Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker (13 page)

“That’s very interesting,” said Price, and, feeling that his host expected it, he added, “That’s very interesting.”

Lockhorn held out his glass and Price carried it back to the bar. “The
Times
man, or whoever it was,” Lockhorn went on, “put down that one of the things I regard as wonderful is the feminine anatomy. You can’t get ‘body of a woman’ in the papers. The feminine anatomy is something that can be touched only with the mind, and you’ll notice that in my list everything can be touched by the hand. A watch a man never held would not be wonderful.”

“That’s true,” said Price, speculating on the factual aspect of devotion.

“There is only one thing I’ve never told an interviewer,” Lockhorn said, after a pause. “I’ve never told any interviewer about the game. ‘Don’t tell the man about the game,’ Mrs. Lockhorn always says. ‘Promise me you won’t tell the man about the game.’ Let me ask you one thing—why would Martha ask me not to tell you about the game if there were no game?”

“She wouldn’t, of course,” said Price, taking a long slow sip of his drink to cover his embarrassment. The two men drank in silence for a while. “My second wife left me because of the game,” Lockhorn said, “but you can’t print that, because she would deny it, and I would deny it.” Lockhorn took a great gulp of his drink and stared into the fire again. Two minutes of silence went by, during which Price found himself counting the ticks of the clock on the mantelpiece. “My memory is beginning to slip,” Lockhorn said, “but if you print that, I’ll sue Hammer’s pants off. Maybe I’ll sue his pants off anyway. Sunday editors are the worst vermin in the world. If you use that, credit it to Mencken. I don’t know why the hell you boys want to interview me. I’ve said a great many sharp things in my life, but I can’t remember which ones are mine and which ones were said by Santayana, or John Jay Chapman, or Bernard De Voto. You can say my memory is slipping—maybe it will arouse pity. I’m the loneliest man in the United States.” Lockhorn had finished his drink very fast, and he got up and walked to the bar. Price’s eyebrows went up as he heard the heavy slug of bourbon chortle into the glass. “Martha’ll be sore as a pup,” Lockhorn said with an owlish grin. “Just touch your forelock to her. You can’t argue with her. She’s my fourth wife, you know. The others were Dorothy, Nettie, and Pauline, not necessarily in that order.” He came back to his chair and flopped into it. Price began to listen to the clock again. Lockhorn’s head jerked up suddenly. “Going to call my memoirs ‘I Had to Write,’ ” he said. “You can put that in your piece if you want to.”

WHEN Mrs. Lockhorn came into the room, smiling her small, apprehensive smile, Price had just handed his host a seventh highball. “This is Pricey,” said Lockhorn. Price, who had jumped to his feet, stood bowing and grinning at his hostess. She barely touched him with her smile. “One for the house,” said Lockhorn, holding up his drink.

“It’s early,” said Mrs. Lockhorn. “It isn’t five yet.”

“I must be going,” Price said. “May I make you a drink, Mrs. Lockhorn?”

“No, thank you,” she said, in a tone that corked the bottles.

“Nonsense,” said Lockhorn. “Sit down, Pricey. I’ve never, by God, known anything like the female timetable. They live by the clock. The purpose of 6
P.M.
is to unlock their inhibitions about liquor. Sexual intercourse is for holidays—”

“George!” said Mrs. Lockhorn sharply.

Price began to babble. “Well, I guess it was us men—we men—who actually set a schedule for drinking, with that business about the sun over the yardarm, wasn’t it, Mr. Lockhorn?”

“Sun over your grandma’s thigh,” said Lockhorn irritably, looking at Price but aiming the phrase at his wife. “Who called tea ‘the five o’clock’? Women, French women. They don’t even believe a man should smoke until he puts on his tuxedo. We are a prisoner of the hours, Pricey, and you know it.” Price flushed and became vastly conscious of his hands.

“Finish your drink,” said Martha Lockhorn to Price. “My husband is going to finish his, and then I’m afraid he must rest. The new book has taken a great deal out of him.”

“You’re goddam tootin’ he’s going to finish his,” said Lockhorn, his fingers whitening on his glass, “and don’t third-person me. Sit down, Pricey. We’re just getting started.” Price sat stiffly on the edge of his chair. He saw that Mrs. Lockhorn, who had moved behind her husband’s chair, was trying to communicate with him by a shake of her head and a glance at the bar. “Don’t let ’em third-person you, Pricey,” said Lockhorn sternly. “Next comes the first person plural—they first-person-plural you to death. Then you might just as well go to bed and die. You might just as well go to bed and die.”

“I hope he hasn’t been entertaining you with imprecations all afternoon,” said Mrs. Lockhorn.

“Oh, no indeed,” exclaimed Price, picking up his glass and setting it down.

“She loves the happy phrase,” said Lockhorn. “She spends more time on phrases than most women do on their hips.”

