“Yes. I recall thinking that my foot doctor had such a pretty wife. Who knew?”
“Yeah, I get that a lot.”
Alyse shook Uziel’s hand and said, “It’s nice to meet you. I’m so sorry about what happened at your store. Our daughter Esme drools whenever she looks in the window at your clothes.”
That wasn’t really true and Alyse smiled at me as if to say, Yes, I know that wasn’t really true.
“Yes,” Uziel said, “The young girls love my store. Sometimes I don’t know if that’s such a good thing. But who am I to say?”
“Gotta make a living,” I said in a jocular tone I never knew I had.
“Yes, that’s the rationalization I use.”
I thought that was a pretty revealing comment. Uziel’s Orthodoxy conflicted with the whole Lolita aspect of his business. But then, Jews never really worry themselves much about promiscuity. I think that, so long as you say shtup instead of fuck or screw, you’re pretty much in the clear in the eyes of the Jewish Lord.
“As you probably have guessed, I’ve come regarding the incident at my store.”
Alyse nodded and said, “Well, please come in. Would you like some coffee and a bagel?”
“A salt bagel would be nice.”
“Oh, we only have plain, poppy, or bialy.”
“Besides,” I said, all professional, “shouldn’t you watch your salt intake, Nat?”
“If I watched my intake, as you put it, I’d be eating nothing but spinach and Jell-O.”
“Maybe a decaf coffee, Mr. Uziel?”
“That would be nice, Alyse. Thank you.”
I looked at Nat, giving him an opening to say, “Oh, and Alyse, please call me Nat.” You’d think after coming over unannounced, requesting a salt bagel and then accepting Alyse’s offer of decaf, the least the guy could do was give her the security clearance to call him Nat. But he didn’t, and it bugged me. I think I was feeling so good after the phone call with you, Commie, that there was a little more attitude than usual flowing through me.
I said, “Come on in,” as if ordering around a guy from Allied Van Lines.
Uziel followed me into our unused living room. “Lovely home.”
I gave him the most perfunctory, “Thanks,” imaginable. I don’t know if he was picking up on whatever tinge of defiance I was feeling or not. Remember when we used to listen to that Richard Pryor album over and over? He had that routine about being convicted of tax evasion and, feeling all defiant, he said, “The judge is gonna sentence me, but he ain’t gonna get my dick ‘til he kiss my ass.” That routine was actually in my head as we sat down. I led him to the squishy sofa and I sat on the arm of a leather club chair, making myself a couple feet higher than him.
Richard Pryor . . . damn.
As I was about to ask Uziel what he wanted from me, my kids came hurtling down the stairs.
“Dad?”
“In the living room.”
Charlie flew in, breathless, “Dad, is douche a dirty word?”
Esme, shaking her head, said, “I called him a douche and he got all whacked. I told him it’s a perfectly good word. Right? I saw it on the cover of a magazine. There was an article called ‘Don’t Be a Douche Bag.’ I think it was in Details.”
“It is a word, but Esme, it’s not a nice word to use—especially not in front of company.”
That’s when Esme noticed Uziel. “Oh, hi.”
“Esme, Charlie, this is Nat.”
Not Mr. Uziel. Nat. You like that?
“Nice to meet you both,” Uziel said, staring at Esme.
The kids did their standard, bored hellos.
“So,” Uziel said, “you’re the young lady who was unfortunate enough to hear that terrible anti-Semitic comment on Friday, right?”
I swear, Commie, I don’t know if my blood froze or boiled. I shot Uziel a look like: Shut the fuck up. But he didn’t.
“It’s a shame there are people like that in our world, but there are. So we must remain vigilant.”
Esme got a faraway look. She turned to me. Then Alyse walked in with the cup of coffee and felt the blowback of awkwardness in the room. I went over to Esme, gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, and said, “Ezzie, Mommy and I have to talk to Nat. It won’t take long. You and Charlie go upstairs and I’ll be up in a minute or two, tops. And try to cool it on the douche thing.”
