"You're the worst doorman I ever saw in my life!" "I don't want you working here no more." "Take off your uniform." "You don't even know how to wear a uniform!" "Someone told me the other night... you killed his appetite for my New York cream cheesecake." "Really first-class French restaurants don't carry New York cream cheesecake." "Change your clothes and get out!" " I'm gonna have to have my money." " Money for what?" "I don't pay for vacation." "You owe me money 'cause I worked last night till 4:00 a.m., and I'm working tonight..." "Get out of here!" "I call the cop." "I call 9-1-1." "They come real fast for business!" " You can't not pay me." " Go back where you belong, in Greenwich Village." "You don't have the class to be an uptown doorman!" "And you write things in that book of yours." "What the hell are you writing all the time?" " I hope you're not going to grouse at me." " Joanna." "I love you." "I love you too." " Why haven't you been answering the phone?" " Am I not answering the phone?" "All right." "I'm coming over." "Our creature of the night." "Why are you shaking?" " I'm what?" " Shaking." "You're shaking." " Why are you shaking?" " I'm not shaking." "You were shaking the phone when you called me." "Well, I got a lot to shake about." " You got my money?" " Your money?" " You owe me a lot of money!" " Which you are obviously still obsessing about." "Well, how long you owe me the money?" "I actually heard your teeth scraping together on the phone." "You owed me that money since May 28." "You think that's right?" "You owe someone like me that kind of money, who hasn't got a dime?" "Who's scrounging, even scraping his teeth together on the phone 'cause you owe him that dough?" "You think that's decent?" "You're a dog, you owe someone like me that kind of money." "You owe someone like me that kind of money when it's so cold out... when I'm walking around freezing 'cause I got no money?" " Can I get you a cup of coffee?" " No, I don't want any coffee!" "No!" "I want what's due me." "I don't want to walk around in a rag of a coat." "See?" "I want something warm and decent." "Harry, you are not shaking because I owe you that money." " No?" "Why am I shaking?" " Because you are out of control." "I am not out of..." "Don't." "Jake, don't do that." "You change the subject, then attack, then disembowel me psychologically." "I disembowel you psychologically?" " Don't do that, Jake." " Harry, you're not upset about the money." "I am obviously very upset about it." "You're always upset and enraged, and you think that gives you the right... to be habitually hysterical." " I think it's boring." " You think it's boring, I scrape my teeth together on the phone?" "Yes, I do, Harry." "Almost everybody has trouble with their teeth." "It's no accomplishment." " Why is it so stifling in here?" " It is in no way stifling in here." "It is." "It's thick." "It's dense in here." "So open a window." "I gotta open a window." "All your equipment... you wouldn't have it if it wasn't for my money." "That's only 10 percent true." "It's insanity, the way you stuff yourself in here like this." "It's four stories down." "I hope you're not gonna jump." "If I was gonna jump, would I worry about the height?" " Okay." "What do you need to open this window?" " More than good intentions." "It's bolted closed." "Why the hell do you tell me to open a window when you know it's bolted?" " Harry, you're hysterical." " I'm not hysterical." "I'm indignant." "And you care only marginally about the money." "What's really on your mind is whether or not I've read your precious new book." "That is not what..." "what's on my mind." "Oh, fine, because I haven't read it." "I gave you the book a month ago, Jake." "Over a month ago." "Where have you been for over a month?" "I was starting to worry about you." " Why haven't you read it?" " But it's not on your mind." " Why haven't you read it?" " Look, let's get back to the money." "Why haven't you read the book?" "Because reading every new effort by Harry Levine... isn't all I have to do in life." "I'll take it back." "Okay." " Where is it?" " I don't know." "It's under something." "Look, I will find it and I will read it, so just relax." " Don't fuck with me, Jake." " Nobody's fucking with you." " Don't fuck with my mind!" " Nobody's fucking with your mind." "I will not have you fucking with my mind." "I wouldn't wanna fuck with your mind." "Things have been a little hectic around here." "Hectic?" "What way hectic?" " Hectic, hectic." " What do you mean, hectic?" " You had sittings?" " There has been some activity, yes." " You had sittings." " In other words, we're back to the money again." " I suppose we are." " But you're not sure." " I'm sure." " Are you sure?" " Yes." " Isn't that why you came?" "Why I came." "Didrt you come for the money?" "Or did you come about the book?" " I came." "Yes." " Yes what?" "I came for something." "I" " I..." "What do you..." " You're shaking again." " I'm not shaking." " Your knee is shaking." " Your legs are shaking." " It's your nerves, honey." " It's my nerves." " Steady yourself." " I'm steady." "So, what, you had sittings?" "All right." "All right." "You wanna know whether or not I've made any money, right?" "Okay." "Sit down, sit down." "Let us put this thing to rest forever." "Now, exactly how much is it I'm supposed to owe you?" "On May 28, on my MasterCharge card... you borrowed 500 bucks for that..." "that equipment, right?" " If you say so." " You dispute it?" "Take it easy." "I am not disputing anything." "You say I owe it, I owe it." "Go ahead." "Continue." "Okay." " You paid July." " Take it easy." "This is gonna be a very complicated financial discourse, I can tell." "Okay." "You paid July." " You want some coffee?" " No, no." "No coffee." "You paid July." "Yeah." " No?" "No?" "Yes?" " Yes, I'll take coffee." " How do you want it?" " I want it with milk." " I don't have any." " You don't have milk?" " No." "No milk." " What do you have for it?" "I have nothing." "I have black coffee." " You have any tea?" " How do you want it?" " Do you have any tea?" " I don't believe I do, but I might." " Give me the coffee." " Excellent." "Okay." "Continue about the money." "Okay, you paid July, you paid August, September." "Twenty bucks each time, plus the one-and-a-half percent interest... on the unpaid balance." "Now, for five months, since it's now February, you haven't paid a dime... so you owe me $440... plus the interest for five months... which is five times $6.60... or $33." "So you owe me, all told... $473, altogether." "Fork it over." "I'll take a look at those figures, if I may." "So, uh, who's been making the payments the last five months?" "I've been making the payments." " Doesn't that bring the interest down every month?" " It does." " So how can I owe you $33..." " Let's cut the interest in half." " We may need a computer." " Forget the interest." "We'll waive it." "No, I'm not waiving it in any manner." "I want to pay you exactly what I owe you." "No more, but certainly no less." "Unfortunately, I have no money at all." "Jake, I'm walking around without a dime." " Let's not be dramatic." " I got $1.50 to my name." "Hey, hey." "I am as dry as a Steinbeck dust bowl." "The last leaf has blown away." "That's from O. Henry." "Sometimes he talks the way some people write." "This man I started working for last night..." "Is it all right if I talk?" "Sure." " He has the lowest..." " Who?" "The man that I started working for last night where I take the photographs at the nightclub... the man who has the concession." " What about him?" " His name is Jacob Manheim." "He's very, very serious, but completely crazy." "I think you'd enjoy meeting him." "What's the limit on that credit card?" "The limit is $500." "Well, you're a man of means!" "You only owed 340, so you still have 160 to draw on." "You don't think I'm up to the limit again?" " You tell me you had sittings." " Inquiries." "But you've been too busy to read my manuscript." "I have not been in a reading vein." " No?" "Have you opened it?" " No." " I don't believe that." " Why don't you believe it?" "Because it's not like you." "And if you'd opened it, you'd have finished it." "You're a little cocksure of yourself." " I don't believe you haven't read it." " I haven't opened it." "I haven't read it." "I don't have your money." "Anything else?" " You have any tranquilizers?" " I don't take tranquilizers." "What happened to your tranquilizers?" "Gone." "Tonight." "You didn't swallow them all at once, did you?" "No." "If I did, would I be here asking for more?" " Ever think of such a thing?" " No." " Do you ever think of it?" " No." " Everybody thinks of it." " Then everybody thinks..." " From time to time." " I'm not suicidal." " So what happened to your tranquilizers?" " I was opening the vial." "My hands shook so badly, I spilled them all down the drain." " So go back to your doctor." " It's my dentist." "I'm a grinder." "Says one morning I'm gonna wake up with a mouth full of white dust." "I owe him too much money." "I gotta get my hands on some money." "I gotta get my hands on some money." "Wait a minute." "What are you doing here tonight anyway?" "Arert you supposed to work Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights?" " I was fired." " When?" " Tonight." " Morris fired you?" " Maurice, yes." " You don't do what a doorman do!" " "Does."" " Does what?" " "Does," not "do."" " Does not do what?" "Does not do what you don't do?" "You don't do nothing!" "You got to bow." "You got to scrape." ""Good evening, sir." "Would you like a cab, sir?"" ""Please, sir, do