Kissing in Manhattan

by David Schickler

  Donna’s eyebrows were officially raised. “I have a feeling you’re going to say a lot more.”

  Checkers laughed. “I knew you were clever.”

  Donna learned some things. Checkers had been born in Germany to military American parents. He’d grown up in Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, San Diego, and Wheeling, West Virginia. He was double jointed, he worked as a headhunter, he drove a souped-up Plymouth Duster.

  “In Manhattan?” asked Donna.

  Checkers blinked. His eyes had spent time on Donna’s neck and breasts, which Donna felt was a good sign. On the other hand, he had a vicious scar down his left jawline that looked like it had been carved by a knife.

  “You assume,” said Checkers, “that a souped-up Plymouth Duster would be more at home in the yard of some West Virginia hick?”

  Donna cleared her throat. “I don’t know.”

  “What you also don’t know,” said Checkers, “is thatmy souped-up Plymouth Duster purrs like a kitten. It’s got eight cylinders, comfortable upholstery, and just last week, a very mature female client of mine said what a refreshment my souped-up Plymouth Duster was among the cabs and limos of this metropolis. That’s the word my client used. Refreshment.”

  “I don’t like cars,” said Donna.

  “I don’t drive a car. I drive a mature, souped-up refreshment.”

  Donna wondered who this female client was. Checkers leaned back in his chair. His Trout and Donna’s Veal hadn’t materialized.

  “I’ll bet you’re a certain kind of girl,” said Checkers.

  “We all are,” said Donna.

  “I’ll bet you’re the kind of girl who, if you were walking down a street and a guy pulled up in some macho car and said, ‘Hey, sexy mama,’ you wouldn’t even smile.”

  “I probably wouldn’t,” she said.

  “I’ll bet if the guy got crude and said maybe you and him could get some together, you still wouldn’t smile at him. You’d be too sophisticated for him.”

  “Right again.”

  Checkers slapped the table. He looked angry. “Goddammit,” he said loudly.

  Donna was surprised. She thought they’d been talking.

  “Goddammit,” said Checkers. “Who the hell do you women think you are?”

  Donna frowned.

  “You think men are subtle? You think we’re all just happy as clams to go the traditional flirting route? Take a girl out to dinner and make conversation? Jesus!”

  The diva and the skinheads turned toward Checkers.

  “Don’t you understand?” Checkers’s eyes were locked on Donna’s. “Don’t you understand how perfect it is when a guy says, ‘Hey, sexy mama,’ to a girl because that’s all he can say?”

  Donna stared at Checkers. His face, which had been so easy with smiles, was grave. Donna didn’t know what to say. She considered leaving, but Juan appeared, bearing a tray.

  “Pleasure,” he explained. “Dinner.”

  “How’d you get that scar on your jaw?”

  Checkers ate his Trout quickly, efficiently. He worked his utensils like a surgeon.

  “In a knife fight,” he said, “with a West Virginia hick.”

  Knife fight, thought Donna. I am absolutely not going home with this guy.

  “And your name?” she asked. “How’d you get that?”

  Checkers looked at his watch. “Not bad. You went sixty-seven minutes without asking.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Donna. “It’s an unusual name, though.”

  There was music in Flat Michael’s dining room. It was a bass guitar track, with no other instrumentation.

  “My name is Checkers,” said Checkers. “It has nothing to do with the game of checkers. It’s the name my parents put on my birth certificate.”

  “Did they ever explain why?” said Donna.

  “It’s what they wanted to call me. It’s something I can’t control.”

  Donna ate her Veal.

  “There are other things I can control, though,” said Checkers.

  “Like what?”

  “Like I want to be happy. I don’t want to be bereaved. I want a woman.”

  Unbelievable, thought Donna.

  “That’s why I wanted to meet you,” explained Checkers. “Lee said you were a beautiful woman. ‘Great,’ I told Lee. ‘A beautiful woman is what I’m looking for.’ You know?”

  “Is this how you talk to everybody?” asked Donna.

  “Oh, come on. I could go the traditional flirting route, but for Christ’s sake, look at yourself. Look at your lips and your cheekbones.”

  “Checkers,” said Donna. “Please.”

