Dancing Aztecs (25 page)

Angela Bernstein has come home, and she and Mel are sitting at the kitchen table discussing their marital problems with Mandy Addleford, who is sympathetic but practical, like Ann Landers.

Wally Hintzlebel is sitting at his kitchen table playing canasta with his mother and telling her lies about those scratches on his face that he got from Angela Bernstein. Oscar Russell Green is asleep face down on his living room floor, with the television set showing
Bringing Up Baby
to the top of his head. Felicity Tower is wide awake in her bed, glowing like the filament in a light bulb.

Far away to the south, Pedro Ninni and Edwardo Brazzo and José Caracha are asleep in Quetchyl, with their mouths open. Somewhere in the New York area the
real
Dancing Aztec Priest glitters in the dark; no switches were made in Descalzo, the real statue
is
one of the remaining four.

Financier Victor Krassmeier, suffering from constipation, is sitting on his toilet, reading
Barron's
. Mobster August Corella is having a Rob Roy in his living room, watching
The Tonight Show
and sulking about his day. Earl is in bed with a steak, placing it alternately over each eye and watching
The Tonight Show
with the other. Ralph is dreaming that he is driving a car down a mountainside with no brakes.

Wylie Cheshire, with a white X of bandage on his forehead where Angela Bernstein crowned him with the Dancing Aztec Priest, is watching
The Crimson Pirate
on Channel 9 and feeling sulky and mulish; beneath the X, the bump is still growing. Luke Snell, with his own white X of bandage on his upper lip from where he hit the steering wheel and knocked out three teeth when the motorcycle rammed him, is also watching
The Crimson Pirate
, but isn't enjoying it as much as he'd expected.

Bud Beemiss is sitting in his study with a very dry Tanqueray martini on the rocks, brooding at the space where his Dancing Aztec Priest used to stand, and thinking things over. Downstairs in his house, Hamlet and Ophelia are asleep with smiles on their faces.

David Fayley and Kenny Spang, each terribly hurt with the other for having brought Jerry Manelli into the house, are lying side by side in bed, wide awake, not speaking and not touching. Jenny Kendall and Eddie Ross are in one sleeping bag together in the woods in Rhode Island, making love; they'll do just fine with one motorcycle and one sleeping bag and each other.

Leroy Pinkham is lying on the floor in his living room with his sister Ruby and his sister Renny, watching
Bringing Up Baby
. Buhbuh is lying on his own living room floor a few blocks away, watching
The Crimson Pirate
.

F. Xavier White is sitting up in bed, listening to Maleficent tell him everything he did wrong today, which was everything. Jeremiah “Bad Death” Jonesburg is sleeping happily, dreaming of funerals.

Chuck Harwood is curled up on his closet floor, snoring in his sleep; he's going to be
very
stiff tomorrow. Bobbi, her mind full of confusing dream fragments, is sozzily asleep on Madge's sofa.

In their homes, in their beds, Ben Cohen and Mrs. Dorothy Moorwood are peacefully asleep, neither of them guessing what's coming their way on the morrow.

Everybody is settling down now. Everybody is going to sleep. You, too.

THE
SECOND PART
OF THE
SEARCH

 

 

Everybody in New York City wants to get somewhere. At Christmas everybody wants to get to Macy's, and in the summer everybody wants to get to the beach. At five o'clock everybody wants to get through the tunnels. On Saturday night everybody wants to get to the newsstands for Sunday's paper. Everybody uptown wants to get to Zabar's and everybody downtown wants to get to Balducci's. Everybody all the time wants to get into the next elevator, the next subway, and the next-door neighbor's pants.

White-collar workers want to get to the executive wash-room. Executives want to get to Palm Springs or Palm Beach. First-class passengers at Kennedy want to get to the VIP Lounge. Cabbies want to get across town. Children want to get to Radio City Music Hall, grownups want to get to an X-rated movie, and 1 per cent of the population wants to get to a Broadway show. Door-to-door salesmen want to get a free trip to Puerto Rico for writing a million dollars in sales.

