Finding the Worm

by Mark Goldblatt

  Then, at last, Lonnie said, “What the heck was that?”

  “I don’t know,” Shlomo said, coughing out the words more than saying them.

  “Never mess with a guy’s pinball,” Lonnie said, but in a deep, grown-up voice, as if that was the lesson we were supposed to learn. That cracked up Shlomo again, and by then, the rest of us were hysterical too.

  But we didn’t talk about it afterward.

  Still, as weird as that was, it was nowhere near as weird as what happened today. I was lying on my bed around five o’clock, not sleeping, not even shutting my eyes, just resting up and thinking about the weekend, when the phone rang. I thought for sure the call was for Amelia, since it’s Friday, and she gets like a dozen calls every Friday, but then my mom picked up the phone and yelled that it was for me. I figured it had to be Lonnie—maybe he was lying around thinking about the weekend too.

  I hustled into the kitchen and took the phone. But it was Quentin on the other end, not Lonnie. He was talking, except his voice was more like a whisper, before I got the thing to my ear. “… you got to help me. You got to get this guy out of here.”

  “Who?”

  “Shlomo,” he whispered.

  “He’s still there?”

  “He’s been going at it for like two hours. I think he broke the machine, but he’s still playing.”

  “How could he be playing if he broke the machine?”

  “I don’t know,” Quentin said. “But he won’t leave.”

  “Well, he has to leave soon. It’s almost sundown. He has to go home for Sabbath.”

  “I’m telling you, Jules, the guy’s not going to leave.”

  “Why don’t you get your dad to kick him out?” I said.

  “He’s not home yet. Plus, I don’t want to do that to him.”

  “You don’t want to do it to Shlomo or to your dad?”

  “Either one,” he said.

  “What about your mom?”

  “I don’t want to kick him out. He can’t help himself.”

  “Then what do you want?” I asked.

  “I want him to go home,” he said.

  “Should I call Lonnie?”

  “No, Lonnie’s just going to kick him out.”

  “Then tell me what you want me to do,” I said.

  “Maybe you can talk to him.”

  “What can I say to him that you can’t?”

  “If I knew that, I’d say it to him. C’mon, Jules. I’m really tired.”

  That got to me, the fact that Shlomo wasn’t letting Quentin rest. So I said goodbye and hung up the phone and headed over to Quentin’s house. I had to walk past Shlomo’s house on the way, and I could see through the front window. There was no sign of anything unusual. Mrs. Zizner was setting the table for Sabbath dinner. Mr. Zizner was already sitting at the head of the table, flipping through the pages of the newspaper. Shlomo’s older brother, Hiram, was sitting on the couch, getting in a last half hour of TV before sundown. I’m sure they were expecting Shlomo to walk through the front door any second.

  I kept going until I got to the Hampshire House, and Quentin must’ve been watching out the window, because he buzzed me in about a second after I rang the bell. He was standing at the front door when the elevator opened on the fifth floor, and he led me back to his room. Mrs. Selig had a sour look on her face as I walked past her. The last thing she wanted, you could tell, was another guy in Quentin’s room.

  “Look who’s here, Shlomo,” Quentin said, opening the door to his room.

  Shlomo didn’t even turn around. He just said, suspiciously, “Who is it?”

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Julian?” Shlomo asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s just you?”

  “It’s just me.”

  “Lonnie’s not with you?”

  “No, it’s just me.”

  “That’s good,” Shlomo said. “You’ve got to see this.”

  “See what?”

  “I got the most amazing game going.” His voice was so high it sounded like a girl’s, and I could see trickles of sweat behind his ears. “You won’t believe this game. No one’s going to believe it, so I need witnesses. Look at the score!”

  I glanced at the score in the top right corner of the machine. It was ninety thousand and change.

  “What’s the big deal, Shlomo?” I said. “Heck, I got a hundred thousand the last time I played—”

  “You don’t get it!”

  “What don’t I get?”

  “It’s the third time around. It’s gone back to zero twice.”

  “C’mon!”

  “I swear to God!”

  “It goes up to a million, Shlomo. That’s not possible.”

  He hit the flippers and smashed the pinball up toward the bumpers again. “Look at the post!”

  The center post had come up between the flippers.

  “So you hit the bonus flag.”

  “You’re still not getting it,” he said. “It’s stuck like that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The post. It came up, and it didn’t go down. It’s stuck.”

  “Then why don’t you stop playing?” I said.

  “Because I’m at two million ninety thousand!”

  “But the machine’s broken!”

  “It’s not broken!” he said. “It’s still working!”

  “But the post is stuck—”

  “Because I hit the bonus flag over and over!”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “I earned it,” he said. “It’s like as if I broke the bank in Las Vegas!”

  “Then you admit it’s broken,” I said.

  “It’s not broken broken,” he said. “Look, the score’s still going up!”

  “Shlomo, the ball can’t go down the chute while the post is up. If the post is stuck, that means the game can’t end. You can’t lose.”