  “Look at the tiny down whiskers around the edges of your mouth.”

  Donna blushed. Women weren’t supposed to have whiskers.

  “They’re almost invisible,” said Checkers. “They look very . . . I don’t know. Gentle.”

  “They do,” said one of the skinheads.

  Donna ducked her head. She put down her utensils.

  “Please stop,” she whispered. “Stop talking about . . . my face.”

  Checkers lowered his head so his eyes met Donna’s. “Say something, then. With a mouth like yours you could say all sorts of beautiful things.”

  Donna kept her head lowered. “I have to go to the rest room,” she said.

  In the rest room Donna imagined the kind of women that Checkers had had. She imagined waitresses, mermaids, philosophy majors. She wondered if his mouth tasted like smoke.

  “Try,” she told herself in the mirror. “You’re thirty-two years old. Come on.”

  When she was nineteen, Donna had dated a man in his late twenties, a man with a passion for skydiving. Donna had loved him deeply. She hadn’t understood his battles with gravity or his country music. Still, she devoted herself to him, and he gave her irises on the first of each month. Donna thought he was the man of Ms. Vivian’s prophecy, the man to whom she would belong. But that man died on her—died horribly, in a skydiving accident. He crushed himself into the ground instead of Donna.

  “Come on,” Donna told the mirror.

  “He likes your lips,” she whispered. “Come on, girl.”

  When Donna got back to the table, she’d missed something. Checkers was laughing. He was talking with the waiter, Juan, and laughing like an animal.

  “What?” said Donna.

  “Listen,” panted Checkers. He was out of breath from laughing. “Say it, Juan.”

  “Knock on boot,” said Juan.

  Checkers erupted again.

  “Exactly,” said Juan. “Knock on boot.”

  Checkers wiped a tear from his eye. “Knock on wood. He’s trying to say, ‘Knock on wood,’ Donna.”

  “Yes,” said Juan. “Knock on boot.”

  “He can’t pronounce wood,” tittered Checkers. “He keeps saying boot. It’s his accent.”

  Donna took her seat. She tried to focus on Checkers, her date, tried to smile at him. But Checkers was focusing on Juan.

  “Try it slow, Juan,” said Checkers. “Concentrate.”

  “Yes,” agreed Juan.

  “Wwwood.” Checkers looked gleefully at Juan. “Wwwood. Wwwwoood.”

  “Boot,” said Juan.

  “All right, Checkers,” said Donna. She meant, That’s enough.

  “Wwwwood,” said Checkers.

  “Boot,” said Juan.

  Checkers lost it. He slapped at the table. His laughter came in yelps. Donna could see his diaphragm working. People were watching.

  “Stop it,” pleaded Donna. She was frightened. Laughter, like cars, could frighten her.

  “Oh my God,” howled Checkers.

  “Stop.” Donna’s voice rose. You’re ruining it, she thought. Stop.

  Juan grinned at the two of them, oblivious, ready for more.

  “Oh my God,” begged Checkers, waving Juan off. “Oh God.”

  Juan left.

  “He didn’t know.” Checkers exhaled, got control. “Wood and boot. He couldn’t hear
the difference.”

  “That was cruel of you,” said Donna. “Laughing at him.”

  Checkers collected himself. He drained his beer, his second. The plates were gone.

  “You had to be there when it started,” said Checkers.

  Donna hadn’t been there. She looked on him with wrath.

  Checkers tried to explain. “It was just one of those things,” he said.

  There was no dessert. The candle burned at half mast.

  “What are you thinking?” asked Checkers.

  “Nothing.”

  Donna finished her vodka. She thought about what it was like to lie beneath a man, his weight on her weight. She thought about Charles, with his books and handcuffs. She thought of her sky diver, the way he’d tugged on his shirts.

  “You’re thinking I do strange things,” said Checkers. “You’re thinking I’m strange.”

  Donna nodded.

  “You aren’t planning on seeing me again.”

  Donna shook her head.

  “Why? Because I laughed at Juan?”

  The married couple, the skinheads, and the diva were gone. The bass music was fading. Only the young accountant remained, still staring at the opal earrings in his palm. Outside, on East Fourth Street, it was close to November.

