by Paul Neuhaus
Wiener had a purse made of rigid brown leather. Another throwback to a bygone era. It was the kind of purse the hippie girls carried back in the late sixties and early seventies. She took out her wallet and flipped to the plastic photo holder in the middle. It was full of photos—mostly of people I didn’t recognize. I was surprised to see her carrying around hard copies like that. Most people kept their pictures stored on their phone. She found a particular snapshot and handed it to me. We were sitting at a red light, so I glanced down at it. It was Elijah looking more or less the way I remembered him. Like me, he was soft around the middle. He had crow’s feet and a little less hair, but it was definitely the man I knew. He was standing with a mousy woman with mean eyes. “And the chick would be...?”
“Exactly who you think it is,” Keri replied.
I passed the photo back to her as the light changed. She put it back into its vinyl housing and returned her wallet to her purse. Gods, what was I doing? Seeing Elijah was bad enough but seeing him with the woman who’d ended our relationship was a little much. Was I, as Hermes said, trying to get closure? Was I helping Keri? Gods’ honest truth, I had some hostility toward Keri, and I’m not sure closure was what I was after. Was I looking at this as a second chance? Was I looking to steal Elijah back from Addie? Was Elijah even worth the trouble? People can change a lot in fifteen years. For all I knew he’d turned into an even bigger goofball than he’d been when I knew him. I mean, let’s face it, as much as I blamed Addie for the breakup, Elijah’s drunken dick hadn’t slipped into her vagina by accident. I was praying the coffee would clear my head. I knew it wouldn’t.
“Look,” I said. “As helpful as your little itinerary was, I don’t see any reason to trace Elijah’s daily routine. We gotta think big picture. Where does Jack live?” Jack was Elijah’s brother. The one from the triple-A baseball misadventure.
“Right next door.”
“Next door to what?”
“Us. My family. My dad likes to keep an eye on him.”
By then we were at Swinger’s on Lincoln near Santa Monica Boulevard. I parked at a meter. “Okay, you know what? Let’s lay some groundwork for our relationship: You don’t get to tease me about my past, and I don’t get to be mean to you because what happened back then happened. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn’t get born to fuck with me.”
“Are you gonna yell at me when I talk too much?”
“Probably, yeah.”
The girl thought it over for a second. “Okay, well, I can’t fault you for that.”
We shook on it and went inside for some breakfast burritos. Over the meal, I said to Keri, “Why’re you looking for your dad?”
“Why’m I looking for my dad? He’s been missing a coupla of days. If your dad was missing for a coupla days, you wouldn’t go looking for him?”
“My dad’s been dead for like five thousand years, but in principal, I would go looking for him, yes. What I meant was why didn’t you go to the police?”
The teen hesitated, her orange juice halfway to her lips. “I... wanted to keep it on the down low. Pop’s been acting strange. Secretive.”
“Is he still on the sauce?” I tried to make the question sound as casual as I could since “the sauce” was what split Elijah and me up.
Wiener took a drink before speaking. “No, he’s been clean for eight years. He never touches the stuff.”
“Alright, so give me your theory... What do you think he’s up to?”
“I... think he might be having an affair.”
I felt my stomach acids boiling. I really didn’t wanna know from Elijah and his affairs. I didn’t need that kind of sordid detail messing with my already messed-up brain. “Has your mom been faithful?”
Keri’s laugh was loud enough to draw the attention of the staff and all the other diners. The girl looked around, embarrassed, and mumbled an apology. When she turned to face me again, she was smirking. “Addie’s a serial cheater. If she wasn’t my mother, I’d say she’s seen more dick than a Grand Central john.”
“Good thing she’s your mom.”
“I know, right?”
Again, the situation was making me queasy. Like I was peeking into a world that was none of my business. “Why does your dad stay with her?”
“I’ve never asked him, but I think it’s because he’s loyal. Especially, since his twelve step, he’s Mr. Stiff Upper lip. Mr. True Grit. Or at least as close to those things as a man like him gets.”
