Dancing Aztecs Page 21

  “For Angela,” he whispered, and started the engine, and drove away from there, heading first toward the nearest of the two:

  Ben Cohen

  27-15 Robert Moses Drive

  Glen Cove, Long Island

  ON THE SOUND …

  If you’re a Jewish retail merchant in Harlem, your smart move is to take an interest in the community, which was why Ben Cohen, whose liquor store was on Lenox Avenue not far north of 125th Street, devoted so much of his time and effort and money to causes like the Open Sports Committee. But on his own time Ben Cohen was a member of an entirely different community; he was a boat person on Long Island Sound.

  New York City is amid more water than any other major city in the world, and pays it less attention. Paris has some little brook called the Seine, and they run another bridge over it every fifteen feet. The way London carries on about the Thames you’d think it was a big deal, including lining it with all their classiest buildings, such as Parliament. San Francisco, the wind-up toy of cities, never gets over its Bay, and Venice is so much in love with its Bay that it’s sinking into it.

  New York is full of water, and neither looks it nor acts it. Of the five boroughs of the city, only one—the Bronx—is on the mainland of the United States, and yet you can spend months in New York without seeing any water except what comes out of the faucet. Manhattan Island alone is surrounded by three rivers (the Hudson, the Harlem, and the East), one creek (Spuyten Duyvil), and a kill (Bronx). The island is fourteen miles long and less than two miles wide, and of the six ways off the southern half four are tunnels. People who travel to and from Manhattan Island every working day of their lives never see a shoreline until they go to the beach for summer vacation.

  For those people called by water, therefore, the only thing to do is leave town, and for most of those people the place to go is Long Island, which for much of its hundred-mile length is flanked by two protected bodies of water, Long Island Sound to the north and the Great South Bay to the south. In the summertime the boat people are as numerous off the two coasts of Long Island as pigeons in the park. And one of them, every chance he gets, is Ben Cohen.

  Today was one of his chances. He’d have to go to the store this evening, but most of the daylight hours he could have to himself, so here he was alone on the Sound, getting the Bobbing Cork II ready for summer.

  Hell of a boat, the Bobbing Cork II, a gleaming white Chriscraft with the wheel on an upper deck over a compartment that could sleep four. His twin seventy-horsepower black Mercury engines gleamed at the stern, where two white and pale-green director’s chairs stood on the pale-green indoor-outdoor carpeting. The white plastic bucket filled with water (for people with sandy bare feet) stood next to the white rubber welcome mat with Bobbing Cork II inscribed on it in pale-green italics. The hibachi, spotlessly clean, stood on its own low white Formica shelf in a corner.

  Inside, pale-green and white continued to dominate, on the vinyl cushions of the two settees (the trundle beds slid out from underneath) and on the Formica-topped table and the Formica-faced cabinets and shelves. The curtains, white with green dots, were plastic, and so was the white cabinet of the television set. The interior of the head was white plastic with green toilet paper.

  But up top, up by the wheel, that was Ben Cohen’s territory. Captain of his ship, with his Budweiser hat at a jaunty tilt, under a canvas top and flanked by a pair of long fish teasers looking like a set of whip antennae, when Ben Cohen was at the wheel of the Bobbing Cork II Ben Cohen was at home.

  This space was to Cohen what a den is to many men. Pictures of the family and the store, in weatherproof frames, were mounted all about the dashboard, along with other memorabilia, including most recently the Other Oscar, which he had taped to the top of the dash between the statue of the pregnant mermaid and the statue of the monkey sitting on the book marked “Darwin” and studying a human skull. And the white director’s chair at the wheel had written on it, in pale-green script, Cap’ Cohen.

  Cohen was up here now, polishing the brightwork with a diaper (to own a boat is never to lack for something that needs to be cleaned or painted), when a voice on the dock suddenly called out, “Hello?”

  Which is no way, Cohen knew, to talk to a boat. The proper hail is, “Ahoy, there!” Knowing, then, that this was a landlubber. Cohen went ahead and gave the proper response anyway: “Ahoy yourself!”

  “Is Mister Ben Cohen here?”

