Neil's: A Manhattan Cabaret

By Manny Hillman

After an absence of almost fifty years, Larry looked for a cabaret that he had worked in as a waiter and found that it had been replaced by a parking lot. In his youth he was an innocent, aspiring writer, just out of college, looking for a place to work where hopefully he could obtain material for short stories. He found Neils, the cabaret, and talked his way into a job as a waiter despite the dangers and his slight appearance. Neils was a clip joint that was frequented mainly by servicemen and prostitutes. Larrys education removing him from navet began quickly.

Larry describes his first meeting of prostitutes, an alcoholic man whose intoxication increased without even drinking the rum he had ordered, and encounters with servicemen who were benign and threatening. He also describes the musical entertainment provided by the cabaret that helped entice people to enter the place, women who came to Neils who may or may not have been prostitutes, army stories that some of the soldiers told him, a wedding in the cabaret, nights of fear, fights that he had to avoid, and a musician who had survived the second world war and dreamt some weird dreams.

Incidents about Larrys non-cabaret life enter the narration, including his meeting the woman he married. Flo, an artist, would have supported him in his effort to write, but other matters intervened, and Larry had to wait almost fifty years to resurrect his notes and write his tale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 6, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462833153

Manny Hillman

Manny Hillman attended Brooklyn College and Washington University, and spent his professional life as a research chemist. Both his profession and his own and his wife's desires propelled him to travel extensively around the world. Now retired, he devotes his time to writing, woodworking and more travel.

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NEIL’S

A Manhattan Cabaret

Manny Hillman

Copyright © 2000 by Manny Hillman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

I   

II

III

IV

V   

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X   

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

In memory of all my departed uncles and aunts

and to my three surviving aunts

all of whom played a significant role in my life

I   

The City

To walk the streets of Manhattan has endured as my passion even after an absence of more than forty years. Business trips occasionally did bring me back to The City, but they were rare, and my visits were never longer than one day. They were always hurried and were almost always confined to the place of my business. I often regretted that I had no opportunities to wander among the city’s streets and to reabsorb the sights and the suffusive colors and smells that I had once known so well. The very few changes that I could observe at a glance were limited to the increased concentration of skyscrapers, many of which I found abhorrent. But whenever they came into my view, I was always pleased that the Empire State and the Chrysler buildings still rose majestically above the others. The night-lit façade of the former had always been a beacon of welcome whenever I returned home from outside of the city, and the Chrysler building with its arches and gargoyles was the most beautiful skyscraper of them all. It had been built in an age when beauty was still considered an important part of architecture.

Then, during my most recent visit, after I had fully exhausted my patience viewing hundreds of samples of the latest styles of men’s clothes, I discovered that I still had an entire afternoon of unexpected freedom. I rode a subway to 91st Street and walked to Riverside Drive, to an old haunt I had shared with a teenage chum who had lived nearby. Raphy and I had spent most of our Saturdays throughout Junior High and High School wandering Manhattan’s streets together. We always began our day at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Riverside Park, and I went there first and contemplated it anew, circling it several times and admiring the view from every angle.

Nothing appeared to have changed in the neighborhood. The buildings were the same. There were children wrestling on the grass in the park just as Raphy and I had done. Frisbees had mostly replaced tennis balls and the red balls that we called Spaldeens for a game of catch. A few sunbathers and lounging readers were scattered on the lawn. A child’s playground had materialized nearby, but that was all. I turned away from the monument and began to repace one of our habitual long walks, meanwhile mentally reviving that part of my ancient, but long-lost, friendship.

Ours was a strange relationship. We had very different interests. Raphy was interested in analytical things, and I in the descriptive. Our paths, even if we had gone to the same school, would not ordinarily have crossed, but we met at the New York World’s Fair one day. It is now sixty years since. We had been independently meandering from exhibit to exhibit and repeatedly found ourselves standing on the same line. By the end of the day, the first of our friendly wrestling matches began. I visited Raphy almost every Saturday from then on, each one filled with a different adventure, and we continued this routine until we entered college. Raphy went to Cornell University to study math, physics and astronomy, and I’m sure that somewhere he must have made a name for himself. I stayed at home in Bensonhurst and went to Brooklyn College as an English major with the goal of becoming a writer. We exchanged one or two letters. Then those ceased, and our once intense friendship was gone.

