Free Getting Even by Woody Allen Page B

add.”
       Everyone looks at one another and shrugs. Wine is poured and they all drink.
       “Some eclipse today,” the Mayor says, sipping from his glass.
       “Yes,” the baker agrees. “Incredible.”
       “Yeah. Thrilling,” says a voice from the closet
       “What, Dracula?”
       “Nothing, nothing. Let it go.”
       And so the time passes, until the Mayor can stand it no longer and forcing open the door to the closet, he shouts, “Come on, Dracula. I always thought you were a mature man. Stop this craziness.”
       The daylight streams in, causing the evil monster to shriek and slowly dissolve to a skeleton and then to dust before the eyes of the four people present. Leaning down to the pile of white ash on the closet floor, the baker’s wife shouts, “Does this mean dinner’s off tonight?”

A Little Louder, Please
       Understand you are dealing with a man who knocked off Finnegans Wake on the roller coaster at Coney Island, penetrating the abstruse Joycean arcana with ease, despite enough violent lurching to shake loose my silver fillings. Understand also that I am among the select few who spotted instantly in the Museum of Modern Art’s impacted Buick that precise interplay of nuance and shading that Odilon Redon could have achieved had he foresaken the delicate ambiguity of pastels and worked with a car press. Also, laddies, as one whose spate of insights first placed Godot in proper perspective for the many confused playgoers who milled sluggishly in the lobby during intermission, miffed at ponying up scalper’s money for argle-bargle bereft of one up-tune or a single spangled bimbo, I would have to say my rapport with the seven livelies is pretty solid. Add to this the fact that eight radios conducted simultaneously at Town Hall killed me, and that I still occasionally sit in with my own Philco, after hours, in a Harlem basement where we blow some late weather and news, and where once a laconic field hand named Jess, who had never studied in his life, played the closing Dow-Jones averages with great feeling. Real soul stuff. Finally, to lock my case up tight, note that mine is a stock visage at happenings and underground-movie premieres, and that I am a frequent contributor to Sight and Stream, a cerebral quarterly dedicated to advanced concepts in cinema and fresh-water fishing. If these are not credentials enough to tag me Joe Sensitive, then, brother, I give up. And yet, with this much perception dripping from me, like maple syrup off waffles, I was reminded recently that I possess an Achilles’ heel culturewise that runs up my leg to the back of my neck.
       It began one day last January when I was standing in McGinnis’ Bar on Broadway, engulfing a slab of the world’s richest cheesecake and suffering the guilty, cholesterolish hallucination that I could hear my aorta congealing into a hockey puck. Standing next to me was a nerve-shattering blonde, who waxed and waned under a black chemise with enough provocation to induce lycanthropy into a Boy Scout. For the previous fifteen minutes, my “pass the relish” had been the central theme of our relationship, despite several attempts on my part to generate a little action. As it was, she had passed the relish, and I was forced to ladle a small amount on my cheesecake as witness to the integrity of my request.
       “I understand egg futures are up,” I ventured finally, feigning the insouciance of a man who merged corporations as a sideline. Unaware that her stevedore boy friend had entered, with Laurel and Hardy timing, and was standing right behind me, I gave her a lean, hungry look and can remember cracking wise about Krafft-Ebing just before losing consciousness. The next thing I recall was running down the street to avoid the ire of what appeared to be a Sicilian cousin’s club bent on avenging the girl’s honor. I sought refuge in the cool dark of a newsreel theatre, where a tour de force by Bugs