Debasements of Brooklyn

by Ira Gold

  When I had first seen the place, I laughed. Here is not Manhattan where the redundant hold off panic with cappuccino and meds. Did this dinky joint, with its fey pretentions, with its four-dollar espresso and its sprout-filled wraps, expect to make it in a neighborhood where bodegas earned fortunes by selling Colt 45 to twelve-year-olds, where connected Italians would firebomb the place rather than order its morning-glory muffin? In fact, Vinnie Five-Five debated this very issue. He has a piece of a popular Italian café on Avenue U that serves rock hard biscotti and overstuffed cannolis. Stamm Tisch presents a challenge to the ethos of all people who care about the substantive and the traditional. It is a perfect example of style over substance, theory over praxis. “It sucks cock,” Vinnie pointed out.

  I love it.

  In the end, Vinnie Five-Five, like me, thought that the joint would choke on its own silliness. No one in their right mind would sit at tiny tables two inches apart so each word you uttered to an associate could be heard by every sniveling punk in the neighborhood.

  Vinnie had sneered at the very thought of having a conversation there. “Might as well invite the Feds to a meeting. Forget about it. I give it two months.”

  Ah, people adapt too slowly for the pace of change these days.

  I, much to my shame, often drink the overpriced coffee and gobble down the skimpy, bland turkey and Brie sandwiches. If I need to get a slice afterward, so what? This place guarantees me one thing. I will never run into my crew. I have enough of them at work, at the club. Here I can read without someone commenting on my masculinity or my sanity.

  Today I don’t plan on going in. A person fleeing for his life should not stop for a macchiato. I have left my car behind, but the subway is inches away.

  Yet I enter. The interior exudes peacefulness. What can happen at the calm center of civilization? The young, its target market, avoid it. But other people, elderly, ancient, who had been on their last legs a decade earlier and now go about on stumps, held up by canes, walkers, and in one case, by a wheelchair with a chin strap, occupy the tables. They sit happily with cookie crumbs on their shirts and coffee dribbling down the sides of their mouths. A Jamaican aide to the woman in the wheelchair laughs uproariously into her cell phone, speaking in patois while her charge mumbles numbers—thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-five—into her paper cup.

  Only one table is taken by a patron under eighty. Layers of light brown hair shield her face for she is reading a book, an unusual enough sight that it catches my attention. So, as if pulled by magnets, I head to the counter where the pastries glow with ethereal light. A round, layered carrot cake of burnished mahogany—an architectural marvel of carrots, cream cheese, and walnuts—rests in the center of the counter, a perfect Oldenburg that gives a timeless dignity to this out-of-place haven.

  Though the entire Mongol horde be after me, though General Zhukov himself plots my defeat, I will sit in this place for a bit, right next to the attractive woman and pretend that I am in the midst of other battles, ones fought in journals and monographs, ones whose weapons are hot tea and cold schnapps, coffee, and cigarettes. These battles pitted Leibniz against Spinoza and Popper against Wittgenstein, where hurt feelings and academic positions rather than crushed testicles and slit throats lay in the balance. Such a world had indeed been stomped to death by the Nazis in the name of Aryan supremacy, and, on our shores, by the marketers who suffocate thought in a barrage of bullshit under the guise of business.

  I take the empty table to the right of the girl.

  She looks up when she senses my presence and I say, “Hey.”

  She nods.

  I used to pick up chicks like I breathed, with an effortlessness that was the only thing my friends envied about me. But not lately. Lately, I have lost interest. Don’t know why. But for some reason this girl I can’t resist. “Good book?” I make sure to ask this in a way that indicates I have no interest whatsoever in the book and am solely concerned with picking her up.

  More bafflement than fear registers on her face. She does not expect a palooka like me to notice her book.

  Without saying anything she shows me—The Valley of the Horses. Not a Penguin classic. On the cover is a picture of a blonde Amazon riding a horse bareback.

  “You like it?”

  She reacts as if under interrogation, with monosyllables. “Sure. Good.”