  Ashore, Ben Cohen was Mister, but afloat the term Mister meant a mate or other junior officer, and afloat Ben Cohen was Captain, but what did a landlubber know? “Right here,” Cohen said, and came down the ladder to see an ingratiating smile on the face of an under-forty man in a rumpled light-tone jacket and tie. He was standing on the dock in the sunlight, leaning slightly in Cohen’s direction. There was nothing of the boat person about this fellow, and Cohen did not warm to him. “What can I do for you?” he said.

  “I stopped by your house,” the stranger said, “and your wife told me I might find you here.”

  “Oh, she did, did she?”

  “My name’s, uh, Mel George, and I’m—Uh. Could I come in for a minute?”

  “In? You mean aboard?”

  The stranger gave an affable laugh. “I guess that’s what I mean. I don’t know that much about boats.”

  “I can see you don’t,” Cohen said. “Come aboard, if you want.”

  “Thank you.” Mel George stepped carefully over the side and directly into the bucket of water. “Ak!” he said.

  Cohen shook his head. “Mostly people don’t do that unless they’re barefoot,” he said.

  “Goddam it!” said Mel George, and in pulling his shoe-clad foot out of the bucket he tipped it over, sloshing water all over the carpet.

  “Take it easy!” Cohen said.

  “I’m really very sorry,” Mel George said. He had his wet foot up in the air, like a dog taking a leak, and was shaking it. Then the boat moved slightly, and Mel George lurched and kicked the hibachi off its stand.

  “Take it easy!”

  “Sorry. Sorry.” Mel George leaned over, bumping into a director’s chair, and picked up the hibachi. The director’s chair bumped into the other director’s chair, and they both fell over.

  “Holy shit!” said Cohen.

  A fairly large boat had just gone by, and that little movement of the boat a few seconds earlier had been the first wavelet of that passing boat’s wake. Now a larger roll of wake tipped the Bobbing Cork II left, then right, and Mel George dropped the hibachi into the Sound. “Oh, my gosh!” said Mel George.

  “What in hell are you doing?” cried Cohen.

  Mel George clutched at various parts of the boat, getting oily fingerprints all over the brightwork. The wake passed beneath the boat in several successive rolls, and Mel George stood there wide-eyed, holding on like a sleep walker waking to find himself on a building ledge. Cohen took the opportunity to right the director’s chairs and place one of them handy to Mel George, “Sit down, goddam it.”

  Mel George sat down. “I’m terribly sorry about that, uh, thing,” he said. “I’ll pay for it, of course.”

  “You’ll tell me your business with me,” Cohen told him, “and then you’ll go away and leave me to clean things up around here.”

  “Yes, of course. I really am sorry, it was a very unfortunate way to begin, particularly because, well, in fact, I’m from UJA.”

  “I gave at the office,” Cohen said. Which wasn’t the truth. But he had decided some time ago that he couldn’t give financial support both to black causes and Jewish causes, and his choice for various reasons had been to stick with the black causes and let the Jewish causes struggle along without him. Including the United Jewish Appeal.

  Mel George, unfortunately, was not to be so easily dissauded. “This isn’t precisely a contribution I’m asking for,” he said.

  “I don’t have any spare time,” said the master of the Bobbing Cork II.

  “Oh, we know you’
re a busy man,” Mel George said. “We wouldn’t want to take up any of your time.”

  “Not money and not time? What is it, then?”

  “Well as you know,” Mel George said, “the project of planting trees in Israel has been wonderfully successful for many years.” And he went on from there to a long rambling account of most of the Jewish philanthropies of the twentieth century, whether connected with Israel or not. B’nai B’rith was mentioned, rather confusingly, and the kibbutzim, and the annual Chanukah Festival in Madison Square Garden. All of the words formed rational sentences, and all of the subjects were familiar to Cohen, and yet he had the feeling nothing was making any sense. What, after all, was this fellow talking about? He tried to find out a few times, asking direct questions, but the answer tended to be even foggier than the phrase that had prompted the question, so after a while Cohen just sat back in the other director’s chair and waited for this squall to wear itself out.

  Then Mel George coughed and said, “I’m sorry, I’m a little hoarse.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder,” said Cohen.

