The Speed of Life

by James Victor Jordan

  “It’s Friday night,” I said. “Am I keeping you from Shabbat services?”

  “Since Harold died I hardly go. Maybe I should have checked ‘not very religious,’ too.”

  During intermission she leaned against a column in the orchestra-level lobby. Wearing stiletto heels and décolletage, she was a latter-day Aphrodite.

  “Would you like something to drink?” I said.

  “Red wine?” she said. Then she took hold of my sport coat and pulled me close, caressing my inner thigh with her knee. She whispered, “After the show will you be ready for lesson two?”

  “We can leave now,” I said.

  “But I want to find out how it ends.”

  “You won’t like it,” I said. “It’s not happy.”

  “You devil! You’ve seen it before. Don’t tell me what happens.”

  I took the escalator to the wine bar on the mezzanine level. On my way back I imagined Bunny standing in front of me, auburn hair spilling over bare shoulders, the back of her dress unzipped, candlelight and the majesty of Beethoven’s Eroica enhancing the moment. She lowered her dress to her waist, lingering before unhooking her bra and letting it fall.

  Before it hit the floor, I was startled by a young man wearing a full-length fur coat who screamed, “Get the fuck out of my life!” He shrugged under an arm draped over his shoulder, lurching into my path, splattering wine on my white shirt.

  His companion, an older man, steel-gray hair hanging over his collar, wearing a blue blazer and red ascot, tried to mitigate the damage. “I’m ’tho ’thorry,” he said, patting his handkerchief against my chest, creating a Rorschach inkblot in red and white.

  Classic personification of archetype. I had to love them.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” It was a new voice, shrill, belonging to a mousy woman, also wearing fur. “What’s going on?” She put her arm around the older man.

  The younger man looked at the floor, his bravado dissolved, his voice a simpering wisp. “Look what Daddy did,” he said. “He made that man spill wine on my mink.”

  “It-it’s chi-chin-Chinchilla,” the father said. “How many t-t-times do I have to t-tell you that, son?”

  “One day,” the woman said to her son, “you will regret the way you treated us with disrespect.”

  The father offered to pay for the cleaning, but I had more pressing matters in mind.

  When I stepped off the escalator, Bunny was waiting. She kissed me, then took the wine.

  “What happened?”

  “Don’t ask,” I said.

  She sipped the wine. “This is awful,” she said, dropping it into the trash.

  After the show, inching our way up Hollywood Boulevard, Bunny stroked my thigh.

  “Will you come to a fundraiser I’m hosting next Saturday?” she said.

  “Sure. What’s the cause?”

  She kicked off her heels, extended her tongue, curling it until it touched her upper lip. Her short dress made me imagine what was concealed above the hem. Her eyes followed mine. She shifted in her seat, moving her thighs farther apart. “Abolishing Medicare—”

  “You’re joking?” I said.

  “. . . as we know it.” She rolled her wrist and extended her index finger as if she were royalty, pointing to the cars in the next lane. “The light’s green.”

  I was thinking furiously, at a loss for words, pulling into the intersection, when Bunny said with alarm, pointing, “That’s Abe.”

  Near the flowerbeds on the grounds of the Fifth Church of Christ Science, a cop holding a baton was jawboning three white punks dressed, coiffed, and pierced to personify their rebellion against conformity: multi-hued Mohawk haircuts, lip studs, and nose rings. The cop stood between the punks and a slender young black man wearing a dark suit, white shirt and a thin, dark tie.

  I took my camera out of the center console and handed it to Bunny. “Do you know how to use this?” I said. She had already turned the camera on, switched the mode to live view, and depressed the red video record button

  “Which one is Abe?” I said. “The one wearing a suit?”

  “His father was killed a few months ago, hit and run.” She pointed to her synagogue, a half mile up the street. “He must be walking home from services.”

  “He’s Jewish?”

  “Yes,” she said, “he’s Jewish— and black.”

  I pulled the Jeep to the curb and heard the cop say, "I said, 'disperse.'"

  Abe yelled, “Racist pigs!”

  The cop, perhaps unaware of how close he was to Abe, but perhaps not, whirled. The butt of his baton struck Abe’s forehead, opening a gash above his eye. He collapsed. The punks cheered.

