The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue

by Robert Klein

  Herbert protested, “Will you shut up already, you’re exaggerating.”

  “Exaggerating? Everyone came running to help. All this in the middle of a torrid knee-humping session with a boner that wouldn’t quit.” More laughter; even Herbert couldn’t suppress a smile.

  “All right, all right, let me tell my own story, if you don’t mind, Mitch. He thinks he’s Mr. Comedian.” Herbert continued, and the story came out more or less like this. After three seconds of limp groaning and a quick, tactile search for blood, the hearty horny boy picked himself up in a masculine display of recuperative power. This played well with Sheila, who had initially wanted to call for an ambulance. In fact, she began fussing over him, straightening his jacket and bending his glasses back into shape. Herbert seized the opportunity to invite her to the Taj, but the episode seemed to have cooled her off, and she refused. She said that was way too far to go for two people who hardly knew each other. He tried to kiss her, but she presented only a cheek, in contrast to the tonsil-depth kisses of a few minutes before. She said she’d better get home or her folks might worry. All of a sudden she had gone from steamer to dutiful daughter. “I thought, who needs this? She’s a cockteaser,” said Herbert.

  “Would you mind walking me home? It’s late,” was the girl’s request. Herbert Schwam was nothing if not a gentleman, so though he now expected no payoff, he could not refuse her, and they began to walk the half mile or so to her parents’ vacation home. The conversation was sparse, with a slightly sullen Herbert contributing little, especially when she had the nerve to regress back to Voltaire. He was cold in his perspiration-soaked tuxedo, and he thought he could see his breath. To add to this, the poor fellow was experiencing the first sign of male excitement interruptus; his testicles were exceedingly painful as he walked. Finally, they arrived at a small white summer cottage with a 1956 Chrysler parked adjacent to it. “This is the house. My parents are sleeping. Thanks for a really nice evening,” she said. No kiss. No nothing. Then she looked at him strangely and took his hand and said, “You know, I like talking to you, but it’s kind of chilly out here. Why don’t we go into the car?” They did, and she was all over him. “Bingo! That was it. I was home free,” Herbert told us. When she said: “You know, I like talking to you, but it’s kind of chilly out here. Why don’t we go into the car?,” the dentist-to-be knew he would find the cavity of his dreams.

  What a story, I thought. I should be so lucky. For several nights after, I looked for Sheila, though I didn’t see her. I wasn’t sure what I might have said to her, since at that stage of my academic career, Thomas Hobbes could have played third base for the Chicago Cubs and a Calder mobile might have been a car. But I kept visualizing Sheila performing acrobatic sexual feats in the backseat of a Chrysler. The vision was a mixed blessing, as it was difficult to eliminate the nerdy Herbert from the mind’s eye.

  “PEEK OP, YOU COCKSUCKER! IT’S GETTING COLD!” The gentle voice of Henry the chef pierced my reverie. I had been caught daydreaming, and a hotel kitchen is a mighty bad place to daydream, especially with those maniacs behind the counter. I hurriedly picked up two side orders of stuffed derma, or kishke, a tasty compote of flour and fat stuffed into the intestinal tract of a cow. If they could eat this stuff and survive, small wonder that Jews had survived for over three thousand years.

  Just then a vicious argument broke out in front of the chef’s station between two waiters in dispute over whose main dishes were sitting on the counter. The kitchen can do that to people. There was only one denizen of the kitchen without a care: the childlike pot washer, Guy. He was showing everyone his new construction boots, of which he was very proud, and he told anyone who would listen how he had hitched a ride into Monticello and bought them for twenty dollars “all by myself.” At twenty-four, he had never purchased a pair of shoes on his own. The kitchen staff, especially the dishwashers, teased him about his boots and said he had paid too much and got taken by the store clerk. But Guy didn’t care. He would interrupt his pot-washing rhythm only to look down at his precious new boots, whistling and smiling. This was a happy man.

