Outskirts Press, INC.

Life in a 1960 American city: was it the nostalgic time that history remembers?

It’s 1960 America, where optimism abounds, music is fun, cars sport chrome wings, Beats study Kerouac, and residents are secure, working, and happy. And yet in ‘Milburn Avenue’s’ fictional city of Sylvania, a family business owner clashes with his patriarch father and mistrusted in-laws; the controller has launched an embezzlement scheme; an out of town cop pursues a factory worker over an old homicide; a high school girl has a crush on a negro student; strip clubs thrive; a college sophomore grapples with his sexuality; a young single woman finds herself pregnant and her boyfriend womanizing; local bars witness human frailties; and teenagers grow up in large inner city high schools where social class, money, race, and academic levels are as varied as the city’s neighborhoods.

 
      
     Mulcahy was alone in the accounting department.  Again.  As he usually was this time of the work day.  It was the part of his day he liked best.  When he could attend to special matters that demanded privacy.  In this instance he was studying the memo on his desk.  Beneath the  brightness of the new overhead recessed lighting Corbin had installed last month.  ‘Damn, those lights are intense,’ Mulcahy muttered to himself, impatiently glancing up to the ceiling.  At those new-fangled fluorescent light tubes recessed behind plastic lenses Mr. Corbin, ‘Bill’ everyone in the company called him, had installed last month.   ‘Bill’s always messing around with new shit.  Why doesn’t he leave well enough alone?  Jesus,’ he mumbled. 
     Mulcahy directed his eyes back to the memo in front of him.  But I like THIS new-fangled idea of his,he grinned in silence.  He swung his chair around to the window behind him, the blinds still open to the dark, rainy, wintry night outside.  Where rush hour traffic crawled along Central Ave, south-bound, splattering rain water and reflecting the lights of the buildings across the street.  It was another gloomy, gray, drizzling, wet winter night in Sylvania.  It was only February, and spring seemed a long way off yet.  But Mulcahy didn’t mind.  This’ll do me just fine! he almost laughed, as he continued to study Corbin’s memo.
     Kevin Mulcahy was forty-two years old, a C. P. A., and the controller of Corbin, Inc.  He’d been with the company five years and he made a respectable living.  He wasn’t rich like the Corbins, but he did all right.  The problem was, he had an expensive hobby.  So he needed to augment his income.  Bill Corbins’s new sales program outlined in the memo would do just that, Mulcahy figured.   Mulcahy guessed the new program was most likely the brainchild of Tom Beach, a member of the sales force, and Bill would take all the credit for it.  But that didn’t matter.  That’s what bosses did anyway he shrugged.
     Mulcahy turned his chair back around, returned the memo to his desk for further study, glanced at his Longines that read six-ten, pushed his chair back, and reached for his hat and coat hanging up in the corner.   He hesitated for a second, considered downing a quick pop from the bottle of Old Crow in his bottom desk drawer, then thought better of it.  Nah, I’ll wait til I get downtown,
he decided, and shut off his office lights, the bright ones.  Stepping out into the open space filled with the vacant desks of the accounting staff, he glanced around the room, saw that indeed it was empty, left the lights on for the janitorial crew, and descended the stairs that led from the second story offices above the warehouse to the parking lot.
     Outside the building now, with rain drizzle faintly tapping on his hat, he glanced up above him and saw that Bill’s office light, at the far end of the building, was still on.  And his car was still there, too.  The ’59 Cadillac with the massive tail fins.  Probably should have looked in on him and said good night before leaving, Mulcahy considered.  But, fuck it, he decided.  He hopped into his own Buick and backed out.
     Mulcahy was married with four kids at home.  He loved his wife Maureen, he guessed.  Probably the correct word was ‘needed.’  She took care of him.  She laundered his clothes, fed him his meals, minded the kids, willingly if not avidly allowed him sex whenever he wanted it.  He guessed that was love, wasn’t it?  He’d told her that morning that he had a special Rotary meeting that night but he’d probably make it home by seven thirty.  ‘Go ahead and feed the kids and I’ll eat when I get home,’ he had said to her.
