Pipsqueak (7 page)

Chapter 10

A
ngie was arguing with the phone when I got home.

“Peter, darling, this doesn’t make any sense!” She pulled the phone from her head and gnashed her teeth at Otto.

“Very nice! Yan-gie face like Fred.” Otto glanced up from grooming the lion’s mane. “Ah, Garv, Fred, he’s lookink, yes? I careful very brush all to nice.”

“You need an argon atmosphere to solder titanium, Peter. . . . Well, that kind of solder on titanium is crappy workmanship. You want the platinum beads popping off Madeline’s ears into the champagne at the Savoy Revue benefit next week?” Angie aimed a withering “Peter” sneer my way. “What I’m trying to say is that unless you want to contract Lockheed to solder the beads, it’s got to be cold connections. How do you feel about rivets?” Angie clenched a fist of her hair and squinted at the ceiling. “No, Peter, I don’t know anybody at Lockheed.”

I slipped behind the soda bar, checked the answering machine, and obeyed the wink of my blinking diode. At the same time, I obeyed the need for a cup of coffee from the Krups.

“Guess what, Gawth? I did it! I proposed to Carmela right there where she works, at the DMV lunchroom. Said yes. And Gawth? I got a call back from Vito. He’s playing a swing set at the Gotham Club tonight. What say we do the foursome celebration tonight? Nine-ish.”

Beeep!

“Mr. Carson, this is Janine Wilson at Warner’s. Do you have any more snakes? Kevin O’Brien—our director—he wants some more snakes. Please give me a call ASAP. It’s about nine-ten
A
.
M
.”

Beeep!

“Oh, forgot to mention. It’s dress-up night at Gotham. Vintage duds, you know? See ya.”

Beeep!

“Hi, Mr. Carson, Janine Wilson again. Kevin wanted me to ask about any other reptiles you might have. Like lizards, big lizards? It’s about nine thirty-five
A
.
M
.”

Beeep!

“Mr. Carson, this is Cat Taylor calling from Kenzie Taxidermy Supply? About your recent order? The Sal Soda, horn stain, magnesium carbonate, Permatex, cedar oil, and Sculp Stix are on their way, but we’re back-ordered on the bird tongues and beaver teeth. They should come in in the next week or so. Just to let you know.”

Beeep!

“Professor! It’s Stuart, Sharp’s Antiques. Look, I just came across the most gawd-awful thing, thought you might want it. It’s like I dunno what. A giant weevil? Stands about two feet high on a square of wood. Ugly. But weird. Thought maybe you should come up here and have a look at it. Also have some kind of bone thing. Dunno what that is, either. Ugly. Gimme a call.”

Beeep!

“Hello, this is Stage & Set Marketplace calling to see if you want to renew your ad. Call Andy Poole. Thanks.”

I dialed up the customer first and told Janine what I have in the way of reptiles.

“Four-foot spectacled caiman (like an alligator), alligator heads, a crocodile skull, an anaconda skin about twelve feet long and mounted on a board, eighty-pound snapping turtle in a glass case, a three-foot monitor lizard on a Crea-Stone rock, a couple of garden-variety freestanding iguanas, four or five striking rattlers. That’s off the top of my head, of course. I could fax a complete list.”

“Uh, no time. Just bring over your three biggest lizards and three biggest snakes. Any live tarantulas?”

“No live stuff. But I have a friend, Pete Durban, who wrangles tarantulas.”

“Yeah, we lost him. A camera dolly squished one of his bugs and he walked out on us.”

“Well, I know a guy who might help you out. Alan Peden, he’s at Middle Village Exotica, in Queens, snakes and bugs a specialty. But can I ask why there would be a live tarantula in a sports shop?”

“Oh, different scene altogether. Dream sequence.”

“Ah, I see. So anyway, I’ll bring the stuff over right away.”

Next call: the Big Weevil.

“Hi, Stuart, Carson here. Let’s hear about this whatsits.”

“Gotta see this thing, Professor. Come on out.” He always wants me to come charging out to New Hope every time he gets a piece of taxidermy, and he’s never able to identify even the most rudimentary of animals. I once went up there to check on what he said was an eagle only to find it was a turkey. Then again, he drew me out there with a story about a mean-looking black chicken and it turned out to be a capercaillie, an exotic Siberian game bird I scored for a mere thirty bucks.

