"Go back to your own planet!" a black teenager called to a group of Swedish girls. "The play's over. You better pack up and leave!"
Peddlers were lined up in front of the Cooper Union building, offering old magazines, second-hand belts, empty shaving cream cans, and outdated records for sale. "Spare a dime?" another voice begged. A woman tripped on the broken pavement and lay where she fell. Old newspapers flew about on the light breeze, together with clouds of dust and smoke. It all seemed surreal, like a different world. Was it really my world?
Rikki grabbed my arm as I tripped over a homeboy sitting against the wall, his clothes stained with the dirt of the sidewalk. We entered Odessa, a Russian restaurant famed for its blintzes and cabbage soup. It was filled with artists of every sort. I admired Rikki for her perseverance and calm, but we never had any personal chat. Here, in Odessa, she was showing emotion for the first time.
"Look," she said, taking my hand, "this is a great city. It's the best place in the world - but the people are crazy. Look at the gang at Motti Pizza. They're all loners and nuts, each in their own way. Nissim, the dearly departed Sharon, Nadav, Miller. You don't belong there. You ought to leave before it gets to you, too."
"I'm no saner than anyone else," I said. "I'm sick and I'm tired, and I love the place just like the rest of them. I have nowhere else to go, and that's the kind of life I just might enjoy."
"You're right. You'll have girls and pals and fantasies and money - but somewhere down the line you'll lose yourself, your soul. It's not worth it to sell your soul just because you had a love affair that ended badly."
"Is Avihu as nutty as the others?" it suddenly occurred to me.
"Sure thing! Do you really believe someone forced him to get involved in this dirty business? Don't you think I see what's going on? That everyone sees? The poor guy is desperately looking for a way to destroy himself - and he's doing a pretty good job if you ask me."
"He doesn't look like the others," I said. "He talks and he thinks differently."
"Okay, so he comes from a different neighborhood, a different school," she answered, "but that's only a shell. Underneath, he's hollow, desperate and lost."
"Why? It doesn't make any sense"
"What do I know?" she shrugged. "There could be a thousand reasons. Maybe because he was a big war hero in 1967, but in the Yom Kippur War, he and his navigator were shot down behind enemy lines. Miller said it happened in the swamps in the northern Sinai. Avihu was wounded. The navigator carried him on his back for two days. He was wounded too, and Avihu told him to leave him there and save himself. In the end, they were both rescued, but it changed Avihu."
I’d heard another version of that story, but didn't say a thing. "Miller thinks something happened to him during those two days in the desert," she went on. "Something he never experienced before, so he has this desperate need to recreate it. To me it all sounds like psychobabble, but when I think about it, your girlfriend Kate was the only person he ever really cared about."
After a short pause, she added, "Don't you see? She probably represented the things he'd lost: youth, enthusiasm, passion, integrity..." Rikki took my hand again. "You're a nice guy, David. You've got your whole life ahead of you. Get out of here, get out before it's too late. Avihu is just as screwed up as everyone else here."
I was sitting with my back to the door. Rikki's eyes suddenly grew wider as she recognized someone coming in. I turned to see who she was looking at. Miller was marching into the restaurant, deep in conversation with two Russians. We hurried out. He ignored us, but as I passed him, he whispered to me, "Great potential, great potential."
I didn't know if he was referring to his new Russian friends or making a sly remark about Rikki.
*
When we got back to Motti Pizza that night, it was crowded and noisy.
"Let me know next time you plan to disappear," Nissim snapped at me. "I’m glad you won the fight in the storeroom. Just watch your back. Nobody wins every round." He tossed me an apron. "Three hamburgers for the idiots in the back, two Philly steaks for the couple by the door, no onion on one."
The hamburgers had been served and the steaks were sizzling on the grill when Danny called from Boston.
"This mother of yours, amazing woman!" he exclaimed into the phone, sending chills up my spine. I hadn't seen my mother in fifteen years.
"Is she okay? Did she say anything important?"
Danny was, first, untypically focused. "She's more than okay. A very impressive woman. She's waiting for you. Other than that, she gave me a letter for you."
"Hold on to it." I pulled the phone over to the grill and quickly turned the steaks, carefully covering them with cheese slices.
"I got you a job in Hampton Court, just as you wanted. A cook at the 'Princess Lodge' Motel. They're looking for a bookkeeper too, and they're willing to wait till the summer - but they'd prefer if you started right away. Just who do you plan to take with you?"
I loaded the Philly steaks onto two rolls, adding seasonings and salad. "Forget it, it was just a thought."
Danny went on with his news. "Your friends stopped coming. Go count on friends."
"Danny - "
"I mean, at first the consul himself came and told me he was ready to forget everything that had happened in the past few weeks if you'd just come back. You want the truth? I'd be happy to see you back here too."
"Danny - "
"It's the distance - it makes me sentimental. And the job. You don't want to know how much work I have. I started fixing up used cars and renting them out."
"Oh, no."
"The bottom line is, I've got more work than I can handle. It got its upside. I meet a lot of new people, but..."
