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From the novel Westlake Village by Harry Buschman
© by Harry Buschman
CHAPTER NINETEEN
We Do Not Have Lift Off
A glass of sherry
.... maybe two, then if I can stay up late enough, maybe I'll watch the ball
come down in Times Square. That's enough excitement for an octogenarian. I know,
I know, a millennium doesn't come along every day, but on the other hand the
world is a hell of a lot older than that. A thousand years is just a tick of
the cosmic clock. Must I celebrate this particular tick by spending a noisy
night with the neighbors at Tony and Rita Sargassa's on New Year's Eve? It doesn't
appeal to me.
I didn't relish the idea of another new year cupid in swaddling clothes knocking
at my door in any case .... he had little to offer me. Old men don't need to
be reminded of another year down the tubes, one quick glance in the mirror tells
the story, so does a look at yesterdays snapshots -- who needs to know tomorrow
will be 2001?
In this negative mood fate stepped in, and I ran into Seymour Slansky down at the Deli on the afternoon of the 31st.
"If you go,
I'll go." He said tentatively.
"Why do you want to go? It's not 2001 for you?"
"Dot's right, it's coming up 5761, but who's counting? I'm Jewish, remember
.... everything's negotiable."
It is difficult to resist Seymour. The state of Israel would have owned all
of the Middle East if he had been sitting at the conference table.
He went on without enthusiasm, "Ve leave right after midnight, okay? I
will bring herring -- it is a custom of the old country."
"I'll bring a bottle," I said, Rita will go for that. Thing is, I
don't have anything to wear to a party. I don't even own a suit any more."
"Mine Gott! How will they bury you? You can't go looking like a shmegege.
I, on the other hand, have two suits -- one gray for bar mitzvahs, one black
for funerals."
"I envy you and your social life, Seymour. Which of them will you wear
tonight?"
"A shvetter perhaps, Rita is cheap with the heat."
He talked me into
it, and by nine o'clock I was standing at Tony's back door, as ready as I'd
ever be. Beneath the soles of my shoes, I could feel the deep electronic thump
of rock music inside. I left my boots in the pantry, I had sloshed my way through
the wet snow -- the gutter brown snow that just a week ago on Christmas morning
had lain fresh and crisp and even. It was now bespecked with dog shit and dead
leaves.
It is a custom (like Seymour's herring) that the good people of Westlake Village
always use the back door. In summer and winter we enter through the back door.
Back doors lead to kitchens and pantries where we can usually be found. Front
doors lead to living rooms where little living is done. Last time I used the
front door was when they wheeled me out on the Gurney.
Everyone was there. Lucas and Muriel Crosby, Stacey Pomerance and her intended .... it occurred to me they had been pushing their intent for more than a year now. Charlie Pinter, Patrolman Ryan Donleavy. Seymour was trying to pass out slices of his herring without much success.
Tony, already half sloshed, whisked off my coat. He stared at me with wild New Year's eyes. "Gee, nice sweater man, C'mon, wadd'ya drinkin' y'already way behind us."
I had no intention of catching up, and I wished desperately I hadn't come. "A light scotch, Tony. Happy New Year everybody -- Rita, here's a little something, how're the kids." She was in something with large pink and orange flowers. Nobody finished a sentence or waited for an answer to a question they asked. We were saying things we'd heard all year long ....
"Socially inappropriate behavior."
"No person is above the law."
"There's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol."
"Then we spent two nights at Lake Louise. You wouldn't believe how cold it was."
"They soaked me $330 for four new tires."
I headed for Tony's den where the food was ....
"Hi, Mr.
Buschman, you member Murray, don'tcha?" Stacey Pomerance, revealing
a breathtaking cleavage, in something black and far too tight, was trying to
introduce Murray Feldman to the torpid night life of Westlake Village. Murray,
the bald-headed buyer for Cosmic Imports is absorbed in china and glass and
has little time for the likes of us. He seemed a little old for Stacey -- but
so does everyone else in my opinion. Charlie Pinter tells me the engagement
is dragging on because the couple can't get together on a place to go for their
honeymoon.
