Seventh Avenue (2 page)

Jay’s stomach began to perform a silent ballet.

“Yeah, great. It’s a deal.”

“Ever see such a boy, Immie? Two things he can’t say no to, food and cash, but I love ‘im.”

A cheerless hall, in which dankness, the effluvium of an unventilated kitchen, and the stomping of hundreds of pairs of feet reconstructing the steps of an off-key foxtrot, provided the scene for the first hot meal Jay was about to have in three weeks. The hall was above Moszynski’s restaurant on Second Avenue; the cuisine was “exquisitely and exclusively Moszynski’s own.”

“Here’s the men’s room,” Barney said, handing Jay a tan linen jacket, four sizes too large for him, and a black bow tie that had recently come into contact with green-pea soup. A minute later Jay emerged from the improvised changing room transformed; when he moved, he resembled a man fighting a choppy sea.

“Beautiful.” Barney beamed at him. “Who designs your clothes?”

“Omar, the tentmaker.”

“Don’t get caught in a draught, or you’ll fly away.”

Jay extended his arms: “Look, I’m floating. Do you think anyone’ll say anything?”

“Course not. They’ll be stunned into silence. If the bride’s father gives you a funny look, grab a few glasses.” He picked up a napkin from a table and handed it to Jay. “Here, carry this over your arm. Christ, it really suits you. You’ve got a career . . . a future, my boy.”

Jay disappeared into the crowd around the hors d’oeuvres table. He picked up a plate, wiped a speck of dust off it with his napkin, and then seizing a serving utensil, began to heap everything within a radius of six feet onto his plate. No one in the buoyant crowd of eating, talking, dancing guests noticed him, until the bride, inadvertently reeling from a rather fiercely administered Kazatski whirl, crashed into him. Four minutes had elapsed since Jay had served himself, and fortunately for the bride, a double-chinned satin-bedizened slug of a woman with the prospect of mustache before long, Jay’s plate had been wiped clean.

“Gee, careful,” Jay said.

“Oh, sorry. Hy gets all excited when he dances.”

“Never mind. It’s your night,” Jay said, with magnanimity, planting a resounding kiss on her sweaty forehead. “Congrats . . . success and long life - and to you too,” he added, returning her to a tall, thin man, beardless and bespectacled, who gave him a Bugs Bunny smile. “You’re a lucky man, Hy.”

“Telling me!”

The stamp of approval having been given him by the bride and groom, Jay noticed the atmosphere of the guests warm considerably towards him as he approached the hors d’oeuvres table for a second encounter. Just as he was about to launch into the attack, a waiter, a real one, sharply tilted the serving dish away from him.

“Closed, Mister. No more eating till we serve dinner.”

“When?”

“Few minutes . . . they’re setting up the tables.”

“But there’s still some liver on . . .”

“Sorry, boss’s orders.”

The bastard’s going to eat it himself, Jay thought.

“I’m the bride’s cousin,” Jay said.

“I don’t care if you’re the groom,” the waiter said.

Can’t bluff him, Jay decided.

“I’ll have a word with Mr. M,” Jay replied, using Moszynski’s name in vain.

“It’s M’s orders I’m obeying.”

Careful . . . careful.

“I have the pleasure in making the acquaintance of Mister . . .” a white-haired man with two carnations stuffed into his lapel, wearing a double-breasted tuxedo that had been the rage of the Congress of Vienna and was a living advertisement for mothballs, addressed Jay.

“Er . . .”

Steel-rimmed spectacles were placed over watery blue eyes that blinked until they became accustomed to sight.

“Forgive me. How could I mistake a Ratkin? Pity your father couldn’t come, but believe me I understand. I couldn’t expect anybody, especially a relative on my wife’s side, to get out of a sick bed.”

Must’ve seen me eating and mentally added up the bill, Jay reflected.

“Grippe it was?”

“And bronchitis,” Jay ventured. “He’ll be in bed at least another week.”

“Beautiful couple, no? He hasn’t got too much class, but with a wife like my daughter . . . my little Esther, he’ll learn, eh?”

“Can’t miss . . .”

“I’m paying for the honeymoon. He’s a student yet with the bar exam to take. Hasn’t got a pot to piss in . . . but still a lovely boy, Hy. What’s the good of talking . . . money can’t buy everything . . .”

“Definitely.”

