He thought about how he probably would be known as the man who brought back boogaloo, saved boogaloo, made boogaloo great.
Let me say that you're mighty slow, You're as cold as an Eskimo—
"Hello, Harry Seltzer."
Harry turned. It was Florence in a tight black dress, the fabric pulled to its limit and shining across her "big black booty." Her hair was pulled up on her head and she was wearing a thick layer of a magenta lipstick that seemed to clash oddly with her skin color. "It's Florence," she explained with a hopeful smile.
"Yes, I know. Hello, Florence."
"This could be our time, Harry Seltzer. Just a few very good minutes."
"Oh, thank you, Florence, no time right now." She had placed a soft hand in the sag of his pants. He was surprised what a good touch she had, and while he protested that his family was waiting, she noticed that he made no effort to remove the hand.
"Come over here a minute," she said, and maneuvered him below a brownstone stoop, against the wall on the steps to a basement doorway It seemed to Harry that she had just led him by his penis, but how could that be possible? But he now realized that his fly was open and her hand was directly on his organ.
"Ohh," she said with a note of half triumph and half feigned surprise as she felt his excitement. Her touch overtook him.
"You like me, don't you, Harry Seltzer," she purred almost in amusement. Then she knelt on the step and placed him in her mouth. In three minutes it was over, and whatever was left of the moment was instantly destroyed by Florence, her purple lips curled as though she would be ill, leaning toward the sidewalk and spitting across to the curb, then wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
"I'm sorry," said Harry, not certain what to say. "What do I owe you? I mean, how much do you—" He took out his wallet full of crisp flat twenties newly minted from the cash machine. He tried to hand her two twenties, but three stuck together. "Is this all right?"
"Whatever you think, Harry Seltzer."
Why did she have to say his name? Harry thought, handing her another twenty. Then he heard footsteps. It could be somebody who knew him. He grabbed Florence and tried to shove her into the doorway below the stoop. At that moment a firecracker exploded, and taken by surprise, Harry jammed her head into a wrought-iron gate.
"Ohh!" Florence protested softly, and reached up to touch her tern ple where blood was running down her face—the wrong shade of red,
the color of her lipstick, which had mostly vanished.
"Fm so sorry, Florence," said Harry. "Are you all right?"
"It's nothing," said Florence, laughing. She could see how urgently
Harry wanted to leave.
"Here," said Harry, handing her what was left of the money in his wallet, three more twenties, and he ran quickly down the street, leaving Florence to nurse her wounds and marvel at her stack of $20 bills.
Nathan hurried down the stairs to the side door around the corner from the Edelweiss. Almost at the bottom, his footsteps sounding like a commotion of hooves, he saw Mrs. Moellen looking up at him, so sadly, so silently, that Nathan wanted to take her hand and say, "Fm so sorry." But instead he smiled pointlessly and sidestepped past her, saying only, "Excuse me."
Out on the hot July street as the door was closing, he thought he heard her say, "Yes."
As he turned the corner, he heard a strange Teutonic sound like marching orders in German—it sounded the way Nathan imagined a German army in training would sound. The shades of the Edelweiss were down, covering the windows with flat sepia images of steepled German villages that had been bombed and rebuilt. Nathan peeked through a corner and was able to see inside. A few unpurchased linzer tortes were still in the window. Moellen was on the floor. He was doing push-ups, snapping them up and down with his body very rigid in a martial rhythm while counting in German, "Acht! Neuen! Zehn!" His face was getting red and veins were beginning to stand out. Nathan noticed something odd. He had always imagined Moellen to have pale blue eyes, but in fact he had very dark eyes—like Nusan. Had the war turned his eyes, too?
The sun had not quite set, and the last amber rays were catching a haze of greenish smoke. Nathan was hurrying toward the building roof party on Avenue A when he remembered—just in time—that he would give himself away, lose his alibi, if he didn't know the final score of the Mets game.
There was a bar on First Avenue, a dark, partially belowground place with dusty Sicilian ornaments in the window. Three shadows were hunched over the bar. Nathan knew that he should order a drink first but couldn't spend the time on the ritual.
