Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue

by Mark Kurlansky

  "Well," said Lipinski, "the first thing you have to understand is that 1 and the other officers in this precinct do care about this neighborhood. But we don't run the department."

  The meeting went on a little longer, but it didn't seem to resolve anything. It didn't even appear that anybody expected anything to be resolved. As they were walking out, Moellen extended his long, bony hand and arm, which was sinewy from a lifetime of kneading dough, to Nathan.

  "I like this country," Moellen declared again as they walked down the sidewalk. "Everyone comes from everywhere and it doesn't matter. That's why I had to stop that man who was talking that way to the Spanish woman. You cannot let that kind of thing start. Believe me, I know."

  "From Germany."

  "Jah. Terrible times. Terrible. People who didn't live it will never know."

  "Yes. Other people have told me that, too."

  "Oh, it's true. Un-i-ma-gin-a-ble." He stretched out the word as though each syllable had a special meaning. The two barely noticed the cacophony surrounding them. "Smoke, smoke?" Everyone was being asked but them. They glided down Tenth Street invisible and untouchable.

  "Where were you during the war?" Nathan at last had the opportunity to ask.

  "In the German army" He sighed. "Like everyone else." There was a small polite smile. Nathan remembered that Nusan had predicted that line. "You had to go. There was no choice. Terrible time. Well, I wish we could talk more, but my wife is not feeling well and I better lookinonher. I'm very glad you came. With your little girl, you need to be concerned."

  Nathan had to see Karoline. He had to end it now. This afternoon. But he could not walk there with her father, so he said good-bye and headed to his shop. The Spanish Fat Finkelstein suddenly ran up to him, gave him a defiant stare, and stuck out his fist. In his hand was a small copper bullet shell. The fist closed over it again and he ran into his building.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  A Plucked, Ripe Fruit

  THIS WAS THE SUMMER of tomatoes. Everybody had them. Perfect ripe fruit—crisp, with deep cavities of juice and flavor so rich that you could smell it the second the fruit was cut into. The people at the casita sold them to Felix and still had extras to give away. Felix had few customers, because everyone continued to believe that he was involved in drugs. This belief was oddly unshaken by the fact that Felix's best customer was a policeman. Joey Parma had made it his mission to distinguish between Manhattan, Bronx, and Brooklyn tomatoes. He thought the "local crop," the tomatoes grown in the East Village, were the best. Felix was hoping he could interest others and so labeled these "Loisaida Jugosos." He also sold Barrio Rojos and Bronx Grandes, of which there were several subspecies, including Kratona Park Beefsteaks and Prospect Avenidas and Kelly Street Plums.

  Upstate and New Jersey tomatoes were cheap at the Tuesday market in front of St. Mark's Church—with its breezes, the coolest spot in the neighborhood. But casitas all over New York were getting repaired and painted with the money Felix was paying for tomatoes. He barely made a profit selling them, but he was certain that in time he would become established as a grocer. The Casita Meshugaloo put its tomato earnings into a good tin roof and new speakers for the music and a fresh coat of turquoise and red paint.

  Many people got free tomatoes at the casita. Those that Felix didn't buy, Chow Mein gave out to the many single mothers of the neighborhood. Palo always silently delivered a box along with a tall bunch of white, pink, and yellow snapdragons to Dolores, the mother of the Spanish Fat Finkelstein of his generation. A box held far more than she and her chubby little son could eat, and a few would go bad and end up in the garbage, where her son found them. He liked to throw them against walls and watch them splatter. One day he barely missed Jackie, the woman who might be a man, who was fanning him- or herself on the brownstone stoop. He or she became very angry and frightened the boy away but later termed Spanish Finkelstein's attack an act of protest. True theater. A dramatic visual representation of rage. He or she designed a poster to that effect with a close-up, black-and-white photo of a smashed tomato and took it to Nathan's shop to have several hundred printed, which would then be posted on walls throughout the neighborhood. "Really," he or she explained to passersby "we should all be out here throwing tomatoes." Then Jackie fanned him- or herself feverishly with a stack of flyers as though overheated by the very idea. Jackie often referred to the heat, and though it was more than ninety degrees, and though most people guessed that Jackie probably was male, he insisted that the problem was that he was menopausal.

