Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue (19 page)

But to Harry, it was all "Hispanics"—Sonia, Felix, Chow Mein—"a wonderful culture." Someone had put up a sign on the casita—"No Hispanics Here"—in response to candidate George Bush's recent assertion that he intended to give a cabinet post to "one Hispanic."

Inside the casita, Chow Mein Vega was having a crisis. He had popped the buttons on his turquoise shirt. Cristofina had hurried back to her shop for a needle and thread—yes, she assured him, she had turquoise thread. But she could not run very fast on the tall, thin heels of her red shoes with her legs tightly bound in a silk dress.

"I've got some news," said Harry.

"You've found a bigger shirt?" said Chow Mein.

"Better than that. I talked to Tommy Drapper. He's coming to hear you."

"From Tommy's Bar?"

"That's the one. He will book you in the Village. From there you will get a tour. We're bringing boogaloo back."

Harry and Chow Mein slapped hands. "That's great, man. And it will be just in time for my biography. We can get a movie contract. And we can do the sound track." Then, changing voice, he said, "Listen to Felix. That is the stuff. In 1962 I worked with a guy from Bayamón who played congas like that. Drugs got him, though."

The crowd was gathering on Avenue D. Firecrackers exploded in the street, sending dogs whelping under the bandstand while people looked around anxiously, as though making sure everyone still had their face on. Grossman's Deli had a stand selling kosher
pasteles.
And at the
cuchifrito
stand, Consuela, with a Puerto Rican flag painted in sparkles on her soft and ample upper arm, sold
lechón
and garlicky
bacalaitos,
the batter thin and watery so that it would spread out and stay thin and crisp when poured in the hot oil, then served in a paper napkin that turned translucent as it absorbed the grease.

Dolby rode by and everything stopped. No one seemed to know Dolby's real name. He was just Dolby, an angry-looking man with long, receding hair and a beard, all of which stuck out around his head like a lion's mane. Dolby rode around the neighborhood on a bicycle with a sound system taped to the back that was so large, it made his bike look like an ice-cream cart. He played pounding, throbbing disco music through speakers so powerful that the sound was felt in the stomachs of passersby. When he rode down a block, everyone stopped what they were doing or saying until the throbbing sound had passed.

When Dolby reached Avenue B, Tommy Drapper, even though he was late, stopped his Mercedes and waited for Dolby to pass. Drapper, whose name wasn't Drapper when he had been growing up an Italian in Brooklyn, would have been on time if he had known where to park his Mercedes. He went to many bad neighborhoods looking for talent, and the problem always was finding a place for the car. He didn't know the neighborhood, and the more he drove around looking for a garage, the more convinced he was that he could not leave his car on the street over here.

While Tommy Drapper was looking for a garage, more and more people were pouring into narrow Avenue D, eating Grossman's
pasteles,
milling around among the little bursts of firecrackers lit by children, waiting for Chow Mein Vega. Finally, Harry stepped out on the bandstand, his suit as rumpled and edgeless as well-worn jungle fatigues, the pant legs gathering in rolls at his ankles.

Yet Harry glowed on the bandstand. It was only in front of an audience that he was at last able to forget how close he was to the dreaded East River—just across the highway and a little strip of lawn. But this was his moment, unmarred by the hoots and shouts of
"En Español, Harry,"
and
"Baila, Harry, baila!"
But he was not going to dance. To him, their calls meant no more than the pop of firecrackers that also peppered the moment—part of the festivities.

Out came Chow Mein Vega, near bursting in his ruffled turquoise skin, and Felix and the others—a six-piece band. Felix slapped the congas and Chow Mein said in a slowly mounting crescendo, "AhhhhhM/i!"

The crowd swayed in unison from left to right and threw up their hands, shouting back, "Ahhh!"

"Yiddish boogaloo! Ahhhh!"

The crowd swayed again.

"Meshugaloo!"

"Ahhh!"

"Meshugaloo!"

"Ahhhh!

"Second Avenue!"

"Ahhhhh!"

"Avenida D!"

"Ahhhhhhh!"

The vibes chimed in, followed by keyboard. The Avenue D crowd screamed and threw lit firecrackers. People shrieked and jumped as the little bombs exploded around them. Over all this came the voice of Chow Mein Vega:

Go to the deli, And you will find, Corned beef,
pasteles,
And pastrami on rye. And for dessert
—mofongo
pie! And as you leave They'll give you A kishka good-bye.

And then he screamed in a strained falsetto,
"A kishka good-bye!"
and the crowd screamed more, set off more little blue-and-white cardboard bombs, as the musicians played on.

Chow Mein introduced a new work, "The Squatter's Boogaloo," which contained the lines

The landlord thinks The place is cleanah

Cuandojwes
a light To
la gasolina.

Whoops loud as firecrackers exploded into the sapphire-clear summer sky that glowed over the dark brick buildings. Behind the silliness of Chow Mein's boogaloo lyrics was his irresistible phrasing and rhythm as he rolled over the keyboard and Felix bounced a conga beat and the vibes tiptoed through it with timbales and a double bass in counterpoint. Chow Mein could do anything—from rhythm and blues, he could move to jazz. His lyrical voice was haunting when he sang slow ballads in Spanish. It was physically impossible for anyone within ear range to keep his or her body from moving. Most of the crowd was dancing. Sonia held Sarah and danced and wished that Nathan didn't have to be with Nusan.

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.