Gilbert Sorrentino - Aberration of Starlight

I don’t want, John, do not want, do you understand, you crawling around that damn dago and begging him to come back, come back, come back to Marie. She’s a damn sight better off without him. Good riddance to bad rubbish! Bridget flings her leg vulgarly over the arm of the Morris chair and slaps yesterday’s Sun against her thigh. Marie sits, pale, at the dining-room table, looking out the front-room windows at the tar roofs of the buildings on the next street. How she despises them.

But Momma … Momma, I don’t think he wants to leave me. I asked him and he looked at me like I was crazy. He comes home … he does come home.

To change his goddamned shirt! Bridget says. Now I’ll not have your father on his hands and knees, kissing that dago’s ass and begging … you’ll leave well enough alone. Let him have his bog-trotter slut, they make a fine pair.

Just a minute, Bridget, her father says. Now just wait one minute. This is Skip’s whole life you’re talking about. Skip thinks I can do some good talking to Tony, man to man, about this — I don’t give a damn about how I look. Skip wants me to call him and by God almighty I’ll call him. Is he suddenly a stranger? Don’t we know our own son-in-law anymore?

You’ll do nothing of the kind! Bridget says, folding the Sun, her face red with anger. Let the girl and Billy move out of that cheap cheesebox he calls a house and let that guinea go to hell! I’m telling you, John, keep your nose out of it.

I’m sorry, Bridget, I’m going to call him and see if we can’t talk this over. It’s one of those things that can happen. The man is human..

What I’m doing is asking for your white, your dainty, your fragile, your soft and goilish hand in marriage, to wit: I am plighting my troth, so to speaketh, Lenny Polhemus says, his face handsome in the shadow of his soft grey fedora.

Oh, Lenny, Marie says. I don’t think it’s very nice to kid a girl about that. I really don’t.

Kid, me proud beauty? Do not be ri-DIC-ulous! Marie, I’m just head over heels over you. And he begins to sing, in a comic imitation of Russ Columbo:

Alone from night to night

You’ll find me,

Too weak to break the chains

That bind me …

Oh, Lenny. You’re terrible, Marie laughs.

I’ve got it bad, kid, and that is not bush-wa.

You’re Mrs. Recco? Tony’s wife? Margie turns to Tony. Tone, you never told me that your wife was so beauty-ful! I’m really pleased to meet you, Mrs. Recco. I didn’t know you’d be coming, I would have fixed up … cleaned up the office, a little. It’s terrible, we been working all week on some bids …

It’s quite all right, Margie. These furs certainly won’t be hurt by a little dust, Marie says, flinging her silver-fox stole across Margie’s desk. I’m really so delighted that Tony has a secretary. I hope now he’ll have someone to talk business with… goodness knows, I haven’t got any head for it at all.

Marie likes other … things, Tony says. Reading and culture and mental things.

Oh yeah, sure, Margie says. Geez, I hope you don’t mind me chewing this gum? I know how it looks to some people? I always forget that, I …

Oh, ha ha ha, Marie laughs, lounging in Tony’s chair and crossing her legs. Chew away, dear, chew, chew. Tony, you devil, I hope you don’t have any splinters in this old desk that I’ll ruin my stockings on. I am always telling him to get some decent office furniture. Oh, no, God dear, Tony says, and rushes to the desk to inspect it. Real silk hose? Margie says. Oh say, Mrs. Recco, they’re beauty-ful. You may go back to your bidding and paperwork things now, Margie, Marie says. I’ll have to take my husband away soon for the afternoon. Remember, dear?

You bet, honey. Chop suey and dancing? At Yung’s? How does that sound?

You love, Marie says, opening her diamond-studded compact. Would you get my mink, Margie dear, like a good girl?

Oh Lenny, look at that sunset, Marie says. It’s pretty as a picture. God, how beautiful it is here. Hollywood! Nothing, but n-o, nothing, is too good for my perfect little wife. It’s all pink and purple and gold. You’re my gold, honey.

I can’t believe we’ll be back home in Brooklyn in just a little more than a week. This has been so perfect I hate it to end.

I hate the idea too, kid, but a bank officer has his responsibilities, ri-DIC-ulous as it may be. Oh, honey, I love your hair. Oh Lenny. Oh. Oh.

You will do nothing of the kind, John. What if the greaseball brings his floozy along with him? Oh, Momma … please.

God damn it to hell, Bridget! I’ll do what I goddamn well please in this for Skip’s sake. And you liked that greaseball well enough when they lived down the street.

What? What are you trying to say, John? The poor man is losing his mind and his memory.

I understand, Margie, that you have some ri-DIC-ulous idea about Tony, I mean about Tony and yourself, Marie says, tossing her sables at a huge rat that is crouching in the corner of Margie’s basement flat.

He … he loves me, Mrs. Recco, Margie says, scurrying to pick up the fur. And I think — I think he’s just, just swell.

Love? Love? Marie laughs. Leave that old rag of a coat be, darn it! Do you know what love is? Do you know what it is for a husband to go out for chow mein and come back with a little pair of red silk slippers, all hand embroidered by old Chinamen? And Chinese apples? Does Tony worship the ground you walk on? Love! Do you know how he likes to eat a tomato or a soft-boiled egg? Did you know him when he was the best dancer in the neighborhood, the life of the party, and had a little red Moon roadster just big enough for two? Of course not! We have things you can never share. Please don’t make me laugh, Margie, please! Have you given him a beautiful son that he adores? Did you ever— will you stop fidgeting with that coat and whimpering? — did you ever have the head teller at the main branch of the Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn, a college man from Holy Cross, ga-ga over you, ready to kiss the hem of your skirt? Love? Give me my coat, please. I warn you to stay away from Tony. What you think is my husband’s “love” is an infatuation for someone whose life is a sad tragedy. Don’t you think that my husband is affected by the fact that you live here in this damp, this cellar, with the rats perching on your skinny shoulders? Why, my dear girl, Tony merely feels pity for you. And seeing you like this — so do I.

Oh, oh, Mrs. Recco, I’m so sorry, so sorry. I’ll leave my position with Neptune tomorrow. I didn’t know. I wondered why he was sweet on someone so common, like me.

I’ll see to it that you get another job, you poor child. Poor child. You can always work at the steam table in Bickford’s. I happen to know Mrs. Bickford personally.

How can I ever thank you enough, Mrs. Recco?

Hush, hush, no tears now. Just get me my furs, all right?

Well, Tony. I went to see Margie yesterday. In her cellar. The rats were so bold that they were stealing the food off the table. The boiled potatoes, I mean, that seemed to be the only food she had.

Margie told me. Oh gee, kid. Will you ever forgive me? I don’t know why I ever got mixed up with that floozy.

Maybe you felt sorry for her. You big baby.

Yeah. I thought I could do something for the kid. But I didn’t know that it would ever come to—

Let’s not ever, ever speak of it again. What’s in the big box, honey? Oh, this? It’s just a new fur coat and muff to match. Ermine. Oh, Tony! You fool! You wonderful wonderful fool.