by Steve Israel
“There’s no credible justification at the present time. We already raised the alert for various financial institutions without any supporting intelligence. We can’t keep doing that.” He sighed, almost painfully.
Cheney remained silent. Libby would do his work for him:
“How about the suspicious foreigner videotaping the Brooklyn Bridge?” Libby asked.
“His hobby is photographing bridges. Wants to publish a coffee table book. Not blow up a bridge.”
“That group of foreign students taking out books on nuclear fission from the library in Boston?”
“Students at MIT.”
“Okay, what about those guys who pulled out that prayer rug at the airport and started praying toward Mecca before getting on their plane!”
“We checked it out. Evidently the airport chapel was already taken. By Baptists who were praying before getting on their planes.”
“Still . . .”
An uneasy quiet settled on the Vice President’s office.
Libby broke the silence. “Let me be clear. We go into our convention in two weeks. We need the right atmospherics on this.”
Pruitt said, “I think we have the right atmospherics. Tell the voters we don’t need to raise the threat level! Why? Because the Republicans are keeping you safe. Period.”
Libby nodded his head in protest. “If people feel safe, they’ll start paying attention to other issues where we may be . . . soft. Which means they just might elect Kerry. Who will make this country less safe. And expose us to an attack by our enemies.”
Good boy, Scooter! Cheney thought.
“As counsel to the Secretary of Homeland Security,” Pruitt said as officiously as he could, “I simply do not have the comfort level to advise him to increase the threat level based on . . . political considerations.”
“Political considerations? Who said anything about that?” Libby snapped.
“Not me,” said Cheney. And he cast a glare that sent a searing pain through Pruitt’s stomach.
CHINESE TAKEOUT
SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 2004
“What’s wrong with the ribs, Morris? You’re not eating your spareribs.”
Morris chewed on his Kung Pao chicken from the Great Neck Mandarin Gourmet, but he wanted to bury his face in his hands and moan, “Leave me alone for God’s sake!” That, of course, would be unprecedented behavior for Morris. And it would upset Rona. So, to keep the peace, he feigned a slight smile, and said, “It’s fine. I’m just full.” And continued chewing. Through gritted teeth. The food was bland. Bland like my life, he thought. Another Sunday night. Same take-out order from the Mandarin Gourmet, same white cartons and silver handles with the brown sauce overlapping the brims. Same fortune cookies and tiny plastic packets of duck sauce; same comment from Rona about eating more ribs. Same dark room dimly lit by the chandelier from Fortunoff. Same beige walls with washed-out portraits of Jeffrey and Caryn as children. Reminding him that his life had never been updated.
Except for one thing: Morris had never felt this way before. His lunch with Victoria had changed everything.
Ever since that lunch, a restlessness coursed through Morris’s veins. Nothing satisfied him. Not even the Mets one-run win over the Diamondbacks on Saturday. He couldn’t even concentrate on Turner Classic Movies’ weekend tribute to Claude Rains. Victoria intruded on almost every minute of the past forty-eight hours. How she crinkled her nose when she chewed her food, how she swept loose wisps of blond hair behind her ears, how her dress swirled above her knees when she walked.
How she laughed.
He had spent the entire weekend considering the contrast between that scintillating one-hour lunch with Victoria, and the bland and unsatisfying totality of the rest of his life.
The lunch with Victoria was a curve ball in Morris Feldstein’s infinite extra-inning game of no runs, no hits, no errors.
“Are you sure you’re full?” Rona asked, chewing through her Special Chicken and Vegetable in Garlic Sauce. “You hardly ate! Have another sparerib. You love spareribs, Morris.”
“No. Full.”
“Have another, Morris.”
The sign outside on their lawn said: RONA FELDSTEIN, CSW. Just down the hall, in her small office at the end of the house, she probed and peeked at the innermost anxieties of imperfect strangers. And here he was, just at the other end of the table, married for thirty-four years, and what is her professional evaluation? Have another sparerib, Morris.
