by Sol Stein
“Sam Glenn.”
“That’s the one. Why’s he calling me?”
“Your name is on the papers, Ezra.”
“He wants a certified check returning his investment. He says you wouldn’t take his phone calls. Now he wants you to fly out to Chicago for a talk.”
“How the hell can I do that in the middle of this?”
“That Glenn is not a nice man.”
“I’ve known that since high school.”
“He could be real trouble.”
“Compared to what?”
“He’s threatened…I need to talk to you, Ben, before—”
“I do anything stupid.”
“I’ll grab a cab and meet you at the theater. Don’t talk to anyone before I get there.”
“I don’t want you at the theater.”
“I’ll meet you wherever you say, only swear you won’t talk to the cast first. Promise?”
“What the fuck can I promise, I can’t keep the hundred promises I already made,” I said and hung the receiver on the black wishbone.
Why should I call Ezra? Won’t everything he’ll say be predictable? What I needed for a lawyer now was a gorilla, not a friend.
Two more blocks to the theater.
If in doubt, blow up the ship.
Does the captain get away in a lifeboat? Isn’t he supposed to go down with the ship?
*
In the theater, the sea of seats rippled downward, empty except for two in the fifth row occupied by the director and his boy. I sat down in back. The seat creaked.
Mitch craned his head around. He got up abruptly—not his usual inconspicuous way—and headed for the stage. He whispered something to the stage manager, who quickly came down the side steps to the auditorium and slid into Mitch’s seat, a way of telling the cast he was watching the run-through in Mitch’s place.
Mitch stole back to where I was. “Let’s go outside, Ben, so we won’t disturb the cast.”
“Later.”
“Not later, Ben. Now.”
Once we were clear of the auditorium, I said, “Looks good, the five seconds I saw of it.”
“Ben,” Mitch said, “the word is bad. They say the investors aren’t in, that the partnership can’t close. Don’t shit me, Ben. If it’s gotten to the cast, it must be all over town.”
I was trying to think of a lie when I heard Louie’s voice.
Enough is enough. Tell him the truth.
Mitch said, “Stop daydreaming, Ben. If the show folds out of town, it’ll butcher the cast. And murder me.” Mitch’s eyes wouldn’t let go of mine. “Or do we close before we move out of town?”
I used to be able to tell wonderful lies.
Mitch was saying, “Everybody in the business knows I turn down five for every play I do. I’ve got my thing hanging out there. Tell me, Ben. Level.”
I can usually put my arm around a gay man without feeling uncomfortable. This time I felt queasy because it was part of my deceit.
“I should have talked to you earlier, Mitch. You didn’t expect financing this production would be a walk, did you?”
“Of course not. But we move out of town in ten days. It’s panic time.”
I took my arm off Mitch’s shoulder.
“I guess I’d better tell you,” I said.
“Tell me what?”
Tell him Manucci.
“You got time, Mitch?”
“Is it a solution?”
“Of course.”
Mitch’s smile could have cracked glass. “Don’t tell me what it is, Ben, just do it.”
He headed toward the doors of the theater, then turned to say, “Your word is good, Ben. I’ll tell the others.”
The moment before he went back into the auditorium, as if he’d forgotten something, he turned at the door just enough to blow me a kiss.
My lie galvanized me into a rapid stride back toward my office. Before opening the door I ran my fingers through my hair. Thank heaven, no more beseechers. Charlotte said, “Ezra told me.”
“Told you what?”
“That he couldn’t stop you from going down to the theater to close the play.”
“He had no business telling you.”
“He says you could end up in jail. Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Close the play.”
“I didn’t have the guts. Why are you smiling?”
“I know you.”
“Nobody knows me. Not anymore.”
“That reporter from the New York Post called.”
She handed me the slip. Larry Robertson. Page Six slime, read by the Post’s lawyers and then everyone else in town. I dropped the slip into the wastebasket just as I heard the phone ring in the outer office.
Charlotte buzzed. “It’s him again.”
“Ezra?”
“No, Robertson.”
“All right.” I wasn’t ducking any more calls.
“Ben Riller,” I said into the phone.
“Hi, Mr. Riller. I’ve been trying to reach you about a little item we’re running in tomorrow’s paper about the show. I’d just like to get your comment on the story around town that The Best Revenge may never open.”
“Mr. Robertson?”
“Yes?”
“If I tell you you’re wrong, your story will say ‘Producer denies show folding,’ right?”
“Unless you’d care to confirm that it is folding or make some other comment.”
“I do,” I said.
“Slowly, please,” he said, “so I can take it down.”
“Mr. Robertson,” I said, “does your wife have syphilis?”
Robertson’s voice shrilled, “What the hell kind of question is that?”
“I’ll tell you,” I said. “I’ve got an AP wire service reporter here finishing up an interview and he’d like to run a story saying ‘Post reporter denies wife has syphilis.’ Well, has she or hasn’t she?”
I could hear Robertson breathing. Then he said, “You win, Mr. Riller,” and hung up.
Fuck him. The worst thing you can do is lie down in the snow.
