Schultz

by J. P. Donleavy

  “Shit it was you you son of a bitch who told me to write it for christ’s sake.”

  “My dear, it was suggested in the most jokingly off handed manner to divert you amusingly for a moment.”

  “I really enjoyed writing that letter. Why the fuck do people want to go killing poor foxes for. But meanwhile. I’m getting the fuck out of here. Before you start dragging me out into the philosophical depths again.”

  Schultz in the hall pecking Rebecca on the cheek. Down in the street heading towards the theatre. Stopping nearby on the corner. The lobby lit and empty. Jesus business looks bad. Just a woman coming along. Good. She’s slowing. Come on, stop. Look at the posters. Shit she is. Good. Turn in you bitch. Christ. That’s it. She’s going in. A customer. Hope yet.

  Schultz entering the theatre. Crossing the luxurious cozy lobby. Approaching the pleasant grey haired lady in the box office.

  “Hey. Hi.”

  “Good evening Mr. Schultz.”

  “Hey what happened to that woman did she buy a ticket.”

  “No sir. She’s the manageress of the stall bar.”

  “Holy jeeze.”

  “Booking sir, has increased a tiny bit since the afternoon papers have come out. But I’m afraid it’s been an awfully slow morning.”

  “How about tonight.”

  “We’ll be lucky if we’re a fifth full. Business could improve at the doors later. But it’s not going to be a good week sir.”

  Schultz stopping into his favourite amusement emporium. Shoving sixpences in the pinball machine. Warming up and winning free games. Then racking up one record score after another. A group gathered to watch this master at work. With his delicate tilting, bumping and massé shots. Only thing left besides fucking I’m really good at.

  Schultz walking back through Mayfair to the Dorchester along Curzon Street. Heading past a hairdresser’s, book shop, wine merchant. If I have a future left, I could get a flat around here. Everything one needs. Even a good selection of whores. Patrolling on this moist pavement. Jesus I got to start fucking them. So much cheaper than ruining my life screwing women that make you pay not only with all your assets but with blood.

  Schultz passing some black railings. Fronting a velvet green lawn spreading towards a gleaming cream town house. A drunken gent swaying on the sidewalk ahead. Blocking Schultz with his upraised arm.

  “Ah now sir, have you the right time.”

  “Sorry I’ve lost my watch.”

  “Ah you’ve lost the time. Lost it. Ah but I can see you can afford it. And now what a time it is for me to be wasting your time when you don’t be having the time. It’s light enough to carry if you only want to know what time it is. But believe me it’s an awful weight when it accumulates. Ah Jesus the weight of time.”

  “Here, here’s a couple of tickets to the theatre tonight.”

  “Ah well now imagine, manna falls into me hand when least you’d expect. Would you have a price of a drink for the interval.”

  “Sure. Here.”

  “You’re a gentleman, a gentleman.”

  “Promise to clap your head off at the final curtain. Cheer. Do anything that sounds like you enjoyed it.”

  “Ah I’ll do that. Be glad to. They’ll be bravos. Now pray tell me who have I the privilege of talking to. Are you yourself by any chance a man of the theatre.”

  “You might say that.”

  “Well I’m a man of erudition. But latterly of the streets. And a bridge player of championship standards. Down a little bit on me luck at the moment. But I was a great man for attending the theatre in me day.”

  “Come see me at this address tomorrow. I might have a job for you.”

  “Ah I’m not a great man for working. But if you have something to challenge the intellect I’m your man.”

