Nick Bones Underground

by Phil M. Cohen

  Me, I can only experience this at a remove. I wasn’t born and, conventionally at least, I won’t die. But Abe did, and before his time.

  CHAPTER 25

  FAREWELL TO ABE

  AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK ON a cold, dreary morning somewhere in the bowels of Brooklyn, we buried Abe Shimmer at a graveside funeral service. Present were Ezekiel, Maggie in a small box, and Marc Goldberg’s avatar in a larger box supervising two cemetery workers making ready to lower the casket into the wintry ground and cover it when given the order. Rabbi Robbie had yet to arrive.

  I propped Maggie-in-tablet on a nearby monument. She came to Abe’s funeral as her most formal Marlene, beautifully dressed and impeccably coifed. Ezekiel looked surprisingly clean. As we were about to begin, Simone showed up, wrapped in an ankle-length down coat, down gloves, and hat. I went to hug her, but she pulled away.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  Her voice was halting. “I guess I wanted to say goodbye. I only knew about him from you, but I wanted to be here,” she said.

  “How did you even find out?” I asked.

  She looked at the casket, then at me, then down on the ground where her eyes rooted for several seconds. “We all have our networks,” she murmured.

  Something nagged at me, but before I could say anything the rabbi assistant arrived. Rabbi Robbie weighed in at a good 300 well-apportioned pounds, and he had to approach six-five. He had a longish but well-trimmed black beard with some well-appointed grey peppered in. Horn-rimmed glasses in shades of brown lent him just the right air of gravitas, and a large, black yarmulke manifested piety. A dark pinstriped suit, a light-brown shirt with a dark tie, and a scarf around his neck completed his attire. No coat. No hat. No gloves. The cold left him unaffected.

  “Hello. I am Rabbi Robbie, Rabbi Weiner’s rabbi assistant,” he said with a slight mechanical sound in his voice. “So sorry to be late, Mr. Friedlander.”

  “Freidman,” said Maggie. “His name is Nick Friedman, Dr. Friedman to you.”

  Rabbi Robbie lifted an arm to his forehead in a gesture approximating thinking. “Oh yes, terribly sorry.”

  He reached into his jacket and withdrew his rabbi’s manual, opened it, and began speaking. “As we all know, in our ancient tradition, marriage is a most sacred of institutions—”

  “A funeral, this is a funeral,” said the disembodied Marc Goldstein.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” said Rabbi Robbie, slightly discombobulated now, as he turned the pages. He scanned the group. “We have come all the way out to Mount Sinai Cemetery here on Long Island this spring morning to say our farewells to Avi Leib Shmuel, may he rest in peace.”

  “Numbnuts,” I whispered. “Wrong location, wrong season, wrong name.”

  Rabbi Robbie stood momentarily paralyzed, eyes closed. “Oh, yes, I see. So sorry.”

  He read a few funeral prayers as we stood in the cold, caught by the sorrow of the moment.

  Bleak could not begin to describe the morning. Abe lay in his casket, not yet lowered into the winter’s earth. A cold wind blew in from the south, creeping in and out of the stones like a thief who’d found nothing worth stealing. Someday, somewhere I would lie in a similar box. Who’d be present to regret I was no longer among the living? Who’d have something kind to say over my mortal remains? Maggie? Someday it would be me, all of the travails and dilemmas of my life, too, gone forever.

  At the end of his readings, Rabbi Robbie turned to me and lethargically nodded several times.

  I pulled out a few pages and read my remarks.

  “Abe Shimmer entered my life when I was fourteen. Decades later we met again. I needed but a moment to recall how much I’d always loved this man, for the way he warmly extended himself to me when I was a teenager, for his relentless questioning that trained me for high school and beyond. And I loved him because he deeply loved a son who deserves no one’s love. Abe escaped the ovens. He came to this country a boy. Until these last few years, he lived well and contributed generously to his adopted home.”

