The Coral Gables Times

BY ALEXANDER KING The Long Arm of

BY ALEXANDER KING Alexander King — painter, author, and great entertainer. "I Should Have Kissed Her More" is the title of his third book — and undoubtedly third best seller — which will be published this October. This could have happened only to the author of "Mine Enemy Grows Older" and "May This House Be Safe From Tigers"— told as only he could tell it PETER KILIAN walked into my life some twenty-three years ago, when I was living out in the country and trying to write a play. Six plays in fact. At any rate, I was living in an enormous mansion that a friend of mine had loaned me while he had to go abroad on some urgent business of his own. One afternoon there was an unexpected knock on the door and, when I stepped out on the wind-blown porch of this fraudulently lush edifice, I was confronted by a little, gray-haired character who seemed to have stepped straight out of a novel by Charles Dickens. "Mr. King live here?" he asked. You must remember that for quite a few years before this weather-beaten gnome had landed on my doorstep, I had been dodging squads of sheriffs, miscellaneous process servers and assorted bill collectors with an agility which the hunted wildlife of the world tried vainly to emulate. So, naturally, although my visitor looked harmless enough, I had no intention to offer up my true identity without further painstaking investigation. "Which King do you want?" I asked. "I'm looking for Alexander King," he said. "I'd like just a word with him, if you don't mind." For one unguarded moment a cunning look came into his moist, blue eyes and for just the shadow of a second a certain ominous twitching in his shaggy brows gave potent warning to my ever alert, precautionary antennae. "Well," I said, "my name is Gabriel King, and you're looking for my cousin Alexander, who isn't around, just now." "Ah," he said, "that's too bad, because I've elaborately on our phony seafaring doormat and followed me into the house. He was wearing a sort of oversized scotch plaid Mackinaw that had at least a dozen pockets on it, and when he removed his poison-green cap with thick earflaps that could be tied under the chin, his bristly gray hair stood out wildly in all directions. He looked like an elderly schnauser that had died on me some years before, and it may v well be that this resemblance was really the secret keynote to the harmonious rapprochement between us. "Perhaps something a little stronger than coffee would be more to your taste," I said. "It might, at that," he conceded. "I've been out since six-thirty this morning, because I wanted to catch the seven o'clock ferry at Nyack." I took him into my workroom (which he instantly called a "study"), and proceeded to pour him a shot of Scotch. He held the glass up to the light and said, "You're a most generous man—Mr. King. May you never lack the wherewithal to serve it, nor a grateful friend to appreciate it." Then he poured it down in one eye-watering swoosh. "Want a chaser?" I asked. "Naw," he said. "There is nothing like natu--l saliva." "Sit down," I said. "I will, for a moment, if you don't mind," he said. He took out a dark, measly little pipe and proceeded to stuff it, getting crumbs of tobacco all over his coat. With methodical care he slowly collected all this debris, and when he finally lighted really taken quite a bit of trouble to find this place. It isn't listed anywhere, and I had a heck of a time locating it." I can't tell you why—but I had suddenly developed a kind of liking for the old goat, and although it would certainly have been to my advantage to get rid of him—I simply couldn't get myself to turn him cold-bloodedly away. You know how it is with people—there are occasionally incalculable bonds of sympathy that spring up between them—mysterious radiations that encompass two human hearts—so that from the first moment they meet they cannot ever again feel indifferent to one another. "Come in," I said, "and I'll rustle you up a cup of coffee." "Thank you," he said. "I take that very kindly of you. It's a pretty raw day, and I could stand a cup of something hot." He proceeded to wipe his clean shoes very up, he filled the room with acrid clouds of what subsequently turned out to be some of his own home-raised weed. "Grow everything I can myself," he said, smiling comfortably. " 'Be sufficient unto yourself,' is my motto. Tell you the truth, this man Alexander King, this cousin of yours, would be a lot better off if he had that as his slogan." "Is that so?" I said. "What do you know about him, anyway?" "I know that he owes the telephone company twenty-three hundred dollars, and I came around today especially to talk to him about it." "Oh, yes," I said. "I've heard about that phone bill of his—and I must say, he isn't altogether to blame." "Ah?" "He had a crazy house guest up at his place in the country, two summers ago, and this cool was in love with a geisha girl in Kobe, Japan, and I think he called her up at her native tea house Excerpted from "I Should Have Kissed Her More," by Alexander King. © by Alexander King. To be published by Simon and Schuster, Inc.

6 Suburbia Today, August 1961