by Joel Deutsch

“That Liara is such a precocious little piroshok for 13,” Irina always says, usually in Russian, to anyone who’ll listen. Piroshok is the singular of piroshki, those fried dumplings with different fillings like ground meat or mashed potatoes inside them. I think she likes to say this mostly because she thinks I remember everything about everybody, which is mostly true by the way, and that’s on top of too much homework and all those surprise math quizzes that big, fat, or should I say horizontally challenged sadist Mr. Snallor likes to spring on us.

I don’t really mind being called a piroshok so much, because piroshki are pretty delicious, at least the way my mom makes them sometimes. But what does annoy me is that ‘little’ thing. Where Irina gets that is totally beyond me. Seriously. On my last visit to the pediatrician, just before the beginning of the school term, I measured five feet, eight inches in my socks.

Growing so fast has its positive side, I’m sure. But you just try being a tall 13-year-old girl and see if you like it so much, yourself. And that’s without the rest of it. My other dimensions and proportions, I mean. Where people know me, it’s okay to look, well, older than my actual age. Kinda okay, anyway. But outside of home and school, and I never dreamed I’d hear myself say this, I’m glad I still have my braces.

But back to the ‘precocious’ part. Listening carefully, that’s actually all there is to it. The thing is, most people just pretend they’re really listening, and maybe they sincerely think they are, but you can tell they’re not, I mean if you’re paying attention. Their minds always seem to be somewhere else.

It’s not that I don’t have to keep notes. I keep notes, plenty of them, believe me. I keep them right on the family computer, in a file with a name that looks just like one of my school assignments.

When I thought about it, the only kind of notebook I could even imagine using for the same purpose was the kind that girl uses for a secret journal in this novel I read when I was eight, called Harriet the Spy. The book was meant for ten year olds, but apparently I read two years above grade level. I just felt you had to know that. Anyway, that wouldn’t work for me, ‘cause something like that would be abysmally obvious, not to mention totally uncool. I mean, even if I hid it in my backpack, it would still be really weird, you know? Besides, it’s not like I need more stuff to lug around. Seriously. My backpack weighs about three billion pounds. And keeping something like that out in the open? Not happening! I mean, I do value my puny semblance of actual social status, thank you very much. So when I hear something really juicy, I just have to trust my memory until I can get to the computer in private.

Although Irina might be right when she teases me about something else, which is that I’ll probably grow up to be a reporter or some other kind of writer. To be honest, I do think about that sometimes, along with a lot of other career ideas. Though definitely not anything that includes science or math, no way.

But that’s an entirely different topic from the one I started out with, which was explaining how I know so much about what’s been going on right here around my own apartment building. Which is considerable. Not to mention complicated.

First of all, Irina’s son Sasha actually started UCLA instead of going off to some kind of religious college, which Irina told me he’d been considering. Irina says he spends a lot of his time at some Jewish center at the university campus, not Hillel but another one called Chabad that’s more Orthodox.

Sasha doesn’t dress the same as he used to, all in black in a way that wasn’t like some kind of cool Goth or hipster or anything, but just like some depressed old man. Maybe I’m the only one who saw Sasha that way, but I don’t really think so.

Its not as if now he puts himself together like a male model out of the Abercrombie& Fitch catalogue, as if I gave a scat about that sort of guy. But when Irina took him to the discount clothing store, she told me all he wanted were a couple of new white shirts, a couple of blue ones, and two pairs of plain khaki-colored slacks. That was it, except for a zip jacket for chilly weather. And, believe it or not, he still wears the same old black lace-up shoes. Irina tried to change his mind about the shoes, she said, but he didn’t want any kind of sneakers or some kind of casual leather shoes like loafers, either. And I mean even black ones.

He still always keeps his head covered, but now it’s just a cute little blue and white knitted skullcap called a kipah, I think, that he has to clip to his hair with a bobby pin so it doesn’t fall off.

I’m not sure if Sasha has a girlfriend yet, just for benefits, if you know what I mean by that, or even with serious intentions. Irina doesn’t know, either, I don’t think, or she probably would’ve told me.

Sasha being gone so much of the time because of the group meals and study sessions they have at his Jewish center isn’t the only change that this apartment complex is going through, of course. In fact, it almost reminds me of musical chairs, that game they made us play in kindergarten.

Let me look at my notes for a minute. Okay, here goes. By the way, if you were wondering how I have the time to write all this down, it’s because it’s holiday break from school, which won’t start again until the first week of the New Year. If you weren’t wondering, then this is a totally classic example of Too Much Information, TMI for short.

Old Mr. Karnovsky died in October the week before Halloween, which was sad but no big surprise to anybody, including Mrs. Karnovsky. He was over 75, and he was sick with about a thousand different diseases.

One time, in the middle of the night, an ambulance came to get him and woke me up because my bedroom faces the street, with their sirens screaming, and then they came into our building’s driveway, their flashing light turning my whole room one color and then another color, over and over again. So I got out of bed and ran to the living room, barefoot and wearing only this extra-long T-shirt, to look out the big front window and see what was happening.

Three or four men were carrying him down the steps on this bed with wheels to Level One, and then pushing him around the pool and out the front gate, which was wide open now, constantly saying things to him that I couldn’t hear from behind the glass. I looked around and saw that my mother, my father and my little sister Diana were all standing beside me at the window, watching too.

Mr. Karnovsky died in the hospital. Personally, I think that would be creepy and confusing, to die in a hospital, with those electronic sounds going off all the time and the P.A. system calling out doctors’ names and secret messages as if no one knows what things like “Code Blue” mean unless they don’t even own a TV or a computer or something, which would just be weird. not to mention all those total strangers constantly running around you. Ugh.

Mrs. Karnovsky, who’s pretty rotund, isn’t exactly losing any weight from loneliness, as far as I can tell. She’s a lot younger than Mr. Karnovsky was, approximately Dedushka Zalman’s age, I think, and Dedushka Zalman spends a lot of time over at her place, visiting. He says it’s because they both grew up in Leningrad, which is St. Petersburg now, and he likes her cooking, especially since Sasha bought Irina an American Jewish kosher cookbook that she has to translate into Russian and then he inspects everything to make sure it’s “proper,” as he puts it. But that won’t last very long, if you ask me.

One reason is because Irina and Daniel have been seeing a lot of each other, and besides talking about getting married, they’ve got a nice little house in escrow now, whatever that means, in a pretty tree-lined neighborhood not too far from here to walk. Plus Irina says I’ll be welcome to come to their place for a sleepover some weekend nights.

Daniel’s divorce is final now, which means he’ll know just what his budget is going to be, and so he can do something like that. Buy a house, get married. You know.

I’ve seen the house; Irina walked me over there one afternoon. It has a swimming pool in the back yard that may not bee Olympic size, but it’s bigger than the one in our apartment complex. The house has three bedrooms and an apartment over the garage which could be used for a photography studio by Irina or fixed up for Grandpa Zalman , depending on what happens with the widow Mrs. Karnovsky or whatever, because Russians don’t like to put their parents in a nursing home or a so-called “rest home” when they get really old or sick. They just don’t think it’s right. When mom and dad say that family should stick together, they really mean it.

I can understand that. There’s a home for old seniors just a few blocks from here, down on Melrose near where Sasha worked for that lawyer last summer. Every time I go by there, it makes me sad. All those old people just sitting behind this big front window, either watching the cars and pedestrians go by or the TV up in a corner by the ceiling or just staring off blankly at, I don’t know, nothing. I sure wouldn’t want to see my own grandfather wind up in a place like that.

When Irina moves , you can bet Sasha’s not going to want to stay in that apartment all by himself, with nobody to cook for him, even if Daniel and his father Dima helped him out with the rent. I think that Jewish group has communal houses near the campus, either all boys or all girls, where everybody shares the rent and takes turns cooking for everyone and doing household chores.

I just realized that I haven’t said a word about Nick. That’s not because I don’t like him. Quite the opposite, in fact. I have to admit he must be about the weirdest person I’ve ever met, but that just makes him groovier, to use one of his words, and especially because of the cool stories he tells me about his past.

It’s generally down by the pool that we run into each other and have these conversations. If it’s a sunny day, he’ll be sitting out there at one of the tables, usually with a laptop, a couple of cell phones, and those goddamn cigarettes of his.

It seems that Daniel has already hooked him up with several good clients for his private investigator work, mostly divorce attorneys and insurance men. A few more like that, Daniel says, and he’ll help Nick find an actual office, a small one, on the same street in Beverly Hills where Daniel works.

