A Commodore of Errors (10 page)

“I am afraid the man is no yellow belly, Mr. Paultz,” the Commodore said, “but a formidable opponent. A lothario of the highest caliber—your very own mayor of Great Neck.”

Putzie's head jerked up. “Mogie? But he's only a quarter of an inch taller than me! How can that be?”

The Commodore shook his head in wonder at the audacity of his adversary. “Mogie Mogelefsky always finds a way. The man always finds a way.”

FETISHISMS

W
hen Putzie pushed through the curtain separating the front of the shop from the Martinizing machines and slumped onto a stool by the cash register, the Commodore, Raymond, and Mrs. Tannenbaume were waiting for him. They stared at the black patch on his left eye.

“He uses a stool,” Putzie said.

“He hit you with a stool?” Mrs. Tannenbaume said.

“No,” Putzie said. “He uses a stool to service Mitzi standing up from behind.”

“How . . . clever,” Raymond said.

“The man
is
an ingenious adversary,” the Commodore said.

“What's with the eye patch?” Mrs. Tannenbaume asked.

“We wrestled right there on the floor in his office.”

“Did the lout poke you in the eye?”

“No,” Putzie said. “He held me in a headlock on the floor and drooled in my eye. His secretary was nice enough to give me this eye patch.”

“My dear man,” the Commodore said. “I am sorry for your troubles, but what about our well-conceived plan? Were you not instructed to lure your nemesis into the safe bosom of the Merchant Marine Academy gymnasium for your wrestling match?”

“I tried,” Putzie said. “It's that damn chair of his.”

“Ah,” the Commodore said. “I know the chair. It does place one at a decided disadvantage.”

“Stools. Chairs,” Mrs. Tannenbaume said. “This loon sounds like some sort of fetishist.”

The Commodore did not have time for Mrs. Tannenbaume's crackpot theories. He was too busy thinking of a way to get out of the business deal he had unwittingly made with Mogie. He desperately wanted to lure Mogie into a wrestling match with Putzie at the academy. He figured if Mogie were to lose to Putzie in a highly public way, Mogie would lose face and back off from his demands to replace Admiral Johnson with a Jew. The Commodore fumed at his egregious misstep. He should never have gotten into bed with the likes of Mogie. He could have found his own Miss Conrad to trap Johnson's Johnson.

However, what's done was done. He needed to focus on a way to isolate Mogie so that Mogie's photo of Johnson's Johnson's johnson would be of no value as blackmail.

“Anyway,” Putzie said to the Commodore, “in the end, I did lure him into a public rematch. I think he felt sorry for me after Maven put the patch on my eye.”

“So then he did agree to a rematch at the academy?” the Commodore said, his pulse quickening.

“Well, I never mentioned the academy,” Putzie said, “but Mogie did agree to wrestle anytime, anywhere.”

This was good news. Good news indeed. The Commodore felt energized for the first time in days. He now felt sure that if Mogie were humiliated in front of a capacity crowd at the academy gymnasium, Mogie's ego would compel him to leave the academy with his tail between his legs. The Commodore could
count on his friends at
Newsday
to spin the story in the academy's favor—“a disgruntled sore loser makes trouble for the academy”—if Mogie insisted on replacing Johnson with a Jew. My goodness, there were things to do, and time was of the essence. At any moment, Mogie could take Mitzi's photograph of Johnson's Johnson's johnson public and the Commodore would lose control of the entire situation.

Prioritize, he must prioritize. The Commodore looked at Putzie. Could this pipsqueak really beat Mogie in a wrestling match?

“How confident are you, Mr. Paultz, in your abilities on the mat?”

“I had him beat in high school before he bit my neck. As long as he doesn't cheat, I know I can beat him.”

The Commodore could not form a picture in his mind's eye of Putzie Paultz, athlete. He certainly bore no resemblance to the statuary of Roman-Greco wrestlers the Commodore so favored. But the Commodore was desperate, and lacking another plan to rid himself of Mogie, he was stuck with Putzie and his puny biceps.

