Gilbert Sorrentino - Little Casino

Why do they refuse to recognize that Scientology was, originally, a card game, something like Casino?

Why don’t they lay off the goddamned cream of tomato soup?

Why do so many of them retreat to the sanctuary of the Zen rock garden in the Bel Air place whenever the “blow-job theory” as it pertains to inexplicable success, is mentioned?

Why don’t they go home to Ashtabula?

Why, to borrow Raymond Chandler’s phrase, are “all their brains in their faces?”

Why do they think that Raymond Chandler is a cocaine connection?

Why can’t they spell “cocaine”?

Or, for that matter, “connection”?

Or, for that matter, “ MGM”?

How come they can’t shoot pool?

Why don’t they like the notion of themselves as “overnight successes”?

Does it have anything to do with the “blow-job theory”?

Why don’t they learn how to open clams? Why do they hate to be recognized?

Why do they think that they “work hard” for their money?

Why do they wish they could “just walk down the street” like “anybody else”?

Why do they rarely, if ever, really hurt themselves on skis or in boats, planes, and cars?

Why do they seem to live on and on?

Does it have anything to do with the money that they work so terribly, terribly hard for?

Why are they always in and out of one clinic or another?

Why don’t they stop throwing up on people?

Why do they think that fashion designers are artists?

Why do they think that they themselves are artists?

Why are they eternally honing their fucking craft?

Why don’t they know the words to “Prisoner of Love”?

Why must they have recently learned to “appreciate” jazz?

Why can’t they make a decent marinara sauce?

Why don’t they stop sucking on that bottled water?

Why do they drive such dumb cars?

Why do they think that they can write?

Why do they think that they can write poems?

Why do they all go to the same restaurants and then go to the same restaurants and then go to the same restaurants and then go to the same new restaurant?

Why do they eat egg-white omelets?

Is it true that they will hump anything that will stand still?

Why don’t they get rid of their grand pianos?

Their acoustic guitars?

Their “outsider” art?

Why are they such glorious marks for fake paintings, fake antiques, and fake first editions?

Should they drop dead already en masse, or one at a time?

Belatedly, Bromo Eddie queries: “Why don’t they go fuck themselves?” What a serious and well-informed citizen and consumer Eddie is!

What, precisely, is the “blow-job theory” of inexplicable success, and is it germane to occupations other than the movie business?

Eddie reminds his chums that he prefers the term “film business.”

Did many of these basically regular folks have gals and fellas back home in, say, ah, Moline?

What is the joke which bears this punch line? “Well, how about ten dollars’ worth?”

Can one actually “fix” a cold beer?

HE ENTERS THE RESTAURANT WITH HIS mother, into the wonderful smell of the bar, just opened on Sunday early afternoon, the serious, adult smell of whiskey and bitters, lemon peel, gin and vermouth and rum; the sweet and sharp cigarette smoke from the first patrons, sitting quietly with their griefs and their hangovers and their Sunday papers, waiting patiently for the liquor to make the slow afternoon sadly bearable. He orders a Gibson, his mother a Clover Club, or is it a Jack Rose? He waits for her comments on his news, given her, abruptly, two days earlier, regarding his plans to marry, suddenly, a girl whom his mother dislikes a good deal. Not only is she a Protestant, but she is much too young, not even out of high school, so his mother insists despite the facts. The cocktails arrive, his mother takes out a pack of Herbert Tareytons and lights one with her beautiful little jewel of a Dunhill lighter, inhales and blows smoke at an angle past the little brim of her small black velvet hat. She is an attractive woman, whose terror and loathing of men has been elegantly metamorphosed, over the years, into an aloof but sharp contempt. She puts the lighter squarely on top of the cigarette pack. So, she says. Have you given any thought to this, you lummox? He looks at her and shrugs, a gesture of love, intimacy, and respect. The trouble with this girl, she says, that is, one of the troubles that I can see, is. She stops, and takes a sip of her gorgeously blushing cocktail. Is, she says, simply that she is obviously a little tramp. Do you, dear God, want another little tramp to set next to the first one? At least she was Jewish.

The restaurant was on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights. It may well have been Armando’s. It looks like Armando’s.

The young man once accidentally saw his mother, through a half-open door, as she was dressing, and spied on her, shamed and disturbed. He has trained himself, if “trained” is the word, to think of her, on that particular day, as a woman wholly different from the woman he sits across from in the restaurant. In this way, even a hint, a breath of the incestuous may be successfully proscribed. More or less.

The Gibson was made with Beefeater gin, one of the small glories of this humdrum life.

CLOVER CLUB

Juice ½ Lemon.

2 Tsps. Grenadine.

White of 1 Egg.

1½ oz. Dry Gin.

Shake well with cracked ice and

strain into a 4 oz. cocktail glass.

JACK ROSE

1½ oz. Applejack.

Juice ½ Lime.

1 tsp. Grenadine.

Shake well with cracked ice and

strain into a 3 oz. cocktail glass.

THE CLIPPER, BOWLING THROUGH HEAVY glassy seas, all sails set, straining and singing in the wind, holds still, as always and ever, on the side of the laminated cardboard wastebasket. Just as still as the clipper is the woman, paralyzed drunk, athwart the hotel room bed. She is in her mid-fifties, and her face is attractive, though her blond hair is clearly too yellow to be natural. Her skirt, which has ridden up revealingly but not quite immodestly to mid-thigh, allows her legs to be seen as strong, straight, and well-made, with generous thighs, superbly shaped calves, and slender ankles. She is wearing a hat, cone-shaped, of shiny purple paper, which declares, in a sadly blatant red, HAPPY NEW YEAR. The hat is askew, and she snores, quietly, her mouth open. The young man, sitting at the little secretary on a hard straight chair in dim lamplight, finishes the whiskey in a thick bathroom glass, pours the last of a fifth of Ballantine’s scotch into it, and drinks that too.

He’ll maybe put her to bed, but he won’t, God, undress her. He is upset because he has allowed himself to think that she has very good legs. Maybe he’ll just put a blanket over her. Maybe he’ll go get another bottle, maybe he’ll leave and go to one of the bleakly frenzied parties he’s been invited to, or go to a crazed bar, or go for a walk, or go get laid. Maybe he’ll jump off the fucking pier or in front of the Fourth Avenue Local. Maybe he’ll just sit there until she wakes up and then ask her who she thinks she is, who she thinks he is to say what she said to him, and then to say it again. Love? she said, love? For Christ’s sweet sake, don’t make me laugh, I’m the one who said she was nothing but a tramp. Now you’re surprised?

Somebody on that clipper ship is probably looking at him from its shuddering deck, yo-ho! He knows this to be a fact, oh Christ, yes, he knows many things, he does, except why he’s here with his drunken mother in dark and sleety Brooklyn, in the dark and iron world.