“Okay, Dad,” she said with a mixed-up smile as she turned to leave. Charlie followed her, both thrown for another loop by the adult world.
Alyse put Nat’s mug on the coffee table and said, “Is something wrong?”
“Nat, it was way out of line for you to bring up the anti-Semitic remark with my daughter. You have absolutely no idea how Alyse and I, as her parents, decided to deal with this matter. For all you know, we successfully talked it through with her and it was over and done with. Why would you bring that up within two seconds of meeting a young girl?”
“I’m sorry if I upset her. But, frankly, I doubt that whatever bromides you used to explain the situation would, as you seem to imply, so completely alleviate the trauma she’s suffered.”
“Bromides?” I said, struggling to reel in my composure. “What do you call, ‘We must remain vigilant?’”
Like the day in my office after my dispute with his pious freak son, Uziel seemed impressed by my point. “Yes, I suppose that would also qualify as a bromide.”
I was ready to move on, but Alyse said, “You-ey’s comment . . . ?”
“Yes, I brought it up with your daughter and perhaps that was a mistake. Although it was bound to happen because people in town do know what was said and to whom it was said.”
Alyse closed her eyes and slowly shook her head. “Mr. Uziel, we are, for the most part, bringing up our children as non-believers.”
“You can’t be a non-believer in anti-Semitism. It exists.”
“That doesn’t mean we have to instill fear in our children. If we feel they need to know more about anti-Semitism, we’ll invite Elie Wiesel over and let him teach them how to ‘remain vigilant.’”
All men are unnerved by sarcasm from a pretty woman, but Uziel did his best not to seem flustered. He murmured, “I’m sorry if I spoke out of turn.”
Without openly accepting his apology, Alyse excused herself. I watched her leave, then said, “Nat, what brought you here today?”
He lifted the clipboard. “Nassau County is planning to prosecute Mr. Radmonovic with a grade-one felony. We are circulating a petition to urge the powers that be to prosecute the case as a federal hate crime. That way, if the case is botched in any way, the federal government can retry it.”
I know what you’re thinking, Commie: After the whole discussion about what he said to Esme, this guy still had the chutzpah to hand us his petition? That was my thought too.
“Nat, Mr. Radmonovic hasn’t even been indicted yet.”
“It’s important to get out ahead of these situations.”
“You may not even have a situation. As you probably know, detectives have talked to us a couple of times now. Frankly, they have a very thin case against Mr. Radmonovic.”
“They’ll strengthen the case. They always do when it’s someone who is so clearly guilty.”
How much did I want to tell him right then and there that I was guilty? It was me! I crashed the window of your store. What I really wanted to say was: “You know what you should do, Nat? You should change the name of your store from Nu? Girl Fashions to ‘Young Pussy Fashions.’” I guess I was still in Richard Pryor mode.
“What are you smiling about?”
I couldn’t help it. I was smiling. Enough for Uziel to notice.
“Nothing,” I said. “I just had a funny thought. Nothing relevant to our discussion. Anyway, I can’t sign your petition.”
Uziel paused.
/> “Nat, I’m not really as sure as you are of Mr. Radmonovic’s guilt and, in any case, calling this a hate crime seems like a real stretch to me. If the bottle was thrown through the window of a synagogue, okay. But the perp in this case could just as easily be some normal guy who, I don’t know, tripped over the bottle and got so angry that he picked it up and threw it through the window without thinking.”
“What kind of person throws a bottle through a window without thinking?”
“I have no idea.”
III.
Closing the door behind Uziel, I had a great feeling of suddenly having switched sides from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Anti-War Movement. Not that I have ever heard of anyone in history who had made that move. But I did feel like I was suddenly on life’s fun team.
I pulled back a curtain to see Uziel turn right to, presumably, hit up our next-door neighbors. Gail and Jonathan Herman were perfectly thoughtful, reliable neighbors who, upon sending their morose, pimply twins off to BU, declared war on each other. Every few weeks, they had monster fights. Their house may as well be miked by roadies for Deep Purple the way their livid voices carry through the neighborhood. Rage, bottled up for the sake of the kids, needed only the spark of college acceptance letters to ignite the Hermans.
