A HANDSHAKE WILL DO

 

And so New York, gargantuan, gray, deep-throated, shrouded in an ashen mantle of fog and smoke, lay before me, a demonic hulk apt to pulverize anyone powerless or unwilling to keep up with its dizzying pace. The great city would remain for many years elusive, intimidating and incomprehensible. In time, she would slowly adhere to me like a spurned lover begging for affection and I would learn to love her in return with the reticence, circumspection and lust of a boy infatuated with an older woman. (It would take the tragic events of September 11, 2001 to realize how much New York and I had coalesced in 45 years. Incinerated and pulverized, the majestic Twin Towers had snuffed out the soul of this great city, leaving us, the survivors, the real victims of the terror attack, to ponder the limits of human hatred, the banality of evil. Those who perished, all New Yorkers now understood, would have nothing more to fear. It is we, the survivors, who are being smitten, doomed to remember, sentenced to anticipate, fear gripping our hearts, the echo of our own worst nightmares.)

The old man who’d stood by my side at the railing since daybreak was gone. He’d bid me good luck and I’d seen him clamber down toward the lower decks in a state of euphoric agitation. Passengers were now disembarking, scrambling down the gangplank and spilling into the arms of loved ones massed in clumps on the windswept pier. Dawn’s dank murkiness had turned into day and New York was now towering above me like a cyclopean citadel. I would have given anything to stir awake from this unbelievable dream and find myself in bed in my little Montmartre aerie, the aroma of fresh croissants rising from the bakery below.

Aunt Mary -- Malku -- who’d come to fetch me, had noticed sadness in my eyes, weariness in my voice. The curtness of my replies, in response to a thousand questions, further accentuated my discomfort and fueled my feelings of alienation. I knew I should have faked a smile, simulated a semblance of joy for this woman, my father’s sister, who so generously offered me shelter during my first few months in America and kept her home and heart open to me for years to come.

“Won’t you tell me what is troubling you,” she’d asked, kindness and concern radiating from her eyes.

“Maybe some other time.”

I kept my feelings to myself, determined to weather the inevitable, eager to prospect the knowledge and challenges this senseless adventure might yield. I’d spent ten days at sea. The voyage, it seemed, had just begun. I was 19. It was best that dismal thoughts of home be brushed off like desert sand from a pilgrim’s sandals.

*

I heard a key turning into the lock.

“Louis’ home,” chimed Mary. I rushed to the door, opened it and spread my arms, ready to embrace him. Prematurely gray, a tall, lanky man with stooping shoulders stopped me gently but firmly with one hand on my chest and offered me his hand instead.

“You’re in America now. A handshake will do.”

 

Words don’t hurt until they’re uttered.

 

I would forgive the affront but I never forgot it. Accustomed to my parents’ warmth, I found the snub incomprehensible, almost hostile. Spurning a hug, I thought, even from a perfect stranger, as I was to him, was cruel and boorish. I would learn in time that Louis’ reserve was less the product of ill breeding than an inbred inability to demonstrate affection. His father Sam (Schmiel), my father’s paternal uncle, was a sullen old man who denied relatives a glass of water but invited derelicts to his table. His wife, “Meema,” was a stoned-faced, acerbic borderline schizoid woman. Her pinched lips, furtive glances and calculated irascibility betrayed meanness beyond pathology.

Meema and Sam had immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s, when Louis was just a boy. Soon after the end of World War II, Louis, at my father’s behest, had invited Mary, his first cousin, to come to America and become his bride. I don’t think Mary ever forgave my father for engineering the compact.

A veteran of New Guinea, the Philippines and Okinawa, Louis was intelligent but utterly lacking ambition. He earned a living pressing ties in a sweatshop in New York’s garment district. He and Mary produced two daughters -- Pearlyn, who was eight, and Sherry, still incubating in her mother’s belly when I landed in America. Now in her fifties, my pretty, dreamy-eyed cousin Sherry had been diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was thirty or so. I’d called it “Meema’s revenge.”

Soon after I arrived, Louis took me to Macy’s for a complete makeover. He bought me a see-through plastic raincoat that folded into an envelope-sized pouch, a fedora that aged me but did not impart the look of respectability Louis had hoped it would lend me, and a pair of “rubbers,” hideous overshoes that old men wear in the rain and snow. I never wore either.

Eager to dazzle me, Louis, who’d never been to Paris, also introduced me to the Horn & Hardart Automat, then located around the corner from Macy’s West 34th Street store. At first, I considered the whole concept of mechanized dining bizarre, something out of Flash Gordon. But as time went on I found myself drawn to this immense den of anonymity gleaming with chrome-and-glass coin-operated machines, art deco mirrors, marble floors and fancy marquetry. The automats had by then became an American icon. With their uniform recipes and centralized commissary system, they were America’s first major fast-food chain. Patrons composed their own meals. Hot food was always hot and tasty. The huge rectangular halls were filled with shiny, lacquered tables, and women with rubber tips on their fingers -- “nickel throwers” -- perched on high chairs in glass booths exchanged paper money for the five-cent pieces required to release food and drink. There were many advantages to this style of dining. Patrons could see the food before buying it. The glass-fronted compartments and gleaming fittings looked reassuringly clean. The coffee was probably the best in town. At a dime a cup, it was also a great buy. The last automat closed in New York City in 1991.

*

In less than a month, I found a job as a junior clerk with a shipping company, Overseas Maritime Corporation. I’d withdrawn from Aunt Mary’s tutelage and moved to a furnished room on 113^th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. My landlady, Mrs. Neumann, was a stern German Jew who laid down the law: No guests. No music after 10 p.m. No metal-cleated shoes on her shiny parquet floor. No baths allowed -- only showers. No leftovers in the refrigerator. I had no problem complying with four of her injunctions. I deemed the first -- no guests -- groundless and unjust. I’d begun courting several girls, including Priscilla, the daughter of an elder at Riverside Church, and doe-eyed Blanca, the eldest of five children of a working class couple from Puerto Rico. Barred from ushering them in through the front door, I smuggled them to my room, which gave out on the street, by lowering the iron ladder and having them climb up the fire escape. Priscilla, a picture of Protestant primness, had a volcanic libido. She erupted in multiple orgasms, some in mere anticipation of coitus. Kissing her and rubbing my penis against her nipples was enough to send her swooning. Thrusting myself in all the way to the hilt catapulted her from one pinnacle of ecstasy to another until, weak from self-exhaustion, she let out long, tremulous sighs. I often had to place a hand over her mouth to muffle her ululations.

Blanca, Catholic down to her armored underwear and unyielding bra, vowed to surrender only in exchange for an engagement ring. She steadfastly resisted my advances but agreed, perhaps hope eternal springing in the face of crass exploitation, to submit to dry sex, which, faute de mieux, was better than nothing. Those were the days when some girls clung to their virginity, others pretended not to have lost it. I would never get to examine Blanca’s credentials.

Mrs. Neumann, it turns out, was aware of these nocturnal escapades but never said a word until, in search of greater privacy and larger quarters, I moved out of her apartment.

“I must say you were a model roomer,” she declared as we parted, shaking my hand with Prussian vigor. “You paid the rent on time. You were quiet, neat and thoughtful. Of course, I didn’t really expect you to obey all the rules. I am, however impressed by your resourcefulness and stealth, and grateful for your discretion. Good luck, young man.”