Reunion (6 page)

“Great!” he said, stopping for one brief moment in front of a statue of the Buddha with a canopy of cobras over him, the message IF YOU ARE HOLY ENOUGH, EVIL BECOMES GOOD, DANGER BECOMES PROTECTION, he guessed.

Only how do you get that holy?

He'd have fish as usual.

Fish for his heart, fish in order to avoid flesh, some kind of kosher impulse still vibrating inside him, an impulse to imitate his spiritual Master for so many years, Menke Katz, the great Kabbalist, whose special maggid (heavenly messenger) would come to him nightly and reveal things to him about the inner workings of The Divine, the Shekinah coming like the spirit of some sort of mammoth, eternal Sabbath Bride, to unite with the Male Principle inside the divine substance, so that all sexuality in the universe was a sort of pale reproduction of the inner-workings within the divine substance Itself …

“I'll have some fish.”

“We can go half and half. A little fish wouldn't kill me. Although I was reading last week in one of the journals that the latest research indicates that fish doesn't help the heart at all, it was all a big mistake … ”

“What does anyone know?” he said with a touch of cynical finality.

What did anyone know … or care …

Like every morning back home when he'd take the dog out to do his necessities, 9:15, there'd be this old lady walking up the hill across the street with her jogging outfit on, seventy-five, eighty, determination on her face, like she was going to fool God, Death wasn't going to get her, she'd be the one exception to the Universal Conflagration. Or the professor he saw most mornings, jogging shoes on, walking briskly up the street, heavy briefcase in hand, the same look of dogged determination on his face. The Eternals!! That's what they thought.

Thanatopsis.

The Earth nothing more than one vast tomb.

Up to the Member's Dining Room.

More of the same vast crowd, Buzzy remembering soccer games in Brazil/Peru where the crowds ran out with such madness that people were actually trampled and killed.

The Maitre D' recognized him. Italian. Robust. A little greyer than he'd been the last time Buzz had seen him, what, a year or two before, but still his same bustling, outgoing self, a man who saw Maitre-Deeing as something on the same level as being a symphony conductor or Chairman of the Board at Ford, Buzz loving to see someone actually happy in his own skin, happy in his own job.

“Ah, Professor Lox, to what do we owe the honor of this occasion?”

“Grammar school class reunion!” he said.

“Grammar school class reunion?”

It was a little ‘unusual,' if not ‘unique.'

“The last time I saw them they were fourteen, this time they'll be sixty four.”

“That sounds … how shall I put it … I was going to say appalling … horrendous … frightening … ”

“All of that and more.”

“Well, we're glad to have you here,” looking down at his reservation-book, “The first free table we'll have will be in [checking his watch] two and a half hours … ”

“Two and a half hours?!?!”

“Well, you know it's not just the ‘member's' lounge any more. It's been opened up to the general public, and,” looking around with an expression of slight disdain, lowering his voice, “you know how that becomes … ”

“Well, I have a starving wife on my hands,” said Buzz, “we can try downstairs.”

“The cafeteria?!?!” said the Maitre D' with uncensored horror.

“Well …” Buzz shaking hands with him, the Maitre D' looking resigned and tragic.

“A bientôt!!”

“A bientôt!!”

You almost forgot for a moment that you were in the realm of the Hog Butcher of the World.

Downstairs to the cafeteria. The same general melée.

“I feel like Custer's Last Stand,” said Buzz, practically screaming in order to get through to Malinche.

“Custard?”

“Too many people.”

“It's like home,” she said, for a moment his mind twisting back to Karachi, the sense of the human anthill, pulsating, pullulating, the endless push of raw humanity.

Somehow getting into the food area itself. Fried Chicken. It looked good, but a big piece of paper was scotch-taped up next to it—F
RESH
O
UT
.

No more potato salad. No more cole slaw. A couple fries left. What was there left to eat for Kali's sake? Pumpkin pie. Lots of pumpkin pie and Cool Whip. And Polish dogs. Huge piles of Polish dogs.

“Let's have a Polish dog,” he said to Malinche, “that's all that's left … ”

“No, I couldn't. Pork … you know … ”

“God understands!” he answered jesuitically.

