The Peace Process

by Bruce Jay Friedman

  “Congratulations,” said Kleiner, who hated sarcasm, except when he was the one who was using it. “I hope the two of you are very happy.”

  Kleiner arranged to have his cartons picked up and stored; then he walked across town and checked into a dreary hotel that matched his mood. The desk clerk told him that Charles Bukowski had spent a weekend on the fourth floor. Still, he was unable to shake his depression. It was only when he realized that he had no job, no prospects, very little money, and had just lost his apartment and a hot-looking girlfriend that he understood the reason for it and began to feel better. A bright spot was that he no longer had to duck in and out of his apartment like a criminal, pretending the spacious duplex was his. Even in the bleak hotel room, where the pipes kept him up all night, he was actually registered. If someone wanted to find him, all they had to do was ask the hotel clerk, who would put them through to Room 115, the temporary residence of William Kleiner. And, of course, he no longer had to concern himself with the fortunes of a treacherous Arab.

  Feeling light and free, Kleiner checked out of the hotel, took his car out of the garage, and headed for the open road.

  PART THREE

  Kleiner told a friend, who knew Emma, that he was angry at her—the pills, the vodka bottles. The friend said, “You should get down on your knees and thank God you have such a woman in your life.”

  Kleiner, not a good listener, heard this.

  As he left the city, Kleiner was aware that he was part of an American tradition—striking out across the vast frontier in search of adventure and renewal. The night before, in the same bold spirit that had forged a mighty nation, he had closed his eyes and thrown a dart at the map, determined to journey to whatever city the fates selected. When it landed on Cincinnati, he took it out and stuck it in Miami Beach. As long as he was seeking adventure, he might as well do it in warm weather.

  The selection of Miami was not entirely arbitrary. Emma lived there, of course, but he had been taken there as a boy and had seen pictures of himself sitting on a pink flamingo made of stone. He was determined to find that flamingo and sit on it once again. That would give closure to the whole flamingo thing, although how it would help him earn a living wasn’t clear.

  Driving day and night, he stopped only in Georgia, where there was a statue of the nation’s first screenwriter, who had done a first draft and a polish in Savannah. Had the picture gotten a green light? If so, there was no mention of it. Kleiner was determined to stay in the hospitable city and possibly go no farther, but when a group of teenagers refused to let him into a playground game of hoops, he decided to push on.

  In Miami, he checked into a small hotel in South Beach whose clientele was made up of only Jews and Jamaicans—although there was no evidence of a restrictive policy on the part of the management. After catching a little sun, he called Emma. She seemed out of breath and harassed, but agreed to meet him later in the day for lunch.

  They sat outside at the crowded News Café. She looked fresh and slim; he noticed that the freckles were back on her perfect nose. His heart jumped, just as it had when he’d first met her at a Lillian Gish tribute. At the time, she had only a few addictions.

  Not quite scolding him, she suggested it was unfair of Kleiner to show up after two years as if nothing had changed.

  “What if I had a lover?”

  “Do you?” he asked, strangely—and unfairly—panicked.

  “Not particularly, but what if I did?”

  The possibility was chilling. Kleiner agreed that he was asking for a great deal.

  “I’m tempted to wine and dine you and shower you with gifts and gradually insinuate myself back into your affections.”

  “That’s not a bad little idea.”

  Kleiner, of course, had done that already—when they first met—and he wasn’t anxious to repeat himself. Nonetheless, wearily, in the weeks that followed, he took her to dozens of restaurants, danced with her in nightclubs, and arranged to have a huge carton of white jellybeans poured into the window of her condo. Digging into the last of his pension funds, he hired a plane to fly over, trailing a banner that said i love you. Then he flew one of her sisters in from rural Tennessee for a weekend reunion. As it turned out, it was the wrong sister—one that she hated—but Emma appreciated the thought and invited him to move back in with her.

  “I can’t keep eating in all those restaurants,” she said. “And I’m missing Saturday Night Live.”

