Ball

by Tara Ison

  She is bright and pretty and her SAT scores were higher than his, he tells me, although he doesn’t give me the actual number. She is trying to make it as an actress and is really very, very talented. They have just found an apartment together—crappy, but with his pay cut and, you know, her money situation, it’s not too bad.

  We are at the edge of the evening where we usually either turn to sex or we do not, and at this exact moment he gets up to call her, to tell her he will be home soon. It’s after two in the morning. Zosia looks at him, at me, hopefully, ignoring the impending implication of his empty chair. I pick her up. I’d always wanted a dog—this is the first home where I could have one. She has come into my life at just the right time.

  “CHUCK SAYS YOU guys talked to the police?” Missy asks me in the kitchen; she has followed, helpfully, to help me pour the white wine.

  “Yeah. After the fourth time they finally came and took a report.”

  “Wow . . . and this is such a nice neighborhood.”

  “This place is fucking great!” Chas yells from the living room. Missy and I join him, Zosia trotting after us. “I told you this place was great,” he says to Missy as she hands him his wine. “Thank you, sweetie.”

  “It really is. It’s beautiful,” she says to me.

  “Thanks.” We sit on my new couch, my new chair. Missy leans over to run her veinless, tendonless hand along the gleaming hardwood floor. Their ratty new apartment, I know, is in a lesser area of Santa Monica and has shag chartreuse carpeting.

  “Chuck says you looked at, what, like over a hundred condos?”

  “Oh, thanks,” I say to him. “Sure, make me look like that.”

  He shrugs. “You’re selective. You’re persistent. It paid off, you got the right place.”

  “Except for Nazi vandals.”

  “Dyslexic Nazi vandals,” he says.

  “Oh, yes,” Missy says, “Chuck told me the swastikas are wrong?”

  “They’re backwards. I want to post a notice that says ‘Learn to draw a proper swastika, you fascist prick’.”

  “You stupid fascist prick’,” he adds.

  “Oh, come on. I can just hear you, pleading this guy’s case. ‘Your Honor, this isn’t a Nazi swastika! This is the ancient Aztec symbol of peace!’” I tell him, and he laughs.

  “Is that really what it means?” Missy asks him. He nods. Zosia pushes a ball toward her; Missy pats her gingerly, then looks like she wants to wash her lovely, lotus-like hands.

  “We’re installing a surveillance camera,” I tell them. “In the lobby.”

  “Is that legal?” Missy asks Chas. He nods again. “Okay, doggy, go on,” she says.

  “The cops suggested it to us.”

  “Sure, they don’t have to pay for it,” he says.

  “It’s going to cost the Association a few thousand dollars.”

  “Go on, doggy.”

  “Hey, come here, puppy. . . .” Chas picks up Zosia, to distract her from Missy.

  “It’s worth it. The whole building’s terrified. We’re the Jewish Home for the Aged here.”

  “It is terrifying,” Missy says.

  “It’s a felony,” he tells her.

  “Really?”

  “Four felonies,” I point out. “Each one’s a separate charge. Hate Crime Unit took the report. Of course, the detective made a point of telling me he didn’t believe in ‘hate crime’ legislation. ‘Why should burning a black church be any worse than burning anyone’s home?’”

  “Cops. . . .” Chas shakes his head.

  “Excuse me, darling, you’d be the first to claim we violated the Nazis’ civil rights by making the building too difficult to break in to,” I tell him.

  “You’re actually denying him freedom of speech. Freedom of expression.”

  “You’d get this guy off?”

  “Nah. I want to fry the bastard.” He rubs Zosia behind the ears. “Woodja woodja woodja.”

  “You’re the voice of the downtrodden. The defender of the oppressed, the victimized, the unwashed masses.”

  “Oh, you guys,” says Missy, smiling.

  “Yeah, but you’re a dear friend,” he says. “You catch him on video, I say screw the trial. Crucify him. Howsat? Howsat feel?” Zosia loves him madly. “I’d love to get a dog. Missy is not a dog person.”

  “Well . . .” she hedges, glancing at me. She is even more beautiful, I think, than Chas’s earlier, dumped fiancée, the Senator’s Wife in the looking-down-on-me photo. “This one’s really cute, though,” she says. “I could have one like this.”