“No, that's OK,” and she picked up a piece of pumpkin pie foamed all over with Cool Whip, the pile of Polish dogs in front of him looking like the most delectable bunch of stuff he'd ever seen in his life. But the old Rule Keeper inside him started to talk: “You know what's right, you subscribe to a system, you observe the rules. It's not that God didn't talk. He did. And it's for you to listen!,” the old Total Cynic one more layer down whispering “God Who said What?”

But picking up a piece of pie. Two pieces.

Little notes taped to the pop machine, over the Coke, Root beer, Sprite—ALL OUT. All that was left was water.

Another line for the cash register. Another line to just get into the dining room. The whole place like a dungeon, like San Quentin. Finally getting a seat in the midst of a table full of Koreans, one old man looking over at him as Malinche sat down
next to him, laughing to his wife, as loud as he liked, figuring that he could say whatever he wanted, no one would understand him, “He knows how to get the young ones … he's probably well endowed with you know what,” laughing a loud obscene laugh, Buzz going to ignore him entirely, only the old guy kept at it. “I bet he keeps her busy at night …” the little behavior monitor inside Buzz finally getting pissed, “Genug ist genug,” and Buzz screamed at the old guy “IP TA CHO / SHUT THE FUCK UP!” in his best possible Korean, turned to Malinche, “Let's get out of here!” her protesting, “But we just sat down,” but following him anyhow, the old Korean switching over into English, smiling “Just kidding around,” Buzz ignoring him, coat over his arm, precariously balancing his water and pie on a shaky plastic tray, finding a little table over in the corner that faced out on the courtyard where the green fishman fountains spouted water all summer long and people ate outside, now all full of snow, dismal, white, overcast, the world of his youth, chilled bones and a grey canopy of frozen sky. Pumpkin pie and water.

O
N THE
“L” up to Howard Street where Ellen was supposed to meet him, surprised, as they got up north past the loop how many blacks there were on the train. The South Side was supposed to be one big black ghetto, but the North Side was supposed to be white.

Not any more.

And looking out at the streets there were blacks everywhere.

Where did Whitey go? Were they all like his cousin, Paddy, who had just moved to Barrington the winter before, a big printed announcement with his last year's Christmas Card—WE WE HAVE MOVED TO BARRINGTON.

Barrington? That's where the Jesuit seminary was, wasn't it? Somewhere Over the Rainbow as far as Buzz was concerned.

So stupid, the whole continuation of segregation. Why didn't everyone just intermarry and produce a new mulato race like in Venezuela where it was all beautifully mixed, La Raza Cosmic, The Cosmic Race. Talk about South Africa, what about Chicago? He wasn't used to all this racism any more. In Grand Junction all the professors lived in the same neighborhoods,
there wasn't a Black Professor's Ghetto and a White Professor's Ghetto, an Arabsville and a Korean-Town …

Chicago looking as run-down as ever. As if paint was prohibited for back porches. If a porch fell down, sagged, a window got busted, there seemed to be some kind of general law—ALL REPAIRS FORBIDDEN FOREVER. Entropyville.

And cold and snowy. You could feel the frigid fingers of the wind chill across your face, reaching in through the cracks around the windows and doors, Malinche looking dismally out at the dismal frozen landscape. Lots of snow. And no break in the cloud-cover.

“We're coming up to Loyola!” he announced as they passed Lawrence.

“Loy … ?”

“Where I went to pre-Med,” he said, waiting for it to show to their right … and WHOOPSY-DO! THERE IT WAS. Cudahy Science Hall with its green oxidized copper observatory dome that was actually used as an observatory a hundred years earlier when it was first built, when you could actually observe something. When he went to school there the whole turret on top of the building had been turned into a kind of dead foetus museum. He'd go up there and study, the walls lined with shelves filled with jars of dead foetuses, some of them huge, almost full-term, their dead eyes, he always felt, staring out at him, their faces (the most monstrous ones) in a state of perpetual scowl, whole platoons of little foetal monsters that had never been born, how many Shakespeares and Isaac Newtons among them? All the lives that had never been … the possibilities in his own life that had never been actualized …

“Look!” he said.

