Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue (21 page)

"It's about ninety degrees. You're going to suffocate under these blankets."

"There's bombs everywhere. I had to take cover."

"Why don't you come up to our roof? My family is having a party. They do it every year. Get something to eat. Get off the street."

"No thanks, man. The street's my home."

"Just a couple of hours."

But Arnie wouldn't come. He wished Nathan a
"Viva la huelga"
and withdrew his head, turtlelike, under the blanket.

"Say, Arnie ..." He could try, Arnie always knew everything. "Arnie, how did the Mets do?"

From under the blanket, in muffled tones, came, "Cincinnati killed them. Five-nothing. Cone fucked up."

"Did Strawberry get a hit?" The smirking, lanky Darryl Strawberry was something special to Nusan. To Nusan everything was written, life was
beshirt.
But the long-legged Strawberry sauntering up to the plate, giraffelike, always filled Nusan with the exciting idea that anything might happen. Strawberry at bat was the only time Nusan felt that way

"Strawberry struck out with runners on base."

"Thanks, Arnie!" said Nathan, handing Arnie a $5 bill.

"Viva la huelga,"
said the bereted tortoise head as it shrank back into its woolen shell. And Nathan strode with confidence toward his building, prepared to talk about the game. He had completely forgotten that no one in his family ever talked baseball.

As Nathan hurried home, he suddenly caught up with his father, doing the same thing.

"Hi, Dad, I'm on my way from Nusan's," he said quickly, and then realized that he was coming from the opposite direction. But fortunately Harry didn't seem to notice. Harry said, "I'm coming from Avenue D," and Nathan did not think about the fact that Avenue D was to the east and he was coming from the west.

"Yes, I'm just getting back from Avenue D."

"Yes, I'm just getting back from Nusan's."

"Yes, good, good."

Nathan did think it was odd that his father didn't ask how Nusan was. Should he volunteer the Mets score? Probably not. Wait until someone asks. But maybe nobody would. And it was such a nice detail.

Down Avenue A came Mordy in slow four-four, his untied shoelaces clicking, his arm around Rosita, who came up to his ribs— Rosita in her purple dress moving down the street, her body flowing like waves rolling and disappearing on the ocean's surface. The two walking arm in arm was a dramatization of Chow Mein Vega's theory of ethnic walking rhythms. It was impossible for them to walk together. Mordy's four-four was slower than the usual Jewish step, though his long legs covered the distance just as quickly. Rosita, next to him in a bouncy three-beat, had twice the movement but could not keep up. Anyone with a sense of rhythm could see that these two were not going to make a couple.

"Excuse me," said an elderly man hurrying in the opposite direction with a plastic bag heavy with groceries. "Excuse me." He had to say it several times to get Mordy's attention. "Excuse me, but your shoelaces are untied."

Mordy smiled, nodded, kept walking, and saw Nathan and Harry in front of him stepping so quickly that they seemed to be racing each other. But Mordy with his long stride caught up to Nathan, which allowed Harry to take the lead.

"Mordy," said Nathan, "you are upsetting people again."

"Rosita? It's good the way she upsets people. Oh, you mean she's not Jewish."

"You know it upsets them."

"Jewish, not Jewish, different names, different ages. All arbitrary designations to try to show that we are all different, but in reality we are all identical. It's like deer. Could you tell one white-tail deer from another? A white-tail deer could not tell one person from another. Do you think a white-tail deer could tell the difference between Mom, Rosita, and Birdie Nagel?"

Mordy had always been like this, and no one ever tried to argue with him. When they were boys, they once decided to cross the Second Avenue subway tracks, and the older Nathan had cautioned Mordy not to step on the third rail. Mordy had said, "Who's to say which is the third rail? It depends where you start counting. One man's third rail is another man's first rail." Nathan had not known how to answer, and he always dated his policy of not arguing with Mordy to that statement.

By the time he and Mordy and Rosita got to the roof, Harry was already installed in his green canvas director's chair, carefully positioned away from the East River side. Ruth managed to separate Mordy from Rosita for long enough to ask, "Where's Naomi?"

"Anything for a Jew," said Mordy, laughing, "Sthe musth have been detainth." Then, as an afterthought, "By a bookseller she's going out with on Avenue B."

