Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue (14 page)

"Because he's German. That's not a good enough reason for you?"

"No. It isn't. How could an SS colonel get in here? Is it even possible?"

"How? How? So there's no NCWC?"

"NCWC?"

"Aach. What are you asking for? You want to know.
Aach, tokhes oyfn tish."

There it was again. Ass on the table. "What does that mean, Nusan,
tokhes oyfn tish?"

"It means hurry up before the Mets lose without me."

Nusan would never admit it, but he was grateful for company. But he wanted to watch the Mets game alone, which to Nathan meant being spared nine innings in that apartment. He closed the door behind him, and before he had finished descending the stairwell he could hear the slow, soft moan of the first few bars of the Brahms First Cello Sonata and knew that Dwight Gooden was warmed up and ready to throw.

As he turned down the last set of cracked marble stairs, hand on the red banister, its ornate designs turned into shapeless blobs from more than a century of regular repainting, it occurred to Nathan that Nusan had left him with a free afternoon—and that he could, if he wanted to, call
her.

He walked out of the dark building to a blinding white heat and carefully approached a pay phone in a little metal box. Since most pay phones on Rivington Street had been beaten to death for their coins, it was not likely that this phone would work. That would be the test. If the phone worked, he would call her. The metal box was covered in the same indecipherable graffiti that marked Nusan's building. Someone had pasted a sticker on the black receiver handle that said, "Eat the Rich." He put the phone to his ear and heard a long steady tone.

At this same instant, Harry Seltzer was going home, looking forward to his air-conditioning, passing Mohammed's newsstand, singing, "We may never, never meet again, on the bumpy road to love." It felt good to dip down to a baritone voice for the word "love." Chow Mein Vega had insisted the song was Gershwin.

"No," Harry assured him with good-humored tolerance. "Irving Berlin."

"Gershwin," Chow Mein insisted.

"I'm sorry, Chucho, it happens to be Berlin."

Chow Mein shook his head with enough emphasis to wag his stumpy ponytail. "Gershwin, man. In fact, it's both Gershwins. Words by Ira. From a show called
Shall We Dance.
It was a movie with Fred As-taire." And Chow Mein started to float his tonnage across the sidewalk in surprisingly graceful Astaire-like steps.

"You better stick to boogaloo."

"How about some action, bro'? Loser buys
bacalao
lunch for two at Rosa's?"

They shook on it, but the lunch would never take place because Harry would never look it up, fearing that he might be wrong. He wanted to keep the song in his Berlin repertoire just for that dip. He did it again: "On the bumpy road to"—now the dip—"love."

What was that? He saw something. It was in Mohammed's window. Florence! Florence from Eleventh Street was on the cover of a magazine called
Big Black Booty.
Harry wondered what that meant, but the cover photo helped clarify. Florence was in a very small, very short red dress, and she was leaning over and looking back over her shoulder. Her booty, if that was the term, was exposed and impressive. He looked carefully at the face. It was Florence.

He stepped gingerly into the shop, hoping Mohammed would be busy, but he was waiting behind the counter with a toothsome smile. "Shalom, my friend!"

"Salaam," said Harry, trying to match Mohammed's cheerfulness.

Harry made his selection quickly:
The New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, Big Black Booty,
and the
Forward.
He placed them on the counter.

Mohammed offered him a bag, and Harry, a little too casually said, "No thanks, no.... Well, okay. Put them in a bag."

"Enjoy them, my friend," said Mohammed, and though Harry searched the notes of Mohammed's voice, he could not find the least shading of a connotation to the simple statement.

Harry never saw the pages displaying Florence's magnificent, dimpled, big black booty. He took the entire bag of magazines, contraband too hot to examine, immediately into his office room in their apartment and buried them in a file cabinet where he kept tax records. He could never remember exactly where. But he never forgot that it was in there somewhere and that someday a man from the IRS whose every feature, even his socks, would announce that he was "not from the neighborhood" would arrive for an audit and there, in between forms and receipts, Florence's glorious big black booty would flop across the table.

C
OME OVER
," she had said, "I'll showyou all my secrets."

