I Woke Next to the Corpse by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

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whoever needed a bill collected and wanted to make some sort of point. Jill Merill liked her work, especially the parts in which she got to pistol whip some deadbeat guy.

When Elsa’s turn away indicated dismissal and reluctant acceptance of my presence I went right to the bar, hopping up the embankment and standing next to the middle stool with the textured, khaki brown seat. I was captivated by seeing myself through the corked bottles in the back mirror. My self-absorption was rudely interrupted when I heard a loud; “What can I get ya, old pal?” My first though was that the greeting sounded a bit overdone. My second was that the bartender looked something like Dooley (Sam) Wilson, a dinge from the dark, shanty town fringes of my old neighborhood.

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I semi-feigned excitement, semi as I really didn’t know or care about Sam much countered by my wish to appear to have at least one “friend” at this party, when I said; “My main man! Didn’t expect to see you here.”

He aped Benny’s Rochester when he gutturally replied hoarsely;

“Yassuh. Ah be’s doin’ dese pry-vet party gigs foe a wal now.

But bizniz ain’t be wat it use ta beez since dem repeal dat Probition.” Perhaps nervously, he used a gray and possibly dirty rag to wipe the counter in front of us, which needed no wiping.

I recalled that the last time I had seen Sam was a few years back when he was walking back home humming some happy sounding ditty, flush after a prosperity inducing card game. “Both mother and daughter workin’ for the Yankee dollar.” I told him some sad ass story about getting stiffed by some con countess with hot gams, and flashed the heater I was packing, before I hit him up for a “loan” of a few C-notes. Before I was able to let that little old lowdown bother me in any way, I redirected my focus back to the elevated and fascinating mirror image of me and the tops of the noodles now piling into Elsa’s playroom. I said;

“Can you get me a double Jack Daniels and soda.”

Sam answered; “I’ll do you one better than that. How’s about a special double rum and Coca Cola?”

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Sam’s forehead seemed to be perspiring more than the lukewarm temperature level dictated. I figured that it was caused by the heavy uniform he was required to wear; a black leather apron with pockets and a matching vest under a black Borsalino which had the word “BARTENDER” on a card entrenched in the band. I refrained from shrugging a “Booze is booze” disinterest in the liquor details. The fact that it would be a double sufficed. I said; “Jake. Set me up, Sam,” lousy with the awareness of the double meaning which might be construed. For some unexplainable reason I had developed a mild case of the heebie-jeebies, and didn’t relish the thought of being cornered into sharing them with the grinning, possible provider.

Sam filled a high ball glass with ice while he squeezed both halves of a previously sliced lemon into the chilling freeze, putting half of one drained carcass on the glass top edge and pushed his concoction toward me with the “gusto” endemic to bartenders wanting of other prospects. He finished the drink off with its namesakes. “Drink up, my friend,” he said with a straight face.

Having now suffered through most of the cordial, business party obligatories, I thanked him and after an attempt to drop a silver tip was waived off with a head shake and a waving of arms, without having left a tip, I took the glass back to a spot

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on the edge of the rug which had an empty Davenport with a window-on-the-Hudson view to its right. Wanting to quickly achieve the right mood, I abandoned my initial plan to stuff my face with the edibles, and wolfed down my rum and Coca Cola, my eyes shifting between the river and the newly arrived, some still wearing their military dress uniforms with unremoved Midway caps, as if the war was still going on. With a trifle of unexpected ambulatory difficulty, I sauntered back to the bar for another, my noodle feeling a pleasant float and my legs coping.

At the time I recalled how I figured that this whole thing was just some sort of pain-in-the-ass obligation Tony (Toro) Calabrese had incurred through having been made by Genovanoria while under the Anasthesia umbrella. No more, no less. For him it would have been best for Anasthesia be out of the way, so that he might step right into his place, though that thought was one best kept under the lid. Be that as it may, maybe Toro could compel me to be here, but he couldn’t force me to joyfully socialize.

Sam seemed Christopher Columbused to see me, which also surprised me. I said; “Hi-de-ho. I’m looking to get smashed quick. Can you get me another double rum and Coca Cola. I hardly tasted that one.”

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Sporting eyebrows which were aiming to reach the ceiling, Sam said; “And a hi-de-ho right back at ya. Yassuh. You the boss.”

“And put some rum in it this time. Coke is for junior high.”

Sam grimaced the way one does upon hearing a bad joke and said;

“Okay, you ask for it.” He filled another high ball glass with ice, this time only half way. He cut a slice from the quarter lemon he had under the counter and put it in the glass. Sam then made a point of showing me that he finished off his concoction with half rum and half Coca Cola. “Drink up, my friend,” he again said before turning away from me toward another patron who with shaking hands of an early stage detox escapee seemed anxious to be served.

I ambled back to my empty perimeter Davenport with a window-on-the-Hudson view to its right. The place was filling up, but I guess that the Davenport location was too remote from the party center to attract any attention other than mine.

Elsa Genovanoria Bargnesi Anasthesia wanted to relieve some of her nervousness over Gottinito’s lack of cooperation if not out and out defiance by having this “party” at her place in Jersey City’s “Hightower.” I would surmise just a bit later that in fact it was more a mathematical business than it was a party business, set up to make an estimate of how many were on her

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side, and by default how many were on Albert’s and/or Gottinito’s. Machiavellian considerations obscured any definitive lineups. She tried to cheer up some of the somber set, and “cheerleading” baton in hand, encouraged them to dig the jive and cut a rug, putting some early forties vinyl “Swing”

on the audio system, the reverberations of the surround sound speakers making conversation somewhere between difficult and impossible. Elsa started with the Andrews Sisters and Glenn Miller’s version of “Begin the Beguine.”

I Woke Next to the Corpse