Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue (30 page)

"Florence, are you all right?!"

"Yes, I am all right, Harry Seltzer." She smiled and struggled to stand up.

"She's a junkie, man," said young Wilson Morelos.

"Here, let me give you some money," said Harry, not at all interested in Wilson's assessment. "Here, take sixty. Will sixty be okay?"

Florence nodded her head yes but then said, "I'll never get home with it unless you walk me. Cabezucha will get me."

"Who is Cabbage Suit Ya?"

"It's that guy," said Wilson. "He saw her get the money from the corner. He'll get her. Too easy to pass up."

"I know him from the neighborhood," Harry protested. "He's wearing a Dukakis button. Look!"

"Shit, look at that!" said Wilson, and Harry thought he was referring to the campaign button on Cabezucha's T-shirt. But Wilson reached down to the sidewalk near where Florence had fallen and picked up a silvery ballpoint pen. "Here, let me write my number."

But juggling the birdseed, his wallet, and his banking card, Harry had somehow misplaced the business card where he was going to write Wilson's telephone number.

"Here, man, give me your arm," said Wilson, and he wrote the seven figures on Harry's forearm and then seemed eager to be off to brighter parts of the neighborhood.

Harry did not want to be seen walking Florence, but he had no choice. Crossing Seventh Street, Florence said, "It's all right, he's not following."

But Harry was not thinking about Cabezucha. He was watching a gaunt, angry-looking man with a craggy face, who was carrying a large, black plastic garbage bag. Harry noticed the fury in the man's eyes as he walked up to Harry with an almost violent deliberateness and shouted, "I pay my taxes!" He seemed frozen, waiting for Harry's response.

"I know what you mean. I pay mine. Florence pays hers, too. Don't you, Florence."

The man glared at Florence, waiting for a response.

"I'm pretty much off the books." She could see from the glowing eyes deep in his rough-hewn face that this was not the right answer. But he was willing to wait for it.

"I pay my taxes, too," Florence said weakly. The man nodded agreement and walked to the curb, where he stuck a long arm into the garbage and began groping around with a quick professional touch in search of retrievable items.

"Are you sure you're all right?" Harry asked Florence.

She ran her fingers lightly through Harry's thick white hair. "You are a nice man, Harry Seltzer."

Harry, not especially believing her pronouncement, looked at his watch and saw that he had been gone from dinner for forty-five minutes. He hurried down the street, nearly running, which was not easy to do with twenty pounds of birdseed.

Waiting in the lobby for the elevator, the seersucker
fardarter
seemed to be having a fight with his girlfriend.

"What's wrong with seersucker?" whined the
fardarter.

"It's not exactly a power suit," she said.

The elevator arrived, and they and Harry stepped in.

"It's a way of saying 'Even if it's ninety degrees, I'm still here with my pinstripes.' "

"Yes, but at what price?" she said as they got off at their floor. As the elevator was closing, Harry heard him protest, "I got it at Syms!"

"That's not what I meant."

A full hour late, Harry burst through the door, exhausted. Dinner was finished, and Mordy and Priscilla had left. Sonia had fallen asleep on the couch. Sarah was playing with Nusan in the stuffed armchair. While Nathan and Ruth looked on in horror, Sarah was insisting that "Nusey," as she sometimes called him, recite the numbers on his arm. And Nusan was playfully engaged in the game. It had started when she asked why he had the numbers and he had explained that it was a number he was trying to remember. And so she was testing him.

Suddenly she shouted, "Grandpa has one, too!" and pointed at Harry's arm. Not realizing that Nusan had used the same explanation, Harry said, "No, that's just a number I had to remember."

Ruth, seeing the birdseed, said, "Oh, you got stuck with Birdie Nagel!"

"Yes, she was complaining about the new tenant. You know what she called him? A
seersucker fardarter."

"I don't care if he is
a fardarter,"
Ruth said expressively "As long as he is a
rent-paying fardarter!"

The words suddenly woke Sonia. "What? What did you say?"

Ruth repeated, "I said I don't care if he is
a fardarter,
as long as he is a
rent-paying fardarter."

"Yes!" Sonia said triumphantly, and she wrote something in her notebook.

"Is there any strudel left?" asked Harry

"Nathan made
kugelhopf
tonight. It's very good. We saved you a piece." Ruth took a plate with a piece of yellow cake dusted with sugar and slid it across the table toward him.

"Why don't we get apple strudel anymore?" asked Harry. Then, without warning, he raised his hand over his head and slammed it on the table, making a loud thump that startled the half-asleep Sonia, spilled coffee into saucers, and overturned his piece of
kugelhopf
He seemed to have thrown the cake on the floor in anger, which was not the way Harry acted. Everyone looked at him in silent shock. Sarah was motionless, studying the scene with fascination.

