One Step Ahead

One Step Ahead

Magda never asked Samantha if Dimitri were a wolf. In fact, given her poor English skills, it was amazing that she could interview potential housemates in English. She wangled a student visa by enrolling at Temple’s Fox School of Business. She was pursuing an MBA, but her acceptance was conditional on her improving her English skills during the summer. Dimitri’s command of three languages, Russian, Hebrew, and English, and his prospective major of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages didn’t hurt either. She really tried, but she sounded like this:

WHAT DIMITRI HEARD	WHAT MAGDA HEARD/MEANT
Dimitri: So how long have you lived here?	What length have you lived here?
Magda: Long in time?	Long in time?
Dimitri: (Long in what else?) Yes, when did you come to Philadelphia?	If when you come to Philadelphia?
Magda: Okey, okey, I come in April and I move from one week.	Uh, I came to find this apartment in April. I moved my stuff in last week.
Magda: I study the business. What you will study?	I am in the Fox School of Management, studying business. What’s your major?
Dimitri: TESOL.	Tea soul
Magda: Ehhhh, Tea soul?	Ehhhh. Tea soul? (What is with this college, and what is this, herbology?)
Dimitri: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. I can use you as a guinea pig.	Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. I can to use you as the African pig.
Magda: Perdon? You say, “pig from the west of Africa?	WTF???
Dimitri: No, no, it’s an expression. Guinea pigs are little animals, like rabbits. Scientists use this animal to test drugs and cosmetics on. I can test my skills on you to see if I can make your English better.	No, no, it an expressing. Guinea pigs are little animals. I like rabbits. Scientists use this animal to test drogas (farmaceuticos?) and … I can test you my skills and see your English better.
Magda: Good, good. I can help you if you have a math class. You can help me English better.	Good, good. I can help you with math, and you can help me in English.
(pause)	((?)Que debo preguntarlo?)
Magda: Is the Samantha your new? (Samantha crosses her legs , a little uncomfortable, and smiles nervously)	Is Samantha your girlfriend?
Dimitri: Well, it’s a long story. But let’s say we’re very close. Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend?	Well, it long story. But let say were very close to it. Are you married? Do you have a boy or friend?
Magda: I am a … we call it “soltera.” No boy, no girl. My friend is in Mexico.	I am unmarried and have no children. My friend is in Mexico.
Dimitri: Good. When do you get to see him next?	Good. When do you get him to see him next?
Magda: I get him since made in high school.	I became an item with her in high school. (Magda had a real issue with personal pronouns; in this case, that was a good thing.)
Magda (to Samantha): What length of time you have him?	How long have you been with him?
Samantha: I can’t really say I have him. It’s hard to have a guy like Dimbo. He can be an asshole sometimes, but he’s contagious.	I can really say, I have him (no?). Is hard to have a … like Dimbo. He can be … some times, but he is infection.
Magda: Infection of elefantes?	Infection of elefantes?
Samantha and Dimitri look at each other and giggle. Both answer: Dimbo, not Dumbo! It’s a nickname.	(pause) Dimbo, not Dumbo! It’s a nick name.
Magda (laughs nervously): Oh, not elefante. Light bomb.	Oh, not elefante. Light bombera.
Samantha (reaches over and puts her hand on Magda’s hand and smiles at her, looking into her eyes): You’ll do fine. You keep trying.	You do fine. You keep to trying. (Flinches at first, then returns warm look and locks fingers with Samantha and smiles.)
Magda: You watch careful, Dimbo, I take him from you!	You watch out, Dimbo, I will take her from you!

The apartment was down in the Temple University ghetto. Samantha cautioned Dimitri about living on-campus, but he wasn’t about to keep his 280 ZX with the salt-eaten exhaust system when he could get $2000 for it as a classic. So Dimitri would have to walk or take the bus everywhere he went, and his retraining grant had no money to subsidize housing. So here he was, on a third floor of a N. 16^th St. row house, overlooking a rat-infested, trash-strewn vacant lot where two houses had been pulled down. A stump, five feet in diameter, remained from a junk tree that had burst through the foundation and crashed through the basement and first floor. I wonder what the neighbors thought when they looked through the window and saw the forest on the inside of the house. Did they just pass by, thinking it was an indoor pot farm?

The house itself had art deco molding and wood trim – if you could call it “art” when the red paint had faded to a washed-out fuchsia, and when you touched the wood, it crumbled as if it were filled with termites. Like most of the other houses on the block, its concrete steps were cracked or crumbling. Unlike most of the other houses, the wobbly wrought-iron railing remained in place, and from the change in color of the concrete where the railing met the steps, had recently been reseated.  The steps to the second floor were hardwood – freshly sanded and polished. Dimitri was impressed. On the way to the third floor? A threadbare indoor-outdoor rug whose color palette ranged from a dull weave of mud-brown and grey at the walls to the indescribable nothingness of packed clay where thousands of feet had tread.  Samantha groaned. Su forma es demasiado saludante para ser tan cansada, thought Magda. She looked too healthy to be out of breath.

