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  Little Casino

  COPYRIGHT © 2002 by Gilbert Sorrentino

  AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH © Vivian Ortiz

  COVER AND BOOK DESIGN Linda Strand Koutsky

  COVER PHOTOGRAPH © Painet Stock Photos

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  COFFEE HOUSE PRESS is an independent nonprofit literary publisher supported in part by a grant provided by the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, and in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Significant support was received for this project through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and the Jerome Foundation. Support has also been provided by Athwin Foundation; the Bush Foundation; Buuck Family Foundation; Elmer L. & Eleanor J. Andersen Foundation; Honeywell Foundation; McKnight Foundation; Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation; The St. Paul Companies Foundation, Inc.; the law firm of Schwegman, Lundberg, Woessner & Kluth, P.A.; Marshall Field’s Project Imagine with support from the Target Foundation; Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota; West Group; Woessner-Freeman family Foundation; and many individual donors. To you and our many readers across the country, we send our thanks for your continuing support.

  COFFEE HOUSE PRESS books are available to the trade through our primary distributor, Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, 1045 Westgate Drive, Saint Paul, MN 55114. For personal orders, catalogs, or other information, write to: Coffee House Press, 27 North Fourth Street, Suite 400, Minneapolis, MN 55401. Good books are brewing at coffeehousepress.org

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Sorrentino, Gilbert.

  Little Casino/Gilbert Sorrentino.

  p. cm.

  isbn 1-56689-126-4 (alk. paper)

  isbn 978-1-56689-288-9 (ebook)

  1. Brooklyn (New York,N.Y.) — Fiction.

  2. Autobiographical memory—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3569.07 L58 2002

  813’.54—dc21 2001052943

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  * * *

  Some sections of this book have appeared in Conjunctions, to whose editor the author makes grateful acknowledgment.

  When you look through binoculars, you are holding an instrument of precision and you see very clearly a small cabin which would seem quite indistinct without the binoculars. So you say, “Well, well, it’s just like another one I know, they are almost alike,” and as soon as you say that you no longer see it, in your mind you are comparing it with the one you think came before, while, in fact, it comes after. Truth means binoculars, precision, the thing that really comes first is the binoculars. You should say, “Well, well, these binoculars are almost the cabin.”

  —ROBERT PINGET

  Although we may catalogue a kind of chain mysterious is the force that holds the chain together.

  —JOSEPH CORNELL

  Contents

  The imprint of death

  The chums of 6B4

  On a Studebaker coupe

  The burdens of the Depression

  The very picture of loneliness

  The scow

  A more innocent time

  Lest it be forgotten

  Spring colors

  The fool

  Absolutely beautiful

  The light of bowling alleys

  Imbecile and slave

  In Caldwell

  Costume parties

  The libertine’s hell

  Beauty Parade

  The black force of Eros

  Mechanics of the dream world

  Poor banished children of Eve

  Shoes rain of the cops

  Presidential Greetings

  This is the life

  The salt of the earth

  The kisses of Dolores

  Stars of the silver screen

  An attractive woman

  The dark and iron world

  Shuffle off to Buffalo

  This valley of tears

  The true ciphers at last

  Four soldiers

  Martinis are blue

  Pitie them that weepe

  The Christmas tree

  4th of July

  Gallant improvisation

  Epistolary associates

  Clarity, neatness, and thoroughness

  The tomato episode

  Fats Navarro

  Mysteries of causes and effects

  Never trust a writer

  Little or no respect

  A scherzarade

  This indifferent earth

  A nice surprise

  Small magic

  In a Mellotone

  Helen and Connie

  Lakeside and oceanside

  The color of stars

  Little Casino

  The imprint of death

  PEOPLE ENTER AND THEN INHABIT, HELP-lessly, periods of their lives during which they look as if death has spoken to them, or, even more eerily, as if they themselves are companions to death. It is not usual for others to notice this in daily intercourse, but the look is manifest in photographs taken during these periods.

