He did not tell Alma about the visit to Dr. Feldman. He wanted to tell her about his sudden cure. The men knew somehow it was the health club, but before they told their wives, they wanted to try to figure out what was the actual process. He did, however, let Alma know that he was feeling much better and mentioned that he felt the disease had gone back into remission.
They had dinner and made love that evening. Alma fell asleep. Joe could not and that was why he was on the terrace, sitting in the dark, contemplating the stars above when he noticed Mr. Shields arrive at the office. He did not know the stranger who entered the office shortly after Shields. When the two men emerged from the office later, Joe had stepped backed from the terrace railing and tripped over a chaise chair.
He had backed away because he felt he was being pulled toward the stranger with Shields and he feared he would be pulled over the terrace. He also had the crazy idea that if he fell, he would fly down to the stranger.
The noise woke Alma. She noticed that Joe was not in bed. Then she saw him crouched on the terrace. She smiled inside. That was the same position he had been in when they first met.
Alma McClain was a beautiful woman. She had never married, opting to advance her career as a journalist to a position of editor for a major New York television station’s news department. They had even offered her a crack at commentator, on camera every night, but she declined. She did do the editorial comment weekly and was a celebrity of sorts in chic New York circles. This was long before the Internet and cable entered the world of news media.
She met Joe Finley at a party on Fire Island. She was scheduled to work the evening news that summer Friday, so she didn’t arrive at the party until after midnight. By then things were in full swing. The first thing Alma did was make a beeline for the bathroom. Her bladder was ready to burst after the long drive and then boat ride from the mainland. It was there that she met Joe Finley. He was crouched down on the floor looking for a contact lens that his date had dropped. His date looked more like his daughter. Penny was a slim, pretty girl with long brown hair. She wore a see-through blouse that revealed how young she really was. The idea of older men and young girls passed through Alma’s mind and she immediately disliked Joe Finley. He had been polite and explained the circumstances. It took a few more minutes until Joe found the lens and Alma could relieve herself. As Joe and Penny left the bathroom, Alma let them know of her discomfort by suggesting that they have their trysts in a room other than the only bathroom in the damned house.
When she came out of the bathroom, Joe was standing there. Penny was nowhere in sight. He said three things. “My name is Joe Finley. You are a beautiful woman. You are a mean bitch, too.” He then turned heel and left her startled.
In twenty minutes she approached him and apologized. She then found out that Penny was not his date, but rather an attempt by their host to put them together. It wasn’t working.
After that night their relationship grew slowly. Although they saw a great deal of each other, they didn’t make love for six weeks. Alma began to doubt if they would ever be lovers. She liked Joe and sensed that she could love him. But he seemed removed. Distant.
His new show opened off Broadway on a Wednesday night. The reviews came out that weekend. They were excellent. Alma had made sure that her friends in the press and television covered the show. She never told Joe that she had done that. The show was good and Joe was great.
After the Saturday night performance, Alma waited for Joe in a small restaurant in Greenwich Village. He walked in at eleven P.M. He was glowing brighter than when he had read the reviews. He walked up to her, threw a ten-dollar bill on the table to pay for her drink, took her hand, and led her out of the restaurant. He had a cab waiting outside. Without a word, he took her to his apartment. She had tried to find out where they were going and what he was doing, but he remained silent, holding up his hand and smiling.
They entered his apartment. Joe turned down the lights, opened a bottle of champagne, and poured two glasses. He then gave her a glass, clinked a silent toast, and drained it in one swallow. Then he took her hand and led her to the bedroom. “Alma, I love you,” he proclaimed. “Will you love me?”
“Oh, yes,” she answered. He took her in his arms. They made love for most of the night. He asked her to marry him. She agreed and they set a date.
Their life had been beautiful together until the leukemia. They considered their marriage something to be cherished.
Their love had never diminished.
