Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue (12 page)

"Being a woman and a lover. Living a life and living with love. Doing both well." She knew that he did not understand her but that he would pretend he did because he was attracted to her. A good Emma observation. "The question is, who had the better life? Of course, it seems clear who had a better life in the house. Margarita was alone pining away for her husband and writing him letters, while Emma had one and sometimes several lovers. I think that somehow, in addition to the two women, I have to have Emma's lovers in the house. There was no demeaning cheating or sneaking around. It was all in the open."

"Is that what you would like?"

"No, I want to be alone writing letters," she said with a smile. "Actually, I want to be alone writing plays."

He had little reaction to the fact that she was a playwright. He knew several playwrights, but he was thrilled to hear that she earned her living as a masseuse.

"I knew it."

"That I was a playwright."

"That you are a masseuse. I could see it in your fingers."

She studied the telltale digits that were wriggling in front of her like the tentacles of an octopus. "I suppose playwrights have fewer physical manifestations." She had never had a play produced. In fact, she had never completed a play. She had moved to this neighborhood to write her first play,
Emma and Margarita.

"But if they never met each other..."

"It isn't a documentary. It's not realism. You have to imagine Margarita Juarez, the exiled wife of Mexico's democratic president, and Emma Goldman, an anarchist immigrant. Both radical women of their day. You put these two together and what have you got?"

"A Mexican Jew?" he said, trying to be clever.

But she smiled as though she had just won a prize and said, "That's me!" She, too, was quietly thinking, He must be Jewish.

Nathan had thought it was a fine thing for her to be writing a play. Most people he knew had some project or other. Sooner or later they all had him photocopy their pages. Even Chow Mein Vega was working on his memoirs. He too would someday write something. But after Sarah was born, which Nathan remembered as "the plan" and Sonia remembered as "an accident," Sonia argued that she did not want another child until she had finished
Emma and Margarita.
Sonia was now thirty-eight years old and still working on the play, and the more she talked about her work, the more irritable Nathan became. She would talk about it just to annoy him, if she was angry with him. Few of the people whose pages he copied had ever finished their projects. He too had his life of Ludwig van Beethoven, known only to him and a handful of music history faculty at NYU. Nathan did not believe projects such as
Emma and Margarita
were destined to be completed. Nathan was a great believer in destiny

Nathan could still hear some shouting beyond the shutters.

"You know," said Ted, the expectant father of Maya's future sibling, accidentally stumbling over Nathan's secret thought, "got to look out for that biological clock."

"But
you
don't have to worry about that!" said Sonia with a touch too much mirth. "Having just made it through puberty!" And she laughed.

Nathan looked at her. In her discomposure she was drinking her pink martini in regular, quick gulps. A pink martini is a serious mistake in judgment. He, in fact, was drinking his at about the same rate.

"We have a wonderful place up in Putnam County. You should take Sarah and come visit us this summer."

"Yes, that would be lovely," said Sonia in a peculiar accent. "Just lovely," she repeated, showing her front teeth, Queen of England-like, on the word "Loveleh."

Nathan, trying to carry the conversation, said, "I had to laugh. You know what Sarah said? She said you had a house in Punim County"

Maya's parents looked at Nathan without finding a response.
"Punim,"
said Nathan, and he laughed, but no one followed his lead. "You know,
punim,
like what
a punim, a punim
like that." And then, seeing that his point was not clear, he said a bit too loudly,
"Punim!"
And he reached over and grabbed a handful of Ted's left cheek with a pinch— his face, in truth, was a bit jowly. "As in 'Look at this
punim.' "
First the cheek and then the face turned pinker than what was left of their martinis. Nathan quickly withdrew, realizing he had transgressed.

"What work do you do?" said the expecting Linda, trying to turn the conversation away from the embarrassing men. By now, Nathan was only praying that they got through the entire event without breaking any crystal.

Sonia, pleased by the question, answered warmly, "I'm a playwright," as Nathan sank deeply into his chair and watched the light playing with the antique crystal stem of his oddly colored and almost finished drink. Beyond the shutters was silence, as though everyone had been beaten unconscious.

"Have you done anything we might have seen?" asked the still red-faced Ted.

"Not yet," Sonia said without the least embarrassment. "But I am working on a play about Emma Goldman and Benito Juarez's wife, Margarita, in New York."

"Were they friends?" Linda asked.

"No, actually Emma Goldman was not even born when Margarita was here."

"Oh," said Ted, turning his recovering
punim
toward Sonia. "Emma Goldman was a Mexican painter?"

"I don't understand," said Linda. "They never knew each other?"

