Funny Boys (3 page)

“Jew jokes are mostly okay,” Gloria said. “Jews like to laugh at themselves.”

“I got lots of those,” Mickey said. “Like ‘Don’t give up. Moses was also a basket case.’”

“Yeah,” Gorlick chuckled.

“How about ‘We got a sign over the urinal. Says the future of the Jewish people is in your hands.’”

Gloria giggled.

“Save that for weekdays. The girls love shmekel jokes.”

“But talk only, Fine. Talk only.”

“Got it. We swat flies at Gorlicks. We don’t unbutton them.”

“No fly jokes, Fine. We got horseflies in August.” Gorlick turned to Gloria.

“You think he understands the emmis.”

Gloria looked him over as if he were a prized race horse.

“Believe me, I got it,” Mickey said. “Their business is their business and my business is funny.”

“It’s inspiring, right, Solly? The combination.” Gloria said.

“Yeah,” Gorlick said through a smoke cloud. “An American
success story, the way these boys do business and love each other. Catolic and Jew. They come to Gorlicks for the relaxation and the action and this is where the Jew boys put their families for the summer. The wops have their own places, but they come here to meet. The wops like the kosher coozeen.”

“So no wop jokes,” Mickey reiterated, groping to get back into a tumler mood. After all, his father had healed, the money had been paid back. Even his father had agreed, despite the brutal methods used, that this was business. “I went in with open eyes,” he told Mickey. “So who is the real criminal? Them or me?”

“It’s a respectable Jewish place, strictly kosher. We gotta lot of goyem help.” Gorlick went on. “We got shiksa waitresses and maids. You’ll hear things, Fine. You know what I mean. Bad Jew stuff.”

“Don’t listen,” Gloria said. “It’s expected.”

“Mostly they know better,” Gorlick said. “If not … if the boys hear. …” He made a slashing motion across his neck.

Mickey nodded, his stomach fluttering.

“And no gangster jokes,” Gloria said. “Especially not in fronta the girls. They are very sensitive about this subject.”

“Gangsters consider themselves businessmen and wish to be referred to as such,” Gorlick said. “And they must always be called Mister.”

“Like Mr. Kid Twist and Mr. Pittsburgh Phil?” Mickey asked. When Gorlick and Gloria didn’t laugh, he said, “Just a joke.”

“Monickers are for them and the news boys. Not for you,” Mr. Gorlick said. “We had an incident with Mr. Buchalter. One of the waiters called him Mr. Lepke.”

“Even though he used Mister,” Mickey said.

“These are very sensitive men, Mickey,” Gorlick said.

“What happened to the waiter?”

“Don’t ask,” Gorlick muttered.

“They can be very demanding,” Gloria said. “Right, Solly?”

Gorlick nodded. “And they are very possessive of their women,” he said. “Hence my earlier reference to shtupping.”

Gorlick puffed his cigar and watched him.

“Discretion is the better part of value,” Mickey said, the pun chasing the pall of gloom.

“Yeah. Yeah,” Gorlick said. “Something like that.” He turned to Gloria, who had closed her compact and was smoothing her skirt. “So whattaya think, Gloria?” He glanced back at Mickey. “Gloria is a specialist in entertainment.” Gorlick winked. “Right, Gloria?”

“Bettah believe. Teddy Katz would have been a mistake to hire,” Gloria said. Apparently this was the man they had fired before the season.

“She thought he was too pretty.”

“All we needed was a tumler who looked like Clark Gable. In my opinion we saved him from a not-too-good fate. These boys don’t play games about things like that.”

“This ones so so,” Gorlick said.

“At least he’s no Gable,” Gloria said. “He doesn’t look like a chaser.”

Mickey faced her and showed his good white teeth. He was picturing her spread-eagled under Gorlick’s corpulent body, her smooth white thighs hugging his whale-like middle. In his mind, he saw the porch swing of her hips in double time.

“Not a world beater,” Gloria said. He noted that she had lipstick on her teeth. “And his jokes stink.”

“I didn’t show you everything. I got the whole Jessel routine with the mother down pat.” He put one fist to his ear and one to
his mouth. “Hey Mother, this is your son Mickey, the one with the checks …”

“I’ll say this,” Gorlick interrupted. “He’s a real tumler. He gives me a headache.”