“Well now, we won't have to worry about Mogie's chair on our home turf, will we, Mr. Paultz? Nevertheless, you ought to commence a training regimen at once.”

THE
GOYIM
WERE RIGHT?

R
aymond drove Putzie's Buick at a crawl down Steam Boat Road. A long line rof cars honked their horns behind him, but Raymond didn't care. He had a job to do—to make sure Putzie got his exercise in for the day. Mrs. Tannenbaume sat in the passenger seat. Neither Putzie nor Raymond asked her to come along but she insisted on coming. After all, as she pointed out, you don't spend thirty-five years in education and not learn a thing or two about Phys. Ed.

“Don't forget to breathe, Mr. Paultz,” Mrs. Tannenbaume yelled through the passenger window at the small man struggling to jog one block. Mrs. Tannenbaume's regimen called for Putzie to jog a block and walk a block.

“One of Captain Tannenbaume's fathers was a surfer,” she said through the window after Putzie pulled up for a breather. “That's the kind of body you want. A surfer's body. Picture a surfer in your mind's eye as you jog.”

The long line of cars honked their horns when Raymond put the Buick in park to wait for Putzie, who panted alongside the car. “I don't . . . know any . . . surfer.”

“Visualize!” Mrs. Tannenbaume barked at Putzie. “All great athletes use visualization!” She turned to Raymond. “It's all about vision. You gotta have a vision or you'll never succeed at anything.”

“I don't have a vision,” Raymond said. “I'm just a Martinizer, remember?”

“Not
just
a Martinizer, dear. You're the best Martinizer in all of New York.”

Raymond guided the Buick down Steam Boat Road while keeping his eye on the long line of cars in the rearview mirror. The cars were honking their horns more than ever now. Mrs. Tannenbaume kept an eye on Putzie. She watched him trip over a crack in the sidewalk. He was clearly getting tired.

“Look where you're going, Mr. Paultz. The last thing we need now is an accident.”

The words were barely out of Mrs. Tannenbaume's mouth when Putzie ran smack into a low-hanging maple branch and crumpled onto the sidewalk. Raymond did not see the crash because he was too busy looking in the mirror. Before Mrs. Tannenbaume could tell Raymond to stop the Buick so that they could rescue Putzie, Raymond drove into the rear end of a parked car.

To make matters worse, the parked car and the tree both belonged to Mrs. Tannenbaume. They had somehow managed to crash directly in front of her home.

The maple tree stood in the middle of Mrs. Tannenbaume's front yard. A long gnarly branch had grown parallel to the ground, out across the front lawn, and dipped down low over the sidewalk. She had meant to do something about it for years but had somehow never gotten around to it. The branch was nine inches in circumference and stood exactly four and a half feet off the ground—face-high if you are Putzie Paultz.

Putzie lay motionless on the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Tannenbaume's house, his face bloody, his black eye patch askew, his Nike Air running shoes gleaming in their newness. Midshipman Jones, busy inspecting the wooden cross he had planted in Mrs. Tannenbaume's front lawn, looked up when he heard Putzie's head hit the pavement and then ran over when the Buick piled into Mrs. Tannenbaume's VW Beetle. The Beetle was in mint condition. Mrs. Tannenbaume rarely drove it—she only took it out of the garage to park it on the street in front of the house every day. Midshipman Jones had
told Mrs. Tannenbaume that it was a dangerous place to park her Beetle, but Mrs. Tannenbaume wouldn't listen. She liked to look at it from out of her window, and besides, it kept just anyone from parking in front of her house.

Mrs. Tannenbaume got out of the passenger seat without a word. She stood on the sidewalk with her hands on her hips and surveyed the damage. The Buick had ripped off the Beetle's chrome front bumper. She shook her head in disgust and then walked over to Putzie. She bent over and peeled back the eyelid on his good eye and peered into it. She turned to Midshipman Jones, who did not seem at all surprised that it was Mrs. Tannenbaume who had wrecked her own car.

“He's out cold. You'd better drag him up onto the lawn.”

“I told you about that branch, Mrs. Tannenbaume,” Midshipman Jones said.

“I know, love. You told me to not park the Beetle on the street, too.”

