That’s another symptom of our times: People express guilty feelings but never admit guilt. The closest anyone comes to copping to anything is saying they “made bad choices.” These senators suck the marrow out of the state to pay for hookers and they “made a bad choice.” Mike Vick disembowels a pack of pit bulls? Bad choice. Really? Is that what it was? Just once, I want to hear someone say, “I did it because I’m a horrible human being.”
Or here’s a conversation I’d like to hear: “Gee, I feel responsible for your father’s death.”
“Why?”
“Because I shot him.”
Dream on, huh?
The point is, no one actually speaks anymore. No one just says the words. I don’t know exactly when the English language went from being a way of communicating to a way of deflecting. Watch a tape of Nixon’s dopey “Checkers Speech,” and he seems sincere next to what you see now. Today, everyone in America talks like a spokesperson with an arsenal of meaningless buzz words or hedging phrases. Wow, he handled that well. We’ve just accepted this Teutonic shift toward stonewalling. In fact, we admire it. I hate getting up on a soapbox again, but—
Oh my God. Did I just say ‘Teutonic shift’? Yikes. I’m really starting to lose it here. Or maybe it’s just yet another pre-Alzheimer’s tip-off. I meant tectonic shift. Obviously. You’re not an idiot. I’ll tell you, I’m glad you’ve been out of it for these tongue slips. The shit you would have given me . . .
Although, cut me a little slack. This is definitely the most I’ve ever spoken in a concentrated period my entire life. Which is pretty cool, you know, setting a new personal record at this age.
Wouldn’t it be funny if there was a God, but all He did was keep statistics? You die, you go up or down to wherever. God doesn’t make any judgments or dispense any universal wisdom. He just gives you the stats of your life: You ate 36,452 slices of pizza. You drove 5,306,911 miles. You sneezed 123,968 times. You said the words, “I’m sorry,” 97,455 times, 62,122 times of which you meant it. You spent $336,977 on restaurants and left $57,286 in tips, an average of 17 percent. You’d probably get a better idea of how you lived your life through those numbers than by hearing some pompous, snotty recap from that condescending dick, St. Peter.
The Statistical God.
I think we’re coming up with some pretty good philosophies of life here, Commie. I really do.
V.
I didn’t really know if fifty grand was a lot or a little for heaving a bottle through a window, but I did know that You-ey didn’t have the money. I’d started doing a little research on bail when the phone rang. Alyse was up in the bedroom and I was downstairs in my little office, so I didn’t hear any of her conversation. But it wasn’t long before she came down.
“That was Meri.”
I turned to Alyse and saw her you-won’t-believe-this look.
“You won’t believe this. She says to me, ‘So, I hear you guys didn’t sign the petition.’”
“What? How did she hear that?”
“She heard from Claudia Belkin.”
“Who’s Claudia Belkin?”
“A friend of a friend of a friend of the mother of a kid who knows Nat Uziel’s son.”
“That bony freak has friends? Amazing. Did Meri sign the petition?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Was she shocked that we didn’t?”
“I don’t know. When she told me she signed it, I called her and Ira ‘mindless sheep’ and hung up on her.”
“Get out.”
“Not good?”
“Very good. I’m proud of you. Fuck Reuters and her Jefferson Davis husband. You know, in his quiet way, he really is a moron.”
Alyse laughed. Then she said, “Hon, I’m not going to get hysterical again, but something is changing around here. Just since Friday night. I don’t know.”
“Is that necessarily bad?”
“That’s what I’ve been asking myself. I was thinking that I can’t really remember ever feeling scared in this way before and maybe I shouldn’t assume the worst. I don’t really know what I’m saying.”
“It takes time to process these things.”
“You seem to be doing it more easily than I am. I may have just ended a thirty-whatever-year friendship and I don’t feel what I think I should feel. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”
“Without knocking your past or your friends, feeling the way you do could be a sign of—I don’t know—growth? Not that you needed to grow. But it’s good to evolve a little, I would think. As long as you don’t wake up tomorrow and decide to move to Rwanda.”
“I don’t think I want to live in Rwanda. Although, since we talked about the city, it’s been on my mind. Getting away from all this oppressive tact and gossip to a place where you can see your neighbors and not even have to say hello sounds kind of civilized to me.”
Shit, Commie. Didn’t I tell you before that ignoring neighbors in New York is the peak of civilization? I think I did. Well, if so, I stole that from Alyse too.
The thing that stuck with me from that conversation was that Alyse was now following my lead. It seemed like a role reversal, but maybe it wasn’t. I’d always felt like this was Alyse’s world and I was lucky enough to be along for the ride. But that didn’t mean it was true anymore. Maybe it hadn’t been true for years. The impressions that pockmark your brain are hard to shake. And frankly, I guess I wasn’t overly intent on shaking them. I like Alyse World. But now I was having that wisp of a thought that maybe I’d become more than just a mid-level executive in my own life. Maybe I was controlling things more than I thought. Talk about your tectonic shifts!
As Alyse turned to go back upstairs, I said, “What would you say to taking the kids to the Cayman Islands over Passover?”
