Read Online A Book of Great Worth by Dave Margoshes - Free Book Online Page B

sharply at six. When he worked the night shift, as he often did, his landlady packed him a wholesome lunch.
    There was no mouse in the room on Lexington Av enue and, even though the subway ride downtown to East Broadway took almost an hour, my father en joyed living there, far from the sights and smells that meant something different entirely. And his enjoyment was enhanced somewhat when, after several weeks, he ran into Louis Shmelke in the hall outside his room.
    “Shmelke,” my father said, surprised and pleased, still new enough in his surroundings to be lonely, “what brings you here?”
    “I have to go,” Shmelke shrugged, gesturing to wards the toilet at the end of the hall. At the other end, my father could see, a door hung open, the door to the room where, he believed, a travelling salesman with a lingerie firm resided. Or had.
    “So go,” my father said, moving out of the lean man’s way, “but step in on your way back and begin the process again.”
    A minute later, they were lifting their water glasses to the memory of Cleveland. “May that infermal lake from which blows that infermal cold wind overspill its shores and swallow the infermal city up,” Shmelke said, licking his lips with a peculiar slapping sound, like small waves on stones. He swallowed the whisky with a single gulp.
    He was a tall, fleshless man with ears like mushrooms springing out of moist earth, fond of suits a size too large, as if he expected suddenly to put on weight. His lips were the size and colour of the patches on a worn inner tube. He was altogether the most homely man my father had ever known, quite an accomplishment in a world populated by men who worked too hard or kept their heads on too lofty planes to be physically vain.
    “It was my partner, that infermal rascal Goldblatt, who forced me to descend,” Shmelke said in explanation for his presence, both in the city and these modest surroundings. He was a humourless, literal man whose command of his second language was not quite up to his reach.
    “The ticket selling?” my father inquired after a mo ment’s thought. They had not been friends, by any means, but they’d frequented the same café in Cleveland, a gathering spot for poets, newspapermen, actors, artists, musicians and hangers-on, and he’d known of half a dozen different ventures in which Shmelke was involved. “Artists’ representative” was what he liked to call himself; press agent was closer to the truth; ticket agent was, in fact, what he was the last time my father had heard.
    “Let me tell you, that was no sofa on roses, that expedition. It was a service, a struggle of love, something to do for the people, you know what I mean, Morgenstern? You think I could make a dollar on a thing like that?”
    “Would I argue with you?” my father asked. He poured another two fingers of whisky into the dusty glasses.
    “My partner, what a shlimazel, a head for business he had on his shoulders as big as this.” Shmelke held up his thumb, examined it critically then replaced it with his pinky. “As big as this, no bigger.” He gulped down the whisky with a rubbery slap. “We had these tickets, this big order, something really expressive, for opera, Caruso, no, not him, but someone just as infamous, and it brought in a lot of money. A lot? It made me enervated having that much money so close. And was I right?”
    He slapped his narrow forehead with the palm of his hand. “That infermal shmegegge had a chance – a chance, he called it, a hole in the ground would be more like it – to buy up a whole theatre for Gilbert and Sullivan, so he used all the money from the opera tickets. The whole cat and caboodle.”
    “Sounds like a smart move,” my father said naively.
    “A smart move? Sure, like suicide is smart for the widow and the dolphins.” Shmelke glared at my father as if he were in the company of a fool. My father tipped the bottle over the glasses.
    “So there comes the man from the opera