  The three Sals grew tomatoes in gardens in Brooklyn and said they had not made such good sauce since they left Palermo or, in Sal As case, Catania. They also sold them fresh. "Listen, you want some tomato?" Sal Eleven would say in the same way he pushed mozzarella the rest of the year. Another change to his shop was the mounted head of an American bison that was now hanging above the cash register. "Twenty times a day I got some smart popping in here wanting to know if my mozzareU' is made from buffalos," he explained to Nathan.

  "Isn't that the wrong kind of buffalo?" Nathan suggested gingerly.

  Sal made an upward gesture with his thick right hand. "What are you, another smart? That guy over on Avenue A isn't even Sicilian and they buy his mozarrell'."

  "I thought he was from Catania."

  "Whatever. Catania, that's a place to be from?"

  On Avenue A, Sal A announced, "The tomatoes are in. Vine-ripened. Real Italian tomatoes, from my garden in Brooklyn." There was this widely accepted notion in New York that Italy was located somewhere in Brooklyn.

  The summer was moving on. Dukakis, at last, was officially nominated at the Democratic convention and was still comfortably ahead in the polls. The Mets were also comfortably ahead in the Eastern Division, despite occasional two- and three-game slumps or, as Dr. Kucher insisted, "neurotic episodes" when it seemed that no one could hit the ball.

  Nathan and Karoline's plans to give each other up remained elu-sively in the near future. Their hunger was insatiable and, worse, it was addictive. The more they had each other, the more they wanted each other, beyond reason, beyond any sense. That irrationality felt as good as sex. Maybe it was the best part of sex. They could make love for hours, get up, get dressed, and then at the doorway decide to do one more. If they were dangerously short on time, that made it even better.

  The summer air, sluggish and chewy as caramel, had the sweet-bitter smell of things rotting and things cooking—of last night's chicken bones and fish heads, and frying cuchifrito and potato knishes, of Greek and Italian and Israeli sandwiches, and decomposing mango and orange peels.

  Sonia was walking down Avenue A in the white heat with its odors, passing lightly clad women and shirtless men with lean, hard bodies that she liked to look at. Nathan was right. Tattoos could be sexy. But Nathan wouldn't get one. It is always the woman who makes the sacrifices. And it really hurt. She remembered how much that little butterfly had stung her back, but she was trying to imagine what Emma could say to Margarita after Margarita announced that she had come from the nineteenth century and intended to live in her house. Sonia had a pen and pad in her hand in case the missing line came to her. After that, the play would fall into place. Alongside her was Sarah, struggling to keep up with her mother's pace, holding the one free hand and also her own notebook and purple pencil.

  Sonia saw a couple walking toward her. Both had identical black jeans and black T-shirts and close-cropped hair dyed an acrylic white. But she could tell from the difference in size and shape that the black silhouettes moving toward her were a man and woman. They were holding hands—but not quite. No, they were swinging their arms in unison. No ... it almost appeared that... they were handcuffed together. Just an illusion, Sonia thought. Yet there were reasons why she would see such a mirage. After all, isn't that what marriage is? Consenting to be handcuffed together for life? It wasn't necessarily a bad thing. People could be happy that way. Her parents were. Margarita had been. Or had she? She had been se
venteen when she married Juarez, who was thirty-seven.... Thirty-seven. Nathan's age. Emma would have never let herself be handcuffed.

  By now the matching couple was close enough that she could see it was not a hallucination, they really were wearing handcuffs. And both had leather, chrome-studded dog collars on their necks and large silver rings piercing the septums of each of their noses. Was all this the naked reality of marriage—or only the handcuffs?—and the dog collar....

  "Hello, Daddy!" said a delighted Sarah.

  Sonia turned from the shackled couple and saw Nathan standing in front of her with a look of fear.

  "Hi! Where did you come from?" asked Sonia.

  "I was looking for linzer tortes," Nathan said, buttoning his thin cotton shirt.

  She looked at him uncertainly. "Those dark little pies with the raspberry jam?"

  "Yes!" Nathan answered with an odd overdose of enthusiasm.

  Then she realized that they were in front of the Edelweiss.

