Blind Date (14 page)

The driver shook his head. “This one was not like other kids,” he said. “I saw him. He was crazy. No doubt about it.”

“As I remember him,” Levanter said, “the kid was quite normal.”

For a few moments the driver was silent, concentrating on the traffic, and Levanter thought he had dropped the subject.

“Believe me, he was crazy,” said the driver as he pulled up at Levanter's destination. “But that's almost thirty years ago. You couldn't have been more than a kid yourself,” he continued, taking another look at Levanter.

“Perhaps I was too young to know this kid when you knew him,” said Levanter as he paid the fare. “But when we got older, I came to know him better. He was no crazier than you or I.”

“What do you mean?” asked the driver.

“That story's for another ride,” said Levanter, leaving the cab.

Levanter often reflected that his European upbringing was probably responsible for his tendency to pay far more attention to forms, questionnaires, letterheads, and rubber stamps than most native-born Americans. And he never sent an envelope without extra touches — self-adhesive mail stickers:
FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY, RUSH, HANDLE WITH CARE, UNCLASSIFIED, SPECIAL ATTENTION
— which he knew would attract attention and distinguish his letters from all other mail. An American business friend told him that any time one of Levanter's envelopes arrived, his secretary was certain that the letter should not wait a minute longer and delivered it to her boss immediately, even if it meant dispatching it to his home by messenger.

One day Levanter ran into one of his current correspondents, a friend who had spent the summer at his family's home in the South.
He seemed a bit uneasy when he saw Levanter but agreed to join him for a drink.

“I keep marveling at the care you give your mail,” he said after a moment. “Your letters really create a great stir.”

Levanter looked at him quizzically.

His friend went on. “All those colorful labels stuck on each envelope,” he said. “Even the mailman was intimidated. A couple of times he made separate trips to bring your letters, as if they were special delivery, even though all the stickers said was
EXPEDITE
or
VERY URGENT or CONFIDENTIAL.”

Levanter felt like a prankster praised for playing a practical joke on a superior.

“But some of your letters — I mean stickers — caused a major event in my family,” the man murmured.

“An event?”

“That's all I can call it. You see, one of my sisters has been an epileptic since childhood,” he said. “She's in her forties now. Because of her illness, she never married and never worked away from the house. We all, the whole family, have always taken care of her.”

Levanter squirmed.

“She's the one who collects the mail every day,” the friend went on. “A few months ago, she picked up your letter with a sticker proclaiming
EPILEPSY — UNDERSTANDING IS HALF THE TREATMENT
. She disregarded it at first, she said, but your next letter arrived with another slogan:
HELP EPILEPTICS LIVE AND WORK IN DIGNITY.”

Embarrassed, Levanter listened in silence.

“Where do you get such stickers and stamps?” his friend asked.

“I got those from a foundation that I occasionally contribute to,” said Levanter lamely.

“I see,” the man said. “In any case, by then my sister was convinced that I had put you up to sticking all those messages on your mail to prod her into getting a job. When a letter arrived with
EMPLOY EPILEPTICS
, she ran away from home, leaving a note that she had taken the hint and did not want to be a burden to the
family anymore. It took us and the authorities several weeks to trace her. We found her in pretty bad shape, but she's back home now.”

“It never occurred to me—” Levanter stammered.

The other man shook his head. “It had never occurred to us either that she was so sensitive about her condition. No film or TV play about epileptics had ever upset her; she never took them personally. Yet she really took off over that
EMPLOY EPILEPTICS
sticker. Amazing what the printed word can do!”

Like many other Europeans living in America, Levanter was awed by the effect the size of the country and its large population could have on one's sense of freedom and enterprise.

An acquaintance of his, an elderly man from Belgrade who had settled in Minneapolis, was full of stories about émigré investors.

“For instance, take this fellow from Galicia,” he said to Levanter one day. “Came to this country a poor immigrant. No English, no profession to speak of, no relatives. Works nights sweeping floors, and learns the language by day.