“The Cayman Islands? Why the Cayman Islands?”
“Commie invited us down.” Alyse kind of smiled through her confusion, so I added, “I called Commie before.” Alyse nodded, no less baffled. “I just felt like calling Commie. It was great talking to him.”
“This is what I mean about things changing,” she said, “All of a sudden, you’re connecting with friends and I’m dumping them.”
“Role reversal. I don’t know what that’s about. But Commie’s got a place in the Caymans.”
“Isn’t that some pricey real estate for a do-gooder lawyer?”
“His kid brother owns it. He was an arbitrageur in the ’80s and, according to Commie, he green-mailed his way to insane amounts of money. Now he’s a venture capitalist—whatever that means—and he took his whole family to Shanghai. They’re living there for a few years. And, besides, Commie’s not a public defender anymore.”
“I didn’t know he was a public defender. I remember he worked with that non-profit outfit.”
“The Southern Poverty Law Center. That was before the public defender’s office, which was after The World Hunger Foundation, which was after Save the Children. Now he’s with a big firm. Of course, he’s in charge of all pro bono work, so it’s not like he sold out. In fact, at this moment, he’s representing a dog.”
Alyse looked at me.
“Yeah, he’s the attorney for a dog.”
“What did the dog do?”
“Don’t ask.”
Alyse didn’t ask. Instead she just said, “You know what? We should give your friends a shot. Arnie’s a blast, and Commie’s always been this mysterious Christ-like figure in your life. Fine. Let’s go to the Cayman Islands.”
Alyse turned to go upstairs, but this time she stopped herself. “Oh, by the way, Hanukkah is Tuesday night.”
“It is?”
“I figured you didn’t know. Hanukkah is the most elusive holiday in the world. You never know where the hell they’ll decide to shove it on the calendar.”
“Why can’t they just decide on a day? Just p
ick one. Independence Day is July 4th, Hanukkah is December 10th. Every year. Is that so hard?”
“You should bring it up with Pope Alan Greenspan.”
“Yeah. I know Esme is past it, but is Charlie over the eight crazy nights phase?”
“I think so. One crazy night ought to do it.”
“I’ll buy him something tomorrow. You handle Esme?”
“Deal.”
That was a mild relief. I wouldn’t know what to get Esme. The tastes of her demographic group change every twenty minutes.
I decided against telling Alyse my thoughts about posting bail for You-ey. Enough, I thought. Give her a break.
And the rest of that Sunday passed without incident.
Oh, one tiny thing: When the kids got home from ice skating, Esme said to Alyse and me, “You know, Chuckster is a really, really good skater.”
Charlie reacted as if he’d been sainted. Esme smiled at him with something like real love for her little brother and said, “You should play hockey. You’d be great at it!”
“Maybe I will!”
Even though hockey’s a moronic sport, it looks kind of fun to play. Right then, I decided to get Charlie full hockey gear for Hanukkah.
Another decision out of the way.
MONDAY THEN
I.
On Monday morning, maybe fifteen minutes into my solo time in bed, Alyse came running up the stairs and jumped on my side of the bed.
“Wake up.”
“What? Is everyone okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Everyone’s fine.”
“Then what’s going on?”
“I just went on my website and there are six bids for one of You-ey’s pieces and four bids on another. The asking price for each was four hundred and they’ve both been bid up to over eight hundred.”
“Holy shit. A bidding war? How did that happen?”
“That’s what I was wondering. Then I noticed that two of the bidders had email addresses ending in ‘AllWhiteMeat.com.’ So, I Googled it and AllWhiteMeat.com is a white supremacist group.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Exactly.”
“How did they find out about You-ey?”
“Their website had a link to The New York Times article from yesterday. The ‘buffalo-nosed bagel-biters’ phrase was highlighted along with You-ey’s line about the Holocaust conspiracy. What should I do?”
“Did it say where these nuts are located?”
“They’re based somewhere in Oregon, but they offer on-line memberships so people can hate from anywhere. They offer all these photos on their website of guys in fatigues with rifles. They have bomb-making lessons—you name it. And the weird thing is, they also have recipes on there.”
“Recipes. For what?”
“Butterscotch pudding. Shrimp cocktail sauce. French onion soup.”
“I used to order French onion soup every time I went out to dinner during college.”
“I remember.”
“That’s not important right now.”
“No, not really.”
“Alyse, these are scary people. This may sound extreme, but you might want to call the FBI. Commie used to prosecute these hate groups. He told me that between the weak economy and a black president, they’re sprouting up so fast, the FBI can barely keep track of them anymore.”
“I don’t think it’s extreme at all. I think it’s a great idea.”
“Oh, good.”
It wasn’t until I was in the shower that it dawned on me I was (so far) an unsuspected fugitive who had just willfully suggested bringing the FBI into my life. And yet, in what was becoming a pattern, I just shook my head and smiled. Craziness was starting to feel normal.
Not thirty seconds out of the shower, Alyse was back upstairs and going on about the Feds.
“So, I looked up the FBI. They list a field office in Manhattan serving the whole area, but there’s also something called a resident agent on the Queens/Nassau border, so I called that number.”
