by Steve Israel
“Strike one,” Fairbanks muttered to himself. “Is there anything else?”
Russell wrestled with another file as sweat gathered across his forehead. “Sir, some messages from Colonel McCord. In Great Neck.”
McCord! Another Frankenstein creation of the DHS community-relations imbeciles in Washington. They had printed up hundreds of thousands of laminated cards embossed with the agency seal and “Honorary Agent.” DHS local offices dispensed the cards to foster goodwill and encourage cooperation as the agency’s eyes and ears. Which would have been okay if the eyes and ears had included brains. McCord, for example. A retired paramilitary guy who treated that little card like a license to drive an urban tactical assault vehicle to defend the village pond.
“Sir, the Colonel reports on illegal aliens at Great Neck Diner . . . one, uhhh, ‘Middle East–looking’ gas station attendant at the Exxon, who he believes has infiltrated the gas station to blow it up. Also, a report of—and I quote here, sir—a ‘foreign-tongued’ family that moved into his neighborhood. The caller believes that they are—quoting again—‘hostile to US interests.’ ”
“What language do they speak?”
“French, sir.”
Hmmmmm, thought Fairbanks. “Anything else?”
“Yes, sir. Colonel McCord reported seventeen instances of speeding on Soundview Avenue and one possible violation of the Village of Great Neck zoning code. Illegal deck expansion.”
Jesus H! Strike two. Fairbanks looked at his watch. The conference call would begin in five minutes.
“Let’s keep an eye out, Agent Russell. On everything. Especially that French family. Dismissed.”
He was down to his final strike. He locked the door behind Agent Russell and made sure the aluminum blinds were shut tight. Then he returned to his desk, logged on to his computer. He typed in his primary password and his secondary password. And then scanned the home page. There, at the bottom right of the screen, was the icon he sought, that tiny computer monitor floating above the name NICK. He clicked and the screen flashed:
YOU ARE ENTERING A RESTRICTED SITE. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW. PRESS ENTER FOR NICK. PRESS EXIT FOR HOME PAGE.
Fairbanks poked at the Enter key.
The screen flashed again then went dark. Several seconds later white letters scrolled against the black background.
ENTER NICK AUTHORIZATION CODE
He tapped at the keyboard.
ENTER NICK PASSWORD
He complied.
RE-ENTER NICK PASSWORD
He did.
WHAT IS THE NAME OF YOUR DOG?
He typed: HOOVER, J. EDGAR
The monitor blinked. A dark blue background with the department logo and the screen heading appeared:
NETWORK CENTRIC TOTAL INFORMATION COLLECTION, INTEGRATION, SYNTHESIS, ASSESSMENT, DISSEMINATION, & DEPLOYMENT.
Then there was an entire paragraph of helpful legal information—the dozens of federal statutes that one was currently violating if they had no business on the site, followed by a list of potential consequences, up to and including the death penalty.
“TYPE FIELD CODE” NICK asked Fairbanks.
6-3-1.
“C’mon, baby,” Fairbanks pleaded as he heard his computer gurgle. “Give me something. Anything. For once!”
And then this:
NICK HAS FOUND 0 THREAT PATTERN[S] IN YOUR JURISDICTION. PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER. :(
Strike three.
THE RECEPTIONIST
MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 2004
Even as he crept through heavy rush-hour traffic, Morris Feldstein said to himself with a slight smile, “This will be a good day.” He tapped his steering wheel with his thumbs to punctuate the sentiment.
Morris didn’t normally forecast whether or not his days would be good or bad. As they rarely fluctuated, he could tell you only two things with certitude. One was the score of the prior day’s Knicks, Giants, Islanders, Mets, or Yankees games. The other was that the day ahead would not be good, it would not be bad. It would just . . . be. Early in his marriage to Rona, he’d return home from a day of pitching pharmaceuticals to doctors, and she would ask, “So? How was your day?” Morris would stare at her expressionless, and respond with a languid “No runs, no hits, no errors.” After four years of no runs, no hits, no errors, she stopped asking.
Today, however, was different.
Today will be a good day, he thought.
