Flatscreen (2 page)

“Thanks,” I said.

Kahn didn’t look at me. Instead scanned the backyard, not with a prospective buyer’s assessing gaze but with a ferocious stare, as if, not bound by the wheelchair, he might dive onto our lawn, attack weeds with his dirty fingernails.

“It’s good to be young,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

“I guess.”

“Time is a harsh mistress. Not as harsh as my actual mistress. She’s a real nut job. My first wife was the craziest, but that’s neither here nor there.”

“Oh.”

“I noticed a distinct odor in your bedroom.
Cannabis sativa
, if I’m not mistaken. Sweet leaf. Panama Red. Mexican dirt. Rub it on me belly like guava jelly. I don’t have connections like I used to. Think you could help an old man score?”

“Probably.”

“I can offer you money and goods. I get a world of prescriptions these days. There’s nothing they won’t give an ex–movie star in a wheelchair.”

“You were a movie star?”

“TV. It’s the new film. Or the old Internet. The small
screen keeps getting bigger. Soon they’ll be downloading my dick into outer space.”

Pictured Day-Glo laptops floating through atmosphere, forming cock-shaped constellations.

“What does that even mean?” I said.

“It means posterity is bullshit, and pussy is gold. It means nighttime is the right time. You get my drift? It means the world turns, my friend, no matter if your blood runs red or blue. But I see that you’re a philosopher. That’s a good place to start. You remind me of someone, an old friend.”

It’s a thing women say when they don’t want to fuck you—notification upon entering the friend zone. This was different. Kahn made eye contact. Face on pause, unsure whether to balloon into giggly animation or fall frown-ward: the look of remembering something funny about someone dead.

I’d seen it on my mother on a number of occasions, when she’d caught me red-handed in petty insubordination—stealing wine or loose dollars—and remembered her brother Ned, the way his guilty pink cheeks were a splash of expressionist sunlight.

The look passed. Kahn opened his hands, palms up, as if awaiting an offering, or checking for rain, or else hinting that I too must outstretch, place my paws on his. He’d had his share of lotions and treatments, that much was clear, but the papery remains of wheelchair calluses still speckled his hand skin, and new blisters were already forming on the tips of his fingers and lower halves of his palms.

“I’m a philosopher?” I said.

“A seeker of truth. Like scholars and nymphomaniacs.”

Considered myself neither, with the potential to be both.

“You really want to buy this place?”

“I want to live forever, but I’ll settle for suburbia.”

“Meaning death don’t have no mercy?”

“Meaning tits are built for milking.”

In the kitchen, my brother had Erin’s rapt attention. We could see them through the screen door. Her face was chubbily attractive: dimpled, blushing. Northeast sensitive skin, light makeup. Eyes: hazel. Build: athletic. Strong shoulders. Standard-issue outfit: black blouse, blue jeans, brown giddyup boots.

Benjy tucked a fugitive flyaway behind her ear, said, “Applying to law school.”

“She’s a sucker for men who are the opposite of me,” Kahn said. “In that I taught her well.”

“My brother’s no prize. Trust me.”

“Who said anything about prizes? What I’m talking about is pain, and the ability to avoid it. She has an ear for the silence of easy money. Got that from her mother. Guys like you and me prefer bang-bang, shoot a can.”

“You and me?”

“I recognize my own kind. Don’t deny it. You’ve never worked a day in your life and don’t plan to. It’s a noble pursuit, but it’s also supremely selfish. We’re carried by our daughters and brothers, wives, mothers, lovers. We’re pathetic wards. We’re anchors and they’re beautiful ships stuck in dock until we unhook ourselves. I’m trying but it’s hard. I cling to those highs and lows, those legs wrapped in fishnet hose. Those legs just walk on past. I’m dragging behind, holding on for dear life. I can see from the look in your eyes that you too are a failure in that regard.”

“I’m a failure in many regards.”

Kahn removed a business card. “Call me when you can help me out.”

“Will do,” I said.

