Up in the Old Hotel (Vintage Classics) (50 page)

‘Well, Mr P. J. Mooney has an awful, awful case of what I’m talking about, the worst by far I ever saw. He comes downstairs in the morning in a hell of a hurry, and he grabs the
Times
and opens it up to the obituaries and death notices. The
Times
has the best death notices, all the details. And he sits there, drinking his coffee, happy, humming a song, reading up on who died since yesterday. And he talks to himself. He says, “Well, my friend,” he says, looking at the picture of some poor deceased or other, “I outlived you. You may have been one of the biggest investment bankers of our time, you may have left a thirty-million estate, you may have been a leader in social and financial circles in New York and Palm Beach, but I outlived you. You’re in the funeral parlor, you old s.o.b., you and your thirty million, and here I am, P. J. Mooney, esquire, eating a fine big plate of ham and eggs, and I’m not going to have two cups of coffee this morning, I’m going to have three.” All that used to tickle me somewhat. I’d come downstairs and I’d say to him, “Any good ones this morning, P. J.?” And he’d answer back, real cheerful, “The president of a big steel company, well along in years, eighty-seven, fell and broke his hip, and a big doctor, a stomach specialist, seventy-three, had a stroke. It’s sad,” he’d say, “real sad.” And he’d sit there and give you all the details, the name of the undertaker that had the job, the name of the cemetery, how long was the final illness, who survived, and the like of that.

‘Here lately, the past month or so, in addition to studying the obituaries, P. J. has taken to studying the old men at the Hartford. I caught him several times staring at this one and that one, looking
them
over, eying them, and I knew for certain what he was doing; he was estimating how much longer they had to live. One day I caught him eying me. It gave me a turn. It made me uneasy. It upset me. And he’s taken to inquiring about people’s health; takes a great interest in how you feel. He says, “Did you rest well last night?” And he says, “You sure got the trembles. You can’t drink nowhere near as much as you used to, can you?” And he says, “Mr Flood, it seems to me you’re showing your age this morning. We’re not getting any younger, none of us.” And last night he came out with a mighty upsetting question. “Mr Flood,” he said, “if you were flat on your back with a serious illness and the doctor told you there was no hope left, what would you do?” And I said to him, “Why, P. J., I would put on the God-damnedest exhibition that ever a dying man put on in the history of the human race. I would moan and groan and blubber and boohoo until the bricks came loose in the wall. I wouldn’t remain in bed. I would get up from there and put me on a pair of striped pants and a box-back coat and I would grab the telephone and get in touch with preachers of all descriptions – preachers, priests, rabbis, the Salvation Army, the Mohammedans, Father Divine, any and all that would come, and I’d say to them, ‘Pray, brothers, pray! It can’t do me no harm and it might possibly do me some good.’ And while they prayed I’d sit there and sing the ‘Rock of Ages’ and drink all the liquor that the doctor would allow.” I thought that’d shut him up, but I was just wasting my breath. Next he wanted to know had I made my will, had I given much thought to what I wanted cut on my tombstone, did I have any favorite hymns I wanted sung at my funeral. “Shut up,” I said to him, “for the love of God, shut up!” And this morning I came downstairs, and I had a hangover to begin with, a katzenjammer, and he had that estimating look in his eye, and he said to me, “Good morning, Old Man Flood. How you feeling? You look a bit pale.” And I flew off the handle and danced around and made a holy show of myself. If he inquires about my health one more time, if he so much as says good morning, I’m going to answer him politely, like a gentleman, and I’m going to wait until he looks the other way, and then I’m going to pick up something heavy and lay him out.’

‘The way I look at it,’ said Mr Maggiani, ‘those questions Mr Mooney asks you, they’re personal questions. I wouldn’t stand for it.’

‘I’m not going to stand for it any longer,’ said Mr Flood. ‘I’m going to put my foot down. All I want in this world is a little peace and quiet, and he gets me all raced up. Here a while back I heard a preacher talking on the radio about the peacefulness of the old, and I thought to myself, “You ignorant man!” I’m ninety-four years old and I never yet had any peace, to speak of. My mind is just a turmoil of regrets. It’s not what I did I regret, it’s what I didn’t do. Except for the bottle, I always walked the straight and narrow; a family man, a good provider, never cut up, never did ugly, and I regret it. In the summer of 1902 I came real close to getting in serious trouble with a married woman, but I had a fight with my conscience and my conscience won, and what’s the result? I had two wives, good, Christian women, and I can’t hardly remember what either of them looked like, but I can remember the face on that woman so clear it hurts, and there’s never a day passes I don’t think about her, and there’s never a day passes I don’t curse myself. “What kind of a timid, dried-up, weevily fellow were you?” I say to myself. “You should’ve said to hell with what’s right and what’s wrong, the devil take the hindmost. You’d have something to remember, you’d be happier now.” She’s out in Woodlawn, six feet under, and she’s been there twenty-two years, God rest her, and here I am, just an old, old man with nothing left but a belly and a brain and a dollar or two.’