Raymond got out of the driver's seat and joined them on the front lawn. Raymond told Mrs. Tannenbaume how sorry he was for crashing into her Beetle. He told her that he was good with cars and that he would fix the Beetle good as new.

Mrs. Tannenbaume merely nodded. She was inspecting the wooden cross. “You think it's sturdy enough to hold the Jesus?”

“Yes, ma'am. I used two bags of Sakrete.” Midshipman Jones grabbed the cross with both hands and shook it hard. “See? It doesn't budge.”

“Ahh, excuse me, you two,” Raymond said. “Don't you think we should do something with Mr. Paultz?”

Mrs. Tannenbaume looked down at Putzie lying on his back on the grass. “He'll come to soon enough. The fresh air is good for him. In the meantime we might as well hang Jesus.”

The first time Midshipman Jones came to Mrs. Tannenbaume's house, he and Mrs. Tannenbaume could not agree on the best way to nail the Jesus to the cross. Midshipman Jones thought it should be done while the cross was on the ground. Mrs. Tannenbaume wanted to plant the cross in the ground first, then nail the Jesus to it—she thought it would be more authentic that way. She did not want to do anything sacrilegious, what with Sister Mahoney acting funny about the papier-mâché Jesus in the first place.

Midshipman Jones had finally agreed to do it Mrs. Tannenbaume's way, but by that time it was late and he needed to get back to the academy. He returned the next day, dug the hole, and planted the cross in the ground. He had come back today to hang Jesus. When she said he was doing more than he needed to, he replied that he was honored to be able to help Captain Tannenbaume's mother. Apparently all the nice midshipmen loved her sonny boy.

Midshipman Jones grabbed the Jesus from under its armpits, hoisted it off the ground, and stood the Jesus up in front of the cross. “You mind giving me a hand?” he asked Raymond. “I'll pick him up and put him in place if you'll grab that hammer and nail him to the cross.”

Raymond put both hands to his mouth and stepped backward, tripped over Putzie, and fell flat on his back. He lay there on the ground and looked up at the life-size papier-mâché Jesus, fighting back tears.

“I . . . I . . . I . . . , I . . . I don't think I can do that.” He broke down and started to cry.

Mrs. Tannenbaume snatched the hammer herself, stuck a few nails in her mouth, and said through the nails, “Hold him steady, son. I'll nail him up.”

Mrs. Tannenbaume started with the feet. She often wondered, whenever she pondered the crucifix at St. Aloysius, why the Romans nailed Jesus's feet to the cross. Was he kicking? Mrs. Tannenbaume asked Father McSorley about it once. “If Jesus died for our sins, then why was he kicking?”

“Jesus went to his death meekly,” Father McSorley told her. “A lamb to the slaughter.”

“Well, then why did they nail his feet down?”

Father McSorley told her it was for stability reasons, so that Jesus wouldn't fall off the cross, which sort of made sense. Maybe.

Mrs. Tannenbaume grabbed hold of the Jesus's feet. She was about to hammer home a nail when she stopped. “You know, I don't think Jesus needs a nail in his feet.”

“Nails in his feet will probably help stabilize him.”

“That's what Father McSorley said. I don't buy it. I think the only reason they nailed Jesus's feet was because Jesus was trying to kick them in the teeth. Wouldn't you kick like crazy if a bunch of people were trying to nail you to
a cross? Father McSorley has got it all wrong. But then again the Catholics have got a bunch of things wrong.” Mrs. Tannenbaume waggled the hammer in Midshipman Jones's face. “Like the fact that Father McSorley says his long-ago church Fathers told him to be celibate. I said to him, ‘Father, why would another man want you to be celibate?' I told him I thought it was the typesetter's fault. The church leaders way back when said the priests should celebrate. The knuckleheaded typesetter wrote celibate instead of celebrate, and because of that one simple typo, priests have been celibate for centuries! It makes you question their judgment. If they got duped on the question of whether or not to have sex, it makes you wonder what else they're getting wrong. Father McSorley is a nice man and he tells a good homily but he's got no
saichel
, getting duped like that.”