  He and his wife stand side by side in casual summer clothes, comfortable, and, as they say, contemporary, but in no other way remarkable. Behind them is a cluttered, even messy kitchen table, in the center of which, curiously, a tangerine sits atop a coffee mug, and on the wall behind that is a very poorly done pencil drawing made by a neighbor’s daughter, a senior at the High School of Music and Art. Such infirm productions attest to the inevitable errors of talent selection. In the man’s face we can see, clearly, the imprint of death left there years ago by the deaths of his mother and father, who died less than a year apart. They died badly, as do many people, gasping, fighting, twitching, their staring eyes registering amazement at how their bodies were impatiently closing themselves down, literally getting rid of themselves. Enough! Enough!

  And then they were gone, they passed away. His wife’s face has, uncannily, borrowed the subtly peaked, grayish blandness of his own, and so she, too, looks as if she has to do with the other side.

  But here is another photograph of a middle-aged man, let’s say he’s the wife’s brother, whose eyes, in a placid, contented, almost smug face, have the half-mad, glazed expression which used to be known, among infantrymen, as a thousand-yard stare. Precisely at the spot at which those thousand yards end, or, perhaps, begin, is the more precise word, stands death itself, in mundane disguise, of course, looking like James Stewart in one of his honest-friend roles. The face of the man in the photograph is unsettling, since its peaceful demeanor belies the crazed eyes, which reveal the dark truth. Death, as James Stewart, may have even been approaching when the photograph was taken. Which would go a long way toward explaining the ocular terror.

  And here is a group of eight or nine children in a Brooklyn playground in 1959. There are four boys and two girls and they are smiling and mugging with their gap-toothed mouths, their shirts and shorts soaked from the sprinklers whose gossamer spray can be seen in the background. They are enough to break your heart. One of them, a sweet girl with straight black hair, cut short, and with a tiny Miraculous Medal on a chain around her neck, has her hands crossed on her chest. It is this pose which somehow allows access to the expression beneath the sweetness of her lovely face. The occulted expression is the one that can be seen on prisoners in Auschwitz, although this little girl knows nothing of Auschwitz. He puts the photograph down, he hides the photograph, but has no true idea why. Yet the message has been delivered, oh yes. It is at such times that we are brought to consider how completely strange death is, how remote from us, how foreign, how impenetrable, how unfriendly. In its ineradicable distance from our entire experience, it is inhuman.

  Or: “Death is not an event in l
ife: we do not live to experience death.” (6.4311)

  Click. Now you see us; now you don’t.

  Click.

  Many people cannot understand why certain religions do not allow animals to enter heaven. Well, we know that they have no souls, but many people wonder about that, too. Do they? When the Rapture snatches Joe Bob Joe outen his Ford pickup, it’ll be tough on Mr. Joe to leave Rend and Tear, his “really gentle” Rottweilers, behind.

  “Let him change his religion and truly be saved!” Bob Joe Bob says, perhaps irrelevantly.

  May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen. Which implies, maybe, that if God does not wish, in, of course, selected cases, to be merciful, these faithful departed may not rest in peace.

  Tangerine was, indeed, all they claimed, but she’s been dead for about 50 years. Bob Eberle knew her well, and even, so they say, had an amour with her. He may be dead by now as well.

  Of what is’t fools make such vain keeping?

  Sin their conception, their birth weeping,

  Their life a general mist of error,

  Their death a hideous storm of terror.

  John Webster was, clearly, unfamiliar with the rhetoric of grief counseling.

  I once heard Ray Eberle, Bob’s brother, at the end of his rather undistinguished career, sing in a Brooklyn saloon named Henry’s. His backup band was a disastrous trio, piano, accordion, and drums, but he was game. He bummed a cigarette from me at the bar. I was going to tell him that I’d seen him at the Paramount with Glenn Miller, but what was the point?

  Click.

