Dreams from Bunker Hill (3 page)

The days stumbled past. August came, hot and sticky. One evening it rained. People streamed out of the hotel and stood in the street catching the rain in their hands. A sweet smell came over Bunker Hill. The rain splashed our faces. Then it was gone. I worked hard, pecking away on a short story. I took the work with me to Du Mont’s office. Several times during the day he drifted over and studied what I was writing. Suddenly he tore the page from my typewriter.

“You’re fired,” he said. He was trembling. “Take your story and get out.”

I left. I went to a movie. I loafed down Main Street to the Follies, the marquee lit with the name of Ginger Britton. She was in the midst of her strip, swinging from the drapes, her ass a perfect Rubens. I found a seat in the first row and watched her ravenously. She was magnificent, with the ass of a young colt, stomping the stage in high heels, turning her back on the audience, bending down to look at us between her legs. An absolutely world-champion ass, incomparable, her skin glowing like the meat of a honeydew melon. Her long red hair hung to her hips, her Valkyrie breasts flying about in wild circles. The audience cheered and whistled. They angered me. Why were they so fucking vulgar? They were watching a work of art with the same acclaim as a boxing match. It was sacrilegious. As she left the stage the applause was raucous, impossible. I couldn’t bear it, and stomped out of the theater. In a rage I returned
to my hotel. I sat at the typewriter and wrote a letter to Ginger Britton:

I signed the letter, put it in an envelope and took it to the lobby. Mrs. Brownell was behind the desk. I asked her for a stamp. Then I smelled an intoxicating odor wafted from the door of her living quarters behind the desk.

“What’s that?” I asked, sniffing.

“Mince pie,” she said. “I just took it out of the oven.”

“Smells wonderful.”

“Would you like a piece?”

It was the first friendly remark I ever heard from her. I looked at her clear blue eyes and wondered at the change. She was actually hospitable and not the bitch I had gotten used to.

“Thank you, Mrs. Brownell. I’d love a piece.”

She invited me into her room. I stood there looking around. It was a housekeeping room—a stove, a refrigerator, a breakfast table, a couple of chairs, and a studio couch.

“Sit down, Mr. Bandini.”

I sat at the table and watched her cut a wedge from a large mince pie. She wasn’t young. Maybe fifty-five. If you looked closely you saw that her figure was trim and well formed. There was even a hint of a nice ass. She placed the wedge of pie in a deep plate and poured brandy over it.

“It’s funny,” she said. “All this hot day I’ve been thinking
of mince pie. Now I know why.” She smiled, her perfect dentures showing, and put the pie before me. She handed me a spoon, and I tasted the pie. I must have eaten very quickly, for she soon served me a second piece. It was very powerful pie, but I loved it, and sipped the brandy like soup, and felt great heat in my stomach. Then everything was vague and I was drunk. I heard Mrs. Brownell talking of Kansas and Thanksgiving dinner on a farm outside of Topeka, an account of her brothers and sisters and how her father ran away with a woman from Wichita.

I woke up in bed. Not my bed, but Mrs. Brownell’s. I lay on my back next to the wall. The person asleep at my side was Mrs. Brownell. She was in a white nightgown and nightcap. She lay facing me, her two hands clutching my arm as she snored musically. The bedside clock showed three
A.M.
I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

We were good for each other, Helen Brownell and I. Every night I found the passage to her room an easy journey. She sometimes smiled as I sat down and removed my shoes. Other times she paid no attention, as if expecting me. I was her little champion, she said, for I was a small man, no larger than her husband, an accountant who had died five years before. When it was time to close up shop she disappeared into the bathroom to undress, then emerging in her muslin nightie and nightcap. She snapped off the bathroom light and slipped into bed beside me. We shared the darkness together, sometimes, that is. Sometimes I groped a little and she responded. Mostly she was like a relative in the night, a maiden aunt, my Aunt Cornelia who lived with us when I was a boy and who hated children. In the morning I awoke to the hiss of bacon, and saw her over the stove, cooking my breakfast.

“Good morning,” I’d say, and she’d answer,

“Time for breakfast, little champ.”

Sometimes she bent over and kissed me on the forehead. She must have known that I was broke for every day or two I found a couple of dollars in my pocket. I tried to do the
dishes, but she wouldn’t have it. Well fed and rested I went down to my room and faced the black monster typewriter glaring at me with gaping white teeth. Sometimes I wrote ten pages. I didn’t like that, for I knew that whenever I was prolific I also stank. I stank most of the time. I had to be patient. I knew it would come. Patience! It was the least of my virtues.

