17- Survival kit for a NY Giants fanatic
I must have
looked like a delivery boy – one of those classic characters from a 1930s black
and white comedy films complete with shit-eating grin, arms loaded down with
packages and waiting for someone at the bar to stick a foot out to trip me.
I had
everything but the bow tie, uniform and silly hat.
I had spent
hours at home with Scotch Tape, wrapping paper and ribbon to package
everything, box after box, glittering under the bar lights looking fancier than
they really were, a late delivery by Santa that nobody at the My Way expected
to get, least of all, Peggy.
These boxes
were piled so high I barely got them though the door and I was not quite sure
if I had dropped one of the smaller ones on my way across
I couldn’t
actually see directly in front of me so nearly ran into a drunken patron who
was staggering back to his stool from a visit to the rest room in the rear.
Some of the
stanch regulars glared at me as I passed them, grim expressions grinding out
their displeasure at disrupting their world with this obvious alteration in
their otherwise normal routine.
Even some
of the irregular patrons looked up in surprise, faces still flushed from
watching one of the dancers, annoyed at having their attention drawn away by me
and my packages.
All
squinted at my trying to figure what this was all about and growing even more
annoyed by the fact that they couldn’t.
Mary,
filling a glass full of beer on the far side of the narrow oval bar, looked up,
foam flowing over the rim of the glass and onto her fingers.
“Oh no!”
she moaned.
She
deposited the glass on the drain, the intended patron raising his hand to
object to its lost as she rushed around the island to reach me on the other
side, following along with me on the inside of the bar until I reached a vacant
stool.
“Are you
out of your fucking mind?” she asked, struggling to keep the volume of her
voice down so this came out something like a croak.
I put the
packages on the bar near the stage and slipped onto the stool.
The first
dancer eyed me strangely as well as she concluded her set, slipped down from
the stage, giving me an angry look for distracting the patron at that critical
time when she had to make up her mind which one she intended to sit with.
“What do
you men?” I asked Mary.
“I mean,”
Mary said, pushing out the words between clenched teeth, “If the boss sees
this, he’ll put you out permanently.”
“But
they’re gifts for Peggy.”
“I know
they’re gifts for Peggy,” Mary said, clearly exasperated. “That’s the problem.
God only knows how she’ll react.”
“I hope
they’ll make her happy.”
“Happy?”
Mary said, looking even more puzzled at which point Wolfman howled from his end
of the bar.
Mary
glanced at my face.
“Get this
stuff out of here while there’s still time,” she said.
“No way,” I
said. “It took me some time to assembly this collection and I’m going to make
sure Peggy gets it.”
Mary
started to respond, but Wolfman howled again, and then Peggy appeared out of
the ladies room, both events making Mary sag.
“It’s your
funeral, Al,” she mumbled and hurried off.
Peggy
hadn’t noticed me yet. She was too full of her usual routine, her nose uplifted
as she passed the pool table and its collection of taunting thugs.
She never
acknowledged them or their taunts, but she always seemed pleased by their attention.
She snarled
at Wolfman’s minions who giggled when she reached the gate into the bar to
undergo Wolfman’s usual inspection.
At this
point, she paused, frowning over Wolfman’s odd reception. His minions giggled,
but in anticipation of Wolfman’s explosion. And he looked about ready to
explode, too, but seemed determined to hold it back, looking straight at her
for a moment and then slowly, turned to look at me.
Sure, I
could have grabbed up those boxes again and tried to escape. Perhaps somewhere
in the back of my brain that thought even registered a little. But by the time
I became of aware of it, Peggy saw me – her gaze following Wolfman’s to where I
sat.
She stared,
her frown turning into something even odder, a bewildered look. Gone was the
arrogant queen high on herself and the cocaine she had snorted in the ladies
room, replaced by an astonished look that left her mouth hanging slightly open.
The music
selection from the previous dander stopped, plunging the bar into yet another
silence, one filled only by the shuffle of stools and the cough of nervous men.
Peggy’s
mouth closed as eh squinted hard at me, one of her painted eye brows rising
high onto her forehead like a question mark. She clearly saw the packages piled
high on the bar and had to have known I had brought them for her, and I could
see – even though her face was half hidden in shadow – an odd smile rising onto
her lips.
She said
something to Wolfman I could not hear.
