Well, yes, in this one he does do the driving, but you won’t know what REALLY happens until Episode 3
But here, the action picks up; hints are subtly dropped that the past haunts the present; dark family histories are slowly opened; different socio-economic childhoods of Olifko and narrator contrasted; one never knows whose paths will cross and what life will throw in one’s way; more run-ins with Hudson County Latinos; the 7-Eleven on Bergenline and 50th shows its use; and a relentless and resourceful Welsh Losser appears…
Anti Olifko is not from New York City, the greatest city in the world, Borough of Manhattan, the awesome pounding heart of the metropolis, as well as the Greater Metropolitan and Tri-State Area, as he likes to claim he is.
As a privileged child, Olifko had been given everything he ever wanted and told consistently how talented and smart he was, in a cloistered upper middle-class suburban Connecticut home. There, everyone wears docksiders on their bare feet, even in Winter. And there, wearing his docksiders, which his ostrich feet were growing out of for the third time that year, Anti Olifko smoked marijuana with the other kids in a neighbor’s basement when he was 12. It was Winter.
Now, sitting in his father’s Cadillac rumbling and lurching obnoxiously athwart several parking spaces in front of the 7-Eleven on 50th Street and Bergenline Ave in West New York, New Jersey, having been denied a blowjob by the specter of two zombie Chicanos who’d frightened the fuck out of him and disappeared, vague memories I am imparting to Anti Olifko begin to distortedly make their way into his agitated brain.
He remembers The Wife driving the outskirts of Kyiv in her Communist grandfather’s ’71 Lada one minute and the next minute being vacuumed into some kind of sleeve of space connecting Kyiv with Hudson County, New Jersey, that suddenly found them in Anti Olifko’s father’s ’71 Cadillac Eldorado flying through the ghost of Nungessers Bowling Lanes, crossing Kennedy Boulevard as it disappears into North Hudson Park and coming out the side of a White Castle.
[Narrator’s Note: Apparently, from the research we’ve done so far, there is only one such portal, but it can land you just about anywhere inside Hudson County].
‘White Castle… Nungessers… what the fuck?!’ Anti Olifko thinks with great strain and anger, his mouth askew in the shape of a sphincter.
I’ll tell you what the fuck, Olifko.
White Castle! And truly, what would you know about it? Nothing, that’s what – nothing!
The tiny square oniony and dill pickled hamburgers – add your own mustard, ketchup; not only can they be eaten in two bites (one, if you want to show off), but if you open the bun to look at the patty, it has holes in it – five of them!
And they’re fucking awesome!!!
And Nungessers?
Today whatever had been here and was called Nungessers is a confluence of roads that change their names when they intersect. Woodcliff Avenue becomes Fairview Avenue, Bergenline Avenue becomes Anderson Avenue. Hudson County becomes Bergen County as North Bergen becomes Fairview. The great trans-Hudson County Kennedy Boulevard, winding its broad back from all the way down in Bayonne, disappears up here between the angle formed by Bergenline and Fairview Avenues into North Hudson Park, out of which it emerges at the park’s western edge as Boulevard East and its unequaled high twisting panorama of the Hudson River and Manhattan.
As a kid, the name Nungessers always conjured up the image of a shopping center or a big department store, like Gimbels or Macy’s, which I supposed had to be somewhere around there, although I could never find it. I kept the matter quiet.
Was Nungessers the bakery on the corner of Fairview and Anderson Avenues, where my mom would send me for a loaf of rye bread, sliced, without seeds, and maybe a couple of cupcakes for me to have with milk for dessert?
No, it wasn’t.
Was it the parking-lot-like asphalt patch between Fairview Avenue and Kennedy Boulevard with the White Castle on it?
No, it wasn’t that, either.
What was this Nungessers, then?
Other than a state of mind, it was nothing in particular, because there was nothing really there. There was no one object that could be called ‘Nungessers’; the bowling lanes, being too obvious a reference point, and not equal to the historical bigness the name of the place evoked when people spoke it, didn’t count.
Meanwhile, back in the present, Anti Olifko is about to enter the 7-Eleven for food.
