Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue (20 page)

But while he was distracted with this new victim, Jimmy Colon managed to get up, tried to shake off his grogginess, direw a lock on El Dominicano's head, and—and flipped him to the mat! Then he picked him up and flipped him again. The crowd cheered. Firecrackers were exploding.
"Bonzai! Bonzai!"
shouted Jose.

Suddenly, from somewhere in his costume, El Dominicano pulled out a handful of something and flung it in the direction of Jimmy Colon. The entire ring was consumed with bilious, bright orange clouds. Jimmy was covered in orange. He started coughing. Then choking. Then he fell to the mat and clutched his throat. His legs twitched violently El Dominicano, the former sweet-faced Ruben, stood over him smiling demonically while angry fans shouted,
"Brujeria! Haitiano!"

Sam the referee, in his now orange-stained Mister Custard uniform, investigating the fans' charge of Haitian witchcraft, attempted to approach El Dominicano to examine what he had in his right hand. El Dominicano reached out with his menacing, tiger-striped arms and the referee backed off But Jimmy Colon, in another miraculous resurrection, leapt to his feet again, hurled El Dominicano into a corner, threw him to the edge of the mat, crashed onto him feetfirst, lifted him by the head, and slammed him to the mat several more times until El Dominicano went limp, barely conscious, while Jimmy rolled him over, pinned him on his back, and stood up, raising his arms triumphantly Not only was Jimmy victorious, he had saved Mister Custard for the neighborhood.

Slowly, El Dominicano, the black spikes of his waxed hair knocked askew, raised his tattooed head slightly to look for Rosita in the audience—just one wink for Rosita. But all he saw was the nacreous sheen of a woman's rhinestone-studded, white pearl pixie glasses. Her shriek was so loud that it silenced the rest of the crowd, and the uniformed policemen started moving toward the ring. She pointed at the vanquished El Dominicano and shouted, "That's him. That's him!"

Mrs. Skolnik was hopping up and down with one hand extended like a bayonet, pointing at tattooed Ruben on the mat. "That's him! He killed Eli Rabbinowitz. I saw him!"

As the police moved in, Tommy Drapper quickly made his way back to the parking garage.

I
HE MORE HE THOUGHT
about Nusan, the guiltier he felt. But the worse he felt, the more he wanted Karoline. He could not understand this, did not want to understand it. He just wanted to turn his back on his life and beliefs and have sex over and over again with this woman.

She answered the phone as though she were expecting his call. He had prepared his arguments, but she wasn't interested. She sounded resigned.

"What are we going to bake?" Nathan asked.

"Kugdhopf"

"What kind of kugel?"

"Kugelhopf
Just get over here and I'll show you."

"Kugdhopf"

"Yes. It was Hitler's favorite dessert,"

He hung up. He hated the way she did that. Teasing him, which was an understated form of laughing at him. She knew he hated it, but she also knew that it made him want her more. She knew everything about his soul, could hold it in her hand like
kugdhopf
dough, and he had to have her to get it back—or that was what he reasoned walking up from Rivington Street through the explosions.

Farther east on Rivington, some people had broken into an abandoned building. It had been a high school; by family legend, it was where Harry had learned English. Rumored to have been bought by a developer who planned to turn it into luxury apartments but must have been waiting for a better moment, the building was deserted and most of the windows were broken, the walls claimed by competing gangs in colorful spray paint on the dark walls. Rockets were being fired out of some of the windows, balls lobbed out rhythmically like orchestrated meteors. It lacked only a "star-spangled banner" to look like Fort McHenry under siege by the British. Smoke rose above the buildings, and the ornamental metal edges of the roofs were revealed in sudden flashes of light.

Nathan had to choose streets carefully A few little crackers went off near his face on Houston. He stamped out a fuse on First Street just before it exploded and was glared at by three disappointed boys. The wide avenues seemed safer than the streets, where the explosions echoed against the stone of the tenements and where Eli Rabbinowitz's hunted killer probably stalked. It drifted across Nathan's thoughts that a killer with a handgun could fire unnoticed this night.

Even this warm, smoky air seemed almost cool and clean after Nusan's. Nusan would be fine. Why worry about an octogenarian with a heart condition in a permanent depression who would spend the Fourth of July locked in a small room, jumping every time he heard a firecracker? Nathan tried to talk himself into going back. Instead, he went up First Avenue, heading toward the home of a possible Nazi. To accuse Mr. Moellen of being a Nazi, Nathan told himself, was completely unfair, a kind of racial stereotyping that was in itself Nazi-like. It would be like suspecting his family of greedy business practices because they were Jewish. Well, maybe that was going too far. But certainly Nusan's assertion that all Germans were Nazis was extremely unfair.

