Forest Dark

  The coat clerk continued to spin the rack lazily, stopping it now and then to inspect the numbers on the hooks. She took down a khaki trench coat. “Not it,” Epstein called out before she could try to pass it off to him. She shot him a disapproving look and went back to her spinning.

  Unable to stand it any longer, Epstein maneuvered his way behind the table. The clerk leaped back with exaggerated surprise, as if she expected him to club her over the head. But her expression was replaced by one more smug as Epstein began to look through the coats himself without luck. When she limped off to try to take Menachem Klausner’s chip, the sermon-maker with a three-thousand-year-old bloodline protested—“No, no. I don’t mind waiting. What does the coat look like, Jules?”

  “It’s navy,” Epstein muttered, slapping the tweed and woolen sleeves as they swung past. But the coat, which he could not say was rather like the one on the table, only far softer and more expensive, was nowhere to be found. “This is ridiculous,” he sputtered. “Someone must have taken it.”

  Epstein could have sworn that he heard the clerk laugh. But when he spun around to look, her stooped, squarish back was turned and she was already helping the person in line behind Klausner. Epstein felt the heat rise to his face and his throat constrict. It was one thing to give away millions of his own volition, but to have the coat taken off his back was something else. All he wanted was to be away from there, to walk alone through the park in his own coat.

  There was a ring as the elevator arrived and its doors rolled open. Without another word, Epstein snatched the coat lying on the table and hurried toward it. Klausner called after him, but the doors closed just in time and the elevator carried Epstein down alone through the floors.

  At the hotel’s side exit Abu Mazen’s men were piling into the limousine. On the last of them Epstein spotted his coat. “Hey!” he shouted, waving the rough garment in his arm. “HEY! You’re wearing my coat!” But the man didn’t hear or chose not to, and as he slammed the door behind him, the limo pulled away from the curb and floated down Fifty-Eighth Street.

  Epstein looked after it in disbelief. The hotel doorman eyed him nervously, concerned, perhaps, that he might make a scene. Glancing morosely at the coat in his hands, Epstein sighed instead and dipped one arm and then the other into the sleeves and shrugged it onto his shoulders. The cuffs hung over his knuckles. As he crossed Central Park South, a cold gust blew through the thin material, and Epstein reached instinctively into his pockets for his leather gloves. But all he came up with was a little tin box of mints printed with Arabic script. He popped one into his mouth and began to suck; it was so spicy it made his eyes tear. So that was how they grew the hair on their chests. He descended the stairs and, entering the park, made his way along the path that edged the pond filled with reeds.

  The sky was a dusty rose now, failing orange to the west. Soon the lamps would come on. The wind picked up, and overhead a white plastic bag billowed past, slowly changing shape.

  The soul is a sea that we swim in. It has no shore on this side, and only far away, on the other side, is there a shore, and that is God.

  It was a line from the little green book Maya had given him for his birthday almost two months ago, parts of which he had read so many times that he knew them by heart. Passing a bench, Epstein doubled back and sat down, reaching into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. Recalling that it was empty, he jumped up in alarm. The book! He’d left it in his coat! His coat, which at the moment was making its way east on the back of one of Abbas’s henchmen. He fumbled around for his phone to text his assistant, Sharon. But the phone was also nowhere to be found. “Fuck!” Epstein shouted. A mother pushing a double stroller along the path gave him a wary look and increased her speed.

  “Hey!” Epstein shouted, “Excuse me!” The woman glanced back, but continued moving briskly. Epstein ran after her. “Listen,” he said falling breathlessly in step beside her, “I just realized I misplaced my phone. Can I borrow yours a second?”

  The woman glanced at her children—twins, it seemed, bundled into fur-lined sleeping bags, noses wet and dark eyes alert. With a clenched jaw, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. Epstein plucked it out of her palm, turned his back on her, and dialed his own number. It rang through to his voice mail. Had he turned his phone off earlier, at the closing for the loan, or was it Abbas’s man who’d done it? The thought of his calls going through to the Palestinian filled him with anxiety. He dialed Sharon’s number, but there was no answer there, either.