He turned his chair, wheeled back toward the kitchen. Erin opened the screen, lifted him inside. Her biceps bulged from a lifetime of lifting. The card said:
Seymour J. Kahn: actor, cripple
. Cell and e-mail listed below.

Establishing Shot:

V.O.:

Cut to
: Through the window she’s graceful in the kitchen, flickering like lightning in the streetlamp shadows. Zoom in and we see that her motions are jagged, her fingers shake. Face is creased, cavernous. Natural gray of her hair shows in the roots.

Bird’s-eye view: Congregation Beth Shalom might appear to be part of the Pine Hill Mall, which is sometimes referred to as the Mall at Pine Hill. If the mall is Quinosset’s Mighty Mississippi, then Beth Shalom is a tributary akin to the Yazoo River
(Fire on the Yazoo!
, Left Hat Pictures, 1987).

Large building with a larger parking lot. High Holidays: front lot like a rap video removed of black people. Mercedes, Lexus, Beamers. This is where we used to park until Dad left. Then we drove a Camry, and they stuck us out back.

Jennifer Estes waved us in. Her orange mesh vest was the kind crossing guards and trash-spear parolees wear—a servitude marker, sun-bright. Visible from fifty yards: her bounce and hip shimmy, wind-borne hair.

Jeremy Shaw used to be the parking attendant. A Head-First kid—from an alternative school within my high school—a good guy. His dad was janitor at the synagogue. They lived in the Beth Shalom basement. We weren’t friends but shared nods and thin joints by the old bomb shelter, not saying much, passing it back and forth.

Last year Jeremy hung himself in his bedroom while Henry Villeva and Jamal Green played
Grand Theft Auto III
in the living room. I heard Alison Ghee—his ultra-skinny, no-less-sexy-for-it girlfriend—had cheated on him. People said she gave him herpes. I never believed it. Thought he was just a sad guy living in a basement. Once dreamed I was sitting shotgun in his pickup doing 120 on the Zakim Bridge when Jeremy turned, drove us over the rail. A peaceful moment. We spun like a failing propeller. Watched the bridge lights recede. Sank to the pavement, fell on the sleeping city as if it were a mattress, as if death itself were a soft mattress.

Jennifer smiled at me. Couldn’t tell if it was the type of smile that said, “Do me!” or “Time for a new suit. You’ve had that one since you were fifteen, and you’ve put on a few pounds.”

Gave a half-wave that I thought looked cool, disaffected. As we walked past, my mother tried to fix my tie.

We had the good seats, up front, won from Dad in the divorce. If there was a single person making peace with God as the Schwartz family strutted up the aisle, she was doing so while mentally commenting on the fact that my pants only came down to my shins. Not that we were special. Whole show was a social affair. Women showed off new outfits, men showed off new wives.

Like Dad. Pam wore a leather miniskirt, applied lip gloss, added a seven to her Sudoku panel. The twins passed a pack of Lifesavers. I patted Dad on the shoulder. He looked up, nodded, offered a handshake, but I was already halfway up the aisle. His hand dangled, retracted.

Walk to our seats took fifteen minutes. Mom had to stop-and-chat with six groups of people. I flanked her dutifully. Avoided eye contact with my former classmates. They
went to liberal arts schools in Maine or Connecticut, majored in IR, econ, etc., returned to proud parents, maple-glazed brisket, younger girls—QHS seniors—sweating in halogen classroom deserts, waiting for Prince Cohen to arrive via Amtrak.

Older siblings were I-bankers, traders, account managers, other things I only understood in theory. No clue what they did, but the result was money, piles of it, stored in steel vaults, spent on tools of entertainment pricier than the super high-def 120-inch plasmas now on sale for a low, low price at Robot World in the Pine Hill Mall.

Not that I hated them so much as hated myself for not being one of them. I was a glorified townie without the glory. No rugged good looks or blue-collar gas-station-employee pride. No fading memory of a football career. No greaser girlfriend, legs thick and strong like the twin pistons on my (nonexistent) restored Camaro.

