Trouble in Makeoutsville

I don't have much to Recommend me but Good Looks, Smart ways, and a Resistant Heart. But my Looks are not so good as all that (Two-Colored Eyes), my ways are Smart Enough only to get me in Trouble (Afterthoughts, Nostalgia, Fits of Temper), and my Heart Turns out to be Sentimental Just When I think I have things all Under Control. You have to be a Genius to get along my Wasting, Spoiling way in the World, and I'm not a Genius. I'm of the Species Makeius Outium. Sometimes I do; always I don't. "Complex?" says Max, my Agent, "why, Luckarooney, you're Practically Russian." He calls me Luckarooney because my name is Lucky. He calls me complex because my life is complicated.

For example, they did a pilot film for a new adult Western with me as the star. Lucky me, you might say. I got to wear the white sombrero – not the star's buddy, not the villain, but the star. Howsowhomever, they peddled this show from New York to Havana, and it was the sole and only Western series they couldn't sell that year. My luck. A few weeks' work, then dumped on the street again, and wheeled around in my agent's barrow. I was offered work in a stag movie, and they promised to help me out by cutting and splicing, splicing and cutting, so I wouldn't have to worry about my performance – and I could wear a false nose – but like I said, I'm sentimental. It was either network television or Hollywood, no convention productions for me.

Then I did a disc jockey show. Glamorous, eh? But have you ever been the most popular disc jockey in Grass Lake, Michigan? I headed back East. I told my agent: "Jockey me no more discs, pal, do me a favor. Find me something for my kind of man."

"Listen, that stag film outfit, they say you can pick your co-star among some of the finest ingénues on Third Avenue."

"I said out, Max. My mother didn't raise me to work my way to fame and fortune down there."

"All right, Lucky, then there's just this one little deal on at the moment. It's not much dough, sure, but maybe it could lead to something ––"

What it turned out to lead to was Gulf Ditch, Alabama, Laredo, Texas, Fresno, California, and a long, long road a-winding. Here was the deal: There was this new magazine, Hike!, sort of like Holiday, only smaller and poorer. And there was this new car some rich Portugee was putting out, sort of like the Fiat station wagon, but smaller and funnier. The magazine had gimmicks – stories about Fun Traveling On a C Note. The Lisbon Station Wagon had gimmicks – a double bed unfolding to fill the whole interior, a tube leading to a reserve tank of Azores wine, and a ticket that allowed you to fill this tank six times free at your nearest Portuguese wine shop. The ex-wife of the publisher of Hike! was now cabin girl on the yacht of Paolo San Paolo, designer of the Lisbon, and 'twixt the two of them, they had had like this swell trip across the Mediterranean. But she had one more idea in return for her second income (alimony, plus a cabin girl's regular salary in silk undies and heartfelt thanks). Hike! would send a typical American couple across country in the Lisbon, reporting for the magazine on the travel scene, publicizing the Lisbon, making it big in the papers for both outfits as we received the keys to various cities. Each mayor would get a free subscription to Hike! and a voucher good for purchase of a Lisbon upon presentation together with $2000 cash. All the sponsors needed was a typical American couple, clever, sociable, photogenic, and willing to work for a Portuguese pittance.

Would I do it?

This is not a quiz show, but when you're starving and don't have enough money to replace the buttons on your collars, the answer is fixed. Would I do it for small money? Would I travel across country with some lovely chick? Would I? Would I?

Suspense! Will Luckarooney nibble, will he bite? Question mark, question mark, question mark. Suspense, suspense, suspense. Dot dot dot...

Man, would I! (Answer: ¡Si!) "There is no American couple more typical than I," I informed Max. "And besides, no matter what they pay, it's easier than acting in stag movies."

"Not easier," he said pensively, "but it does have more class."

