Nick and Jake

by Jonathan Richards

  Then somebody yelled out “Cops!” and the next thing I knew, they were hurrying Monk off the bandstand and out the kitchen door again, and suddenly four policemen came running in, swinging nightsticks. It was scary! They wouldn’t let any of us leave until they’d taken everyone’s name and address down.

  So I guess that’s why Mr. Powell acted so odd. I know it didn’t really have anything to do with you. It’s Monk--people get fierce about him. You should have seen how they took care of him that night with the police. I never saw anything like it.

  Funny, I always thought of policemen as our friends. But then, I always thought of our government as good people, protecting us from the Communists. But so many things are happening to me. In many ways, I’m not the girl you knew. I hope you’d still like me. I hope you’d like me better. I feel like I’m not a girl anymore, I’m a woman.

  Your special friend,

  Ronnie

  Apartment C

  14½ MacDougal Street

  New York

  April 9, 1953

  Dear Jackie,

  Hi, girl--surprised to hear from me? How are things at the Martha Washington? Still breaking all the rules--and getting away with it??? Ha ha.

  I need you to tell me something ... I hope I haven’t made a terrible mistake. I really, really, really hope, because I wrote the letter a few days ago, and I already sent it off, and then I started thinking about ... well ... if there’s a guy you think maybe you really like more than anyone else in the world, and he’s a long way away, like maybe Paris, France, and you wrote him a letter, and in it you said, “I’m not a girl anymore ... I’m a woman,” would he get the wrong idea?

  Can you keep a secret? I went to this party with Mr. Sheinbloom at his friend Jerry Wexler’s, who owns a record company. The Weavers were there (except Mr. Seeger), and Burl Ives, and we were going to hear this wonderful new blind singer and piano player that Mr. Wexler’s label has just signed.

  He was “real” cool! And you know what? He sang this one song where he needed some girl singers in the background, and Jerry told me to get up with these two Negro girls named Ruth and Lavern. I think they were the best singers I ever heard, and I had no business singing with them, but they were awful nice to me, and told me to keep at it.

  Afterward this young guy named Chuck came up to me. He’s a singer and a songwriter from St. Louis, he’s here trying to get a recording contract, and he told me he really liked the way I sang, and the way I looked. He couldn’t get over my eye makeup, and I told him it was just Maybelline, that all the girls down in Greenwich Village wear lots of eye makeup, to look more sophisticated. I told him back in my school days in Winnetka, I thought the height of being grownup was to wear tight dresses and lipstick, and high-heeled shoes, but that all seemed so teenage now.

  Anyway, the way he kept looking at me when we were talking, it made my skin go all goose-bumpy, and I could tell he wanted to, you know ...

  But just then there was a big commotion and Mr. Sheinbloom had gone all purple and couldn’t breathe, and he was saying “The cat! The cat!” Mr. Wexler’s cat had gotten out of the bedroom and jumped in his lap and Mr. Sheinbloom is deathly allergic, and I had to take him home, so I didn’t get to see Chuck again. But that other guy from the Weavers, whose name I can never remember, drove us, and after we got Mr. Sheinbloom to bed he insisted on driving me home.

  And I don’t know, Jackie, maybe it was that I was still so hot and bothered or whatever from being with Chuck, but next thing I knew ... well ... you know that thing I was, that I didn’t want to be? Well I’m not anymore.

  The worst of it is, I still can’t think of his name! They say a girl never forgets her first. I guess I’ll never remember.

  Your friend,

  Ronnie

  PS. Do you think it was OK? The letter, I mean?

  Robert Cohn Associates

  1853 M Street NW, Suite 830

  Washington, DC

  April 10

  Dear Roy,

  I had breakfast up on the hill with your boss this morning. McCarthy is as proud of you as if you were his nephew. Believe me, he’s following the headlines from your trip like they were box scores from the Washington Senators.

  Over coffee, he looked a little down, and for a moment I thought I sensed a little disappointment that there hadn’t been anything really climactic. “A capper,” he said, dabbing distractedly at a spot of egg yolk on his tie. “There’s gotta be a capper!”