  “There isn’t another one like this,” he tells her.

  “That’s very true. She’s ethereal,” I say.

  “Terribly ethereal,” he agrees.

  “I’m knitting her a sweater,” I announce.

  “You are? That’s so adorable!” Missy smiles at him, smiles at me. She is happy at becoming dear friends with Chas’s dear friend and her dear little dog.

  Chas follows me into the kitchen for more chips, the entire basket of which he and I have devoured but Missy hasn’t touched. He hops up to sit on the counter while I tear open a fresh bag.

  “You know, the comps on this place have already gone up,” I tell him. “It’s already worth maybe thirty thousand more than I paid.”

  “The perfect time to buy,” he says. “You are very wise. You made a fucking brilliant choice.”

  As I pass with the basket he catches me within the V of his legs; I stop, and his knees tighten slightly at either side of my waist. I look down at the chips and he tugs me forward, rests his chin on top of my head. We stay this way for a moment, but I don’t know what this is. Other than exactly a moment I wanted, and another thing to hate him for.

  “Hey, you guys?” we hear Missy call. He takes his time releasing me, then lets me go ahead of him into the living room.

  “OKAY, SO, THE next thing, you gotta set the timer right,” Cliff tells us. Cliff is our surveillance specialist. He has installed a fake fire detector—we had been given a choice of fake fire detector, fake briefcase, or fake teddy bear—in the lobby, its tiny hidden camera cued on the bulletin board and wired to a monitor hidden in the storage room. “It tells you the date and time, shows it right on the video. Important for when you go to court.” LouAnn and I nod, take notes. “How many times this goon show up?”

  “Fourteen,” LouAnn tells him. “We have fourteen flyers slashed with swastikas.” LouAnn is keeping a file of them, all the dates listed, just as the police instructed. Every time one is swastika’d we immediately replace it, so all the residents coming on or off the elevator, collecting their mail, don’t have to walk by it and get traumatized. Everyone is waiting, hoping, praying, they tell us, for this to end, for us to do something.

  “He does it sometime between midnight and 6:00 AM. Every third or fourth night,” I say.

  “We thought about staking out the lobby ourselves, but . . .”

  “No, no, you ladies are doing the right thing.” Cliff checks his watch and programs in the correct date and time. “You don’t want anyone getting hurt. You get him on camera, that’s it, you got him. He’s not getting away with shit.”

  LouAnn and I return to the lobby to post a brand-new notice: Please Note: Do Not Buzz Anyone Into The Building You Do Not Know Or Expect Personally! We Must Look Out For Each Other! We stand for a moment, looking at the fake fire detector. She waves at it like a tourist.

  “This is creepy,” she says. “Every time we get on and off the elevator, we’re being watched.”

  “I know. But I feel like I’m being watched, anyway. Every time I take Zosia for a walk at night, or just going into the garage. Who knows when this guy is hanging around or not? When he’s going to show up next time?”

  “How about what he’s going to do next time? I keep waiting for it to get worse.”

  “Me, too,” I say. “I’m not sleeping at night. I keep waking up, all the time. Every little noise . . . I feel like we’re all so
vulnerable.”

  “We are,” she says. The elevator opens, and we get in. “I mean, c’mon, we have a building full of dykes, kikes, fags, and cripples. This guy could have a field day.”

  “I’m only half-kike,” I remind her, and she laughs.

  I WANT SO badly to hate her; the best I can do is to feel bored. Despite the SAT scores, which I continue to be told were very, very high; her intelligence is responsive, the bright and supportive follow-ups in conversation. It doesn’t matter. She is sweet and sincere, with Edwardian curls, bird-like bones, and healthy pink gums. She is delicate, sweatless. She answers the phone when I call him at home and keeps me there for long minutes, asking a vast range of personal questions, revealing private details, creating intimacy between us. Eventually she stops turning the phone over to him at all and goes ahead to make the plans herself, for the three of us. Eventually I stop asking to speak to him at all and succumb to the girlfriend chat. She is insultingly unthreatened.

  The three of us go to dinner at El Coyote, where Chas and I each finish two double margaritas before our Numero Ocho combo platters arrive. Missy delicately picks the canned green beans from her vegetarian tostada.

