wo words together, slamming it. The Sunday reviews will crucify us. Binky. Jesus, the son of a bitch knows there’s no money left. And I’ll never be on a yacht on the Riviera. Dispossessed of a whole fucking house. My private personal papers strewn all over. There they were. The behemoth and a fucking wife. Throwing me out of my own home. Out of which. Shit. I tell you. I needed no encouragement to go. Imagine at dawn. Me on my own doorstep. Them shouting to get out. Jesus these fucking women. Think it’s so god damn easy to make money. Go step out there yourself you bitch. Go ahead. Where the financial guns are blazing and you make some money. Otherwise, instead of bitching sitting back there in the comfort of free room and board, shut your fucking ass. Shut it you cunt. Holy Jesus. I’m shouting. I’m delirious after all these nonstop horrendous days. Don’t know which are worse. The day horrors or the night horrors. But nothing, nothing could be worse than back working for my father. Or Uncle Werb. O Jesus. It’s only diamonds or erotic ladies’ lingerie left. I don’t think Binky and I are good for each other. Too many of the same kind of showbizz disasters have befallen us. We both shove the same crutches at each other for support. I need them and he doesn’t. My last hope. My only hope. Is his Lordship. Got to get him somehow to open up his coffers and save the show. He’s got to have some fucking humanity left I’m sure. He’s really an understanding guy. When I asked him, Jesus your Lordship why don’t you stop using your titles altogether if it causes you so much anguish. Ah Schultz, that would deprive people of their so clearly enjoyed pleasure of addressing me for what I am. Holy shit. I’ve got to stop fucking women. Before they kill me. When you’re just looking for a nighttime of thrill they’re looking for a lifetime of bliss. Only Rebecca is still absolutely loyal. The other secretaries skulking about. Shifty eyed. Cleaning their fingernails. Sneaking out of the office to fuck off every chance they get. Holy jeeze. This is the time. Of utter utter treachery. Everywhere. If I live through this I’m going to make a pilgrimage to Prague. Discover the beginning of my origins. At least see that before the end. In the beautiful mother of cities. Growing up I was happy. Never knew then what the horrors meant. Except trying to practice my violin after school with frozen fingers. These could be my last fucking hours. Born in Woonsocket. Sigmund Franz Isadore Schultz. A special a instead of the i in Isadore. For is adorable Schultz. Following four flops, he died in London. Fuck him, don’t help him, he’s too dead. At least during my life I had a beautiful name. I’m going to be a father. A kid born with no daddy to look after it. The behemoth could be raising my own flesh and blood. That monster fucking woman trying to tell me how to behave in my own fucking private house, in my own fucking private moments conducting my own fucking private body with my own fucking private desires. I couldn’t stand it. I got to win. Jesus I’ve already lost. Bills cascading from every direction especially this hotel. Even owe Binky rent on the coffin space I got my desk in, squeezed into an office for a midget. In the most polite and friendly kind of way, I know the flint hearted fucker will kick me out. But Jesus there were times of joy I had up there sometimes. Whenever those two fuckers weren’t plotting something against me. Just sitting around and bullshitting for hours. In those moments I really could have relaxed in utter happiness if I only knew I had already made millions. Or else was totally flat on my arse in failure. Once the trade reviews get out, it will ruin and smash my career. Those commercial minded cunts will revile the show. Boy have they got the jargon to do it. They love seeing you go down the drain for a fortune. My previous flops were too small to notice. They vanished like a saint’s fart. Now I have to bomb with a bang heard all over showbizz. Uncle Werb says, Sigmund, diamonds don’t evaporate. A fucking production sure does, the second the closing notice gets posted. Uncle Werb used to come up from Brooklyn to Rhode Island to build me snowmen in the snow. Put a yarmulke on the snowman’s head. Jesus I’m already crying tears for the unborn. I could have a son or a daughter. How can I support them. When my parents had me. They sold fire damaged ladies’ underwear from an outdoor stall in a market. Holy shit, how near the bottom can you start. Ten years it took of saving to get them just one lingerie store. We moved from the worst apartment house to the best apartment house on the block. Uncle Werb kept saying why don’t you go to the suburbs out of the slum. Make a social milestone in the family’s history. By that time Uncle Werb had a big suite in the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn. Holy cow, how did such a sweet nice guy like him make all that money. Jesus, simple, he stayed a bachelor. Retained the peace of mind to overcome disasters. As I keep reminding myself, expect the worst and that’s what you’ll get, only it will be much worse. I’m shaking. A cold sweat. Hold tight on the sides of the bed. This is an emotional emergency. And let me tell you. At today’s prices emotional satisfaction is not available to mankind. It’s a lure to keep you looking for it. Happiness is not money. The biggest asshole remark of the century. Holy jeeze how content I would be to wallow in a big