Max (23 page)

Marcus's hall had an upstairs and a downstairs, an arrangement which the Levine side of the family accepted with resigned distaste. The rabbi was Orthodox, provided by Max to please his mother. The sixty guests sat on folding chairs with an aisle separating Levine and Britsky. The bride and groom – Sally lovely in white organdy and lace, Max in a tuxedo, this one purchased – standing under a canopy, the rabbi intoning, ‘
Ha'ray att M'ku' deshet lee' b' ta' ba' at zu k' dat moshe v' ysrael,
' and Max wondering how, in his search for proper moving picture places, he could have missed Marcus's place, and calculating precisely how much he would offer Marcus. A few minutes later, Sally was his wife; he had crushed a glass underfoot, according to the Jewish custom, and he had placed a ring on her finger; then he had kissed the bride. As everyone crowded around to join in the congratulations, Max tried to create in his mind an erotic picture of taking his virgin bride to bed that night. But he had never gone to bed with a virgin, and the prospect was somehow more dismaying than erotic.

The wedding ceremony had taken place upstairs. The tables were set downstairs, a half-circle around a dance floor and a four-piece jazz band. As Max led Sally downstairs, they looked at each other with the sudden alarm of two. people who, having known each other a long time, unexpectedly find themselves strangers.

Boss Murphy, chief of Tammany Hall, prince and feudal lord of the city of New York, sipped champagne and watched Max and Sally dance a waltz, alone on the floor for this first dance, and he said to Alderman Sweeney, ‘There, Timothy, is one of the most remarkable men in this city.'

‘The skinny little Jew?'

‘That skinny little Jew, Timothy, has more brains and guts in his little finger than you got in all three hundred pounds of you.'

‘You're joshing me.'

Murphy smiled and patted Sweeney's huge hand. ‘Indeed I am, Timothy. Indeed I am.'

At the Britsky table, watching her son dance, Sarah said to Freida, ‘Who has such a beautiful son like I have? Didn't I say so, from the day he was born?' Then, dropping her voice to a whisper, ‘The girl Ruby brought, she's Jewish?'

‘I don't know, Mama.'

‘She don't look Jewish. He should just marry one of them, I'll jump out of the window.'

The girl Ruby brought was Kathy Sullivan, whose father was a gripper man on the Broadway cablecar line. She watched Max and Sally dance, thinking to herself that she had become involved with the wrong Britsky. She was a pretty girl with jet black hair, bright blue eyes, and a rosebud complexion. She caught Max's eye as he danced and smiled at him, and he acknowledged the smile and returned it.

‘How old is your brother?' she asked Ruby.

‘Twenty-three.'

Nothing lost, she thought. There were many, many years ahead.

Benny was not totally without talent. In the eighth grade at school, one of his teachers had discovered in Benny a gift for drawing, and suddenly Benny found himself able to do something people admired. Now he was drawing Boss Murphy's face on the tablecloth when Sarah reached over and slapped his face. ‘What are you, a hoodlum, making pictures on the tablecloth?'

Alderman Sweeney stared unenthusiastically at a plate of stuffed derma and stuffed cabbage that had been placed in front of him.

‘What is it?' his wife wondered.

‘Kishke,' Bert Bellamy told her. She was a very attractive, red-haired woman, almost two hundred pounds lighter than her husband and at least fifteen years younger. Seated next to Bert, she had assured him with a gentle pressure of her knee that she was not averse to a further acquaintance if it could be managed. ‘That's what they call it. It's really very good, beef intestines stuffed with a mixture of flour and fat, much better than it sounds. And the cabbage is stuffed with meat and raisins – very good.'

‘How do you know so much about Jewish food?'

‘Ah, Max and me, we been together since we were kids.'

‘And how old are you at this minute?'

‘About as old as you, Mrs Sweeney.'

‘Go on with you! I'm old enough to be your mother,' smiling at him and increasing the pressure of her knee.

The Levines took a dim view of the Britsky tables. They watched Bert dance with the flamboyantly red-headed Mrs Sweeney, and they watched Max's sister Freida dance with Boss Murphy, whom they did not recognise. Told that he was
the
Boss Murphy, they were not impressed. They were readers of
Harper's
magazine and looked upon Tammany as a consortium of thieves and murderers. The strange combination of vulgarity and miscegenation at the Britsky tables puzzled and disturbed them. Introduced to the enormous bulk of Alderman Sweeney, who regarded whatever moved and breathed as both a voter and a constituent, they were at a loss at how to receive his warmth and praise of their daughter, coming from one whom their favorite newspaper regarded as a thief and swindler without peer. They were equally at a loss as they watched Kathy Sullivan, high on champagne, embrace Max and kiss him somewhat more fervently than the occasion demanded.

‘I don't like them,' Lillian Levine whispered to her husband. ‘That Sarah Britsky is one of the most dreadful women I have ever met, and look at the people they invited – Boss Murphy, Alderman Sweeney, and that man, Clancy, we were introduced to. He's a policeman, isn't he, and he doesn't even look human. What has happened to my poor daughter?'

Her husband comforted her as best he could. Max tried to get Mrs Levine to dance with him, but she protested that she was too old to dance. Then Sarah Britsky tried to get both of the Levines to join in an old-fashioned folk dance that was practically
de rigueur
at a Jewish wedding. Mrs Levine fled into the bathroom, where she burst into tears, but her husband joined in the dance and so did the Irish contingent, who found the dance almost identical to an old Irish folk dance. Sally left Max whirling with the dancers and followed her mother into the bathroom.

‘I'm heartbroken,' Mrs Levine said through her tears. ‘What kind of people are they?'

‘Don't cry, Mama,' Sally begged her. ‘They're plain people. It's a wonder that Max and his brothers grew up at all. That's the miracle of it. His mother is terrible, but I suppose her life has been terrible.'

