You were wrong, Thad," said Martha. "You were wrong in Grosse Pointe and you were wrong in Gstaad."
"But, dear –"
"You were wrong in Palm Beach and you were wrong in Palm Springs, too."
"I beg your pardon, I admit I may have been wrong in Palm Beach, but in Palm Springs–"
"You were wrong."
"But –"
"Don't 'but' me, you swine. You were wrong."
"But –"
"Terribly wrong."
"But."
"Wrong."
"May I say one thing in my defense," he said.
"Go ahead," she said. "Lie. Lie again."
"The one thing I have to say," said Thad, "is that I love you."
"Ha."
"I have always loved you."
"Tell it to the marines."
"You really know how to hurt a guy, Martha."
"Swine."
"Gee, Martha."
"Oh, don't 'gee, Martha' me, you weak, alcoholic, mewling, son-of-
Harry Beachcroft pulled the page out of his battered old second-hand Royal portable and laid it on the stack of paper to the right of the machine. He took a fresh sheet of paper from the stack on the left and rolled it into the typewriter, and then he sighed. Harry's daily quota was ten pages, and once he finished that tenth page, he knocked off for the day, even if, as today, he was in the middle of a sentence.
And now was that very special time of the day: time for a bock at Harry's "local", Bob's Bowery Bar…
It was a snowy late afternoon, one might even say a blizzardy one, but, no matter, it wasn't as if Harry had far to go, just out the door of his tenement building on Bleecker, left past Mr. Morgenstern's cobbler shop, and around the corner to the entrance of Bob's.
A train passed on the elevated tracks up above, heading down to the Houston stop, filled with huddled masses on their way home from their mundane jobs, and Harry opened the door to the only home he had.
Inside the bar was the usual crowd of drunks, the place was thick with smoke and the warm rich smells of beer and booze, of unwashed human bodies and damp woolens, and a sad song played on the jukebox. It was a Monday, but every day was a Friday at Bob's Bowery Bar.
Harry found a seat down at the right, in between a small chubby man and Gilbey the deranged mystic.
"How are you today, Gilbey?"
"I ain't seen God lately, Harry, but I ain't given up yet."
"Maybe someday, Gilbey."
"Yeah, maybe someday," said Gilbey. "Meantime I'll be waiting."
Bob was down at the other end of the bar, so Harry took out his Philip Morrises. This is what cigarettes were for. The waiting times. He shook one out and put it in his lips, then patted his pockets for matches.
"May I ignite your cigarette, sir?"
This was the little fellow to Harry's left, who was extracting a match from a box of Ohio Blue Tips.
"Thank you," said Harry, and he accepted a light.
The man could have been a prematurely decayed twenty-five or an alcohol-preserved forty on the verge of a heart attack, it was hard to say, and he was smoking a pipe. He wore a red-and-black checked mackinaw coat and a matching billed cap with buttoned-up earflaps. He looked at Harry through thick horn-rimmed glasses, and he had a moustache trimmed top and bottom like an actor in 1930s movies. He definitely looked like a lush, but not the usual sort of lush you saw in Bob's.
"Do you come here often?" said the man.
"Only every day," said Harry.
"First time for me," said the man. "A delightful establishment, I must say."
"I like it," said Harry.
"I usually like to drink at my club, but sometimes one feels the need to wander, to explore the city in all its richness and variety. You know how it is."
"Um," said Harry, who had no idea how it was.
"Do you know there are at least thirty-seven bars and cafés just within three blocks of my familial manse?"
"I, uh –"
Harry was on the verge of saying how could he possibly know how many bars and cafés were within three blocks of the fellow's familial manse, but he restrained himself.
"Normally," continued the man, "I never go beyond the three-block limit, I call it 'easy stumbling distance'. Get it?
Three blocks, and even if you don't find a cab you can usually find your way home without waking up dead in an alleyway. Usually."
"Um, yes, that sounds reasonable," said Harry.
"But today I felt the need to go farther, despite the snowstorm, who knows, perhaps because of the snowstorm. Call it the call of the wild. Or was it something else. Do you remember the words of the gallant Captain Oates of the ill-fated Scott south polar expedition?
He knew he couldn't go on, and so he hobbled out of their tent into a roaring blizzard to his certain death, with the parting words, "I am just going outside and may be some time."
"Um," said Harry.
"My name," said the man, "is Livingston P. Lovechild."
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Lovechild."
