Chapter Five. The Count of Central Avenue

As was their custom, Ed and Johnny followed their pitch to Jack Warner with three days of drinking and despair. On the fourth morning they realized they’d run out of both Spam and gin, and so a trip to the grocer’s was in order. Just that little errand was enough to reawaken them to the charms of life. Johnny picked up a Racing Form and Ed the latest issue of Titter, which they read while having their shoes shined at the Greyhound station. Afterward, they agreed they could not bear to waste another beautiful spring day holed up at home. They considered catching a game at the ballpark but finally decided to go to a bar.

Their favorite watering hole was the Wet Whistle on Sunset, although lately they’d been neglecting it badly. “Long time no see, boys,” said the bartender, Chuck, as they stood and let their eyes adjust to the gloom.

The boys were fond of Chuck. If nothing else, there was absolutely nothing Hollywood-like about him, and sometimes it was nice to remember that not everybody in the world had been shaped, molded, or forged in the Tinseltown cauldron. They had met his kind in bars in Duquesne, in Philly, in Manhattan. In Santa Fe and Tucson and even in Veracruz. Stolid, phlegmatic, nondescript, and just friendly enough. Never too friendly. When Ed and Johnny responded to his greeting and started complaining about their latest failure to sell an original script, Chuck listened politely and said, “What’ll it be?” the precise instant they finished telling him how that lunkhead J.L. Warner had no vision at all. And when he brought them their boilermakers he flashed a quick grin and sidled away.

They took their drinks to a table. Ed poured his whiskey straight into the beer. Johnny threw his shot down the hatch and used the beer as a chaser. They looked around. Not one of the other patrons resembled Chuck in the least. There was the usual Sunset Strip mix of two-bit musicians, nomadic journeymen, and studio cast-offs. And, as usual, there was some clown who called himself a “writer.” Tonight it was Sherm Manooghian, the loudmouth who was always sounding off about his “million-dollar ideas” that producers would “come begging for” if they only knew what they were missing. Which, given that Sherm never seemed to write a line, was an ignorance unlikely ever to be relieved.

“Look at these mugs,” Ed said. “There sure are a lot of different ways to fail, aren’t there?”

“And so few to succeed,” Johnny said.

Into the bar walked a young man whose tailored seersucker suit and fifty-dollar shoes immediately announced that he didn’t belong there. Ed and Johnny watched him walk up to the bar and ask a question of Chuck, who inclined a head in their direction. The young man spun on a heel and approached their table.

“You two Ed and Johnny?” he asked.

He didn’t look like any bill collector they’d ever seen. Still, their nods were cautious.

“Nicky Ratifio,” the young man said. “From the office of Nathan J. Blumberg at Universal.”

“Say!” Ed said. “Pleased to meet you, fella!”

“Pull up a chair,” Johnny invited.

Nicky whipped out a mauve silk hanky and carefully wiped the chair before sitting down.

“How’d you find us?” Ed asked.

“A Mrs. Beaumont indicated you’d most likely be either at Gilmore Field or here. You weren’t at Gilmore Field.”

The way he said it almost made them want to apologize, but not quite.

“So what can we do for you?” Johnny asked.

“Nothing at all for me,” Nicky said, “but Mr. Blumberg requires a rewrite.”

“How much?” Ed asked, leaning across the table.

“How much do you think?” Nicky said.

Ed and Johnny both knew what the man was driving at, but this time they were not inclined to settle. A new job had been dropped in their laps mere days after the previous one had been completed. Obviously their fortunes in Hollywood were turning upward. Surely they had bargaining power now. Ed leaned back and grinned.

“Not Guild minimum,” he said.

Nicky started to get up.

“Okay,” Johnny said. “Guild minimum.”

Nicky sat back down.

“But we get a pitch meeting with N.J. if the rewrite is good enough,” Ed said.

“No you don’t,” Nicky said.

“We’ll kick back a fifth of our earnings to you,” Johnny said.