“Okay, so, your mom’s had affairs, what if Elijah is having one too? Wouldn’t you say he’s entitled?”
“I’d say he’s entitled, but I don’t want him to go down that road.”
“How come?”
“Because he’s better than that. If he takes that road, he’ll be no better than Addie.”
I nodded. “I get it. How confident are you in your affair theory?”
She shrugged. “He’s being secretive and weird which certainly could mean an affair, but it doesn’t matter one way or the other. The fact he’s gone, and I don’t know where he is trumps the why.”
Breakfast was over, and eight cups of coffee is my limit, so I picked up the check and headed for the counter. The teenager followed. “I admire your pragmatism,” I told her.
“Thanks,” she replied. “I admire your gruff but lovable style.”
Westwood is a little neighborhood next to UCLA. It’s a quiet place made up of shops and restaurants. There are two theaters there, you’ve probably seen on TV. Whenever Hollywood has a premiere, it’s usually at either the Fox Theater or the Bruin. Both of them are on the north side of the little town and both get featured on Entertainment Tonight regularly. The Wiener homes were a couple of streets inland from Westwood proper. It was the middle of the day, so there was plenty of street parking. As we got out of the Pontiac, I noticed a man sitting in a car looking at us. It was a red BMW 3 Series and the man had a tightly-trimmed beard. “Do you know that dude?” I said.
“Which dude? The dude in the beemer?”
“Yeah.”
“Never seen him before in my life.”
I wanted to go have a chat with Mr. Looky Loo. Nothing good has ever come from people ogling me (apart from sex, but I don’t think Beardie was looking to get laid). I had to quash the impulse to lean on him since Keri had already moved on.
The teenager stood in the middle of the street and pointed at two houses. On the left was a nice, upper-middle class home like all the other nice middle-class homes on the street. On the right was what I would’ve thought of as a mother-in-law house, but those’re usually behind the main home. This one was in the same row as the others. The fact it was tiny threw off the rhythm of the street. “I don’t guess I need to tell you, but we live in the big one and Jack lives in the little one.”
“How often do you have to change out the gingerbread?”
The girl cocked her head at me. I realized then she reminded me of a very young Carrie Fisher. Right down to the clothing and the accoutrements. “What?” she said, confused.
“Never mind. Do you think Jack’s at home?”
“Do I think he’s at home? I told you about the foul ball, right? The last time he left this place, it was because he thought Danny DeVito had gotten into his toilet tank and wouldn’t leave.”
“I can see how that’d be troubling.”
“No doubt.” By then we’d walked up the front lawn and come to the door. Wiener knocked. “I have a key, but I don’t like to use it,” she said. “Fruit loop or not, a man has a right to his privacy.”
“You’re queer for the fourth amendment.”
“You’re queer for the fourth amendment.”
It might’ve gone on like that if Jack hadn’t opened the door. I hadn’t seen him for fifteen years either, but he also looked more or less the same. Which is to say he looked more or less the same as Elijah. The men were identical twins. Except Jack had gotten the differentiator he so desperately needed. He had
a crater in his forehead roughly the diameter and depth of a baseball. When I saw it, I cried out. Keri said a “sorry I should’ve warned you” out of the side of her mouth, but Jack was unfazed by any of it. “Dora!” he said. He rushed out onto the porch and pulled me in for a hug. A very heartfelt, very sustained hug.
After what I’m sure was a full minute, I said, “It’s great to see you too, Jackie.”
Finally, he released me, nodded to Keri and said, “Come in, come in.”
He ushered us inside and I was taken aback by the orderliness of his place. It was like a surveying crew had laid out every aspect of the living room. Everything was at right angles to everything else even the little knickknacks on the end tables.
The elder Wiener caught me looking. “Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t like this before the, you know, the thing.” He pointed to the divot in his head as if I didn’t know what he was talking about. “That foul ball... It slammed a love of geometry into me. A love for precision. I’m OCD by way of SHT.”
