J. Donleavy - Schultz

“Here you are Sigmund, mit mazel and broche.”

“Holy shit, Al. I don’t need that kind of sentimental yiddish shit just now.”

“Sentimental, like hell, since when can especially you do without luck and blessing.”

“O.K. Al, O.K. You win.”

Schultz in his pale faced daze did manage to be intrigued by the three legged emblem on a cheque drawn on the Isle of Man Bank, as he folded these amounts of twenty thousand from one investor, thirteen from another, twenty five from a third and two from Big Al himself. Putting them one into the other and shoving them into his side jacket pocket.

“Jesus, Sigmund, don’t just stuff away sixty thousand pounds like it was a hat check.”

“What do you want me to do.”

“Put them safe in your wallet.”

“I lost it.”

“Hey that’s what I’m saying. You could lose them. Don’t be careless. Sometimes I think I must be crazy the way I help you out of jams.”

“Out of jams. Into jams. What the fuck are you telling everybody my mother and father are opening big factories for. When all they opened is a back street cut price lingerie store. They already think I’m made of money. When all the fuck I’m made of is overheads. And it’s ruining me.”

“Sigmund, come on. I like to make you sound good. That something is backing you up. Like who doesn’t know the theatre is treacherous. But from now on, you’re going to zing mit der dick dick. Right. At the beginning of what is to be for you lifelong happiness. Right.”

“Al. Wrong. Stop. Just for a second. And I’ll tell you something. Holy shit I feel sick. Jesus, just for a second the whole room began to spin.”

“Here. My car’s not nearby. So puke in the basin.”

“Fuck you, I’m not going to puke Al. And you know what it is that I want to tell you.”

“No what.”

“I want to tell you Al. Thanks from the bottom of my heart for some things. But Jesus christ almighty.”

No thanks

For others

From the bottom

Of my soul

Schultz’s two day honeymoon was spent in Brighton. Deposited at a begrimed grim Victoria Station in Big Al’s limousine. And with his face buried in five different daily newspapers, reading in the train swaying through the Surrey and Sussex countryside. The sky clearing approaching the coast. The big massive hotel’s wind shivering windows overlooked the cold slate grey waters of the English Channel.

“You would wouldn’t you, book us into a morgue like this.”

“Honey, what the fuck’s wrong. Look it’s got palm plants all over the lobby.”

Taking a taxi through a night opened wide with stars, there was a candlelit dinner in a famed fish restaurant where Schultz sat over his plate of sole meunière staring into oblivion. As Pricilla glowered and waited for doors to be opened, her wine to be poured and for her momentarily culturally orientated questions to be answered.

“Never, never will I ever go out and sit with you in a restaurant again with you behaving like that. And people thinking that we have nothing to talk to each other about.”

“We don’t honey, we don’t.”

Schultz taking a lonely midnight stroll on the shore. Ships out to sea. A liner, her decks aflood with light. Binky says good fortune makes one belch and fart and misfortune makes one think and worry. And holy shit, I’ve just wet my only pair of shoes and filled them with sand. With this fucking wave washing in.

“What a foolish childish thing to do. Imagine at your age getting your feet wet.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Don’t you dare speak to me like that.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Schultz shoving his feet down deep between cold sheets. The sounds of a wife climbing in her own bed two feet away. A night of nightmare. Dreaming of living in a doss house. Full of apprenticing whores. A dingy smoky bar. Drunken lurching figures. Where the inmates were hoping to hatch a revolution. Then a slap on the face. Pricilla in her flimsy negligee looming over him.

“How dare you fall asleep without making love to me.”

“Honey, I’m exhausted. Not only in mind and body but in spirit.”

“At least my father was a man. You’re a mouse.”

“Jesus what are you saying that for.”

“Because it’s true.”

Early morning Schultz walking on the promenade. Hands dug in pockets. Cold in a rumpled flannel suit. A sour gnawing in an empty stomach. Passing by pasty faced oldsters. Thin hollow cheeked husbands and fat wives. Some who sat hunched up in deck chairs reading newspapers in the momentary sun. And Schultz took a taxi up to the high cliff tops overlooking the sea. Swooping dive bombing seagulls. Waves pounding down below on the rocky shore. Jesus, if the show didn’t have to go on, maybe I should jump like Pricilla’s father. Only my mind’s full of Roxana. And heaven would never have such an incredible cunt without a thousand angels’ pricks trying to get in it all at once. Her unforgettable wares. Jesus the way she exhibited them. Greta and I even fighting to take turns with her. Safely behind the changed locks on the front and basement doors of Four Arabesque Street. Jesus what narrow escapes I was having. Till I got trapped in this big trap. Pricilla twice turns up trying to turn her own keys and ends up kicking and banging. With the Ambassador’s Third Secretary and Financial Attaché coming over. The three of them standing on my front stoop. In a confab I could hear up in the bedroom. All of them thinking that’s where I was. Inside. Which I was. Teetering on the edge of an orgasm.

His Lordship was rumoured to have left a considerable fortune at the gaming tables during his honeymoon in Monte Carlo. And upon his return to England went directly to deer stalk at one of his northerly castles on a bereft windswept western peninsula in Scotland. From where he took a helicopter to be best man at Binky’s wedding held in the Duke’s private chapel in a rhododendron shrouded corner of their walled garden. His Lordship now repairing with the new Countess to his favourite Castle Nectarine. And on the way spending a day or two at his highly confidential and secretive town house in London to attend the first night opening of the show and to let the new Lady Nectarine consult decorators concerning her extensive plans to refurbish the southerly situated of his Lordship’s residences.

“Holy jeeze your Lordship you already got paint and wall paper on your walls.”

And now in the surprisingly calm splendour of the chairman’s office of Sperm Productions where Binky made a point of keeping all feverish activity to a minimum, his Amazing Angry Grace accosted Schultz.

“Don’t lie to me Schultz.”

“I’m not lying.”

“You are.”

“I’m a married fucking man now.”

“You weren’t when Roxana disappeared.”

“The girl dropped in innocently for tea I’m telling you. I don’t know where she was after that. Christ there were fresh scones, I had delivered by taxi from Fortnum’s, all that kind of thing.”

“You’ll have sledgehammers and all that kind of thing delivered by hand on your head Schultz.”

“Hey your Lordship I mean, Jesus, you want to keep tabs on a free human being like that.”

“No Schultz I do not. But her father, her three brothers and two of her irate uncles, all of whom are stone masons and possess arms which could break you in two, want to keep tabs on her.”

“Hey come on, your Lordship, it’s nearly opening night, I’m crushed already with problems. Everything gets blamed on me like I’m some kind of sex maniac. Can’t you tell them what I’m telling you. She must have stayed at a hotel somewhere wanting to see London in private. I never touched a hair on her body.”