Kagan's Superfecta: And Other Stories

by Allen Hoffman

  “Oh,” Bienstock said gently, “he’s been dead for twenty years. But if you ever ate down at the dairy restaurant on East Broadway you must have seen him.”

  “No, Bienstock, not him. Where did you see the old man tonight? The old man in the rumpled suit.”

  “In shul here.”

  “Did you see him later?”

  “Yes, we walked down Broadway with him. A nice old fellow.”

  “Where did you see him last?”

  “What’s wrong, Kagan?”

  “Plenty, Bienstock, plenty! Just tell me where you saw him last.”

  Bienstock heard the urgency of Kagan’s plea.

  “We turned left on Eighty-sixth Street and he kept going on Broadway. Downtown on the west side of the street.”

  “Thanks, Bienstock,” Kagan said, running for the door.

  “Kagan, can I help you?” Bienstock called.

  “You have already.”

  Kagan ran down the steps to the sidewalk, took Fran’s arm, and dashed toward Broadway. At the corner, Kagan turned right and rushed even faster. Fran began panting as Kagan dragged her down Broadway.

  “Moe, do we have to run?” she gasped.

  “We’ll never catch him if we don’t,” Kagan explained without slowing up.

  “I can’t, Moe!”

  Fran slowed to a walk.

  “C’mon, Fran, c’mon! This is important,” he pleaded.

  “Moe, I can’t.”

  “Fran, you’re always saying we don’t do enough together and when you get your chance, you won’t come along.”

  “I can’t, Moe. I can’t.”

  “But you’re good at spotting people in crowds, Fran. I need you.”

  Fran drew a deep breath.

  “Moe, if this is so important, why don’t you run on ahead and I’ll follow as quickly as I can.”

  “Good! Good!” Kagan said racing down the street.

  He stopped short, spun around, and raced back to her.

  “You know what he looks like? Old guy, rumpled green suit.”

  “Between a Ping-Pong table and a pool table,” she responded.

  “Good, you got it. Keep an eye out!”

  Kagan took off down Broadway. He raced the five blocks to Eighty-sixth Street without looking around. At Eighty-sixth Street, he was stopped by a red light. As he stood on the corner, he began frantically looking in all directions at once. He squinted into the greasy spoon on the opposite corner and peered down the street. The light changed, and as he ran across the street he glanced into the taxis stopped by the crosstown light. Kagan didn’t believe that the old man would ride on Yom Kippur, or eat either; still, you never know, sometimes people wind up doing some pretty crazy things that they never planned to do. That’s how I got married, didn’t I?

  Half running, half walking, and looking everywhere — hotel lobbies, all-night groceries, laundromats, darkened florists, the other side of the street, inside buses, down side streets, into faces on street corners, Kagan continued down the street in a frenzy. But he didn’t see a rumpled green suit or anything that even faintly resembled one.

  People began to notice Kagan. Rushing about in his high-topped sneakers, he rarely looked in the direction he was moving. One of the young whores called out.

  “Hey, fella, you lookin’ for somethin’?”

  “Yes,” Kagan replied eagerly. “Yes, I am!”

  “Well, good,” she said sliding her mouth open into a wide, receptive grin. “Maybe I got it, honey.”

  “How long have you been standing here?” Kagan asked suddenly.

  At the unexpected query, the grin left her face and her jaw muscles tightened.

  “What business of yours?” she asked sullenly.

  Kagan paid no heed to her offended tone. “I’m looking for an old guy. A white guy, wearing an old-fashioned green suit, somewhere between a Ping-Pong table and a pool table.”

  “Sounds like a sharp dude,” she said coyly.

  “Did you see him?” Kagan asked hopefully.

  “What if I did?” she continued.

  “Well, where is he?” exploded Kagan.

  “You want to go out or not, man?” she said defensively.

  “Did you see him or not?” Kagan demanded. He stepped menacingly forward.

  “Shit, man. I didn’t see nobody. I only here a minute myself.”

  Kagan rushed on down the street. After he was a safe distance away, the whore called after him, “I ain’t no missing-persons bureau. Try the police for your faggot friend.”

