When the Cat's Away (18 page)

Augie finished playing the cash register to thunderous applause and showed the Rat and me to a table near the small stage. Vittorio, in his little Russian cap, was singing “If I Were a Rich Man” when a large form came lumbering up to our table.

“May I join you girls?” it asked. It was McGovern.

“How the hell did you know we were here?” I said a bit irritably.

“Got a tip from Reuters,” said McGovern, as he sat down with us and ordered a Vodka McGovern from a passing waiter. “That’s vodka, orange juice, soda, with lime. Vodka McGovern.”

“No problem,” said the waiter.

“I’ll have a Vodka McGovern, too,” said Ratso.

“I’ll have some kind of obscure, expensive cognac,” I said. It was a good thing to warm the blood and I wasn’t happy enough with McGovern to order a Vodka McGovern, or even to eat one of my favorite dishes he cooked, Chicken McGovern. In the back of my mind still lurked, despite his denials, the thought that my old pal might’ve put my life in jeopardy.

“So tell me,” said McGovern, “about that giant red claw mark you found on the door of your loft. That must’ve scared the shit out of you two.”

I looked at Ratso and Ratso looked at me. We both shrugged.

“How’d you know about that?” Ratso asked, suddenly nervous.

“I have sources,” McGovern laughed, “among the gay terpischorean community.”

“Goddamn poufters,” said Ratso.

“Alarmingly homophobic,” I said, as I sipped a little of the obscure and expensive cognac. “As Rita Mae Brown says, ‘If Michelangelo had been a heterosexual, the Sistine Chapel would have been painted basic white with a roller.’” Ratso looked at me. “I didn’t know you were into such highbrow writers,” he said.

I sipped the cognac. It tasted like semiviscous airplane fuel from the Amelia Earhart era. I didn’t respond. “Better than no brow at all,” said McGovern.

49

I was working on a linguine with red clam sauce when Pasquale hit the stage simultaneously singing Figaro and demonstrating how to make a pizza. He threw the spinning dough in the air repeatedly until it reached a diameter of about three feet. Then he put it on his head like a scarf and sang a verse of “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina.”

Pasquale now tore little balls of dough from the pizza and threw them to various diners seated around the place. Eddie, the piano player, kicked into high gear and the patrons threw the dough balls back toward Pasquale, who, holding a tambourine in front of his face like a hoop, caught them in his teeth.

Through this hail of dough balls walked a figure in a business suit carrying an attaché case. It sat down at our table and ordered a double shot of Bushmills. It was Rambam.

He set the attaché case down on the floor beside his chair and reached across the table to take one of Ratso’s Shrimp Puccini.

“I like your Wall Street drag,” said Ratso.

“Not everybody has your vast wardrobe, Ratso,” I said.

“And not everybody wants to go around looking like a Sonny Bono impersonator,” said Rambam.

“Is that why you’re affecting that attaché case?” Ratso said.

“No,” Rambam laughed, “that’s my Uzi submachine gun.” He took the double Bushmills with one large gulp. “Not bad,” he said.

At the next table were some opera buffs. One guy was pretty friendly and gave me periodic little nods when a song was performed particularly well. I could kind of cue off of him so I knew how much enthusiasm to applaud and bravo with. He probably took me for an eccentric but willing-to-learn non-opera buff in my cowboy hat, for we exchanged knowing little nods throughout the course of the evening.

There existed, of course, the possibility that he was a homosexual. But opera buffs, like cowboys, are probably a dying breed in this busy world and whatever they choose to do is okay with me. If you ever had to sleep with one of them in the same bed, it might be smart, however, to put a cello case between you.

Augie came by the table. “Would you gentlemen like a round of drinks on the house?” he asked.

It was an offer McGovern couldn’t refuse and he appeared as happy as a young gentile on Christmas morning. None of us refused the offer, actually, but some of us were more subdued in our enthusiasm. In a world of empty gestures, coming from Augie at Asti’s, this was a real one.

“Shall I check that briefcase for you?” he asked Rambam.

“No, he’ll keep it,” Ratso said delightedly. “It’s his Uzi submachine gun.”

Augie laughed. Rambam laughed. McGovern laughed. Even the opera buff at the next table laughed. I went to the men’s room to grab a Republican by the neck and watch Arturo Toscanini sail to America.

When I returned to the table, Rambam was on the subject of South American hit men. “Dixie cup kids,” he said. “That’s what they call them. Completely expendable. Anything happens to ’em, they buy their family a few acres and a couple of pigs and everybody’s happy.”

“This conversation’s off the record, of course,” I said to McGovern.

“Of course,” said McGovern, his eyes twinkling.

Before we left, we said goodbye to the opera buffs, the piano player, Vittorio, Pasquale, several bartenders and waiters, and, of course, Augie. It was like leaving home. And, unlike Gallagher’s Steak House, Asti’s lets you wear your hat indoors if you’re a cowboy. One of the few things cowboys and Jews have in common is that they both wear their hats indoors and attach a certain amount of importance to it. Hank Williams wore his hat indoors. So did Davy Crockett. A friend of mine, Bob McLane, who was the former chairman of the Gay Texans for Bush Committee, told me that George Bush always took his hat off when he came inside a place. That’s another good reason for wearing a hat indoors.

