Free Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler

Daddy.”
    â€œAnd your latest ‘discovery,’ that idiot Diana, is certainly not joining us for dinner while Miriam’s here.”
    â€œSay we’re in a restaurant, and I have to go and make weewee, do I put up my hand to ask permission?”
    â€œAnd none of your prurient Hollywood gossip, please. It would bore the hell out of her.”
    I needn’t have been apprehensive about Miriam meeting Hymie. She adored him at first sight, dinner at The White Elephant. He made her giggle harder than I ever had, that bastard. He got her to blush. And, to my amazement, she couldn’t get enough of his salacious stories about Bette Davis, Bogie, or Orson. There I was, mooning over my loved one, my smile goofy in her presence, but definitely
de trop
.
    â€œHe told me you were intelligent,” said Hymie, “but he never once mentioned that you were so beautiful.”
    â€œHe probably hasn’t noticed yet. It’s not like I ever scored a hat trick or the winning goal in overtime.”
    â€œWhy marry him when I’m still available?”
    â€œDid he say I had agreed to marry him?”
    â€œI didn’t. I swear. I said I
hoped
that you would —”
    â€œWhy don’t the two of us meet for lunch tomorrow, while I give him some typing to do?”
    Lunch? They were gone for four hours, and when Miriam finally tottered into our hotel room, she was flushed and slurring her words, and had to lie down. I had booked us into The Caprice for dinner, but couldn’t get her out of bed. “Take Hymie,” she said, turning over and starting to snore again.
    â€œWhat did you talk about for so long?” I asked Hymie later.
    â€œThis and that.”
    â€œYou got her drunk.”
    â€œEat up,
boychick
.”
    Once Miriam had flown back to Toronto, Hymie and I resumed our carousing. Hell for Hymie wasn’t other people, as Camus had it, 15 but being without them. When I would quit our table at The WhiteElephant or The Mirabelle, pleading fatigue, he would move on to another table, uninvited but making himself welcome by dazzling the company with anecdotes about bankable names. Or he would slide over to the bar, chatting up whatever woman was seated alone there. “Do you know who I am?”
    One night it still chills me to remember, Ben Shahn turned up at The White Elephant with a group of admirers. Hymie, who owned one of Shahn’s drawings, took that as licence to intrude upon his table. Pointing a finger at Shahn, he said, “Next time you see Cliff, I want you to tell him for me that he’s a dirty rat.”
    Cliff, of course, was Odets, who had babbled to the House Un-American Activities Committee, naming names.
    Silence settled like a shroud over the table. Shahn, unperturbed, raised his glasses to his forehead, peering quizzically at Hymie, and asked, “And who shall I say gave me the message?”
    â€œNever mind,” said Hymie, shrinking before my eyes. “Forget it.” And retreating, he seemed momentarily befuddled, old, unsure of his bearings.
    Finally, several months later, the day came when I sat with Hymie in a Beverly Hills screening room and watched the titles and credits of our film roll past. Startled, I read:
    FROM AN ORIGINAL STORY BY BERNARD MOSCOVITCH.
    â€œYou bastard,” I hollered, yanking Hymie out of his seat, shaking him, “why didn’t you tell me it was from a story by Boogie?”
    â€œTouchy touchy,” he said, pinching my cheek.
    â€œNow, as if I didn’t have enough to handle, people will say I’m exploiting his work.”
    â€œSomething bothers me. If he was such a good friend, and he’s still alive, why didn’t he show at your trial?”
    In response, I reached back and managed to crunch Hymie’s twice-broken nose for a third time, something I had longed to do ever since he had taken Miriam out for that four-hour lunch. He countered by pumping his knee into