me the honor of walking on my face."" ""Bonsoir, madame." "Bonsoir, monsieur." That's a doorman!" " Fucking French." " What did you do?" "Nothing." "He said I wasn't servile enough." "I didn't demean myself enough in a manner befitting a doorman... of a chic French restaurant." " He wanted I should bow and scrape more." " He didn't really say that." " He said that exactly." " You're making it up." "I'm not making it up." "That's what he said." "There comes a point in life when one will no longer bow and scrape, doesn't there?" "Oh, I don't know." "Does there come a point when one says, "I will no longer whine"?" "Who's whining?" "Where were you last night?" "I called till 2:00 in the morning." "I heard nothing but the usual vague clanging in my head." " You were out on a date." " A date?" "Yeah, you were out with a girl, spending my money." "Listen, if I so much as talk to a girl... she either laughs and runs away or runs away laughing." " Thank you." "I called till 2:00 in the morning." " I wasn't answering." " Why not?" " Same reason you called." "No money." "How did you know I was calling about money?" "What else does anybody ever call for?" "Certainly not to offer it." "Besides, I was too depressed, and I wasn't answering the phone because... because nobody ever calls!" "Don't persecute me." "I'm a thing of shreds and patches." " I'm a dying man." " And me... what am I?" " Is this a dying man contest?" " I'm literally a thing of shreds and patches." "Look." "Look at this coat." "Ratty, purposeless." "I hate it." "So it's old." "I can still see where it was once a coat of real distinction." "Distinction?" "It's a rag." "It was never a coat of distinction." "Even in the beginning, this was a coat without cachet." " I hate that fucking coat." " Pick it up." " Pick it up!" " I hate this coat!" "Pick the coat up!" "I don't want it on my floor!" "I scrubbed that floor today." "No wonder you drove your woman away." "You throw things on the floor like that when you and Joanna were together?" " What difference does it make?" " Stop!" "Ooh!" "Yeah, once in a while." "A shoe." "How you must have terrorized that poor angel." " Why can't I have a decent coat?" " Stop whining!" "The coat is fine." "I have to wear this damnable sweater underneath just to stay warm." "That's a beautiful garment." "That's a Mexican sweater." "It's a thousand years old." "Well, then it's valuable." "It's pre-Columbian." " It's utterly dethreaded." " And so are you." "Walk into Bigelow's drugstore to weigh myself, I'm ashamed to take off my coat." "I can't even determine how much I'm losing." "I don't know what you're complaining about." "You got a credit card, a Mexican sweater." "The world's at your feet." " I live like a tramp." " You live like an artist." "You laze around, write a few lines... strike up some conversations in coffee shops." "I'd say you've got things worked out pretty well for yourself." "This morning I'm shaving, I notice this thing under my left eye." "What kind of a thing?" "I see nothing." " Like a pouch." " A what?" " Pouch." " A what?" "A bag under my eye, all right?" "It was frightening." "I didn't know how to get rid of it." "Should've called the Marsupial Society." "I did my laundry instead." "What happened to the pouch?" "It went away, I thought." "I went to the supermarket." "Great big bag, laundry bag, canvas bag." " She thought, uh..." " Who thought?" "She thought..." "The supermarket cashier." " She said..." " We don't take cans till 10:00." "I said..." "This is my laundry." "I want to buy soap." " She said..." " We don't redeem cans until 10:00." "It's not cans." "It's..." "It's my laundry." "I want to buy soap." " We don't redeem cans until 10:00." " These aren't cans." "I got into this rage." "I'm looking at her." "She's looking at me." "Really staring right at me." "I thought, "She's looking at the pouch."" "So I felt my face." "It was gone, but she was staring." "Jake, the episode unnerved me." "I sat for a full hour afterward..." "Abingdon Square playground..." "feeling my face, freezing." "I was sure I had some kind of disfigurement." "As it is, I think people are looking at me." "Anyway, this woman..." "I'm going into this supermarket for years." "She knows me." "I'm the guy who says thank you to all the people who are supposed to say thank you." "This morning, she didn't know me." "Thought I was a Washington Street can collector." " Then this afternoon, on my way to Chinatown..." " What?" " Forget it." " No." "What?" "I just didn't know if I had enough money to buy a Gai-mai bao." " A what?" " Hey, young man." "You Gai-mai bao?" " You wanna split a Gai-mai bao?" " Sure." " One Gai-mai bao." " Oh, sure." " Did I just put sugar in here?" " I don't know." "Anyway, I'm sorry." "What were you saying?" "It's just that he... he's really kind of down, depressed..." "Gai-mai bao!" "No more Har Gau?" "No Shumai?" "No Juk today?" " No, no." " You no hungry today?" " Not today." " Ahh." "He's upset." "So he was very what?" "He has a very firm opinion of everything he's read... and he can be very negative, caustic... like a critic." " Do you want to meet him?" " No." "It's a coconut peanut butter bun." "How the hell did you ever get a credit card in the first place?" "I don't know." "You live long enough." "You never apply for one, and then they appear as if by magic." "You really have no money." "Jar full of pennies." " My folks were always dragging out hidden pennies." " Here." "Mi pennies, su pennies." "Oh, that's impressive, Jake." "A month before my mother died, she said to me, "Harry, you're 43." ""You're gonna be 50 before you know it." "Put some pennies away." "You're gonna be just like your father was." This is great, Jake." "Well, who knows?" "Maybe you'll make some dough with that new book of yours." " Think it's got a chance?" " Well, I don't know." "That's why I came here." " I wanted your opinion on that." " Don't rush me." "As Tolstoy said, "Everything comes to him who waits."" "That was all right for Tolstoy's general." "He had nothing but time." " Uh-oh." "Whoo!" " What's with your legs?" "Muscle tension." "Oh!" "I had a spasm in the middle of the night, almost had me screaming." " Hmm." " I don't know what I'm gonna do if I don't get some money." "You don't get it." "What don't I get?" "You don't get that I'm 42 and I have nothing... and I never had anything... and every time I wake up, I think..." ""I'm gonna be exactly like what my brother said about my father."" " What did he say?" " "Nothing but a long record of failure."" "He's a schmuck." "My brother." "Oh, God." "What a fucking bum." " Oh, please, please." "Don't start with your brother now." " Why shouldn't I start?" "All the combined and wretched prophets of heart disease and stroke... serve only to support his vile taste in art and aesthetics." "Not a dime to nourish my talent." "Not that I'd want it anyway." " It's just a thought." " Forget him, will you?" "Will you let it go?" " What do you got here?" " Hey, don't go in there." " I'm just." "Ohh!" "Jake." " There's nothing in there." "There's just..." "Please." "Please, stay out of there, will you, Harry?" "Till the day they died, my folks were proud I was a writer." "They'd brag to anyone who'd listen I was a writer." "Unlike my brother, who sorrows for me, 'cause what?" "I'm not a winner." " Let him go!" " He doesn't let me go." "He comes over and he cries." "Real tears." "He comes to my room, he says..." ""When I think of the way you have to live..." ""without a house, a home, furniture..." ""I laid awake all night, crying, thinking about you coming back... to this dark, lonely room without furniture. "" "I didn't know I didn't have furniture till he told me." "You think he'd cough up a chair or something." "Maybe he can't cough up a chair or something." "Maybe a chair or something sticks in his throat." "Maybe he's broke too." "He's a heart surgeon." "He gave his heart to science." "Why don't you leave the poor guy at peace?" "So he's got a few bucks." "So he doesn't read the New York Review of Books." "What a remarkable idea... that one's relatives should be supportive of one's aesthetics." "And financially supportive." "Even more remarkable." "He behaved the same way with my father, and the old man wasn't any kind of artist." "Please, don't go on about things you don't know." " Why don't you just finish your coffee and go home?" " I don't wanna go home." ""I don't wanna go home."" "Don't you have a support system someplace?" "What does that mean?" "I hear it constantly." ""Support system." I don't understand it." "What does it mean?" "It means, don't you have anybody whose balls you can break... because your friends don't want you to break theirs?" " What friends?" " You read the Times today?" " Only the comics." " Armand Gottlieb won the National Book Award." "I couldn't finish it." "Hey, don't do that!" "You wanna blow us up?" "Why don't you put some of those 8- by-10's in the envelopes, huh?" "Armand Gottlieb keeps award-winning company." "What's that mean?" "Gottlieb's a thoroughgoing fraud." "He steals front story from Balzac, back story from Conrad... some wind from Thomas Wolfe and a little social catchall from Dreiser." "He wins everything in sight, but everything in sight he steals." "Who knows that?" "I do." "What do you wanna do, sit around here all night?" "Because you can't." "I'm wiped out." "I'm exhausted from being exhausted." "What does it mean when you can't fall asleep?" "Severe depression." " When you wake up constantly?" " Severe anxiety." " Any remedy?" " Death." " Something less exotic, please." " Doesn't sound exotic