Manny.
“Hey, Manny, what took you so long?”
Out of the side of Manny’s mouth: “Keep it easy—had to build you up real big and then spice things up a bit with an offer of free booze.” A beefy hand reached for the tip money on the top of the piano. “This’ll probably take care of it...”
Sure, let George pay for everything. Show business! Why’d he get into it? Admit it! Nothing else he could do. Music had been his life; playing pi-ano was something he’d done since his pre-teens.
“What you gonna sing, Georgie boy?”
“Same old thing.”
Just then a large man came up. The expression on his ruddy features and slightly glassy eyes was enough to tell George that the man wasn’t in any condition to judge anything—or even care about judging anything!
“Mr. Delcado, this is the fellow I’ve been talking to you about…”
“Okay, okay! Glad to meet you sonny!” That large hand gripped his and for a moment he could almost believe that Mister Big was really inter-ested.
Frozen smiles and glad hands.
That was the trademark of the business world; but it was the very heart and core of the false reality of show business. Smile when you’re crying. Pat them on the back when you want to slug their damn teeth down their throats. Everybody loves everybody else!
“You’re agent has been talking you up real big,” Mr. Delcado said me-chanically, hardly noticing whom he was talking to. He and Manny turned and stepped back through the crowd, disappearing into the Mardi Gras of drunken faces and dim smoky atmosphere that hung over the place like a drapery of misty fog.
George reached for the mike. “Ladies and gents, the club is offering a special low spot in the show, tonight...” He wanted to say that this was so very important; and wouldn’t they please, pay attention. But. “Normally, guys like me are only allowed to make with the keyboard stuff, but tonight I’m going to give out with a little of the voice.”
A scattered applause.
Maybe three or four people had heard him and made a half-hearted at-tempt to be polite. They turned back to their conversations.
Frankie eyes looked his way and her lips smiled encouragement. He could really go for her this evening. A real swinger. What rolling hips, de-lightful, fully-stacked breasts. Maybe after the...
Suddenly he felt the old hates and frustrations and years of disgust and heartache rush through him. What did it matter to any of these bastards that he was about to sing his guts out so that maybe some rotten slob who owned a night club would give him a chance to get a new start?
As he started singing, a couple of the people turned his way. The soft words and flow of his voice carried across the darkened room and more people turned. They nudged each other and shushed each other. The noise slowly faded to a quietness that seemed almost tomb-like.
With a great sense of power, he went into his second number.
They liked him all right. Never had he had such a crowd like this be-fore. A bunch of drunks and lonely pick-ups and tramps and men on the make. He had them all clutched in the swell of his voice. It was a wonder-ful feeling of power. They sighed when he sighed, and cried when he cried.
For his third number he went into a happy swing tempo and the people were tapping their feet and smiling and laughing. The applause afterwards was first only a rippling and then it slowly swelled. After a short moment it was over.
Frankie rushed up through the crowd.
“That was wonderful!” she whispered, her face beaming and her eyes shining with excitement.
Manny pushed toward, them. “Great! Have to rush off right now. Call me in the morning!”
“How’d Mr. Delcado like it?”
“Fine! Said he’d see what he could do. Maybe a spot in—well, call me, tomorrow. Have to rush off!”
He was gone.
George looked silently at the cocktail waitress. “Well, Frankie—whatever that meant; I guess it was something good!”
For a moment he paused, not knowing how to ask the question he wanted to ask, or if he should. Looking into her eager eyes he saw the long-ing there.
“How about celebrating with me tonight after work?”
She nodded anxiously, then she was called away before they could say anything more.
But it didn’t matter now. She had said yes with her eyes and her ac-tions. She’d be waiting for him before she left work. It was funny how lonely people could say so much without many words communicated to each other.
“Say, mister, how about playing ‘Down by the Old Mill Stream’?”
Watching Frankie, he didn’t mind so much now. As he followed her progress from one table to another, he couldn’t help noticing the difference in her movements; they seemed more alive. Happy. Excited.