  The chums of 6B4

  MARIO WORE RUBBERS TO SCHOOL EVERY day, for the uppers of his shoes were cracked and split, and the soles worn all the way through. He could have chosen not to wear rubbers, of course, for this was, even in the thirties, America, and freedom, enough to choke a horse, was in the unfailing ascendant. An unkind youth with a belief in his own superiority once thought to bait him about these rubbers, industrial rubbers, as they surely were, slaughterhouse rubbers, with their unmistakable thick red soles. The rage that he saw within Mario’s tautly held body dissuaded him, however, and warned him away. A lot of the boys in class, knowing of his plans, were disappointed, because they hoped that maybe Mario would, in the parlance of the day, clean the little bastard’s fucking clock. Maybe, God willing, even kill him. Nobody would miss him, least of all the chums of 6B4.

  “I wish that all the pain that _____ is feeling could be visited, in spades,

  on my worst enemy,” is a refreshing phrase. If one can’t wish one’s enemies misery or death, what is the use of sin and redemption?

  Follow the leader: Mario, after his bitter childhood years of poverty, which he shared with his older brother, Mike, followed Mike and Mike’s wife, Connie, to Trenton, NJ, for God knows what reason. They may still live there, doing the Jersey bounce.

  It is generally agreed, or so I understand, that the word “chum” is no longer in general use, save for ironic or parodic affect. It functions, that is, much like the well-made short story.

  “Of which we’ve read, ah, plenty.”

  On a Studebaker coupe

  HE TAKES BUBBSY, WHOM HE HATES, BUT HAS no idea why, up to the roof, for reasons never explained, reasons never even suggested by the quiet, handsome boy, who has lived, more or less, in saloons most of his life. His mother has kept him in food and clothes, despite the fact that she rarely leaves the bar, save to stagger into the ladies’ room with one drunken lothario or another. He pulls Bubbsy, by the hair, to the edge of the roof, and throws him off. Bubbsy lands on a Studebaker coupe, crushing the roof with his head, which cracks open in a mess of blood and brains. He leans over the edge of the roof and lights a cigarette, then carefully drops a burnt match, aiming at the body, but the wind blows the match well off line and out of sight. He thinks that the coupe belongs to that stupid prick who lives over the candy store on the corner. That would be nice.

  Hide and seek: death. He had been in Lincoln Hall. After the death of Bubbsy, he was sent to Coxsackie, then Dannemora. Nobody knew where he went from there, although there were recurring, preposterous rumors that he was acting in the movies, with a different face.

  “They can do fuckin’ anything in Hollywood.”

  Bubbsy liked to torture cats and cruelly tease and hurt little children. Had he lived, there is a good chance that he would have become a hail-fellow-well-met regular sport of a bully, drunk, and dedicated beater of women, like his older brother, Mac, the cop.

  “There are always, sure, a few bad apples in the barrel, but it’s very wrong to condemn and blacken all the other honest, hardworking, law-abiding people who and so forth, and who and so on, and who, day in and day out, do this and do that and do the other thing too.”

  It could happen to you. Hide. And seek.

  The same darkness envelops them all.

  The burdens of the Depression

  HAVE A SPAGHETTI SANGWICH! HAVE A spaghetti sangwich with pieces of cold frankfurter on it! Have a cod-liver oil sandwich, a sammich that’ll put hair on your chest, your head, your hands, and your freezing feet!

  A ketchup sammich? A ketchup-and-mustard sammich? Or how does a cold stringbean sammich strike you, little fella? A canned pineapple sandwich might go well with a big jelly jar chock by Jesus Christ up to the brim with lemon Epco or grape Kool-Aid, as too might a canned-spinach sandwich. Succotash on moldy rye? Mmmm.

  A cottage-cheese-and-cold-boiled-puhtaytuh sangaweech on stale Bond bread, now that is the absolute ticket! You’re talking nutrition? Then, too, sandwiches of sliced green pepper and Crisco will surely refresh after a long day of career discussions. And don’t neglect to pop over to friendly Gallagher’s, sport, for a pitcher of Trommer’s: crisp, light, and tingling! And zesty! It’s the Ivy League beverage of choice, you’ll recall?