  She does not want to speak to me. Either that or there is something shameful about reading The Valley of the Horses.

  By the counter is a box with newspapers. I want to get the Times but I only see a Post. As I return to my seat, I study the girl. Like me, she flounders somewhere in her early thirties. Unlike me, she wears thick black tights and a short black skirt that show off tasty legs. She looks good—petite, intelligent eyes, nice rack. She brushes her hair behind her ears with an innocent, schoolgirlish gesture. She strikes me as serious and demure. What she is doing in the ass end of Brooklyn I have no idea.

  I move my eyes to the café’s picture window. On the street a few people hurry toward the subway. I glance back at the girl. A small dimple clefts the point of her chin. My mind, racing, imputes all sorts of vulnerable charm that she possesses. Not for her the bored, glazed, and depressed expression that so many beautiful women cultivate.

  She glances at me again, not hostilely but quizzically. She’s uncertain about my intentions, which she very well should be. Yet . . . could she be intrigued?

  I don’t want to scare her so I continue to stare out that front window.

  Ivan. Goddamn it. He’s across the street walking with a friend, a whippety little guy half Ivan’s size. I don’t know him but I instantly make the judgment that he has the strut of the extra special sociopaths who too often inhabit this diseased world of ours.

  I worry Ivan recognizes me. I don’t know if he has homicide on his mind, but I can’t stay to find out. I take my gym bag and slip into the bathroom. I feel the woman’s eyes on my back.

  Besides the actual commode, this toilet’s greatest feature is a window, the glass slathered in thick white paint. It opens onto a small cement courtyard containing nothing but large trash cans that are dragged down an alley every Tuesday and Friday.

  I hear, “You see big man sitting here?” Ivan must be questioning that lovely woman.

  Now I will find out how truly lovely.

  I hear no response. Maybe she’s terrified. This Mutt and Jeff team of monsters would intimidate tougher-looking cookies than that girl.

  “One minute before,” Ivan’s voice rises, and I realize whatever our relationship had been, whatever we had shared, our long conversations over whether the Russian soul is indeed unique in its sensitivity to the celestial realms, Ivan, given the chance, would whack me.

  A voice, tremulous, rightfully nervous responds, “I don’t remember seeing anyone.”

  So I fall in love as I drop my gym bag out the toilet window and follow it. In a second Ivan will start his own search and the first place he’ll check is this sanctuary. I hop the chain link fence separating the yard from the building opposite and I scurry onto the next block.

  I’m not 100 percent certain that Ivan has murder on his mind. It could be that he wants to continue to debate literary matters. But why take chances? From the other end of the street I watch the café. Before long Ivan and his little friend come out and head in the direction of Brighton Beach.

  9

  Sand Castles

  I slip down the block and reenter Stamm Tisch.

  The woman’s eyes pop wide when she sees me.

  I approach her, a serious expression hiding my laughing mind. “Thanks.”

  She’s paler than when I first saw her. But after a second blood floods her cheeks and she lights up as if on fire. “Who were those men?”

  “Friends.”

  She clears her throat. “Friends?” Her voice trills light and high. “What did they want?”

  “Did not want to fucking find out.” I split the infinitive with the unnecessary
participle because I believe she expects a taste of rough trade. I sense her delight in meeting someone from another world, the underworld. How disappointed would she be if she discovered I was just another know-it-all asshole who mentions The Valley of the Horses is a sequel to the much superior but still schlocky The Clan of the Cave Bear? No doubt she had her fill of those types.

  “They checked the bathroom. You’re lucky you . . . escaped.”

  I see that my half-finished coffee still rests on the table next to hers so I sit down in front of it as if I never dived out the toilet window.

  She’s eager to talk now, but I nonchalantly examine the paper, the Post. It’s a rag, yet its every fatuous headline testifies to man’s bottomless capacity for cruelty. No aspect of human achievement is exempt. Scientific, educational, commercial, judicial, political, theological, martial—each institution abuses its power, causes untold suffering against individuals and the environment, fails to show an iota of compassion, serves only itself, excuses the worst sadism in the name of principle, exhibits no shame, and relies on the fear and ignorance of a disoriented populace to maintain a hold on power.

