The Ringer

by Bill Scheft

  “Who’s Charlie?”

  “Charlie. C. 10C. You know, people stop raking the sand traps, the whole course goes to hell.”

  “Mr. Spell, maybe you should try and get some sleep.”

  “I will now that I’ve been able to exonerate you.”

  There are two versions of what happened between the ambulance at the Beverly Wilshire and now, here at Mount Sinai, or the golf course, which would make four versions. According to Version One, Mort spent twenty-four hours at the Scripps Clinic, was fitted with a catheter, which he pulled out during the flight back to Kennedy and left in his coach seat pocket. He then took a cab back to his apartment, unpacked, passed out, and was found around two o’clock by his housekeeper, Sheila, who called 911. In Version Two everything is the same, except Mort stops for brunch at P. J. Moriarty’s before returning home and leaves the catheter in the coat-check room.

  Something with his prostate. That’s all Mort knew. And he only knew that when he wasn’t being delirious, which was almost never. So, he knew nothing. Maybe he’d let his hand occasionally slip under the covers and touch the catheter and let himself think that he might be in a hospital and there might be something wrong with him. But it was easier to think he was touching the plastic trim on his golf bag, and the only thing wrong with him was that he was opening the hips too much on his downswing. The pro would fix that when he came by.

  “What time is it?”

  “Five-fifteen.”

  “What can I get you to drink?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You don’t mind if I have one, do you?”

  “Mr. Spell, where are you going to get a drink?”

  “You’re right. They’re still renovating the Tap Room. Do you mind if we wait until six, when the dining room opens?”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Not really. I had a hot dog at the shack by the 9th hole.”

  “When was that?”

  “1955.”

  Mort was getting better. He would still need some sort of procedure on his prostate, but it had been twenty-four hours since Harold Lloyd had been in bed with him. Thanks to a shortage of space, Morton Martin Spell had to share his bed with the great silent film star, comedian Harold Lloyd. Lloyd, dead since 1971, had moved in on Monday, after Charlemagne had checked out. And how about this for a coincidence—Harold Lloyd was in for a prostate operation, too!

  Mort had much more contact with Harold Lloyd than Charlemagne. In fact, you wouldn’t have known Charlemagne had even been there if Mort hadn’t said to his nurse, “Wasn’t it nice that Charlemagne could take time out from his schedule to sleep here with me?” Mort’s relationship with Harold Lloyd was much more evolved. There were three basic exchanges: (1) Mort laughing hysterically, stopping briefly to catch his breath and ask the nurse “Are you watching this?” before collapsing again in laughter; (2) Mort angrily grabbing his pillow and yelling, “Not funny, Harold”; (3) Mort placing the back of his hand to the side of his mouth and whispering to the space next to him, “Harold, do you have any Valium?”

  Harold Lloyd did not have any Valium. Three days Mort had gone without. Maybe if he left the golf course and checked into a hospital, they’d give him some. Bad idea. He wouldn’t be able to drink in a hospital. It had been three days since that as well. No, he was better off here. And now Harold Lloyd was gone. Damn. Why hadn’t Mort asked Charlemagne?

  Valium stays in your bloodstream for eight weeks, which means whatever was still coursing around Mort would have a longer run than the musical Nick and Nora. No wonder he was having such trouble sleeping. That’s the first thing Mort thought whenever he woke up. “I’m having trouble sleeping.” Actually, it was the second thing. The first thing he thought was, “Maybe I’ll ask Harold Lloyd if he has any Valium.”

  “I’d like to get some sleep before I tee off tomorrow morning. I’ve been awake for the last three days.”

  “Mr. Spell, you were sound asleep when I left last night and when I came in for my shift today at noon.”

  “How am I supposed to believe you when I know you’ve been here the whole time?”

  “I’m not here between midnight and noon.”

  “That’s right. You were out cleaning the driving range. That’s where I saw you.”

  “What?”

  “By the way, damn nice job out there.”