  Though the invitation was lukewarm, Kleiner snatched at it like a drowning man, insisting that he take the couch while she kept the bed.

  Thus he began a new life with his old family.

  With no directing assignment on the horizon, Kleiner broadened himself by touring South Beach, talking to ship-jumpers from Palumbo, Jewish cops with Magnums on their hips, and German students who apologized for Munich’s skinheads but scolded him for Exxon Valdez. He enjoyed the anonymity of the beach, where a new Cuban friend, for example, would have no idea that he was unemployed in the film business. And on Arthur Godfrey Drive, he felt he could be as Jewish as he wanted to be, even more so than in Israel. On one occasion he shouted out, “Farblondget,” at the top of his lungs and caused only a minor commotion.

  By day, Emma worked at the Cluebox, a store she had opened that catered to lovers of genteel English mysteries, thus putting the last of her addictions to profitable use. The store did a surprisingly brisk business, with models on skateboards drifting in to browse, and gay body-builders taking the latest Julian Symons off to read at tanning salons. The only employee was a savagely handsome black-haired man named Diarmid, a pipe smoker who wore a shawl and scowled at customers, with no appreciable effect on sales. Kleiner sensed that he was the lover Emma had hinted at, but in his new maturity, he refused to ask if this were true—not that he wasn’t dying to know.

  At night, they had dinner at Emma’s condo with Kleiner’s stepdaughter. Becky had become great-eyed and willowy, an enchanted child, no longer disposed to throw potato salad in his face.

  “Are we Jewish?” she asked one night.

  “I am,” said Kleiner. “Your mother’s not.”

  “I’ve given it a great deal of thought and I’ve decided I’d like to be a Jewish sportscaster.”

  With deference, Kleiner looked over at his wife.

  “At least she wants to be something,” said Emma encouragingly.

  Even when the skies were overcast, Kleiner felt he was in paradise. One day a black cloud appeared in the form of an announcement in the Miami Herald. The director Mahmoud Salah planned to shoot the opening scenes of his new movie in South Beach. At the moment he was looking for extras.

  Across the breakfast table, Emma saw Kleiner’s face fall. He then told her of his troubled history with the opportunistic Arab.

  “The announcement has nothing to do with you,” she said supportively.

  Becky took his face in her hands and pressed her forehead against his.

  “Just ignore him.”

  But this was a difficult assignment for Kleiner. The Arab’s triumphant appearance in Miami reminded him of his own lowly position in the entertainment industry, if indeed he even had one. Was there no place on Earth where he was safe from Mahmoud and the fucking movie business?

  Soon afterward, miraculously, Kleiner ran into an old friend named Vogel, a former press agent who now ran a failing Spanish restaurant in Coconut Grove. The restaurant included a small cabaret; it was Vogel’s idea to stimulate his dinner trade by putting on a transvestite version of Uncle Vanya.

  “Would you consider directing?”

  Though Kleiner had never worked with trannies, he jumped at the chance and told Vogel to count him in.

  Immediately he set about finding talented performers for the key roles, taking Becky along to the auditions. At the end of the first day, she announced that she wanted to do what he did.
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  “I don’t actually do anything,” said Kleiner.

  “I don’t care. I want to do it too. Is math helpful?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “That’s great. I’m good at math.”

  Within a short period, Kleiner had assembled his cast. After an initial period of self-consciousness, in which there were a great many Elton John jokes bandied about, the trannies warmed to the tricky Chekhovian roles. The production was soon on its feet.

  The opening performance was greeted warmly by the local press. As a result, the restaurant quickly doubled the number of dinners served.

  With the play off and running, Kleiner found himself with more time on his hands. Each day he took Becky to ballet school in North Miami. He was enormously proud of her when she landed the coveted role of Clara in The Nutcracker. Annoyingly, there was jealousy on the part of other parents. They felt Becky had benefited from Kleiner’s position in the entertainment industry—a ridiculous charge, considering he hadn’t had a real job in two years.

