The Land of Laughs Read Online Free PDF Page A

Whenever I come into the place — be it in a plane, train, or car — I can’t wait to get there. The Big Apple! Shows! Museums! Bookstores! The Most Beautiful Women in the World! It’s all there and has been waiting for me all this time. I zoom out of the train and there’s Grand Central Station or Port Authority or Kennedy Airport — the heart of it all. And my heart’s doing a conga: Look at the speed! The women! I love it! Everything! But that’s where the trouble begins, because everything includes the bum wobbling into a corner to vomit and an obnoxious fourteen-year-old Puerto Rican kid on transparent rocket-ship high heels asking (threatening) me for a dollar. On and on and on. There’s no need to elaborate on it, but I never seem to get it through my head about the place because every time I come, I half-expect to see Frank Sinatra come dancing by me in a sailor suit, singing “New York, New York.” And in fact a man who looked vaguely like Sinatra did dance by me once in Grand Central. Danced right by and started to pee on the wall.
    So now I’ve got it down to a science. I get off the train in high spirits. Then until the first terrible thing happens I’m great and loving every minute of the place. As soon as the terrible arrives, I let all of my hate and disappointment come flying out of me, and then I go on about my business.
    This time it was a cabdriver. I flagged him down when I got out of the station and gave him the Fifth Avenue address of the publisher.
    “Parade on Fift’ tudday.”
    “Yes? So?” His license card said that his name was Franklin Tuto. I wondered how he pronounced it.
    I saw his eyes in the rearview mirror sizing me up. “So I gotta go down Park.”
    “Oh, that’s all right. Excuse me, but do you pronounce your last name Toot-o or Tut-o?”
    His eyes were in the mirror instantly, drawing a head on me before he answered this dangerous question.
    “What’s it to you, hey?”
    “Nothing. I was just interested.” Fool that I am, I thought I’d try to be funny. “I thought you might be related to the Egyptian Tuts.”
    “Like hell you did. You were checking me out, weren’t you?” He grabbed hold of the bill of his checkered golf cap and pulled it around and down farther onto his head.
    “No, no, you see, I saw your name there on the card —”
    “You’re another inspector! God damn you guys! I got the friggin’ renewal already, so what the hell else do you want from me, blood?” He pulled over to the curb and told me that he didn’t want me in his fucking cab — that I could fucking suspend him if I wanted, but that he was sick of “us guys.” So we all got out of his cab, waved good-bye to Franklin Tuto as he screeched away, and sighing, hailed another.
    The pilot of this one was named Kodel Sweet. I’m a great one for reading the names of cabdrivers. Scenery usually bores me. He had on one of those funky black velvet hats that look like something fell out of the sky onto his head and decided to stay. For better or worse he didn’t say anything the whole trip except “Check it out” when I again gave the address of the publisher. But then when I was getting out of the car he said, “Have a nice day,” and it sounded like he meant it.
    The building was one of those all-glass Brave New World things like a huge swimming pool turned up on end without the water flowing out. The only time I’ve ever liked architecture like that is when it’s one of those brilliantly sunny days in the spring or fall and the million windows reflect light everywhere.
    I was surprised to find that a number of the floors of the building were offices of this publisher. Floors and floors of people working on books. I liked that idea. I liked the fact that Kodel Sweet had told me to have a nice day. There was a nice smell in the elevator, of some woman’s sexy perfume… . New York’s okay.
    As I went up in the elevator, I felt a funny jump in my stomach to think that in a few