In the apartment, things looked up. The ceiling was a fresh white with new fixtures. The wood floor was buffed, and Magda’s space rugs and wall hangings showed a cross of good taste and ethnic pride, representing the best of the indigenous textile trade around Puebla. The appliances were old but functional, and unlike the original design of row houses built to contain the new industrial workforce of the turn of the century, cabinets and closets popped out of strategic places in each room. This cut into the evident living space, but as Samantha kept reminding Dimitri when he was staying with her after getting caught with a naked girl between his legs in Atlantic City, nobody wants to look at your personal stuff.  

As Magda, Samantha, and Dimitri hacked out a conversation in one-and-a-half languages, it became clear that Magda was looking for a man as a housemate because of security reasons, but really wanted one with a girlfriend. Hearing sex, in Magda’s mind, was better than being hit on for it. As for her situation, Samantha figured out that Magda was, in fact, a lesbian, and that her comment about taking Samantha from Dimitri was a jibe with a foot in fact. Magda had not mentioned Flora by name, choosing the code phrase, “mi socia,” or “mi companera.” Samantha didn’t understand the female suffix at first, and Dimitri missed it completely. But Samantha noticed the slight flush in Magda’s light complexion when she tried to talk about Flora. Magda also squeezed her slight legs together and looked up. It seemed the Magda touched her right thigh just below her denim miniskirt.

Magda’s mind wandered to the first time she suspected that she wanted to be with a woman. In Catholic Mexico, it was a matter of common knowledge that homosexuals were going to hell, and even heterosexual sex outside of marriage was a mortal sin. In this repressive environment, the liberalization of the previous decade seemed more rumor than fact. Even Flora, a girl who wore tie-dye and hemp sandals, found herself dogged by boys who wanted to be her first encounter. They even said so. Anna knew Flora, and they had been friendly since third grade, when Flora got bullied regularly for her weight. By the tie-dye and hemp days, Flora’s baby fat had disappeared, but her curves had not.

Anna had introduced them. Only Anna knew that her best friend would never be interested in boys. Or in men. Anna had no clue that Magda would be interested in Flora. Sitting in front of Dimitri and the smoking-hot Samantha, Magda mind wandered and her whole body thought about her “socia.” Flora’s broad, soft facial features. Flora’s rich latte skin. The shape of Flora’s thighs, her calves. The infinitude of ways that she touched Magda with all her body. And those incomparable hands. Magda didn’t notice that her right foot had slipped out of her sandal, embraced her left, and all her toes were curling.

All parties snapped out of their reverie, and concluded their business. Dimitri paid Magda the $250 for the first month’s rent. He shook her hand, put his left hand on her right shoulder, and placed a chaste kiss on her right cheek. Samantha hugged the shorter woman around the shoulders, while receiving Magda’s arms around her waist. The embrace lasted only a few seconds, but engaged both women from head to toe. They kissed, just for an instant, and smiled.

On the way out of the row house, Dimitri stumbled over Samantha’s ankle and caught himself on the wrought-iron railing. Whispering a silent “thank-you” to the landlord for making that repair before worrying about the non-carpet on the steps, he turned to Samantha, who had grabbed his other arm to keep him from falling.

“You like her, don’t you.”

“She seems really nice. You’ll have a great roommate.”

“And which one will you sleep with?”

“Dimbo!”

Samantha swatted Dimitri over the head with her Fendi purse.

...but a Whisper, part 2

Good. Her car is not in the garage. She must have had to work overtime.

Rafi parked his car across the street from the smallest house on Euclid Heights Blvd. For the first Valentine’s Day after he moved in with her, he bought her a dozen roses. A dozen bare-root roses. Jackson and Perkins had shipped them in two waist-deep boxes. Four weeks later, the parcels arrived on Thursday afternoon, one at a time, totally obscuring a delivery driver. Margie was at work, and Rafi was at the keyboard – with the TV on to Wake Forest vs. North Carolina – NC A &T, that is – and the radio tuned to the Cleveland Indians pre-season exhibition game. Sprawled out over the coffee table were three years of Margie’s back tax records, so she could finally collect her refunds, so Rafi’s use of the keyboard was as much for a writing surface as for a pitch source. Rafi had bought the cheesy cherry-red wrapping paper with the “Happy Valentine’s Day” hearts. He wrapped the boxes and applied the pink bowtie.