She watched as Joe slowly raised his body up to the railing of the terrace. She could see that he was holding on tightly. She thought that he was shaking and became frightened. Was he sick? Has he been stricken. A seizure? She got out of bed and rushed to the terrace.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” he murmured over and over. “Son-of-a-bitch...”
She was quickly at his side and put her arms around him. “Are you okay, honey?”
He saw the concern in her face. “Am I all right? You bet your sweet little butt I’m all right.”
Then she was crying and he held her as they sat on the terrace floor rocking back and forth. He realized that he must have given her an awful fright. Should tell her. Joe Finley rolled that thought over in his mind as they went back into the bedroom.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - MEMORIES AND REVELATIONS
Early morning found Ben, Art, Bernie and Joe at the pool. They each had an urge to go there without knowing. None had slept much last night. Ben and Joe left sleeping and happy wives. Bernie Lewis’ Rose was reasonably happy, but still confused. Bess Perlman was nervous and refused to discuss her feelings with Art. They had not made love that night.
The men met at the card table. They stood there, silently, waiting fro something to happen.
Ben finally spoke. “I called you all here. I used the new phone system in our brains that our health club seems to have given us.”
The others understood.
“I know no one slept much last night. And I know we are not in the least bit tired. Joe is cured, thank God.”
“I’m growing hair,” Art Perlman announced. He bent over and pointed to a dark fuzz on his normally bald scalp.
Bernie Lewis sat down under the umbrella and put his left hand on the table. “See that, guys?” He pointed to a small scar on the side of his thumb. “I cut my hand this morning. Actually, I just picked up a glass of orange juice and it ... well, I must have squeezed it too tight or something because it broke in my hand and a big shard went into my thumb.” The other three men leaned closer to examine the scar. “It began to bleed and I thought that it was going to be the emergency room and stitches. I went to the bathroom to get bandages but by the time I got there it had stopped, so I ran some cold water over it to wash off the blood. When I turned off the water, I saw…well, the cut was healed.”
“Healed?” asked an amazed Ben Green.
“Healed!” Bernie said emphatically. “Healed and sealed as though it had been there for years.”
Bernie didn’t tell them what the sight of blood did to him. It was an old story and a deeply personal matter - traumatic experiences that people carry silently all their lives.
Bernal Woolens was incorporated in 1948 in the state of New York. Bernie Lefkowitz, a tough kid from Chicago’s South Side, had been through a war and survived. He returned from Europe on a packed troop ship and sailed into New York harbor in the winter of 1945. Two years of fighting and occupation in Germany had left him drained and bitter. He was discharged at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. The first thing he did was to petition the court to have his name changed from Lefkowitz to Lewis.
His father had died when he and his brother Martin were young kids. His mother died shortly after hearing that her oldest son, Martin, was killed on Okinawa. So there was no family left for him in Chicago. He decided to stay in New York.
When he met Rose Charnofsky she was young and vital and beautiful. The woman he had dreamt of while slogging across fighting the Nazis. The
y married. He worked in the garment center as a showroom salesman for a manufacturer of inexpensive dresses. Bernie was successful and became sales manager in a few years.
There was only one thing that Bernie Lewis never spoke about in those days - his experience of being part of the first unit to enter the Auschwitz concentration camp. He spoke Yiddish and was attached to a British unit. The sights that he saw and the deprivation that Jews had been put to so shocked and angered him that he could not speak to a German without the thought of killing coming to mind. His hands trembled and his heart raced for a whole day after that liberation. Then he worked around the clock to try to help the poor souls who had miraculously survived in that death camp.
He told Rose about the experience only after he had another experience that replaced the concentration camp as the thing that he would never speak about. That was what happened to his partner, Al Berger.
Bernal Woolens was Bernie’s and Al’s dream. They met in the garment center and liked each other right away. They became good friends. Al ran the business, supervised the cutters, and kept things on schedule. Bernie did the buying and selling. They were a great team.
