Man of the Hour

by Peter Blauner

  What was the matter with her? She was seventeen years old, a healthy American girl, with a good mind and a good body. A rockin’ bod, as the other girls in the class would say. A slammin’ bod. So what was holding her back? Why couldn’t she play? In fact, why couldn’t she do anything she wanted? She wasn’t wrapped up in a veil in a Middle Eastern village somewhere, about to be bartered away in an arranged marriage. She had the run of the country—the open sea on her right, the arcades, merry-go-rounds, and everything beyond on her left. She didn’t have to stay home until she got married, though that was what Nasser and her father would have liked. She could go away to college, maybe even to Boston, where Merry was probably headed next year. She could have her own life, her own career, she could marry who she wanted. She could even make her own mistakes.

  She started picking up speed as she drew closer to Merry, who was already sweet-talking with the boyz by the Aquarium entrance. There was nothing for her to be afraid of, she told herself. She wanted them to see her, to see she was just like them, and maybe even to chase her if they had the nerve.

  But as she zoomed past the crew, and heard Obstreperous Q call out, “Ooow mama, I like it like that,” she saw something that scared her. An old woman in a black head scarf feeding seagulls by the benches on her right. She couldn’t see the woman’s face, couldn’t even tell if she was Arab, but for some reason, the thought came into her head that this was what her mother would have looked like. She turned, glancing back over her shoulder as she kept skating forward, twisting herself into a kinetic sculpture of confused emotions. She wanted this, she didn’t want it. And so she tripped and fell.

  44

  OKAY, THIS IS who you are.

  You are not a man who beats his wife. You are not a man who would ever hurt his child. You are a father and a teacher. That much you know for sure. It’s a start. And you are not going to kill yourself. At least not yet.

  Thus David Fitzgerald began trying to reassemble himself.

  You are going to go on with your life. You are going to walk out of the apartment this morning. You are going to ignore the photographers on the sidewalk, yelling, “Hey, fuckface, look over here!” and “Hey, shithead, have you beaten your kid today?” to try to get a rise out of you. You will ignore the vicious animal gnawing at your insides and you will get on the subway, bury your face in Darkness at Noon, and start the long ride out to Coney Island. You are going to survive this somehow. You are not a victim. You are going to get back to being yourself, whoever that is.

  You will show up at school for the first time in almost a week and you will not be embarrassed when Charisse, the sullen, spherical security guard, insists you go through the metal detector like a student when all the other teachers routinely step around it. You will go to the principal’s office and you will ask to see Larry and you will not get upset when Michelle, his bitchy secretary, tells you that you’ll have to wait most of the morning and gets on the phone with her crazy boyfriend. You will do this because you cannot continue to sit around the apartment waiting for further disaster to strike.

  When Larry finally makes time to see you a few minutes before lunch, you will smile and grasp his hand warmly and try to summon up memories of when you were an eager young teacher. When Larry gives you a look of glacial seriousness, you won’t be discouraged. You will ask for your job back.

  “David, you have got to be kidding me,” he will say. “Do you know what the people in the district superintendent’s office and the Parents’ Association will do if they even find out you’ve set foot in the school after what you’ve been accused of?”

  You will remind him that no one has any legal standing to keep you from doing your job. You are yet to be charged with any crime, and though Ralph says that could change at any time, you still have your rights. You also have lawyers who are more than willing to sue the school if it comes to that. You will be making Larry very, very unhappy. When he tries to argue that you should be fired for not mentioning on your original application that you’d been arrested for stealing a car, you will point out that it happened when you were a juvenile and the record was sealed, so it can’t be counted against you. You will cause his already waxy skin to turn slightly gray. You will make his hairline recede. You will make him reach for the Maalox. But this isn’t your problem. You have been punished for a crime you didn’t commit and you need to be made whole again. You have to re-apply to the world. The fact that you’re still getting paid is irrelevant. A man is his work, and you need to work again.

  A fighter fights, a writer writes, a teacher teaches. You need to get back in the classroom again, because it’s the only place you’ve ever truly felt at home. But just as important, one of the kids may know who did the actual bombing. And in your heart, you know they’re far more likely to tell you than a cop.

  So you have to get back to work. It’s impossible, Larry will tell you. The parents will go ballistic. Be reasonable. Take a reassignment back to the district office, he’ll say. But that’s not what you had in mind.

  After going back and forth with him for ten minutes, you’ll work out a compromise. College applications are due in a few weeks and someone has to review the students’ essays with them. You will have some contact with the kids but it will be limited enough to keep everyone else satisfied. This seems like a fair alternative until the case is resolved. Until forces beyond your control determine whether you spend the rest of your life as a free man or a convict in a faraway prison, who gets to see his son maybe two or three times a year. But you will not think about that for now. You will try to get on with things. You are not a victim.

