Guma stood on a chair and shouted out the titles: “Beach Boys in Bondage? Wrong crowd. No? You want it? OK, second feature, Cheerleaders in Chains, must see! OK, here it is! A Girl and Her Donkey! I’m dying! Hunk! Roll this one first. Where’s the fucking popcorn! I got to have buttered popcorn!”
“Marlene,” said V.T. as the film unfolded, “help me out. Do you think this film has any redeeming social value? More to the point, is she getting off with the donkey, or is it just clever acting?”
“Gee, V.T., why ask me, I’m a Sacred Heart girl. But off-hand, I’d say yeah, there was a close personal relationship.” Marlene became aware of a heavy pressure on her shoulder. The tower of sodden flesh that was Butch Karp was about to collapse onto her.
“Hey, Butch, wake up! Damn, V.T., help me here!”
The two of them managed to get Karp settled in a large swivel chair.
“Drink,” said Karp, his expression witless and good-natured, like that of the donkey performing on the screen.
“Sorry, baby, you’ve had enough. V.T. what are we going to do with this man?”
“Oh, we’ll think of something. We usually do … what the hell!”
“ALL RIGHT YOU PERVERTS, FREEZE! THIS IS A RAID!”
A man in a long trench coat with a snap-brim fedora pulled over his eyes was standing in the projector beam, pointing a shotgun at the onlookers. The room froze for an instant, the only sound the whirring of the projector and the boom of music from the tape player. Then someone laughed hysterically: the front of the man’s trench coat was covered with the projection of a dripping genital close-up. Then the gunman whipped off his hat and flung open his trench coat.
“Guma, you asshole. Get out of that cunt!” Hrcany shouted. Boos, catcalls, and bits of debris flew through the flickering light. “Guma! Where’d you get the gun?” somebody yelled.
“The evidence locker. There’s goddam everything there. Here take this! It’s COPS AND ROBBERS TIME!” Guma pulled pistol after pistol out of his coat pockets and flung them into the crowd. The average mental age of the assemblage was now six and dropping fast. Distinguished attorneys and grave civil servants crouched behind desks and crawled on their bellies through potato salad, shouting POW-POW! CHHSS! CHHSS! YOU DEAD, MUTHAFUCKA! at one another.
Guests began dropping to the floor, and not from the imaginary bullets. The bottom of Denny Maher’s washtub was finally shining in the sputtering candlelight. Stouter physiques dragged the wounded away from the scene; toward home in some cases, in others toward offices known to have long leather couches.
Around 3:00 A.M., a group of about twenty hard cases were watching the last few minutes of “Babes in Toyland,” an item that featured two teenaged girls who were being forced by a mad scientist to submit to an increasingly elaborate collection of motor-driven sexual appliances. The girls had thoughtfully removed their pubic hair to provide the last iota of lubricity.
“I can’t stand any more of this,” said Marlene Ciampi, yawning. “I’m not going to think about sex for a year. Goddam, look at that!”
“Yeah,” said V.T., “it looks like a clam eating a Buick.”
“CLAMS!” shouted Guma. “Let’s go for clams! Larrupa’s All-Nite Clam House in Sheepshead. Clams! Clams!”
Everyone started chanting, “Clams! Clams! Clams!” as they rose from the wreckage and started for the exit. “Pick up the guns!” yelled Hrcany, “and the films!”
The porno films and the weapons were dumped into a trash can and thrown into the evidence locker. Guma led the chanting procession down the hallway: “Guns! Clams! Guns! Clams!” He had removed his grass skirt and now wore Proud Mary’s bra around his neck in place of a necktie. Somebody hoisted the tape player. Jim Morrison was asking his baby to light his fire, at 110 decibels.
“Hey, wait!” Marlene shouted. “What about Karp? Hey, guys! Wait, he’s out cold. Don’t leave!”
She shook Karp as hard as a smallish woman can shake a 210-pound man. No reaction. The sound of the party faded away.
“Ah, shit!” said Marlene. She was exhausted and not a little drunk herself, having been sucking white wine all evening, not to mention the Scotch in the morgue. But she felt unable to leave Karp helpless in the middle of the Gym.
Looking about for a solution, she spotted Maher’s washtub. It held about two inches of icy water-the remains of the fifty-pound block that had cooled the punch-in which floated some paper cups and a pair of beige lace panties. She removed this debris, emptied a trash can, and tilted the washtub to fill the can with about a gallon of ice water.
This she poured over Karp’s head.
Karp sat upright and made a sound like a breaching fur seal.
“Phooooo-ahhh! ‘sall right! ‘sall right! I’m fine,” he said looking about wildly. Seeing Marlene, he smiled and said “Hi, Champ. Les go t’the Garn.”
“C’mon Butch, we got to get out of here. Everybody’s gone.”
She helped Karp to his feet, and steadied his sway, like a flying buttress. “OK, Butch, one step at a time, slow and steady.”
They left the wreckage behind, descended in the elevator, and staggered drunkenly, clutching one another, into Foley Square.
“Christ, Butch, where the hell are we going to find a cab? Shit, I don’t even know where you live.”
“Wanna go t’ Manson Squa’ Garn. Play basabaw,” said Karp.
“Karp, you’re looney. Just sit there, willya, and I’ll go get us a cab. Jesus, I’m going to have to flash tit to get anybody to stop at three-fucking-thirty.”
But as she turned to walk up toward Broadway, Karp suddenly leaped to his feet and went into a basketball crouch. He took the long throw from Frazier, hit the pivot and raced down court on the fast break.
“Karp! Wait! Oh, goddam it! Karp, stop!” Marlene took off after the weaving figure. Karp was naturally much faster than Marlene, but of course he had to keep the ball away from five Celtics, which slowed him down somewhat. On the other side of Foley Square Park he saw De Busschere open and whipped a screen pass over to him and then raced for the boards, which happened to be in the middle of Lafayette Street. He was just getting into good position again when somebody blindsided him with a terrific body check. Not for nothing had Marlene Ciampi spent five straight seasons as the only girl ever to make the first team on the dreaded 112th Street Rangers, the undisputed roller-hockey champions of Ozone Park. He went down on the cool pavement a few feet from the double yellow line.
“Hey, foul,” he called weakly. He didn’t feel so good now. His knee hurt. The game seemed to have passed him by. Where were the other Knicks? Where was the crowd? There was only a woman yelling not very nice language at him.
“Champ! Wha’ you doin’ here? Where’s a game?”
“Game, my ass! Get up, Karp!”
He got up and allowed himself to be led to the curb.
“Oh, thank you God, here’s a cab. Karp, don’t move!”
There was an empty cab with its dome light on in front of an all-night diner on the far side of Lafayette Street. As Marlene approached it, the cabbie came out of the joint, picking his teeth. He was a gap-toothed man with a fringe of graying hair, not much taller than Marlene, but twice as big around.
Marlene opened the rear door and sat in the backseat.
“I’m off duty, lady.”
“Your sign’s not on.”
“I was just gonna. C’mon lady, out. I gotta get home.”
“No way. I’m in the cab and the law says you have to take me.”
The cabbie sighed. “Where you goin’, huh? Canarsie, right?”
“Uh … I don’t know. I mean, I’m taking my friend home.”
“What friend?”
At that moment Karp wandered up. The cabbie saw a swaying giant in a soaked and filthy shirt open to the waist, with a striped necktie wrapped around his head.