Alyse and I don’t want to hear the fights—too creepy—so we crank our TV volume up hoping that, during lulls in the hysterics, the Hermans might hear those two music strings on Law & Order and not feel awkward the next time they saw us. Sure enough, sometimes we’d see them on a “morning after” and they’d act like nothing ever happened. One time Gail even called Jonathan to come say hello to us. “Hon? Come on out a sec!”
I remember exactly one time when my parents had a fight. I have no idea what it was about. All I remember was my father’s voice cracking at one point and then, at an especially high-pitched moment when I was about to barricade the door to preserve my family, this fat, asshole jeweler down the hall, Mr. Bratton, knocked on our door and, without waiting for it to open, called out, “Hey in there: Can you cool it with the heavies?” My parents both came to the door and told him to shove it up his ass, which must have unified them because the “heavies” died down pretty fast.
Alyse and I have never had a major blow-out. Some people say that’s unhealthy, we’re in denial, we’re headed for the same hell currently occupied by the Hermans. We’ve been out with couples where one spouse says, “Marriage is hard work,” and the other nods like: You said a mouthful, honey! Think about that: They openly talk about how labor-intensive marriage is in front of a couple who never fights and we’re the unhealthy ones? This whole compulsion about putting everything out in the open? It’s crap.
Of course, that was a needless digression in the story because, as it turned out, Uziel didn’t go to the Hermans. He got in a Lexus driven by his son Jason. It wasn’t a door-to-door petition. It was targeted.
I took off a few minutes before going upstairs for another bout of crisis management with the kids. Back in the living room, I saw Uziel’s untouched coffee still sitting there. I picked it up and drank it. Fuck him.
Yeah, I know, Commie. Not much of a fuck-you gesture, but I was new to acting on my moral outrage.
If only Esme had called Charlie a douche bag a little earlier, they would have run downstairs before Uziel got here and never would have had to hear about being vigilant in this sick world . . .
Up in Charlie’s room, Alyse was almost done dealing with the kids. As I entered, she was saying, “Remember Friday night when we were talking about inner lives? A lot of people have empty inner lives, so they gossip about other people. Ezzie, you did nothing wrong. You were at dinner with the Binders on Friday night and you mentioned a pretty important thing that was said to you that day. Mr. Binder was wrong to tell your story to other people, especially the police, and I’m going to let him know. As far as You-ey is concerned, he may have thrown the bottle through the window. Then again, maybe he didn’t. He’s not a dangerous person, and he’s definitely no one to be afraid of. I’m just sorry Mr. Uziel brought the whole thing up. But again, that’s not your fault. He should have known better, but he has an empty inner life, so he says things he shouldn’t.”
Charlie chewed this over a second and said, “You should never buy clothes at his store again. It could be like, you know, a protest.”
I loved that. “Sounds like a good idea. What do you think, Ez?”
“That’s a good idea, but you know what else we can do? We could buy tons of clothes there and always return them a day later. Store people hate it when you return stuff.”
Commie, everyone talks about how great their kids are, but, really, can you believe how much better my kids are than everyone else’s?
Things leveled out at chez moi for a few hours. The kids went ice skating, Alyse went up to take a long shower, and I—
Well, I don’t know if you need to hear this. Probably not.
I’ll just pick up the story later in the afternoon. I was doing more research on the web. I tracked down the architect who remodeled the mattress store into Uziel’s joint. Turns out . . .
IV.
Okay, Commie! Jesus, let go of my arm. I’ll tell you what I left out: the kids went ice skating, Alyse took her shower, and I went to the basement, sprawled out on a couch, and did my thing with Jenji. I imagined doing her on the ping-pong table. It sits on a pool table, so you just move the net out of the way. It’s no big deal, okay?
You know what? I’m sick that I told you that. On principle, I’m just nauseated. I’ll tell you why I’m nauseated. I can’t stand people talking about sex in any way.