“Listen to me,” Nicky said, “and listen closely, because I’m only going to say this once, and rapidly at that, and if you claim I said it later I’ll deny it. Universal Pictures, that august legacy of the Laemmle family, largest of the so-called non-integrated majors, is about to undergo a significant business reorganization. In advance of said significant reorganization, Mr. Blumberg wishes to put all delayed and pending projects into what we in the trade call the ‘production pipeline,’ so raising the firm’s profile and, he hopes, avoiding too great a fall in his standing with the new management. Thus, what he needs from you is a rewrite, and he needs it with alacrity and frugality.”

Johnny looked at Ed.

“Fast and cheap,” Ed said.

“You have a reputation for said fastness and cheapness,” Nicky continued. “You have a reputation also for alarming ideas. Mr. Blumberg will have no truck with alarming ideas. Mr. Blumberg wants nothing disturbing, distasteful, startling, or controversial. He wants a rewrite, and he wants it in five days.”

“You’re screwy!” Johnny laughed. “When were our ideas ever alarming?”

“If you feel you cannot live up to these expectations,” Nicky said, “say as much now.”

“Let me get this straight,” Ed said. “You expect us to do a full rewrite in five days for Guild minimum and no perks?”

“Take it or leave it,” Nicky said.

* * *

The office assigned to them was not a broom closet for a change. There was a nice desk and nice chairs and a nice sofa, with not a stepladder or rivet gun to be seen. On the other hand, the trash basket piled high with the previous occupant’s crumpled pages and the ashtray heaped with old butts spoke of a studio very much in transition. In the middle of the desk, next to a cup half-full of cold, scum-covered coffee, sat a script. “Say,” Ed said, picking it up. “It’s a monster picture!”

“I love monsters!” Johnny cried.

Ed looked up, a dreamy look on his face. “Boy. I can still remember when I first saw Frankenstein at the Stratford Theater. Must’ve been thirteen. It scared the pants off me!”

“For me it was Dracula,” Johnny said. “Did I ever tell you about that idea I had called ‘Betty the Vampire Stabber’?”

Ed had noticed a memo paper-clipped to the cover. “Seems this script is left over from the war. Too many Japanazi references. They want a ‘simple update.’”

Johnny snatched it gleefully out of his hand. “So let’s get updating!”

Ed threw himself on the couch and Johnny started pacing, reading the script aloud as he moved about the office. Ordinarily, Ed would have been yelling, “Stinks! Rewrite!” on every other page, but this time he just expostulated with joy each time a new monster was introduced. This one had them all: Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy.

Suddenly Johnny threw the script against the wall. “Christ, did the joker who wrote this miss the boat or what?” he yelled. “All these great characters and what does he turn in? Just another monster story! Safe. By the numbers. The kind of crap that always gets made.”

“No kidding,” Ed said. “It’s a tragedy they’re only letting us do an update.”

“Well, what does an ‘update’ mean, really?” Johnny asked hotly. “Wouldn’t ‘updating’ it mean bringing it alive for today? Making it current and bold?”

“Why, shoor!” Ed boomed. Then he remembered something. “But not alarming.”

“Hell no!” Johnny said with a grin. “Bold, that’s all. Brilliant, even.” As he said the words he heard another voice saying them in his mind, a feminine voice, and he saw dark green eyes, green like the shade of a sycamore. And he found himself saying, “We should update it with…Negroes!”

“Negroes?” Ed said, sitting up sharply.

“Remember that idea we had about the Southern sheriff and the Negro dick?” Johnny gushed. “That was one of our boldest, wasn’t it? A testament to the human spirit!”
Ed narrowed his eyes. “Some might say so, yes.”

“So this is a testament to the monster spirit!” Johnny yelled. “This coffin gets shipped to L.A. from Africa, see, and it’s got this dead African prince in it—but he’s a vampire! A big, scary, black vampire! And the white cops are helpless!”

