Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [79]
“Hi, Tim.”
“’lo.”
“I promised Tim that you had a job for him.”
“Doing what?”
“Tim’s been sleeping rough in Central Station, so I’m afraid he’s going to need a week’s salary in advance.”
I put Tim to work running messages and managing our Xerox machine, even as he wiped his nose with a quick swipe of his sleeve. He was gone by the end of the week, along with our receptionist’s handbag, a calculating machine, an IBM typewriter, a bottle of Macallan, and my recently filled humidor.
Another morning Miriam brought in a runaway young girl, who was being wasted as a waitress in a greasy spoon, suffering a boss who, she said, could never pass her in the kitchen without fondling her breasts. “Marylou,” she said, “is willing to take a computer course.”
Next thing I knew, quitting my office at noon, I would run into a flotilla of courier-service motorcycles and bicycles parked outside. Marylou, it turned out, was servicing guys in what had become our office building’s celebrated freight elevator. There were complaints and I had to let her go.
Nowadays I understand Miriam holds open house for Blair’s students in their apartment on Friday evenings, comforting the troubled or those who are far from home. She has seen young women through their abortions and testified on behalf of young men appearing in court on drug-possession charges.
I avoided the offices of Totally Unnecessary Productions this morning and, instead, lingered late in bed. Tuned into “By Special Request,” eyes shut, adrift, and pretended Miriam was tucked under the duvet with me, warming my old bones. I know that voice’s every nuance. There’s something wrong. Playing that tape back at night, I was sure of it. Miriam is troubled. She’s quarrelled on the phone with Kate again. Or, still better, with Blair. Possibly the time has come for the adorable old Panofsky to make his move. “Of course you can come home, my darling. If I start out right now I can be at your front door in Toronto first thing in the morning. No, you mustn’t worry about me on the road. I’ve given up drinking. You’re right. It makes for unfortunate changes in my personality. Yes, I love you too.”
Emboldened by another stiff drink, I actually dialled her number in Toronto, but no sooner did she say hello in that distinctive voice of hers than I thought my heart would break. So I slammed down the receiver. Now you’ve gone and done it, I thought. Blair could be out somewhere hugging trees or pasting Animal Rights stickers on fur-shop windows. Miriam could be home alone, in her negligée, and think that a burglar was checking out her place. Or a heavy breather. I had frightened her. But I didn’t dare call her back to reassure her. Instead, I freshened my drink and sensed that I was now in for one of those old fart’s nights, rewinding the spool of my wasted life, wondering how I got from there to here. From the sweet teenager reading The Waste Land aloud in bed to the misanthropic, ageing purveyor of TV dreck, with only a lost love and pride in his children to sustain him.
BOSWELL: “But is not the fear of death natural to man?”
JOHNSON: “So much so, Sir, that the whole of life is but keeping away thoughts of it.”
My first job, a harbinger of sins against good taste to come, was in vaudeville, or what the odious Terry McIver would surely call “commedia dell’arte, where P —— was initiated in mimeticism.” Put plainly, I was hired to sell ice cream and chocolate bars and peanuts in the Gayety Theatre, patrolling the aisles with my tray. Then Slapsy Maxsy Peel came to MC the show that starred Lili St. Cyr; and I got my first break. “Hey, peckerhead,” said Maxsy, “how would you like to earn two bucks a performance?”
So, whenever Slapsy Maxsy was scheduled to make his first appearance of the show on stage, I would zip up to the balcony and, before he could get a word out, cup my hands to my mouth, and holler, “Hello, shmuck.”
Seemingly startled, Slapsy Maxsy would glare at the balcony and shout back, “Hey, kid, why don’t you put your hands in your pockets and get a grip on life?