  “Could I have—would you have some water?”

  “Water? Of course.” Rising, Cohen said, “Would you prefer seltzer?”

  “No, thank you, just plain water would be fine.”

  “Ice cubes?”

  “Why, yes, thank you. Thank you very much.”

  So Cohen went inside to the galley and got a glass of water with ice cubes, and when he came outside Mel George was gone.

  No, he wasn’t. There he was up by the wheel, smiling around in that infuriating ingratiating way of his. God alone knew what damage he could cause up there. “George!” cried Cohen. “Come down from there!” And then, in somewhat less harsh tones, “I have your water.”

  “Thank you, thank you!” Coming down the ladder, he smiled and said, “I was just enjoying the view from up there. Beautiful, beautiful. You have a beautiful boat, Mr. Cohen.”

  It was until you got here. But Cohen didn’t say that aloud. Instead, he said, “Here’s your water.”

  Mel George thanked him again, drank the water, and then said, “Well, I don’t want to keep you. But you will bear us in mind for when we call again, won’t you?”

  “Bear you in mind for what?”

  But Mel George was returning the glass, smiling, saying a lot of fuzzy things, and preparing to leave the boat. Off he went, his left arm held oddly down at his side as though he’d hurt himself on the ladder—wouldn’t that be nice—and while Cohen watched in bewilderment the man stepped ashore, waved his nonstiff hand, and turned to walk back down the long wooden dock to the land.

  Had the fool hurt himself by breaking something up by the wheel? Cohen hurried up the ladder and saw at once what was missing; the Other Oscar. The bastard had stolen it! The stiff left arm, concealing the statue beneath his coat!

  Turning from the wheel, Cohen saw Mel George still walking away along the dock. And then, providentially, a young man appeared on the shore, coming this way. Grabbing up his pale-green megaphone, Cohen yelled at him, “STOP, THIEF! STOP HIM!”

  The young man, a tall and skinny fellow in pullover shirt and gray slacks, apparently understood at once, because he suddenly ran forward to block the end of the dock. Mel George, seeing him there, stopped and pointed at him and seemed to be saying something. Some lie, no doubt.

  Cohen hurried down the ladder, off the boat, and along the dock, running as fast as his sure-grip sneakers and his middle-aged spread would permit. Mel George, looking over his shoulder, saw him coming and dithered a bit, like a base-runner caught between the second baseman and the short-stop. Then, making the only decision he could, he suddenly jumped forward, trying to run either through or around the younger man.

  Who wouldn’t permit it. He and Mel George feinted one way, then the other, and as Cohen came panting up the young man punched Mel George in the nose and Mel George sat down hard on the wooden dock. The statue of the Other Oscar dropped out from under his jacket onto his lap.

  “Thank you,” gasped Cohen. “Thank you.” Stooping, he picked up the statue out of the thief’s lap and turned to smile pantingly at the young man. Who then punched Cohen in the nose, grabbed the statue, and ran away.

  IN THE SOUND …

  Wally Hintzlebel’s day had begun with an argument with his mom. That never happened, trouble with his mom, but it did this morning, and it ended with Wally screaming God-knows-what at his mother and running out of the house. (He couldn’t remember what he’d screamed at her, and he certainly hoped she couldn’t remember either.)

  He blamed the bad dreams. He’d slept fitfully, waking up and waking up to hear his heart beating like running foot-steps, then dropping back into dream worlds of chains and monsters, running and running and more running. Great glaring crevices in the vaulting ceiling of the cave, through which sunlight spat, charring everything it touched. Drowning in green-gray murky seas, with the slithering tentacles streaming off him. His foot and ankle imprisoned inside a boulder, with the great black night rolling down the mountainside. Laughter and cawing, and the Dancing Aztec Priest hopping on one leg, mocking him, flying backward up into the trees with brown fur on the leaves. Then up again gasping into his own bedroom, sweat enameling his body, his mind full of what he hadn’t done. The statue, the statue! Did they have it already? Was it too late, was it already too late? Did they sleep?

  No wonder he’d fought with mom over breakfast, when she’d started in again about those scratches on his face, her terrible teasing about girl friends. He’d screamed, he’d thrown things, he’d run from the house, he’d started running, and he was still running.