  The front page shows a picture of the Hefty bags containing Garlic. Since neither Candi’s nor Scrunchy’s bodies are found, nor are they reported missing, the article errs by assuming that Italian families are waging fratricidal war. No one mentions the clash of civilizations predicted by Samuel Huffington et al. The police do not want to frighten the citizens by suggesting that Asiatic hordes are once again attacking the remnants of the Roman Empire. Besides, nostalgia for the original Mafia is quite an industry.

  I turn to the story inside. “I knew that guy.”

  The woman cranes her neck and sees a photo of two cops holding the two bulging trash sacks, posing as if they just caught a giant fish.

  “Which guy?”

  “It’s only one guy. They put him in two bags.”

  Even against her will, this intrigues the woman. She does not hide the top to bottom examination she gives me. Her head bobs slightly, as if already regretting her compulsion to continue this conversation. “There’s a man in that bag?”

  “Garlic, because he loved garlic more than he loved his mother. He thought it would protect him from colds. No one warned him about hacksaws. Now, there’s a war.”

  I look over and see how the cute chick is taking this. She’s white again, colorless as a dress shirt, but asks, “Who’s warring with who?”

  With whom. Instead, I say, “The Triads, who contracted Vlad the Impaler. They plan to divide Vinnie Five-Five’s territory.”

  At the mention of Vlad, she begins to tremble. She recalls the two Russian soldiers who just accosted her. But she pushes forward. “Why?”

  “It started over a poor dead whore.”

  I regret immediately uttering this last word. Women resent the term, take it personally. Much better to use “sex worker.” But “sex worker” fits neither the sentence nor the sentiment.

  After another second’s hesitation, she asks, “What whore?”

  I have her. She wants to just connect. Though shy, murder turns her on. “Candi Apple. She rolled that weasel Scrunchy Cho so he stuck her. The bros took care of Scrunchy. Ah, we’re yesterday’s news. The Chinese, the Russians, they know it. All Vinnie wants is to survive in the rackets until he qualifies for Medicare. Then it’s Julius and Gus’s problem. His sons.” I fold up the newspaper. “The real bloodbath begins when Crazy Bo hits Vlad.”

  She comprehends enough to nod, “Sounds like a movie Scorcese should make.”

  “Nothin’ new under the fuckin’ sun. You have a name?” She hesitates only for a second. “Ariel.”

  “My friends call me Windows.” I hold out my hand and she responds as if touching a bloody animal lying on the roadside.

  It’s a start.

  “Windows?”

  “Howard Fenster. Fenster is German for window. Howie if you want.”

  She’s getting over the surprise of being in the middle of a gang war. “Are you going into town, Howard Windows?” This is a natural question since the café’s proximity to the tracks makes it a way station for travelers to and from Manhattan.

  “Sure,” I decide. “I gotta get out of Brooklyn. You know, to avoid certain people.”

  Our eyes lock and we laugh. A shared private joke is as good as shared nudity in the development of any horizontal relationship.

  “If you have nowhere better,” Ariel volunteers, “I’m going to the Met.”

  I figure she means the museum, not the opera, but my face must have shown some confusion, so she explains, “The big museum on Eighty-Second and Fifth. It’s one of the best in the world.”

  I go infrequently but I know its collection pretty well, even if the place mostly oppresses me. Like culture itself, I imagine the Metropolitan Museum a sand castle. A single evil breeze would bring the stones crashing down onto the heads of the oblivious patrons. I mostly liked the medieval rooms, where tapestries, Holy Families, crucified Christs, and sculptures of heavily draped saints tilt toward heaven and yearn for the eternal in a refreshingly unironic way. Once artists figured out perspective, subjectivity and thus doubt crept into their work. Occasionally, one yearns for an unambiguous attitude toward transcendence. Medieval art allowed me such contemplation. To the girl I say, “What do you like in the museum?”

