Kagan's Superfecta: And Other Stories

by Allen Hoffman

  Big Abe had once walked into a gas station and everyone had started yelling at him. “No smoking! You want to blow us all to Kingdom Come?” Blinking, Abe withdrew the small bouquet he was preparing to place at the base of the nonleaded Exxon pump in memory of his sister and asked if anyone could help him across the street to the cemetery. Kagan smiled. He could picture it all. Once on his way to Belmont he had pulled into the gas station with Big Abe. Before he could tell the attendant how much gas he wanted, the guy growled, “For Christ’s sake, keep him in the car.” There was such fear in his voice, Kagan thought the guy was talking about a dog. “What are you talking about?” Kagan had asked. “Him!” he said pointing to Big Abe. They had never forgotten Big Abe, nor Kagan. He made it a habit to buy gas there whenever he went out to Belmont. In a minor way, Kagan was a celebrity. “Jesus, that guy thought we were a cemetery!” “Oh, he’s fine. Just the same.” “Brother!”

  Kagan would find out from Big Abe: five — seven — three — four as Ozzie maintained or five — seven — four — three as he, Kagan, had seen and heard. Kagan became nervous. Something was at stake, but what was it? He had the chill and the tingling, all right, but that was kid stuff. You could get that by watching TV or at the movies. Kagan had the real thing. His flesh and the encapsulating air around him seemed sensitized — even magnetized — to some inscrutable force that was at the very root of Action. But what was the Action? Kagan became nervous. He looked about. Thank God, they were almost finished. Big Abe, Big Abe would know. Kagan held onto Big Abe. The little, nearly blind man was unflappable (in this crazy world, yet), and that reassured Kagan. Big Abe would know; he knew everything. Although Kagan did not know who had won (indeed, he didn’t even know what was at stake), the fact that Big Abe knew the results calmed him. Such a ready, constant, and available source of information suggested, at the very least hinted, that Kagan was on the right track — plugged in — not altogether unsuccessful in his attempts to negotiate passage through this absurd world. If information was present (and it was — ready, constant, and available), might not knowledge be present, perhaps within Kagan’s grasp? And if information and knowledge, why not understanding? Kagan might be close without knowing it, the way Big Abe was across the street from the cemetery. Yes, why not?

  Kagan was exhilarated by such a thought, but as he considered it, he was not quite so sanguine. Someone had told Big Abe where the cemetery was. Who would do such a thing for Kagan? And Big Abe had almost blown himself to Kingdom Come. Deep down, Kagan felt a quivering of recognition — there was more than a little self-destruction in his frantic life. Still, Big Abe had made it and Big Abe definitely knew the results! How could the results not be on the news? And yet, who wanted to go to a cemetery?

  Kagan was aware of excitement in the shtibl. The chazan was singing the last kaddish in the bold holiday tune. There was a tune! Everyone hollered “Amen” and “ Yosher koach — Congratulations” — at the end. A little like the Derby at Mooney’s, come to think of it. The rabbi was announcing when the morning services would begin. Seven o’clock, everyone should come on time so they could begin promptly. As the congregation sang the final prayer, a short, lively rhythmic one, everyone relaxed. Everyone except Kagan. He removed his tallis so quickly that he almost knocked Danny and his friend over.

  “Kagan, what’s the rush? You can’t eat supper,” Danny said.

  “Kid, I gotta see a man about a horse. It should never happen to you guys,” Kagan replied earnestly.

  Danny respected Kagan’s devastating vulnerability. He did not answer other than to wish Kagan that he might be sealed in the Book of Life. Kagan shook his hand and returned the wish. Everybody was shaking hands now and exchanging wishes. They milled about unhurriedly; tonight there was no supper. Kagan had to make a break for it. What’s the fastest way out of here? Through the women’s section. Murmuring “gut yontiff, gut yontiff” in all directions, he headed toward the women’s section. He had opened the gate and was about to step through the curtain when he felt a hand on his elbow. Kagan turned to find himself facing the not so familiar face who had earlier moved the finish line. Kagan was impatient.

