Ruth shrugged and squeezed up her face and said, "Boyoboy. It just doesn't speak to me." But Sonia could see that even she had a slight sway to her hips as she said it.
Cristofina danced with anyone she could find—most of Avenue D were customers. She slid from partner to partner, and her soft and abundant flesh, sealed in tight, shimmied like liquid mercury
"It's surprising," said Harry. "I never thought of Cristofina like that."
"She's hot," said Chow Mein. "She could be Puerto Rican." Then he went back to his microphone and sang some more. He said to Harry, "You are going to be famous. The man who brought back boogaloo." And Harry smiled like a cat in sunshine.
Karoline looked at the great, gaseous ball of buttery dough blown huge with yeast and, with an impatient gesture, smacked it. The dough deflated with a sigh. She added rum-soaked raisins and chopped almonds, working the dough quickly in twisting motions like rapid strangulations. Then she put the bowl back in the refrigerator to let the dough slowly rise once more. While brushing melted butter into the brown crock kugelhopf mold, she caught herself daring to think that her life might work out after all.
For the first time, she could see a future. She could be safe. She had never been safe. No one ever trusted her parents because they were immigrants. Because they were Germans. She grew up with an ambiguous sense that something was about to happen, that someone would come to the shop and their life would be turned into chaos.
And then this man came into her life, so American that his name was actually Dickie, from another part of New York where they had people with names like Dickie. Dickie wanted to marry her, and he wanted to take her away from this neighborhood and help her to have a pastry shop on Madison Avenue, the kind of place that is always mentioned in The New York Times, the kind of place that does wedding cakes for the daughters of politicians and movie stars. It would all work out. If only he didn't call. If only the phone didn't ring.
She looked at the phone with dread, but instead the doorbell rang. "It's me, Joey Parma." And Karoline laughed quietly alone in her room with her rising higelhopf dough.
Tommy Drapper walked to Avenue D, sweat beading on his shaved head, the parking garage ticket in his sweating left hand, which stayed in his pocket guarding his wallet. By the time he arrived, the crowd had left the bandstand and was gathered around a raised and roped platform, a wrestling ring, draped in bright blue, red, and white Puerto Rican flags.
Harry, in the wilted cloth that was his summer suit, went to Tommy and assured him that Chow Mein Vega had the whole crowd moving and would do it again after the match.
Tommy looked skeptical. "Just watch this match," Harry said. "We do it every year. Then he plays some more sets."
Tommy looked around the crowd nervously and kept clutching his wallet while Chow Mein leapt up to the wrestling ring and popped a button. "Ah, shit," he said, barely picked up by the microphone, and he introduced "the Borinquén bomber, the big cojón de Carolina, the boy-chik from the barrio, the pride of Bodega Borinquina, the alter kake amoroso of Avenida C—Jimmy Colon!"
Jimmy leapt up to the ring and vaulted over the ropes in his blue tights and red, white, and blue tank top of the Puerto Rican flag, the star over his chest. He was tall and broad shouldered and only a little out of shape—a modest distortion of bulges pushing against the red and white stripes running up his shirt. His curly blond hair betrayed only a suggestion of dark roots. As he walked around the ring smiling and waving, just as nice as he could be, the crowd applauded.
After a few merry minutes of Jimmy Colon, Chow Mein took the microphone again. All he said was, "And now..." and his voice was drowned out by a wave of bass boos and hisses. "Por favor, mis amigos," said Chow Mein, "we have to show respect to our amigo from"—he paused to give the audience an extra second to prepare its protest—"la otra tsla."
Like the deep roar of a jet, the crowd responded to mention of "the other island" with a loud boo that swept over Avenue D, punctuated by firecrackers thrown in the air and José Fishman shouting, "Bonzai Bon-zai, get him, Jimmy-san!"
Blue, white, and red paper was thrown into the ring. "Please, show some respect or we will have to call the fight," said Chow Mein, and the crowd quieted down as they did every year at this point. "And now, the champion of the Republica Dominicana, El Diablito Dominicano, the Slammer of the Cibao, the Santiago Crusher, the mamzer mamarucha from the Malecón—El Dominicano!"
