Next Thing Was Kansas City

THE young fellow nodded his big bony head, remembering; eager to tell because it was still so great, so new. He leaned across the table, yellowstained fingers circling his tot of rye. “So I said to myself, I’m a newspaperman, I mean what am I doing in this circus? And right then and there, Joe, I decided to quit their lousy magazine. In the middle of the night, sitting in my brand-new office, drinking. Can you imagine? So I had another drink, and then I had an idea. I went into Kinneally’s office and got this filing cabinet — this great jeezly filing cabinet he kept all his genius ideas in — and I hauled it over to the window, hoisted it up on the sill, and boing! Right down into the street.”

Joseph Cullen focused his watering eyes on the young fellow. “Good for you,” he said,

“Six stories down,” the young fellow said. “Ker-ash!” He shook his big bony head, rueful, remembering his proud rebellion, tolerant of his terrible folly. “So then I went back into my own office and finished the bottle. And waited for the cops. After all, even at night, if you throw a steel filing cabinet right into the middle of Manhattan you expect some reaction, don’t you?”

Joe nodded his white, well-brushed head. “Goddam right,” he said. “I remember one time here in Montreal, when —”

“So the cops came up. And next morning we had the drum roll, the tumbrel, the works. Kinneally, he was the big wheel, the executive editor, you see, he was waiting for me when l came in.”

Yes, yes, Joe remembered. Firings, well, he could tell this kid a thing or two, why once the biggest publisher on the West Coast fired him right in the middle of a story, why —

“So he called me into his office, sat me down, looked at me as if I was a human bomb or something. Said: Leo, we’ve got no room for wild men in this organization. You’re good, but nobody’s indispensable here. Now, I feel, personally responsible for you because I was the one brought you down from Canada. But I’ll be goddamed if I’ll take the rap for this crazy stuff. You made a big mistake, Leo, if you thought — Wait a minute, I said. Last night was no mistake. I meant it. Well, he drew back as if I had a gun on me or something. Okay, okay, he said. Forget it. And here, he said. This is for you. Severance.”

The young fellow paused, pursed his lips in doughnut shape and put the rye in like a draught of medicine. His baby-blue eyes opened wide as though he were coming up from under water. “So I looked at the check. It was for one thousand dollars. Can you imagine? One-thousand-bucks.”

“Bro-therr,” Joe said. He doubted it about the thousand bucks, but still, this kid was all right. He had that old-time spirit. Wreck the joint, that was the way. Let them see you didn’t give a damn. Of course, when you were young it was easier to —

“So the next thing you know I was over on Lexington Avenue buying drinks for my fellow wage slaves. What a party — I mean it just went on and on and on. After the first five hours I had a complete blackout. And the next thing, Joe, well the next thing was Kansas City. I woke up in this airport. It was Wednesday morning. I said to the counter clerk, I said, is this Toronto? No, he said. This is Kansas City. But how’d I get here? I said. He said how should he know. Kansas City. I mean, it was just a name to me. I knew nobody there. Insane. I went through my pockets and found a hundred and eighty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents. I mean, can you imagine? That was all was left of that grand. So I went back to the reservations counter and I said, listen, I want to get to Toronto. En-oh-double-you, I said. So I put the money on the counter and here I am. Except that you ask, why here? This isn’t Toronto. Right. Well, I was a boy wonder in Toronto, and you can’t go home again, you know what they say. So when we put down at Chicago I switched reservations and came on to Montreal. Arrived the day before yesterday. Went into your office cold, and met this McAlmon. Right away he put me on rewrite. He’d heard of me, from the old Toronto days.”

Memory welled the talk in Joe’s throat. “Like me,” he said. “Years ago. Woke up one morning on the Pacific Ocean with fifty cents in my pocket. Fifty cents, that’s all was left of six months’ pay.”

He smiled, begging his new friend’s attention. Saw the flicker of boredom in the young fellow’s eyes and signaled to forestall it, holding his hand aloft, four fingers out, thumb tucked in his palm. A tavern waiter came at once, shoes moving like pistons under his long white apron. He laid four glasses of draught beer on the table. The young fellow reached for one.