There seemed to be a little problem inherent in the situation. There always is, natch. The billing was supposed to be for a couple, newlyweds, who would make subscribers and car-purchasers open their mouths for that long sentimental American sigh ("Aren't they cute?"), and although I have maybe a split personality with definite schizoid leanings, neither half of me is a sweet, winsome, photogenic girl who could write dispatches to Hike! or at least type them (Grappo portable typewriter supplied by a Portuguese importer trying to crash the Amerlo market).

And so we auditioned models. Max looks like the kind of agent who auditions models well into the night. He is both balding and affliclited with too much hair – that sparse retreat at the forehead, that jungle rush past the temples. "Not you, honey. Well, maybe for another job, but not this one. No, sorry, honey, but just call me Max." We talked with a Miss Rheingold runner-up; we talked with a girl who smoothed her stockings on the late, late show and showed her wrinkled, crinkled forehead (Before: Brainwashing) in the commercials (After: Evening gown and dancing); we talked with a girl who had played Medea on Second Avenue. But the first girl couldn't write or type, the second one felt that the double bed wasn't large enough for the two of us ("What kind of pajamas you give this lunk, cast iron?" she asked Max about me), and the third felt that the payment in travel expenses plus heartfelt thanks and all the publicity we could garner was not enough for the job. It looked as if the species model and actress was out. We could not find an oddball pro, we had to find an oddball oddball. We put an advt in The Village Voice:

Girl needed – writer, model, actress type, opportunity to see country, make name, brains and class essential, up-and-upsville. Send pix, Box 491.

I needn't describe the creeps we found. Nobody knows the trouble we saw and rejected, nobody but me and Max. Some girls seem to think that wearing no panties is class and having a central nervous system will do for brains. It won't do. You need more than twitchy ganglia and a cooperative heart to qualify for high adventure with me on the Open Road.

Then in pranced this girl, name of Cleanthe, pronounced Cleo. When I say she pranced in, I mean just that – the fine high step of a horse fed on Kentucky blue grass, only this was a filly fed on ego and steaks, full of Southern graces and a hard New York mind after two years of it. Skidmore College, actress, traveler, her letter said, and max and I fought over the picture. "Probably," I remarked enviously as he put it in his pocket, "probably clipped it from some other girl."

"Probably," he had said, "probably better ask her in. Look, Lucky, suppose she's right. Suppose this is it. You get the girl, at least let me keep the picture, OK, pal?"

"Yeah," I had sullenly replied, "but suppose she doesn't look like this and you get the picture and I get nothing but my deceived hopes."

"Don't tell me about that resistant heart of yours again, boy. I may be your agent, but if you need professional therapy ––"

I couldn't afford it. And I didn't need it, for Cleo looked like her picture only sweeter, creamier, prouder, more like Cleo. She pranced in, as I said, and smart? She had a curve to her calf that took me back to some dream of a girl's legs that I could almost – not quite – didn't need to remember. She existed; she was real. Lord, smarter, better looking, and with a more resistant heart than even old Lucky's. She had a long neck (pride) and smudged eyes (intellect). She had a plump little mouth for telling lies. She had charm.

We explained the deal while she put on her heavy black hipster glasses to prove that she was listening. "Uh-huh," she said. "I like the little problem. The only little problem to the little problem is ––"

"What?"

"You," she said, fixing me with an eye in which ice cubes fit into ice cubes, all the way back to her planning, scheming, harassing Kentucky girlhood. "We have to hang together on this deal. (continued on page 62) Makeoutsville (continued from page 32) Landsakes, pops, I see us fighting all the way across the desert, and as the result of the fight, Lucky," she remarked, "I see your bones a-whitening on the sands."

"A nice pictorial eye," said Max approvingly. "Maybe you'd like to act in a little movie we're whomping up out on Long Island. We'll shoot in one weekend, and probably none of your friends will find out about it."

"I dig," she said, "and the answer is: nyet. And furthermore: Bug off."

"You'd paint a lovely picture," Max said, with poignant regret. "You have class."