  Here’s the strange part. Golf wasn’t even Morton Martin Spell’s favorite sport. Or favorite thing to write about. The past was his favorite topic. And if, on his way to the past, there was a nice course, he’d play. He preferred ice hockey, jai-alai, any kind of rugby, even ski jumping. But you really couldn’t look out your New York City hospital window and act like you were at the Forum or the Holmenkohlen. That would be nuts. A country club. A nice country club. Someplace where you’re entitled to wait around for a putting lesson, a gin and tonic, a pair of shined shoes. And no one, especially no large black woman in the chair opposite your bed, asks you why you’re waiting. That worked. Even in Downtown Delirium, Mort Spell was using his good mind.

  He slept until 7:01, until his internal alarm clock, repaired by two falls, went off just as he heard the TV announcer say, “…And now, here’s the host of Jeopardy, Alex Trebek!”

  Both Single and Double Jeopardy were especially good to Mort. Not too much pop culture or that pun crap they liked to run at you. A lot of monarchs and painters, and second-stringers from the Old Testament. Final Jeopardy was so easy, he could have done it with his catheter closed. You had to give three of the four state capitals that shared the same first letter as their state. Mort got all four (Honolulu; Oklahoma City; Indianapolis; and Dover, Delaware), and when none of the contestants thought of Dover, he hid his own contempt by saying, “I think Alex is bitterly disappointed with everyone’s play today.”

  His nurse got three right—“Who is Heather Locklear?” “What is a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger?” “What is Dy-no-mite!”—and each time Mort said, “You’re much brighter than these charlatans.” Finally, the nurse said, “What is a charlatan?” and Mort cracked, “I think you won another six hundred dollars,” and pissed himself laughing. Which was the first time in three days someone other than Harold Lloyd had made him do that.

  Mort continued to snap out of it during Wheel of Fortune. He ate his dinner—consommé, cello-wrapped salad, ICU chicken, apple pie—with great reverence. And for the first time in three days, did not push it aside and ask the orderly to read him the specials instead. He was trying to behave for Vanna White.

  Morton Martin Spell, Yale ’37, Cambridge ’39, who had played squash on every continent except Antarctica, who smuggled two gloves to Cuba in 1964 and got Castro to show him how he threw a curveball, who had Jane Russell give him a skeet-shooting lesson, who had flattered enough Mrs. Sid Luckmans, Mrs. Jerry Wests, and Mrs. Al Oerters to have a couple of them offer to meet him alone later for drinks, who when he and Bing split up the call girls grabbed the pretty one, had a stone crush on Vanna White. Going on four years now, and with enough two-dimensional contact he thought he might, just might, have a shot at her. He’d have to come up with a girl for Pat Sajak, but he had a shot. Maybe if he had been able to stay conscious in Los Angeles, they might have hooked up. But he kept his plans to himself. And because he kept his plans to himself, technically, technically, he had only been considered delirious for three days. The only thing the world heard from him about Vanna White was how “she does some damn fine work turning those letters.”

  “By the way, Vanna does some damn fine work turning those letters.”

  “I hear she’s an idiot.”

  “You’re rather cocky since your performance on Jeopardy.”

  How old was Vanna anyway? Thirty-two, thirty-three? A few years younger than Sheila, the woman who cleaned his apartment twice a week. And heh, heh, we all knew how things were going with Sheila. He’d heard something about Vanna being married. So? Sheila had been married. And we all knew how things were going with Sheila. Mort,
of course, was terminally single. The only thing he liked about the idea of being married was you could use the line, “Hey, I’m married, not dead.” The first time he heard the line was around 1946. Some hockey player. Maybe Eddie Shore. No, Shore wasn’t that clever. The second time was 1947. Bing. Somewhere over Nebraska.

  Maybe he’d go out there in a couple of months. Vanna looked like she played tennis. He could do one of those celebrity tennis studies, like the one he wrote in 1971 about Lee Remick. “A Quick Set, Off the Set.” Lee had been a little standoffish, especially after their opening exchange:

  LEE: You want to watch me play tennis? What, did Hepburn turn you down?

  MORT: Yes.

  He would not make that mistake this time. Vanna White was his only choice. Without Vanna, there was no story. Some publication—Tennis, Tennis World, Tennis USA, Tennis Illustrated, Tennis Monthly, Tennis Magazine Compliments of the Delta Shuttle—would buy the piece. And at his price. He’d take his nephew, the actor, with him. To drive him around. And when Mort gave the word, to get lost.