“One day, just for fun, he places an ad in two newspapers, one on the West Coast and one in the East:
TICKLE HER FANCY — THREE ORIGINAL TICKLERS FOR A DOLLAR ONLY.
He lists a post-office box. If he gets any answers, he figures he'll send every customer three ordinary goose feathers for their buck. After all, where he comes from men have other things to worry about than tickling the fancy of their women.

“In a few days, the post office calls him to say he has received several thousand letters. He picks up his mail and starts opening the letters. Out pour orders from all over the country. Some with one dollar, some with several dollars. Before he knows it, he is investing in the mail-order business. He buys thousands of goose feathers, envelopes, and postal stamps, hires three sweet young things to help him fill the orders. He places more newspaper ads in papers throughout the nation, hires more employees.

“In the first few weeks he makes over sixty thousand dollars. But this is a large country, and a lot of people are willing to part with a
mere dollar to tickle the fancy, or whatever else is ticklish, of their beloved. The orders keep coming. Today that guy is a millionaire. Over the mantelpiece in his Malibu Beach house hangs a plaque — a solid-gold relief of three goose feathers!”

After a few glasses of wine, the man admitted to Levanter that he had been forced to leave Yugoslavia when the whole capital seemed to know of his eccentric sexual proclivity. “How many people like me are there in the world?” he asked.

Levanter shrugged.

The man answered himself. “A fraction of a fraction of one percent,” he said. “In a small country like Yugoslavia, that's no more than a dozen people at most. They hide like animals, even from each other. But in America, a country of two hundred twenty million,” he continued, “a fraction of a fraction of one percent runs into tens of thousands. Here, people with my preference, like people with various political views, are free to advertise, to communicate with each other, and even to congregate in public places. When I learned about it, I felt like a left-handed person discovering a whole town of left-handers.”

He reached into his desk drawer and brought out a thick book.

“Our most recent directory,” he said, handing it to Levanter. “It lists thousands of people who like the same thing I like: names and professions, addresses, telephone numbers, even photographs of some of them. In fact, it seems that in America there are more men and women with my taste than there are inhabitants in the whole city of Belgrade. Imagine that! There I was a freak. Here I am one of the multitude. Nothing to be ashamed of anymore.”

A few years after Levanter's arrival in America, a New York-based booking agent for conventions mentioned that he had just arranged a three-day meeting of the newly formed Alliance of Small Americans. Like the better-known Little People of America, it was an
organization made up of unusually short men and women, both midgets and dwarfs.

Small Americans, the agent said, tried to avoid convening in big cities. In subways and buses, their faces were pushed into other people's thighs, bellies, and bottoms. Most public telephones were hung too high for them to reach. In general, dwarfs or midgets in trouble were afraid to ask for help, because most people of average height assumed they were also mentally handicapped. It was not uncommon for little people to be sexually abused and molested by those who saw them as mere children, though they were endowed with the minds and appetites of adults.

The meeting had been booked in the Midwest, in a place called Impton. The agent told Levanter that when he went there to inspect the facilities and to reserve rooms in hotels and motels for the conventioneers, none of the managers had ever heard of the Alliance of Small Americans. Thus, when he requested only hand-held microphones for the assemblies and asked for the lowest tables and chairs, the managers assumed that Small Americans were Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. The agent laughed as he told Levanter that he had done nothing to disabuse them.

“I'd like to be there in Impton,” he said chuckling, “to see all their faces when these assorted dwarfs and midgets start descending upon them.”

Curious about how such things went in his adopted country, Levanter landed at the airport that serviced Impton and two other neighboring townships, rented a car, and drove to the center of town. He went straight to the Taft, the largest hotel, which advertised itself as “unconventionally superconventional,” and took a room.