  "Let's get some from the cookie man," Sarah said cheerfully. "Look, there they are." And she pointed in the window, where sitting in a neat row were three five-inch crusty pies—thin, with latticed crusts and dark, jammy holes that in places had bubbled reddish on the pastry.

  "My God, she knows everything about pastry," Sonia muttered.

  Nathan looked guilty.

  "She's going to end up with tellas like you," Sonia added, poking him in his side, but there was nothing there. "Where did they go? Have you been working out in secret?"

  Sarah and Sonia were both staring at him. Sarah started writing something in her notebook.

  "No," said Nathan with disdain. "These are all wrong. The pastry should be dark with cinnamon."

  "Let's get some, Daddy. Shall we?"

  Cabezucha ambled by slowly, looking almost like a sleepwalker.

  "Buenos tardes, Sr. Badigo," Sonia greeted him.

  He didn't answer.

  "You know him?" Nathan asked with surprise.

  "Why don't we get a few?" said Sarah.

  "You think too much about pastry," Sonia said to Nathan. "I wonder why you aren't getting fat."

  "Protein!" Nathan announced a bit too earnestly.

  "What?" answered a perplexed Sonia.

  Too late. He had to finish it, so he halfheartedly explained as they walked past the pastry shop, not daring to turn his head to her on the left or to the shop on the right. "I eat a lot of protein, and it has amino acids that break down fat."

  "Really. Where did you learn that?"

  "I don't know. I ..." Nathan paused to look back at 'Cabezucha in his slow, somnambulist's stagger. "You know him?"

  "I gave him a massage. What did you say to Katz?"

  "Katz?"

  "Daddy, let's have linzer tortes," Sarah whined, beginning to realize that she was not getting her father's attention.

  "You said you were going to talk to Katz about the shop," said Sonia. Going to see Katz had become a standard explanation.

  "I want linzer tortes!" Sarah shouted. And then over and over again, the chant of her militant action, the slighted Sarah protested, "I want linzer tortes, I want linzer tortes ..." Nathan was sure that she could be heard inside the shop by Karoline's parents.

  "We are not getting any linzer tortes!" he shouted at his daughter, who retaliated by wailing loudly.

  Sonia stared at her husband. "You didn't have to shout at her like that, Nathan."

  "Miss Moellen?" said the muffled voice in the plastic box on the wall.

  Karoline's instincts, which seldom failed her, told her not to answer. But curiosity overruled fear. "Yes?"

  "Can I come up? I want to talk to you."

  "I'm sorry, who are you?"

  "I want to talk to you about my husband."

  Karoline pushed the button and heard the door open downstairs. So he finally did tell his wife. And now she was going to have to endure this. Why couldn't she have just married Dickie? She could have started her pastry shop. It would have been written up in the Times by now instead of her having to endure this conversation she was about to have. Holding open the door she let in a well-dressed woman who chimed with jewelry. Attractive, Karoline thought. She had a nice body, and it looked good in her expensive linen suit, though she was not at all what she had expected of Nathan's wife.

  The woman looked around the apartment judgmentally Karoline guessed that she didn't think much of it. She probably didn't bake. Of course, that was part of her own appeal. Nathan was married to a woman who couldn't bake.

  "I want you to leave my husband alone."

  "Fine, tell him to leave me alone." Karoline had thought she would be nicer. But she was angry. Why did they always have to tell their wives?

  Billows of water like lenses covered both eyes. The woman tried not to blink, because she knew that if she did, tears would spill down her cheeks. "So it's true."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Are you?" The woman turned around and opened the door. "You can tell Joey not to bother coming home." And she ran down the stairs.

  Joey? "Wait!" Karoline called after her. "Are you Joey Parma's wife? I thought you were someone else."

  Mrs. Parma almost laughed at the preposterousness of that line. "Original, though," came her involuntarily pronounced judgment.

  Fridays were particularly difficult for Nathan that summer. It seemed to be the busiest day in the shop, he was almost always needed for the minyan on Sixth Street, and there was pastry to be made.