  Twelve hours later, during the next morning’s breakfast, there was a silent, sullen Guy, scrubbing at half speed. He was not wearing his new boots. In fact, one of the furtive dishwashers was wearing Guy’s new boots, while Guy had on a pair of used, trashy, pointy stiletto loafers from some Tijuana tag sale, which, to add to the insult, had been sold to him by the dishwasher, who was wearing his boots. It seemed that Guy had lost the boots in a dice game with the two dishwashers, and when we found out about it, a certain amount of extra tension began to build in the already volcanic environment. To the chef, the salad man, and the lunatic baker, Guy’s misfortune was a source of entertainment. They showed not the slightest pity for the man’s loss, smirking and exchanging remarks about it in two or three Central European languages with a dash of Cantonese. However, the humanistic collegians of the dining room staff were outraged, because everyone knew that Guy had been cheated, that he couldn’t negotiate his way through a dice game if his life depended on it. Though he kept muttering something about losing his boots “fair and square,” we knew he didn’t understand the rules of craps.

  Davy, one of the Israeli waiters on summer leave from a kibbutz, approached the dishwasher, who was a Panamanian. The dishwasher was small but scary, wiry and muscular, and had a bumblebee tattooed on the tip of his penis. He was quite proud of this tattoo and would often show it upon request, given a sufficient amount of cheap wine. He also had T-R-U-E L-O-V-E tattooed on eight of his knuckles; the two remaining knuckles bore red hearts.

  “Amigo mio,” Davy said in a thick Israeli accent, “give the poor guy his boots back.”

  “Fuck you” came the quick retort. The dishwasher tensed his body in preparation for battle, producing from under his apron a switchblade knife which he did not open.

  The Israeli proceeded more warily. “I’m not looking to fight you. Look, here’s five dollars. Take your shoes and give him his boots, and everyone will be happy.”

  At this the Panamanian let out a rapid stream of Spanish words that were undoubtedly opprobrious, lots of putas and madres and maricones. He had a crazy look in his eye, and Davy backed off. The chef and his gang got a kick out of the confrontation and seemed disappointed that it was over, screaming, “Whatsamatta, you scared to fight him? Fight him! Fight him!”

  Davy looked at them contemptuously and hurled some insults in Hebrew, which I found out later were about whores and mothers and fags. He had been in the Israeli army in the Sinai in 1956 and was no coward. But perhaps because he had seen bloodshed up close, he seemed little interested in engaging in a knife fight in a kitchen with a psychopath over a pair of boots. He took his tray, turning to leave, and playfully hit Guy on the head. “Meshuggenah! Don’t play no dice no more with these charming gentlemen in the back here. Okay?” Guy just muttered and scrubbed and occasionally looked forlornly at his beloved boots on someone else’s feet.

  All day everybody talked about poor Guy and his boots, but nobody dared confront the thief. Joel, a political-science major from City College, gathered a petition and presented it to Henry the chef, demanding that he intervene in the matter. We all signed it. The theory was that the chef’s ego would be stroked by this acknowledgment of his power, and in the interest of justice, he would act. When the petition was presented to Henry, he looked at it for five seconds, uttered a Hungarian expletive, contemptuously blew his nose on the document, and threw it in the garbage. So much for the theories of political-science majors.

  At the Waldorf that night, a lively discussion about Guy’s boots took place, and much anger and indignation were vented. Billy Fink, a liberal-arts guy from NYU, gave an impassioned speech about “the dignity of man” and how “the workers must be protected from exploitation.” This stuff seemed to make sense, but then he veered way left, comparing the stolen boots to “the hideous execution of the Rosenbergs,” which was a bit of a stretch. Fink, though a
good speaker, was a Commie through and through whose bullshit no one took seriously, and he was booed heartily to sit down.

  Kendall Haynes, the gentle Episcopalian from the Yale Divinity School who could imitate a calliope, talked quietly, in the manner characteristic of modest people who have something important to say. Kendall thought before he spoke and considered his words carefully, framing the question in the simplest ethical terms. There was right and there was wrong, justice and injustice, right before our eyes. He invoked the holocaust as an example of people seeing injustice and doing nothing, but he counseled against violence. I think some of the boys had tears in their eyes upon hearing the gentle gentile espouse such a reasonable treatise. Kendall had nailed the problem admirably, but he offered no solution for correcting the matter beyond vagaries about “moral suasion.” How are you going to exercise moral suasion over a maniac with a switchblade knife and a bumblebee tattooed on his penis?

