by Tom Robbins
With that, Buddy turned and headed for the barricades. Cursing him, firemen brushed past him on their way up the steps. He disappeared momentarily in belches of smoke. “Bet the archbishop’s faggots forgot to turn off the heat under the chowder,” he joked. “’Course, too, they might’ve been warming up some of that KY Jelly.” He’d closed his eyes against the sting of the smoke, and it was at the instant of their cautious reopening that he spotted the things on the sidewalk.
His retrieval of them, two of them, had been purely instinctive, although it quickly occurred to him that the spoon was identical to the one that his wanton niece had painted pictures of, and that the satanic-looking stick was the one that had been used to trip him up a few weeks prior. He’d had a funny feeling about the grate in that cathedral for a while now, a feeling as if something unnatural and unrighteous was being carried on behind it. Something that might have been intended to personally bug him. It wasn’t anything he could speak about. He was reluctant to think about it in any but the most superficial way. Oddly enough, he didn’t blame the Catholics. Intuition led him to suspect that whatever it was was somehow connected to that lunkhead who used to stand stock-still down the street there, fooling gullible pseudointellectuals such as Ellen Cherry Charles into believing he was turning around. Whatever it was, it was also connected to these things he’d found on the sidewalk. Well, he would paint their little red wagon blue! He’d just take their playthings with him! Except for the sock, of course. Let the Devil dress his hoof in that noxious stocking!
Dirty Sock folded himself into a tiny wad and scrunched against the wall. Toward dawn, stymied and alone, he slithered back through the grate into the fire-blackened cellar of St. Patrick’s. Some say that he is there still. That he haunts the cathedral like a vile Protestant wraith, causing altar boys to spill the wine, dignified gentlemen to break wind during confession, bishops to lapse into pig Latin, and young mothers to agitate for birth control. It is even rumored that on cold winter nights, he weights himself with a lump or two of coal and plays eerie Hank Williams riffs on the organ. Or that he will slither out of the grate just long enough to wrap himself around the ankle of a matronly shopper, making her squeal and drop the parcels she is fetching home from Saks. “Heh-heh-heh,” he’s reported to chuckle as he darts back into his den.
Cooler heads say that he’s not in the church at all, but, rather, that he’s gone to that place where so very many socks go, when, in a manner most unaccountable, they vanish from laundry machines all over America; that he’s entered another dimension, as it were; a parallel universe of cotton, wool, and polyester: the Planet of the Lost Socks.
In either case, like numerous pilgrims before him, Dirty Sock was never to reach far Jerusalem. It is possible, however, that Jerusalem will yet come to him.
In regard to Jerusalem, at least, the other locomotive objects fared better than the sock.
Buddy Winkler carried Spoon and Painted Stick to the handsome midtown apartment that the Third Temple Platoon had leased for him (and which he’d turned into a bit of a sty), where, with a mixture of curiosity and revulsion, he scrutinized them for a while longer before shutting them away in his closet. He sealed the door with a prayer. “Lord Jesus, if these here items be possessed of the demonic, please protect your loving and no-account servant from their evil influences.”
No sooner had Buddy slammed the closet door than a hysterical Spoon, noting the wide gaps between the louvers, began urging Painted Stick to attack. “Bash him on the noggin,” said Spoon, “and let’s get out of here!” Surprised by her assertiveness and sensitive about bashing animate noggins, the stick advised her to cool down, to wait to see what fortune would bring.
During the night, Spoon did, indeed, regain a measure of equilibrium, but come morning, when they heard the preacher stir, she began anew her plea for a bash and a dash. “Silence!” ordered the decorated rod. “What can be the matter? Did you not overhear last evening the auspicious designs of our captor?”
The designs to which Painted Stick referred were revealed in a conversation the Reverend Buddy Winkler had had around midnight with a stealthy visitor. “Sorry to ask you to meet me here, rabbi,” Buddy had said, “but this dad-blasted phone is as good as tapped. An undercover cop of unknown liberal affiliation inveigled me earlier this very day. He was a slick sucker, though I don’t believe he more than covered the bottom of his bucket outta my loose pump. Anyways, it’s a sign, a sign doubtless provided by the Almighty, that we gotta take us some care. For that reason, I want you to know that I plan to ship this here possibly incriminatin’ stuff on over to Jerusalem tomorrow or the next day. Clear it offen the premises. My boy Boomer Petway can just as well store it over there.”
