Stories From Westlake Village

A glass of sherry . . . possibly two. Then, if I can stay up long enough, maybe I'll watch the ball come down in Times Square. That's surely enough excitement for an octogenarian. I know, I know, a millennium comes along once every thousand years, but the world is a hell of a lot older than that. A thousand years is just a tick of the cosmic clock. Must I celebrate that particular tick by spending a noisy evening with the neighbors at Tony and Rita Sargassa's on New Year's Eve? It doesn't appeal to me.

I didn't relish the idea of another new year cupid in swaddling clothes knocking at my door in any case . . . he had little to offer me. Old men don't need to be reminded of another year down the drain; one quick glance in the mirror tells the story. So does a look at yesterday's snapshots -- who needs to know tomorrow will be 2000?

In this negative mood fate stepped in, and I ran into Seymour Slansky down at the Deli on the afternoon of the 31st.

"If you go, I'll go," he said tentatively.

"Why do you want to go? It's not 2000 for you?"

"Dot's right, it's coming up 5760, but who's counting? I'm Jewish, remember . . . everything's negotiable."

It is difficult to resist Seymour. The state of Israel would have owned all of the Middle East if he had been sitting at the conference table.

"We leave right after midnight, O.K.? I will bring herring -- it is a custom in the old country."

"I'll bring a bottle," I said, "Rita will go for that. Thing is, I don't have anything to wear to a party. I don't even own a suit any more."

"Mine Gott! How will they bury you? You can't go looking like a shmegege. I, on the other hand, have two suits -- one gray for bar mitzvahs, one black for funerals."

"I envy you, Seymour. Which one will you wear tonight?"

"A shvetter perhaps, Rita is cheap with the heat."

He talked me into it, and by nine o'clock I was standing at Tony's back door, as ready as I'd ever be. Through the soles of my shoes, I could feel the deep electronic thump of rock music inside. I left my boots in the pantry, as I had sloshed my way through the wet snow -- the gutter-brown snow that just a week ago, on Christmas morning, had lain fresh and crisp and even. It was now bespeckled with dog dirt and dead leaves.

It is a custom (like Seymour's herring) that the good people of Westlake Village always use the back door. Even in summer we enter through the back door. Back doors lead to kitchens and pantries where we can usually be found. Front doors lead to living rooms where little living is done. Last time I used the front door was when they wheeled me out on the gurney.

Everyone was there. Lucas and Muriel Crosby, Stacey Pomerance and her intended. It occurred to me they had been intending for more than a year now. Charlie Pinter, Patrolman Ryan Donleavy. Seymour was trying to pass out slices of his herring without much success.

Tony, already half sloshed, whisked off my coat, "Gee, nice sweater, man, C'mon, wadd'ya drinkin', y'already far behind." I had no intention of catching up, and I wished desperately I hadn't come.

"A light scotch, Tony. Happy New Year everybody --- Rita, here's a little something; how're the kids." Nobody finished a sentence or waited for an answer to a question. We were saying things we'd heard all year long.

"Socially inappropriate behavior."

"No person is above the law."

"There's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol."

"Then we spent two nights at Lake Louise."

"They soaked me $330 for four new tires." I headed for Tony's den where the food was.

"Hi, Mr. Buschman, you 'member Murray, don'tcha?" Stacey Pomerance, dressed in something black and far too tight and revealing a breathtaking cleavage, was trying to introduce Murray Feldman to the sluggish night life of Westlake Village. Murray, the bald-headed buyer for Cosmic Imports, was absorbed in china and glass and had little time for the likes of us. He seemed a little old for Stacey -- but so does everyone else in my opinion. Charlie Pinter tells me the engagement is dragging on because the couple can't get together on a place to go for their honeymoon.

Of all people, Tim Clancy, the bartender, was there. The Hollow Leg Saloon has been condemned at last, and the Italian bakery is rolling pizza dough where once the professional drinkers of Westlake Village would gather like knights of the round table. We commiserate the loss of our watering hole. Saloon keepers, like shoemakers, are a vanishing breed, and Tim will soon join the growing band of Westlake Villagers in Orlando, Florida. But for 130 years, including 130 New Year's Eves, the Hollow Leg stood like a light on a rocky shore -- a beckoning beacon to the hopelessly thirsty.

"Where are you walking now?" Seymour asks me.

"I walk later in the day, with Mrs. Petrasek . . . we go to the mall."

"She is a woman of 83. She should not wear white leotards. Can you do no better?"

"She cannot drive, Seymour. She would not walk at all if I didn't drive her to the mall."

"So what do you talk?"

"We don't talk, Seymour; I listen." I went on to explain that after getting to the mall, I steer her up the escalator, wind her up, and send her on her way. "Then I walk with Charlie Pinter; he gets there about the time I do."

It seems to satisfy Seymour. He is very solicitous about my involvement with the opposite sex, and he's quick to tell me that "So and so is not your intellectual equal," or "So and so is out to get a man." I tell him that I am not stimulated by ladies in my age bracket. Stacey herself, in that drop-dead black dress of hers, would have a devil of a time raising my spirits to anywhere near horizontal.

How I wish I'd never ventured out this New Year's Eve. How pleasant it would be deep in my blankets rereading Joyce or Fitzgerald.

"Did you try my herring?"

"Yes," I said, "It's slippery."

"Too fresh, I have had the herring in Poland. It is different there -- they say the Danzigers make the best herring. It is a Jewish sushi."

Both of us are getting sleepy. 11:30 already. A half hour to go.

"O.K. everybody -- EVERYBODY!" Tony is shouting from the living room, "Everybody in the den!" He is carrying a black cardboard box the size of a golf bag.