  “So what’s your point?”

  “If you can’t lose, the score doesn’t matter,” I said. “It could be a million times a million, and it wouldn’t matter, because you have to be able to lose. That’s how you know you’re still playing.”

  “I don’t see it like that.”

  “If the ball can’t go down the chute, it’s not even a game anymore. Think about it. Right now, what’s the difference between Shlomo Zizner playing Challenge the Yankees and a chimpanzee playing Challenge the Yankees?”

  “The chimp wouldn’t know when to hit the flippers.”

  “Shlomo, you have to be able to lose, or else there’s no challenge. Get it? You’re not really challenging the Yankees if you can’t lose. You play the game to test your skill. But it’s not a test if you can’t …”

  “If I can’t what?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Look, Shlomo, the sun’s going down. It’s Sabbath. You’re going to get in trouble if you don’t go home. You know that as well as I do. What if you just walk away from the machine, and we’ll leave it exactly how it is until Sunday night? No one will touch it—”

  “No!”

  “Shlomo, it’s the only way. Your mom’s going to call any minute.”

  “What if the post goes down?” he said.

  “But it’s stuck. You said so yourself.”

  He shook his head. “What if it gets unstuck?”

  “Shlomo!”

  “I’ve got to finish it, Jules.”

  “But you can’t finish it. That’s the point.”

  The phone rang in the kitchen. The sound came just after Shlomo rocketed the ball through the left tunnel and up into the cluster of bumpers—it was like clack-whoosh-bibidi-bang-bang-bang, and then the sound of the phone. Shlomo reacted to it like he’d been punched in the jaw. His head rocked backward and then rolled to the right. But he recovered and focused again on the game.

  Half a minute later, Mrs. Selig knocked on the door. “Shlomo, your mom’s on the phone. She says the dinner table is set.”

&nbs
p; “Tell her I’m on my way,” Shlomo called back to her.

  Quentin and I watched him keep going for another half minute. We were expecting him to step away from the machine—or at least I was. But he kept playing. His head was bowed, and his shoulders were loose, but he kept hitting the flippers and sending the ball back up toward the bumpers.

  “Shlomo …”

  He heard me say his name, but he didn’t turn around. Instead, he let go of the right flipper button, reached up, and took off his yarmulke. He folded it around his thumb and pushed it into the back pocket of his pants. Then he brought his hand back to the flipper button.

  “C’mon, Shlomo …”

  He let out a loud sob, just one, and he kept playing.

  Then, at last, Quentin said, “Why don’t you tilt it?”

  Shlomo choked down a second sob. “What?”

  “You could tilt it, and the game would be over.”

  Shlomo glanced over his shoulder, and I nodded at him.

  “There’s no other way,” I said. “You have to go home.”

  He turned back to the machine and gave it a quick shove. Nothing happened. Then he hit the left flipper and sent the ball up through the tunnel again. He was still playing, even though he was also trying to tilt.

  “You have to do it harder,” Quentin said.

  Shlomo gave the machine another shove, slightly harder. Again, it didn’t tilt—and, again, he kept playing.

  “C’mon, Shlomo,” I said. “Just tilt it.”

  He took a deep breath and slammed into the machine with his hips. He hit it so hard that it actually moved an inch closer to the wall.

  But it still didn’t tilt.

  He moaned and let out a deep sob. Then, suddenly, he bent over and smashed his forehead against the glass top of the machine. It was ferocious. I thought for a second he was going to put his head right through the glass. But he came back up with no damage to his head or to the glass. He looked down at the machine and hit the right flipper, which sent the ball back up to the bumpers. As soon as the ball hit the first bumper, the machine went dark.

  The tilt sign came up, and the center post slipped down.

  Shlomo snatched the yarmulke out of his back pocket and slapped it back onto his head. He was still holding it there as he grabbed his coat from the chair and ran out of the room.

  Quentin and I just kind of stared at the door for a couple of seconds after he was gone.

  “You think he’ll get home by sundown?” he said.

  “Not unless he invents a time machine.”

  “You think his dad will kill him?”

  “I doubt it. He’s not allowed to kill him on the Sabbath.”

  “I figured out another word, Jules.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, are you writing them down?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Did you figure out the meanings yet?”

  “Not yet. But I’ll get to it. I promise.”

  “You’re not going to forget, are you?”

  “C’mon, Quentin. I’m not going to forget. What’s your new word?”

  “Addleeoonee.”

  “How do you spell it?”

  “I’m not sure. I just know how to say it: ah-duh-lee-oon-ee.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll figure out how to spell it.”

  “And you’ll figure out what it means?”

  “I promise, Quent. I’ll figure out what it means.”

  February 18, 1970

  The Dying Pen

  Rabbi Salzberg didn’t notice I was standing at the entrance to his office for at least half a minute. I waited for him to look up. I didn’t want to barge in on him—even though his secretary, Mrs. Klein, told me I could. I think that’s a joke Mrs. Klein plays on him sometimes, telling guys to walk right in and not giving him a heads-up.

