The Girls of Cincinnati

by Jack Engelhard

  When one of our guys hit a home run everyone got up and cheered and she just sat there, not out of disrespect; she just didn’t know.

  She was more used to debutante balls and tennis and lunch on the veranda at the country club.

  So I explained that you’re supposed to stand and cheer when someone hits a homerun, which she did, when someone from the other team did. Oh well, my mistake.

  “Well I’m playing catch-up to you, Eli,” Fat Jack said. “You don’t have to pay for it; I do. So what? Nature was kind to you. Me, I’m ugly. So I pay. Does that make your conquests purer, more righteous than mine? I don’t think so. You use your looks for barter, I use money. We’re both trading on what we’ve got to offer. So don’t be getting superior on me, Eli.”

  “But wasn’t it rotten to make her think she was doing ME a favor by screwing YOU?”

  “I didn’t make her think anything, Eli. She drew her own conclusions.”

  He said I could still have her.

  “Except on Mondays.”

  He punched me in the arm. I punched him in the belly.

  “You think I care?” I said.

  “I know you don’t. That’s the trouble with you, Eli. Ever since you came back from New York.”

  “What about before?”

  “Before you weren’t so terrific, either.”

  “Thanks, Fat Jack.”

  “But at least you had Stephanie. That’s why you came back, right? For Stephanie.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Also because you couldn’t make it there as an actor.” He started pushing me around with his belly, his favorite sport. Fat Jack had some belly, hence his nickname. “You left a loser and you came back a loser. Not that I’m calling you a loser. Between then and now, you also lost Stephanie.”

  “Thanks for reminding me, Fat Jack.”

  “Of what?”

  “That I’m a loser.”

  He punched me in the shoulder and kept at it until I gave him one to the belly. He grabbed and twisted my tie.

  “You’ve given up,” he said, “and I know why. You’re trying to punish yourself for that other thing.”

  THAT OTHER THING was the possible killing of a man. I don’t know for sure. It was a blur. The man was on 72nd Street in New York, between Second and Third Avenues, it was one a.m., I was returning from my night shift as a waiter in Greenwich Village, between auditions, and saw the man beating a boy of about eight years old. He told me it was his son so it was all right.

  I said, “You’re killing the boy.”

  He said, “Pardon me?”

  “You’re killing the boy.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I can’t let you do this.”

  “Pardon me?”

  I blocked his fist from landing another blow to the kid’s head. He took a swing at me with his free arm. I hit him in the throat. He grabbed his throat, gagged, staggered, went down, and was out. That sudden, that fast. The cops came. I was arrested but let go, and never knew why.

  I never found out what happened to the kid. I only knew that I had hurt a man unconscious and did not know (to this day) if he ever came around. I had good cause to do what I did. I never could watch this stuff, even in movies or on TV, I mean the abuse of children, or women, and here it was in real life. But when you hurt someone like that (did I take a life?) you do something cosmic. You rearrange the stars. You also rearrange the universe that is you. You can never be the same again. But they let me go, the cops did, and charged me with nothing. Very strange. They never even gave me a chance to explain the correctness of my action.

  The cops came after I phoned it in. They checked out the guy, and called for an ambulance, but someone said it may be too late. Anyway, that bruiser, they took him off, hospital or morgue. They took the kid to the hospital, that much I did know about the kid. They took me to a precinct station, locked me in a detention cell and three hours later said I was free to go. I wouldn’t need a lawyer. I wouldn’t need a thing. Goodbye. I was free. As if nothing had happened.

  Maybe the kid had told them everything, how I had stepped in for him.

  Maybe the guy had a long rap sheet, or mob connections, and they wanted him dead, or locked up. Whatever.

  Maybe he was a crooked cop and they wanted all of it hushed. (That still makes the most sense to me.)

  Maybe a thousand other reasons.

  The point was, I wasn’t guilty.

  But I wasn’t innocent, either.