The girls here—slender, over-eyelined, snuggly shawled in black cashmere—went to BU, Northeastern, prepped for careers in PR, HR, other initials. Mean-sexy with salon-styled hair, slipping shoulder straps. Eyes peeled, panning for potential husbands. Gave me a look that said, “Yes, we cum-guzzle weekends and some Wednesday nights, post–Sex
and the City
, bewitched by Samantha’s skanky spirit. But never for fat boys in ill-fitting suits still living with Mom, hardly shaken by un-stoned ‘I’m a fuckup’ revelations, no job, no portfolio, no property, no chance for a seven-figure bonus come Christmastime.” Daughters looked just like their mothers.

Knew I didn’t look like Dad, but wondered if people thought I looked like Mom. Mascara had already smudged. Women whispered as she moved past. Felt the urge to stand in front of her like Secret Service, block the eye-bullets
with my blubbery bod. Maybe if I held her arm and corrected my posture she would see that we were in this together: this town, these stale, life-lorn lives. But she would have shoved me off. I was her shame in my too-short pants. Fair enough. This was her world, not mine. She tried to follow its rules, she failed; my existence underscored her failure.

Picked up my prayer book, thumbed the pages, braided the fringes of my tallis. No one paid attention. Maybe some oldies whose faith had come and gone, but now, with the end drawing near, it was God or zilch. The cantor’s voice trickled with vibrato, rose up to the high ceiling where it was contained in the building (no musical bird soaring to heaven), accepted reverb from the stained glass, bounced down into our ears and his. A hundred syncopated pacemakers kicked garage backbeat while Cantor Branson hymned.

There was beauty in the music itself, ethereal organ in perfect counterpoint to Branson’s earthy tenor. You could get lost in it, space out, stare at the stained glass, or retreat into your own head, where the sounds drowned out the other sounds, annoying and imagined, like my brother gleefully whispering, “Tough shit. I go to college where coeds swill keg beer, while you stay with Mom in this purgatory of postadolescent angst.”

Left for the bathroom before the start of the sermon, because you’re not allowed to move once the sermon starts. If I timed things right, I’d be locked out, wouldn’t have to sit through Rabbi Zarkoff’s talk. Zarkoff stood on his tiptoes when the pitch of his voice rose, camp-lisping like an alum of the Richard Simmons Rabbinical School: “Joseph was a special boy with a special coat.”

Strangely, the “yes-on-eight, yes on the word
feygele
” contingent had no complaints about Zarkoff, who was a private
bachelor, Harvard-educated, acceptably conservative in regards to Israel. I liked him too: his unself-conscious style; his interest in the Old Testament’s moral ambiguities; his way of smuggling queer theory into Talmudic analysis, same way Mom mixed ground turkey in the burger meat—our best interests at heart. But I was restless, wanted to get high.

On my way out, I found Seymour Kahn sitting by the exit, staring at a high-school-aged blonde a few aisles over. Erin sat next to Kahn. Next to her was a pretty black girl of about thirteen. I tapped Kahn on the shoulder, flashed the universal “Smoke a joint?” hand gesture.

Pushed Kahn past the back lot into the edge of the woods. Small clearing I’d been going to for years. When I was in high school, I thought getting high at temple made it more spiritual. Then realized it didn’t.

Lit the joint, passed it.

“Take a few.”

Kahn closed his eyes, inhaled. I leaned on his wheelchair, delicately, to see if it would support my weight. Chair began to roll. Grabbed the handles, reeled him in. Took all my strength. Thought I might have pulled a muscle.

“Trying to kill me?”

“Sorry.”

Kahn coughed, spit in the dirt, grinned. Smile showed yellow-tipped teeth, a menacing overbite.

“You need to get laid. Your pores leak sexual frustration. I can smell it on you.”

“What does it smell like?”

“I’ll tell you what it doesn’t smell like.”

“Roses?”

“You laugh. But when I was your age, I fucked everything that moved. It wasn’t a good weekend if I didn’t wake
up with puss dripping out of my dick. It’s the whole problem these days: AIDS, Christians, Islam, condoms, well-made vibrators. No one fucks anymore. Maybe the French, but fuck the French.”

“What’s wrong with the French?”