Free Eyes Wide Open by Andrew Gross

influential people: models, Wall Streeters, retail executives, movie producers, not to mention his inner circle of rakes and hangers-on, who eventually sucked him dry.
    Dad’s charisma was boundless, but his temper was even larger. And it always seemed to rear up after a couple of scotches. He would elevate brand-new acquaintances as his closest friends in the world—true geniuses, movers and shakers, even those who it was clear only wanted something from him.
    The same people down the line who when the tide eventually turned—and it always did—were banished from his sight.
    His biggest customers—not just lowly buyers but upper management, even store presidents—loudly thrown out of his showroom and told to never come back. His panicked salesmen scurrying after them, feverishly apologizing. They even came up with a brand that poked fun at his legendary outbursts: Lenny Didn’t Mean It, it was called.
    He would introduce me to his pals as the “Remarkable Dr. Jay,” even as a kid. And I had to admit it always made me feel like the most important person in the world. Growing up, he would take me out for dinners with his drop-dead girlfriends at Gino’s or to sit at the bar with his Irish bookies at PJ Clarke’s.
    Then he wouldn’t call for weeks, completely forget important events. Disappoint me terribly.
    I never understood what was behind my father’s rage. The truth was, if he were diagnosed today, maybe we would know. He ran away from Brooklyn in the forties and headed out to Hollywood, where he took up with starlets and ingenues and managed to become the right-hand man of Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM. His homes were always filled with bikinied beauties in the pool and glamorous people dropping by. Opera blasted over the beach on the stereo.
    He made millions over the years—and gave back every penny.
    At the end, his business partners grew shadier and shadier, as the glamour crowd wanted nothing to do with him. The Wall Street honchos became shiftier and the retail bigwigs turned into low-priced discounters.
    There was the suspicious fire in his warehouse in Brooklyn. The SEC was on his back over cash that had disappeared from the firm, as well as the IRS over back taxes.
    He became sort of a sad figure, driving around in his ten-year-old Mercedes, scrounging around the city’s flea markets, arriving unexpectedly at the house with some bizarre new “find”: paintings no one wanted or retro board games for the kids missing the key pieces. “ Lenny Presents! ” they grew to call him.
    We managed to become close in those years.
    Ten years ago, he downed his usual two Rob Roys at a local watering hole in the Hamptons, where he still had a small house near the beach. The bartender remembered him going on about some new idea. A couple of women were at the bar, but they didn’t want to be bothered by him. He threw a twenty on the table and waved good-bye.
    The next morning they found his car at the bottom of Shinnecock Bay.
    A fter dinner, we sat around the living room, Charlie strumming on the guitar. “Evan was getting pretty good himself,” he said with pride. “Even better than me!” He picked through versions of “Get Back” by the Beatles, the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “White Room” by Cream, Rod Stewart’s “Maggie Mae.”
    “Jay . . .” His eyes lit up. “You remember this?” He sang, “ Just when you say your last good-bye / Just when you calm my worried fears . . .”
    I did recognize it. It was the song he had recorded back in L.A. More than thirty years ago. “One Last Thing.”
    “Just when the dawn is breaking / There’s always one last thing . . .”
    He always played the same two verses. Only them. To this day, I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard the whole thing through.
    Charlie cooed, happily. “ Ooooh, girl, it’s always one last thing . . .”
    He put down his guitar. “You know it got to number twenty-nine on the charts,” he said with his