I’m not being cogent here, I know. Look, the thing is, even when I go to the movies and see sex scenes where the guy pounds the girl up against the wall and she’s digging her nails into him and he’s biting her lip and she’s tugging up his head by the hair and he’s flipping her over and she’s cursing and grabbing an ice pick from a credenza . . . it all just bugs me. It seems less like sex and more like some kind of freak show.
I hate turning everything into a theatrical command performance. Or maybe I don’t want to see through the window of people’s secret perversions. Or maybe I’m just repulsively wholesome. Maybe I’m scared of obsession in all forms. Or maybe I’ll go so far as to say that wild sex just scares me. Okay? There, I said it. On the other hand, when I watch a nature show on lions, ducks, click beetles, horses, dolphins, and elephants, they all mate in their one way every time.
But humans, with our oversized brains and endless capacity for boredom? No. It’s not enough to complete the staggering feat of getting a girl into bed. You also have to be creative. And the more creative you are, the more demand there is for variety! And if you run out of creativity, you bang headlong into the Emasculation Proclamation: You’re boring in bed. I mean, otherwise, how the hell would seemingly normal couples wind up having anal intercourse?
I have nothing against societal advances, but when the vagina becomes a victim of job obsolescence, something’s very wrong. And, and! With all that going on, you have these religious nuts pushing the concept of intelligent design! If God had a lick of intelligence and gave a shit about families, he’d have made us physically capable of screwing in one position and one position only. A simple edict: Here’s the way you’re going to do it. If you’re not happy with it, tough shit. And maybe, in all His wisdom, He’d throw in a reluctant blessing on oral sex, you know, just to keep the peace. But that’s it. No more crazy ass shit. Don’t you think that would have made the world a better place? All He had to do was keep the possibilities for longing to a manageable number and He could’ve had a much easier time selling all the rest of His bullshit. You with me here? Just think about it a moment.
You wanna hear something really insane?
I can’t believe I’m telling you this one.
Once, while whacking to Jenji, I tried spi
cing things up with a little dirty talk. Nothing raunchy. I just said something about “your great tits.” And Jenji says to me, “Ugh! You’re disgusting!”
That’s right. She scolded me in my own fantasy. Two seconds later, I’m lying there apologizing to her!
You can bet I didn’t try that again.
You know what? I gotta get off this subject. Enough already.
Where was I?
After I checked out the architect on the web, I called Arnie to see how he was doing as any dirtyful friend would. Dirtyful? I meant dutiful. Jesus.
I caught Arnie just as he was about to pick up Fumi from the hospital. He sounded whipped but managed to slip in one great thought, “You know, when you ask a woman to marry you and she says yes, all it does is give you the confidence to think you can get other women. I’m telling you, man, you just can’t win.”
Now that I think of it, that kind of dovetails with what I was just talking about.
Anyway, just before we hung up, Arnie wondered if he should buy a stomach pump for home use. How funny is that, Commie?
Next order of business. I texted Graydon with my theory that a non-baseball-playing artsy Eastern European most likely couldn’t throw a bottle hard and fast enough to bust through a dollhouse window, let alone a window like Uziel’s. I included the contact info of the architect, Preston Lomeli, and:
Ask about the glass he used and what it would take to shatter it.
Best, Deep Throat
Less than a minute later, Graydon texted back, “Hey, Hal Holbrook.” That gave me a chuckle. Then,
Good idea. I’m on it. BTW: charging Radmonovic w/ felony Monday or Tuesday. Asking 50G bail.
Best, Ben Bradlee
To tell you the truth, that wasn’t the first moment I thought of bailing You-ey out. Right after he was busted, part of me wanted to bail him out just to stick it up everyone’s asses, especially that of Uziel and that pig cop, Byron. Another part of me wanted to spring him because, well, I am the guy who committed the crime. I mean, you know as well as anyone that I have an over-developed sense of guilt. In this case, my guilt was pretty much justified by the fact that I was guilty.
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