During my musings, I walked along 91st Street toward Central Park, past the Eldorado, a majestic, luxury-apartment building with residential towers on the four corners of the roof. I lingered there awhile and studied its intricate moldings, for I still knew no other apartment building like it. It was once famous as the legendary residence of Marjorie Morningstar. Would anyone remember her today?

I then entered Central Park and followed the same unchanging, snaking, and rarely trodden paths that I had wandered along with Raphy. Central Park was forever a pastoral haven for strollers and nappers and for people sitting on the grass or on a bench, people who were just looking for a pleasant respite untouched by the city noise. In my youth, the park was used even at night. No one in those years would have given the potential danger a second thought.

After skirting around the lake near 72nd Street, I exited the park near Lincoln Center and went to see the new Metropolitan Opera House and to see the other new halls that were devoted to music and theater, subjects that were always dear to me. I had never before seen Lincoln Center, and I was thrilled to be there. Though I was unable to visualize the new buildings’ interiors, as a substitute I recalled the interior splendor of the old Met—the velvet and gold, as it was called.

I continued along Broadway towards the busier parts of the city. On Broadway, Raphy and I were unceasingly awed by the kaleidoscope of dynamic billboards promoting their wares. We stood for hours watching the characters in the Bond Clothes display move from one end of the street to the other, and we sat for other ages watching the smoke rings emerge from the mouth of the man in the Camels sign. We tried to imitate the shape of his mouth, and we reeled in laughter at our distorted expressions. In the winter, when we didn’t have to be home for supper until after dark, we would stand transfixed while gaping at the astounding Broadway lights. And it was those lights in the windows and those lights on the billboards and on the theater marquees that delighted us most of all.

But on this, my recent trek through my old haunts, I confronted many changes. The Camels and Bond Clothes signs were gone, and the newer advertising signs were considerably more sedate. I was especially surprised that for the most part the people on the street were uninterested in what there was to see. Perhaps they were correct to be so disinterested, for the billboards that towered high on Times Square were too reminiscent of the billboards along the highways that everyone but the advertisers strove to remove.

Even without Raphy’s presence and without his collusion, my fascination for The City continued throughout college and a little beyond. I added Broadway theater to my adventures, and I began to go to operas as a standee at the old Met. I became acquainted with many of my regular neighbors on line, kindred spirits no matter what their age. As I emerged from my teens, I also began to notice the different characteristics of the people on the streets instead of the merely superficial similarities. Raphy and I were always so busy looking at the physical aspects of the city that we hardly ever noticed the people. I was very conscious of my change of attitude, and I hoped that my newly acquired power of observation would contribute to an ability to write maturely. Finally, during my last three years in New York, after I had graduated from Brooklyn College, I worked as a waiter in a Manhattan cabaret, and in that setting, I grew to know a kind of night life that was far different from the lives of my fellow opera and theater goers. I became well acquainted with several other orders of people.

As my recent walk continued, and as the hours of the afternoon progressed, I was able to visualize the streets of my old days with increasing clarity. I remembered how I used to stand on the corner of the old Met or near the New York Public Library while simply watching the people pass by. They were teeming people who robotically wended their incomprehensible ways. They were countless people who proceeded at identical paces toward goals that no one could discern by observation alone: to their offices if that was the hour, perhaps with some excitement while mentally planning the day’s work, perhaps sullenly while recalling the problems of the yesterday, or en masse to lunch and then back again for another session in the office. Or they were on their way to the overcrowded subways, hurrying home, tired, restrained, no longer excited or sullen, just worn out both mentally and physically, and hoping for an evening of repose. Then, for a brief time after the rush hour, before the theater and dinner crowds appeared, the streets of The City were calm. These were the visions that returned to me.

All of that old life of fascination came to an abrupt end when I moved to Denver in 1953 to become a retailer in men’s clothes. My memory of my ambition to be a writer dwindled rapidly, but for a very long time my memory of The City clung tightly to my heart and was difficult to release.

In Denver, I quickly found myself in deep trouble. By habit I kept talking about my life in The City. It was natural for me. It was the name for Manhattan used by most Brooklynites. But, my new family and my new neighbors weren’t at all pleased. They concluded that I was a big-city chauvinist who thought nothing of debasing their own home as if it wasn’t also a true city. Flo was amused. she understood the problem since she had lived in Manhattan for the three years that she attended an art school. But the only way she was able to help me was to laugh when I slipped, to offer some humorous comment to counteract the effect, or merely to remind me to be more careful. In time, and it seemed to me an endless and embarrassing time, the problem abated. I became more consciously careful, and almost everyone became inured to my habit and ignored my rare slips. Nevertheless, even after more than forty years of good behavior I still refer to Manhattan as The City in my own thoughts and even aloud when alone with Flo. Forever perhaps, as far as I am concerned, there could never exist a city other than New York, at least the New York I once knew so well, whatever it might have become today.