  Nathan's family found that he had mysteriously discovered a talent for making pastry to correspond with his passion for eating it. From his point of view, if he made the Friday night dessert, he was not required to go to the Edelweiss to buy one. And he liked making pastry. He thought of selling his shop and opening a bakery. What would Karoline think of that? In truth, Ruth and Harry were both a little disappointed with their son's new hobby, because they liked the Edelweiss's apple strudel. But they tried to resist complaining, since there was a longstanding accusation that Harry belittled Nathan's creativity Nathan had tried to get Karoline to teach him strudel, but she didn't make it. The strudel was always made by Mr. Moellen, the dough stretched over his long, bony arms where hundreds of strudel leaves had been stretched to translucent thinness before, by a gentle pounding motion from underneath that he had not taught his daughter. Nathan preferred making pastries that he did not make with Karoline. He did not want to share her with his family. She was his own private folly

  Every day there was news of the heat wave, of temperatures higher than a hundred degrees. But it didn't matter. In New York, once it got over ninety-five everything hurt. The heat crashed down from above, ribbons of searing white light that silhouetted the tops of the buildings, sparkled on the pavement, and bounced back up. Everybody who could stayed off the streets. Even the drug dealers did not come out until evening.

  Casualties were reported—usually elderly people who died of strokes or heart attacks. People like Nusan. Nathan would check on him, though he hated doing this on a Friday because it meant that he would have to escort him to the synagogue on Sixth Street and then he would be forced to stay for the service. Nathan hoped that if he went by early enough in the day, he could leave before it was time for services. So he hurried through his morning work, closed the shop early, finished off the kugelhogf he was baking in spite of himself, and scrambled into a taxi.

  The driver, with the name of Am Islam, drove as though his taxi were a wide-bowed ship with a loose rudder—steering far to the right, then overcompensating to the left. The one advantage of Am Islam was that he got Nathan to Rivington Street very quickly Nathan had him stop a block away from Nusan's building. Though Nusan had no view of the street from his apartment, he did sometimes rest on the front stoop in hot weather, and Nathan wanted to avoid the lecture about not walking like everyone else, which was certain to lead to a reference to a death march, which he never explained.

  Nusan was not on the stoop, but in his apartment with his h
at and scarf on. He seemed in a good mood. When Nusan was in a good mood, he did not smile or seem happy He was simply more energetic than when in a bad mood.

  "So, ready for lunch?" Nusan asked.

  Nathan, who had not counted on lunch, ignored the question and made his way over the papers and other rubble that filled Nusan's apartment, to the window, which he opened. Although Nusan had an air conditioner, it was on the floor by the window, covered with piles of papers and making it that much more difficult to open the window. Harry had bought the air conditioner for Nusan, thinking that even though Nusan refused anything that he perceived as a luxury, if Nathan delivered it, there was a chance that Nusan would use it. Nathan believed that he would be no more effective than a deliveryman, that Nusan would argue, "When you have experienced real cold, you don't mind a little heat."

  But Nathan had been wrong. Actually what Nusan said was, "Who am I to be spared a heat wave? Millions of people all over New York are suffering. I hear it on the news. It is in the newspaper. But now Nusan Seltzer is so special, he stays cool. Too good to sweat. This is from your father. I know. Your father thinks he is too good to sweat. Because he is an American, because he is safe, he should not sweat like everybody else."

  "It's really hot out," said Nathan.

  "So, kreplach or pirogi?" Nusan answered.

  Any of Nusan's places would be unbearable today. "Look, Nusan, how about ravioli?"

  "Ravioli? Who are you with the ravioli?"

  "It's okay to have ravioli, Nusan. In Italy the poorest people eat ravioli. Really miserable people eat ravioli in Italy."

  "What's with Italy?"

  "Come on. You'll like it. It's little pieces of dough with cheese inside."

  Nusan shrugged. "So what's not to like?" It always surprised Nathan when Nusan was agreeable. He couldn't help suspecting that Nusan chose to be agreeable every now and then just to throw people off balance. The real clue to Nusan's moods was his sleeve, and on this hot day he was keeping his tattoo covered.

  But on the way out he shoved up the sleeves of his jacket. Then he tapped the right doorpost. That tap always irritated Nathan. If he wanted a mezuzah, why didn't he put one up?