Read The Israel Bond Omnibus Online
Authors: Sol Weinstein
The Israel Bond Omnibus (43 page)
In Milton’s Sherpa-Hunza they made some safe small talk about cars, politics, suburban life. “Pretty quiet out here,” said Milton with satisfaction. “ ‘Course we did have our little excitement last summer. Guy next door’s power mower went mad. One minute it was breezing along chewing up the crabgrass; next minute it whacked out, ate up three poinsettia beds and somebody’s pet Schnauzer. When it went for a Volvo we got scared, called the SRS... that’s the Sears Rescue Squad... and they shot the poor bastard dead on our lawn.”
“Any of that wife-swapping bit going on out here?”
“Nah, old hat. The real hippies are swapping their mistresses. Hey, Iz, did you read Jim Michener’s new book?”
“You bet, Milt. Damn fine. I saw him in Jerusalem while he was gathering
‘Source’
material.”
From Milton’s outraged “ooooh” and his howls of hilarity Bond knew the ice of early evening had been broken.
Chums again!
6 “The Martini Gave You Away...”
He finished the speech before the sweet old matrons, any one of whom could have been fated to head the Secret Service of Israel, so much like M. were they. Having won Mother’s products a few dozen more lifelong supporters, he rejoined Milton in the latter’s modernistic office with the genuine Tupperware spittoons which were gaining favor with busy executives.
“Come on, Iz; I’ll take you through the joint.”
He led the Israeli through the Pinochle Royale’s rooms, explaining their functions. “You see what it is, Iz. Jews have become so jaded; they just won’t buy the oldtime ways any more. You gotta give ‘em that ol’ show business pizzazz in every area of existence. Now this,” and Milton’s eyes were humorous, “is the Slice O’ Life Room.”
No further explanation was needed as Bond watched the rite of circumcision performed upon an eight-day-old squeaker in a room whose walls were a montage of
Life
Magazine covers.
“Noch a Yid!”
[28]
Bond said with fervor. “Amen,” Milton chimed in. As the
mohel
worked, they saw the child’s cowering father, his arm before his face. Not so the mother, who coolly applied a tape measure to the pink monkey feet.
“Real Jewish mother,” Milton commented. “Already measuring him for corrective shoes.”
After they passed through three kitchens (“Kosher, non-Kosher, Kosher-style,” Milton informed him), they came to a masculine den upon whose knotty pine walls hung pennants of Midwestern universities and photographs of elephantine football players with grim expressions (Bond spotted Casimir Predpelski in the togs of Michigan State). “This is our Big Ten Room.”
“For old grads and such?”
“Hell, no. This room is for the
minyan
.
[29]
Hence the name. Clever, huh? The Tanteh Claus Room is undergoing repairs so we’ll skip that one.”
“
Tanteh
Claus?”
Milton stripped the tinfoil off a 95-cent Chano Poso cigar. “Well, you know how our kids feel sorta deprived when Christmas comes around. So I dreamed up a great
shtik
that’s made this place the talk of the East, maybe the country. We have this little old lady in a red dress and white beard sit on a throne in that room and the kids come in and tell her what they want for Chanukah. If they’ve been real good, she says she’ll drive up from her big Lincoln Road toy shop in her Cadillac, which is jammed with goodies, and leave ’em Chanukah gelt and toys for eight straight nights. The parents are wild for the idea ’cause this way we work in religion. Now, my magnum
epis
.”
They walked through nutria-lined swinging doors into a vast nightclub setting crowded with raucous people in furs and evening wear. “It’s bigger than the Copa, huh, Iz? This is the Club Thirteen, my room for post-Bar Mitzvah receptions. Got a dilly tonight for multi-millionaire Keefe Barrington’s kid, Whitney. Getting this shindig was quite a plum in my compote. Every fency-dency catering house in the East was after this one.”
On stage at the microphone an animated little man in a flashy Crawford Clothes Po Valley mohair suit was gabbing.
“Good evening, ladies and germs. Welcome to Whitney Barrington’s Bar Mitzvah reception. You know what a Bar Mitzvah is. That’s when a Jewish boy reaches manhood. And a motel is where he proves it!
“And speaking of San Francisco... I just wrote a song called ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco and My Sinuses in Arizona.’”
He spoke through a cupped hand to the musicians. “Notice how the hip material never makes it? Well, back to the dreck, by heck. My wife is a lousy cook. She has to call a repairman to fix a TV dinner.
“Jesus, it’s
all
dying tonight. And is she square? She thinks a condominium is something a guy buys in a drugstore.
“Speaking of spies, they got a lot of spies on TV. There’s a new spy called Blue Light, but he’s got troubles. Whenever he drives his car they won’t let Blue Light cross at the Red Light until they give him the Green Light!”
Marvelous, marvelous, Bond thought, envying the clever construction. Why aren’t these fools laughing? And haven’t I seen this little funmaker before? Yes. It was Henny Benny Lenny, West Coast comedy sensation. His mind wandered back to a night at the Kahn-Tiki, the leading Class B hotel in the Catskills, and pain twisted the cruelly handsome face as he recalled the wonderful girl who had been so enmeshed in that electrifying Loxfinger caper,
[30]
the girl who now slept under the eternal sands of the Negev. Poontang Plenty. Something cried out from the core of his being with the profoundest sincerity: Better her than me.