“I don’t know, Johnny. Our assignment is…”

“Oh, come on, Ed! Who could find anything alarming about L.A. being terrorized by Negroes?”

Ed thought about it. “Well, when you put it that way…”

“And we could use all the most popular colored actors. Like Mantan Moreland.”

“As the Wolf Man!” Ed said, and as he said it he leapt to his feet.

“Yeah! And Rochester as…as…Frankenshine!”

“And Hattie McDaniel as the Bride of Frankenshine!”

“How about the mummy?” Johnny said. “Somebody quieter. With that, what do you call it, dignity. Like Karloff, but Negro.”

“Paul Robeson!” Ed boomed.

“And a female mummy too! Picture a real doll wrapped in those tight bandages. Lena Horne! Lena Horne as the Mummy’s Mammy!”

“But Lena Horne’s a singer.”

“Yeah, but she’s been in pictures, hasn’t she? How good an actress do you have to be with your head wrapped in bandages anyway? I’m just thinking of that shape, brother!”

“Bro-ther!” Ed said. “But wait a minute. How will anybody know she’s colored if her head is all wrapped up?”

“We use black bandages!”

A big smile creased Ed’s face. “I love it! So who do we get to play Dracula?”

“Hmm,” Johnny said.

“The black Bela Lugosi,” Ed said. “Let’s see. Let’s see…”

“Stepin Fetchit!” Johnny cried.

“By God, yes! We’ve been wanting to do something with him. I haven’t seen him in a movie since before the war. I bet he’d kill to make his comeback in this!”

“But what do we call him?”

“Darkula?” Ed suggested.

“Close, that’s close,” Johnny said. “Vampigro?”

“How about Negrula?”

“Blackpire?”

“God damn it,” Ed said. “I feel like the perfect name is just out of reach.”

“We’ll get it, we’ll get it,” Johnny said. “We just have to think black Dracula.”

“Draculack?”

Johnny sighed. “Let’s give it a rest. “It’ll come to us in time.”

Ed looked worried. “Say. You don’t think we’d be exploiting blacks with this, do you?”
“’Exploiting’? What the hell does that mean?”

“I just mean, don’t you think it might be wise for us to make sure that Negroes would actually like these ideas? And that Negro actors would actually want to play the parts?”

“Yeah,” Johnny said. “It’s screwy what those people get offended by. Remember at that party in New York there was that colored writer, that Ellison joker, who kept trying to tell us that Amos ‘n’ Andy was offensive to Negroes? And I kept telling him, but it’s white guys doing the voices. They’re just talking like blacks. How could that make black people look bad?”

“Blumberg could never call this alarming if we told him we’ve already got Stepin Fetchit on board to play black Dracula.”

“Oh, he’ll want to get on board, all right,” Johnny grinned. “And you know what? I’ll bet I can find him.”

* * *

Central Avenue on a warm spring night was a swirl of shiny cars and nattily dressed pedestrians. Most were black, some Mexican and Filipino, with a few whites shooting through the crowd, like pinkish meteors through the firmament. Expensive cars lined up at the Club Alabam with its marquee jazz bands and valet parking.

Ed hoped the place they were going, Jack’s Basket Room, didn’t have valet parking. It was bad enough having to maneuver the boxy, sputtering Nash among all those curvaceous new Lincolns and Cadillacs without having to pull it up, brakes squealing and engine backfiring, to some young black man with a dapper uniform and an amused glint in his eye. He was glad they’d gone back to the Edna for a change of clothes, at least, and glad that that bill collector hadn’t succeeded in repossessing his green suit with the violet pinstripe or Johnny’s tan number with the hound’s tooth check and his gaily-banded panama hat. At least he knew that once they got out of the rustbucket they’d look just right in the Central Ave crowd.

Johnny was excitedly checking the addresses as they drove. “I can’t believe I’m actually gonna be working with Stepin Fetchit!” he said, with an almost childish giggle.