  You will leave it to Larry to work out the details with the other administrators. It’s not your concern who has to be stroked and who has to be bludgeoned. You just want to come back and find out who did this bombing. Hands will be shaken and eyes will be averted. You will walk out of there with a sense of purpose. You will still be scared and dreading every minute, for fear that you will suffocate, but you will put one foot in front of the other. You are going to live until you die. You are going to be a father to your son and a teacher to your students. You will have lunch at Nathan’s down the street. Two dogs with relish, a large Coke, and those sublimely greasy fries. And for the first time in weeks, your food will taste decent.

  45

  WITH THE BOMBING TARGETS selected, Nasser, Youssef, and Dr. Ahmed arranged to have breakfast with the imam, Sheik Abdel Aziz Ayad, at the Skyview Diner in Bay Ridge.

  The purpose, Nasser assumed, was to try to get some money and obtain blessings for each of their choices, especially since Youssef had expressed reservations about the school as a target. Getting permission was no easy matter, Nasser knew, for out of the literally thousands of imams in the tri-state area, almost none would sanction acts of violence against innocent people.

  “I would like plain pancakes with no butter on the side,” the imam told the waitress in English with his crooked smile. “And please have them wipe the grill for me, so my food doesn’t touch any of the pork.”

  “Yes, keep my eggs away from the bacon too,” chimed in the Great Bear, who was wedged into the booth next to the imam and across from the doctor and Nasser. “I only eat what’s halal.”

  Nasser noticed the bigger man trying to puff himself up in front of the imam. Things had changed in their little constellation lately. Nasser sensed that he’d elevated himself to a new level of respect in Dr. Ahmed’s eyes by suggesting they bomb the school again, while Youssef had forfeited some status with his hesitation.

  It was strange about the Great Bear. Once he’d appeared so masculine and dominating to Nasser. But now he was just another follower. Nasser realized the weakness must have been there all along—with the hamburgers and the American videos and the muscle magazines. Despite his size, Youssef was ready to go wherever a strong wind pushed him.

  Nasser and the doctor both ordered plain toast, and the waitress, a tired busty blond, took their menus and headed back to the
kitchen.

  “So!” The imam smiled, switching back to Arabic and flashing the mischievous grin that had captivated Nasser at their last meeting. “What are my brothers up to?”

  Dr. Ahmed leaned across the Sweet’n Low packets conspiratorially, being a little too obvious, Nasser thought. “We have three questions we’ve been discussing among ourselves, sheik.”

  “Good!”

  Nasser looked around, trying to make sure no one was eavesdropping. From sharing an apartment with the doctor, he’d begun to notice the little man was swinging back and forth between fits of unfounded paranoia and moments of troubling heedlessness.

  “I want to ask about the schools they have in this country.” The doctor coughed and cleared his throat. “What do you think of the way the children are taught here?”

  “This is surely an affront to God.” The imam folded his hands and looked thoughtful.

  “Good. Then it would not be haram for someone to attack such a place again, right?”

  The doctor coughed again and Nasser was reminded he’d smelled burning tobacco through the bathroom door last night. Did Ahmed have a secret vice?

  The imam looked ill at ease. “Well, I would rather not say exactly—”

  “It’s all right, I understand.” Dr. Ahmed cut him off and looked around. “There may be other ears here.”

  “Exactly,” said the imam, receiving a cup of coffee from the passing waitress.

  Nasser felt the vinyl seat cushion move under him as Dr. Ahmed fidgeted to his right. Was this all they needed? Had the imam really sanctioned bombing the school again, or had he just evaded the subject entirely?

  Dr. Ahmed was undeterred. “There’s something else I have to ask you,” he said, lowering his voice so the imam had to lean across the table to hear him. “Even more serious.”

  “Go ahead.” The imam’s eyes twinkled.

  Okay, so now he’s going to ask about the other targets. Nasser picked up a glass of water and then put it down quickly, worried his shaking hands would betray his mood.

  But the doctor suddenly veered in another direction. “The other day, there was a shaheen—a martyr—in Jerusalem,” he said quietly. “One who blows himself up and kills these so-called innocents. We need to know if such a thing is against sharia, the laws of Islam.”

  The question stunned Nasser. Nothing had been said about a suicide bombing.

  The imam’s smile fell away. “Well, this is very serious indeed,” he said, with raised eyebrows and a turned-down mouth. “The Holy Book is very specific that such things are strictly haram. Suicides are condemned, and so are ones who would kill innocent women and children.”

  “Oh?” Dr. Ahmed shot Youssef a questioning glance to the side of the imam.

  “However.” The imam paused and sipped his coffee. “There is a long, honorable tradition of martyrs. And remember: we are living through a time of Holy War. And in a war, it is not always possible to live exactly by the Book.”

  Oh my God. Nasser pitched his head forward into his hands. “Why are we even talking this way?” he asked the others. “No one has talked of doing such a thing here.”

  Silence fell over the table as the waitress brought the imam’s pancakes, Youssef’s scrambled eggs, and plain toast for Nasser and Dr. Ahmed. “There you go, guys,” she said, heading back to the kitchen. “Give a whistle if you need anything else.”

  “Of course we’re not talking about such things,” Youssef hissed across the table at Nasser. “Inte mej noon. Are you crazy? We’re just trying to find the limits we have to work within.”