Now, it was five years later, and the roses were glorious – from Mr. Lincoln red to Peace white to Golden Showers sunshine yellow doubles. A three-dimensional kidney-shaped hill rose from the center of the lawn, with its contours shaped further by a shock of coreopsis interwoven with spears of iridescent navy-blue liatris. Various other flowers, selected for their thin, churchlike form, rose up like chaste fireworks out of the sedum that held the topsoil onto the clay foundation. Trim rows of baptisia and astilbe trimmed the sides of the little garden – power pinstripe meets psychedelic tie-dye.  All that was wrong was that Margie, who had extremely light skin, had not been out to weed in far too long. Rafi headed to the garage and found the canvas sheet that he used for collecting weeds and clippings where he had left it two years before.

You never were the pushy one with the women. All the other boys, as soon as we could see the Tzaha”l on the horizon, would start posturing like peacocks. The girls would become ashamed even going near those guys. In the army? Hui, just like the old song says, “Go out and check out the soldiers from our farm, girls! Don’t hide yourselves from the soldier boys, the men of the army.” I don’t know if my dad was born when that was written. Me? Ha. I only got the ones that ran from our soldiers of the farm. Now I let this one pick me and here I am, about to pay the price. How should I have handled myself? What should I have done? Not gone on that first date? Not made out? Not moved in? I would have had to move in with somebody, why not her? Damn. Garab.

The weed pile mounted between the rose garden and the architectural mound. As the sun’s rays grew increasingly direct, Rafi’s skin pleaded for release from under his sweat-soaked shirt.

Ok, Rafi, focus. She’s a good person, but she refused help when the med school offered it. You kept telling her to stop the TV and the ice cream. She didn’t listen. (Damn, how I begged her. She nearly took my head off.) You couldn’t have done anything else; she was a slow-motion train wreck. And how could she have not seen this happening to herself anyway? What wag said that quote about the three invisible things – the air to the bird, the water to the fish, and his life to the man?

Yeah, what do I look right at? Am I such a good man – and would I do so much better if I strike out to go after fame and fortune – or at least a musical career? Oh, that – I can just see it now – the cantor, if I can’t become a legit opera singer, has to cancel a rehearsal because he has to get the children at Vacation Bible School? “Jesus love me, yes he do, Jesus love me, with a love that’s true.” Choke me. I don’t get it. I’m sorry. I can’t live that way.

Rafi moved forward to the eastern tie-dyed row. He was almost done weeding. She wasn’t back.

But what about her? She gave up a job for a dream. Then her dream was stolen. How can she recover? What can she do? Can she crawl back to the hospital, tail between her legs, and beg for her old job back? How can she recover? And what about the depression?

Will someone teach me how to have my own life and not be responsible for the whole world? If any normal person saw that he was on a train that was going to crash, he’d get the hell off the train, right? Don’t I get to be normal? I’m not her Jesus, I’m a man, and her train was going to derail with or without me in a crewman’s seat.

Just then, Margie pulled into her driveway. She stumbled out of the car, swinging her legs in her hospital scrubs out of the driver’s seat, and with all her psychological pain wobbling in its physical manifestation, reached her enormous arms to Rafi.

“But I’m a mess.”

“I don’t care.”

Rafi did not think that this was THE MOMENT. So he returned the hug. It didn’t register with Margie that she had never seen Rafi with a shirt on in the bright sunshine if there wasn’t a penalty to be paid.

“Get out of the sun, Margie. I’ll be done in ten minutes.”

“OK, Rafi, I’ll make iced tea.”

The last time I was in her kitchen, the linoleum was curling, there were weeks’ worth of dishes in the sink, the refrigerator was a graveyard for heaven-knows-what, and I have no idea what will happen when this tea comes out. And she hasn’t lost an ounce. I hope she doesn’t offer me ice cream.

Rafi wrapped up the canvas that held the weeds. Slinging the parcel over his back, he headed around to the backyard where the strawberry pyramid grew, and emptied the waste product of the war of the roses into the compost bin. He returned the canvas sheet to its resting place in the garage. Just before trudging up the steps to the little house, he thought twice and crossed the street. The keys sat edgily in his right pocket. He took them out and opened the driver’s door. His gym bag was on the passenger’s seat. Out came a plain T-shirt. Off peeled the drenched yellow second skin. Having switched tops, Rafi returned to the bungalow.  

“Did you have to work today?”

“No. I was at the Intro to Judaism class at Beth Shalom.”

“Really?”

“They’re mostly women, engaged to or going with Jewish men.”

“Were their guys there?”

“No, not many. There are about thirteen of us in the classroom, and only five guys; two in the class and three BFs.”

“How are you finding it? Is it worth your time?”

“ Rafi, just like I brought you closer to the farm, you brought me closer to Judaism After growing up on a kibbutz, you probably never thought you’d have anything to do with farming ever again, and here you are, weeding a hundred different species of flowers and vegetables. And I might never become Jewish, but at least I know they don’t have horns.”

“Funny – I think the people in Fredonia sensed I was different – a lot – before I turned to them to say anything.”

“I think they noticed your skin color. Maybe they thought you were a Muslim. The closest mosque is in Dayton. My brother says you should open up a kosher butcher shop – you’d have no competition.”

