Part 1e. Herman and Shriner Hat
"Happily family for 5 please" Herman was very excited to have an occasion for wearing shriner hat.
He had been preparing all week for our highly anticipated trip downstairs for dinner with the basement people; deciding what to wear, how to act, where to put everything.
We were playing Chinese restaurant, in Chinese restaurant.
Herman had his clothes neatly laid out before bedtime the previous day perfectly at the foot of his cot.
Acrylic cranberry blazer with those fake round and embossed gold buttons that dangle from their loops sewn right through the sleeve, a new blue button shirt, purchased by George and pins removed on my request was tucked and rippling bloused into a pair of forest green 1975 Benson & Hedges mall breakfast pants with a reflective candy apple red tie. All under a velvet burgundy shriner hat. His favorite.
My little 280lb pear shaped tutifruiti lunatic.
Herman walked into the kitchen area with his tie in a jumbled half knot. "Fix my jumble please." He held both ends of the tie out to me. I unjumbled it and pulled up his collar.
The conditions for our evening were fine with Herman and the rest of everyone involved.
There were only two actual conditions and they were these: We'd take Herman down to Wo Hop using the building's back basement tunnels to avoid leaving the building, and the basement people at Wo Hop will have the restaurant cleared of strangers by the time we get there.
You may be thinking now I'll write another one followed by 'there were three conditions' but there were only two and how many times will you put up with my repeating devices.
Maybe the conditions weren't really even conditions at all. They could already be assumed to be the case anyway, with Herman never leaving the building and being under constant protection from strangers and circumstances by George and me.
But the declaration of these conditions was necessary to pull the evening off regardless. To Herman acting normal meant a constant struggle to mimic the behaviors of the others, and having a predetermined context for the evening gave him a set of railings to hold onto.
I finished tying Herman's tie and set the tassel on his shriner hat at a more appropriate angle. "There we go bub, did you remember to bring your fork?"
Herman nodded and then picked the shriner hat up off the floor. "Is George coming too?"
I opened the ice box and told him I think so, that is I think George is coming.
On the top shelf of the ice box was a white crackly paper bag, the sideways kind, and a folding bakery box knotted at the top with red and white twisted string holding down its warping flaps against springy escape tension. The box had a gold stamp indicating it was from the old Russian lady bakery on Kings Highway.
Herman looked over my shoulder at the pair of treat packages in the ice box. "Man of mystery."
I opened the bag to reveal several Chinese cookies, the ones with the yellow bean mush filling and blurry red pictures printed on top of the egg yolk glazing. You maybe know the kind.
I picked up the box in one hand and the cookies in the other, I turned around to Herman. "Should we bring cookies or the Shmectectalach?"
Shmectectalach is a fictitious Jewish pastry I just made up that has drizzled honey over a Slivovitz soaked and crusty rolled up cake inside a fried sugar shell. It's quite popular for the purposes of this story, though it's almost impossible to eat because of the ridiculously hard shell that shatters bits of sticky sugar all over the place when broken.
Slivovitz is a plum brandy that actually does exist and comes from the old country somewhere in eastern Europe depending on which kind it is. Sometimes Hungary and sometimes Croatia.
Herman made a reasonable face, "cookies." I agreed. With it being so cold down in the tunnels and hallways under the building that lead to the Wo Hop back entrance, the shmectectalach coating would harden and most likely be almost as impossible to eat as the bar of Chh that I was saving in the freezer.
Chh is another Jewish dessert I just made up with its origins supposedly in post invasion Kiev. The recipe is said to have survived the extermination fields of the mid 40's after being smuggled to holland in a frilly lace bodice, the carrier having been only wounded when shot had survived by hiding in the mass open grave for several days, laying motionless as the people of the town picked through the clothes and belongings not already removed from the carcasses in the pit.
Jewish food backstories always seem to require a level of tragedy in the telling, real or imagined.
Chh is pronounced 'chh' - a short burst of hard H. Like the beginning of chhhhanukah, or chhhhallah, or chhhhamburger. Except not hamburger.
The best way to eat Chh is with tea and lemon using those blushing face teapot shaped tea bag dishes from the 30's. The Chh is dipped in the tea to soften it enough to take a bite until eaten. Traditionally Chh is eaten during the pretend self effacing holiday of Flegdelem. It's considered a mitzvah to break a tooth on it, however there is rumor that part was created and promoted by Mitch Fineman DDS in the early 60's.
None of this is relevant, we chose the cookies.
A shape came navigating in through the layers of laundry sheets dividing one of the living areas next to our own.
George poked himself through. "Hey there moon boy."
Herman walked over and stood next to George, he looked over and adjusted his posture and height to mirror George's sort of. He chuckled as if he just let himself in on a joke. "Hello George."
"Jeez bub if you got any closer you'd be standing on the other side of me" George walked over to the ice box. "I was actually saying hello to this one." He flipped his hand up in my general direction. "But hello to you also Herman... Got your fork?"
Herman pulled his fork gently from the inside of his jacket pocket and showed it to George. "Just in case they only have sticks" Herman put the fork back in his pocket. I told him I'm sure they have forks but I'm glad he's prepared.