  AT Seventy-ninth Street under the pool hall, two young policemen stood motionless on the northeast corner. Kagan, in front of the church on the other side of the street, spotted them.

  “Officer!” Kagan screamed. He waved his arms and started across the street against the traffic light. Horns blared as Kagan dashed toward the island separating the uptown and downtown lanes.

  “Officer!” he called again.

  Noticing his coat and tie, the policemen relaxed their grips on their nightsticks.

  “Wait for the light,” one of them called.

  Unmindful of the advice, Kagan waded into the uptown lane, barely scrambling away from a taxi.

  “You’re gonna get killed like that,” the cop said.

  “Yeah,” Kagan agreed. “Listen, did you guys see an old white guy in a crumpled green suit? He must have been around here in the last half hour.”

  The two policemen looked at each other to confirm their ignorance.

  “No, I didn’t. Did you?” asked one.

  “No, sorry,” said the other.

  “It’s a crazy color green. You’re probably too young to remember the style unless you watch the late show: Boston Blackie, nineteen-forties. In color, it’s between a Ping-Pong table and a pool table. In the dark, it might look a little darker. The guy’s about seventy, hunched over a little but pretty healthy-looking for his age. He would’ve been going downtown.”

  “No,” said one.

  “Uh-uh,” said the other.

  “Yeah, well, thanks anyway,” said Kagan, racing back to his side of the street.

  As Kagan dashed into the traffic, he heard one cop ask, “Isn’t he a little old for perpetrator shoes?” He heard, but didn’t care. Kagan was madly scanning the great canyon of Broadway and was almost overwhelmed by the torrent of traffic coursing through its asphalt center.

  At Seventy-second Street he stopped and stared about the busy intersection. The light changed but he didn’t cross the street. Kagan stood staring farther down Broadway, but he knew it was hopeless. Traffic, people, but no green suit. Kagan blinked at the strange frantic world that hid his... his what? Where is he? Kagan thought, my... what? My man, yeah, my man, all right. No, more than man. I need him. He’s my — he predicted the results of the race. “My prophet?” Kagan wondered aloud in amazement.

  It was a wild and disturbing thought. A prophet yet! An angel wasn’t enough! Who knows, mused Kagan as he stared down Broadway with greater concentration. He looked past the subway kiosk, a strange menacing mask with its bright magazine-stand eyes. No rumpled green suit, just the downtown stream of traffic bucking the crosscurrent of Amsterdam Avenue, before veering left toward Lincoln Center and even past that to Times Square, and from there... even farther.

  For a few moments Kagan let the swirl of lights mesmerize him. He found a moment’s respite in the frantic but ordered pattern of the traffic: Broadway, up- and downtown to the left; Amsterdam just beyond; and the lighter refrain of the Seventy-second Street crosstown immediately before him. Kagan felt as if he were staring out to sea and sensed the finite limits of his search. A moment earlier he had been frantic in his chasing after fate, but now with the small vehicular waves of Seventy-second Street playing at his feet, and the powerful currents coursing toward the great depths of Manhattan beyond the horizon, he felt calm. The limitless expanse of waves and sky imposed a more accurate perspective than the one harried souls encounter in their relentless
charge through the small, crowded corridors of life.

  Kagan watched the individual lights in the streams flow together into great rivers of red and white, with dashes of yellow and orange. As Kagan turned to head back up Broadway, he felt a sense of defeat, but also a sense of calm. The hidden was not to be revealed, not yet anyway. You win a few, you lose a few — and action is better than no action. But did I win or lose? Kagan wondered. I won’t be able to find out tonight unless Ozzie shows up and that’s unlikely. He disappears every Yom Kippur and he’s been acting pretty strange anyway. I might as well enjoy the walk back. Wherever that old guy is, he’s not around here. And yet, thought Kagan, you never know, I might as well go with the percentages.

  Kagan crossed the street just to be on the safe side, with the percentages.

  AT Seventy-ninth Street, he heard someone calling his name. Kagan looked across the street to find Fran waving at him. He waited as she crossed to his side.

  “Did you see him?” she asked with a concern that Kagan heard and appreciated.

  “No,” Kagan said in a relaxed manner. “I couldn’t find a trace of him.”

