Clothing Optional Read online

  He hands Happy a business card.

  HAPPY

  (reading)

  “The Sports Kingdom.”

  DONALD

  I have four stores in the tri-state area.

  HAPPY

  So let me see if I understand this correctly. This ball with all these autographs on it is worth money.

  DONALD

  Yes.

  HAPPY

  And if I write my autograph on it…

  DONALD

  It will be worth more money.

  HAPPY

  Why?

  DONALD

  There’d be no other ball like it. That original team. Three of them Hall of Famers—based on the careers they had with other teams before they came to the Mets, mind you. But still, they’re dead, so they can never sign another ball ever again, and the rest of these players are probably scattered all over the country and it would take a fortune to go track them down.

  HAPPY

  So how much could you get?

  DONALD

  For that ball?

  HAPPY

  Approximately.

  DONALD

  I can tell you exactly.

  HAPPY

  So tell me exactly.

  DONALD

  Twenty-eight thousand.

  HAPPY

  Dollars?

  DONALD

  That’s right.

  HAPPY

  So let me see if I understand this correctly. You actually think that you can take this ball and sell it for exactly—

  DONALD

  I know I can sell that ball for exactly twenty-eight thousand dollars.

  HAPPY

  And how’s that?

  DONALD

  It’s already sold.

  HAPPY

  It is?

  DONALD

  Yes. Once you sign it, that is.

  HAPPY

  And, just so I know, how did that happen?

  DONALD

  I know a man up in New Jersey whose name is Joe Eastern, and he’s a collector, and he called me. You see, Happy, there’s so much memorabilia out there, the market is so flooded, that many collectors like to specialize in just one particular category that they have a passion for. The 1961 Yankees is a big attraction. Anything to do with Muhammad Ali, some of the great Boston Celtic teams, you know…and this guy…

  HAPPY

  Joe Eastern.

  DONALD

  That’s right. Joe Eastern…

  HAPPY

  He the one who gave you this Sissy Mary pen as a gift?

  DONALD

  No, but he did tell me that he grew up on Long Island and that he was eleven years old when the Mets came into existence and I told him I had a ball in mint condition with the original team’s signatures on it with the exception of yours, and he said if you signed it…well, I negotiated a price of twenty-eight thousand dollars.

  HAPPY

  So you’re going to part with this ball.

  DONALD

  Yes.

  HAPPY

  (sarcastic)

  This ball that’s filled with all those happy memories of when your hero dad caught it and saved that cute little baby face of yours from being scrambled.

  DONALD

  Well, yeah….

  HAPPY

  (raising his voice)

  That same father who called you Happy. After me, by the way. Who the hell are you, Mr. Rappaport? I played baseball because I loved it. I still love it. Every year I stop by those spring-training camps when the teams are down here—they don’t know me from a hole in the ground. To them I’m just another fan, and they’re right. I am a fan. And you told me that you were one, too. But now I see that all you really came here for was to get an old man’s signature on this ball so you can sell memories for a profit.

  DONALD

  Happy…

  HAPPY

  No. Mr. Rappaport! You’re not a fan!

  DONALD

  Happy…

  HAPPY

  You’re a scavenger!

  DONALD

  Happy!

  HAPPY

  What!

  DONALD

  I came here to give you this ball.

  HAPPY

  Excuse me? Would you mind indulging an old man by repeating that last sentence one more time? Just in case my heart stops and I die.

  DONALD

  Joe Eastern offered me twenty-five thousand dollars for the ball. But I insisted on exactly twenty-eight—which is exactly one thousand dollars for every game you played in the major leagues. It’s not a lot by today’s standards, but I just thought there was a certain ring to the way it sounded.

  HAPPY

  So let me see if I understand this correctly. I sign this ball…

  DONALD

  And Joe Eastern owes you twenty-eight thousand dollars.

  HAPPY

  I just shamed you into this, didn’t I?

  DONALD

  No…

  HAPPY

  Me calling you a scavenger and all.

  DONALD

  No…

  HAPPY

  And this isn’t one of those Jewish guilt things I keep hearing about.

  DONALD

  No.

  HAPPY

  So right from the time you buzzed my button you were going to do this?

  DONALD

  Yeah.

  HAPPY

  No. Something’s wrong with this story.

  DONALD

  Why do you say that?

