Arbitrary Stupid Goal Read online

Garboli was a drunk mess, and he was expensive. But he was better than Two Time Ralph, who no matter what he fixed would need to come back again. Plus Garboli had a plumber named Chris. A thin, sweet guy, Chris would ride over on his bike as soon as you called. There was another good plumber that worked for Garboli named Philip.

  Willy and my dad always hoped to get Chris, but were happy as long as Garboli himself didn’t show up.

  The basement apartment had its own entrance and was sort of hidden. Willy would let people use it as a tryst spot for secret love affairs.

  One morning Willy woke up and found a gun dropped in his window. He took it apart and dumped it in the river.

  Memphis was a friend you didn’t sit next to. Willy never let him near my dad. If Willy was talking to Memphis my dad circled the block.

  Memphis wouldn’t drop a gun in Willy’s window if he wanted it back.

  But one of Memphis’s lackeys would. When the kid came looking for the gun Willy chewed him out.

  Fucking shit. You don’t dump no gun in my house without telling me.

  When Willy told this story to my father it was long, lyrical, and involved two women. Nuances like that are now lost to time.

  Willy never had to pay for drinks; he would just sing a set at a club or be treated by someone. And he didn’t pay for other things, because people owed him for the use of his love nest. He learned to survive in the city like an Indian lives off the land.

  “The nutrients of New York City are in the fringe people.” I was brought up to believe this, and that the definition of a fringe person was Willoughby.

  Willy was born in St. Louis. His mother had tried to abort him and ran off as soon as she could. He was raised by his dad, who worked for the railroad.

  As a kid Willy got a lot of shit for being light-skinned. An ungodly amount. I think his dad was black and his mom was a mix. There must have been some Irish, because he had red hair. I can’t confirm this, because I only knew him with gray tiny curls. But he would tell me about getting the crap kicked out of him. He must have looked pretty freaky, because as a person Willy was the least contentious human on the planet.

  A blind woman named Annie lived in Willy’s building. Annie baked these fluffy muffins. She always gave a few to Willy because he helped her out and because he loved them.

  One day Willy is over at her apartment. She is baking the muffins and measures out the ingredients. There are hundreds of bugs and weevils crawling in not just the flour but the sugar, too.

  He never told Annie about the bugs. He just continued to eat the muffins. And he loved the muffins just the same.

  But when pushed, Willy would get tough. His father had taught him to fight back.

  Willy didn’t know where to begin.

  There were so many kids that beat him up.

  Start with the biggest, scariest one, was his father’s advice.

  A boy named Arvell was twice anyone’s size. One day Willy walks by Arvell and baits him into a fight. As soon as Arvell swings, Willy hits him in the shin with a copper pipe.

  Willy didn’t win the pipe fight. But he won the war: no one bothered him after that. For the rest of his life he didn’t take crap from anyone.

  He taught it to my dad, and he taught it to me:

  Stand up to that cocksucking bully. No shit if you lose. As long as it ain’t a free ride, that motherfucker, all those motherfuckers, will let you be.

  Later Arvell and Willy became friends, and that made double sure no one messed with him.

  When he moved to New York, Willy brought a wife. She was beautiful, but a compulsive gambler who would fuck other guys, and eventually did too much coke. I never met her. I never met any of Willy’s ladies. Separate life.

  Willoughby loved pussy. There is nothing more in this wide world he loved more than pussy. It is just a fact.

  My dad told me Willy once had a girl over. The girl and Willy had lots of sex and drinks. And he gave her his television set.

  When Willy wanted to get laid he gave everything away. He had an expression:

  When I’m hard I’m soft and when I’m soft I’m hard.

  And it was true, because the next day Willy went and got the television back.

  WOLF’S LAIR

  Parking costs ten zloty. We are in the middle of nowhere.

  When I was 11 my whole family drove to Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

  We sang “Dolly Parton is the best. She’s got mountains on her chest” the whole way there.

  It was far.

