Invasion of the Blatnicks Read online

  “Mother,” Steve said. “I have no intention of buying a new sofa or any other major piece of furniture. If you want to help me decorate, help me cheaply.”

  “Well, you could afford a little area rug here. One with some cream and some green in it would bring together the colors from the sofa and the chairs.”

  “I can spring for a rug,” Steve said, nodding.

  “I’ll help you look for one. How about Saturday?” Rita sat down next to Steve on the sofa.

  “I don’t know,” Steve said. “I just want to relax on Saturday. And I might go out at night.”

  “You can’t. Mrs. Blatnick has invited us all to dinner Saturday, and you’re expected.”

  “Mother.”

  “Your Aunt Mimi has gone back to New Jersey, and I said I would keep an eye on Sheryl and Mrs. Blatnick.” Rita leaned back on the sofa and picked up a magazine.

  “What about Sheldon?”

  Rita paged through charts of economic cycles and ads for expensive Scotch whiskey. “Sheldon will have to take care of himself. Or else his brother will have to do it.”

  “Dusty? Is Dusty in town now, too?” Steve asked. “Has the state liquor control board been warned?”

  Rita sighed. She put the magazine down. “Yes, he’s here. He and Sheldon are coming to dinner on Saturday too.”

  “Hide the Aqua Velva,” Steve said. Dusty reminded Steve of a t-shirt he had seen when he was in college. “I’m not a problem drinker,” it read. “I drink. I fall down. No problem.” His longest periods of employment were always as a bartender, usually in a place where the boss was away a lot and the controls on the booze were very loose.

  “Why don’t you come over to our house at seven o’clock.” Rita stood up and smoothed her jogging suit. “We’ll drive over to Mrs. Blatnick’s hotel together.” Steve shrugged, and Rita took that for agreement. “And you have to promise to be nice,” she added.

  “Being mean to the Blatnicks is what makes seeing them worthwhile,” Steve said. “You’re no fun.”

  “I’m not supposed to be fun. I’m your mother.” She turned and started for the kitchen. “We have to do something about this awful table.”

  Steve turned to Harold, who had been staring out the window at the activities of a pelican who had nested in one of the mangroves. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “I’m not getting involved.”

  Steve sighed and followed his mother to the kitchen.

  Rita called Steve at nine on Saturday morning to ask him to come by earlier and help his father hang a new chandelier. Steve was barely awake and he grunted his agreement. When he hung up the phone he looked at it and said, “I liked it better when you were many area codes away from me.”

  He arrived at his parents’ condo that evening to find his father on a ladder in the dining room, trying to hang a modern contraption of glass and brass that Rita had bought at a designer’s discount from a wholesale house in Boca Raton.

  “Dad! Get down off that ladder!” Steve said. “Mother, I can’t believe you let him get up there.”

  Harold started to step down and lost his balance. “Rita!” he cried, the chandelier swaying crazily from his hand. Steve rushed forward and grabbed the chandelier, and body-blocked his father back against the ladder. Sweat was pouring from his face though it was cool, almost chilly, in the living room.

  “Now that Steve is here, he can do it.” Rita turned to Steve. “Your father is all theory and no skill. Honestly, I don’t see how an engineer can be so clumsy.”

  “Your mother, the supervisor,” Harold said. “Move it to the left. No, to the right a little. Let her get up on the ladder and see how easy it is.”

  “All right,” Steve said. “I ought to get a uniform with black and white stripes to wear when I come over here, and a whistle. That’s it, a whistle.”

  Rita tormented Harold in a hundred small ways. She would harass him to be ready to leave the condo, get him dressed and shaved and standing at the door, and then sit at the kitchen table sorting her grocery coupons or finishing a letter. Or else she’d bring his dinner to the table, a plate steaming with chicken, stuffing and vegetables, and no silverware to eat it with, so that Harold, who was always quick to anger, would howl with rage. But as soon as the missing silverware was offered, as soon as Rita was ready to leave, the quarrel between them passed away like a summer shower and neither of them would have admitted that they’d argued.

  “We have to leave for the Blatnicks in five minutes, Steven,” Rita said. “Get up on the ladder and let’s get this over with.”

