His Master's Voice - Part Two

His Master's Voice
Part Two

HarryBuschman

Shelley knew he could save a hotel bill if he took the Delaware Lackawanna train from Hoboken. From long experience he had learned to take night trains. The food is bad, the roomettes are rolling prison cells, but you step out of the train at the crack of dawn with a smile, a shoe shine and a leg up on the competition.

He arrived in Hoboken at 6:45. He decided on a one way ticket to Binghamton. It was a week's gig, but who knows. "Shelley and Woody" had been held over before, even though Shelley couldn't remember the last time. The train didn't leave for an hour, but that's the beauty of taking the train from Hoboken. Hoboken is the end of the line. The train is sitting there waiting for a handful of salesmen who have nowhere to go. Men with nothing in common except the job of getting out of town.

He found his roomette and dropped off his bag and the trunk that held Woody, then he turned to leave for the dining car. Before closing the door he looked at the trunk.

"I'm gonna go eat now, anything I can getcha'?"

"Course not! S'matter with you anyways! .... tell'ya what though, take me outta the trunk and sit me by the window. I like to watch the people comin' and goin'."

Shelley sat by himself in the dining car. Two other cheerless people, losers, like himself sat at other tables reading the evening paper. Salesmen most likely––headed for Syracuse or Buffalo. "Christ!" he thought, "We're three of a kind––we’re all goin' nowhere."

Things hadn't been going well for Shelley since his last wife left him. His attachment to Woody became unnaturally close. There were times when he was convinced that the little wooden monster was the ventriloquist and he was the dummy. At other times Woody was a physical extension of himself that he could talk to, man to man. Once or twice he caught himself speaking in his own voice and moving his lips while Woody sat staring at him without moving his. At first it seemed there was nothing wrong with that––nothing wrong at all. That's the way it's supposed to be. But then, on second thought, suppose Woody held the strings and was doing the talking for both of them. What then?

He needed a cigar after dinner. In the old days he always had a cigar after dinner. In the Playboy Club, the Century Club, somebody would always give him a cigar after dinner–stand him to a brandy too. Even when he ate home, he'd have a cigar after dinner. But here, in the dining car you couldn't smoke. Signs everywhere, "NO SMOKING." No smoking in the roomettes either. Imagine somebody telling Shelley Lewis, "No smoking" back in the old days.

$17.50. Hell of a price to pay for a lousy dinner like that. 15 percent? From a lifetime of tipping, Shelley could do percentages in his head. Whores, waiters, agents and lawyers––everybody wanted their 15 percent. "Well this guy in the white coat isn't gettin' more than $2.65, and that's givin' him the benefit of the doubt."

The train gave an initial jerk and began to crawl its way out of the Hoboken station. The two other men still sat there reading, reluctant to leave. Shelley had better things to do––after all Woody was waiting for him. He had it all planned out. He would get undressed, wash up and go to the john. All this would be done with Woody's face turned to the wall. They could talk face to face, but Shelley would not let Woody see him naked. He felt strangely vulnerable with Woody's eyes on him, measuring him. He'd let the bed down out of the wall and they'd lie side by side and talk long into the night on the way to Binghamton and the "Paradise Hotel."

End of part two