"God, I hate these things," Harry said as he picked up the remains of a water bug from the floor with a napkin.

"Oboy That was on the table?" said Ruth in disgust.

"Right on the edge here. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Just the same, why don't we go back to apple strudel?"

"Why is it," Nathan asked with uncharacteristic irritation, "that Moellen is the one man you never suspect of anti-Semitism?"

"Moellen," said Harry, curling his lower lip reflectively. "I know Moellen."

Nusan laughed quietly as he stood up, still wearing his hat and his maroon wool scarf and his dark wool suit jacket. Bundled against the cold, he said good-bye and stepped into the midsummer heat.

Sonia hurried to her manuscript.

(Emma walks into the room and finds a tall, thin woman with long fingers and curly hair.)

EMMA:
Who are you?

MARGARITA:
I am Margarita Maza Juárez.
(She waits for a moment hut gets no response from Emma.)
Wife of Don Benito Juarez, the exiled president of Mexico.

EMMA:
Boyoboy

MARGARTA:
This is absolutely true.

EMMA:
The exiled pres ... Exiled my
tokh ...
You know, you can get pretty far with a lie.
(She raises an index finger and swings her hips for emphasis)
But there is no getting back.

MARGARTA:
But it is not a lie. I am Benito Juarez's wife.

EMMA:
I don't care if you are an exiled
fardarter,
as long as you pay your share.

Yes! thought Sonia. And now a relationship begins.

W
HAT AM
I
DOING?
Nathan demanded silently but not in the least rhetorically, of Oggún, still elegantly swathed in
El Vocero
on his shelf, still as blank faced and silent as ever, although, Nathan thought, no more silent and no more blank faced than Dr. Kucher.

A narrow escape, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. But Nathan always believed he was experiencing important brushes with disaster, such as the logic-defying near miss when Karoline "almost knocked on the door when the family was having Friday night dinner." The fact that Karoline, who loathed such confrontations, had never seriously considered doing this did not enter into Nathan's calculation. That could have been Karoline instead of just Birdie Nagel, and then where would he have been?

It was a busy day at the Meshugaloo Copy Center. Felix's East Village Gourmet was having a flyer printed announcing a sale—on tomatoes. Jackie, the woman who might be a man, was printing something up about "Tomato Street Theater." It was a complicated job involving reducing a picture of a tomato and superimposing it over the skull on a picture of Hamlet. The neighborhood association had an order for flyers, and so did a group of street poets, whose program included Gilberto Banza's latest work, "Fucked in the Loisaida." Harold Kaskowitz, the classical kazoo player who for years had failed to convince Nathan to perform chamber music with him on his harmonica, was giving a concert. There were several flyers to be done for different groups in defense of squatters' rights. And Sonia, to Nathan's complete amazement, was having
Emma and Margarita
produced by a small but famous East Village theater group and needed twenty scripts, which seemed a lot for a two-character drama or, as Sonia labeled it, "a feminist out-of-body dialogue in three acts."

Quietly, in a corner, on a small table Nathan had placed there, Sarah, whose mother was at rehearsals, was at work with crayon and paper, drawing what she said were depictions of herself having swimming lessons at the Jewish Community Center pool.

Sonia had decided that she did not want to give massages anymore. She was hoping to be a successful playwright. With
Emma and Margarita
still in rehearsal, Sonia had already been profiled in four publications. The
Forward
was featuring her as a new Jewish writer, another wrote of her as a new Latin writer, a third as a Latina feminist, and a fourth as a Mexican-Jewish feminist.

Money was not going to be a problem, because Nathan had decided to stop "gambling with Sarah's future." He was going to take Ira Katz's offer. He had also decided to finally confront his claustrophobia.

Ruth demanded to know.

Harry could not bear Ruth knowing. How did she find out? How did women find these things out? Florence certainly wouldn't have said anything. It must have been someone who saw them walking together. How much did Ruth know?

"It's a passive-aggressive thing, isn't it."

"A passie a ... ?" Was she going to a psychiatrist? Did she find out that way? Scientifically?

"Maybe it's not even conscious. You resent my not cooking and so you go outside searching for the most unacceptable food."

He hadn't thought of prostitutes as a meal substitute.
This
was a diet that would sell.

"You are a grown man. You can do what you want," said Ruth. "But it makes me look ridiculous. It makes
us
look ridiculous. All the Puerto Ricans probably laugh at us."

"I don't think all the Puerto Ricans know. She wasn't even Spanish."

"Who?"

"Who?" replied Harry.

