“Goom, be serious! What am I gonna do?”
Guma looked at him hard and popped him in the chest with a stubby finger. “Serious? What’re you talkin’ about? I’m serious. Booze is real. Pussy is real. You’re in fuckin’ Oz, in comparison. Wise up, Butch! Start living, for Chrissake. Now listen! What you need is to get drunk and laid, which is going to be easy where we’re going, because you are the man of the hour, and the bitches’ll be crawling all over you. I’m going to get my car from the garage here and I’ll meet you on the Sixth Avenue side in ten minutes. It’s bring your own, so hit the joint across the street and pick something up. See you.”
Guma trotted off. People were leaving the ballroom now and Karp drifted with them. He knew he was losing his mind. My life is falling apart, he thought, and I’m blabbing the intimate details of my married life to Ray Guma, drunk, wearing a funny hat. He walked through the crowded lobby, out into the summer night. The air was soft, and smelled of roasted peanuts for some reason, the way air in New York will often carry odd and unexplained smells. In the food market he bought a six-pack of Schaeffer’s; that amount of beer represented approximately one half of his annual intake of alcohol.
“What did you get, a whole six-pack?” asked Guma, when Karp slid into the front seat of his car outside the Hilton. Guma had half a case of Teacher’s in the trunk. “Jesus, Karp, we’re talking oblivion here. What’s wrong with you?”
“Come on, Goom, you know I can’t stand the taste.”
“Who can? Schmuck! You drink it in spite of the taste.”
“Fine, fine, stop hocking me!” snarled Karp. Then, after a while: “Where’re you driving? What’s this party we’re going to?”
“You’re joking! This is not just a party. This is a classic, guaranteed. We’re having a Dance at the Gym.”
“Oh,” said Karp glumly, and thought about oblivion, heretofore a scarce commodity in his life, but looking better.
The Gym was the one good part of one of Conrad Wharton’s worst ideas. For decades one wing of the fourth floor of 1 °Centre Street, where the Felony Trial Bureau was quartered, had been divided into tiny bathroom-sized offices for the ADAs. For most of them, coming from the squad bays of Criminal Court, it was their first real office-with-a-door, and prized accordingly.
But Wharton had read something about the latest thing in efficiency being open space plans with individual “work-stations,” divided by colorful foam partitions. He therefore ordered the razing of the entire area and the replacement of the cozy old offices with an immense echoing space filled with flimsy tin furniture and cloth-covered panels in earth tones and primary colors. As a functional office it was a disaster, since Wharton had not thought it necessary to buy the sound baffles and special flooring that prevent such offices from sounding like what they resemble-cheap day-care centers for the retarded.
On the other hand, the “modules” were easily shifted. Half an hour’s work produced an open hall with eight big windows that would easily hold 200 people-presto, the Gym.
When Guma and Karp arrived there were only about a dozen people in the room, mostly secretaries and clerks arranging platters of food on desks covered with paper tablecloths. The secretaries supplied the food, the professional staff supplied the drink. The overhead lights had been doused and the room was lit by candles stuck in ashtrays and cardboard coffee cups. Guma deposited his half case of Scotch and Karp his six-pack on the pair of desks designated as the bar. Jugs of wine were cooling in ice-filled trash baskets. Towers of paper cups were arranged around them.
A short, red-haired, pug-nosed man was standing at one end of the “bar,” pouring pineapple juice from a can into a huge galvanized washtub, the type used to bathe the heroine by candlelight in western movies.
“Denny! How they hanging, my friend?” said Guma.
“Not so bad, Goom. A couple more cans and this will be ready to taste.”
“What is it? Oh, hey Butch, you know Denny Maher, from the M.E.’s office?”
“Yeah, sure, hi.”
Maher cracked another can and poured it into the foaming, creamy mixture. “Butch, you look like shit. I believe you are low on potassium, the inevitable result of excessive masturbation. Therefore, as your personal physician I will insist that you swallow at least twelve ounces of this here punch.” Maher finished pouring and filled a paper cup from the tub. Karp eyed it suspiciously.
“What’s in it?”
“Nothing but the purest tropical ingredients. It’s a piña colada, or pina colitis, as we used to call it in medical school. C’mon, taste it.”
Karp took a swallow. The drink was sweet and icy. “Hey, it’s all right. Is it spiked?”
Maher and Guma exchanged glances. “Spiked? No, not really, just enough to prevent bacterial contamination. I mean, I wouldn’t want any of the guests to come down with salmonella.”
“Hey Butch, come over here and help me with the meat.”
Hrcany, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and cutoffs, was tending half a dozen smoldering hibachis set up on the window ledges. He was taking shish kebabs out of a cooler and placing them on the grills. Karp took his drink and walked over, glad of something to do to get his mind off his troubles.
Maher stirred his tub and gestured in Karp’s direction.
“Spiked? Is he kidding, or what?”
“Ah, Karp’s OK, he’s just a little new to physical depravity. What did you put in it anyway?”
“Oh, the usual twelve pints of Olde Medical Examiner.” Maher reached under the desk and held up a squat bottle with a black and silver label. The label said “Ethyl Alcohol-C2H40H-(Absolute).”
“Is that all?” asked Guma. “No exotic aphrodisiacs?”
“Is that all, he asks! Listen, friend of mine, by the time the bottom of this old tub sees the light of day there won’t be a functional higher brain in this room. The lowest animal reflexes will rule all.”
Guma laughed. “You’re an evil man, Maher, and I love you for it. But isn’t this a violation of your Hippocratic oath?”
“Oh, that. It’s sad, but sometimes we physicians must appear to cause pain in order to work our miracles of healing.” He poured a cup of punch and offered it to Guma. “No thanks, I’ll stick to Scotch, Denny.”
“You’re a fool. That stuff’ll kill you. I speak as your personal physician.” He took a deep drink himself. “Ahh … healthful and refreshing!”
“Better you than me, pal. Oh, and Denny, we’re trying to get Butch to loosen up. Why don’t you see that his cup stays full, hey?”
“A duty and a pleasure,” said Denny Maher.
For the next hour Karp cooked fifty pounds of skewered beef. It was a warm, humid night and the grills were blazing hot. He took off his jacket, then his tie. He unbuttoned his shirt and rolled up his sleeves. Then he wrapped his tie around his forehead. Every so often somebody would appear at his side with a platter and he would load it with smoking shish kebabs and, in turn, receive a tall, cool cup of piña colada, which he gulped down.
Now the room was jammed with people. Somebody had brought a ghetto blaster, which was blasting away, and dancers were leaping in the candlelight. When the meat ran out, Karp staggered toward the music. Guma was up on a desk doing the dirty boogie with Proud Mary, a 300-pound property clerk with chocolate skin and blonde hair. He had removed his shirt, shoes, and socks and rolled up his trouser legs. He was wearing a green cellophane Hawaiian skirt and Proud Mary’s brassiere, stuffed with paper napkins. Karp watched hypnotized as Proud Mary’s unrestrained size 46s struggled for freedom against her dress. She was laughing, a high-pitched, “hee-yuh-yuh-yuh … HEE-yuh-yuh-yuh” like the artificial fat lady in front of a Coney Island fun house.
“Butch! Man of the hour! C’mon dance!” Marlene Ciampi grabbed his hand and pulled him onto the dance floor. “Jesus, Butch, you look like you just finished the graveyard shift at a coal mine. What you been doing?”