McDonald's wants to get into the Village. Men in last year's bow ties want to get back into the swim. Executive assistants want to get into a corner office. Over at ABC, they want to get into the running.

Shoppers want to get into an air-conditioned cab. Seducers, male and female, want to get into something a little more comfortable. On weekdays, people with a cause want to get into City Hall Park, but on Sundays they want to get into Central Park.

People on the A train want to get to Harlem.

Messengers want to get to the seventeenth floor. Exalcoholics want to get to the church basement. Burglars want to get on the fire escape and pigeon breeders want to get on the roof.

Gotta hustle.

Almost everybody wants to get on television. People on local television want to get on network television. People on network television want to get to Palm Springs or Palm Beach.

Retired people on the upper west side want to sit in the sun on the benches in the middle of Broadway. When they get there, they want to be in Miami.

Men want to get next to women. Women want to get equal with men. Girls want to get in the Little League and boys want to get in the big leagues. Smart children want to get into the High School of Music & Art and dumb children want to get out of high school.

People in tenements want to get into high-rises. People is projects want to get back into tenements. Actors in NY want to get to LA. People at the top of the Guggenheim Museum want to get to the bottom. So do ass-pinchers, river-dredgers, and investigative reporters.

Everybody in New York City wants to get somewhere. Every once in a while, somebody gets there.

AT THE CENTER …

Jerry Manelli wanted to get moving, but his mother wouldn't let him out of the house two mornings in a row with no breakfast. “You can take five minutes to eat an egg,” she said.

“The way I figure it,” Jerry said, “the mob's already
had
an egg by this time.”

“So they'll have indigestion and you won't.”

“Okay, okay,” Jerry said, and used the time to call around and make sure the other guys were on the move. Frank was waiting for Floyd, who had just left the house. When Jerry called Mel, a burry female voice said, “
Bern
-stein res-dince.”

“Hey,” Jerry said. “What the hell
you
doing out?”

“I'm on parole,” Mandy told him. “I gave my word I wouldn't run away. You want anybody? These pancakes are burning here.”

“Where's Mel?”

“Up with Miz Bernstein, getting dressed.”

“Don't let him hang around all day.”

“What about
me?”
Mandy wanted to know. “I don't wanna hang around all day neither.”

“We'll figure something out this afternoon,” Jerry told her. “When this other stuff is done.”

“Huh,” said Mandy, expressing the deepest doubt, and broke the connection.

Jerry stepped out to the backyard, where his father was shooting at a stamp-collecting album with his new BB gun. The old man was skinny, and he didn't like to wear his teeth. “How's it going?” Jerry said.

“I think the barrel's bent.”

Scrambled eggs were ready, with spaghetti sauce on top, and Jerry sat down to shovel them in. His mother, watching, said, “Take it easy, take it easy.”

“Some other time, Mom. I gotta hustle.”

“That's all you care about, hustle, hustle, hustle.”

Jerry gulped down coffee. “So? What else is there?”

“I guess you'll find out now, won't you?”

Jerry wiped his mouth on the paper napkin and got to his feet. “Meaning what?”

“You'll find this golden statue, won't you? Your share's a quarter of a million dollars, isn't it?”

“So?”

“So then you'll have it,” his mother said. “Everything you've hustled for. And what then?”

“Are you kidding?” He stared at her. “Mom, I could blow that in a month. You kidding? Two hundred fifty grand? Blow it in a month. I wouldn't even have to leave New York.”

She frowned at him. “Then what's the point?”

“The point? Hustling's the point. See you later, Mom,” he said, and got moving out of there.

ON THE SOFA …

Bobbi and Madge had breakfast together companionably in Madge's living room, sunlight filtered dappling through the spider plants and avocados. Bobbi was on the sofa, with her breakfast spread before her on the coffee table, while Madge had the chair over by the television set, with her plate on a hassock. “Mmm,” Bobbi said. She ate scrambled egg. She chewed some bacon. She swallowed coffee and munched toast and went back for more scrambled egg. Madge, watching her with interested doubt, said, “How can you
eat
all that? Why don't you have a
hangover?”