to me." " Let's go have some coffee." " Why, Harry?" "Because we're young, it's the Village, we're happy, we're in love." "Arert we, Jake?" "Wanna take a walk to Chinatown?" " Chinatown?" "No, I decidedly do not." " Why not?" "Because it's 1:30 in the morning." "Because it's February." "Because it's freezing outside." "Because I don't like Chinatown." "Because we don't have any money." "It's brisk." "It's a nice walk." "Come on." "We'll get some coffee with milk." "We got enough money for that." "You don't need coffee, Chinese or otherwise." "Give me that cup." " Look at yourself." " The worst coffee I've ever had." "You're shaking, trembling." "You need to be clubbed, not prodded." " Chinese coffee puts me at peace." " Oh, please." "I had a cup of java there once." "Did anything but put me at peace." "My stomach did flip-flops for days." "You had to be in a border area." "What street were you on?" "Street?" "What?" "Who knows?" "Chinatown... acid." "You must have been in a border area." "I wasn't reading maps." "All I know is I could have opened a drain with the stuff." "That's the point." "If the coffee had acid, you couldn't have been in Chinatown." "You were obviously in a border area." "Couple of Chinese just sitting around the joint." "Greeks running it." " You know that for a fact?" " Yes." " How?" " Chinese worship their stomachs and everything they put in 'em." "When it comes to coffee, it's the freshest." " Oh, I get it." "They grind it from the bean." " That's pretentious." "Only they use the very best beans." "And it's brewed fresh, in Silex pots only." "Glass, never an urn." "You know the final touch?" "Soy sauce." "Cream." "Real cream." "Some places, not many... half and half." "That's as far as they'll descend." "But most places?" "Cream." "Throw the whole quart at you." "Wouldrt that give you a lift?" "No, for me the Chinese are not escapist entertainment." "They're crammed into sweatshops... and obscure poverty." "They should be glum and depressed." "It depresses me that they're not." "They have hope." "They inspire me." "I admire them, really." "You do not." "You feel superior to them." "Isn't that it?" " No matter how broke you are." " Nonsense." " I like their spirit." " Please." "So you got wrappers for these pennies?" "There's a paper bag around here someplace." "No, I don't want to walk around with a paper bag full of pennies." "Who's gonna see you?" "It's 1:30 in the morning." "I'm gonna see me." "Others are..." "This is New York at 1:30." "I don't want a bag!" "I think you're gonna have to leave, Harry." " Why?" "What's the rush?" " I have a customer coming in." "I have a sitting." " At this hour?" " She's a little late." " What time was she due?" " 6:00." " It's almost 2:00." " She's an actress." "She's working in Jersey as a go-go dancer while she perfects her theatrical hysteria." "You been waiting here for her since 6:00?" " That's right." " Doing what?" " Reading." " Reading." "But you werert in the reading vein, I thought." "One need not be in a reading vein for Tolstoy's Letters." "Tolstoy puts any civilized man in the vein." "Do I unnerve you?" "You have that capacity, yes." " I ran into two friends of yours the other day." " I find that highly doubtful." "The two Irvings." "Your bosses from the club, remember?" "They asked me how you were doing in theatrical photography." "They want me to reopen the concession." "Listen, anybody asks you how I'm doing, you tell 'em I'm doing marvelously well..." "I adore theatrical photography... and I will never again be interested in nightclub photographic concessionairing." "Why not?" "At least you had a place to go, people to see, besides me." "For 30 years I sojourned in nightclub hell." "Is this supposed to be a fucking photograph?" "My grandmother took a better picture with a Brownie!" "I am finally risen." "You know Sarah, the belly dancer?" "She told the two Irvings that she came here to be photographed... and that you groaned all during her session." "Because she was killing me." " Stop groaning." " Stop belching." "I'm paying." "I can belch." "I had too much falafel last night." "And I'm paying for that tonight." "That's it." "Put your rags on." "The session's over." "Boy, have I had a belly full of you." " She said the phone rang, you answered..." " Death house." "'Cause she was killing me!" "Jake, when was the last time you had a customer?" "I mean, someone who actually showed up... besides Sarah." "Two months ago." "And since you left the club six months ago to go into theatrical photography... how many customers have you had altogether?" "Four." " But you like these people, these show people." " I loathe them." "Oh, I thought you liked them." " I loathe them." " Really?" "At their worst, nightclub patrons are merely drunk and vomitory... but actors and actresses!" "Magnificent!" "You are cleaving my heart with your Elizabethan tragica!" "I can actually see the grave open." "Now let me hear it open." "Speak to me, Hamlet." "Speak!" "To be or... not to be." "Ah, bravo, noble prince!" "Bravo!" "Now the dagger." "Bring it up towards your heart." "That's it." "Now press the point in deeper." "Deeper!" "Deeper!" "Sometimes I actually dream of slipping a chisel... underneath their preening choppers and dislodging them one by one." "How do they come by this remorseless enthusiasm for misery?" "Mercy, honey." "Arert you even a little bit nervous?" " I only did the masks." " Only did the masks?" "What is Greek tragedy without the masks?" "She's a nervous wreck." "She's all a-twitter." "She just hides it well." "The way your work has grown, I'm sure they're going to be absolutely glorious." "I just want to serve the play." "Honey, you are on the brink of an artistic breakthrough." "I can just feel it." " I was telling Jake..." " Will you can the magnolia juice?" "She hasn't been to the plantation." "Jake, why did they use those masks anyway?" "They were a visual aid, and they also contained a kind of a voice box... so an audience of up to 10,000 could see and hear." "This theater really only holds about..." " Thirty people, I think." " Thirty." " So what is this production all about?" " Pretension." "It's about giving artists like Joanna, you know, a chance to do her stuff." " Easy there, Hotspur." "We know you love her." " Yeah, well." " Your lover was about to belt me." " Shh." "You citizens of Cadmus!" "He must speak home, that in the ship's prow... watches the events... and guides the rudder!" " Why is he screaming?" " Hush, honey." "I just love your masks." "Great prince of the Cadmaeans, I, a messenger... come bringing a clear word from the army of matters there." "I, myself, too, have seen the things I speak of." "O Zeus and Earth and gods that guard the city... my father's curse, mighty evil spirit!" "It's killing my eardrums." "This is all the fault of rock and roll." " Your masks are just beautiful." " They're incredible." "They're incredible." "The chorus of Theban women must be heard." " Not by me." " My sorrow is great and fearful... therefore, I cry aloud." "The army has left the camp and is gone!" " So am I." " I think they're just trying to be authentic." "I know." "I love your masks." "They're great, really." "He was going to take costume pictures after the show." "Behold the rushing river, the great tide of horsemen." " I'll be in the Acropolis, the diner around the corner." " Shh!" "O misery!" "Maybe you'd like them better if more of them came." "Yeah, naturally." "I need bigger ads." "I gotta raise my prices." "Jake, I think you should learn a little something about theatrical photography first." "Hey, fella, don't get high hat on me." "This is America." " You are what you say you are." " Well..." "Eh, don't give me "well." You are what you say you are." "You oughta learn that, too, because you're totally off on a wrong bat." "Oh, really?" "How?" "You think a writer should merely write, and that's naive crap." "A writer's primary activity is promoting." "No." "Look at Norman Mailer." "You hang around Chinatown." "Who's gonna see you there?" "Not even the Chinese." " That's the way I like it." " Get your hands on some money." " Money." " Then promote yourself, and the rest will follow." "And I mean real money, not the few pennies I owe you." "See, you can't sleep in bohemia and commute to the real world." "It doesn't work that way." "And don't give me that blank look!" "There is real money out there for you." "I wish I could say the same." " Really?" " Yeah, big money practically staring you in the face." "Have you seen your lost love lately?" "No." "Why?" "What did Joanna take with her when she ran out on you?" "Joanna..." "All right." "At least hold on to your keys." "Nothing." " I don't want the keys." " Wait a minute." "Wait." "Here." "You'll be in the neighborhood." " Then I'll call you." " Joanna, just take the keys." " You'll need them." " How am I gonna need them?" "You'll meet another sweet thing." " No." " Joanna." "Jo..." "Guilt." "She ran off with guilt... which is one step removed from gelt." "What are you suggesting?" "I filch guilt money from Joanna?" "Well, you should make an ignoble try." " Can you?" " Naturally." " Naturally?" " Harry, you sit on a very high moral plane." "I'm merely trying to get along." "Well, why don't you squeeze money out of Mavis?" "You love to tell me how loaded she is." "Why don't you extort from her?" "Mavis is, yes, exquisitely rich." "Unfortunately, she doesn't begin to appreciate the concept of the word "guilt."" "Maybe that's because you left her." " There are other worthy guilts, Harry." " Really?" "She just doesn't take the cue, and I do