Ruth continued impatiently "You think you can sit in that what do they call it, cookiefrito, eating all that pork without every Puerto Rican in the neighborhood laughing about the Jew and the
lechón.
Oboy I know we are not kosher, but—"

Suddenly a piercing scream stabbed the stale air of the room. And then another one. "Noooo!!"

Harry and Ruth ran to open their door and heard the screams echoing through the hallway. As they rushed down the stairs to see what had caused the uproar, Birdie Nagel was coming up, her glasses askew and eyes wide with fury. "I was coming up to pay the rent," she declared with great and breathless indignation. "But this is the end. I am leaving! I don't care if I have to go to Boca Raton!"

And without handing Harry anything for the three months of back rent she owed, she turned around and stamped her way down four flights of stairs, leaving the rhythmic echo of her slapping shoes.

Underneath was a more gentle sound, the soft rhythms of a drum. Harry and Ruth continued down to the fifth floor, where they found Cristofina widi a large green-and-black silk scarf extravagantly wrapped around her head. Next to her, seated on the floor, was Panista from the casita, playing a small drum he held sideways, tapping it in such intricate and lovely patterns that at last his restless fingertips seemed satiated.

In Cristofina's hand was a headless, milk-chocolate-colored pigeon out of which she was pouring blood in the doorway, humming like a nimble and contented seamstress fast at work. Puddles and splatters of dark, wine-colored blood filled the doorway like an abstract expressionist painting in progress. Like stoppers and empty bottles cast aside in a bout of drinking, bird heads and drained carcasses with crumpled feathers were scattered in the hallway Nathan was seated on the floor dressed in white, strands of green and black beads around his neck, a grayish feather resting on the side of his head, a bashful smile on his face as he looked up and saw his parents.

Cristofina poured honey over the blood and then sprinkled feathers on the sticky, bleeding pools while singing in a gentle, happy voice in Yoruba.

Chow Mein Vega was hunched over the table in the dark, cool corner of the casita, tapping out page 611 of his autobiography, in which he was performing in the Catskills. On the porch, the other cool part of the house, Panista was leaning back on a metal folding chair, balancing himself against a post, his fingers tapping out a
plena
beat against a book called
A Taste of Japan.

"Did you know that
kamaboko
was first made in the fourteenth century?"

"What do you mean, made?" said Palo, who, too tall for the casita, was seated in the garden on a wooden stool. "I thought
kamaboko
was a vegetable."

"No," scoffed Panista, "that's
takenoko."

"Bamboo shoots," said Panista, still tapping.

"Okay,
pendejito,
what is
kamabokoT
Palo challenged.

"It's fish puree, asshole," said Panista. "They mold it so it is shaped like your head."

"Hello, Mr. Seltzer," said Palo, suddenly seeing Harry coming through the front gate.

"Hey, Mr. Seltzer," said Panista. "Know of any openings in Japanese restaurants? We can wait tables, cook, whatever. Ask me something, Seltzer-san."

"Well, Palo-san, I have no sushi work, but I do have a boogaloo gig."

"Sí señor!"

"One night. A wedding."

"A wedding. Old people?"

"Afraid so. People in their fifties. Third marriage, no white dress, but they wanted boogaloo. Latin boogaloo. Where's Chow Mein?"

The three simultaneously pointed inside the house, where the typewriter could be heard. Felix had said that Chow Mein was the last person in New York to use a typewriter.

As Harry walked into the casita, Chow Mein looked up from his work, saved by an interruption. "Man, writing is hard. Who was it talked about the blank page, Hemingway or someone. I got too many pages."

"Anybody can write," Harry said. "A pencil or pen, some paper, and then you just sit down and write."

"Hemingway said that?"

"No. Irving Berlin."

Mrs. Kleinman kissed the mezuzah on her doorpost softly as she left for the third floor to Birdie Nagel's, where the door was open and Birdie really was packing. "You're getting out? Good for you! Good-bye to all the goddamn cockroaches and the stolen mail and the guy who pisses in the doorway every night. Where you going? Boca? God bless. You'll probably get an eat-in kitchen and a living room and closets big enough to dance in."

The seersucker
fardarter
leaving his apartment a floor below heard her and, for the first time, noticed the building's tile floors had dirt caked in the edges and the paint was peeling in large curls off the wall.

When Nathan asked Ruth where Harry was, she had said pointedly, "At the casita—eating
lechón!"
Nathan was not sure what significance Ruth was attaching to this, but he left to look for his father. Today was the day he would straighten out his life, and he was anxious to talk to Harry before settling things with Ira Katz.

On his brisk walk to the casita, it struck Nathan that Arnie was missing. He did not see him or his pallet, blanket, or books.