  Very much against type, I pointed to the casket. “Now, Abe,” I said, “I not only have to find Shmulie, but your killer, too.” I made a few more remarks of the type offered at funerals, then put the papers back. I glanced at the somber gathering. The tears that shone in Ezekiel’s and Simone’s eyes magnified the morning pale. Simone sobbed. I wanted to comfort her, but again she pulled away. It made little sense for her to be inconsolable, but I’d long given up attempting to explain human behavior.

  In a key I’d never before heard, the rabbi assistant chanted El Malei Rachamim, the prayer expressing hope that God would care for the soul, again using the wrong name, but we were all well past caring. Goldstein ordered the two men to lower the casket. When complete, Rabbi Robbie ambled to the pile of earth beside the grave, squatted, and scooped up an enormous quantity of dirt into his arms and dumped it unceremoniously atop the casket. A dull thud rose from the hole. Others took turns using a spade that protruded from the pile; Abe Shimmer laid to rest.

  Why kill him, a sick old man? And who? What is with Simone? When I looked at her, the back of my neck itched. What could that mean?

  Maggie wept. “Oh, Abe. Oh, Abe. Goodbye, my friend,” she sputtered through her sobs.

  “Maybe you can turn it down just a bit,” I whispered.

  “But it’s so sad, Nick. It’s beyond sad. It’s so, it’s so lachrymose. Like Jewish history itself,” Maggie’s said, her weeping filling the air.

  “Yes, damned sad,” Ezekiel added. “God’s creatures should not be treated this way. Murdered and dropped into a hole in the ground like trash.” He looked to me with wide eyes. “Prof, do your job, man. Raise these bones and make them live again.”

  Rabbi Robbie approached me and, gripping my hand with both of his, pumped it up and down. “So sorry for your loss.” He looked at his wrist as though a watch were there. “Got to go,” he said. “A bar mitzvah somewhere in Bed Stuy. I think.” He ambled off. Before he’d gone too far, he turned around and went to Goldstein.

  “Uh, my check,” he said.

  “It’ll be in the mail tomorrow,” said Goldstein, tersely.

  “That means I won’t get it until next month. Can’t you Venmo it?”

  A grinding noise came out of Goldstein’s mouth, and his image disappeared.

  I stood gridlocked. Shmulie’s father was gone. I remained alive, the mystery no closer to resolution, the grey, frigid air framing the day. I couldn’t have contrived in my deepest dreams what lay ahead.

  ***

  With Maggie safely packed up in a padded knapsack, she rode with Simone and me back to my place. Riding the elevator, Simone leaned into me.

  Inside, we removed our outer gear. I turned on some Coltrane; we drank tea in the kitchen. Simone sighed and began to cry.

  From the rucksack I’d laid down in the living room came a shrill voice: “Nick, get me the hell out of here.” Though Maggie could have clouded to her usual home from within the bag, she chose not to, and I chose not to liberate her. Ignoring the voice, we walked to the bedroom. I was not altogether comfortable with my decision. Another of those acts a disembodied computer could not engage in was what I needed rather badly at that moment.

  We lay beneath the blanket, Simone’s shoulders exposed to my eyes.

  “Sorry I wasn’t so good,” she said. “I’ve been preoccupied.”

  “You did seem like you were elsewhere.”

  I lay on my side looking at her, realizing I’d had sex twice with the same beautiful woman. Nearly a biblical miracle. I rubbed her shoulder, then her back. I closed my eyes and took a breath.

  “Ever slept with a black woman before?”

  “Not that I can remember.”

  “Notice any difference?”

  “Darker nipples, about all. Maybe curlier pubic hair. Nothing that matters
. You ever sleep with an older man?”

  “Not that I can remember.”

  “Any difference?”

  “Gray stubble. Maybe took a little longer to cum. That’s a good thing,” she said.

  “Yeah, as long as I can still cum,” I said.

  “No need to worry about this time, and probably not the next time, either. If there’s any trouble, I’ve got a few tricks,” she said.