  Only Fat Jack knew about this. Only Fat Jack because I trusted him. In business he’d skin you alive. But man to man he was fiercely honest and trustworthy. “You figured the courts didn’t punish you, God didn’t punish you, so you’re punishing yourself,” he was now saying. “I can imagine what it’s like living with that memory. You must have nightmares by the hours.”

  Which I couldn’t deny.

  “But you can’t live your whole life in retreat,” he said, “in a funk, over something you once did. We all once did something.”

  Chapter 7

  “It’s not good,” said Mona after all the others had gone home.

  Mona was in a very serious mood and she worried me when she got that way. I was tired. I had a headache. It was hot. The leads still weren’t coming. The salesmen were complaining. Even the Big Three, Phil Coleman among them, were going slow from regular walk-in business downstairs. Fewer people were responding to the newspaper and TV ads. When the economy was bad luxuries like carpet were the first things people stinted on. Everybody complained how bad business was. The stock market was down to record lows. The temperature was up to record highs. Every year people said the stock market had never been so low and the temperature had never been so high. I hadn’t been around when the world was perfect, but it must have been perfect since people kept saying things had never been so bad before.

  I didn’t care. I had spent the day thinking about Stephanie. That’ll get you very high and very low.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” I said to Mona.

  “Then get rid of her.”

  We weren’t talking about Marie. We were talking about Sonja the Psychic. When Mona took a dislike to someone, it was time for alarm.

  I told Mona that I felt sorry for Sonja.

  “She’s broke. She’s working hard. I can’t fire her.”

  Mona said she was a bad influence on the girls, scaring them with her spooky talk, but mostly with her big-eyed glances and silences that were getting creepier by the day. She told one of the girls, Tina, that she, Tina, had only a short time to live, and this affected Tina very badly.

  “I can imagine,” I said.

  “And there’s lots you can’t imagine.”

  “Oh?”

  “She’s falling for you, you know, as they all do eventually.”

  “I never take that too seriously.”

  “This time you should, Eli. That one spooks me.”

  “Fat Jack said the same thing.”

  “Well for once he’s right.”

  “But she hasn’t done anything.”

  “Do we have to wait until she does?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “She’s been confiding in me, and some of the other girls, saying you two are DESTINED.”

  “Me and Sonja?”

  “You have no idea how much she hates Stephanie.”

  “She’s never met Stephanie.”

  “Yes she has. She SEES things, remember? She sees you two married, living happily ever after – after she gets Stephanie out of the way. She says sooner or later you’re going to realize that Stephanie is really ugly, and if you don’t realize that yourself, she’ll do something to prove the point.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, Eli, but I’d take it as a threat.”

  “That’s crazy, Mona.”

  “Exactly, Eli. This one’s crazy.”

  “Come on, Mona,” I laughed. “You think she’s a witch or something?”

/>   “Yes.”

  * * *

  Fat Jack called to ask if I was busy, which was a laugh, I was never busy, but as a question it was usually a prelude to a rotten task. In fact he always asked if I was busy and I always said yes and he always laughed. We had this joke going about how wrong I was for this job and how wrong I was for practically everything. But he put up with me because – hell, I don’t know.

  “Yes I’m busy,” I said.

  He wondered if I could take a few minutes of my precious time to walk across the street, to Ben’s Smoke and News Shop, and bring back those Cuban cigars Harry Himself had specially ordered. I thought about that for a while. Am I an errand-boy? No, I don’t do errands. I am an artist, nearly made the second cut off-Broadway and my photo is still floating around. That phone call may still come any day. I am an actor!

  Forget that, if we must, but wasn’t I supposed to be some sort of an EXECUTIVE around here? I wore a suit! All right I didn’t, but I could if I wanted to. I was supposed to. Even if I wasn’t an EXECUTIVE I was in charge of an office, a department – I had a STAFF. I had a BUDGET, even though I never knew what it was. Yes, I was head of a DEPARTMENT. I was a department HEAD.

  “Well?”

  “I’m really too busy.”

  “Eli, it’ll only take a few minutes. Please. For me. Do it for me.”

  “So why don’t you go?”