The crowd booed and jeered and threw more paper, and out of a side street emerged Ruben—the former sweet-faced Ruben. He was draped in a huge cape showing the red and blue squares of the Dominican flag. He had a black goatee that came to a sharp point. The black lines of hair that connected his mustache to his goatee formed an unpleasant sneer. His head was shaven on the sides, and on this whitish bald border a red-and-blue Dominican flag had been tattooed. This was the only part to which Ruben had objected, but Cristofina convinced him that it would not show after his hair grew back, and to compensate she gave him a free tattoo of a Puerto Rican flag on his stomach where it would not show in his costume. The Puerto Rican stomach tattoo had hurt and was still a little sore, whereas, unjustly, the Dominican one around the border of his head had been painless. The dark hair on the top of his head had been waxed so that it stood up in black spikes. He had several gold rings on his left ear, and his eyebrows had been shaven off and replaced with demonically arched blue tattoo eyebrows. He leapt from the street over the ropes and into the ring in one startling, needlessly aggressive—just like a Dominican, the audience was supposed to think—vault. Then, with the grace and fanfare of a bullfighter, he removed his cape and swirled it across the ring, taunting poor Jimmy Colon with it, a Dominican flag that Jimmy politely shoved away from his face. The more people booed, the more El Dominicano swirled the Dominican flag in front of Jimmy. Jimmy smiled good-naturedly and winked at the audience as though to say "Don't worry, El Dominicano will get his."
Once his cape was off, the audience not only could see the curves of Ruben's muscles, they could see a steel blue chain with red background tattooed around his neck and the metal rings that had been placed in his nipples like undersized door knockers gleaming white in the sun. His fists were the faces of two growling tigers, and tiger stripes tattooed up his arms accentuated his thick forearms and large biceps.
El Dominicano was frightening, and clearly Jimmy was in trouble. The crowd was silent. This was not last year's El Dominicano. They had never seen an El Dominicano who looked like this.
"Man, he looks like a million," said Chow Mein.
"Well, not quite that bad," said Harry, remembering the bill in his pocket.
Felix pounded the congas and Chow Mein Vega rang a brass gong that they borrowed every year from a restaurant in Chinatown. El Do-minicano stalked Jimmy, making the ring smaller and smaller, until Jimmy, who tried to go inside but kept slipping out before El Domini-cano could grab a hold on him, was trapped in the corner. As El Do-minicano was closing in, Jimmy suddenly jumped at him and wrapped his legs around El Dominicano's waist, knocking them both to the ground. El Dominicano slammed the mat helplessly with his powerful arms as Jimmy applied some painful pressure, and the crowd cheered joyfully.
Then, without warning, El Dominicano managed to stand up and slam Jimmy into the mat so hard that he lost his grip. He slammed him again. And again. Jimmy seemed barely conscious, and El Dominicano was throwing him at will. He was killing him. Women shrieked. Men cried,"Falta! Falta!" Foul!
"Damay yo," No good, shouted José Fishman. "F-hay,f-kay," he yelled, mistakenly but effectively evoking the Japanese word for dandruff, as events worsened for Jimmy.
The referee, Sam Lipman, a small, balding man who drove the Mister Custard ice-cream truck and, worse, was wearing his white Mister Custard uniform, attempted to intercede. But El Dominicano slammed Mister Custard to the mat, too. Clearly he knew no limits. And then he picked him up and slammed him again. This was terrible. El Dominicano was killing Mister Custard.
&n
bsp; But while he was distracted with this new victim, Jimmy Colon managed to get up, tried to shake off his grogginess, direw a lock on El Dominicano's head, and—and flipped him to the mat! Then he picked him up and flipped him again. The crowd cheered. Firecrackers were exploding. "Bonzai! Bonzai!" shouted Jose.
Suddenly, from somewhere in his costume, El Dominicano pulled out a handful of something and flung it in the direction of Jimmy Colon. The entire ring was consumed with bilious, bright orange clouds. Jimmy was covered in orange. He started coughing. Then choking. Then he fell to the mat and clutched his throat. His legs twitched violently El Dominicano, the former sweet-faced Ruben, stood over him smiling demonically while angry fans shouted, "Brujeria! Haitiano!"
