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Do Not Have Liftoff
by
Harry Buschman
From The Westlake Village Collection.
A glass of sherry .... maybe two, then if I can stay up late enough, I'll
watch the ball come down in Times Square. That's enough New Year's excitement
for
a man my age.
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, why should 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 don't relish the idea of another new year cupid in swaddling clothes
knocking at my door in the first place .... he has 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 us all we want to know, so does a look at yesterday's snapshots.
Who needs to know tomorrow will be 2001? The hell with it!
In this negative mood fate steps in and I bump into Seymour Slansky down at
the Deli on the afternoon of the 31st.
We talk about the party. "If you go, I'll go." He says tentatively.
"Why do you want to go? It's not 2001 for you?"
"So? it's coming up 5761, but who's counting? I'm Jewish .... everything's
negotiable."
It is difficult to resist Seymour. The state of Israel would have owned all
of the Middle East if he had a seat at the conference table.
He goes on without enthusiasm, "At midnight we leave right after, okay? I
will bring herring -- it is a custom from the old country."
"I'll bring a bottle," I say, Rita will go for that. The thing is, I don't
have anything to wear to a party. I don't even own a suit."
"Mine Gott! How will they bury you? You can't go looking like a shmegege.
Loosen up. Take me for instance on the other hand, I have two suits -- one gray
for bar mitzvahs, one black for funerals."
"I envy your social life, Seymour. Which of them will you wear tonight?"
"A shvetter perhaps, Rita is cheap with the heat."
He talks me into it, and by nine o'clock I find myself at Tony's back door,
as ready as I'll ever be. Somewhere deep under the soles of my shoes, I can
feel, rather than hear, the deep electronic thump of rock music inside. I leave
my boots in the pantry, I have sloshed my way through the wet, week old snow
-- the gutter brown snow that only on Christmas morning had lain fresh and
crisp and even. It is now bespeckled with dog shit and dead leaves.
It is a custom (like Seymour's herring) that the native people of Westlake
Village always use the back door. Regardless of the season 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. The last
time I used the front door was when they wheeled me out on a Gurney.
Everyone is there. Lucas and Muriel Crosby, Stacey Pomerance and her intended
.... it occurs to me they have drawn out their intentions for more than a
year now. Charlie Pinter, even Patrolman Ryan Donleavy. Seymour is trying to
pass
out slices of his herring without much success.
Tony, already half sloshed, whisks off my coat. He stares at me with feverish
New Year's eyes. "Gee, nice sweater man, C'mon, watch'ya drinkin' --
y'already way behind us."
I have no intention of catching up with him, and I wish desperately I stayed
home in the first place. "A light scotch, Tony. Happy New Year everybody --
Rita, here's a little something, how're the kids." She is in something with
large pink and orange flowers. Everybody is talking; nobody finishes a sentence
or
waits for an answer. We are saying things we 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 shoulder my way into Tony's den where the food is ....
"Hi, Mr. Buschman, you member Murray, don't cha?" Stacey Pomerance, flaunting
an unbelievable cleavage, is in something black and far too tight. She is
trying to accustom 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 seems a little presumptuous 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 where they
should go for their honeymoon.
Of all people, Tim Clancy, the bartender is there. The Hollow Leg Saloon has
been condemned at last and the Italian bakery will soon be 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. For 130 years,
including 130 New Year's Eves, the Hollow Leg stood like a lighthouse on a rocky
shore -- a steady beacon for the hopelessly thirsty. Where shall we go now?
What can possibly take its place?
"So where are you walking now?" Seymour asks me.
"I walk later in the day, with Mrs. Petrasek .... I drive her to the mall."
"She is a woman of 83. She should not wear white leotards. Can you do no
better?"
"She cannot drive a car, 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 go 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
no longer stimulated by ladies in Mrs. Petrasek's age bracket. Stacey herself,
in that drop dead black dress of hers, would have a devil of a time raising my
spirits to anywhere close to 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 say, "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 is a
wild, almost scalding light in his eyes now, I've seen that same light in the
eyes
of soldiers starting out for a weekend leave in Paris. A look that says, "I'm
going to remember this night the rest of my life -- or die trying."