“I’d have no customers.”

“Right. Minor problem.”

The carpet, if it could be called that, parted in two nearly stony pathways: one straight ahead, past the keyboard, the hall, the bathroom, and the bedroom, and one branching to the left, past the TV to the sofa that Margie and Rafi had bought when they lived together. The sofa where Margie slept, indecent, with a remote control clutched in her pillow-like right hand and a half-gallon of ice cream empty at her side. Sometimes, Rafi’s cat Kinneret curled up on Margie’s stomach; sometimes on the back of the sofa. Rafi still had pictures of his golden Angora cat highlighting the fine threads in the olive upholstery. The sofa was quality – no permanent impressions had been left by Margie’s sprawled out form. No cat hair remained either, a near miracle. Margie was drowning in depression and clutter, but she managed some of the big cleaning jobs by turning on the adrenaline when family was in town for a visit. All the clutter would wind up in laundry baskets in the basement.

Margie headed into the kitchen. The linoleum was still curled up, with chunks torn out, because of a sprinkler accident four years ago. Connecting to the hose was easy; the dry rot was the hard part. I learned not to take anything in this house at face value.

Margie was babbling as she yanked the pitcher of tea out of the freezer. The clinking of ice cubes punctuated her narrative – was it Fredonia, or Lake Wobegon? It made the same impact. Rafi hated Garrison Keillor. Rafi lurked around the fork in the carpet. To the sofa? The chairs across from the pile on the coffee table? To the kitchen? Stand here and wait? Was this tea made this morning – last week? Hell. Garab. I can’t even hear her words for the echoes between my eardrums.

The chair near the phono. I dubbed a huge collection of records that WCPN was selling off, and it looks like she left the chair empty in my memory. Why in hell else is there no crap on it?

Margie crossed into the living room and set the glasses of tea down on the smallest pile of glossy magazines. She ripped her shirt and bra off, and kicked away her flip-flops, but there was nothing sexual about the gesture. Don’t go for your shorts. Please. Please.

There was nothing else to do.

“Margie, stop.”

The victim looked up and froze, in the same moment.

“I’m leaving you.”

...but a Whisper

This is not good. I need to have my head clear, not filled with Nazis. And we were allies with those people during World War II. Rafi had begun his trip on July 13, a typical morning involved in a typical daydreas, the Dead might have said. Low humidity, 87˚, light cirrocumulus cotton balls painted on the sky by a Hand wielding shell white clinging to natural ocean sponge. Shirt off, shoes off, man-thong between him and jail, top down on the classic BMW 2002 convertible. Jerry Garcia from Merryweather Post on the stereo. He’d stopped for lunch at Sideling Hill Plaza, and had to return to the BMW – he had secured the top and locked the door, but forgotten to bring his flip-flops; “no shirt, no shoes, no service.” Beach towel out of the bag. Flops between the fingers. Tossed onto the tile floor just before getting in line. Flipped up to the right hand before the door was gained. Off with the shirt. Out in the rays. You’d never think I was going bake to Cleveland to destroy a woman’s heart.

But now it was 6:30 and All Things Considered had been interrupted by the time Rafi picked it up on WKSU just west of Youngstown with news of the slaughter. At about 7:30 local time, the murderous Serbian Scorpions and the regular Army of the Republica Srpska,began separating and deporting women and children from the village of Srbrnica, a town supposedly under UN protection. Rafi had listened to half the Dead tapes he had planned, because he was hanging onto the signal of WHYY in Philadelphia, WITN in Harrisburg, WQED in Pittsburgh, and now WKSU from Kent. Bits and pieces of the story were filtering into Western reportage. What started in the late afternoon in Srbrnica was lost in the Allegheny Mountains, providing for the near naked lunch at Sideling Hill Plaza. NPR first confirmed the devastation and depravity of the massacre of July 13 when Rafi was in radio reception of the Kent State affiliate. Mamzerim! Bastards! And what were the Blue Hats doing, frigging themselves? They should have fought to the last man to preserve the dignity of the United Nations and all its member states. Or just to preserve what was hanging between their legs,” Rafi fumed.

So now I’m less than an hour away from Margie/s place. Thank God for my friend Jefferson. WCPN sound engineer and freelance producer Jefferson Donaldson had been good enough to open up the house so that Rafi could have a place to decompress overnight before making the final appearance at Margie’s.house on Euclid Heights Blvd. The plan was to show up in the morning, do some work to help her around the house, and then at an appropriate time, drop the earth-shattering bomb that should have been just the inevitable final chapter in this sad, sad story.

Jefferson and Georgia greeted Rafi with a combination of friendship and sympathy, as if Rafi was on his way to a funeral – of a close relative. As is common with such situations, Mason, their five-year-old son, stole the show.