Louie’s voice in my ear was saying, Italians are wonderful people, Ben, warm. Look how many times Manucci reached a hand out to help me. A phone call won’t hurt.
Just shut up, I shouted at him. I don’t need anybody’s advice.
A grown-up doesn’t talk to his father that way.
If I didn’t answer, he’d go away.
You can’t get rid of me, Ben.
I don’t need voices.
I told you to be a writer, not a talker like me.
I did what I could.
Not true. You did what people wanted you to do.
I had to make a living, Pop.
Did I use up my life so you could become a salesman like everyone else in America? In the newspapers they call you an impresario, what’s that? A fancy salesman? A broker for other people’s talents? A handler? You were supposed to use the brains I gave you to write, every teacher said so.
I needed money.
You had money.
I needed enough so I wouldn’t end up a slave to someone like Manucci the way you did.
Careful, Ben, soften your voice. Manucci was my friend.
You always went to him for money.
The Rockefellers don’t lend money to people like me. Who should I have gone to?
Manucci’s a shylock.
Without Manucci my business would have gone down the toilet. We had to eat. Manucci helped me the way you helped Ezra when he was in a money jam.
I didn’t charge Ezra interest. I’m not a moneylender.
Ben, I love you. I hoped you would never go broke like me.
Go ahead, curse me.
The biggest play producer in America is not going to like it in jail. God have mercy on you.
Don’t do that, Pop. When I was a kid, you always talked and I listened. It’s my life now, not yours.
That’s true.
Now I’m going to shout
into your grave, Pop, and you’re going to listen.
2
Ben
I kept three things of my father’s: a rotted-canvas-covered case that contained his World War I razor with which I took the first fuzz off my cheeks and called it a shave; a metal box filled with unredeemed pawn tickets that I never showed anyone, not even Jane; and a small maroon leather address book that contained, according to my mother, the names of all of Louie’s alleged mistresses, in addition to friends, acquaintances, business contacts, our long-dead family doctor, and the unlisted number of Aldo Manucci, Louie’s moneylender.
I’m famous for not being able to find anything I’m looking for. The address book, which I hadn’t looked through in years, was, to my great relief, where it was supposed to be, in my locked desk drawer.
“No calls,” I said to Charlotte, who’d followed me in.
“Not even prospects?”
“Take numbers. I’ve got a very important call to make.”
“Jane wants to talk to you.”
“Later.”
“Ezra called her.”
“I said later. Please shut the door gently.”
I put a yellow pad in front of me on the desk. I placed a pen on the yellow pad. This is ridiculous, I’m not going to write anything, just call.
I expected whoever answered the phone to speak in the Italian intonations I remembered from long ago. The voice of the woman who said hello in English had no hint of an accent.
“I’m calling Mr. Aldo Manucci, please,” I said.
The woman hesitated. Was Manucci still alive?
“Who may I say is calling?”
What a relief.
“My name is Ben Riller.”
“Miller?”
“Riller with an R. Tell him it’s Louie Riller’s son.”
“Oh,” the woman said with an audible rush of air. “Can I help you in any way? Can I give him a message for you? It’s hard for him to come to the phone.”
“Is he sick?”
“Well, not sick sick,” the woman said, “resting. He’s eighty-eight, you know. Can I give him a message?”
Can I ask whoever you are to carry the message that I need over four hundred thousand dollars?
“My father—Louie Riller—was a good friend of Mr. Manucci’s—”
“Oh, I know,” the woman said. “I still have the cross he made for me when I was three. My uncle has arthritis. His sight is very poor, and his hearing, well, he can hear what he wants to hear, but it’s difficult for him on the telephone, Mr. Riller. Can I give him a message?”
“Could I come to see him at a time when he’s rested?”
“A social visit?”
That would be a lie. “I’m afraid I’ve been neglectful of my father’s old friends,” I said. “It’s a business matter.”
“Oh, Mr. Manucci is not in business anymore. He hasn’t been for many years.”
“He might make an exception. My father said that—” I hesitated. “If I ever got into trouble, I should go talk to Aldo Manucci.”
“If you’ll hang on,” the woman said, “I’ll ask.” She was gone a long time.
“Sorry to have kept you. My uncle says to tell Bennie that the past is never past. He’ll be happy to advise you. If the matter is urgent, you could come today, after he’s rested and shaved. Would seven this evening be all right?”
She could have said midnight.
“Are you still in the same house on North Oak Drive?”
*
I remembered the Little Italy of my childhood in the northeast Bronx in images of its people, the imperious shouts of old women dressed in black, the teenagers playing stickball gesturing with three fingers and yelling obscenities at cars that disrupted their game.
Though I saw no stickball games in progress, my BMW seemed too conspicuous on these streets narrowed by parked cars on both sides. I should have taken Jane’s Toyota for this visit. I drove slowly, noticing the walkers carrying portable radios—that was new—and the stoop sitters, as of old, looking at my unfamiliar vehicle as if it were a foreign invader.
I had almost forgotten about the hierarchy of houses, the tenements from which families hoped to move into the attached row houses with their tiny vegetable plots in back, and then the stand-alone houses covered with imitation brick siding except for the largest house—which I recognized as if suddenly coming upon an old enemy—covered with imitation stone siding, set back from the street, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence with a gate that used to be locked.