He felt a twinge in his chest; in a place he estimated was roughly where his heart should be. Just like the feeling he had in Dr. Kirleski’s office. Only now it seemed worse.
That was the other thing about the past few days. The anxiety attacks. The chest pains. The signs of a midlife crisis halfway through a crisis-free life. Is that my heart beating faster? he thought. Or, does it always beat this fast but now I’m overly sensitive to it, which is causing anxiety that’s making my heart beat really, really fast until it will stop altogether? Gottenyu—is it hot in the room, or is it the Kung Pao? Stay calm, he coached himself. No need to panic. I’m Morris Feldstein. Bad things don’t happen to me (or good things, for that matter). I’m not the type to have heart attacks or panic attacks or any kind of attack. People who jump out of planes—they have mishagas. Risk takers and workaholics. Not pharmaceutical salesmen who don’t make waves. We just go on. And on . . . and on . . . and on. No runs, no hits, no errors. No anxiety, no ecstasy.
He felt better. More relaxed. More like himself. He was ready to attack the evening with a newfound energy. He would plunge into the RoyaLounger 8000 and watch the ESPN Game of the Week.
And then Rona asked, “Were you going to watch a game tonight, Morris?”
“I was. But if you—”
“No, it’s okay. If you want to watch the game, we’ll watch—”
“What do you want to watch, Rona?”
“Nothing. It’s just the Summer Olympics. In Athens. Look, what’s the big deal? I can miss them. They’ll be on again in four years.”
And the pain returned.
“CHECK, PLEASE”
THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2004
That day, sitting across from Victoria at the Sunrise Diner, Morris’s eyes kept investigating the way her blouse clung to her chest and her skirt clung to her hips; how her forearm muscles bulged when she brought a drink or a fork to her lips; and how other men in the diner took mental snapshots of her.
So Morris was mentally unprepared for Victoria’s question:
“Morris, how come you never talk about your wife? Tell me about her.”
He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Rona.” Because that pretty much said it all.
“That’s it?” Victoria giggled.
Morris felt a slight nudging of the Feldstein Anxiety Anticipation Index and began tapping his foot. Then he fidgeted with his wine glass, moving it from one side of the plate to the other and watching the streak of moisture it left. “What do you want to know?”
“What does she look like? Do you have a picture?”
A picture, he thought. He couldn’t remember the last time he looked at the picture of Rona buried in his wallet. He fumbled through his inside jacket pocket, unfolded the wallet, and produced the only three photographs it contained: two high school graduation pictures of Jeffrey and Caryn, and a photo circa the 1990s of him and Rona taken at a dinner function he couldn’t remember. Someone’s bar mitzvah or wedding. Or maybe one of those Celfex Employee Appreciation dinners he hated. They sat at a table cluttered with plates and glasses and a huge floral centerpiece. His arm was extended across the back of Rona’s chair. She assumed her standard pose: her head cocked at an odd angle, her eyes widened. In that photograph, her auburn hair fell below her shoulders. More recently, it was cropped, and assumed an unnatural red sheen.
He passed the picture to Victoria, wh
o studied it closely. “Awwww, you’re cute.”
“Who, me?”
“Yes, you.”
“No. I’m not cute.”
“Well I think so.”
Victoria returned the picture, pressing it into Morris’s palm. And when she did, she let the tips of her fingers rest there, just for a moment. But long enough to send a jolt through Morris’s body, as if she had rubbed her feet on carpeting on a cold winter’s day and shocked him. So that he felt the hairs jump on the back of his neck and a tingle pass straight down his back and into his groin.
“Rona’s okay. But you know how it is.”
“I know. Jerry.”
“You drift apart.”
“Eighteen years. That son of a bitch.”
“You run out of things to say.”
“But you never stop fighting.”
“We don’t fight,” said Morris.
“You will.”
“She just doesn’t . . . understand me anymore.”
“Jerry never listened. Never.”
“You develop separate interests.”
“Like a pizza girl. That—”
“It becomes . . . boring.”