One day there was a surprise in my mail. The letter sparkled in my hand. I recognized it instantly. It was a letter from Ginger Britton, scented with the fragrance of gardenias. I took it to my room and sat on the bed and opened it, a letter in a stately hand of elegant penmanship. Ginger Britton thanked me for my letter. She appreciated all that I had written and she was delighted. Unfortunately she could not meet me for a supper date because she was certain her husband would never permit it, but she urged me to come often to the Follies to watch her perform. She loved my letter. She was deeply moved by it. She would treasure it always.

I unfolded the letter and pressed it to my face, breathing the fragrance of her gardenias. I pressed my lips into it and gurgled gratefully. Da, da, da I murmured. Oh Ginger Britton, how I love you! Da da da.

I was in the first row of the Follies Theater when the curtain rose for the burlesque show. She entered the stage with the full cast and I sank gratefully into my seat. I had come with plans: to whisper to her, to wave, to toss her a kiss, but as I looked around, every face was the face of her husband, and I lost courage. Then I looked up at her face. She was smiling down at me. She recognized me. I
knew
that she recognized me, and there was an intimacy about her smile that thrilled me, and I waved two or three fingers in a cowardly acknowledgment. Then she entered her specialty routine, twirling midstage, then bending backward to look at the audience between her legs, and from that position she turned her face to me and smiled emphatically. I looked about nervously. The customers ignored me except a man two aisles back, a black man, rugged, tough, unsmil
ing, staring straight at me. I sensed trouble, got up and walked out. The black man was either her husband or another fan who had written her.

On the way back to Bunker Hill I went through Pershing Square. It was a warm night and the park was brilliant beneath the street lamps. People sat on park benches enjoying the cool tranquillity after a hot day. In the center of the square was a park bench occupied by chess players. There were four players on either side of the long table, each with a chessboard in front of him. They were playing rapid transit chess—eight players matching their skills against one man, an old man, a raucous, insolent, brilliant man in shirt sleeves, dancing about as he moved from player to player, making a chess move, delivering an insult, then moving on to the next player. In a matter of minutes he had checkmated all eight of his opponents and snatched up a bet of twenty-five cents for his victory. As the disgruntled players moved away, the old man, whose name was Mose Moss, shouted out,

“Who’s next? Who thinks he’s a great chess player? I’ll beat any man here, any two men, any ten men.” He whirled and looked at me.

“What are you standing there for?” he shouted. “Who the hell do you think you are? You got two bits? Sit down, and put it up, you smart-ass kid. I’ll beat your britches off!”

I turned away.

“That’s it!” he sneered. “You fucking coward! I knew you was yellow the minute I laid eyes on you!”

By now another group of chess players had taken seats around the long table. There were seven of them. I had not played chess in two years, but I had been a good chess player
at Colorado, and had even won a tournament at the chess club. I knew I could hold my own against this garrulous, insulting old bastard, but I didn’t know if I could win against his scatological attack. He slapped me on the back.

“Sit down, sonny. Learn something about chess.”

That did it. I dug a quarter from my pocket, slapped it on the table, and sat down.

He beat me and the others in ten moves. We, the victims, rose from the table as he gathered up the quarters and jingled them in his pocket.

“Is it over?” he asked. “Have I won again?”

I dug out another quarter, but the other players had had enough. Mose Moss sat across from me and we began to play. He lit a cigarette.

“Who taught you this game, kid? Your mother?”

“Your move,” I said. “You sonofabitch!”

“Now you’re sounding like real chess player,” he said, moving a pawn. He beat me in twelve moves. I plumped down another quarter. He beat me again quickly, decisively. There was no way I could defeat this old man. Then he began to toy with me. It was cruel. It was brutal. It was sadistic. He offered to engage me without his queen, and I lost. Next he removed his queen, his two bishops, and his two knights, and I lost again. Finally he stripped his forces down to just pawns. By now a crowd three deep was gathered about us, howling with laughter as his pawns mowed my pieces down and he worked another checkmate. I had one quarter left. I placed it on the table. Mose Moss rubbed his hands together and smiled with benign triumph.

“Tell you what I’m going to do now, kid. I’m going to let you win. You’re going to checkmate me.”

The audience applauded, moved closer. Forty people crowded about. He needed about twenty moves to finish me off, maneuvering his pieces in such a way that I could not avoid checkmating him. I was tired, frustrated, and sick of soul. My stomach ached, my eyes burned.

“I’m through, Mose,” I said. “That was my last quarter.”

“Your credit is good,” he said. “You look like an honest
kid. You’re a goddamn fool, but you look honest.”

Numbly I began to play, too confused to walk away, too ashamed to get to my feet and move off. Suddenly there was a commotion. The bystanders fled. The police were on the scene. They grabbed a couple of people and Mose and I were hustled off to the paddy wagon. We were taken to the city jail, six of us, and lined up at the sergeant’s desk, each accused of loitering. After the booking, we were taken to the drunk tank. I followed Mose around, for he seemed to know the routine. We sat on a bench and I asked Mose what happened next.