     It was one of many excuses he’d used over the last couple of years so he could make his private sojourns after work.  Instead of going straight home to the house on Milburn Avenue in Sylvania, and his family.  He sighed as he waited for cross traffic to pass and tried not to think of them.  At home.  Eating dinner right now, probably, he realized to himself.  He put them out of his mind.  He crossed Central, turned left at the next block, and headed north in the Buick.  He began to smile as he considered Bill Corbin’s new sales incentive.  He started to feel good again.
     His wipers batted the drizzling rain off his windshield as the asphalt reflected the deep red of the taillights easing along in front of him.  I’ll start reviewing the accounts tomorrow for targets.  The ones I can pull this over on.  The ones who are too dumb to even notice, he resolved.  But right now, as he turned left on Broadway and headed for the river that separated east from west in Sylvania, he thought of her.  Bambi. And he sighed again.  Mulcahy was headed for the Pink Fox.
     When Mulcahy first read Corbin’s new sales program memo, he thought of Bambi.  Sounds odd, but it made sense.  See, Kevin Mulcahy was addicted to the Pink Fox, an all-nude club on the inner west side of downtown.  Near where the Sylvania docks used to be, which by Kevin Mulcahy’s 1960 had moved much further north to the industrial area along the Cascadia River, where the great shipyards of the war had built more Liberty Ships than any yard in the country.  The downtown waterfront now off Broadway was home to seedy bars, the gospel mission, shelters, Chinatown, queer clubs a little further west, Skid Road, and the X-rated clubs that had so infatuated Kevin Mulcahy.  The first time he attended any club like the Pink Fox was two years ago in ’58.  At his brother-in-law’s bachelor party.  Where he had first seen Bambi.  And he’d been hooked ever since.
     Mulcahy’s Buick crossed the Cascadia on the Broadway bridge, one of many downtown that spanned the river, edged four blocks through heavy evening traffic, turned right down a narrow one-way street barely wide enough for two cars, parked on the street, and walked back towards West Broadway to the club.  Flashing yellow scrolling lights highlighted the large marquee of the Pink Fox.   ‘ALL NUDE GIRLS,’ the large letters read on top of the back-lit message board.  Below it: ‘Shows Nightly. Cocktails.  Food.  Stage Shows.’  Mulcahy slipped in, subconsciously ducking his head within his fedora and the turned up collar of his raincoat.
     Mulcahy removed his hat and coat, gave them to the check girl at the small counter to his right with a wink, and scanned the room with the stage on one end.   For her.  Another gal was performing her routine instead.  Vixen, they called her.  Brunette.  Pretty and sexy, but not in Bambi’s class Mulcahy believed.  He seated himself at the bar hugging the stage and immediately one of the dancers doing cocktail duty brought his old fashioned.   The servers knew what Mulcahy drank.  They ought to.  He’d been in enough.   Mulcahy tipped her a buck, smiled, and asked her if Bambi were in tonight.
     The gal smiled at him and said, “Yeah, she was in earlier, so she’s around here somewhere, Kevin,” then sauntered off, shaking her butt intentionally as she had been trained to do.  None of the gals in the club knew Kevin’s last name.  He wanted it that way.  He never paid his tab with a check.  Always cash.   He didn’t want to be seen in the club.  This one or any of the two or three others in the neighborhood he patronized.  He couldn’t afford for anyone to know about his passion.  For these women; for these clubs; and especially for Bambi.  And many other patrons in the club were just like Kevin.  Semi-anonymous.  Chatting with fellow patrons occasionally, but not getting too friendly.  Oh, the single guys spoke freely, but not married men like Mulcahy.  Friends revealed things.  Like last names and places of employment.  And that wasn’t wise for family men.  Mulcahy sipped his old fashioned and turned his attention to Vixen on the stage.  He tipped her two bucks when she’d finished her routine.
