Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue

by Mark Kurlansky

  Desperate for a job, he wandered down to Rivington Street and on the way, on Grand Street, saw a HELP WANTED sign in Jack Bialy's. He took little domes of dough and twirled them with his powdered fingers on a flour-dusted board to make the well, and then he tossed onions into the indentation. The bakery had no wall to hide behind. Customers, owners, and salesclerks could all see him, and he was expected to move fast. No one ever moved faster. Felix could make seventy-five bialies a minute. People would come just to watch him do it. Jack Bialy would pat him on the back admiringly, shake his head, and say, "You are a real kuchen macher." Felix didn't like the name because he did not want to be a kuchen macher, a bialy maker. This was like the jobs in the Dominican Republic. He earned barely enough money to survive, and he had no possibilities for a better future. He asked for more money, but Jack Bialy just looked sadly at his flour-dusted black shoes and said, "There is no margin, Kuchenmacher. It's sixty cents a bialy. What can I do? But you can eat as many bialies as you want. Take them home." And Felix did, making whole meals of nothing but bialy and hard-boiled egg or sometimes bialy, hard-boiled eggs, and chorizo. Jack asked that on his way home he bring a bag of leftover bialies to his friend Nusan, close by on Rivington Street. Felix would warily climb the stairs and brace himself for the sour smell when Nusan opened the door. Sometimes, especially if he tapped lightly enough on the door, there would be no answer, and he would leave the bag in front of the door and quickly descend the stairs.

  Felix came to hate the puffy cushions of chewy bread that Jack Bialy reverently called bialystock kuchen. He was not even making money to send to his mother, so he began selling "smoke" on Tenth Street, and then he could send impressive quantities of dollars home. He explained to his mother that he was doing well, doing business in New York with the Jews, a plausible story.

  The amount Felix made on Grand Street was minuscule next to what he could make on Tenth Street, and it was likely to remain that way—unless the government suddenly legalized marijuana and outlawed bialies. So Felix, according to Jack Bialy, broke Jack's heart and left. Jack told him that he could have his job back anytime he wanted. And to tempt him, he would go up to Tenth Street where Felix was dealing, arriving in shirtsleeves and suspenders with his flour-dusted shoes, and hand Felix a bag of the loathed bialies. "So you remember your friends," Jack would say. Not knowing what to do with the bialies while he was dealing, he would hide them behind the stoop where he kept his stash of marijuana and a hard-boiled egg. Even Joey Parma had noticed that Jack Bialy was "involved in something."

  People continued to call Felix "Kuchenmacher," which inevitably became Cuquemango, or even El Cuquemango. Felix felt that he had not learned how to be a Puerto Rican and moved to America just to be Cuquemango. When he heard someone call him El Cuquemango, he would say angrily, "Felix, solo Felix. Okay?" Just Felix.

  It was hard to break in on Tenth Street, but the dealers paid good percentages to lookouts. He worked about five hours a night and made more money than he had ever made in his life. This is more than five thousand bialies, he said to himself one night, counting his money and thinking of his old boss. All he had to do was warn when a plainclothes cop came, and they were so obvious that they might as well have worn uniforms. Soon he too was a dealer, and he even helped Ruben take over his spot as lookout. Helping a young Puerto Rican break in on Tenth Street helped to establish Felix as a Puerto Rican. Felix was sending money to his mother, who could see from the amounts that her son was doing well in New York. New York was turning out to be exactly what everyone in the Cibao said it was.

  Felix didn't want to be in drugs. Whenever anyone questioned him about it, which was not often because most people preferred not to talk about it, he said, "I know people in the barrio on welfare that eat dog food. That canned shit. I'm not eating no fucking Ken-L Ration, bro'."

  But Felix understood that the drug business had no future in this neighborhood. That was why white people were not dealing anymore. The Nazi or the cops or somebody would shut them down. He had to become a real American businessman. He was looking for his chance to prosper the way other immigrants had—like the Italians on First Avenue. He thought opportunities might be found at the casita, if not from music, then farming. Felix was the only one at the casita who knew how to grow crops. When he first came to the neighborhood, he could see that these Puerto Ricans were not like the ones in the island. An island Puerto Rican could grow a whole crop in a back alley—anywhere there was soil. They grew things all over San Juan.