  Finally a roller coaster peeked out from hickory trees. “We’re glad you’re here!” a sign proclaimed.

  “Parking $10,” said another.

  My dad turned the car around. Five children banged on the glass wailing and begging. My mom hummed “9 to 5” as we drove away forever.

  Jason downshifts the rental car. I remember that ten zloty is less than four dollars and let it go.

  A checkpoint has three guards smoking cigarettes. They don’t have any official badge or uniform, unless well-defined muscles count as a uniform.

  The biggest one comes over to our car.

  Jason hesitates before he rolls down the window.

  Forty zloty later, we are past the razor wire fence.

  I am relieved to find three giant tour buses in the parking lot, signaling we are not the only humans here.

  Here is the eastern edge of Poland, at what remains of Hitler’s headquarters called Wolf’s Lair.

  Surrounded by swamps, lakes, and woods, the location was picked for its remoteness but also for its proximity to the Soviet Union, which Hitler wanted to invade.

  Our reasons for visiting Wolf’s Lair are less clear.

  Last night I said to Jason: “There is an old Nazi bunker three hours away. I’m creeped out by it, but do you want to go see it?”

  “Definitely,” he replied.

  Wood-and-concrete bunkers were built. Wolf’s Lair became a small city with two air strips, a casino, its own power generator, a railway station, and a cinema.

  This info is learned from a guide I downloaded to my phone. Keeping in the spirit of a Nazi bunker more than a historic site, Wolf’s Lair doesn’t provide much information or guidance. Except a big wooden map similar to the kind that ski resorts have. Rather than K2 trails and bunny slopes, it marks the bunkers of Hitler and Göring.

  Past the ski map are a hotel and a café housed in an original bunker that wasn’t destroyed.

  Bare bones and army green, the sparseness of the café looks almost hip. The coffee is not bad.

  A sign that resembles a beat-up dog tag reads “Souvenirs.” The small kiosk sells snacks and World War II novelties. I buy a history map pamphlet with set in Jackboot Grotesk. Jason buys some crackers.

  Hitler spent over eight hundred days at Wolf’s Lair. In the early mornings he would receive frontline reports, from nine to ten he would take his dog for a walk, and at night he would drift off serenaded by the ribbit, ribbit of frogs.

  The lair had a mosquito problem due to all the nearby swamps. It wasn’t just a problem, it was a plague. Some of the guards wore beekeeper hats to protect themselves.

  To fix the plague the soldiers poured oil in all the swamps. This killed off the mosquitoes, but it also killed all the frogs.

  Hitler was pissed.

  A batch of frogs had to be imported ASAP.

  We follow a German tour group into the woods. Their guide speaks into a portable PA that he carries like a purse. Jason and I don’t understand German, so it sounds like another tacky decorating decision the lair made.

  The mosquitoes are gigantic. I slather bug spray on Jason and myself.

  Wolf’s Lair was protected on the ground by land mines and barbed wire fences; it was hidden by air through camouflage nets and strategic overgrowth.

  Witnessing the strength of the Soviets, Hitler didn’t think the lair was safe enough. Bunkers were reenforced. More land mines were added.

 
In November 1944, things started to go downhill, and Hitler ordered the destruction of Wolf’s Lair. Eighteen thousand pounds of dynamite was no match for the lair. Most of the buildings were damaged, but not many destroyed. The soldiers gave up, and the ruins of Wolf’s Lair still stand today.

  They are remarkably intact. Each bunker is numbered, and you can enter. There are bits of rebar and chunks of concrete sprinkled throughout. The forest is overgrown, and the path is more of a hiking trail.

  Yellow signs, spray-painted on rubble and rocks, warn that the bunkers are old and liable to fall, you shouldn’t stray from the trail, as there might still be undiscovered land mines, and under no circumstance should you climb the bunkers.

  Everyone is climbing the bunkers, especially a group of Polish teenagers and Jason.