If they found the man whom the world knew as Fetchit, it would be his coup. Although he usually couldn’t afford it, every once in a while Johnny liked to play the ponies. He knew a bookie named Sy who worked out of a smoke shop on Vine where an old tout named Al who was usually too pickled to get out to the track hung around all day and blew hot air about the Hollywood big-shots he used to know back before Lana Turner had tits. (Those were Sy’s words about Lana’s tits, not Al’s.) The guy whom Al said dropped the biggest bets and slipped him the biggest tips was Stepin Fetchit. Tossed him two centuries once, and the nag Al was touting had only placed. So Johnny had called Sy, who yelled questions at Al (had to yell them several times to get them through Al’s skull), who put Johnny on to a retired jockey named Leon who said he still saw old Step most every night at Jack’s Basket Room on Central.

“When I was a kid once they showed Hearts in Dixie at the Baptist Church,” Johnny continued. “I swear to God, the whole damn congregation pissed its pants when Step started in clowning.”

“Nobody makes you laugh like that anymore,” Ed said. “Remember that look he had? How he’d go all slack-jawed and rubber-lipped, with his droopy eyelids and the whites of his eyes showing?”

“Yeah,” Johnny said wistfully. “They had faces then.”

Then they heard the sound of a saxophone playing jazz at an astonishing speed—if it had been a typewriter only Ed himself could have been the soloist—and they smelled chicken frying and saw the sign on the sidewalk reading, “Bird-in-a-Basket Cocktails Floor Show $1.” And no valet parking, Ed noticed with a thrill. They found a spot on 33rd Street and hurried toward the door.

“Man,” Johnny said. “Step’s gonna be so thrilled to meet us!”

* * *

Lincoln Perry was not having a good day. He’d been awakened by the sound of a collections man trying to hot-wire his Cadillac. He’d thrown him into the street and yelled that he used to own so many Caddies he could have given one to the man and never missed it, but the man—a dull-eyed ofay who wouldn’t make as much money in his whole life as Perry had once made in a year—only laughed at him and told him to pay what he owed. Perry paid. Then the mail had brought a gift from an old vaudeville partner, a wiseass who thought he was funny: a clipping from the Amsterdam News where some stiff from the NAACP had called on Hollywood to “leave behind the degrading Stepin Fetchit era” and described the “frightened, shiftless clown whom Fetchit embodied” as a “mockery of the entire Negro race.” Not the kind of notices an actor likes to read when he already can’t get work. That evening, as he drove down Central, his mind drifted back to the days when his entourage of purring cars, white-spatted cats and high-yellow kittens had stopped traffic on that very street. Then a cop stopped him and hassled him about his left taillight.

At last he arrived at Jack’s and his table in the corner and the rum-and-Coke that appeared like magic the moment he walked in the place. Some people still knew who he was. Not the studio bosses, he thought ruefully over his second drink. Not that bulldog-necked mustache-twitching motherfucker Zanuck, he thought over his third, who let him walk away when he didn’t get the billing and the money he deserved. Such was Lincoln Perry’s mood as the fourth drink was plunked in front of him. And so, when the two grinning white men in the hideous clothes began to speak to him of studios and properties and comebacks, he was not inclined to be charitable. Nor, however, could he dismiss them out of hand.

“So just what is this role?” he asked.

“You’ll love it, Step,” Johnny said.

“My name is Lincoln.”

“Saaay,” Johnny said. “Are you ribbing me?”

“Nuts,” Perry said.

“He’s right, Step,” Ed said. “This is the role you’ve been waiting for your whole life.”

Also seated at the table was a young couple whom Perry had introduced as friends. “Uh oh,” the young man said. “It’s frightened, shiftless clown time.”

“Motherfucker!” Perry said. “You saw that too?”

“Saw what?” Johnny asked. The young man was a light-skinned Negro with an angry intensity that made Johnny uncomfortable.

Perry turned a scowl on the boys. “The role?”

