“This place smells like New York to me. Sour beer, whiskey sweat, cheap perfume, and cigarettes.
Back in the 50s I used to go up to Harlem and tune whorehouse pianos.” He inhaled the air, as if to pick out a faint trace of that memory on the breeze. “Lilacs and a woman’s glow after a trick.”
A saccharine version of MISTY played on the jukebox.
“Jackie Gleason. People loved his music. He composed and arranged the theme for his TV show, even though he couldn’t read music.”
“I watched THE HONEYMOONERS with my parents.” His hilarious interpretation of a luckless Brooklyn bus driver won the big man fame and fortune. “How sweet it is.”
“He was more than funny. You know he did his show down here?”
“THE JACKIE GLEASON SHOW.”
“It was broadcast live direct from Miami Beach. I wish that I could have worked there, but Jackie worked with union guys. I had drinks with him once. The big man was really into UFOs. He thought they were going to kidnap him into Space. Fat chance of them fitting the Great One in a flying saucer.”
“I loved him in the movie SOLDIER IN THE RAIN.” Jackie Gleason had played a conniving sergeant opposite Steve McQueen. “The ending made me cry.”
“You were never in the military, Hippie boy, were you?” The words were almost an accusation.
“No.” I tensed up in preparation for an attack.
“Chill out, Hippie Boy. I wasn’t in the army either, but I did get called up for induction. The damned draft board thought I was faking my blindness. After a check-up they wrote up that I had perfect 0/0 vision and flat feet too. Never knew that. Good thing I have a long nose. I can smell everything around me like a bloodhound tracking a runaway slave.”
Old Bill raised his head and howled off-key. He was no singer.
I ordered us another round.
The rough and ready bar had a warped pool table. Two rednecks were finishing an eight-ball game. I watched the winning cracker’s winning shot.
“They any good?”
“Nothing special.”
“How about you and me taking them on?”
“Are you serious?”
“Serious as death.” He listened to the click of the balls and then handed me $5.
“What’s this?”
“Our bet. Can you play?”
“Yes.” I had spent two teenage summers hanging out at a pool hall in Boston’s Combat Zone and said, “I can take them.”
“We can.”
Old Bill walked over to the pool table. He knew his way around the Deuce. The grits smiled and the winner asked, “What you want, old man?”
“My friend and I are challenging you to game. Hippie Boy, show him the money.”
I didn’t like the way the skinny Reb had called Old Bill ‘old man’ and slapped the fiver on the rail.
“You break.”
“Look at that, Bob Bob. A blind man and the hippie trying to hustle us like we were rubes from Ocala.”
Several people gathered by the table.
Everyone at the Deuce liked a free show.
“I’ve seen the old man before, JJ. He’s a blind as a bat in sunlight. I don’t know about the faggot Hippie Boy.”
“It’s $5. You chickenshits in or you out?”
“We’re in, old man.”
The Miami humidity had warped the remaining sticks and Old Bill asked, “You mind if I use my walking stick.”
“You could use a beer bottle for all the good it will do ya. Like you said. Our break.”
The skinny grit sank two solids on the break and deftly dropped two more in rapid succession. The two friends laughed in expectation of victory and Bob Bob asked, “What about upping the stake to $10?”
“What’s the table look like?” whispered Old Bill.
“He has one more open shot and then our balls block theirs.”
Old Bill laid out another $5.
“But only if the odds are 2 to 1.”
“You got it.” JJ put up $20 and then sank the obvious shot, but missed a difficult bumper shot leaving me with an open table.
I sank four balls and left the cue behind the eight ball. Bob Bob had no play. The two rednecks conferred and the big man unexpectedly airbombed the cue on the six. It fell in the side pocket. His next shot came nowhere near that brilliance. It was Old Bill’s turn and he asked, “Where’s the cue ball? And where am I shooting?”
I explained the positions to Old Bill and he touched the green felt before the cue ball, then called out, “Eight ball ball in the corner.”
Old Bill’s cane tapped the cue ball, which sank the black ball. The bar applauded his shot. I laughed with joy. Old Bill bowed to the crowd.
We strolled home with the dawn stretching across the Gulf Stream in bands of blue.
“A good night, Hippie Boy,” said Old Bill before the Sea Breeze.
“And even better a good sleep ahead of us.”
I started for the phone booth and Old Bill grabbed my arm.
“It’s 5am in California. Your girl is asleep, plus there’s nothing you can do to a girl 3000 miles away.”
“I’ve never been lucky in love.”
“You’re lucky in ways you don’t see. Everyone loves you at the Sea Breeze.”
“They do?’
“No one has died since you came here, so stop worrying about that girl. She’ll be there. She’s going to college and schools don’t end till Spring.”
We rode the elevator up to our floors and I fell asleep to dreams of Diana. I had to get out of Miami soon
No comments:
Post a Comment