A Chapter From 101 Nights When Somebody Robs

A Chapter From 101 Nights 

When somebody robs you, face to face, you spend months afterwards thinking of that face and what contusions and wounds you’d like to put upon it, inscribing your furious response with weapons of all kinds, not excluding blowtorches as the fantasy heats up.

I was discussing the possibilities of such revenge with my friends Ray Gabriel and Tom Grady as we sat around a rickety table at The Volga Boatman, a seedy little bar on 7th Street near Avenue A, watching the gyrations of a particularly voluptuous dancer on the tiny stage.

“Those people are your neighbours,” said Ray, “they’re not going away. You should move out of that shitty neighbourhood.”

The other member of our party, a sometime steeplejack and part-time drug dealer named Tom Grady, nodded assent. “Yeah, move to somewhere safe, like First Avenue… ”

I looked across at Tom, all glasses and goofy teeth, his mind on little else but women and cocaine, twin obsessions that he pursued with a shark-like voraciousness. Despite his eccentric looks, he had a peculiar attractiveness to the opposite sex, which combined with a line in filthy small talk that frequently produced astonishing results. Tom had tipped us off to these weekly go-go sessions, a recent innovation by one of Tom’s clients, a middle-aged Pole named George Wilnetz, who had recently inherited the bar from his father. 

For years the place had been a subterranean sanctuary for harmless alcoholics and mumbling refugees, and now quite suddenly, every Tuesday night, a team of very large and attractive dancers invaded its sleepy precincts to perform their sensual art, mostly for George’s benefit, since he didn’t advertise. Tom was delivering a package to Wilnetz. Ray and I had tagged along to study the talent. Ray now turned his attention back to the performer on stage, assessing her with a professional eye. He suddenly spoke.

“I can do that. Fifty dollars sez I can do that. Right here. Today. As soon as she gets off stage.” 

“Fifty sez you won’t,” Tom replied eagerly, pulling a bill from his pocket and handing it to me. “Hold on to that until I get it back, Maxie.” 

“Fifty it is, Tommy boy,” said Ray, peeling a bill from a roll and pressing it into my palm before returning his attention to the stage. I watched the money move in his hands like cards in a croupier’s fingers, a deft and sensual touch that implied a familiarity with currency I could never hope to attain.

Hot Buttered Soul was blasting from two cheap speakers suspended from the bar’s low ceiling. The dancer was shaking the boards of the tiny stage, flesh rippling in sublime wave-like movements every time her high-heeled foot stomped the ragged wood. Apart from us the only patrons were a couple of shell-shocked regulars sipping slivovitz at the bar.

“Real busy in here,” Ray said.

“So far it’s just this one night,” Tom said, “and George forgot to tell anyone about it. He’s kinda possessive with the talent.”

“Well they got some real music anyway.” 

“Yeah, the girls complained about having to strip to polka tunes,” Tom said. 

Wilnetz waved to us discreetly from his seat at the bar, and then resumed drumming his large fingers on the mahogany as he watched the dancer with obvious pleasure. A paranoid character, he did not permit Tom to speak or make contact with him when he arrived with drugs, even if there was no body else in the bar.  Tom would simply leave a package in the back room and collect his money later. It seemed odd to me that a man of Wilnetz’s age would take cocaine. 

“What, Max, don’t you think old people should have any fun?” Grady asked me with a smile. 

“It just seems weird, it’s like my parents doing it or something.”

“Christ, the man’s hardly 50. He’s not that old! He needs it to bang those strippers, doesn’t he?”

“Surely they don’t fuck him, do they?” I moaned.

“What do you think the blowski is for, dopey? Even somebody like George starts to look cute if he’s holding a gram… ”
“Does he have a wife?”

“He had one, but nobody’s seen her for years. Rumour was that George had croaked her, but he claims she just ran off.”

“She probably wasn’t big enough,” said Ray.
“Yeah, zaftig is how Georgie boy likes ’em; he’s a chubby chaser. Keeps a scale in the office, won’t hire ’em under 150lb. And some of them are tenants of his. He owns a couple of buildings around here. This is how they pay the rent.”

The music faded and his target stepped daintily from the stage. She walked directly over to our table and said a shy hello to Ray. 

“Nadine, this is Max and this is Tom. Have nothing to do with them,” Ray said, waving vaguely at the two of us. She smiled politely then gave Ray her full attention. 

“Where ’ave you been ’idin’, Raymond? You’ve neglected me something terrible!”

That lovely accent washed over me like spring rain. She was a Yorkshire girl!