The instant he pressed the button for the second floor, the issue of Moellen's past, the firecrackers, the killer, Nusan's heart condition, and all other thoughts vanished from Nathan's mind. A loud buzz released the lock. She was anxious, Nathan could not help noting. Or maybe she was just anxious to get him away from her door. When he got to the top of the stairs, the door was opened wide and there she was, in her apron, the entire apartment smelling of butter. But then, seated by the table was Joey Parma, his gray blue, silk-blend pant legs spread wide, balancing as he tipped back his chair, rotating clockwise a glass of wine in his hand. Staring at the glass, he swirled the wine in that manner that all the new people in the neighborhood had. It was as though the smarts went to wine school before moving to the East Village, and so had Joey Parma.

"You know each other?" asked Karoline.

Nathan noted with relief that Karoline was dressed under her apron.

"Here, have a glass," said Joey, straightening the chair on the floor and pouring another glass from a tall, thin, green bottle. "It's eiswein, from Riesling in the Rheingau. They can only make it certain years when there is an early frost. The berries freeze and it becomes concentrated and forget about it!" He handed Nathan the glass. They sipped the richly fruited wine, like cold, pungent syrup. Karoline and Joey discussed the Rheingau. Nathan tried not to look at his watch but knew that he had only two hours at most and this cop was sitting there talking frozen berries.

But then Joey looked at his own watch. "Oh! Got to go." He grabbed three bottles on the table, thanked Karoline, wished everyone a good holiday, and galloped noisily down the stairs.

Alone, Karoline shrugged at Nathan. "He wanted to come by."

"To get wine," said Nathan, finishing the sentence.

"Yes. I wonder why he thinks you came." They were both quiet a minute. "He just took about two hundred dollars' worth of wine, including an Alsatian Gewürztraminer, a Château—"

Nathan cut her off irritably. "I don't care."

"But it's funny He is going to a picnic in Queens. He tells me that they all smack their lips and say, 'Nice wine, Joey' Sometimes he can't bear it and he puts the wine in decanters so that he can slip his guests cheaper wine. They don't know. And he can't tell anyone. If his wife knew what he spent on wine, she would kill him."

Nathan pulled the tie string on her apron, but she grabbed it. "No."

He looked at her for that brief instant, but then she lowered her eyes and said, "The
kugelhogf."
She instructed him to brush melted butter into the still unbuttered molds on the table.

"I lied, you know, it wasn't the Führer's favorite," she said, deliberately pronouncing the German word with the perfect Prussian accent she had learned from her parents. "This is the French way. The Austrian one has less butter. This is better."

"Hitler had bad taste?"

"He was Austrian."

Hefting the large mixing bowl of dough from the refrigerator, she said, "It's like a brioche. Or a challah. My father used to make the most wonderful challah. But no one bought it, because he is German." She said the word "challah" with the appropriate Hebrew
ch
sound from the back of the roof of her mouth.

Suddenly she slapped the rounded edge of the dough rising out of the bowl—slapped it three times, forehand, backhand, forehand—like a good boxing combination—until it went limp, sinking in the bowl.

She showed Nathan how to make rolls of dough and fill each mold only about two-thirds full. "Now," she said, unbuckling Nathan's belt, "we have to wait for it to rise. Very slowly." She smiled at him.

"How slowly?"

"About two hours."

Nathan smiled, too, and they undressed each other with ritual care, folding each other's clothes and draping them carefully on the chairs. When they were both naked, she pointed at his beaded bracelet. "That, too. I want you completely naked."

He carefully removed the green and black beads. He felt no panic. He could do this without Oggún, He placed the beads in the pocket of his folded pants and looked at the naked Karoline.

An idea overtook him.

He took the butter pot and began carefully brushing butter on her skin until her entire body was gleaming and golden like a Cellini Venus, and then he began meticulously to lick the butter.

Karoline knew that it was too late. That was the way it was. The first time is a mistake, but the second time means that it is "an affair," that they would keep meeting, fill their lives with lies, sink deeper and deeper, and not stop until they were destroyed.

Even without Tommy Drapper—what happened to him, anyway?—Harry thought the concert was a great success. He walked back from Avenue D with little bombs exploding around him, not loudly enough to upset his Irving Berlin:

If you don't want my peaches, You better stop shaking my tree.

He thought about how he probably would be known as the man who brought back boogaloo, saved boogaloo, made boogaloo great.

Let me say that you're mighty slow, You're as cold as an Eskimo
—

"Hello, Harry Seltzer."

Harry turned. It was Florence in a tight black dress, the fabric pulled to its limit and shining across her "big black booty." Her hair was pulled up on her head and she was wearing a thick layer of a magenta lipstick that seemed to clash oddly with her skin color. "It's Florence," she explained with a hopeful smile.

"Yes, I know. Hello, Florence."

"This could be our time, Harry Seltzer. Just a few very good minutes."

