Bobby Dews takes you on an unforgettable baseball road trip.
Unpublished Poets
By Bobby DewsAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Bobby Dews
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4567-4190-7 Chapter One
(1920's)
Arm in arm they crossed 44th Street in the light snow, snow tinted red, sometimes greenish-blue falling against the glow of Christmas lights lining the sidewalks, lights vying for attention with the glaring neon of the small specialty shops so famous and close to Broadway. The three young people, a woman and two men, had their eyes on the Algonquin Hotel and maybe a nightcap while Contessa played blues. No holiday standards in the Blue Bar. Sometimes there they got a glimpse of Faulkner in town for a book signing, or maybe Hemingway tucked in a far corner as if daring a tourist to come near, only enough pale light on his face to be noticed by café society. Once, the woman had talked briefly with Max Perkins, the only editor to ever understand modern writers. Nobody ever said they understood Max. Some said he drank too much, others said they'd never seen him have more than two, possibly three. And family? If he had one, they must have missed him. He was always in the city, out and about near Broadway, once in a while with a showgirl type, usually an older diva making a comeback. He was also seen every now and then with younger actresses, dancers, and singers, but more often with writers, fiction writers; he liked to help them with their manuscripts, help them celebrate new contracts with Scribner, liked to watch them bask in glory when books sold big, when they got a literary prize, especially then.
The lady with two escorts wanted to write fiction. So far, she'd not been so good. Not that it would matter or change her lifestyle really. Her family had built great ships for more than a hundred years, and she was an only child. She'd self-published once and now lived in a townhouse near Central Park where she entertained but always after they'd dropped by the Algonquin. Someday she'd have the nerve to ask Maxwell Perkins, and he might ask F. Scott Fitzgerald, or maybe even Hemingway. Anything was possible in the Blue Bar at midnight.
Between horn blasts and the screeching brakes of a taxicab, the tall woman said, "I love to stop traffic."
Her escorts hurried her away as the driver yelled. "Hey, ya dumb hicks, whadaya tink dose lights are for down at da endah da street?"
"Aren't dose lights bootiful down at da endah da street, fellas?" the lady said, making even the cabbie smile as he wheeled away.
The doorman asked, "Staying here at the hotel?"
As they brushed by, the taller escort answered brusquely, "Must be his first night." He spoke in that affected British style as so many following World War I, a faddish manner of the more snobbish universities in the northeast, a manner made popular by Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, their ploy to attract publishers still suffering from an English-style hangover. A carefree dialogue, far removed from any hint of anything other than pure Anglo Saxon. The relentless doorman followed the trio in and considered giving them a word or two concerning their manners but changed his mind as he was handed a ten. In the better light now, he recognized the man giving him the tip. "Certainly, Mr. Berg," he said. "Would you prefer the lobby for coffee or perhaps the Blue Bar?" He glanced at the young lady, recognized her as another regular, always on schedule after curtain call.
"Lounge, by all means." She didn't wait for the others. The doorman's smile for her was sort of sad. She drank too much, like so many of the younger rich these days, he thought, as he returned to the cold night.
"Mr. Berg?" the younger man said. He felt he was losing ground to the larger man, although he'd known Arquetta far longer. This had happened before with her, but he knew how the evening would likely end. Very few days passed when he didn't think about dropping her, and very few days passed when he didn't think about being with her forever.
They entered the Blue Bar, and the black-and-white-striped piano was the first thing in view. For years Contessa had played a solid white baby grand, and before settling full time at The Algonquin she'd been a legend in New Orleans, playing and singing for Caucasian customers who didn't exactly connect with the music but felt it stylish to act as though they did. She would have preferred to play the black clubs, but "white money was the only money talking loud back then," she would say. That was before Mr. Taggler went to Mardi Gras in 1914 and about two one morning ambled down Royal Street into the lounge of The Vieux Carre Hotel and discovered Contessa banging the blues like he'd never heard the blues banged before and like he knew he wouldn't hear again unless he took the lady back to New York. She could not refuse his offer. Years later Contessa admitted just about on a nightly basis near closing time, when she'd had a few with a lingering customer or two and was poring over her problems and theirs as well, how fast she'd accepted the offer, which included a suite on the seventh floor of her—"Heaven sent," as she put it—employer's hotel, The Algonquin. No doubt, the suite was an enticing part of the deal, "but the thirty grand a year wasn't all that damned bad either, honey," she'd say, maybe with a slight slur, depending on the hour.