‘Life is sad,’ said Mr Maggiani.

‘And the older I get,’ continued Mr Flood, ‘the more impatient I get. I got no time to waste on fools. There’s a young Southern fellow drops into the Hartford barroom every night before he gets on the ‘L’; comes from Alabama; works in one of those cotton offices on Hanover Square. Seemed to be a likable young fellow. I got in the habit of having a whiskey with him. He’d buy a round, I’d buy a round. Night before last, when he dropped in, I was sitting at a table with a colored man. When I was in the house-wrecking business, this colored man was my boss foreman. He was in my employ for thirty-six years; practically ran the business; one of the finest men I’ve ever known; raised eight children; one’s a doctor. In the old days, when my second wife was still alive, he and his wife came to our house for dinner, and me and my wife went to
his
house for dinner; played cards, told stories, listened to the phonograph. When I sold the business, I gave him a pension, an annuity. He bought a little farm on Long Island, and whenever he’s in town he pays me a visit and we talk about the days gone by. Tommy, you remember Peter Stetson. He’s been in here with me.’

‘Sure,’ said Mr Maggiani. ‘Fellow that runs the duck farm.’

‘That’s right,’ said Mr Flood. ‘Well, Pete and I finished our talk, and I walked to the door with him, and we shook hands, and he left. And I went over to the bar to have a drink with this young Southern fellow, and he says, “That was a nigger you were sitting down with, wasn’t it?” And I said, “That was an old, old friend of mine.” And he began to talk some ugly talk about the colored people, and I shut him right up. “I’m an old-time New Yorker,” I said to him, “the melting-pot type, the Tammany type before Tammany went to seed, all for one, one for all, a man’s race and color is his own business, and I be damned if I’ll listen to that kind of talk.” And he says, “You’re a trouble-maker. What race do you belong to, anyhow?” “The human race,” I said. “I come from the womb and I’m bound for the tomb, the same as you, the same as King George the Six, the same as Johnny Squat. And furthermore,” I said, “I’ll never take another drink with you. It would be beneath me to do so.” Now that’s a heathen kind of thing to happen in New York City. I’m going over and talk to the Mayor one of these days, tell him about a plan I have. I got a plan for a parade. The population is all split up; they don’t even parade with each other. The Italians parade on Columbus Day, the Poles parade on Pulaski Day, the Irish parade on St Patrick’s Day, and all like that. My plan is to have a citywide Human Race Parade, an all-day, all-night parade up Fifth Avenue. The only qualification you’ll need to march in this parade, you have to belong to the human race. The cops even, they won’t stand and watch, they’ll get right in and march. Tommy, how about you, would you march in the Human Race Parade?’

‘It would depend on the weather,’ said Mr Maggiani.

Mr Flood sighed and tossed his gut-blade on the counter. ‘I’m full,’ he said. ‘I’ve had my bait of clams.’

‘Me, too,’ said Mr Maggiani. ‘There’s no law says we got to make pigs of ourselves.’

Mr Flood got a rag and a pan of water and cleaned off the oilcloth counter, and I gathered up the empty shells and put them in a trash bucket. Mr Maggiani carried what was left of the basket of blackies back to the coldroom. Then the three of us sat down by the stove. Mr Maggiani put a pot of coffee on the hob. We heard steps in the hall, the door opened, and in came a friend of Mr Flood’s, a grim old Yankee named Jack Murchison, who is a waiter in Libby’s Oyster House. Libby’s is one of the few New England restaurants in the city. It was established on Fulton Street in 1840 by Captain Oliver Libby of Wellfleet, Cape Cod. It is unpretentious, its chefs and waiters are despotic and opinionated but highly skilled, it broils or boils or poaches ninety-nine fish orders for every one it fries, it has Daniel Webster fish chowder on Wednesdays and Fridays, and it has New England clam chowder every day. On its menu is a statement of policy:
‘OPEN TO 8 P.M. NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR PERSONAL PROPERTY. NO MANHATTAN CLAM CHOWDER SERVED IN HERE.’

‘Been down to the river for a breath of air,’ Mr Murchison said. ‘Sat on the stringpiece for fifteen minutes and I’m cold to the bone.’