  Schultz opening the door into the quiet peace of his suite. Turn on a lamp. Ring room service for tea. Get a wake up call in three hours. Throw myself on this bed. Toes of my borrowed shoes pointing to the ceiling. Jesus I could go down a flight and along the hall and slam a quick fuck into Sylvia. Before they get their walking papers out of this place. No. Stop. Don’t. Be smart for once for christ’s sake. Besides. After all these marvellous foreign women, an American girl’s voice sounds like noise. I got to review my whole life. Where the fuck I took the wrong turning. Only I’m too exhausted. Can hardly stay awake. I’m fucked. I’m finished. And broke. The show’s a shambles. Nothing will resurrect that fucking thing. With every shit who can string two words together, slamming it. The Sunday reviews will crucify us. Binky. Jesus, the son of a bitch knows there’s no money left. And I’ll never be on a yacht on the Riviera. Dispossessed of a whole fucking house. My private personal papers strewn all over. There they were. The behemoth and a fucking wife. Throwing me out of my own home. Out of which. Shit. I tell you. I needed no encouragement to go. Imagine at dawn. Me on my own doorstep. Them shouting to get out. Jesus these fucking women. Think it’s so god damn easy to make money. Go step out there yourself you bitch. Go ahead. Where the financial guns are blazing and you make some money. Otherwise, instead of bitching sitting back there in the comfort of free room and board, shut your fucking ass. Shut it you cunt. Holy Jesus. I’m shouting. I’m delirious after all these nonstop horrendous days. Don’t know which are worse. The day horrors or the night horrors. But nothing, nothing could be worse than back working for my father. Or Uncle Werb. O Jesus. It’s only diamonds or erotic ladies’ lingerie left. I don’t think Binky and I are good for each other. Too many of the same kind of showbizz disasters have befallen us. We both shove the same crutches at each other for support. I need them and he doesn’t. My last hope. My only hope. Is his Lordship. Got to get him somehow to open up his coffers and save the show. He’s got to have some fucking humanity left I’m sure. He’s really an understanding guy. When I asked him, Jesus your Lordship why don’t you stop using your titles altogether if it causes you so much anguish. Ah Schultz, that would deprive people of their so clearly enjoyed pleasure of addressing me for what I am. Holy shit. I’ve got to stop fucking women. Before they kill me. When you’re just looking for a nighttime of thrill they’re looking for a lifetime of bliss. Only Rebecca is still absolutely loyal. The other secretaries skulking about. Shifty eyed. Cleaning their fingernails. Sneaking out of the office to fuck off every chance they get. Holy jeeze. This is the time. Of utter utter treachery. Everywhere. If I live through this I’m going to make a pilgrimage to Prague. Discover the beginning of my origins. At least see that before the end. In the beautiful mother of cities. Growing up I was happy. Never knew then what the horrors meant. Except trying to practice my violin after school with frozen fingers. These could be my last fucking hours. Born in Woonsocket. Sigmund Franz Isadore Schultz. A special a instead of the i in Isadore. For is adorable Schultz. Following four flops, he died in London. Fuck him, don’t help him, he’s too dead. At least during my life I had a beautiful name. I’m going to be a father. A kid born with no daddy to look after it. The behemoth could be raising my own flesh and blood. That monster fucking woman trying to tell me how to behave in my own fucking private house, in my own fucking private moments conducting my own fucking private body with my own fucking private desires. I couldn’t stand it. I got to win. Jesus I’ve already lost. Bills cascading from every direction especially this hotel. Even owe Binky rent on the coffin space I got my desk in, squeezed into an office for a midget. In the most polite and friendly kind of way, I know the flint hearted fucker will kick me out. But Jesus there were times of joy I had up there sometimes. Whenever those two fuckers weren’t plotting something against me. Just sitting around and bullshitting for hours. In those moments I really could have relaxed in utter happiness if I only knew I had already made millions. Or else was totally flat on my arse in failure. Once the trade reviews get out, it will ruin and smash my career. Those commercial minded cunts will revile the show. Boy have they got the jargon to do it. They love seeing you go down the drain for a fortune. My previou
s flops were too small to notice. They vanished like a saint’s fart. Now I have to bomb with a bang heard all over showbizz. Uncle Werb says, Sigmund, diamonds don’t evaporate. A fucking production sure does, the second the closing notice gets posted. Uncle Werb used to come up from Brooklyn to Rhode Island to build me snowmen in the snow. Put a yarmulke on the snowman’s head. Jesus I’m already crying tears for the unborn. I could have a son or a daughter. How can I support them. When my parents had me. They sold fire damaged ladies’ underwear from an outdoor stall in a market. Holy shit, how near the bottom can you start. Ten years it took of saving to get them just one lingerie store. We moved from the worst apartment house to the best apartment house on the block. Uncle Werb kept saying why don’t you go to the suburbs out of the slum. Make a social milestone in the family’s history. By that time Uncle Werb had a big suite in the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn. Holy cow, how did such a sweet nice guy like him make all that money. Jesus, simple, he stayed a bachelor. Retained the peace of mind to overcome disasters. As I keep reminding myself, expect the worst and that’s what you’ll