feed it to her." "Relentlessly tell her she's guilty." " Of what?" " What does it matter?" "It doesn't matter." "All that matters is there's no real payoff." "And I have to sleep with her for a lousy C-note." "She gives you a hundred to sleep with her?" "I find it in my pocket on my way home, along with a chocolate caramel." "But it's not an easy buck, I assure you." "And any more than that, I have to move back in." " Jake, do you want a divorce?" " No." " Do you want to move back in?" " No." "Do you still love me?" "I have no idea what you mean by that question." " How much did she inerit?" " Stop snooping." "Plenty." " Only you're not gonna move back in to get it." " My, aren't you the wag?" "Why?" "Because it's a compromise?" "Well, it's a compromise I'm not prepared to make." "Not that I'm against compromise per se, but..." "I'm against compromise per se." "Once you start, you inevitably turn into phlegm." " Where did you hear that?" " What?" "That "phlegm" business." "You heard that from me." "I did?" "When?" "A couple of years ago." "That's something I was saying a lot two years ago." " You stole that from me." " I stole your phlegm business." " Right out of my mouth." " You want it back?" " Yes, exactly." "I want it back." " I have been using it." "But you have no right to use it." "It is in no way public domain." "My words are my words, always!" "They are not free for random manipulation... and tawdry circulation!" "In other words, there is no open season on my words!" "Not any longer!" "You're pretty upset, Manheim." "I won't use the phrase again." "Look, uh, I don't know how to do this... without seeming unduly hurtful... which I'm not inclined to be... but, uh..." "I think I oughta tell you bluntly what I think of your new work." "Sure." "Why not?" " It doesn't satisfy me." " But you haven't read it." "I gave both your books to Jake." "He compared them with Nathanael West's first two books." "He didn't go into it, but... he would like you to read two short stories he wrote when he was a boy." "I think the time has come for you to try something else." " You have any suggestions?" " About what?" " About the book." " About your new book, I have no suggestions." "Then why do you say "try something else"?" " I mean exactly what I said." " You mean try another book?" " I mean exactly what I said." " You mean try another book?" "I mean, try something else." " Try what?" " Harry, it's almost 2:00 in the morning." "I have not paid my rent in three months." "The landlord is lying in wait for me with a rock and a sling." " I can't afford to have you in here kicking up a row." " Don't fuck with my mind!" " What'll you have?" " Uh, double espresso." "Whoa!" "Aren't you the brave one?" "I'll have an American coffee." "We don't have American coffee." "This is Café Dante." "Oh, this is Café Dante." "Do you have anything like a Café Americano?" " Whipped cream?" " Whipped?" "No, I think lightly disciplined will do." "You got it." "Not one of your haunts, this place." "No, I'm strictly for one-armed Greek diners." "But your lady said you liked it here." " I like the painting." " Ahh." "Dante on first seeing Beatrice." "But you notice, he's got his eye on both dames." "It only looks that way." " Yeah, he's checkir 'em both out." " No, not for me." "What are you, City College of New York?" "No college." "No." " Oh, I'm really nervous now." " No." "Really?" "Harry, I did like your first two books." "You know that." "I mean, they were sharp, flinty, crazy in all the right ways." "And workmanlike." "You are a worker, so you deserve a break." "But I simply cannot give you the nod on this one." "I" " It's a mess." "The whole thing just flies apart." "It fails utterly." "Why?" "Why?" " Joanna says you work day and night." " I'm not very facile." "Hmm." "Why not be more like Trollope?" " Anthony Trollope?" " Yeah." "Trollope wrote more words in his lifetime than all the other English writers put together." "This was his unswerving routine." "7:00 to 11:00 every morning, he worked without respite." "Then the rest of the day, he had fun." "I very much like those two, uh, stories that you gave Joanna." "Oh, mere autobiography." "No, I-I really..." "The writing was wonderful." "My writing's always wonderful." "There just isn't enough of it." "Which is why I'm still taking dyspeptic pictures in inelegant nightclubs." " So what else have you written?" " Nothing." "Nothing?" "You wrote those two stories when you were young... a boy, right?" "Yeah, I've had a little bit of a block since then." "Harry, pull out the zinger." "Harry, pull out the zinger." " I tell you as a friend." " What?" "The zinger, the poison dart." "See it sticking out of you a mile away." "That's why you can't write or think." "I don't know what the hell you're talking about." "Your lady love..." "She stuck it to you, and now you're stuck with it." " Get rid of it." " Why did you lie... about having read the book?" "Were you in any shape when you walked in here to deal with anything?" " When did you read it?" " I read it, I read it." "Does it matter when?" "I don't know." "Maybe." "Maybe it doesn't." "Could you just tell me something?" "Talk to me honestly about it." "It's riddled with chaos." "It oozes disease." "That was helpful." "So, uh, nothing much happened with those two books of yours?" "Well, last week I was at the Strand." "You know, nine miles of books." "The world's greatest collection of out-of-print books?" "They didn't know me." "Wanted to know if Harry Levine was a living author." " Listen, you mind if I'm honest?" " No." "I think your work could be a little more personal." " Well..." " That's really the kind of writer you are, you know." " You're right." " After all, it's what made Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe." "It's certainly Hemingway's appeal." "Not his sorry aping of Gertrude Stein's dilettante maunderings." "And it's what finally turned the tables for Nathanael West... and, without doubt, Henry Miller." "I do write in the first person." "Well, that's a stylistic decision." "You mind if I get a little pushy?" "Harry, the answer to love is love." " Pull out the zinger." " I don't have a zinger in me." " Do you ever meet a woman?" " Several knockouts per day." " I see no evidence of that." " I meet women, Jake." " I see no evidence of it." " Well, I meet them." "They usually say things that turn me off." "Like she's never heard of Theodore Dreiser?" "No." "Usually some crack about how tiny my room is." " Which Joanna never cared about." " No, she adored it." "You arejust such a grouse." "I'm not a grouse." "You know a grouse is a bird?" "I'm a grouser." "Well, stop it." "I think that this place, it is terrific." "You know, it's not tiny, it's cozy." " I could do wondrous things with it." " Like what?" " I could paint it." " Yeah." " Yeah, paint the ceiling." " That's a start." "Could paint the floor." " Paint the floor?" " Paint it yellow." " Paint it yellow?" " Yeah, like that van Gogh painting you like so much." "She loved it." "She used to say, "We have a wonderful life."" "We have such a wonderful life." "After all, for her it was a room she was passing through." "To you it's a closet you're nailed into." "Our little cave." "Our little prison from the world, you and I, alone." "Speak of court news, right?" "Who's in, who's out." "How does that go from King Lear... when he talks to Cordelia, his daughter?" "Like two creatures in a gilded cage will say about what the world was... and stuff like that." "How does it go?" "It's a cookbook." " I'm getting older." " Poor baby." "Most men my age are having their first heart attacks." "They're starting to cut back." "You don't have to worry about heart disease." "You've never eaten well enough." "Harry likes cream cheese and radish sandwiches on white bread." " Oh, mercy!" " It's this city, this wretched metropolis you seem to adore." " It feeds me." " It feeds on you." "On all of us, and it shits out the leavings... which fertilize absolutely nothing." " But there are places." " Really?" "Where?" "Do you have any idea what you can still do with three dollars a week..." " in certain parts of Central America?" " No." "You can purchase a 12-year-old certified virgin... who will cook for you, clean for you, revere you... satisfy all your erotic needs." "Yes, there are still some truly civilized places in this world." " Did I hear "Central America"?" " No." "He went down there two years ago, stayed for two days." "The heat was unbearable and the so-called cuisine beneath contempt." " Oh, oh, oh!" "Do you see that house?" " Yeah." "That is the house where, allegedly..." " Booth plotted the assassination of Lincoln." " Mercy." " I get pains." " Really?" "Awful pains." " Where?" " Forget it." "No, please, tell me." "Where?" "No, please, tell me." "Where?" "You really wanna know?" "I'm sitting in a chair, and I could swear there's a tack... a fiery tack, sticking right into my buttock." "As though someone took a tack, roasted it red hot... and put it on a chair just so I could sit on it." "It's like a shot just went up me." "Like a shot." "It was like a shot went up me." "Like a shot went right up me." "But I don't think that's a heart attack." "Or I'm out on the street, walking." "My legs start to cramp up in the back, right above the knee... like a vise is grabbing me." "I simply cannot walk." "I'd go to a doctor if I could afford it." "But I know it's nothing." "You think it's nothing?" "You think it's something?" "What do you think?" "Be honest." "You don't mind my being honest?" " No." " Some people mind it." "Generally, I don't mind." " Your