  Claus von Stauffenberg tried to assassinate Hitler at Wolf’s Lair. Von Stauffenberg came very close to success. So close there was a Tom Cruise movie made about the attempt.

  The bunker where the attempt took place has a monument to von Stauffenberg, and the longest blurb in my walking tour guide.

  Moss-covered traces of the war are at every turn. It is not just moving, but haunting. Jason and I both imagine hearing gunfire.

  Wolf’s Lair is off. I am surprised that it has not been boycotted. It seems only a matter of time before an angry mob will demand the lair cease operating a military-themed hotel and canteen. It will be deemed poor taste and a celebration of a monster. This faction will also demand the guards of Wolf’s Lair not be so threatening and not quite so ripped. Crushing cans with your shoulder blades will not be part of the employment test. Guards won’t be allowed or encouraged to wear black army boots. And they will be called guides, not guards.

  But right now, amid the tactlessness, insensitivity, and genuine confusion of how to present such a place, Wolf’s Lair spurs more thoughts and emotions than a respectful plaque with fact-checked details could.

  It wasn’t our imagination.

  Inside bunker number seventeen we find a guy in camo pants, renting replica World War II rifles for a few zloty.

  It is a shooting range. The targets are glass bottles hung on strings.

  Two women wearing matching visors poke their heads in, make grossed-out faces, and hightail it to the next bunker. Camo pants seems used to this.

  A SEVEN-DAY PILLBOX

  Before he dropped out of college my dad did a report on The Catcher in the Rye. He focused on the part of the plot where Holden keeps wondering where the ducks go when the pond freezes. Holden wonders, does a guy come in a truck and take them or do they just fly away? My dad went to Central Park and asked.

  The ducks just stay there and take care of themselves.

  What I took from this story was not so much the ducks being able to take care of themselves but my dad asking for help from Central Park.

  When I was in college, Willy was seventy-something with a cane.

  He still came to The Store every day. My dad screwed a huge silver handle next to the door so Willy could manage the stoop himself.

  Willy would sit in his favorite booth, and I would bring him a sweet potato and a birch beer. Often I would help him home because he lived on the second floor.

  One day he came in and told my dad he was going to Germany for a singing gig.

  The next day he came in and said he had a great time and now had a show in Paris.

  Then Willoughby didn’t come in.

  We had keys to his place. I went and all his stuff was there, but I didn’t see Willy.

  I’m a little foggy, and what I write may unintentionally lack the whole truth. Names changed, facts left out, facts put in. Memory is unreliable, especially with an event that can’t be seen from the other side.

  This I know: Willy must have been with two thousand girls just on Morton Street. Married women, young, old, white, black, long-term, short-term, crazy, sane. They all loved Willy, and when I say loved I mean fucked. He only was really married to Yvonne, and she was a bitch that broke his heart and she was dead. He had no children. He hated his family, and his mother, father were definitely dead.

  Willy and my father had been together for decades. He was our blood. There was always an understanding my dad would take care of Willy, but I don’t think any of us imagined there would be a day when Willy couldn’t take care of himself.

  At this point I was 19 and lived by myself in an apartment above The Store. I was sort of the super of my building. I swept the halls, took care of the trash, changed fuses, but I paid rent because I had a rent-stabilized apartment.

  In NYC some apartments have regulated rents that keep them affordable and give the tenant rights that make it hard to be kicked out. Willoughby had swapped his illegal basement apartment for a rent-stabilized apartment as well.

  Basically, an R.S. apartment is a golden ticket that allows you to live in a city you love but could not afford otherwise. It is not fair, but neither is life.

  The best stoop on Morton Street was Willy’s building. It was wide, so you didn’t need to stand up as people entered or exited. Before he had The Store, my father would sit on that stoop and shoot the breeze with Willy all day. The building used to be owned by Judge Massey, who lived on Park Avenue.