"Danny," I said agreeably, "some people talk about how much work they have and some people actually work. I'm in the middle of something. Anyone else looking for me?"
"It's a good thing you asked. I almost forgot. The sleeping beauty, the princess of Cape Cod, Kate, she called at least three times. She left a number."
He must have given me the number, because when I hung up and the fog cleared, I realized I was holding a menu with a Boston phone number scribbled on it.
The phone rang at least twenty times, but no one on the other end picked up. I hung up and tried again. Same results.
Moving slowly, I walked over to the counter. "Rikki," I said quietly, taking off the apron. "You win. I'm going back to Boston."
A wide grin spread across her face. "I'm glad," she said. "Actually, I'm happy for you and sad for me. Come on, I'll drive you to Penn Station and you can take the train. Okay?"
"Nissim and the guys. What should I say? When should I tell them?"
"Forget it. I'll make your apologies if anyone asks. They won't. Come on, get your bag and let's go."
We were almost at the door when Miller got up from his corner table and came over to us, wiping the pita crumbs and shawarma sauce from his chin - early supper after his late lunch at Odessa.
"You leaving?"
I hadn't expected such a show of sentimentality from him.
"Gone the battle day and its eve on the road, "he surprised me, quoting from a poem I'd had to learn in school so many years ago in Israel.
"Alterman?" I asked.
"Yeah, why are you so surprised? And the king fell on his sword. My favorite poet. One of the good guys, isn't he? I had some pretty good talks about him with General Dayan before he died. Going back to Boston?"
"Yup."I didn't have the patience for him right then.
"Just don't do anything stupid."
"I've already done all the stupid things I could."
"I'm not so sure. I have a feeling there's another screw up down the road, waiting for you, maybe even the biggest one yet."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"David! What’s your ugly face doing here first thing in the morning? Where did I go wrong?"
Danny didn't even try to hide his joy at my return. The huge grin nearly split his fac
e in two. The aching I was still feeling from his hearty slap on the back left no doubt as to the intensity of his excitement. It was seven in the morning. He offered me a seat on his tool box and tried to put the things he had to do that day into some kind of order.
"You going back to the consulate?" he asked, his grin growing even wider when he heard I had no such intention. "So you can help me with a few towing jobs."
"Before I do anything else, I need to use your phone," I said from my seat on the tool box.
I tried the number a dozen times. No answer. Meanwhile, Danny had pulled his ancient tow truck out of the garage. I was glad to be working side by side with him.
"I hope you're not the one who fixed this heap and got it going," I growled as I got in.
"What are you, crazy? It's a '51 Dodge. Even the real old-timers in Boston, the mechanics from way back, can't remember when a museum piece like this was back on the road."
"The old-timers in Boston don't remember much of anything," I said, tactfully trying to remind him of the bitter truth.
He waved off my comment and then, as if he had just remembered, took a long white envelope from his pocket. "For you," he said, and after a thoughtful pause added, "She's an amazing woman, Sarah."
I stuffed the envelope in my pocket. I needed more privacy for that. I was burning with curiosity, but there was also some other pretty heavy baggage that kept me from reading it straight away. There was a dull rage growing in my stomach, along with fear, plain and simple.
We stopped for a hearty breakfast. "Anyplace but a pizzeria," I pleaded before Danny pulled up at a McDonald's. I ordered two Egg McMuffins and a cup of coffee.
"She doesn't live in any trailer," Danny remarked, returning to the subject of my mother and volunteering information I hadn't requested. "She lives on a farm and runs a good business from there. Mostly, she talked about her father who died in an old folks’ home two weeks ago at the age of ninety-six! Can you imagine?"
Her father - the words tugged at my heart. I remembered my grandfather with sadness. It was moving into that home that killed him. There was no doubt in my mind. When I knew him, he was already an old man and even then he wasn't really all there, but he was still a live-wire.
When I was in the Israeli army I rented an apartment near Paratroopers House in Ramat Gan, but I often went to visit the family in Kfar-Vitkin. I'd show up in my uniform, proudly sporting my paratrooper's wings and red cap, and I'd receive a hero's welcome - thanks more than just a little to these trappings. I was considered a "lonely soldier," whose home is away, but the people of Kfar-Vitkingave me a sense of family; it was a good feeling, a sweetness I'd never known before.
My grandfather got up every morning at five-thirty and went through an intricate ritual of getting ready for work. He'd wash himself thoroughly, dress meticulously, and tie his shoelaces with the utmost concentration. Then he'd sip a cup of sweet morning tea and chew on a piece of dry bread. He'd take a hoe from the tool shed beside the house and for three hours would turn the dirt and pull the weeds. He followed a fixed route around the large yard, ensuring that there would never come a day without weeds to uproot. As he worked, he carried on a hushed dialogue with the grass, cursing it angrily, advancing arguments and rejecting them with a raised eyebrow, scolding and sometimes conciliatory - but never toward the weeds. Those he despised. He didn't stop working except to wipe the sweat off when it dripped into his eyes and blinded him. Any attempt to get him to stop or to talk to him during those hours was doomed from the start. Around ten in the morning he would come back into the house, swinging his thick arms contently like a wrestler after a good fight. For the rest of the day he'd eat, take an afternoon nap, and return to the tool shed in the evening to clean the hoe and get it ready for the next morning. Weeding the yard kept him alive.