Bob was there, and about time.
"Oh, hello, Bob," said the man to Bob. "I shall have another one of your delicious house bocks, and I would like to buy my new friend here whatever he's drinking."
"Thanks," said Harry, who had never turned down a drink in his life, and he wasn't about to start now. "Bock for me, too, Bob."
Bob went away, and the man looked at Harry through his thick horn rims.
"I wonder may I possibly know your name, sir?"
"Beachcroft," said Harry. "Harry Beachcroft."
The man took the stem of his pipe out of his mouth.
"Harry Beachcroft you say?"
"Yes," said Harry.
"Are you perhaps by any wild chance a writer?"
"In fact I am."
"Harry Beachcroft the novelist?"
"Yes, my name is Harry Beachcroft, and I have written novels."
"Not the author of Last Train from Poughkeepsie?"
"Yes, I'm afraid so."
"And The Damned of the Damned?"
"Yes, that was me," said Harry.
"Good God, may I shake your hand, sir?"
"Of course," said Harry.
Harry took the man's hand. It was small and plump, the hand of a man who had never done physical labor in his life, but then neither had Harry.
The hand was also sticky, presumably with Bob's basement-brewed house bock. The fellow held onto Harry's hand even after a rather prolonged shake, and it seemed that he was holding onto it as if he did not want to let go, ever. Not wanting to appear rude, Harry allowed the man to grip his own for half a minute as the fellow beamed, revealing smoke-stained teeth or dentures.
Bob was there with two glasses of bock, and he laid them down.
The man quickly disengaged his hand from Harry's with a faint sucking sound and tapped a pile of bills and change in front of him.
"Take it from here, Bob," he said, "and do keep them coming."
Bob took a dime and went away.
The man turned again to Harry, his eyes alight behind the thick lenses of his glasses.
"You don't know what an honor this is for me, Mr. Beachcroft. I have read all your books. At least all the books I could find."
"Really?"
"Yes," said the man."Riders of the Savage Moon. Give My Love to Caroline. Steamer Bound for Bombay. A Gal, a Pal, and a Dog
Named Al. Three Lads on a Quest. Dead End Street in a Two-Bit Burg. Chums From the Slums. I've read them all."
"Well, I'm very impressed," said Harry. "I myself barely remember some of those books."
"How many books have you written?"
"I'm not sure," said Harry. "Thirty-five? Forty? Some I've written under other names."
"Why?"
"Well, publishers don't want to flood the market with a particular author, so sometimes it's deemed best to use a pen name."
"Such as?"
"Well, let's see, I've written a series of gothic romances under the name of Gwendolyn St. Jacques, and then there were a few science fiction titles I put out as Jack Henry Hildenburg, and then I wrote a couple of the 'Congo Mike' novels under the house name of Herbert Penn Blake, and –"
"You must write all these titles down for me, Mr. Beachcroft, because I want to read them all!"
"Oh, okay," said Harry.
"I mean, not this very second, but later."
"Okay, sure, if I can remember them."
"I'm sure you'll be able to remember them if you set your mind to it."
"Um," said Harry, who was not at all sure, having written some of these novels in a couple of weeks and then never thought about them again.
"I want to read all of them," said the man, what was his name? "I want to read every word you've published."
"Gee," said Harry, "you might have trouble finding everything, especially stories I've written that only appeared in magazines."
"I'll find it all," said the man. "I'm your biggest fan. Yes, I will find those books and magazines, every one of them, just as I have now found you, their esteemed author."
"Gee," said Harry, not knowing what else to say, never having met anyone who had read his work before, outside of Sid Scheinberg, the publisher of A-One Publications, the firm that had published most of his work, both books and stories.
"Do you know what I think you are, Mr. Beachcroft?" said the little man.
"Um, no," said Harry.
"I think you are the finest American writer of fiction since Robert W. Chambers!"
Harry had barely even heard of Robert W. Chambers, but he was discreet, and so he said, "Well, that's pretty high praise, Mister, uh –"
"Lovechild, Livingston P. Lovechild, but, please, call me Livingston."
"Okay, Livingston."
"And may I call you Harry?"
"Of course," said Harry.
And thus began a friendship – if that was the word, and it probably wasn't – which was to change the course of Harry Beachcroft's bleak and drudging existence, and plunge him into a world stranger than any he had created in his forty-odd novels and dozens of stories written under both his real name and various noms de plume.
