The Merchants of Zion

by William Stamp

  “That's your side of the story. Just get out of here. I'll talk to Helen and we'll decide on an appropriate course of action.”

  Obviously nothing I had to say would make a difference, so I got up to leave. “Bye Ells Bells,” I said, then “Good-bye Mr. Felkins. Please let me know when you've made your decision.” I wanted to beg him not to fire me, but wanted even less to offer him the satisfaction my groveling would entail.

  “Bye Cliff,” Elly said. I set off in a random direction, then called Ruth. The phone rang twice and went to voice mail. I texted her, asking her to call me back, and headed home.

  * * *

  The living room was packed with a medley of liquor boxes, all taped up and marked by labels like “books,” “clothes,” and “research files.” James must have had most of his belongings in storage and figured he could fully move into my house during my absence, as I wasn't around to tell him no.

  The kitchen was the cleanest I'd seen it since he moved in; there were no dirty pots on the stove or half-empty styrofoam containers of Chinese food left rotting on the table, and his easel was tucked into a corner, its broad, white paper facing the wall.

  Dimitri was bent down in front of the cupboards. He didn't notice me, and was packing away his pots and pans with the same focus he applied to everything else. His long, curly black hair had been chopped off, replaced with a crew cut. The haircut exposed a tattoo on the back of his neck I'd never seen.

  “I didn't know you had a tattoo,” I said, stepping into the kitchen.

  “Huh?” he said, turning around and facing me. He'd shaved his beard and replaced his thick-framed black glasses with a svelte pair made of thin silver wire.

  “Christ, did you kill Dimitri and botch the impostor job? Or are you an evil twin?”

  He laughed, and pressed one hand against the nape of his neck. “I got it while you were gone. It's Russian. It means: It would be painful to depart and leave no faint footprint of glory.”

  “You come up with that yourself?”

  “No, it's Pushkin.”

  “Is he that painter?”

  “He's a poet.”

  “I'll have to read him some time.”

  Dimitri went back to packing his kitchenware, methodically wrapping every piece in paper towel and placing it in an empty liquor box. That I might be wondering what he was doing never occurred to him, or he was avoiding the issue.

  “Are you going to ask me about Chicago?”

  “I'm kind of busy.”

  “I see. I saw Edward.”

  “How is he?”

  “Good. I think he's lonely out there. He doesn't have any friends.”

  “That doesn't sound like Edward.”

  “I know, right? Maya breaking up with him really messed with his head.”

  “I bet it did.” He shut the cabinet door and opened the one beside it that had our silverware. “Did you tell him you two dated?”

  “No. I didn't see the point.”

  “Do you think he knows?” He taped up a narrow box for small bottles of cheap vodka.

  “I dunno. It's not like we dated until after they'd been broken up a while.” There was no way he could've known. If Maya or someone else had told him, he would've confronted me. Maybe kicked my ass. I know if our situations had been reversed, and I'd known, there would've been no other choice. But Edward was a nice guy, much nicer than me. Not the kind of guy who dates his friends' ex-girlfriends. It hadn't struck me as possible to hide away knowledge like that—to just grin and bear it.

  “Don't you think that box is too big for your silverware? Some of it's mine, remember. Anyways, what're you doing? Did James piss you off enough to make you leave?”

  “No, I have a new job. Don't worry, I'll send enough money to pay rent for the next two months. To finish out the year, you know.”

  He was moving out west. If I needed to contact him, he'd still check his old mailing address, but he couldn't give me his new one. He was getting a new phone number and couldn't share it with me either, sorry. It was all very hush hush, and he'd been instructed to tell as few people as possible. He apologized for not letting me know, but I could only think about how jealous I was of him for being paid to do what he loved. People still found ways to move their lives forward even while the world went to shit around them. Everyone except for me. And James, thank God.

  I hovered around Dimitri while he finished packing. He hadn't talked to James since I left, and hadn't heard him crashing around the bathroom in three days. I told him about my crazy experience on the train, and he offered up some begrudging words of consolation.