get, only it will be much worse. I’m shaking. A cold sweat. Hold tight on the sides of the bed. This is an emotional emergency. And let me tell you. At today’s prices emotional satisfaction is not available to mankind. It’s a lure to keep you looking for it. Happiness is not money. The biggest asshole remark of the century. Holy jeeze how content I would be to wallow in a big bank account. Al. O god Al. You geriatric motherfucker. Taught me so many of the ropes. You helped. Did favours. And momma meeo. Why did you then have to finally suffocate me. The day you sent Pricilla over, everything in my life was like eating bagels, bananas and coconuts in the sun. Since that moment. How could I put on a decent production with all the pressures. Flesh bone and blood, that’s all women are, and Jesus what they can fucking well do to you. Now Al it’s you who is in love. Victimized. But come to think of it Louella was the only serene pleasant thing I saw all of opening night. Louella. Christ what a beautiful name. Maybe what I would like is one of those gorgeous intelligent half bitches who really understands sweat, men and money. Who loves to hear all the nuances of the kill. Wipes your brow after every business transaction and pats your hand as you reach over to feel her thigh. Who tells you that the fucker deserved what you did to him in that deal. Instead here I am landed with the complete bitch. Who after she’s corroded my guts away will grow old after I’m buried, hanging jewels on herself to compensate for every line and sag she’s got. As a kid I was known as Guts Dutch Schultz. I slapped girls all over the place. When I was a little child in my high chair eating a bowl of spinach, Uncle Werb said to my father, Milton I’m telling you he would make a good diamond merchant because he will grow up into a genius. My suspicious father who thought for a long time I was pretty stupid, looks at him. Says nearly hysterically, hey Werb how can you tell. Ah, of course Milton, I can tell. It’s you who doesn’t bother to look. See. If the bowl is more than an inch away from his fingertips, instead of reaching, he throws a screaming fit at the inconvenience. Let me tell you Milton. Such impatience over a detail makes a brilliant diamond merchant. My father told me the story every time Uncle Werb wanted me down learning merchandising gems on Forty Seventh Street. Why did I ever come to England. Jesus I know why. As a tiny tot still crapping in a potty, I heard London’s Big Ben ring nine o’clock one night on the American radio at the abdication of an English King. It sounded profound like nothing had ever sounded to me before. Imagine. That same fucking bell now is measuring off the time in the longest and maybe last chapter of my life. And Uncle Werb before he hit the big time, lived in deepest Brooklyn. Would you believe it, in an area called Kensington just off Coney Island Avenue. With streets named Westminster, Rugby, Buckingham and Marlborough. When Uncle Werb’s whole stock in trade was just one diamond wrapped in tissue paper carried in the shell of a vest pocket watch, when he stood dealing in the snow and rain on the Bowery. Jesus here I am with a date now with Lady Lullabyebaby. His Lordship’s sister. As high up as you can get in the aristocracy without being annoyingly conspicuous wearing a crown. Nearly said to her on the phone. To bring her down a peg. Hi ya baby. How about a cocktail, ballet, dinner and fuck, not necessarily in that order. I must be getting old thinking such shit The way I feel right now, it won’t be long before I’m popping down pills and timing my heart with a stopwatch like Al. Jesus am I over the hill. Like two of the most stunning women I ever knew. When they were only a few years older than Roxana and Greta and ripe and beautiful in their prime. Went to see them when I hadn’t seen them in ten years. Cramped up in an attic, furniture jammed everywhere. There they were, unable to move in the proximity. One of them trying to get me to screw her for old time’s sake. The other dying. Lungs black and cancer riddled from cigarettes. My god her hair was falling out. Her back was burned from exposure to X rays. And she wasn’t going to live long enough to sue the hospital. Holy shit, back that night I could hardly take it. Threw my cigarettes down a sewer. Nearly had to drag myself through the streets and there as I looked at these two women who were once both so fucking beautiful, all three of us those years ago screwing away in the same bed howling out orgasms and now one of them in tears at death’s last trap door. The other like an American matron. All the hell I wanted to do was get the fuck fast out of there. And thought Jesus, that’s why women behave as they do. They got to make it while their beauty lasts because shit they’re going to end up on the scrap heap. And only that I’m so crucified by a fucking female at the moment, I’d nearly admit they deserve a tear of sympathy. Christ right this minute I’m in the middle of my own doom. Maybe it’s my compassion that has stymied me. Once when I was being a nuisance saying to Uncle Werb, don’t get anxious, he suddenly got angry and shouted. Anxiety is a Jewish characteristic for christ’s sake, with good fucking reason. Now it’s me who’s anxious. And I only wish I could feel more fucking Jewish. If I suffer like this now. What will it be like at four or five in the morning when the pre dawn ghosts are hooting and howling up my arse. Momma meeo. Stop. I got to stop. What the fuck is all this foolishness. Wasting valuable time trying to dig a hopeful omen out of my soul and only finding more horror. Fight you son of a bitch. Fight. Up. Off the fucking bed. Fight. Jesus look at me. My fucking tie, shirt, jacket, pants, shoes. Are all looking like two generations behind the times. I got to get in style again.