“A big bug, huh?” Could he be talking about a
Dynastes hercules
, world’s largest beetle? Approaching seven inches long, the olive-colored males have a pair of long pincers as big as a raven’s beak. They originate in Central America, and as a kid I was forever searching bunches of bananas at the supermarket in vain hope of finding a stowaway. Needless to say, young Garth never did collect a Hercules beetle, a critter I reckoned big enough to qualify as taxidermy. “You open tomorrow?”

“At eleven.”

“Maybe Angie and I’ll pack a picnic, make a day of it.”

“A day of what?” Angie said as I hung up.

“Stuart’s got something. . . .”

“And he doesn’t know what it is, I’ll bet. Wants you to come out to New Hope to look at it. Now you’re thinking picnic, right?” Her smile was pained, teeth clenching her lower lip.

“Right.”

“Forget it. I’m stuck showing Peter what the gosh-dern beads will look like posted to the titanium.” Angie has the cutest ways with expletives.

“And tonight?”

Angie gave me a sidelong look. “Tonight?”

“Yeah, I told Dudley we’d go out to celebrate his engagement.”

“Engagement to the Beast?”

“Uh-huh.”

I got a knitted-brow smile, and I clasped her shoulders.

“Save your bad humor, Angie, for Peter. Look, we’re going to hear music, a swing band at the Gotham Club.”

“Dancing?” The clouds began to part.

“Yes indeedy. And it’s dress-up night. We’re supposed to dress forties or fifties or something.”

The clouds darkened Angie’s brow again, and she struck me a blow to the shoulder.

“Ow!”

“How could you, Garth?”

“What?”

“You know I don’t have anything to wear to something like that.”

I reflected on the two closets filled with her clothes.

“Surely, Sugar Cube, you have something you could throw together—”

“Ha!” Angie stalked to the back room and I heard the closet door almost fly off its hinges. Angie’s usually very even-tempered, really. Just Peter drives her nuts. Which meant my next move was to assemble the best-of reptile squad and run them out to Brooklyn.

“C’mon, Otto. Help.”

Otto dropped his brush and scurried after me into the basement. “Vhat I help, Garv, please, tell to me?”

The snakes are pretty fragile, so we put them in an oversize Rubbermaid storage tub in a vat of styro peanuts, squares of shirt board to separate them. The caiman and monitor I bubble-wrapped and rolled into moving blankets. A crocodile skull the size of a small dog I merely wrapped in a blanket, and we put a couple of iguanas in a box of shredded paper. I have to store not only the critters but all the supplies for transporting them. Packing is one of Otto’s talents. He has a near perfect sense—esoteric as it may be to some—of how to fold paper, bubble wrap, or cardboard over toes, claws, and muzzles in such a way that a rigid cocoon is formed around the delicate bits most likely to get snapped.

“I ever tell you you’re good at packing, Otto?” I knew what the response would be but decided to see if his story changed any. Otto claims to have done things and been places that I sometimes don’t completely believe.

“Otto, of course, pack very nice.” He waved a piece of newspaper at me, rather resentful that I might even question his talents. “Tall ago, like young man, home in gulag. Ve not just play card, drink tea day into night. Guards take us to factory, I wrap package night to day.”

Otto picked up his tub of snakes and I hefted the rolled blankets of lizards. I unlocked the cellar door to the sidewalk. At street level, we emerged and aimed at the Lincoln. I put the top down and we loaded up the backseat with all the wrapped beasts. Once the cellar doors were locked again, Otto took the opportunity of being out in the fresh air to light a cigarette. I paused before getting into the Lincoln.

“Otto, how’d you get out of the gulag, anyway?”

He paled, the circles around his eyes darkening. At first I thought the smoke had caught in his throat, but the peaty vapor came out in a long, thoughtful stream as his eyes narrowed sharply toward the Hudson River.

“How is Garv see man die? Knife? Kalashnikov? Rope? Hand? Teeth?”

“Uh, what, you mean like on TV? The movies?” Naïveté is my specialty sometimes.

The sun glinted off his steel dental work, the smile of hard knocks flickering on his scruffy jaw. His gray eyes met mine.

“Otto, he is not knowink how seeink many men die. Very much, Garv. Eetz not good place, maybe, God put to man.” Cryptically, he drifted off toward the roar of the West Side Highway, smoke rising, arms folded, silhouetted by shimmering afternoon sun on the Hudson.