He could hardly wait to get her into bed caress her full breasts. Feel her naked body squirming against his. That idea sent excited energy and anx-ious excitement through his whole body.
“Say, you sure sounded good. I mean the singing. Could you do ‘My Funny Valentine’ for me and my girl?” A dollar fluttered like an autumn leaf into the glass. He hardly noticed.
Nothing was too important right then, except that after work things were going to being different. A little less lonely.
First, there would be drinks; then celebrating with Frankie. Tomorrow would possibly start a new existence for him.
But he didn’t really care—right then, anyway—about anything except Frankie.
After work they talked a little. The bartender had brought them drinks. And then later at her place they had, continued the talking and drinking.
He’d learned things about Frankie. Some of the things about the loneli-ness which her eyes expressed every time they made contact with his.
She’d come to California when she was eighteen. Gone to college. Met a man who said either she’d let him climb into bed with her or she didn’t really love him. The affair had been short, but it had broken her in to the sexual side of life.
Then things had worked out pretty fast. They had been drinking for a couple of hours by then and the buzzing effects of the booze worked their passions into a burning pain inside them. They had been sitting on the sofa for a long time, his arm around her body, her hand touching his leg and thigh. She was warm and affectionate.
He was finding it continually more difficult to keep from taking her in his arms. The position was just right, and her full red lips were only inches from his.
Both held their breath for a long moment. Then suddenly she pulled away and stood.
“I’ll be right back,” she smiled warmly, leaning over towards him and pressing her lips on his. It was one of those closed mouth caresses that sent a man out of his head. He wanted to pull her into his arms right then.
She moved away and then a moment later she disappeared into her bed-room.
He took out a cigarette from his jacket pocket and lit it. Nervously he puffed on it, blowing smoke into the air. The very thought of what she must be doing was enough to make him feel shaky inside. It was as if he was being pulled into a whirlpool of ecstatic excitement and the suspense was overwhelming.
He reached for his drink and downed it in one gulp. One thing he could say for Frankie, she was one hell of a woman; and that was for damn sure! The bedroom door opened and Frankie stood there.
He swallowed hard, finding it difficult to catch his breath. She was just about the most beautiful, sexy thing he had ever seen. The lacy negligee, which was loosely draped around her body, hardly did anything to hide the fact that she had a terrific body. Every curve showed through the thin net-ting. He found it hard to keep his eyes away from the full, supple swells of her breasts, which peeked through like curiously waiting eyes.
She slid across the room towards him, her eyes sparkling and the cor-ners of her lips turned upwards in a happy anxious smile.
“Hello there, baby!” he sighed. He reached up and pulled Frankie down to him. She came willingly and hungrily
into his arms, her lips parted and trembled slightly under his.
The kiss lasted long enough to get them both stretched out full length on the sofa and then slowly he pulled aside the lacy netting and started ex-ploring every curve and swell of her body. It was sheer delight—the feel of her silky, velvet flesh was like smooth cream. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her—or his eager hands. Her response was remarkably, swift and passion-ate. She seemed to have been hungrily waiting to be made love to for some time, for now that they were close and kissing and caressing, she squirmed and writhed in pleasant agony. Her breathing was heavy and intense; Her whole body became a sea of quivering, excited flesh, that lurched with eve-ry touch as if given an electric shock.
It seemed as if all the energy in his body was being sucked out of him as they clutched tightly to one another. Her lips once more made contact with his. Her tongue was a delicious darting target, moving with his with a hunger all its own.
He moved his hand down to her breasts, slowly stroking and fondling them, excited by her frenzied response of her body as it moved under his.
Then they couldn’t stop. The anxious beating of her heart as it pounded against his searching and caressing fingers began to match the desperate agony in his own chest. The flood of passion became too heated, too stimu-lating and overwhelming as they churned frantically and desperately against one another until their fiery explosive need had been burned out of them.
Afterwards the need was still powerful in them.