  HAPPY

  It doesn’t add up.

  DONALD

  What doesn’t add up?

  HAPPY

  You know, I’ve tried my best all these years not to be bitter. That doesn’t do anyone any good. One newspaper guy once figured out that if I’d kept up those numbers I had, you know, over the length of a normal career, I’d be in the Hall of Fame. Well, that kind of talk don’t do anyone any good either. Sure, it would have been great if I was Happy Haliday for longer than I was. But I wasn’t. So I try my best not to mourn for the life I didn’t have. And I think I’m doing an okay job. We raised five kids in this place, my wife and I. She worked, I worked, and somehow we managed to send five happy people out into this world. But now you come here offering me this incredible generosity—Jesus, more money than I’ve ever seen in any one place at any one time—and one part of me wants to cry and another part is suspicious and says that this doesn’t add up. That there’s a lie here that hasn’t been said yet.

  DONALD

  There’s no lie, Happy. Here. Here’s Joe Eastern’s phone number. Call him and see for yourself that…

  HAPPY

  No, no. I believe that part.

  DONALD

  Then what part don’t you believe? The Taurus? I swear to you I rented a Ford Taurus. I’m not proud of it. But look outside, it’s right by the curb.

  HAPPY

  (shaking his head)

  It’s the pacing. The constant looking at your watch, I’ve seen executive types before. Suits, tiny phones that make them look like they’re talking into their hands. Guys who are here but on their way to there. Are there but have to cut it short because they’re already late somewhere else. Basically we’re talking about guys who are never where they want to be. So now I look at you and do my best to figure out where you’re supposed to be instead of here. Can you tell me that? Where you really should be right now.

  DONALD

  In Boca.

  HAPPY

  With your family.

  DONALD

  Yeah.

  HAPPY

  But instead you came down here. You read an article, flew down, and drove a rented Taurus to Delray Beach so you can give someone you never met a twenty-eight-thousand-dollar baseball an hour before the start of a holiday dinner, when you’re going to be here in Florida for how long?

  DONALD

  Seven days.

  HAPPY

  Seven days. Is that how long Passov
er lasts?

  DONALD

  That’s how long shiva lasts.

  HAPPY

  The shiva?

  DONALD

  The mourning period. My father died last night. We flew down here for his funeral.

  HAPPY

  (sympathetic)

  There’s more, right?

  DONALD

  We hadn’t spoken in years. We had a fight and I got real pissed at him and he got real pissed at me and we were both acting like we were going to live forever and had all the time in the world to make up with each other.

  HAPPY

  What was the fight about?

  DONALD

  We both forgot. But we were both stubborn. My mom tried to intervene. My sisters, my brother…All I know is that I was starting to miss him and then, about a month ago, that article about you was in the New York Post and I sent it to my dad with a note attached to it that said, “Remember?” And a few days later I got a package in the mail. A box. Inside of it was this ball, and a note that said, “Yes, I remember.” I called him and we stayed on the phone for over three hours and at the end of the conversation decided that we would give you this ball together—when I came down for Passover. Then around three o’clock this morning my mom phoned. He had a heart attack.

  HAPPY

  Had you two spoken since that three-hour call?

  DONALD

  (smiling)

  Every night.

  HAPPY

  (smiling)

  No shit?

  DONALD

  (smiling)

  No shit.

  HAPPY

  So I did good?

  DONALD

  You did real good. Thanks.

  A beat. Donald checks his watch.

  DONALD (cont’d)

  Look, I should be getting back to my parents’ house. Here’s Joe Eastern’s number. After you sign the ball, why not give him a buzz and you can work out all the details with him directly.

  HAPPY

  Well, I’m not sure I want to do that.

  DONALD

  Oh, would you like me to call him for you?

  HAPPY

  No. I’m just not so sure that I want to sell this thing so fast.

  DONALD

  Happy…

  HAPPY

  I know, I know—there’s a lot anyone can do with twenty-eight thousand dollars. But just like you have your quirky ways about you, I was brought up to feel that a man should not accept any gift that he himself could not afford to have given.

  DONALD

  Don’t let false pride enter this, Happy. Because I don’t know exactly how much it was worth your getting me and my dad back together again. As far as I’m concerned, I’m the one who got the bargain. But the decision is yours. There’s the ball. And there’s the phone number. Take care, Happy Haliday.

