Carnovsky's Retreat

by Larry Duberstein

  I know this much. If I said the things that guy says I would seem like a fool. The trick is in how you say it, like hitting a cue-ball.

  Mail from Linda Stanley. She is among the missing for three weeks and now comes a letter saying, “We must talk.” Not we must do the therapeutic deed, but we must talk. All right so let’s talk—I’m curious what we’ll say.

  “Yesterday,” I told Jimmy, “I won a million dollars in the eighth at Belmont.”

  “Bull shit,” he told me.

  “That’s a nice mouth, squirt. If you don’t believe me, say so.”

  “I said so. Tell the truth, Oscar.”

  “Why should I? Is the truth worth more than a lie?”

  “Sure it is. You don’t lie to a friend. If you do he isn’t your friend anymore.”

  “A code he has, to live by! And I agree. So then why did you tell your father I took you to Ebbets Field yesterday when it wasn’t the truth?”

  I had to watch the poor kid sag against the ropes and I felt like hell. A bully, that’s me, smacking this poor little punching bag. Imagine a man so smart he can trick a trusting child.

  “Hey Jimmy, stop it, don’t cry, it’s no big deal.”

  “I know what it is.”

  “It’s a stupid joke, that’s all. I’m sorry, Jimmy, please accept an apology. I thought I was cute, making my point. I was only worried where you really went off to yesterday—what you were covering up.”

  “I didn’t cover anything. I was at the city pool all day.”

  “So why?”

  But I knew. I figured it out for myself the minute I pulled the string on him, and saw his expression. He must have told his old man for months, ever since I promised him, about Ebbets Field. I’m going, Oscar is taking me, it’s true it’s true. So he was losing face and all my fault. I didn’t come through and instead today I bungle much worse by sandbagging him, a real cute set-up.

  So I tried to do some salvage work by setting a definite date for Belmont Park early next week and this I can do, show him around the racetrack, no problem. But Jimmy will believe it when he sees it and who could blame his attitude? Head down, sullen, he says, “Thanks, Oscar, thanks a lot, that sounds like real fun.”

  You cannot horse around when you are dealing with children. I never had one and yet I always knew it. They are the most serious of people and also the most vulnerable. So you do it right or don’t do it at all.

  It’s the truth about lying and yet people lie all the time. No one says I just won a million and expects belief, but many will tell you, I had the Double, just to look good in your eyes. In this way the racetrack breeds a liar.

  If I glance back over the nonsense I have been storing in this notebook (and I do, keeping track) I can say to myself it’s at least the truth and nothing but, right on the button every time. I could put down anything, or change the names to protect the innocent, yet I record the whole truth even when I squirm to see it there. Why lie to your own diary? You can lie to yourself and hope it passes on the wind, so long as you are not storing it. With a diary, however, there is no point—why keep a diary if you plan on telling it lies?

  Unless of course you are out in the spotlight. Never trust the diary of a public person, movie-stars, office-seekers, etc. That isn’t a diary—not when they trot it out in the feature section of Saturday’s Post. They have an eye on reputation and will say whatever it serves them to say.

  I could get famous overnight. Just write in my diary how I spent Christmas Eve with Marilyn Monroe one time, when Dimag wasn’t looking, and then lose the page on a car of the Long Island Railroad. A week later I’d be talking on television, a celebrity.

  Wiley has friends everywhere, including the town of Saratoga Springs, New York. Now he says he can get me a night job there for the month of August, at a steak joint near the racecourse. A new deal, and why not? Sounds good, I told him—nights to work, days at the track, and still my mornings free to lounge like royalty—sign me up.

  And that’s when I realized I have a crush on the girl. My very next thought was will Caddy Moore travel upstate with the circus or stay put in the city. If she travels, so much the better. If she stays, I’m out of range—and maybe never see her again. What’s that but a crush? Old enough for the glue factory and I’m coming down with a crush on the teenage queen!