Once she was established in New York, the story was Ernest Hemingway brought her a zebra hide from one of his safaris and, as was his way, presented it to Contessa the evening A Farewell to Arms hit the bookstores. Then F. Scott Fitzgerald, as was his way where Hemingway was involved (the fate of one-way friendships), bought Contessa a zebra-striped baby grand and presented it on the night of the day he'd signed his contract with Scribner for The Great Gatsby. As the crowd applauded, Maxwell Perkins, Manhattan's star-like editor, mentioned Hemingway wasn't feeling well and might make an appearance later.
From that evening on, the gold bench with zebra-hide cushion and the garish piano were the talk of the café crowd. Joseph Mitchell, pulse of the city, gave the two writers ample praise in The New Yorker, and suddenly the Blue Bar was the only place to be, and although almost too crowded from time to time, there always seemed to be enough room for a couple's intimate conversation—this the charm of the room, even now.
They were seated near the piano, close enough so the spotlight caught half their table. Morris "Moe" Berg had called ahead. Moe didn't live like a second-tier player; he considered himself too popular, apart and above any society assigned role, and although his style depended on his well-known ability to have someone else pay the tab, it was also well-known he was an extravagant tipper and fantastic at keeping a conversation going, especially if he remained the central theme.
Arquetta loved Moe and adored the way he appeared to live on the wind. She also loved her other escort, Carl Thorpe, the shy, young pilot, war hero, and now aspiring poet—but, of course, it wasn't time for him to know.
She listened to Contessa's soft blues, studied her suitors, wondered how long it would be before they'd figure her out. It really was very simple. Bergy was handsome, a graduate of Princeton, a major league baseball player who spoke six languages, quoted Shakespeare applicable to almost any conversation, and even found time to study law between baseball seasons and around an enormous social life, including invitations to estates on the Hudson and out on Long Island. Many women envied Arquetta and thought Moe perfect. Still, as her mother never failed to remind her, "We're different, dear."
There were nights when she felt this difference didn't matter, and she dreamed of being with Moe for a lifetime, far away, where only love, flesh, intelligence, and charm mattered, away from the real world of her father's stolid, unyielding equation for life, where intelligence over emotion equaled a generous trust fund. She knew her father loved her and would always give her great freedom, as long as she abided the parameters of his calculated formula for a full and happy life.
As Moe excused himself from the table, he leaned forward and dropped a ten into Contessa's tip jar, a cut-glass goblet. Arquetta thought she heard Carl say, "It's a wonder he didn't make change." Arquetta smiled a smile that could go either way, as if she hadn't heard what Carl said or that she had.
The smile betrayed no approval or disapproval, a trait her mother had convinced her was important for a young lady from her class to develop. When she'd asked her mother exactly what class that was, Mrs. Willa Baker Wynnton answered, "Well, dear, I'm not sure exactly of the level, but I'm sure there is not one higher." As a matter of course she'd said it, as though looking at a swollen, dark horizon of storm clouds and saying rain wasn't imminent and to proceed with the picnic of life of entitlement.
As a traditional part of her performance, Contessa announced the presence of certain celebrities; certain tips helped her memory—if the tip fell short of her standards, her memory might fail her. So in the Blue Bar after the war, it wasn't considered gauche to drop a large bill in the oversized goblet, especially for younger people on the rise and older people hoping to be remembered by a crowd living only for the moment who, in their collective voice, said to anyone vain enough to listen—terrifying especially to aging artistic types—"What have you done lately?"
Carl Thorpe wasn't impressed by Moe's tip. "I've never seen that done before,"
"Really, Carl? Well, perhaps you'll surprise your recently invented New South aristocracy with the custom upon your return to—where is it down there?" Arquetta pulled a slender golden pen from her purse, wrote a line or two on a cocktail napkin, folded it, and handed it to Carl, at the same time giving him a look, a vague glimmer of a smile transcending their conversation, an expression reminding the nascent poet of the Oscar Wilde line Carl's mother once murmured as she stared through the window into her other world, "Never confuse love and sex. You could ruin both."
And now Carl still didn't know much about sex and even less about love. Other than Arquetta, there had only been the last night in Paris, the night the world celebrated the end of the war, the night he'd followed the woman up to her room for an evening of pleasurable flesh and aromas and soft music, so urgent, so different from his mother`s imagined world of love and sex as one, a safe and comfortable life of compatibility she'd dreamt for herself and now could only compartmentalize within the materialistic, intolerant existence his stepfather had walled them within, away from the rest of the world.
"Where did you go, Carl? I missed you so much there for a moment." Arquetta took a large bill from her purse and folded it inside the napkin. She leaned closer and kissed him lightly, only brushing her lips near his ear, and whispered, "For me?" Carl took the napkin, stared into her eyes, felt their charm and their chains, and somehow rose and walked away to deliver the message and the money. Always the money with Arquetta, always.