“Don’t be tiresome, George,” said Mrs. Lockhorn. She turned to Price. “You see, he has been interviewed constantly,” she told him. “It seems as if there has been an interviewer here every day since his novel came out. You all want something different, and then it never comes out the way he says it. It’s all twisted and ridiculous.”

“I hope to avoid that sin,” said Price, noting that the famous author had closed his eyes but still kept his tight grip on his glass.

“He’s terribly tired.” Mrs. Lockhorn’s voice was lowered to a whisper, as if they were in a sickroom. “He worked four years on ‘The Flaw in the Crystal.’ Some of the reviews have hurt him deeply.”

“It’s selling wonderfully,” whispered Price.

Mrs. Lockhorn made a gesture with her hands, but its meaning was lost on him.

The novelist opened his eyes and quickly finished his drink. “I’ll tell you some other wonderful things,” he said. “A woman crying, children calling over the snow—across the snow—dogs barking at a distance, dogs barking far off at night.” He put his empty glass on the floor and groped in the air for more wonders with his right hand. “Things I’ve wanted to do,” he went on. “You can use this, Pricey. Bat baseballs through the windows of a firescraper from a lower roof across the street, spend—”

“Skyscraper,” said Mrs. Lockhorn.

To Price’s secret delight his host, after a slow stare at Mrs. Lockhorn, repeated with great authority, “Firescraper.” He winked at Price. “I want to spend the night in Ovington’s,” he said. “I want to open a pigeon. All my life I’ve wanted to cut a dove open, looking for the goddamnedest omens in the history of the world. Like the Romans performing the ancient assizes. I want to find two hearts in one of the sons of bitches and go crying through the night, like another Whozis, ‘Repent, ye sinners, repent. The world is coming to an end.’ ”

“George,” said Mrs. Lockhorn, “the newspapers can’t print things like that.”

Lockhorn didn’t hear her. He picked up the glass and drank the trickle of ice water in it. “Go down, ye sinners, to the sea,” he said, with a wide gesture.

“Talk about your book,” said his wife. “The newspapers want to know about your book.”

Lockhorn looked at her. “They are all the same, Pricey,” he said, “and they differ as the waves differ. Only in height. The blood of the dove, as they say, Pricey. I’ll tell you about the book, drunk as I unexpectedly am, or get.”

“He’s terribly tired,” cut in his wife.

“Spiritual hope!” bawled Lockhorn, so loudly Price started the ice tinkling in his glass. “Spiritual hope is my tiny stock in trade, to quote the greatest master of them all.”

Mrs. Lockhorn, observing that the newspaperman looked puzzled, said, “He means Henry James,” and then, to her husband, “I think he spoke of his
small
trade, George.”

“The greatest master of them all,” said Lockhorn again. “I always begin with a picture, a visual picture. Woman standing in the doorway with the evening sun in her hair. Dying rays of the evening sun in her hair, as Hockett would put it.”

“Hockett?” asked Price, realizing, with a small cold feeling in his stomach, that he was not going to have anything to write.

“Your boss,” said Lockhorn.

“Oh, Hammer,” said Price.

“I beg your pardon?” said Mrs. Lockhorn.

The author jiggled what was left of the ice in his glass. “The women write backwards,” he said, “beginning with their titles—‘Never Dies the Dream,’ ‘Lonely Is the Hunting Heart.’ ”

“It’s ‘The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,’ ” said his wife, but Lockhorn waved her away.

“I’m tired of the adult world seen through the eyes of a little girl,” he said. “A woman forgets everything that happens to her after she is fourteen. I, too, have lived in Arcady, Pricey, but I’m tired of viewing the adult world through the great solemn eyes of a sensitive— What is that word like nipper?”

“Moppet?” asked Price.

“Sensitive moppet,” said Lockhorn, closing his eyes, and sinking deeper in his chair.

Price attempted to make a surreptitious note on his copy paper.

“You can’t use that,” whispered Mrs. Lockhorn. “He’s talking about one of his closest women friends.”

The interviewer put his pencil and paper away as his host opened his eyes again and pointed a finger at him. “Henry James had the soul of an eavesdropper,” he said. Price gave a laugh that did not sound like his own. “Everything he got, he got from what he overheard somebody say. No visual sense, and if you haven’t got visual sense, what have you got?”

Price stood up as if to go, but Lockhorn waved him down again and grinned at his wife. “Pricey, here, has invented some remarkable game, Martha,” he said. “Tell Martha about your game, son. It’s all we’ve talked about all afternoon.”

Price swallowed.

“What sort of game is it?” asked Martha.

“It’s nothing, really,” gurgled Price. He stood up again. “I must be running along,” he said.

“Sit down for a moment,” said Mrs. Lockhorn. “George, you better lie down awhile.”