I got in the Lincoln and drove past him to the highway. Did he misunderstand my question? Or had Otto killed someone to get out of the gulag? Was there a massacre of some kind? Had he witnessed carnage? There was a grim story that he wasn’t keen to tell, and I was slightly queasy just from his innuendo, not so much for what the particulars might be but for all my vast ignorance of and ultimately indifference to the systematic brutality seemingly endemic to far-flung places.

In that he slept on bar tops, aspired to sell hot dogs on a nude beach, smoked too much, and babbled, I didn’t take Otto very seriously. Quite the contrary. But I was beginning to think there was a lot more to him, that maybe his flip everyday persona was the result of some very difficult times. Times in which he learned that all is fleeting and perhaps meaningless.

As I drove south to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, I looked around me. A Rollerblader had fallen and scraped an elbow. A taxi had a flat tire. A couple argued outside a restaurant. A Lost Our Lease sign. An enraged motorist honking at someone who’d cut him off. A woman limping along with a broken heel. A shabby man slumped in a doorway.

The problems of Mall Age America seemed somehow paltry in comparison.

Chapter 11

A
s usual, the male of the species had little trouble choosing a wardrobe. My choice was made easier by having only two options for the occasion: the blue pinstripe or the ivory cruisewear. With the remarkable foresight of a collector, at the tender age of twenty I had rescued four seriously dated suits from my late grandparents’ wardrobe before my parents sent them off to the Salvation Army. (The wardrobe, not the grandparents.) In the midst of gargling, I had turned from the image of my sleep-tousled hair in the bathroom mirror in time to see the SA truck pull up in front of the house. I had sprinted down the stairs in a towel and half a faceful of shave cream. Catching the Salvation Army man as he was going down the front walk, we got into a bit of a tussle, much to the dismay of my folks. To peeping neighbors, the tableau must have looked like a missionary in hand-to-hand combat with a Watusi savage right there on Red Robin Road. I’d pretty much got the suits out from under his arm when I made a bonus grab for a bunch of ties in the box. My towel dropped, I coughed up the Scope, and he let go. The rest is history. (Mr. and Mrs. Vogel from across the street probably still bend the postman’s ear about it.) Anyway, the suits fit like tailor-made—tails, tux, pinstripe, and cruise—and I’ve kept them around for twenty-five years and only had occasion to wear them each once in that time. Since it wasn’t summer, and I wasn’t waving a hanky from the deck of the
Piscataway Princess,
my choice was reduced to the pinstripe. In the pocket, I found a cocktail napkin from my dad’s funeral.

Angie’s closets were not devoid of fashion. She found a black, calf-length, off-the-shoulder bridesmaid dress loaded with pleats. (Yes, a black bridesmaid dress. This is New York, after all.) With the matching black pumps, the ensemble wouldn’t have gotten her much more than a shrug at the Gotham Club. But it was her jeweler’s eye for accessorizing that got her the nod: elbow-length black satin gloves, seamed stockings, crushed velvet wrap. With a curling iron, she sculpted her shoulder-length blond hair. After much angst, she’d decided that even a small hat was too much, so acorn-sized red costume earrings and matching lipstick ended the ordeal. Standing before the mirror, she smiled, then turned to me with a frown. “I look terrible. Don’t I look terrible?”

It only took fifteen minutes to convince her otherwise, and another fifteen to get us out the door and into a cab.

“You look good, Sugar Plum.” Angie squeezed my arm. “Though maybe it needs to be let out in the middle a little.”

I sucked it in ever so slightly, about to protest.

In ten minutes our cab delivered us to the Gotham Club, an outwardly unremarkable venue in the low 50s, and we went in.

Beyond red velvet drapes we emerged into a cavernous blue-tiered ballroom, concentric rows of candlelit tables making a bull’s-eye of the obsidian-tile dance floor. There was enough headroom to bone up on your model rocketry, though they’d opted to use the extra space to keep the velvet industry solvent via curtains billowing down from the apex to the floor. Diamond-shaped sconces dimly defined ledges in the plush walls that were balconies.

The muted light was yellow, dampening colors so that a navy suit wasn’t that far off from the red pillowy walls.

Thick and red as pimientos, every woman’s lips were laden with lipstick. Sharp eyes darted to competing fashions. Hair spray—layers and layers of hair spray—stung the nostrils. With a laugh and the self-conscious wave of a cigarette holder, one woman put a hand on a man’s forearm to make a point.