  “I’m glad,” I said.

  We lay still. This would be the time when in the old days we’d silently smoke a cigarette or two.

  Simone started to cry.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I can’t tell you,” she answered.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s, it’s nothing. It’s everything. Everything’s so sad, so out of control, you know?”

  I knew about the world where no one fit in. I put my arm around her, and she drew close. A moment passed, and she regained some self-control, but the tension did not seem to abate.

  “How’s this going to work—I mean you and me?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Me, either.”

  We agreed for the moment we’d do what lovers who had geographic challenges with their relationship frequently did—procrastinate.

  “Get me the hell out of here,” came a voice from the living room.

  “Shit. Guess I got to get moving,” I said.

  “Me too,” she said. “My mother’s expecting me before I go back down.”

  We pulled ourselves up, and dressed, leaving the bed unmade.

  “Yeah,” I said, looking at her dressing. “Darker nipples, same curves. You’re beautiful.”

  CHAPTER 26

  THE CHEMIST

  I FELT LIKE A barrel of lard and my back hurt. I needed a workout. I decided to take advantage of Hank’s standing offer and went for a swim late afternoon in his synagogue’s pool.

  A pool in a temple? Sound odd? One imagines a congregant saying to his neighbor seated to his left or right one Friday night, “The sermon’s a stinker. Let’s go swim a lap.” Not a bad idea, but not the point. Those who oversaw the construction of a synagogue in the 1940s hoped it would also serve as a community center.

  I tossed my gear into a gym bag and made my way down the block. I went swimming to exercise but also to think. Swimming was a private affair. A hundred people could be in the water, six to a lane. No matter. The swimmer, the water, arms and legs thrashing away, was a solitary monad.

  I entered the building and was directed downstairs. I changed, walked through the shower to the pool, pulled my goggles over my eyes, climbed in, resisting the slight cold of the water, and got to work crawling up and back, kicking, stroking, breathing, immersed in thought.

  Who’d want Abe dead? I kept asking myself. Shmulie’s compliance seemed unlikely. But if not him, then who would want to off the harmless, forlorn, old and dying man anyway?

  Then there was the other matter. What to do about Simone? Our relationship would be an intermarriage of a sort. Who’d move in with whom?

  And then there was Maggie. Simone, Maggie, and me? Who would be a third wheel?

  Shmulie was missing and I had no clue where. Abe had been killed for no apparent reason. And Simone, well, Simone. So, I swam.

  At around three quarters of a mile someone bumped into me from behind. It happened sometimes when the pool was crowded and the lane was shared with three or four people. When I reached the end of the pool I stopped and hung on the edge. The fellow who ran into me stopped, too.

  “Just stay the fuck out of my way,” he said, in a tone that bespoke an anger not really in keeping with pool etiquette, like he was pissed off at me for something else, even though, as best I could tell beneath his goggles, he was a stranger. He kicked off the side, and I got out.

  The shvitz, the steam room, beckoned, though normally I couldn’t bear more than a few minutes of sweating rivers in extreme heat before fleeing to the cold shower. At that moment, though, I needed a dose of heat—the hotter the better.

  I climbed out of the water and walked to the steam room. As I opened the door, a foggy wave of scorching, damp air slapped me. I forced myself to sit down. Immediately, I began shvitzing, sweat pouring out of every pore. I was melting.

  With the endorphins flowing inside and steaming like a fresh broccoli outside, I reflected on my visit to the home of Schmeltzer, the mystery that lay behind 42, and Menkies’s sudden rage. Perhaps something related to Shmulie; perhaps not. The time had arrived to employ Maggie creatively. A little virtual espionage among Schmeltzerites might yield results. Results or not, a little subterranean work, I knew, would make Maggie’s day. I’d have her study Schmeltzer’s economy.

  I was growing accustomed to her as a living entity. I had definitely changed my internal pronouns from “it” to “her.” I had two women in my life. But I knew better than to feel smug. I knew how very easily, and quickly, all that could get blown away.