"They lived at different times."

"Then how can they be together?"

"You see, you ask that because you are obsessed with the dimension of time. They had all other dimensions aligned. Two radical women who could understand each other. How important is it that they were in different times? They were in the same place and the same plane. People can be in the same room at the exact same time, but they cannot talk because their worlds are so different, but no one questions the logic of them being together because it is assumed anyone can share time and space. But when they have everything putting them together except time, people say, Oh, that's impossible. In reality, this is what is impossible."

"What is?" asked Linda, and there were worried expressions on the faces of both of Maya's parents. But Nathan rescued the moment with a huge belly laugh.

"These are impossible," he said. "You can't drink pink martinis. What makes them pink, anyway, nitroglycerin? I can't even talk."

"I'm sorry, can I get you something else?"

"Oh no, no, thank you. This was very nice. We just aren't used to it." He was thinking, They are Jewish, right? Kaplan? Why don't they know what a
punim
is? And suddenly he had a terrible thought: Maybe they are Republicans. Maybe these are the hidden Republicans in the back recesses of the neighborhood who cast their clandestine vote. "What do you think of the election?" he blurted out.

"I think Dukakis is going to walk away with it," said Ted. "Thank God."

"And that will be it for Bush and company," said Linda. "Thank God is right."

"Linda was going to work for Dukakis until she found out her due date would be too close," said Ted.

"I don't want my baby born under a Bush," said Linda, and she laughed. They all laughed, relieved to find something they could share besides time and space. And they all started feeling much better about one another. The Kaplans brought up the Seltzers' visit to Putnam County again and even tried to get them to commit to a date. But the Seltzers demurred.

"And they teach swimming up there?" Nathan asked.

"Yes, they have a whole summer camp. Sarah would love it."

By the time they left, their pink martinis were beginning to wear off. Nathan had insisted on opening the shutters to make sure it was safe. The park was empty, and as far as he could tell, so were the streets. It was as though the stadium had been cleared and the game was over.

"What nice people," said Nathan after walking down the front steps and seeing no one on the sidewalk in either direction. He noticed a dark blood spot on the sidewalk where the woman had screamed.

"They are very nice," Sarah confirmed. "She is my best friend in the world."

"That's nice, sweetie," Sonia said with encouragement in her voice.

"Yes, and they have boxes in every room. You push it and you can hear everybody in the other room." Sarah started to laugh. "We heard you!"

"They are just the nicest people," said Sonia.

"And such a nice house," said Nathan.

"Arts and Crafts," said Sonia.

"Mission," said Nathan. "Really nice people."

"They have a television the size of a whole wall," Sarah said.

"And they probably have a nice house in the country," said Sonia.

"Yes," said Nathan. "Well have to go there this summer. It will be very nice."

Both Nathan and Sonia were hoping they could get through the summer without this subject ever coming up again.

"Maya has a music computer," said Sarah, as though this proved the niceness of it all.

"Oh, Uncle Mordy will be jealous," said Nathan.

"Me too!" said Sarah.

The police had wagons into which they were jamming young people who seemed prepared to be taken quietly.

"They have a lot of stuff, Sarah," said Sonia. "But you will learn that this is not important."

"I know," said Sarah, sulking only a little. "But we could use a little more stuff, too," she added, looking up at her mother with a smile successfully calculated to be irresistible.

"Well," said Nathan, rubbing his head, "we are not going to get pink martinis."

"Until I grow up," Sarah added.

"Not even then," Nathan insisted.

"Okay," said Sarah. "Let's just get stuff!"

On Ninth Street, a police officer put his badge back on his shirt and rounded the corner to Avenue A, where he interrupted Harry Seltzer in midphrase of an Irving Berlin song. "Hello, Daniel, how are you?" said Harry, who prided himself on knowing everyone's name.

"Not bad," the officer said pleasantly, fingers tapping the billy club holstered to his belt. "And yourself?"

R
UTH AND
H
ARRY
had passed essentially the same Saturday night together on Second Avenue for the last fifty years. They had dinner together at Saul Grossman's, then they went to the Yiddish theater, then they walked down to Chaim's for an egg cream, then they walked home. Over the years, certain compromises became necessary.

They still went to Saul's. But it was no longer filled with their friends from the neighborhood—Esther and the others had moved away or died. In the old days, they didn't have to watch the time. The waiters would make sure they got across the street to the theater before curtain. Sometimes even some of the actors were there. They often saw Menasha Skulnik, and he would greet them in Yiddish.