When Moe returned from the restroom, he met Carl on the circular stairway, a stairway so narrow the two brushed each other as they passed. Carl couldn't resist the moment. "Sort of crowded here."
"Yes, no doubt, Frenchy, but it's still about competition here in America, don't you think?"
"I was born in America and only went to France to join the Escadrille. I'm not French."
"Right, right, of course," Moe said, his attention drifting. He always appeared to be leaving a conversation. "I see now. So you went to France and fought for the French before we got into the war, but then when we got in it, you came home."
"Not exactly, I was shot d—" But Moe Berg was gone.
In the restroom, the black attendant asked Carl, "Shine, sir? Towel, sir?"
Carl looked at the ten on the very top of a tip tray strategically placed on the gray marble surface of the long vanity. The black man followed his gaze and, handing Carl a fresh towel, said, "Yessir, always tell when Mr. Moe Berg's been here. You know, he plays for the Dodgers. First class, that Mr. Berg. First class."
Carl's smile vanished as he got out a ten and a five. Trying to hide the southern drawl so effective in France but noticeably an albatross in New York City, he said, "Yes, yes, my good man. By all means, a shine is well needed after all that snow. This `Bird' fellow—plays for Brooklyn, you say? Don't believe I've ever heard of him."
The attendant cleared his throat. "It's Berg, sir. But, yes, sir, quick shine coming right up." He appeared to work energetically, but the shoes stayed dull.
Carl stood up and looked down at his shoes. "Tell you what, old timer. I'll try to get a good night's sleep, get up fresh tomorrow, go out and rob a bank, and then come back to see if I have enough for a decent shine."
The man ambled back to a corner, took his time getting settled before starting to fold towels, then said softly as Carl left the room, "Welcome to New York." He paused as he lit a cigarette, and then said as the door closed behind Carl, "Sucker."
Upstairs, Arquetta smiled as Moe returned to the table. She wondered why she continued to lead him on. Her course was set. She rationalized there was plenty of time and also it wouldn't be easy to convince Carl he was destined to spend the rest of his life in New England working for her father in the ship building industry. But if this could not be, he might join her if she decided to spend some time in the South to pursue her muse and the southern literary mystique to become the writer her professors had assured her she was capable. She glanced around the room for Bill Faulkner. Once, she'd gotten his autograph. He was so aloof on the surface, like Carl, her young poet, who needed her for security to free himself for his art, and she would have a husband, as she must for her freedom.
Her father wasn't entirely convinced, as he'd indicated after dinner several days earlier. "I don't know, Arquetta. On paper he looks good, but to be honest, dear, he's got that same look as those writers and artists you used to bring up from the village. And I hate this term, but well, the look of the avant-garde. Of course if you decide he—."
"Well, he is an aspiring poet. Actually it's only a phase, really almost therapy, considering what he must have seen in the war. And to be honest, he has no talent for poetry or any art as far as I can tell, and he only has that year at Harvard. Still, when we look into each other's eyes, I just, well, I—."
"You're so young, dear. Time changes that perspective."
"Even if it's real?"
"It's never real. Not in the long run. Someday you'll—"
"Then what about Morris?"
"You know that would be fine by me. I like him."
"And Mother?"
"You should have studied law, Arquetta. Don't worry, dear. It will all work out for us."
Contessa had the floor. She had a deep, clear speaking voice, but when she sang it went raspy like that of a heavy scotch drinker or smoker. She had been known to have more than a few from time to time but never smoked, not in public anyway. Not that it mattered in her line of work. There wasn't much talk of second-hand smoke or really even any long-range effects of anything. The war had taken its toll, and there was a collective live-for-the moment attitude that boosted the stock market to all-time—dangerous all-time—highs but set the already meager environmental standards and programs and national long-range health efforts back thirty years.
"Dear ladies and all you handsome gentlemen out there I can't quite see yet"—she squinted against the spotlight glare—"but can't wait to meet." There was some applause and a few cheers, especially from male customers, some of them leaning into the glow of each table's electric faux candle flame to illuminate their profiles, hoping Contessa might spot them, single them out, and give them a wolf whistle comparable to the loudest heard for her down along Lexington or on Madison or Fifth. She did this from time to time but usually only for Hemingway, Faulkner, or Max Perkins. This was a sore spot for F. Scott Fitzgerald, but he never knew Hemingway nightly gave Contessa a hundred to play along with the exclusion.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Unpublished Poetsby Bobby Dews Copyright © 2011 by Bobby Dews. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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