True, the Mets had lost to Saint Louis the day before. But Morris chalked that up to a pitching meltdown by Al Leiter in the third and fourth innings. Plus, it was Monday, which meant Rona was bringing in kosher deli for dinner. The morning offered slight relief from the recent heat. And he was on his way to a Celfex sales call at the office of Dr. Kirleski, where his favorite receptionist, Victoria D’Amico, worked.
Victoria D’Amico always greeted Morris with an excited smile and a cheery, “Hello, Morris Feldstein!”
And he was on his way to see her. With something special.
This morning Morris had a gift for Victoria, tucked between three pens in his shirt pocket. He tapped his thumbs on the wheel again, to the overheated blaring on the car radio of The Angry Andy Morning Rant. Angry Andy was spewing about the Mets game in Saint Louis, with a chorus of grumbling ascent from Tony from Astoria, Woo from Flushing, and Pete from Seaford (who announced that he was a “longtime listener, first-time caller” to Andy’s incessant ringing of his “welcome bell”). Meanwhile, Morris inched through an intersection of gas stations on every corner and continued past a monotonous canyon of big-box retailers, the Costcos and Walmarts and Home Depots. The endless, rusted chain of America’s corroding chain stores: the same Blockbuster Videos and CVS drugstores, the same family restaurants with cheerful names and scrubbed brick facades and circus-themed canopies. The same fast-food franchises on Long Island, the land of franchise opportunity.
“Almost there!” he chirped, and it was as close as he’d ever come to singing (except during his High Holy Day visits to Temple Beth Torah, when he felt compelled to mumble a monotone and ambivalent drone). Finally, Morris eased his car into an intersection and waited to approach the Roslyn Plaza Medical Arts Building, listening to the rhythmic ticking of his turn signal.
He had arrived.
Morris slipped his car into a spot and turned off the ignition. He gathered his Celfex sales forms and promotional literature from the backseat. One glance at his paperwork told him that Dr. Kirleski needed resupplies of Celf-Assure (impotence), CalaFLO (incontinence), and CelaREM (insomnia). He walked across the parking lot, checking his shirt pocket for Victoria’s gift.
Inside, Morris found Victoria sitting behind the glass partition, her head bowed toward some paperwork, her blond hair cascading forward. When she heard the door open, and saw that it was Morris, her lips curled into a smile and dimples implanted themselves in her cheeks and Morris thought, She looks like a young Doris Day. Doris Day in Pillow Talk. With Rock Hudson. I think she was nominated for Best Actress. Nineteen fifty-eight or fifty-nine.
“Hello Morris Feldstein!” For some reason, Victoria seemed to enjoy saying his full name.
“Hullo, Victoria.” His hands felt awkward and heavy at his sides.
“What happened to our poor Mets this weekend?”
That was an invitation to Morris. “Well, if you really think about it, they won three in Milwaukee. And in Saint Louie, on Friday, Glavine was scoreless most of the game. Just had a bad ninth. Then on Saturday it was a two-to-one game. That was close. And yesterday, you take those two bad innings out of the game and we would have won. So it wasn’t so bad.”
“Let’s go Mets!” Victoria squealed. “So you wanna see the doc?”
“Yes. Actually, no. Not yet. I mean, I have something for you. From Celfex. The home office. I thought you
would enjoy it. Hold on.” Morris felt his tongue stumble against the inside of his cheeks as he fumbled through his pocket. He produced the gift: two tickets to the Celfex Diamond View Suite at Shea Stadium. “These are for you. Mets versus Astros. Tomorrow night.”
The tickets were “customer-relations incentives,” dispensed by the home office in Plattsburgh like bars of gold. There was no quid pro quo involved in Celfex dispensing gifts to the doctors who dispensed Celfex products. That would be wrong, according to chapter four of the Celfex ethics manual. This gift was simply a matter of good customer relations. Celfex encouraged Morris to entertain doctors at the luxury suite. But Morris was uncomfortable with the entire concept of luxury-anything at a baseball game. Shea Stadium should not require jackets and ties; the sipping of white wine and eating of hors d’oeuvres he couldn’t pronounce; the making of small talk for nine innings. Especially when normal Mets fans in the cheap seats outside hurled curses and swilled beer and accumulated small piles of discarded peanut shells under the seats in front of them. So he didn’t mind giving away the tickets, and enjoying the game from the comfort of his RoyaLounger 8000. That made him happy, as well as his supervisors, the doctors, and now, perhaps, Victoria.