He had known women in the past; but never one that affected him like Frankie. They rested, and then he felt her move once more.
Her body pressed up against his, and he felt the excited fullness of her—as she breathed heavily. Her hands clawed at his back with an almost painful intensity. The need and electric power of that one embrace left them both weak and—breathing heavily in each other’s arms. They tried to relax, but found it impossible. They looked at each other for a long time in si-lence. Only the soft, drifting sound of music filled the air.
Again they kissed, slowly embracing each other with lips, arms and body. They didn’t stop until the ocean of desire had been silenced and their needs and passions soothed once more.
CHAPTER TWO
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
ADDED DIMENSIONS
While some of the following material has been touched upon in the previous chapters, many details are further developed along with other in-formation concerning my writing career. They are all articles complete in themselves.
1. A TAPED INTERVIEW WITH
CHARLES NUETZEL
by Lynn Munroe
Lynn Munroe came out to the house several times to do this above in-terview, recording a lot of conversation. He is a very dedicated fan and col-lector of books, and is actually in the business of buying and selling hard-to-find collector’s editions of pocket books. He is considered one of the top experts in the field. I can only thank him for the following interview.
* * * * * * *
American author Charles Nuetzel (pronounced NEWT-zel) was born in San Francisco in 1934. The son of artist Albert Nuetzel, Charles has written over seventy paperback originals under many pen names. When Victor Berch asked me to see what I could dig up about Scorpion Books, I called Nuetzel’s agent, Forrest J Ackerman. Both Victor and I had heard Nuetzel had died, and over twenty years have passed since his last book was pub-lished. Ackerman surprised me with the news that Nuetzel was alive and well and living in Southern California. Ackerman got me in touch with Nuetzel, which led to this interview:
BAE: Mr. Nuetzel, as I told you on the phone, my friend Victor Berch noticed an error in Warren’s Official Price Guide to Paperbacks. There is a listing for Scorpio Books of Chicago, NAC Publications, listing two books. But actually it was Scorpion Books of Los Angeles, and there are eight ti-tles. You wrote all eight of them under pseudonyms, didn’t you?
CAN: Yes. NAC are my initials backwards.
BAE: Did you sell them to the distributor, Golden State News, as a package deal?
CAN: Yes. Bob Pike was doing a line of books for them, and I was selling both my books and my Dad’s covers to Pike. One day Pike said, “Why don’t you cut out the middle man and do it directly?” GSN was a one-man operation: Joel Warner.
BAE: So you sold the whole package to Warner.
CAN: Everything. Wrote all eight books, wrote all the ads and copy in-side, wrote all the cover lines. Dad did all eight covers, all the art and the paste-ups. My father was a commercial artist for many years. Most of his work was done for the movie studios. Later in his career he did magazine art and paperback covers. It started with me, as a young science-fiction fan, acting as his agent and selling a cover to Ray Palmer at Other Worlds. (The cover was used on one of his publications, Science Stories.) At that time, 1951-52, I was getting to know Forrest J Ackerman, who later was my agent. And my Dad’s agent. When Dad retired from the studios [movie industry, Pacific Title and Arts] he began doing science fiction covers for me. By then I was writing professionally.
BAE: How did you meet Forry Ackerman?
CAN: It was as a result of meeting Ray Bradbury. I met Ray at the Cherokee Bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard in 1951. I was a fan. I was listing every science-fiction story and novel on color-coded index cards. So I knew Bradbury’s name. Talking about fandom with Ray led to an intro-duction to Forry.
BAE: How did you start writing paperbacks?
CAN: I started writing magazine stories. I told Forry I wanted to write for the science-fiction pulps. He told me the pulps were dead and the girlie magazines were the pulps of the ’60s. So I started writing stories. The tech-nique was to type a title on the top of the page, pick a pen name, type that down, and start typing straight through. No more than twelve pages hope-fully. I trained myself to finish something once I started it. That first year I did about 100 manuscripts and sold about two a month. But I sold a fair amount of those others over the years.