  What the hell, these days I’ve got a crush on life. After the long sloppy winter cooped up with my many worries (not to mention all those crazy-eights at 10 Battersea) I love every summer morning. I come out earlier and earlier and it’s always the same: a soft blue sky, nice low sun on the tin shedroofs, the rainbow of flowers along the course. And yes, Caddy Moore is part of it too. If I spotted her on the train car coming out she might look like less—just another traveler—whereas here she is part of the scenery, adds a little spice to it and vice-versa I’m sure.

  You can see men freeze before your eyes on the Bowery in March yet riding cross Ozone Park in July you can understand a hobo who lies out the cornfield with a friend, or with a jug of his favorite pain-killer, or both. Someone who is happy putting his face up to the sun unencumbered. You can worry over all the things you meant to do, or all the money you never made (while others did), or all the people who had such big expectations of you. But you could also skip it and be just fine, like a hobo in summertime.

  A dream last night, in which I am getting combed and ready for Linda, in my new shoes—a true detail, new this week—and then I hear a tread on the stair. When Linda first arrives, in real, I need a little push to get myself going and to get events underway. I feel a deadness of muscle, lack of steam, which for some reason I am not experiencing this one time, in the dream. This time I hear the tread and feel eager, excited at the prospect, like a kid skipping into Luna Park.

  Because it isn’t Linda. I see the chestnut-colored hair, dark blue eyes, Caddy Moore. Blood comes flooding to my face and she smiles, reaches for my hand. I look down, however, and see that my hands are full—each holding one of my old shoes—so I have none to offer her. She shrugs and smiles once more and I wake, frustrated that I couldn’t free up a hand for her.

  No point denying the contents of a dream. Call a spade a spade, call a crush a crush. Some dreams are a mish-mash and would baffle even the high priests on Park Avenue. This one is as clear as a ball score. Three to two. Bango.

  So the worm turns: I can spare Mrs. W. but who will spare me?

  Among the casualties for this week, myself and Linda Stanley. We are kaput. No surprise to anyone after a month in which we hid from each other, and neither is it the occasion for great suffering. The vote was unanimous, two to zero.

  We concluded our business on the ferry-boat. Saw no movie, ate no dinner, drank no wine, and did not indulge in any last-minute therapy. Just took to the water on a very hot night, and talked. Linda never said as much but I would venture that something has changed in her life in Fort Lee, something good has come up, and a young man is the best guess. Maybe she took another junket and turned up a younger schnorer.

  If you are virginal the circumstance dominates from inside you and yet shows to the whole world, so that you become ineligible—they cross you off the roster. You assume no one could want you and such an assumption will fulfill itself day to day till it seems impossible to dream the reverse. But break it down, change it by doing and suddenly you are surrounded by possibilities. Suddenly the impossible becomes a leadpipe cinch.

  It’s funny, Oscar the ladies’ man, and yet a woman could find me now. I’m sure it’s the same with Linda. A brand new man appears on the scene, one who never met the virgin, the wallflower, and he sees a different sight altogether. Sees it and feels it that here is a woman, for him. This new man in Fort Lee—the gym teacher, biologist, the butcher’s boy—can provide her the therapy without the commute.

  And I’m nothing but happy for her. I only hope she will agree to see the butcher’s boy on a Wednesday or Thursday sometimes, and walk out into the air on Sunday morning. Say hel
lo to the Butcher and Mrs. Butcher too.

  “I think it was good, Oscar. And that it worked.”

  “Sometimes it worked!”

  “No, it was good. It couldn’t have been any better, unless it was something else entirely.”

  “I understand.”

  We are both being grown-ups here, paying respects and going for the right tone of voice. Why offend now, when we are soon to be free?

  “And when I say it worked, I mean that I had a big problem when we began seeing each other and I don’t have that problem anymore.”

  “Now you have new problems.”

  “No, just us—do you know what I mean?”

  Yes I know. Like myself, she looks forward to our nights of pleasure with nothing but dread, so let’s cancel. We went three furlongs and did all right, but try to go a mile and we will swallow more dust than a donkey. We’ve been losing ground.