bank account. Al. O god Al. You geriatric motherfucker. Taught me so many of the ropes. You helped. Did favours. And momma meeo. Why did you then have to finally suffocate me. The day you sent Pricilla over, everything in my life was like eating bagels, bananas and coconuts in the sun. Since that moment. How could I put on a decent production with all the pressures. Flesh bone and blood, that’s all women are, and Jesus what they can fucking well do to you. Now Al it’s you who is in love. Victimized. But come to think of it Louella was the only serene pleasant thing I saw all of opening night. Louella. Christ what a beautiful name. Maybe what I would like is one of those gorgeous intelligent half bitches who really understands sweat, men and money. Who loves to hear all the nuances of the kill. Wipes your brow after every business transaction and pats your hand as you reach over to feel her thigh. Who tells you that the fucker deserved what you did to him in that deal. Instead here I am landed with the complete bitch. Who after she’s corroded my guts away will grow old after I’m buried, hanging jewels on herself to compensate for every line and sag she’s got. As a kid I was known as Guts Dutch Schultz. I slapped girls all over the place. When I was a little child in my high chair eating a bowl of spinach, Uncle Werb said to my father, Milton I’m telling you he would make a good diamond merchant because he will grow up into a genius. My suspicious father who thought for a long time I was pretty stupid, looks at him. Says nearly hysterically, hey Werb how can you tell. Ah, of course Milton, I can tell. It’s you who doesn’t bother to look. See. If the bowl is more than an inch away from his fingertips, instead of reaching, he throws a screaming fit at the inconvenience. Let me tell you Milton. Such impatience over a detail makes a brilliant diamond merchant. My father told me the story every time Uncle Werb wanted me down learning merchandising gems on Forty Seventh Street. Why did I ever come to England. Jesus I know why. As a tiny tot still crapping in a potty, I heard London’s Big Ben ring nine o’clock one night on the American radio at the abdication of an English King. It sounded profound like nothing had ever sounded to me before. Imagine. That same fucking bell now is measuring off the time in the longest and maybe last chapter of my life. And Uncle Werb before he hit the big time, lived in deepest Brooklyn. Would you believe it, in an area called Kensington just off Coney Island Avenue. With streets named Westminster, Rugby, Buckingham and Marlborough. When Uncle Werb’s whole stock in trade was just one diamond wrapped in tissue paper carried in the shell of a vest pocket watch, when he stood dealing in the snow and rain on the Bowery. Jesus here I am with a date now with Lady Lullabyebaby. His Lordship’s sister. As high up as you can get in the aristocracy without being annoyingly conspicuous wearing a crown. Nearly said to her on the phone. To bring her down a peg. Hi ya baby. How about a cocktail, ballet, dinner and fuck, not necessarily in that order. I must be getting old thinking such shit The way I feel right now, it won’t be long before I’m popping down pills and timing my heart with a stopwatch like Al. Jesus am I over the hill. Like two of the most stunning women I ever knew. When they were only a few years older than Roxana and Greta and ripe and beautiful in their prime. Went to see them when I hadn’t seen them in ten years. Cramped up in an attic, furniture jammed everywhere. There they were, unable to move in the proximity. One of them trying to get me to screw her for old time’s sake. The other dying. Lungs black and cancer riddled from cigarettes. My god her hair was falling out. Her back was burned from exposure to X rays. And she wasn’t going to live long enough to sue the hospital. Holy shit, back that night I could hardly take it. Threw my cigarettes down a sewer. Nearly had to drag myself through the streets and there as I looked at these two women who were once both so fucking beautiful, all three of us those years ago screwing away in the same bed howling out orgasms and now one of them in tears at death’s last trap door. The other like an American matron. All the hell I wanted to do was get the fuck fast out of there. And thought Jesus, that’s why women behave as they do. They got to make it while their beauty lasts because shit they’re going to end up on the scrap heap. And only that I’m so crucified by a fucking female at the moment, I’d nearly admit they deserve a tear of sympathy. Christ right this minute I’m in the middle of my own doom. Maybe it’s my compassion that has stymied me. Once when I was being a nuisance saying to Uncle Werb, don’t get anxious, he suddenly got angry and shouted. Anxiety is a Jewish characteristic for christ’s sake, with good fucking reason. Now it’s me who’s anxious. And I only wish I could feel more fucking Jewish. If I suffer like this now. What will it be like at four or five in the morning when the pre dawn ghosts are hooting and howling up my arse. Momma meeo. Stop. I got to stop. What the fuck is all this foolishness. Wasting valuable time trying to dig a hopeful omen out of my soul and only finding more horror. Fight you son of a bitch. Fight. Up. Off the fucking bed. Fight. Jesus look at me. My fucking tie, shirt, jacket, pants, shoes. Are all looking like two generations behind the times. I got to get in style again.