  “I didn’t see him either, Moe.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “You do?”

  They had crossed Seventy-ninth Street and were under the pool hall.

  “Nobody saw him, Fran.” To confirm it, Kagan turned to the two policemen, who had not moved from their post. “You fellows didn’t see him either, did you?”

  “No, we didn’t,” the younger one said, shaking his head.

  “Not a trace,” said the other.

  “See,” Kagan said to Fran.

  Kagan’s rapport with the Twentieth Precinct surprised her. She noted the two cops staring at her tennis shoes.

  “Moe, what do you suppose they think about our shoes?”

  “I don’t know. I guess they take us for natural-food freaks from Connecticut.”

  Fran laughed and took his hand.

  “Hey, lady, this is Yom Kippur!”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  She released his hand.

  “That’s better,” Kagan said. “Now that you’re behaving like a lady, you want me to buy you a drink?”

  “You nut,” she said, affectionately punching his arm.

  “Lady, you bother me and I’ll call the cops. Bothering a cohen on Yom Kippur is a federal offense.”

  “I didn’t know the police were such good friends of the sneaker set.”

  “The young ones are. They were raised on natural foods — organic corned beef and cabbage.”

  “It sounds delicious!”

  “No better than organic herring.”

  “Organic herring!” Fran said in horror.

  “Oh, I forgot. You’re from Connecticut.”

  “No,” she said seriously, “you never forget that.”

  “Yes,” he said with equal seriousness. “I guess you’re right.”

  The last was added as an unarticulated apology, and Fran accepted it as such.

  Kagan didn’t look for him, but he was hoping that the man would appear since he wasn’t looking for him. Isn’t that how a crazy world works? So Kagan gazed about — not looking for him but prepared to recognize him at once. His attentive inattention proved difficult to sustain and Kagan was weary by the time they reached Ninety-fourth Street. He was also frustrated: no old man, no rumpled green suit, no understanding. For me, he thought, Broadway is a blind alley.

  6

  IN their apartment, they looked at the Times for a few minutes and gave the cat some milk.

  “I told you this wasn’t a Jewish cat!” Kagan exclaimed when the tawny little creature lapped up the white liquid.

  “A Catholic?” Fran laughed.

  “No,” said Kagan, “she doesn’t like champagne. She could be only one thing the way she jumps around and bothers us. This cat is Hare Krishna.”

  “Yvette? Hare Krishna?” Fran said in a fit of laughter.

  “This younger generation is wacky, Fran. Wait and see. She’ll be in Times Square in her orange fur, jumping up and down with a little bell around her neck. We’ll go up to her and she won’t even recognize us.”

  “Yvette not recognize us?” Fran registered mock horror.

  “And no more Yvette either. The only thing she’ll accept from us is money and we’ll have to make the checks out to Maharishi Cat.”

  “She’d do a thing like that?”

  “Of course she will, but the joke will be on her.” Kagan paused.

  “It will?”

  “Since when have we written a check that was good?” Kagan exclaimed in morose triumph.

  Not knowing how to respond, Fran attempted neutral agreement.

  “I suppose so.”

  “You suppose?” Kagan barked. “Our check to Maharishi Cat will bounce higher than a rubber guru! And you suppose so? Since when have I written a check that hasn’t bounced?”

  Fran didn’t answer the question. Instead, she began to cry.

  Not again, thought Kagan. What is this? All Yom Kippur she cries, just because I yell at her. They’re my rotten checks that are no good, not hers. My God, I can’t find the old guy to wish him a gut yontiff and I make Fran cry. With my luck, how can I ever pick a winner?

  “Fran, I’m sorry!” Kagan shouted.

  “You are?” she said tearfully.

  “Of course,” Kagan said switching into a breezy conversational tone. “I can imagine how bad you must feel at having raised an apostate pussy cat, a meshumed feline — God forbid. And do you know why Yvette is capable of doing such things?” Without waiting for an answer, Kagan continued with great indignation. “Because she pisses on the couch. That’s why! Any creature that pisses on the couch can’t be too good.”

  “It doesn’t smell like some cats,” Fran protested.

