J. Donleavy - Wrong Information is Being Given Out at Princeton

“Yes, I saw that. It’s an outrageous disgrace.”

“Well old buddy boy, we’ve been really having a philosophical talk. Just like we used to do those off-duty times half-going Asiatic out there in the Pacific. And you know pal, just between you and me, I sometimes think what a damn fool I’ve been. I had a good ole heiress girlfriend from childhood in Chicago I could have tied the knot with. They had an estate right on the lake shore, her family had a big engineering business. Straight away I could have slotted in somewhere near the top. Isn’t that the problem being a damn fool. And the solution. It’s simple. Stop being a damn fool. Right.”

“Max, I think you’re right.”

“I know I’m right. I still got some good connections from out Chicago way and my club out there. But leave your options open and be ready is my motto. Here. I’m going to go right now and break out a bottle of the pretty decent champagne I got waiting right in there in the refrigerator. A little bit of the old Charlie Heidsieck. You’ll take a glass of the good old bubbly.”

“Yes, I should enjoy and very much like to.”

“Attaboy. Only thing wrong in this apartment is, with no room in the kitchen, the decent-size refrigerator I need, I’ve got to keep out here in the living room. Tomorrow’s Saturday. No goddamn office in the morning. Hell, why don’t we just go out and celebrate in this city where they keep bragging that they got the world’s tallest building. That Chicago is one day, I promise you, going to end up building. Let’s go uptown over there to the old Waldorf or even better the old Biltmore, where they keep the women out of the gentlemen-only bar, and knock back a few. All on me, pal. Find a couple of bimbos for ourselves. I feel better already. Boy, it’s sure nice to see you again, pal. Untwist the old wire on the champers. Pop the old cork. Take these two tulip glasses I got polished ready and waiting and fill them up. Put the bottle in an ice bucket. Here we go. Your good health.”

“Thank you. Thank you very much. And to your good health, friend.”

“Steve, get yourself a couple of good shotguns made, old buddy boy. Some tweeds. Plus twos. Plus threes. I’ll tell you the name of a good tailor over there in London on Savile Row. British quality is what you want these days old bean. Like my Bentley four-and-a-half-liter Tourer, vintage 1930, I got sitting over there on Eleventh Street in a garage. Drove it, the top down, the breeze blowing through my hair, all the way from River Oaks Houston to New York. Nicest two weeks ever had in my life. Have me a big steak and few beers every night. Talk with the townsfolk. Always be the volunteer fire department guys sitting around bullshitting outside their fire station. Went via New Orleans — what a town, boy, for some pretty pleasant evil, if that’s what you’re looking for. Then north through Vicksburg, Memphis, Nashville, then detoured a little south again to Chattanooga. Now there’s a decent little old town. Had a couple of names and addresses with me. And, without repercussions, holed up with a nice little ole gal from Knoxville. What a gal. From a damn good family. She wanted to tag along. But I was traveling light. Now that I think of it I should have let her. But sent her back home on a train before heading across those Appalachian Mountains to Lynchburg, then on to Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York. Now how do you like that, isn’t that champagne really something.”

“Hey Max, the champagne is really wonderful.”

“Well old bean, I also got me laid down some good old port with a London wine merchant over there.”

“Max, as much as I should like to adapt to this quality-first manner of living, I think I got to wait a brief while with these kind of plans. I can’t even afford to buy new underwear or socks.”

“Steve. Come on. I already told you. The way I used to wangle things for you in the navy. What’s mine is yours.”

“I don’t believe in fact, you did say that.”

“Well, close enough to it. Jesus, three years we were chess-and bridge-playing pals out there in the Pacific where death could always be in the next second. Lobbed at you from the other side of the horizon. But boy, when we lobbed back with our little ole sixteen-inchers, they went off, wham, wham, wham. Nothing was as beautiful as that bright orange cloud of pure fulmination coming out of the muzzles of those guns. We have all that in common. I want you to feel you’ve got a true friend.”

“Well Max, putting aside the gunnery, chess and bridge a moment, let me attest to your always having been a steadfast ally.”

“Okay. Before it knocks us, let’s between us knock this city for a loop. It’s the weekend, pal. Know what I mean. A loop. A goddamn loop. I don’t mean overexert ourselves pleasure seeking. Just flow with the more felicitous tide. Come on. Down the old champers. Here, have a couple more pretzels and let me refill your glass. Gee it’s good to see you and bring back a few ole memories. Let’s you and me drive up Madison Avenue in my old Bentley.”

Excusing myself to take a piss, I passed through Max’s bedroom. Hung along the wall on a clothesline were at least fifty silk ties. And on the floor at least twenty pairs of shoes in shoe trees.

Now dressed to leave, Max beneath his dark blue blazer, buttoned closed with large silver buttons, sported a crimson silk cravat adorned with black dots and stuck with a gold pin. Max surely was a picture to behold in his racing green Bentley. Yellow plaid cap on his head, goggles shielding his eyes as he smiled over the motorcar’s great long bonnet, as he called it. The chromework polished, gleaming. Headlights like two large bulging eyes. The massive engine throbbed into life. And open to the balmy breezes, we drove past Washington Square. This motor vehicle so perfectly fitting the setting of this terrace of redbrick and limestone-trim houses.

“Hey pal, isn’t this beautiful. All in wonderful harmony. Where people must have once lived in dignity and must have peacefully gone about their business out their doors with cane and spats to take constitutionals in the park, without some-goddamn bastard conducting a holdup, poking a goddamn gun or knife in their ribs.”

Max was right. It reminded one of more peaceful times and of the costumes and musical glory of opera. But such visions of grandeur were shattered on reaching Union Square as we motored north on Broadway. Stopping for a red light. A barefoot black man sitting on the step of a bank, brushing the demons away, his other hand searching in his pocket. Legless beggars on roller-skate platforms. Political literature for sale suggesting agitation and protest. Racks of cheap garments in the emporiums for the poor and dispossessed. A shopping mart with six pairs of socks for fifty cents. But Max impervious to the downtrodden. Racing the great engine, hooting his horn as we turn up Broadway to Madison Square and head up Madison Avenue. Max singing out to the street the “Whiffenpoof Song.”

“We are poor little lambs who have lost our way. Bah, bah, bah.”

Pulling up in front of the Biltmore Hotel. Depositing ourselves out of the Bentley. Max peeling off a couple of dollars from his thick bankroll to give the doorman. “Park right here, sir.” A blind man kneeling nearby upon a rug on the sidewalk and playing the saxophone. A passage from Haydn’s Horn Concerto No. 1 in D Major. Executed with a degree of distinction. Shudders the heart to come upon such accomplishment and such impoverishment. Old Max seemed neither to see the poor gentleman nor to hear me drop a quarter coin clank into his tin cup as the musician murmured, “Thank you.”