Behind the glass partition Victoria’s eyes widened. She sprang out of her seat and disappeared, which confused Morris. Then the door to the lobby burst open, and she charged him with outstretched arms, blaring, “You are the best! Gimme a hug, Morris Feldstein!”
Morris refused to do many things in public. Hugging was near the top of the list. Morris didn’t do hugs with strangers. They were too complicated. They involved excessive motion and calibration. Too many things could go wrong. Limbs moving in all directions. Uncertain where his arms were supposed to go, or whose head went where, or what body parts could come into contact with the other person’s body parts. And when two bodies are that close, there’s no room for error.
So when Victoria rushed toward him, it was as if he was watching a highway collision in slow motion. Morris braced for impact, his face screwing into a tortured grimace, his arms reflexively rising to protect his chest, his fingers locked around the Mets tickets as if he was clutching a football that he might fumble. Victoria wrapped her arms around Morris and pulled him against her. So powerfully that it forced an anxious oooohhhh from his mouth; so close to her that he felt her chest against his and smelled a fresh lemon scent in her hair. Morris’s arms felt like steel beams as he extended them around her. And he robotically patted her on the back, as if consoling her at a funeral.
She drew back and stared at the tickets. Then her lips sank and her eyes grew sad.
“Oh,” she whispered.
“Oh?”
“Well, it’s just that—I guess I never told you. I’m divorced, Morris Feldstein.” Her eyelids twitched and she looked at the floor.
“I didn’t know, Victoria. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, don’t be sorry,” Victoria chuckled, but Morris detected the slightest trace of bitterness. “It’s better this way. I mean, it took me eighteen years to figure out that Jerry—that’s my ex—was no good. But now I’ve-started-my-new-life-and-I-just-hope-he’s-happy-with-that-slut-he-met-at-the-pizza-place-because-the-two-of-them-deserve-each-other.”
Morris blinked.
“It’s just that, to be honest, Morris Feldstein, I haven’t been to a Mets game since the divorce. Jerry and I used to go all the time. Of course, we sat in the nosebleed section because he was such a cheap bastard. Anyway, I don’t know who I could go with. At the last minute like this.” She scrunched the corners of her mouth and her nose twitched. “Unless . . . I mean, are you going to go?”
Going to a Mets game with Victoria had never occurred to Morris. Even when Victoria and two Mets tickets were staring him in the face. “No. They’re for you,” he said.
Victoria looked at him strangely, as if he just didn’t get it, which he didn’t. And she shrugged with a giggle. “You know what, I bet Doctor K would go. I’ll ask him.”
Only later, after Morris arrived home to the smell of fresh kosher deli and a quick greeting from Rona, only when he was ensconced in his RoyaLounger 8000 watching the highlights of the prior weekend of Mets games, did he wonder if Victoria was suggesting that they go to the game together. And even though that realization was about eight hours too late, it made Morris feel something new and strange.
Maybe he wasn’t such a schlub after all. No Rock Hudson, mind you. But not so bad after all.
THE MATCHMAKER
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11, 2004
“Uccchh. I hate this day,” Victoria D’Amico thought the next morning as she pulled her car into the parking lot of the Roslyn Medical Arts Building. And the reason for this departure from her usual good cheer was in the passenger seat, right next to her.
Morris’s Mets tickets. Unused from the night before.
She stared at the dull yellow brick walls of her office building. The morning was gray. The first drops of a light rain pinged at her windshield. The radio blared Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl”—one of Victoria’s favorites and, she was known to say, her “theme song.” She would raise her palms outward, gyrate her shoulders, contort her face, and sing. Now, all she could do was echo the words half-heartedly.