  On weekends, he and Becky searched for the pink flamingo. One day they located the site of the Vane Hotel, which was now nothing more than a pile of rubble. A notice was posted, saying that a wholesale drugstore would soon be erected on the property.

  There was no sign of the statue.

  “Somebody probably took it home,” said Becky.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’m sure of it. They probably wanted to keep it in their living room and not let anyone else sit on it.”

  “Are there such people?”

  “Of course, Mr. Daddy. Didn’t you know that?”

  On the day of Becky’s ballet recital, Kleiner received a call from Naomi Glickstein.

  “You probably don’t remember me, but we dated briefly in Jerusalem—and then in the city.”

  She hesitated a moment, then said, “The bubbies girl that you lied to.”

  “Of course I remember,” said Kleiner. “How are you getting along?”

  “Mezzo, mezzo,” said Naomi. “We’ve run into some trouble on the film. The completion bond fell through at the last minute and Mahmoud is taking it badly. He’s out on a ledge at the moment, threatening to commit suicide. And he says you’re the only one he’ll talk to.”

  “I’m on my way to my daughter’s recital.”

  She let out a sigh. “All right, so he’ll jump.”

  The guilt trip took effect.

  “What’s the address?” Kleiner asked.

  She gave him the number of a high-rise on Collins Avenue, the top section of which had been taken over by the production.

  “We’re on the eighteenth floor. You’d better come quickly.”

  After Kleiner hung up, he had to hold on to a chair for support. He was terrified of heights and couldn’t even get up on a ladder to change a bulb. The very thought of an Arab, one he knew so well, standing on a ledge, way up in the sky, made him dizzy and nauseous.

  He told Emma about the call.

  “Fuck him,” he said. “After what he’s put me through. Let him jump.”

  “You can’t do that. Go over there and see if you can help. I’ll save a seat for you at the recital.”

  “What about my fear of heights?”

  “You’ll get over it,” she said.

  And for the moment, he believed her.

  Kleiner took a cab to the address he’d been given and had a surprisingly smooth ride up on the elevator.

  Clustered around the production office were concerned crew members and half a dozen police officers.

  When Naomi saw him, she ran over and gave him a hug.

  “Thank God,” she said, once again unsettling him with her enormous breasts. Was it his imagination, or did she shift them around enticingly?

  She led him out to the terrace, where a police sergeant was conducting what sounded like generic movie dialogue with Mahmoud.

  “There is always darkness before the dawn. I don’t have to tell you that, Mahmoud. You’re no different from millions of others, except that they refuse to take the easy way out. Any coward can splatter himself all over the pavement.”

  Ten feet away, crouched on a narrow ledge, Mahmoud stared at the horizon with blank eyes and appeared to hear nothing.

  Kleiner introduced himself to the sergeant, saying the Arab was an old friend.

  “Let me take a crack at him.”

  “Be my guest,” said the sergeant, stepping aside. “I can’t budge the fucker.”

  “Mahmoud,” said Kleiner, taking hold of the terrace railing and trying not to faint. “I heard you were in trouble and I thought I’d drop by.”

  Mahmoud responded in a weak voice.

  “Thank you, Mr. Kleiner. I hope it didn’t interfere with your schedule.”

  “Not at all,” said Kleiner. “What’s the story?”

  Mahmoud held his temples, a gesture Kleiner remembered from room service, back at the King David.

  “The production fell apart and now I have nothing. The psychology. It’s worse on the coast than it is in the souk.”

  “You’ll get another film deal,” said Kleiner, drawing a nod of admiration from the police sergeant. No doubt he wondered why he hadn’t thought of the same ploy.

  “I don’t want one,” said Mahmoud. “They have no values. They’ll raise you to the sky, then when you’re of no further use, they’ll drop you like a dead fly. I should have listened to you.”