"The Georgia O'Keeffe of Sheridan Square. But listen," she said, and she turned her back on me, "listen, Mr. Max, is he strong and sincere? You can get into all sorts of jams on a trip. Can he pick the shrimp out of the egg roll? Can he fix a tire, talk to a state patrolman, cash a check?"

"If not," said Max, "he can take a quick course at the New School."

"No smart talk," said Cleo. "Is he strong and sincere?"

"Strong and sincere?" I shouted, outraged. "Sincere and ––"

"OK," she interrupted, "I see you're sincere. I'll have to take the rest on trust. I can change the tire myself if I have to, and we'll stay out of Cantonese restaurants. All I like is the shrimp in the egg roll."

What this girl needed, I was deciding then and there, was a strong and sincere hand on the inside of her skirt, tugging at her fasteners. I would be no shrimp in an egg roll. I would be strong, sincere, and irresistible.

As if reading my mind, she whirled on me. "And you-all, buster, no rough stuff. I can say no politely and I can say no with my knees."

I blushed modestly. "Wouldn't think of it, Cleo ma'm. I'm all business, me. And ma'm, I sho do hate a knee to the groin."

Max beamed. His pink face turned happy and red under the Westinghouse tan, the high blood pressure, and the blue of his six-hour-old shave. "You two young folks," he sighed. "Isn't it grand?"

Both Hike! and the Lisbon Car and their attendant ad agencies approved us. We were off to see the world, to show the world the Lisbon Station Wagon (double bed), and to fill the pages of Hike! We were described as "newlywed," of course. Well, the degree of inaccuracy in that description was something to define between us. Like the quiz show winners, we had received the answers. Now all we needed was the question.

• • •

The question commenced. We left New York on a Ruesday; I remember, because I rued that day. Cleo on the seat beside me was like a delectable baby tiger, squirming, flirting, laughing, made of candy and teeth. She had tigerish slanted eyes, no stripes, a curled-up little tail, and soft paws. She slithered, she slept against the armrest of the Lisbon Station Wagon, she jumped up and nearly scared me off the Pennsylvania Turnpike by giggling suddenly with a story she remembered. "Funny thing happened to me my second year in college. . . ." She had gone to a good school, but left without her degree. And there was this funny thing in college. The funny thing that had happened to her was getting pregnant. She had told the dean, gotten expelled, lost the baby, and cursed herself for unnecessary honesty. Boy, was that funny. Hahaha, her laughter went trilling past the Howard Johnson's where I had intended to stop for a Comfort Stop. Thirty-six miles to the next John with free soap for truckers and free relief for fidgety kidneys. That was the funny thing that happened to me on the Pennsylvania Turnpike while Cleo reminisced about Happy Collitch Days.

In Harrisburg, Pa., we were presented with a tin key to the city, were interviewed by a reporter, and sent our first correspondence back to Hike. (From now on I omit the exclamation mark after the name of the magazine.) Also Cleo and I had our first serious wrestling match on the Lisbon Special Fold-out Double Bed. She did the driving for the next few days, since I suffered a dislocated ego, a fractured libido, and a sprained intention.

She won the wrestling match.

"And another thing," she said, "I think you ought to wear pajamas when we go to bed."

"But I always sleep in my birthday suit."

"I'm only trying to make it easier for you," she said. "Wear something. A suit of armor, maybe." She smiled winsomely. "I'm only thinking of your good, honey. That eye better?"

"How long will it stay black?" I asked.

"At home," Cleo explained, "I always lay in a supply of good whiskey, eggs, toast, espresso coffee for my espresso machine, and some fine old-fashioned leeches. For when I blacken the eyes of a fresh young man who tries to take advantage. Steak is the fad, but leeches really solve it." Her face lit up with medicinal fervor. "The leeches suck out the bruised blood and leave a chap's eye as good as new." Her mouth opened with that lightly trilling laughter. "But they look so uglified with those wormy critters hanging from the swollen pouch.

When. Takes away all the yen."

She explained to me all about how the leech gorges itself, then drops off, and lives practically forever in its jar, waiting for the next meal. I tried to think of other kinder animals than Cleo: Vampira, Dracula, Lucrezia Borgia.

