Marty cast a thumb at Ted. “You remember my ungrateful progeny? This is my adopted son, Lord Fenway, the peanut man from Yankee Stadium.”
All the men lowed, like a gray herd of grazing cattle. Benny spoke from behind the magazine rack of the kiosk, his face barely visible, he was so short. “Oy vey. Teddy. The little splinter, I haven’t seen you since you were yay big.” He held his hand an inch or two above his own head, because even yay big was a touch taller than he was. Benny always seemed on the verge of bittersweet tears. “I have Sports Illustrated for you. And the Post. You like girls? I have Playboy.”
“The jury’s out on that one,” Marty said.
Benny continued, “Shut up, Marty, I’m talking to a person who is still alive. I also have Oui and Club if you like less mystery. You hungry? Want some Goldenberg Chews? They have peanuts in them. Healthy. Protein.”
“Quite the amuse bouche they are, the Goldenbergs,” added Schtikker.
“No thanks, Benny, but thank you.”
Responding to some mystical prompt inside his own head, Ivan offered, “You see where Sweden banned the aerosol can?”
Tango Sam stepped forward and grasped Ted’s hand in both of his. “Teddy, you look tremendous, loan me fifty.”
“Hi, Tango Sam. Hi, Ivan.”
Ivan looked up from caning a cigarette butt to the gutter and said, “The Sox don’t have enough black players.”
All the men groaned together on cue. Schtikker piped up, “You can have that schvartze Reggie Jackson. He’s a cancer. And you’re not black anyway, Ivan, there is no black man named Ivan. It’s an impossibility. Like a unicorn. Or the Second Avenue subway. Hey, Marty, come over here, I read in Time magazine where you can guess a man’s age by sticking a thumb up his ass.”
“That was in Time magazine?” Ted asked.
Benny said, “I just feel bad for the rest of the Wallenda family.” As if he were in the middle of a conversation no one else could hear. But nothing, no matter how far off topic, could stop the crazy flow of these men; the lack of flow was, in fact, their flow.
“Or Newsweek,” Schtikker continued. “Mighta been Scientific American.”
“National Geographic.”
“The Advocate.”
“No fair, I thought I was next,” Ivan said.
“Only once a week now, Ivan, we talked about this.”
“It works.”
“Like the rings of a tree. He’s seventy-eight.”
“What is this Space Invaders thing? Anyone?”
“He’s right, I’m seventy-eight.”
Marty joined in, “Turns out his ass is a hundred, though.”
“With Dutch elm disease,” offered Tango Sam, “and a Japanese beetle infestation. Might have to cut it down to save his balls.”
Ted felt like riffing along with them. “Yeah, but I bet it’s the squirrels that are really annoying, hiding their nuts…” but he trailed off as he felt a change in temperature. Total silence. Like the popular E. F. Hutton commercials of the day. The old men turned and stared at Ted with outraged incredulity.
“What?” Ted asked. “His ass is like a tree, so it follows a squirrel might hide nuts in Ivan’s ass like in a tree. A tree. If his ass is a tree in this joke, then it’s possible a squirrel… I’m just…”
“That’s off-color,” Ivan said dismissively.
Schtikker seemed disgusted. “Marty, the lip on that kid. That is no way for a man to talk about another man’s cock and balls.”
Marty raised his hands in a gesture of peace. “I apologize, gentlemen. Jesus, Ted, who the fuck raised you?”
“Come on…” Ted protested.
Tango Sam tap-danced toward Ted. “Theodore, I alone love and forgive you. Loan me fifty.” And all the old men laughed in unison. A graybeard herd of laughter, Marty included. It was the first time he’d seen the old man laugh since the hospital. Ted smiled. If his father was laughing, Ted could be the butt of the joke.
16.
Around dinnertime, Ted went to pick up some Chinese takeout. He was dying to get high, but didn’t want the smoke to bother his father. His stash was at home, so on the way to Jade Mountain, he stopped by a Jamaican restaurant called Brooklyn Jerk, and bought a nickel bag off a Rasta. It was mostly stems and seeds, but any port in a storm. Ted laughed to himself-any pot in a storm-as he rolled a bone in his car and smoked it down. He felt instant relief, and closed his eyes to listen to the reggae music reaching him like a patch of Carribean blue sky from inside the restaurant. But reggae had to fight with the hideous disco that blared from passing cars. Disco was everywhere that summer. The summer before had belonged to Son of Sam and his all-too-real carnage and tabloid domination. Now it seemed no one wanted anything real at all, and disco fit the escapist bill. And, oh, how he hated it. Ted thought coming down with Saturday Night Fever was worse than coming down with the bubonic plague.
Even the Stones, once the poster boys for hard-rock street cred, were back all over the charts that summer with the godawful, hustle-friendly “Miss You,” and its stupid-ass disco bass line. Wyman had slain Richards, and Jagger didn’t seem to give a shit, just kept right on singing. Moms could finally exhale, Mick wasn’t the Antichrist after all; he was Tony Orlando. Even though Ted wished there were some Puerto Rican girls just dying to meet him, “Miss You” was all you needed to know about the sad state of pop music in the summer of ’78. In November, after the World Series, Rod Stewart would sound the nadir of the depths of rock ’n’ roll with “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” (Fuck no, was Ted’s answer, I think ya are ridiculous.) But that was Rod Stewart, and he’d always been kind of a joke with excellent hair. This was the Stones. This wasn’t Dylan going electric, this was Dylan going Donna Summer. This was Greg Allman marrying Cher. Dance music without meaning, lyrically submoronic. “Disco Sucks” was a good T-shirt.
He tried to block “Last Dance,” broadcast from street transistors, from invading his consciousness through his ears. Then he was forced to do battle with a dreaded Brothers Gibb offering from the ill-fated youngest of the chirping, protean, seemingly infinite Aussie clan, the Billboard #1 “Shadow Dancing”-trying to tune his interior rabbit ears to the Bob Marley righteously wafting from inside Brooklyn Jerk. Reggae turned the beat around for real-made guitar and bass change places. Guitar scratched rhythm and bass stole the melody. That was revolutionary stuff. Bob tried to sing to him not to worry, that every little thing was going to be all right. I don’t know ’bout that, Bob. I don’t know. But Bob Marley was his man. Bob said, “When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself.” Ted agreed with that. He also agreed with the opposite. That the herb concealed you from yourself. He would accept both, he would accept the contradiction. An image of his long-dead mother popped into his head-her face on a box of laundry detergent. Like Mrs. Clean. That was strange and seemed to have meaning, but what? I should clean up my act? He didn’t know. He closed his eyes and wished the box of detergent away. One parent to reveal, one to conceal. One parent at a time was more than enough to handle at the moment.