Some uptown girl she was. Even with two tickets to a luxury skybox at Shea Stadium to see the Mets play the Astros, she had spent the night alone, without a date, without a friend, cross-legged on her couch, wrapped in a pink terry-cloth robe, dipping into a bag of microwave popcorn and watching the one movie that she always reserved for such nights: Sleepless in Seattle.
Tom Hanks and Jerry D’Amico. Contrast and compare.
Hanks: suave, sensitive, inquisitive.
Jerry: “I don’t watch chick flicks.”
No one was able to go with her to the game. No boyfriends to speak of (“I’m not ready for the dating scene so soon after Jerry ruined my life.”). Not Dr. Kirleski (“I’m sorry, Victoria. Mrs. Kirleski is dragging me to one of her charity medical dinners.”). Even Morris Feldstein turned her down. I mean, Morris Feldstein! What could he have going on? Nice guy, but I mean, c’mon. You stick two Mets tickets in my face, I practically beg you to take me, and you say no? What is that?
Which is why she spent the night with Tom Hanks.
The lobby to Dr. Kirleski’s office was empty and dark. A single window, facing the street, provided as much light as a porthole in a prison cell. Magazines were strewn on coffee tables; their six-month-old pages tattered by the germ-infested fingers of patients. Mismatched couches and fabric chairs were propped against the walls. And those walls! Those walls had always annoyed Victoria. It was Dr. Kirleski’s idea to plaster them with meditative landscapes, which he thought would lull his patients into a relaxed state, as if staring at a Sonoran Desert sunrise would make it more pleasant to have a stick scraped against the enflamed recesses of a strep throat. The scenic montage was interrupted with dire skull-and-crossbones warnings from the Centers for Disease Control. There, above a couch, was a photograph of turquoise waves lapping against an untouched Caribbean beach, then the dazzling greenery of an Amazon rain forest, then a startling display of skin-rash patterns associated with Lyme disease.
A small television was mounted on a corner shelf. She turned it on with a remote to see footage of President Bush and some geeky-looking guy who was about the become head of the CIA. She turned it off.
Every time you turn on the TV they scare you half to death, she thought. With the color-coded warnings and Iraq and Afghanistan and car bombs. Who needs it?
She plunked her purse on the desk behind the glass partition. Prepared to sit, she heard rattling sounds coming from Dr. Kirleski’s rear office—the familiar opening and closing of drawers and the shuffling of papers. There he goes, she thought, looking for something that’s probably right in front of him. A brilliant diagnostician, they said of him. Just not able to ide
ntify his own nose. She marched through a darkened corridor, past Exam Rooms 1, 2, and 3, past the heavy metal cabinets where years of chicken-scratch records were filed and medical samples were stored. She entered Dr. Kirleski’s tiny office. He sat behind his desk with a perplexed expression, scratching the few white wisps of hair left on his scalp.
“Oh, Victoria. Good. Have you seen the file on Mrs. Johanson?”
She approached the desk and picked the file from under the morning New York Times. “Aaaaahhh,” he said, as if he were opening wide for his own throat exam. “Thank you, Victoria. You’re a lifesaver.”
“Sure, Doctor K.”
He cleared his throat, a signal of more to come.
“So . . . how was the Mets game?”
Ucccchhh. He had to ask. Bad enough I didn’t go, but now my pathetic little life has to be his business. “I stayed home. Wasn’t in the mood.”
“Stayed home? By yourself?”
No, stayed home with the Mets. They all came over after the game. “Yes. By myself.”
Dr. Kirleski stared at her, as if diagnosing some horrible disease. Terminal loneliness, she assumed.
“Well, Doris had an idea. We met someone last night. At the charity dinner. She thought you might like to meet him. I have his card. Here, somewhere.”
Oh God, Victoria thought as Dr. Kirleski raked his fingers through the jumble of papers on his desk. Another find by Doris Kirleski. There was Romance.com, Cupid.com, Match.com. And there was Doris Kirleski. As if the divorce from Jerry made Victoria some kind of charity case. To be pandered to and pitied, to be made Doris’s pet project. With that condescending voice, assuring Victoria, “Don’t worry. I’ll find someone for you. You’re special.” Pronouncing special as if she really meant “pathetic.”