"But you're sweet," she said, cuddling, "and I'm sorry there's nothing I can do. I was born chaste."

"So is everybody," I remarked. "The alteration comes later."

"Bitter, bitter."

And so it went across the country. Mayors made eyes at Cleo, also made passes. I made eyes at automobile mechanics who claimed never to have had dealings with Portuguese automobiles. It was probably the first time in their lives they ever spoke the truth. We made the turnpike scene, the country road bit, the urban traffic jam game. We bon jour'd it up with newspaper men and publicity representatives. Cleo left a trail of broken hearts and blacked eyes from coast to coast. I took to visiting parts of town without her, like Short Vincent in Cleveland and North Beach in San Francisco. A man needs a spot of reÉaxation now and then, friendly discussion and communion with the universe. In other words, I had to pay for it. Meanwhile, back at the ranch wagon, she poked in a notebook, writing poetry. (She had made the hip scene long ago when it was still fresh. She had retired from the Beat Generation. But she still wore lots of eye shadow, very little white lipstick, and liked to walk in the rain.)

Can you imagine the strain on my arteries when I shuffled into the mortal coils of our bed at night? Can you imagine pulling down the shades on our Lisbon Station Wagon and dressing back to back, bumping occasionally, and saying only, "Whoops, sorry." – "That's all right, Lucky." Can you? Can you see the fury in my friendly eyes? The burning sensation on my backside where we had accidentally touched? The crazy cuddling which she performed, pal-like, before dropping off into rapid, healthy, delighted sleep?

I Resign Send Replacement, went my wire to the home office in New York. They had heard of my predicament.

Haste Never Won Fair Lady, you jerk, said the return wire, resignation not accepted. Max.

"Hm," said Cleo, who opened the wire. "You getting impatient, mister? Why we hardly know each other."

But it seemed as if this gave her a little start. She was quite sweet to me for a few days, doing little things, sewing on a button, trimming my sideburns. Just not doing the big thing. Like writing a Haiku in my honor: (continued on page 103)Makeoutsville (continued from page 62) The rain of spring: in the carriage that we share, my dear one's whispering.

Naturally I was delighted if not happy. I reserved happiness for a less verbal occasion. If we were to continue in Japanese style, we'd have found Cleo's "dear one's whispering" something like this: Drive a fellow nuts/ a healthy chap buggy,/ goddamnit.

Later, I vocalized it. "You're a couple syllables short for a Haiku," she said. "It has a set number of beats. But I appreciate the thought, friend."

"Thanks."

"You're even getting to look rundown. Wyncha buy a bar of good soap instead of always that gasoline station detergent on your face?"

"Dry skin," I said.

"Sure, it comes from sexual frustration," she cooed. "Also dandruff, ulcers, and international boundary disputes – from the same little problem. But you can counteract it with shampoo, a soft diet, inspection of launching sites ––"

"Watch your tongue," I said.

"And soft soap."

Thus bantering, we fought our way. The tension of our interpersonal strife crept into our dispatches to Hike and gave the welcoming committees in Dayton, Salt Lake City and Missoula something to think about. We were thought to be married, of course, and no one asked to see our license. Our snapping at each other was a better guarantee than a license. Since we are both handsome, well set up, and public types, the black bitterness in my heart was translated as wit. "Ho ho ho," said a dozen politicians who had gone to prep school with Santa Claus, "you young folks, ho ho ho."

"I want you to meet Cleo Durrell, the twisted actress," I said.

"Ho ho ho. Maybe the gentlemen of the press should take my picture with Miss Durrell standing a little closer."

If looks could wear a groove, Cleo would have been worn in half vertically, between the bosom. And if frustration can frazzle a man, I must have looked like grandpa's surrey with the fringe all around – frazzled. But she counseled patience. "I too have feelings," she remarked. "This is an abnormal situation, Lucky. That's why I've taken to writing poetry. Wait till the situation normalizes itself," she said ominously.