He walked Rosita away from Ruth. Rosita looked up at him. "Can I ask you something?"

"Anything," Mordy said expansively "What would you like to know about me?"

"Why don't you tie your shoes?"

"Why should I?" said Mordy, as though he had hatched a great and liberating idea.

"So you don't trip and fall."

Mordy smiled.
"Escuchas,
Rosita." He trilled the
R
so long and loudly that Rosita thought he might be laughing at her name. "There are two great lies in this world that are always told to try to control people. The first is that you will trip and fall if you don't tie your shoelaces. I haven't tied mine in more than twenty years and I have never fallen."

"And the second?"

"The second?"

"You said there were two great lies."

"Oh yes.... That you can get ahead by hard work."

Rosita shyly covered her mouth and began laughing. She put her arm around Mordy's waist and began swaying happily to salsa music that was rising up to the roof from a distant window.

The Seltzers' July Fourth roof party had always been catered by Schneider's, whose specialty was a kosher Hawaiian luau. Schneider served everything, including the barbecued lamb, which he somehow displayed to look like a pig—albeit one without the unkosher hindquarters, and of course there could be no head to put the apple in—and he was on hand to personally flame the pineapple dessert, which was always lit just before the fireworks began.

But two years ago, Schneider too moved to Florida—did they all see one another down there? Would the whole neighborhood be waiting for him one day? Harry often wondered.

Last year, they got grilled chickens from Bob's Greasy Hands, and Birdie Nagel became terribly upset. This year, the new sushi maker on the ground floor had provided the food. His name sounded like Kamizaki to everyone else, though Harry insisted it was Mr. Kamikazi. It must not have been very close to either one, because he did not respond when these names were used. He had set up a table with little fingers of rice covered with perfectly manicured strips of raw fish—rose-colored tuna, orange salmon, golden eel, sparkling salmon eggs piled up like jewels—all fanned out like the speckled wings of a butterfly

"Fantastic," said the young man who had just moved into 3E with his English spaniel and, thus far, had been seen wearing only seersucker suits.
"Unagi
I love
unagi."

"It took forever to put things away on Avenue D," Harry explained repeatedly to Ruth, though no one had asked him why he was late.

"Yes," agreed Nathan, the only one listening. "And the Mets game seemed to last forever." He was just daring someone to ask him the final score, but nobody did.

Ruth was not listening. She was watching her husband and both her sons, all three staring at the two shiny purple parts of Rosita's lower half swaying at the edge of the roof as she listened to music from below. Ruth was smiling. Sonia, who saw the same thing, was not.

"He's really very attractive," declared Mrs. Kleinman, startling Nathan.

"Who is that?"

"The Japanese gentleman who did all this lovely food." Mrs. Klein-man was wearing a red sundress that left her muscular back exposed. She stared with hatred at the purple-dressed Rosita, who did not need a bare back, then waved flirtatiously at the Japanese man, who was explaining to Harry that he had to leave and hoped they enjoyed the food. "Mr. Kamizaki," Mrs. Kleinman shouted, realizing that he was leaving. But he did not seem to hear her. "Mr. Kamikazi?" He opened the door and left the roof. Helplessly she turned back to Nathan. "Well, very attractive anyway." She tried to flare the skirt of her red sundress and move a little like Rosita. "I like the Fourth of July There isn't any mail today, is there?"

"No. No mail. National holiday."

"Probably tomorrow our boxes will be stuffed."

"I hate this day," Birdie Nagel volunteered. "Do you know why?"

Nathan could imagine.

"Birds have very good hearing. Better than ours. It's a higher frequency Do you know what that means?"

"More sound units per second," said Mordy.

"Yes," said Birdie Nagel, looking frightened at Mordy. "I was talking to Nathan. Nathan, did you know with all these firecrackers and bombs and everything in the sky, it's terrible for the birds. They have to migrate to Staten Island."

"That
is
terrible," said Nathan. "So then is Staten Island covered with birds today?"

"Yes, and Hoboken."

"Don't they have fireworks in Staten Island and Hoboken?"

"You know, that is a very good point. I just don't know. But I will find out."