“Oh, the honeymoon? They’re driving over - I lent him my car - to my bungalow in Mount Freedom. Mountain air . . . s’wonderful. C’mon over and say hello to your Aunt Hennie,” he said, indicating a berouged, besequined balloon at the end of the room.

Controlling his panic with an iron nerve that might even have impressed Hitler at Munich, Jay pulled his ears, stuck his tongue out, then clicked his teeth violently, hoping by this demonstration to simulate the symptoms of instant grippe.

“You’re not well?”

“Grippe.”

“Oh . . . well go over to the bar and tell him to give you a rock and rye. That’ll kill those lousy germs.”

Jay sidled over to the bar and glanced around apprehensively. Then, with sudden decision, he walked behind the bar.

“Okay, I’ll take over,” he told the barman.

“Yeah? On whose orders?”

“Mr. M’s.”

“Fine. There’s another six bottles of Carstairs over there and remember what Mr. M says” - he pointed a long solemn finger at a brown bottle – “that no one and I mean no one can have any Canadian Club unless he’s got a note from the bride’s father.” The bartender gave him a final scowl as if to enforce this point and was swallowed up in the crowd.

In order to test the efficacy of the mythical M’s instructions, Jay immediately seized a glass, swished it around in some clean water - poverty had made him crankily fastidious - and poured himself a four-inch shot of the forbidden elixir, which he mixed with ginger ale. He took a sip of the drink, fingered a lonely meatball, hummed in time to the music, which took a bit of doing, as the musicians were in the midst of a polyphonic conflict, and smiled glowingly at the guests. As he was about to repeat his previous action - the bottle in his right hand, perpendicular to the glass - a voice froze his arm, giving him the aspect of one of those timeless urchins trapped in a Hellenic frieze that depicted Dionysus at his pleasures.

“What are you doing?” asked a rather plump girl with a moon-shaped face, long wavy hair with a hint of red, a warm naïve smile, and cat-green eyes. Under fire, Jay quickly assessed the situation: an easy hump.

“Ummmmmmm . . . pouring a drink.”

 “You don’t work here.”

That should have been a question, Jay reasoned.

“What makes you think . . . ?”

“I’ve followed you since you came in.”

Very definitely an easy hump, but where?

“You’re not a relative . . .”

“Not a close one.”

“And you
don’t
work here,” she said again.

“I’m an assistant.”

“Relative or bartender?”

“Both . . . have a drink.”

She nodded . . . thank God. Jay lifted the bottle of Carstairs.

“C.C., please.”

“Got a note from Mister . . . ?”

“Berkowitz, that’s the bride’s father for your information. Neither have you.”

He placed the bottle of whiskey recklessly on the top of the bar and chucked the girl under the chin. Then suddenly he spied Berkowitz wagging a threatening fist at him from across the room - he was trapped between Aunt Hennie and some ancient matriarch. He performed a strange little mime, his fist jerkily moving to his mouth, until it occurred to Jay that he had been using the wrong bottle.

“You better have the other rye, or he’ll be over in a minute with the sheriff.”

“Okay . . . but when he’s not looking switch bottles.”

“Sold.”

“My name’s Rhoda Gold.”

“Congratulations.”

“No, no kidding.”

“I believe you. You’ve had your drink so . . .”

“What’s your name? Honest, I won’t tell anybody.”

“Jay Blackman. And you can shout it from the rooftops.”

“I live in Borough Park.”

“I’ll pin a medal on you.”

“Gee, you’re really a smart aleck, aren’t you?”

“Are you asking me, or telling me?”

“Aw, c’mon, be nice. You’ve got a nice face.”

“I wish I could say the same about you.”

“Why are you this way? Actually I’m sure you’re very kind. Do I scare you?”

“I came for a free meal. So far I’ve had only hors d’oeuvres, two drinks, a kiss from the bride, which I could’ve lived without, a discussion with Mr. Berkowitz about the fact that the groom, Hy Schmuck, is a nothing law student, and
no
hot food. Conversation I get, but roast chicken I’d prefer. Answer your question?”

“They’ll serve dinner after the emcee does his act.”

“So I’ve been promised . . . by millions.”

“Do you have a job?”

“Why?”

“I just wondered . . . that jacket isn’t yours.”

“That’s the nicest thing anybody ever said to me.” Jay laughed.

“So I broke the ice? You’re human,” Rhoda said, placing her hand on top of Jay’s. “You can’t be married, with that mouth.”

“My mother tells me the same story.”

“I’d like to meet her, she sounds like a clever woman.”