  But then he looked up at me, and a big grin spread across his face. “He’ll do it,” he said. “The kid’s got imagination. The kid’s got balls! You watch, Cohn--that nephew of yours’ll come up with something spectacular!”

  I tell you, Roy, watching that smile spread across that five o’clock shadow (this is morning, mind you) it was like watching the sun break through storm clouds over a Wisconsin swamp. That man thinks a lot of you. He’s expecting something big.

  I know you won’t let him down.

  Your proud uncle,

  Robert

  Jacqueline Susann

  Martha Washington Hotel

  New York City

  April 10, 1953

  Ronnie,

  Don’t worry, kiddo. Men are all alike. If a man likes you that way, he suspects you with every man who ever lived, but he doesn’t really think you’d ever do it with anyone except him. So don’t worry, it never hurts to keep ’em guessing.

  So ... little Ronnnnieeeeee!!!!!!!!! Woo woo!!!! But here’s a word of advice from a babe who’s fallen off a few cabbage trucks in her day. You can have a fling or two, but when you get ready for the One That Counts, here are your Aunt Jackie’s Three Rules for Choosing a Man.

  Rule Number One: Think Older.

  Rule Number Two: Think Jewish.

  So far, your friend Wexler sounds he’s got potential, but don’t ever forget Rule Number Three:

  Think Broadway.

  All that jazzy-jazz and folky-folk stuff will never get you anywhere. This is New York, kiddo.

  Love and kisses,

  Jackie

  FROM THE DESK OF:

  ALLEN DULLES

  By Diplomatic Pouch

  April 10, 1953

  Carraway,

  Sorry to have had to leave you out in the cold through all this. I trust in your heart of hearts you never doubted that I, and the Agency, were behind you, but for obvious reasons it was important that this situation be allowed to unfold in a way that would arouse no suspicion whatsoever.

  Mind you, the McCarthy development was not one that we put into play, but here at the Company I’ve encouraged a tradition of seat-of-the-pants adapting to circumstances that I learned from my mentor, Wild Bill Donovan. So when the junior senator gave us a way to position you deep under cover where you could do the most good, it was a gift we had to seize. I apologize if it caused any difficulties for you personally. You can’t make sausage without letting a little blood.

  I’ve kept a close eye on you. Believe me when I say we were never going to let anything bad happen to you. There were moments when we were on the verge of stepping in, but instead we watched with gratified fascination as your instincts took you in exactly the right direction. You’re good, Carraway. You’re damned good. Someday, when this is all over and the world is safe, you and I need to sit down with a bottle of bourbon and talk about what you knew, and how you managed it.

  The pieces are moving into place. The time is now.

  Bring in Barnes.

  Dulles

  Lady Brett Ashley

  Grand Hotel

  New Delhi

  April 10

  Dear Jake,

  Bulletin from the spirit world: the spirit was willing, but the flesh was stronger. It seems you can’t teach an old cat new tricks.

  Not strictly true, darling. The Maharishi taught me a trick or two I would never have dreamed possible. A nifty little number called tantric sex. Orgasms composed of two parts butterfly wing and five parts diesel locom
otive. And I’m not talking about the Brighton local, darling, I’m talking about the Orient Express.

  Oh, I know you hate it when I tell you these things. But you love it, too. Given our rotten damned circumstances, it’s the closest we’ve got to intimacy, isn’t it? And you’ve always been the only one I could talk to. Even five thousand miles away, you’re still the man I want to run to whenever I’ve been naughty. Because no matter whom I’ve been naughty with, Jake darling, it’s really always you. Like that shah from the Middle East I was seeing just before I left Paris. Always told him I was in love with you. True, too.