But in his excitement Joe had forgotten that he was short. The waiter waited. The young fellow, glass halfway to his lips, saw Joe’s uneasy smile.

“Say, could you spot me five until payday, Leo?”

The young fellow lowered his glass. Unwillingly he passed over five.

“Thanks, Leo. Well, this happened during the Depression, when some of the best newspapermen in the country were working as shoe clerks. I got myself a job on a weekly in the British Columbia bush country. Sweated it out there six months, never lifted a drink. Then, one day I collected my pay and headed for Seattle. Met this guy on the bus. He had a bottle of hot wine. You ever try hot wine, Leo?”

Shocked, the young fellow stared at Joe. Hot wine? What was the matter, was he blind or something that he hadn’t noticed, hadn’t recognized this Cullen for what he was?

Rivers of broken blue veins mapped on the thick red skin of nose and cheeks. Joe’s facial tic, irregular, jumping now with the excitement of drinks and boasts. And the things to hide it: the well-brushed white hair, the neat blue suit, the clean shirt and black tie. Careful neatness, mocked by those minute abrasions, by that tiny jumping fold of flesh in Joe’s cheek. God almighty, the young fellow said to himself. Hot wine! Slowly, he shook his head. “No, Joe. I’m a rye and beer man. Strictly.”

“You haven’t lived, then.” Joe’s wet lips parted for a long swallow of the golden beer. “Hot wine. You try it sometime, you’ll see what I mean. Bad for you, I’m not denying that. But an interesting effect. By the time that bus got to Seattle, why —”

The young fellow, no longer listening, turned baby-blue eyes toward the tavern clock; remembered that deskmen had thirty minutes for supper break; counted forty-five minutes now dead as the empty beer glasses on the table. Would you look at this Cullen, for chrisakes? Corned on a few beers, stinking with the sadness of things past. How many times has this lush been fired? Well, not for me, no sir. Let’s get out of here. “Hey, Joe. That desk must be piling up on us. And McAlmon’s on the warpath tonight.”

“McAlmon?” Joe said. “The hell with him. He’s no newspaperman, Leo. Just a teetotal preacher, that’s all.” His four fingers went aloft in signal. A tray of glasses, cruising high above the heads of the customers, pirouetted, and a waiter came. The young fellow looked up, babyblue eyes meaningful. The waiter understood, passed by, his tray held high above Joe’s white, well-brushed head. Joe did not see: his hand remained up, confident, unanswered.

Then the young fellow stood, saying they’d better move along. Forget it. The service was lousy here, he said. Joe stood too, arm-linking his new friend. In a drunken gesture resembling a salute, he slid his brown fedora far over his eyes. “Lead on, MacDuff.”

Outside the tavern, the night wind cut like contempt. Joe stumbled on the step, swayed, turning his jacket collar up. “You know something, Leo?” he said. “The minute you walked into the city room last night I said to Hal Prellis, that guy’s okay. I mean, not like those prissy college boys they hire nowadays, mealymouth little sonsabitches, scared speechless every time McAlmon opens his yap. Why —”

“Sure, sure.” Worried, the young fellow took Joe’s arm, steering him toward the editorial lights which brooded insomniac over that businessdistrict slumber. How the hell was he going to get out of this? Second night on a new job, rolling in late with the office rummy. Perhaps he could let old Joe go in ahead of him, pretend he’d just met him in the elevator or something?

But Joe seemed done. He could not budge the revolving door. The young fellow had to shove him through.

“Thanks, Leo. I owe you five, okay? Won’t forget, okay? Payday. Y’know, Leo, I was just like you at your age. Real hellion. Those were the days, eh, Leo?”

“Sure, sure.”Unobtrusive, the young fellow folded Joe’s jacket collar down. Watched the arrow-shaped elevator indicator move around its semicircle, five-four-three-two-one. Stop. The steel door slid open. The paunchy elevator operator grinned at sight of Joe, who yelled: “Going up!” And they went up, one-two-threefour, up with the arrow until Joe shouted: “Stop!”

