I tried calling Ashley a couple of times a few days ago, but he was on the train, he said. “The New York Central?” I asked. He laughed. “No, the D train. We’re going over a bridge so I have some service.” He said he’d call me later.
Then I noticed he’d tried to phone me on Monday, the 4th, when I was right in the midst of filling in all the forms for the cremation. The reason I was calling Tom now is that I wanted Michael’s friends to learn about his death from me. So far I’ve called Duignan and Egan. They were sad and sorry, but there really wasn’t much more to say.
Now, finally, a couple of nights ago, Tom rings me back, telling he’s going to have a meeting with Tony James, our elusive would-be investor for Learning Sense. He’s not promising anything, but he’s giving a meeting. Tony and Tom know each other through an old babysitter connection, I forget what. So when wrapping up the call, Tom asks, “How is Michael?” and I say, “He’s dead.” And then I break into tears and Tom is stunned. He and Michael go back a long way, because Tom’s oldest friend from Grosse Pointe Farms, Walter Connolly, was at USC with Michael, and the three often hung out together in L.A. in the Sixties.
Tom proposed we get together for breakfast soon, and it looks like 10 am on Tuesday, at the Palace on 57th between Park and Lexington.
Friday, the day I got that evening phone call, I got a call from Manhattan Online Cremation to tell me the death certificates were ready. They will need to be revised later, when we have Michael’s discharge records. The City requires discharge records before declaring the deceased a service veteran. And they misspelled Vliet at Vilet.
Yesterday I got a call that the ashes were in. So I trudged over to West 43rd street a second time, across from Manhattan Plaza, and picked up the nice little compact (but heavy) parcel wrapped in brown paper. They put it in a drawstring bag, and then a tote to carry it all. I was weighted down with my gym bag (my Revlon volumizer brush and case were in that) so I had to walk pretty slowly. First up to 49th St., to go to TMPL for a very slight workout (10 minutes on the C2, maybe 10 on the stationary bike), my first shower in a month or two, and the laborious process of drying my hair, which badly needs cutting and shaping.
I also went to TMPL on Friday, after getting the certificates. John, the guy at the mortuary, is a pleasant, plumpish guy of about 50. We discussed St. Malachy’s for some reason. I was saying where TMPL was, and it was on the other side of Eighth. He knows St. Malachy’s well, as a funeral director ought to. I said, apropos of very little, that Bing Crosby once played the pastor of St. Malachy’s in a movie. His third and last cassock role. I did even less exercise on Friday, and was too weary even to take a shower. So I needed that Saturday.
I hear it’s raining out. Unseasonably warm weather. I will walk back to TMPL, and try again shortly.
I got my JetBlue Master Card (Barclay’s Bank) yesterday, with its mighty $3300 credit line, which I largely wiped out immediately by transferring $2500 of the Chase Amazon Visa onto it. 0% interest balance transfers for a year if you do them in the first 45 days. I’m thinking of putting some cash onto JetBlue, and then do another balance transfer, for either Amazon or Citi Cash Card, which is nearly depleted now, thanks to the $2210 I paid for cremation last Monday.
Drinking a pint a day. This isn’t good, makes me feel woozy and heavy-lidded in the morning. But I’m sleeping well, which I wasn’t doing through much of that last year with Michael.
Yesterday, before mortuary and TMPL, I scraped the flaking paint off the living room wall. It’s been gathering there for two years. We seem still to have a pint of Brandied Crimson from Janovic Plaza in stock.
Finished Teentime Part III (Chapter 5) on the Substack today. It’s narrative stasis, complaining about Hornblower, and mulling over the Sal Mineo business.
Last night after gym (it was indeed night, though only 4:30 in the afternoon) I bought myself two 2/$3 chimichangas from the Duane Reade near 56th. I was just curious. They were okay, but burritos, not chimichangas. And the price was right. Washed ’em down with a new pint of Svedka.
Spent all Thursday morning on the phone to SSA, HQ and local. Negresses very unhelpful about my missing earnings years. The one on 48th St actually told me I’d have to refile my tax returns for 1998-2006 in order to adjust the SS earnings. That makes no sense at all. I’m square with IRS. It’s the SSA that needs to adjust earnings. So I’m going to find some lawyer who specializes in this and has done it a hundred times.