There was something about Karoline's manner that made Nathan feel that she was toying with him, that everything she did was calculated to manipulate him for her amusement. It was a demeanor that promised abuse and disaster, and he was hurrying up Second Avenue toward it. Even in this heat he could have run. The thought of her gave him limitless energy.

"Viva la huelga,
Nathan," Arnie shouted cheerfully from his sidewalk perch. Arnie in his wool beret on a shadeless block of Avenue A was not noticing the heat this day Arnie never seemed affected by temperature, though his skin was starting to resemble the weathered bricks of tenement buildings.

Nathan realized that he was acting suspiciously. He slowed down and said hello to Arnie. Then he realized that to act normally, he would have to stroll over and chat.

Why? Acting suspiciously? Did he think this would end up in a court of law? He picked up his pace again and soon was at the Edelweiss. The shop entrance was on the Avenue A side, but the doorway for the building was conveniently around the corner on the quiet side street. He pressed the button. What should he say? "Hi, it's me," or "Hi, it's Nathan," or ... A loud buzz unlocked the door without the need to say anything. Inside, she was waiting at the top of the stairs barefoot, in a clean white apron, and—Nathan was quickly debating this in his mind—possibly wearing nothing else.

As though reading his thoughts, she said, "It's a hot day for baking," and she gave him a very light kiss on the cheek that seemed shy—almost embarrassed.

But surely her naked arms and legs and shoulders and back were a calculated effect. When a woman coifs for a man, no matter how casually she coifs, to the intended target she always looks coiffed—planned, calculated. Otherwise the effort has failed. Women know magic, and their willingness to use it excites. Was she barefoot by chance with perfectly painted toes? If her hair was falling down, why was only one beautiful dark strand draped over a bright blue eye? On the lower back was the beginning of a tattoo, as though to say "If you want to see the whole tattoo, you have to untie the apron." Did she know how the inelegant white muslin of her apron made her skin look that much softer and more elegant?

She knew. She knew. She knew exactly what he was aching to do as she led him into her apartment with seeming disinterest—and yet still with a touch of a shyness that he was sure was not intended.

Her apartment was one room, a large studio with a king-size bed in lacy linens on one side. On the other side was a kitchen: professional baker's ovens—five of them, long, deep, and wide and arranged floor to ceiling; a stainless-steel stove, gleaming and spotless; metal racks; a large mixing machine; crock canisters with whisks—some balloon shaped, some elongated. Other canisters had plastic scrapers and spatulas. A wall rack contained knives with gleaming blades. There was a large industrial refrigerator. And there were huge sacks of flour and sugar.

By her bed were five cardboard cases and a number of wooden boxes.

"It's the cool side of the room."

"What is?"

"Where the boxes are. It's wine. It all belongs to Joey Parma."

"Joey Parma the cop?"

She nodded her head in delight. "Look." She sat on the edge of the bed and started pulling bottles out of boxes. She held up a thick green bottle with a vanilla-colored label with maroon lettering—CHASSAGNE-MONTRACHET—and then a white-labeled Aloxe-Corton. "Prefer Bordeaux?" she asked, holding up a bottle with a yellow label that said
BOYD CANTENAC.
"Try a Margaux. Now let's see," she said, sifting through other boxes. "Now here's something," she announced, hoisting a long thin bottle. "From Erbach in the Rheingau. My father would kill for this wine. Oh, it's a Trockenbeerenauslese. My father would kill for much less than this." She looked up at Nathan with a pleasant smile.

Was she laughing at him? Teasing him? Could she see how much he wanted to have her on that bed at this very moment? "Why does Joey Parma keep his wine here?" asked Nathan, realizing that he might sound a bit jealous.

"You can keep your wine here, too, if you like."

How he would have enjoyed walking out on her at this moment, leaving her alone by the bed with Joey Parma's wine. But he knew he wouldn't do that. Worse, she knew he wouldn't.

"Joey Parma, like you," she said with a small but almost sad chuckle, "has a wife. And his wife would kill him if she knew what he spent on wine. So he keeps it here and comes over and fondles the bottles and every now and then takes one home for a special event, and the wife always agrees that it is a nice wine and has no idea how nice."

"And you make the pastry here?"