“Easy, Joe.” The baby-blue eyes were nervous. “Easy.”

But in the corridor Joe swayed, smiled foolishly, stopped. “Y’know, Leo . . .”

He could not be brought back to work. He needed the washroom, black coffee, a cold wash. And time. But the clock at the entrance to the city room warned: late. And there was a light in McAlmon’s office. Decided, the young fellow moved ahead in the corridor, away from that drunken, garrulous voice, entered the city room at a half run, alone.

Fluorescent lights blinked down on masses of littered paper, on desks like staggered chessmen, on the horseshoe copy table, ringed by bent heads, suspenders, a field of colored shirts. The young fellow, stripping his jacket as he approached, homed to his empty chair, sat in. Empty chair opposite, Joe Cullen’s place. Virtuoso on the typewriter, the young fellow grabbed copy, scanned it, reduced some cub reporting to seventy words. Finished, he ripped the book out, glanced again at Joe’s chair. Still vacant.

Joe, hat now pushed back to halo his white hair, had entered the city room. He stood in the danger area, reading a notice on the board outside McAlmon’s partitioned-off office. Nervous, the young fellow turned again to his work, grabbed a paste pot, scissored copy in a show of industry.

“Cullen?”

McAlmon, terrible-tempered, black jowls aquiver, came out of the doorway marked “Managing Editor.” Went straight to the board. “What are you doing, Cullen? Where were you?”

The question, roared, brought silence as an echo. Typewriters stuttered to a stop, heads lifted cautiously, pencils remained poised over dribbling rolls of wire copy.

“You been drinking, Cullen?”

Joe stood by the board, not looking at McAlmon. He did not speak.

Prellis, in charge of rewrite, spectacles opaque against the light, spoke in hushed undertone as though, by reverence, this quick, brutal authority could be charmed. Cullen had just come back from supper break, he said. Couldn’t have been gone more than twenty minutes.

Then Prellis turned opaque, reproachful lenses toward the young fellow. Were you with him?

The baby-blue eyes were innocent. Me? No.

“He’s been drinking, look at him,” McAlmon said. “You were drinking, Cullen, weren’t you? Last chance. I warned you. didn’t I?”

Everyone awaited the denials, the humiliation. Cullen used to be a wild man, but McAlmon had him licked, hadn’t he? Joe would crawl.

“Well, Cullen? What you got to say for yourself?”

Joe’s hand reached for the wall, gripped the edge of the notice board as he turned to face his tormentor. Deliberately, he yawned.

McAlmon’s jowls quivered as though slapped. “Okay. If that’s the way you want it, you’re fired. Fired, do you hear?”

Again, Joe yawned. McAlmon, the decision made, looked back to the reporters on the floor. Asking approval, knowing in advance it would not be given. A man has to draw the line somewhere. And if Cullen wouldn’t defend himself, well . . . A man has to be hard to be respected. In my place, with a last-chance lush like Cullen, what else can I do?

No one told him. But by their silence, they accepted the verdict. The deskmen eyed the new guy. Who was with Cullen at break? Who let him come in like this?

But the baby-blue eyes studied worn typewriter keys. Not me.

“A’right, Cullen,” McAlmon said. “Go on home. You’re through.”

Head lolling, a dejected Punch, Joe fumbled in his trouser pocket. Took out a dollar bill, inspected it, then raised his right hand above his head, four fingers spread, thumb tucked in his palm. He stared at McAlmon. “Hey, you,” he said. “Waiter. Four more.”

Laughter blew across the city room. Men stirred appreciatively. Old Joe.

“Get out!” McAlmon roared, restoring fear, freezing the laughter. “Get out and don’t come back. Don’t even try.”

A third time, Joe yawned. Then looked around the room, searching for the man he did it for. Found his new friend. Went over. “Service is lousy, kid. You were right. Let’s go.”

He waited, puzzled.

“Hey Kansas City, I’m talkin’ to you. Come on — we’re too good for this teetotal preacher, you and me. What d’you say we wreck the joint?”

He smiled into terrified baby-blue eyes. The Judas smile of love.