  “Don't you think it's reprehensible... the power our government has?” I asked.

  “Not really. It's too big to be seen as a moral entity. It's the preferences of thousands, maybe millions, of individuals duking it out for their slice of the pie. How it turns out is, more than anything, random. I can't affect it, so I don't worry about it. My research makes me happy, and a person can't do more than look out for themselves. Besides, you're better off than ninety-nine point nine percent of humans in the history of the world—it's not like you have to worry about an army riding into New York and burning it to the ground. You've got to keep things in perspective.”

  “I guess. But because it could be worse doesn't mean I can't wish it were better.”

  “Then wish as hard as you can.”

  I didn't have anything to say to that, and changed the subject to my getting fired. He pointed out that I hadn't been officially terminated yet, and he thought Mr. Felkins would cool off, or Helen would talk him down. Besides, I had two months rent upfront, which would tide me over while I looked for a new racket. I told him he was the most unsympathetic person I knew. But I had to admit—he did have things in perspective.

  An unmarked black van and an SUV showed up outside the house at exactly five o'clock. Two men in army fatigues and carrying sub-machine guns watched while we loaded the boxes. They didn't offer to help.

  Two-thirds of the boxes were labeled “books.” No surprise, since Dimitri's room was lined with bookshelves packed two deep. I wondered if he'd actually read all of them, or if they were for show. I began to ask, but realized I didn't care to hear the answer one way or the other. If he'd read them all I would feel inadequate and if not, I'd see him as a poseur. I comforted myself by thinking he'd read about a third of them, which would make us roughly equally well-read.

  “So you're gone now,” I said, stacking the final box.

  “Yeah, I guess I am.”

  “Fuck, if my train had been delayed another hour you would've left without a trace.”

  “Those were my instructions. Now I've endangered you by telling you about my job,” he joked. I think.

  “I doubt you believe in some nebulous idea of fate, right?”

  “Not really... sort of. It's complicated. Humans are similar enough to subconsciously reflect their desires in one another. A good metaphor would be that we're like a really primitive internet.”

  “That's a terrible metaphor.”

  “That's why I'm a mathematician, not a writer. Look, I'll give you some advice.”

  “What's that?”

  “Ditch Ruth and James. They're bad news.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “Are you serious? Ruth is a bought-and-paid-for propagandist. If you think society is fucked up, well she's a front line solder. And James is involved in some serious shit, trust me.”

  “I'll keep that in mind.”

  He stuck out his hand and I shook it. I liked that about him—we had the same opinion about the stupidity of hugs. He went over to one of the gun-toting goons and they talked for a minute, and got into the passenger seat of the SUV. Then he was gone, like an imaginary friend I'd grown too old to keep.

  * * *

  James didn't come home that night or the following one and Ruth was too busy to see me, so I bided my time contemplating my future unemployment and trying to write.

  The writing didn'
t go well, not at all, and after six hours of staring at a blank screen I'd written two words: “Man is.”

  The door downstairs opened, and I leapt to greet James. It bothered me how much I looked forward to seeing him—to seeing anyone, really. I always prided myself on not needing other people, and here I was running to see him like a cooped up dog.

  I paused for a moment in order to not seem so needy. The front door closed and I heard him talking mutedly to another man. I counted to a hundred, then descended down the stairs, forcing myself to take them one at a time.

  James and a man I didn't recognize were in the kitchen, leafing through a stack of manila folders scattered across the table and counter. The easel had been reinstated to its rightful location—between the table and the refrigerator, blocking easy access to the stove or far cupboards. I remembered why I preferred to maintain my fondness of James from a distance.

  His partner was a skinny man, maybe forty, with thin, pursed lips and a long nose like a gun sight beneath alert, amber eyes. He had the air of a predator, a loan shark, a human trafficker, and for the first time I worried James might be in over his head.

  “Hey, long time no see,” I said, edging over to see what they was doing. It looked complicated—the papers were filled with endless rows of numbers. More than I could count.

