Free Little Casino by Gilbert Sorrentino Page A

had unofficially broken the world records for the giant slalom, the butterfly, the 100-meter dash, and the pole vault; he advised his close friends to buy up all the cheap land in and around a small, virtually abandoned one-time mining town in Colorado: Aspen; and he was the writer or co-writer of speeches given by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Father Divine, Al Smith, Fiorello H. LaGuardia, Huey Long, Eddie Cantor, Father Coughlin, Eugene V. Debs, and General Douglas MacArthur, the latter’s remarks those famous words delivered on the occasion of his being awarded his ninth Good Conduct Medal; he had, uncannily, predicted the popular musical expression that came to be called rock and roll. His heart had stopped beating for forty-seven minutes when his mother died, and he remarked, upon regaining life-functions, that “the other side” looked “like an enchanted Elizabeth Street”; he wrote all the jokes and comedy routines for W.C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, George Jessel, Milton Berle, Henny Youngman, and the Marx Brothers; he was, perhaps, proudest of the humble sausage recipe that he gave, gratis, to Nathan Handwerker; and she said, too, that he was a lying, cheating, unfaithful, deceitful, and miserably cruel and thoughtless and selfish son of a fucking bitch bastard who should suffer and suffer for years and years and then die in agony and all alone and burn screaming in the torments of hell forever and ever and ever, may God forgive me! That’s what she told him.

    This is, without a doubt, faintly absurd, but one may read it with Beckett in mind, who remarks that one may “puzzle over it endlessly without the least risk. For to know nothing is nothing, not to want to know anything likewise, but to be beyond knowing anything, to know you are beyond knowing anything, that is when peace enters in, to the soul of the incurious seeker. It is then that the true division begins, of twenty-two by seven, for example, and the pages fill with the true ciphers at last.”
    Samuel Beckett, it may be recalled, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. So were many, many other people.
    This woman, vexed and exasperated by life, is, in effect, saying, “I won’t cry anymore, and I wish you were here,” or “I wish you were here, but I won’t cry anymore.”
    “Maybe, I mean just maybe, she’s really saying, ‘Come to the Mardi Gras!’”
    Oh, for Christ’s sweet sake, don’t be so literary.
    Speaking of literary, a list of selected, judiciously selected, Nobel Prize laureates in Literature, might be thought of as “the true ciphers at last.”

Four soldiers

    H E WAS ONE OF FOUR SOLDIERS IN A SALOON somewhere, after so many years, it’s hard to remember. That’s what he says, in any event, probably a dodge. The others cannot be located, or accounted for, or so he says. A saloon in maybe Baltimore, or Blackstone, maybe Glen Burnie or San Antonio. This was another world, existent before probably three-quarters of the people presently dwelling, as best they can upon this earth, were born. There was a dance floor, big enough for three couples, just off the end of the long bar and near the two booths at the back of the room. The usual jukebox, some of the songs that year were “And So to Sleep Again,” “I Won’t Cry Anymore,” “Mixed Emotions,” and “Unforgettable,” the last cited the only one to have survived. A blonde. A pale-blue dress. Reminiscent of something that he could not quite place, but it may well have been important. He was giving this blonde some story about being shipped out in a week to FECOM, la-la, la-la, la-la. Then the pale-blue dress presented him with another image of another girl at another bar, OK, FECOM, oh yeah. The dress might have been a uniform, white, or an elegant sweater with tiny faux pearls in a fleur-de-lis pattern on the bosom. The feel of ice-cold fur with a hint of clean, fresh perfume.
    Now, how to get this blond girl with her small breasts and lovely hips away from the other