Dean and Me_ A Love Story - Jerry Lewis [9]
Now that things had turned serious, I had to send Patti and Gary back to Newark. I had a tear in my eye as I put my wife and baby on the bus. . . .
I was waiting at the terminal on Washington Street, downtown Atlantic City, and then I saw the bus. As it pulled into the inner drive, I rushed over and watched the passengers unload. First a lady, then a kid, then another lady . . . and there he was!
“Hey, Dean! Over here!” I called. I was standing by a bench with my foot resting nonchalantly on the seat. Dean looked and smiled, because (it occurred to me later on) at that moment he remembered the milk shakes I always drank. . . . When I’d first called him about the gig, there had been a bad moment on the phone when he thought I was Jerry Lester (Buddy Lester’s brother, and, like Buddy, another excellent comic).
Now he knew for sure it was Jerry Lewis.
Still growing at nineteen, but with a pompadour that added another six inches, easy, thanks to about three and a half pounds of orange pomade . . . and the flies liked settling in that pomade! My pants were so pegged that they choked the blood flow to my ankles, and I was wearing my Irvington High School sweater—all wool and a little hot for Atlantic City in July at three in the afternoon. The truth was, I had no clothes to speak of, just my blue stage suit that already had a mirror shine on the ass from too much pressing. Until your suit shone in the back, you were not quite a veteran.
I went to help Dean with his bag, grabbing it in my right hand— but then Dean extended his hand to shake, so I had to switch hands . . . except that as I switched, he went for the left hand with his left, banging into the bag. He smiled and said, “Oh, we’re gonna be all right.” I proceeded toward our transportation (Skinny had lent me the house car, a 1945 Chrysler station wagon with wood on the doors), and Dean stopped.
“Hold on, pally, Poppa’s got another little chestnut coming.”
And he strolled over to the bus driver, who was taking luggage out of the bus’s belly, and waited till the driver handed him his golf clubs. Dean whipped out a buck and handed it to the driver. Wow! Was he cool! A buck! I shlepped his bags to the back of the wagon and put them in.
In the car, Dean was quite talkative. “When did you open here?” he asked. “What’s the joint like? Any broads? And what time is rehearsal? And where do I lay my curly head?”
But here we were. I jumped out of the car, got his bag and golf clubs, and started for the lobby. Dean looked skeptically at the entrance awning, which read, “Princess Hotel and Spa.”
The Princess was near the beach, where everything was damp. After one night of hanging in a closet at this (un-air-conditioned) palace, your clothes looked like someone had sat in them during a Greyhound bus ride from Fresno to Hartford. They didn’t have hot and cold running chambermaids, you did the bed yourself. Every other day, you found linens outside your door. I think they felt it was costly if they knocked. The bathroom (down the hall) was a delight. You only prayed that all your normal bodily functions would lock up until you checked out of this facility.
Dean looked at the hotel lobby, then at me.
“Is this the best we can do?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “We can do better at the Ritz-Carlton, but their suites run a little more than the twelve dollars a night we’ll be paying here.”
Resigned to our surroundings, we decided to save a little money by splitting the tab. “Do you have anything in a double for us?” I asked the desk clerk (the same man selling cotton candy outside the hotel lobby).
“Yeah, about thirty-five rooms,” he answered. “Take your pick. But the twelve-dollar price is only from the eighth floor up.”
“How many floors are there?” Dean asked.
“Eight,” the clerk said.
“We’ll take it,” Dean said. “Can someone carry our bags up?”
The desk clerk looked at me and said, “Sure, him.”
After walking up the eight flights (the elevator was broken), I was perspiring pretty good into my wool sweater. I reached