  “It’s not just that,” said Donna.

  “Well, why, then? Do you want me to be bereaved? Do you want to be bereaved?”

  Donna sighed with an ancient despair.

  Men are doors, she thought. They close in my face.

  “I just . . . don’t think I’m good at talking to you.”

  “So what?” Checkers seemed astounded. “I’m good at talking to you. I can do the talking.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Donna. “I just want to go home.”

  Checkers gazed at Donna. Flat Michael’s was emptying out.

  “I’m a headhunter,” said Checkers quietly. “I spend all day matching people up with their lives. Don’t you think—”

  “I can’t explain it,” said Donna. She almost shuddered. “I want to go home.”

  Out on the street it was cold. Leaves and trash blew around. Checkers and Donna walked together, not speaking.

  “You don’t have to walk with me,” said Donna.

  Checkers looked at the sky. He was thinking about what happened when he was alone in his apartment at night, sleeping. He knew he curled around himself at some point, because that’s how he woke every morning: curled up tight, hibernating.

  “There’s a subway stop.” Donna pointed.

  “My car’s near the next one,” said Checkers. “Broadway-Lafayette. Come on. Just five more blocks of your life. Then I’m vamoose.”

  They kept walking. A ragged white cat watched them from an eave. Something smelled like rubber. Slouched in a doorway was a lanky, black-eyed street vagrant tuning a guitar.

  “The holidays are coming,” said Checkers.

  “I guess so.”

  Donna watched her pumps clopping the sidewalk. The subway station loomed.

  “Well,” said Donna. “Thanks for dinner.”

  Checkers nodded east. “I’m parked around the corner.”

  They could see their breath.

  Donna stuck out her hand. “Nice meeting you.”

  “Sixty seconds,” said Checkers. “Just stand where you’re standing for sixty seconds.”

  Donna detested how she felt.

  “Checkers,” she said. “The night is over.”

  Checkers was already trotting away.

  “Sixty seconds,” he shouted back. He disappeared around the corner.

  Forget it, thought Donna.

  She moved toward the subway. Then she stopped.

  There’s nothing to try, she told herself. She didn’t move, though. She stayed standing still and looked up at the stars, which were dull blobs of gas.

  Jezebel’s up there, thought Donna. Jezebel, with her perfect calves, is floating around like an imbecile.

  I’m an imbecile, too, thought Donna, shivering. An imbecile with no coat.

  “Screw it,” said Donna.

  She walked to the top of the subway stairs. A car braked. A horn honked.

  “Whoa, baby,” shouted a voice.

  Donna turned. A midnight-blue Plymouth Duster was pulled up to the curb twenty feet from her. The passenger window was rolled down, and through it Donna could see Checkers behind the steering wheel, staring out at her.

  “Hey, sexy mama,” shouted Checkers.

  “I’m not coming with you,” said Donna.

  Checkers rolled down the driver-side window. He leaned out, waved at some pedestrians.

  “Hey.” Checkers jabbed a thumb toward Donna. “Anyone else see this package over here? She spoken for, or what?”

  “Cut it out, Checkers.” Donna’s arms were folded on her chest. “I know it’s you. I get it.”

  “Is she the bomb?” hollered Checkers. “Is she the word? Is she the motion?”

  Two cars were stuck behind the Duster, unable to pass. One was a cab, the other a Honda.

  “Move that thing,” yelled the cabbie.

  “Checkers,” said Donna.

  Checkers turned his attention back to Donna. He widened his eyes at her, raised his eyebrows, honked his horn. He revved his engine, whooped like a schoolboy. He slid himself over to the passenger window.

  “Say there, fine thing.” Checkers hung his tongue like a dog. “You got the eyes and you got the thighs. Know what I’m sayin’, love chicken?”

  Donna scowled. She gave Checkers the finger.

  “Move that fucking thing,” yelled the cabbie. He laid on his horn.

  Checkers licked his pinky, made a summoning motion.

  “Come over here, woman,” he growled. “Come over here and get nasty with old Checkers.”

  Donna rolled her eyes. She tossed her hair. There were goose bumps on her neck.

