d’, and I asked him what had happened to the old one, Roberto. He said that Roberto had been killed by a bicycle messenger going the wrong way on a one-way street right in front of the club.
I said that was too bad, and he heartily agreed with me.
I didn’t see anybody I knew, which was hardly surprising, since everybody I know is dead. But I made friends in the bar with a man considerably my junior, who was a writer of young adult novels, like Circe Berman. I asked him if he had ever heard of the Polly Madison books and he asked me if I had ever heard of the Atlantic Ocean.
So we had supper together. His wife was out of town lecturing, he said. She was a prominent sexologist.
I asked him as delicately as I could if making love to a woman so sophisticated in sexual techniques was in any way unusually burdensome. He replied, rolling his eyes at the ceiling, that I had certainly hit the nail on the head. “I have to reassure her that I really love her practically
incessantly,”
he said.
I spent an uneventful late evening watching pornographic TV programs in my room at the Algonquin Hotel. I watched and didn’t watch at the very same time.
I planned to catch a train back the next afternoon, but met a fellow East Hamptonite, Floyd Pomerantz, at breakfast. He, too, was headed home later in the day, and offered me a ride in his Cadillac stretch limousine. I accepted with alacrity.
What a satisfactory form of transportation that proved to be! That Cadillac was better than womblike. The Twentieth Century Limited, as I have said, really was womblike, in constant motion, with all sorts of unexplained thumps and bangs outside. But the Cadillac was
coffinlike.
Pomerantz and I got to be
dead
in there. The hell with this baby stuff. It was so cozy, two of us in a single, roomy, gangster-style casket. Everybody should be buried with somebody else, just about anybody else, whenever feasible.
Pomerantz talked some about picking up the pieces of his life and trying to put them back together again. He is Circe Berman’s age, which is forty-three. Three months before, he had been given eleven million dollars to resign as president of a big TV network. “Most of my life still lies ahead of me,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “I guess it does.”
“Do you think there is still time for me to be a painter?” he said.
“Never too late,” I said.
Earlier, I knew, he had asked Paul Slazinger if there was still time for him to become a writer. He thought people might be interested in his side of the story about what happened to him at the network.
Slazinger said afterwards that there ought to be some way to persuade people like Pomerantz, and the Hamptons teem with people like Pomerantz, that they had already extorted more than enough from the economy. He suggested that we build a Money Hall of Fame out here, with busts of the arbitrageurs and hostile-takeover specialists and venture capitalists and investment bankers and golden handshakers and platinum parachutists in niches, with their statistics cut into stone—how many millions they had stolen legally in how short a time.
I asked Slazinger if I deserved to be in the Money Hall of Fame. He thought that over, and concluded that I belonged in some sort of Hall of Fame, but that all my money had come as a result of accidents rather than greed.
“You belong in the Dumb
Luck
Hall of Fame,” he said. He thought it should be built in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, maybe, but then changed his mind. “The Klondike, I think,” he said. “People should have to come by dogsled or on snowshoes if they want to seeRabo Karabekian’s bust in the Dumb Luck Hall of Fame.”
He can’t
stand
it that I inherited a piece of the Cincinnati Bengals, and don’t give a damn. He is an avid football fan.
14
S O F LOYD P OMERANTZ’S chauffeur delivered me to the first flagstone of my doorpath. I clambered out of our fancy casket like Count Dracula, blinded by the setting
I said that was too bad, and he heartily agreed with me.
I didn’t see anybody I knew, which was hardly surprising, since everybody I know is dead. But I made friends in the bar with a man considerably my junior, who was a writer of young adult novels, like Circe Berman. I asked him if he had ever heard of the Polly Madison books and he asked me if I had ever heard of the Atlantic Ocean.
So we had supper together. His wife was out of town lecturing, he said. She was a prominent sexologist.
I asked him as delicately as I could if making love to a woman so sophisticated in sexual techniques was in any way unusually burdensome. He replied, rolling his eyes at the ceiling, that I had certainly hit the nail on the head. “I have to reassure her that I really love her practically
incessantly,”
he said.
I spent an uneventful late evening watching pornographic TV programs in my room at the Algonquin Hotel. I watched and didn’t watch at the very same time.
I planned to catch a train back the next afternoon, but met a fellow East Hamptonite, Floyd Pomerantz, at breakfast. He, too, was headed home later in the day, and offered me a ride in his Cadillac stretch limousine. I accepted with alacrity.
What a satisfactory form of transportation that proved to be! That Cadillac was better than womblike. The Twentieth Century Limited, as I have said, really was womblike, in constant motion, with all sorts of unexplained thumps and bangs outside. But the Cadillac was
coffinlike.
Pomerantz and I got to be
dead
in there. The hell with this baby stuff. It was so cozy, two of us in a single, roomy, gangster-style casket. Everybody should be buried with somebody else, just about anybody else, whenever feasible.
Pomerantz talked some about picking up the pieces of his life and trying to put them back together again. He is Circe Berman’s age, which is forty-three. Three months before, he had been given eleven million dollars to resign as president of a big TV network. “Most of my life still lies ahead of me,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “I guess it does.”
“Do you think there is still time for me to be a painter?” he said.
“Never too late,” I said.
Earlier, I knew, he had asked Paul Slazinger if there was still time for him to become a writer. He thought people might be interested in his side of the story about what happened to him at the network.
Slazinger said afterwards that there ought to be some way to persuade people like Pomerantz, and the Hamptons teem with people like Pomerantz, that they had already extorted more than enough from the economy. He suggested that we build a Money Hall of Fame out here, with busts of the arbitrageurs and hostile-takeover specialists and venture capitalists and investment bankers and golden handshakers and platinum parachutists in niches, with their statistics cut into stone—how many millions they had stolen legally in how short a time.
I asked Slazinger if I deserved to be in the Money Hall of Fame. He thought that over, and concluded that I belonged in some sort of Hall of Fame, but that all my money had come as a result of accidents rather than greed.
“You belong in the Dumb
Luck
Hall of Fame,” he said. He thought it should be built in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, maybe, but then changed his mind. “The Klondike, I think,” he said. “People should have to come by dogsled or on snowshoes if they want to seeRabo Karabekian’s bust in the Dumb Luck Hall of Fame.”
He can’t
stand
it that I inherited a piece of the Cincinnati Bengals, and don’t give a damn. He is an avid football fan.
14
S O F LOYD P OMERANTZ’S chauffeur delivered me to the first flagstone of my doorpath. I clambered out of our fancy casket like Count Dracula, blinded by the setting
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