Authors: Stanley Elkin

The Dick Gibson Show (35 page)

“I’ll tell you something else.
You’re the last.
A man’s first woman is special, and so’s his last. He never gets over either of them. And how much time do you think I have left? You saw how I was. I can’t control it. I’ve had it as a man. I’m through. Give me a break, Bea. Don’t call the police. I love you. I’m your friend. Though I’ll let you in on a secret. I’d still be your friend in jail. All I really wanted was to see it. I
still
see it. I’m looking now. No, I’ll be honest:
staring.
I’m staring because I’ve never seen anything like it, and I want to remember it forever. Not that I’ll ever forget. I
never
will. Never.”

I was weeping. Bea had started to dress.

“There are jokes,” I said when I’d regained control, “about men on motorcycles disappearing inside women, or getting lost. There’s this one about a rabbi married to a woman who’s supposed to be really fabulous. One day the cleaning lady comes into the bedroom where the rabbi’s wife is taking a nap. She’s lying on the bedspread, all naked except where she’s covered her genitals with the rabbi’s skullcap, and the maid says, ‘Oh, my God, I knew it would happen one day. The rabbi fell in.’ I used to laugh at stories like that, but I never will again. You’re
so
beautiful.”

“I didn’t scream,” she said, “because it was my fate.”

“What?”

“People find out about me. In high school, in gym, the girls would see me in the shower, and they’d tell their boyfriends. Then the boys would humiliate me. Worse things were done than what you’ve done. We had to leave town. In the new high school I got a note from the doctor so that I could be excused from gym, but they still found out. Maybe someone from my old town knew someone in the new town, maybe the doctor himself said something—I don’t know. Boys would take me out and … want to see. When I graduated I moved away and started all over in a different state. There was a boy … I liked him. One day we made love—and
he
told. It was terrible. I can’t even wear a bathing suit. You know? Then I came to Hartford. And you found out. I didn’t scream because it was my fate. At least you say you love me—”

“Adore you,” I said.

She said something I couldn’t quite hear.

“What was that?”

“I said it’s my burden. Only it carries me. It’s as if I were always on horseback,” she cried, and rushed toward me and embraced me, and I held her like that for two hours, and when I was ready we made love.

During the commercial break Dick discovered that apparently his guests had lost their voices.

After his confession the druggist had slumped in his chair, his hands in his lap, his mouth slack-jawed. His eyes were glazed, stunned by the violation of his character. Dick murmured his name and shook him gently, then turned to the others. “Do you think he’s okay?” he asked. But Jack Patterson and Pepper and Mel were as somnolent as the pharmacist. The cat had their tongues. Behr-Bleibtreau was smiling. “Listen,” Dick told his panel, “you can’t poop out on me. We’ve got almost two hours to go.” Pepper Steep’s eyes were closed. Jack Patterson was catatonic. Bernie was off in some private world. “You’ve got to be able to talk,” he said. “It’s bad radio.” He turned to Mel Son. “Come on, Mel, you’re the professional. Give us some help here. When we go back on the air, get with it.” Mel scowled; he winced and blinked. He
seems
alive, Dick thought, but helpless, like someone gagged by robbers.

Meanwhile the commercial tapes were being played over the loudspeaker in the studio. At this time of night there were only the public service spots: enlistment pitches for the Naval Air Reserve, appeals for Radio Free Europe, “Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires,” “Watch Out for the Other Guy.” Dick loved the ragged shrillness of these messages, their martial musical backgrounds, the sense they gave of a low budget and a moribund style: the sound man’s cellophane fires, more cozy than ominous, the long scream of a car horn gone awry that was, in these pieces, an inevitable signal of an accident proclaiming itself, a fanfare of the accomplished fact. He loved the starched treble of the announcer’s anti-Communist voice, and enjoyed—the discount for broadcasting public-service messages was enormous at this time of the morning—the sense the commercials created that his show was self-sustaining, a public service itself, that the equipment operated for
him,
existed to carry
his
voice out over the mysterious air incredible distances, into receivers (those strange extensions of his mouth), a sign in the night that there was no death.

Ordinarily he had to shush his guests who, suddenly relaxed, chattered nervously during these commercial breaks, annoying to him as if they drowned out the strains of some favorite song. Now he began to panic as the commercials came toward their end. Hurriedly he opened the key on his mike and spoke to his engineer. “Put up another commercial. Give me some time here.” He looked at Behr-Bleibtreau. If his panelists wouldn’t talk he’d be alone with him. He was getting scared.

Then Vendler came in with the sandwiches.

“Vendler,” Dick said, “where’ve you been? We’re all starving.”

From time to time Dick had attempted to put Vendler on the air, but the man wasn’t interested. The popular late-night television shows all had their Max Asners and Mrs. Millers and pet bartenders, even their favorite barbers and regular cab drivers: fans who never missed a night, who out of some inexplicable urgency were always in the studio audience and were never surprised when they were called on. But Dick had never been able to draw this man out. Probably he did not even listen to the show. He was content merely to wait around until Dick mentioned his delicatessen and then would pick up the empty lazy susan from the previous night and depart.

This time Vendler wouldn’t get away so easy. Dick pulled a chair up for Vendler and sat him down in it. Grabbing Bernie’s microphone, he put it in front of the man, gave him one of his own sandwiches and took one himself. Quickly he removed it from the wax paper envelope and took a great bite, pantomiming monumental chewing, holding it up in front of him and waving it about like a man eating on the run. Though he hadn’t said a word, it was as though he was speaking to them with his mouth full. He spun the lazy susan as if it were a roulette wheel and pointed to it with his sandwich hand inviting everyone in the studio to partake. No one made a move except for Jerry, his engineer, who came out of the control booth, grabbed some sandwiches and coffee and rushed back into the booth.