  I’ve left the ashram. The Maharishi was sweet, he begged me to stay, but you know, I’m just not much of a one-guru gal. And truth be told, darling, at my age you don’t want to lie still too long. It’s harder to spot the wrinkles on a moving target. The Maharishi is surrounded by all those guileless, willing twenty-three-yearold heiresses with firm titties and legs like baguettes. He was sweet, he offered to send them all away if I’d only stay another week, but you don’t live a half a century as a temptress without picking up a few practical bits of wisdom.

  So I’m down, but not out. Down from the mountaintop, that is. I’m in New Delhi, making up my mind which way to let the wind blow me next. I’d love to come back to Paris. I miss you, you know? But it’s not going to happen right away.

  I met a young chap at the monastery. Alden. Young and vigorous and very American, and I guess he reminds me of you--or what you would have been, darling, if it hadn’t been for rotten luck and that damned war. Remember Pedro Romero, the bullfighter? Sort of like that, only very American, and of course I never let Alden see me in good light. Not that there’s any good light at the monastery. I suspect he’ll be leaving there soon. I’m afraid it turned out that the celibate life wasn’t for him, either. I’m afraid he’s quite smitten with me.

  So I’ll play this one out a little farther, till my whiskers tell me the magic’s wearing thin, and then I’ll jump off the roof before I get pushed. One of these days you’ll hear me scratching at your door again, with a tale or two to tell. Have a bowl of warm milk standing by.

  Oh Jake, we could have had such a damned good time together!

  Love Always,

  Brett

  Atlantic Records

  Interoffice Memo

  Date: April 10

  From: Wexler To: A. Ertegun

  Ahmet--

  Let’s keep an eye on this girl. She has nice tits, which is reason enough, but there’s more. You heard her the other night singing backup for Ray, which is in a way easy, because Ray’s doing shit no one ever did before, so there’s no right or wrong way to do it, which is something you wouldn’t necessarily think about, because the other half of it is so obvious--it’s difficult as all fuck, because no one ever did it before.

  But the kid got up there with Ruthie and LaVern, and hung in there. She mostly hit all the right notes, which is too bad. But every now and then she took a chance, and once--maybe twice--she found something.

  Right now she’s singing that hootenanny shit, and I don’t want to push her too hard into changing. She needs some time to develop. She’s spent too much fucking time singing nursery rhymes to kiddies, and you can tell. She’s got an innocence about her that I hope she never loses completely, but she’ll grow up fast enough in New York. Especially if she spends much time with guys like that kid-shtupper Sheinbloom.

  She’s learning the ropes, but she’s not doing anything that challenges her musically, and pretty soon she’s going to realize that. I think she could be another fucking Chris Connor.

  What did you think of the Berry kid? I say pass on him. He’s got his own style, and it ain’t never gonna be our style. That hillbilly stuff may play in the Midwest. But this is fucking New York.

  Jerry

  Maurice Chevalier

  April 10

  Mon cher Cohn,

  I have been entertaining your nephew and his friend (particularly the friend) according to your instructions. Enclosed you will find an account of expenses. Ca coute cher, mon vieux. David aime bien le champagne.

  Maurice

  4/11/53

  FROM: ROY COHN

  HOTEL GEORGE V

  PARIS

  TO: ROBERT COHN

  WASHINGTON DC

  UNCLE ROBERT

  TELL MCCARTHY AND DULLES DONT WORRY STOP WORKING ON NEAT PLAN FOR CARRAWAY AND BARNES STOP DAVEY SPENDING TOO MUCH TIME WITH DEGENERATE FRENCH STOP CHEVALIER GOING TO HIS HEAD STOP SICK OF EUROPE STOP NO BULL

  ROY

  FROM THE DESK OF:

  Robert Cohn

  BY MESSENGER

  April 11

  Hey Allie,

  Had a cable from Roy. He says he’s working on a “neat plan.” I’ll try to get details. Knowing my idiot nephew it could be entertaining, or it could be disastrous. Very likely both. In any case, we should be able to use it and still have complete deniability. We want things unsettled in France, right?

  Robbie

  FROM THE DESK OF:

  ALLEN DULLES

  By special courier

  4/11

  Cohn, Don’t let him do anything till I approve it.