Last Sunday was a really nice, warm day and my dad was driving me down to the mall, mostly to go to the bookstore there and see if anything was on sale for the holidays. It’s not as if I don’t check out a lot of books from the library, not just the school library but also from the public one. You can find some books at their online site, file an order, and the books will be waiting for you at your local library when you come in for them.

But there’s still something special about a bookstore. Something exciting. All the people you wouldn’t see anywhere else, and then getting to take your very own copy of a book home in a bag with the bookstore’s name on it.

We were stopped behind a line of other cars at a red traffic light when I noticed this homeless-type guy. He was coming up the line toward us on the drivers’ side, in the middle of the street. At each car, he stopped for a couple of seconds, held up a sign of some kind, and talked to the driver.

When he got to our car, I could see what the sign said. It was printed in very big letters with something like a black Magic Marker on a square piece of cardboard.

FLORIDA FISHERMAN JUST ARRIVED
NEED WORK OF ANY KIND
SPARE CHANGE TOO
GOD BLESS YOU

The man seemed to be in his 40s or maybe his 50s. I’m not very good with ages. He was wearing a dirty-looking T-shirt and a rumpled pair of red shorts that were way too big for him, and he had knobby knees with scars and cuts all over them. Some of the cuts looked like they were still bleeding.

The traffic light stayed red for a long time. When the man got to our car, Dad just looked at the sign and then said no thank you in his worst Russian accent so that maybe the man would think he didn’t understand what he wanted. The man stank of alcohol. I could smell it all the way over on my side.

“Beer,” my father told me in Russian, and then the light turned green and we started up again. I looked around behind us and watched the man sort of skip between the moving cars back to the safety of the curb, and when he reached it I turned forward again and thought about the mall, about the bookstore and about stacks and stacks of books on about a million tables.

The End

What Sasha did want, as it turned out, once he gathered his courage and found the words,, was nothing so radical, nothing so binary, as any of the others had imagined.

This much was true: He harbored no inclination whatsoever to be a rabbi, or even a rebbe. No way. Years of Torah and Talmud studies followed by a lifelong religious vocation while others went on to become doctors or lawyers or, sure, it was always possible, overeducated taxi drivers with photocopies of unsold screenplays in their messenger bags, was simply not for him.

But neither had the earnest young man any desire whatsoever to let himself be assimilated into an America of animated electronic billboards, rampant social BARBARITY, no problem, dude, an America of mass culture, celebrity worship and perpetual war. An America full of lonely people dying of their fiercely-guarded privacy even as they compulsively yakked with each other over cell phones everywhere in the agora, from crowded elevators at the workplace to supermarket checkout lines. An America where being Jewish seemed so often to involve nothing more than not eating pork and shellfish, as well as not eating meat and dairy at the same time, or else feeling vaguely guilty about transgressing such taboos. And where , every December, you set up a decorated fir tree in your living room, rising above a semicircle of gaily wrapped gifts at its base, just like the Christians.

All Sasha really wanted, when you got right down to it, was to be an observant Jew and a good man. And he wanted for himself the kind of knowledge and career preparation that only secular colleges and universities, not Yeshivas, would afford him.

Irina shot Daniel an imploring look behind Sasha’s back. Her son owed some sort of obligation to God? Listening to Moti, the whole thing sounded to her like just another fishy Soviet five-year plan, with this authoritarian deity, surrounded by white-robed bodyguards, holding court in a Kremlin-like heaven behind closed doors.

How had he become involved in this scene in the first place, Daniel wondered. The moment he realized the kid had gone and gotten himself circumcised, he should have sent him straight home to face the family music, not let him sleep it off on his own couch like some post-traumatic stress victim or a homeless drunk.

And who was it that he was representing, anyway? Against whom? This was not what he would have expected. No echoes of legendary judicial confrontations like the Scopes Monkey Trial, where Clarence Darrow put up his pro-Darwinian eloquence against William Jennings Bryan’s Bible-thumping fundamentalist oratory. Not even like going to court against some big insurance firm on behalf of a client who’d slipped, fallen and broken a hip in some Wal-Mart aisle. This was going to be less like cutthroat, high-adrenaline litigation, more like mediation, where both sides went home with some of the candy bars instead of one side getting the whole bag. Okay, then. Fine. He’d take a crack at it.,

Daniel stood up, brushed pizza-crust crumbs off his pant legs, edged out from behind the coffee table and planted himself by the door, where everyone would have to turn their heads to look at him and, at least subconsciously, give up all hope of escape.

Dressed in Shirtsleeves, collar unbuttoned and necktie loosened, hands thrust into his pockets, Daniel looked the epitome of folksiness.

“In the interests of full disclosure,” he began in his most disarming manner, “I should say up front that I’m not a believer. Think of me as you will. Atheist, secular humanist. Whatever feels comfortable for you.

“Be that as it may, I’ve got to admit that I was very moved by Rebbe Tepper’s tale of the creation of our imperfect world,, not to mention his captivating story about the encounter between the poor man and the rich money lender.

Moti shifted a bit uneasily in Daniel’s big arm chair, but otherwise seemed to keep his composure.

“But If you want to know what _I_ think,” said Daniel, removing his hands from his pockets and making short, decisive chopping motions as if to sever the thought-webs of theological disagreement, “is that what this is about is not about my beliefs, or Moti’s beliefs, or anybody’s beliefs at all. What its about is Sasha, purely and simply. How is Sasha going to be true to himself? What will best prepare him for a life of doing something restorative, even healing, if you will, to this crazy old planet of ours and making himself a good example to others?

A patient Rebbe Tepper still had his fingers interlaced atop his ample belly. Sasha had his head down again, but this time he was smiling and nodding. Irina was watching Daniel’s every move, taking in his every word.

“Nowhere is it written,” said Moti, “that a man must not earn a living. “in fact,” he added, smiling, “it’s the other way around. Sure, some of us are scholars.
But then also one man may be a Hebrew teacher, another man may be a kosher butcher or a bus driver for a Jewish school. These honorable occupations and many more like them, however humble, permit a man to raise a large, observant Jewish family and to devote plenty of time to worship and study.”

Sasha looked up, straight at the rebbe. ”Nothing against jobs like that, Moti,” he said. Nothing at all. “it’s just that I want to do something else with my life. Something that requires more secular education.”

“such as,” asked Moti. “don’t you think there is honor in such work?”

Daniel had his hands back in his pockets, now. “The point is, don’t you_ Rebbe, believe that any other kind of work might be worthwhile and even proper for a good Jew? God forbid, I think you would say. In your own way, of course. Something else. Some other expression.”

“Ha Shem,” provided Moti. The Name. The other forms are just for addressing The Most Holy One, Blessed be He, in song and prayer.”

“You know,” said Daniel, “there’s another great spiritual tradition, Buddhism, ancient and wise like Judaism, that has something pertinent to say about this: it says that all work, no matter how high or low, no matter how complicated or simple, is chopping wood and carrying water. For once, something Bobby Bail had taught him from those dog-eared paperbacks about Buddhism when bobby was still Robbie Beiloff, and they were both , what? 16? 17? had come in handy.

It turned out that there was a Chabad Jewish center, right there on the UCLA campus, where Sasha would be free to hang out, study and celebrate the Sabbath among like-minded others, male and female both.

“Better than spending all your free time in front of a computer playing video games, no?” quipped Rebbe Tepper as he hoisted his considerable bulk from the big chair and Sasha got up from the couch to hand him the black fedora he always wore outside over his knitted blue skullcap.

“You go, too,” irina instructed her son, after Moti took his leave of them with firm handshakes for Daniel and Sasha and a nod to Irina, disallowed as he was from touching an unrelated female. “And tell Nick to stay at our place for maybe another hour. Daniel and I need privacy to talk about everything. Okay?”

“Chorosho, mom,” said Sasha, “No problem.” and left the two of them alone.

“I never think I find not just the husband for myself but the father for Sasha, too,” Irina mused with her eyes closed, in the afterglow. The sex was better than the awkward rendezvous in Griffith Park had been. Much better. More fluid, more free, less inhibited. Less of a sense that she was holding something back.

Daniel didn’t bother correcting her grammar. He was thinking how glad he was that he hadn’t permitted Nick to smoke in the bedroom. The only disturbance was the middle-aged Israeli couple from Jerusalem next door screaming about something in Hebrew through the wall, but then that stopped.