  After Steve hung the chandelier and Rita appeased Harold with a glass of iced tea, the Bermans left for Mrs. Blatnick’s hotel. In the car, Rita pulled down the mirror in the sun visor and checked her lipstick. “Steven, are you still in contact with that nice little girl we met in New York?” she asked, baring her teeth in the mirror. “What was her name, Cindy?”

  Steve shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess so,” he said. “She called me at the office the other day and we talked for a while. Why?”

  Rita flipped the visor up and sat back in her seat, adjusting the seat belt so it didn’t wrinkle her silk dress. “Audrey Silverman has a lovely niece,” she said. “I just thought you might like to call her up, that’s all.”

  “I’m not calling anybody’s niece,” Steve said. “As a matter of fact, I’m not interested in dating any girls who have aunts. I’m going to make that a new qualification. No aunts. Especially no aunts with hunch backs and long scraggly front teeth and black hats and broomsticks.” Steve hunched over and imitated a witch. “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!”

  “Audrey Silverman looks nothing like that,” Rita said, but she could not help smiling.

  Rita had been trying to arrange dates for Steve since he was in high school, when she’d pump her clients for the names of eligible Jewish girls. Even though Steve had never gone out with any of those girls, she had not stopped trying. She believed that if she was going to have to live with a daughter-in-law some day, she had a right to have a say in who that might be.

  Steve did not want to date anybody until he felt he had his own life in order. He could not tell from one day to the next whether he liked working at the Everglades Galleria or hated it with all his strength. He was happy at the trailer, where things were relaxed and what he had to do could be easily quantified-- broken down into materials to order, calls to make and letters to write.

  On the site it was different. No two days were alike and it was hard to establish any kind of routine. Crises arose, were solved, and then reappeared every hour. Bill, the superintendent, never explained things clearly enough for Steve and as a consequence Steve was always screwing up. It was hot, noisy and exhausting and there were mosquitoes everywhere.

  But it wouldn’t really be dating just to know a nice girl he could go to the movies with, someone to take out to dinner. Not dating in the way he had been serious about Cindy. Of course he didn’t see how he would have time to meet anyone like that. He worked late every day at the site, and collapsed in front of the TV as soon as he got home. On the weekends, he was stuck going to see the Blatnicks with his parents.

  And they had to go out in public with the Blatnicks, to a restaurant, and who knew what kind of mayhem they could create? Between the imperiousness of old Mrs. Blatnick, Dusty’s drunkenness, and the plain stupidity of Sheryl and Sheldon, the Blatnicks could turn any simple evening into a disaster movie. They were capable of accidentally sinking the Poseidon or inadvertently torching the towering inferno. They seemed to draw tragedy towards them like magnets; they were the kind of people who were always in the middle of a hurricane, at the epicenter of an earthquake. And Steve, as the normal, ordinary cousin, was somehow always drawn into their troubles, apologizing and mopping up after them.

  It was not going to be the kind of Saturday night he enjoyed.

  8 – Monster Insects

  The Neuschwanstein Palace Hotel had been built on Miami Beach
in the 1950’s to resemble King Ludwig’s Bavarian castle, with turrets, crenelated towers and a driveway arching over a small moat. The bellhops, wilted by the heat and sea air, were dressed in Teutonic uniforms and spoke with German accents. As they walked inside, Steve whispered to his father, “This looks like a place where ex-Nazis from Argentina come on vacation.”

  Harold said, “Did anyone ever tell you that you were funny? Because they lied.”

  The marble lobby was lined with gilt mirrors and oversized replicas of Meissen urns, and enormous crystal chandeliers dripped from the ceiling. Mrs. Blatnick’s suite was on the seventeenth floor and looked out over the ocean, with a side view of the towers of downtown Miami. She was staying in one bedroom, with Sheryl in the other. Sheldon and Dusty were sharing a room next door.

  Dusty, whose real name was Irving, looked like no one else in the family. He had dirty-blonde hair, small beady eyes set close together, and a cleft in his chin so deep he needed a pocket knife to clean it out.