  Dulles

  FROM THE DESK OF:

  Robert Cohn

  BY MESSENGER

  April 11

  Allie-boy Loosen up! Seat-of-the-pants, remember?

  Robbie

  Hotel de l’Odeon

  Paris

  April 11, 1953

  Dear Ronnie,

  I’m glad one of us is growing up. It sometimes seems to me I’ve just grown old, without managing any maturity at all. I may have known more when I was young. Back before you were even born, I actually wrote a novel. It made a little splash at the time, and then it went away. It was part fiction, part memoir, about a man I knew, a strange, friendless man named Gatsby, one of nature’s knaves and noblemen. He was my neighbor one summer on Long Island, and then he was murdered. He made such an impression on me that I wrote a story about him, and about some other people I knew.

  Then I decided I was too grown up for such silliness, and it was time that I entered the real world. That was when I went into advertising, and married Margery, and we had Alden, and I decided I owed it to him to be a good, responsible father. Which meant working late every night, rarely seeing him, ultimately sending him away to boarding school in the East--the Millbrook School for Boys, where he wrote me about being bullied by an older boy named Bill Buckley. He retaliated by telling everyone he was going to vote for Henry Wallace when he grew up, and in short order he was expelled from the school.

  Would I have been a better father to Alden if I’d remained a starving novelist? I don’t know. But now, I find myself looking back and wondering if I really wasted all those years, wondering if I had more books inside me waiting to come out. If I still have. Well, life has many mysteries.

  You, Ronnie, are one of the sweeter of those mysteries. In your last few letters I’ve felt the change in you, and I realize that my old image of you as a naïve and innocent child no longer applies. Innocent, yes, and perhaps still trailing a few wisps of the naiveté I remember, but I can see that you’re a woman now. Unfortunately for me, you are a very young woman, and I am fast on my way to becoming a very old man. Because you are the one person to whom I find my thoughts turning these days when life has me spinning like a dervish and staggering like a Bowery rum-pot. I hope you will take no offense when I say that if I were a younger man, Ronnie, and a better man, I would certainly find myself thinking of you in a way that my age and imperfections rule out of the question.

  Your Friend,

  Nick

  4/12/53

  FROM: MLLE CHRISTINE JORGENSEN

  HOTEL D’ANGLETERRE

  COPENHAGEN

  TO: JAKE BARNES

  PARIS HERALD TRIBUNE

  JAKE DEAREST CALL ME STOP HOT PILLOW TALK

  STOP LOVE CHRISTINE

  Hotel de l’Odeon


  Paris

  April 12, 1953

  By messenger to the Paris Herald Tribune

  Jake--

  Well, hallelujah and glory be! I’ve done it. I’ve written that novel.

  Well, okay, I haven’t. But I’ve set pen to paper with serious intent.

  It feels good. It feels terrible. It feels strange as bloody hell. I feel like a virgin

  – “It hurts! Don’t stop!” And it’s all your fault, you sonofabitch. I date this fall from grace to the day you introduced me to Sartre and De Beauvoir as “Carraway, the American author.” Now don’t tell me I got it wrong, and what you really said was “Carraway, the other American.”

  Doctor, I’ve got this disease. I carry a notebook around with me all the time and scribble the most ridiculous goddamn shit. I scrawl notes on menus and metro tickets. Cryptic notes to myself that seem profound as hell when I write them, and later on when I excavate them from my pocket and read them they look like the ravings of a hophead.

  There’s an idea. I’ll become a reefer addict. I’m halfway there anyway--I’ve started smoking those things Sartre smokes. I think they’ve made me shorter.

  Jesus, Jake, I don’t know another soul in the world I could talk to about this. Certainly not Sartre, who intimidates the crap out of me as he pats my hand and stares at me through those coke bottles he wears. “We writers,” he says, “we have a responsibility to write.” Like what he does and what I’m trying to do could be described by the same word. I’ve sat across a table from Ike, and believe me, Sartre is a lot more intimidating.