rolled his eyes. Meanwhile, right away, he busied himself driving his limousine into the city (he had discovered a lucrative ploy of waiting outside the swank Four Seasons restaurant and grabbing big spenders who emerged after dinner and required a semiplush lift to destinations various) and sometimes he stuck his head into this unique kind of nightclub called The Improvisation (just to see what it was like) where people went onstage and got no pay and started breaking into show business (singers and comedians mostly; six years earlier, he had walked in and offered to do his birthday routine and was chased off before he could display his talent and told to come back once he had reached legal age) and he also worked again delivering for Grady and also did a little cab driving around Great Neck, so he tucked away money throughout June because he had big plans. He had an uncle in Hollywood who wasn’t a blood uncle but was best friends with Daddy’s brother Jackie—Uncle Jackie was his only real uncle—and so Sam Denoff, who grew up five doors down from the Kaufmans in Brooklyn and went on to become a tremendously successful comedy writer, had long been known around the family as Uncle Sammy. Among many great jobs in his wonderful career, Uncle Sammy wrote for Steve Allen’s program in the early sixties—even back then Andy would call and ask him questions galore (who was this José Jimenez?)—and then, with his partner Bill Persky, he wrote some of the most famous episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show and, by this time, all the great comedians knew exactly who Uncle Sammy was. Anyway, Andy had decided that this was the summer he would go see what Hollywood was all about and he would go stay with Uncle Sammy and also with Uncle Sammy’s mother, Aunt Esther, who was best friends with Grandma Lillie and then also there was Gregg Sutton, who now lived in Los Angeles and attended UCLA and was trying to get started in the music business—so there were plenty of places to sleep. He would go west for several weeks starting in July and this was the plan because, at the very end of July, Elvis Presley—who hadn’t really performed any live concerts since the 1950s—would open a monthlong engagement, two shows a night, at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada—which was not very far from Los Angeles (a mere bus ride or easy hitchhike, he figured)—and the penultimate plan, of course, was to go find Elvis and to show Elvis the novel he wrote about him and there really was no sense in trying to deter him from this goal because it would happen because it had to happen.
Gloria called him not long before he left. Now in her eighth month—her stomach bulge still remarkably small thus fairly imperceptible beneath billowy frocks—she knew that she would give birth to this child whose prenatal existence was yet unknown to everyone but her. (She took her diploma onstage at graduation, perfectly concealed beneath ceremonial robes.) She had no notion or desire to have him marry her, knew he could be no kind of responsible husband and father, was unsure that even she could be a care-giving mother, but her belief in God and in life was such that she would have to bring the baby to term and face the consequences. She realized, however, that if there was one person she should tell, it was him. “It was nighttime. He came over to my house and we walked over to the park. We were sitting on the swings and nobody else was there. I said, ‘I have to tell you this. I’m pregnant. I don’t know what else to say.’ His eyes got wide and he looked at me and then he said. ‘What are we going to do?’”
Tears came as they will in futility. It was, of course, unbelievable as certain momentous true things tend to be. He kissed her and held her and she said that it was good that he was going to California. She said, “Well, I’m glad you’re going away because you shouldn’t be here. My father will kill you when this comes out.” Her parents had always liked him—they were always charmed and amused by his crazy extrapolations, even brought him along on family trips to the Jersey Shore—but