  “You can ask them if they need a machzor now, but you know what the answer will be,” the older man said smiling.

  Kagan assumed that this was a joke. “Yeah, we’re done now. Who needs a book?” he replied.

  “Of course,” the man agreed, “we’re done until tomorrow.”

  “If they had enough machzors tonight, they’ll have enough tomorrow,” Kagan said.

  “Sure, why not?”

  The older man released Kagan’s elbow. Kagan said, “Gut yontiff, gut Shabbes,” stepping through the curtain. But it was not so easy. The older man had grasped Kagan’s hand and was wishing him that he be sealed in the Book of Life. Kagan had to step back through the curtain to return his good wishes.

  “It’s a funny thing. Everybody runs out of shul like it’s a race. What kind of race could you have in shul?”

  Kagan touched the older man’s sleeve. “Yes, what kind of race?” Kagan implored.

  “What kind of race?” the older man shrugged. “Believe me, take it easy. People race, they don’t even know why or what for. Keep your shoes on!”

  The older man turned to exchange greetings with another not so familiar face.

  Kagan stood there. Keep your shoes on, he repeated to himself in amazement. Keep your shoes on! What these old guys won’t do with the English language. He rushed through the women’s section, almost trampling old Mrs. Bienstock as she was bending over to put away her machzor. Mumbling an apology and wishing her a good inscription, he grasped her elbows to keep her from falling over. When she was steadied, he rushed out as the old woman surfaced to find no one near her.

  5

  KAGAN raced down Ninety-first Street toward Broadway. Keep your shoes on! Keep your shoes on! What does he think I am going to do, run barefoot? Keep your shoes on, Kagan repeated almost maniacally. Aware of the insane repetition, he continued to engage in it anyway. Keep your shoes on. Keep your shoes on. This continued until Broadway, when he looked up to see his butcher shop in the shadows and switched his mindless chant to chicken as sweet as licorice — chicken licorice — chicken licorice.

  Next to the OTB, in front of the bar, he saw a group of waiters, as he called them — always waiting for something. Waiting for a race to begin, waiting for a race to end, waiting for an office to open, waiting for the results. God forbid they should be just standing around relaxing. No, always waiting.

  “Have you seen Abe?”

  “Yeah. He just went home. He decided not to wait for the paper.”

  Kagan tore off down the street. My God, he thought, if I don’t catch him before he gets home, I’ll have to talk my way past the guard without having him ring me up.

  Kagan ran up Broadway and turned onto Ninety-third, crossed Amsterdam, and saw a dull glow shuffling along in the shadows. Kagan raced after Big Abe and caught up to him under a street light in front of the junior high school.

  “Abe, Abe, wait a minute,” Kagan called as he raced up.

  Big Abe followed his cigar around to face the direction of the call.

  “It’s me, Abe, Moe Kagan.”

  Big Abe just nodded his head.

  “Abe, you shouldn’t walk on this side of the street. Somebody can jump out and grab you. There’s nowhere to go. They have you against the fence here.”

  Kagan stopped talking and for a moment they just stood there. Finally, Big Abe spoke.

  “You need money? How much?”

  My God, that’s what they all think. Money, money, money. He’s no better than those jokers in shul. Worse, at least they don’t smoke on Yom Kippur.

  “Abe,” Kagan said, “let me ask you something. You’re a Jew. Why are you smoking on Yom Kippur? It’s Yom Kippur! Yom Kippur!”

  This last Kagan delivered with a sense of outrage and recrimination.

  “Oh, yes?” Big Abe said with mild
surprise. “It wasn’t on the news.”

  “It wasn’t on the news? Don’t you have a Jewish calendar? Everybody has a Jewish calendar!”

  “We don’t have one,” Big Abe replied.

  “Why do you think I’m wearing these? To look like Bob Cousy?”

  Kagan pointed to his sneakers and lifted one foot off the ground for Abe to see. Unseeing, Abe blinked reflexively in the direction of Kagan’s feet.

  “It’s Yom Kippur!” Kagan pleaded.