I began to discover the little things about my lovely Cleo that one learns when one lives with a person, and I noted them with the touch of malice which follows when the person with whom one beds down is a lovely light creature who tells funny stories, occasionally giggles, flirts, and bounces, but threatens to black one's eye again if one doesn't turn over and go to sleep. (You might ask why I didn't just kill her, strangle her, stuff the body in the comfy, roomy and convenient Lisbon baggage compartment. Well, I kind of liked her, I was bemused and hopeful: I have amazing virtues.) The little things I discovered: She was a health faddist, treating her good body as if it were a disease, stuffing wheat germ and honey and vitamins down her gullet every morning. She had only one filling in her mouth (it gleamed from all the way in the back when she laughed). She disliked her father and hated her mother. She had been a swimming champion in junior high school, a ping-pong star in high school, and the most beautiful tease in her freshman class at college. (That one mistake was a mistake.) A tease she still was, blast her silvery laugh and brooding, hooded eyes. When you go to bed with a lovely young thing who won't let you touch her, you tend to learn nasty things about yourself. I tried to concentrate on Cleo, and worse luck, succeeded.

Our correspondence was brilliant. Hike picked up circulation. My blood pressure zoomed.

The Lisbon worked out well. Franchises were established in major cities, and the far-out consumers, for whom an MG or an Alfa-Romeo had begun to seem square, began putting in orders. It was effective advertising, those pictures of Cleo and me. Men liked to imagine Cleo coming with the fold-down bed. Perhaps women liked to imagine me. And we only imagined each other, while in reality we thrashed our pillows side by side.

Our tour had begun in difficulty and was ending with trouble in Makeoutsville. Cleo was getting used to thinking of me as a big brother with incest in his heart. (Actually, all I had was bile in my spleen, spleen in my bile duct, and rage in my heart. I was in love, Count Sacher-Masoch, love!)

"Rue the day? Rue the day?" Cleo asked. "You think that'll go in a Haiku about an unhappy relationship?"

"Does the giri get strangled in the end?" I inquired.

Somehow Cleo got back to New York alive, with me at the wheel. Her arrival unmurdered indicates the kind of genius of which the world has no need what-soever these days. Max, my faithful agent, had stars in his eyes. My new career was blooming. I was first in the field of small foreign station wagon promoting. I was high on the list of correspondents for Hike. I had made out (he thought) with Cleo.

"I've been done in," I confessed wearily to him.

We sat in adjoining telephone booths at the Schulte Cigar Store on Times Square and talked it over. Max had an office, but from his non-rent-paying days, he retained his nostalgia for the phonebooth office where he used to loiter waiting for prospective clients to return his call. (He would imitate the soprano of a secretary and then put himself on the line.)

"Well, maybe you wouldn't be happy," he suggested.

"So then I could get a Mexican divorce, cha cha cha. For a couple hundred dollars you get the official papers plus two pounds of fresh roasted coffee."

Max came out of his booth and stood before mine. He stood and looked at me with tears in his eyes. "You're in love," he said. "Here's a dime. Call her." And he strode out without another word, with a sense of suspenseful drama weakened only by pausing at the cigar counter to buy a box of mints. He used the dime which he had offered me. It broke the rhythm of the scene.

I had my own dime. I dialed Cleo's number. She lived, natch, in one of those all-girl hotels, the Spitalny Residence Hall for Professional Women.

"Allo-allo," said her French roommate.

"Donnez-moi Cleo."

"Not here, buster." Click.

I dialed again. "I know your voice, can't hide," I said. "This is Lucky."

"Oh hello," she crooned. "I was just going to give you a ring."

"When?"

"Oh, next month or so."

I groaned. "Cleo, I've got to see you."

"OK, I'm hungry. Ask me to dinner."

"How abouÉ lunch?"