  I got out of the Jeep and said to the cop, “Call an ambulance.”

  The cop said to me, “Get back in your car.” His voice was calm, but he was slapping the baton against an open hand. The veins on his biceps bulged. He looked as if he spent half his time lifting weights and the other half taking steroids. His name tag said Vasquez. I didn’t get the impression the Fourth Amend-ment was on his mind. If anything, he was thinking excessive force was a virtue.

  “Don’t swing that club again,” Bunny yelled. She was standing on the sidewalk in her stocking feet, pointing my camera at Vasquez; the recording light blinked.

  “Abe?” she yelled. He didn’t stir. “Are you okay?”

  “Fuck you, bitch,” one of the punks hooted.

  “Nigger lover,” another one hollered.

  “Charming,” Bunny said.

  Vasquez gave the punks a menacing look; still jeering, they sauntered off.

  Bunny hurried toward Abe; before she reached him, the cop blocked her path.

  Bunny said, “I’m a doctor—”

  A siren blasted. A police car – lights flashing – pulled up to the curb behind the Jeep. The cop riding shotgun swung his car door open and got out, pointing a gun at Bunny. A metallic voice resonated from a speaker on the roof of the squad car, “Drop your weapon; raise your hands.”

  Bunny dropped my camera on the lawn and raised her hands, which were steady, her body language bespeaking far greater calm than I could summon.

  The cop who’d been driving got out of the car and briskly walked toward Vasquez and me. Did I know a sergeant with a salt-and-pepper mustache? I almost expected him to say, How ya doin’, Georges? But he didn’t. He walked past me as if I weren't there.

  The sergeant’s partner put away his gun and got a first-aid kit.

  Bunny knelt beside Abe.

  Abe groaned, “Prium non nocere.”

  “Prium non nocere illico,” she said.

  The sergeant was pointing at my camera.

  Vásquez said, “Ninguna manera que jode.”

  I walked up to them.

  “Have we met?” I said to the sergeant. He avoided eye contact. “I’m Georges Bohem, counsel for the Police League Pension Fund.” I offered him my hand; he ignored it. “My work for the league is pro bono,” I added.

  “Not your man,” he said, still not looking at me.

  “A lawyer,” Vasquez said. “What’d I tell you?”

  The sergeant seemed to consider this. Then he looked at me, addressing me in the third person. “But he doesn’t sue cops?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  My answer was followed by a palpable silence as the sergeant looked at his partner helping Bunny with Abe, then at my camera. He stepped very close, finally offering me his hand. “Frank Artaza. Appreciate your work for the League,” he said, adding, “Pro bono.”

  Nodding toward Bunny and Abe, the sergeant said, “What language was that?”

  “Latin. He said, ‘Do no harm.’ She said, ‘Do no immediate harm.’”

  He looked at me with incomprehension.

  “It’s the Hippocratic Oath,” I said. I still couldn’t detect a reaction. “He was joking,” I said. “He told Dr. Siegel not to make his injuries worse.”

  “She’s a doctor?” the sergeant said. “Thou
ght she was a celebrity in that outfit.”

  Vasquez got Abe’s driver’s license. “Abebe Demeke,” he said. “No record, no warrants. She says he’s a medical student at UCLA.”

  As I walked away from the cops, the sergeant said, “They were just driving by?”

  “I didn't ask. Maybe they were stalking him.”

  Bunny and Abe were sitting on the lawn, quietly arguing when I came over to introduce myself. Abe was holding a blood-stained towel to his forehead.

  Bunny said to me, “May I use your phone? Mine’s in the car.”

  I handed it to her and she punched in a number.

  I held out my hand to Abe. “Georges Bohem.”

  Abe held out his hand, tried to get up, but fell back into a sitting position on the lawn.

  Still holding the phone to her ear, Bunny said in a querulous tone, “Abe!”

  Abe’s hand was still extended. I took it and we shook.

  “Abe Demeke,” he said, softly, deferentially. “Wish the circumstances were otherwise.”

  Still holding my phone, Bunny said, “I couldn’t reach Ras, left voice mail.”

