Elizabeth McCracken - Niagara Falls All Over Again

“What do you mean?”

“You know: I like big blondes.” He drew a big blonde in the air. “She’s so little.” He pinched his fingers together. “A sturdy woman, that’s more my type.”

I stared at him. “What, your blood type?”

“No, you know—”

“What is wrong with you, Rocky?” I felt like snatching back the martini. No more gin until you behave yourself.

“What’s wrong with you ? Not everyone has your catholic tastes.”

“You’re being ridiculous, that’s what’s wrong with me. Someone’s not your type, you leave her alone. She’s a lovely girl. You married her.”

“You say that,” he said, “but I notice, looking around, that you appear to be a bachelor.”

We examined my living room, empty of women.

“You notice correctly. You know why? Because I don’t go around marrying people out of boredom.”

“My partner the playboy,” Rocky said admiringly. He angled his empty glass toward me and I poured a little more from the shaker. “You’ll never get married. I’d like to think you would, but you won’t.”

“Of course I will,” I said. “Eventually.”

“Well, you might get married, but you’ll never be married. You’ll fuck around.”

That bothered me. “Why would you even say something like that?”

“What? That historically you’ve spent a goodly amount of time fucking around, and history repeats itself?”

“I never did.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No. I mean, not the way I define the word.”

“Which word would that be? Fuck?”

“Actually, no. Around . I’ve never made a promise I didn’t keep. I’ve never been a sneak. I’ve never lied.”

“Never.”

“Never. I’ve been discreet, sure. Stop laughing. I mean it. When I get married, it’ll mean I’ve stopped.”

“Fucking around.”

“The around part, sure.”

“Well, darling boy, when the time comes, remember who to ask for divorce advice.” He twirled his glass between his fingers morosely. “You know how to find them, but nobody knows better than me how to lose them.”

Whose Julep?

Tansy always said that money changed Rocky, and not for the better, but I think it was just the opposite: he stayed the same as he always was. That was the problem. He’d never been humble, he’d never been thrifty, he’d never had an ounce of noblesse oblige. A man with big dreams and a brash belief in himself and no money at all has a kind of charm. The guy’s got pride, God bless him. No telling how far a fellow like that can go.

Same guy, same habits, but rich? Worst jerk you ever met.

Rocky had always wanted a bar in his basement, a band playing by the swimming pool, the prettiest lady barber in town to cut his hair. Poor, he drank too much and ate too much and sometimes lost his temper with strangers and those he loved, and the only thing that changed was now he could hire people to do the things he’d previously left undone. He’d always believed that money needed to be spent as quickly as possible; it was just harder work now. He lived big, a lot bigger than I did, because he made more and because some of my father’s lessons had stuck with me and I believed in banks as places to increase my fortune, not merely as vaults to keep my cold hard cash, as Rocky said, warm.

Not that I played the ant to Rocky’s grasshopper. A better man than me would have watched Rock’s spendthrift ways and shaken his head sadly: Don’t you know there’s a war on? I watched that grasshopping and thought it looked like fun. I frowned at the endless supply of gas ration coupons he’d got his hands on — he seemed to know a counterfeiter — but I happily bought myself a jukebox that, when plugged in, bubbled at the edges like a hysterical carpenter’s level. Rock installed an entire game room, including a roulette wheel. I bought a restaurant; Rock took over a nightclub on Sunset and called it the Rock Club. Rock bought himself a trailer to relax in between takes; I had his trailer towed into my driveway; he hired a guy to come around on the set to hit me with a pie; I hired a pretty girl in a low-cut dress to hit him with three pies; he bought a Rolls-Royce and hired a driver; I bought myself a diamond ring; he bought his wife a diamond necklace that made my ring look like dust; I slept with his wife, though not the necklace.

Okay, so as pranks go, that last one goes too far. It wasn’t entirely my fault.

Hear me out. Excuse number one: they were estranged, they’d both told me so. Rocky had taken an apartment and left Penny at the house while they sorted things out. “This time it’s for good,” said Rocky. “Born a bachelor, might as well die one.” “You’ll never,” I said, and he bet me two thousand dollars that he’d stay single. But he hadn’t divorced Penny yet, and now I know that this is exactly when you shouldn’t sleep with your best friend’s wife, because it means too much. Then, though, it seemed as though I might as well, the way that Rocky in restaurants would eat my leftovers when I was finished with my meal. That sounds awful. It probably is. All I mean is: the line between what was his and what was mine sometimes seemed pretty blurry.

Excuse number two: Rocky was sleeping around then, so he said, and how could he complain?

Excuse number three: it wasn’t my idea.

Rocky loved his nightclub. He had an idea that he was meant to be an impresario, enamored as he was of liquor, company, smoke, music, and girl singers. “I’m only being patriotic,” he said. “Servicemen drink free.” Nearly everyone drank free. All you had to do was shake Rocky’s hand: instant cocktail. If you were sufficiently grateful, you got a line of credit. Anyhow, it was late. Penny and I were sitting in a banquette in the back; she and Rock had recently resolved to be buddies. Across the room, Rock stood behind the bar, talking to a young woman whose blond hair was more aluminum than platinum. Then Rocky cocked his elbow for her to take and they left together. I was glad Penny’s eyesight was so bad. We’d become buddies too: she was simultaneously the deepest and most shallow person I’d ever met. She had an abandoned child’s need to be the center of attention, and then she’d get suddenly wise.

“They gone?” she said.

“Who?”

“Rock and the magician’s assistant.”

“They’re gone. You can see that far?”

“I got radar for girls like that,” said Penny. “I should get a part-time job on the vice squad.”

“Penny!” I said, and clucked my tongue. “I thought there were no hard feelings between you and Rock.”

“I’m drunk,” she explained, leaning back on the quilted banquette. “You know, I always liked you.”

“I never thought otherwise. Drink?”

“Nah. No: sure.” She sat thinking for a while, then closed one eye and looked at me, then swapped and looked again.

“How many?” I asked.

“One drink’s fine .”

“No,” I said. “How many of everything are you seeing?”

“Dozens. None of them clearly. You look like a whole orchestra, sitting there.”

“What’ll you have to drink.”

“A julep,” she said, which was what she now called all drinks. “A tall cold julep. Is it true that you slept with one?”

“A julep? Does that mean something I don’t know about?”

She giggled. “Should. No: an orchestra. That’s the rumor that I heard, is that you slept with an all-girl orchestra.”

Ah. This was one of Rocky’s favorite myths: The week we played Syracuse, the Professor worked his way through the whole Cherry Red Orchestra, starting with the percussioness . I wished he hadn’t spread it to Penny.