"Not that hungry, I can wait. Dinner. Michael's Pub." And the telephone clicked shut on me once more. I turned on the fan in the booth and let it cool my fevered brow. Loitering outside, Max lay in wait. He wanted to know how I had done. Fine, just fine. He wanted her number so he could put in a good word for me.

"You wear nice ties," he said. "You're the sole support of your orphaned bookie. You help Seeing Eye dogs find their masters. You pay your half of the check when we drink together. Lots of good I can say for you."

"Go to ––"

"In due time," he said. "Farewell, lover."

In due time, as everyone by this time knows, the offer to give us permanent TV assignments as America's Perfect Soulmates came our way. The television types were looking for something honest to replace quiz shows, something acid to replace heart-warming situation comedy, and something not Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball to replace Desilu Productions. Our pictures, our words, our "image" had made it. The offer was categorical. Max threw up his hat and cheered. His hat came down and he stopped cheering.

Cleo, who wanted to make out her own way, quietly examined the contractual offer and agreed.

I sat down and said no.

"Wah-wah-what?" they asked like seventy-six trombones.

I explained that I was not interested. I had nerves. The strain. A quiet life I wanted; just a furnished studio apartment and my memories. Many entertainers speak of retirement after their years of glory. I wanted to retire before my glory. Gazing steadfastly at Cleo, I said, "Before my thrombosis, before my sclerosis, before my future unhappy times of frustration and misery."

"He's an artist?" wailed Max in deep agental distress. "Oh my god, I, who have serviced many artists in my business as an agent to artists, now I'm stuck with an artist?"

Cleo said competently to all the gathered commercial calculators, "Get out and leave me alone. Leave him alone. Leave us alone."

They left us alone in the conference room. "Try to seduce me," I warned her, "and I'll black your eye."

"Enough foolishness, Lucky."

"A husband and wife team!" I snorted. "After what we've been through!"

"You've been," she said, fluttering her eyelashes rapidly while I noticed that they were blacker than usual, "you've been a real advertisement for oysters, wheat germ, queen bee jelly, and the healthy outdoor station-wagon life, Lucky. I mean you've been swell."

"OK."

"I've been mean."

"Great. Over."

"I mean . . ."

"You mean you've been mean."

"Yes."

"So?"

She unfluttered the fluttering eyelashes. "I want to make it up to you now, Lucky."

"Why? The new contract? You need me?"

And then the jazz she gave me? All about how it had seemed too jazzing easy, and I would think her jazzingly facile, and she hated the basic situation which threw us together, and she couldn't help herself once the pattern got started, and she was afraid, scared, terrified. "J'ai eu le gloire de la defense, mais je veux le plaisir de la defaite."

"Wah?" quoth I.

"French. The glory of defense. But a chick needs the pleasure of defeat, too."

I didn't believe it.

"You think I'm fri-cold?" she asked, abandoning the foreign languages.

"-gid-indifferent," I said, finishing her sad, savage word. "Trés." I was very clipped.

"How can I prove otherwise?"

I shrugged, in French.

Her answer was apparently thought out in advance. She called them in to refuse the job. She would have none of it. She did not want to be teamed up with me. She was done. "Max," she said, "shove it." She quit, resigned, abandoned the whole field of mutual endeavor between us. The two of us were once more alone.

All right, now you've done it, I thought, fiddling with a plastic unbreakable ashtray. I dropped it. It broke into a million pieces. The guaranteed impossible happened. "Now you've done it, Cleo."

"Now I'm doing it."

She seduced me then and there on the six inches of pile carpet in Max's other office – not the cigar store this time. She told me that it was only for good luck for Lucky, that she wanted nothing more from me, least of all a contract. She had no contract with me.

However, I now find myself with a license to practice conjugal husbandry. I support her without a personal contract, but willingly, and we pass none of our time in station wagons. We pass lots of it in TV studios. For our vacation we plan to take a little trip in our Lisbon wagon, but we'll stop in motels. Memories. Ah, memories, they come back to haunt a fellow. But a happy horizontal Cleo is the answer to those sad vertical memories.