     Already Mulcahy had spent four bucks for his two drinks and three more in tips.  Seven dollars and he still hadn’t seen Bambi yet.  And that’s why Mulcahy was so pleased about Bill Corbin’s new sales program.  It was a golden opportunity for Mulcahy to augment his income.  And he needed to.  Money here in the Pink Fox, and the Starr and White Poodle up the street, went fast.  And Mulcahy couldn’t help it.   But then Bambi magically appeared from behind the curtain and there she was.  Mulcahy forgot about Corbin’s memo.
     The music was slow and sensual.  Bambi was tall; six feet in her stocking feet.  Eyeball to eyeball with Mulcahy’s height.  In heels she was statuesque.  Her hair was deep auburn, her eyes blue, her skin ivory cream-soft.  Her nose a little large but that usually went hand-in-hand with a great ass, Mulcahy had concluded.  And it applied here.  She scanned the bar seats in front of her as she performed.  Three men caught her eye, then she saw Mulcahy.  He was grinning avidly at her, dollar bills resting next to the cocktail in front of him.  She gave him a subtle nod and soft smile.
     She worked her routine over his way so he could give her the money.  When she got close enough he stood up and slipped a one into the thin strap of her bikini bottom.   The tingle went all the way up his arm.  She smiled at him, then maneuvered over towards the other patrons.  At length, after she had removed first her bikini top, then the bottoms, she scooped up the bills that her viewers had tossed towards her.  Mulcahy held a five aloft in his fingers for her to collect on her way by.  “Do you have a minute, Bambi?” he pleaded as she took the five.
     “Kevin, you can see I’m busy,” she said this with a mock frown and scold.
     “But just for a minute, please.  I----------.”
     “Thanks, hon!” she interrupted, smiling, and sauntered off to the back.  Mulcahy immediately got up from his seat.  He left eight bucks for his drink tab.  He hurried around the side of the bar for the door to back stage.  Just as he was about to enter a burly young man in tight black T-shirt with massive forearms and biceps stopped him.
     “Beat it, chum,” the bruiser said.
     “But I just wanted to leave a----------.”
     “I said beat it, Mac.”  The bruiser’s eyes were not friendly.
     Mulcahy started to plead but stopped with open mouth.  He sighed, turned, and headed for the door.  Outside in the street the rain had stopped.  The streets were wet under the dark sky, and street lamps shined off the pavement.  The big buildings of downtown several blocks to the south hovered like the shadows of a forest.   As Mulcahy walked, he glanced at his watch.  Seven-forty.  Shit! he cursed to himself.  He’d spent eighteen bucks in the Pink Fox and didn’t even get to hardly talk to her.  He savored the soft cool of her ivory skin when he’d slipped the bills into her bikini.  He sighed.  I’ve got to figure out a way to meet her outside of the Fox, he silently moaned.  I don’t even know her real name.  Shit!    
     And it was true.  The smart girls kept their distance from the customers.  The married ones anyway.  And Kevin Mulcahy had ‘married’ written all over him.  Bambi had in the last year or so begun to consider Mulcahy a pest.  He wasn’t unattractive, she had concluded when he first started coming in.  He was tall enough.  His hair was kind of thin the way he combed it back.  But he always dressed well.  And he must have money.  He spends enough on me,
she told herself.   But he was so helplessly infatuated with her it was starting to get under Bambi’s skin.  But Vixen had told her, ‘Relax, honey.  Guys like Kevin are harmless.  You should wish for more guys like him.  Steady customer.  Good tipper.  Respectful.  You’ve made a lot of money off him, right?’  But to Mulcahy Bambi was making life miserable for him.  He had to have her.  And he wouldn’t stop til he did.  He’d find a way.  Money talks, right?  She’ll see.  Mulcahy found his Buick and headed back across the bridge to Northeast Sylvania and his home on Milburn Avenue.