“Did you not hear that?” asked the stick. “This man shall be shipping ’stuff’ to Jerusalem. And you and I shall ship along with it.”
“Oh, dear,” Spoon gulped. “But what about the others?”
“There is nothing we can do for them now. Their fate is in the stars. Fortunately, Conch Shell is on the best of terms with starlight.”
It took several hours for Conch Shell and Can o’ Beans to get out of the cathedral. Soon after the fire hoses were dragged in, they scooted from their hiding place behind the door and began their laborious and frightening ascent of the stairs. Before they reached the basement level, two firemen rushed by without seeing them. In the basement, they hid for thirty minutes in a crate of incense. “Once more I’m thankful I’m not human,” said the bean can. “If we had noses, this powder would asphyxiate us. Of course, if we had noses, Mr. Sock might have gassed us long ago.”
The firemen made rather quick work of the blaze. All but one of the engines departed. Its crew hung around outside, enjoying coffee and doughnuts and talking football with the cops. They were making certain the fire didn’t flare up again. Eventually, the arson squad arrived to launch its investigation. By that time, the shell and the can, like a couple of plaster-cast salmon climbing a dry fish ladder, had clumped safely to the main floor, where they took refuge beneath a pew in the nave.
Gradually, the men cleared out until only one investigator, the archbishop’s secretary, and the chief custodian were left. For a time, the objects feared they might be trapped in the nave, destined to be knelt upon at Sunday mass. However, the secretary suggested that the front doors be propped open to air out the place, which smelled pungently of woodsmoke and cremated hymnals. Shortly thereafter, Can o’ Beans and Conch Shell were on the night-town streets, the thousand pulses of the city beating like a thousand phosphorescent wings against their steel and calcium hides.
The balled-up sock was crouched a yard past the Fifty-first Street end of the grate. Turning downtown, as they had been instructed, Can o’ Beans and Conch Shell didn’t see Dirty Sock. He didn’t see them. Keeping to the shadows, they hastily crossed Fiftieth, rounded the corner of Forty-ninth, and ducked into the cement-dusted labyrinth of a construction site. They were sorely disappointed that stick, spoon, and sock weren’t awaiting them there.
“Jilted!” said Can o’ Beans. “Now what do we do?”
“We shall linger for a bit. There are too many humans about at this hour. But if our companions have not shown themselves by moonset, we shall continue on our own to the river. Thence the sea.”
A pensive Conch Shell leaned to rest against a piece of Styrofoam. It proved to be a food carton, left by a gastronomically adventurous construction worker who had purchased his lunch that noon from a nearby Japanese restaurant. The thrust of the shell’s spiky whorls tipped the carton over, causing it to expel from its chamber a quivering blob of repulsive white custard. “Go-oo-oo-oo-od-od e-e-e-ev-ev-ev-ning-ning,” said the blob, continuing to vibrate like the larynx of an albino soprano.
“And what, pray tell,” asked the startled shell, “might you be?”
When at last it had ceased to jiggle, the strange life form replied, “You can call me tofu. Or you can call me dofu. But you doesn’t have to call me be
an curd.”
For seventy-two hours, Conch Shell and Can o’ Beans scurried from hiding place to hiding place along New York’s waterfront, hoping, in vain, for a rendezvous with their fellows. Finally, at approximately eleven o’clock on the third night, an August night, a night as warm and gamey as turtle soup, the shell instructed the bean can to mount her, and with the deformed container nestled in her nacreous cockpit (a little too precariously to be to their liking), she slipped into the greasy harbor and swam away.
The weight of the can forced her to ride low in the water. Every gentle wave lapped against her passenger, and her worry was that the more powerful waves of the open ocean would wash the can from its niche. She warned Can o’ Beans of the dashings and drownings that might await them, but when they did exit the harbor the next morning and the first row of whitecaps set him/her to rattling in her aperture, he/she yelled “Surf’s up!", and whooping like an exuberant schoolboy/girl, he/she did his/her toeless best to hang ten.
