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

Stephen O’Kelly’O slowly climbing back to the apartment. Up the stairs creaking one by one. Pain in odd places. The door splintered and jammed. The bastard must have tried to break in. Push it open with a shoulder. Close, lock, and latch it. After the battle. Sit down and rest. All the symphonies that I might now never write. Instead of soaring passages of musical triumph, nothing now but risks of death and awful despair. Just as I was once, unwanted, turned away from joining the school choir. Because of a lack of serious intent. Which wasn’t true. Sat on the steps outside the door where they practiced and rehearsed. Tears falling on the back of my hands as I listened to their voices. The same hands now with a knife cut on the side of my thumb. Blood spattered. As this city now begins to haunt. With Max arrested. Sylvia gone. And she said once when leaving, “One of these times we say good-bye will be the last time we say good-bye. Good-bye.”

And I felt a gloomy shudder the way she said her last good-bye. Her presence now could at least give me something to be irritated by. Watch her pull on her stockings on her long beautiful dancer’s legs. The muscles that could faintly be seen across her stomach. Her shiny clean hair like the hair of the girl in the bus station. This city without warning. Even with all its red lights, sirens, and signs. Catastrophe comes from anywhere in the flash of a second. Take a walk. Thousands pass you by. Alone with yourself. A world that wants you to show your teeth shining out of your glad face.

Two days staying in the apartment. I lay down to sleep with a tiredness so overwhelming. Between moments of tinkling the keys of the piano, staring out into the Oriental street and reminding myself to call Max but waiting to be cheerful before I did, I washed and cleaned the knife, practised pushing the button that flashes out the five-inch-long blade. Kept it handy through the nights and then tried throwing it, sticking it into the back of the bedroom closet door. Feeling lonely for company but remembering that coming back with Sylvia on the train to the city and passing by so many places that you don’t want to be, you realize that nobody in New York has anything to say to each other after all their current jokes are told. And when I did go out on the street to buy something for breakfast, my familiar Chinaman said to me, it is a nice day overhead. And in a desperate lonely disillusion and with the swiftly dwindling money my sister gave me in my pocket, I went back to the Biltmore “Men Only” bar. Same man outside playing his music, pretending he’s blind. Missed three notes from Prokofiev’s Overture Russe, opus seventy-two. Anyway, not one of Prokofiev’s greatest works, but an insult to a composer nevertheless. Inside, a new waiter called Angelo. Had cheese and crackers and a beer. Illuminated by lamps, stared at the painting of the nude reclining girls against their green background. Then, working up the nerve at the telephone in the bar, put my nickel in to dial that Butterfield 8 number, and spoke to her. But before I could utter an endearment, a shock of a frosty voice came crashing into my ear.

“Do you mind if we have for a moment a serious discussion.”

“No ma’am, fire ahead.”

“When I was a little girl someone said to me, you can afford, can’t you, to be of a high moral character. And those others whom you may find throughout your life who are not of high moral character, you may avoid and dispose of.”

“Ma’am forgive me, but I don’t believe I know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about having my privacy invaded. It’s being deemed entertaining to others to describe me as ‘the richest woman in America.’”

“Ma’am, I’ve never said a thing to anybody about your money or about you ever having any.”

“Well, you have a friend who did. And said such a thing to my bankers.”

“Ma’am, maybe it was your bankers who said such a thing. And if my friend did, he meant no harm in such a coloration.”

“Meaning no harm does not stop the unwelcome attentions of all the lowlife in America.”

“Well ma’am, there’s no need to worry that it will be repeated, for he’s in prison.”

“What.”

“Sony, I meant to say he’s gone west to Chicago.”

The phone line went dead. Cut off at a point when you try to say a word and another word jumps in too soon. Dru will be thinking my friend Max will be consulting with his coconspirators behind bars and is already plotting to embezzle or kidnap her. All I needed now was just one more blow. And I got it. Of rejection. As I then in desperation immediately telephoned back to Sutton Place and Gilbert answered the phone.

“May I please speak to Mrs. Triumphington.”

“Who’s calling, please.”

“Alfonso Stephen O’Kelly’O.”

“I’m afraid Mrs. Triumphington is not available.”

“I’ve just been talking to her.”

“I’m afraid madam has just left for Montana.”

After some prompting and knowing I already had it, Gilbert gave me the number out in Montana. Where if it were to be believed she had gone, I would ring her. But maybe she had really departed there. But with some other guy. Fucking someone else. She did say once, although I pretended not to be one of them, that she liked to have guys available on tap for fucking and just gobble them up. Listen a little to their bullshit and take them on and take them off one after the other. Now on top of it all, a dreadful premonition suddenly seizing me over Max’s arrest and incarceration in alimony jail. And I immediately rang to plan to visit him. A voice coming on the phone saying they had terrible information that he had hung himself and his remains were being shipped by train back to Chicago. My fists clenched in a sudden raging anger at the female species. And remembering what Max had said as we lay back on our couches in the hot room of his club.

“How modern can life get, pal. Here we try to keep it a little old-fashioned. Except to come dine and have a cocktail, that’s the real wonderful thing about this club, no women. And one should have only conducted one’s associations with them on wise Muslim principles. Purdah and all that. Because boy, they have recently sure done me down.”

As I felt this numbing news from the “alimony club,” as Max now called it, spread to all parts of my body, I had nearly dropped the phone. But the report of hanging was immediately followed by laughter and Max’s voice.

“Old pal, I’ve executed a power of attorney, and deed of sale for a dollar, and all the other things you can do with a flourish of the pen. Go get my ole Bentley quick, soon as you can, out of the garage. I’ve given them your name and they’ve got the key. Be a sport and park at fifteen o’clock as near as you can get to Freeman Square. If I don’t show up by quarter past fifteen o’clock, you beat it with the Bentley. It’s yours, pal, ole buddy. I glow with joy when I think of what I’m going to do. Pure joy. Anyway, no matter what happens, wait for me to be in touch again. This is your lifelong friend, best man at your wedding, signing off.”

I couldn’t figure out what Max was up to, but I wanted to do him any kindness or favor he might ask. And one thing was for sure. Ole Max aboard ship in the navy was one of the greatest fixers and connivers of all time. I found I was already fully insured and got the Bentley, but trying to figure out how to drive it out of the garage, I almost crashed a couple of times. And when I finally did figure out how to drive it, I found it a nightmare trying to park it. Waited half an hour near where the traffic passed to enter the Holland Tunnel under the Hudson and Max did not show up. Then after a search, I found a friendly garage a couple of blocks away to park the leviathan. The enthusiastic owner of the garage rubbed a spot of soot off a fender.