The business grew through the prosperity of the fifties and into the sixties. Bernie and Rose had their son, Craig, in 1950. Life was beautiful; a good business, an honest partner, a beautiful wife, a son, and a new home in Hewlett, Long Island. Bernie was even thinking of buying a Cadillac.
But their business was cyclical, and the garment industry was especially prone to fads and fancies, as well as economic cycles. In late 1965, amid the Vietnam War escalation, Bernal Woolens had a setback. Synthetic fabrics were moving into the marketplace rapidly. Imports were growing. On top of all this, Al had talked Bernie into buying new equipment for the cutting room and three new trucks. The partners signed personal guarantees on the loan to make the purchases.
Unlike Bernie Lewis, Al Berger was an introverted man. He had come to America as a boy in 1932. He struggled through the Depression. Deep inside him were the scars caused by his father’s fears that the family would go hungry. When bill collectors came to the door, Al watched his father hide in the basement. They had no money. His dad, Benjamin Berger, a proud man, eventually had a stroke and turned into a vegetable. He swore that he would never put himself in that position.
So when Bernal Woolens could not make its bank payments or its payroll, Al Berger, Mr. Inside, took the blame for their failure on his shoulders. He could see no way out of their financial predicaments. On a muggy summer Monday morning, Al came to the office early. He neatly arranged his desk papers, then sat down and typed a letter to his partner. The quiet Polish immigrant, Albert Berger, who was born in Warsaw and escaped the Holocaust, pried open the elevator door, carefully hid the tool he had used, and then jumped down the shaft, landing on top of the elevator fifteen floors below.
Bernie had to identify the body. It had torn through the top of the elevator car and a sharp edge had ripped Al’s body open. The elevator was filled with blood viscera.
After reading the letter, Bernie realized that Al had killed himself to save the business because they had insurance on each other’s life. He explained in the letter that he would make it look like an accident and even suggested that Bernie sue the building and buy the mill they always dreamed of owning.
Bernie destroyed the letter. He followed Al’s instructions and bought the mill in the quiet countryside of eastern Pennsylvania. He named it Berger Mills. Al’s wife and family always remained partners in the firm.
The night after the suicide Bernie went home and told Rose about Auschwitz. He cried and railed and beat his fists on the walls. Rose knew his tears were brought on by Al Berger’s death, but she said nothing. From that day on, when the subject of Al Berger came up, Bernie Lewis had only one answer: “I don’t want to talk about it!” And he never did. It was only the sight of blood that brought Al Berger and the secret sacrifice he made to the front of Bernie Lewis’ mind.
“Let’s cut the bullshit.” Art Perlman said. He sat down at the card table. “This health club of ours isn’t a health club at all. It’s the goddamned Fountain of Youth and Mt. Sinai Hospital rolled into one.”
Ben Green was half listening as he followed another train of thought. “I feel like I’m in a science fiction movie,” he blurted out.
Joe Finley laughed. “We are, my friends. We most certainly are!”
They stared at him and asked him to explain.
“I’m an actor, right? so I know about movies. The things that have happened to us are impossible. But in the movies the impossible always happens. That place ... that room in Building B is not, to put it mildly, not human.”
“How do you know?” Ben asked.
“Facts. Here they are. My leukemia is gone. Art is growing hair. Ben swims a hundred laps in the pool. Bernie slashes himself and the cut heals in a minute. We are all trotting around like young studs trying to be young bucks with wives again. We can read each other’s minds and thoughts. We can project our thoughts into other people’s minds.”
Joe Finley had their attention as he rattled off their accomplishments. “Now I’ll tell you the weird stuff!”
“All that’s not weird enough?” Bernie asked. “I mean we have…” Art Perlman spoke.
“Wait,” Joe interrupted. “You remember when I told you that I was under the water for four laps? Well, there is more to the story. I didn’t understand…couldn’t bring myself to tell you before. While I was underwater I had the feeling that I was in the ocean. I could see the bottom…and…I wasn’t alone. There were others swimming below me. They were down deep, yet I could see them. They didn’t have diving suits. They seemed to be pulling caskets or tubes out from under large stone slabs.”