Mary, who
had worked her way up the bar again to a point a few feet from me said, “It’s
too late to do anything now, Al. This might blow over yet. I’ll get you another
beer.”
I didn’t
know what to expect to happen next.
Nothing
really did – not at first.
Mary
dropped another beer in front of me then hurried to the cash register from
which she extracted five quarters – and delivered these to Peggy, who still
stared at me, even as the coins jingled in her hand.
Peggy
continued to star even as she began her march down the outside of the bar to
the juke box. But she didn’t linger there the way she usually did, punching out
the all too familiar tunes she wanted to dance to, then she hurried back to the
gate where Wolfman let her pass inside and to the stage.
Perhaps for
the first time in her life, Peggy was actually speechless.
Other men
had given Peggy gifts before, of course, drugs, tickets to concerts or other
bribes they thought might get her to bed down with them. But no one apparently
had packaged their gifts up in Christmas wrap and carried them into the bar for
every one to see.
In a world
where nearly everything followed predictable patterns, where nearly everybody
said or did largely the same things with only minor variations, this gifting
was a stunning departure, and it even managed to stun Peggy, who bumped into
Marry as she climbed onto the stage.
Wolfman
could not longer contain himself and snorted, then let out a long invective
about Santa Claus and Peggy’s getting starry-eyed over some fucking boxes, and
how if she doesn’t pay attention to her dancing, she and the boxes would wind
up on the street with the winos and the pimps.
If Peggy
heard any of this, she showed no sign. She danced no faster nor slower than she
had before, and she continued to glance my way, at me and the boxes, looking
very much like an intrigued kitten who could not resist being drawn to a
string, struggling to maintain an air of indifference, but clearly
unsuccessfully.
Her
frustration, however, showed with each glance at the clock, as if she could not
hurry time so as to end her set and let her come down to investigate what these
boxes were all about.
Time
conspired against Peggy.
Half way
through Peggy’s set, Mary scooted over to where I sat, touched my hand with her
pink painted fingernails pressing every so slightly into my flesh. She motioned
with her other hand for me to lean over the bar, which I did, and her paint
painted lips came close to my ears.
“The boss
says for you to leave,” she said.
“But I have
to…”
“He wants
you to leave and this time It’s for good.”
“I’m banned?
Why?”
“The boss
doesn’t want men romancing his dancers.”
“I’m not
romancing anybody.”
“That’s not
the way he sees it,” Mary said, keeping her voice down even as she backed away
from my ear. “It’s one of his rules. No romances. No boyfriends. No sex in the
bar. Dancers are here to dance. That’s all.”
“Are you
telling me dancers can’t have boyfriends?”
“Sure they
can,” Mary said. “They can have all the boyfriends they want, all the lovers
they can handle, they can even have husbands, just not in the bar. It keeps
down the fights.”
“I’m not
anything to Peggy,” I said, glaring down to where Wolfman sat.
He glared
back, his cigar frozen in one place although it glowed intensely orange as he
pulled hard on it, smoke swirling around his head as if he was the one on fire,
not the cigar.
“Just go,
Al,” Mary pleaded. “The boss can be very mean when he needs to be.”
I sat there
for a very long moment and then said, “All right, I’ll go. But can I leave the
packages?”
“I
suppose,” Mary said with a shrug. “As long as you’re not here when Peggy gets
down. The boss is peeved enough to have you escorted out, and his boys are
never gentle.”
I slipped
off the stool, dropped some money on the bar, then slowly turned to leave.
“Hey!”
Peggy roared from the state. “Where the hell do you think you’re going now?”
I stopped,
my shoulders hutched. I could feel her stare at my back like the point of
knife. I would also feel Wolfman’s stare, and struggled to figure out which was
more dangerous.
“Let the
fucking asshole go,” Wolfman shouted. “tell him to pack up his fucking presents
and leave. This ain’t Christmas any more.”
Mary shut
off the juke box again, Madonna’s voice grinding to a halt mid-word.
Once again,
an uncanny silence filled the interior of the bar and again the men stirred and
coughed uncomfortably.
I did not
turn. I did not look at anybody – not Peggy, not Wolfman, not Mary or any of
the other men. I just stared at the door, wishing I had managed to reach it
before all this exploded.
“But I
don’t want him to leave,” Peggy shouted, her voice sounding shrill. Her
reflection showed in one of the side mirrors.
“Well, he
can’t stay here,” Wolfman said. “You know the rule about boyfriends.”