Chiseled jaws, beetle-wing hair, and a dreamy look were the men’s ideal. Hands wanted to go into pockets, but it ruined the look of the double-breasted jackets. A few had attempted the pencil-thin mustache, but the Gable mojo only worked for the swarthy ones, and looked itchy anyway. Breezy, but uneasy too, they checked their surroundings for familiar faces.

Swank cliques, positioned in archetypal clumps, cast sardonic looks on the inauthentically attired.

“Timex . . .” Miss Cat Glasses whispered to Miss Corsage.

“Chess King . . .” Mr. Tux said to Mr. Briarwood.

“. . . tie clips that don’t go the whole width, you know what I mean?” Mr. Boutonniere muttered, his pals chortling commiseratingly.

“Your hat, sir?” A finger was tapping my shoulder. I pivoted toward the coat check. “Check your hat?”

“Yes.” Angie swapped my fedora for a ticket, smiling tightly. “I could see the cheapskate look coming into your eyes.”

“Wisenheimer.” I put out my arm and Angie hooked her gloved hand through my elbow. We walked to a railing overlooking the tiers and dance floor.

“Have I told you how exquisite you look tonight?”

“Yes, but it never hurts to hear it again.” Angie gave me a skeptical smile, the one that knows the compliment is contrived but appreciates the thoughtfulness anyway. She did look great.

“Gawth!” Dudley was waving us toward his table on the second tier with the gusto of a crewman on a carrier flight deck. “Angie!”

“Congratulations, you guys!” Angie chimed in.

“You big palooka!” I jabbed Dudley in the shoulder. He looked dapper in a fifties suit with shoulder pads big enough to disqualify him from the NFL. A sizable pink flowered tie covered his chest. He stood behind Carmela’s seat, hands on her shoulders and grinning like Teddy Roosevelt at a Sunday picnic. (That is, he was holding her shoulders with the thumb and forefinger lifted and safe from contamination. Dudley is quick to point out the thumb and forefinger’s complicity in viral transmissions.)

Carmela, of course, sported her usual hangdog expression.

Angie and I exchanged a glance. We were merely reiterating past thoughts along the lines of “How the hell does Dudley get all puppy-lovey for Carmela?” It’s not that she’s just gaunt, stooped, ashen, and beetle-browed. The killer is that she has all the personality of a brooding log. And she’d gone easy on the primping this festive eve: green sack-cut dress, poppit necklace, unshaven legs, and black flats. Well, there was a bow in her hair, one of those clip-on plastic thingies, and it must have been Dudley that got her the corsage. But both accessories looked ridiculously droopy and out of place, the way they’d look if you put them on a borzoi.

Angie made a stab at girlish camaraderie. “So, Carmela, let’s see how the ring looks?” The bride-to-be dropped her hand on the table like a bad banana and blushed ever so slightly.

“Wow,” Angie said, and touched Carmela’s shoulder. “You must be so excited.”

“Yes,” Carmela grunted.

I easily resisted the temptation to give the lucky girl a peck on the cheek. As an alternative, I waved. “Congrats. Got yourself a fine man in Dudley.”

“Yes.”

I pulled a chair out for Angie and hailed a waiter. “I guess this calls for a toast, hmm?”

“A toast indeed!” Dudley trumpeted, resuming his seat.

Angie launched into conversation by explaining the fine points of the ring she’d put together for them.

I ordered the cheapest bottle of champagne in the cellar and proceeded to reexamine our surroundings at the tier tables. Many of the same sorts as in the gallery by the bar, though not the hard-core types, by my reckoning. There were a few Mom ’n’ Pops in the tiers too, looking ready to revive golden ballroom memories. So I took to scanning the railing and gallery beyond, noticing irregulars. For example, there was some rumpled fellow in a cardigan wearing a skimmer and sucking on a pipe. He was all of twenty-something and trying desperately to look like Bing Crosby at fifty. Next to him was another youngster in a greasy pompadour and black bowling shirt. On the back were two red dice and the words
Lucky’s Speed Shop
. Bing and Bowler surveyed the crowd like a pair of vultures. On the other side was a spoofy flapper chick in a gelled hairdo with big black feathers fanned out in back like a turkey tail. Tiny black-frame glasses circled her eyes. In one hand, a cigarette holder that could double as a yardstick; in the other, a martini that could double as a birdbath. From what I could see of it, her dress was a cascade of black feathers. Perhaps she’d just auditioned for some Broadway musical version of
H. R. Pufnstuf
.