"Does anyone know the Mets score?"
"The Mets," repeated one of the shadows.
"What do we look like," said the bartender, "the sports page?"
They were treating him like one of the smarts. He ran to Avenue A. Maybe there would be something at the newsstand.
"Shalom, my friend." It was Mohammed, walking up the avenue. "Are you not going to the roof?"
"Yes, I was just on my way Tell me ..." Nathan stopped. Another close call. It could come out that he had gotten the score from Mohammed. "Oh, nothing. I forgot something. Have to go back to my shop. I'll see you later."
"Good-bye, my friend. Shalom."
Nathan had a radio in his shop. He would go there and find out the score. But on the way, he noticed that Arnie and his pallet were missing. The spot on the sidewalk where he had been for several years had been cleared. Nathan looked down Avenue A and saw the pallet on the next block, but Arnie wasn't there. When he reached the pallet, he realized that something was moving under a pile of blankets.
"Arnie?"
The blankets, one salmon colored and another blue with cheerful snowfiake patterns, slowly moved. From a corner, Arnie's gaunt face emerged, his beret undisturbed at its customary jaunty tilt. "Hey, Nathan, viva la huelga."
"What are you doing here?"
"They made me move. They're opening a new store. Selling running shoes. You know, hundred-dollar sneakers. They didn't want me in front of their store. Bad for business. Everything about me says, 'Why run?' "
"It's about ninety degrees. You're going to suffocate under these blankets."
"There's bombs everywhere. I had to take cover."
"Why don't you come up to our roof? My family is having a party. They do it every year. Get something to eat. Get off the street."
"No thanks, man. The street's my home."
"Just a couple of hours."
But Arnie wouldn't come. He wished Nathan a "Viva la huelga" and withdrew his head, turtlelike, under the blanket.
"Say, Arnie ..." He could try, Arnie always knew everything. "Arnie, how did the Mets do?"
From under the blanket, in muffled tones, came, "Cincinnati killed them. Five-nothing. Cone fucked up."
"Did Strawberry get a hit?" The smirking, lanky Darryl Strawberry was something special to Nusan. To Nusan everything was written, life was beshirt. But the long-legged Strawberry sauntering up to the plate, giraffelike, always filled Nusan with the exciting idea that anything might happen. Strawberry at bat was the only time Nusan felt that way
"Strawberry struck out with runners on base."
"Thanks, Arnie!" said Nathan, handing Arnie a $5 bill.
"Viva la huelga," said the bereted tortoise head as it shrank back into its woolen shell. And Nathan strode with confidence toward his building, prepared to talk about the game. He had completely forgotten that no one in his family ever talked baseball.
As Nathan hurried home, he suddenly caught up with his father, doing the same thing.
"Hi, Dad, I'm on my way from Nusan's," he said quickly, and then realized that he was coming from the opposite direction. But fortunately Harry didn't seem to notice. Harry said, "I'm coming from Avenue D," and Nathan did not think about the fact that Avenue D was to the east and he was coming from the west.
"Yes, I'm just getting back from Avenue D."
"Yes, I'm just getting back from Nusan's."
"Yes,
good, good."
Nathan did think it was odd that his father didn't ask how Nusan was. Should he volunteer the Mets score? Probably not. Wait until someone asks. But maybe nobody would. And it was such a nice detail.
Down Avenue A came Mordy in slow four-four, his untied shoelaces clicking, his arm around Rosita, who came up to his ribs— Rosita in her purple dress moving down the street, her body flowing like waves rolling and disappearing on the ocean's surface. The two walking arm in arm was a dramatization of Chow Mein Vega's theory of ethnic walking rhythms. It was impossible for them to walk together. Mordy's four-four was slower than the usual Jewish step, though his long legs covered the distance just as quickly. Rosita, next to him in a bouncy three-beat, had twice the movement but could not keep up. Anyone with a sense of rhythm could see that these two were not going to make a couple.
"Excuse me," said an elderly man hurrying in the opposite direction with a plastic bag heavy with groceries. "Excuse me." He had to say it several times to get Mordy's attention. "Excuse me, but your shoelaces are untied."