To be continued…

No, admitted Moti, twirling a lock of curly white beard around his finger. There are different kinds of Yeshivas, including ones where you could pursue a more ‘normal’ course of study, as you put it. But at this yeshiva you’ll study just Torah, Talmud, a lot of sacred things you can’t imagine now because you’ve never heard of them. It’s a special kind of yeshiva, made to order for a boy like yourself, Sasha. A bright Jewish boy with no background.”

“Sort of remedial, I guess.” Sasha said disconsolately, looking not at Moti, who’d been speaking, but downward, at his crotch. It was only then that MOTI noticed that the boy was now holding himself and grimacing with pain,

“What?” said Moti.

“It hurts,” said Sasha. “all of a sudden. I think it’s the bandage or something.”

“”Bandage?” demanded Irina. “What bandage?”

“He had a little surgery this morning, that’s all.”

“circumcision,” specified Daniel to a now-horrified Irina, who grasped at Sasha’s hands and tried, fruitlessly, to pull them away from his crotch. “Let me see!” she said. “Let me see!”

“Is that the package we gave you with the bandages and the medication?” Moti asked Sasha, pointing to the brown paper bag on the coffee table.

Sasha, groaning now, nodded in the affirmative.

Moti stood, came around the coffee table, brushed by Irina, and pulled a wincing Sasha up by an arm. “Everything’s going to be fine,” he reassured everyone. Everything’s going to be just okey-dokey. Now if someone will be kind enough to point me to the rest room…”

Irina rose up and grabbed at the stout rebbe’s sleeve. Which looked a little absurd, because the rebbe was not only fat around the middle but towered over her, too. “He’s my son,” said Irina. “My son. Do you understand? I will take care of him myself.”

Daniel stood up, too, although with no plan in mind. It just seemed odd for him to be the only one still sitting.

“Of course I understand,” said the rebbe gently, giving the bag a little shake. “but this is my job, and I’ve got everything I need right here. All we’re lacking is some soap and hot water.”

As Moti, following Daniel’s directions, led Sasha to the bathroom, irina left Daniel’s apartment in a huff, saying she’d be back as soon as she checked on her father and Nick. Daniel sat down, then had second thoughts about having another Corona. So he got up again and went around the counter into the kitchen to get one from the fridge

Nick and Irina’s father were sitting on the living room couch, chatting as amiably as their language problems would allow,, drinking tea. The plates that had obviously once held the supper irina had cooked sat on the coffee table, forks and knives and crumpled paper napkins atop them. Irina also noticed two empty shot glasses, but no bottle of vodka. Apparently there’d been just a friendly drink, maybe two, an ice-breaker, somewhere along the line.

“privet, paposhka.” She bent, kissed her father on his cheek, and began collecting the dirty dishes.

“Hey, Irina,” said Nick. “How’s it going over there? Time to come back, yet?”

Irina shook her head. “No. Not time yet.”

“No hassle,” said Nick. “Your old man and I are having ourselves a fine time over here, aren’t we, Zalman? And thanks for supper, by the way. It was delicious.” That kosher pizza any good?”

“It was okay, the pizza,” replied Irina, coming out of the kitchen and moving toward the door. “To me, pizza is pizza.”

They sat as they’d sat before. Rebbe Tepper in the big chair, Daniel, Sasha and Irina lined up on the couch. The pen and legal pad were nowhere to be seen, and Sasha sat with his knees farther apart than before.

This time, Daniel took the lead. “So what do we have here?” he asked, looking around. Moti wants Sasha to attend a yeshiva instead of UCLA, yes?”

A shrug from Moti.” if that’s what he wants, sure.”
“Okay,” said Daniel. And Irina wants what?

Irina hesitated, possibly perplexed by the grammar, possibly surprised to be asked her opinion in a situation where she’d already been told that a woman’s counsel wasn’t necessarily sought or valued in the matter at hand. Daniel decided to ask again, differently.

“irina, what do you want for Sasha in this situation?”

Judging from her response, she seemed to have understood the question the first time, and only to have been hesitating thoughtfully.

“Well,” she said, looking from Daniel to the rebbe and back again, “I guess I’m supposed to say that I want for Sasha what makes Sasha happy.”

“but this isn’t how you feel?” asked Daniel.

“No, it is not,” confirmed Irina. “Not necessarily. What I want for Sasha is to get regular university education, regular university degree, and then some kind of regular position in American society.”

“Okay,” nodded Daniel. “Fine. But I think that leaves us still not knowing the most important thing, the most important clue for solving this puzzle. Which is what does Sasha actually want for himself?” He looked at Sasha and waited for an answer. For a long beat, Sasha said nothing, moving his knees even farther apart, then closer together, then farther apart again, seeking the most comfortable position.

“Interesting,” Sasha finally said, with a bitter-sounding chuckle. “Very interesting. Funny, even.”

“What?” asked Moti. “What’s so funny? This is something very serious we’re talking about.”

“What’s so funny is that nobody even asked me what I want, until now.”

To be continued…

Daniel FINISHED OFF THE LAST cold shard of the pizza crust, TOOK another sip of his Corona, and settled back on the couch, . The beginning before the beginning? It looked as if they were in for a long, meandering opening statement, rife with Creationism or at least what the slyest Christian fundamentalists HAD TAKEN over the past few years TO calling Intelligent Design, pretending to make room under their theological tent for post-Dark Ages scientific discoveries and developments, Darwin most of all. The Jewish Ultra-Orthodox version of such, of course.

At Daniel’s right hand sat Sasha, straight as a ramrod, a 5 x 7 yellow legal pad balanced on one long thigh, an uncapped fiber-tipped pen poised above it. From one of the jacket pockets Nick hadn’t ransacked, apparently.

On Sasha’s other side sat Irina, closer to the front edge of the couch so her small, sandaled feet could reach the floor. Brushing a stray lock of hair out of one eye, she folded her arms across her chest.

A few beats of hesitation, Daniel knew, could be a very effective rhetorical device. Get your audience focused. Moti waited something like 2 seconds longer than Daniel would have, just enough so that Daniel’s attention was riveted, too.

So,” began the rebbe, “before we have this world, what did we have? A great nothing. An emptiness completely filled up by the spirit of Ha Shem.

“You want to talk about your Big Bang, maybe? Okay by me. Fair enough. Everywhere, every people has had its own story how this world of ours was born. They’ve got eagle gods. They’ve got the eggs of great serpents breaking open in the sky. They’ve got thunder gods, they’ve got fish gods. They’ve even had gods who live inside extinct volcanoes and must be fed the beating hearts of living virgins or else they’ll let the world go dark and cold.

“But those are the Creation stories of other tribes, other peoples, mostly long gone, mostly forgotten, with a few exceptions, like the Hindus, with their purple gods who have as many arms as a spider, they should live and be well.

“But this story is our story, the Jewish story, recorded in the time of Moses, passed down through the centuries, studied, interpreted, argued over by dedicated scholars, made to bloom with meaning, and not about to go away anytime soon, as far as I can see. Farshtei? Understand?”

Daniel, secular Daniel who lived on the far side of agnosticism, who was pretty sure he wouldn’t recognize God if He crawled up out of the toilet and bit him on his bare ass, found himself nodding, following, nearly holding his breath. But despite all, he managed to keep a sober tone in his rejoinder. A lawyer’s tone.

“So,” he said to Moti, ” everyone’s got a story of how the world came into being,” if I understand you correctly. And this is the story we’re going with in this discussion. Yes?”

“Exactly,” smiled Moti. “Yes. And what does all this have to do with something called Tikkun Olam, you may be asking yourself?”

Sasha, his writing hand arrested in mid-scrawl on the legal tablet, looked up at the rebbe, nodding, his eyes expectant. Daniel was still slouched back, Irina still upright, still with her arms folded across her chest, watching and waiting.

“Now,” said Moti, ” you may be asking yourself, I know I would, if every nook and cranny of this vast Nothing is filled with the spirit of Ha Shem and if Ha Shem, in his infinite wisdom, decides there should be a world, where is this world supposed to go? So Ha Shem thinks and he thinks. It’s a thorny question, no? a dangerous question, too.

This ha Shem knows, of course, and He knows perfectly well what He must do to make room for the World. The solution is that He must shrink Himself down, contract His spirit, just a little bit.

“Which He does. and then begins the Creation. Then, and not before then. Then begins the First Day.”

“And all this has what to do with my Sasha, what he should do now with his life?”

