4

JAKE WAS WAKENED BY THE PHONE BEFORE NINE THE next morning.

“So, shmock, your big friend finally gets a play on in London, why don’t you direct it?”

“Who in the hell is this?”

“Can you use a smoked brisket? Direct from Levitt’s.”

“Duddy, what are you doing in London?”

“Launching a star. I’ve got to speak to you.”

“All right, then. What are you doing right now?”

“Masturbating. And you?”

Within the hour, Duddy was at Jake’s flat insisting that he read the play he had brought with him – read it immediately – before they talk – and Jake’s protests were unavailing. Grudgingly, he retired to his bedroom and when he emerged, having skimmed through the play, Duddy leaped up from the sofa. “So, big expert, what do you think?”

“I hope you’re not putting any money into it. It’s a disaster.”

“Atta boy. I’ll buy that dream,” Duddy said, and then he unburdened himself.

He and Marlene Tyler, née Malke Tannenbaum, showstopper of the Mount Carmel Temple’s production of My Fair Zeyda, and occasionally seen on CBC-TV, were wed, or as the rabbi put it, joined hands for nuptial flight, within two months of their first meeting. Something of a show biz celebrity by this time, often seen around Toronto with local lovelies, Duddy was interviewed by the Telegram. “When it comes to wedlock,” he said, “there was never any doubt in my mind that I would marry one of our own brethren. I’ve seen too many mixed marriages. It just can’t work.” And Marlene said, “It may sound silly, but we won’t have milk after meat in our house for hygienic reasons germane to our faith.”

The house Duddy built in Forest Hill, the letter K woven into the aluminum storm door, antique coach lamps riding either side, double garage doors electronically controlled, was sumptuously furnished for Marlene Tyler, the girl of his dreams, pink and white, like a nursery. But he had assumed that after their marriage, she would give up stage and television, as she was only an adequate performer and could see for herself that they were rich and there was no need. After the lonely years of struggle and bachelorhood, gulping meals in restaurants and sleeping with shiksas, he had yearned for home-cooked meals, an orderly home life, and screwing on demand. “Like on drippy Saturday afternoons after you come home loaded from a bar mitzvah kiddush. Or like on Saturday night after the hockey game and there’s only Juliette on TV. I even had a TV set put in the bedroom with remote control, so that we could watch from the bed and get in the mood before they picked the three stars. Foreplay, that’s the word I want.”