“Because today,” Bobbi said, “I am a new woman. A totally new woman.” She drank more coffee, bit off another chunk of toast, and suddenly grinned. She giggled, with her mouth closed.

Madge made a quizzical grin. “What's so funny?”

Bobbi chewed, chewed, chewed, swallowed, washed it all down with coffee, and laughed aloud. “I threw all Chuck's clothes out the window!”

“So you told me last night. Several times.”

Suddenly serious, intense, Bobbi stared across the room at her friend. “I left him, Madge, I left him for good!”

“You mentioned that, too.”

Bobbi frowned. “You think he'll be all right? What if he's stuck in there forever, without any clothes?”

“He's fine,” Madge said. “I phoned there this morning, and there wasn't any answer, so he's up and out.
With
his clothes on.”

“And looking for me.”

“Wouldn't doubt it for a second.”

“Mm.” Absent-mindedly chewing, Bobbi looked around the room, organizing her thoughts, and then spied the Dancing Aztec Priest, the Other Oscar, standing on the windowsill amid Madge's jungle, and she smiled. The Other Oscar; he had made it all possible, he had made it happen. He danced in there among the greenery, his golden skin glistening with sunlight, his green eyes vivid with intelligence, his very posture a command to
do
and
be
and
move
and
become
.

“What are you smiling at?”

“My future,” Bobbi said.

“You know what you're going to do?”

“Absolutely. I'm going to California.”

“So you really are, huh? No morning-after second thoughts?”

“This isn't the morning after,” Bobbie told her. “This is the morning before. The morning before my life
begins.”

Madge grimaced. “Send that to the
Reader's Digest
,” she said.

“I'm really going to do it, Madge.”

“Well, bully for you. Got your schedule worked out?”

“As soon as I get dressed I'll go see Everett Coalshack at the orchestra. He can give me references and letters of introduction to people on the West Coast. And then I'll pick up my harp and I'm off. Today.” Suddenly both ravenous and impatient, she stuffed her mouth with food and asked Madge if she had the Yellow Pages.

Madge said, “What?”

“Fumfumfumf,” Bobbi said again, then chewed quickly, slugged down some coffee to clear the way, and said, “Do you have a Yellow Pages?”

“Sure.” Getting it from the shelf under the TV, bringing it across the room, Madge said, “What's the idea?”

“I have practically no money,” Bobbie explained. “I'll go to the bank this morning and take out a couple hundred, but there isn't much more than that
in
there, and I'm not going to Chuck for
anything
. Not that he has anything.”

“If you find money in the Yellow Pages,” Madge said, “show me the listing.”

“Not money,” Bobbi told her. “A way to California.”

“Fascinating.” Madge sat on the sofa next to Bobbi to see how it was done.

Very simply. Bobbi turned to the Automobile listings and under the heading Automobile Transporters & Drive-Away Companies there were about twenty-five companies offering to ship your car to or from anywhere. “Right,” Bobbi said, and reached for the phone.

Madge said, “Ship a car? You don't
have
a car.”

Bobbi said, “Where do you think they get their drivers?” And she made her first call, saying to the person who answered, “Hello. I'd like to drive a car to California.”

As it turned out, there were only two problems. In the first place, she wanted a car to drive
today
, and that was a bit too precipitous for most companies, though they could provide her with a car next Monday or Tuesday. And, in the second place, she didn't call the companies in alphabetical order but by some intuitive sequence of her own, so that it wasn't until the eighth call that she reached Beacon Auto Transport, where a harried-sounding young woman said, “Girlie, you're on. We had a guy didn't show up this morning. If you've got the seventy-five-dollar damage deposit and valid references we can check on the phone and you can be out of town this afternoon.”