Of all people, Tim Clancy, the bartender was there. The Hollow Leg Saloon has been condemned at last and the Italian bakery is rolling pizza dough where once the professional drinkers of Westlake Village used to gather like knights of the round table. We commiserate for the loss of our watering hole. Saloon keepers, like shoemakers are a vanishing breed and Tim will soon join the growing band of Westlake Villagers in Orlando, Florida. But for 130 years, including 130 New Year's Eves, the Hollow Leg stood like a lighthouse on a rocky shore -- a beckoning beacon to the hopelessly thirsty.
"Where are
you walking now?" Seymour asked me.
"I walk later in the day, with Mrs. Petrasek .... we go to the mall."
"She is a woman of 83. She should not wear white leotards. Can you do no
better?"
"She cannot drive, Seymour. She would not walk at all if I didn't drive
her to the mall."
"So what do you talk?"
"We don't talk, Seymour, she does .... I listen." I went on to explain
that after getting to the mall, I steer her up the escalator, wind her up and
send her on her way. "Then I walk with Charlie Pinter, he gets there about
the time I do."
It seems to satisfy Seymour. He is very solicitous concerning my involvement
with the opposite sex, and he's quick to tell me that "So and so is not
your intellectual equal," or "So and so is out to get a man."
I tell him that I am not stimulated by ladies in my age bracket. Stacey herself,
in that drop dead black dress of hers, would have a devil of a time raising
my spirits to anywhere near horizontal.
How I wish I'd
never ventured out on this New Year's Eve. How pleasant it would be under my
blankets reading Joyce or Fitzgerald.
"Did you try my herring?"
"Yes," I said, "It's too slippery."
"Too fresh, You should taste the herring in Poland. It is different there
-- they say the Danzigers make the best herring. It is a Jewish sushi."
Both of us are getting sleepy. Will we make it to twelve? 11:30 already. A half
hour to go.
"Okay everybody
-- EVERYBODY!" Tony is shouting from the living room, "Everybody in
the den!" He is carrying a black cardboard box the size of a golf bag.
"Two thousand and one will be here in a half an hour, folks!" There
was a wild, almost feverish light in his eyes now, I'd seen that same light
in the eyes of soldiers starting out for a weekend leave in Paris. A look that
said, "I'm going to remember this night the rest of my life, or die trying."
"See this here box?" He tilted it over and removed the cover. Inside
was a crudely constructed rocket more than two feet long with rudimentary fins
and a sort of lop-sided nose cone. A wire stand was attached to the bottom.
Tony made a circle of the room, showing it to each of us in turn. He reminded
me of a prosecuting attorney showing a piece of State's evidence to the jury.
When it passed in front of me I noticed a vicious looking wick, thick as a pencil,
coiling out of its bottom.
"How do you like that?" Tony grinned. "It's an honest to goodness
Gucci "Celestial Sphere" rocket, an M-27. It's illegal as all hell
and it don't come cheap, lemme' tell you. I bought it from .... " His eyes
darted across the room to Ryan Donleavy, our by now, glassy eyed off duty patrolman.
"Anyways, we're gonna welcome in wyetookay like it's never been welcomed
before! When the old ball starts down in Times Square, I'm gonna light the fuse
on this sucker, and when the ball hits bottom .... off she goes, see!"
He paused for breath and waited for his words to sink in. Seeing no enthusiasm
and no smiles of approval, he went on, "C'mon, it's gonna be great
.... we'll all put our coats on and go out back. I'll set the thing up on the
barbecue. Y'can see the TV from out there. I'll light the fuse when the ball
starts down .... it'll lift off on the stroke of twelve. C'mon, what'sa matter
with you people? It'll light up the whole neighborhood .... a giant ball of
light .... guy said the "Celestial Sphere" is their Genesis rocket,
like, y'know, like at the beginning of the Bible."