“Well, we don’t have a name for the character yet, but…”

“Duskula?” Ed said.

“What’s that you say?” Perry snapped.

“Just thinking out loud,” Ed said. “You’ll be playing Dracula, see?”

“But get this!” Johnny added. “The Negro Dracula!”

The woman giggled and said, “Well, he couldn’t play no white Dracula.”

“You mean like that junkie-ass Bela Lugosi?” Perry said.

“That’s the guy!” Johnny said.

“Who in hell is going to make a picture about a Negro vampire?” the other man said.

“Universal,” Ed said. “That’s who hired us to work on the screenplay.”

“And you’re saying Universal wants Stepin Fetchit as the vampire?” Perry asked.

“They don’t know they want it yet,” Ed crowed. “But they will!”

The woman giggled. “Who’s gonna hammer a stake into his heart? The Klan?”

“No, no,” Johnny said. “There’s this vampire-hunting doctor, see…”

“And what color will he be?” the other man asked.

“Black,” Ed said. “All the big roles are black.”

“Blacks hunting blacks?” Perry said.

“Sure,” Ed said. “But it’ll be the good blacks hunting the bad blacks.”

The woman giggled again. “Damn, Lincoln! And I always thought you were one of the good ones!”

“It’s not just a Dracula picture,” Johnny said. “It’s got the Wolf Man and the Mummy and Frankenshine too.”

“Franken what?” Perry snapped.

“Frankenshine,” Johnny said. “See, it’s a play on words. ‘Franken’ like in the monster and…”

“Why not just call him Frankennigger?” the other man said.

“Are you kidding?” Johnny said. “That would never get past the Hays office.”

The woman shook her head. “White folk,” she said.

“So who’s gonna play Frankenstein?” Perry said.

“We’re hoping Rochester,” Ed said. He threw back his head and released a loud imitation of the comedian’s gravelly voice saying, “Alone bad! Friend good!”

“And Lena Horne as the Mummy’s mammy,” Johnny said.

“Did you just say the Mummy’s mammy?” the other man said.

“All up in bandages?” the woman said.

“Swell, isn’t it?” Johnny said.

“But how you gonna know she’s colored?” the woman said.

Ed and Johnny exchanged a knowing glance. “Black bandages!” they said together.

“Black bandages,” the younger man said.

“I’ll go you one better,” the woman said. “You give her a head-rag to wear over them bandages.” She giggled.

“Say, that’s terrific!” Ed boomed.

“White folk,” the woman said.

Ed suddenly grew solemn. “Well, what do you think?” he asked. “We know this is a great idea, but before we pitch it we want to know what you people think.”

“You people?” the younger man said.

“Sure,” Ed said. “Negroes. If we’re going to write a movie about Negroes, we want to make sure first that Negroes like it.”

“They’re wasting your time,” the man said to Perry. “Who would ever make an all-Negro vampire movie?”

“Monster movie,” Johnny said. “Remember, it’s not just…”

“Right. I forgot. It also features Frankennigger and the Ape Man.”

“The Ape Man? You mean instead of the Wolf Man? Say, I like that!”

The woman giggled.

“Look,” Ed said. “Try to forget about whether or not the movie will get made. If it should get made, would you think it was a good idea?”

“With you writing it?” the young man said, and he leaned across the table as if about to do something unpleasant to Ed. But just then he heard applause and looked up to see the jazz trio coming down from the bandstand. “Damn,” he said, standing up and grabbing an upright bass that leaned against the wall. “You made me miss Bird with your bullshit.” Which confused Johnny, as the man seemed to have eaten the entire chicken in the basket in front of him.

Ed was glad to see the young man lugging his bass up to the stage. He had seemed almost protective of Step, although what harm a well-intentioned screenwriter might do, Ed couldn’t imagine. “What do you think, Step?” he asked. “This could be your comeback.”

“My comeback,” Perry said.

“Then you like it, Step?” Johnny asked.