"No, my father makes it in the back downstairs. I just make special orders up here. Let's get started."

"Started?"

"I told you I was going to show you all my secrets. We'll start with a genoise. I love genoise because it seems rich and buttery and solid, but it's light as cotton. Everything is about paradoxes. That's what good baking is. Making paradoxes."

She put a pot of water on the stove to boil and then took a large tray of eggs from the refrigerator and with fluid and efficient motion, two eggs at a time, one in each hand, opened six eggs, cracking them on the side of a mixing bowl, dumping in the contents, and flipping the shells into a nearby trash barrel. "A little more than two-thirds cup," she said as she jammed a metal scoop in a bin of sugar and tossed some, unmeasured, into the bowl. She grabbed a wire whisk as she carried the bowl to the stove and beat the mixture over the boiling water. Nathan tried to get closer to her and widened his nostrils to detect her scent of butter, but butter was everywhere in the room—or was it she? As she pounded the metal of the bowl with the whisk wires in a circular manner, he watched her entire body moving—and longed for it. "Make it thick and creamy," she said, briefly looking up at him.

Then she put the mixture in an electric mixing bowl at high speed and busied herself brushing butter in cake molds and dusting them with flour, taking out utensils and ingredients like a nurse preparing an operating theater. "You have to be ready, because there is no time to waste," she nearly whispered as she lowered the speed in the mixer. Finally, the mixture was a pastel yellow and had quadrupled in volume.

"Now," she announced in a low and hungry voice. "Now we fold." She sifted a light layer of flour onto the mixture by barely tapping the sifting hoop three times. "Folding is everything. If you don't have the hands for folding, you can't do anything. You are not mixing, not stirring. You caress the mixture with the spatula." She held his hand in hers and rubbed the palm gently and then placed a rubber spatula in it. "I'll show you," she said as she guided his hand. "Gently," she whispered. "Oh, that's nice. Mmm. You have to get rid of all the pockets of flour, but don't let the air out. Yes ... that's good. Turn the bowl slowly You keep doing the same slow motion with your right hand and you slowly turn the bowl with your left.

"Now," she ordered as she brought over a pot of melted butter, "I'll pour and you fold."

It was true. Nathan was astounded to realize that as she poured the cooled liquid butter, it released the same perfume that came off her warm body, slightly moistened by sweat in the hot afternoon. Her skin shone as though it were buttered. His hands trying not to tremble, he gently folded as she poured. She carefully emptied the light, fluffy mixture into cake molds and slid them in an oven.

"Now," she said, and she untied her apron and dropped it to the ground. It was true. She was naked. She had coiffed.

Nathan caressed her breasts, gently, like folding a woman's genoise batter. Then they went to the bed and fell on each other hungrily—for precisely thirty minutes.

"Cake's ready," she announced, and jumped out of bed, went to the sink and washed, put on her apron, and handed another to the now naked Nathan. She pulled out a cake, put it on the counter, and put her ear next to it. "Come here," she said, and Nathan, still recovering from the last exactly thirty minutes, staggered over. "Listen," she said, holding her ear close to the cake and tapping it. "Hear that?"

Nathan brought his ear close and heard a slight rustling, almost hissing noise as she tapped the cake.

"It's perfect," she said. "Next we are making a
dobos torta.
Hungarian. Hungarian is the best. My father doesn't admit this, but it's true. In 1962 they celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of Dobos's invention of the cake. My father doesn't like this story because they were Communist. He thinks people only suffer under Communism. But in 1962 they made a
dobos torta
that was six feet in diameter. Hungarians attach a lot of importance to size. But this one that we are making is twelve inches, which is a profitable-size cake. Smaller—too much labor per slice. Larger—too hard to cut a reasonable serving."

As she leaned over, working, Nathan looked at her moist and shining back. Above the apron string was the beginning of the tattoo. He had seen the rest now. It was a spoon with something dripping out of it arching gracefully down one buttock. When had she gotten that? Why?

"Hungarians make nine or sixteen of these for layers. They also do a slightly different cake, folding the beaten whites into the beaten yolks, but this is better. I take these four and split them in fourths." She began sawing a thin layer off the first cake. "And I'll have sixteen.