  “So, you got him?” he asks, excited. “That’s great, you got him. I love it.”

  “Yeah. Three different nights on tape. At 2:33, 2:41, and 2:27 AM.”

  “Nazis are very punctual.”

  “At one point he actually stops, turns his head, looks right at the camera. LouAnn and I were sure he figured it out. But then he turns and carves a second one.”

  “Balls. Big, Nazi balls.”

  “Chuck said none of you recognize him, right?” asks Missy.

  “Nope. He’s some fat, schlubby, thick-necked guy. He’s wearing the same T-shirt and shorts every time. And he’s totally blasé about it, just strolls in. . . .”

  “That’s so gross,” Missy says.

  “At least we’re doing something about it. The video thing was brilliant.”

  “You’re Simon Wiesenthal. You’re Beate Klarsfeld,” Chas pounds a fist on the table in tribute.

  “And this schlubby guy . . . I’d always pictured some well-groomed, goose-stepping Aryan eating streusel and drinking Riesling.”

  “No, the Nazi from Cabaret,” Chas says. “That beautiful, sweet, blond angelic kid, who gets up in the tavern and sings ‘Tomorrow belongs, Tomorrow belongs’—”

  “Tomorrow belongs to meeee!” I join in singing, and the two of us raise our margarita glasses like beer steins. “Did we rent that, or what?”

  “No, Beverly Cinema.”

  “Oh, yeah, with the guy at the ticket window—”

  “With the hair!”

  “Yeah!”

  “I saw that movie once,” says Missy, smiling. “It was really good.”

  We all smile and sip our drinks.

  “So. . . .” Chas says.

  “So, anyway, tonight the cops are finally staking us out. They’ll grab him in the act. LouAnn and I are going to wait up. I want to see this guy suffer.”

  “You know, even with the videos they’ll plead him down. You’ll probably wind up with a few counts of vandalism, defacement of property, maybe a terrorism statute. Misdemeanors. He could even get off.”

  “Then we’ll form a posse, track him down, and string him up by his hairy Nazi balls.”

  “You’ll let me know, right? You’ll call me tomorrow?”

  “You don’t want me to call at 2:47 AM?”

  “Nah. I’m in court early.” He gets up, heads to the bathroom. “Order me another, right?”

  Missy and I smile at each other.

  “Chuck told me how much he loved your book,” she says to me.

  “Really?” I ask, although he and I have already discussed it. He calls me every few days from his office. It is when we talk. I decide not to tell her this. I decide to spare her.

  “Yeah,” she says. “He told me he thought it was incredible. I can’t wait to read it.”

  “I hope you like it.”

  “Oh, I know I will. Wow. . . .” She sighs, takes a sip of her margarita. “I wish I could get it together. Maybe I should go to grad school. I don’t know. I just think it’s incredible, everything you’re doing. Both of you.” She gazes toward the bathroom; Chas is on his way back to us. She leans a little closer to me. “I feel so insignificant,” she says quietly.

  I want to throw my drink in her face. No, I want to claw her first, rake my nails across her creamy cheek, so the alcohol burns.

  “Hey, sweetie,” Chas says to her.

  “No, wait, I’m going next.” She slides out of the booth. “Chuck, finish my margarita.” She heads to the bathroom, calling back to me: “I’m such a lightweight!”

  “How’s Zosia?” Chas asks.

  “She’s delicious.”

  “I’m converting to Judaism,” he tells me.

  “You are?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You are.”

  “Monday I begin instruction with the Janowsky family rabbi.”

  I suddenly get it. “You’re getting married.”

  He nods. “Next August somethingth.”

  “You’re a devout atheist.”

  “It means something to her. Kids and everything. It’s okay. I like Jews.”

  “What does your therapist say?”

  “He approves. Well, he did. I’m not seeing him anymore.” He pours half of Missy’s margarita into my glass and the rest into his. He raises his glass. “L’chaim.”

  We drink, and the salt burns my lips. Missy returns.

  “Mazel tov,” I tell her.

  “Oh. . . .” She slides in next to him, smiling, and slips her arm into his. “He told you. I wanted to tell you. . . .” She playfully punches his arm. “I’m so excited. I can’t wait.”