  Kleiner didn’t recall issuing such an advisory to the Arab, but felt it prudent to nod in agreement all the same.

  “Now that it’s out of your system,” he told the Arab, “you can come back in.”

  “Who said it’s out of my system?”

  “If I handed you a broom, would you grab the other end and let me pull you over here?”

  “No way,” said Mahmoud, who had Americanized his speech somewhat.

  “I shouldn’t even be here,” said Kleiner, reversing his psychology. “Not after what you did to me.”

  “What did I do? You’re better off now.”

  Though it was hardly a time for introspection, Kleiner considered the Arab’s comment and saw that there was some truth to it. Yes, he was still unemployed in the film industry. But he had his family back, an apartment he could more or less call his own, a child he adored, and excellent weather. It’s true that he had lost the sensuous Naomi Glickstein. But their romance, such as it was, had been based primarily on sex and Yiddish phrases and would probably have worn thin after a couple of great months.

  “You have a point,” said Kleiner. “Now you can come back in.”

  “I can’t, Mr. Kleiner. Hollywood destroyed me. I’m out of gas.”

  He stood erectly now. The wind blew back his hair, revealing the bald spot he was always worried about. He wore khaki pants and an old blue windbreaker. Kleiner found this affecting, though why he should be touched by such an innocuous garment was beyond him. He thought of their meeting at the King David, Mahmoud playing bingo with a patient in the Jerusalem clinic, the dinosaur model in his room, the boyish stubble on his face when Kleiner hugged him in the souk and promised that somehow he would deliver him up to Queens.

  After a quick peek at the concrete courtyard below, Kleiner stepped out on the ledge, his back against the building. Not taking time to be nauseous, he inched his way toward the Arab and grabbed his hand. Mahmoud pulled one way, Kleiner the other. After a brief tug-of-war, Kleiner gently and stubbornly pulled him back onto the terrace.

  “Thank you, Mr. Kleiner,” the Arab said simply.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “I know Mahmy,” said Naomi, having given him a horrible nickname. She was breathing heavily. “He wasn’t fooling around.”

  “I realize that,” said Kleiner, wishing he could have one last shot at her enormous breasts�
�and trying to damp down the thought.

  “Let me come home with you,” said Mahmoud. “I’d love to meet your family. Maybe I can stay with you for a while.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Kleiner.

  “Please, sir. Your wife sounded so nice on the phone. We can all be together.”

  “Out of the question.”

  “I promise not to get sexy with Mrs. Kleiner. And I’ll teach your daughter to swim in the ocean, far out where nobody goes.”

  “She knows how to swim. You’re on your own now, Mahmoud.”

  Kleiner looked at his watch and saw that he had little time to get to the recital.

  “I’d better get going,” he said to Naomi.

  “Let me give you a lift.”

  She was more desirable than ever, but Kleiner recalled her clumsy walking style and cringed at the thought of her behind the wheel.

  “I don’t want to bother you.”

  “Please,” she said. “It’s the least I can do.”

  In the studio car, Kleiner told her of his infatuation with his stepdaughter.

  “You’re very lucky,” said Naomi. Her driving style was surprisingly smooth. “I’ll bet she’s gorgeous.”

  Kleiner detected some sadness in her voice. “You’ll have a family too.”

  “If my two-picture deal at Universal is picked up, maybe. If not, who knows.”

  “How’d you get the film deal?”

  “An executive at the studio went wild over my poem. Maybe you remember it. It’s called ‘I Could Burst.’”

  “How could I forget it?” said Kleiner.

  As they pulled up to the community center, he thanked Naomi for the ride. He leaned over and kissed her, aware that he would never see her again.

  “Zei gezunt, Naomi.”

  “Zei gezunt, sweet princealah.”

  The ballet had already begun when Kleiner entered the theater. He had missed some of Becky’s performance, though fortunately not her solo. Groping his way through the darkness, he found Emma, who had put a coat over his seat.