Mordy smiled, nodded, kept walking, and saw Nathan and Harry in front of him stepping so quickly that they seemed to be racing each other. But Mordy with his long stride caught up to Nathan, which allowed Harry to take the lead.
"Mordy," said Nathan, "you are upsetting people again."
"Rosita? It's good the way she upsets people. Oh, you mean she's not Jewish."
"You know it upsets them."
"Jewish, not Jewish, different names, different ages. All arbitrary designations to try to show that we are all different, but in reality we are all identical. It's like deer. Could you tell one white-tail deer from another? A white-tail deer could not tell one person from another. Do you think a white-tail deer could tell the difference between Mom, Rosita, and Birdie Nagel?"
Mordy had always been like this, and no one ever tried to argue with him. When they were boys, they once decided to cross the Second Avenue subway tracks, and the older Nathan had cautioned Mordy not to step on the third rail. Mordy had said, "Who's to say which is the third rail? It depends where you start counting. One man's third rail is another man's first rail." Nathan had not known how to answer, and he always dated his policy of not arguing with Mordy to that statement.
By the time he and Mordy and Rosita got to the roof, Harry was already installed in his green canvas director's chair, carefully positioned away from the East River side. Ruth managed to separate Mordy from Rosita for long enough to ask, "Where's Naomi?"
"Anything for a Jew," said Mordy, laughing, "Sthe musth have been detainth." Then, as an afterthought, "By a bookseller she's going out with on Avenue B."
He walked Rosita away from Ruth. Rosita looked up at him. "Can I ask you something?"
"Anything," Mordy said expansively "What would you like to know about me?"
"Why don't you tie your shoes?"
"Why should I?" said Mordy, as though he had hatched a great and liberating idea.
"So you don't trip and fall."
Mordy smiled. "Escuchas, Rosita." He trilled the R so long and loudly that Rosita thought he might be laughing at her name. "There are two great lies in this world that are always told to try to control people. The first is that you will trip and fall if you don't tie your shoelaces. I haven't tied mine in more than twenty years and I have never fallen."
"And the second?"
"The second?"
"You said there were two great lies."
"Oh yes.... That you can get ahead by hard work."
Rosita shyly covered her mouth and began laughing. She put her arm around Mordy's waist and began swaying happily to salsa music that was rising up to the roof from a distant window.
The Seltzers' July Fourth roof party had always been catered by Schneider's, whose specialty was a kosher Hawaiian luau. Schneider served everything, including the barbecued lamb, which he somehow displayed to look like a pig—albeit one without the unkosher hindquarters, and of course there could be no head to put the apple in—and he was on hand to personally flame the pineapple dessert, which was always lit just before the fireworks began.
But two years ago, Schneider too moved to Florida—did they all see one another down there? Would the whole neighborhood be waiting for him one day? Harry often wondered.
Last year, they got grilled chickens from Bob's Greasy Hands, and Birdie Nagel became terribly upset. This year, the new sushi maker on the ground floor had provided the food. His name sounded like Kamizaki to everyone else, though Harry insisted it was Mr. Kamikazi. It must not have been very close to either one, because he did not respond when these names were used. He had set up a table with little fingers of rice covered with perfectly manicured strips of raw fish—rose-colored tuna, orange salmon, golden eel, sparkling salmon eggs piled up like jewels—all fanned out like the speckled wings of a butterfly
"Fantastic," said the young man who had just moved into 3E with his English spaniel and, thus far, had been seen wearing only seersucker suits. "Unagi I love unagi."
"It took forever to put things away on Avenue D," Harry explained repeatedly to Ruth, though no one had asked him why he was late.
"Yes," agreed Nathan, the only one listening. "And the Mets game seemed to last forever." He was just daring someone to ask him the final score, but nobody did.
Ruth was not listening. She was watching her husband and both her sons, all three staring at the two shiny purple parts of Rosita's lower half swaying at the edge of the roof as she listened to music from below. Ruth was smiling. Sonia, who saw the same thing, was not.
"He's really very attractive," declared Mrs. Kleinman, startling Nathan.
"Who is that?"