When I reached Times Square, where Raphy and I had always ended our tour, I started walking west along 42nd Street for no determinate reason except perhaps from an old habit that took over my will. My time left to roam was almost done. I must soon hurry to meet Flo, and together we would return to Denver. But I could not change my path. I was fiercely drawn by a latent nostalgia for the three years I had worked in the cabaret. This was the route I had always followed. This was the part of The City I had learned to know best of all. All the noises and sights and sounds and the smells of the old 42nd Street returned to me. Very little had changed. Only the crowds were denser. True, some specific things were new; salesmen hawking on the sidewalks, their wares spread out on blankets, and three-card Monte, for example.

Hey, mister! Ten’ll get you twenty if you find the ace!

No thanks, I shouted back. I had learned a lot of those tricks when I was young, and a few others, too.

All the old stores and all the old movie houses still lined 42nd Street even though the film fare had changed. The national origins of many of the people were different and more varied from those of the early fifties, and their clothes revealed a panorama of many life styles. But the harried facial expressions, the angst that had always seemed typical of New Yorkers, were still dominant. Most people were still hurrying on whatever paths they were driven, and the idle ones were still leaning against walls or huddling in doorways while waiting for something to happen. And, what was probably the most unchanged of all characteristics, everyone still seemed oblivious of the existence of everyone else.

When I approached Eighth Avenue, a pleasant looking young man who was not too shabbily dressed sidled up to me.

Any change? he asked.

I gave him a quarter and he disappeared. His character as an individual never had a chance to register. Instead, my mind returned to the summer of 1950. In that very same spot, a young, very slender, lightly dressed, good looking woman, whose name I knew as Syl, came running up to me.

Sonny, can you spare some money? I need a half-dollar quickly. A half-dollar to me was a lot of money then, but I gave her one, and she ran off.

Remembering made me smile. I may even have laughed aloud, and, most likely, I wasn’t noticed by anyone else. My name is Larry Schiff. Sonny was my nickname in the cabaret. Syl was a prostitute and my own age, at that time about twenty-one.

I turned north on Eighth Avenue and the uncannily familiar scene continued to startle me. I could easily have been thrown back through a time warp. I was suddenly flushed with additional intensifying memories. The street looked exactly the same as it did in the fifties. There was still an odd assortment of two-and three-floored brick buildings with stores on the street level and apartments above. Lining the street for as far as it went were the same kinds of restaurants, bars, junk stores, laundries and furniture stores. An occasional movie house stood taller than the other buildings. Today, they feature triple-X films; then, they showed nondescript B or C movies. I had always felt that the movie houses served primarily as places to keep someone warm, not only from the cold of the winter but during any season, from the coldness of living alone. Since nothing else had changed besides the nature of the films, I still considered that these movie houses must serve the same purpose as of old.

I remembered that the people who lived on Eighth Avenue were always faceless and nameless to me despite the three years that I had worked in their midst. Their isolated and lonely lives seemed important only to their own selves. I could never have met any of them without deliberately trying, and, though I walked along Eighth Avenue every afternoon shortly before five, I never became part of the life on the street. Still, the old sounds and the odors remained with me, embedded as a part of my unplumbed subconscious mind. They had persisted in deep quiescence until the day I returned.

As soon as I entered Eighth Avenue, as soon as the vision of Syl was resurrected, every aspect of Neil’s returned to my life again. In the vision I dreamed while I continued up the Avenue, I saw myself entering the cabaret, passing between the Military Police and the Shore Patrol who always stood under the awning. I greeted Bill, the two-hundred-thirty-pound bouncer who was very tough when trouble brewed, but who was also a gentle and good friend. I waved at Jack, the chief bartender who served drinks with a smile and a joke. The jukebox on the right played Good Night Irene. The small stage on the right, just beyond the jukebox, with barely enough room for an upright piano and three or four musicians, was alive with music, country music, raucous music. I saw the shadows of those who leaned against the bar. They drank if the entertainment was mediocre and gave their tips to the bar. They were enthralled if the entertainment was good, left their drinks standing untouched and gave their tips to the stage. I again heard the Cowboys sing Woody Guthrie songs. And, at the end of my vision, at the rear of the cabaret were the tables