SOL KLINGER IS not one to take unnecessary risks. Although the early-bird special at Sabia’s runs a generous hour and a half, from 5:00 to 6:30, he arrives at 4:45. When O’Hara walks in twenty minutes later, she finds him settled in a corner, the only customer in the place, gnawing a breadstick and studying the menu for loopholes.
“To old friends,” says O’Hara after the waiter drops off her Amstel.
“To Bunny ‘Schoolboy’ Levin,” says Klinger, “inch for inch, pound for pound, the toughest Jew I’ve ever known.” In his mid-eighties, Klinger still has some hair and some heft and some light in his eyes. Swathed in high-end fabrics, reading glasses dangling from a gold loop attached to a neck chain, he looks prosperous and relaxed in a way that makes the connection between the two obscenely transparent.
“I guess that poor fellow at Sweet Tomatoes didn’t stand a chance,” says O’Hara.
“I’m not talking about an old fart with a quick temper,” says Klinger, waving away whatever O’Hara may have heard with the stub of his breadstick. “I’m talking about a kid who as a junior at South Newark High School beat a leading contender for the lightweight title. The next day, his classmates carried him around the playground on their shoulders. Can you imagine how good that must have felt? I can’t, and I’ve been trying for seventy years.”
Klinger reaches into a leather portfolio and drops an ancient publicity shot on the table. “This is from ’37,” he says, “before they banned religious symbols. Bun was seventeen.”
Seventy years ago in a Newark gym, Levin adopts the classic pugilistic crouch. His thickly muscled arms and legs are poised for action, his taped fists ready to fly. But as always, it’s the eyes. Levin’s are soulful and belligerent and calm to the point of indifference, as if quietly informing his opponent that they can settle this now in the ring or some other time on a street corner, it’s all the same to him. Sewn on the leg of his silk trunks is the Star of David, and written in script across a bottom corner of the picture “Bunny ‘Schoolboy’ Levin,” although with his glistening black hair and fearless eyes, Levin looks more like John Garfield than a schoolboy.
Kids grew up faster then, thinks O’Hara. Then she remembers the scene, however contrived, on the wall of the Chelsea gallery, and dismisses the thought as nonsense.
“At seventeen, Bunny already had twelve pro fights. Three at the old Garden, two at Saint Nichols Arena on Sixty-Sixth Street. I know because I saw them all.”
“You two been friends since then?”
“Friends? He was the neighborhood hero—‘Schoolboy Levin.’ I was just Klinger, an actual schoolboy. I tagged along as much as he would tolerate it, and I helped him out. Like most parents, Bunny’s didn’t approve of the sweet science, even if it helped pay the rent. So I stowed his gear at my place. Our apartment was on the second floor. On his way to a fight, he’d stop below my window and whistle. Then I’d lower his bag down to him in the street.”
“Did Bunny ever mention spending time with a young boy from New York, about nine years old, blond hair, a slight limp?”
“I don’t think he’d been in New York in years. After the war the GI plan took him to college. Then like all of us, he got married. His wife’s family made disposable plastic gloves, the kind women wore at night over moisturizers. He grew the business, moved to the suburbs, and was lucky enough to sell it when it was still worth something. Me, I became a lawyer, did even better. It wasn’t until we met again down here that we became more like friends. Equals, almost. The only reference to a kid I can remember had something to do with helping some broad pay for her son’s tuition, but I don’t recall her being from New York.”
“Financially, was Ben okay at that end?”
“He was fine. Ben didn’t get excited about money. You saw his place. It would fit in my garage. For him, it was about proving something, making a point. The rappers on my grandsons’ CDs, they all sing about ‘representing.’ That’s what Bun was doing too. He represented the corner of East Fifth and Sparrow in South Newark. That’s why we all loved him.”
“What was your reaction to the news?”
“I was devastated. How do you think I’d feel? And not that I have any right to judge, not knowing all the details, but I was disappointed. In seventy years I’d never seen him back down. It wasn’t his style. I don’t think he could if he wanted to.”
“So you think the suicide was staged?”
“By who?”
When the waiter returns to the table, O’Hara orders a burger, Klinger the salmon. “Could I get a salad with that?” he asks.
“The special doesn’t come with a salad, sir. It comes with rice or a potato and the vegetable. Would you like to order a salad?”
“That’s okay.”
“Come on, Sol,” says O’Hara, “order the goddamn salad.”
Klinger scowls at O’Hara and turns back to the waiter. “When you get back to the kitchen, if you see some lettuce and a couple tomatoes and maybe a mushroom or two, could you just drop them in a little pile on the plate next to the fish?”
“A little pile?”
“Yeah.”
“That sounds a lot like a salad, sir.”
“Maybe to you.”
The waiter glances at O’Hara in a plea for empathy, but O’Hara looks past him at the empty restaurant. With its long mahogany bar and vintage movie posters, it could be in any city in America except New York.
“At the end,” asks O’Hara, “was he still all there? Mentally.”
“He was fine. Still did the crossword in ink. It’s not like boxing today. Those guys knew how to slip punches. His curse was that he still could fuck.”
Why do Jews always find a way to talk about good things like they’re bad? What is that about?
“An eighty-seven-year-old widower who can still fuck is just about guaranteed to go out like a schmuck. It would be okay if Bun would content himself with the old widow upstairs, but of course that’s not what he has in mind. Who does? He wants someone younger. Believes a young broad could still want him, can’t help but believe it, so he ends up paying some stranger’s kid’s tuition. Which pissed off his own daughter, and I don’t blame her.”
“You remember anything about this woman?”
“Actually, I think there were two. All I remember is that one had bad skin.”
“How did you know that?”
“Bun must have told me. His point, I guess, was that she could actually care for him. She was young, too young for him, but she had her flaws too. Hey, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she did like him, and I’m just jealous. I’ve been jealous of him my whole life.”