Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue by Mark Kurlansky Read Free Book Online Page B

called enemy. A killer or a robber has a victim, but an enemy has only an enemy...." In time Nathan excused himself, still not knowing why he had an obligation to teach his child swimming.
    Of course, these obligations were only toward a son and included circumcision. Nathan's father had not taught him to swim, because Harry was afraid of water. But he had to do better than his father. That was the point. Was he supposed to have a summer home in Putnam County? There was no doubt in his mind that he did not want one, but was this something contemporary fathers were supposed to offer? After a couple of millennia, was it time to revise the list of a father's obligations? Preschool, summer home in Putnam County, sell your business and take the money. A modern Talmud might read differently.
    Nathan turned up Eleventh Street, walking toward this Friday's nameless fate. So far, he had learned that he was a financially insolvent claus-trophobe who harbored adulterous lust and had not taught his daughter to swim. And it was only four o'clock.

CHAPTER FOUR
Calamity in Disguise
    W AS THAT ALL? Was today the Friday he realized all his shortcomings? Or was there some other fate, some unforeseen defining moment still waiting for him? Had he avoided a mistake on the Copy Katz deal by deciding to put off a decision? "I need some time," he had pleaded at the meeting.
    "Sure," said Ira Katz. "Take a couple minutes." Then he laughed and said he was joking.
    Nathan turned up to Eleventh Street with his daughter back on his shoulder, moving away from the drug pushers that Maya's parents probably didn't expose their daughter to. He stopped in to see Sal Eleven, who had the best mozzarella and bread, although Nathan's mother would have neither for Shabbas —though any other day it was a welcome alternative to cooking. Both Ruth and her family welcomed alternatives to her cooking.
    Sal Eleven was short—none of the Sals was tall—with thick dark hair, one bushy eyebrow across his face like a thick black hyphen between his two large ears. He wore disdain the way most people wear simple indifference. He had a television mounted on the wall at exactly his eye level, which was an awkward height for most people. He kept it on a news station, which he greeted with dismissive waves of his hand and disgusted, disbelieving nods of his head.
    "Hey, how ya dew-in," he said, and handed up an olive to Sarah without ever removing his gaze from the television. He always gave her an olive, which resulted in olive oil being rubbed into Nathan's hair, which the anointed father reasoned was a positive thing, though he never understood what became of the pit. At home her mother was still cutting up grapes so she wouldn't choke on the seeds.
    "Terrible about Rabbinowitz, isn't it? He was a nice man."
    Sal brushed away Rabbinowitz's claim to niceness with his usual sweep of the right hand. "So what do you think of the block committee?"
    "The block committee?"
    "Yeah, these cockamamies with the meetings want to push the pushers off." He said this while staring at the television, as though this were the subject of the news program.
    "Well, I guess that's a good idea."
    Sal smiled cynically and dismissed everything with a wave of his hand. "So you got a few Puerto Ricans selling smoke in the neighborhood. As long as they don't let those Dominicans in with the crack. And they won't. Puerto Ricans hate the Dominicans. It's dumb guys and dumber guys. But it's good for the neighborhood. You know why?"
    Nathan knew Sal would wait until he asked, "Why?"
    Then he continued, "Because it keeps the fucking Japanese out."
    Nathan had learned to amuse himself by pursuing logic in these conversations that he knew logic would deftly elude. Sarah, who probably looked as though she were not listening from her lofty perch, would absorb it all and later reinterpret it for Nathan in a way that made even less sense than the original. Sal reached up with another olive, more oil for Nathan's