"The Japanese gentleman who did all this lovely food." Mrs. Klein-man was wearing a red sundress that left her muscular back exposed. She stared with hatred at the purple-dressed Rosita, who did not need a bare back, then waved flirtatiously at the Japanese man, who was explaining to Harry that he had to leave and hoped they enjoyed the food. "Mr. Kamizaki," Mrs. Kleinman shouted, realizing that he was leaving. But he did not seem to hear her. "Mr. Kamikazi?" He opened the door and left the roof. Helplessly she turned back to Nathan. "Well, very attractive anyway." She tried to flare the skirt of her red sundress and move a little like Rosita. "I like the Fourth of July There isn't any mail today, is there?"
"No. No mail. National holiday."
"Probably tomorrow our boxes will be stuffed."
"I hate this day," Birdie Nagel volunteered. "Do you know why?"
Nathan could imagine.
"Birds have very good hearing. Better than ours. It's a higher frequency Do you know what that means?"
"More sound units per second," said Mordy.
"Yes," said Birdie Nagel, looking frightened at Mordy. "I was talking to Nathan. Nathan, did you know with all these firecrackers and bombs and everything in the sky, it's terrible for the birds. They have to migrate to Staten Island."
"That is terrible," said Nathan. "So then is Staten Island covered with birds today?"
"Yes, and Hoboken."
"Don't they have fireworks in Staten Island and Hoboken?"
"You know, that is a very good point. I just don't know. But I will find out."
"This is the best ikura," said the new tenant, who was eating more sushi than anyone else in the building. "But the unagi is unbelievable. Has his place been reviewed?"
"I don't know," said Harry "I was late from Avenue D and I just got here. What is unagi?"
"Eel."
"Eel! Where?"
"These over here."
"Isn't that something," said Harry. "Here he knew we were Jewish and he gives us eel. And that's not anti-Semitic?"
The new tenant did not understand.
"Eel, it doesn't have scales. Jews don't eat it," said Nathan, trying to be helpful.
"Actually," said Mordy who had been stroking Rosita's dress hungrily by the edge of the roof and giving no indication of listening, "it's all a complete mis
understanding. Eels have lots of scales. Their natural defense system is to be slippery, so they are covered with a slime and their scales are embedded in the skin. But unlike the uni, which has spines, eels have scales. And they are not full of industrialized crap like the sake, which is farmed salmon; they are not high on the food chain and loaded with heavy metals like the toro, which is tuna. So in fact, Jews who know their stuff"—he reached to the table and theatrically picked up an unagi and popped it in his mouth—"can eat eel."
Rosita, Birdie Nagel, Mrs. Kleinman, the new tenant, Sonia, and even Sarah looked at Mordy with wonder.
"Boyoboy," said Ruth with a proud smile, looking at Rosita, "der yingl is a lot more than a hunk of fleysch mit oygn."
Rosita looked at her quizzically, and Mordy, as he led her away to a different corner of the roof, explained, "I'm not just a piece of meat with eyes. Reassuring, really."
"That's what your mother calls you?"
"It's hard to translate."
"After all," Harry said to Ruth, "it's a Jewish neighborhood. It wouldn't kill him to serve a little cream cheese with the fish."
Sarah found Nathan in a dark corner by himself. "Daddy?"
"Yes?" said Nathan, his face brightening quickly
"What's a baketion?"
"What?"
"A bacation."
"A vacation is when you stop working or whatever you are doing and go away for a week."
"Why don't we have vacations?"
"I don't know. Not everybody takes them. When you work for someone they are supposed to give you a vacation."
"Do you give Pepe Le Moko a vacation?"
"No. It's just when you go away for a while."
"Like Mr. Apple?" Mr. Apple was an elderly tenant who had died.
"No, Mr. Apple is not on vacation."
"He went away."
"But he's not coming back."
"I know Because he's dead."
"Yes," Nathan said uncertainly. "That's right."
"I know where you go when you die."
"Really?"
"Florida."
"Well, you could go to Florida on vacation."
"No, because the people who go to Florida never come back."
"Do you need a vacation?"
Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue Page 19
