Karate Chop: Stories

THE BIG TOMATO

THE BANGS WORK A LOT AND NEVER SHOP FOR GROCERIES THEMSELVES. Everything in the refrigerator is ordered online. Every Sunday evening they place their order. Every Monday a box is left outside the door with all their food. One of these Mondays the box contains a tomato weighing more than four pounds, which the Bangs do not believe they ordered. The first thing is that they cannot possibly eat a tomato that big. The other thing is that they are paying by the ounce. It’s too expensive, says Mrs. Bang, so Mr. Bang calls the online grocery store to complain. At seven that evening, while I am busy in the guest bathroom, the doorbell rings. As usual, Mr. and Mrs. Bang are not at home and it’s up to me to see who it is. A small man is standing there sweating and says he has come to collect the tomato. I fetch it from the refrigerator and give it to him.

He remains standing on the mat, so I ask him if there is anything else. He says he doesn’t get paid for his work, other than what he makes in tips from the customers. I explain to him that the Bangs are not at home. He says he picks up his deliveries on a bike that has no brakes. He shows me the soles of his shoes and wipes his forehead.

Mr. and Mrs. Bang are very nice people. Mrs. Bang works for the Danish Consulate on Second Avenue, organizing trade delegations from her home country. Mr. Bang, or Lars, as he likes to be called, is a record producer. I got this job cleaning their penthouse in Lower Manhattan because I do the cleaning in his record studio. Mrs. Bang is very tall and beautiful and has blond hair. Mr. Bang is even taller, and if he is home when I arrive he gives me a high-five with his hand down low. The nameplate on the door says the Great Danes. This is a joke by some friends of theirs. I like the Bangs, but when the Bangs aren’t at home I’m always afraid they will suddenly appear in the doorway.

That’s why I hesitate to invite the man inside. But he is sweating, and the Bangs have air-conditioning. I tell him my name is Raquel and that he must take off his shoes. His name is Gabriel. He says he has other returns he needs to pick up elsewhere in the city. I tell him I’ll give him something for his trouble. He says he won’t accept anything if it’s my own money. We smile, and he puts the tomato down carefully on the kitchen counter.

“I don’t know what to give you,” I say, but then he says I can let him freshen up a little.

The Bangs have a separate bathroom for guests, but my buckets and cleaning supplies are in there and the Bangs never told me what to do about guests like Gabriel. So I indicate the sink in the kitchen and he pulls the sleeves of his T-shirt up over his shoulders. Gabriel washes like my father used to in the kitchen at home in Puerto Consol. Mexican men lather themselves up to the elbows and pay special attention to the eyes and ears and nose. And when they rinse the soap away they snort like the first Mexican snorted as he staggered out of the Rio Grande. This is how Gabriel washes, and when he is done he half turns to face me. I hurry into the guest bathroom to get him a towel. The dirty ones are in a pile on the floor. The clean ones from Lumturi are folded in a neat stack. I take a clean one and go back to the kitchen where he stands dripping.

“I could make you a sandwich,” I tell him as I hand him the towel.

“I don’t want to be any trouble,” he says.

I point at the tomato and say:

“Es un jitomate muy grande, pero no puede bajar las escaleras por si mismo.”*

While he eats his sandwich I finish up my cleaning in the guest bathroom, and when I’m done scouring the bowl I put the dirty towels and the Bangs’ bed linen in the laundry bag for Lumturi. In the kitchen, Gabriel is standing in his stockinged feet looking at the bulletin board.

“They are tall people, right?”

He indicates how tall he thinks the Bangs would be beside him if they were at home.

He is looking at some photos from the Bangs’ wedding. There are quite a few on the bulletin board, and I tell him that the people who live here are from Denmark. He looks at the photo of the Bangs together with a lot of other people outside a small, white church. Everyone looks tall, though not as tall as Mr. and Mrs. Bang. Another photo shows them in wedding outfits standing by a horse-drawn carriage in front of a castle in a sumptuous green landscape. Mrs. Bang’s hair has been put up in a way that makes her look even taller. In another photo, Mr. Bang is carrying her over his shoulder. She is so high up her head is not even in the picture.