  The limits? Nasser was completely confused now, but afraid to say anything, lest he appear weak-willed in front of the imam and lose his newfound status. He had thought they were supposed to be getting the blessing to bomb the school and the other locations. What was the point of going into all these abstractions if they weren’t going to put them into action?

  “We have one last question,” said Dr. Ahmed. “It also has to do with limitations. We are limited by money. We have three operations we want to do and we’re running low on funds. This is a terrible thing about living in this society. One always needs more. So we were hoping you could help us. For the sake of jihad.”

  “How much do you need?” The imam spread a small lake of syrup across his plate, dipped a chunk of pancake, and stuck it in the corner of his mouth.

  The doctor checked with Youssef, eyeball-conferencing and leaving Nasser out of it. “Maybe five, six hundred dollars?”

  The imam raised his chin and rested his hands on the table, chewing thoroughly. “That is a considerable commitment,” he said after a minute. “Are you sure the time is right?”

  The question seemed to shrink Dr. Ahmed a little. “I know it in my heart, sheik,” he said quickly, as if he sensed his request was about to refused.

  The imam turned to Nasser and smiled. “You hear this?” he said. “He knows it in his heart. This is splendid, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Nasser realized this entire meeting had been a waste. They were going to leave this diner without getting any money or even a sanction to bomb the school. The idea of going forward without a blessing left him feeling profoundly unsettled, as did the question about the suicide bombing. He kept seeing the image of the martyr lying there on television, half-destroyed in front of the jewelry store. Why did the others ask about this?

  “So if it is meant to be, and you work righteously and pray, God will make it easy for you,” the imam told the three of them. “Now let’s have breakfast.”

  46

  THE NIGHT BEFORE HE returned to school and began the arduous task of reinventing himself and getting back his good name, David had reread The Great Gatsby.

  Again, he was struck by the scene at the end where Gatsby’s father pulls out a faded old book with his son’s boyhood schedule and “General Resolves” for making himself into a better person printed on the inside.

  Exactly, thought David. He needed his own list of resolves:

  1. Most important. Reestablish contact with your students. One of them may have seen something or heard something about the bombing.

  2. Get people around the neighborhood to talk to you and find out what they might have seen.

  3. Fight back. Have the lawyers issue more vigorous denials of the stories that have appeared so far in the press. And think about making an appearance yourself. People may need to see you to believe you’re not a monster.

  4. Publicly demand the FBI put up or shut up about arresting you.

  5. Assume if the first four steps don’t work, you were probably destined to be screwed anyway.

  But as soon as he arrived at school the next morning, he realized he hadn’t done enough to prepare himself. Just as Larry had predicted, some of the parents went nuts, showing up with with placards and bullhorns, protesting that an alleged wife-beating, child-abusing terrorist was being allowed back in the building, WHAT ABOUT OUR CHILDREN’S RIGHTS! said one sign in electric-purple letters. Naturally, the press corps was out in force to record the debacle with their dense packs of microphones and cameras. David bulled past them as best he could, pausing to notice that same little black kid with the homemade press pass hanging around on the fringes.

  Inside the building, the reception wasn’t any warmer. Larry had assigned him to a dank, smallish basement office next to the cafeteria—actually a converted storage closet—jammed with video equipment, shelves of books, workmen’s tools, and rolls of toilet paper. Squeezing himself in among the clutter, David felt like a character in a nineteenth-century novel, forced to dwell beneath the surface of respectable society.

  For most of the morning, he sat idle, quietly burning, waiting for students to come see him, wishing he could do more to seek them out. But he knew if he was too aggressive and obvious about pushing his cause and asking questions, he’d give Larry an excuse to have him removed. Better to play it cool, at least initially.

  Slowly they began to t
rickle in. Kevin Hardison came first. Instead of one of his alternating outfits with the Dollar Bill cap, he had on a brand-new, pressed, green-and-white-striped Oxford-style shirt with a silver stickpin in the collar and stylish khaki slacks.

  “Hey, how you like my Gatsby look?” he said, slapping the novel down on David’s desk defiantly.

  “You read it?”

  “I read it.”

  “And where’d you get the threads?” David took his feet out of the drawer, where they’d been resting.

  “Don’t ask,” Kevin said darkly. “I got a new job for after school.”

  Probably grilling hot dogs at Nathan’s, thought David. But still, how about that? The kid might not get into an Ivy League college, but he’d gotten something out of the book. It might have even inspired him to get a job. More than you could say for most readers.

  “Here, I wanna give you something.” Kevin dropped a wrinkled, coffee-stained business card into David’s lap.

  “What’s this?”

  David picked up the card and saw it had the name and phone number of a Court Street lawyer in the Heights.

  “Myron Newman, attorney-at-law.” Kevin touched his stickpin, which on closer inspection looked like something you’d win at an amusement park by throwing a ball at a clown’s head. “He helped my cousin out last year, off a drug arrest. Got him probation when he was carrying like a gram of coke. I figure you could use a hand.”