“I’ve been working, baby, don’t get over this way very often. Great to see you, though,” Ray pulled her close and kissed her cheek and she folded into him, then he whispered something in her ear and she nodded, flashed us a brilliant smile and walked towards the back room. 

Grady leaned over. “Hey, you didn’t tell me you fucking knew her, man!”

“Why should that make a difference, Tom?”

“Ya fuckin’ hump, ’course it makes a difference! If I knew her I could probably fuck her, too.”

“I doubt it, Tom, I seriously do,” said Ray.

“Ah, fuck you. Come on, Maxie, let’s go back and leave this for George.” 

We walked to the rear of the bar, as another scantily clad light heavyweight made her way to the stage. In a small back room, Tom placed George’s package in a cupboard under the sink, then took a small folded paper from his pocket. 

“Here, this should entertain us while that dirty bastard has his way with that innocent girl,” he said, pouring a mound of powder onto a scratched hand mirror that lay on the table, and trowelling out four generous lines with a small pocketknife. He inhaled two lines and quickly stood up. 

“Here, check this out. Let’s monitor that nasty Paddy’s activities!” He pointed to a peephole drilled in the wall at roughly eyeball height that allowed a certain restricted view of the dressing room next door. I busied myself with the white rails and then switched places with Tom. I liked to watch. The peephole looked directly onto an old iron-framed single bed that stood against the wall of a shabby room. 

“He’s in there, Tom,” I reported from my observation post. “No foreplay, direct insertion.” Just as I made this observation the girl emitted an orgasmic shriek that pierced the wall. 

“Stand clear and let me see that!” said Grady, a coked-up grin exposing his protruding teeth. But I held my ground and Tom hastily pulled a travel poster from the wall, revealing another peephole. The wall was riddled with them. Tom set his eye to the opening and studied the scene within.

“Jesus, will you look at that! Beautiful, that is, firm and springy as moss on the forest floor, soft and yet solid, you could bounce quarters off of it. The girl is wasted on that Irish bastard.”

“Jeeze, Tom, I’m trying to concentrate… ” I said, focused on the main event. 

Ray’s ass rose in the air and then disappeared into this mountain of flesh like a coracle labouring in heavy seas, rising and falling with the waves. He was exchanging ribald pleasantries with the keening girl as he worked. I had recently discovered the verb “to shtup”, and yes, this was shtupping, live from the back room of the Boatman. “Fuckme fuckme fuckme!” a demanding backbeat of noisy imprecations that ran beneath her wails and trills.  

Ray worked steadily away, gathering up Nadine by the handful, chewing on her meaty gifts, a drunken jester adrift in a medieval knocking shop. Their mutual admiration finally expressed itself in a double-buckled shudder that rattled the bed frame. Ray unglued himself, sliding off the bed and out of our sightlines. Nadine lay there like a clubbed seal. We hurried back to our seats at the bar and ordered another round as Ray walked up. 

“Where’s my fiddy, Tommy boy?” he said cheerfully. 

“Christ, you’d fuck a rabbit if you could catch it on the hop,” said Tom morosely. “Give him the focken money then, and wash your hands after.” 

I handed the two fifties to Ray.

“Show me that bunny, I’ll do him for money!” Ray said, laughing, as he folded the cash into his wallet. “Come on, Maxie, let’s get out of this hole. I’ll treat you to the Russian Baths. We’ll get a eucalyptus rubdown, wash away our sins.”

We finished our drinks and waved to Wolnitz, who ignored us. As we walked out into the daylight another plus-size beauty began dancing to an empty room. Tom had more deliveries to make, so he accompanied us as far as Tenth Street, where we turned east for the Russian Baths, just off Avenue A. The baths had once been a community centre patronised exclusively by ageing refugees, many with that telltale line of numbers tattooed on their forearms, escapees from the horrors of Europe in the Second World War. As we walked Ray described in clinical detail the sensual effects created by the girl’s great size. 

“It’s the same principle as the earth’s tectonic plates, they press downward toward the centre of her planet, and you get an especially snug aperture from all the weight bearing down. Tight as a mouse’s ear… ” 

I mused on this odd simile as wiry little steamologists, pickled by years spent immersed inclouds of vapour, beat us with leaves the size of an elephant’s ear. We were all just one vast sweaty herd of mammals, dreaming of mummy’s tit as the poisons were driven from our systems.

Temporarily purified, we emerged from the heat, showered, dressed, walked upstairs to the small dining room and commenced putting the toxins back in, sirloin steaks and shots of ice-cold vodka. After lunch, another hit of coke in the bathroom to straighten out the potato vodka. We drifted down Second Avenue, shocked by the clarity of January sunlight, musing on the size of the world and all the comforting creatures contained within it.