  “Come on now,” said Checkers.

  “You’ve got cars behind you,” warned Donna.

  There was a rush and rumbling in the earth. A train was pulling in.

  Checkers thumped his chest. “Come get in the love machine,” he told Donna. “Papa Checkers’ll make you a woman.”

  “You’re sick in the head,” said Donna.

  The driver of the Honda was out of his car. He was an angry man in a bow tie.

  “What’s the story?” he demanded.

  “Papa Checkers will screw you cross-eyed,” yelled Checkers.

  Donna gasped. She was thirty-two, in a tight dress, with goose bumps and good lipstick. She sold real estate, loved children, voted.

  “Come on, now,” said Checkers quietly, holding his hand out to Donna. “You’re all about obeying Papa, aren’t you? Get on over here right now, little girl.”

  The man in the bow tie stuck his face in the Duster’s driver-side window.

  “What’s the story?” he bellowed at Checkers.

  Checkers didn’t flinch. His hand was still out, reaching toward the woman.

  “Now,” he whispered, and Donna smiled.

  * * *

  * * *

  Jacob’s Bath

  The legend of Jacob’s bath began on May 1, 1948, the day Jacob Wolf married Rachel Cohen.

  The wedding took place in the West Eighty-ninth Street synagogue and the reception was at the Plaza Hotel. Jacob and Rachel’s mothers—both named Amy—coordinated these events. Both families had histories of propriety in Manhattan. Centuries back the Wolfs had been Romanian tailors. They now owned Wolf’s Big and Tall on West Seventy-second, where they trimmed the prominent and took in the monstrous. It was rumored that Sherman Wolf, Jacob’s father, had been personal tailor to both the mayor and the Scapalletti crime bosses. The exact clientele of Wolf’s Big and Tall was never known publicly. What was known publicly was that the Wolfs were in league with giant men, men whose paws you were afraid to shake. That’s what made it such a disgrace when, in the summer of 1943, twenty-four-year-old Jacob Wolf, Sherman�
�s only son, took work as a jingle writer.

  “A what?” Sherman Wolf stared at his boy. “What’re you handing me, here?”

  “I’ll write jingles,” said Jacob. “Songs for products.”

  “Songs for products?” Sherman Wolf was six foot seven. His son was five eleven.

  “What songs?” demanded Sherman. “What products? What’re you handing me?”

  “It’s for the radio, Dad.” Jacob sighed. “It’s for a conglomerate.”

  “What now? What’re you handing me? A condiment?”

  Jacob sighed again. The conglomerate was a team of businesses whose common association mystified Jacob. All he knew was that a man had offered him a paying job writing jingles. If the man called and said, we need a poodle-collar song, that’s what Jacob wrote. If a thirty-second-long ode to mouthwash was required, Jacob would create a thirty-second-long ode to mouthwash.

  “A conglomerate is a team of businesses, Dad.”

  Sherman looked down on his son. They stood facing each other in the drawing room of Sherman and Amy’s penthouse on West Seventy-fourth Street. The penthouse contained two original paintings by August Macke. It also contained a black grand piano that Sherman had bought when Jacob was aboy. At an early age Jacob had shown musical talent and achronic deficiency in athletics, and Sherman hoped to promotethe former. True, his son was short and a disgrace at stickball. But, with arduous training, perhaps Jacob could become a musical genius of stormy temperament, a kind of Jewish Mozart who would bang out his tragedies at Carnegie Hall or the Met. Sherman wasn’t averse to culture. But he presupposed that his only male offspring would crave power, notoriety of some respectable cast. A war was on, and anything that smacked of the trivial was disgraceful to Sherman Wolf.

  “Amy,” barked Sherman, “get in here. The boy wants to join a condiment.”

  So Sherman and Jacob never agreed about Jacob’s profession. In 1944, when Jacob netted a fat paycheck for his Grearson’s Soap Flakes jingle, Sherman held his tongue. He did the same during his son’s 1946 Bear Belly Cupcakes phase. But, in the fall of 1947, Sherman’s patience died when he heard the following ditty on the radio:

  It’s time to be kind

  to your child’s behind.

  Switch to Kyper’s . . .