“And you really think they’ll want to make this thing?”

“How could they not?” Ed asked. Then he turned to the woman. “What do you think of it?”

She was watching Perry. As she saw the hunger in his eyes, she suddenly looked very sad. “Well,” she said. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.”

“Maybe not,” Perry said.

“Then you do like it!” Johnny said with a grin.

Perry paused for a long moment. Then he said, “I’m not saying I don’t.”

The boys turned to each other, beaming in triumph. They paid for the last round of drinks and announced they were getting back to work.

Ed was in an expansive mood as he strolled toward the door. He stopped one of the men from the band that had just gotten off the stage, the cherubic fellow who’d been playing the saxophone so quickly. “Say, brother,” he said. “I’ve got some advice for you.”

The man flashed him an impish grin. “Have you now?”

“You’ve got chops, I’ll give you that,” Ed said. “But you play way too fast. I could tell that you kept trying to play I Got Rhythm, but you were going so fast I couldn’t follow the tune. I recommend you go pick up some records of the old Glenn Miller orchestra and listen to Tex Beneke’s solos. Now there was a sax player!”

“Tex Beneke,” repeated the saxophonist, his eyes wide with wonder. He asked Ed to spell the name and carefully copied it onto a napkin. “I haven’t heard of him playing around here. Is he a white gentleman, sir?”

“Yes, he is,” Ed said. “But don’t let that deter you. Music knows no color. There are some fine Negro jazz musicians too!”

As Ed left the Basket House he heard a wave of laughter rising from the crowd behind him, and wondered if good old Step were up to some of his hijinks.

“Say,” Johnny said. “How about Africundead?”

“We’re getting closer,” Ed said.

* * *

Four days later Nicky Ratifio stopped by the office and found both boys fast asleep, Johnny sprawled out on the couch and Ed hunched over the typewriter. Nicky frowned, but then he noticed the thick stack of paper under Ed’s elbow. He carefully pried it out and glanced at the last page first. With a sigh of relief, he saw the words “The End” at the very bottom. Then he flipped it over and looked at the title page. And suddenly he didn’t look so relieved.

* * *

Johnny had been dreaming of monsters. So when he felt himself being dragged to his feet his first thought was that Frankenshine had him in his clutches. But then he opened his eyes and saw that the brute lifting him by his lapels was neither a Negro nor did electrodes protrude from his neck. He saw instead a very large white man dressed in a guard’s uniform. Another man who could have been his twin was effortlessly lifting Ed by the back of his collar.

“Hey! What’s with the bum’s rush?” Johnny hollered.

“Unhand me, you lout!” Ed boomed.

Neither guard unhanded them nor spoke until they were out on the parking lot. Then the one who had ahold of Ed said, “Which one’s your heap?”

“What do we need our car for?” Ed cried. “Are we supposed to drive to N.J.’s office?”
The same guard tittered and said, “Your heap.”

Johnny pointed out the Nash.

“Jesus Christ,” the other guard said. “I thought that was a prop for a comedy picture!”
After the guards had pushed him and Johnny into the Nash, Ed said, “So what now?”

“Now drive straight out the front gate,” the tittering guard said.

“And don’t come back,” the other guard added.

“This is ridiculous!” Ed said. “N.J. Blumberg is expecting a screenplay on his desk this morning!”

The tittering guard tittered. “So maybe he’ll be waiting for you out by the gate,” he said.
But instead of Nathan J. Blumberg waiting for them out by the gate, the boys found Nicky Ratifio.

“What in Sam Hill is going on here?” Ed demanded as he piled out of the car.

“What’s going on here is that you’re kaput with Universal Studios,” Nicky said.

“You can’t expect me to believe that N.J.’s already read the screenplay,” Ed said. “Hell, we finished it less than an hour ago!”

“Oh, Christ,” Johnny said, the light of realization dawning in his eyes. “I bet it’s the damn title he doesn’t like.” He turned to Nicky and said, “Look, we’re not married to ‘Count Chocula.’”