“Painful.”
“Suddenly you have nothing in common. Nothing. Rona loves to watch the news. I love watching the Mets.”
“Let’s go Mets. Doubleheader tonight. Benson is pitching. Bad trade, I think. How about you?”
That was it. That was the moment. A question about Rona, with a follow-up question about the Mets’ pitching rotation. Marking the one time that Morris could not keep his feet reliably on the ground. Because Victoria D’Amico had swept him off his feet. Rona didn’t know the difference between Benson and Leiter. And here was Victoria—not exactly The Bill James Baseball Abstract, but she understood Morris. At his most primitive level. The Mets.
As they drank the last of their wine, Victoria looked at her watch and exclaimed, “Oh my God, Morris, we’ve been here so long we can go right to dinner. Or skip the diner and go right to the Bayview!” And giggled.
The Bayview was the Bellmore Bayview Motor Inn. It was also known as the “Pay-Per-View Motor Inn,” the “Bellmore Bordello,” and “Schtups-R-Us.” And if you were slinging back a beer at Flanagan’s Pub, which was just adjacent to the Bayview, you would here this joke:
“Question. How many people does it take to screw in a lightbulb at the Bayview?”
“I dunno. How many?”
“Two to do the screwing and—hold it—since when does the Bayview have lightbulbs! Ha!”
Unfortunately for Morris—or fortunately, depending on how one looks at it—when Victoria made that crack about skipping dinner and going straight to the Bayview, he wasn’t in his joke-receiving position. He was in no position at all to defend against a joke, now that he had lost his footing. So he responded, “Yeah, we sure could.”
To which Victoria curled her lips devilishly and said, “Oh, and don’t you just wish.” Which also verged on humor in the playful, flirtatious “I-could-be-kidding-but-maybe-not, let’s-just-see-how-you-respond” kind of way.
But Morris didn’t receive that as a joke, either. He looked at Victoria seriously, even sadly, and said, “I do wish.”
Which even caught Victoria off guard. Oh my God! Did he just say what I thought he said? He just crawled out on a limb? Now what do I do? Saw off the limb? That would be some reward for being honest. And look at those puppy dog eyes!
Victoria had a soft spot for honest men, puppies, and international drug counterfeiters.
The Feldstein Anxiety Anticipation Index began its inexorable ascent, forcing Morris to blurt out, “I’m kidding,” and then laugh, as if he were only kidding. He tried to regain his joke-receiving footing, like a staggering fighter who had just taken a sucker punch.
But it was too late.
“Let’s go!” Victoria declared.
Now, Morris had to retract his retraction, otherwise he would have caused irreparable offense to Victoria and lost an opportunity to see her naked. So he promptly said, “Okay!”
And then there was the ritual diplomacy and negotiations that often accompany such arrangements:
“I mean, if you would, I would,” said Victoria.
“Do you want to?”
“Do you?”
“If you do,” Morris offered.
“When?”
“I have three more appointments—”
“I have to get back to Doctor Kirleski—”
“Oh.”
Silence.
“Tonight?” Victoria suggested.
“You mean tonight—as in when today ends?” asked Morris.
“No?”
“No?”
“I mean,” stammered Victoria, “yes. I was asking ‘no’ as a question. I would go. After work. Only if you can, Morris.”
“I can.”
“Me too!”
“Waitress! Check, please!”
When the check came, the formerly good and decent model citizen Morris Feldstein reached across the depravity line. So flummoxed was he that he grabbed the first credit card in his wallet that his thumb touched, which just happened to be his Celfex-issued American Express card.
It was so unused that he hadn’t even signed the back.
