Cliff Post
A Night on the Town Lainie Wolowitz and Ike Finkel were both 22 and inclined to eat. They weren't going together but were quite close and had privileges, which were used sparingly. A typical outing would be dinner at an ethnic restaurant, a movie, a couple of drinks, then a parting of the ways. But this was not a typical night. It started out in the usual way. They met at a Syrian restaurant in the old rug district of Manhattan that ran from Fifth to Sixth Avenue and from 18th Street to 23rd Street. In the '60s oriental rugs, except for rare examples, were inexpensive and only in modest demand. They were sold mostly by men with large moustaches with Arabic accents working out of storefronts. The stores that weren't occupied by rug merchants belonged to small, family-owned restaurants, most quite good. By 1970, all this was gone, run out by high rents and the onset of giant rug merchandisers. Lainie and Ike asked the proprietor, who also waited table, what they should have and settled on stuffed grape leaves and lamb kibbee, with rice, hummus and a salad. During dinner they discussed their mutual friends and acquaintances, mostly who was sleeping with whom and why. Lainie was especially entertaining about her former boyfriends, in particular Eric, who was attracted, harmlessly, to high school girls. "He's all thumbs with them. He tries to anticipate their every whim and falls all over himself trying to satisfy them. It's really pretty cute—and quite a contrast to the way he treated me, if you remember." Ike did remember and it stung, because, privileges or no, he was secretly in love with Lainie and every reminder of her affairs—they were numerous—brought him pain. It was such a deep secret that not even his best friend knew. After dinner they had baklava and Syrian coffee. "You would like that made the traditional way, with sugar," the owner said. Ike replied he would like it bitter, like himself. "No. No. You are too young to be bitter." Ike, however, considered he had taken a bite of the fallen apple, or maybe some other fruit—a persimmon?—and found it foul. He rejected it, immersing himself in wine and pot, performing disagreeable acts of defiance and self-destruction. He had his coffee unsweetened. When they paid their check, the owner said, "You are Jews, yes?" Ike and Lainie looked at each other. "We happen to be," she replied in her slightly reedy voice. "You are good Jews." "You are a good man," Ike said. When they got outside, they lit up their Camels. Lainie asked if he still wanted to see "The Manchurian Candidate", which had just opened the day before. "Harry saw it yesterday. His dad got him a pass. He said we've got to see it. It's like a mirror." "Don't get between a vain woman and her mirror," Lainie said. "What does that mean?" "I don't know. It's one of those things. You hear it in your head and then repeat it." "The gnomic utterances of LainieWolowitz. You could be another Emily." "I can't stand Dickinson. She's like a Puritan being cute." "To each according to his need." "Now, who's being gnomic?" "Ironically gnomic." "For god's sake, do you always have to have the last word?" "What can I say?" "See?" "How do we get out of this?" "Let's catch a cab. It's getting late." The movie was at the Loew's in Times Square, what they called a movie palace, with ornate plaster moldings, scrolled and gilded and a ceiling of twinkling stars high above. They sat in the balcony, so they couild smoke. After the show, they compared notes as they worked their way through the crowd down to 42nd Street. Lainie lit up and blew a plume of smoke into the warm October air.. "It's typical anti-socialist propaganda," she said. "Anyway, there's no such thing as brainwashing at that depth." "How do you know that?" "My analyst hypnotizes me sometimes and tries to implant a post-hypnotic suggestion. It never works." "That's one thing. Brainwashing's another. They pressure you until you do and say what they want." "But they've studied these guys who were prisoners. The effects just aren't permanent and they revert back to their former beliefs soon after release." "Revert back is a pleonasm." "So what?" Lainie replied, irritated by the break in the thread of their conversation. "So nothing." "What did you think?" "It's a metaphor." "For what, Ike?" "Freudian psychotherapy. It demonstrates that implanted drives can be completely unconscious." "And Marco is the therapist? He just substitutes a counter-impulse that causes Shaw to kill his inadequate parents, It's preposterous, no matter how you slice it. Just propaganda to stir up anti-communist hysteria." "You're such a red." "You're such a beige." "Beige harmonizes." "Oh, let's get something to eat." It happened that they were at the corner of 42nd and Seventh, where there was an eatery, not quite a diner, certainly not a restaurant, with no tables but counters along the perimeter at which various types, mostly men, some in shabby clothes, some dressed for the office, stood to eat a cheap but solid meal. Ike and Lainie both had fried fish dinners, in those days, even at a joint like this, served up on porcelain plates with stainless steel cutlery. Afterward, they walked up Broadway. "I almost didn't come," Lainie confided. "Oh." "I'm so tense over the crisis…" "That Cuba thing?" "How can you be so naïve? We're on the verge of atomic war! Kennedy told Russia we can't tolerate atomic weapons on our doorstep. He sent out the fleet, armed with nukes!" "Hey, there's a knish stand. You want a knish?" "Of course, I want a knish." They had potato knishes with mustard on top of two dinners. The hot dry lozenges of potato served to pacify something, some longing perhaps. "We have weapons on Russia's doorstep. What's the big deal if they have some close to us. After all, it's mutually assured destruction already." "It's the difference between New Year's and New Jersey." "The gnome's at home." "I mean all the difference and no relation. The Americas are our Central Park. There may be parts of it we don't go to, but it's still our park. We can't allow them to stake a claim even to places we don't use. In Europe it's different. We've set foot there in conquest." "How about some hot dogs?" Lainie asked. "I can't deny hot dogs." They had hot dogs on top of two meals and knishes. The dogs had the tangy onion sauce that seems native to New York and is untransferable—something in the water? Ike and Lainie seemed content. "I don't want to die of radiation burns," she said. "Don't worry. We're right at ground zero." "I'm going to say something that goes against my grain. It's very unred, but I keep thinking about it." "What is it?" "Actually, I've thought about it since I was ten. About how Russia and the U.S. are really very much alike. They each have the interests and means of great powers. We just happen to have more resources and a better climate…" "And a tradition—rather, a custom—of free-thinking untrammeled by an overweening church and a repressive monarchy." "That's all changed…" "Only the stationery and the uniforms have changed." "You don't have any idea! There are no more cossacks and the peasantry are free to go where they choose." Of course, this is all condensed, and as all conversations, theirs had distractions and divagations. So, it was about ten o'clock when they reached 50th Street and decided to call it a night. But their appetites still had an edge, and they found themselves in front of a Chinese restaurant. They went in and were greeted by the host. "Could we just have some white rice?" Ike asked. When they were served, Lainie said, "I wonder what he thinks of us." "Why, what else could he think? We're paragons of abstemiousness." "I was Bronx-born, but became well-travelled in U.S. (via thumb)
at an early age. Dropped out of four colleges. Became a stevedore
in Gloucester, Mass. Returned to N.Y.C., became an ace cold-
calling salesman. Published poems in Amelia, Bezoar, and others,
won a couple of small prizes, was poetry editor of The Larcom
Review."
|