  “I got customers down here. Please Eli, this time I’m serious.”

  Also, and this was strange, he had to run over and drop something off at his synagogue. We did not talk religion here at Harry’s Carpet City, or practically anywhere else in Cincinnati. Not that it was taboo. It was impolite. We were family and religion causes friction around the table. We had Saturday people, Sunday people, and even Friday people, but it was pretty much don’t ask don’t tell. Beginning with the Our Crowd dynasties of Ochs (newspapers) and Lazarus (department stores), of which Emma was a member, the Jews of Cincinnati were Episcopalian.

  “I really am serious,” said Fat Jack. “Harry needs those cigars.”

  Yes he was, and I couldn’t remember the last time Fat Jack had been so serious.

  “Why can’t somebody else go?”

  “Everybody’s tied up. Come on, Eli.”

  “Is this a test?”

  If it was, it wouldn’t be coming from Fat Jack, who’d never fire me, on his own. We had an understanding, that we were brothers, not technically, but brothers, with all the (mostly good-natured) bickering; living out our lives in someone else’s world. Fat Jack played the conventional middle class game, but he knew the absurdity of it all.

  I had quit once, a few summers back, against Fat Jack’s advice and it took only a few weeks to get me completely broke, so broke that I finally went tottering to the unemployment office and waited in those lines with other people who were broke just like me, the losers in this war of economics, and here you are in that universe where you’re just a number and always waiting in the wrong line.

  You are being processed, branded just like sheep, with the same sensitivity.

  Soon, after about three hours, I had to go to the bathroom. I asked the guy in front of me, wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates t-shirt, if he’d save my place till I got back and he nodded okay. In the bathroom I threw up and when I got back my place in line was taken. Pittsburgh, figured.

  I inched closer and now there was just one person ahead of me, then it was my turn, and just at that moment I fell back and passed out. When I recovered nobody helped me get up because you’d lose your place in line. So never mind the unemployment – I probably didn’t qualify anyway – but now the job was to get home. Drive? No, not in this condition, woozy as I was. Whom to call? I tried Maishe. He wasn’t home at either place, where he regularly lived or on campus. Next I tried Fat Jack. He was there in 15 minutes and wasted no time telling me I told you so, you yutz!

  “You’re not cut out for this life,” was what he said.

  But he was there; he showed up.

  “No test,” he now said. “We’re only talking cigars, Eli. CIGARS!”

  “You know it’s not cigars we’re talking about.”

  “You could have been there and back by now.”

  “Like any running dog.”

  Fat Jack sighed. “Forget it – I’ll go myself.”

  “Never mind. So happens I was just on my way over to Ben’s anyway for some pipe tobacco.”

  Fat Jack: “We needed all this grief?”

  Chapter 8

  Ben was behind the counter smoking a cigar.

  He used to say: “People tell me if I smoke I’ll die. So if I don’t smoke I’ll live?”

  Ben was in his late 70s. He did more than run a smoke and news shop. Ben (self-educated) was well-read, an intellectual, a philosopher, an iconoclast. He worshipped Mencken, Voltaire and Erasmus. He could quote them all and from Erasmus he learned that cynicism was the highest form of truth. Only one president, in his view, was worthy of the office, John F. Kennedy. The rest were bums.

  When I walked in he winked at me. He was telling a customer I’d never seen before (only regulars frequented the place): “Sure everybody used to come in here, back in the old days. Duke Snider came in here once. Joe Louis was here. Rocky Marciano. Duke Snider. Everybody.”

  “You already said Duke Snider,” said the guy, who didn’t know the protocol.

  “That’s right. Duke Snider. Big Klu. Wally Post. Johnny Temple. They were all here. Those were ballplayers.”

  “Well I seen Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle,” said the guy, who was obviously from New York and passing through, probably thinking he was in the HEARTLAND. Probably thinking he was in Cleveland. They all thought Cleveland was Cincinnati. They thought Ohio was Kansas. I remembered that from New York. People would say, “You’re the guy from…Cleveland, right?”