  HAPPY

  You too, Happy Rappaport.

  Donald picks up his attaché case and turns to leave.

  DONALD

  Bye.

  HAPPY

  Hey, Donald?

  DONALD

  Yeah?

  HAPPY

  Thank you.

  DONALD

  Sure.

  Donald exits the apartment, crosses the lobby, and opens the door to the vestibule.

  HAPPY

  (through intercom)

  And, Donald?

  DONALD

  Yeah?

  HAPPY

  (through intercom)

  Next Passover? If you and your family should decide to fly down to Florida?

  DONALD

  Yeah?

  HAPPY

  (through intercom)

  I’d really love it if you had the seder here, in my apartment.

  DONALD

  Really?

  HAPPY

  (through intercom)

  Yeah. That way I could get to cook that big meal for you we were talking about earlier.

  DONALD

  And pie?

  HAPPY

  (through intercom)

  Yes, pie.

  DONALD

  À la mode?

  HAPPY

  (through intercom)

  Don’t push it.

  Donald exits the building.

  LIGHTS SLOWLY FADE OUT.

  The Big Forgery

  I believe in connections. The kinds that forever bind through shared experiences, secrets, or songs. I particularly like the connections, however subtle, that keep people united even after one of them has passed away—because they tend to keep the person alive that much longer. Like my maternal grandfather, who lived the often-heard saga of a refugee who emigrated from Europe on May 12, 1912. A confused, Yiddish-speaking boy arriving via ship and processed at Ellis Island, he worked in a sweatshop to help bring money into the apartment where he lived with his parents and eight brothers and sisters. As a result, his childhood was denied along with any semblance of a formal education. Still, he did his best to blend in by teaching himself the new language and by picking up as many colloquialisms as he possibly could along the way—so by the time he became my grandfather, to me the only detectable trace of his not having been born in America was the accent that all grandparents seemed to have back then. But I understood everything he said. His jokes. His stories about the Old Country. And he made me laugh. Hard. Real hard. One time so hard that I inadvertently, and quite audibly, broke wind. Which made me laugh even harder—all the while he kept laughing and repeating, “Alan made a forgery. Alan made a forgery.”

  Now, as a four-year-old boy who was just learning English himself, I had no reason to think that that wasn’t what it was called. No reason to even consider that the one word my self-educated grandfather didn’t fully get the hang of was the one that distinguishes the act of falsely creating, altering, or imitating a document or signature with intent to defraud from the noise a person makes when he’s eaten too much cabbage. So, as far as I was concerned, that noise was called a forgery—and long after I’d learned its true meaning, the word forgery never failed to make me laugh hysterically while drawing befuddled stares from all who witnessed my outbursts. Like the dozens of moms and dads in that auditorium during a fifth-grade spelling bee. And the proctor in the room where I was taking the vocabulary portion of the SATs. And most recently, the judge, attorneys, and my fellow prospective jurors for the trial of a man accused of signing his name to elderly people’s Social Security checks. Boy, did that make me laugh. Hard. Real hard. So hard that I, yes, so hard that I, a fifty-four-year-old man in a court of law, committed a forgery of my own. A rather explosive, window-rattling forgery that brought the proceedings to a dramatic halt as it came this close to tipping the scales of justice at an angle they had never assumed before. Everyone in the jury box, everyone in the entire courtroom for that matter, stopped what they were doing and took notice of my first laugh-induced forgery in a half-century. Even the judge, a burly cross between Oliver Wendell Holmes and Oliver Hardy, looked up from whatever documents he was perusing and simply said, “Wow.”

  I wasn’t selected. The prosecutor dismissed me summarily, and the defense offered no argument otherwise. Whether it was due to my background, or my political leanings, or the hesitance of those impaneled to be in an enclosed space with me during deliberations is anybody’s guess. But the time I’d spent there was invaluable, as jury selection is a feature of our democracy that I had never experienced firsthand before, and it served to keep me connected, albeit in a most unorthodox way, to a loving man I still think about whenever I laugh.