Sam the referee, in his now orange-stained Mister Custard uniform, investigating the fans' charge of Haitian witchcraft, attempted to approach El Dominicano to examine what he had in his right hand. El Dominicano reached out with his menacing, tiger-striped arms and the referee backed off But Jimmy Colon, in another miraculous resurrection, leapt to his feet again, hurled El Dominicano into a corner, threw him to the edge of the mat, crashed onto him feetfirst, lifted him by the head, and slammed him to the mat several more times until El Dominicano went limp, barely conscious, while Jimmy rolled him over, pinned him on his back, and stood up, raising his arms triumphantly Not only was Jimmy victorious, he had saved Mister Custard for the neighborhood.
Slowly, El Dominicano, the black spikes of his waxed hair knocked askew, raised his tattooed head slightly to look for Rosita in the audience—just one wink for Rosita. But all he saw was the nacreous sheen of a woman's rhinestone-studded, white pearl pixie glasses. Her shriek was so loud that it silenced the rest of the crowd, and the uniformed policemen started moving toward the ring. She pointed at the vanquished El Dominicano and shouted, "That's him. That's him!"
Mrs. Skolnik was hopping up and down with one hand extended like a bayonet, pointing at tattooed Ruben on the mat. "That's him! He killed Eli Rabbinowitz. I saw him!"
As the police moved in, Tommy Drapper quickly made his way back to the parking garage.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Fireworks
IHE MORE HE THOUGHT about Nusan, the guiltier he felt. But the worse he felt, the more he wanted Karoline. He could not understand this, did not want to understand it. He just wanted to turn his back on his life and beliefs and have sex over and over again with this woman.
She answered the phone as though she were expecting his call. He had prepared his arguments, but she wasn't interested. She sounded resigned.
"What are we going to bake?" Nathan asked.
"Kugdhopf"
"What kind of kugel?"
"Kugelhopf Just get over here and I'll show you."
"Kugdhopf"
"Yes. It was Hitler's favorite dessert,"
He hung up. He hated the way she did that. Teasing him, which was an understated form of laughing at him. She knew he hated it, but she also knew that it made him want her more. She knew everything about his soul, could hold it in her hand like kugdhopf dough, and he had to have her to get it back—or that was what he reasoned walking up from Rivington Street through the explosions.
Farther east on Rivington, some people had broken into an abandoned building. It had been a high school; by family legend, it was where Harry had learned English. Rumored to have been bought by a developer who planned to turn it into luxury apartments but must have been waiting for a better moment, the building was deserted and most of the windows were broken, the walls claimed by competing gangs in colorful spray paint on the dark walls. Rockets were being fired out of some of the windows, balls lobbed out rhythmically like orchestrated meteors. It lacked only a "star-spangled banner" to look like Fort McHenry under siege by the British. Smoke rose above the buildings, and the ornamental metal edges of the roofs were revealed in sudden flashes of light.
Nathan had to choose streets carefully A few little crackers went off near his face on Houston. He stamped out a fuse on First Street just before it exploded and was glared at by three disappointed boys. The wide avenues seemed safer than the streets, where the explosions echoed against the stone of the tenements and where Eli Rabbinowitz's hunted killer probably stalked. It drifted across Nathan's thoughts that a killer with a handgun could fire unnoticed this night.
Even this warm, smoky air seemed almost cool and clean after Nusan's. Nusan would be fine. Why worry about an octogenarian with a heart condition in a permanent depression who would spend the Fourth of July locked in a small room, jumping every time he heard a firecracker? Nathan tried to talk himself into going back. Instead, he went up First Avenue, heading toward the home of a possible Nazi. To accuse Mr. Moellen of being a Nazi, Nathan told himself, was completely unfair, a kind of racial stereotyping that was in itself Nazi-like. It would be like suspecting his family of greedy business practices because they were Jewish. Well, maybe that was going too far. But certainly Nusan's assertion that all Germans were Nazis was extremely unfair.
