UNDERCOVER
I met Jesus outside the Café Au Go Go in the middle of Lenny Bruce’s last performance there, the one that would get him arrested for obscenity. I’d noticed Him near the rear wall, nursing a highball. He wore a Panama fedora pulled low, and when my eyes passed over Him, there was a glow under the brim. It was quick, on and off, but it was special—fluid and golden. Bruce had been riveting, but at that point, I couldn’t focus on the performance. Jesus left his drink on somebody’s table, climbed the stairs, and walked out onto Bleecker Street. I followed. Outside, he was leaning back against a blue Mercury Comet with whitewalls. His arms were folded against His chest. He was looking thoughtfully at the littered sidewalk.
“Too intense for you?” I said.
He took me in quietly.
“You made Me?” Jesus said.
“Yes. I thought you wanted me to.”
“Ah, the inner light. I usually keep it switched off, but I got distracted.”
“I’m sorry. If you’d rather be alone…”
He waved it off.
“Can’t put the genie back in the bottle. But please, don’t miss the show on my account. It’s historic, you know.”
I nodded. “It was a tough ticket, but the real show is out here. I mean…oh shit, I can’t believe I said that.”
Jesus chuckled. “Relax, I’ve heard worse.”
A burst of voices, a few laughs but mostly gasps, rolled up from the underground.
“I wouldn’t have thought this was your cup of tea,” I said, nodding toward the stairway.
“Well, I was getting worn out with the Day of the Dead in Mexico. You want intense?”
It was a Tuesday night and foot traffic was sparse, allowing us to talk across the sidewalk. After awhile, the audience filed out of a showing of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at the Bleecker Street Cinema a few doors down the block. As walkers passed between us, Jesus lowered his fedora. He looked entirely guilty of something. But the moviegoers were in a bright mood, chatting happily about the Gallic musical and nobody paid attention to the hipster slouched against a car.
When the sidewalk was clear again, Jesus said, “He isn’t funny, is he?”
“Lenny? Probably not. People go to the club thinking they’re going to see a comic. They came to laugh, and that’s what they do when they hear those words. It’s just an automatic response to something they don’t know how to process.”
Jesus seemed impressed. “What are you, a reporter?”
“Nah, I manage the shipping room up at Gimbels. There’s been a lot of chatter about Lenny. I’m just repeating what I’ve heard.”
“Gimbels? That’s north, right? Let’s walk up there. I’d like to see it.”
“Well, if you want. But it’s a little depressing for me. You know, it’s just going to work again.”
“Of course. What was I thinking? Show me something else, a part of the city you like. Do you have the time?”
“I think I can squeeze You in.”
We headed east toward Second Avenue and then south on Bowery. He was a slow walker, very slow, and I had to stop as He paused continually and considered the storefronts and tenements and gazed up at the rooftops. I couldn’t tell if He was looking for something or just enjoying Himself.
“Are you in town for long?” I said, mostly to get Him to keep up with me.
“I hadn’t planned to be. Mainly, I just wanted to be in the audience. There was something I wanted to see.”
I nodded, waited, but He didn’t elaborate.
Ten blocks later, I said, “This is it. Chinatown.”
It was after eleven, but the streets were fully awake. Women and their teenage daughters carrying stuffed grocery bags bumped against each other and forged ahead unfazed. Thin, unshaven men in dirty white aprons broke open wooden crates of fresh fish, vegetables, and fruit and filled the baskets of their open-air markets. Ankle-deep trash got kicked into the streets and run over flat by delivery trucks.
“Oh, yes!” said Jesus.
Something inside me swelled. Chinatown really wasn’t one of my favorite parts of the city, but I thought He might like it, more than Gimbels anyway. It seemed I was right, but this was a Gentleman. Was He just being polite?
We wandered for a while, and I kept wanting to say that this was New York but also something so foreign. But it was catching up with me, Who I was with, what I was doing. Self-doubt seized me. I fell into silence.
Jesus said, “Are you okay?”
I nodded, paused, and said, “No.”
He patted me on the back and said, “Let’s get something to eat.”
I led Him, underground again, to a restaurant on Mott Street I’d heard about but never been to. It was packed and we had to wait fifteen minutes before we got seated at a big common table where a family of four, two parents and a couple of boys, were silently eating. Jesus ordered shrimp chow mein; I got fried rice and broccoli.
“Are you a vegetarian?” He asked.
“Yes.”
“Good for you. Listen, I appreciate you going out of your way for Me, so I’ll share something with you. I didn’t come to see Lenny. There were a couple of undercover cops in the audience, writing down all those dirty words as evidence. When the show ended, they arrested him. They were the ones I wanted to see. I was watching them watching him, and before I knew it, My heart broke. That’s when I left.”
With that, the family sitting with us, all four of them, stopped eating and turned to look at Him and the golden light.