  Charlie Abrams, the prelaw from Boston University, said that the owner of the hotel, Mr. Grunwald, should fire the Panamanian forthwith. He suggested an “executive committee” to approach Grunwald and hope that he would do “the decent thing.” Larry Zwick, a dental student from the University of Maryland, revealed that he had already talked to Mr. Grunwald, who was his uncle, and he could not have cared less about a pair of boots. “The Panamanian does a good job cleaning the dishes. That’s all that concerns me,” Mr. Grunwald had said.

  Grunwald had inherited the Fieldston Hotel from his father, the late and much venerated (by the immediate family) Israel Grunwald. An amateurish portrait of Grunwald the elder was prominently displayed in the hotel lobby. Several penciled-in mustaches had obviously been painted over in a futile attempt to maintain the dignity of the portrait, whose quality brought to mind paint-by-numbers. It looked as if number seventeen, the lower jaw, had not been fully filled in. Mr. Grunwald was a hands-on boss who endlessly nagged the boys about wasting food in the dining room; it was crucial that the butter and the cream be collected and refrigerated. Surviving hard-boiled eggs would become tomorrow’s egg salad. He liked to make inspections of the dining room stations to see that they had been properly swept and maintained. One of his main preoccupations was reminding the male staff to dance with guests who had no one to dance with, especially elderly widows. This was considered part of the job, so no cash was offered, as in the special case of Diamond Lil. This duty was avoided whenever possible. When one of the busboys was locked on the dance floor in the embrace of an elderly guest (more for balance than passion), the others would position themselves behind the widow and try to make the boy laugh by making unearthly, repulsive faces—that is, until Grunwald caught a few. He lectured them, saying that this was a test of their maturity and they were failing.

  However, the moral dilemma about Guy’s boots was a more sobering, important test, and Grunwald was failing. Steven Stern, a basketball jock from Syracuse, suggested that we all surround the Panamanian and threaten to beat the shit out of him unless he returned the boots. “He’s only five feet tall, for Chrissakes!” This appealed to a fair amount of the boys, thanks to the old strength-in-numbers concept.

  “What if he pulls a knife?” I said.

  “We just rush him, and we can have knives, too,” said the basketball jock. He was addressing a group of boys whose experience with a knife was largely confined to buttering bread. Somebody pointed out intelligently that our trays would make excellent shields. But the question to me was who would be in the front row and most vulnerable to a nice knife in the belly? If there were fifteen of us, should we confront him in three rows five deep? Five rows three deep? Or the most egalitarian, share-the-risk mode of a circle of fifteen? The latter suggestion appealed most to the group, and everyone agreed we would do it the next morning before we served breakfast.

  When morning came, no one involved in the plan bothered to eat the two-day-old blintzes or the oatmeal that was offered, preferring coffee and cigarettes. A certain jumpiness pervaded the room as we looked around conspiratorially like cons about to break out of Sing Sing. Stern, the jock, gave a signal with his head, and we all grabbed our trays and proceeded to the kitchen. It was apparent that the squadron was in a highly defensive mode; no one picked up a knife. We formed at the dishwasher’s station, a hodgepodge of nervous volunteers holding trays at our sides at the ready, like a phalanx of Roman soldiers. The dishwasher was in a position near the wall, where we couldn’t get behind him, so we had to make do with a semicircle of varying depth. Stern put his money where his mouth was and gamely, if nervously, stood at the front.

  The dishwasher looked confused. “What the fuck you want?” he said.

  “We want you to give Guy back his boots,” said Stern.

  The Panamanian smiled, revealing ugly gold teeth barely hanging on to rotten bone and diseased gums. He put down some cups and saucers very slowly and deliberately, and in an instant, he produced a switchblade that opened with a CLICK. On that sound, fifteen trays snapped up with absolute precision to the shield position, worthy of a scene from Ben-Hur. It is amazing what the instinct of self-survival can accomplish for even inexperienced warriors.