"See this here box?" He tilts it over and removes the cover. Inside is a
crudely constructed rocket more than two feet long with rudimentary fins and a
nose cone that leans to one side. A wire stand is attached to the bottom.
Tony makes a circle of the room, showing it to each of us in turn. He reminds
me of a prosecuting attorney showing a piece of State's evidence to the jury.
When it passes in front of me I notice a vicious looking wick, thick as a
pencil, coiling out of its bottom.
"How do you like that?" Tony grins. "It's an honest to god 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 dart 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 in 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 pauses for breath and waits for
his words to sink in. Seeing no enthusiasm and no smiles of approval, he goes
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."
Are we in the presence of a madman? Rita raises her eyes to the ceiling and
slowly shakes her head, the rest of us look at each other and slowly shake our
heads. Someone suggests that Tony put his cigar out while he waves his rocket
around. I have a dim recollection of Fidel Castro cartoons in the newspaper
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 seems best to humor him, particularly with that damn rocket in his arms
and the cigar in his mouth. We dutifully file in and out of the Sargassa's
bedroom. I've never seen this room before tonight and it flits through my mind
that
this must be the very same bedroom that witnessed the conception of the
Sargassa's seven children. All seven of them married, and could it be that all
seven had seven -- no, it couldn't be! Far too Biblical. My mind is playing
tricks
on me .... it's past my bedtime .... I've had two scotches. Lord, I think,
will this evening ever end?
We stand out in the night on what passes for the Sargassa's patio and Marcus
Crosby keeps tabs on the television screen in the den. The weather continues
unnaturally warm and an unhealthy mist is rising from the dirty snow in the
back yard. None of us have shown any enthusiasm for Tony's "Celestial Sphere"
rocket and none of us care if the damn thing lights up the town or not .... we
just want Tony to get this out of his system so we can all go back inside.
He settles the rocket on his barbecue so it points more or less at the sky,
then looks 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 scratches a wooden kitchen match on the side of the barbecue, and
touches it to the end of the stiff fuse. It bursts into action violently, more
like
a Fourth of July sparkler than a fuse.
He beats a hasty retreat back to where we are 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 is beside himself. He keeps repeating, "Okay, go! Okay, go!!"
Somewhere around 12:00:11 a.m. on the first day of 2001 the lighted fuse
seems to disappear reluctantly inside the tail of the rocket and sure enough
there
is a sputtering. Quite abruptly the thing lifts off the barbecue grill.
Someone -- not me, shouts, "Hooray!!" and Tony bellows, "We've got lift off!!"
It rises perhaps fifteen feet in the air and then pauses as if to get its
bearings. The propellant flame spewing out the bottom sputters and dies. The
rocket is obviously going nowhere tonight .... it lazily turns over on its side
and falls in the wet snow about ten feet from the barbecue.
"It is an abortion," Seymour comments.
"Fifty-five friggin dollars, wait'll I get my hands on Angelo."
"When's it goin' up." That sounds like Stacey.
"Folks," I say, edging sideways. "I think we ought to get out of here,
y'know, suppose it explodes where it is?"
There are voices in the dark, disembodied voices. I want to reach out my hand
to Tony, wherever he is, and tell him how sorry I am. But he does not respond
well to sympathy.
I suggest again, a little more forcibly this time, that we all go inside and
get away from the 'Celestial Sphere'. We can'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 have a final nightcap and wish each other a Happy New Year. I get a
memorable hug from Stacey for old times sake. It will give me something to think
about these long winter nights. I glance at the intended Murray and envy his
intentions, whatever they might be.
Seymour and I turn around in the street and wave goodbye to Tony and Rita.
Rita's arms are folded across her ample bosom like Il Duce .... her fuse is
already ignited and if anybody is going to light up the neighborhood it will
probably be Rita.
Another New Year's Eve in Westlake Village.
"Happy 5761, Seymour."
"Watch out for Mrs. Petrasek."
©Harry Buschman 1998
(2370)
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