The lights darkened in the hall, giving it the atmosphere of a cavern where a Black Mass was about to begin. A feeble spotlight, pregnant with dust motes, illuminated the stocky figure of Barney Green.

“Evening folks . . . it’s a pleasure to be . . .” - he removed a card from his breast pocket and glanced at it - to be at Maison Moszynski.”

A heckler shouted: “Shaddup.”

“If that gentleman would be good enough to take a bow.” The man stood. “Sir, if I were you I’d lance that pimple growing between your shoulders.” The crowd laughed. “Thank you, thank you, ladies and germs. Any more comedians in the audience without a license are welcome to try their hands. No takers? Good. Y’know, I don’t have to do this for a living, but I’m too nervous to steal. Please don’t applaud, you’ll interrupt the bride and groom . . . Ha-Ha. Haven’t had so many laughs since my mother-in-law got her tittie caught in the car door.”

A swarthy dark little man, just above five feet with piercing angry eyes, and elevated shoes, appeared at the doorway - the legendary M.

“Evening, Mr. M,” Barney said. “Taking five minutes off from your chopped liver?”

Even Jay laughed. Most of Barney’s persiflage was vintage East Side - heard in every bar, poolroom, and candy store from Delancey Street to Williamsburg.

“. . . So this Mr. Ginsberg and his wife decided to go to Monticello for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Ginsberg gave her a few dollars to buy herself a new dress and to get rid of her for a few hours so that he could
operate.”
Squelched titters from some pseudo-Ginsbergs in the audience. “I mean, after six hours on the Derma Road, listening to his wife’s stories about operations - not to mention her face, how much can a man take? He strolled down the street and a gorgeous redhead comes up to him, looks him up and down and says: ‘Five dollars.’ Ginsberg looks her up and down and says: ‘Not a penny over two dollars.’ He’s a dress manufacturer. The girl turns up her nose and walks away. The same evening Ginsberg gives the Missus an airing. They walk down the main street, look in all the shops and the Missus has a new dress on, a new bag she’s carrying. Frankly she looks fifty. Suddenly out of the shadows comes this gorgeous redhead and pointing a finger at Ginsberg’s Missus says: ‘That’s what you get for two dollars.’”

“He’s pretty cute,” Rhoda said to Jay, who had moved in front of the bar when he spied M.

“I’ve heard it before. Not bad.”

Barney was winding up his act with a song, and now it was the musicians’ turn. The trio of men on stage with him, to judge by their instruments, rather than the soporific, practically unconscious expressions on their faces, were an accordionist, drummer and clarinetist, and called themselves the Murray Meltzer Minstrels. Meltzer, the clarinetist, also sang, when not in a coma. Barney, realizing that he was an obvious foil, woke him from his customary stupor, and pulled him into the spotlight. Six thousand weddings and bar mitzvahs were written, like the tail end of a stillborn epic, on his face.

“Do you play requests?” Barney asked.

Astonished by the stupidity of the question, Meltzer raised a swollen lip and said:

“Course we do. What’re you, a crazy?”

“Then do me a favor, take the other two zombies and play poker.”

Meltzer sniggered: “What do you think we been doing all night?”

“Okay, Benny Goodman, then show me that thing you been licking all night isn’t a licorice stick.”

Barney then went into his own unique rendition of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” which brought a gurgling sob from the expectant bride; it was apparently her song.

When the lights went back on, the crowd once again began to dance to the lazy uncertain melodies of the Minstrels, and Jay looked about him a bit awkwardly, fearing that he might have been recognized by the hawk-eyed M.

“Don’t worry, will you?” Rhoda said, taking about three inches of sleeve before she reached his arm. “You can eat at my table. There’s someone who didn’t come.”

She and Jay glided over to a corner table already occupied by six hungry relatives. She examined the place card next to hers, and Jay was instantly transmogrified into mr. Isidore goldfarb, an expatriate tailor from Bosnia, lately settled in the Bronx and unable to make the pilgrimage to Second Avenue because of an ailing mother. Jay settled down to eat with a silent, methodical rapacity that resembled some obscure manufacturing process in which yarn is fed into a machine that swallows it whole and fails to disgorge it.

Conversation? If Rhoda had expected any, she had engaged the wrong supper partner, for Jay was
committed
to a policy of single-minded consumption of everything served within an arm span. A certain Plotnik, seated along his right diagonal, “a surveyor of situations,” followed his trail right up to the fish course before making a cautious appraisal.