Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue (29 page)

"Now I am!" she said with too much enthusiasm.

"Priscilla bought my apartment," Mordy explained.

"That bastard Dubinsky has already sold them!" said Harry.

"Yes," said Priscilla. "He is completely redoing the building and breaking through walls. We are going to have a three-bedroom apartment. It won't be ready until the fall. But my family has a place on Cape Cod where we can stay until it's ready" She smiled pleasantly about all this good news, and Mordy attempted unsuccessfully to wear a matching smile. The rest of the room was silent.

Mordy has found a way to keep squatting, Nathan thought, smiling to himself.

"It's a
shanda,"
said Harry. The Yiddish word for disgrace, in Harry's mouth, was always a prelude, and everyone turned, dreading what they thought he was about to say. "Jewish people are selling out these properties and having them rebuilt by anti-Semites so that Jews can't move back in."

"Really," Priscilla said with great concern. "I didn't know anything ..."

Nathan patted her hand to tell her it was all right and then turned to his father for more of this story. "How do you know they are anti-Semites, Dad?"

"The doorways. They keep putting in steel door frames. So you can't nail up a mezuzah."

The room fell silent again, except for the soft muttering of Nusan,
"Tokhes oyfn tish."
Nathan strained to understand what he was saying about the table, and then Priscilla ventured cheerfully:

"Why not put magnets on them? You know, like refrigerator magnets. In fact, that would be a great product. Refrigerator mezoozoos. Something Mordy might want to undertake."

They all turned to Mordy, unaware that he was looking for something to undertake.

"Well," began Mordy, "that's a market without much elasticity... to say the least. I actually have other plans."

"Really?" purred Priscilla.

"I have decided to get my MBA—master's in business administration."

The entire family unconsciously let slip a collective sigh. Mordy was not changing.

"First," Priscilla explained, "we are going to the Cape."

Sarah's eyes widened. "On vacation. Are you going on vacation?"

Mordy thought it over and looked at Priscilla. "Yes, I think I am."

"Will you take swimming lessons?"

"No, but I think I will float." Everyone laughed at Mordy floating, but Sarah didn't want to be laughed at.

"Do you know how to swim, Uncle Mordy?"

He didn't answer.

Priscilla looked at him. "You don't know how to swim? That's so sweet! I'll teach you how to swim."

"Everybody at the table who knows how to swim, raise your hand," Sarah commanded.

Priscilla, Sonia, Ruth, and Sarah raised their hands. Sarah looked triumphant. "Girls win!"

"She's started swimming lessons this summer," Nathan said.

"Uncle Mordy, if you are going on vacation, you should take swimming lessons," Sarah insisted in a reprimanding voice. "And you should also buy stuff. We are going to start buying stuff."

At this moment, just as Ruth reentered carrying the unloved brisket on the large platter on which the brisket was always carried, the doorbell rang—a loud, intrusive, drilling noise.

The second Nathan heard the bell, he knew who it was. He had seen the anger in Karoline's eyes when she found him talking to her father. He remembered her threat to one day come here. Now, at last, the disaster with which he had been toying was at the door. He was ten feet from the door and his life would unravel if he did not get there first.

He leapt to his feet so quickly that he knocked his chair over backward. Unfortunately, Harry had also gotten up and, because of the chair, had a head start to the door.

Sonia was laughing at the two of them fleeing the brisket.

When Nathan got to the door, Harry was already there with his hand on the knob. Father and son looked at each other with oddly matching glares of desperation.

The harsh, intruding buzzer sounded again.

"Why doesn't someone open it?" said Ruth.

"Sit down, I'll get it," said Harry, resurrecting the old-time voice of parental authority. Nathan sadly returned to his chair to await his destruction.

But Harry, to Nathan's amazement and admiration, stepped discreetly into the hallway and closed the door behind him.

"Hello, Harry Seltzer," said Florence.

Harry looked at her as though he were considering pretending he did not know her.

"It's me," said Florence. And she pointed to the spot on the side of her head and grimaced in pain to remind him of their one tryst. Then she burst into laughter.

"Shhh!"

"It was funny"

"What are you doing here? I thought prostitutes didn't do this. I thought you could keep secrets."