  “Ras?” I said, sitting on the lawn beside them.

  “My brother,” Abe said. He smiled mischievously. “There’re too many doctors in our family.”

  “We’re not going to get into that tonight,” Bunny said. She made another call.

  Abe said, “Bunny, I’m okay.”

  Bunny was having none of it. “You need a few stitches,” she said. She’d spoken to a friend, a neurologist in the emergency department at UCLA hospital. Abe was going there. Bunny’s neurologist friend would call her and Ras after he’d examined Abe.

  Still protesting, Abe left in an ambulance. As it drove away, Bunny put her arms around me, pressing her chest against mine, shivering. I felt her heartbeat.

  “I’m a mess,” she said.

  “I’ve never seen anyone more beautiful.” The words were still on my lips when she kissed me.

  Traffic was a stop-and-go echo—abolish Medicare, abolish Medicare.

  I took Vine to Sunset; the congestion was worse, but my frustration with the traffic was trifling compared to the resentment smoldering within me like a fire in the hold of a ship, unseen on the main deck but dangerous nonetheless.

  “I don’t understand,” I said, “abolishing Medicare. We’ve reformed healthcare.”

  “We didn’t get it right,” she said.

  “That’s a Tea Party slogan!” I said.

  “Let’s not do this,” she said.

  “It’s code to camouflage right-wing agendas.”

  “I don’t talk code. You know what I mean?” she said, her voice silky. “So if I say the government has to respect the Constitution, that’s exactly what I mean, no more, no less.”

  “More code,” I said. She folded her hands in her lap. A light rain fell.

  When we arrived at her home, she surprised me, saying, “C’mon in for a nightcap.”

  “I can’t drink. I have to drive.”

  “Not tonight you don’t,” she said, opening her car door, looking at me seductively as if a harsh word hadn’t been spoken.

  She put on a Mozart symphony, dimmed the living room lights.

  “‘Abolish Medicare as we know it’ sounds familiar,” I said, pacing.

  “I’m prescribing an extra-dry martini.” She returned from the kitchen with two freezer-chilled martini glasses, vodka, vermouth, a cocktail shaker, and a bucket of ice.

  “Are you talking vouchers?” I said.

  “Making a perfect martini isn’t simple. You chill the vodka without letting it get watery. The lazy woman’s solution is to keep a bottle in the freezer but that makes premium vodka syrupy and masks its aroma.” She waved the open bottle close to her nose and inhaled, as if judging a fine wine. “Subtlety separates the sublime from the banal. You know what I mean?” She swirled two drops of vermouth in each glass and emptied them, filled the cocktail shaker with ice, then vodka, shook it briskly, then strained the drinks through the ice. She added a twist of lemon.

  “Only a philistine would eat an olive with a martini.” She shuddered. “Like pouring salt into a glass of Dom Pérignon.”

  She sat on the sofa, patted the cushion beside her. “Try it.”

  I sat in an armchair beside the sofa, sipped the cocktail.

  “How does the government infringe your constitutional rights?”

  “Come over here and cuddle.”

  “Look,” I said, “if we have sex—”

  “Did I suggest sex?” she said. “Why be hasty?” She took my hand, pulling me gently toward her. “Okay. I’ll talk Medicare and the Constitution; maybe that’ll put us in the mood.”

  I sat beside her. She unbuttoned my shirt. In a soothing voice, between interrogatives such as “How does that feel?” and “Is that better?” and sipping our drinks, she massaged my back and told me that she and her partners were aggrieved by the inefficiencies of Medicare.

  “Doctors, hospitals, and taxpayers shoulder the burden while the pharmaceutical and health-insurance companies make money like slot machines. They don’t break laws; they make them.”

  I was succumbing to the melody of her voice, its cadence, my suspicions allayed, my muscles relaxed, the vodka having its effect, ready to move on.

  But when the back massage ended; her oratory intensified. As she spoke, her hands moved in syncopation incessantly, indefatigability, inexorably— rhythmically punctuating each point with a downward thrust or a wagging finger as if delivering a sermon, a call for justice, a call to arms.

  “Whoa,” I said, interrupting her rush of words. “Explain it later, your plan to reform—”

  “Abolish and replace.”