first book's about whom, your father?" " My uncle, actually." "An incident in his life." " And the second one's your older brother." " No, actually, he's my friend." "A very close friend of mine." "And your next?" "I'm thinking of this political thing that's been on my mind." "Apolitical thing?" "Write a letter to the Times instead." "Then sit down and write a memoir in third person about yourself... and about everybody you love and hate." "Don't be shy with the venom." "That's what I'd do if I were you, which, lucky for you, I'm not." "Joanna told me you've taken some extraordinary photographs of old people." " Very old people." " Jews without money." "There are some, you know." " I've heard." " So, uh, are the two of you gonna get married?" "I don't know." "Maybe." " I'll need a bigger place." " Why?" "Sounds like fun, from what she tells me." " Sweetheart." "Sweetheart." " Huh?" "Do you think maybe you couldjust, like, do, uh, maybe two less chips... per every 15-second interval?" "I think you're in serious trouble... and not primarily of a physical nature." "I'm a little tense because of money." "You're tense because of money?" "Yes, because of money." "But not because of the nine million cups of coffee, the relentless womanizing... the fits of anxiety, the hopeless depression, the nocturnal tooth-gnashing... and the utterly debilitating, drenching sweats?" "You're just describing yourself, Jake." "But I function." "You haven't been right since Joanna skipped out on you." " I've done all right." " You have in no way "done all right."" "Your behavior when she left was utterly psychotic." "I must tell you, I seriously considered trying to have you committed." " I was heartbroken." " Don't give me any alibis." "How many times did I find you sitting in Sheridan Square Park crying your eyes out?" "Once." "How many times did you stumble into my darkroom at the club 2:00 in the morning... tears streaming down your face?" "Once." "Twice." "Twice too often." "Wasn't fair to me either." "There's only so much friends should be expected to endure for friends." "But you don't see beyond your own needs." "You've got a real streak of cruelty in you." "Probably why Joanna left you." " Do you have that table of five?" " Just coming out of the dryer." "Give me a hand." "Do you, uh..." "Do you want to have a drink when we close up?" "What about our boy?" "Where's he?" "I don't know." "Home, I guess." "You sure he won't mind you stepping out with me?" "Maybe he should, uh, live alone." "That's what I keep thinking." "What do you think?" "Well, it might solve your problem, but it won't solve his." " What do you mean?" " He had a well-placed agent." "She sold a couple of books." "He got a nice advance." "Somebody printed them." "These things happen." "But they're not likely to happen again." "What I'm saying is, he probably is not gonna get much happier... which brings us back to you." " Why?" " Why?" "You know why." "A smile, I've noticed, is your weapon of choice... and I don't think anybody has the right to take it away from you." "I was never cruel deliberately." "I got angry, yes... because living penniless in Greenwich Village at age 42... was not my idea of romance and excitement." "One winter she wore a coat so beat, she had to put it on in three parts." "She loved it." "I did not like it." "To me, La Bohème was just another opera at Lincoln Center I couldn't afford to see." "Hey, come on, wait!" "I didn't mean anything bad." " I know." " Am I a bad person?" "Just 'cause I say something that gets you mad, that doesn't make me a bad person." " No, it does not." " But I am on edge all the time." "I'm afraid to speak 'cause I never know when you're going to explode." "Come here." "You know, Joanna..." "Telling me that the day F. Scott Fitzgerald died... only 40 copies of his book were sold... while today Gatsby alone sells 300,000 a year doesn't make me feel good." "I only meant that time works things out, and I just..." "I took the wrong example for what I wanted to say." "Why do you wear that coat?" "I mean, why do you insist on wearing that coat?" " We can't afford..." " I bet I can sew it better." "Yeah, well, the bottom line is, she wasn't happy, and now she's happy." "Guy she's with is a palooka." "The bottom line is, you two couldn't make do with each other... and she makes do with him very well, palooka or not..." "I suppose because she loves him." "You don't know that." " She's with him." " You don't know that she loves him." " She is with him." " He wasn't honest with her." "Come on." "Stop being such an ingenue." "He wanted her." "Let her go." "Made believe he didn't have a dime 'cause he knew... that would work on her romantic sympathies." "Yeah, so she moved in with him, and it turned out he had a couple of bucks." " Millions." " He didn't have millions." "He had hundreds of thousands, had hidden stocks, apartments." "I warned her." "She made him out to be the big romantic loser." "He wasn't." "He was a fake." "He was a winner with money and a penthouse." "So!" "And she stayed with him." "What a fool." "She could still be in that airless room with you always raging at her." "I have nothing, and I never had anything!" " I didn't always rage at her." " You raged at her quite a lot." "Hi, honey." "It was real busy tonight." "College freshmen." "Girls with peanuts in their hair." "Jake says he's starting on a new story." "You shamed him." "I was looking for some notes on an envelope... so I couldn't find it." "I do like the way you put my paintings on exhibit." "Everything was wedged in so tight." "Yeah." "I can make some attractive boxes." "I think that might be a good idea." "I can move out." "There is that residence on 11th Street for unmarried ladies... little ballet dancers, things like that." "And just come and see you." "Why do we have sheets on the windows?" "Because, sweetheart, those old drapes you had were falling apart." "So you threw them out, put up sheets?" "Why do we have to have sheets on the windows?" "Do you know what that does to me... to have sheets on a window?" "Other people have shades." "They have drapes." "I have sheets!" "Do you understand what that makes me feel?" "I'm not one of them privileged brats from Westchester... who thinks living down and out in Greenwich Village is cool!" "No, I'm a grown-up!" " I didn't understand." " You never do." "I didn't think." "Tomorrow I can go and buy some nice shades for five dollars." " You don't understand." " Yes, I do." " No." " I really do." "I don't think so." "I didn't always rage at her." "Goddamn it, don't rag me about Joanna that way." "Do I rag you about Mavis?" " Do I rub your nose in it?" "And I could." " You couldn't." " I wouldn't." " You couldn't, boychik, because I am in control." " Of whom?" " Of myself." "You think I'd let Mavis do to me what Joanna did to you?" "Only last week she was here with one of her infernal curry dinners." "I pinned her to that chair for four solid hours." "I heaped a load of abuse on her so heavy and so relentless... she finally had to crawl out the door on all fours." "And I never repeated a word." "And she deserves it, you know?" "She's the one always starting these little truth-telling sessions... but I finish them up, pal." "I feed it up to her hot and plenty." "I relentlessly hit her with..." "Guilty!" "Guilty!" "Guilty!" "Guilty!" " Of what?" " She ruined my life." "She ruined your life?" "Huh." "You think I would have been a nightclub photographer all these years... if it hadrt been for her?" "I would have been a writer." " I mean, I am a writer, but I would have been..." " A professional writer." "Yes, exactly." "The problem is, even if you have the requisite coin... there really is no place to go, is there?" " Well..." " Come on." "Let's face it, kid." "Every place you go, you've already been." "Every door you rap on is one you just walked out of." "It's all the same stale hash." " Well..." " What kind of a life is it anyway?" "What is it, after all?" "You toss and turn." "You scratch and wheeze a bit, then one morning you wake up dead, if you're lucky." " Well..." " So what's the point, huh?" "I mean, there really is no point." "And if there is no point, and there really isn't, then what's the point?" " Well..." " Oh, you see this house?" "Hart Crane lived in that house... just before he committed suicide." "Just before he committed suicide." "Jake, you're the brightest..." "You're certainly the most literate person I've ever known." "You are not a writer." "I'm sorry to say this." "It pains me to say it." "You're a photographer, a superb one when you wanna be." "But two six-page stories do not a writer make." " Two published stories." " At 19." "Nothing since." "Because she sucked the life out of me, drained me dry." "Took me all around the world." "Moving, moving all the time." "Endless rounds of parties." "Ships, trains, planes." "Made me incapable of movement now... artistic or physical." "And you loved it." "The way you and Mavis lived in those..." "You told me often enough about the cars, the apartments... the hand-tailored garments, the trips to wherever." "Okay, good." "You had it." "You enjoyed it." "Wonderful." "But now this wild wrinkle that you could have been a writer if only." "Jake, never." "Never could have been a writer." "Would you have lived the way I have lived all these years, to be a writer, Jake?" "Oh, there we have it." "Don't we?" " You gotta think about that." " The magic, secret, hidden word." "Say it, and the duck comes down." " You mean I wouldn't have suffered?" " No, I don't mean that." "Yes, you do." "You mean that exactly." "You