***
Around an hour earlier, Anti Olifko and The Wife, already ravenous even then, decided to drive down Bergenline Avenue from the point where it becomes one-way south only, at 48th Street in Union City, the goal being, reasonably enough, to find a Latino joint of some sort to eat; Cuban, most likely, as Anti Olifko somehow knew he was in the sprawling swath of Hudson County known as Havana on the Hudson.
The Wife is all but completely unhinged, a shaking basket of nerves. It takes all the restraint of his exasperation for Anti Olifko not to rap her in the mouth to shut her frenzied shaking head the fuck up, except he realizes that they’re both starved and hunger-crazed, and that she’s driving, because she keeps saying, ‘cantina, cantina,’ while he futilely keeps repeating that they probably wouldn’t get full meals in a cantina, as cantinas typically only serve alcohol and snacks.
But the dumb fucking bitch carries on – “cantina, cantina, cantina, ha-ha-ha, cantina, cantina, cantina…”
It’s as if she’s insisting, like she knows better. Or is she simply not listening?; or she’s listening but it’s not registering?; it’s not making sense to her, or, as soon as she hears him she doesn’t remember what he’s said?; for she’s famished, exhausted, and all but on the verge of hallucinations.
He finally punches The Wife in the face and she stops rambling and continues driving calmly as though nothing had happened. Anti Olifko is sorry only that he hadn’t done that before.
“Serves your stupid fucking bitch ass right.”
She keeps driving and cheerfully mentions with pleased surprise and high enthusiasm all the different shapes, colors, and variety the Latinos come in, to which Anti Olifko answers why that is, proudly displaying his profound knowledge of geography and history, while doing a pretty good job of softening the condescension.
[Narrator’s Note: Actually, Anti Olifko knows everything, as well he should, since he has an Ivy League education, is incredibly well read, and was the chief editor of a hip alternative underground newspaper in Greenwich Village, where, as his resume lists among his top achievements, he gained valuable experience firing people.
[Narrator’s Note Continued: To clarify: It’s not that Anti Olifko simply has an opinion on everything, like all smug, arrogant, sarcastic, cynical, vicious, poison-inked, smirking, know-it-all assholes, who appear to be exactly like him, do, thinking themselves special, unique, and standing out from the rest as better and smarter, because they are the actual centers of the world – as everything they’ve ever written so clearly demonstrates, gonzo journo techniques notwithstanding – but that he actually really DOES KNOW everything.]
They do not drive long one-way southbound only on Bergenline before they are forced to stop in front of a couple of sawhorses that have the look of official police barriers, except there’s something funny about the whole thing.
The Wife points beyond the barriers; she is excited by what the Latinos there are doing. Their cars are parked facing the wrong way northbound with the headlights on. Latino music blasts from someone’s apartment windows. Brown curving chiquitas gyrate provocatively for the men in a lewd mating ritual in front of the car lights and on top of the hoods in tight, button-popping short-sleeved blouses, wet t-shirts and extremely cut-off shorts sticking up their butt cracks. The hips are wide, the breasts are big. The men are in violent fever – they whoop, they clap, slapping and pounding their own faces with their hands, whistle, drink hard and break bottles over their heads. It is a carnal bedlam, a riot of Latino lust just barely held from the brink of complete criminal madness. The mating ritual is a cruel and sadistic one, and the men, having turned into animals, are ready to kill.
Two leering oily-faced Latinos with crazy eyes walk from behind the barriers and one points at Anti Olifko and The Wife to turn left, yet they are clearly intrigued by the size and age of the car and begin to approach it, weaving their way over aggressively in the first fits of drunk. It is a huge car, a boat. No one drives anything like this anymore. It is a spectacle worthy of their fiesta itself and the Latinos want to engage it.
You know how people are when they’re drunk – they make connections you or I, sober, would surely never normally make. But at the present moment, I do not think we can call these Latinos people.
The two point the bottles in their hands at the car, their laughter raucous, raspy, raw, their mocking evil mirth unrestrained at the sight.