"This is the best
ikura,"
said the new tenant, who was eating more sushi than anyone else in the building. "But the
unagi
is unbelievable. Has his place been reviewed?"

"I don't know," said Harry "I was late from Avenue D and I just got here. What is
unagi?"

"Eel."

"Eel! Where?"

"These over here."

"Isn't that something," said Harry. "Here he knew we were Jewish and he gives us eel. And that's not anti-Semitic?"

The new tenant did not understand.

"Eel, it doesn't have scales. Jews don't eat it," said Nathan, trying to be helpful.

"Actually," said Mordy who had been stroking Rosita's dress hungrily by the edge of the roof and giving no indication of listening, "it's all a complete misunderstanding. Eels have lots of scales. Their natural defense system is to be slippery, so they are covered with a slime and their scales are embedded in the skin. But unlike the
uni,
which has spines, eels have scales. And they are not full of industrialized crap like the
sake,
which is farmed salmon; they are not high on the food chain and loaded with heavy metals like the
toro,
which is tuna. So in fact, Jews who know their stuff"—he reached to the table and theatrically picked up an
unagi
and popped it in his mouth—"can eat eel."

Rosita, Birdie Nagel, Mrs. Kleinman, the new tenant, Sonia, and even Sarah looked at Mordy with wonder.

"Boyoboy," said Ruth with a proud smile, looking at Rosita,
"der yingl
is a lot more than a hunk
of fleysch mit oygn."

Rosita looked at her quizzically, and Mordy, as he led her away to a different corner of the roof, explained, "I'm not just a piece of meat with eyes. Reassuring, really."

"That's what your mother calls you?"

"It's hard to translate."

"After all," Harry said to Ruth, "it's a Jewish neighborhood. It wouldn't kill him to serve a little cream cheese with the fish."

Sarah found Nathan in a dark corner by himself. "Daddy?"

"Yes?" said Nathan, his face brightening quickly

"What's a baketion?"

"What?"

"A bacation."

"A vacation is when you stop working or whatever you are doing and go away for a week."

"Why don't we have vacations?"

"I don't know. Not everybody takes them. When you work for someone they are supposed to give you a vacation."

"Do you give Pepe Le Moko a vacation?"

"No. It's just when you go away for a while."

"Like Mr. Apple?" Mr. Apple was an elderly tenant who had died.

"No, Mr. Apple is not on vacation."

"He went away."

"But he's not coming back."

"I know Because he's dead."

"Yes," Nathan said uncertainly. "That's right."

"I know where you go when you die."

"Really?"

"Florida."

"Well, you could go to Florida on vacation."

"No, because the people who go to Florida never come back."

"Do you need a vacation?"

Sarah nodded her head yes, and Nathan smiled and held her close to him and felt her small arms hold him with surprising strength. Then she went off to see her grandfather.

Ruth, finding Nathan alone in the dark, said to him, "Are you all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine. I was at Uncle Nusan's."

"Yes, I know"

"Let me ask you something." Nathan hesitated. "Do you think I am passive-aggressive?"

"What? What does that mean?"

"It means that I don't confront people when I am angry with them but then find little ways, maybe subconscious ways, to get back."

"Oh boy! Who have you been talking to?"

"No one, I just wondered."

"I'll have to think about it." Ruth announced that everyone should eat up because she was bringing up a special dessert before the fireworks. The family braced themselves for apple strudel. Nathan took Soma's hand and smiled at her sadly. Sonia looked down at her hand in his and then studied his sad face and said, "You lost your bracelet."

"My bracelet?"

"The beads."

Suddenly, panic—not at all the kind of panic the beads were designed to protect against, but the panic of having stepped into a fatal trap—overtook him. Had he left them at Karoline's?

Ruth went down the stairs to her apartment on the top floor. But when she opened the door to her apartment and turned on the lights, she saw Mordy with his pants to his ankles and his hands far up Rosita's purple dress. Ruth shrieked involuntarily.

"Well," said Mordy, "better a Jew with no pants than pants with no Jew."

Back on the roof, Nathan, who had already explained to Sonia how the string had broken and he had lost his beads, reached into his pocket and felt the bracelet and in his surprise pulled it out to examine.