Rebbe Tepper smiled benevolently. “A good question, Mrs. Shteynberg. A very good question. And, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, because I mean no offense by it, a very good question coming from a woman, in particular. Without doing a thing, a woman is closer to Ha Shem, closer to holiness, than any man alive. Which is why, in spiritual and intellectual things, the man must spend his lifetime praying and studying, while the woman– ”

” Please, Moti,” interrupted Daniel. “. Forget the condescension. just answer the lady’s question, if you don’t mind. Just what does this story, which is a very good story, I’ll grant you, have to do with Sasha?”

Sasha was still bent forward, taking notes. “Thank you,” said irina to Daniel across her son’s black-clad back.”

“You’re welcome,” said Daniel. As Moti says, it’s a very good question.”

“Imperfection,” said Moti. “It’s all about imperfection. When Ha Shem diminished Himself in order to create the world, He diminished his power. Just a little bit, but enough to leave us a world that was damaged the moment it came into being. Imagine a potter creating a beautiful clay pot but shaping it and smoothing it using one hand only. The result will be still a beautiful vessel. But here and there, places that should be plain and smooth will be rough, and there we see already the beginning of a crack. And this is the world a diminished ha Shem left to us, a world already broken. And so every person’s first obligation in life is to watch over this poor, damaged world closely, at every moment. To fix, to smooth over, to do whatever they can manage in the way of repair. To heal the broken world. Which is what Tikkun Olam means.

“And there are many ways,” he continued, “that a person can fulfill this obligation, just by living a righteous life. But in some you see the gift of a special healing power, the gift of teaching, the gift of guidance. In Sasha, young as he is, untutored as he may be, I can see this ability, and I believe it should be nurtured.”

“In other words,” said Daniel, “you think Sasha should become a rabbi?”

“or a rebbe, like me,” said Moti. “Congregation not necessary. But yes, I believe teaching could be sasha’s special way to perform the work of Tikkun Olam.”

“But first you say righteousness is enough, and now you say it has to be teaching?” countered Daniel. “Why teaching?”

“Ever hear of Rebbe Nachman?” asked Moti, looking again from one to the other, and being met again with blank expressions. “This was Nachman of Breslov, a bright light in Chasidic tradition. He left us stories, and this is the story that makes me think of Sasha:

“A very poor man has borrowed and borrowed over the years, just to stay alive, dreaming that someday his ship will come in and he can repay everything to the incomparably rich man whose loans have kept food in his mouth and hope in his heart for so many years.

“but finally comes the day when this poor man realizes the truth, and in great shame he is taken by a servant into the rich man’s office, which glows with wood and leather, an opulence such as he has never laid eyes upon.

Standing before the desk of the money lender, he can only hang his head and admit the sad, humiliating truth. That he will never be able to repay what he owes. Not in one lifetime, not in two, not in a thousand years.

“to his astonishment, the great man waves his hand, explains he has millions, and says that he doesn’t care. The debt is trivial, nothing to worry about, and the poor debtor feels both relieved and insulted.

“The rich man, seeing this, as an act of kindness, suggests, “There is a way you might work off the debt, for others owe me sizeable sums. If you will go to my other debtors, remind them their payments are overdue, and try to collect, you will bring me hundreds of times what you owe. Agreed?”

“Of course, the debtor is Rebbe Nachman, the debt is moral, not financial, and the moneylender is– ”

“Is God?” says Sasha, looking up from his notepad.

“Yes,” beams Moti. yes, indeed. The moneylender is Ha Shem, Blessed be He. And this is how Rebbe Nachman, or my humble Self, or you, or any of us, despite our own failings,, despite the broken state of the world, presumes to study, to teach, and to preach to others. You see?”

Irina uncrossed her arms, then recrossed them, giving her head a shake as if waking from a trance. The silence that followed lasted what seemed to Daniel a very long time, a silence during which Moti’s smile regarded the three of them with the utmost tenderness like, like what? Daniel tried to think. Like Bobby Bail, he realized again. This was going to be a hard act to follow. He sucked down the last few drops of his corona. He thought of making a quick trip to the kitchen to grab another beer, but decided against it. Credibility and all that. If Moti could do this on the natch, so could he, by God.

“Moti?” Sasha piped up. “this school in New jersey– ”

“Yeshiva,” said Moti.

“Yeshiva. Right. Would I be able to study, umm, normal things there? You know, like history or psychology or physics or, I don’t know. Film? Spanish? Programming? I mean, whatever, besides religion?”

to be continued…

“Of course and why not?” agreed Rebbe Tepper, leaning back in Daniel’s big chair, feet planted firmly on the floor, fingers pensively interlaced atop his unwrinkled white shirt and ample, soft-looking girth.

“To start from the beginning,” said the rebbe in a patient, teacherly tone that reminded Daniel of Bobby Bail, nee’ Robbie Beiloff, “we have to start at the beginning.”

“Yeah,” testified Sasha, obviously the acolyte, to his shoes. “Definitely. Begin with the beginning.”

Walk in the park, thought Daniel. Piece of cake. May as well let the deluded old charlatan have his say. Then he’d whip right in there and take him apart, truism by truism, circularity by circularity, superstition by superstition.

he flashed on the undergraduate debate club whose invitation he’d spurned at Berkeley because, he was sure, they must be completely out of step with the changing times. Imagine, making a competitive virtue out of burrowing deeper and deeper into logic, in the midst of so much enthralling randomness. He recalled the moot court sessions he’d floated through at law school, adrift on a few parking-lot tokes of excellent weed. No matter. What could it take ?– Half an hour? 45 minutes– before he’d figuratively have the kid eating cheeseburgers or BBQ pork ribs right out of his hand. Food. Tref food, having been for Daniel the first category of Jewish taboos that he’d transgressed the minute he got to college, if you didn’t count all the beating off. But everybody, even Robbi Beiloff, did that. Didn’t they?

“In the beginning,” said Rebbe Tepper, ” Ha Shem created the heaven and the earth.” He was reciting, by heart, in perfect King James English except for his Orthodox way of replacing the ineffable word ‘God’ with the Hebrew for The Name, the Creation story, the first lines of The Book of Genesis. This man Moti says the beginning, thought Daniel, the beginning is what he means.

“And God said,” the rebbe continued, ” Let there be light. and there was Light.”

Whereupon some kind of Pavlovian signal sounded out from deep inside Daniel’s long-term memory and he, to his own surprise, heard himself complete the passage in perfect biblical Hebrew, then translated it into English.

“And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.”

Daniel had said all this with his eyes unfocused, lost in memory, transported back decades. Had spoken in a voice just barely broken down from a boy’s soprano to a teenager’s uncertain baritone. Now, as if waking from a dream, blinking, he looked around.

Irina was regarding him with a bemused smile, as if she were surprised but not that surprised. After all, she was Russian. She was used to life being layered like an onion, used to people being nested inside themselves, one embryonic stage within the next, like painted wooden Matryoshka dolls.

Moti peered at Daniel with aroused curiosity and a conspiratorial twinkle in his eye. “very good, my friend,” he said. “Very good. And may I ask just where did you learn that?”

“Hebrew school,” said Daniel. “They sent me to Hebrew school twice a week after public school for years, and Sunday mornings, too. My parents, I mean. And then I was Bar Mitzvah’d, on top of everything. The whole bit.”

” These things the mind never forgets,” said the rebbe with a satisfied nod.

Now,” Moti, Daniel said, ” with all due respect, I have a question for you.

“Ask away,” said the rebbe, leaning back again and once more interlacing the fingers over the belly.

“Okay. What’s with this ‘beginning’ business? You were reciting the story of The Creation, from Genesis.”

Moti laughed in a deep, not unkindly way.
I had to tell the story of the Creation that everyone knows from the Tanach, from the Five Books of Moses, so I could tell another story about it. The one they don’t teach you at a Conservative or Reform Hebrew school. Something that might explain why I believe that this young man– here he glanced at Sasha– ought to attend this Yeshiva I was telling his mother about, not secular university.”

But before Moti could utter another word, Sasha finally stopped staring at his shoes, straightened up and looked Daniel full in the face.

“See? He said. “that’s the kind of Jewish background I never had, coming from this Fifth Line family.”

“Fifth line family?” asked Daniel.

“In Soviet Union,” explained irina, “we had internal passport. Fifth line on form is for Nationality, which for many Jewish people says ‘Jewish.’ Which is all most Russian Jews know about what Jewish means.”