  How to feed your family of five, or even six, on a dollar a day, without endangering their health or welfare. Just takes a little g-u-m-p gumption!

  Stay away, oh, stay far hence from those terrible crumb buns, cinnamon buns, coconut buns, crullers, doughnuts, and Danish pastries: they’ll send you to your grave, yowzah.

  Break out the lettuce-and-oleo sammiches, pliz. Look at those smiling children in the sunny kitchen! Look at those cavities and suppurating ears! Bacon and eggs and sausages and toast with butter, again! That will do it every time.

  Afterward, when the coughing lets up a little, these tykes can build a little character selling Liberty at the subway station. “How to Feed Your Growing Family on Fifty Cents a Day” is in the latest issue, wow!

  And for the love of God, who does not cotton to the idle poor, as we all know, please avoid those thick steaks, buttered mashed potatoes, rich sauces, cream-laden desserts, all those deadly foods that will damage the courageous heart, OK?

  Lard on toast might allay certain yearnings, but moderation, moderation.

  How amazing that the poor have always eaten a healthy diet, rich in vegetables, legumes, and whole grains, and low in fat and sugars. They’ve had it puh-retty darn good!

  Here you go—a kohlrabi sangwich on what looks like a fetching pale-green slice of Silvercup! Fulla vitamins Q and T.

  Herbert Hoover died at the age of 137, of course. It is said that he never ate a steak in his life, and that his favorite dinner was farmer cheese on soda crackers with skim milk.

  He did not call the unemployed “the shiftless idle,” and the rumor that attributed this remark to him has been traced to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, described as “Godless un-Cristian [sic] Jews” in Jesus Knows News. It is a cruel rumor, and one that is in very poor taste as well.

  When the burdens of the Depression and such aberrations as the Bonus March could not be lightened by cheery thoughts of Tom Mix, Mr. Hoover often went fly-fishing, called “the sport of dukes.” He wore his Stanford tie.

  “Don’t fence me in!” the doughty President would exultantly cry to the aromatic w
oods. And soon it would be time for a raw onion.

  The very picture of loneliness

  DESOLATE LOT. A BOY OF PERHAPS FOUR, in a tattered and patched hand-me-down windbreaker, a knitted cap on his head against the raw cold of a late March afternoon. He is alone, rooting with a stick in the rubble of broken red and buff bricks, shards of stained porcelain, diseased shingles, tree limbs, all the rubbish and detritus of this failing neighborhood, struggling for life on the thinnest edge of utter decay. It is the very picture of loneliness. The boy’s father, who has gone to look for him as the bitter darkness begins to slide across the low roofs of the neighborhood houses, watches him, heartbrokenly, in silence. He knows, although he has no idea that he knows, that the boy, alone in the sad quiet of this gray, dispirited lot, will be alone always in his life, and that the distant, perplexing world that he is to inhabit is one to which he will be forever strange. This knowledge enters the father with viral efficiency, and years later, he will remember this day, even remember the shape of a brown leaf that lies at his feet, crepitant.

  And years later, after a long period of estrangement and silence, the boy, now a solitary man, will write his father a letter, suggesting that the years of separation and misunderstanding might, possibly, be ended, might, possibly, be “cured,” is his odd word. And the father, tentatively, carefully, replies, with guarded love and exquisite care, but hopelessly. The boy will have no memory of the death of hope that lay at the center of that lot, at the center of that raw afternoon, eerie in thin, failing sunlight and dirty cold. The father will have no way of telling his son of the truth that was thrust upon him, as he watched from the sidewalk before he called to him to come home. The fact of the loveless void of that shattered lot on that unremarkable block in Brooklyn in the fading years of the 1950s will be in and of his letter, and even as he mails it, the letter, full of carefully phrased sentences that demand nothing and expect nothing and promise nothing, that is but a salute, labored yet authentic, will not, he knows, be answered.