  “It wasn’t on the news,” Big Abe said evenly. “Maybe it’ll be on tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow might be too late.”

  “Maybe,” Big Abe conceded. “What can I do for you today?”

  Kagan drew a deep breath.

  “Abe, listen, you know I never bet on Shabbes or Yom Kippur, but what was the superfecta tonight?”

  Kagan saw the cigar glow bright red as Big Abe drew on it.

  “The ‘perfecta?”

  “Yeah, the ‘perfecta!”

  “It paid over fifteen thousand dollars.”

  “Who won?” Kagan asked hoarsely. “What was it, Abe?”

  “It was five — seven — four — three,” he answered.

  Kagan gasped for breath. Five — seven — four — three! Five — seven — four — three! He stepped over to steady himself against the base of the street light. Kagan blinked his eyes. He blinked them again. Five — seven — four — three! Kagan could see only the numbers and then he blinked again and saw the freeze-frame finish for fourth with the not so familiar face pushing back the mechitzah-finish line into the number-four horse’s face. Kagan collapsed against the street light.

  “Moe, maybe you shouldn’t fast. Come on up. I’ll give you a glass of water. My wife can’t fast either.”

  Kagan silently hung onto the post. Then, as suddenly as he had collapsed, he struggled to his feet and grabbed Big Abe by his lapels.

  “What about the finish? Did they say anything about that?”

  “Moe, how did you know? I guess you heard them talking in front of the shop. It was a photo finish, all right, but no one knew it at the time. At the track and over TV they announced it as five — seven — three — four but then they developed the photo to confirm it and the photo had it five — seven — four — three. Everybody who saw it on TV said it looked like the finish line was crooked, but the photo itself was very clear. Five — seven — four — three. Seeing is believing. No doubt about it. Clear as day.... Say, Kagan, are you all right?”

  Kagan, still holding Big Abe’s lapels, was motionless. The air in his lungs, nose, mouth and in front of his face had become magnetic. He couldn’t breathe. He tightened his grip on Big Abe’s lapels as if his hands grasping through the asphyxiating field could keep him from being enveloped and consumed by the Action Forces. Like so many other drowning victims, Kagan discovered that it is impossible to breathe with one’s hands. Still, he remained attached to Big Abe’s lapels until the short, blinking man calmly drew on his cigar, causing the lit end under Kagan’s nose to glow red with combustion, sending a sharp intense surge of heat into Kagan’s face. By reflex Kagan released Big Abe and stepped back.

  “Kagan,” Big Abe said solicitously, “come on up. I’ll give you a glass of water. No one will know.”

  Kagan didn’t hear the offer. As if drunk, he backed into the street lamp, grabbing the pole at the last moment to keep himself from falling.

  “Kagan, are you all right?”

  Kagan was still clutching the metal pole. The purposeful electrons pulsating inside toward the bulb high overhead were all right. Kagan, however, could not see or hear. The Action Forces had invaded his eyes and his ears. Something had been decided and Kagan didn’t know what. He had sensed Reality and lost his senses. Kagan felt neither the pole that supported him nor fright at the loss of his senses. His senses had always misled him. What good were they now? He had watched and listened to the world all his life and what had he seen? What had he heard that could compare with tonight’s events?

  Aware of the Forces in his ears and eyes, Kagan straightened up. He had known from the moment they had invaded his apertures of perception that the only way to remove them was to assimilate them. “Out” was in. There was no other way to get them out short of chopping his head off. Kagan realized the sad, horrible, irrevocable truth: these Forces would have to be pushed, shoved, and forced through into his head, perhaps rearranging his mind and reorienting his soul in the process. Faced with the fear of change, the recognition of truth, what could Kagan do but hope it was all a mistake?

  “Are you sure?” Kagan croaked.

  The short, blinking man pulled his transistor radio out of his pocket and by the time Kagan leaned forward for an answer all he heard was that the Office of Economic Opportunity wasn’t what it used to be. Kagan turned away and stiffly, almost blindly, moved down the street. Although turned on now, he couldn’t see through his eyes or hear what was beyond his ears. Looking out from his old mind, he could see the Forces invading his eyes and he could hear them in his ears.

