New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Television game show hosts -- Fiction
"Set-ups." Lennox displayed his bottle. He lurched playfully up and
down the bar, pouring drinks for his friends into their beer, their
rye, their cognacs, their wine glasses. He was quelled with difficulty.
Accord was restored when he planked fifty dollars down on the bar and
requested demon rum for his playmates.
"What happened to your hand?" someone inquired.
Lennox lifted both hands. The left was encrusted with blood. "My
pitching hand!" he wailed. "My bread'n'butter hand. Don't anybody
rec'nize me? Lefty Jordan, the Big Train?"
Nobody recognized him. He left the Hofbrau in a state of high dudgeon
and staggered down Third Avenue until he reached the Irish bars in the
sixties. He entered The Poplin crying: "Hoch Der Kaiser!" The clients
of The Poplin were equally exuberant and traded drinks with Lennox
generously.
"Lissen," he kept repeating. "Lissen. Lissen. Lissen."
Nobody listened and he was content. Somebody asked him his name.
"Lefty," he said. "Jus' call me Lefty. Om inna shoe business. Make
shoes f'left foot only."
He vacated The Poplin and continued down Third Avenue until he reached
the fag bars in the fifties. He entered The Fantasy and elbowed his
way through the buzzing and the hissing and the sibilation to the bar
where he fell into easy conversation with the languid boys around him.
He informed them that he was Leftwich, a wealthy shoe manufacturer from
Brockton, Mass. They were not impressed. They went on gossiping and
name-dropping and Lennox fancied he heard something familiar.
"Anybody here jus' mention 'Who He?'" he asked.
"Oh _that_ thing," a voice drawled. "The original Rigor Mortis, from
the picture of the same name."
"You're so right so right so right," Lennox agreed. "I watch it up in
Brockton. Come'ome fr'm hard day inna factry. See nothin' but puke.
That show's vomit. That show's.... Alla fault of a lousy stinkin' louse
who writes it. Lousy phoney. Name of Lennox. Anybody here know'm?"
Somebody said they knew him intimately and he was a big queen.
"No-no-no," Lennox said. "He'sa whore. Thinksee writes clever with his
fancy filth from's stinkin' sewer mind. People like me don't think
hesso clever. Plain people like Lefty Leftwich witha feet onna ground.
Want heart and soul and meaning. Y'unnastan? Heart. And. Soul. And.
Meaning ... not garbage outa fancy barrel. Faker sells hisself out f'ra
buck and sells us out too, Y'unnastan?"
No one was paying any attention. Lennox went on raging to the bored
backs. "I know'm. Me. Plain old Lefty Leftwich from Brockton, Mass.
Know allabout'm from way back. He could write from's guts ifee wasn't
so busy pimpin' f'pennies." Lennox began to shake his fists in fury.
"Lousy sewer Lennox! Fancy filthy fraud! Sells hisself downa river soee
can live fancy'n'elegant like a duke or a marquiss. Betrayal. Why don't
somebody honest tell'at corpse where to get off? Why don't someone
kill'm an' make room frhonest writers?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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