Gabriel repeats what he said about them being tall. I tell him that the Bangs are nice people, which is true. Then Gabriel points at the horse-drawn carriage and says he thinks it’s strange for people to come to America when they have lives like in that picture. I say ordinary people may find it hard to understand, but even people like the Bangs will live abroad if it means their lives can be happier.

I point to the blue laundry bag and tell Gabriel not to forget the tomato. I am done here. We take the stairs together without speaking. Outside the evening is warm and his bike is where he left it. It has a large box, and he has the key. He puts the tomato inside next to some other vegetables, but I don’t notice what kind. Then he bends down and turns the pedals with his hand. He scratches his head. Eventually he straightens up, takes the laundry bag out of my hand, and puts it on top of the box.

“I’m going your way,” he says.

He pushes the bike along beside me and we head for Snowy White. Lumturi, the Albanian laundryman, never closes. As we walk, Gabriel tells me his brother sells un-salted bread and holiday flowers in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. I tell him that’s not far from where I live. He says his bike is borrowed and he has been promised a job with a car to drive. I tell him I live with my cousin who isn’t married either, and then I point to the laundry shop on the other side of the street.

“Take the tomato out of the box and come in with me,” I tell him. “Lumturi never saw such a big tomato in all his life.”

Lumturi is fastening the hem of a dress. He looks up at me and smiles when we walk in. I put the laundry bag on the counter and show him the tomato.

“Did you ever see one that big?”

Lumturi puts his hands to his face as if the tomato gave him a scare.

“Where did it come from?”

“It’s from the Bangs. The laundry is theirs, too.”

“May I?”

Gabriel places the tomato in Lumturi’s outstretched hands. It looks funny, Lumturi standing there cradling it as if it were a baby. We sit down for a while and Lumturi tells us about his homeland, how it was like a foggy morning. You go out anyway, because a man needs to walk even if he has no idea where he is going. He walks all day and the fog does not lift until evening, leaving the man standing in the middle of nowhere. He scans the horizon for life, but there is none. He looks back over his shoulder toward the house that isn’t there. Tired legs and no place to go with yourself, that’s what it was like where he came from, Lumturi says. He hands the tomato back to Gabriel, carefully, as though it were his.

When we leave the Laundromat we don’t know which direction to go. I ask Gabriel if he needs to deliver the tomato somewhere. He says all the groceries people don’t want are taken to a cold store in the Meatpacking District. He asks where I’m headed, and I tell him home.

“To them?” he asks, gesturing in the air.

“No, home to myself,” I say, and point toward the Brooklyn Bridge.

Gabriel thinks it will be okay to take the tomato back in the morning. We can walk over the bridge together. There’s a walkway across the top, and cars and boats beneath. Far off to our right is the Statue of Liberty, which is small and green, and I tell Gabriel how I like my paella. He tells me they grew oranges back home. We talk about the things we miss, warm sand especially, and we discover we both used to tie string to cockroaches and take them for walks when we were kids.

Halfway across the bridge I make him turn around so we can look back at where we have come from. We stare at the Manhattan skyline, which is like it always is. He adjusts my cardigan at the shoulder. I smile, and he pulls gently on my little finger.

“Es tan pequeño,” he says and gives it a squeeze.

Then our fingers interlock, and somewhere over Manhattan fireworks are going off. Two spheres light up the sky. They look like faces smiling. Like a kind of happiness so big it can’t all be in the picture. The fireworks explode above our heads, above the river and the skyscrapers. Gabriel tries to tell me something, but I can’t hear him. I take the handlebars of his bike and we cross the bridge. He and I and the tomato.

________________

* It’s a very big tomato, but it can’t go down the stairs on its own.