“‘SHT’?”
“Severe Head Trauma.”
“I wish I had a smattering of whatever it is you’ve got. My place is a dump.”
Jack smiled a smile that was a little two wide. I started to notice how everything about him was... off. His movements, his expressions. It was like a robot slowly learning to be human. “You’re here about Elijah, aren’t you?” he said, sitting down on the couch and indicating I should do the same. I did. (He’d lost interest in Keri, so she sat down in a chair facing us.)
“I am,” I replied. “Keri says he’s missing. She also said you said I was uniquely qualified to find him.”
Jack suddenly remembered his niece was in the room. He turned to her. “Did I say that?”
The younger Wiener nodded. “Words to that effect, yeah.”
Jack turned back to me. “Well, there you go. If you guys say I said it, I must’ve said it. You know I live next-door to Elijah and he never goes anywhere. This is the longest stretch I’ve spent not seeing him since... Well, since we came out of the womb. It’s weird. It’s... what’s the word?”
I looked back and forth between the niece and the uncle. “I dunno... unsettling?”
“No, that’s not it.”
“Discombobulating?”
“No.”
“Upsetting?”
“No.”
“Confusing?”
“No.”
“Disquieting?”
“No.”
“Worrying?”
“No.”
“Distressing?”
“No.”
“Um... Angst-inducing?”
“No.”
“Perturbing?”
“No.”
“Frightening?”
“No.”
“Alarming?”
“No.”
“Flustering?”
“No.”
“Distracting?”
“No.”
“Scary?”
“No.”
“Rattling?”
“No.”
“Ruffling?”
“No.”
“Confounding?”
“No.”
“Debilitating?”
“No.”
“Agitating?”
“No.”
“Disheartening?”
“No. Wait, what was the first one you said?”
I had to think back. “Unsettling?”
“Yeah. That one. It’s unsettling.”
I sighed, more out of exhaustion than anger. “Okay, Jackie.”
Jack nodded. In some ways, he was the guy I remembered. He’d spent a lot of time together with Elijah and I back in the day. I always took him to be sweet and well-meaning, but also sad. That guy was still in there behind the dented cranium. “I remember now.”
“Remember what?”
“Telling Keri she should get you to find El. I remember telling her that.”
“Well, sure. She had to get it from somewhere, am I right?”
He laughed as if I’d just told the funniest joke ever. Partway in, he burst into tears. Full-on traumatic tears where he put his face in his hands and his head in his lap. He was convulsing by the time Keri and I got to him. (I leaned in, putting my arm around his shoulders and Keri got up and sat down on his other side.) He was talking but the words were incoherent around the sobs.
“Oh, hey, hey, hey, Jackie, Jackie, Jackie, what’s wrong?” Even though I was weirded out by the circumstances, I was still moved by the despair of an old friend.
Keri put her hand on her uncle’s back and said. “It’s okay, uncle Jack. Find your words. Find your words.”
The elder Wiener said something but, again, it was muffled by his crying (and the fact his face was buried in his lap).
“Is this about Elijah? Don’t worry. Keri and I’ll find him. We’ll find him as fast as we can.”
Jack shook his head no. It wasn’t about Elijah?
“Uncle Jack, if you want us to help you, you’re gonna have to sit up and tell us what the problem is. We can’t help you if we don’t know what the problem is.”
The man nodded into his own lap. That made sense to him. He sat up and rubbed the tears out of his swollen eyes. He looked as despondent as anyone I’d ever seen. It took him a while to catch his breath and regain his composure. Keri rubbed his back the whole time. Finally, Jack found his words. “You’re here for Elijah?” he said.
I nodded.
“You’re always here for Elijah.”
Keri and I shared a glance. “What do you mean, Jackie?”