"I don't want to tell any secrets, Harry Seltzer. I just need some help. I'm in trouble. I need some money."

Harry looked at her. She was in trouble. The reds and purples of her heavy outer layer of makeup were gone, and Harry could now see that she was much older than he had thought, not much younger than him. And she was losing her plumpness, acquiring a drawn look. She was not well. Sweat was beading on her forehead. Harry reached into his wallet and took out the $15 that he had. The two bills quickly vanished into her shiny blue dress that was not as tight on her as it was meant to be.

"I need more than that. I need at least forty I'll do what you want." She seemed to start to drop to her knees and, panic-stricken, Harry grabbed her to stop her—grabbed her a little too hard, and suddenly they were in an embrace. Florence started to laugh. Harry stepped away. "Never mind. I'll get you forty," he whispered, having already forgotten about the fifteen. "Just wait for me out on the street."

Matching his hoarse whisper, she said, "You will come down, won't you?" and then added in a full voice, "You won't leave me there?"

"I promise! Just go downstairs." He waited for her to disappear behind the elevator door, which closed slowly, seeming to erase her. Then he went back in the apartment and said, "I have a building problem. I'll be right back." No one seemed particularly curious. Nathan, his face flushed and his soul suddenly joyous, started talking with great enthusiasm about Sonia's play. Deliberately affecting a casual saunter, Harry made his way out the door, closed it slowly, smacked the mezuzah almost as a rebuke, and ran down the stairs.

But by the third floor he had to stop. He was out of breath and his chest hurt. While standing in the hallway gathering his strength, Birdie Nagel suddenly pounced.

"I can't help you with the birds right now, Mrs. Nagel."

"It's not birds," she pleaded. "The dog is going to die!"

"What dog?"

Mrs. Nagel touched the center of her chest as she tried to gather herself, seemingly more out of breath than Harry "Three C is away for a week. Boca Raton. Why? What is it with Boca Raton?"

"I don't know." Harry started to walk toward the next set of stairs. If he did not appear soon, Florence would take the elevator back up and sound his door buzzer.

"Wait!" shouted Birdie Nagel in such a commanding voice that it stopped him. "The dog! I said I would feed the dog. The keys don't work!"

Harry looked longingly down the staircase and then took the keys from her hand and walked to 3C and opened the door. "You just have to jiggle the key a little."

"It needs a new lock. This dog could have died." The front hallway to the apartment had little piles of droppings, and an anxious little white fluffy animal was trying to climb Harry's leg.

"It's not the lock," said Harry "It's the key. Someone made a bad copy."

"Oh, thank God, thank God," said Birdie Nagel, embracing the dog. "Here, help me. Open my door. I am going to keep the dog with me."

Harry got the fluffy dog and Birdie Nagel back into her apartment. "God bless you, Mr. Seltzer.
Lang lebn,"
she said, wishing him a long life.

"That's all right," said Harry, anxious to leave.

"Wait a minute!" She disappeared into her apartment and returned with a twenty-pound sack of birdseed. "It's for the birds. I can't feed them with the dog. I asked my neighbor, that new boy you rented to. The
fardarter.
No, he's too busy. That's the best you could rent to? That
fardarter.
They bury better-looking people...."

Harry saw the elevator coming back up and grabbed the birdseed and ran to push the button. When the elevator door opened, he stepped in without even acknowledging the impatient Florence, apparently en route to destroy his life. "Bye, Mrs. Nagel," he said as the doors closed.

When the door opened on the second floor, the new tenant, the
fardarter
himself in seersucker, stepped in.

"Hello, Mr. Seltzer, I have a problem," said the new tenant. Harry couldn't help thinking that Birdie Nagel was right about him, he was a
fardarter,
a withered, dull young man. "I am having trouble getting cable TV The cable company said that the building has never been wired. No one has ever had cable TV here? How is that possible?"

"I don't know. It never came up. There is a very nice theater on Second Avenue, a multiplex. They chopped up a beautiful old theater and now you have a choice of six movies." The elevator opened to the ground floor and Harry fled to the door and would have made it if it hadn't been for Mrs. Kleinman.

"Mrs. Kleinman, I know nothing about the postal service. There is nothing I can do."