  “— Medicare by raising money for the Tea Party.”

  “Ideologies are irrelevant, you know? Ideas matter, action matters, the Constitution matters.”

  “How does this work, promoting a liberal cause by donating to a right-wing movement?”

  “What’s liberal?” she said.

  “Containing medical costs altruistically.”

  “Altruism,” she said, “like privacy, is fiction.”

  She hurried on. Her medical partnership had the financial means to publicize its views with TV and radio ads. So they hired a campaign-finance attorney, who advised them to form a non-profit political action committee. “The attorney said we’d have to ask the F.E.C. for advisory opinions to avoid the risk of criminal prosecution. We need government permission to exercise free speech.”

  “It levels the playing field,” I said.

  She stood. “Good intention is no defense to censorship.”

  “You’re proposing—” I said.

  “Georges, don’t tell me what I’m proposing. You say you’re liberal. Liberal means open-minded, but what you really say is you’re unwilling to consider change. That’s intolerance.”

  “It’s not intolerance. It’s principle.”

  “Your problem is you can’t tell the difference— my problem is you can’t respect our differences.” She opened a journal, thumbed through pages.

  “Citizens United is letting the oligarchy buy elections,” I said. “Your free speech talk is naïve.”

  She slammed the journal on the end table. “I won’t be patronized!”

  At her front door she said, “And I thought you were a mensch.”

  I walked through the rain from the portico to her driveway, following granite steps that meandered past pristine koi ponds and formal English gardens. In the Jeep, I looked at Bunny’s Bel Air home, really seeing it for the first time. I should have known, a Tea Party house.

  A second-floor room filled with light. Bunny, naked to the waist, led me in. Through the window, I saw myself in the Jeep, a corked bottle bobbing on roiling seas. Bunny slipped her arms around me, pressed her breasts against my naked back. Her silhouette moved behind drawn shades. I’d meant to give her the memory card from my camera.

  At the hos
pital, when I found Abe, he was slipping into his suit jacket. His head was bandaged.

  “Georges,” he said. “May I trouble you for a ride home?”

  “You hungry?”

  “Famished,” he said.

  We drove to Dolores’s, the last of the all-night diners in West Los Angeles. The DJ on the radio announced that storms were stacked up off the coast like planes in holding patterns.

  I told Abe about the recording of the cop hitting him, told him he could use it as evidence.

  “A lawyer with a camcorder in his car,” he said with a little laugh.

  I laughed too, just as I always did when hearing a lawyer joke, imagining most lawyers did the same to soften the sting of the slur. “That’s a good one,” I said. “My son’s on the track team at his high school. There was a meet yesterday. I left the camera in the car.”

  “Hey, it’s okay, Georges, everybody’s got to make a buck,” he said.

  My voice quavered. “I’m not an ambulance chaser.”

  “You’re all tense,” he said. “I’m the one who got beat up tonight.”

  We made it to Dolores’s before the rain became torrential. Kitaru, a short, wiry man, who’d served me late-night meals at Dolores’s for years, showed us to a booth upholstered in orange vinyl adjoining a large window framed by gray-and-pink curtains with a ruffled valance. A green cone-shaped pendant lantern hung above each table. Glistening waves of raindrops scrolled across the glass. Shivering, I took off my jacket. Goosebumps covered my arms. I rubbed my hands together and blew on them, trying to get warm.

  After Kitaru brought our meal, I said, “Bunny told me about your father. I’m sorry.”

  I wanted to say something about Jake, that like Abe’s father, he’d been killed in his prime by an errant driver. But there was no way to compare our losses, and it wasn’t the right time to talk about the twin cruelties of death: losing those we loved and the passing of our own life.

  We ate in silence, and I thought about my father, the man he’d been. Now his memory loss was so great that he couldn’t recognize his grandson. He’d already suffered a death of sorts. I thought about the seasons of life, that it was too early a season in Abe’s father’s life for him to have passed, that Abe’s father must have been my age. I wondered what it would be like for Dante if I were to die in middle age. Soon, Dante would be gone, living at college. Rowdy teens breezed into Dolores’s, opening the doors to chilled winds and sheets of rain.