funny stuff.”
“Zere vill be no more vunny shtuvh,” says Feigenweiser. “Zankyou, chentlemens.”
Reluctantly, the bouncers withdraw back inside the auditorium, casting surly glances at us over their shoulders, and brushing their hands, as I would expect, in cliché fashion over their sleeves.
I look at Morrie. Suddenly he is crying. His head is in his hands, and his body is wracked with choking sobs.
“I’m sorry,” he says. He looks at me with an of expression of such grief and misery that I feel momentarily like embracing him. But Diana takes care of it, slipping one arm around his waist now, and talking soothingly to him. “It’s all right, Morrie. It’s all right.”
“Vut got into you, Mowwie?” Feigenweiser asks him.
“Nothing, it’s nothing I can talk about,” Morrie says.
“Iss tewwible image to pwoject of company,” Feigenweiser says.
“Oh, fuck the company,” Morrie says. And, it seems to me, it is his finest moment.
“Language, Morrie,” Diana says.
“I’m sorry, Diana,” Morrie says. And he really is. He looks at her with such sorrow and concern for her feelings that I am afraid he will burst into tears again.
“Don’t worry about it, Morrie,” I say.
“Ja,” says Feigenweiser somewhat stiffly. “I zink I go to my womb now.”
“It’s been a long day,” I find myself saying, and feeling foolish for doing so.
Feigenweiser clicks his heels, nods curtly, and departs to his womb, while Morrie, Diana and I stand awkwardly outside the arena, looking sheepishly at one another, as the crooning voice of Wayne Newton wafts thinly through the door.
“What happened, Morrie?” I ask him at last.
“That son of a bitch, Passanante,” Morrie says, his face contorting into rage again. “He’s running a—a—raffle. He wanted me to ask Diana to volunteer as the prize.”
“Oh, my God!”
“Oh, Morrie,” Diana says, “so did you have to get all that excited?”
“You don’t understand!” Morrie exclaims. “It—it—was—an insult!”
“We’re all here to help out,” Diana says soothingly. “What’d he want, me to go out on a dinner date, or something?”
“Eating was definitely a part of it,” I toss in.
“Yeah,” says Morrie bitterly. He looks at me sorrowfully. “Did I hit you, Brock?”
“Just sort of.” My ear at the moment feels to be about as big as my head.
“Oh, Morrie, Morrie,” Diana says. “Look at all the trouble, and just over a little jealousy.”
“It wasn’t jealousy!” Morrie shouts at her.
“Sh-sh-sh. Shush,” she says, fingers to her lips. “You’ve got some explaining to do to Dr. Feigenweiser, too.”
“Nazi prick,” Morrie says.
“Language! Morrie!” She stomps her foot on the thick carpet.
She must be some wonderful piece in bed, because the price for anything less is more than anyone could possibly stand. There is no point in my hanging around any more. I figure the two of them will spend all night talking about it, without Diana ever having the slightest inkling of what Tony had proposed to Morrie, and, therefore, not the slightest inkling of what she is talking about, but she’ll go on about it all night anyway, alternately consoling Morrie with a grind, then making him feel guilty by rolling her backside toward him.
“Good night, all,” I say. I look at Morrie. The tuft of graying red hair that he grows on his left side is standing straight up in the air at the moment, giving him the wild look of a Samurai warrior in some old Japanese print. Actually, I can’t help but feel that with it going straight up like that it gives him a look of dignity he ordinarily doesn’t have.
“You did right, Morrie,” I say to him.
And even though I am just enough of a shit to find Tony Passanante’s diabolical insult and assault on Diana’s absurd notions of herself the most delicious part of the day, as a civilized human being I am obliged to add, “Tony’s a prick, Morrie.”
“Language!” Diana says.
CHAPTER V
The alarm goes off at 6:30, because I want to be up and at ’em and ready to skin ’em on the big day of the press conference. I assume it’s another hot sunny day in Las Vegas, but it’s impossible to tell from looking outside, since the hotel has rigged up some kind of exterior arrangement of blue neon lighting around all the windows that seeps into the room day and night simulating a perpetual twilight, a concession to gamblers, somebody told me, who don’t want to be reminded that they have been up all night at their chores.