“Ten dollars or five days,” he said. “Fuck ’em. Let’s play chess.” To my horror he pulled a miniature chess game from his back pocket, and we put the chess men into place and began to play. He was indefatigable. My eyes would not open. I slept with my chin on my chest. He shook me awake and I moved a player. We were playing for astronomical sums now. I owed him fifteen thousand dollars. We doubled it. I lost again, and as Mose tried to awaken me, I slipped off the bench and fell asleep on the floor. I heard his last words:

“You bastard, you owe me thirty thousand dollars.”

“Put it on my bill,” I said.

I slept. Vaguely I heard the night sounds around me—the snores, the farts, the moans, the puking, the mumbling in sleep. It was cold in the big cell. The gray dawn crept through the window. Daylight gradually came. At six o’clock the jailer rattled the cell bars with a riot stick.

“Everybody get ready for Sunrise Court,” he shouted. “You have five minutes to make a phone call.”

I followed Mose down the hall to a waiting room with telephones on the wall. They were pay phones. I searched my pockets for a dime. I had nothing. Mose was in front of me, talking to someone by phone. As he hung up I crowded him.

“Loan me a dime,” I said.

He frowned. “Jesus, kid,” he said. “You already owe me
thirty grand.”

“I’ll pay you back, Mose,” I implored. “Every cent. Believe me.”

He dug into his pocket and pulled out a handful of silver coins. “Take one.”

I selected a dime and stepped up to the telephone. I dialled my hotel. Mrs. Brownell answered.

“I’m in Sunrise Court,” I told her. “Can you bail me out? It’s ten dollars.”

There was a silence. “Are you in trouble?”

“No, but I’m broke.”

“I’ll be right there.” She hung up.

She was in the courtroom when the prisoners were brought in. My name was called and I approached the bench. The judge never saw me, never even looked at me.

“You are charged with loitering. Ten dollars or five days. How do you plead?”

“Guilty,” I said.

“Pay the bailiff,” he said. “Next.”

As I moved to the bailiff’s desk Mrs. Brownell arose and came to my side. She opened her purse and gave the bailiff a ten-dollar bill. I bent over the desk and signed a bail receipt. Mrs. Brownell sped down the hall, moving fast. I ran to catch her.

“Thanks,” I said. She raced ahead, out the front door, down the steps to the street, where her car was parked. I got in beside her, and the car lurched as she threw it into gear.

“I appreciate what you did,” I said. She flung me a bitter glance.

“Jailbird!” she said. We did not speak as she drove up Temple Street and turned onto Bunker Hill. She parked the car in the empty lot next to the hotel.

“I didn’t commit a crime,” I explained. “I was booked for playing chess, that’s all.”

She looked sullen. “And now you have a prison record.”

“Oh shit,” I said.

We got out and crossed to the hotel. We went through the office into her living quarters. She stepped into the bath
room and turned on the hot water. Clouds of steam rose and drifted into the living room.

“You’re going to take a bath,” she said. “You’re going to cleanse yourself of all that jailhouse scruff and dirt and filth, the lice and fleas and bedbugs.”

I dropped my clothes around my feet and she gathered them like dead animals and tossed them into the laundry hamper. The water was warm and soapy, and I sank to my neck and let the goodness of heat sink in. Mrs. Brownell bent over me with a washcloth and a lump of fels naphtha soap. She lathered the washcloth and began to scrub me. The washcloth ground into my ears until I screamed.

“Dirt,” she said. “Look at the dirt! Aren’t you ashamed?”

She plunged the washcloth into my crotch and I screamed again.

“Get out,” I said. “Leave me alone.”

She flung the washcloth into my face. “Jailbird!” she said. “Convict!”

She turned and left me alone. I dried myself off, got into my shorts and walked into the kitchen. She was at the stove, cooking my breakfast, her back to me. Skilled ass man that I was, I quickly detected the contraction of her buttocks—a sure sign of rage in a woman. Experience had taught me great caution in the face of such dramatic change in the derrière and I was quiet as I sat down. It was like being in the presence of a coiled snake. She brought ham and eggs to the table and slammed the dish in front of me. The telephone rang. I heard her answer it.

“For you,” she said.

I picked up the phone. The caller was Harry Schindler, the movie director. He was an old friend of H. L. Muller. He had obtained my address from Muller, and was anxious to talk to me.

“What about?”

“Have you ever written for pictures?”

“No.”

“That’s fine,” Schindler said. “Would you like a job?”

“Doing what?”

“Writing a screenplay.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Nothing to it,” Schindler said. “I’ll show you. Meet me at Columbia Pictures tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.”

I went back to Mrs. Brownell’s living room and sat down. She had obviously overheard the telephone conversation.

“I may have a job in the movies.”

“At least you’ll be clean,” she said. I noticed her derriere. It was still contracted. I ate quickly and went back to my room.