Changing the Past by Thomas Berger Page A

smokers.)
    â€œMaybe if this works out,” he asked Mr. Charles, “you would—”
    â€œI don’t like being hustled for money,” the manager said, staring with lusterless eyes. “It shows a lack of respect.”
    Jack continued to grow as an audience favorite throughout the subsequent months, though in a place the commercial purpose of which was to create drunks, troublemakers would appear from time to time, usually harmless hecklers whom he found it easy to demolish (“Hey, when I come where you work, do I bother you? Do I kick the toilet-brush outa your hand?’ but infrenuently someone would pose a genuine menace. Once a man hurled a glass at the stage, and another time a husky crewcut fellow in a sailor’s uniform stood up and shouted in a drunken Southern voice that he would whip Jack’s ass for not making him laugh even once. Though fearing no man’s verbal assault, Jack was physically a total coward, and he would have been seriously upset on such occasions had not the bouncers introduced by Mr. Charles not soon materialized and escorted the offenders off the premises, after having in both cases done something discreet and effective to bring about a violent bending at the waist and the immediate disappearance of all aggressive display.
    Jack had the sense never again to bring up the subject of money with Mr. Charles, whom even Marie was scared to cross, whereas she had taken liberties with Vince, faggot that he was, and had been wont to skim from the tips she was supposed to split with the club. She admitted she would never try as much with Mr. Charles. “They burned a girl’s nipple up in Jersey for doin’ that,” said she, in an almost inaudible undertone, for she insisted that all areas of the club were wired. “They’re mean, Jackie, real mean. You oughta get out of this business and do something clean like join the army.”
    But the fact remained that Jack was in his element. He saw Mr. Charles & Co. as his protectors and, doing what he enjoyed, in those early days he did not see money as the supreme good. Anyway, after he had proved himself for a couple of months, Mr. Charles called him in and said, “Move outa that fleabag room of yours, Jackie. It don’t make the right impression for one of the featured performers at the Coronado Club. Get over the Mountford Hotel, they’ll fix you up. You can afford it: you’re making fifty a week.”
    This seemed a fortune to Jackie, who was now called by his stage name and not Kid. The latest posters mounted on either side of the main doors to the club showed an elaborately retouched life-sized photograph of a showgirl in tassled bra and sequined G-string and identified as “fresh from the Follies Berger in Gay Paree, the glamorous MARIE BONJOUR, heading a bevy of exotic, erotic beauties for your delectation.” Diagonaled across a lower corner of the poster on the right ran a yellow band on which was printed: “Fresh from the Great White Way, the sidesplitting comic JACKIE KELLOG!”
    But after six-eight months it had become clear to Jackie that he could never become a headliner at such a club, which was essentially a whorehouse with added attractions. However, he lacked the nerve to speak of his ambitions to Mr. Charles, who might well find him ungrateful. But once again the heavenly powers came to his aid without being asked. Mr. Charles called him in.
    â€œHere’s how it goes, Jackie. Me and my associates are wrapping it up here. But I got a soft spot in my heart for you, maybe because it was me gave you your start and you’re like a son to me. We got some interests in Havana, a lot nicer than this shithole which I don’t mind telling you we just kept open for sentimental reasons, you know? You can come along over to Cuba, or I’ll give ya a good send-off for someplace else, your choice.”
    Someplace else turned out to be Atlantic City, and