The Dick Gibson Show (25 page)

“At least let us drop you,” I said. “I need a cab myself.”

“Very well,” she said.

I wanted to go into the hotel with her but she assured me it wasn’t necessary. “Goodbye, Miss Tabisco, Professor.”

“So long honey,” Miss Tabisco said.

D
ICK
: I hadn’t heard any of this.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: It took longer than I thought to get my car, and Miss Tabisco had an exam that afternoon and had to leave. Incidentally, they
do
charge for storage. Well, anyway, it was almost five o’clock before I got the car business straightened out, and after the kind of day I’d had I was really tired. The idea of going home and eating and having to come back downtown for the program … Well, suddenly I thought of Laverne Luftig registered in her room in her hotel and I was envious. I mean, it had all gone so smoothly for her and so badly for me.
I
was the one who’d been inconvenienced; it was as if
I
was the stranger in town.

I can’t explain this part very well, but the fact that I knew someone who was registered in a hotel downtown made me very nervous, very edgy. Do you understand?

P
EPPER
S
TEEP
: Sure I understand. This is disgusting.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: No, you don’t. I’m talking about
hotels.
You sign the register, but you’re anonymous. This isn’t very clear, but nothing is ever
yours
so much as the room you rent. God, the assumptions a hotel makes about you! All the
towels
they give you. I mean, you’d have to take eight baths a day to use them up. The clean sheets and the Gideon Bible and the whisky mode. The Western Union blanks! As if all one had to do all day was fire off telegrams to people.
Oh, the civilization!
Everyone there—do you realize this?—everyone there will be dining
out
that night! And the bed like a lesson in function—

B
ERNIE
P
ERK
:
(softly)
Jack—

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: No, Bernie, it isn’t what you think. I
registered
in the hotel. I asked the desk clerk where Laverne Luftig was, and I took a room on the floor beneath hers. Later I called her up. “Hello, honey,” I said. “It’s Uncle Jack, sweetheart. How are you?”

“You got me out of the shower,” she said. “I thought you were Ben Meadows.”

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Ben Meadows?

M
EL
S
ON
: He’s a d.j. here in Hartford. The kid was probably after him to play her record.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: “I just called to find out if you’re all settled, Laverne. I’m sorry about the car.”

“It wasn’t your fault. Did you have much trouble?”

“No.”

“How’s Miss Tabisco?”

“She had an exam. She had to leave.” I had just come from the shower myself and was lying in my shorts on top of the bedspread. The air blowing through the air conditioning had a lemony scent. Laverne’s voice on the telephone was lower than Annette’s. “We never did get a chance to speak about the show tonight,” I told her. “I thought we ought to do that.”

“Where are you now?”

“Well, I’m still downtown.”

“Can you come to my room for a drink? Are you near the hotel?”

“Close by.”

M
EL
S
ON
: Hard on.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: “Use their underground garage,” she said.

“I will, Laverne.”

“Give me thirty minutes,” she said, and hung up.

I hate waiting. I have the impatience of a better man. The hour before an appointment is a torment for me. I have no skill for slowing down the shave or drawing out the combing of my hair. At the Modern Language Association conventions the same. I go down to the lobby for newspapers I don’t have the patience to read, or into bars and finish my drink as soon as it’s brought. I never learned to nurse a drink or brood over the salted peanuts. I gulp my food and burn my cigarettes as in a high wind. I get no value from these ceremonies.

After I dressed I
still
had twenty minutes. I sat for two and went up early. Laverne came to the door in towels.

“There’s scotch on the desk,” she said, and disappeared back into the bathroom. “Pour yourself a drink. I’m sorry, but there isn’t any ice.”

When she came out, in exactly the thirty minutes she had asked for, she was wearing a sort of shift, very stylish. Her hands were in her hair, fixing it, and there were hairpins in her mouth. “Meadows called just after you did,” she said. “He said he didn’t have the record, so I sent one over by messenger in a cab. What time is it?”

“Just past seven.”

“He’ll play it in the segment after the 7:30 news. We’ll listen to it here.”

D
ICK
: This story, Jack, is it—?

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Oh, yes. Don’t worry. It’s okay.