“I do imitations, too,” Mickey persisted, summoning up his Edward G. Robinson. “Ya ya, you boysh get your gats and come wish me to the Soush Side.”

“How many guesses?” Gorlick said.

“Want to see my Eddie Cantor?”

“Not today,” Gorlick said.

“Who’s this?” Mickey said, summoning up his Joe Penner. “Wanna buy a duck?”

“You’re shpritzing me.” Gorlick said.

Gloria’s continued contemplation was an elaborate routine. She lit a cigarette with the pistol lighter that had been lying on the cocktail table then got up from the chair, brushed down her dress, looked behind her to straighten the seams of her stockings, then walked across the room, hips swinging, her cute ass bobbing.

At the other end of the room, she stopped, took a squinty drag on the cigarette, picked a morsel of tobacco from her tongue, then, throwing out her ample chest, she posed against a doorpost, eyeing Mickey up and down.

“Great audition, kid,” Mickey said, imitating Cagney. “You got the job.”

Gorlick moved his head from side to side.

“Not bad,” he said, barely cracking a smile.

“You a fagele?” Gloria asked suddenly.

“Oh my God,” Mickey said mincingly, waving a limp wrist. “You do know.”

“A fagele they wouldn’t like,” Gloria said. “They like a real tease.”

Mickey hid his embarrassment. He did not like being judged like horseflesh.

“Considering the others we seen,” Gloria said, “and since we need someone in ten days, maybe you should give him a try.”

Gorlick turned to Mickey. “I personally am not overly impressed.”

“I swear, Mr. Gorlick,” Mickey said, raising his right hand. “If I let them down may I drop dead.”

“Believe me, boychick, that’s no joke.”

“They kill people that aren’t funny?” Mickey asked with elaborate innocence.

“For less than that,” Gloria said as she came back to the chair and sat down.

Again Mickey caught a peek at pink flesh beside her stocking suspenders. The sight, with its resultant twitch of lust, somehow mitigated the sense of the ominous. Their warnings seemed unreal, make-believe, a kind of initiation ritual for a tumler rookie.

“The important thing,” Gorlick said, shifting his body on the couch and lowering his voice. “No matter what you see, what you hear, you gotta always make like them three monkeys.”

“See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,” Mickey said acting out the words, walking around the room like a gorilla.

“Enough already,” Gorlick said. “You got it.”

“You mean BO or the job?” Mickey asked, sniffing under his arms.

Gorlick looked at Gloria.

“There’s a fine line between a tumler and a nudnick.” Gorlick said.

“Finally you’re getting the message, Mr. Gorlick. A ‘Fine’
line. That’s me. That’s what I feed them. Fine’s line.”

Gorlick took another puff on his cigar and shrugged.

“Step outa line, boychick. It’s your funeral,” Gorlick said, pausing, as he relit his cigar, which had gone out. “And my hotel.”

“You won’t be sorry, Mr. Gorlick.”

“It’s twenty a week with free meals and a room. From Decoration through Labor Day.”

“I was hoping for thirty,” Mickey said. He knew he was being lowballed because of his weak bargaining position.

“First thing we argue about money,” Gorlick said. “For this opportunity, you discuss money. You be a good boychick, you’ll get tips—you’ll double what I pay you.” He took a deep puff on his cigar and displayed a scowl.

“All I’m asking is a fair deal,” Mickey said.

“Talk to President Roosevelt then. Gorlick pays twenty. By right, you should pay me for the privilege.”

“Twenty-five then.”

“Right away with the money. There’s a depression, Mickey. Haven’t you heard?”

“Blumenkranz mentioned thirty,” Mickey said.

“Sure, it’s not his money,” Gorlick said. “Twenty or nothing.”

“All right then, Mr. Gorlick,” Mickey said. “This is my last offer. Twenty a week with room and board. I warn you. Not a penny more.”

“This Mickey is a mensch,” Gorlick said, stuffing the cigar in his mouth and putting out his fat stubby hand.

Mickey Fine took it in his. He wasn’t sure whose hand was sweating more, his or Gorlick’s.