  Dusty poured drinks from the wet bar while everyone made polite conversation. Sheryl had not registered for classes at the community college after all, and Sheldon had decided to stay in Florida for the season. It looked like Dusty was going to stay, too, though neither of them liked sharing a room.

  “Why don’t you just take another room?” Steve asked. Money never seemed to be a problem with the Blatnicks-- though none of them ever worked, Steve had the impression that old Mr. Blatnick had left enough money tied up in irrevocable trusts to keep them all going indefinitely.

  “It’s Ma,” Dusty said, inclining his head toward his mother, who was regaling Rita with details of her latest medical problems. “She thinks we’re still kids. She keeps talking about the bunk beds we used to have when we lived in Brooklyn.”

  “Dusty, you’re forty years old,” Steve said. “You think she hasn’t picked up on that yet?”

  “Who knows what she picks up on.” Dusty drained his drink in one long swallow, and then spoke to the room at large. “So, we drinking another round here or going on someplace else?”

  “We’re going to dinner,” Mrs. Blatnick said. She had a very short bullwhip in her right hand, which she flicked onto the countertop for emphasis. Steve looked at her with alarm.

  “You better leave that whip up here, Grandma,” Sheryl said. “You try and use that in the restaurant, you’ll get us all kicked out.” She got up and looked at herself in the mirror. Though Steve couldn’t imagine why, she smiled at what she saw.

  They ate at a deli next to the hotel. Dinner was slow and dull, and everyone was antsy, no one more than Dusty. Steve was eager to get the whole thing over with and get home. Finally the dessert dishes had been cleared away, and the check was delivered to the table. With her crabbed, wrinkled fingers, Mrs. Blatnick grabbed it and brought it right up to her eyes. She peered intensely at it for a moment and then crowed triumphantly, “Wrong!”

  “Let me see it, Ma,” Dusty said.

  “You?” Mrs. Blatnick said. “You couldn’t add two and two. Here, Steve, you’re the businessman, you add it up.” She handed the check to Steve, who looked it over carefully.

  “She’s right,” he said. “It’s off by ten cents.” He called the waitress over and explained the problem, and she corrected it. Mrs. Blatnick insisted on paying the whole bill, pulling wrinkled twenties and tens from her little black pocketbook.

  Everyone stood on the pavement in front of the restaurant shuffling their feet and staring at the ground. Mrs. Blatnick said good night, kissed Rita, and started walking toward the hotel lobby.

  Dusty turned to Steve. “So, you want to get a drink?” he asked. Steve shrugged. Though he didn’t like the Blatnicks much, it might be better to go and have a few drinks with them than to go home and sit in front of the TV set for the fourteenth straight night. And who knew, he might run into a nice girl somewhere in the Miami darkness.

  “We can all go,” Dusty said. “Shelly. And Sheryl, too.” They all looked at each other and agreed in a vague kind of way.

  “Your car is at our house, Steven,” Rita said.

  “I can drive you over there.” Dusty motioned to his car, a big old Cadillac convertible with Jersey plates, parked in front of the deli. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “All right,” Steve said. “See you, Mom, Dad.”

  “Just be careful, Steven,” Rita said.

  Dusty put his arm around Steve and said, “Don’t worry, Rita, I’ll take care of him.” Steve grimaced and shrugged again.

  Steve thought that the first couple of bars were OK. He and the Blatnicks had a few drinks, listened to the music of nondescript bands and out-of-synch jukeboxes, and made some limited conversation, mostly about the family or about Florida.

  By the fourth place they stopped, Steve was tired and ready to head for home, but Dusty was just getting warmed up. Dusty and Steve played pool with a couple of bikers, while another biker danced with Sheryl. Though the music on the jukebox was country and western, they did a crazy polka around the floor. Her dance partner was big and beefy, with red hair and a wiry red beard, and Sheryl seemed to like him. Steve said so to Dusty.

  “She likes anything in pants,” Dusty said, missing an easy shot into the corner pocket and losing the pool game to the bikers. “I could have beaten them,” Dusty said as they moved back to the bar. “But you know how it is. Guys like that don’t take kindly to defeat.”