"Oh, thank you, Florence, no time right now." She had placed a soft hand in the sag of his pants. He was surprised what a good touch she had, and while he protested that his family was waiting, she noticed that he made no effort to remove the hand.

"Come over here a minute," she said, and maneuvered him below a brownstone stoop, against the wall on the steps to a basement doorway It seemed to Harry that she had just led him by his penis, but how could that be possible? But he now realized that his fly was open and her hand was directly on his organ.

"Ohh," she said with a note of half triumph and half feigned surprise as she felt his excitement. Her touch overtook him.

"You like me, don't you, Harry Seltzer," she purred almost in amusement. Then she knelt on the step and placed him in her mouth. In three minutes it was over, and whatever was left of the moment was instantly destroyed by Florence, her purple lips curled as though she would be ill, leaning toward the sidewalk and spitting across to the curb, then wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

"I'm sorry," said Harry, not certain what to say. "What do I owe you? I mean, how much do you—" He took out his wallet full of crisp flat twenties newly minted from the cash machine. He tried to hand her two twenties, but three stuck together. "Is this all right?"

"Whatever you think, Harry Seltzer."

Why did she have to say his name? Harry thought, handing her another twenty. Then he heard footsteps. It could be somebody who knew him. He grabbed Florence and tried to shove her into the doorway below the stoop. At that moment a firecracker exploded, and taken by surprise, Harry jammed her head into a wrought-iron gate.

"Ohh!" Florence protested softly, and reached up to touch her tern ple where blood was running down her face—the wrong shade of red,

the color of her lipstick, which had mostly vanished.

"Fm so sorry, Florence," said Harry. "Are you all right?"

"It's nothing," said Florence, laughing. She could see how urgently

Harry wanted to leave.

"Here," said Harry, handing her what was left of the money in his wallet, three more twenties, and he ran quickly down the street, leaving Florence to nurse her wounds and marvel at her stack of $20 bills.

Nathan hurried down the stairs to the side door around the corner from the Edelweiss. Almost at the bottom, his footsteps sounding like a commotion of hooves, he saw Mrs. Moellen looking up at him, so sadly, so silently, that Nathan wanted to take her hand and say, "Fm so sorry." But instead he smiled pointlessly and sidestepped past her, saying only, "Excuse me."

Out on the hot July street as the door was closing, he thought he heard her say, "Yes."

As he turned the corner, he heard a strange Teutonic sound like marching orders in German—it sounded the way Nathan imagined a German army in training would sound. The shades of the Edelweiss were down, covering the windows with flat sepia images of steepled German villages that had been bombed and rebuilt. Nathan peeked through a corner and was able to see inside. A few unpurchased linzer tortes were still in the window. Moellen was on the floor. He was doing push-ups, snapping them up and down with his body very rigid in a martial rhythm while counting in German,
"Acht! Neuen! Zehn!"
His face was getting red and veins were beginning to stand out. Nathan noticed something odd. He had always imagined Moellen to have pale blue eyes, but in fact he had very dark eyes—like Nusan. Had the war turned his eyes, too?

The sun had not quite set, and the last amber rays were catching a haze of greenish smoke. Nathan was hurrying toward the building roof party on Avenue A when he remembered—just in time—that he would give himself away, lose his alibi, if he didn't know the final score of the Mets game.

There was a bar on First Avenue, a dark, partially belowground place with dusty Sicilian ornaments in the window. Three shadows were hunched over the bar. Nathan knew that he should order a drink first but couldn't spend the time on the ritual.

"Does anyone know the Mets score?"

"The Mets," repeated one of the shadows.

"What do we look like," said the bartender, "the sports page?"

They were treating him like one of the smarts. He ran to Avenue A. Maybe there would be something at the newsstand.

"Shalom, my friend." It was Mohammed, walking up the avenue. "Are you not going to the roof?"

"Yes, I was just on my way Tell me ..." Nathan stopped. Another close call. It could come out that he had gotten the score from Mohammed. "Oh, nothing. I forgot something. Have to go back to my shop. I'll see you later."

"Good-bye, my friend. Shalom."

Nathan had a radio in his shop. He would go there and find out the score. But on the way, he noticed that Arnie and his pallet were missing. The spot on the sidewalk where he had been for several years had been cleared. Nathan looked down Avenue A and saw the pallet on the next block, but Arnie wasn't there. When he reached the pallet, he realized that something was moving under a pile of blankets.

"Arnie?"

The blankets, one salmon colored and another blue with cheerful snowfiake patterns, slowly moved. From a corner, Arnie's gaunt face emerged, his beret undisturbed at its customary jaunty tilt. "Hey, Nathan,
viva la huelga."

"What are you doing here?"

"They made me move. They're opening a new store. Selling running shoes. You know, hundred-dollar sneakers. They didn't want me in front of their store. Bad for business. Everything about me says, 'Why run?' "