The desk clerk handed him a guest registration card. Levanter looked up at the huge banner suspended from the ceiling:
THE TAFT WELCOMES ALLIANCE OF SMALL AMERICANS: THE SCOUTS OF TODAY, THE LEADERS OF TOMORROW.

“Who are these Small Americans?” Levanter asked the clerk while filling in the card.

“Just boys and girls from all over the country. A Scouts' convention, you know,” said the clerk.

“How many are coming?”

“A few hundred. Some might arrive tonight, the rest tomorrow.” He glanced at Levanter inquisitively. “You here on business?”

Levanter smiled. “Looking for business.”

“It's all the same, isn't it?” The man returned the smile.

After dinner at the hotel, Levanter strolled over to the registration desk and leaned against the far end. A number of people were milling about the lobby: a couple with five children waiting for their luggage so they could depart, two businessmen who had just arrived, and several elderly men and women of the sort always found in the lobbies of respectable hotels, sitting, drowsing, reading, or just idly watching each other and the people who pass through.

Suddenly, a tiny man came through the revolving door. He was less than three feet tall, fat and pursy, his head nearly as big as his torso, his arms so short that the wrists seemed to grow out of his elbows. He approached the desk and, in a squeaky voice, asked the clerk to send a bellhop out to collect the luggage he had left outside with his wife. He then reached up, took a registration card, and, using his knee for support, began filling it in, writing with his left hand.

“Did you see what I just saw?” the clerk whispered to Levanter when the short man walked away.

“It's a big country,” said Levanter. “A lot of left-handed people.”

The clerk looked puzzled. “Left-handed? A lefty is one thing, a freak is another. Why, this fellow is shorter than my six-year-old kid.”

“Will your kid grow any taller?” asked Levanter.

“That isn't funny, Mister,” said the clerk.

Just then the little man returned, accompanied by a fat woman, an inch or two taller than he. She had a round face, double chin, full bosom, and plump thighs bulging out of tight shorts.

Everyone in the room stared at the newcomers. The departing family clustered together, the five kids peeking out from behind their parents, mocking the waddle of the little couple. A few senior citizens who had dozed off in easy chairs woke up and, adjusting their glasses, blinked at the spectacle. The two businessmen stood dumfounded, dangling their room keys.

The couple went up to the desk. Standing on tiptoe, they called out their names and asked for their room. The man said the reservations for the conventioneers had been made for the whole group, but he and his wife had arrived early.

“What convention?” asked the clerk.

The little man proudly pointed to the identification tag on his lapel. “Small Americans! What else?” he said.

“Are your kids the delegates?” the clerk asked.

“We don't have any children,” said the woman.

“We are the delegates,” the man said emphatically.

The clerk glanced toward the cashier at the other end of the desk. But she deliberately looked in the other direction.

“So you are!” the clerk said at last. “It just didn't click right away that some grownups would be accompanying the kids,” he said cheerfully.

“Not ‘grownups'!” the small man corrected him with a smile. “Adults!”

“I didn't mean it that way! Adults, of course!” Sheepishly the clerk handed the room key to the bellhop.

The little couple went to the elevator, followed by the bellhop, who could not restrain his snickering.

Levanter was still standing next to the desk.

“In this line of work you have to expect anything,” said the clerk, rubbing his forehead. “How was I to know that these two worked with the Scouts? Adults, indeed!” he chortled.

“It's a big country!” Levanter said once more.

The clerk had just settled down behind his desk when the revolving door spun around again. Three little women and four tiny men
came through and advanced toward the desk. The clerk, engrossed in his work, did not see them.

“You have some more guests,” said Levanter.

The clerk stood up. When he saw the group, an expression of utter disbelief crossed his face. Open-mouthed, the cashier stared at the midgets. Everyone in the lobby turned toward the registration desk.

The new arrivals were barely as tall as the desk. All wore convention identification tags.

“Are you all delegates to the Scout convention?” the desk clerk asked, nodding toward the banner over the entrance.