BAE: What year did you start writing?
CAN: 1960. My first science-fiction story was “A Very Cultured Taste” in Jade Magazine #1. One magazine publisher, Dave Zentner, was doing a line of adult books. I wrote my first books for him in 1961. Zentner was very good to me. A lot of us learned the book business from him. He could be intense, demanding... well, there are a lot of stories about him. There was a writer named Mike Knerr—
BAE: The guy who wrote Sex Life of the Gods (Uptown 703)?
CAN: Yes, Dad did the cover for that. Knerr wrote other books, too. Knerr was a sweetheart but he could talk tough on the phone. Zentner kept delaying on a payment so Knerr called him and said; “If you don’t have a check for me I’ll come down there with a .45 and kick in the door.” So he went down there and they had the check waiting for him. Another night I was writing a book for Zentner like mad. Knerr tells the story that he called me up and said, “Let’s go out for a drink.” I said “OK, but just a second.” He heard this maniacal typing for a while and then it stopped and I came back to the phone and said, “OK, I just finished a book, I can go now.” That’s how we worked, chained to a typewriter. Knerr told me he wrote Sex Life of the Gods in one week.
BAE: So he wrote under his own name?
CAN: He was one of the few with enough guts to do that. I was too chicken. I wrote too many adult books. Mike only wrote a few. Like Harlan Ellison, he didn’t mind putting his own name on the books.
BAE: Even Ellison did a book he didn’t put his own name on. But an-yway, getting back to Zentner....
CAN: That line was called Epic Books. That’s where I met Bob Pike, who got his start working for Zentner. When Pike started his own line he called me and said, “I need a manuscript.” I said, “When do you need it?” He said. “Yesterday.” So a week later I gave him Lost City of the Damned.
BAE: And that’s the first Pike Book, Pike 101.
CAN: Pike wrote the second Pike Book himself, under the pen name Marv Struck (Beatnik Ball, Pike 102). That was a one-man job. He even took th
e cover photo himself. My next for him was Appointment with Ter-ror (Pike 204).
BAE: In the meantime Pike had published The Coming of the Rats, by another writer. Did you know him?
CAN: George H. Smith. No, never met him. [*Author note added Au-gust 1997: met George a few years before he died, a very nice fellow.] He had a lot of pen names. Very prolific. My Dad did the cover art for The Coming of the Rats.
BAE: It’s unforgettable. I think that cover, and those great Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine covers your father did for Forry Ackerman, are among the best covers of that era.
CAN: He also did Lost City of the Damned at that time. He hated that cover.
BAE: So doing those books for Pike led you and your father to Scorpi-on Books for Golden State News.
CAN: Joel Warner, right. He was GSN among other things. The way he worked, you’d go to him and get a contract and he’d pay you with an IOU that was cashable in three months. But he’d tell you about this company that was willing to cash them immediately for a ten percent charge. So you’d go there to get your money right away. Then we found out later that he was a partner with this company too. He had you coming or going. He would use one publishing company for two or three months then jump to another, then back. He used to play everybody against everybody else. But he got a lot of people started in the business. Milt Luros started with him. Even Dave Zentner did some books for Warner. Some became publishers, then packagers and printers, then wholesalers. The whole thing.
BAE: Luros was Parliament News (Brandon House, Essex House, etc.) and Zentner was Bee-Line.
CAN: And Epic Books and Escapade Magazine and many others. Warner’s partner was a lawyer, Frank Laven. You’d send the manuscript to him and he’d check it out. They were very conservative, they would not let anything pornographic get past. They were very careful, whereas Luros was pushing the edge as far as he could, and Bill Hamling did even more.
BAE: At least until he went to prison for pornography. Your most sought-after book today is Queen of Blood [author note: totally non-sexual adaptation of movie script], published by Hamling’s Greenleaf Classics (GC 206.) Was that your only book for Hamling’s syndicate?