  So scratch our entry, it’s for the best and is in truth already accomplished. True to form it’s Linda who takes the reins—“We must talk”—but I had it on my agenda too. My feeling for Caddy Moore makes a break necessary, makes me ashamed of bed with Linda, past present or future, ashamed every which way.

  Someone in the old days, Alfie Wohl it was, came up with a good trick for meeting the girls. He bought himself a mutt, put the mutt on a string, took the string in his fist, and took his feet to Prospect Park. Every day this mutt would make him new friends, because alone in the park you are a stranger, a threat, but hold an animal on a string and the world comes falling at your feet. A nice lesson for the confidence-man. Wheel a baby will get the same results, if you can get the use of a bambino.

  I can see Alfie shrug—“They are just looking for an excuse to speak too. They want what you want. The trick is to make it happen.”

  Don’t I know it. I have been gazing at Caddy Moore for weeks and I never said a mumbling word, though I have come close once or twice and always aimed at inventing a means, however idiotic, for broadcasting the word hello. I never thought of Alfie Wohl and his mutt on a string until I got out here with one of my own—Jimmy Myers, unpremeditated. But a free ticket. With the little boy in tow, I’m in like Flynn the Irishman.

  She was working on False Alarm, big bay sprinter, and I’m nearby giving pointers to the squirt—this one is a nice chestnut filly, look at the markings, etc.—very smartass I’m sure and playing the Nice Guy who tows a kid. Then Jimmy, this little operator, has an instant eye for the pretty face and strikes up the band: “How about that big guy, Oscar, is he going today?” This he puts on the P.A. system, loud and clear, so the girl cannot miss picking up his signal.

  “Would you like to say hello to him?” she says.

  And that’s all it takes! A mutt. She has already a smile for me, to squeeze the heart, and a carrot for Jimmy, to feed the horse. “You can give this to him. But let him take it. Yeah.”

  “Jesus, Oscar, he’s huge!”

  “He’s just a lad like you,” she says. “He’s three years old.”

  “I’m ten.” (He rounds off for her.)

  “So that makes you two about the same.” (She explains him the age of a horse.)

  She has nothing as yet to say to me, so I stick in a little horse talk—False Alarm moving up to 5500 despite slow works etc.—and she responds in kind. She has to figure I’m the daddy (what else?) so I introduce myself, Oscar Fish and this is my young friend Jimmy Myers. (Not the daddy.) And she tells us her first name only, Caddy.

  “You know how to ride a horse,” I tell her. “I’ve noticed.”

  “I know.”

  Just like that, a kick in the shins. Because it’s not to say Yes I know I can ride, it is to say Yes I know you have noticed. So I went red as a hardboiled lobster, and tried to slip the noose by saying, “You know how it goes on the backstretch, a person keeps both eyes open.”

  “Absolutely. I keep mine open everywhere I go.”

  And with this I get one more smile that says: I kicked you in the shins, old man, but just for fun. I don’t mind you looked at me, not half so much as I might mind you not looking. It is not flirtation, this sharp talk and the smile, it’s a statement—I’m not the nervous type, so why not relax about everything. No time to relax, however. Jimmy sees it and quickly inserts the needle.

  “Oscar,” he says—calls me that, speaks to me like a colleague—“It’s time to get to work, I think.”

  What does he know about time? He’s got no wristwatch. It’s the bull. But we made the introduction and enough is enough, New York City wasn’t built in a day. I told her where I worked, I’m not ashamed, and got a feeling she knew it already, though of course that is this girl’s style, knowing. Maybe, though, she took the trouble to find it out. I was asking questions about her, she could have done the same about me.

  Dreamer. What could she care? Who would she ask? More likely she spotted me up there one day in my shiny brass buttons at a time when I was busy with a twist of lime and didn’t see her too.

  There are times when I’m sitting in my chair with the radio on and hope Jimmy won’t come up and disturb the peace. I could be tired or grouchy, or just not in the right mood for a visit. Not that I will send him away if he comes at such a time, but he will be extra baggage to tote.

  If someone is baggage long enough, however, there grows up a bond, of comfort and trust. (Not to mention of course the times are rare, and usually I am delighted to see his face.)