I bump into Morrie on the breakfast line, who tells me that Diana is catching a little extra sack time, information he has gathered, he says, by a phone call to her room.
“Poor kid,” he says. “I guess she’s all tuckered out.”
Poor kid, probably from admiring herself all night in the ceiling mirror.
Morrie looks terrible, downtrodden and sad, but he makes no mention of the events of last evening. During breakfast he keeps glancing around the room nervously, hunching his shoulders and exhibiting a slight tic in his neck I have never noticed before. Finally, over coffee, he says, “Sorry about last night. Your ear looks terrible.”
It feels terrible, but it will be all right. It is red and swollen, but I can hear all right, I don’t have a headache, and the skin isn’t broken. So I assume eventually it will recede back to something like normal.
Morrie and I share a cab together to the Convention Center, arriving at about eight, just as the first visitors to our concession already are beginning to drop in for free coffee at our air-conditioned refreshment bar. The air conditioning is a blessing, since the desert sun is hot as an oven, even at this early hour. Outside in the heat, Tony Passanante and his sales force are stationed at the various exhibit booths that line the main mall.
In the executive offices, I find Dr. Feigenweiser conferring with Shatsie, who is on the phone to Germany where it is two o’clock in the afternoon. Dr. Feigenweiser is cordial, but hardly genial. I show him the press kits with his treatise included, and he is pleased. The plan is for the press to arrive at about noon. After Diana checks them in at a reception desk, they will take chairs at the café tables in the piazza, and I will greet them from a podium next to a long table behind which will be seated Dr. Feigenweiser, Frank, Morrie and Tony. Dr. Feigenweiser and I, without going into the events of last night, agree that Tony and Morrie should be seated at opposite ends of the table.
“Vill Mowwie go gwazy again?” Dr. Feigenweiser asks.
“No,” I say. “He was provoked.”
My part of the day’s activities is all set, with very little for me to do from now until noon, when the press is scheduled to arrive. I had intended simply to distribute the press kits, then ask Morrie to give a brief demonstration of the Hand-Arbiter, using a prop, take a few questions, then call a halt to the business part of the meeting, and invite everyone to sit down and enjoy a “picnic lunch box” of pate, cold shrimps, a pimento and avocado salad, and a pastry for dessert. White wine (which, diplomatically, I deferred to Morrie to select—a modest Sancerre), and, finally, a cup of coffee, will send them on their way with a warm glow and a press kit full of information about Hand-Arbiter to copy from back at their offices and print verbatim in the next month’s issuance of their magazines. Dr. Feigenweiser’s interjection, of course, will alter this schedule, with him making the major presentation, for twenty-five minutes, after which the Foreign Legionnaires will shake rubber hands all around, and then offer their palms for close inspection and fondling by the press, a bit of business that I have the feeling may turn everybody off from portions of the cold pimento and avocado salad. Anyway, that’s a few hours away.
Now, at 8:30, three aides, or usherettes, show up, and are briefed by Shatsie in her office. These are local Vegas girls whom we rent from an agency to stand around in hot pants with farmer-in-the dell suspenders over tee shirts and wearing straw hats. On the front of the tee shirts, in and out of the valleys, you can make out the company’s name, PRO-TEC. Since one of the major objects of an exposition of this kind is to attract sales leads, the girls have as their assignment to direct any visitors to our area toward a table with a giant glass bowl on it into which they are invited to drop their name, address, affiliation, and an indication of whether or not they want to receive sales literature and a sales call follow-up. (They’ll get the sales literature whether they say they want it or not.) Every day at the hour of noon, one of the girls will draw a slip from the glass bowl, and read the name of a winner over the public address system, winners being entitled to a two-week vacation for two to Hawaii, or a free prosthetic device of their choice. These prosthetic devices are not cheap, so anyone with a leg missing, or whatever, might very well choose the plastic replacement, at least such is the thinking of our leader, Frank, whose brainchild this lottery drawing is. Of course, there are a lot of distributors and dealers here at the exposition, and if a guy has already been to Hawaii and doesn’t want to go again, even if his own limbs are all intact, he might choose the prosthetic device which he could then sell through his outlet back home and use the money from the sale for a trip to Paris for two weeks. So maybe Frank knows what he’s doing, at that. At first, Frank just wanted to offer the prosthetic device, but Tony, I think it was, persuaded him to offer the trip to Hawaii as an alternative, in case the winner didn’t want the inconvenience of carrying a plastic leg home with him on the plane. Actually, this drawing is rather generous, at least in comparison with what other exhibitors are offering, things like free fountain pens and pocket calculators. The Krauts have arranged for the Pro-Tec barrage balloon overhead to circle around trailing a banner reading: “BIG PRIZES AT PRO-TEC.” This, it is anticipated, will stimulate traffic to our exhibit area.