‘And you're going to live in a house next to that woman.'

‘I'll manage, Mama. Please, don't cry about it.

At home that evening, Max and Sally sat in the bedroom of their brownstone, their bags packed and ready for their honeymoon at Niagara Falls. Exhausted, filled with an uneasy mixture of champagne, wine, and rye whiskey, more than a little drunk, smelling of booze and cigar smoke, Max stared at Sally and tried to contemplate an action as new to him as it would be to Sally, the deflowering of a virgin lady.

And facing him, sitting on the edge of the bed that she had chosen with such delight in its four posts and flounced top, Sally's wan face stared out of a pile of crumpled organdy. What am I doing here? she asked herself, and, How can I face this? I'm supposed to have sexual intercourse now with this man who is my husband. How did it happen? I think I will die if he tries to make love to me, but why do I feel this way? There were times when I almost loved him, but then it wasn't for the rest of my life. Now it is for the rest of my life, and what will we talk about, what will we say to each other? And what do I do now? Do I undress? Why doesn't he do something, anything, instead of sitting there like that?

A soft snore answered her question.

‘Max!'

No response.

She felt impelled to wake him. Suddenly she felt forsaken. ‘Max!' she shouted.

No response. She felt her eyes fill with tears. Then she wiped the tears away and went over to Max. ‘Get up,' she said firmly. She put her arms around him, pulled him erect, and half dragged him to the bed. He was not heavy and not much taller than she, and that helped. She pulled off his shoes and then his shirt and his trousers. The sight of his skinny form lying there in his one-piece BVDs set her to laughing. She pulled off his socks, still giggling, standing over the bed in her wedding gown.

She shook him. ‘Max, Max! This is your wedding night.'

A few mumbled words answered her, but his eyes remained closed.

She sat down on the edge of the bed next to him, staring, at him. He was really quite handsome, she told herself, and he didn't have an ounce of fat on him. That at least was positive. She made an image in her mind of going to bed with Alderman Sweeney, imagining that huge bulk unclothed, and the thought sent her into another fit of giggling. But now what was she to do? She studied Max again, and then with a boldness she had never dreamed herself to be capable of, she placed a hand over that portion of Max's underwear that covered his sexual organs. She felt the outline of his penis and his testicles, and she felt the increasing excitement within her, and she watched his body respond, mumbled sounds coming through his drunken stupor. Under her hand, his penis began to swell, and suddenly she pulled her hand away. Then, again, she began to giggle. She had drunk three glasses of champagne during the evening, sufficient to hand her the excuse that she was drunk, not like Max, but nevertheless a little drunk.

‘That's it. I am drunk.'

The self-deception was necessary. She slipped out of the wedding gown after struggling for a few minutes with its fastenings, and then out of the chemise and the wholly unnecessary corset and the oversized bloomers. ‘Everything, because I am drunk.' She had never experienced this kind of heated desire before. Finally, she stood naked, her slender body lovely in the shaded light of the single lamp, her nipples firm on her small breasts, and she said sharply, ‘Max, wake up!'

He opened his eyes this time and stared at her, and then she put out the light and slipped into bed next to him. He was asleep again. She began to fondle his penis, her excitement increasing as it grew erect, and then, still half asleep, he reached out and put his arms around her.

[
S I X
]

 

The offices in the Hobart Building had been enlarged, improved, and redecorated. There were three girls who did nothing but work at typewriters, and these young ladies were still called typewriters. There were two bookkeepers who worked under Jake Stein, whose office door now bore the title comptroller, and there was a new receptionist to take the place of Etta Goodman, who was now Max's administrative assistant. The new receptionist was a pretty red-headed young woman, whose name was Della O'Don-nell, who was somewhat distantly related to Boss Murphy. Jake Stein insisted that Murphy had asked Max to hire her in order to have a spy boring from within; but Max felt that the amount of boring Della O'Donnell could do was insignificant and that if it were true, Murphy was entitled to have someone inside to report on his share of the business.

For one thing, Max was intrigued with Della O'Donnell. She had the same qualities that Alice Snyder possessed, an easygoing, unflappable good nature and a plump, round warmth that made him wonder how it would feel, to be married to such a woman; but the thought of her as Boss Murphy's spy was ridiculous. Yet it was indicative of the workings of Jake Stein's mind. Feldman, who disliked Jake Stein, had mentioned to Max that they might replace him. ‘He's good,' Max protested, to which Feldman replied, ‘Too good.' Max told Feldman that he would think about it, but the more he thought about it, the less possible it became for him to fire someone who had a wife and children, who was brilliant at his work, and who gave no evidence of being the crook that Feldman felt him to be.

The question of Etta Goodman was more bothersome. Her work as administrative assistant was for the most part a combination of the emotional and the physical, although no longer exercised on the floor. In redecorating his office, Max had included a large sofa. The purchase of the sofa and what went with it were a result of Max's sexual relationship to Sally – a weak flame to begin with, which became a flicker and then flickered out. While it flickered, it had produced two children, and after that it more or less ceased; whereupon the affair or exercise, as Max often thought of it, with Etta Goodman was renewed. Max and Etta had been functioning on the sofa when Della buzzed him and informed him, via the newly installed intercom, that two gentlemen wanted to see him. Their names were Frank Stanford and Jack Calvin. While the names were vaguely familiar, Max could not recall them. Since they had no appointment, he told Della that either they could wait or they could state their business and ask for an appointment on another day. Della replied that their business was film production, and Max said that if they wished to see him, they should wait.

Etta watched Max adjust his trousers and button his shirt. ‘You don't even seem to enjoy it anymore,' she said to him.

‘I got other things on my mind.'