  It was riding the train back I realized what pals we have become, such that we can sit in silence and watch the light seep away and a hundred street corners flying past. No need to speak, both of us tired and contented. And at last he slumps. A head on my shoulder as we come back into the city, and I note my mutt is dozing.

  On the Belmont Special I always take a window and watch the scenery roll by even though it is nothing to see, nothing lovely. Queens shows its back to you if you ride the train—a net of trolley lines, back windows and trashcans, piles of scrap behind the body-shops. Why look?

  What you never see is a person, a human being. They are all inside or out front, I guess, and so are the trees and flowers, if any. If I look, and like it, I am looking at the morning light itself—light in the sky, light on the bricks, whatever. Maybe because I love the daytime more and more, and have not much use for the night.

  Found Caddy at her station, face up to the sun. (She is like me?) Her hair has become quite fair, and new freckles sit across the bridge of her nose like a little saddle. I love to look at this girl’s face and today I was free to give it some study, as her eyes were shut tight. I also took my opening from this—determined to keep the ball rolling even though flirtation is like rolling it uphill in mud.

  “Excuse me.”

  “Oh, hello. How are you today?”

  “Wonderful! And yourself?”

  Too strong, to say Wonderful so loud, yet I could not muzzle it any more than stop a sneeze. She smiled and nodded, looking sleepy and speaking without words: I’m wonderful too, in a quiet way, though I don’t mind your noise.

  “Your eyes were closed.” (The Opening.)

  “Pardon me?”

  “I was sorry to disturb you, but I thought you might want to know, after what you said the other day.”

  “Tell me what I said. I forget.”

  “That you make a point always to keep your eyes open.”

  Oh I am a silly fool, pushing my luck. Intoxicated, is what. And yet she is determined to let me get away with it.

  “Oh yes, I do,” she says, as though my stupidity is not in the least bit stupid. “It’s just there are times you have to shut your eyes in order to really see.”

  “Go on, you were asleep at the wheel.”

  Yes I can flirt. A pigeon can walk too, only not very fast. Caddy has nothing but good will, however, and a laugh like soft music. No interest in exacting a price. I did not have my next line ready, so I elected to rest on my laurels and left her the way I found her, sunbathing.

  Bad lu
ck this afternoon at Belmont Park—my ship came in and I couldn’t climb on board. I got shut out on a winning quinella that paid 63.50 and I would have had it ten times. I was set to go with it, using Benny the shoe-shine boy outside, who is my last-minute system, working no commission on a lose versus two bucks against a win. Time was very tight, however, and I had a family with Captain Fingersnapper at the helm, an ice-water drunkard.

  I took my exercise for the day pouring water for these five. The little ones must have been dumping it in the rubbertree every time I hit the kitchen so when I reappeared on the floor he could instantly demand a refill, like a birthright. I’m leaning on the door with Jackson’s portrait in my fist, ready to grab Benny and buy my action, when I hear his fingers snapping, the King of Siam. Snap snap. Snap.

  Of course I should have kept on going, through the door. You can always pretend not to hear a jerk, but I allowed myself to hesitate so he knew and then it was Waiter Waiter! Snap Snap! Curtains for my winning quinella.

  Why not shoot such people? An empty glass to this man is a call to arms—let it stand empty for sixty seconds and surely the earth will tilt off its axis. But granting the guy his foibles, the water, there is no excuse for manners like that. Even the children looked guilt-stricken, embarrassed by the pushy father and not the least bit thirsty.

  Mrs. Fingersnapper had on a very low-cut business, with her boobies served up like fruit on a tray. Midget weightlifters inside there, one on each side. It is something for a mother of three to look like that and at the end—knowing that with everything I did and all the dough this guy had cost me already he would still leave mouse-cheese for a tip—I had a sore temptation to drop a load of cubes into her cleavage. Wake up the weightlifters.

  I was leaning from one side with the pitcher and she was leaning from the other side with her dress wide open and the two balloons floating onto the table and for one second I thought I not only had the guts to make it happen but that in fact I could do nothing to prevent my hand from freezing her frontage.