“We travel slowly,” said Conch Shell, “and we have such a long, long distance to go. If we should encounter a storm . . .”
“Let ’er blow!” shouted Can o’ Beans. Then, more quietly, he/she added, “Look, Miss Shell, it’s not every tin of prepared carbohydrates that gets to ride the waves, especially not in such a pretty boat. I would be prevaricating were I not to admit that both the masculine and feminine aspects of my nature are aroused by the accommodations on this cruise. Now don’t blush. And don’t fret. Think about the Third Temple of Jerusalem and what role it is that you’re destined to play therein. As for me, my energy has been too long centered in my intellect. I’m having the time of my life.”
Conch Shell said nothing further, but concentrated on the sea and on keeping her wobbly passenger upright in her crevice. Garlands of seaweed encircled her like composted leis, crabs serenaded her with their flatiron fiddles, and schools of shad bumped her along with their noses. Hardly was she out of sight of the Statue of Liberty than several cargo ships overtook her. And in the hold of one of them, the one that gave her the greatest problem with its wake, secreted amidst odd trappings and paraphernalia in a crate addressed to Randolph Petway III, huddled a pair of mutated objects of her long and fond acquaintance.
HUSBANDLESS, LOVERLESS, and now fatherless, Ellen Cherry became wife, mistress, and daughter of the I & I. The restaurant’s staff had been virtually doubled, and once more she found herself in a managerial position. She might have preferred to remain simply a waitress, but it wasn’t possible. By the middle of September, the situation there was almost out of hand, and her expertise and energy were much in demand.
Salome was New York’s new queen of the night. Finding her refreshing compared to the aggressive, overdressed publicity sluts who normally competed for the crown, the press doted on her. Yet the more that was written about her, the more mysterious she seemed, and the greater her mystery, the more attention she attracted. In a revolutionary reversal, the hip, the cool, and the famous were among the last to discover her. For months they resisted, but, one by one, two by two, they swallowed their pride, deserted Nell’s, 6 Bond Street, M. K., and Payday, to limo and taxi to United Nations Plaza, where, humiliated, they lined up with squares from the suburbs, whining to be let in. Occasionally, a genuine platinum-plated celebrity would appear at the door and petition for admission, but Abu and Spike played no favorites: it was first come, first served at Isaac & Ishmael’s, although once Abu did allow Debra Winger to watch the show from the kitchen after she offered to help with the dishes.
In each and every interview they granted, Abu and Spike insisted that there be some mention of the restaurant’s raison d’être and of its troubled history. As a result, their experiment in Arab-Jewish camaraderie received notice beyond their wildest dreams. The clippings and videotapes that they collected were dutifully copied and dispatched to Jerusalem.
“Do not get sentimental over us,” Abu warned journalists. “We are a tiny and slightly mad oasis in a vast desert. We do what we do, make the statement we make, because of who we are, not because we think we are going to change the Middle East.”
Added Spike, “But what we do is necessary already, even if nobody else follows our suit.”
In late September, the I & I actually received a fairly major humanitarian award. It was the young belly dancer, however, it was Salome, who was the center of attention. As far as New York was concerned, she was the I & I’s meat, and gravy, too; the brotherhood bit was merely an obligatory garnish of parsley.
For a few weeks, the restaurant brought in the orchestra on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, as well, and hired two experienced belly dancers to shimmy on those nights. In terms of business, the expanded schedule was not unsuccessful, but on Spike and Abu’s excitement meter, it failed to even breathe on the needle. The new dancers, veteran performers though they were, were fluoridated tap water compared to Salome’s gourd of spiced mare’s milk. They were adequate, but as Abu put it, “To the connoisseur, adequacy is insulting.” Besides, old customers were complaining that to accommodate the floor show, the super-duper TV was being switched off, usually at the most crucial point in a ball game. Spike and Abu fired the dancers and returned the band to its Friday-Saturday schedule.