“Mason,” Jefferson introduced his friend, “this is Rafi. He used to live up the street, and we went to Blossom together when he sang with the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus.

“Oh, I remember, We play on the grass there every year. Rafi, wanna play Frisbee?”

“Maybe in a bit, Mason, I promise.”

“But it’s getting late now!”

“OK, let me visit with your dad and mom for a bit. Then we’ll play.”

Jefferson interjected. “Rafi, can I get you something to drink? We have Russian iced tea, with or without adult content. We also have OJ, lemonade, and Cleveland Brew.”

“What? Did Dennis Kucinich take over the municipal water supply?” Rafi tried to maintain a straight face. Georgia smirked. Jefferson cackled. Mason just requested OJ.

“I’ll take the iced tea. With adult content. Georgia, how is business?”

“My mom is making the coolest badges!”

Georgia corrected. “Brooches, Mason. What’s your favorite design?”

“I like the bugs!”

“I have started a line of insect brooches. I started with ladybugs, and my goth friends asked for spiders, flies, caterpillars, and even maggots on meat.

“Eeeeewwwww!”

“OK, so I didn’t do that one, but I have about thirty different insects, and not a butterfly among them.”

Rafi observed, “Too many people do butterflies. They make them in China. You are better off staying weird. Nobody markets to us weird people.”

“Mace, would you do Mommy a favor and bring down my display case?”

“OK, be right back! Don’t move.”

“We won’t, honey.”

Jefferson came back with the iced tea, spiced with cinnamon and garnished with orange slices. He had met Rafi on the kibbutznik’s first visit to the US, when Rafi was a guest teacher at S. Y. Agnon College. Rafi was being housed in the Case Western Reserve dorms, and Jefferson was in the studio engineering program. Jefferson, only a sophomore, was already living with Georgia, a junior. Georgia was living at home. It was an elaborate series of ruses that enabled this circumstance; central to which was the discovery that in Victorian mansions in Shaker Heights, often a storm door would lead into a storm cellar, which would be connected to the rest of the house by a second stairway for the servants. Somehow, the pair was never discovered. Perhaps just as miraculous, Georgia did not become pregnant. Although both teenagers were whitebread Presbyterians (in fact, they met at church), the Bohemian instinct that their parents had absorbed from Jack Kerouac et. al. took full flower in the children. Georgia was named after the artist famed for her flower paintings. Jefferson was named for the Patriot who came to his liberation politics from his free-thinking intellectual life. Because of their first names, both were on the mailing lists of every advertiser in the country that marketed to African Americans. Rafi remembered having a crush on Georgia, whose first bra was certainly her last. Like a freshly opened daylily still glistening with dew, her innocence and naiveté radiated when, guileless, she invited him to a studio session with her boyfriend. Arriving, and finding the boyfriend to be real and not just an excuse to avoid appearing too forward, Rafi had wowed Jefferson with the folk themes he spun through his compositions.

Mason returned with Georgia’s display kit. Rafi knew just what to do.

“Mason,” he asked, which are your favorite pieces here?”

“They’re not pieces, they’re all together. My mom doesn’t break her artwork!”

“’Pieces’ is, how do you say, a figure of speech. We say ‘pieces’ when we mean separate things someone has made. Like when I write music, anything that stands by itself is a “piece” of music, …”

“Even though you can’t cut it,” added Jefferson.

“OK, let me pick. But you can’t look.” Mason snapped open the display kit as easily as if it were a chunky-sized LEGO kit. Rafi, Jefferson, and Georgia turned their chairs away ceremoniously.

“Are you ready?” asked Georgia.

“Ready!”

The adults turned their chairs around to see a bestiary of ceramic, plated metal, and stained glass insects flying in a circle around an empty lazy susan.

“I get it,” responded Rafi. It’s 7:30, and you have to start getting ready for bed soon. The plate is the Frisbee, and all the insects are playing the game.”

“How did you guess?!” The words all but bounced out of Mason’s lips.

Rafi glanced at the parents. “Shall we?”

“We shall,” they responded, and “Jinx!”

Mason, who was already shoeless, grabbed a frisbee and ran out onto the front lawn. The adults left their sandals under the table and followed. While the game hardly qualified as Ultimate, it allowed for everyone to select their favorite bug, favorite fruit, favorite instrument, favorite beach (Jefferson and Georgia liked Presque Isle State Park in Erie, PA, Mason voted for Edgewater Park, and Rafi, of course, selected the beach in Haifa where he, Salman, the Italian, and the Mermaid played volleyball during the InterZayin. ז.  Finally, Georgia caught the Frisbee and declared, “OK, Mace, time’s up. We’re going to take a bath.

“But first I catch you!” Rafi shouted, and after a short chase, grabbed the boy and tossed him up into the air. Mason was beaming, so Rafi enrolled him in a gag.

“Stiffen up like a board, and I’ll hold you up with one hand,” Rafi whispered.