“Not caskets or tubes, Joe,” Ben Green interrupted. “They were bodies.”
“Bodies? How do you know?”
“Because I saw the same damned thing two days ago when I went for a swim. I decided to try your underwater feat. It was lunchtime, and the pool was deserted. I stayed down for fifteen minutes. Hear? Fifteen minutes! I saw the same thing. They were bringing up bodies. I thought I was hallucinating.”
“Okay,” Joe continued, “that’s number one. Now listen. Last night I couldn’t sleep so I was out on the terrace. It was late. After midnight. I saw a guy come out of B and meet our old friend Shields. They went into the office and had some kind of powwow. When they came out I suddenly felt ... don’t laugh ... I felt like I could fly.”
“Holy shit!” Bernie Lewis put his hand to his mouth.
“I had to drop to my knees and crawl back away from the railing because, I swear to Christ, I was about to take a header down to the parking lot.”
“What do you think that was all about, Joe?” Art asked.
“I think that place belongs to someone who doesn’t live here.”
“You don’t mean here at the condo?”
“I mean here on this mother-loving planet!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN – DISCOVERIES AT THE DOCK AND POOL
“Operator, I’d like to call the vessel Razzmatazz. It’s registered in the name of Mr. Phillip Doyle, Coral Gables.”
Judy waited patiently as the ship-to-shore operator searched out the number.
“Please make note, that number is 22-4851-CG-11. I’ll connect you. Just a moment.”
The line crackled a bit and she heard Phil Doyle’s voice.
“The old man of the sea, here.”
“Phil? This is Judy Simmons. Jack Fischer’s friend.”
“Oh yeah. Hi, Judy. How’re ya doin’? Is something wrong?” There was concern in his voice.
“No, Phil. I’m just trying to raise Jack and I seem to be having trouble. Have you spoken to him?”
“Not for a week. No, almost two weeks. He told me he had some kinda special charter.”
“Well…okay. Thanks. If you see him, please remind him that he has a girl friend who’s lonely.”
“How about dinner wi
th me? Jack hasn’t been at the dock for a while. Matter of fact, Jimmy Patras told me he thought he saw Jack’s boat over at the condo with the strange name. Ya know. Like a star?”
“Where is it, Phil?”
“At the end of Red Lake Canal. I got it. Antares! Yeah. It’s called Antares.”
“Why would he be there?”
“Well, maybe it’s not Jack. Just a boat like the Manta III. Or maybe that’s where his charter lives.” There was a condescending tone to his voice. He was covering up for his buddy in the male tradition.
“Thanks, Phil. How’s the fishing?”
“Good in the Stream, but lousy over by The Stones.”
“Nice to talk to you. Het, maybe we can have that dinner if the louse keeps me hanging on too long.”
“Anytime, sweetheart. Anytime.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
Judy slammed down the phone. She was furious. Minutes later she was heading toward the Antares condominium complex.
Wally Parker noticed the pretty young girl in the convertible as she parked in the visitors’ lot. She wore tight jeans and a well filled tank top. Probably a granddaughter of one of the old fogies, he thought, as Judy walked toward the pool.
Bernie Lewis looked up from his gin hand. The sight of Judy Simmons filled his eyes. He was immediately interested. He locked on her mind and guided her to their table.
“Can we help you, young lady?” he asked as Judy stopped next to them.
“Uh, maybe.” She was looking into the face of an old man, but the eyes were bright and burning right through her. What she felt was strange and extremely sexy. She smiled, with as light adrenaline rush. Dirty old man, she thought.
“Well, what is it, sweetheart?” Art Perlman chimed in.
He too had that look. Judy gathered her composure.
“I’m looking for the boat dock. A friend of mine is supposed to meet me here with his boat.”
“Boat dock?” Bernie looked at Ben. “We have a boat dock?”
The Cocoon Trilogy Page 13