  Hank, Ben’s partner, came over to help out, saying, “Had some of the finest jockeys here, too.”

  “Best jockeys are in New York. I seen Eddie Arcaro.”

  That made Ben laugh. “Mister, Eddie Arcaro is from Cincinnati. Cincinnati’s his hometown.”

  “Anyway, that was a long time ago…”

  “That’s correct, Mister. Everything was a long time ago. You seen a boxer like Joe Louis? You seen a ballplayer like Big Klu? You seen jockeys like Arcaro, Longden, Shoemaker? Don’t give me Vasquez. I’m talking jockeys. You want to talk writers? Gimme a Hemingway! Gimme a Lardner. You wanna talk presidents? Gimme a Roosevelt. You wanna talk horses? Gimme a Kelso, a Dr. Fager. You young people, you came too late. Everything’s ALREADY HAPPENED.”

  Ben gave me another wink. For some reason, even though he could be my grandfather, Ben considered me part of his generation, at least he bestowed upon me the honor of his generation’s wisdom, seeing in me, perhaps, something of a tattered individual. Also, I smoked, the last to do so of MY generation.

  “Tell me Roosevelt once came into your shop,” said the New Yorker.

  “As a matter of fact he did. Everybody who was anybody was here at least once.”

  When the guy left Ben said, “In the old days…you know how they sent in the results from River Downs? By carrier pigeon.”

  “Those were the days all right,” I said, whatever they were, those days.

  “You came for Harry’s cigars?”

  “Yup.”

  “He’s too good to come for them himself?”

  “Yup.”

  “Harry’s all right. I remember when he first started out, from the back seat of a Chevy selling remnants. He’s all right. Not like some of those salesmen of his.”

  “They’re all right.”

  “They’re wise guys. They respect nothing. Do any of them read?”

  “Contracts for wall-to-wall.”

  Ben liked that. “You’re all right, Eli. Someday…”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re not like the other salesmen.”

  “I’m not a salesman.”

  “I know. You’r
e an actor. Matter of fact, you look like William Holden, doesn’t he Hank?”

  Ben said that to me at least once a week. Also, “One day, Eli, your name will be up in lights.”

  “Or up on the post office’s most wanted bulletin board,” said Hank.

  Ben handed over Harry’s box of cigars – Cuban and contraband, but Ben had contacts. He could go to jail if word got out.

  “What can they do to me at my age,” Ben said.

  Hank already had some history with the authorities.

  “They’ve done enough,” said Hank.

  The shop was raided now and then even though Ben and Hank counted cops and politicians among their clientele.

  Chapter 9

  I called it boiler room fever, this thing that happened when people were thrown in together eight hours a day, five days a week and turned familiarity into lust. Most affairs, and plenty of marriages, had nothing to do with storybook love, as much as the fact that you were here and she was here. Maybe I had a bit of an ego, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think that my looks and my charms lured all these women to me. My greatest asset was that I was here and another guy wasn’t.

  So it was no terrific compliment when they’d get that washy look in the eyes and find excuses to hang around your desk and come in early and stay late and suddenly wear tight sweaters and short skirts. They’d show leg, flash smiles, stare dreamily into your eyes, just as Sonja started doing more and more.

  “Are you sure you want me to call Avondale?” Sonja asked. “I mean it’s mostly black.”

  The girls worked from a Criss-Cross Directory off a new-fangled computer database, which differed from a regular phone book in that it provided complete addresses, too, and by neighborhood, which was valuable information in the world of telephone soliciting as it more or less told you who was rich and who was poor, who was carpet and who was linoleum, who was area rug and who was wall-to-wall.

  “I mean it’s such a waste of time and I’m getting tired of all these rejections.”

  Which I could sympathize with since rejection was the name of this game. Fifty percent of the people said no even before the girls had a chance to start their pitch and 49 percent simply hung up. Not much slack. That’s the carpet business, at least from the phone soliciting end, and that’s show business. Heck, it’s all the same. New York and Cincinnati are not that far apart.