  Arriving at the broad expanse of Amsterdam Avenue, Kagan did not pause but plunged off the curb into a swift wave of traffic racing with the synchronized green lights uptown. A taxi, avoiding a collision, shot forward to clear Kagan’s path. Behind it a huge Greyhound bus heading north blasted a maniacal hissing toward Kagan and braked with shocking fury. The sudden swerve of the rushing bus threw the passengers up against the windows to see Kagan marching mechanically toward the rear wheels. The alert driver accelerated and the swerving bus surged into the middle lane. The colorful tin wall of license plates above the blast of noxious fumes escaped before Kagan arrived, and the bus flew up the avenue unbloodied and bound for Boston.

  KAGAN arrived in front of Fran’s Conservative synagogue, where services had just ended and the sidewalk held the well-dressed throng. The men were putting their yarmulkes into their pockets and the women were improving their grip on their purses. Kagan would have charged relentlessly into them had Fran not been on the steps.

  “Moe, Moe, over here!”

  Moe kept walking straight ahead.

  “Moe, Moe!” she repeated.

  Moe turned. Fran made her way through the crowd to his side.

  “Kagan, are you all right?”

  “It’s you!” Kagan said in amazement that he could see and hear.

  “Who did you expect?” she asked suspiciously.

  “No one. Nobody.”

  “Why did you come here then?” she asked, confused and hurt.

  He looked up to see the synagogue, the institutional doors and stained-glass windows. Well, what do you know, he thought. Here I am, isn’t that something!

  “Are you all right, Kagan?”

  Kagan found himself taking her hand.

  “No, Fran, I’m not all right and you can help me.”

  “What’s wrong, dear?”

  “I have to find someone, Fran.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “Where could he be? I left before he did, so I don’t even know which way he went.”

  “Moe, I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t either, Fran. Maybe someone saw him leave.”

  “Kagan,” she said, taking both his hands, “what are you talking about? I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  “I’m not making sense, am I?” he agreed.

  “No, you certainly aren’t.”

  “Why does it bother you tonight?” he joked halfheartedly.

  “Because it’s Yom Kippur and you don’t look very happy.”

  “You’re right,” he said softly. “Listen, in shul tonight, there was an old man who wanted to talk to me and I didn’t have time for him. I didn’t even wish him a gut yontiff.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, Benny wanted to tell me something. You know how he is. By the time I turned around, he was gone.”

  “Who was he?”

  “That’s the thin
g. Nobody seemed to know. He comes every Yom Kippur. An old man in a green suit the color of a bright Ping-Pong table, just terrible.”

  “A Ping-Pong table?”

  “Yeah, it’s darker than a pool table. Just awful.”

  “Can’t you wait until tomorrow morning?”

  “It’s Yom Kippur and I feel terrible. What if he doesn’t come tomorrow because of me?”

  “But where can you find him?”

  “That’s the problem,” Kagan admitted sadly. “How do we know where to look?”

  Kagan stood there trying to think of something, anything.

  “Maybe someone else saw him leave,” Fran suggested. “But they would have gone home, too. That won’t help.”

  “Oh, it might!” Kagan called. “Let’s go!”

  Clutching her hand, Kagan took off toward Broadway.

  “They study for a while at the shtibl. The laws of Yom Kippur, that kind of thing.”

  “You think he’s still there?”

  “I doubt it. He’s not the type. Someone might have seen which way he went. Everybody’s wife was there for Kol Nidre and most of them walk their wives home. Then they return to study. Maybe somebody saw which way he went.”

  “YOU mean the fellow in the rumpled green suit?” asked Bienstock looking up from the study table. A large book lay open in front of him.

  “Yes,” replied Kagan eagerly. “That’s the guy.”

  “You know, it’s a funny thing,” Bienstock reminisced. “I haven’t seen a suit like that in thirty years. Do you remember Sadie’s brother, Herman? He had a suit like that. And you know where he got it?”

  “Where is he now?” Kagan implored.