“I don’t know French.”
“You sounded like you did there, for a minute. What kind of milkshakes?”
“Chocolate,” John Joel said.
“Chocolate malt,” Parker said.
“My brother was in the Philippines,” the counterman said. “Used to get the monkeys drunk as skunks. Leave beer in the cans. Monkeys would swing around, loaded, fall out of the trees. Monkeys were certifiable alcoholics. He brought one home with him, smuggled it in. Drank with him at night. Staggered around the house. There was a lost soul. My brother, I mean. There’s somebody who never figured out what he was going to do and never did it. Spent years drinking with a monkey.”
“Here we go,” Robby said. “Saclass="underline" responsible hero of the family.”
Sal put two metal containers under the machine and turned it on. Water ran down the sides of the containers. Parker took out his bandanna and wiped his forehead.
Robby was still standing in front of the grill with his hand over his heart.
“I should disco and get drunk with monkeys. Sure,” Sal said.
“Their milkshakes are ready,” Robby said, pointing.
Sal put two glasses on the countertop — the kind of glasses Coke used to be served in. He poured each glass half full and set the containers on the counter.
“I never spent so much time talking to kids in ten years,” Sal said. “How did we get talking?”
“We’re fat and jolly. People can’t resist us,” Parker said.
“That’s the truth. You won’t dare weigh too much when you’re chasing the ladies, though. Listen to me: I sound like somebody’s father. If I’m somebody’s father, I don’t know about it.”
“You’re somebody’s father, I’ll fry a leg on this griddle,” Robby said. “I’d like to see what you do besides work.”
“All this because I wouldn’t close up shop for August. You’d think this was the French Riviera. That he’d do anything worthwhile if I closed for August.”
“My sister’s got a condo in Ocean City. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“Yeah. And a pool that fell through the ground. A swimming pool brought down by carpenter ants.”
“There’s the ocean, you know, Sal.”
“Yeah. I can see it. Full of seaweed. Stay here where the fan’s going.”
“I might quit,” Robby said.
“You’re not going to quit,” Sal said.
Parker tapped his cigarette on the counter. He knew that Sal was watching him, that he was making Sal nervous. Earlier in the day he had tapped the cigarette on his psychiatrist’s table. In front of the sofa the patients sat on, the psychiatrist had a table with magazines on it, as though the patients might tire of talking and just stop and flip through a magazine. As though they were waiting to see the doctor instead of being in the room with him. Some of the old Life magazines Parker thought might be collectors’ items, but he didn’t want to get into that with the shrink. He would rather have spent the hour eating. He had no interest in talking to the shrink about why he wasn’t doing anything all summer.
“Let’s get going,” John Joel said. “Let’s go to the museum and get it over with.”
“Leave me a big tip,” Sal said. “He quits on me, I’m going to need cheering up. He goes off to Atlantic City, I’m all alone here. Just me and his grill.”
“Ocean City,” Robby said.
“Probably you’re going to march in the beauty parade. Leave here and put on your Easter bonnet, march in the beauty parade.”
“You’re all screwed up,” Robby said. “Don’t tip him but five percent.”
John Joel left a fifteen-percent tip because he knew he’d go back to the hamburger shop. He looked at his watch and saw that they didn’t have much time. Nothing was worse than being caught in New York late on Friday and having to ride the commuter train home. The few times that he had done that with his father, his father had always stood in the bar car instead of sitting down, standing and being shaken around, saying that he knew he couldn’t really get out, but standing gave him the illusion of escape. When the voice came over the p.a. system and began announcing where the train was headed, the message always started: “Make sure you’re right.” John Joel’s father always sighed and bent his head back when he heard that, and then shook his head as the announcement went on: Stamford, Noroton Heights, Darien…
On the street, they passed a man in jeans, smoking a cigar, standing and staring in a bookstore window. Parker coughed and fanned the air. They went into the Whitney without discussing it again. Parker gave his package to the man behind the desk, and they went to the booth and John Joel bought two tickets. Then they walked into the museum and had to turn back for their stubs — John Joel had almost forgotten that Parker’s mother would reimburse him if she saw the stubs. He put them in his pocket, and they waited for the elevators to come.
“Walk,” Parker said.
“Are you kidding? It’s too hot.”
“It’s air conditioned.”
“Are you kidding?” John Joel said.
Eventually the elevator came and the door opened and they got on. It was a huge elevator, like somebody’s room, without furniture. John Joel thought that there should be at least a pole light in one corner, a pillow or two on the floor.
“Walk,” John Joel snorted.
They got off at the third floor and started looking around. John Joel could tell that Parker was really interested in the show when he went to look at a group of people who weren’t even naked. Parker stood and stared so long that John Joel wandered off and read what was written about the scene Parker was looking at on the walclass="underline"
Though the figures are cast from friends,
by adding color to them, I touched
on terror, hallucination, nightmare.
He stood beside Parker and looked. The most interesting figure was the one that was all blue. By a process of elimination — because he was sure that that was Antony and Cleopatra sprawled on the floor, and because he could recognize Catwoman and Superman and Pussy Galore — the one he liked had to be Bottom.
“Come on,” he finally said to Parker.
“How much does he get paid for doing this?” Parker said.
“He’s a famous artist, so he’s got to be rich. I don’t know.”
They looked at other pieces of sculpture: a woman on a subway car, with something rigged up so that the lights of another subway car seemed to be passing the window. A person behind a counter. Someone seen through a window, watching television. Then they got to the good stuff: a man and a woman sprawled on a brass bed, with an old mattress beneath them, the man’s penis half erect, the sheets a mess. Parker stared. He crossed the gallery and looked at the other bed scene, a blue woman sitting on the side of the bed and a man asleep. The beds both looked very uncomfortable. The lighting was odd. He stared for a while longer, then looked for John Joel.
John Joel was looking at the sculpture that Nick had stared at for so long the week before. There was a girl emerging through tile — tile like the tile that was in their shower at home, but she was breaking through it, her left breast showing, her left leg and pubic hair, some monster of the shower, with eyes that you couldn’t really look into because they were looking down, just indentations, or because of the way the light was. To the side of the woman breaking through the tiles were four other women, or rather fragments of women’s bodies. John Joel was thinking about Mary, and how much he would like to be able to push her from behind so that she would go through a wall like Superman, though hopefully with more pain. The woman breaking through the tile didn’t look upset, though. John Joel couldn’t imagine why she was doing what she was doing, and thought maybe she couldn’t, either.