mean I wouldn't have worn your badge... the merit badge of the starving bohemian writer of old-time Greenwich Village..." " Yes." " Who, by the way, is at least 40 years out of date... and who remains only the major hero of his decidedly minor tragicomedy." "Jake, you wanna write?" "There's a typewriter." "Turn it on." "That's what it comes down to." "It's simple." "How 'bout if I finally clear the air... and tell you exactly what I think of this new book of yours?" "What?" "I think that it's a warning... a warning that you are sick, beaten and ready to go right over the edge... which is why, as your friend, I counsel you..." "Give up this game." "Throw it over and find a new one while you still can." "Because you cannot ever..." "will not ever make it in this market." "Are you seriously saying I have no talent?" "No, I'm saying something far worse." "You have no money, and you have had no money for so long... it has seriously affected your mind." "It has made hash of your soul... which is why your lady love was able to get to you so poisonously." "This book you wrote is the grisly proof." "I don't say these things with relish." "Look..." "Look at your shoelaces." "I have shoelaces." "Yes, but look at them." "Beaten, hopeless, shredding themselves with utter despair... and shameful fatigue." "I tie the broken pieces together because..." "Because it's a major crisis to buy a new pair." "Because you can't face the realization that even a new pair of shoelaces... means comparison shopping!" "You're saying I look like a bag man." "Who said you look like a bag man?" "This afternoon, on my way to Chinatown..." " I got thrown up against the wall..." " Up against the wall!" "By five plainclothes cops... then dragged down to the precinct... like a piece of Times Square sleaze... because, it turns out..." "I look just like some horror... who killed five people out in Queens." "Showed me a photo." ""Kind of mean,"I said." ""Mean?" this cop says to me." "He's practically subhuman, and you're his twin." "Jake, this guy was the meanest, seediest... most cretinous-looking creature I ever laid eyes on." "I tell ya, after I left there, I started looking in mirrors." "I passed mirrors I didn't know existed." "I got home, I started looking in every mirror in my house." "But mirrors lie, don't they?" "Whoever looks at himself in a mirror?" "Pictures, they don't lie." " The camera tells all." " That's what I thought." "So I went midtown, one of them penny arcades... where everything costs a buck and a half." "Went into the photo booth there." "You spin the stool to the right height, flash goes on and you die." "Took my picture for hours." "Changing my hair around different ways... seeing what that would do." "People in the arcade thought I was absolutely nuts... which is really saying something, when you consider where I was." "I'm down to a buck and a half." "I simply cannot go home." "So I start walking uptown." "Least you're going up." "Right?" "Strips and strands of these monstrous-looking photos I just took... hanging out of my pockets." "Have you been uptown lately, Jake?" "Have you seen it?" " What happened?" " The '80s, Harry." "That's what happened." "Hundreds and hundreds of these cunning cafés... and cavernous restaurants... filled to bursting with these bright-eyed young people... living the high life, laughing, feeling beautiful... eating salads... and looking out at me looking in... like I was something that crawled out of a half-opened can." "So I started walking downtown." "I thought the walk would calm me." "I got home, I was shaking." "Jake, I was shaking." "My whole body was shaking so bad I had to lie down." "Then I got up... went to work and got fired... for not bowing and scraping enough." "I mean, what the hell am I, a monkey?" "But this guy... in the police photo..." "I mean, he really had a subhuman look." "Whatever that means." "I'm supposed to be his twin." "Could such a thing develop, you think?" "I mean..." "What's happening to me, Jake?" "What's happening is, you're gonna be 50 before you know it... and you know it." "Not gonna have a dime, and you know it." "Gonna bejust like Mom said..." "just like Pop... and you know it!" "And that's what's on your face." " How much money do you need?" " More!" "The truth is, you're getting older." "I'm old already." "In 10 years you'll really be older, and I'll probably be five years dead." "I don't know." "A lot of important artists don't make it till later in life." "Yeah, Europeans." "And one American..." "Grandma Moses." "Should have gone to college, gotten a degree." "At least then you can teach something, even if you don't know anything." "I always thought that business of having something to fall back on... showed a real lack of obsession." "Listen, maybe it's not too late to change, try something else." "Try advertising." "I loathe advertising." "Bunch of trendy fucks in running clothes... spreading disease and dementia." " Somebody has to do it." " Not me!" "Besides, I've done it." "I tried to get in." "They won't let me in." "I'm too old for them." "What about those afternoon television dramas?" "Any age limit on those writers?" "You need real, in-depth superficiality for those things." "That takes years to develop." "How 'bout Hollywood?" "Lot of gray-chested wonders out there." "Hollywood?" "You can't be old out there unless you've been young out there." " Besides, I have no résumé." " No résumé?" "You've published two remaindered novels, even though they can't be found... a bunch of stories, a couple of fellowships." "And you've worked in 29 restaurants." "You know, all I ever really wanted to do was write what was in my heart." "What an unseemly idea... especially at your age." "If writing what's in your heart means writing your heart out for nothing..." "What do you want to be in 10 years, Harry?" "One of those brilliantly autodidactic Greenwich Village dishwashers?" "Some Bleecker Street pearl diver with your hands in boiling-hot water... while you mouth off about Shaw and Proust?" "It is a possibility, you know." "It is out there, looming in the distance." "Try something else!" "Anything!" "You don't think my book could make any dough, do you?" "Its entire landscape is barren and pedestrian... its ensemble of players, uh... a monumental collection of insufferable bores." "I think they're colorful." "The originals, perhaps." "The reproductions are washed-out and dull." "Not the..." "Not the two main characters though." "No, you're right." "I'm wrong." "Your two central inventions are not boring." "They are, nonetheless, even more artistically defective than the others." " In what way?" " In that they are preposterous, unreal... and utterly contrary to nature." "Show me." "Give me an instance where anything in the book... is incredible or whatever you said..." "contrary to nature." "This Abraham Singer character, for instance." "He lacks reality in every instance." "He is an utterly unique character, but he's a real character." "He is fancy and highfalutin and unforgivably childish." "I mean, this is supposed to be a 50-year-old man?" "How?" "Like no 50-year-old I've ever come across." " He has a certain..." " And his sidekick!" "The cretinous Mr. Morris Frankel!" "This is supposed to be a 44-year-old man?" "He talks, behaves like a 44-month-old retard." "You honestly believe any of this book really works?" " I think it works, yes." " Well, I don't see it." "The two characters you supposedly based on us... they're just such phenomenally ludicrous buffoons!" "Well, I simply don't see it that way, Jake." "Singer, my shadow figure, there's no end to his verbal pretension." "Ohh, let me have the book, Jake." "Such breathy, fluffy prose just issues from him." " I would like my book back." " What made you think you could get away with it?" " It works." " What made you..." " It works." "It does not work!" "I mean, this guy is such a fluffy, blowing, complaining... endlessly breathy, postprandial fart!" "A" " Am I like that?" "Who knows?" "Maybe I am." "I don't know." "A" " And this other nitwit..." "your character." "What an ingenue." "So much gushing and simpering." ""We sat in the bagel café..." ""speaking of art and literature..." ""of Henry Miller and Anais Nin in Paris." ""We began to chew each other's fingers..." ""and through her fingers, through the cream cheese..." "I could feel her temperature rising."" "What is that?" "Is that art?" "Is it sex?" "Is it kosher cuisine, or a house call?" "Have you no shame?" "Do you know, I actually thought, Jake... that you would be, uh..." " What?" " Touched by the two of us." "Amused, even." "Pleased." "You trot me out as some pompous, coffee-house phony... some gaseous, abject failure... and you thought I would be touched, amused, pleased?" "Well, I don't see it that way, so maybe, uh..." "You don't see it that way because that would require a little empathy." "You're saying I have no empathy?" "You are a pathological hypochondriac... meaning, you are completely and utterly self-obsessed." "I'm not pathological." "You are probably without parallel in the Encyclopedia of Abnormal Psychology." " Not true." " Not true?" "How about the time you nearly drove me crazy for a month... worrying whether you were gonna die because your father had high blood pressure." "Went out and bought that ridiculous blood pressure machine... took your blood pressure all night till it was above normal." "Then you came in here the next day with blotches all over your arm from the cuff... and thinking it was some kind of red gangrene." " My father did develop high blood pressure." " When he was 82!" "A" " A-And