The instant he pressed the button for the second floor, the issue of Moellen's past, the firecrackers, the killer, Nusan's heart condition, and all other thoughts vanished from Nathan's mind. A loud buzz released the lock. She was anxious, Nathan could not help noting. Or maybe she was just anxious to get him away from her door. When he got to the top of the stairs, the door was opened wide and there she was, in her apron, the entire apartment smelling of butter. But then, seated by the table was Joey Parma, his gray blue, silk-blend pant legs spread wide, balancing as he tipped back his chair, rotating clockwise a glass of wine in his hand. Staring at the glass, he swirled the wine in that manner that all the new people in the neighborhood had. It was as though the smarts went to wine school before moving to the East Village, and so had Joey Parma.
"You know each other?" asked Karoline.
Nathan noted with relief that Karoline was dressed under her apron.
"Here, have a glass," said Joey, straightening the chair on the floor and pouring another glass from a tall, thin, green bottle. "It's eiswein, from Riesling in the Rheingau. They can only make it certain years when there is an early frost. The berries freeze and it becomes concentrated and forget about it!" He handed Nathan the glass. They sipped the richly fruited wine, like cold, pungent syrup. Karoline and Joey discussed the Rheingau. Nathan tried not to look at his watch but knew that he had only two hours at most and this cop was sitting there talking frozen berries.
But then Joey looked at his own watch. "Oh! Got to go." He grabbed three bottles on the table, thanked Karoline, wished everyone a good holiday, and galloped noisily down the stairs.
Alone, Karoline shrugged at Nathan. "He wanted to come by."
"To get wine," said Nathan, finishing the sentence.
"Yes. I wonder why he thinks you came." They were both quiet a minute. "He just took about two hundred dollars' worth of wine, including an Alsatian Gewürztraminer, a Château—"
Nathan cut her off irritably. "I don't care."
"But it's funny He is going to a picnic in Queens. He tells me that they all smack their lips and say, 'Nice wine, Joey' Sometimes he can't bear it and he puts the wine in decanters so that he can slip his guests cheaper wine. They don't know. And he can't tell anyone. If his wife knew what he spent on wine, she would kill him."
Nathan pulled the tie string on her apron, but she grabbed it. "No."
He looked at her for that brief instant, but then she lowered her eyes and said, "The kugelhogf." She instructed him to brush melted butter into the still unbuttered molds on the table.
"I lied, you know, it wasn't the Führer's favorite," she said, deliberately pronouncing the German word with the perfect Prussian accent she had learned from her parents. "This is the French way. The Austrian one has less butter. This is better."
"Hitler had bad taste?"
"He was Austrian."
Hefting the large mixing bowl of dough from the refrigerator, she said, "It's like a brioche. Or a challah. My
father used to make the most wonderful challah. But no one bought it, because he is German." She said the word "challah" with the appropriate Hebrew ch sound from the back of the roof of her mouth.
Suddenly she slapped the rounded edge of the dough rising out of the bowl—slapped it three times, forehand, backhand, forehand—like a good boxing combination—until it went limp, sinking in the bowl.
She showed Nathan how to make rolls of dough and fill each mold only about two-thirds full. "Now," she said, unbuckling Nathan's belt, "we have to wait for it to rise. Very slowly." She smiled at him.
"How slowly?"
"About two hours."
Nathan smiled, too, and they undressed each other with ritual care, folding each other's clothes and draping them carefully on the chairs. When they were both naked, she pointed at his beaded bracelet. "That, too. I want you completely naked."
He carefully removed the green and black beads. He felt no panic. He could do this without Oggún, He placed the beads in the pocket of his folded pants and looked at the naked Karoline.
An idea overtook him.
He took the butter pot and began carefully brushing butter on her skin until her entire body was gleaming and golden like a Cellini Venus, and then he began meticulously to lick the butter.
Karoline knew that it was too late. That was the way it was. The first time is a mistake, but the second time means that it is "an affair," that they would keep meeting, fill their lives with lies, sink deeper and deeper, and not stop until they were destroyed.
Even without Tommy Drapper—what happened to him, anyway?—Harry thought the concert was a great success. He walked back from Avenue D with little bombs exploding around him, not loudly enough to upset his Irving Berlin:
If you don't want my peaches, You better stop shaking my tree.
Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue Page 18