"Two thousand will be here in a half an hour, folks!" There was a wild, almost feverish light in his eyes; I'd seen that same light in the eyes of soldiers with a weekend leave in Paris. A look that says, 'I'm going to remember this night the rest of my life or die trying'.

"See this here box?" He tilted it over and removed the cover. Inside was a crudely constructed rocket more than two feet long with rudimentary fins and a sort of lop-sided nose cone. A wire stand was attached to the bottom.

Tony made a circle of the room, showing it to each of us in turn. He reminded me of a prosecuting attorney showing a piece of State's evidence to the jury. When it passed in front of me, I noticed a wicked-looking wick, thick as a pencil, secured to its bottom.

"How do you like that?" Tony grinned. "It's an honest-to-goodness Gucci "Celestial Sphere" rocket, an M-27. It's illegal as hell and it don't come cheap, lemme' tell you. I bought it from . . . " His eyes darted across the room to Ryan Donleavy, our by now glassy-eyed, off-duty patrolman. "Anyways, we're gonna welcome in wyetookay like it's never been welcomed before! When the ball starts down in Times Square, I'm gonna light the fuse on this sucker, and when the ball hits bottom . . . off she goes, see!" He paused for breath and waited for his words to sink in. Seeing no enthusiasm and no smiles of approval, he went on, "C'mon, it's gonna be great . . . we'll all put our coats on and go out back. I'll set the thing up on the barbecue. Y'can see the TV from out there. I'll light the fuse when the ball starts down . . . it'll lift off on the stroke of twelve. C'mon, what'sa matter? It'll light up the whole neighborhood . . . giant ball of light . . . guy said the "Celestial Sphere" is their Genesis rocket, like, y'know, like the beginning of the Bible."

Were we in the presence of a madman? Rita looked at Tony and slowly shook her head; the rest of us looked at each other and slowly shook ours. Someone suggested that Tony put his cigar out while he waved his rocket around. I had a dim recollection of Fidel Castro cartoons that I'd seen during the Cuban missile crisis.

"Let's go! Let's go! . . . We ain't gotta lotta time. It's a quarter of already. Go get'cha coats, they're in the bedroom. Move! Move!"

It seemed best to humor him, particularly with that damn rocket in his hand and the cigar in his mouth. We dutifully filed in and out of the Sargassas' bedroom. I had not seen this room before, and it flitted through my mind that this must be the very same bedroom that had witnessed the conception of the Sargassas' seven children. All seven of them had married, and could it be that all seven had seven . . . no, it couldn't be! Far too Biblical. My mind was playing tricks on me . . . it was past my bedtime . . . I'd had two scotches. Lord, would this evening ever end?

We stood out there on what passed for the Sargassas' patio, and Marcus Crosby kept tabs on the television screen in the den. The weather had continued warm, and an unhealthy mist was rising from the dirty snow in the back yard. None of us was enthusiastic about Tony's "Celestial Sphere" and none of us cared if the damn thing lit up the town or not . . . we just wanted Tony to get this out of his system so we could all go back inside.

He settled the rocket on his barbecue so that it pointed more or less at the sky and looked back at Marcus. "How're we doin' Marcus . . . time yet?"

"Just about . . . yeah! There it goes . . . they're countin' down. Ten . . . nine . . . got a match?!"

Tony scratched a wooden kitchen match on the side of the barbecue and touched it to the end of the stiff fuse. It burst into action violently, more like a Fourth of July sparkler than a fuse.

He beat a hasty retreat back to where we were standing . . . "O.K., now everybody count. What is it Marcus, six?"

"I don't know, you're makin' so much noise I can't hear. There!! That must be it, everybody's shoutin' and the clock says twelve!"

Tony was beside himself. He kept repeating, "O.K., go!" -- "O.K., go!!"

Somewhere around 12:00:11 a.m. on the first day of 2000, the lighted fuse seemed to disappear inside the tail of the rocket, and sure enough, there was a sputtering. Quite suddenly the thing lifted off the barbecue grill. Someone -- not me, shouted, "Hooray!!" and Tony bellowed, "We've got lift off!!"

It rose perhaps fifteen feet in the air and paused as if to get its bearings. The propellant flame spewing out the bottom sputtered and died. The rocket was obviously going nowhere tonight . . . it sort of turned over on its side and fell into the wet snow about ten feet from the barbecue.

"It is an abortion," Seymour commented.

"Fifty-five friggin dollars, wait'll I get my hands on Angelo."

"When's it goin' up?" That sounded like Stacey.

"Folks," I said, edging sideways. "I think we ought to get out of here. Y'know, suppose it explodes where it is?"

There were voices in the dark, disembodied voices. I wanted to reach out my hand to Tony, wherever he was, and tell him how sorry I was. But he does not respond well to sympathy; he will shrug you off and say, "Lemme alone!"

I suggested again, a little more forcibly, that we all go inside and get away from the "Celestial Sphere." We couldn't really be sure whether or not the thing was still ticking. It could engulf all of us in a ball of flame . . . the Guccis don't fool around.

We had a final nightcap and wished each other a Happy New Year. I got a powerhouse hug out of Stacey for old times' sake. It will give me something to think about these long winter nights. I glanced at the intended Murray and envied his intentions.

We waved goodbye to Tony and Rita. Rita's arms were folded across her ample bosom . . . her fuse was already ignited, and it seemed prudent to get out of harm's way. Another New Year's Eve in Westlake Village.

"Happy 5760, Seymour."

"Watch out for Mrs. Petrasek."