‘Draw up a chair, Jack,’ said Mr Flood, ‘and take the weight off your feet.’

Mr Murchison lifted the tails of his overcoat and stood with his back to the stove for a few minutes. Then he sat down and sighed with satisfaction. ‘Hugh,’ he said to Mr Flood, ‘got something I want to show you.’ He took his wallet from a hip pocket, drew out a newspaper clipping, and gave it to me to pass over to Mr Flood, who was sitting on the other side of the stove. It was a clipping of Lucius Beebe’s column, ‘This New York,’ in the
Herald Tribune
.

Mr Flood glanced at it and said, ‘Oh, God, what’s this? Is he one of those ignorant fellows writes about restaurants in the papers, ohs and ahs about everything they put before him? Every paper nowadays has a fellow writing about restaurants, an expert giving his opinion, a fellow that if he was out of a job and went to a restaurant to get one, this expert on cooking, this Mr Know-it-all, the practical knowledge he has, why, they wouldn’t trust him to peel the potatoes for a stew.’

‘This gentleman is a goormy,’ said Mr Murchison. ‘Go ahead and read what he says.’

Mr Flood read a paragraph or two. Then he groaned and handed the clipping to me. ‘God defend us, son,’ he said. ‘Read this.’

In the column, Mr Beebe described a dinner that had been ‘run up’ for him and a friend by Edmond Berger, the
chef de cuisine
of the Colony Restaurant. He gave the menu in full. One item, the fish course, was ‘Fillet de Sole en Bateau Beebe.’ ‘The sole, courteously created in the name of this department by Chef Berger for the occasion,’ Mr Beebe wrote, ‘was a delicate fillet superimposed on a half baked banana and a trick worth remembering.’

‘Good God A’mighty!’ said Mr Flood.

‘Sounds nice, don’t it?’ asked Mr Murchison. ‘A half baked bananny with a delicate piece of flounder superimposed on the top of it. While he was at it, why didn’t he tie a red ribbon around it?’

‘Next they’ll be putting a cherry on boiled codfish,’ said Mr Flood. ‘How would that be, a delicate piece of codfish with a cherry superimposed on the top of it?’

The two old men cackled.

‘Tell me the truth, Hugh,’ said Mr Murchsion, ‘what in the world do you think of a thing like that?’

‘I tell you what I think,’ said Mr Flood. ‘I got my money in the Corn Exchange Bank. And if I was to go into some restaurant and see the president of the Corn Exchange Bank eating a thing like that, why, I would turn right around and walk out of there, and I’d hightail it over to the Corn Exchange Bank and draw out every red cent. It would destroy my confidence.’

‘President, hell,’ said Mr Murchison. ‘If I was to see the janitor of the Corn Exchange Bank eating a thing like that, I’d draw
my
money out.’

‘Of course,’ said Mr Flood, ‘you got to take into consideration this fellow is a gourmet. A thing like that is just messy enough to suit a gourmet. They got bellies like schoolgirls; they can eat anything, just so it’s messy.’

‘We get a lot of goormies in Libby’s,’ said Mr Murchison. ‘I can spot a goormy right off. Moment he sits down he wants to know do we have any boolybooze.’

‘Bouillabaisse,’ said Mr Flood.

‘Yes,’ said Mr Murchison, ‘and I tell him, “Quit showing off! We don’t carry no boolybooze. Never did. There’s a time and a place for everything. If you was to go into a restaurant in France,” I ask him, “would you call for some Daniel Webster fish chowder?” I love a hearty eater, but I do despise a goormy. All they know is boolybooze and pompano and something that’s out of season, nothing else will do. And when they get through eating they don’t settle their check and go on about their business. No, they sit there and deliver you a lecture on what they et, how good it was, how it was almost as good as a piece of fish they had in the Caffy dee lah Pooty-doo in Paris, France, on January 16, 1928; they remember every meal they ever et, or make out they do. And every goormy I ever saw is an expert on herbs. Herbs, herbs, herbs! If you let one get started on the subject of herbs he’ll talk you deef, dumb, and blind. Way I feel about herbs, on any fish I ever saw, pepper and salt and a spoon of melted butter is herbs aplenty.’

‘Let’s see that clipping again,’ Mr Flood said. He took the Beebe column and read it slowly from start to finish. Then he handed it back to me. ‘Burn a rag,’ he said.

Mr Maggiani lifted the pot of coffee off the hob and poured us each a mug. Then he stepped over to the counter and got his Scotch bottle. There was an ounce or two left in it, and he poured this into Mr Murchison’s coffee.