“You... were always here for Elijah, but I loved you too. I loved you as much as he did only I never got to say it. I loved you, but he got to you first, and then he pissed it away. Knocking up a tramp waitress from the Polo Club. And I never even got to see you again even though I didn’t do anything wrong. And then... after this...” he pointed again to the divot left by the foul ball. “After this, I wasn’t even a good catch anymore.”
The teenaged girl stood and, her eyes bugging out, she said, “I’ll wait outside.”
When Keri was gone, I returned my eyes to Jack. I felt like the floor had dropped out from underneath me. It sounded like my old friend and I had spent the last decade moving in similar directions. “Jack. You’re still a good catch. You were always kind and sincere, and I can see you still are. I... I’ve been in a funk for a while. A good long while. And then, out of the blue, Keri shows up on my doorstep and asks me to help find a man I haven’t seen in fifteen years. I was...”
“Unsettled?” he said with a smile.
I returned the grin. “Yes. Unsettled is exactly the right word. And I haven’t acclimated to the... unsettledness yet. I’m still all like, ‘Whoa, what is happening here?’”
“And I’m not helping,” he replied, running the back of his right hand under each of his eyes.
“No. Don’t think of it like that. You didn’t say what you said to throw me. You said what you said because you felt it. I respect that. I could learn from that. Will you... let me process this? I feel like we should talk again, but right now I don’t have my feet underneath me.”
He smiled again. “Okay,” he said. “You’ll remember where I live, right?”
As I stood, I bent and kissed the top of his head. To the side of the divot. “I’ll remember where you live.”
When I got back outside, Keri was there. She looked curious but chose not to broach the subject of Jack’s confession. Thank the gods for small favors. “What now?” she said.
“Is anybody home at your house?”
“Not a soul.”
“What about your mom? Where is she?”
“Vegas. She goes to Vegas twice a month.”
Another small favor. If I went to my long-delayed grave without ever meeting Addie, it’d be a good thing. “Does your dad have an office?”
“A home office? Yeah.”
“Okay. We’re gonna search it.”
/>
The girl was taken aback. “Search his office? I would never do that. Isn’t that like a civil rights violation?”
“You really are queer for the fourth amendment.”
As we crossed from one lawn to the other, I noticed Beardie was still watching us from the 3 Series. I did my best not to flip him off. “Elijah told you he found magic," I said. "Real magic, and he didn’t have to wish anymore. What do you think he meant?”
“I don’t know,” Keri said. “As goofy as he is, he usually doesn’t talk like that. In riddles, I mean. He was completely sincere when he said it. He was like a little kid. You know how you can tell when a little kid is lying? Well, there’s the opposite of that, too. You can always tell when a little kid is being straight. They haven’t developed their poker faces yet, so whatever they’re feeling shines through. Pops was like that when he said it. I shrugged it off at the time, and then he went missing. Just him saying that got me thinking; thinking and worrying. I mean I woulda been concerned anyway if he went missing for three days without saying that, but him saying it added to the strangeness. I thought he might’ve been talking metaphorically. About a woman. That kinda ties in with my affair theory.”
The girl opened the front door of her home, and immediately I felt weird. I felt like I was in a place I didn’t belong. A place that’d been built up over the last decade and a half in my involuntary absence. There were pictures on the wall. Pictures of Elijah and Addie. Of Elijah and Addie and Keri. Of just Keri. I hugged myself. “Does your mom know Elijah is missing?”
Keri’s mood darkened. “Addie doesn’t know much of anything. Excepting of course Addie.”
“So, you and your mom’re pretty tight.”
The teenager pointed at me and said, “Sarcasm.“ Then she shifted back to the matter at hand. “Look, I don’t see any reason not to be straight with you. Addie’s human wreckage. She’s like a grifter, sizing up every situation, looking for the angle. I’d say she’s like some kind of hustler robot, but that implies she’s flat and emotionless. She’s not emotionless. She’s a walking raw nerve. A bag of hormones with a hair trigger.”