“Like you and Dad and Grandpa Zalman,” accused Sasha.

“Okay,” admitted Irina. Maybe yes. And This is so terrible? This is a crime?”

“So as you were saying, Moti,” interjected Daniel. The story behind the story? The beginning behind the beginning?”

“Tell me,” said Rebbe Tepper, looking from one to the other. All attention was on him now, the momentary discord forgotten. Does any of you know the meaning of the concept Tikkun Olam? The healing of the world?”

Blank looks all around. “Very well,” said the rebbe. Fine. Don’t worry. Outside of religious Jews, not many people do.” He rubbed his interlocked hands up and down over his stomach, as if readying himself for a feast.

“To understand the obligation of Tikkun Olam, we have to go back. Not to the Beginning, but even before the beginning…”

To be continued…

As soon as he entered his apartment, Daniel could sense the confrontation in progress, see the adversarial tableau in the positioning of bodies. The rabbi had taken his place in Daniel’s big recliner, facing irina and Sasha on the couch like a family patriarch presiding at the Passover Seder.

On the coffee table between them lay a huge open pizza box from a kosher pizzeria on Highland Avenue, a place Daniel had noticed with fleeting curiosity in passing. The box was wide open, and there was one very large slice left in it.

The portly gray-bearded man, dressed like Sasha in black suit and white shirt, with a small black velvet skullcap pinned to the thinning gray hair at his crown, stood up and offered his hand. “Rebbe Moses Tepper,” he said as they shook, his eyes twinkling. “You can call me Moti. Feel free. Everybody calls me Moti.”

“Daniel Silver,” Daniel reciprocated. “Daniel.” Ah, he thought. Just call me Moti, everybody does. The power-freak working on a first-name basis for cover.

“ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he had said in court, himself, many times. “My worthy opponent, the attorney defending against Mr. Jackson’s obviously valid claim of wrongful personal injury on behalf of (here insert Geico, State Farm, 20th Century Insurance, etc.) has done me the honor of referring to me as Mr. Silver, or even by the very formal title of Counsel for the Defense.

“And of course I accept opposing counsel’s professional courtesy, gratefully. Nevertheless, I’d like you to think of me as Daniel. Just Daniel. Just another person like you, or you, or you, or like Mr. Jackson here, whose rights under the law I’m striving with every fiber of my moral being to defend. Whose grievous injury we’re trying to remedy, insofar as the law can provide a remedy for something as painful, something as life-changing, as the injury Mr. Jackson suffered last august 26th.

” I’m asking this favor of you not only for Mr. Jackson’s sake, but for me, and for you, and for our entire system of justice. And what is it that I’m asking? Only that you do your best to see me as Daniel instead of ‘Mr. Silver’ or ‘counsel for the Defense,’ and I think we’ll all be able to relax and do our jobs a little bit better.”

“this is probably your favorite chair, am I right?” asked the rebbe, congenially. “How about I go over and sit on the couch, instead?”

Daniel patted the air with a downturned palm. “No, Rabbi Tepper. Sit, sit. I’ll be fine.”

“Moti,” reminded the man, sinking back into Daniel’s recliner. “And if you insist on using a title, it’s Rebbe, not Rabbi. Big difference. A rabbi is a licensed clergyman, as you might put it. A remnant of what was once, in ancient Jerusalem until the Romans destroyed the Second temple, a proud, sacred priesthood.

Compared to that, a rebbe is a humble nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly. But a rebbe is just a scholar and a teacher, recognized by the Jewish community. With, why not, a certain amount of authority. But a rabbi I’m not, my friend Daniel. Only a humble rebbe.”

Daniel pointed to the single slice of uneaten pizza. “anybody mind? I’m pretty hungry.” Irina and Sasha shook their heads, as did the rebbe. “All yours,” he said.

Next to the pizza box was a half-empty one-liter plastic bottle of 7-Up that the three had been drinking out of glasses they’d taken from Daniel’s cupboard.

“That all there is for liquid refreshment?” Daniel asked no one in particular. “Be back in a sec.”

Daniel placed his chilled long-necked Corona on the coffee table and took a seat next to Sasha, so that the three of them presented like a family, father, son, mother.

“Would someone mind bringing me up to speed?” he asked. Explain to me what’s going on here, exactly?”

“Sasha says he will not attend university at UCLA,” said Irina.

“This true?” asked Daniel of Sasha. “I didn’t even know you’d been accepted there. Congratulations. When does the term start?”

“Couple of weeks,” Said Sasha, looking down at his shoes.

“He thinks he wants to go to some Yeshiva in New York and study to be a rabbi,” snapped irina. “This is what the rebbe is telling us about. And I say no, Sasha. This you won’t do. This is not why Dima and I brought you to the United States.”

“Mom,” said Sasha, still looking down, “I’m 18. Which means you can’t tell me what to do anymore, one way or the other. From now on, I make my own decisions about my own life.”

“America,” muttered Irina.

“And I don’t see what Daniel has to do with it, either. He’s not my father, you know.”

“Like Dima is your father? Tell the truth, Sasha, when was the last time you saw him, our dear Dmitri?”

“At my graduation,” I guess.

“And it is now, what, September? You see, I think,” said irina bitterly.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Shteynberg,” ” said the rebbe. The yeshiva I was telling you about is in New Jersey. Not New York.”

“new York. New Jersey. All the same,” said irina.

“And just why is it that you don’t want to enter UCLA, Sasha? asked Daniel. Am I missing something?”

“Because,” Sasha said.

“Because, Daniel,” supplied Rebbe Tepper, ” our Sasha wants to get a true Jewish education and live a true Jewish life.”

“Yeah,” said Sasha, still contemplating his shoes. “That’s what I meant.”

Daniel looked across Sasha to Irina, whose face beseeched him to join in.

In the silence, The rebbe was daintily brushing errant pizza crumbs from his tangled beard into a paper towel, which he crumpled up and crammed into a jacket pocket.

Daniel gathered his thoughts, spoke. “Rebbe Tepper? Moti? May I ask you something?”

“Something, anything,” said the rebbe, affably enough. Go right ahead and ask.”

Daniel took another bite of pizza and a swig of Corona to fortify himself, covered his mouth, quietly belched, and looked across the coffee table at the rebbe.

“Okay,” he said. “. What I want to ask you is this: What is meant, in this discussion, by the phrases ‘true Jewish education’ and “a true Jewish life?’ I’d just like to be sure we have our terms straight, right up front.”

To b continued…

By Joel Deutsch

Daniel had never seen the inside of a house trailer before. This one, inhabited by Miguel, his wife Nora (which was, it turned out, her name) and the baby boy Carlito was dark as a cave an narrow as a submarine he and Sheila had once toured at the Navy base during a trip to San Diego. Aching everywhere, Daniel lay gratefully on the worn black leather couch, his head resting softly on a pillow Nora had borrowed from the marital bed.

“Be right in,” called Nora from somewhere, “soon as I put the baby down and get some things together.,”

it was not without difficulty that Daniel managed to raise himself up slightly and look around to see what he could see in the little bit of light allowed inside by the tightly-drawn black velvet curtains on the trailer’s few high, small windows.

There was a galley-style kitchen and, across the narrow center aisle from it, a four-person dining booth. Beyond that RAN a short hallway down which Nora had disappeared with her baby.

The living room was wood-paneled, like a basement family recreation room from the time of his childhood. The couch, an old black leather number that was worn but not yet sagging, was against the wall opposite the trailer’s door, flanked on one side by an end table with a small lamp and fronted by a glass-topped coffee table.

There was no coffee table in front of the couch, no room for one. Across from it sat and old, sagging recliner, also worn black leather, with a floor lamp beside it. But what Daniel found most interesting were the corners of the trailer.

One rear corner was occupied by an old 20″ TV set on a stand, with a DVD player and a VCR stacked on the stand’s lower shelf.

All of which seemed normal enough. But in the other corner, on a pedestal draped with scarlet cloth, stood a large white plaster replica of the weird statue Daniel had noticed on Miguel’s ashtray. The statue was three feet or so tall, and had the same sepulchral, skull-like visage, the coiled ropey hair, the gnarled skeletal hands and feet, and the upraised scythe, but this one looked all dressed up for some kind of macabre dance: A jeweled ring flashed from every finger. Instead of a monk’s cowl, it wore a plumed purple hat, and large twin spots of what looked like rouge conferred a festive blush on its pale, bony cheeks.