Ratso and McGovern, having already hosed me on the check, were up front getting their coats. I was still dealing with the check, paying the guy at the other cash register, the one that didn’t play “Dixie” but just took your money. Ratso circled back briefly, requested and received a receipt for the meal I was paying for, and walked back to the door. Sometimes Ratso could take the word
chutzpah
to a whole other level.

Rambam was having a last drink at the bar as I walked by to get my coat.

“Have one with me for the road,” he said.

As I ordered a shot of Jameson, I noticed his attaché case resting on the barstool next to him. “What
is
in the attaché case?” I asked.

In the background a man and woman were dancing together on the stage and singing a duet of “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top.” Rambam watched the stage with a faraway expression. When he spoke he had all the even-mindedness of the Mahatma.

“An Uzi submachine gun,” said Rambam.

50

We were standing outside Asti’s on the sidewalk. McGovern, Ratso, myself, Rambam, and Rambam’s attaché case. Either the music and the magic of Asti’s was staying with me or it was the red clam sauce.

We drifted with the snow down toward Fifth Avenue. My thoughts skittered like snowflakes through all the cold nights and all the winters of the past. I was wearing my old blue David Copperfield greatcoat that I’d had forever and that Ratso’d always coveted. I’d bought it down the street from the Greyhound station in Albany, New York, shortly after I’d been de-selected from my first Peace Corps program. I thought of Leila with her David Copperfield cap. Maybe someday, if we both lived long enough, we’d take off our David Copperfield clothes and put them together in a warm closet somewhere. Then we could twist away the summer. Be happy Americans. Raise cute, gypsylike children who’d grow up realizing that their parents loved each other. I put my hands down into the big pockets of the coat.

There was something in the right pocket that hadn’t been there when I’d left 199B Vandam. It was a package of some sort, but I didn’t like surprises and I didn’t think it was my birthday.

I took the parcel out and looked at it. It was the size of a thin brick or maybe a somewhat undernourished videocassette. It was wrapped in brown butcher paper and tied with twine. Scrawled in pencil on the butcher paper were the words
PERLA YI-YO
.

“Maybe it’s a valentine present that’s a little slow out of the chute,” said Ratso. He grabbed the package out of my hand.

“Gimme that,” said Rambam. He took the package from Ratso and headed back in the direction of Asti’s with it. About halfway there, he found a doorway with steps leading down below ground level. Rambam took out a knife and disappeared from sight.

Ratso, McGovern, and I stood around the little doorway watching Rambam down on the ground fooling with the package. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “this could be a bomb.”

“Why don’t you see if it’s ticking?” Ratso said.

“That big-alarm-clock shit went out with the Russian Revolution, Ratso,” said Rambam. “Today, they use a little Timex or something—you couldn’t even hear it until it’s too late.”

“If it’s our guys,” I said, “they probably used a Rolex.”

“Very funny,” said Rambam, as he gingerly poked the knife into the side of the package. “You want to be very careful, you see, not to mess with the twine. We’ll know in a minute … one way or another.”

I looked over at Ratso and he wasn’t there. One moment he was standing between McGovern and myself, and the next moment there was nothing but McGovern’s large head blocking out Fifth Avenue.

“Maybe you should call the bomb squad,” came a voice from about forty feet away. Ratso was standing in the street on the other side of a parked car.

“Hate cops,” said Rambam.

“Maybe you should put those feelings aside,” said McGovern, “till this whole thing blows over.”

“An unfortunate use of words,” I said. “I’m concerned about your use of the language, McGovern. You know what Hemingway said about journalism, don’t you?”

“What’d he say?” asked McGovern as both of us backed slightly away from the doorway.

“He said, ‘It blunts your instrument.’”

“And hanging around a bullring can sap your semen,” said McGovern.

“Holy shit,” said Rambam. McGovern and I moved a little farther away. Rambam might be right or he might be off the wall, but it’d be pretty ugly if all of us were to wind up literally off the wall.

“What is it?” called Ratso.

“Come over here and find out,” I said.

McGovern and I inched a little closer to the doorway. Rambam had cut a small hole in the side of the package. He’d cut through the butcher paper and through a thick layer of plastic, revealing what looked like a white chemical substance.

“What the hell is it?” asked McGovern.

“Could be potassium chlorate,” said Rambam, “a very popular ingredient in explosives today.”

It was about at this time that I put my hand back into my coat pocket and found the little card that had apparently fallen off the package.

“Hold the weddin’,” I said. “It ain’t a bomb. Take a look at this. It’s a note that came with the package.”

Rambam, knife in hand, came over to me. So did McGovern. Even Ratso found his way back from the street and looked over my shoulder at the little card. It read as follows:

I hope you enjoy this little token of my gratitude. I have great admiration for what you have done. Soon I shall meet you.

The Jaguar

“Nice-looking business card,” I said.

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