The East Indian restaurant next door, completely overshadowed even though it employed a superior chef, offered to sell out to the Arab and the Jew so that they could enlarge their premises. Abu and Spike declined. “What we have already we’re sticking to already,” said Spike. And what they had was a reticent sixteen-year-old student nurse (Shaftoe was correct) who refused to speak with producers of “The Tonight Show” when they approached her in the cafeteria at Bellevue Hospital, waving a contract so briskly that it cooled off her double order of french fries. (Shaftoe also revealed—nobody knew where he was getting his information—that the girl wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses when she studied or watched cartoons, a fact later confirmed by a writer for Newsweek, prompting dozens of men and women with perfect vision to start showing up at UN Plaza in spectacles of consummate dorkiness.)
What they had was a squirmy, self-conscious, adolescent girl who redefined the art of belly dancing without really trying, like a somnambulant who writes original love poems in her sleep. What they had was a virgin (the bandleader swore that she was!) who could make men (and a few women, too) come without touching them, without even looking at them. What they had was a callow child-woman who, wielding a tube of cheap lipstick, marked a ruby X on the sternum of modern, sophisticated, cynical Manhattan, then gunned its heart full of deep emotions and silly ideas.
“The belly dance began as a kind of practical feminist yoga,” Abu explained on more than one occasion. “It was developed in the Levant hundreds, maybe thousands, of years ago as a way to tone certain muscles and loosen others, so that women could give birth more easily, with less pain. It also reduced menstrual cramps. Now I am merely guessing, but I imagine that women got together to do these exercises, rather like a contemporary aerobics class, and the menfolk were intrigued in spite of themselves. They found the workouts entertaining or prurient or both. Gradually, belly dancing, like so many other things, drifted out of its original context and became mannered, stylized, self-referential.”
“And is Salome restoring some of the original flavor, the old moves?”
“How would I know? For that matter, how would she know?”
“Well, she claims she’s a Canaanite.”
“A conceit, obviously. Those Canaanites who were not exterminated by the Hebrews were absorbed by them. What Salome said, actually, was, ’I’m one of those Canaanite girls whose mothers picked flowers for the altars of Jerusalem.’ A conceit, but I like it. It is musical. A little poem. What I think she is trying to say, in her romantic, adolescent way—and I forbid you to quote me on this—is that she is half Arabic, half Jewish. She would have suffered somewhat because of this, and styling herself a Canaanite, a member of a lost race, is her poetic way of dealing with that confu
sion, that pain. Pure speculation, mind you. Detective Shaftoe, whose information is usually reliable, has said nothing of the sort.”
There was a way in which Ellen Cherry grew to resent both the I & I and its star attraction. The more successful the restaurant became, the more of her time and energy it sapped. She was happy for her employers, but once again her return to painting had been postponed (not that any thundering stampede of great ideas was rushing toward the cliffs of her cerebrum, anxious to throw itself headlong into paint jars down below). As for Salome, she, like Boomer, seemed to have succeeded wildly without really working at it (although how could a chagrined Ellen Cherry be sure that Salome hadn’t spent most of her young life practicing those moves that she executed with such hesitant if not indifferent grace, and, moreover, wasn’t it Ellen Cherry who had asserted that she didn’t care whether or not artists paid their dues so long as the end product sprayed Windex on the panes of perception?). Contradiction may be an unavoidable trait in a many-faceted sensibility in an expanding universe, but bitterness is reductive in the most trivializing way, and Ellen Cherry was aware that it was her fate to have to struggle against it. Over and over, she reminded herself how fortunate she was to have landed her life in a situation where strange things could happen to it. “Why, if I hadn’t learned the eye game when I was little, I could be in Colonial Pines right now, washing and ironing some clodhopper’s shorts.”
Husbandless, loverless, and now fatherless, Ellen Cherry couldn’t have been unaware that men’s shorts definitely were one item missing from any inventory of her world. It was as if some monster Kali-Hoover had sucked all the primary shorts-wearers out of her life. Of course, there was Abu. And Spike, in a recycled guise. And no lack of male energy among the clientele at the I & I. On the other hand, what had become of Turn Around Norman? And that flirty Raoul? They, too, had been vacuumed up off that Middle Eastern rug that seemed to cover the earth in every direction as far as her eyes could see.