  Notes from a Western State

  6:15 A.M. PST…A call from a sister in Nyack, New York, crying, “Turn on the news”…One plane, then another…One tower…Jesus Christ, there goes the other…. They also got the Pentagon? Probably going after the obvious targets like the Sears Tower, Hoover Dam…Wracking my brain trying to figure out what in L.A. is worth hitting…Phone calls crisscrossing the country. “Did you get through? Is he okay? Did you actually speak to hi
m and he personally told you that he’s okay?”…Got to get back to my city. Yeah, yeah, I’ve been out here for years but…Boy, is Gary Condit one lucky son of a bitch or what?…Wayne St. Clare. Where did that name come from?…Sang all the verses to “America the Beautiful” during Yom Kippur services. It took about an hour…. A store put me on a waiting list for a flag…. There’s that name again. Who the hell is Wayne St. Clare?…Went to a party Saturday night. People sad beyond authenticity. Hollywood grief-chic…Jesus, I haven’t thought about Wayne St. Clare since June 1972. Just out of college. Employment agencies. Job hunting. Any job. Psych Degree—I know, I know, that’s why I said any job. Adderson Business Memos. One World Trade Center. Brand-new. Smells of sawdust. Sheetrock. Finishing touches. Met with Wayne St. Clare. President of Larson’s Business Memos. My dad’s age. Everyone’s dad’s age. Loved business memos. Loved Tower One. Called it “my building”…Training for the NYC Marathon. Listening to oldies while I run. The song “Candy Man” reminds me of Wayne St. Clare, who, when he fired me for writing jokes on his time and on his business memos, did so by yelling, “Young man, leave my building now!”…November 2001. Flying to New York. On the plane I wonder if I would’ve had the balls to fight with hijackers like those others guys did…. JFK cabbie asks me what I do. I tell him that I write. He asks what I’ve written. I mention my last movie. He says he could’ve done a better job…. Check in to Essex House. 5:30 P.M. Starting to get dark. Maybe I should wait until the morning. No, I can’t. Hop on a subway and head downtown. I look around and want to apologize to everyone for not being here when it happened. For not looking like they do as we approach the station at Broadway and Nassau Street. For consciously trying to not look like a tourist in a place I still consider home…Up onto the street. The smell. I’d wondered if it was still there or would I have to work extra hard to try to detect something…. Is this ghoulish? To experience the same thrill a child gets upon seeing in person a toy he only knows from television? What possible reason could I have to…My God. Ground Zero. Look what those assholes did to our city. To all those people. To Wayne St. Clare’s building. A woman standing next to me started crying about the same time that I did. We hugged…. Later. On my laptop. Checked that “Portraits of Grief” section in the Times. No one named St. Clare…The night before the marathon. I wear an FDNY cap to a prerace pasta dinner in the park. The fat woman dishing out the food smiles, gives me extra rolls, and whispers seductively, “Take from this pot. It’s fresher.”…November 4. 6:00 A.M. On a bus to Staten Island. Lived in New York the first thirty-six years of my life, this is my first trip to Staten Island…. Mayor Giuliani tells us we’re heroes, that guy who sang “God Bless America” during the World Series games leads us in song, a cannon goes off, and thirty thousand people say, “Fuck you, bin Laden” without uttering a word…. Halfway across the Verrazano, sixty thousand eyes look to the left and see the skyline. This time some people actually speak the words “Fuck you, bin Laden.”…Brooklyn. Another first for me when a Hassidic woman gives me a high five as I run past her and her seventy-two children…. Queens. As I trudge up the slight gradient of the Fifty-ninth Street bridge, I hum the lyrics to the Paul Simon song about this very structure (“Slow down, you move too fast”) and can’t help but think that moving too fast is hardly my problem…. Manhattan. I wonder if any of these thousands cheering along First Avenue have any idea that I peed in my running shorts, just a little…. The Bronx. A guy on crutches passes me. I’m starting to think about upping my pace…. Manhattan again. It’s getting dark as I enter the park. I see a cop on a horse and wonder if it’d be considered a bribe if I offered him ten bucks for the horse…. Tavern on the Green. I throw my arms up into the air as I cross the finish line and find out that I came in 22,373rd place. Which means that, all told, I ran behind 22,372 asses. Still another first…What a day. Triumphant. Defiant…Monday morning. On my way back to JFK I play a hunch and dial information. There’s a Larson’s Business Memos at an uptown address. A guy named Steve St. Clare tells me they relocated two years ago despite the wishes of his father, who didn’t want to leave “his building.” Wayne St. Clare died at the age of eighty-one on September 7, and I still feel that was a good thing.