  But these Nuyoricans couldn't grow weeds in a sunny lot. Well, they could. In fact, that is mostly what they did. But he showed them how to plant a second crop in between rows, to find crops that helped each other out, that some places were better than others, that wind direction mattered, that creepers and vines could be trained upward to get more space, that growing onions enriched the soil, that laying a mulch of straw saved the low-hanging vegetables, that some crops were grown from seeds and others from planting seedlings. The reality that he did not want to tell anyone was that the one crop that was well suited for this vacant lot in the city would be marijuana.

  The tomatoes were coming in—late, but they would ripen into real tomatoes that would be juicy with crisp flesh and the flavor of tomato that had been forgotten by gringos. And the peppers burned hot and were ready for pepper sauce. The corn was growing because corn always grows, but the beans between the rows were not getting enough shoots. The pigeon peas would prosper because they are easy to grow, if he could only convince the Nuyoricans to stop watering them. The banana was not growing and probably couldn't because the roots could not survive winter. He had finally convinced them of the folly of planting coffee at sea level. The flowers—gladiolas and snapdragons, magenta, white, and yellow—were going to do well this year if the heat didn't burn them down.

  He could sell these things. Share the profit with the casita. Then he could be a neighborhood businessman instead of just a spic or, to use the longer version favored by Vice President Bush's campaign, a "Hispanic." There were several empty storefronts on Tenth Street. The neighborhood had many new businesses, but most did not last long—a used-furniture shop, an art gallery—East Village—type businesses that were now struggling, with fewer and fewer East Village—type people around. But even though there were always storefronts available, many of the landlords would not rent to Felix because they knew El Cuque-mango was involved in drugs. They would rather leave their storefronts empty a few more years until they got a Japanese restaurant or a boutique selling things that no one had ever wanted before.

  But the Weinberger brothers didn't care. They lived in New Jersey and didn't know who was dealing drugs in the neighborhood. They had let shops and apartments go empty for years because the fewer tenants they had, the more valuable the property would be when the money came in to level the blocks, bulldoze them, and build tall luxury apartment buildings with low ceilings. Six floors of tenement held eight floors of luxury. But so far that hadn't happened, and they had given up and started renting again. So they rented Felix a store where he sold flowers and vegetables.

  The casita didn't produce very much, and the store was mostly empty. He filled several buckets with gladiolas and snapdragons, which made Joe the florist regularly walk down the block for reconnaissance. Many of Felix's early customers were plainclothes policemen and Drug Enforcement Agency agents who assumed the shop was nothing more than a front for drug traffic and wanted to figure out how it worked. This was unnerving to Felix, who could recognize a federal agent when he saw one.

  Jack Bialy came to Felix's store. He brought bialies, which he said were "on consignment." Jack Bialy defined consignment as "Pay me when business picks up." So every day a young Puerto Rican would show up with one dozen bialies for Felix to sell. Nusan, who hadn't been getting bialies since Felix left Grand Street, started appearing at the end of the day, and Felix gave him what he didn't sell, which at first was a dozen. But soon word spread that they were really good bia
lies, and Felix had to hold one or two back so that he would have something for Nusan. When Joey Parma came in, Felix would not give him a free bialy. If Joey reached for one, Felix would defiantly say, "Sixty cents!" Joey started to get the idea that somehow El Cuquemango, Jack Bialy, and Nusan were involved in some kind of drug ring. He reasoned that "the old tough one," Nusan, was probably the leader.

  The others at the casita were pleased that Felix had come up with a use for the things that they grew. Most wanted only a few vegetables or flowers to bring home. Panista, a drummer who always tapped nervously, gave snapdragons and tomatoes to Consuela's daughter, Rosita, while he stared irresistibly into her eyes, saying nothing. He knew he did not have a good voice. His strength, he reasoned, was his look. But it made Rosita nervous the way Panista always tapped his fingers. Felix was sure Rosita would be happier with him. They danced well together. Though of course he could not say this, he thought that she danced like a Dominican. She loved the way he danced and told him so.