To Price’s astonishment, the novelist got meekly to his feet and started for the door into the hall. He stopped in front of Price and stuck an index finger into his ribs, making a skucking sound with his tongue. “Is love worse living?” he said, and went out into the hall and closed the door behind him. He began to stomp up the carpeted stairs, shouting, “Dorothy! Nettie! Martha!”

Price, swallowing again, idiotically wondered what ever became of Pauline.

“As you see, he’s really worn out,” said Mrs. Lockhorn hastily. “He’s not as young as he used to be, of course, and I wish he’d give up writing. After all, he’s written eighteen books and he has a comfortable income.”

From far upstairs Price heard a now faint shouting for the lost Pauline.

“Are you sure you won’t have another drink?” asked Mrs. Lockhorn, not moving from the edge of her chair.

“A quick one, perhaps,” said Price. “Just half a glass.”

“Surely,” said Mrs. Lockhorn with the hint of a sigh, taking his glass. “Bourbon?”

“Scotch, if you don’t mind,” said Price.

She made it very small, and very weak. “I know that you will use discretion,” she said. “George has become a little reckless in some of the things he says, and I hope you were able to tell the truth from the things he just makes up.”

Price finished half his drink. “I’m afraid I really haven’t got anything,” he said miserably. “Perhaps you could tell me something I could use.”

Mrs. Lockhorn looked mysterious. “There are some wonderful things about the book,” she said. “I mean about the way he wrote it and what had to be done by the publishers. He had actually written, word for word, a chapter from one of his earlier books into the new one. He hadn’t copied it, you understand. It was simply there in his memory, word for word.” Price got out his pencil and paper, but his hostess lifted her hand. “Oh, mercy!” she said. “You can’t possibly print that. He would be furious if he found it out.”

Price looked puzzled. “If he found it out?” he asked.

She stood up and Price got to his feet. “Oh, he doesn’t remember writing it,” she said. “It was just stuck in. The publishers had to take it out. But you mustn’t mention it. Please don’t even tell Mr. Hockett.”

Price set his glass down on the table beside his chair. “I believe my hat and overcoat—” he began.

“I’ll get them,” she said. “They must be in the hall closet.”

They went to the closet. There was no sound from upstairs. Price got into his coat, and Mrs. Lockhorn went with him to the front door and opened it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid it’s been something of a wild-goose chase.”

“I’m afraid it has,” said Price, a little grimly.

Mrs. Lockhorn gave him her best hostess smile. “George gets mixed up when he’s tired,” she explained, “or he wouldn’t have said ‘Is love worse living?’ ”

Price matched her smile with one just as artificial. “He was quoting one of the most famous lines ever written by James Joyce,” he said. He went out and got into his car. “Goodbye, Mrs. Lockhorn,” he said.

“Goodbye, Mr. Pricey,” she called to him. Her smile was gone. “I’m sorry you didn’t have time to tell me about your game.”

“Some other time, maybe,” said Price, whose smile was also gone, and he started the engine.

Mrs. Lockhorn closed the front door.

When Price had driven a few hundred yards from the house, he took the copy paper from his pocket and threw it out of the window. Then, suddenly, he reached for his pencil and threw it out of the window, too.

1950

BRUCE JAY FRIEDMAN

LET’S HEAR IT FOR A BEAUTIFUL GUY

Sammy Davis is trying to get a few months off for a complete rest.

—Earl Wilson, February 7, 1974.

I
HAVE
been trying to get a few months off for a complete rest, too, but I think it’s more important that Sammy Davis get one. I feel that I can scrape along and manage somehow, but Sammy Davis always looks so strained and tired. The pressure on the guy must be enormous. It must have been a terrific blow to him when he switched his allegiance to Agnew and Nixon, only to have the whole thing blow up in his face. I was angry at him, incidentally, along with a lot of other fans of his, all of us feeling he had sold us down the river. But after I had thought it over and let my temper cool a bit, I changed my mind and actually found myself standing up for him, saying I would bet anything that Agnew and Nixon had made some secret promises to Sammy about easing the situation of blacks—ones that the public still doesn’t know about. Otherwise, there was no way he would have thrown in his lot with that crowd. In any case, I would forgive the guy just about anything. How can I feel any other way when I think of the pleasure he’s given me over the years, dancing and clowning around and wrenching those songs out of that wiry little body? Always giving his all, no matter what the composition of the audience. Those years of struggle with the Will Mastin Trio, and then finally making it, only to find marital strife staring him in the face. None of us will ever be able to calculate what it took out of him each time he had a falling-out with Frank. Is there any doubt who Dean and Joey sided with on those occasions? You can be sure Peter Lawford didn’t run over to offer Sammy any solace. And does anyone ever stop to consider the spiritual torment he must have suffered when he made the switch to Judaism? I don’t even want to talk about the eye. So, if anyone in the world does, he certainly deserves a few months off for a complete rest.