“Hey, smart guy,” the blond man called after him.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t come back. Not you, and not your friends, neither.”
They went out into the hallway. Behind them, the blond man said, “All right, let’s shoot craps here.”
17
As the limousine headed downtown once more, Buddwing discovered a few things about the three good men and true who had come to his assistance in the third-floor apartment.
The thickset Irishman, as it turned out, was an Off-Broadway character actor named Sean Murphy. He confessed immediately that he had been scared to death of the three hoods in the apartment, but that his acting experience had seen him through his fear, since he had once played the part of Alan Squier in a summer stock production of The Petrified Forest, and therefore knew all about handling people like Duke Mantee.
“Summer stock is not life,” the thin man with the rimless spectacles informed him. “I happen to be a lawyer. That’s why I was certain none of the men in that game were ready to commit homicide.”
“How could you tell?” Murphy asked.
“Homicide would have endangered their livelihood, which is gambling. Homicide is a felony. Gambling is only a misdemeanor.”
“What’s a misdemeanor... uh... I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”
“Harris, Roger Harris. A misdemeanor is something like spitting on the sidewalk.”
“Were we guilty of a misdemeanor?” Buddwing asked. “By being in the game?”
“Certainly,” Harris said. “That’s the trouble with the world today. The laws are so unrealistic.”
“The trouble with the world today,” Murphy said, “is that not enough quality shows are being done on Broadway. The actor must look to Off-Broadway if he wants to do anything serious. And then, in order to supplement his meager income, he’s forced to break the law by entering illegal crap games, which are misdemeanors, as you just said. He has to go all the way up to Harlem to find a game which, if he’s caught in it, will—”
“Think of all the poor colored kids up in Harlem,” Grace said, “who never even get to see a Broadway show.”
Hank smiled benignly and said, “That’s right. The trouble with the world today is that not enough colored kids get to see Broadway shows.”
“Who’d want to see a Broadway show?” the unshaven young man asked. “All you pay for there is the privilege of watching another man’s neurosis, usually homosexual in nature, and usually badly expressed.”
“You sound like a writer,” Murphy said.
“I am,” the young man answered.
“What’s your name?”
“Mike. My point is that even if—”
“Listen,” the driver of the car said suddenly, “the Off-Broadway shows aren’t too good, either.”
“Why don’t you tend to your driving?” Murphy said, somewhat testily.
“I’m trying to, but look at this traffic, will you? If you want to know the real trouble with the world today, the real trouble is the condition of our streets and highways. Our speed has outgrown our technology. Man is embarked on a supersonic voyage to nowhere.”
“You can say that again,” Grace said. “How can anyone possibly have any sort of image prolongation when he’s constantly threatened with nuclear annihilation?”
“Well, that isn’t exactly what I meant, ma’am,” the driver said.
“Look at our milk supply,” Grace said, ignoring him. “Do you know how much strontium 90 is in our milk supply right this minute?”
“Whose milk supply?” Hank asked. “The world’s, or yours personally?”
“That’s right, switch it to tits,” Grace said. “What do you care about the thousands of unborn freaks?”
“Honey, I was born a freak,” Hank said.
“The trouble with the world today,” Harris said, “is the long delay in getting civil rights cases to trial. I’ve had a case on the docket for close to five years now. Involves the rape of a white girl by a Negro, present company excluded, of course. He certainly had every provocation.”
“She asked him in to chop up the chifferobe, correct?” Mike asked.
“No, she came to his apartment naked with a bottle of bourbon in one hand and a daisy in the other.”
“She was only trying to find her own chemin,” Mike said.
“In addition,” the driver said, “all this traffic is polluting the air with poisonous gases.”
“That’s no worse than polluting the Broadway air with the stench of garbage,” Murphy said.
“Or making Le Pavilion too expensive for poor colored kids,” Grace said.
“The thing I’d like to know,” Hank said, “is why there are no colored mannequins in the store windows of America.”
“I marched in protest,” Grace said. “All the way from Sutton Place to City Hall.”
“When was this?” Murphy asked.
“Oh, twelve years ago, I guess.”
“Why did you march?”
“I was pregnant at the time. My doctor said walking was very good for me. A hell of a lot he knew.”
“I wrote a letter to Commissioner Barnes,” the driver said over his shoulder. “I told him that unless we solve our traffic problems, this city will become hopelessly obsolete. Our technology has outgrown our speed, that’s the trouble with the world today.”
“I attended a meeting of Actor’s Equity,” Murphy said. “I told them that the struggle in the world today is to enlarge our Off-Broadway theaters beyond that arbitrary two-hundred-and-ninety-nine-seat limit. That’s the trouble.”
“Would anyone like to play Who’s Jewish?” Grace asked.
“The Black Muslims are a threat,” Hank said. “The trouble with the world today is lunatic-fringe groups. I went to a rally in Harlem. I told them there is no difference between white men and black men except the color of our skins.”
“We all drink the same contaminated milk, don’t we?” Grace asked. “Wouldn’t anyone like to play Who’s Jewish?”
“...Pinter and Ionesco as compared to Williams and Inge...”
“...General Sessions, Part II. Well how is anyone expected to...”
“...changed it to a one-way street overnight. When I got to the corner...”
“I wanted to be a respected and successful writer,” Mike said to Buddwing. “That’s why I spent all that time studying the respected and successful writers. After all, there must be something that causes the critics to go wild over a book, don’t you think? A book has to hit some kind of nerve, isn’t that right? I mean, after all, there must have been something that prompted Gilbert Millstein to call On the Road ‘an authentic work of art,’ don’t you think?”
“Gilbert who?” Buddwing asked.
“Or The New Yorker to say By Love Possessed was a masterpiece, don’t you think?”
“I should hope so,” Buddwing said.
“Reviewers,” Mike said, and shook his head. “That’s what’s wrong with the world today. Reviewers. They all deny the writer the one luxury to which he is automatically entitled.”
“And what’s that?”
“The right to fail. Take that away from him, and you also rob him of the courage to dare. In this country, if a man writes a bad book, the reviewers behave as though they’ve caught him exposing his genitals on a crowded subway car.”
“That’s only a misdemeanor,” Harris said.
“Well, I happen to believe that even writing a bad book is important.”
“Certainly,” Harris agreed. “I was merely pointing out that it isn’t necessarily a felony.”