THE BAYVIEW MOTOR INN
THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2004
Bill Sully had a front-row seat from the FDA control room in Washington and Agent Leone sat nervously in his car in the Bayview parking lot. Tom Fairbanks monitored a bank of television screens in Melville. And Agent Russell fidgeted in his vehicle under the flickering neon of the BAYVIEW MOTOR INN sign. One video surveillance system affixed to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit five hundred miles above Bellmore assisted them. In addition, six Sanyo digital binocular cameras with 5x telescopic lenses and high-speed shutters; two Nikon Infinite-Range Day Color/Night Black-and-White video cameras with 5-50 mm adjustable telephoto zoom lenses; two Hitachi long-range parabolic listening systems with pinpoint accuracy to one-thousand yards; one Toshiba laptop-based digital video recorder with 72x CD-RW, a 120 fps, 320x240 recording system, and 360GB storage capacity; and dozens of AAA batteries stuffed into the glove compartments of the small fleet trailing Victoria and Morris to their less-than-secret rendezvous that evening.
All watching Morris Feldstein and Victoria D’Amico. Watching and waiting for them to do something. To do anything.
Nu? So what am I waiting for already? Morris asked himself. He practiced his breathing exercises. The windshield was fogging heavily and almost everything outside was fading from view: the dim light fixtures hanging in front of every room of the Bayview, the passing headlights on Merrick Road, even the garish neon from the shopping center across the street. Then, fearing that Victoria might disappear as well (in a sudden rubber-burning, brake-squealing, panicked recognition of the mistake she was about to make), he whined, “Gottenyu” and pushed open his car door.
A warm breezed brushed his face, and he could taste the salt air from the Atlantic. He gazed for a moment at the second-floor balcony. Every room had two windows facing the parking lot. A curtain was drawn across every window. Some of the rooms were pitch black, and others flashed tantalizing columns of light where the curtain fell short of the window frame—a peep show that didn’t offer much of a peep.
Morris dug his hands in his pockets and walked to Victoria’s car. Every step was weighed down by the gravities of doubt, self-loathing, and fear. But those forces were matched by another force that pushed Morris forward. An irresponsible force that drowned out the cautious voices in Morris’s mind. It exclaimed, “Soon I’ll see Victoria naked!”
Which is exactly what kept him going, until he arrived at her car and heard her window hum open.
“Hello, Victoria,” he said. He sounded as if he were greeting
his tax accountant.
“Hi, Morris!”
“So how was the rest of your day?” he asked.
“Fine. And yours?”
Cars swooshed past on Merrick Road.
“Fine. Just . . . did a few things,” reported Morris, and then jiggled some change in a pocket.
“Yes. Me too.”
Refined social graces are imperative in the moments before skulking into a motel room for some primitive grunting. It lends a certain air of decorum.
“So,” Victoria sighed. “Do you want to get a room?”
“A room? Of course. A room. Should I go to the front office now?”
Victoria giggled. “Or I can go. If you want.”
“No, I’ll go. Should you wait here? In the car, I mean?”
“Okay. Unless you want me to come with you.”
“You mean go together?”
“We could.”
“At the same time?”
“Or I can stay here.”
From his seat, Sully dropped his head into his hands and moaned, “Christ, it’s like they’re negotiating troop positions in a cease-fire!”
Morris raised his palms. “No. You stay here. I’ll go get the room. Then I’ll meet you back here. At the car.”
“Okay. I’ll wait here.” And then, eyeing the nondescript sedans idling in the parking lot, Victoria said, “Wow, it’s crowded here, isn’t it?”
Morris turned toward a sign that flickered OFFICE in dim red letters against a white background, dropped his head as low as his chin would allow without denting his chest cavity, and hurried through the lot.
In the front office, a lonely, overworked fluorescent bulb struggled to do its job, and a clerk stood behind a chipped Formica counter, dressed in a wrinkled black shirt and a carelessly knotted yellow tie. His eyes were locked on a small television that sat at the edge of the counter. To Morris’s discomfort, the clerk seemed to be watching a selection from the Bayview’s extensive “Discreet In-Room Adult Pleasures Library.” Unless “Oh yes, yes, there, uh-huh, right there, yeah, yeah, yes, yes, ooooooh” accompanied by the warbled twang of a guitar was a new Food Channel special featuring Rachael Ray basting a turkey. Which was possible.