It looks as though everything is under control; the food is scheduled to arrive from a concessionaire at 11:45, with a crew of waitresses in white uniforms to serve it.
I step outside, and except for my throbbing ear, feel fairly comfortable with myself. The sky is deep blue, the sun high, and I raise my face to catch a few minutes of the last rays of summer and perhaps darken my complexion just slightly so that when I return home to Connecticut everyone who sees me will think I am a playboy who vacations all summer, or at the least, a world traveler moving through romantic places. As I look upward, the barrage balloon floats before my eyes, with its trailer: “BIG PRICES AT PRO-TEC.” A nice promotional touch. We have completely dominated the competition at this exposition. Big PRICES! What the hell is going on?! PRIZES, for Christ sake!
I scurry into the executive suite and interrupt Shatsie dialing Germany again.
“Shatsie! Shatsie! Hold the phone!” I bawl at her. She hangs up.
“Who ordered the sign on the barrage balloon?”
“I did,” she says, a look of pride crowding aside her normally depraved expression.
“It says, ‘Big prices.’”
“Ja,” she says. “Zat’s vot I told zem—big pwi-ces.”
“Prizes! Shatsie! Prizes!”
“Oh! Mit an ‘s’.”
“Mit a ‘z’!”
“Mit a ‘z’,” Shatsie says. “So ve spell it wight now.” And she goes for the phone again.
For the rest of the morning, traffic at the Pro-Tec exhibit is heavy. Tony and his men are busy waving plastic arms and hearts at holiday-spirited groups of distributors and dealers who have come to our area to check out the latest developments in prosthetics while helping themselves to free coffee and Danish pastries and enjoying the air-conditioned comfort of our sultan’s tent. Our farmerette hostesses don’t let them escape without getting their entries into the daily raffle.
At 11:30, Frank arrives in a taxi, accompanied by Diana.
(She sure manages to be in the right place always at the right time.) When Frank walks down the center mall of the exhibit area, it’s a little like a general inspecting the troops. Everyone stands just a little straighter, except the Vegas farmerette hostesses who try to interest him in taking a chance on a trip to Hawaii.
I encounter him at the entrance to the circus tent, as I have just finished setting up the speaker’s table and tested the microphone.
“Good morning, Frank.”
“Wha hoppen to y’ear?” he says.
“Oh? Oh, my ear? Oh, ho. That’s a story.”
“You guys do too much drinkin’. We’re not out here ta play. We’re here ta do a job.”
“Everything’s all set, Frank.”
“It better be.” And he moves on inside.
“He’s cute,” Diana says to me. And then adds, “How’s Morrie?”
“He’s fine. For a guy that didn’t sleep much last night.”
“What do you mean, didn’t sleep much?” She glares at me, the crease between her eyes deepening for a moment, looking as though it will cleave her head.
“Restless, you know.”
“Oh.”
The food arrives, as scheduled, at 11:45. My press guys, loyal bunch that they are, and hungry, start arriving just before noon. We have plenty of food. There is a slight delay of the press conference while we wait for one of the farmerettes to pull the name of today’s winner of the trip to Hawaii.
“Mr. and Mrs. Aldo Bellagamba!” she calls out.
I am not even surprised. A little hurt, perhaps, that Aldo and Loretta didn’t bother to look me up and say hello.
The press people have been touring the convention area since nine o’clock, and already their briefcases are full of press releases which they have picked up. They have the whole afternoon and evening and two more days of this, so they are glad enough to be seated and ready for lunch. Scattered amongst them as inconspicuously as possible are the ten Krauts in navy blazers and gray flannels who will rise at the end of Dr. Feigenweiser’s presentation, and shake hands with the journalist of their choice, and then offer a close-up individualized working demonstration of how the Hand-Arbiter works.