Olifko is not fazed or scared and rolls down the window. For some reason he feels a particular need to be vicious and the freedom for it coming on. What’s happening here has the look and smell of illegality, he thinks, like these damn Latinos decided to simply take over the streets these hot muggy nights and hold their fiestas on them without permission.
“Eeeyy, man, we have dee leetle partee, so ju mos torn here. Ey, dees car som kin’ a ol’ fokeen Cadillac Rancho?”
“Yeah, Eldorado, 1971,” says a confident Olifko, his facial expression contorting in disgust at the stink of booze coming off the Chicos.
“Sheeeeet…”
“Yeah, hey, is this some kind of official function? I mean, do you have official permission for this, uh, street party?”
“Eeeyy, what ju talkin’ ‘bout… permeeshun, man. We have dee party, man, hot night, ju know, man, we come out a dee houses, we play dee fokin museec, we dance weet our weemens, man, dreenk, ju know, smoke, heh, heh, heh, have dee good time. We want eet, we have dee leetle partee, ju know, man…”
“Yeah, that’s great, but what I’m asking is, do you have permission from the authorities?”
“Authoritees? Een our streets, we dee fokeen authoritees, man. We put dee barriers, we –”
“Yeah, but if you’re using official police barriers, or even your own, without official sanction, then what you’re doing is illegal. I don’t know how many other laws you’re breaking, but at the very least, you’re blocking traffic. Disturbing the peace, reckless endangerment, sexual molestation of minors, drinking alcoholic beverages in public without a paper bag… Undoubtedly, the list goes on and on. How many of you here are even legal? I mean, do you really want this, I wonder. Where are your badges?”
“Badgees?!”
“Yeah, your fucking badges – where are they?”
“Who dee fok ju, man?!”
A big knife is pulled out of a back pocket by one; the other starts going around the hood intending to reach the driver’s door. But the hood is about the size of a city block and it is taking him a long time to get there – something, it turns out, he never does.
“Ey, look eet, ju fokeen maricon gringo!” says the knife one. “Eef ju wanna leave, ju better make dee fokeen torn here or I cut dee neck of dee fokeen Chihuahua beetch…”
The Wife screams the car in reverse, shifts and wildly turns left. The Latinos fall from the picture. It’s possible she hit both of them, but the car is so big, and the noise around them so loud, and the rush of blood to their ears so great, that it’s hard to tell.
***
As Anti Olifko rummages around in the 7-Eleven thinking how he simply must be a better writer than Tom Wolfe, back out in the car, The Wife closes her eyes with relief and rests her head back against the seat, still, of course, running the engine. In just a few blessed moments she will finally have some food in her stomach.
[Narrator’s Note: Hey, fucking Anti Olifko – you have no fucking imagination, which is what it all comes down to. Now behold, Olifko, if you can comprehend it, how actually having one works.]
On the car’s AM radio, something she did not know exists, a song plays she’s never heard:
Now, that I’ve lost everything to you
You say you wanna start something new
And it’s breakin’ my heart you’re leavin’, baby I’m grievin’
But if you wanna leave, take good care
Hope you have a lot of nice things to wear
But then a lot of nice things turn bad out there
Ooh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world
It’s hard to get by just upon a smile
Ooh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world
I’ll always remember you like a child, girl
You know I’ve seen a lot of what the world can do
And it’s breakin’ my heart in two
Because I never wanna see you a sad girl, don’t be a bad girl
But if you wanna leave, take good care
Hope you make a lot of nice friends out there
But just remember there’s a lot of bad and beware, beware
…
“And that,” says the DJ, “was Cat Stevens the Muslim Greek with ‘Wild World’ from ‘Tea for the Tillerman’…”
“Vowv, I vill to tell Anti abouvt song and buy as soon as ASAP the new CD,” The Wife exclaims.
A fireplug-shaped figure in a dark barrel-shaped suit and fedora with a feather opens her door.