  "Baile' ta' hueno, Cuquemango."

  He was glad she liked it, but first she had to get his name right. "Felix, por favor. Solo Felix."

  Panista, a tall, thin stick of a man called Palo, Chow Mein, and the others at the casita didn't like drug dealers. It was a complicated point of view, because the younger ones like Palo spent the afternoons around the casita listening to plenas and smoking what they had bought from Felix. They all believed that the future was not in drugs, but in sushi, for which the price per ounce seemed almost as good. They called Jose Fishman "the only smart dealer on the Loisaida."

  The Japanese were coming in. Many kinds of new people were slowly appearing. Property was going to become valuable, and one day some white guy was going to come strolling through the fence gate and the garden and up the wooden steps of the casita to announce that he owned this lot and was selling it to some real estate development corporation. Then they would have no place. Already most Latin people were gone from First and Second avenues. The only pasteks on Second Avenue now were sold at Saul Grossman's. Chow Mein insisted that the one hope was that boogaloo would get hot again and he would buy the lot.

  "Sushi, sashimi," Panista repeated, tapping out the rhythm of the words.

  "Chow Mein could do a Japanese boogaloo," said Felix, "except no one wants boogaloo."

  "What's the difference entre sushi and sashimi?" asked Panista.

  "What difference. No difference pa'nosotros," said Palo.

  "No, bro', these guys are smart," said Felix. "Sabe how much they charge for a pedacito de pe' cao."

  "Y they don't even have to cook it."

  "Sashimi you don't even have to give rice and they charge the same."

  "Solounpedacitode tuna, nada ma."

  "Toro. I remember that. And wasabi. What's wasabi?"

  "Wasabi's not a fish."

  "Yeah, it means 'friend' in Indian," said Panista.

  Felix charged just enough at his store to make a small profit after the rent. With little overhead, his produce was good and the prices cheap. But he had few customers. It was getting tougher in the neighborhood. He couldn't even open on Tuesdays because there was a farmer's market in front of St. Mark's with good prices for the same things. It was a hot, sunny summer after a good rainy spring, and everyone was going to have nice tomatoes.

  For now, Felix could accept that he was not making money the way he had when he was in drugs; although he was barely getting by and didn't want to move down to Rivington Street with the Dominicans, the most painful part was thinking about his mother in their village in the Cibao. When he was dealing, he used to transfer her money every week. She was becoming one of the richest people in the village, and she would just smile coyly and tell the neighbors, "My son Felix is doing very well with the Jews in America." Now he had nothing to send to his mother, and it was not difficult for him to imagine the villagers coming up to her from time to time and asking, "¿Y cómo van las cosas con tu hijo Felix en Nueba York?" What's going on with your son Felix in America?

  And his mother would answer with a long, solemn sigh of sympathy, "Nueba York, qué lucha." What a struggle it is.

  But Felix had a plan, to be an American, like the Italians. That was why almost no one in the neighborhood, possibly not even the Chino, was as angry at Cabezucha as Felix.

  Cabezucha had gone crazy. He did that. Too much crack and his head became a bomb. He got $200 from the Chino with the laundry. Who would expect to get more from a shop like that? And the Chino saw him, of course, since he stuck the gun in his face and demanded money.

  The other dealers didn't like what Cabezucha had done, either. You weren't supposed to remind people that there were guns. You weren't supposed to have any action at all in the territory, you weren't supposed to, as it was always put, "piss in your own bed." It always seemed a strange expression to Felix since he had never heard of anyone pissing in someone else's bed. In the Dominican, you weren't supposed to piss on your own door, which made only slightly more sense.

  According to the story that was circulating the neighborhood, Cabezucha was so "ripped" that he did not remember to speak English. But the Chino could guess and handed over what he had in the wooden drawer—$214.37. The Chino was one of several people who saw him try to run into Felix's store. Then the Cuquemango hit him hard in the groin, an easy shot with their height difference, and pushed him out.