  “Just a quick text,” Epstein explained, and with numb fingers tapped out the message: Contact UN Security Council ASAP. Coat mix-up at Plaza. One of Abbas’s cronies made off with mine: Loro Piana, navy cashmere. He pressed send, then typed another line: Phone and other valuables in coat pocket. But just as he was about to shoot that one off, too, he thought better of it and erased it, lest he tip Abbas’s man off to what he unknowingly had in his possession. But, no: that was ridiculous. What could he possibly want with a stranger’s phone and an obscure book by a dead Israeli poet?

  The twins started to sneeze and snuffle, while the mother shifted impatiently from foot to foot. Epstein, who had no experience with the receiving side of charity, retyped the text, sent it, and went on holding the phone, waiting for it to buzz to life with the assistant’s response. But it remained inert in his hands. Where the hell was she? Not my phone, obviously, he typed. Will try you again soon. He turned to the woman, who grabbed back the phone with a grunt of exasperation and marched off, not bothering to say good-bye.

  He was supposed to meet Maura at Avery Fisher Hall in forty-five minutes. They had known each other since they were children, and after his divorce Maura had become his frequent companion at concerts. Epstein began to angle west and northward, cutting across the grass, frantically composing texts in his head. But as he passed a bush, a flock of brown sparrows shot up from it and scattered into the dusky sky. At their sudden burst of freedom, Epstein felt a wave of consolation. It was only an old book, wasn’t it? Surely he could track down another copy. He would put Sharon on the case. Or better yet, why not just let the book go as easily as it had come? Hadn’t he already taken what he needed from it?

  Lost in thought, he entered a tunnel under a pedestrian overpass. As he shivered in the dank air, a homeless man stepped out of the dark and into Epstein’s path. His hair was long and matted, and he reeked of urine and something festering. Epstein removed a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet and stuffed it into the man’s callused palm. As an afterthought, he fished out the box of mints and offered those as well. But it was the wrong decision because now the man moved jerkily, and in the darkness Epstein saw the flash of a knife.

  “Gimme the wallet,” he grunted.

  Epstein was surprised—Really? Could the afternoon strip him any further? Had he given so much that, stinking of benefaction, the world now felt free to take from him? Or, just the opposite, was it trying to tell him that he hadn’t yet given enough, that it wouldn’t be enough until there was nothing left? And was it really possible that there was still a mugger left standing in Central Park?

  Surprised, yes, but not frightened. He’d dealt with plenty of lunatics in his life. It might even be said that, as an attorney, he possessed a certain gift with them. He assessed the situation: the knife wasn’t large. It could hurt but not kill.

  “All right, then,” he began calmly. “How about if I give you the cash? There must be at least three hundred dollars in here, maybe more. You take it all, and I’ll just keep the cards. You don’t have any use for those—they’ll be canceled in two minutes, and anyway you’ll probably just toss them in the trash. This way we both go away happy.” As Epstein spoke, he held the wallet in front of him, away from his body, and slowly removed the wad of bills. The man snatched it. But he wasn’t through with Epstein apparently, for now he was barking something else. Epstein failed to understand.

  “What?”

  The man raked the blade qu
ickly across Epstein’s breast. “What’s in there?”

  Epstein stepped back, clamping his hand over his heart.

  “Where?” he gasped.

  “On the inside!”

  “Nothing,” he said quietly.

  “Show me,” the homeless man said, or so Epstein thought; it was almost impossible to make out his slurred speech. The thought of his father, whose own speech had become permanently slurred after a stroke, flashed through Epstein’s mind, while the man continued to breathe heavily, weapon poised.

  Slowly, Epstein unbuttoned the coat that wasn’t his, and then the gray flannel suit jacket that was. He opened the silk-lined pocket that usually held the little green book, and tipped forward on his toes to show the man that it was empty. It was all so absurd that he might have laughed, had there not been a knife so near his throat. Perhaps it could kill after all. Glancing down, Epstein saw himself lying underfoot in a pool of blood, unable to call for help. A question came into focus in his mind, one that had lingered vaguely for some weeks, and now he tried it, as if to test its fit: Had the hand of God reached down and pointed at him? But why him? When he looked up again, the knife was gone, and the man had turned and was hurrying away. Epstein stood frozen for a moment, until the man disappeared into the circle of light at the other end, and he was left alone in the tunnel. Only when he lifted his hand to touch his throat did he realize that his fingers were shaking.