the cancer of the knuckle?" " The knuckle cancer?" " Ehhh." "We spent the whole weekend looking for a knuckle specialist... a "knuckelist"?" "Oh, oh, oh, and the cancer of the palm?" " It kept growing." " It was a callus!" "Jesus Christ, if I had 1/10th of your physical stamina..." "I would have risen above every obstacle to become a truly great novelist." " What an alibi." " Alibi?" "Ali..." "Tolstoy, when he was 80, could run a mile at full clip." " It's right there in the letters." " Well..." "There is no art without sinew." "Nothing's seriously wrong with your health, Jake." "I am dying on my feet." "I am rotting in my slipper socks." "And you, you... you're perfect." "You're perfect." "You walk through the streets... dragging yourself around like some haunted shadow figure... from some Dostoyevskian netherworld." "But it's all a phony romantic pose." "Empathy?" "Your own brother, when he reads this book, he'll never speak to you again." "And you don't give a damn." " He'll get over it." " And will I?" "Suppose I told you I would never speak to you again." "I can't imagine that." "It never occurred to you that I might feel... maligned, damaged, betrayed?" "Jake, you knew right from the start this book featured our lives." "You were forever asking me..." " So, how's that book coming?" " What book is that, honey?" "Oh, he's writing a valentine to the two of us." "I'm sorry, sweetheart." "I don't understand that." "It's a jokey little novel with a couple of nutty Greenwich Village types." " Based on the two of you?" " Well, so he claims, but he'll never capture the real me." "Is this to be one of your more humorous efforts?" "Uh, well, uh, maybe." "I hope so." "I'm in it." "I'm a struggling artist who lives with her boyfriend, a very struggling writer." "Really?" "You've seen it?" " I've seen him writing it." " And me." " Am I in it?" " Uh..." "It could be arranged." " Oh, I wanna be in it." "Please!" " Okay." "Harry, how would you portray me?" "Well, how would you want to be portrayed, Mav?" "As your anchor." "Uh, make her my lead weight." "But I never dreamed..." "I mean..." "What?" "Things you said, things you quoted... things you had no license, no right to quote..." "Like what?" "Personal things about my mother and my father... that miserable Bronx apartment... the illnesses I suffered as a child and the mark they left on me later... that whole passage about my mother screaming in agony... as, night after night, my father ravished her... the whole shameful incident when she threw my books out the window." "My books." "How I had to leave school at 15, the school that I loved so much... to go to work in that Copa darkroom... making more money a week than my old man." "Things that I said to you in... in passing... in... in private." "I mean, how do you even remember those things so exactly?" "I have a talent for that kind of thing." "You have a talent." "You have a talent to be a court stenographer." "You stole my life!" "How do I steal your li..." "How can someone do that?" "I-I don't understand." "I don't know." "How do you do it?" "What, do you wear a wire?" "Are you wired now?" "Do I read everything I said tonight in your next draft?" "How could I steal what really happened?" "You sanctimonious hypocrite!" "I could wring your goddamn neck!" "You'll throw anybody and everybody to the dogs to make a quick buck." "No." "No, no." "There were two motives here." "The first was quick profit." "The second was to punish everybody..." "What is all this "profit" business?" "What are you talking about?" "Nobody's read the damn thing but you." "We don't know that anyone's gonna publish it, now, do we?" "When a cagey writer squeezes out this kind of salacious shit... there's always somebody who'll rush to put it on paper." "Salacious." "How is it salacious?" "You got Greenwich Village sex and mayhem... intimate, devastating family relationships..." "And... and more Greenwich Village sex and mayhem." " And?" " And nothing." "You know what you wrote." "Are you saying you think I could make money with this book?" "Well, there's always that possibility." " How much?" " Eight zillion dollars." "What am I, the oracle at Delphi?" "So you're saying you think I might have actually written a popular book here?" "Well, it's trashy, isn't it?" "So naturally there's a possibility of popularity." "So, why should I go into advertising... to keep from winding up a Greenwich Village dishwasher, a Bleecker Street pearl diver?" "Why?" " I would like you to withdraw this book." " Oh, that's fancy talk." "Withdraw it from what?" "From whom?" "From contention." "It's not in contention." " Well, it will be." " I certainly hope so." "But do you think that the few pennies you'll make from this... will make up for all the pain that it'll cause if it comes out?" "Pain?" "I'm walking around with $1.50 to my name, Jake." " No, there are other concerns." " To other people, sure." "Look, all I'm saying is, just wait a little longer to become successful." "But I'm walking around with $1.50!" "You have held out this long." "You can hold out a little longer." "For the last, what is it, hour and a half... all you've been telling me, if I'm hearing correctly... is stop everything and go after the money." " But not this way." " Not what way?" "Not... cynically!" "Oh." "I should go into advertising." "Jake, you really take my breath away." "I mean, with all your heart you believe there's only one way to make money." " Oh?" "Oh?" "What way is that?" " Any way." " No." "I don't subscribe to that." " Why?" "Because of principles?" " Precisely." " But you have no principles." "Where are they?" "From the moment you started reading this book, you knew I could do something with it." " And what did you do?" "You tried to talk me out of it." " Because of the damage you'd do." "Oh, you are such a liar, Jake!" " A li..." " I never knew that about you, that you are such a liar!" "I thought you were crazy, I thought you were contrary, unduly critical at times... but I believed everything you said had weight and was truthful." "But you lie, Jake." "You lie." "You lied tonight." "You lied about what you thought my book's chances might be." "You lied about having read it." " You lied, probably, about what you thought of it too." " Absolutely not!" "No, no, no." "Aside from anything else..." "anything else... it's lousy writing!" " It's the best thing I've ever written." " No." "It's lousy." " It may be the best thing I'm ever gonna write, Jake." " But it's no good!" " What's your stake in that?" " Stake?" " Don't flatter yourself." "I have no stake." " Oh, no?" "I mean, it just..." "i- i-it offends my sensibilities." "It's shoddy workmanship, that's all." " I like it." " Sure, you like it." "You think you'll make money with it." "No, no." "I love the book." "I love what it's about." "I love the people in it." "Even the people I don't love, I love, but not as much as the people I love." "And you think you'll make money with it!" "No, you think I'll make money with it!" "That's your problem, that I might make m..." "I'd like to make money with it." "I hope I make money with it." "I'd enjoy making money with it." "I did not set out to m..." "And what difference would it make, in any case, if I did?" "It would mean that you had deliberately set out to profit from other people's pain!" "You prove it." "You say something like that..." "prove it." " I don't have to prove anything." " No, you have to prove it." "You see this?" "This is film." "This is negative." "I can turn this into positive." "Proof positive." "Proofs." "Is that a play on words?" "Am I a sophist?" "Do I give a shit?" "No!" "Here, you prove everything." "But if you could prove it, Jake..." "That's all I'm saying." "If you could prove it." " Prove what?" " That I wrote this book with malicious profit in my heart." "If you could prove that, and prove it with an argument that I could swallow..." "Not all this wind..." "something of substance." "Yeah?" "Then?" "Then I would take this manuscript and burn it." "I would burn it." "I'd walk on the ashes." "But you gotta hold up your end." "You gotta convi..." "What are you doing?" "I'm trying to keep my hands and eyes busy... because what's left of my brain knows there's nothing worth listening to." "All right, I did not write this book... with malicious profit in my heart... nor did I write this book to make money." "But I'll tell you something, if it's got anything... anything at all..." "I will do whatever I can to push it... to shove it, to move it out... because I cannot live this way, Jake, a day longer... a moment longer than I absolutely have to." "I cannot, Jake!" " And how do you want to live, in a word?" " In a word?" "How do I want to live, in a word?" "Space." "I want space." "Do you know there are nights I make and unmake my convertible bed... half a dozen times?" "I go out, I come in a dozen times a night." "It's the room." " Everything's a room." " Oh, no." "No, Jake." "You don't understand." "It is no longer a room to me." "It has become, for me, an oppression." "I can't fix it up." "I can't sand it down." "I can't paint over it." "I simply cannot live in it anymore." "Half the people in the world would kill for your room." "Any room." "I know that, Jake." "I see 'em every day on the street." " It's got nothing to do with me." " Why?" "Because you call yourself "artist"?" "You wanna know where I've been the last four weeks?" "I'm gonna tell you." "I've been with a girl." "First girl since Joanna." "A golden girl from the golden West." "Now she's gone." "Bimbos tend to be fleet of foot." "She's not a bimbo." "She's