"I am not talking about the postal service," she said indignantly. "I am talking about my gas line."

"I'm sorry. What is wrong with your gas line?"

"I am charged five dollars a month for gas and I never use my stove."

"But that doesn't have anything to do with me either."

"I know It's the man who reads the meter. But don't you see?"

"What?"

"He's the one who's been stealing my mail!"

"I've got to go." He started to walk out of the building with Florence following behind.

"Please, Mr. Seltzer. I have to get my mail."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Kleinman, I will try to figure this out for you."

"You promise, Mr. Seltzer?" Somehow the order had gotten mixed up and Mrs. Kleinman found herself behind Florence, shouting at her instead of Harry Florence smiled politely and backed away.

"I promise, Mrs. Kleinman, I will work on the postal problem. But not right now."

"May you live to a hundred, Mr. Seltzer," Mrs. Kleinman shouted at him as he scurried down Avenue A, Florence at a discreet distance struggling to match his pace.

He was almost at the cash machine at First Avenue when a tough-looking, dark-skinned man with no shirt and several rings in his right ear stopped him. "Are you Harry Seltzer?"

"I can't believe it."

"Believe what?"

"I am Harry Seltzer."

"So why is that hard to believe?"

"What do you want?" said Harry, his manners at last fraying.

"I am Wilson Morelos," the young man declared with great drama.

Harry could not find a response.

"The merengue trumpet player."

"Ohh, wonderful. Where are you playing?"

"That's just it. I was told you could find me a booking."

"Who do you play with?"

"I thought you could help me."

Harry looked back at Florence, resting against a brick building like a tired but determined hunter. Even from a distance, he could see the sweaty shine of her face and skin. But she was determined to follow. "Talk to Chow Mein Vega."

"He doesn't do merengue. He said to talk to you."

"Do you have a phone number?"

"I'll write it down for you. Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?" Harry found a scrap of paper, the back of someone else's card in his wallet. But he had no pen. He was standing by a newsstand. "Can I borrow a pen a minute?" he asked the vendor.

"Are you buying a newspaper?"

Harry started to reach into his wallet and realized he was still carrying twenty pounds of birdseed. Then he remembered that he had given Florence all his money He looked at the young man, who reached fatalistically into the low-slung empty pockets of his baggy pants. "Florence," he called after her, and she started to back off nervously He coaxed her like a deer, and when she was finally near him he said, "I just need some money for a newspaper."

"You know I don't have any money."

"The fifteen dollars."

"What fifteen dollars?"

"Oh, God. Listen, Wilson." No one ever had to give their name more than once to Harry. "Wilson, I am going to a cash machine. Come with me. I'll get some money and buy a paper and use his pen and you can give me your phone number."

"Gracias,
man."

"Yeah."

So Harry continued toward the cash machine, birdseed in hand, with the lean and shirtless horn player Wilson behind him, and Florence behind Wilson, and, Harry thought, maybe Mrs. Kleinman behind her. The wide avenues of bright lights giving off orange haze as they refracted in the humidity were crowded with people in the warm summer night, but the narrow side streets were dark and silent and their footsteps clopped loud as horse hooves.

About to round the corner to the cash machine, he nearly ran into Cabezucha, who suddenly appeared, looking very large, his eyes barely fitting in his head, bloated and tense like a tire with too much air. Harry did not notice this, did not notice the wild-eyed way this large man looked at him, like a hungry animal eyeing prey, almost licking his chops. Harry only remembered his previous encounter with the man, because Harry prided himself on remembering previous encounters. "You see, you didn't listen to me," Harry scolded in a friendly way. "The cash machine doesn't give change. Now here I am without a dime to give you."

Cabezucha stared at Harry helplessly.

"I am going to get cash, but it will all be twenties. And I can't give you a twenty" He reached up, patted the giant on his back, and walked past him. Wilson followed uneasily. Florence did not dare.

Harry got the money, all twenties. Wilson was waiting for him outside, but he could not find Florence when he came out, and in any event, he did not want Wilson to see him giving Florence money. He decided to walk back to the newsstand with Wilson, buy a paper, and borrow a pen, but on the way back he found Florence in her blue dress hunched over the sidewalk in the position of a Muslim praying.