Gilbert Sorrentino - Aberration of Starlight

In the meantime darling, while I wait, can you manage to slip me under the table, the expression goes, a keepsake of your feeling for me if you have same? I know that you have. Perhaps a small and intimate garment. You know what I mean? I am so nervous writing this because I know that you are pure and fine and I am afraid that such a request may shock you. A delicate hankie would be nice except, hankies remind me too much of Janet my ex, who used to make me do something very nerve wracking in my marital duty and a hankie was mixed up in it. I’ll tell you more about it later if you insist but for now let sleeping dogs lie. Anyway, hankies still have a funny effect on me. So I would prefer something more intimate that has lived close to your sweet pure skin. Something that a gentleman does not mention. But a hankie would be swell if other items are embarrassing to you.

I wait for a Sign, my dearest,

Yours, Tom

I think that it is really a swell opportunity, a fine opportunity, for the two of us to get together over a glass of cold beer at the Bluebird on a quiet Sunday afternoon, and I say so. John McGrath agrees. We are both businessmen and despite the difference in age, God knows we understand each other. That is always the great thing about business, it brings you into contact with people of all types and breeds and from all walks of life and you get a chance to see a little of the world. Right? It is damn right.

Oh hell yes, the Depression, damn and double-damn the Depression, it has hurt business all across the board but if a fellow keeps his eyes open and his nose clean and isn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty, hell, he’ll make out all right. I’m making more money now than I have in years! I don’t want to pat myself on the back too much, that could just mean that things are getting better all across the country. People beginning to talk a lot about defense contracts what with the European situation and all. Damned if you can make head or tail out of it.

The textile-factoring business, the whole credit game for that matter, goes along, day after day, come hell, high water, or Depression. Banking is banking whichever way you cut it. People always need somebody to stand behind them with the dollar when it comes to expansion and new materials and that sort of thing. It’s an interesting business, that’s all there is to it! Why, John has seen millionaires turn into paupers overnight. And vice versa! He tells me the wonderful story, wonderful, wonderful! about old Whitestone asking him to go into business with him, just the two of them, years ago, but how he preferred to work for a salary and not take all his headaches home.

By God though, they’re still friends! Families exchange cards at Christmas and every other damn thing. Oh, absolutely! A prince of a man, old Whitestone.

I know, of course, who Whitestone is? I don’t really know although certainly the name is a familiar one in business, a big name. A high mucky-muck all right. Well, old man Whitestone is just the President of the National Credit Office and you know what that is! There’s Dun and Brad and the National Credit and that’s it. A very very big man, but just as regular … A prince! Still good friends, yes indeedy.

I of course excuse John as he rises to go to the men’s room just as I order two more beers. When he returns they have been paid for and John shows surprise and protests that it is his round but I wave it off and John sits. As far as business goes, John goes on, he has to see it as looking a damn sight better but mainly, mainly, at least that’s what he surmises, because we damn well, yes indeed, damn well are getting ready to get into another goddamned war in Europe. God knows why! That’s your damn Jew Roosevelt.

John lowers his voice and leans across the table and says that it is as usual a Jew war and that Helga — Mrs. Schmidt? — who was born and raised in Germany and still has a brother and lots of other relatives over there, have I got to know her? He thinks for sure I have, and certainly, hell, yes, I know her, a hell of a good sport, an honor to make her acquaintance. Well, anyway, it turns out that Helga says that nothing’s the matter with Hitler as far as she can tell, he’s been a godsend for Germany, and just what’s the matter with the Germans getting their jobs back from the Jews? The damn Jews have run the country for years and the Germans are getting goddamn sick and tired of them. And if truth were told, they run this country too! It’s for Christ’s sake clear that every German you meet over here is clean and decent and hard-working. Can you blame them for how they feel about the kikes?

I mention that I’ve read some stories once in a while in the paper about how the Jews are being treated pretty bad but I admit that it’s probably all propaganda. John says goddamn tootin it’s all propaganda a yard wide and that Helga tells him all that crap in the paper, but Helga didn’t say crap, is put in there by, who else? The Jews! By Christ, they own all the papers.

I am certain that surely if anybody knows what is going on in Germany it is Mrs. Schmidt. You have to take her word before you take the word of the papers. John nods and says that you have to go a long way before you find a woman with a head on her shoulders like Helga. I apologize, and then apologize again for putting my two cents’ worth in when I’m not asked but I think that they, John and Mrs. Schmidt, make a handsome couple, a real match. I’m really sorry for sticking my nose into somebody else’s business. John nods and of course, she is a fine, good woman and he’s known her for years and years, knew her husband, Otto, God rest his soul, he was a fine big strapping man. John’s late wife, Bridget, and Helga, had been the best of friends. No need to apologize, certainly not. Between the two of us and the lamppost and in strictest confidence, he and Helga haven’t actually talked seriously about it but they’ve put their cards on the table and after the passing of time, for decency’s sake, who knows? She and John aren’t relics, for God’s sake, with one foot in the grave!

Of course, it must be obvious to me that John is not what anybody could call lonely. There’s Marie and Billy. And Marie is only too happy to stay with him now that Bridget, God rest her soul, is gone. But a man has no right to make his daughter a slave even though it’s her pleasure to cook and keep house for him — and for herself too of course. Christ knows that Marie deserves some life! She hasn’t been given a fair deal, you know. Well, I don’t really know but I had gotten an idea … the “other woman”? I’m just guessing because Marie never … I am one hundred per cent right, John lets me know, treated like dirt by the man— man! An excuse for a man, by God. She’s taken it all in stride and kept her head high.

And then I have to excuse John, please, for talking out of turn, but he thinks that it is something that has to be said … John suddenly ducks under the table to tie the laces of his spectators as the waitress comes over with two fresh beers and straightens up just as I’m paying for them. He is annoyed, almost angry that he has again been prevented from paying for the round and protests that it is his treat but I smile and assure him that he can spring next time. John again apologizes for talking out of turn but… he really thinks that I should know that he thinks that Marie likes me an awful lot, as a matter of fact, an old man who knows his daughter and has been with her through thick and thin has a right to say, as far as he is concerned and there’s no two ways about it, that he thinks that Marie is sweet on me. I protest, almost blushing, but John nods his head. He very deliberately does his best to make it crystal clear to me that as far as he is concerned and he damn well doesn’t want me to think that he is being common, God knows he hasn’t spent his life working with really good skates, and the girls who work at the office are, by and large, fine decent girls, not a floozy in the bunch, so … He wants to make it crystal clear to me that he is being as straight as a die with me. That’s maybe why he might sound a little rough saying that Marie hasn’t been married in the true sense of the word for six years and six years is a hell of a long time for a young woman in the prime of her life to go it alone. Is he being crystal clear? Alone, without a man to look after her, or anything. To be as plain as the nose on your face, Marie seems to John to look like she can use some companionship, some manly companionship. It seems to John that she can use it. It seems to John, as a matter of fact, that she needs it. John grants that a woman is not like a man in that respect, but still. Still and all. She’s been kind of nervous the last year or so.