an interesting person." "I met her in the library." "What, she was looking for references?" "She told me she was here in New York on a desperate, last-ditch search for fiber." " But she didn't really use those words." " She did." "Something like that." "She stayed with me in my room for almost five weeks... and then one day she said, "Listen, honey, I think you're swell in a lot of ways... but how much fiber can one person stomach?"" "She told me I was destined to be poor the rest of my life." "It was a neurotic sickness with me." "She said I was always gonna live this way..." "in a room without sun... because I had the habit." "Told me I looked cute enough under a thin sheet... but that every time she saw me in clothes... a stronger wedge was driven between us... that no amount of sexual frenzy on her part... could make up for the lack of wardrobe on mine." "Told me the first time she saw me walk into the library... she thought I might be a bag man coming in from the weather." "She said, "Harry, how are you gonna be a successful writer without the clothes?" "Harry, how are you gonna win without the clothes?"" "She said, "Harry, I don't think you wanna win,"" "this girl from L.A." "Last thing she said to me before she left..." "She took my hand gently, she looked into my eyes tenderly, she said, "Harry..."" "Harry, I love you." "I really do love you." "Get some money." "But what she said or didn't say doesn't matter." " But she..." " The only thing that matters..." "She said what you've been saying for the last hour and a half." "That's what she said." "Yeah, but she's as much of a fraud as I am, right?" "No!" "She's right, Jake." "Look at me." "I'm no 18-year-old with a street guide of Greenwich Village in my mitt... and a six-pack of Trojans in my wallet... trying to nickel-and-dime it on Pepsi and pizza." "Look at me!" "I'm a middle-aged man." "I mean, suppose I get sick." "I mean, really sick." "Where do I go?" "Public clinic?" "Clogged to suffocation." "You're dead from the delay before they ever get around to maltreating you." "I gotta think of things like..." "I'm of an age!" "I gotta stop kidding myself, romancing my..." "You're right, I kid myself, Jake." "That's my whole thing with the Chinese." "Kicking the old gong around down there in Chinatown... while the world passes me by... kidding myself I'm somehow part of the spirit... that no one's judging me down there for my money... when the truth is that every time I walk into one of those joints down on Mott Street... it's strictly the price of the beverage that counts." "That's all I'm judged for!" "Because I couldn't squeeze a single drop of that dark brown juice... out of my exotic Oriental chums... if I didn't have the coppers." "Joanna ... same thing." "Lived with me for six and a half years... but when she walked, she walked upstairs." "She does live in a penthouse." "I don't fault her." "She's a nice girl." "More than that, she is the love of my life." "But she did not leave me for another basement!" "Call it all the sour grapes you want, Jake, and a lot of it is... but I'll tell you something..." "I put in the time... and an awful lot of it my best time." "I still don't have five fucking bucks in hand!" "And unless I somehow... manage to recut the stone... it does look like I'm slated to go out of here without a dime." "Just like Mom and Pop." "Because I got the zinger in me, boy." "Well, that's hardly news." "No, no, I don't mean the one you're talking about." "I don't mean romantically." "I'm talking about the one you're born with." "You know the one I mean." "Or you should know." "The one in there." "Deep down." "The one that keeps telling you over and over and over again... that no matter what you do, how hard you try, how long you go at it... that nothing good can ever, will ever, should ever happen for you." "And unless I do something... to dissolve it..." "this thing, this zinger... to waste it... and unless I do it now, while I'm able... it's gonna waste me, Jake!" "It is gonna kill me." "It is gonna kill everything good around me, Jake." "That I know." "And the one thing I have that can maybe make the difference..." "I have right here." "And you wanna take it away from me?" "Why?" "Because you're upset." "Because you're angry." "Because maybe you're a little jealous." " This is nothing but sentimental drivel." " It's drivel?" " Yes." " What do you mean, drivel?" " You stole my life." " I stole your life?" "And no amount of overwrought rationalization will alter that fact." "I did not steal your life, Jake." "I merely put it to some imaginative use." "Shouldn't I have first crack at that?" "I thought that's what you had for 50 years!" "Jake, isn't this all because I did it?" "I mean, I was actually able... to write this book?" "And if that's the case, Jake, and I think it is... then I understand." "I sympathize." "I empathize with you." "But I simply cannot do anything about it." "I'm not gonna change a word of it or withdraw it." "How could I do a thing like that if it meant hurting the book?" "Would you?" "Would you?" "I never meant to wrong you, Jake... or to hurt you, to use you, ever." "I mean, that's a given." "I just..." "I don't know how to put things right with you, Jake." "I just don't know how to do it." "Get out of here." " Okay." " I mean it, Harry." "Get out of here." " But I'm not finished." " Yes, you are." "Completely finished." "Out." "We both know nothing's gonna happen with this book." "It won't make a dime, Jake." "I meant what I said, Harry." "I want you out of here." "But if the miracle occurs and something..." "anything should happen... you don't think I'd take care of you?" "That I would share with you?" "I would put that in writing." "Now you wanna pay me?" " It's not a payment." " No, it's a payoff." " No, it's not, Jake." "What are you talking about?" " No, come on." "Come on!" " I want you out of here!" " It's for whatever you regard as your material." "I don't want your money!" "I don't want your scummy money!" "Get out!" " Why is it now scummy?" " Get out!" "I hope you're not gonna get violent, Jake." "Uh, I'll take my manuscript." "You want your manuscript?" "Here!" "Here's your manuscript!" "Go ahead!" "Take it!" " That's very gracious of you." " Don't bother to pick up your trash." "I'll take care of it." "You'll find it in your garbage can tomorrow." " I've got another copy." " You're such a dog." "No, no, not even, because a dog is man's best friend." "You're your best friend's worst enemy." "Best friend, Jake?" "Jake, I don't think we were ever friends." "Were you my friend tonight?" "There's nothing in your heart but money." "Everything on the block's for sale." " Only the goods." " Ha!" "Who told you you had the goods?" " Who do you think?" " You don't have the goods." "You only have the spoils." "Whatever." "At least I'm not shaking anymore." "How you doing, Levine?" "How you doing, Levine?" "You don't have to answer." "I know how you're doing." "You're doing terribly." "Come on." "Sit down, pull up a waitress and let's talk things over." " How'd you know it was me?" " Oh, I'd spot you in a million." "Yeah?" "Like looking into my own cracked mirror." "You've got despair scratched all over your New York mug." " Hello, kid." " Hello, Barney." " Good to see you, mate." " You too." "How about a drink?" "Coffee?" "A little seltzer?" "Uh, a seltzer'd be fine." "Lovely note you sent me." "I was very flattered." "Oh." "Those poems were great, Barney." "I was flattered you sent 'em to me." "They should be in print." "The Atlantic's publishing the one about my father." "Oh." "That's a beautiful poem." " I worked on it six months." " It shows." "And some obscure and foolish press... wants to republish my book of sea poems." "Should've never gone out of print, those poems." "Barney, any work around here?" "They're always looking for waitresses that don't wanna make any money." "I mean for me." "Oh." "Well..." "There is something as of last night." " Really?" " But I don't know if you'd want it." "W" " Why?" "Is it porter?" " Not quite." " Washing dishes?" " That's all we have at the moment." " Could I get it?" "Sure, you could get it." "But..." " But what?" " Washing dishes?" "You got two book jackets on the wall of dishonor." " Is that what you call it?" " Yeah." " I'm on it." " Well, then I'm in good company." "Ah." " So, who would I see for this?" " Show up about 4:00 and talk to Lester." " Oh, that's good." " If you want it." "I want it." "So, uh... what do I owe you?" "Hundred bucks." " Good to see you." " Good to see you again, mate." "Hey, wait a minute." "Wait a minute." "Look, this is no fun." "I thought it might be fun, but it is no fun." "Maybe I'll laugh about this later on, but right now I can't even smile... because I'll wind up with a frozen rictus." " My rictus isn't freezing." "Come on." "Let's go." " Come on." "Let's turn around." "Turn around?" "We're halfway to Brooklyn!" " And what happens when we get there?" " We turn around and walk back." " No, we take a cab back." " Oh, what's a..." "If Thomas Wolfe can do it, I can do it, you can do it." " The question is, why should I do it?" " Why?" "Because you get over your block and you can write again." "Did you know that Thomas Wolfe... would walk back and forth on this very bridge night after..." "And then finally, one night a torrent of words just gushed out of him... and he wrote, uh, Of Time and the River." "Listen: "A stone, a leaf..." ""an unfound door." ""Of a stone, a leaf... and all the forgotten faces."" "Beautiful." "But that's from Look Homeward, Angel." "What difference?" "It's still Wolfe!"