  Ten minutes later, having safely arrived in the lobby of the Dakota, Epstein was borrowing another phone. “I’m a friend of the Rosenblatts’,” he’d told the doorman. “I was just robbed. My phone, too.” The doorman lifted the house phone to call up to 14B. “Don’t bother,” Epstein said quickly. “I’ll just make a call and be on my way.” He reached behind the desk and dialed himself once more. It went through to his voice again, recorded long ago but still arriving. He cut the line and called Sharon. She picked up, full of apologies for having missed his earlier call. She’d already put in calls to the UN. Abbas was speaking in fifteen minutes, and at the moment no one in his party could be reached, but she was getting in a cab now and would make sure to intercept them before they left the building. Epstein told her to call Maura to say that she should go ahead to the concert without him.

  “Tell her I was mugged,” he said.

  “OK, you were mugged,” said Sharon.

  “I really was,” Epstein said, more softly than he had meant to, for once again he saw himself sprawled on the ground, the dark blood slowly spreading. Glancing up, he caught eyes with the doorman, who he saw didn’t believe him either.

  “Seriously?” his assistant asked.

  Epstein cut her off: “I’ll be home in half an hour. Call me then.”

  “Listen,” he said to the doorman, “I’m in a pinch. Can you lend me a twenty? I’ll remember you at Christmas. In the meantime, the Rosenblatts are good for it.”

  Having handed over the bills, the doorman hailed a cab going south on Central Park West. Having nothing left to tip him with, neither cash nor rings, Epstein offered only a humble nod and gave the address of his building, across the park and fifteen blocks north. The taxi driver shook his head in annoyance, rolled down the window, and spat thickly. It was always the same: if you diverted them from their natural course and asked them to reverse direction, they always took it badly. It was a nearly universal aspect of the psychology of New York City taxi drivers, Epstein had often lectured to anyone who was with him in the backseat. Once they were in motion, having been stymied by traffic jams and red lights, everything in them longed to continue the motion. That money was to be made by turning around and going in the opposite direction hardly mattered at the moment the news was delivered: they felt it as a defeat and resented it.

  The atmosphere in the cab only darkened when the traffic going uptown on Madison turned out to be at a dead standstill, and the streets going west were blocked off. Epstein rolled down the window and called to a policeman, fat and muscular like a ballplayer, stationed by a sawhorse.

  “What’s going on here?”

  “They’re filming a movie,” the officer reported dully, scanning the sky for fly balls.

  “You’re kidding me, right? That’s the second time this month! Who told Bloomberg he could sell the city to Hollywood? Some of us still happen to live here!”

  Released from the smelly cab, Epstein marched down Eighty-Fifth Street, which was lined with humming trailers powered by a giant, roaring generator. Passing the catering table, he lifted a doughnut without slowing down and bit into it, the jelly spurting.

  But when he turned onto Fifth Avenue, he halted, for there he found that snow had fallen. The trees, lit by huge lights, were cloaked in white, and along the sidewalk great drifts sparkled like mica. All was silent and sedated; even the team of black horses hitched to a hearse stood unmoving with bowed heads, the snow swirling down around them. Through the carriage’s glass windows, Epstein saw the long shadow of an ebony coffin. A flood of grave respect coursed through him—not just the reflexive awe one feels at the passing of life, but something else, too: a sense of what the world, with its unfathomable pockets, was capable of. But it was fleeting. A moment later the camera crane came rolling down the street, and the magic was broken.

  As at last he came in sight of the warmly lit lobby of his building, a wave of exhaustion broke over Epstein. All he wanted now was to be home, where he could ease himself into the giant bathtub and let the day drain away. But as he began to walk toward the entrance, he was thwarted once more, this time by a woman in a puffy anorak wielding a clipboard.

  “They’re shooting!” she hissed. “You have to wait at the corner.”

  “I live here,” Epstein snapped back.

  “So do plenty of others, and they’re all waiting. Have some patience.”