“Mr. Blumberg read five pages and I had to get him a purgative,” Nicky said. “Now beat it. Scram. Be missing.”

“All right, if that’s the way you want it,” Ed said, drawing himself up. “We’ll be out of here as soon as we’re paid.”

Nicky reached into his pocket and out came a fat wad of money. Carefully, he peeled off two tens, returned the wad to his pocket, and stood there holding the money carelessly with his fingertips.

“Twin sawbucks?” Johnny sneered. “For five days of writing?”

“For writing,” Nicky said, “we owe you nothing. We hired you to do a ‘simple update.’ You did not deliver a ‘simple update.’ You delivered a monstrosity.”

“Well of course we delivered a monstrosity!” Johnny roared. “It’s a monster movie, isn’t it?”

“Then what’s the twenty for?” Ed asked.

“It seems that Mr. Blumberg came away from your screenplay with the inkling of an idea. He at once saw the humor in the juxtaposition of Universal’s monsters with a couple of morons—which, from the few pages of your script he could stomach, he deduced you two must be—and it occurred to him that this might be a perfect vehicle for Abbott and Costello.”

“Abbott and Costello!” Johnny said. “Say, I could write an Abbott and Costello picture, couldn’t you, Ed?”

“Hell, we’ve already written great scripts for comedy duos!” Ed boomed. “Like the one about the rich white guy and the Negro bum who trade…”

“We’ve already contacted Abbot and Costello’s regular writers,” Nicky said, “and they’ve agreed to do it. After, of course, assuring Mr. Blumberg that they would write it for the white Abbot and Costello, not the black ones.” Nicky found that funny. When he’d finished laughing he continued, “However, Mr. Blumberg thought it only fair that you be recompensed for providing him, if inadvertently, with the idea. I suggest you take the money and beat it.”

“Twenty bucks for a solid gold idea?!” Johnny cried.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Ed snarled, “or we’ll take this up with the Writers Guild!”

“Okay,” Nicky said. “Take it up with the Writers Guild.” And he started to put the money away.

Johnny reflexively raised his hand to signal “stop.” Nicky stopped. Johnny looked at Ed, and Ed looked back. Many was the time they had taken things up with the Guild.
“It’s highway robbery,” Ed said.

“That she is,” Johnny said, but rather tonelessly.

In the end, they took the money and beat it.

* * *

After the boys had ordered their drinks and found a table they sat there staring at the familiar faces. It seemed like all the usual suspects were there that night, but a subdued air hung over the Wet Whistle, as if each and every patron had suffered a severe blow. “Look at these mugs,” Johnny said. “They look worse than I feel.”

“They look bad, all right,” Ed said. “But worse than I feel? That’s a stretch.”

Johnny took a sip of his bourbon and turned to Ed with a look of profound distress. “Say, Ed. What did that louse Ratifio mean, when he said we were morons? We’re not morons, are we?”

“Hell, no,” Ed growled. “In fact, I’d say we’re a couple of the brightest lads in this infernal town.”

“Well, you are maybe. Me, I’m not exactly a genius.”

“You’re smart enough, chum. Don’t let the bastards get under your skin.”

Johnny took another sip of his drink and sat thinking for a moment. At length he said, “Than what the hell is wrong with us? Why does everybody treat us like we’re poison all of a sudden? Is it our ideas?”

“Our ideas? Hell, our ideas are the toast of the town!”

“People really do like our ideas, right? It isn’t just some kinda gag?”

“Now don’t get ridiculous on me, chum.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Johnny sighed. “But Christ…why the hell can’t we sell one? Just one little stinking idea?”

“There you got me,” Ed said.

They finished their drinks and ordered a second round. They drank in silence for a while. Then Ed took a look at all the long, sad, disillusioned faces around them and said, “There sure are a lot of ways to fail in this town.”

“Yeah,” Johnny said, “And so few to succeed.”



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