  Steam shot up from the floor, and a fog engulfed me. When the hot cloud began clearing, an image to my left was revealed. I couldn’t make out much except that he was a large man, and he appeared to be looking my way. I thought he might have been the guy who confronted me in the pool. But he got up and left. So did I.

  ***

  I walked the few blocks in the dark and cold to Eat Your Vegetables, a small basement restaurant around the corner. It managed to survive the GD, and had done so with class. Its creative menu featured wondrous and rare vegetables and an impressive array of whole grains.

  Frank Moser, the owner, was standing by the door as I approached. “Hi, Doc. Haven’t seen you in a while. Table for one?” I nodded.

  He led me to a small square table flush against a wall. An unlit multi-colored candle sat in the middle. He handed me the menu as I sat, and disappeared into the kitchen. A mix of old Motown hits played.

  A young woman with streaks of lime and pink in her hair came to the table carrying a glass and a pitcher of iced spring water in which were suspended two thick slices of lime.

  “I’m Arlene,” she said. “I’ll be your server this evening.”

  I ordered, and she assured me that my food would be ready soon.

  My steamed vegetables with fried tofu arrived. In past days this meal would have been mundane. But the days when a vegetable would essentially jump into your cart as it passed through the produce section of the supermarket and beg you to eat it were gone. How Frank acquired vegetables in such variety and abundance was a miracle. But that’s why I kept coming back.

  That and the excellent serving staff, mostly women, including Arlene, who was new. Her name jogged my memory, though I would likely have been able to keep the name repressed, had Smokey Robinson not started singing “Tracks of My Tears.”

  My appetite vanished. I paid for my unfinished meal and walked back home.

  On my way up that gradual incline to my apartment, I pondered the memory my server and Smokey Robinson provoked. A dark whisper from the past. The darkest.

  ***

  Shmulie and I approached the end of high school knowing our future would not lie in the path the rabbis counseled—a year in a yeshiva in Jerusalem, followed by attendance at a university where Orthodox Jewish life would be easy. Higher education would not be preceded by a year in Jerusalem, and we cared little whether the rabbis at the yeshiva approved our academic destinations. We were anxious to leave the yeshiva behind and slip quietly into the outside.

  Yet I wasn’t wholly untouched by the world in which I’d dwelt. I developed a passion for religions in general alongside Judaism in particular. By my junior year, in addition to a close study of much of the Talmudic tractate Sanhedrin and the demands of my secular studies, I found warm intellectual companionship with the likes of Buber, Fackenheim, Sartre, Kaplan, Niebuhr, Tillich, Levinas, and Barth
, men who opened up the meaning of religion beyond what I believed were the limits of Orthodoxy.

  Other than a flirtation with Ayn Rand, Shmulie had no affinity for philosophy. His future lay in chemistry.

  Shmulie strolled into Dr. Frankel’s chemistry class in September of eleventh grade. By that time nothing in science or the humanities had taken extraordinary hold of him. Though he’d done well in biology and physics, he had not found an intellectual home. But chemistry fit him like a tailored Armani suit. Good as he was at Talmud, he was far better at chemistry—his genius hit overdrive among acids, bases, and Bunsen burners.

  By November of eleventh grade he’d spent what remained of his bar mitzvah money purchasing a chem lab he placed in his basement, a laboratory far better equipped than the one at school. I’d occasionally find him down there dwelling among the vials of chemicals, test tubes, pipettes, the books opened and stained. I’d be assaulted by thick clouds of assorted colors bearing disagreeable aromas, some of them likely approaching toxicity.

  “With enough time,” he told me once in those days, “I could take shit and transform it into gold. I know I can.”

  And he would.

  In the world of the yeshiva, graduating with one’s virginity intact was far more common than in secular high schools, or at least so we believed. Shmulie and I took an account of our male classmates and estimated the rate of virginity at probably 65 percent, among whom, alas, we counted ourselves.