Right (Write) On

ARTHUR MULLINS

 

His coffee has been re-heated twice. It's flavor is gone. So is his mind. It is blank. Not a single idea comes from it to his fingers. Chapter one of 'Booze Days' is dead after just two pages. That he lived thru Prohibition days had inspired him but instead he is depressed, bored with t.v.'s overkill of the subject. Arthur rips his scribbling into bits and hurries to the toilet where he gags, throws up the blueberry muffin he almost enjoyed. 'Calm down, 'Arthur,' he says aloud to the mirror. 'It will come, it always does. Be patient!'

 

After the torture of a wordless day, he enlarges the misery by tossing and turning until daylight shows its face. The carpet on the stairs looks shabby. Capone wouldn't have accepted that and may have had Bugsy shot down just because ????? On his desk is Arthur's writing book, right where he left it overnight. It leaps at him like a rattler ready to kill. It's hiss, sharp bite send him directly into a busy, loud speakeasy.
Cab Calloway is at the piano singing 'Minnie the Moocher', young ladies are dancing wildly. Their silk hose are held up by fancy flowered garters. Their long hair has been bobbed. Spit curls are glued to their cheeks. Arthur asks for a double Scotch.

 

He is comfortable there, decides to stay a while until there is a raid. The bouncer opens the window in the door and sees a regular customer. As soon as he opens the door, in rush cops, tall ones, fat ones. A few of them pull up chairs and sit down with the illegal drinkers. They don't even have to ask, hootch is before them, fresh money slides over the tables. A knock-out blonde who had been in the chorus, takes to Arthur, approaches him with a big smile and a low cut costume. Just as he reaches for her, Arthur's lights go out. His story fades. He makes a new pot of coffee.

 

This coffee is hot, real hot, but not as hot as that dancer he was visualizing.  From his night table drawer he takes out a porn mag. and plays 'let's pretend.' It invigorates Arthur enough for him to be able to add an entire chapter to Booze Days. It takes several writings before it reads right to him. This still could be a winner, he thinks, but it will take time, a lot of time.

 

For info he Googles Prohibition and gets plenty of Ness stories, how the illicit booze reached Europe, what the moonshiners  made and delivered, where much of the raw alcohol came from. It all has to be categorized, plans laid out, more characters brought in. Arthur is no longer on that sweet high. His head starts to throb forcing  bloody screams from his dry throat.  For sure he is being electrocuted. The buzzing stops when Mokey arrives, a bootlegger he remembers as a delivery man for his grandfather's five gallon cans of liquid poison.

 

The green wondrous odor of stacks of money being arranged on the kitchen table set Arthur on a new track. He steals a wad or two, stuffs them in his pants and get whacked hard over the head when his grandfather catches him. That sets up his last chapter. Arthur is about ready to re-read all of Booze Days, locate a proof reader before he submits his story to Argosy. He makes only minor changes, adds  Officer Hornsby, the real guy he heard of who had the biggest 'horn'

 

It takes three full months before all of the small details are accomplished, the book cover designed and printed, radio and magazine ads, streetcar posters filling the eyes of those who are interested and those who object. The first day of distribution is in NYC and is off the charts. Window displays invite readers to meet Mr. Arthur–a real authour. Five hundred books are autographed and paid for.

 

Arthur is absolutely surprised and delighted, stays until the last lookers leave. He heads down to Bally's Bar for a real man's legit real drink and waits to see what happens. New thoughts begin to tease him.