Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? by Jimmy Breslin Read Free Book Online Page A

of other people’s, too, because this is one helluva lady.

3
119 or Bust
    S OME YEARS AGO, AT a night club in New York called the Versailles, Mr. Joe E. Lewis came onto the floor under the strangest of conditions to give his first show of the evening. To begin with, Mr. Lewis had been drinking coffee in the dressing room. That was news. Furthermore, his routine consisted of a series of remarkably clean gags and stories. There was a reason for all this. In the audience was a close friend from Chicago, George Levy, who was throwing a birthday dinner party for his son, Alan, sixteen. In deference to Alan, Mr. Lewis racked his brain for every nice story he had ever heard. He then told them for the first—and last—time. The Levys loved the show.
    As did a fine society matron in the audience named Mrs. Charles Shipman Payson. She is from Manhasset, Long Island; Hobe Sound, Florida; Bar Harbor, Maine; and wherever else she feels like living this month. Mrs. Payson thought Joe E. was terribly funny. She also thought his fine, wholesome routine would be splendid fare for her two nephews, aged fourteen and fifteen.
    Two nights later she returned to the Versailles with the nephews in tow. They settled at a table and awaited Mr. Lewis’s entrance. Mr. Lewis was back to normal on this night. He was in his dressing room in the company of a bottle of Scotch, and when it was time to go on, he brought the bottle out with him. Then, with a little sophisticated smirk on his lips, and with no Alan Levy birthday party out front, he launched his normal routine:
    â€œShow me a Hungarian with good penmanship and I’ll show you a bum check.”
    Then:
    â€œShow me a man with a cool head and I’ll show you a chilly bathroom.”
    Mrs. Payson stirred a little. This was a somewhat different beginning to Mr. Lewis’s show from what she recalled.
    Which it was. For Mr. Lewis now announced, as he has always announced, and as he always will announce:
    â€œShow me a broad …”
    So it went. While Mrs. Payson tried to hide behind a glass and figure out a way to get the nephews out of this place alive, Joe E. was telling the audience about life in general and young broads in particular.
    â€œThat was the last time I brought any children to see Joe E. Lewis,” she was saying one afternoon. “But it most certainly wasn’t my last time at a show of his. He’s my favorite entertainer. If I only could keep him from playing those terrible long shots he likes so much. I doubt he ever cashes a bet.”
    Recently Mrs. Payson was talking about this while sitting on a couch in the parlor portion of her personal Pullman car, Adios II. It was hooked to the rear end of the Florida East Coast Champion, which was swaying through the icy weed stalks of the Jersey marshes as it came out of New York en route to Florida. Mrs. Payson was heading for her annual two-month stay at Hobe Sound. Two dachshunds slept on the couch next to her. A brass spittoon was off to one side on the carpeted floor. It is for decorative purposes; the lady does not chew tobacco. She rested her feet on a huge felt turtle which bore a New York Mets’ insignia.
    â€œI just received him today as a present,” she said. “So I had them sew a Mets’ insignia on him right away. The tortoise and the hare. That’s the Mets. I’ve given him a name. Marvelous Marv, of course.”
    She had a glass of No-Cal ginger ale in her hand, but she saw to it that a Scotch and water, a stiff one, too, was produced for her visitor.
    She is a large, pleasant woman with light hair. She had on a green blouse and gray skirt and only one bit of jewelry. Which was enough. It was a ring big enough to shake up the Van Cleefs. Her first name is Joan and she is a Whitney. She is of the world of the Social Register and charity drives and art museums and chauffeured Rolls-Royces. Her husband, Charles Payson, is Wall Street. International Wall