Neatly arrayed at the statue’s feet lay a cluster of ritual offerings: A cellophane- wrapped cigar, an unopened pint bottle of Presidente tequila, a small pile of coins, and a fat white lighted candle in a chipped white saucer.

On the wall a foot or two to one side of the statue’s head was a framed poster for what seemed to Daniel like a wrestling event of some sort, with a picture of two powerful-looking dwarves squared off in a ring, wearing boxing trunks, their faces hidden behind lurid skin-tight hoods that covered their heads like baklavas. EL DIABLITO CONTRA EL CHINITO! Exclaimed the poster, beneath.

Nora reappeared with first aid materials, and Daniel lay back. She prodded and palpated, daubed on disinfectant, applied gauze and tape.

“Mind telling me What’s up with that statue over there? Is it some kind of shrine?”

“that’s la Santa Muerte,” said Nora, setting the tweezers aside and rinsing the wound with another folding of wet gauze, this time soaked in clean water from a second bowl.

“Saint Death?” asked Daniel. “Seriously?”

“or La Niña Blanca,” laughed Nora. “The little white girl. Or la Negrita. The little black girl. Or Santa Marta. Or La Flaca, the skinny one. Prison inmates call her La Madrina. The Godmother. Take your pick. You know how the Virgin of Guadalupe is the official patron saint of Mexico, right? Well, Santa Muerte is the patron saint of the Dark Side. She’s the saint of the people who don’t completely trust the Blessed Virgin to sympathize with their kinds of problems. People who live risky or dangerous lives. Taxi drivers. Prostitutes. Night-shift Cops. And wrestlers. La Santa Muerte is very popular with professional Mexican wrestlers.

el Diablito? Guess Daniel.

Yep, nodded Nora. Miguel was fighting in the lucha libre circuit before he took over somebody’s lunch truck.”

There, said Nora, finishing up. You should feel better in a few days. She left for a moment, and when she came back offered him a glass of water and two caplets of some kind.

“What are these?” asked Daniel, but he was already raising his head in compliance and taking the pills.

“Nothing special,” said Nora. “Don’t worry. I used to be a nurse. Now just relax.”

There were a lot of other things Daniel wondered about Nora, about Miguel, about their life. How two such unlikely people had come together, in the first place. How they had met. About Miguel’s move from the flamboyant, boisterous world of lucha libre to being the captain of a lunch truck. Where Nora had been a nurse, and why she’d quit. Whether the baby Carlito’s was fated genetically to be a dwarf like his father or had a chance of developing a normal body.

But he’d let his head fall back onto the pillow, was getting sleepy. And all the time he’d imagined himself driving home. very funny. he closed his eyes and folded his arms across his chest.

“Would you like something to cover up with?” asked Nora?

“That would be nice,” Daniel muttered.

There was the soft drift of some kind of quilt or comforter settling onto him, the cocoanut fragrance of Nora’s hair, then nothing.

To be continued…

By Joel Deutsch

Daniel had never seen the inside of a house trailer before. This one, inhabited by Miguel, his wife Nora (which was, it turned out, her name) and the baby boy Carlito was dark as a cave an narrow as a submarine he and Sheila had toured at the Navy base during a trip to San Diego. Aching everywhere, Daniel lay gratefully on the worn black leather couch, his head resting softly on a pillow Nora had borrowed from the marital bed.

“Be right in,” called Nora from somewhere, “soon as I put the baby down and get some things together.,”

it was not without difficulty that Daniel managed to raise himself up slightly and look around to see what he could see in the little bit of light allowed inside by the tightly-drawn black velvet curtains on the trailer’s few high, small windows.

There was a galley-style kitchen and, across the narrow center aisle from it, a four-person dining booth. Beyond that RAN a short hallway down which Nora had disappeared with her baby.

The living room was wood-paneled, like a basement family recreation room from the time of his childhood. The couch, an old black leather number that was worn but not yet sagging, was against the wall opposite the trailer’s door, flanked on one side by an end table with a small lamp and fronted by a glass-topped coffee table.

There was no coffee table in front of the couch, no room for one. Across from it sat and old, sagging recliner, also worn black leather, with a floor lamp beside it. But what Daniel found most interesting were the corners of the trailer.

One rear corner was occupied by an old 20″ TV set on a stand, with a DVD player and a VCR stacked on the stand’s lower shelf.

All of which seemed normal enough. But in the other corner, on a pedestal draped with scarlet cloth, stood a large white plaster replica of the weird statue Daniel had noticed on Miguel’s ashtray. The statue was three feet or so tall, and had the same sepulchral, skull-like visage, the coiled ropey hair, the gnarled skeletal hands and feet, and the upraised scythe, but this one looked all dressed up for some kind of macabre dance: A jeweled ring flashed from every finger. Instead of a monk’s cowl, it wore a plumed purple hat, and large twin spots of what looked like rouge conferred a festive blush on its pale, bony cheeks.

Neatly arrayed at the statue’s feet lay a cluster of ritual offerings: A cellophane- wrapped cigar, an unopened pint bottle of Presidente tequila, a small pile of coins, and a fat white lighted candle in a chipped white saucer.

On the wall a foot or two to one side of the statue’s head was a framed poster for what seemed to Daniel like a wrestling event of some sort, with a picture of two powerful-looking dwarves squared off in a ring, wearing boxing trunks, their faces hidden behind lurid skin-tight hoods that covered their heads like baklavas. EL DIABLITO CONTRA EL CHINITO! Exclaimed the poster, beneath.

Nora reappeared with first aid materials, and Daniel lay back. She prodded and palpated, daubed on disinfectant, applied gauze and tape.

“Mind telling me What’s up with that statue over there? Is it some kind of shrine?”

“that’s la Santa Muerte,” said Nora, setting the tweezers aside and rinsing the wound with another folding of wet gauze, this time soaked in clean water from a second bowl.

“Saint Death?” asked Daniel. “Seriously?”

“or La Niña Blanca,” laughed Nora. “The little white girl. Or la Negrita. The little black girl. Or Santa Marta. Or La Flaca, the skinny one. Prison inmates call her La Madrina. The Godmother. Take your pick. You know how the Virgin of Guadalupe is the official patron saint of Mexico, right? Well, Santa Muerte is the patron saint of the Dark Side. She’s the saint of the people who don’t completely trust the Blessed Virgin to sympathize with their kinds of problems. People who live risky or dangerous lives. Taxi drivers. Prostitutes. Night-shift Cops. And wrestlers. La Santa Muerte is very popular with professional Mexican wrestlers.

el Diablito? Guess Daniel.

Yep, nodded Nora. Miguel was fighting in the lucha libre circuit before he took over somebody’s lunch truck.”

There, said Nora, finishing up. You should feel better in a few days. She left for a moment, and when she came back offered him a glass of water and two caplets of some kind.

“What are these?” asked Daniel, but he was already raising his head in compliance and taking the pills.

“Nothing special,” said Nora. “Don’t worry. I used to be a nurse. Now just relax.”

There were a lot of other things Daniel wondered about Nora, about Miguel, about their life. How two such unlikely people had come together, in the first place. How they had met. About Miguel’s move from the flamboyant, boisterous world of lucha libre to being the captain of a lunch truck. Where Nora had been a nurse, and why she’d quit. Whether the baby Carlito’s was fated genetically to be a dwarf like his father or had a chance of developing a normal body.

But he’d let his head fall back onto the pillow, was getting sleepy. And all the time he’d imagined himself driving home. very funny. he closed his eyes and folded his arms across his chest.

“Would you like something to cover up with?” asked Nora?

“That would be nice,” Daniel muttered.

There was the soft drift of some kind of quilt or comforter settling onto him, the cocoanut fragrance of Nora’s hair, then nothing.

To be continued…

By Joel Deutsch

A Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department patrol car swung in off the road, cutting its siren and light bar. What a tableau they must present, thought Daniel. A muscular Mexican dwarf and an earth mother redhead, now holding the .357, which was registered to her, it turned out, standing guard over a disheveled man who could have been the veteran of at least two different branches of the service and two or three different wars, with a dazed-looking bespectacled professional type thrown in for good measure.

There were two deputies. The driver was a trim, middle-aged white man with graying temples whose name tag said Garner . His partner, name tag Lee, was a sturdy-looking young Asian-American woman, Korean, Daniel guessed. Clipboards in hand, they interviewed. Deputy lee talked to Miguel and Nora, Deputy Garner had Daniel. At one point, Deputy Garner asked Nick for his side of the story, but Nick just lay glaring up at him from the ground, propped up on his elbows with his useless legs outstretched before him at unnatural-looking angles, saying nothing.