I told Laverne pretty much what she might expect on the show that night, and we ordered dinner from room service. She just wanted to go down to the coffee shop and grab a bite; it was for me.
I
wanted to eat off the cart with the big wheels and the white-on-white linen thick as blanket and spoon my fruit from the glass dish in the packed ice.
I
wanted napkin under my chin and the high luxury of sitting in socks and drinking scotch out of a water tumbler.

Laverne put the radio on, turned down low so we could talk while waiting for Meadows to play her song.

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: What did you talk about, Jackiebunch?

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Well, nothing. Doctor. We just talked.

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Just talked.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Well, I guess I told her about my job, Professor Behr-Bleibtreau.

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: You were boasting?

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Well, no, I wouldn’t say I was boasting.

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Was it the way you talk to Annette, to Miss Tabisco?

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Yes, I guess. In a way. Yes.

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: You were boasting to a ten-year-old girl?

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Yes, sir.

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Bragging about Harvard?

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Yes, sir.

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Go on.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Suddenly she hushed me. “Shh,” she said, “the news is finished. He’ll play it after this commercial.” She was very excited, on the edge of her chair, leaning forward, one hand above the table and making rapid motions as if bouncing a ball—you know, the way policemen hold back one line of traffic while signaling the other line to go through—and talking softly to the radio. “Come on, Meadows. Say something nice. Put it on the charts here in Hartford. Get in how I’m only ten years old.”

But Meadows only gave the title and her name.

“The fool’s never
heard
it,” she said. “He’s listening to it for the first time.”

Her voice was good, stronger even than her speaking voice.

“You sing very beautifully, Laverne.”

“Be quiet. I want to hear this passage. The trumpet cuts into the words. I knew I should have made him use the mute.”

We listened to see if Meadows would make any comment after the song was finished, but all he did was give the title again.

Laverne turned off the radio. “The d.j.’s aren’t playing it in the East,” she said. “I think we’re in trouble.”

“It’s a fine tune, Laverne. Did you do the words
and
the music?”

“What? Oh. Yeah.”

“Which do you write first, dear, the lyric or the melody?”

“The lyric, the melody. It doesn’t make any difference.”

“You certainly are an ambitious little girl. I don’t think I ever met anyone like you.”

“What’s wrong with ambition?”

“Nothing, dear.”

“Do they give concerts at your school, Professor? Do they ever bring in singers from the outside?”

“Well, they do, Laverne, but I’m afraid I have no influence with the Concert Committee.”

“What did you think of the song?”

“I enjoyed it very much.”

“Do you think it will be a hit?”

“A scholar doesn’t really have much knowledge about these things. Is that very important, Laverne?”

“Well, they don’t give out gold records for duds, kiddo.”

“Is that what you want out of life, Laverne? A gold record?”

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: You talked about life with a ten-year-old?
Life?

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: Yes, sir.

B
EHR
-B
LEIBTREAU
: Go on.

J
ACK
P
ATTERSON
: “Of course I want a gold record,” Laverne said. “That’s one of the things I want. Most of the others will have to wait. They don’t write leading roles for ten-year-old girls. What can a person like myself expect on Broadway? One of the brats in
Sound of Music? ‘Do
a deer, a female deer,
re
a drop of golden sun.’”

“Why are you in such a hurry, Laverne?”

“‘Cause I’m dying of cancer, kiddo. I’ve got twenty-seven minutes to live.”

“Laverne!”

“Pour yourself another scotch, Professor.”

“Well, thank you very much, Laverne. I think I will. I just wish there were some ice.”

“Take it out of my root beer.”

“Well, that’s very sweet of you, Laverne, but if I do your root beer will be warm.”

“Yeah, well, there’s a broken heart for every light on Broadway.”

“I think I’m getting a little tipsy, Laverne dear.”

“The schmuck didn’t even tell them I’m ten years old.”

“Do you have any brothers and sisters?”

“He didn’t even announce the
label
I’m with.”

“What grade are you in?”

“The Hartford market is one of the biggest in New England. I think I’m a dead duck. What are
you
giggling about?”

“This is the way I talk to the baby-sitter.”