At the casita, Nathan was stopped by Palo. "Here's the man
que corta el bacalao.
Nathan, how do you make miso?"

"I don't have any idea. But it seems to me that miso is one of those things, like pizza and hot dogs, that you don't try to make. You just buy it. Ask José Fishman. He's Japanese now."

After Nathan walked into the casita, Palo whispered to Panista, "That's bullshit, man. He better get with the program or he's not going to make it in the neighborhood."

"Got that," said Panista. "Things are changing."

Harry was seated next to Chow Mein Vega but was not eating
lechón.
Chow Mein was hunched over his typewriter, stroking his stumpy ponytail, while Harry was explaining their strategy for the future of boogaloo. Nathan knew he would have to be patient, that Chow Mein would want to go to the
cuchtfrito.
It seemed probable that the only meals Chow Mein ever had were when he could get someone to take him to lunch. That and the food available at weddings and receptions at which he performed. For a while he did well with bar mitzvahs. Chow Mein believed that more food was available at bar mitzvahs than any other type of event. He even wrote a "Bar Mitzvah Boogaloo." But it was the parents who wanted him, not the bar mitzvah boys. Besides, there were fewer and fewer bar mitzvahs in the neighborhood. Still, mysteriously, Chow Mein grew ever larger.

Just as the conversation seemed to be wearing down, Chow Mein clapped his hands together with sudden enthusiasm and said, "How about some
cuchifrito?"

At the
cuchifrito,
which posted a "Free Ruben Garcia" sign, Nathan noticed that as his mother had predicted, Harry ordered
kchón,
the suckling pig. But since almost everything at a
cuchifrito
is cooked in pork fat, Nathan could not see anything particularly galling in Harry's choice of
lechón.

Finally, after Harry paid the inexpensive bill and Chow Mein left them, Nathan had a chance, as they walked home, to talk to his father.

"You don't sound very happy about this."

"I can get five hundred thousand dollars. Maybe more."

Harry did not react, so Nathan tried a different way of expressing it. "It's for the money." He wanted to say, "It's for the money, stupid." But money meant nothing to Harry. He wouldn't understand. "We have to send Sarah to school. Preschool, then school. And swimming lessons. There are a lot of things kids need now. The shop doesn't make money, Dad. It never did."

Nor was Harry moved by this revelation.

"Sometimes it broke even. Right now it is not even doing that."

"This company seems anxious to get it."

"They just want to put it out of business."

"Look, Nathan, I have to tell you something. We are rich. The family is rich." Nathan was either not understanding him or not believing him. "We're rich people. You don't have to sell your business. Mordy doesn't have to run off to Cape Cod with a shiksa. We have money.... Okay, we don't have any money. But we have property. Do you know how much property we have? It's better than money. I get offered millions all the time. They keep offering more and more. The more you say no, the more they offer. It makes me wonder why anyone would ever say yes."

"Because if you don't, you never have any money."

Harry stared at him with a look that was not approval, a look Nathan knew well.

"What would be wrong with taking the money?"

"It always means throwing somebody out of their home. Besides, I never like the people making the offer. A bunch of anti-Semites. I don't need to do business with them. Say, where's Arnie?"

It was true there was no trace of him on Avenue A.

"People get older. They die or go to Boca Raton, which is probably the same thing. Fly away, like Birdie Nagel. Someday we will sell something. Or maybe we will just let the properties earn money Give Mordy a building to manage. We could make him a landlord."

"Free him from Priscilla."

"Who knows. I'll tell you a secret. When I was sixteen years old I met a woman—a woman, she was maybe eighteen—on a train to Warsaw. I can still remember her. Or maybe it is all wrong, but the way I remember her she had straight blond hair, real yellow stuff, like yellow silk. And that white skin that you can almost see through. And eyes so blue, they had no color at all. A real Pole. And she didn't see that I was Jewish."

Harry stopped walking.

"For some reason, I have never wanted anything in my life more than I wanted to sleep with this girl. And she wouldn't. Maybe she knew I was Jewish. If she had slept with me, she would have seen I was Jewish. Maybe I was afraid because of that. But I lied. Pretended I was a Pole. Even tried to sound a little anti-Semitic. I couldn't do it very well. But I could see that she didn't like it when I talked like that. Then I really had to have her. No excuse. She wasn't even an anti-Semite. Well, she was a Pole. Klara. And I couldn't have her. I still remember her. I still remember wanting her. Disgracing myself, pretending to be a goy. I always remember it—her and how I acted and how I wanted her. I think I would have done or said anything. So if Mordy wants to spend the summer on Cape Cod, I wish him God bless. If I could have had a summer on Cape Cod with Klara, I would have forgotten her by now. That would have been better."