  Dusty and Steve sat down at a table near the bar in a room ringed with neon fish, palm trees and beer signs. It was as if they had entered a neon showroom, or some parallel universe where nothing real existed, only the thin, glowing outlines of real things.

  That was about how Steve felt after his fourth rumrunner, a red, slushy concoction made with 151-proof rum, blackberry brandy, and banana liqueur, among other ingredients. His real body had floated away, leaving only its shimmering, glowing outline.

  Steve watched Sheldon at the bar trying to pick up a dyed blonde in her forties, a woman with fingernails long enough to scratch a man’s eyes out at twenty paces. She looked very familiar, but Steve couldn’t seem to focus on her.

  One thing that was clear, even with his blurred vision, was that Sheldon wasn’t having much luck. But then again, neither was Steve. He hadn’t seen a woman in the last two bars who was worth a second look. They were all too old, too homely, or too frightening. He wasn’t interested in any woman who wore scraps of clothing, heels higher than three inches, or whose hair was moussed into little tufts that stuck out from her head. And those were just the single women. Each of the ones who were with dates glinted with a metallic halo, as an African tribe’s worth of gold glowed from their necks, ears and wrists. They all wore their clothes too tight, especially their blouses, and their chests brimmed with the fullness of nature and silicone. He longed for a prim girl in a pin-stripe suit, with a white silk blouse tied into a knot just below her neck.

  That kind of woman was nowhere to be found in the bars of Miami Beach late on a Saturday night. That species seemed exclusive to the singles bars and office canyons of Manhattan, where they strode along in their designer sneakers, with sensible leather pumps in their legal-sized portfolios.

  Dusty slung his arm around Steve’s shoulder. “What do you say we move along?” he asked. “Gather up the troops and push on to foreign shores. Make a new beachhead somewhere. Fight on for truth, justice, the American way, and a bar that doesn’t play goddamned country music.”

  “I’m ready to call it quits, Dusty,” Steve said. “It’s after two.”

  “Hell, we’re only getting started,” Dusty said. “You can’t back out on us now. One more round. But it’s your turn to buy.” Dusty pointed toward the bar, and Steve got up reluctantly. He walked up next to Sheldon, ready to order his fifth rumrunner, and recognized the blonde.

  “Maxine!” he said. Up close it was clearly the director of leasing at the Everglades Galleria, dressed up for a night cruising the bars. Her blouse was a little tighter, and her b
reasts seemed that much fuller. Her nails seemed longer than was humanly possible, and Steve marveled that she could walk on such high heels.

  As soon as he blurted out her name he was sorry he had. He saw the whole awful scenario. Sheldon would start to date Maxine. Dusty and Uncle Max would become best friends. Sheryl would replace Celeste as receptionist, and the Blatnicks would infiltrate the Everglades Galleria like monsters out of a sci-fi film, chewing up people and buildings in their giant insect jaws.

  Steve tried to back away quickly, but before he could go more than a few steps Maxine turned and recognized him. “Steve!” She swung around on her bar stool, wobbling like one of those little toy people who have no feet. She must be drunk, Steve thought; why else would she talk to Sheldon Blatnick, who radiated the sexual energy of a jellyfish?

  Maxine grabbed Steve’s arm, pulled him close to her, and planted a big kiss on his lips. It was not what he expected from a woman he had only known from meetings and brief office conversations, and it took him by surprise.

  Sheldon reacted immediately, though. “Hey!” he said. “Where’s my kiss?” He grabbed a handful of Maxine’s hair and turned her around to face him. When he mashed his lips onto hers she struggled to get away, grabbing a hunk of Sheldon’s curly brown hair and trying to pull his face away from hers.

  When she got her lips free, Sheldon put his arms around her. “Get him offa me!” Maxine screamed. Steve tried to separate them but could not get a good grip on either one. He felt a meaty hand on his shoulder as the bouncer pulled him out of the fray.

  “All right, break it up.” The bouncer stepped in between Sheldon and Maxine and separated hands from hair. The bouncer had one of those broad square chests that signified concentration on the body to the exclusion of the brain. “I think it’s time for you to hit the road, buddy,” he said to Sheldon. “All by your lonesome.”