  She gets a kick out of this, because again she titters, “The art.”

  What I mean, of course, is what period she favors. I again begin to wonder what would happen if I talk less like an ape and more like a human being. “Fuckin’ this,” “fuckin’ that”—is this really necessary? With my crew, maybe, I need to sound like a cretin to fit in, to assure that I’m one of them. But with a woman who no doubt landed in this benighted neighborhood through some personal cataclysm, I might build a narrow bridge to connect my internal with the external.

  She encourages, heedless (or perhaps quite heedful) of the consequences. “Why not? Going to a museum with someone else is more fun.” Again, her face flares crimson: “And probably the people after you won’t even think of looking there.”

  True enough. I know no one alive who ever expressed the slightest interest in high art. Even my sister, lovely and sensitive as she is, limited her exposure to a fifth-grade field trip to the dinosaurs at the Natural History. Had she lived with my father, it might have been different. But her mother saw leaving the house for any reason as a dangerous waste of time.

  Because I don’t answer directly, Ariel prods, “Have you ever seen a Rembrandt self-portrait?”

  Here my heart leaps. Other than the Fra Angelicos, Rembrandt’s vision of himself as an aging man moves me, terrifies me actually. In fact, the self-portraits have the unfortunate effect of making other paintings, other masterpieces, melodramatic and false. That Ariel mentions this particular work excites me as much as her luscious breasts and tight body. I almost open up to her, explain that I have interests beyond getting laid. But no doubt she has a college degree, has probably junior-yeared in Europe. I cringe to think of what she would make of my childish insights concerning art.

  Besides, I think she gets a kick out of leading me. “I’ll give it a fu— a shot.”

  She drains the last of her tea. “Let’s go.”

  10

  A Brief History of Her Time

  Every time I take the B, I remember my father believed his greatest accomplishment was to live at an express stop. He pitied those who needed to switch for the local, and he barely contained his contempt for those who lived in places where you need to take a bus to the train. He’d point to the weary, bedraggled commuters forming a line in front of the bus stop and warn, “Poor schmucks. If I teach you nothing else, remember: live near the express.”

  The train pulls in, sounding its barbaric yawp over the roofs of the neighborhoods—Midwood, Flatbush, Prospect Park, Fort Greene—and then underground toward DeKalb Avenue. I feel freer with every passing stop. Also, Ariel starts talking. We sit side
by side and Ariel’s leg brushes against mine. It doesn’t take much prodding “You look like a fu—, not like the girls who live around here. What brings you to Gravesend?”

  And the story comes tumbling out.

  She had escaped Avenue Z and East Third Street by attending Tufts in Boston and then held a series of jobs in public relations. She started three master’s—in education, history, and business—unable to finish any as the work got more boring and pointless with each passing course. Then she got stuck in digital marketing, sending out e-mails and Facebook updates for dubious health aids and for-profit college scams. She got canned because she wrote a resignation letter calling her boss a thief. A brain freeze, as she describes it, caused her to leave it on her desk when she went out. When she returned to the office, the letter was gone. Her boss had found it. “After I got fired,” Ariel finishes with that story, “I regretted not making it even more insulting.”

  It’s here that I first detect the grit and edge that Ariel hides under a shy and modest front.

  She continues, telling me about a breakup, an exciting but disastrous fling, subletting the co-op she had bought with her life savings to move back with her mom until the job thing worked itself out. “I’m okay for a while, but I’m losing my subletter in a couple of days. I’ll move back in for a bit. Living with my mom is impossible. If all else fails, I’ll become a teacher.”

  Certainly she could teach people how not to finish what they start. I listen to her carefully while imagining her in panties and bra, the fabric straining artfully against her chest and backside. I think she would enjoy my body too—my abs cut from years of crunches, my legs muscled from daily runs.

  By now we’ve rattled across the Manhattan Bridge and pulled into Grand Street. I let Ariel know that I live not far from her, in my half-sister’s house. Then we discuss how to get to the Upper East, for the B runs on the West Side.