he: A Novel(80)

Oh, Charlie! she mimics. Thank you for calling. Thank you so much for remembering me, your poor little friend from long ago.

Sometimes he and Chaplin meet for dinner at the Masquers, or Musso & Frank, but such occasions are rare. So they speak on the telephone, but only of some bucolic past.

I hate how you sound with him, Vera says. So fucking … obsequious.

He is shocked – not by Vera’s swearing, but that she knows the meaning of the word ‘obsequious’. He wonders if she is having an affair, possibly with a lexicographer.

But she is not correct. He is not merely grateful to hear from Chaplin.

He is honored.

He and Chaplin worked together, traveled together, roomed together, he and this man who is so much greater than the rest. They were close, once. They had a bond, which is why Chaplin calls him to talk of England.

Chaplin remembers him.

To Chaplin, he has meaning.





154


At the Oceana Apartments, he thinks:

But if all this is true, then why, in the telling of his own life story, did Chaplin hurt me so?





155


Roy Randolph, the Dancing Master, backlit by the morning sun, performs a routine before the living-room window. No music plays. Roy Randolph moves to his own melody, the only sound the tap-tap-tapping of his shoes upon the floor.

Roy Randolph is the court jester.

Roy Randolph is the dog sleeping at the foot of the bed.

Roy Randolph is only one false step away from the street.

But Ben Shipman has been feeding him half-recalled tales of Roy Randolph.



Roy Randolph, tried and acquitted on a morals charge.

Roy Randolph, in all his rapacious glory.

Roy Randolph completes his frolic. Vera and Countess Sonia clap, an action that causes Countess Sonia to spill vodka on her breasts. Countess Sonia rubs her right hand over her skin, mixing scent and liquor, before licking the resulting cocktail from her fingertips. Countess Sonia’s tongue is fat and pale; pink-tipped, like a flaccid prick protruding from her mouth.

All this he watches from a chair in a corner of the room.

Come, says Vera, join us.

He shakes his head. He is drinking, and Vera is drinking, and Countess Sonia is drinking, and Roy Randolph is drinking, and it is not yet noon.

He’s no fun, says Roy Randolph. You know he’s only funny when he flickers.

Vera and Countess Sonia laugh, so Roy Randolph turns his jest into an Eddie Cantor pastiche. Roy Randolph rhymes funny with money, and flickers with pictures. Roy Randolph spins and kicks. Roy Randolph capers so hard that sweat beads blister from his brow, milky with alcohol. They sparkle in the sunlight, and Roy Randolph’s eyes are panicked and bright as Ray Randolph dances to save himself from exile.

He does not react.

He empties his glass, and wishes for the sea.





156


He is broke.

Again.

So he is in court.

Again.

He tells the judge that he pays alimony and child support when he can. He pays income taxes for his ex-wives. He keeps Vera and Countess Sonia – and Roy Randolph, the Dancing Master – in liquor and linen. He has $200 left from an endowment at the end of each month, and a little over ten times that amount in his bank account.

He looks out at the courtroom and sees the newspapermen writing down every word. He sees his first wife, Lois, and his second wife, Ruth. He does not see Vera because Vera is in hospital, having crashed her rental car into a tree following a police chase. A UP reporter, in a memorable phrase, describes his wife and ex-wives as ‘triple-threat husband hazards’.

It will be many years before he can smile at this.

He is humiliated. The only consolation is that Judge Lester E. Still, blessed be his name, finds in his favor against Lois, and he does not have to pay her $1,000 a month in child support. But Judge Lester E. Still – blessed, etc. – is not about to let him crawl away without first administering a kick in the pants.

The judge reads the newspapers. The judge hears tales of fights in restaurants, of ambulances called, of sirens in the night. The judge may even know of the Dancing Master who plagues his home, the pale puppet who makes merry for Vera and Countess Sonia and, when all are abed, drifts from room to room, marking the value of the master’s every possession.

The judge tells him that he is a fool.

And he cannot disagree.





157


At the Oceana Apartments, he parses the year with Vera.

He remembers that Vera was a drunk.

He remembers that Vera couldn’t sing.

He remembers that Vera had a son, Bobby, although not by her first husband.

He remembers the peculiar color of Roy Randolph’s hair, which matched the peculiar color of Roy Randolph’s eyebrows, both of a blackness found only in bottles and the souls of certain men.

He remembers that Countess Sonia’s perfume smelled like cat piss.

He remembers that Vera wasn’t very good in bed, although she was soft, like fucking a marshmallow.

He remembers that Vera crashed his car. He remembers that Vera was not insured. He remembers that Vera was not insured for the very good reason that Vera could not drive.

He remembers fleeing the house wearing only his socks and underwear.

He remembers driving the wrong way down Reseda Boulevard, intoxicated and crying, and only Ben Shipman’s bamboozling of the jury keeping him out of jail.