“He’s not
my boyfriend.”
“If he
brings presents, he is.”
“Loot’s of
people giving me things,” Peggy yelled. “That doesn’t make them my boyfriends.”
“Drinks are
okay. Shit from Bloomingdale’s ain’t.”
“For
Christ’s sake. You don’t know what’s in those boxes any more than I do. Stop acting
as if the guy just bought me a mink coat.”
“If it
ain’t mink, then its something worse, lace maybe.”
“You’re
fucking jealous. That’s what this is all about.”
“I am not.”
“Yes, you
are,” Peggy howled. “I know the look and you got it. That’s why you’re always
giving me such a hard time about the men who come to see me. You don’t mind me
hurting the newbies, but God help the man who you think actually wants to get
me in bed.”
“Stop it,”
Wolfman yelled.
“I won’t.
And you can’t make me.”
“But I can
make him leave,” Wolfman said. “A rule is a rule and he’s got to go.”
“If he
leaves, I go with him.”
This last
startled me so I actually turned to look at her.
Wolfman
seemed as stunned as I was, and it took him a moment to respond, and finally he
did.
“Fine,” he
said. “Go.”
Peggy snorted,
snatched up her tips from the corner of the stage, climbed down, marched along
the bar to where Wolfman said. She didn’t even stop. She just gave him the
figure as she passed through the gate, and rushed passed the pool table to the
ladies room, from which she reemerged a moment later, carrying her street
clothes. She walked up to where I stood, stopped, glared back at Wolfman.
“You know
where to reach me when you want me back,” she snarled, then glanced at me.
“What are you waiting for, an invitation.”
I started towards the door.
She grabbed
my arm.
“Are you
forgetting something?” she asked, and tilted her head towards the pile of boxes
still on the bar.
“Oh yeah,”
I said, and grabbed them up, performing the same precarious balancing act on
the way out as I had coming in.
Mary
switched back on the juke box as Wolfman sent one of his minions to pound on
the ladies room door to roust out the other dancer.
“You’ll
come crawling back!” one of the regulars mumbled as Peggy walked by.
“Never,”
she said indignantly, and shoved the door open, holding barely long enough for
me to slip through with her presents.
*************************
Journal: March 18, 1987
I almost
screamed with frustration when I talked to Peggy today.
Each time
we meet I learn more about how lost a soul she is and how she hopelessly looks
towards a future she can’t ever achieve.
I want to
tell her she’s missed the boat, that she’s attached herself to ideal that can’t
possible support her.
But she wouldn’t listen.
Each night
proves even more that she is an alcoholic. Even her mother who she calls “El”
is suspicious, marking the bottle each time she comes over to see how much
Peggy consumes.
I don’t
know why she needs the alcohol so much, but the booze is clearly connected to
her life here at the bar, and may be more of a reason for her continuing to
dance than the money is: free booze.
She even
seems bored with her job, although she claimed once that her job is varied
enough to keep from driving her crazy. Perhaps she already sees its limitations
and like many resorts to booze as a cure. Perhaps, she drinks because of some
man she once loved.
She said
she attended Montclair State College, making me wonder what her life was like
on campus, and if it was as wild as her life is now. Still that was five years
ago, and for five years, this has been her existence, working a job by day and
this by night, pretending to be a good solid Republican.
She said
her parents are of Ukrainian decent and that she regularly attends church at
the First Presbyterian Church of Wallington except during football season.
“I go to
church, but never when the Giants are playing, ha ha,” she said.
But when I
checked, there was no First Presbyterian Church in Wallington, only a
Wallington Presbyterian Church.
She drives
a late model 1970s car, a
She said
someone stole her “Giants on Board” sign and the little Paddington bear wearing
a Giants’ football helmet.
“How cheap
can they get?” she asked.
Her whole
philosophy scares me. Sooner or later everything will collapse. It could be the
police. There might be a regular DWI check point on the road she takes home.
Once they police get a whiff of her breath, they will ask for papers. Then they
will notice all the other things.
Even if the
law doesn’t catch up with her, she can’t keep this up physically. This week she
worked four nights and as a result went to into her day job late. She’s
suffering cramps from her period which had her bent over double on the stage.
This didn’t stop her from belting down two drinks in my twenty minutes with
her.
I don’t
think she recognized me later on the road when she nearly ran into my car
turning from
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