  “Cliff, we've missed you.” He stood up and hugged me, dragging me away from the table and the iniquity of prying eyes. “Where's Dimitri?”

  “What? Oh, he's gone. Moved out a couple of days ago.”

  “Nice, nice. Cliff, I'd like you to meet my new business partner, Vincent.”

  James explained to me in detail what they were doing, about amortization and discount rates and other stuff I couldn't care less about. The more he labored to make it sound legitimate, the stronger the criminal vibe became. He edged me away from the table while he spoke. Vincent's beady eyes homed in on me like I'd interrupted a drug deal.

  Maybe I was jealous of James's success. He'd made a little money—though not that much, as far as I could tell—and his plan was further along than any of my abortive projects. Here I was unable to write more than two words and out of a job, and I couldn't help but denigrate his work in progress.

  “So I was wondering if you and Ruth wanted to come up and visit me while I hammer this out?” James asked.

  “Huh? Visit you where?”

  “Rockford. Like I just said. No wonder you can't get a real job.”

  “Oh. Sorry. Where's that?”

  “Upstate. By the border. Anyway, I'm meeting up with some guys there. Fuckin' mucho dinero,” he grinned. “It should go smooth, and I want to celebrate my success with you two.”

  “Um... sure, I'll ask Ruth when she's free.”

  “Sick. Look, I'd love to chat, but me and Vincent gotta prepare for this thing.”

  “No problem. Let me know how it goes.”

  I trudged back upstairs and called Ruth. She could only talk for moment. I asked if she'd like to get dinner. She said she'd love to, as soon as she was done with work. It was the first good thing to happen since I'd come back. I have a theory that life gives you just enough good news to keep you going. Not enough to make you happy, but enough to keep you from falling into despair. Enough keep you in the rat race.

  We met at a bistro on the Lower East Side. She paid. Afterwards we went back to my place.

  Journal of Experimental Quantum Cryptography

  Regarding the Recent Liberty Bell—JEQC Joint Prize in Quantum Consciousness

  Dear Editors,

  I write this from a place of respect for all the wonderful work the JEQC has published over the years and with much love for the amazing community this journal has fostered, but I'm sorry, it has to be said.

  Have you all lost your mind? In what world do you think it is appropriate, proper, or professional to allow a review board of non-experts to provide such an enormous incentive for researchers to focus their efforts and unmatched intellect on empirically unsubstantiated propositions that are, to be blunt, the worst sort of woo? The conditions of the prize are impossible, but the monetary reward is so large that resisting it is nigh impossible. You may as well have asked for proof that God exists. In one fell swoop you have derailed quantum cryptography for years, possibly decades, and every day you continue this silly farce is another day you've set back humanity's quest for knowledge.

  On a more personal note, I will now be inundated with low quality papers, questions, and requests for collaboration as researchers throw every random thought they have at you in the hope that something sticks. I have heard from a friend and former colleague that his entire department has dropped everything to develop a piece of software that will algorithmically write scientific papers in the hopes that infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters can recreate the entire history of mathematics, invent calculus, and independently resolve Hilbert's sixteenth problem.

  If such methods were fruitful, of course, we would have solved every scientific question ever posed, and obviously that is not the case. Rather, it is more likely that over the next few years we will see a stream of charlatans and nincompoops present erroneous and unsound research, while all good, honest work is pushed by the wayside as our entire field rushes headlong off a cliff.

  Already facing a loss of funding for reasons of pure politics, I'm afraid your decision in this matter must force me to reconsider my commitment to academia, as I must now confront the fact that all of JEQC's past pronouncements about integrity and and rigor now ring hollow. I have been lied to; this whole endeavor is no more than a sham.

  With Much Respect,

  Dimitri Levitzki

  11. Rockford New York, Part 1

  On Saturday Ruth and I caught a train to upstate New York. We held hands, hers limp and clammy in mine. I sat slumped against the window, watching the Hudson river slide by. She'd been promoted while I was in Chicago, which had triggered a laconic—for her—funk. Her neat plan had hit a snag, and in the ensuing office skirmish there'd been a casualty: her mentor and now former boss.