“Speaking of sex, did youse hear about the Greek who found true love by accident? He backed into it. Oh no, this can’t be the
regular
Bar Mitzvah crowd. I love rock ’n’ roll. My favorite song is ‘I’m Too Tired to Rock Around the Clock, So Let’s Just Walk Around a Watch.’ Forget it, you f— rich-bitch bastards!”
Wow! Bond enthused. What a great powerhouse of an impromptu shock line, designed, of course, to win back the blasé celebrants; but they continued to ignore the scintillating monology that could have been theirs. He jotted down as many of Henny Benny Lenny’s gems as he could remember.
Henny Benny Lenny’s triangular head hung in defeat.
“And now,” he blared, “the real star of this show, Master Whitney Barrington!”
As the 25-piece band crashed into a pounding, frug-beat version of “Mahzeltov!” the crowd broke into yells at the entrance of a small boy with an incurious, bored demeanor who walked down a red carpet toward the stage flanked by six dazzling young women in extra-tight diamond-encrusted miniskirts. At a signal from Henny Benny Lenny six cages descended from the ceiling into which the maidens sprang.
Whitney Barrington, resplendent in his midnight-blue Dean Acheson diplomatic trousers with sateen stripes and regimental Martin Agronsky patent leather loafers, squeaked out of his world-weary face from a voice box whose nodules were pimple-stippled:
“My Bar Mitzvah speech.”
Bond nudged Milton. “Bet his dad’s grinning from ear to ear right now.”
Milton grimaced. “The old man ain’t even here. He’s an Ethical Culturist. It’s the
shikseh
he married who insisted on the Bar Mitzvah.”
Something odd happened. After his opening line, Master Barrington’s voice suddenly became rich and dramatic as the lips moved hesitantly, droning on about “my sacred commitment to the faith of my fathers”... “this memorable day in which I take my place among....”
“Hell,” Bond grunted. “That’s Richard Burton’s voice. The kid is lip-synching his speech.”
“Family’s got money, Iz.” Milton shrugged. “Whose voice do you think sang the selection from the Haftorah
[31]
in synagogue this morning? He lip-synched the tenor voice of Jan Peerce.”
Whitney Barrington’s proclamation of his covenant with the ancient faith concluded, Henny Benny Lenny raised his hand and the band hit a fanfare; the girls frugged tigerishly in their cages.
“Now, ladies and germs, the presents! Will the gentleman from Price Waterhouse please come forth... or even fifth...” (the sharp ad lib died) “... with the envelopes?”
Bond left somewhere between the 500 shares of AT&T from Uncle Giles Rivkin of West Palm Beach and the “12 points, Whitney, 12 points in Uncle Morris Barrington’s Shalomorris Hotel in fab-yew-louse Lust Ve-e-e-egaa-a-as!” Weary of it all and sorry for Master Whitney —it’s all downhill for him after tonight, he thought—Bond needed a drink, but not here in this Fellini orgy scene. “Try any of the kitchens; there should be someone around. Place’s full of part-time help tonight,” Milton said.
The man behind the service bar in the Kosher-style kitchen was tall, powerful and very blond, very cruelly handsome, too, Bond noted. He looks like a Gestapo
me
.
“Hungry, old chap? Or thirsty?” The accent was slightly German, the English colloquially good. “We have just the sort of fare that will appeal to your discriminating taste buds, Mr. Bond. Gold-speckled-with-mauve bayou heron eggs, scrambled, not shirred,
pommes de terre Chevelle
, piping hot Chase & Sanborn Coffee—and remember, sir, what Mr. Chase didn’t know about coffee, Mr. Sanborn didn’t know, either—served with Domino Sugar’s Vitali-style cubes cut to geometric exactness by Cal Tech-trained technicians....”
Bond lit a Raleigh. “How did you know my name was Bond? And that my tastes are so extraordinary?”
The blond man smiled. “You must admit, sir, you look remarkably like the entrepreneur of this establishment. And you hardly seem the sort who’d order Skippy peanut butter on white bread.”
“You’re very perceptive. A Montessori Martini, please.”
The man set about making one. “Beefeater Gin made from potatoes crushed by the feet of exceedingly bright Italian orphans, a Samuel Bronston lemon, and a little shake....”
Bond’s heart was about to burst through his splendid chest. He smelled it on the man’s large, corded hands. Calgonite! The thoughts piled up like blue chips on a l
a guerre
table. Calgonite. Bombing. A Calgonite-scented man in a Jewish establishment. Jewish establishments being bombed left and right. And the last three words....
He smiled in spite of himself. “The martini gave you away. Martinis are
stirred,
never shaken. Anyone who drinks ’em shaken is a social misfit. And I saw the tattoo on your wrist when your tuxedo sleeve moved up... the symbol of the SS jackboots kicking naked buttocks. You’re from TUSH.”
7 Candy, I Call My Killer Candy
“Sessue Hayakawa!”
The Nazi spat it from his sneering mouth as he hunched into the ping-pong stance of the karate expert.
It’s started, Bond thought. He’s attempting to “psyche” me with a stream of vitriolic Japanese words that will bring on panic, terrifying images of him as the star pupil in the Ginza studio of Sensayuma, “The Cobra,” master of unarmed combat.
I must “psyche” back, guttural word for guttural word, hissing curse for hissing curse, until he, too, is beset by devilish eidolons of me as a holder of the Black Belt in the top half of the twelfth Dan, in my red Dan River karate robe, the star pupil of Moto of Kyoto, the only man alive whom Sensayuma fears. And I must be
all
Moto; a mere quasi-Moto will not intimidate him.
Hunching into a similar pose, Bond snarled: