The war came along and saved usSeventy-seven...
The war came along and saved usSeventy-seven million pairs of gloves purchased by the quartermasterThe glove man got richBut then the war ended, and I tell you, as far back as that, even in the good days, it was already the beginning of the endOur downfall was that we could never compete with overseasWe hastened it because there wasn't some good judgment on either sideBut it could not be saved regardlessThe only thing that could have stopped it--and I was not for this, I don't think you can stop world trade and I don't think you should try--but the only thing that could have stopped it is if we put up trade barriers, making it not just five percent duties but thirty percent, forty percent--"
"Lou," said his wife, "what does any of this have to do with this movie?"
"This movie? These goddamn movies? Well, of course, they're not new either, you knowWe had a pinochle club, this is years agoyou remember, the Friday Night Club? And uhr rolex we had a guy in the electrical businessYou remember him, Seymour, Abe Sacks?"
"Sure," the Swede said "Well, I hate to tell you but he had all these kind of movies right in his houseOn Mulberry Street, where we used to go with the kids to eat Chinks, was a saloon where you could go in and buy whatever filth you wantedAnd you know something? I watched five minutes and I went back in the kitchen and, to his credit, so did my dear friend, he's dead now, a wonderful fella, my mind is going, the glove cutter, what the hell was his name--"
"Al Haberman," said his wifeThe two of us just played gin for an hour, until there was this hullabaloo in the living room where they were showing the movie, and what happened was the whole damn movie, the camera, the whole what-do-you-call-it caught fireI couldn't have been happierThat is thirty, forty years ago, and to this day I remember sitting with Al Haberman playing cards while the rest of miu miu clutch them were drooling like idiots in the living room
He was by now telling this to Orcutt, directing his remarks solely at himAs though, despite the evidence of the drunken woman Lou Levov was sitting next to, despite the incontrovertible evidence of so much of Jewish lore, the anarchy of a highborn Gentile remained essentially unimaginable to him, and Orcutt, therefore, of everyone at the table, could best appreciate the platitude he was getting atThey're supposed to be the dependable ones in control of themselvesAren't they? They marked the territoryDidn't they? They made the rules, the very rules that the rest of us who came here have agreed to followCould Orcutt fail to admire him for sitting in that kitchen, sitting there patiently playing gin until at last the forces of good overcame the forces of evil and that dirty movie went up in smoke back in 1935?
"Well, I'm sorry to say, MrLevov, that you can't keep it out any longer lady dior bag just by playing cards," Orcutt told him"That was a way to keep it out that doesn't exist any longer
"Keep what out?" Lou Levov asked "What you're talking about," said OrcuttAbnormality cloaked as ideologyThe perpetual protestTime was you could step away from it, you could make a stand against itAs you point out, you could even just play cards against itBut these days it's getting harder and harder to find reliefThe grotesque is supplanting everything commonplace that people love about this countryToday, to be what they call 'repressed' is a source of shame to people--as not to be repressed used to be
"That is true, that is trueLet me tell you about Al HabermanYou want to talk about the old-style world and what used to be, let's talk about AlA wonderful fella, Al, a handsome fellaGot rich cutting glovesYou could in those daysA husband and a wife who had any ambition could get a few skins and make some glovesEnded up in a small dior logo room, two men cutting, a couple of women sewing, they could make the gloves, they could press them and ship themThey made money, they were their own bosses, they could work sixty hours a weekWay, way back when Henry Ford was paying the unheard-of sum of a dollar a day, a fine table cutter would make five dollars a dayBut look, in those days it was nothing for an ordinary woman to own twenty, twenty-five pair of glovesA woman used to have a glove wardrobe, different gloves for every outfit--different colors, different styles, different lengthsA woman wouldn't go outside without a pair in any weatherIn those days it wasn't unusual for a woman to spend two, three hours at the glove counter and try on thirty pair of gloves, and the lady behind the desk had a sink and she would wash her hands between each colorIn a fine ladies' glove, we had quarter sizes into the fours and up to eight and a halfGlove cutting is a wonderful trade--was, sac chloe an