  Nothing was clear. Maybe he had run there because Felix was involved, but maybe Felix was a hero who had tried to apprehend the thief, or maybe he was involved but then turned against him. But no one even asked Felix what had happened, which proved that the neighborhood saw him as on the other side. Only the cops would talk to him, spreading his legs and slamming him against their car hood, cracking the hard-boiled egg in his hand.

  Five blocks to the east, Cabezucha was hiding in the old amphitheater in the park by the river, cooling off, calming down, watching the red tugboats pass under the bridge and the ships tie up at the Domino sugar dock in Brooklyn. He strained to see if they were Dominican boats, but he never spotted a Dominican flag except for the small one he stuck in the broken end of a rusted railing by the steps where he slept. He counted the folded bills in his pocket. Of the $200, there was only $25 left.

  "Acht und Zwanzig," she heard him puff out as she drew another sip of good sour mash.

  "Neun und Zwanzig" Down he went again, his body straight as a board.

  She began to clap. "Bravo, Bernsie. Dreissig. The new world record."

  Bernhardt Moellen collapsed on the floor of their apartment two floors above the Edelweiss Pastry Shop. "You must admit—" Bernhardt wheezed and coughed and then continued. "Thirty push-ups is not bad for a man of eighty-two."

  "Ja, Bernsie, I will just sit here and sip and not correct you."

  "All right, eighty-one." He stood up and walked over to her and kissed her on the forehead. "But it was thirty push-ups." She smiled and took his hand. He studied her face. "You know, I wish you would not let that woman upset you."

  "What woman," she said. It was a response—not a question.

  "She is completely crazy. From the times. Those times made crazy people. We were the lucky few who could get out with our bodies and minds and—and our honor intact."

  "But you know that Viktor will visit us one day"

  "Viktor Stein is dead!" Moellen whispered.

  "The one really good thing about this country," she said, and she stared into the darker pools of the amber liquid in her glass.

  "Yes, good bourbon."

  She smiled and shook her head.

  "All right, sour something."

  "Sour mash, Bernsie."

  "I am taking a shower. I have a meeting tonight. That angry man who came in the shop today..."

  "I didn't ask."

  He clasped her two delicate hands in his large ones. "Hanna, it's about the block."

  "I didn't ask what it was about."

  "The Chinaman around the corner. He was robbed."

&nbs
p; "That's terrible."

  "Yes, some of these drug pushers. With a gun. He is very angry. He is right. So we are going to the police again. Get them to do something. What is the name of that man who comes in the shop?"

  "Which man?"

  "The one with the daughter."

  "The one who wanted all the cookies?"

  "No, the one who used to be a boy—from the neighborhood. I think Karoline knows him."

  "The Jew with the little girl."

  "Yes, what's his name? He's always been here. He has a little girl. This is the kind of people who should fight for this neighborhood so it will be decent and safe for children, like it was when we came here with our daughter."

  "I don't know his name."

  Bernhardt stepped into the shower and Hanna poured some more Jack Daniel's, which is sour mash.

  Only a few blocks away, Tom Rosen, a thirty-year-old from the Upper West Side, was having a night in the East Village. He did this more and more often and was thinking of looking for an apartment in the neighborhood. On this evening he decided to try some of the old "ethnic" restaurants that had been featured in that day's Times. But it seemed most of them did not take credit cards. Fortunately, he found a cash machine and got $200 out of his bank account in $20 bills that fit inconspicuously in his wallet. You had to be careful down here. He looked around and saw no one who was particularly menacing. But when he turned the corner off the busy avenue onto the quiet street, a very large man with a thick shock of black hair was staring at him wild-eyed, almost as though he had known Tom Rosen was about to turn that corner and he was waiting for him. Rosen, who was athletic and had fast reflexes, pushed the man away, which felt like shoving a wall. The man did not move. Rosen turned to run but realized he was being held by the right arm. The giant looked so confused; he did not seem to realize he was holding him and did not understand why Rosen did not run away Half in anger, half in panic, the large man took out a small handgun, which Rosen could neither reach nor run away from. Rosen struggled. He tried to at least hide his head from the pistol. The more he fought, the angrier the giant became that this man refused to back off. The giant's black-and-red eyes showed a kind of panicky desperation. He fired twice at Rosen's infuriating, bobbing head.