  Pat Sajak, nice enough man, but why didn’t he let her talk? What was he hiding? Why was he so threatened? And for Mort Spell to take time out from being eternally threatened by women to notice someone else was threatened by them, that was something. He’d let Vanna talk. He’d let her talk all night. And not just for the magazine piece, either. He’d let her talk during dinner, after dinner, in the elevator, in the shower, during sex, and a half hour later, when they had sex again.

  There was only one thing missing. His erection. What was this, this item, in his prick? Where did it come from? Oh, that’s right: Someone had given it to him. But funny, it didn’t look like the Bertram Hargan Cup.

  Maybe this nice-looking man in the white coat could help him. This learned man looked up from his clipboard. He did not know that Mort Spell called every nice-looking man he met for the first time “doctor.”

  “Hello, Mr. Spell.”

  “Hello, doctor.”

  “Well, I see you’re doing much better this evening.”

  “I could still use some work with my grip.”

  “Something wrong with your hands?”

  “Well, according to you, they’re five degrees off.”

  “Mr. Spell, this is the first time we’ve met.”

  “Then who did I pay sixty-five dollars to this afternoon for my lesson?”

  “I’m filling in for Dr. Banks. I’m Dr. Cahill. You’re in Mount Sinai Hospital.”

  “Well then, I’m bloody well not paying sixty-five dollars for a lesson.”

  Morton Martin Spell moved the back of his hand to the side of his mouth and asked the nice-looking man he called doctor what the thing in his prick was. Dr. Cahill told him it was a catheter, and Mort was satisfied. He figured this was what he’d spent the sixty-five bucks on.

  Dr. Cahill had some questions, but at this point, he could only ask Mort if he was comfortable. He couldn’t ask Mort if there was anything he needed, because he knew Mort would say something like, “I’ll take Valium for a thousand, Alex.” And it was much too early to ask the question anyone who was able to read Mort Spell’s chart should pose, “How the hell did you make it here?” He didn’t want to scare whatever was not scared. And he didn’t want Mort Spell to say, “How’d I get here? Same as you. Drive and a six-iron.”

  Dr. Cahill told Mort he’d stop by again around 9:30 for another chat after he finished his rounds. Was that okay? “I’d like that very much,” Mort said. This kind of thing—doctors stopping by after their rounds to chat with a seventy-five-year-old delirious man—does not happen. Not even a little. Not even in places where people might think it would happen. Like Iowa. So, it’s pretty easy to understand why anyone would think Dr. Blair Cahill was just another lying sack of shit trying his best to get through the night filling in for Dr. Banks, the regular lying sack of shit. And when 9:30 came and went, and then 9:45, they would have been right. But when Dr. Blair Cahill walked in at 9:50 and apologized for being late, they would have been chagrined. Luckily, Mort Spell experienced none of this. He had forgotten Dr. Cahill was coming back for a chat. So, imagine how thrilled he was to have this nice-looking man visit him in the middle of the night. And once Mort figured out he was the same nice-looking man as before, well, what were the odds of that? First, at the golf course, now here at some hospital.

  Blair Cahill was the type of nice-looking man who made people constantly nudge each other and whisper, “Is that someone famous?” He knew this happened and it visibly embarrassed him, which made him even better looking. He was twenty minutes late getting back to Mort Spell’s room. That wasn’t bad for Blair Cahill. He was late getting everywhere, which is what happens when the people you’re with don’t want you to leave. It was 9:51 when he sat down for his chat with Mort Spell. He had promised to meet his wife, Dr. Lesley Cahill, outside the ER when she finished her shift at midnight. He’d be late for that, too.

  Dr. Cahill excused the nurse, and Mort told her to make sure she got some help cleaning up the driving range. He sat down and offered Mort a cough drop. It was one of those eucalyptus throat bombs that Mort wasn’t too crazy about, but it was as close as he’d get to a drink. Or a Valium.

  That was the first smart thing Dr. Cahill did. The second was his first question to Mort, which he had formulated during the rest of his rounds. It wasn’t “How the hell did you make it here?” It was “Where were you before you came here?” Actually, it was “So, Mr. Spell, where were you before you came here?”

  “So, Mr. Spell, where were you before you came here?”