“OK.”

Rafi brought the prone Mason to Georgia, and asked, “May I present you with our dessert tray, Madam?” The shaking convulsions of the belly-laughing Mason upset the waiter’s balance. Rafi caught Mason, and presented him to Georgia, like the monkey that was to be put back in the barrel.

“So are you ready for this?” Jefferson asked the still breathless Rafi.

“I don’t know.”

tu/you

sin ti

cada inspira

raja a mi pobrezza

cada calle

me lleva a lugar hueca

a negrezza

juntos

estoy un edificio altissimo

llegando a ciel

without you

every breath

tears at my paucity

every street

takes me to a void

blackness

together

I am a skyscraper

reaching to heaven

Kibbutzniks Forever

Kibbutzniks Forever

“Dear Margie,

“I have just finished unpacking my last box of music at the new flat in Elkins Park. As you suggested, it costs way too much, and my savings are going to disappear if I can’t find more people to share it with – but that’s the idea. I like living with other people, and the potential housemates I have found seem cool. I like the psychologist a lot. I fed her my acorn squash bisque and spinach-pesto lasagna, and her response was, “Are you sure you didn’t sneak any meat into this?” I think they had the genders wrong when they said that old story about men’s hearts and stomachs. Her boyfriend is coming over this weekend. She says he wouldn’t share space with anyone unless they paid big money. “So what does he need to see the place for?” I asked. She just looked at me like I was from Mars, not Israel.

“School is OK. They love me because I sing, speak Hebrew, and think better than anyone here, but some times they just tell me they think I am ‘too full of myself,’ they call it. I would rather not be full of what some of them are full of, and being full of them doesn’t sound good, either. Who else should I be full of? They don’t know that I have already taken a trip up to Manhattan to see about conducting a youth orchestra. The youth orchestra rehearses on Saturday mornings. Shabbat! Oy, schande!  Well, fuck them if they can’t hear a joke – did I say that right?

“Did you watch Rabin and Arafat shake hands yesterday? Arafat looked like a schoolboy at recess, and Rabin looked like he had already been blown up by terrorists and put back together. Look. I grew up there. Bombs fell in our orchards. Some of our kibbutzniks died at their hands. I never kicked all the Palestinians out of a village, planted European pine trees there, and showed it to foundations like he did. I should be the one that looks like a zombie, not him. Well, history has an old body and an eternally young face, I guess.

“You won’t believe who I met here this week. Remember that kid with the Russian accent I played music with on the kibbutz? Dimitri – it was him! It looks like he made a job for himself as a lounge lizard, had a fling with the lounge manager, but left for a better opportunity in Atlantic City, and then made it with a Mafioso girl. He’s in Philly now, getting a teaching degree. I think I will go ride  - how do you call it – ball turret gunner with him. Just kidding. It looks like I will be too busy here.

“Speaking about busy, how’s your appeal going? Do they still think that you asked for your depression? They are threatening themselves with the loss of a good country doctor, just the kind they need. What the hell is wrong with them. Are you getting medication? What about that gym we belonged to?  I really hope you can pull yourself together, Margie.

Love,

Rafi”

“p.s. Albert Belle hammering and Steve Olin unhittable. Go Windians!”

Actually, Rafi was going out as Dimitri’s wingman. But Dimitri was in school again, too – this time working on a master’s degree in education. The close call under the boardwalk at Atlantic City, and the subsequent guilt over leaving Samantha first for the job, and then for the girl, seemed to age Dimitri. Tonight, they were off to the Drake Tavern, but from there it was the Regal in Warrington or the Ritz Theaters in Center City, depending on the movie they chose. But first, there was some catching up to do.

The Drake Tavern sat several steps up the ladder from the normal neighborhood bar, with its highly buffed oak bar and tables turning up their brass fixture nostrils at the Sheraton bar in Willow Grove, about fifteen minutes away. The kitchen manager doubled as the operations manager of Drake Catering. The owner and head chef dueled against each other to create new five-star versions of bar food.  On a weekend night, you couldn’t breathe in the Drake, but it wasn’t for the smoke – Pennsylvania bars were in the process of going smoke-free. Fifty-five year-old boomers, men and women alike, bump butts with lithe 25-year-olds looking to get laid. College students mill around, counting on older frat boys and other friends to  buy the pitchers while they spent their parents’ college savings accounts on the pomegranate gruyere chicken wings and oysters provençal.  

But this was a Tuesday night, and the two guys looked pretty good to the waitress, wo they got a seat with a direct view of Baseball Tonight. The plan was to have a few beers, eat the lower-budget offerings on the menu, and exchange scorecards. Dimitri started.

“So if you wanted to sing opera, why aren’t you at the Seminary right up Broadway from Lincoln Center? 

“You ever been to Manhattan? It’s crazy there.”

“Crazy like you?”