Nobody in the restaurant—neither customers nor waiters—spoke Yiddish anymore. Most of the staff weren't even Jewish now, and they were polite, even obsequious. Who could have imagined polite waiters at Saul Grossman's? In the old days, if you ordered pastrami and they had run out of it, the waiter would shout, "Take the corned beef. It's better!" and make the customer feel like the village idiot for having ordered pastrami. Now if they were out of pastrami, they apologized. "I'm terribly sorry, we just ran out of pastrami." The first time a waiter apologized to Ruth, she shook her head and said, "Oh boy." One waiter even introduced himself by name—and his name was Wallace. Soon Saul told him to stop doing that. "You could do us all a big favor, Wallace, and serve the food incognito," said Saul unkindly. At least Saul had not become polite.

The Yiddish theater had closed and the building was converted to a multiplex cinema with almost a dozen theaters. Harry and Ruth always went to the one that had been the actual theater. There could be a children's movie, or ferocious Asians chopping their way through cities with acrobatic kicks and thrusts, or muscular men winning wars with a dazzling array of firepower. They didn't care. They dressed, and Harry's suit was always perfectly pressed even on the hottest day of the summer. He wore it with a hat, a well-made Italian sisal one in the summer. They took their seats in the balcony, and he took his hat off and rested it on a knee until the lights dimmed. They caressed the ornate walls with their eyes, working slowly up the intricate gilded patterns to the ceiling and finally to the Star of David in the center of the ceiling. Ruth clutched Harry's arm through the movie. This Saturday they saw the big hit of the summer. The posters had been everywhere, featuring a double high-rise tower with smoke pouring from the upper floors and a plane flying into the smoke. There were international terrorists and a smart and determined cop acting courageously and all alone. It didn't matter. They were just there together. All week they fought and belittled each other, but every Saturday night they were in love.

After the film, walking down Second Avenue, they rarely talked about the movie they had seen, though Harry did ask Ruth what she thought the title,
Die Hard,
meant. Ruth shrugged and they moved on to better subjects. They talked about the people they had known, some dead, some living somewhere else, many fallen to that horrible Jewish fate, Florida.

Egg creams were essential. The drink had been in its first bloom of popularity when Harry first moved to New York and they began dating. To Harry, who never knew New York before egg creams, no neighborhood was a true New York neighborhood without them. Since he rarely left the Lower East Side, he didn't realize that this was one of the few neighborhoods where it was still made. Egg creams can survive only as long as there are soda fountains, because bottled soda does not have enough gas to produce the foam on top from which the name is derived. Harry and Ruth always got their Saturday night egg cream at Chaim's, and tried to stick with Chaim's without Chaim. The Koreans still made fairly good egg creams—and a good one is not easy to make. The milk has to be slightly frozen. The milk and chocolate syrup had to be mixed by hand, not machine, and then the jet of soda had to be ricocheted off a spoon to get sufficient foam.

When Harry finished his chocolate egg cream, he always asked for a little shot of seltzer for the chocolate syrup that remained at the bottom of his cup. But the Koreans wanted to charge twenty-five cents for the extra shot of soda at the end.

"It's the whole reason I get chocolate. I'd rather have vanilla but there's no syrup at the bottom."

This was just something he was saying to the Koreans. Harry was a purist and never would have dreamed of any other flavor, because the original egg cream, the real egg cream, was chocolate. Chaim had offered four different flavors and the Koreans had expanded to eight, including blackberry, but drinking a blackberry egg cream was like a blueberry or a raisin bagel—not right.

Harry missed his extra shot of seltzer and chocolate syrup, which may have been why he called his granddaughter Syrup Cone Seltzer— also because her real name was Sarah Cohn Seltzer. But when Harry complained about having to pay for the extra shot, the Korean smiled, hoping this was some kind of Jewish joke. So they retreated to the only other place that still made egg creams on Avenue A, where they suffered other indignities, being served by Poles who put the egg cream in red paper Coca-Cola cups.

Nathan and Sonia had their own Saturday night ritual, which they called
traif
night. Still recovering from Ruth's brisket from the night before, they indulged in oysters, lobster, and a favorite, the prosciutto bread, which was made by all three Sals—a loaf of bread infused with small cubes
of traif.
On Saturdays they would eat almost any
traif—
food forbidden by Jewish law Sometimes they would just get ribs from Bob's Greasy Hands. They loved ribs. Saturday night
traif was
usually carryout food, because if they cooked, they imagined the smells drifting up to Harry and Ruth's apartment above. They thought about this even though they knew Harry and Ruth were always out on Saturday night. They didn't know that Harry had spent the afternoon eating pork fat and
gandules
with Chow Mein Vega.