Then, their interviews done, together Garner and Lee had lifted Nick up between them and deposited him, limp and unresisting, into their patrol car’s back seat. Deputy Kim folded up his wheelchair and stowed it in the cruiser’s trunk.

“So you’re sure you don’t want to press charges?” he asked, clicking his ballpoint repeatedly. “If I was you, I sure as hell would. You’ve got witnesses and everything. Maybe you need to see yourself in a mirror.”

“I don’t know,” said Daniel. “ I think a few hours in jail sobering up should be enough to teach him a lesson. I think he’s just a bad-luck Viet Nam vet with a drinking problem and maybe some other kind of substance abuse issues.”

“What if I told you he wasn’t really a disabled vet?” said Deputy Garner . “What if I told you he wasn’t even in the Army, ever?”

“Seriously?”

“It’s all bullshit, sir, pardon my French. This guy has been causing trouble around Santa Barbara for as long as I’ve been with the Department. Not to mention Oxnard, or Ventura, or San Luis Obispo, or any other place he has enough gas in that van to drive to when he “forgets” to take his medication and starts drinking. He’s what they used to call manic-depressive.”

“bi-polar,” said Daniel.”

“Yeah” said Garner. “That’s it. “Bi-polar. And he’s supposed to take these meds. But sometimes he doesn’t. And then he starts drinking. what we have here is not a man who’s suffering from post traumatic stress related to military service. I can tell you that flat-out.
He had polio when “he was a kid, is what that’s about. He survived it and regained his ability to walk, which is no small thing, this I’ll grant you. Although this was with a pretty bad limp. But now the polio comes back from time to time and he needs to use crutches or the wheelchair. Which you can see for yourself.

“And before you start crying for him,” said the deputy, “I should explain one more thing. He’s not poor. Not by a long shot. His family owns Z-Man’s Pizza, up near the University. They’ve been in business for years. The place takes up half a block all by itself, and their parking lot takes up the other half. Even when the chains came in, like Pizza Hut and those, it didn’t make a dent. They’ve got a big house in town, they’ve got a rancho with its own vineyard up in the hills in Montecito, and their own nice little yacht down at the Marina. Right across from Zenetti’s Seafood which, you guessed it, is them, too.

“For all the good it did this one, I guess,” Garner added, with a nod at Nick, sullen in the cruiser’s back seat. The father died a couple of years ago, and the business went to the brother. Both businesses. So like I say, we aren’t talking about a war hero who’s having a bad day. he’s just a troublemaker, living in the mother-in-law cottage in back of the family house on some kind of trust fund and acting up like this every once in awhile.”

“hell of a story,” said Daniel.

“Change your mind, sir?” asked Deputy sheriff Garner. “Feel more like pressing charges now, maybe?”

“No,” said Daniel. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to be okay. So why don’t we just let it drop.”

“Your call,” sir,” shrugged Deputy Sheriff Garner , and produced a business card from his shirt pocket. “If you want to talk, here’s my contact information.” He got up, went over to the patrol car, where Deputy Lee was already waiting inside, got behind the wheel and pulled his door shut.

“We’ll get this guy’s van towed off the lot for you folks in a couple of hours,” he said to Miguel and Nora, firing up the engine and shifting into Drive.

“Wait, Don,” said Deputy Lee. Deputy Garner braked, and the patrol car, already nosing forward, lurched to a stop. “What, Myrna?”

Deputy Lee raised her hips off the car seat, pulled something from a trouser pocket and handed it to him. He scrutinized the object and then held it out the window.

“Whose cell phone is this?” Miguel and Nora just shook their heads. Nick didn’t even look. Daniel, patting his pockets, came over, and the deputy dropped the cell into his upturned palm. Daniel flipped it open to glance at the screen, flipped it closed again. “It’s mine, he said. “thanks.”

“He was kind of lying on it,” explained Deputy Lee. “I forgot to say anything. Sorry. He was a real handful, getting him under control, before he just went limp on me.”

To be continued…

By Joel Deutsch

“Good old student deferment,” reminisced Nick with a wry smile. “Guess guys like you got yourselves a pretty good deal.” .

“Yeah,” said Daniel. “I guess so. That was just before they went to the lottery system.”

“Which makes sense, man,” nodded Nick, solemnly. ” you know? Randomness is reality.”

Daniel wasn’t sure what Nick thought he was saying, exactly, but he knew what he probably meant, and it wasn’t cosmological. It was something about privilege.

“Guess I just got lucky,” he shrugged, feeling vaguely guilty.

“I was delivering pizza back then,” Nick said. “Staying stoned, hanging out, just going with the flow. My old man wanted me to do the school thing, get a degree. That whole trip. But I just couldn’t make myself deal with all the bullshit.”

“right,” said Daniel, anxious to be gone and waiting for the opening.

“And so of course then here comes Uncle Sam,” concluded Nick, “knockin’ on my door, and that’s all she wrote.”

Never mind the opening, thought Daniel. “Nick, I really have to split, or I’m just going to fall flat on my face. You take good care of yourself, okay? Maybe we’ll see each other up here again, one of these days.”

Nick nodded, with the gravity of someone who has just understood something important. “Righteous, man. Later.” He rotated the wheelchair back around to face the table and his computer again.

Daniel glanced over at the food truck, meaning to wave goodbye to Miguel, but the service window was vacant, just as he had initially found it, its cold fluorescent glow fading against the developing dawn. Hollow and numb with exhaustion, he headed for the Camaro.

At the closest pump island, an enormous white Winnebago was gassing up. A young woman– sleep-mussed hair, flip-flops, shorts and a pink Disneyland sweatshirt with the face of Mickey Mouse– stood in the RV’s open doorway, a coffee mug in one hand, flanked by a little pajama-clad boy about three or four years old, rubbing his eyes.

As he approached his car, Daniel reached into his right pocket and fished out his keys and his cell phone. He had carried the cell along with him on his excursion, with the ringer shut off, mostly in case he needed roadside service. Now, as he pointed his keychain remote fob and pushed the button to unlock the Camaro’s doors, he flipped the phone open and checked its pale blue screen for missed calls and voice mail, although he hadn’t felt it vibrate once. Nothing.

Just who had he expected to have tried to reach him? Sheila? She didn’t even call him during the day, unless it was something they had to discuss about Melanie.

And then there was Jacqueline, the new paralegal at the Law Offices of Barry J. Brackman. Some fantasy, Jacqueline calling him.

Daniel had accessed her resume and C.V. on the network server, so he knew her age, 37, and the bare bones of her academic and professional history. Although “bare bones” didn’t exactly describe much else about Jacqueline, at least not physically. She had been a struggling actress, originally from Baton Rouge. But the acting career hadn’t flourished. He’d learned this much from Rolando, the law firm’s computer tech. he’d also learned that an attorney she had dated, ready to cut her loose for the inconvenient sin of carrying too much psychological “baggage,” had, over double Margaritas at the bar of the El Coyote, convinced her to study for a paralegal certificate, something to fall back on, as her parents had advised her in the first place.

Right, thought Daniel. An emergency booty call from Jacqueline, stricken with a sudden realization that she just had to have him. Dream on, kid. Dream on.

“HOO-AH!” Daniel was flipping the cell phone closed when one of Nick’s wheelchair tires slammed into the back of a leg, toppling him forward so fast that he barely got a hand out to break the fall, and still he felt his forehead slap the asphalt.

“HOO-AH! HOO-AH!” shouted Nick as he launched himself out of his chair onto the prostrate Daniel. The man had formidable upper body strength, all that wheelchair work , Daniel realized, and the ferocity of the sudden assault was fearsome, no one having laid a combative hand on him since a hallway scuffle in tenth grade. He tried to push himself up and throw off the boozy, flailing maniac, but Nick’s punches kept raining down.

Whump! A hard one to his right-side rib cage that felt like it broke bone. “Hoo-ah!” A closed-hand smash to the left temple. Daniel could feel his brain ricocheting inside his skull. “yellow-belly cocksucker!” Another body blow, this one to the right kidney. Nick was holding him down with one hand and punching with the other, changing hands as the placement of blows demanded. “Let the Nick Zanettis do your fighting for you while you demonstrate at college with all the other spoiled little brats. Fuck you, man. Just fuck you! People like you are a blood blister on the brain of the fucking world.”