  But Epstein was all out of patience, and when the woman glanced back at the creaking hearse now starting up behind the horses, he sidestepped her and, with a last burst of strength, began to sprint toward the building. He could see Haaroon, the doorman, peering out at the action on the street. He was always there, face to the glass. When there was no excitement, he liked to scan the sky for a sighting of the red-tailed hawk that nested on a ledge down the block. At the last moment Haaroon caught sight of Epstein barreling toward him, and with a look of surprise pulled open the door just before the tenant of Penthouse B could smack into it. Epstein sailed smoothly in, and the doorman bolted the door shut again, spun around, and flattened his back against it.

  “It’s a movie, Haaroon, not a revolution,” Epstein said, breathing hard.

  Ever amazed at the new ways of his adopted country, the doorman nodded and straightened the heavy green cape with golden buttons that was his uniform in the cold months. Even confined indoors, he had refused to remove it.

  “You know what’s wrong with this city?” Epstein said.

  “What, sir?” Haaroon asked.

  But, catching the doorman’s earnest eyes, still filled with wonder after five years of watching Fifth Avenue go past, Epstein thought better of it and let it go. The doorman’s hands were bare, and suddenly Epstein wished to ask him what he had done with the signet ring. But here, too, he swallowed his words.

  When the wood-paneled elevator opened to the familiar colored rug from Isfahan in his foyer, Epstein sighed with relief. Once inside, he turned on the lamp, hung the wrong coat in the closet, and put on his slippers. He had lived here for ten months since he and Lianne had divorced, and there were still nights when he missed his wife’s body in the bed beside him. He had slept next to her for thirty-six years, and the mattress felt different without her weight, however slight, and without the rhythm of her breath the dark had no measure. There were times he woke feeling cold from the lack of the heat that once came from between her thighs and behind her knees. He might have even called her, if he could have momentarily forgotten that he already knew everything she could possibly say. In truth, if he was touched by longing, it was not for what
he’d had and given up.

  The apartment wasn’t large, but its main rooms overlooked Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum to the south, where the Temple of Dendur was housed under glass. This nearness to the ancient world meant something to him; though the Roman copy of an Egyptian temple had itself never impressed him, catching sight of it at night, he sometimes felt his lungs inflate, as if his body were remembering what it had forgotten about the vastness of time. What it had been necessary to forget, in order to believe in the grandness and the uniqueness of the things that happened to one, which could mark life the way a new combination of letters could be impressed on the ribbon of a typewriter. But he was no longer young. He was made of matter more ancient than any temple, and lately something was returning to him. Was coming back into him, as water comes back into a dry riverbed it formed long ago.

  Now that the walls of the apartment were rid of paintings, and he had given away the expensive furniture, he needed only stand in the middle of the empty living room, looking out at the darkly moving treetops, to feel goose bumps rise on his arms. For what? Simply the fact that he was still there. That he had been alive long enough to arrive at a point where the circle was drawing to a close, that it had almost been too late, he had very nearly missed it, but in the nick of time he had become aware of it. Of what? Of time as a shaft of light moving across the floor, and how at the end of its long tail was the light falling across the parquet in the house where he had been a child, in Long Beach. Or the sky over his head, which was the same sky he had walked under since he was a boy. No, it was more than that. He had rarely lifted his head above the powerful currents of his life, being too busy plunging through them. But there were moments now when he saw the whole view, all the way to the horizon. And it filled him equally with joy and with yearning.

  Still here. Stripped of furnishings, of cash, of phone, of the coat on his back, but not yet, after all, ethereal, Epstein felt a gnawing in the pit of his stomach. He’d barely eaten at the Plaza, and the doughnut had whetted his appetite. Poking in the refrigerator, he discovered a chicken leg that the chef who cooked for him three times a week had left, and ate it standing at the window. A great-great-great-great-great-grandrelative of David. The boy shepherd who slung a stone at the head of Goliath, of whom the women used to say “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands,” but whom, so that he should not remain a cold and calculating brute, so that he be given Jewish softness, Jewish intelligence, Jewish depth, they later made author of the most beautiful poetry ever written. Epstein smiled. What else was there still to learn about himself? The chicken was good, but before he got to the bone he tossed the rest in the trash. Reaching up to open the cabinet for a glass, he thought better of it, ducked his head under the tap, and drank thirstily.