Read Online Funnymen by Ted Heller - Free Book Online Page A

a few years but I'd like to have sex with her right now.” So I was fired, but whether it was 'cause I wasn't funny or 'cause I broke a lot of dishes, I don't remember.
    All I know is this: Marvin—he ran dice games up there too—got a girl in trouble. A seventeen-year-old, the daughter of a rich family staying at Heine's. I make a couple of calls to New York and we get this girl taken care of. I saved my brother's neck.
    â€œI owe you one,” Marvin told me as I was getting on the bus to go back to New York after I was fired.
    â€œYou sure do,” I said to him. “Big time. And I ain't forgetting it.”
    Slow dissolve. Manhattan. I start working at the [music] store, sweeping up, doing inventory, and occasionally stealing a few centavos from the cash register. Well, I might not have been the brightest stripling on the Great White Way but I knew I didn't want to work in that crummy store the rest of my life. I wanted out. So I turned on that irresistible, infectious Latchkey charm and wheedled my way into the hearts and minds of some of these Broadway big shots. Irving Berlin. I met Irving Berlin a few times.A doll. I hit him up for three bucks once and he gave it to me and said, “Kid, here. I don't wanna see you again.” So I go back the next day and asked for four. Didn't get it. Gershwin? Cohan? The Schuberts? Jerry Kern? I met 'em all. Larry [Lorenz] Hart? Great lyricist. Lousy tipper. Cole Porter once was signing something for me at the Waldorf Towers and with the other hand he tried to put his hand on my fanny—I shooed it away like you would a butterfly.
    My old man, he fired me from the store. There was a minor discrepancy problem with the inventory. And I was the fall guy and rightly so.
    So now it's time to take advantage of some of my contacts. Murray Katz, who years later was Executive VP in Charge of Doing Very Little at Worldwide American, takes me under his somewhat foul-smelling wing and before you know it, I'm twenty years old and I'm the road manager of the Floyd Lomax Orchestra.
    If I don't take that Lomax job then I don't manage Fountain and Bliss. Kismet again.
    Floyd says to me on my very first day on the job: “Latch, this job is about reeds, reefers, and roast beef sandwiches.” Had he told me I'd be reaming out spit valves too, I might not have taken the job. That and running girls in and out of hotels. Well, to tell you truthfully, he did mention the latter and that's why I leapt at the opportunity.
    [Looking at photograph of the Floyd Lomax Orchestra, taken at the Luxor Ballroom, White Plains, New York, 1938.] Okay, let's start here. This pianist . . . look real close . . . that's Larry and Stu Morrell, the Siamese twin pianists. Larry was actually the real musician of the two; Stu just played along with their left hand. He was a real highbrow, read tomes the size of train cars. Their deal was, Larry would be in the band for two years and then Stu would teach philosophy for two years while Larry hung on. I once said to him, “You know, you're the only sideman who has a sideman.” Yeah, it was some outfit.
    This fellow is Mr. Harry Bacon, he blew alto sax for us. Does he look strange? A little . . . different? No? Well, nobody else thought so either. But one day it turns out that Mister Harry Bacon is actually Miss Harriet Bacon. Nobody ever knew! For years that dyke traveled around with us, nobody knew. She'd pal around with us, smoke cigars, and go to the track and chase tail just like the rest of the boys. And she was married too! Figure that out. Had a wife out on the island, in Bay Shore. We were all completely fooled. It all came out one day when Roy Lindell, one of our horn men and a big bowl of fruit salad, had a few too many one night in Baltimore and he came on to Harry. They started wrestling and roughhousing and the guys are standing around in a circle, cheering them on—this is in a parking lot, I think it was at the old