“Good,” I said, drying my back. “Think globally, call locally.”
“I explained to a receptionist why I was calling and, in no time, she connected me to a FBI agent at his house in Baldwin. He’s dropping by.”
“He’s dropping by?”
“He wanted to come at 8:15, but I asked him if I could get the kids off to school first, so he said he’d go out to breakfast and be here around 8:45. Can you—?”
“I’ll call Sylvia and cancel my first appointment. No big deal.”
Commie, among the admittedly more obvious reasons why I chose you as the one person I would tell this whole story to, I think you can now understand why I thought it would interest you. Granted, it took me over two days to get to the white supremacist aspect. But you spent all that time at the Southern Poverty Law Center nailing white supremacists. You told me how they spread like weeds after Obama was elected. This shit’s right in your wheelhouse.
I woke up the kids a bit earlier and with more vigor than usual.
Did I mention that Charlie has a fish tank in his room? I only mention it now because, when I went into his room that morning, the light in the tank went on right as I opened the door. It’s weird how fish look when they wake up, glassy-eyed and stoned just like people. I also noticed there was a build-up of algae on all their plastic plants. I remember thinking that was so weird. You have plastic plants. Then algae grows on them, making them look like real plants. It was like the botanical version of Pinocchio. Look, I’m a real plant now!
I don’t know why I even mentioned that. I guess, with all that was going on, irony was suddenly popping up everywhere in my field of vision.
“Hey, kiddo, you gotta clean your fish tank one of these days.”
Funny, my kids have never asked for a dog. If they’d asked, I’d have probably done it. Not that I feel one way or the other about dogs. I’ve never had one. Sometimes I think it might be nice to have something around the house that’s aging even faster than me. But otherwise, I can take ’em or leave ’em.
“Maybe we can get a bigger tank soon, Dad.”
“Maybe.”
“We have to get a bigger tank if I buy a silver arowana.”
“A silver arowana can grow to be a foot long. He’ll eat all your other fish.”
“I know. They’re so cool. I read that, in the wild, arowanas can jump out of the water and eat small monkeys.”
I pulled the blanket off him. “You’re a small monkey, and it’s time to go to the zoo we call school.”
As I said, it’s warm in Charlie’s room, so, instead of pajamas, he sleeps in Allen Iverson basketball shorts. By the time he turned eight, I found myself stealing glances at his ankles to see if any hair was growing in, always hoping there wasn’t. It was as if I wanted him to stay the exact age he was, dreading the day he’d turn into another adult with unsavory hormones and hidden motives. On that morning, his ankles were smooth and innocent, temporarily freeing me to worry about all kinds of other stuff beyond my control.
You know what, Commie? Nothing happened at breakfast. We ate and they went to school.
II.
My image of a FBI agent is Efrem Zimbalist Jr. So, when Alyse and I opened the door for Lester Horton, I felt like asking for his ID. As it happened, he showed his ID on his own and we welcomed yet another law enforcement official into our home. Horton was in his early forties, jowly, with a comb-over, gray pants, blue jacket with brass buttons—the kind of guy who always played the father in the high school play.
Alyse gave him a cup of coffee, which he absently sipped while scanning her website. He then whizzed around her computer in such a blur that the hard drive must have been thinking: What the fuck?
In no time, he leaned back and asked Alyse, “Do you have any other pieces of Mr. Brushstroke’s artwork that y
ou can post on your website?”
Alyse, appropriately baffled, said, “Actually, I do. He brought over a few that I took shots of, and haven’t posted yet, and he emailed me photos of three others.”
Horton reacted in a way that was both pleased and grim. “That’s good,” he said.
Alyse and I looked at each other, lost. Horton was probably used to this kind of reaction, so he explained things in a firm, even-paced way that even mindless civilians could grasp.
“First off,” he began, “you need not worry about these people. I’ve investigated and taken down white supremacist groups for years.”
My glance at Alyse was less than a glance. But Horton caught it.
“I know I don’t look the type, but that’s part of why I’m so good at it. “
Alright, sir.
“Now, not all supremacists are rural auto mechanics. Some are middle class, even upper middle class, from metropolitan areas. They post gun-toting photos and bomb-making instructions on their websites, but that’s just a smokescreen. They want you to believe they’re like all those whacko militiamen in Northern Michigan.”
“They’re bourgeois neo-Nazis,” I said.
“Right,” Horton said with light impatience. “So bourgeois that they collect what we call ‘hate art.’”
Alyse was compelled to say, “You-ey’s work isn’t really political.”
“Doesn’t matter. He made the anti-Semitic remarks. They just assume his work reflects that. These guys are more insidious than others of their ilk because they hide their identities and they have money. So, while they don’t get their hands dirty, they give money to groups that do. They let the militia idiots—that’s how they often refer to violent white supremacists—do their bidding. That’s how some band of schmucks who do lube jobs all day can get their hands on grenade launchers. These money guys are the ones I’ve been focusing on. You can help me find them.”
Alyse looked at me, seemingly resigned to watching her life permanently spin into surreal places. I put my arm around her and nodded at Horton. The FBI can count on us, sir.
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