“No, crazy like Bangladesh. Do you know why there are no women and families begging on the street corner, Dimya?

“Duh?! In SCHOOL?”

“No, you Amerikanetz, it’s because they’re pushed off to less desirable spots by the men. It’s psychic water torture. Beside, the Seminary is run by the mitzvah police. I couldn’t get out to rehearsals.”

“Yeah.”

“So what the hell did you do? Last time I checked, you were starting a full-time concert career!”

“Yeah, I was the only lounge lizard in A. C. who took requests for Chopin and Liszt among the usual jazz standards. You’d like my fake book.”

“Your what book?!?!” responded a startled Rafi.

“FAKE book, durak! It’s a book that has one-page versions of jazz and pop repertoire, with the melody and chords, and any big changes. I copied my Liszt and Chopin material, and just punched the copies and stuck them in the binder. Voila – fake book, multicultural style!”

“So you never told me what happened.”

“Yeah, I’m embarrassed. The chick that had set me up as a pianist fell in love with me. So when I needed her to get me out of that Atlantic City jail, and she wanted to know what happened, what could I tell her? “

“Ouch.”

“Right, Ouch. Do you still talk to Margie?”

“In fact, I just sent off a letter this morning.”

Dimitri adopted his most laughable affect, one that could have been plucked from Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.  “Dearest Margie, I think nothing but thoughts of you from morning to night. Does your heart tremble for me so that you can feel anything through that fat-filled breast? Do you cry your tears uphill over those chubby cheeks? Do your thighs, wobbling like lard-filled water mains…”

“Mamzer! Shut up or I’ll…”

It was too late for Rafi to threaten what he would do to Dimitri – he had already spun Dimitri out of his seat and was in position to execute a jiu-jitsu hip throw.

“Let me down, you gorilla!”

“OK, but no more about Margie. The poor girl doesn’t get that I’m here as much to escape her as to get back into music full-time. So we’ll take it that Stephanie, (was it?) didn’t like you fucking around on her. Were you living with her?”

Dimitri explained that he never was, but after the success of Second Tuesdays at the Red Lobster, Samantha kept taking him home. When Dimitri got the offer from the Mafia wise guy, Samantha even helped with the apartment search.  Yeah, they were kind of going steady. Not quite living together, but wasn’t it too much to ask him to stay celibate for weeks at a time, there in the glitz and glitter of the Boardwalk?

“Clear, no,” agreed Rafi. “You would have to know you love the woman to stand the separation. Also, it’s too easy for you.” 

“What? What’s too easy?”

“Women,” continued Rafi. “I have never met a woman and gone home with her on the same night. Remember on the Kibbutz, you just took the leading lady, put her barefoot and braless on the baby grand, and lit up her cigarette.”

“I remember. You went running, didn’t you? Why didn’t you find a chick out of the chorus? Rafi-man, when you have the baton, you have the same power. Why don’t you use it?”

“I try. I fail. I just don’t know how. Women like me, but they don’t love me. That’s probably why I didn’t leave Margie faster.”

Rafi paused. Dimitri, for the moment, respected Rafi’s silence. When Rafi continued, he returned to Dimitri’s situation and Dimitri’s woman problems.

“So what ever happened to Sabrina, any…”

“Samantha,” Dimitri interrupted, with a hint of annoyance in his voice.

“Samantha. Do you still talk to her?”

“Well, I lived with her for a few months after the A. C. fiasco, but you can imagine that it was uncomfortable. She booked me for two evenings a month at the restaurant, and helped me get a job with a competitor. We even tried couples counseling, but I couldn’t connect to her that way.”

“You’d slept with her a lot of time, before, yes?” Every now and then, Rafi’s grammar would slip into word-for-word translation from Hebrew.

“Yes, she was hot. Smoking hot, and flirty as well. Everything I could want. But I’m just unable to think about settling down right now.”

“You’re a man of twenty-nine fucking years, Dim-bulb! You haven’t grown up a bit since Hovevei Tzion. That was ten years ago. What do you think, Madonna is going to walk in here, and want to fuck?”

“No, actually I still sleep over there at least once a week. We had to settle for an open relationship, because the sex is too hot for either of us to give up, but she wants to meet someone who will marry her and…”

“You’re an asshole American man  who can’t commit.”

“I guess you’re right.”

Damn, thought Rafi. This wolf had better introduce me to Samantha.

Rafi switched the subject. “So what has you going to education? For the same money, don’t you think an MBA would bring you more money?”

“You forget. The program in Israel is only accredited as an associate’s degree in the US. I still need an undergraduate degree in order to do anything professional. So I’m going for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.”

“Like me.”

“Hables tu en español?”

“I don’t think you do. But you’ll have to teach Russians, Chinese, Vietnamese, and you can’t learn all those languages. But you’ll learn.”

“Rafi, did you ever teach in a classroom?