  The combination of a nice-looking man giving Morton Martin Spell a cough drop and asking this question, this question without a wrong answer, is beyond disarming. It’s that “I-don’t-think-anyone’s-ever-treated-me-like-this-my-whole-life” feeling a person experiences a dozen or so times his whole life. That’s if he’s not Morton Martin Spell. If he is, it’s an invitation to start talking and stop being delirious for a while.

  Two hours and fourteen minutes later, Dr. Cahill spoke for the second and last time. He asked, “Is there anyone else you’d like to talk to?” Mort said, “The actor.” Dr. Cahill, who felt like he was jerking his fingers back from the slam-bound window of coherency, was sure Mort was back talking about Harold Lloyd again. He wasn’t.

  Harold Lloyd’s name came up right away. Mort said, “Do you know the actor Harold Lloyd? He’s dead. I don’t know why I thought he was here.” Once that was out of the way, Mort relaxed like a star witness about to set the record straight. He got to finally deliver his acceptance speech for the Bertram Hargan Cup. The speech he wanted to give. Alistair Cooke’s first apartment in New York. His sister Dottie’s trip to Scotland in 1969. Then he re-created that day with Bing in 1947 as the Crosby Pro-Am program had not. And the Atlantic Monthly would not. Palm Springs, Santa Anita, Chicago, and glimpses of flesh and handcuffs in between. The director’s cut. He closed with two stories about his father, Jacob Spell, and would have gone on except the eucalyptus and 134 minutes of yakking must have triggered some latent chunk of hemo-Valium and suddenly, he was looking at a real night’s sleep.

  He told the two stories about Jacob Spell that were all anyone needed to know about their relationship, and made anyone want to know more. Both took place on ships, neither one the steerage-equipped bacteria liner which had ferried Iakov Silvitsky to Ellis Island in 1901 (a good story for another time). The first was in 1938, when Jake Spell accompanied his kid over to Cambridge. Their second night at sea, he bursts into the state room.

  “Kid, I met someone on the boat you can pal around with. He’s just like you. He’s going to Oxford, and he’s a chemist, too!”

  “Dad, I’m not going to Oxford. I’m going to Cambridge,” Mort said. “And I’m not a chemist. I know nothing about chemistry. I’m a writer.”

  “Well,” said Jake Spell, “you really fucked me on this one.”

  The second Jacob Spell story sailed eight years later,
1946, and alone. Jake had returned from two months in Europe on some wifeless business. The ship docked in New York and he met his son, ensconced and struggling in Manhattan, at the Oyster Bar for an hour before his train home.

  “I met a writer friend of yours on the boat.”

  “Who?”

  “Some guy. Ernie.”

  “I don’t have any friends named Ernie.”

  “Ernie Hemingway.”

  “You mean Ernest Hemingway?”

  “Yeah. Ernie. You know him?”

  “Well, of course,” said Mort. “He’s the greatest American writer of this century.”

  “He’s a souse. And he didn’t know you.”

  Mort Spell liked to end with stories about his father. You close with your best stuff. It was smart. It was convenient. Not as smart as Mort Spell during Final Jeopardy, and not as convenient as the fact that Jake Spell was now dead twenty-three years and not around to interrupt or correct him. The Jake Spell stories belonged to Mort. Seventy-five and alone since he learned to walk, he had finally landed a speaking part in his father’s life after years of extra work. It was his best stuff, and the only thing he could not write. If the world had bestowed on Jake Spell the kind of celebrity he had deeded himself, Morton Martin Spell could have played Sandburg to his old man’s Lincoln. He had that much material. It would have been a nice career. Travel, good hours, good pay, and maybe, maybe a thank you that he would have let himself hear.

  Mort laughed again at the chemist and Ernie Hemingway bits. You know what? That’s what his acceptance speech should have been. Fuck Bing. And fuck Bertram Hargan. And fuck the grandson, Chuck Hargan. And fuck Frankie Valli and the comic he rode in on. And, if everything went as planned, fuck Vanna White. Fuck Vanna. Fu…Va…

  Dr. Cahill had to meet his wife. He still had five minutes left before his eleven-minute margin of error closed, after which Dr. Lesley Cahill could legally bust her husband’s balls for being late. He fished out another cough drop and startled Mort out of drift-off as he stood up and it cracked against the floor.