"I want you to know," he said on one of the rare occasions when he addressed me, "that as long as you keep working, you are in charge of your life. Life has meaning when you have a reason to get up in the morning. The day you stop working, you stop living." The day my grandfather moved to the care home and stopped weeding the yard, his life ended.
To be honest, it wasn't just me that he hardly spoke to. He didn't talk a lot to anyone. My grandmother had died many years before and his sister had moved in to look after him. They were both confirmed grumps. She kept detailed accounts of all the petty insults she suffered at the hands of nearly everyone in the village. He remained placid. A long time before, when he was still in full control of his faculties, he had given up all hope of any joy from his daughter, who had run away to America, or from his son, who had run away from him, God only knows why. Instead, he hid behind a wall of detachment, refraining from any show of emotion and responding to any problem with a routine "whatever." So it was when my father was killed in an avalanche on the ski slopes, and when I got out of the army and decided to go back to Boston and pursue my dream of becoming a lawyer. "Whatever," my grandfather said with a dismissive wave. "It doesn't make any difference."
Five years later, when I got my degree from BU, I had the feeling he might have been right. I'd graduated with honors, but I didn't accept any of the tempting offers that came my way. I'd been bitten by the Israeli bug and couldn't get it out of my system. I put off my career in law until I could feel the time was right. "Until you grow into it," Allie agreed with my decision. In the meantime, I opted for a temporary job as a security guard at the Boston consulate. I had the right military background, and my training was completed in a six-week course in Israel. I really enjoyed the course, the job a lot less.
With uncustomary tact, Danny left me alone with my thoughts and concentrated on his hamburger. He waited until I got up and went over to the counter, returning with a plate of pancakes and another cup of coffee. "Hungry, huh?"
Breakfast over, we headed north to Malden, to pick up a well-traveled Dodge Valiant. The owner had ignored the temperature gauge and didn't add water in time, resulting in a cracked engine block. Furiously, Danny cursed the inhuman car owner he'd never met. I worked hard that morning, which was just what I needed. Around noon, I tried the number again, and this time someone answered.
"Kate?" he repeated. "Did you arrange to call her here at this time? I don't see any woman around here."
"Where is here?"
"Oh, did your company give you the wrong number?" the anonymous voice asked in what I thought might be a sarcastic tone. "This is a phone booth in West Roxbury."
"That's where I arranged to call her," I lied. "Outside McDonald's."
"Then she's been playing games with you," he announced triumphantly. "There's no McDonald's here."
"So what is there?"
"Just a few stores, a hospital, and a little mental home. Is she a little batty, your girlfriend?" he asked, laughing heartily at his own joke.
I slammed down the phone and hoped he was wrong. I ran the possibilities through my mind. She couldn't be hiding in a shopping center. The West Roxbury hospital was huge. It would take weeks to find anyone there. I decided to start with the easiest option - the mental home. "Hey, you've been jerking off enough," Danny called when he saw I'd hung up. "Come on and earn your keep!"
I worked all that afternoon and in the evening fell asleep in Danny's small room. The next day I got up with him at six and took the subway to the mental home. The morning shift was just coming on when I got there. I walked past the guard at the door and stopped at the registration desk. There was no other way in. The doors were all electronic, operated by buttons from the desk, like a lot of security facilities I'd known. Maybe I'd chosen the right place.
A very professional looking nurse gazed at me questioningly.
"I'm looking for my sister," I said, "Kate Beaver."
I looked around nervously, but nothing dramatic happened. A few of the staff came in through the electronic doors.
"Please fill in this visitor's form," the nurse said, holding out a clipboard with a sheet of paper and a pen.
I d
id the best I could filling in all the patient's details. I put down my name and my driver's license and made up the rest. I gave Eric Albott's address and phone number. The nurse asked to see my license, glanced at it, and handed it back.
"First floor, room 16," she said, pressing the button to let me in.
I was stunned; it was too easy. Room 16 was locked; I flashed my prettiest smile at the camera in the corner. From somewhere above, I heard a buzzer and pushed the door open.
A round, bald face smiled at me from inside. Three of them blocked my way. I smiled back at them - and then my world shattered into tiny pieces.
*
When I regained consciousness, I found myself staring up at a white ceiling. My nose was assaulted by a foreign smell of a hospital. The struggle to remember where I was and how I got here seemed familiar somehow. I was having a hard time clearing my head, and for a while I was afraid I'd never come back to the world I knew. I wasn't sure about the day, the time, not even the season of the year or the place.
"David," I said out loud. "My name is David." It helped. The panic slowly waned and I realized I must still be in that mental home. With every breath I took, a sharp pain pierced my body, the result, or so it felt, of a number of broken ribs. It was a few minutes more before I recognized Eric Albott sitting beside my bed. He noticed I had woken up and gently took my hand in his.
"You are David," he reassured me in his grainy voice. His eyes were red.