“Both here and on the Kibbutz. All Jewish kids, though. They all like my accent, and besides, I don’t have to prepare.”

“You’re no help. I’m guessing that I’ll wind up in the Barrio. But like you say, I don’t speak Spanish. Anyway, they have to learn English. I don’t have to learn anything except how to teach them. I just worry about what it will be like in the classroom.”

“I didn’t know that kids would be so disrespectful. In religious school, they mostly don’t want to be there. At Agnon, they had to take Hebrew seriously.”

A woman walked by, clutching her purse. Her strawberry blond hair swirled down her back, acting as a cape for her bare shoulders. The dress itself was vertically striped. And cinched in at the waist like business clothes. A beige belt with an oversized circular brass buckle held the assemblage together. Though strapless, the dress looked from the bust down as if it could have come from an office cubicle. The flip-flops and bare shoulders suggested that the office shoes had been kicked off on the way to the bar, and the matching beige jacket was draped over a chair in the bar area as a placeholder. Both men recognized this as the bathroom walk. The difference was that it was Dimitri who suggested the approach.

Rafi thought back to the volleyballers on the beach during the Tel-Aviv Interzonal. He mustered his courage, approached the table with the beige jacket, and seeing that two of the four seats were empty, he sat down at one of the seats and addressed the cute, casually dressed brunette in Hebrew.

“Ah habibi, zocheret oti (Ah, sweetheart, do you remember me)?”

As Dimitri suggested, the brunette looked confused, but pleased.

“Ani mazkir otach me-Haifa.”

The brunette looked confused now.

“Lo makirah oti?” Rafi switched to Italian. Abbiamo giocato il pallavolo insieme sulla spiaggia. Lei era con un gruppo da Italia. No?”

A flash of emotion crossed the brunette’s face. I am under her skin. Why isn’t the expression ’under her clothes?’

“Don’t you speak English?” the brunette shot back.

“Don’t you speak anything else?” replied Rafi, with a smile. OK, what would Dimitri do?

Rafi reached out and tapped the brunette’s left hand. “

“No, I guess not. You’re hands are soft, not like volleyballers’ hands. I thought I met you at the beach in Tel-Aviv. That girl played for hours every day. She also spoke Italian and Hebrew.”

“I don’t…”

“It’s OK. I live here now; I’m used to Americans. You take four years of language in high school, and you reach 25, you can’t speak it a word.”

“You’re a sabra?”

“I was born on a kibbutz that used to be a shooting gallery for the Suryans until we took the Golan.”

Rafi and the brunette, whose name was Deborah, were chatting away like old friends. Rafi wondered how Dimitri was making out with the blonde. That answer walked up to the table, with Dimitri guiding her.

“Rafi, this is Chris. It looks like you found her friend. I’m Dimitri.”

Dimitri offered his hand, Deborah took it. Rafi exchanged handshakes with Chris, and rephrased his approach to provide context. He thought he had met her on the beach, playing volleyball, in Haifa. And Chris, you look like Salman’s Mermaid, too. Good thing I prefer brunettes.

Over the next fifteen minutes, Dimitri and Rafi managed to get Chris and Deborah to buy another round of drinks and nachos with shredded white cheddar, olives, and jalapeños. Rafi suggested a film. Deborah suggested Philadelphia. Dimitri countered with Jurassic Park. Chris had seen that, and Deborah didn’t much want to. They settled on The Wedding Banquet by Ang Lee. Perfect date movie.

Perfect choice. Perfect non-double-date. The night concluded perfectly. Each man drove a lady home.

at 2:00, something fell in love

Breath of Life

of spirit

of matter and its opposite

it was a great

forty-eight

You challenged the City’s Best Divorce Lawyer

and we won.

the disability the CBDL said would be awarded

“when I send Ms. Cohen a Christmas card”

well, Merry Christmas (maybe I can buy Erez

another train, or Rebecca,

a gymnastics lesson)

I have a new boss

who won’t let students beat me up.

Now, as I meditated at the foot

of Jacob’s Ladder

my chest rose two inches

something or someone just fell in love with me.

Maybe it was You?

Or was that Your thank-you hug for

not being on time with those forty-eight?

You’ve known I’ve been through hell recently.

did the Breath of Life

suffer a pulmonary embolism?

“No, Ron,” I imagine You answering.

“It was My way of asking forgiveness.

See, I’m God,

but My alarm clock

isn’t”

Penguins

long before the front
swept north from Carolina
every cell in dad in son in daughter
transmitted at the same
frequency

dad its gonna storm tonight
i know i'll ask your mom
dialogue without text
"song without words"
they call it

mom's custody she must approve
she planned a trip to see
her mom in Maryland
will she choose to be snowed in
here or there

parentude ups the amplitude
message returned the children
would be pleased if you came
to play this afternoon i'll supply
the cocoa

emperor penguins and their chicks
can recognize
can amplify
their calls
across a continent