I was able to park at the curb directly in front. I reached across to lock the glove compartment and saw three teenagers looking at me through the windshield with expressions learned from gangster movies on TV. They expected what from me? A declaration of war? I smiled and waved at them, destroying their poses.
I checked to make sure the door lock held. Then, looking over the roof of the car as if it were a battlement offering temporary protection, I took in the house. I remembered the legend that once in the 1920s someone had been heaved out of a third-story window and had been pierced by one of the spikes of the wrought-iron fence. Though he was still alive and screaming for an hour or more, nobody came to get the man off, not even the police.
The gate was not locked. I went through, closing it behind me, watched by the kids near the car. After twenty feet of flagstone path—I remembered Louie saying how expensive flagstone was—I went up the three steps to the front door. There was no name on the doorbell.
The woman who answered my ring was in her mid-forties, a dark-haired, olive-beautiful, Mediterranean presence.
“Is this the Manucci residence?” I asked.
“Come in, Mr. Riller,” she said, smiling. “Your face is the same as in the newspapers.”
“You were very kind to arrange this meeting.”
She stepped aside so that I might pass her. “You won’t remember me,” she said. “When you were here long ago, I was just a baby.”
Was she the niece Manucci chose to be his fortress-keeper when his wife died? Had he not allowed her to marry?
She showed me to the sitting room. “I’ll get him,” she said.
I looked around. No one decorated homes like this anymore, pieces of furniture put in place over time, each without aesthetic connection to the others. The painting of the Madonna on one wall was an untalented piece of street art. If Manucci rescued me, perhaps I should buy him a worthy painting of the Madonna. He wouldn’t recognize it as worthy but as an insult to his own.
At last she wheeled him in, a shrunken human stuffed by a careless taxidermist. He was trying to hold his head up to see me, an eye clouded by cataract. He took an unblinking look, then let a rich smile lift the ends of his mouth as his voice, still bass though tremulous, said, “Ben-neh!” which made my name sound like the word “good” in Italian.
“Mr. Manucci,” I said, and took his hand in both of mine, which were cold. His hand was warm, for he had long ago abjured nervousness about anything that life might bring him.
“You a much big man now,” Manucci said. “In papers all time Ben-neh Riller present, Ben-neh Riller announce, Ben-neh Riller big stars, big shows. You bring Gina Lollobrigida here I kiss her hand. I kiss her anything,” he laughed. “Magnani, you know Magnani, she more my type. I tell people here I know you when you just a little Jew kid this high.” He held his hand up flat to show my height when he saw me last. “Your father, Louie, he just a shrimp, how you get so big? Oh, this my niece, Clara. I call her Clarissima, she best woman ever in my life.”
Clara nodded, blushing.
“Clara go two colleges,” he said. “Last one where all snob girls go, whatsits name?”
“I’ll leave you two,” she said.
“I tell you something,” he said. “Don’t stand like idiot, sit, sit, I sit all time.”
I pulled a chair close to him.
“That’s good.” He sighed. “How’s your father?”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right
. “He’s, well he’s been dead a long time.”
“I know, I know. He talks to me once in while. He must talk to you, too, no?”
We understood each other.
He went on. “Clara tell me you coming, I near cried. I miss your father. I don’t mean business. I had all business I need. I mean Louie stories, jokes, make all women here laugh, cry, he could been Don Juan the whole Little Italy if your mother not such a beauty dish herself. People I do business with old days make my pocket so rich I can’t spend if I live two hundred years more, but Louie he make my heart rich every time he come here. He was like family, I tell you.”
Unembarrassed by the rush of his emotions, he brushed his eyes with the back of his sleeve and said, “Anything I can do for son of Louie I do. What kind of trouble you got?”
I told him a short version.
“Your investors stink,” he said. “No loyalty. Clarissima!” he shouted. “Bring Strega!”
From the other room Clara said, “Momento.”
“You in trouble, Ben-neh?”
I nodded.
“Money trouble?”
I nodded again.
“Who with?”
How do I explain?
“Everybody?” He laughed. “Always that way. Never mind. You try banks?”
I nodded. “No dice.”
His laugh was raucous, spittle glistening in the cracked corners of his mouth.
“Very good, no dice. Must remember. Banks take no chances. God bless stupid banks make Manucci family rich.”
Clara put two cut-crystal glasses with Strega between us, disappeared.
“How much you need?”
“Four hundred twenty-nine thousand dollars,” I said.
He emitted a whistle. “Ho boy,” he said, then leaned forward. I was afraid he might fall out of the wheelchair. I pulled my chair closer to his.
“Know something,” he said, “don’t give half that much to one party even when I was king around here. Never mind. Nineteen seventy-nine dollar nothing. When you was boy, Ben-neh, five cents buy big ice cream, five dollars get someone off street for good. Last week my friend Paolo paid one buck for a shoeshine, you believe that?” The old man sighed for the past. “Never mind. You need all one time?”
“Yes.”
“When you need? Yesterday! Everybody always need money yesterday. Right?”
I nodded.