ustxtxb_obs_1963_01_10_50_00011-00000_000.pdf

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Naval Blockade. Occasionally, he relights his cigar, rests his chin on one of the beach toys, and expresses immortal longings \(Example: “I wish I was in the Humidor Room at DunGLOOEY: I wish I was in the Humidor Room at Dunhill’s. LITTLE DAUGHTER: You said that once already [she is horsing around at the far end of the pool]. GLOOEY: [ignoring Little Daughter, soaping self furiously, steam rising; he submerges to the level of his chicken salad sandwich, which rests atop his head] : Le’s twist again hunny .. . Like we did last Sauna .. . BROTHER [appearing pool right, emerging from dressing room; he is dressed] : Hi Glooey. Hah’r things? GLOOEY: Swinging. BROTHER [registering surprise] : Are they really? GLOOEY: No. They aren’t really. That was just campaign blim-blam. If you really want to know the truth, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, I am not feeling well at all. BROTHER: What’s the trouble? GLOOEY: I got the angst. BROTHER: Gee, I’m sorry. Just last week it was weltschmertz. LITTLE DAUGHTER: Before that he was complaining all the time about the malaise. GLOOEY: Wish I could catch something patriotic, or something. . . . Ever gets out about these chi-chi oneworld ailments of mine, the Birchers’d probably launch a “Suffer American” campaign. LITTLE DAUGHTER: The way they did on account of Polish sausage? BROTHER: Any word from the Fatt Man? GLOOEY [quailing a little, takes sandwich from his head; has a bite; looks at sandwich with affection and understanding; replaces it on head] : Who wants to know? BROTHER: I just thought you maybe wanted to, you know, talk about it, or something. FATHER [moving toward them from dressing room, wearing Zen-raffia cummerbund and an old catcher’s mitt; he proffers a tangerine] : Here, boy-chick. It’s from the Cote d’Azur. GLOOEY: This place is a madhouse. FATHER: I beg your pardon? BROTHER: Don’t take it personal, Dad. He’s under this terrible strain. LITTLE DAUGHTER: Strain, schma in. [Glooey paddles to shallow end where Little Daughter is resting on a rub ber mattress, reading from Burke’s Peerage. He bends down and kisses the arch of her foot.] LITTLE DAUGHTER: Oh, Daddy. GLOOEY: You like a tangerine, Daughter? LITTLE DAUGHTER: I’d rather have a consecrated Newport cigarette. GLOOEY: Don’t you think you ought to cut down, hunny? LITTLE DAUGHTER: If you’re going to nag. . . . BROTHER [coming in on an enormous swell] : I have come to counsel you on the terrible, terrible need for loving and understanding the Fatt Man. He’s just lonely and unhappy and awful to look at and feels lousy all over when he thinks about what a really beautiful President of the United States he’s always being compared to. GLOOEY: That the whole secret of the Cold War, buddy? FIRST LADY [appearing with cocktail shaker and glasses] : How about a little consecrated gin and vermouth, darling, with a sacramental anchovyflavored olive from Wilbur Clark’s? GLOOEY: I guess. [Drinks directly from shaker, shudders a little.] LITTLE DAUGHTER: You going to eat your olive, or what? GLOOEY [appraising Little Daughter with appreciation and understanding] : Her analyst tells us she has a vocabulary on an exact par with Mayor Daley of Chicago, if the Mayor can just be persuaded to use it. VICE PRESIDENT [approaching from dressing room, pauses at far end of pool, considers walking on the water; thinks better of it, approaches around the poolside] : Used to know a fella walked on that stuff. Trouble is, you got to stay in this terrific condition all the time. Otherwise, you lose your wind and get off on your timing . .. Hah, there, Glooey! GLOOEY: Hah there yourself. VICE PRESIDENT [proceeds to hand out gold-flecked pens and swizzle sticks to everyone] : And here’s one from Chiang … And this other from Madam Pandit . . . And this one here from this Pather Panchali character, camel driver fella . . . Hah you been, Glooey? GLOOEY: I think I been suffocating, that’s what I been. [Surveying scene with disapproval] Jeez, you’d think this was Campobello or the goddam Radio City Music Hall or something. VICE PRESIDENT: I been there. I been all over. FIRST LADY: Darling, don’t you think you might get out of the pcopl today? You’ve been in here since the crisis started last Wednesday. And now you’re getting all water-loggy looking. GLOOEY: Has it ever occurred to anyone in this madhouse that I might just happen to like hanging round old beatup pools of water? I was practically elected on account of the stuff, for crissake. I got a thing about water. I’ve nearly drowned in a whole bunch of it. Twice. In the same damn ocean. FIRST LADY: Well, you don’t have to get catatonic, or something .. . BROTHER: Try to think about something nice,. Glooey. Think about your public image. FIRST LADY: All I said was he’s been in the pool since the crisis started. It never seems to occur to him that someone else may want to use it occasionally. [Enter a Man on Horseback, accompanied by Dallas Newspaper. Executive.] NEWSPAPER EXECUTIVE: What crisis she talkin’ about? GLOOEY: You got me there, old man. Mali . . . Cambodia . . . Viet Nam . . . Bucks County, Pennsylvania. NEWSPAPER EXECUTIVE: We got Communists in all those places, boy? GLOOEY: No. Just a bunch of poor people. NEWSPAPER EXECUTIVE: Same thing, boy. GLOOEY: Sometimes I see me dead in the rain. FIRST LADY: Oh, darling, don’t talk like that. VICE PRESIDENT: What’s so awful about talkin’ like that? Go on, Glooey, talk like that some more. GLOOEY: . . . And reading Talley,rand. And David Lawrence. And BROTHER [to First Lady] : I’ve been trying to help. I’ve tried to explain to Glooey that the Fatt Man’s problem is that he has just lost the ability to love. And he needs everybody to love him until he can get the feel of it again and, you know, kind of love everybody back. Otherwise, he might get the melancholia and shoot a bomb at us. MAN ON HOSEBACK: Don’t fire till yew see the whites of their yellow belly buttons. GLOOEY: What was that? NEWSPAPER EXECUTIVE: He said the threat to America comes from January 10, 1963 11