  On the second floor lived Don, a singer, with his wife, who was a great pianist. Willy used to sing duets with her. One day she wasn’t feeling well. The one day turned into twenty. So she went to St. Vincent’s, they told her she had a virus and should go home and just rest.

  That night her appendix ruptured and she died.

  Don survived the eviction trial because they were married.

  On the third floor lived the Strauks. Arnold and Margaret had two or three boys. Arnold made his living cleaning Jewish temples. Margaret was Scottish and baked great shortbread cookies. Before The Store became a restaurant it was a neighborhood grocery, and my dad would sell Margaret’s cookies.

  The Store sold baked goods from lots of people over the years. All of them lived within a few blocks. Lester worked for the board of education and baked linzer tortes on the side. Crystal was a hippie and it was her main source of income, but she never made the same kind of cookies twice. And Kathleen baked the best chocolate chip cookies ever made.

  Kathleen fell deeply in love with baking chocolate chip cookies. She took care in the tiniest details, like how you crumble the brown sugar. If the weather was humid she would crumble less.

  People were hooked on Kathleen’s cookies and would stop into The Store throughout the day looking for them. The cookies were how Robert De Niro beefed up for Raging Bull.

  Because of the way the cookies were made she could only bake twelve at a time. So she had them baking in the background all day. She lived three doors down and would bring them over in her bare feet.

  Kathleen never wore shoes. She ran a school from her house, had three kids who broke all the IQ tests, was a full-time professor and accomplished author, but to us she was “the cookie lady.”

  Margaret Strauk made a lot of money on the cookies my dad sold, but the Strauks never bought anything in our store. The Store really wasn’t expensive. We sold cans of tuna fish and jars of jam. The fanciest thing was melon ball salad. But the Strauks were the cheapest people on the planet.

  All the bathrooms in Willy’s building were in the hall. Not a strange thing at the time. The toilet seat in the third-floor bathroom was so old that the enamel had worn off. Arnold wouldn’t buy a new seat because he thought it was the judge’s responsibility.

  One day my dad and Willy are on the stoop. Arnold starts hounding Willy about the toilet seat. Willy finally just says something like:

  The judge has got a penthouse and a servant. How you going to fuck him up by getting splinters in your ass? He ain’t going to give you no toilet seat. He wish you would all fuckin’ leave, an’ he get more rent; he is one greedy cocksucker!

  I don’t know if Arnold took the hint and bought one, but he didn’t bug Willy about the seat anymore.
/>   Years later my dad hired Arnold’s son Brian to be a delivery boy. An order came in and Brian was sent with it.

  But Brian came back with the order. He couldn’t find Clarkson Street. My dad explained to him it was a block away from Leroy Street, but he still didn’t understand where it was. Finally my dad mentioned it was near the park with the pool, and Brian understood.

  Brian was 15 years old and didn’t know any street names.

  My dad didn’t interpret this as Brian being stupid; he understood that Morton Street and the blocks it touched were more than enough for anyone’s existence.

  Actually, Willy was married four times.

  Yvonne was the first and the only real one. They were wed in St. Louis. She was awful. Cheated on Willy with Joe Louis. Gambled or snorted away his money.

  Next came Pilar. Who Willy described like so:

  She offered me three thousand dollars. Sure, what the fuck. I’ll marry ya. I’ll have your kid for another five hundred.

  And then he did two more citizenship marriages, one in New Jersey and another in Pennsylvania.

  The courts weren’t very on top of it at that point, or Willy knew who to grease. He never got divorced once.

  Immigration didn’t come after him, but he was ready if they wanted to interview him. He had slept with all his fake wives. Not as part of the sham; they didn’t need to. Willy just charmed them into it.

  There was a yellow bank check for $80,000 with dot matrix printed numbers and my father’s name. Willy had given it to my father a month earlier with some kind of instructions. I don’t know what they were, but the gist of it was, don’t cash it until I tell you to or I die. Looking back, this should have been a huge red flag, but my dad was running a restaurant, had five kids, and Willoughby was always up to something.