  Was Ruth, corporate warrior, the same entity I'd watched break down in the subway? Or the Ruth who beamed as she told me about her youngest sister's acceptance into Stanford? Was every betrayal of uncontrolled emotion her faking it, or was it the other way around, and was her essential humanity hidden beneath the caked on tribal makeup of the professional world?

  I squeezed her hand and she nestled closer to me.

  Our car was almost empty, and the few people present were absorbed in their own affairs. Across the aisle a middle-aged man in a turtleneck punched away at his phone. In front of him, a young mother spoke in hushed Spanish to her toddler.

  We got into Rockford around ten pm. The only passengers with this particular destination, we were left alone on the platform. James was supposed to pick us up. He was nowhere to be seen.

  “I thought he'd be here waiting for us,” I said.

  “He's just late. Are you in a hurry or something?” Ruth went to the side of the platform and sat down, dangling her legs over a line of decorative bushes. She removed her heels and set them beside her. I joined her, my brown loafers hooked by my curled toes.

  I felt like a teenager. What could be more natural than a boy and girl sitting under the stars in rural New York? Ruth picked at her cuticles, not saying anything.

  “Do you remember when we first met?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” She laughed. “I needed to pick up a study guide from Dimitri. And you lived... you lived in the dorm room over?”

  “Across the hall.”

  “That's right. And you were in your boxers, wrapped in a blanket. Playing some stupid game. You didn't even know I was in the room until I tapped you on the shoulder.” She paused. “And then you told me to get out.”

  I kicked my heel against the platform. One of my shoes fell into the bushes. “I'd forgotten about that. I was thinking of the first time you ate with me and James in the cafeteria. What, did you know him from a par
ty?”

  “He was dating my roommate.”

  “Oh, right. That didn't last.” I kicked off my other shoe, which cleared the bushes, and I pushed off the platform. The grass was wet and my socks soaked up water as the soft ground gave beneath my feet.

  “Anyways. Yeah you came and sat down with us. We argued about something stupid. Really stupid. I'm sure if I remembered what it was I'd be embarrassed at my own stupidity.”

  “You were telling me how I was sheltered and had a narrow world view. You said I was 'the spoiled, urban version of a redneck.'”

  I grabbed my shoe. “Right. You were treating me like a child because I'm from the Illinois. And you know, I was right.”

  She stuck her tongue out at me. “I'll admit you're right if it ever happens. I was though. Right that is—you were just a wide-eyed kid from Small Town, USA.”

  “The small town known as Chicago.”

  “You're from the suburbs, at best.”

  “Not an enterprising city slicker such as yourself.”

  “You didn't even know the difference between the local and express lines on the subway.” She put her heels back on and walked down the cement stairs, click, click, click. Standing at the edge of the sidewalk, she continued to taunt me. “You have 'country' written all over you. And everyone can tell. It's part of you forever, despite your delusions.”

  I looked at her, hurt, and she frowned. “It's adorable. I wouldn't trade your Midwesternness for a born-and-bred New Yorker Cliff. You'd be much less exotic.”

  “You're so funny,” I said.

  “I'm serious. I never would've thought we'd end up being friends. I was pretty sure you hated me after we met the first time, and even surer the second time.” A streetlight shining down on her traced the troubled thoughts creasing her face. “I'm glad we did.”

  “Me too. After that lunch James asked me if I liked you. I said you were pretty hot, and it was too bad you had such an ugly name.”

  A whisker thin smile brushed away her pensive expression. “Put on your shoes, dummy.” She walked out into the parking lot. She'd opened up, just for a second, and I'd driven her back into hiding with my insensitive comment. Maybe she was used to things like that from me and understood I wasn't trying to hurt her feelings. Unless she filed it away as “one of those things guys say,” a vault filled with mean spirits and accruing bitterness. Or, more likely, it had all been an act and her script would've played out the same no matter what I said.