  “I bet . . . well, indeed, a big, fat, hairy mazel tov.”

  “Thanks,” they say together. He takes her lovely hand and she lifts her head to kiss him, perfectly on the lips, her white throat delicately arched. I think, unwelcomingly, of the last time I went down on him, my desperate, inelegant head-bobbing. Give me a chance, I want to say, one chance to do it over. I’ll do it right this time, be everything you want, all of it, achieve everything, for you.

  “OKAY, ARE YOU ready for this?” LouAnn asks. She is calling from her office; she is just off the phone with the police. “Claudio Marcelo Petrello, he’s thirty-one, he’s from Argentina, he’s here illegally.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, wait. He’s Italian, and they told me his parents, or maybe his grandparents, I don’t remember, were fascists who fled Italy after the fall of Mussolini’s regime.”

  “What? He told them that?”

  “That’s what the cops just said.” Six hours earlier, at 2:57 AM, we had awakened when a police helicopter, two black-and-whites, two squad cars, two plainclothes detectives, and four uniformed cops stormed our building. I’d grabbed Zosia, put on her little sweater, and taken her into LouAnn and Bev’s place to watch from their balcony overlooking the street. Other people in our building were on their balconies, too, in bathrobes and slippers, hiding their faces in curtains and shadows, still terrified. When they looked up and saw us, they’d waved, given us thumbs-ups. This morning Mrs. Steinman posted a “Thank-You” card on the bulletin board.

  “You know how he got in the building? He had a fucking key. He’s a delivery guy for The Wall Street Journal.”

  “A paper boy?”

  “He’s been here every night for five months, delivering the paper to Mr. Weiner on the second floor. And they asked him why he did it, right? He said he was mad the elevator wasn’t working that one time. That we were too cheap to fix it.”

  “Sure, that makes sense.”

  “He’s already out on bail. Fifty grand.”

  “I’d like to rip his throat open. Stone him to death. Something biblical.”

  “Me, too. Oh, and get this, the cops almost missed him. They were j
ust going to wait until 3:00 AM and then leave. He showed up just in time.”

  CHAS ANSWERS THE phone.

  “Hi, it’s me,” I say.

  “Hey,” he says exuberantly. “So, so? What happened?”

  “Is Missy home?”

  There is something in my voice; his voice drops, subdues. “No, she’s out. I can talk.”

  “Tell me you’re madly in love. Tell me you’re blissfully happy. Tell me she’s everything you’ve ever wanted.” I stop, awaiting a sentence.

  He breathes, carefully. “Yes, I’m madly in love. And I’m blissfully happy. And no, she isn’t everything I’ve ever wanted.”

  “What isn’t she?”

  “She isn’t . . .”

  “What? What? What isn’t she? Tell me.”

  “It’s not what she isn’t. That’s okay. What she is works. It’ll work.”

  “It’ll ‘work’.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t understand. I don’t get how you can say you’re madly in love, but she’s not everything you want, and then wrap it up with ‘It’ll work’.”

  “I’m ready for it. What works for me is different now, I’ve changed a lot. It’s the right time.”

  “You’re sitting down, that’s all.”

  “What?”

  “The music’s fucking stopped, and you’re tired, and you just want to sit down.”

  “I have to go.”

  We both hang up.

  CLAUDIO MARCELO PETRELLO, at his arraignment, hears the felony charges dropped to four counts of vandalism and four counts of defacement of property. They are all misdemeanors, with the slim possibility of a few months in county jail, or a few hundred dollars’ fine, but, the city attorney whispers later to us, he will most likely receive a suspended sentence and probation. His bail is reduced to five thousand dollars, to the delight of his family members gathered in the courtroom, a schlubby, thick-necked mother and father and siblings. All of this is due to the fact that Claudio has no prior offenses, and there was no one-on-one threat of physical violence to anyone, and no permanent destruction to the building. It was all superficial, the damage. A trial date is set for next month. The Petrello family dances out of court; LouAnn and Bev, Mrs. Steinman, Mr. Weiner, some other residents and I are seated in the back of the room, trying to be invisible. We still feel afraid. But Claudio does not even glance at us; it is entirely possible, we realize, entirely probable, that he has no idea who we are.