Niagara Falls All Over Again Read Free

was twenty years old, I could lift anything if an audience was involved.
    â€œI’m scared,” he said.
    â€œOh, Rocky,” I said dotingly. “Poor Rocky. Shall I sing you a song?”
    â€œUh-huh,” he said.
    So I started Brahms’s lullaby.
    â€œNot that one,” he said.
    â€œOkay.” I tried Rockabye Baby.
    â€œNo!” He thumped me on the chest.
    Rockabye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody? No. Beautiful Dreamer? Worse. You Made Me Love You? Out of the question. Abba-Dabba Honeymoon?
    A sly nod, a settling in.
    It’s almost impossible to hold on to 180 pounds of snuggling comic, but I managed. “You better sing with me, folks,” I told the audience, “or we’ll be here all night.” So they joined in, and that night five hundred people sang Rocky Carter to sleep for the first time. That’s the bit we became famous for: Why Don’t You Sleep? We did it a million times, in the movies, on radio, on TV. Veronica Lake sang Rocky to sleep, and Dan Dailey, and Bing Crosby. Always a different ridiculous song. Rocky said it was our funniest bit. Rock was educated—Harvard, he said sometimes, Princeton others, School of the Street, he told reporters. Anyhow, he studied things. What made Chaplin great? Keaton? A kind of tenderness and need, he said, not like these jokers everywhere. Why Don’t You Sleep would be how people remembered us, he said. It would be our signature.
    He was right, of course, but mostly I think he just liked being sung to.
    After we got off—four curtain calls, the real thing, no milking—Rocky used the house manager’s phone to call up Freddy Fabian at his hotel. Midnight; Fabian was probably in the middle of the start of his hangover. Rock stuck a finger in his free ear, as though the applause was still deafening, and swiveled at the waist to wink at me.
    â€œFreddy,” said Rocky. “Freddy: remember how you said your father wanted you to take over the grocery store?”
    12:30 A.M.
    â€œTo us!” Rocky said.
    â€œTo you!” he said.
    â€œTo me!” he said.
    â€œEspecially to me!”
    12:45 A.M.
    â€œLook,” said Rocky. “I want you to listen. Are you listening? Pay attention. This is very important. Stop laughing! No, I mean it! Okay, laughing boy. Keep on laughing.”
    1:00 A.M.
    â€œHow many sisters you got? What? You lucky son of a bitch! Listen: I’m an only child. Six sisters, you ought to be able to spare one. Pick me out a pip, okay? We’ll send her a telegram in the morning.”
    1:25 A.M .
    â€œMiriam who? Veblen? Oh, yes, yes, yes: Mimi and Savant. That act’s bullshit, you know that. Really? Let me shake your hand. No, the other one, your
empty
hand. The guy I saw in the act was a nance. I’m sure you gave it a je ne sais quoi. Mimi, on the other hand: tout le monde sait her
quoi
. No kidding? Really? Well, I’m sure you gave that some class too.”
    1:50 A.M .
    â€œDidn’t they teach you to drink, wherever it is you’re from? Oh. Well, no, they wouldn’t teach you to drink
there
.”
    1:55 A.M .
    â€œHey, kid, how old—your glass is empty, here—how old are you? A youngster! I’m twenty-five, fourteen years experience in show biz. My parents—are you kidding? Who do you think packed my bag?”
    2:00 A.M .
    â€œLet me shake your hand. No, I’m serious. I
am
.”
    We drank in my boardinghouse room, and the landlady came in to shush us once an hour, like a cuckoo in a clock. First Rocky and then I flirted with her—that’s probably why she kept coming back, she liked the flattery. Also I threw my Dutch wig out the window, to signal that I would never need it again, and only afterward did I remember that it was borrowed, and this seemed like the funniest thing in the world, and though it was the middle of the night we discussed who it fell on: the landlady, a dog, a cop. Rocky spoke in his