So I am minding my own business last week when who should walk into the diner but two parties by the name of Dapper Danny Jordaan and Knuckles Balfour, and both are looking more than somewhat blue. It also seems that Dapper Danny hasn’t slept in days, and his suit is hanging off him like newsprint off a bum, but then this is not unusual for him so I let it slide.
Knuckles orders half a pound of bacon, and they get to talking. It seems there’s this dame, goes by the name of Fifa. Yeah, I say, I hear of her. Everybody knows Fifa. I don’t mention that Fifa is a mighty lame name for a gal because Dapper Danny is mooning around like he’s going to blub any moment.
So it seems Fifa is in town, just passing through on her way home to Europe. Larry Lips tells me last week that she runs a sweatshop that makes soccer balls, and that her accounting system has more holes in it than Stinky Freddy Fishfingers the night he tries to whack Twitchy Alfredo down at the pier and forgets to load his equaliser, but this is another story. And besides, I can see that Dapper Danny and Knuckles Balfour (now just ordering another half-pound of bacon) are what you call smitten and have clearly been pitching woo at the dame in question, so I say nothing.
It turns out both parties are trying to persuade the doll to come for a longer visit in 2010, but she is being coy and whispering sweet nothings to both and generally teasing them. Why, I say, this sounds like a job for Big Nelson.
Now back in the day Big Nelson does 27 years in the slammer for tossing pineapples at railroads and suchlike, and after he gets out he goes into small-time politics and writes a whole book by himself, called The Long Crawl to Freedom, or something along those lines, about escaping from the cooler. I do not read this book after I hear it features no gunplay and even less burlesque, but he does not drop any in my estimation for not being able to write a realistic story.
Big Nelson is on the wrong side of 80, but he is still a ladykiller despite the long crawl and if there is one guy who can romance a dame like Fifa it is he. Not a day goes by that Big Nelson does not have some doll on his arm, even if sometimes that doll is a very sturdy nurse who seems to be giving him a little push now and then. And Missis Big Nelson, Gracy Machel-Ma Belle, always looks as happy as the widow Finkelstein after old man Finkelstein the millionaire accidentally beat himself to death with a candelabra.
These fellows are made men in their own right and not eager to admit in public that they can’t romance a dame like Fifa. And besides (and this is between you and me) I hear it said that Fifa is not the toughest date in town: without meaning to impugn what is left of her reputation, she is the kind of gal who will be your ever-loving wife and your mother-in-law for enough folding money, and word is that Dapper Dan and Knuckles have leaned on a couple of banks and raised enough green to make the scene. Don’t get me wrong about Fifa: nothing she could do could make me think less of her. She is just not my kind of doll.
I hear it goes swell, with Fifa fluttering eyelashes and lashing on the rouge in one corner of a booth at Lindy’s, and Big Nelson ever the gent in the other corner. Dapper Danny and Knuckles try and squeeze in on either side of Big Nelson, but Knuckles has been putting away the gefilte fish and it is something of a tight fit, so they take the booth next door and play craps and try and listen to what is being said until finally Big Nelson gives Fifa a big peck on the cheek and they call a cab and hightail it uptown.
‘He is a swell guy,” says Dapper Danny, ‘but I think he has stole our gal.”
‘Mmm,” says Knuckles, working at a crème brûlée like a safe-breaker with a rubber drill.
Later I ask Big Nelson what goes on uptown, but he says a gentleman never tells.