  How many times had they had this argument, thought Kagan. Either she’s crazy or I am.

  “That’s true, Fran, but sometimes you must face reality. Cat piss is not perfume.”

  “It’s not her fault.”

  “Fran, that cat has to learn responsibility. The way things are it’s not good for her and it’s not good for us. This cat has to go to the mikveh before it’s too late.”

  Fran didn’t know how to respond.

  WITHOUT further conversation they went to bed. They lay quietly until Fran turned to Kagan and said softly, “I hope you find him tomorrow. I think you will.”

  “I hope so,” he answered calmly.

  After a few moments, he continued seriously, “It’s a funny thing how he could get away from me while I’m wearing my old high-cut sneakers.”

  “Maybe you need a pair of low-cuts?” Fran chided gently.

  “No, Fran, the greats wore high-tops like mine.”

  “I thought you told me they have better players now than they ever did?” she asked.

  “They are, Fran, they’re better, but they’re not as great. Those old guys created the game. Without Cousy, the guys today wouldn’t know how to play.”

  “I hope you find him.”

  “Fran,” Kagan called softly.

  “Yes?”

  “I wish you a good year,” he said.

  Fran began to cry, but not wanting Kagan to know she called in a joking manner, more appropriate to Kagan than to herself, “Happy five — seven — three — four, Bob Cousy.”

  Kagan felt as if someone had thrown a switch and gravity no longer functioned. His head floated through the room. The change of state was so drastic, he couldn’t quite grasp it; you mean there’s no gravity?

  “What?” he rasped in a voice that didn’t begin to suggest the trauma he was experiencing.

  “Happy New Year, dear,” she said.

  “Oh,” Kagan whispered. “I thought you said something else.”

  “I did, dear. I said, ‘Happy five — seven — three — four.’ That’s the Jewish year, isn’t it, fifty-seven thirty-four?”

  Kagan, sailing through t
he dark bedroom, felt as if he had crashed into the wall, fallen to the floor, and bricks from the wall were falling on his head. Each brick had 5734 stamped on it. The police car pulled up; the two young cops got out and walked over to where Kagan lay half-buried by the bricks. “We ought to run you in for this!” one growled. “Do these bricks belong to you?” the other asked menacingly. “Put them in the car!” the first commanded. Kagan staggered to his feet and began collecting the bricks. He dragged them over to the police car, dropped them into the open trunk, and closed it. The number 5734 was painted on the outside. The police car drove off.

  “They didn’t look Jewish,” Kagan murmured in devastated amazement.

  “Who?” asked Fran.

  “The police,” Kagan muttered.

  “Of course they weren’t Jewish,” she said definitively. “They seemed decent enough.”

  They did? Kagan wondered.

  “They helped us look for the old man in the green suit, didn’t they?” she added.

  Kagan got out of bed and stood up.

  “I can’t sleep!” he said with great conviction.

  He opened the window and stuck his head out into the night. Like a bird listening for a worm high above Ninety-fourth Street, he twisted his head first to stare at the intersection of Ninety-fourth and West End and then to Broadway. The warm October night was surprisingly quiet. After several moments, the faint sound of a car horn drifted up from Broadway.

  Kagan, livid with rage, screamed into the darkness, “Stop that goddamn honking; I’m trying to sleep!”

  He pulled his head inside and slammed the window shut.

  “It’s impossible to sleep with all that honking. I can’t take it!”

  He opened the bedroom door, and with the light from the hall, began dressing rapidly. He put on his suit quickly, but slowed down lacing up his high-cut sneakers. Finally, he stood up and moved toward the door.

  “I have to find somebody,” he said.

  “But, Moe, we couldn’t find him,” Fran pleaded.

  “No, not him. Somebody who can help me.”

  “Pakooz?” she asked hopefully.

  “Pakooz?” Kagan burst out in amazement. “Pakooz!”

  “PAKOOZ, Pakooz, Pakooz,” Kagan repeated in mindless amazement as he walked swiftly down Broadway. “Pakooz? Pakooz?” he muttered in rhythmic wonder. As he was saying it, he found himself adding his earlier refrain. “Pakooz, keep your shoes on. Pakooz, keep your shoes on.”