  The Panamanian slowly waved the knife at us, from left to right in a semicircle, still with that terrifying smile. I worried. Unlike a Roman shield, my tray had no handle, and my fingers were exposed. Suddenly, the venomous bastard took a menacing step toward the group, which promptly retreated five steps. One of the boys screamed, having backed into a griddle and burned his buttocks. A couple of warriors tiptoed through the swinging door and returned to the dining room, being more discreet than valorous. I had more or less held my ground, though I have to admit that the dishwasher’s advance had caused me a heart palpitation. While he continued to menace, I inched toward the chef for sanctuary, figuring the dishwasher would never attack in that direction. He kept smiling that sinister smile and, with the knife in his hand, totally belied the tattooed message on his knuckles.

  He had stabbed the air a few times for effect when the chef screamed at the top of his lungs: “WHAT THE FUCK YOU DOING, YOU JOIK!” At last, I thought, the chef will end the madness and disarm this asshole. But no. It quickly became apparent that it was us he was screaming at. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY KEECHIN, YOU COCKSUCKERS!” He grabbed an eighteen-inch cleaver out of a chopping block and charged the company assembled, waving the thing within inches of us, all the while spewing a torrent of Hungarian curses. He looked like he meant it this time, sporting a nice homicidal glaze in his eyes. “BOZMEG UNYUCA! BOZMEG AZUPATA! YOY ISHTANEM, I KILL YOU ALL!” My parents spoke fluent Hungarian, and I can tell you that the incantation was vile indeed. “THIS EES MY KEECHIN! DOSE BOOTS EES NOBODY’S BEEZNESS! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY KEECHIN, OR I FIRE YOU AND YOU GO HOME TO YOUR MOTHERS!” At this, the plan collapsed in a humiliating dash as the busboys cut and ran back into the dining room and proceeded to prepare their tables.

  Moish sat at his station picking his teeth with a wry smile on his face, absorbing the scene. He always smiled, but most of the time it wasn’t a warm smile, signifying pleasure. It was more of a cynical smile, a tormented smile, born of his year in the Auschwitz concentration camp where his family was murdered. We would hear whispered accounts of his misfortune and subsequent exploits. There apparently had been an escape and four years spent running from the Nazis. Morris Landsman had even been awarded a medal from the Polish government, a bizarre irony, because he loathed that country since it was his Polish neighbors who had turned the family in to the Germans. He was a legendary figure at the Fieldston, having worked there for ten summers, and it was said that he had a deal that guaranteed him four thousand dollars for the season. Not your ordinary waiter, he had the best station, with the most generous customers, as well as administrative duties as the boss of the dining room.

  Moish rarely spoke to any of us about his war experiences or his loss. Davy, however, had known him for years and told as much as he dared about the arcane past without violating his friends
hip. The stories had a mythic quality about them, short on details, which stimulated the listener all the more to imagine just how dangerous and horrifying it all had been. In any case, Morris Landsman was portrayed as a man with tremendous inner discipline who did not much savor recounting the past. We were told he had escaped from the concentration camp by killing a guard with a knife, followed by a stint sabotaging trains with the Polish underground, some of whose operatives were as anti-Semitic as the Nazis. Davy implied that Moish knew how to kill a man in ways unimagined.

  He certainly didn’t look the part of a killer. He was sort of handsome and compact and, well, Jewish, with a nice head of prematurely graying wavy hair. Though he was quite muscular and sinewy, he looked older than his forty years and seemed to take a certain pride in the numbers tattooed on his arm. One wondered what he thought behind that inscrutable smile. He had an excellent sense of humor and timing, speaking English with a Yiddish accent that’s almost gone from the culture now, the one associated with Jewish jokes. He often made us laugh. But there was sorrow in his eyes, and more than a tinge of Pagliacci about him.

  Occasionally, if Morris Landsman had enough Scotch in him, he would let loose with some stories to the boys sitting at the bar. Just after the war, the American army had hired him as a translator to communicate with the Germans. He was a Pole, and his German was scanty, so he would speak to the enemy in Yiddish, which was an exquisitely nonviolent revenge with a comedic twist. He recounted how they all understood him perfectly, and how “nice and normal” and polite and humble these Nazis were, sitting there as captives being spoken to in the language of the people they had just been slaughtering. I loved that one.