They were on the air.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: [In a split second balancing these factors: he was no longer alone with Behr-Bleibtreau. Vendler was with him. A laconic man but a presence from the outside, one of the best he could have right now. Yes. Vendler from Vendler’s 24-Hour Kosher-Style Delicatessen, with the smell of lox on his fingers, a suggestion of the briny deeps of pickle jars, his hands red from frankfurter dyes, dark bits of pastrami herb on his white shirt, a vaguely kosher-style lint. A man refulgent with the fluorescent light from his massive delicatessen cases, a solid fellow, full as salami casing, smooth as the formica tabletops he rubbed with damp rags. A generous man with cardboard placards for the Sisterhood Lecture Series using up the precious space in his windows, with slotted collection cans all along the top of his white cases, for Leukemia, Heart Fund, obscure agencies in Israel. A man with a bread-slicing machine, with the butt ends of corned beefs and bloody, delicious ropes about roasts, with sliced lox spread out on oily paper like cards in a card trick. Such a bright, glowing guy! And he wouldn’t be tainted by what had gone on that night. Yes! It was Vendler he would use against Behr-Bleibtreau.

But his habit was to leave right after his name was mentioned. So here was Dick’s problem: Should he guarantee the man’s staying on by never mentioning his name, or should he risk it and even throw in the plug? Vendler was in the chair, the mike in front of him. He had never been this close to being on the air before; he might even like it. If Dick was skillful enough, he might even forget they were talking on the radio after the first five minutes. Subjects, subjects, he needed subjects.

Subjects? He had a ready-made one: It was a family joke among those who listened to the program regularly that Dick’s engineer had a voracious appetite. Indeed, it was Jerry—whom the audience never heard—who was the center of the feast. His appetite was the only legend attached to the show, its single myth. (Why was that?) He got fan mail, requests for pictures, recipes, actual cakes, diets, pennies to weigh himself. Dick sometimes read Jerry’s mail over the air or repeated certain comments he had made about the food. The audience pictured the engineer chewing his way through the night as he turned his various dials. It was as good for the program as Jack Benny’s feud with Fred Allen, Phil Harris’s drinking, Don Wilson’s weight, Crosby’s sport shirts, Jessel’s girls. It neither added to nor detracted from the legend that his engineer’s appetite was real, that the man
was
a pig and, further, a
cheap
pig who ate this much every night only because it was free. So there was his subject: Vendler meets Jerry, the King of Breakfast confronts the Emperor of Freeloaders.

All this in that split second between the red illumination of the On the Air sign and Dick’s opening his mouth to speak. And then this:
Because my character is my mind. Bernie’s is his obsession, Pepper’s her generosity. Jack’s his meanness, Jerry’s his freeloader’s appetite. God knows what Behr-Bleibtreau’s is, maybe his mystery, but mine’s my mind, what I think and nothing else.
And this:
He was a character as other people were amoral.]

Vendler is with us, ladies and gentlemen.

[Surprised because he felt no resistance when he reached out to hold the man in place. Then, realizing that it was because he had not yet mentioned the delicatessen, that the one required the other, that he’d clicked only one tumbler in the lock, he gives the plug to get the resistance over with at once.]

Of Vendler’s 24-Hour Kosher-Style Delicatessen.

[And there
was
a shiver, thinner even than the faint, indecisive shift of the body that signals someone’s intention to rise from a table after a meal has been eaten. So Vendler had a character too, or at least habits. But he was still fixed by Dick’s stiff, outstretched arm.]

Just exactly what
is
kosher style, Arthur? Some of our listeners might not know.

A
RTHUR
V
ENDLER
: Chopped liver. Lox—that’s smoked salmon. Kosher pertains to the dietary laws.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: [Not bad, actually, for a man who didn’t know this was going to happen to him. His voice a little loud, though; probably raised because he’s uncertain about the equipment— look at the way he bends down and brings his mouth right up to the microphone. I have no character; I am what I think. And what I say on the radio. What I think and what I say. My
voice.]

A
RTHUR
V
ENDLER
: Very few people keep kosher any more. You have to be a fanatic. Even most rabbis don’t keep kosher except on the high holidays. It’s a style. Kosher style is a style. It’s not actually kosher, just the kind of things people like to eat. I don’t know if I can explain it. Rye bread, herring, smoked white fish. If you’ve ever been to the mountains, they serve it in the mountains. I guess the best way I can put it is New York style. What you get in your New York delicatessens.

D
ICK
G
IBSON
: Well, it’s delicious. Look at Jerry, will you? That’s called Jerry-Style 24-Hour Eating. How would you like a guy like that for a steady customer?

[How’s Behr-Bleibtreau taking all this?]

Wouldn’t
he
run up a tab? Maybe he doesn’t swallow, what do you think?

[’Tain’t funny, McGee. Get into this, Vendler, please. Help me out.]

He eats for a whole town.

[Behr-Bleibtreau is frowning. He shifts in his chair and looks toward the control booth. What is this? What’s he doing? He points his finger at Jerry. Jerry puts down his sandwich. He puts down the cream soda. My God,
he spits out what’s in his mouth!
He pushes the food away from him. There goes
that
subject.] How’s business, Vendler?