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64 IT TOOK NINE TAILORS
"I insist."
But this was a lot of salami, because we all watched very carefully to see that each bought a round in turn. After the second beer we would drift casually over to the free-lunch counter, our mouths watering, for the Claridge set the best free lunch in Times Square. There were juicy cold cuts of beef, pork, and ham. A thick slice of one of these roasts between crusty rye bread was an entree fit for a king. There were also fat sliced sausages, hardboiled eggs, delicious dill pickles, crisp potato chips, radishes, spring onions, a bowl of potato salad the size of a kettledrum, and creamy cottage cheese. We would stoke up to the limit, then go back to the bar for another round of beers.
Sometimes a tippler in an expansive mood— a Barrymore or a Lowell Sherman— would drop in and generously offer to buy us drinks, knowing that we bit players were always on the bare edge of solvency. In that case we would order Pineapple Bronxes, which were Claridge specialties. This was an expensive drinkfifteen cents. It was a tall concoction made with gin and other potent fluids into which one or two slices of pineapple were stuck. After two Pineapple Bronxes men have been known to stand on their heads and recite "Gunga Din."
Following our free lunch at the Claridge we would move on to the Knickerbocker bar for more beer and a free lunch of corned beef, which was the specialty of the house. Our next stop was likely to be Redpath's bar on Broadway, where the sugarcured ham melted in our mouths and the beer was only a nickel. By this time we had dined sumptuously for the price of six or eight beers.
There were times, though, when even ten-cent beers at the Claridge were more than we could afford. In that case Ned and I usually went to a Hungarian restaurant that was right across the street from our room on Forty-fourth Street or to a Chinese restaurant next door. At either place the meal was fifteen cents. The Chinese restaurant served excellent Yakomein and the Hungarian restaurant gave us goulash with spaetzel.