Daniel finally managed to push his chest a few degrees off the ground, giving silent thanks for all the bench presses he’d done at the gym after work to put off going home alone too the new apartment.

Suddenly, more weight crashed onto his back, something besides Nick, and he collapsed again. , then the weight lifted off him, all at once, in a commotion of struggle and grunting.

Gingerly, Daniel rolled onto his side and looked. Miguel, sans apron, was sprawled atop a struggling, face-down nick, twisting one of Nick’s arms backward at an unnatural-looking angle, fierce determination on his flat-nosed, big-browed face.

“Get off me, you squatty little wetback mutant!” Nick panted. “,You’re breaking my fucking arm!” In response to which, Miguel muttered something dire-sounding in Spanish and bore down harder.

Then a gunshot shattered the early morning quiet, followed by the startled shriek of a baby. The mother in the pink Disneyland sweatshirt rushed back into the Winnebago, pushing her little boy ahead of her.

“Okay, mister,” came a woman’s voice from behind them. “ that’s enough! Lie still and keep your hands where I can see them. Miguel, why don’t you move away and get yourself clear of that fool, babe.”

Daniel looked around, and there she was, Miguel’s wife, framed in the lonchería window. She was definitely not a dwarf, not even a small Mexican woman. Not Mexican at all. she was Five-seven, at least, Daniel guessed, fair-skinned with long chestnut tresses, wearing an untucked green football jersey. The child, whose screams of alarm were subsiding now into rhythmic sobbing punctuated by hiccups, was strapped to her back in a baby carrier of some sort. And in both hands she held out before her the big pistol Miguel had shown him earlier, sighting down its long barrel in their direction.

“Shush, sweetie,” she reassured the sobbing child without taking her eyes off them. “Cálmate, mi amor. Tranquilito. Mommy’s here.”

To be continued…

By Joel Deutsch

Within weeks after graduation, which ceremony Daniel skipped, he received a notice from the Selective Service system advising that he had been reclassified 1-A. Prime grade cannon fodder for Viet Nam. The only way to get back his student deferment would have been to slide straight into a Master’s program in English Lit, Maybe get an assistantship.

Which was far from a sure thing, even if he wanted it. he had a less than stellar grade point average, having attended nearly as many anti-war teach-ins and sit-ins as actual classes, and having devoted a lot of time to his band, Bullfrog karma.

Not that it mattered. The thought of getting onto the tenure track treadmill like an academic hamster turned him off badly.

The student loans and Grants all dried up, of course, along with the helpful checks from home. and it was pretty obvious that Bullfrog Karma, in which Daniel played rhythm guitar, was going nowhere.

Sure, the lead guitarist, Jeff, could rip off solos that morphed from Chicago blues into modal space raga and came back home again, the lines rising and falling around quicksilver high note cascades and deftly placed feedback wails. Jambo the bass player knew how to lay down a good, funky groove, and Craig, the drummer, was solid enough, too, even if he did keep veering off into totally undanceable polyrhythms, because, he said, he was really a jazz drummer born at the wrong time and living on the wrong coast. On top of which Stormy, their chick singer, Jeff’s old lady, had it all. She could belt it out like a Broadway mama, get down low and gravelly like the Devil’s own sister, or break your heart with a pure, pitch-perfect contralto that seemed to emanate from an entirely different set of vocal chords, not to mention she had legs like a white Tina turner and a wild, gorgeous mane of blonde hair.

But for all that, the only bookings their perpetually stoned agent Frodo, neé Sheldon Klugman,, ever seemed to be able to get them were nickel and dime coffee house and bar gigs and the occasional gratis appearance at a free concert in Golden Gate Park, playing from the back of a flat-bed truck.

“So what you’re saying, Mr. Silver, if I understand these answers you gave on the personality profile, is that you can’t keep your hands off other men. Is that true?” Behind his desk, the Army psychiatrist was sifting through the questionnaires and tests Daniel had spent the morning filling out before lining up with the other potential recruits in his Jockey shorts along a hallway of the Oakland Army Induction Center outside the medical exam room.

Now he was dressed again, in ordinary-enough hippie-era street clothes– frayed Levis bellbottoms, buckle-sided Frye boots, blue chambray work shirt– except for the eyeliner, mascara and pink lip gloss that Kristin had picked out for him at a University Avenue drug store and applied as skillfully as she could, after gathering his auburn Sampson mane into a ponytail and securing it with one of the handmade leather barrettes they had picked up at a crafts fair, then trimming his bushy mustache to reveal more of his upper lip. His lower lip already pouted nicely enough over the beard, she assured him, and kissed him full on the mouth, hard and long, just to see what it would feel like, whereupon the lip gloss had to be applied all over again.

“It isn’t like that, sir,” Daniel replied with an air of delicacy he hadn’t known he had in him. “that’s the furthest thing from my mind. I mean, I’m not some kind of animal who goes around just grabbing people. It’s not my hands I can’t control, it’s my feelings. I’m like an open book. Everybody who knows me says so. and I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. It just wouldn’t be right.”

The best Daniel had dared to hope for was a psychological deferment requiring periodic reexamination to determine if he had gotten his mind right. but no, according to the forms a middle aged officer handed him after a long wait on a bench with five or six other rejects, he was classified 4-F. Unequivocally and irreversibly disqualified from military service, forever.

“I don’t believe there’s any known cure for homosexual tendencies,” said the officer, glancing from Daniel’s hirsute and prettified face to the paperwork and back again, with a look of distaste. So I guess all there is to say at this point in time is that I wish you the best of luck in civilian life.”

“thank you, sir,” replied Daniel humbly, shaking the reluctantly proffered hand, his heart racing with jubilation. “I guess I’ll just have to get along the best I can.”

“If you don’t mind me saying so, son,” said the officer, “in the middle of that beard and mustache, with the lipstick and all, your mouth looks like a goddam pussy. That can’t do you much good out there.”

“yes, sir,” said Daniel. “Thanks a lot. I’ll remember that.”

“Disbanded. Disbanded. Dis-BAND-ed,” Frodo had intoned repeatedly in mournful wonderment one night at the apartment Daniel shared with Kristin, passing the blown glass hash pipe to Daniel across the kitchen table over a half gallon jug of Red Mountain Burgundy and the three mismatched coffee mugs they were drinking it from. “That’s what it means, man. That’s why they call it that. Dis-banded. Wow. Shit. I never realized.”

Daniel, rudderless, drifted from one unhappy job to the next. Then he heard that Yellow Cab was hiring over in the City, and that they didn’t care if your hair went all the way down to your ass (Daniel’s own barely grazed his shoulders) just so long as you tied it back when you were driving.

soon he was wrestling taxis up and down the brake-burning, transmission-stripping grades of Nob Hill and Pacific Heights, white-knuckled, no steely-eyed Steve McQueen behind the wheel of a growling Shelby Mustang in Bullitt, he.

Kristin moved to Tucson for graduate school in Anthropology. There were a few phone calls, a couple of letters, and a postcard of the Sangre de Cristo mountains at sunset with thinking of you. Love K. on the other side, then Daniel never heard from her again. He went on driving a cab for a long time, his middle expanding from a diet of dashboard doughnuts and drive-through McDonald’s, his vague hopes for some kind of a life steadily slackening, until he read Dylan saying in a Rolling Stone interview that everyone was going to have to have their cards on the table by 1980.

1980 was still years in the future and, anyway, he wasn’t sure what Dylan meant by that. With Dylan, you couldn’t even assume he meant anything at all by such pronouncements. But if you were so disposed, as Daniel was, desperate for prophecy despite knowing better, you could interpret them the way you might parse a reading in the I Ching. The fox crossing the water, trying to keep his tail dry.

At about which time, paperback copies of Gideon’s Trumpet, To Kill a Mockingbird and histories of American and English common law began finding their way into the canvas Danish school bag on his front seat among the novels and self-help books he took along to read while waiting in line at the St. Francis and the Fairmount and the cab lot at the airport.

For someone like Daniel, law school was one of the things you could do when you admitted to yourself that you couldn’t do whatever it was you had mistakenly, in your youthful grandiosity, dreamed yourself capable of. At least it wasn’t advertising. And, after all, how many times had someone remarked to Daniel, usually someone of his own defiantly inarticulate generation, not at all meaning to flatter, something like “Wow, man, you sound like a lawyer.” So why not? Why the hell not?

To be continued…