  To the library in Mineola first, driving his car faster than he’d ever done, where forty frantic minutes of research (urk, urk, urk) increased his list by four more names and six more addresses. Then out of the library and directly to the nearest known address, one Ben Cohen, 27-15 Robert Moses Drive, Glen Cove.

  Where Mrs. Cohen told (a) that her husband was probably on his boat in the marina near Bayville, and (b) that another gentleman had been asking for Ben not half an hour ago.

  Drive! Run! Don’t let them get ahead! On to the New Wally, on, on, on to the marina, where suddenly someone was shouting through a megaphone, “Stop, thief! Stop him!” And there, coming along the dock, was the husband. The self-same husband. The infuriating bad-penny intrusive pain-in-the-ass husband.

  Not this time. Running to the land end of the dock, Wally blocked the way, crying, “You stop that! You give me that!”

  The husband pointed at him. “Stay out of this,” he had the gall to say. “This is none of your affair.”

  Wally was trembling all over, from rage. “You give me that statue,” he said. “It’s mine.”

  “You dirty eavesdropping son of a bitch, go mind your own business!”

  Some fat man in a Budweiser hat—probably Ben Cohen—was pelting this way along the dock. The husband glanced back at him, ducked this way and that in an effort to get around Wally, and then Wally boiled over, boiled over, and punched the bastard in the nose!

  The husband sat down. The golden statue appeared in his lap. Wally would have taken it then, but the fat man arrived and picked it up, babbling his thanks until Wally punched him in the nose. Wally was transformed into a new continuum of existence, a new way of being. Wally now was a person who would punch anybody in the nose.

  He had the statue. He’d grabbed it out of the fat man’s hand, and now he turned away and ran, taking off toward the parking lot where he’d left the car.

  But he didn’t get there. The damn husband was after him again, and damn if he wasn’t a fast runner. He headed Wally off, and Wally had to veer to the right around a big open-fronted structure full of boats on trailers. The heavy crunch of the husband’s feet on gravel sounded close behind him, closer and closer, and he veered away again, through a space in a chain link fence and out over a blacktop parking lot—not the one with his car, damn it—and off to the right again
when the husband’s grasping hand slid off his shoulder.

  It was like one of the bad dreams, running and running and getting nowhere, with doom smashing and thundering behind. Out through a gate, across more gravel, around a small white clapboard building, across a wooden pier. Veering again, crying out, gasping for breath, staring desperately at the sky, dashing out along a network of docks with boats moored all around, running across the back of a boat whose startled occupants all looked up gaping from The Price Is Right, down along another dock with the pounding feet still close behind, and—

  The end of the dock. Far out there the weathered gray boards came to an abrupt end. There were no boats tied up that far out, nothing but Long Island Sound and Connecticut far, far away. “No no no!” screamed Wally, still running. “It’s mine! It’s mine!” Clutching the golden statue to his chest, he ran full-tilt off the end of the dock and into the Sound. And the pursuing footsteps splashed right after.

  IN THE CITY …

  Almost nobody lives in New York, and that’s especially true of those born there. They live in neighborhoods, the way small-town people live in small towns, and they very rarely leave their own districts. The average citizen of Ozone Park, say, in Queens, has probably never in his life been to the Midwood section of Brooklyn, and why should he? It’s just another neighborhood, exactly like his own, with churches and stores and movies and schools, and with nothing in particular to attract the interest of outsiders. And though most citizens of both Ozone Park and Midwood are likely to have been to Manhattan—because they work there, or they’ve had an occasional special night out—they don’t really think of Manhattan as being part of their hometown. “I’m going to the city,” say the people in the outer boroughs.

  For Jerry, therefore, although he was a New Yorker born and bred, and although he considered himself a total New Yorker, and although the pace and flavor of New York were immutably a part of his character, this sudden crash course in Manhattan was a true eye-opener. The only difference between Jerry and the average out-of-towner tourist was that Jerry was already used to the nervous rhythms of the city, the pace, the hustle, movement without stopping. But the look of it, the variety of it, they were things he had never known, or had learned too early and had forgotten.