There was no Bob at Bob's Greasy Hands. There was a Pakistani man with a name he always insisted was too difficult. "Call me Bob." He had dark skin and large, soft black eyes, and his smile tripped off so easily that withholding it would have been a disappointment for anyone who knew him. He had a grill on which he cooked ribs, and he offered almost nothing else except corn, which was a later addition when a salesman showed him a machine that steamed the corn and kept it permanently warm—also permanently soggy, but no one cared because Bob's had the best ribs in the neighborhood. In truth there was only one other rib place in the neighborhood, a strange chain restaurant that had settled on Second Avenue with the arrival of tourists who wanted to go to the East Village. But Bob's had good ribs to go. No one actually ate there. Nighttime and Cuquemango draped themselves in the two aluminum chairs that were too small to attract diners, drinking Cokes out of cans, taking a short break from selling smoke on a Saturday night.

Sarah was already asleep—with visions of "stuff" no doubt dancing in her head—and Nathan was getting the ribs and renting a movie. He and Sonia had had a fight, which may have been the last traces of the pink martini. He wanted to rent
Algiers,
and Sonia said she could not watch it again, and Nathan pointed out that they had seen the documentary on Emma Goldman five times. Sonia insisted that was for work. When there was a fight they rented
The Red Desert
and watched fleshy Italians roll on the floor with too much air pollution to have sex. There was something oddly appealing about this, and they had seen it more times than the Goldman documentary and
Algiers
combined.

As Nathan walked into Bob's, Nighttime, who had ten gold rings in his left ear, dark gold to match the ring on his finger and the cap on one front tooth, was talking to Bob, while Cuquemango was staring at the ceiling fan as though thinking of hanging himself. "Cabezucha got some money and he's fucked up again.
Mira,
the man is out of it.
Sabe,
he just asks anybody. Cops, neighbors. He doesn't care,
tu sabe'. Una ve'
—
vi
this fucking cop coming down First.
Puñeta,
I shout the alarm. Y
no' vamo'.
I look up First, you know, then I turn back and the street is
vacío,
empty, man,
se fueron todo,
the only motherfucker on Tenth Street is stupid Cabezucha, man, standing there in the
medio bloque, sabe,
with his big
cabeza,
saying, 'Smoke?' "

"Ah," said the man who was not Bob. "You should be very careful. This neighborhood is getting difficult." He smiled. Nathan ordered his ribs. Nighttime did not seem to want to continue talking, but the man who was not Bob did not appear to care about Nathan and just went ahead. "You have to be more careful. There is trouble coming," he said with an even bigger smile. "It is that German. You know the German?" he said to Nathan as he took his ribs order. Nathan nodded. "He is a real Nazi."

"How do you know that?" Nathan asked.

"He does not like people of color. He is out to get us each and every one. A typical Nazi."

"You're just saying that because he's German."

The man who was not Bob smiled. "No. He is SS. A colonel in the SS. Ask him."

Nathan took his ribs and on the way home pondered what it would be like to be German, how he had mishandled that evening with Karo-line years ago, how he wished it had gone differently...

Nathan and Sonia ate the ribs and watched the fleshy Italians rolling around. Just as the actors were about to not have sex, there was a knock on the door. It was Harry. "We got you some liver knishes," he said. Did he intentionally intrude on
traif
night?

"They're good," Harry pleaded. "Not from Yankel Fink."

"Dad, what am I going to do with all these liver knishes?"

"Give them to Syrup Cone for a treat."

"Sarah hates liver."

"Even chopped liver?"

"Any liver."

Harry threw up his hands in despair and bobbed his head in that "I told you so" nod to God. "See that? She's not Jewish. Sonia, you are raising a Mexican."

"I've got good news for you, Harry," said Sonia. "I tried to give her an enchilada. We had carryout Mexican. You know what she said? She looked at the enchiladas and said, 'Blintzes, yuck.' "

"I'm going to bed," said Harry.

"She likes German chocolate and Italian olives. No chopped liver," said Nathan.

"She's four years old and already exhibits a soft spot for Fascist cultures."

"Three years old, Dad."

"That's better? To be pro-Fascist at three? So why don't you bring her by and we can play. I want some fun in my old age. Listen, it is supposed to be a hundred degrees tomorrow. Go see Uncle Nusan."

"All right. Did you hear any more about Rabbinowitz?"

"Something, isn't it. Guy walks up to someone right on the street and shoots them and nobody knows who did it."

Nathan heard Harry muttering on his way up the stairs, "How can anyone not like chopped liver?" and he wondered if Harry knew they had been eating ribs.