Only Malinche was looking out at the other side and by the time she'd turned around they were already past that one marvelous fold-open view of the whole tiny campus. Campus on a postage stamp. Moving into totally unknown territory for Buzz now. In fact he'd never taken the “L” up to Howard Street before, had he? Travelled from the Far South up to Loyola every day for three years, then a year of Med school, then back to undergraduate, the B.A., M.A. all downtown by the Water Tower, before anyone had even thought about Water Tower Place, when the Allerton was the tallest hotel in town and a trip to the Tip Top Tap was the most romantic way to end any evening at the opera or Orchestra Hall, before it had been dwarfed by all the new giants standing sentinel around it … but he'd never travelled up to Howard Street on the “L” before …

Getting off on Howard, walking downstairs, finding a phone.

Thirty cents. Five cents more than Michigan. Malinche had change. She always had change.

Dialed the number, but it didn't work. Wrong area code. Evanston another code. Tried again. Needed a 1 in front of it now. On the third ring finally got through.

Rang forever until Ellen finally answered.

“Walk across the street now. There's a bank there. Just wait. I'll be there in a few minutes … ”

“How did you know it was me?” he asked.

“We get about a call a year,” she answered and hung up.

They walked outside. Maybe five below zero, wind chill at 40 below. He was so-so. Thermal tights, thermal top, shirt, tweed sports coat, corduroy pants, down overcoat. But Malinche had
come “cute,” cute little black high-heeled boots, cute little suede skirt, black suede coat with a fake fur lining.

It had started to snow again and the wind whipped up the snow that was already on the ground, pelted them with it like it was frozen sand. Walked across the street. There was the bank. Now it was just a matter of waiting.

Malinche started to cry.

“It's so terrible. I think we're going to die. We're going to freeze to death. Or end up with p-neumonia and die that way.”

“You don't pronounce the ‘p,'” he corrected her, “it's NEW-MONIA … ”

She trilled out a sobbing, end-of-tether little cry and ran back across the street into the station, almost getting hit by this old lady with perfect marcelled hair and a rigid face that looked like it was carved out of ivory soap. The old lady braked and slid, stayed rigidly stopped, staring discompassionately at them as Buzz ran after Malinche, once they were inside the station put his arms around her, held her up against him.

She was his life, the companion of his old age. And she was right. What were they doing here this way anyhow; they could have just found some hotel around Midway and waited for the reunion, taken a taxi up to Howard Street instead of the “L.”

After they'd left the Art Institute after a desultory, disappointed walk through the Renaissance, they'd trudged around downtown looking for some sort of Emerald City magic that they'd never found, couldn't even get in to the food court area at Water Tower Place. It was as if the whole world had come to Chicago for magic and the sheer numbers of pilgrims had cancelled out the magic itself.

“Listen, you stay in here and I'll wait outside and then come back for you. Once we're in the car it's going to be OK. We won't have to go out in it again.”

“I miss …” her little suffering face filling up with hope again, some sort of ‘quest' for a lost scrap of Past that she could hang on to like a life raft, “I miss … I miss … ”

“What do you miss, baby?” Infinitely patient with her. She would be the woman at his deathbed. She would bury him and mourn his death and wear black and cut her hair and shut herself up in isolation and remember him forever.

“I miss … mangos,” she finally said.

“Mangos. Of course. Mangos.” Looking around. There was a kind of bazaarish convenience store just behind them. He took her by the arm, “Come on, come on,” walking inside, a Korean behind the counter. Wherever there were Koreans there were always mangos. Some fruit over to one side of the counter. And there they were, big juicy yellow mangos. One of his most dangerous allergies. The last time he was in Karachi he'd given into a mango urge and swelled all up, his whole face like that of a giant wart hog, had had to take all sorts of anti-allergy shots. And she'd warned him that it could kill him, his throat could/might swell up and he wouldn't be able to breathe.

Gingerly picked out half a dozen mangos and brought them over to the old man behind the counter.

Looked like his ex-father-in-law, Han Woon.