  Schultz stripping off his clothes. Running along his little hall into the bathroom. Popping in under the shower. Fight, team, fight. Splash chill water on prick and balls. Revive them. To fuck another day. Wrap up in the big warm white bath towels heaped on the towel rail. Cotton tips to dry in the ears. Comb hair in the mirror. Lean in closer. O no. One. Two. Three. Four. Christ. Five. Jesus. Six. Fucking new grey hairs.

  Schultz draped in towels as the waiter brought tea. Setting it up in the sitting room’s bow shaped window. Gaze out through the branches of the trees at the backs of Mayfair town houses. Christ, although I’m still feeling I’m still dying, at least a cup of china tea with lemon, smoked salmon and brown bread and a piece of pineapple pastry will take the edge off my appetite till I get to heaven.

  “The evening papers sir, were outside your door.”

  “Thanks. I’ve seen them.”

  “Terrible isn’t it, this massacre in Africa.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is there anything else sir.”

  “No this is swell thanks.”

  Schultz shaking a fist at the newspapers on the side table. Suddenly focusing an eye at a new emblazoned headline.

  COUP IN ZUMZIMZAMGAZI

  The Zumzimzamgazi army assisted by invading troops of His Royal Imperial Majesty, Field Marshal King Buggybooiamcheesetoo, overthrew the government of Zumzimzamgazi in a sudden coup last night. His Imperial Majesty vehemently denies giving any aid to the new military regime.

  Schultz putting down his tea cup. Picking it up again. And putting it down. My hands trembling. Jesus the behemoth and wife at dawn this morning were threatening to
go live in royal cheesy buggy-boo’s palace. Take my unborn child with them. To be raised by a fucking bunch of blacks killing each other fighting over snake infested jungles. Like hell they will. Abduct part of my flesh and blood back into primitive society. Fucking around with that big charcoal sambo joke in Africa.

  But holy Jesus this. O no. The Ambassador. Holy christ. The poor fucker must have got it in the neck. I never even this morning turned to look up at his windows where he was usually watching when I’m having a disturbance of the peace on my steps. He was becoming one of the last comforts and true friends I had in my life. This is really curtain time. Holy shit. I can’t cry now. In the middle of tea. Got to make rules. Rule one. Keep going Jackson. Rule two. Don’t read newspapers no more. Rule three. Put one foot in front of the other. Four. Fuck the cost. Get on the phone and get a limousine. Five. Get outside into living life. Rule five and a half. Don’t fucking trip on carpets or get garments caught in revolving doors. And even though I was a child prodigy with my prick.

  Rule six

  Don’t screw

  Horror and sex

  Don’t mix

  26

  In a misty soft drizzle of rain Schultz’s limousine purring past the street lamps on The Carriage Road alongside Hyde Park. The big evening lit dining rooms of the hotel. Turning down Sloane Street and left right between the red brick buildings of Knightsbridge.

  Lady Lullabyebaby stepping into the lobby from the lift of this sedate block of flats as Schultz came in. Sweeping forward in a long blue dress past the doorman rushing before her to open the doors.

  “Ah now milady, you have a good time tonight.”

  “Thank you Alfredo.”

  “Ah milady this is your gentleman, right.”

  “Yes, Alfredo. This is my gentleman.”