"We have to start on the buttercream," she declared while crumbling chocolate in a double boiler.

Had he not been entangled in this woman's body three minutes ago in the most impassioned embrace of his life? Nathan wondered. Is she just playing with me? And what have I done? Betrayed Sonia and Sarah for—for a twelve-inch
dobos torta?
Why?

"The chocolate buttercream. That's what you do it for," Karoline said in wild-eyed excitement. "The whole cake is just an excuse to eat chocolate buttercream." She was boiling sugar and water. "You can test this with a sugar thermometer. But there is a better way." She poured a glass of cold water from the faucet and with a wooden spoon deposited one drop of syrup in the water. Then she reached in with her fingers. Taking her free hand, she pushed aside Nathan's apron, exposing his chest, and pressed on him the small, gummy clear drop of sugar she had rolled in her wet fingers. It fell off and she kissed the spot on his chest. "If it stuck, the sugar hadn't been heated enough. It can't be sticky when it cools." She turned to the electric mixer, where egg yolks were being slowly beaten. Nathan was rubbing his chest and looking at her, looking troubled. "The kiss was free," she said. "Not part of the test."

"The test."

"For the sugar," she asserted, slowly adding the syrup to the eggs. Then she added little cubes of butter. Why did the butter always excite him? He knew what would be next. He put his arms around her, but she pushed them off. "Not yet. It's not chocolate yet." She started to add the melted chocolate. By the time the buttercream was chocolate, Nathan was struggling to resist the temptation to pounce on her like a famished predator. He didn't care about the
dobos torta.
But she did.

"Now, let's see about your hands," she said, going to the refrigerator and taking out a mixing bowl filled with white, fluffy, unbaked meringue. "Fold this into the buttercream. Very gently With nice hands."

He obeyed, and after she built the
torta
into thin, alternating layers of cake and buttercream and put it in the refrigerator to set, he used his now well-trained hands on her.

They were outlaws, outside the law, far beyond the rules, so they were free to do anything. She entered him with her fingers. He spanked her with a rubber spatula, which made her squeal in delight. She decorated between his legs, applying French meringue with a pastry tube until he had a huge baroque ornament of white swirls and little stars. Then she licked it like an ice-cream cone.

"I'll show you what I like," Nathan said, taking another pastry bag, filling it with chocolate buttercream, placing swirls around her breasts, decorating the nipples with little stars the way she had shown him to do, giving the bag a little twist before lifting up. And then he feasted.

She rolled over resplendently across the bed, and, eyeing her tattoo, he started at the spoon and followed the drip with his tongue across her buttock. It had already become a favorite route.

"You like my tattoo," he heard her say from the other end of the bed.

"Yes," he answered obediently Yes, he did. Nothing mattered anymore. She had made him like her tattoo. A victory for her—defeat for him. He loved the way she defeated him. He could feel it pulling him deeper into a desire that offered the ultimate pleasure—complete and total destruction. He was not even disturbed by these thoughts. He was excited by them.

Then she showed him how to make the caramel wedge and pipe buttercream with the pastry bag—with which he had already had sufficient practice to finish the cake, making neat rows on the top so the caramel wedges could be placed at jaunty angles, making the top of the cake look like a broken plane of some cubist portrait.

When it was finished—tall cylinder in a purple tan chocolate with amber wedges of tilted carmel crowning the top—they briefly admired it.

"Wait one minute," she said, and slipped it into the refrigerator. Then they went back to the bed. Nathan was amazed. She had turned him into some extraordinary male force, tireless, athletic, insatiable. And then they collapsed.

He looked at his watch: 8:10. He jumped out of bed.

"Wife and child waiting?" she jabbed.

He was ashamed. But it was an inescapable truth.

"Not so fast," she said as he struggled to slip on his clothes. "Sit over there." She pointed to a chair by a table. He sat there, and she carefully cut a wedge of
dobos torta.
It was striped—thin stripes of yellow cake alternating with taupe-colored buttercream, the airy, textured cake suspended in layers of dense buttercream, the caramel sharp, sweet, and crunchy. Just when he thought his senses had been exhausted.