Were we in the
presence of a madman? Rita raised her eyes to the ceiling and slowly shook her
head, the rest of us looked at each other and slowly shook our heads. Someone
suggested that Tony put his cigar out while he waved his rocket around. I had
a dim recollection of Fidel Castro cartoons that I'd seen during the Cuban missile
crisis.
"Let's go! Let's go! We ain't gotta lotta time. It's a quarter of already.
Go get'cha coats, they're in the bedroom. Move! Move!"
It seemed best to humor him, particularly with that damn rocket in his arms and the cigar in his mouth. We dutifully filed in and out of the Sargassa's bedroom. I had not seen this room before tonight and it flitted through my mind that this must be the very same bedroom that had witnessed the conception of the Sargassa's seven children. All seven of them had married, and could it be that all seven had seven -- no, it couldn't be! Far too Biblical. My mind was playing tricks on me .... it was past my bedtime .... I'd had two scotches. Lord, I thought, would this evening ever end?
We stood out in
the night on what passed for the Sargassa's patio and Marcus
Crosby kept tabs on the television screen in the den. The weather had continued
unnaturally warm and an unhealthy mist was rising from the dirty snow in the
back yard. None of us had shown any enthusiasm for Tony's "Celestial Sphere"
and none of us cared if the damn thing lit up the town or not .... we just wanted
Tony to get this out of his system so we could all go back inside.
He settled the
rocket on his barbecue so that it pointed more or less at the sky and looked
back at Marcus. "How're we doin' Marcus .... time yet?"
"Just about .... yeah! There it goes .... they're countin' down. Ten ....
nine .... got'cha match ready?"
Tony scratched a wooden kitchen match on the side of the barbecue, and touched
it to the end of the stiff fuse. It burst into action violently, more like a
Fourth of July sparkler than a fuse.
He beat a hasty retreat back to where we were standing .... "Okay, now
everybody count. What's the count Marcus, six?"
"I don't know, you're makin' so much noise I can't hear. There!! That must
be it, everybody's shoutin' and the clock says twelve!"
Tony was beside himself. He kept repeating, "Okay, go! Okay, go!!"
Somewhere around 12:00:11 a.m. on the first day of 2001 the lighted fuse seemed
to disappear reluctantly inside the tail of the rocket and sure enough there
was a sputtering. Quite suddenly the thing lifted off the barbecue grill. Someone
-- not me, shouted, "Hooray!!" and Tony bellowed, "We've got
lift off!!"
It rose perhaps fifteen feet in the air and paused as if to get its bearings. The propellant flame spewing out the bottom sputtered and died. The rocket was obviously going nowhere tonight .... it sort of turned over on its side and fell in the wet snow about ten feet from the barbecue.
"It is an
abortion," Seymour commented.
"Fifty-five friggin dollars, wait'll I get my hands on Angelo."
"When's it goin' up." That sounded like Stacey.
"Folks,"
I said, edging sideways. "I think we ought to get out of here, y'know,
suppose it explodes where it is?"
There were voices in the dark, disembodied voices. I wanted to reach out my
hand to Tony, wherever he was, and tell him how sorry I was. But he does not
respond well to sympathy, he will shrug you off and say, "Lemme' alone!"
I suggested again, a little more forcibly, that we all go inside and get away
from the 'Celestial Sphere'. We couldn't really be sure whether or not the thing
was still ticking inside. It could engulf all of us in a ball of flame ....
the Gucci's don't fool around.
We had a final
nightcap and wished each other a Happy New Year. I got a
powerhouse hug from Stacey for old times sake. It will give me something to
think about these long winter nights. I glanced at the intended Murray and envied
his good fortune.
We waved goodbye
to Tony and Rita. Rita's arms were folded across her ample
bosom like Il Duce .... her fuse was already ignited and if anybody was going
to light up the neighborhood it would probably be Rita. Another New Year's Eve
in Westlake Village.
"Happy 5761, Seymour."
"Watch out for Mrs. Petrasek."
©Harry Buschman 2000
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