Welsh Losser wraps a fat right hand around her mouth and presses her head hard to his flabby gut, preventing her from seeing the assailant. In her shock and terror, all she hears is something like, “Nyugets…”
In panic, her hands reach automatically for his forearm, but they are way too weak to break his steely grip. He laughs at her pathetic squeaky little essay.
Impatiently, yet quickly and deftly, with his dominant left hand, he takes a large roll of wide black tape out of his left jacket pocket and begins wrapping it around her radish-colored skull and mouth as he keeps her sticklike hands wrenched and clamped behind her, then does the same to her wrists behind her back, and finally, pushing her down, winds the tape around her ankles.
He sees there’s no popping the trunk from the salon so he removes the keys from the ignition, drags her out the car by the feet along the rough asphalt, bruising and tearing her face, opens the trunk with a key, lifts and throws her in, facedown, and slams the trunk shut.
He then gets in the car, shuts the door, adjusts the seat back, and keys the ignition.
While Welsh Losser could never drive before, being a walleyed deformity, in this world he can.
He moves the car up into a darker spot, out from under a lamppost and the 7-Eleven’s glaring lights.
He waits.
Momentarily, Anti Olifko approaches the car, his arms full with two large bags.
“Open the fucking door,” he yells in his most pleasant voice, trying to imitate a sort of good-natured jovial singing.
Losser leans over and obliges and Anti Olifko scrunches in, turns without looking at Losser to place one of the bags on the back floor while keeping the other bag he plans to start eating from on his lap, and closes his door.
“Why the fuck did you move the car?!”
Using an indistinct high girly voice, Losser says something that sounds like words and titters stupidly – “hee-hee-hee…”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Olifko says, too hungry to pay any attention or take note, despite the similarity of the voice’s pitch to The Wife’s, of its suddenly strange raspy quality.
“Okay,” Olifko now says, husking up his own voice in jocular singsong manner, happy he’s about to eat, “first I got this Fruit Juicy Red Hawaiian Punch Slurpee – for me, heh-heh, and this Super Big Gulp for you – hope that’s okay…”
“Oh, thank you,” Losser says in the high voice and in his darkness as Olifko hands him the Super Big Gulp, still without looking.
And for eats, I got aaaaa…:
Bacon, Egg, Cheese and Potato Taquito
Jalapeno and Cream Cheese Taquito
Monterey Jack and Chicken Taquito, for later
an American Sub
a Redipak Chef Salad
a Quarter Pound Big Bite hot dog
a Chorizo, Egg and Cheese Burrito
and some of Ramona’s Chili Relleno Burritos…”
“Oh, that’s great,” Losser says in the voice.
“And for the snacks I got:
Nacho Chips
some Honey Wheat Braided Pretzels
M and M Chocolate Chip Cookies
and some Chocolate Chunk Cookies…
“And for later:
Peaches and Cream Cappuccino, for you
and Mocha Iced Coffee – for me…”
“Oh, ooohh…”
But Losser can’t take it anymore. He puts the car in ‘Drive’ and steps on it, screeching out of the lot. The car jumps the curb into the street, northbound on Bergenline, picking up speed.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa-WHOOOAAA!!! Heeeeeeey!!!”
As the street lights go by faster and faster, Anti Olifko finally looks over at the figure they’re illuminating. He is horrified.
Just a few seconds ago they were on Bergenline and 50th, but now they were fast approaching North Hudson Park, up in the 80s…
Losser laughs and rolls down his window through which he flings the Super Big Gulp Olifko just gave him.
“Hey, Olifko, I came here for the Early Bird Special, and ended up catching a worm – nyaaaag aaah nyaaaooow…!!!”
With no braking or letting his foot up, Losser turns the car on a dime into 79th Street, the Cadillac’s massive backend swiping a car parked illegally on the left, then on the right as he spins the wheel to straighten the heap out and plunge it headlong into the night of their destruction.
As he speeds down the unlighted southern edge of North Hudson Park, he reaches over with his right hand and crushes the Fruit Juicy Red Hawaiian Punch Slurpee into Olifko’s vulture face…
“So, nyugashee,” Losser says, “what was that you said about my brother?”
Filed by JS, August 14, 2015