I asked Herman if he would go and try to find something nicer than a sideways white paper bag to put the cookies in.
"George are you also wearing a tie?" Herman pulled his own tie up in the direction of George and then left to find something nicer to put the cookies in before George said anything in response.
George worked at the automat as a machine stuffer and I doubt he owns a tie, having never seen him wear anything but gray work pants and a t-shirt.
He was part of the "close-down world". What I mean by the close- down world is the world after the places are closed, the vacuuming of carpets is done, the bar dishes have been run through, the construction has stopped for the day. But even though the work has stopped, there's that short period between the public world and the close-down world where everyone is still talking about work.
Theres a certain level of access that comes with being a member of the close-down world, back hallways of malls, the basements of old buildings, the top floors of new buildings still half built but with businesses already moved in. This will make sense to some people, those who have been or are part of the close-down world.
George was glad, as glad as George can be, that he was able to land a job in one of the smoking only establishments.
Since the collapse and the changes implemented by the planning committee, people were able to make their time how they wanted. One effect of this newly minted growth in personal time was a resurgence of the automat trade larger than any since the mid 1960's.
The particular automat George worked at had machines lining its walls complete with quarter pointed pie slices and salted nut rolls, cold sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper and drink dispensing machines with paper cups.
When the planning committee came into power and started forming the various benevolent establishments, some civilians were concerned they were focusing too much on vices and hosteling.
It is true the committee used the legalization, or maybe more accurately the reintegration, of previously marginalized behaviors as a vehicle for disseminating nodes of their new power. However it was the softest place for them to grab into and start to solidify.
It started with the repeal of the Harrison Narcotics Act, and the setting up of unions for insomniac writers, and other marginalized trades followed easily once the door to vice was propped open.
They franchised the vagrant shelters and shooting galleries in the same manner they did the restaurants and drug stores. Smoking and
non-smoking establishments of any kind were predetermined to be so, ending that element in the conflict of social division.
I know that last bit may sound like a small detail, but the real focus here is that while it's true the committee took care of its own first, like any political or social entity, it was done in the order of setting up blocs of confederates in various fields and states of condition, all in the order of taking on the social decay which brought them so easily into power.
The automat George worked at was very convenient to our location being 3 blocks from the old Russian lady bakery and 17 from the building on Ocean Parkway. It was also open all night for the purposes of this story, which was also fine being I've never actually seen George sleep.
Herman came back in with a small octagonal hat box with stripes and one of those acrylic cords that pull out, but never long enough to render a satisfying grip. "Can I bring Martuni?"
George walked into the bathroom area and turned on the exhaust fan. "No, no. No Martuni." He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into the sputtering fan. "No Martuni."
It wasn't so much that George didn't like Martuni as it was he didn't like the fact that Martuni apparently didn't believe in him.
I straightened Herman's tie and told him I didn't think it would be nice to show up for dinner with an extra person without being invited. Herman agreed. Somewhere in there he also knew it would be easier to enjoy himself if Martuni wasn't around.
I tossed a look at George over his initial reaction at Herman for bringing up Martuni. He stopped smoking for a moment and shook his head at me. "What?"
I've mentioned several times about how Herman back when I first met him wasn't like Herman now, but I don't mean to imply he wasn't all fucked up.
He was a mildly disassociated guy living in a building full of crazy people with his imaginary friend, his imaginary friend's imaginary friend, and an unstable imaginary enemy he mistook for a needed friend under self abusive posturing.
We gathered the cookies into the hat box and I placed it in the middle of the table after tapping each point on the lid.
George walked back into the kitchen area picked up the hat box and moved it to a random place on the table. I turned around twice and moved it back to the middle, then tapped on it 8 extra times.
George moved it to another random place on the table when I walked away.
You're probably expecting this moving of the hat box to eventually turn into some tug of war that has the hat box tear open and the cookies fly up in slow motion and all over the floor. But this isn't that kind of story. I'm fine if you'd like to imagine that alternate scenario, but really I just let George keep the hat box wherever. We were leaving soon and any presupposed consequences I had attached to the positioning of the hat box on the table were minimal, cursory, and transient.
George left the hat box wherever it was and put on his ripped canvas work jacket. "Are we ready?"
I was jealous of George's ability to do things like move the hat box to a random place on the table without considering the ramifications, or leave the building for more than 15 minutes at a time, or leave a room without having to tap the lights and then have to go back into
the room because I'm not sure if I tapped the lights correctly, and so need a do-over. And I envied the objectivity he possessed in order to be free of these habits.
George asked again if we were ready to go. I told him I had some things needed doing before I could leave and will follow on in a bit.
George picked up the hat box and handed it to Herman. "Come on bub, our feathered friend needs to touch some doorknobs or something."
They left through a window that was mistaken for a doorway for so many years, it had grown almost to the floor.
I began the tasks I had to perform to satisfy the homunculus, in order to participate in our visit with the basement people at Wo Hop and not have to worry too much about things I may or may not have had a remote type of control over.