From the mannerisms of these and most of the rest of the gallery people, I got the impression that they were the hard-cores. They didn’t act like this was a costume ball. Even while being sociable among themselves, they continually lapsed into serious postures of folded arms, confidential whispers, and meaningful glances. It was as though this gathering of wine and song had some grave import to them: less Benny Goodman, more Brahms.

The lights dimmed and the champagne arrived. Curtains parted at the back of the dance floor, and applause drowned out the pop of our cork. About ten band members in red blazers, white shirts, and red ties sat at attention in two rows of bandstand stalls monogrammed with
GC
(for
Gotham Club
). Piano, bass fiddle, and drums flanked the stalls. The drummer’s base had
The Swell Swingers
stenciled on it in gold glitter. The bandleader was in shirtsleeves with red arm garters and a red bow tie hanging undone. He brandished a grand smile but was unshaven and had black rascally locks hanging in his eyes. Possibly a little stoned.

“Gawth! See Vito? First row, all the way right. Cornet.”

I nodded. There sat Vito in a neat red blazer, shaved head shining in the multicolored stage lights. His shaded eyes sparkled beneath hooligan black eyebrows, the kind that shake hands at the nose.

With a wave of his red baton, the bandleader charged into a round of familiar swing numbers that got the crowd dancing. When the bottle of champagne was history, Angie and I hit the dance floor for two numbers, and I was relieved not to notice any hypercritical stares from the technically accurate dancers. At this point, I really couldn’t say whether what we were doing was a Lindy, East Coast or West Coast swing, jitterbug, jump, or what. In fact, it’s certain that we abbreviated the steps. But I figure as long as you can swirl the girl, dip your doe, flip your chick, and not drop the dame, you’re doing okay. I’ll take panache over persnickety any day.

The applause from the last number stumbled to an end as Angie and I resumed our seats.

“Thank you very much, ladies and gents, thank you!” Wiped from exertion and free radicals, the bandleader took a long drink of ice water. He drew a hand across his head, pulling the sweaty locks from his face. “I’m Rob Getty, and the Swell Swingers are certainly glad you could make it to the Gotham Club tonight.” While the audience applauded obediently, he stole the pianist’s cigarette from an ashtray on the Steinway. “And now we’d like you to give a warm welcome to Scuppy Milner and his Wailing Voice of Gold!”

From stage left, an aquamarine tux jogged onto the stage filled with the night’s singer, a man with a forehead twice the size of his face. And atop that sat a rigid triangle of reddish-brown hair. Tiny blue eyes glinted above a smile as wide as his forehead was tall. I’m not completely sure he even had a nose. Scuppy (Scottish puppy? Schoolhouse guppy?) was a caricature of himself, an amalgam of outsize features, and his pugilistic hand gestures made it clear that he was rarin’ to go mano a mano with Buster Poindexter. The very thought: like a Godzilla flick, two giant foreheads locked in battle, swinging at each other with their titanic hair ledges, buildings toppled, Greenwich Village laid waste.

The teeth flashed. “Who’s ready for some new stuff, huh? Shake it loose, people!” The gallery exploded with applause for Scuppy, obviously a local fave.

The band fired up again, this time with a boogie-woogie beat, flaring horns, and hoodoo jungle drums. Scuppy lit up a smoke, winked at the audience, and made a fist around the mic.

I didn’t catch all the lyrics, but I picked up a Swell Swingers CD later that spelled them out. And the song—“Blinking Light”—went:

Baby, step away from that screen

Now let go, jive and scream

Tomorrow’s not a day to waste

The future’s past as bongos race

Blinking light commands

That you never ever understand

All to own and not to breathe

Bar codes, access, shopping TV

Listen up and dig the sound

It’s your mind coming ’round

Light me, baby, eyes of fire

We’ll wail away the techno mire

Baby, step away . . .
[refrain]

Tongue that tastes complete

Isn’t junked with the obsolete

Dance with me, leave your mouse

Wall of numbers, crumbling house

Doctor says we’re not lookin’ well

That we’re dancin’ to certain hell

Electron gun shot his hypothalamus

Red blue green—now he’s not one of us

Baby, step away . . .

I got the gist of the lyrics during the performance, if not the complete swing libretto. Maybe it’s just me, but the sentiments seemed a little odd—certainly a far cry from “Jump, Jive, and Wail.” I looked back to the gallery while Scuppy belted it out. Some were cutting the rug in earnest. Meanwhile, Bing, Bowler, Feather Lady, and their cronies hung over the railing popping fingers, howling, bobbing heads, and generally going bananas.