Duddy had anticipated nights on the town together, marvelous dinner parties, and, in the fullness of time, children. A son. “After all, what’s the struggle for? It’s a hard world, you know, everybody in business is rotten to the core.” Somebody who would not know his early hardships, but would have a first-class education. The Harvard Business School. And ease the pressure on him at Dudley Kane Enterprises, because who could you trust if not your own? Nobody. “But instead, damn it, I was fool enough, for a wedding gift, to buy the Toronto rights on an off-Broadway musical. I backed the production on the condition that Marlene would star in it. Well, you know she wasn’t absolutely awful. Some reviewers liked her. And next thing I know she’s beginning to get work here and there. TV variety shows, theater reviews, dances. And one, two, three, I’m a bachelor again. Only worse. Dinner at home? Sure, why not? The maid defrosts a TV dinner for me in the oven. Or I eat out and spend the night playing poker with pals. And then what? Me, I’m too tired to stand. I drive down to the theater or TV studios to pick her up. She’s standing outside in her furs, giggling with the rest of the cast. Most of them are fags, all right, but the others? Who knows what they do in the dressing rooms? You haven’t met Marlene yet. Oy. For a Jewish girl she likes it, let me tell you. Now I’m a man of some sexual experience, you know. Not to brag, I’m well-hung. It’s a big one. Masturbating helps, can you beat that? I mean, remember on St. Urbain we were told it would give us pimples or stunt growth? Bullshit. Scientifically speaking, what’s a cock? Tissue and veins. You pull it, it stretches. You don’t use it, it shrivels. Where was I? Oh, I’ve had a hundred and ninety-two girls, not counting Marlene, and more than one has pleaded for me to stop. Enough, Kravitz, you insatiable monster. Big Dick, one of the girls used to call me. Nice, huh? I liked that. Big Dick Kravitz. The girls tell me I’m a very virile guy and I don’t come quick as a sneeze either, like lots of shmecks today. Or need to be spanked, no shit, you’d be shocked what some goyim go in for. Those girls are expensive but an education, the things they can tell you. Would you believe that in Toronto, Ontario, there is a genius of a broker sitting on Bay Street who forks out a hundred dollars every Friday night to have a girl stand on him in her high heels, that’s all she’s wearing, and pee all over him? Goddammit, Jake, that bastard is one broker in a thousand, he’s one of the greats. I’d get into high heels and piss on him for nothing every day and twice on Saturday if only he’d handle my portfolio. Anyway, in Marlene I met my match. She can take it and come back for more, pumping away for dear life. So what goes on there at rehearsal, they’re always grabbing each other in those dance numbers, hands everywhere, and everybody in tights and getting worked up? She’s a good Jewish girl, it’s true, but the way I look at it they’re only human. So I pick her up at midnight, I’m pooped, let me tell you, and I have to be at the office at eight thirty or they’ll steal me blind. And she, she’s rarin’ to go. Let’s have a drink at the Celebrity Club, don’t be an old square, she says to me, and all the fags trail along with us, giggling like high school girls. And who pays each time? Daddy Warbucks, you can count on it. They’re all squealing with laughter at jokes I don’t get, I’m half asleep in my chair, and when we finally get home, she wants to eat. Who can wake up the maid? She’d leave us. So me, me, I make her scrambled eggs. I’m sleepwalking and what does she say, thank you, darling? No. She says you never talk to me, you sit there like a lump. Yawning in my face. It’s two o’clock, I say, I’m all talked out, what do you want from me? You can sleep in until noon. Me, I’m out at eight. And quiet. I mustn’t wake her, poor thing.”

So, Duddy went on to explain, he had made a deal with Marlene. He agreed to bring her to London, where he had some business to transact in any case, and try to get the play produced. He would let her do it, with the proviso that if it failed she would renounce the theater and have a child. “So,” Duddy asked, “do you think anybody would be crazy enough to put it on here?”

“No. In Toronto, maybe. Who wrote it, incidentally?”

The author’s name had been xxx’d over on the title page.

“Doug Fraser.”

“Oh, my God, I should have known as much.”

“Geez, I didn’t realize the time,” Duddy said, leaping up. “Would you have dinner with us tonight. I promised Marlene …”

“Not tonight. I’m busy. Tomorrow, if you like.”

“Done. Oh, one thing. If Marlene asks, we had lunch together today. Dig?”

“Look here, Big Dick, I thought you were in love with her.”

“Sure I am. But she’s bound to be unfaithful to me sooner or later. It’s in the cards. Why should I be the one to look like a fool? This way I get my licks in first. Tomorrow at seven. Right?”

Plump, bejeweled Marlene Tyler, resplendent in a dress of glittering blue sequins, her massive helmet of spun hair bleached blond, false eyelashes heavy and flickering, a beauty patch dabbed on her chin, a gold Star of David plunging between her squeezed bosoms to fend off the evil eye, floated across the lobby of the Dorchester to join Duddy and Jake. “You know where I trod this afternoon,” she said. “I trod where Dickens trod. You’re so lucky to live here, Jake. It reeks with atmosphere.”

At dinner, Duddy started to tell Jake how he had missed the Hersh social event of the year, his Cousin Irwin’s bar mitzvah. “Your Uncle Abe spent enough money on it to float a battleship. He adores the kid. He thinks he’s a genius.”

But Marlene could not be diverted from talk of the play. “Do you think we’ll have trouble finding backers here?” she asked.

“Why doesn’t your rich husband put up the nut?”

“How would it look?” Duddy demanded, glaring at Jake. “I wish the play every success, but if it was only put on because of my money, we could become a laughing stock. Like Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies.”

Eventually Marlene sailed off to the ladies’ room.

“Duddy, why are you leading her on? She loves you.”

“What are you talking, she loves me?” he charged, exasperated. “Who in the hell could love Duddy Kravitz?”