Then he moved to the door, stopped and turned.

“I leave you with one thought, people.”

“Please,” Gorlick said. “Enough.”

“Anytime someone orders a pastrami sandwich on white bread from a delicatessen, a Jew dies.”

“Getoutahere tumler,” Gorlick said.

Mickey did a skip and jump movement, saluted, opened the door and left.

T
H
E MOVIES AND MOVIE STARS WERE THE CENTRAL FOCUS
of Miriam Feder’s life. No one called her Miriam. To everyone she was Mutzie, even to herself. She went to the movies three, sometimes four times a week, depending on when they changed the pictures. Since they were all double features she saw between three hundred and four hundred pictures a year. Sometimes she saw them twice, especially if they starred Jean Harlow or Marlene Dietrich or Franchot Tone or Errol Flynn, her favorites.

On weeknights she usually went to the Loews Ambassador, which showed the first run pictures, or the Blue Bird across the street that showed the older pictures. Since they gave away dishes on weeknights, her mother’s kitchen was filled with hundreds of movie dishes. The dishes somehow canceled out the guilt she felt about spending the extra money each week for movie admissions, although the time away from her homework had considerable impact on her schoolwork.

On Saturday nights she went to the Loews Pitkin, usually with a date. They showed two pictures and a vaudeville show, which she never liked, but at least the boys she dated couldn’t get fresh when the lights were on.

Mutzie, who would be eighteen in August, was a senior at Samuel J. Tilden High School, set to graduate in June. She had taken a commercial course and could type and take shorthand and, if worst came to worst, would get herself a job as a secretary. Her mother would have liked her to marry Henry Goldblaum, who was an apprentice cutter in the shmata business and would soon be in the union, which would mean a steady dollar.

To Mutzie’s mother a steady dollar was the most important thing in life. Mutzie’s father, who had a pushcart on Saratoga Avenue selling sundries, was a loud-mouthed, argumentative radical who considered all authority corrupt and exploiting. He was also, as near as Mutzie could make out, always changing allegiances. Sometimes he claimed he was an anarchist, sometimes a socialist, sometimes a communist.

“Always an argument,” Mutzie’s mother complained. “You say black, he says white. You say it’s morning, he’ll say it’s night. All my life an argument.”

Mutzie agreed that her mother had reason to complain. Harry Feder was impossible. He was always sour, always mad at something or someone, and never smiled. When he was not selling sundries on his pushcart, he spent his time in front of Hoffman’s Cafeteria on Pitkin Avenue arguing with others who also hated their current existence and felt exploited and suppressed by the “authorities.”

“You watch,” her father would say in one of his repetitive monologues whenever he was at home. “All the bastards want is to bleed us dry. I say trust nobody. Hitler uses this Jew business to unite those rotten Jew-hating Krauts. Mussolini has the wops conned. Those Japs are screwing the Chinks and Franco is no worse than the commies in Spain. Stalin’s no angel either. Roosevelt’s no better. He uses sweet-talk. All they want is to
control you, keep you down, suck you dry. Don’t believe none of them. You think La Guardia’s gonna clean up this city? He’s on their payroll. You think this depression wasn’t planned? Every few years, they have to do it. Keep people under their thumb.”

Mutzie’s mother would raise her eyes to the ceiling.

“And he’s the only good one,” her mother would complain, offering her own repetitive rebuttal. “A good living he should make. That’s all I ask. Then he can sit in the toilet all day and make speeches.”

“At least I work for myself,” her father would counter.

“That’s good. But why, when you work for yourself, don’t you pay yourself a good salary?”

Mutzie’s brother Seymour, who had quit high school as a sophomore, spent most of his time hanging around candy stores and pool rooms. He told his family he did odd jobs and he always seemed to have enough money for fancy clothes and dates. He gave his mother ten dollars a week for room and board, always with a big show at the dinner table on Friday nights.

“Seymour’s a good boy,” Mutzie’s mother would say, kissing her son on the forehead as she put the ten dollars in her apron pocket.

“A Brownsville Bum,” her father would mutter.

“A bum is someone who’s broke, Papa,” Seymour would counter.

“Present company not excepted,” Mutzie mother would say with an intensely sarcastic look at her father.