  He was writing in a spiral notebook, and the ballpoint pen he was using kept running out of ink. He was pressing down real hard. You could see the strain in his wrist. Plus, he kept turning the pen upside down, licking the tip, and trying it again. Then he gave up. He stared at the pen in a real disgusted way and dropped it into the wastebasket beside the desk.

  He caught sight of me as he did that. “Yes, Mr. Twerski?”

  “Are you busy?”

  “That depends upon why you’re here. Why are you here?”

  “I don’t want to bother you, Rabbi. You look pretty busy.”

  “I’m writing a letter to the Beatles,” he said. “I’m asking them to grow their hair longer. That way, no one will know if they’re boys or girls. Do you agree that the Beatles should grow their hair longer, Mr. Twerski?”

  “I think it’s long enough,” I said.

  “How can I help you, Mr. Twerski?”

  “The thing you said last time—”

  “You’ll have to remind me.”

  “You know … about what the world would be like if only good things happened to good people and only bad things happened to bad people. You asked me if I’d want to live in that kind of world, and I said I would. Remember?”

  “Yes, Mr. Twerski.”

  “Well, I changed my mind,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to live in that kind of world.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because there would be no point. It wouldn’t be a test.”

  He leaned forward. “Yes?”

  “It would be like a pinball game where the post gets stuck between the flippers.”

  “What are you talking about, Mr. Twerski?”

  “If the post gets stuck between the flippers, the ball can’t go down the chute. You can’t lose. That means there’s no challenge. It’s not a game anymore. It’s only a game if you can lose.”

  “Are you saying that life is a game?”

  “No, but it’s like a game,” I said.

  “I think you should explain your theory to Mrs. Fine. She’ll be relieved to hear that those four years in the concentration camp were a game.”

  “That’s not what I mean, Rabbi.”

  “Then tell me what you mean. But don’t tell me pinball.”

  “What I mean is, if people who did good things always got good stuff, and people who did bad things always got zapped by lightning, and that was how life worked every single time, then no one would ever do bad things. Because who wants to get zapped by lightning, right?”

  “And?”

  “But if people who do good things are only doing good things because they don’t want to get zapped by lightning, then they’re doing good things for the wrong reason. They’re doing good things because it would be stupid of them to do bad things. It’s not a real test.”

  “How would you make it a real test?”

  “I’d mix it up,” I said. “I’d sometimes make bad things happen to good people, and sometimes make good things happen to bad people. That way, people have to decide for themselves if they’re going to be good or bad. It’s a much harder choice if you don’t know for sure what’s going to happen.”

  He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Haftarah is a miraculous thing, isn’t it, Mr. Twerski?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think I mean?”

  “I don’t know, Rabbi.”

  “Maybe that’s what you should study.”

  “If I don’t know what you mean, how can I study it?”

  “That’s your problem, Mr. Twerski. Not mine.”

  He pulled open the middle drawer of his desk and began scrounging for another pen. I turned and left his office.

  February 20, 1970

  Showdown in Ponzini

  The thing with Beverly Segal wanting to race me was kind of humorous the first few times. I didn’t mind, because I figured she knew, deep down, what the result would be, and it was just kind of a humorous thing between us. But after the way she slaughtered Eric the Red, I’m not so sure. I mean, I know what the result would be. But I’m not so sure she does.
/>   It’s not humorous anymore because she’s not letting it go. She stands at the bus stop every morning with her hands on her hips, looking real smug, with her head tilting downward to the left, and with her grin tilting upward to the right, and she stares me down. I’d walk to school just to avoid that look on her face, but Quentin still doesn’t have the breath for it, so there’s nothing to do except ignore her.

  But now even ignoring her isn’t working. The bus was running a few minutes late this morning, and I was huddled with the rest of the guys, trying to stay warm, and she came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. “So how about it, Twerski?”

  “No, Beverly. I’m not racing you.”

  The guys started laughing, since they knew she was getting on my nerves.

  “C’mon, Julian, you look real cold. You need a quick run to warm you up.”

  But then Lonnie spoke up for me. “He’s got no reason to race you, Segal.”

  That caught her by surprise, I think, the fact that Lonnie got involved. She stepped back, and I thought that was the end of it. But then, a few seconds later, she said, “What about you, Fine?”

  “What about me?” he said.

  “Do you want to race?” she asked.

  “Don’t make me laugh.”

  “You think it’s funny?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

  “Bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk!”

  Lonnie’s eyes got narrow, but a second later he cracked up—which was a relief, because no one had ever called him a chicken before, and I didn’t know how he’d react. If you think about it, though, how could he not crack up? Calling Lonnie chicken is like calling Wilt Chamberlain peewee.

  “Okay, Segal,” he said, “I’ll race you.…”

  “Finally!”

  “The day after you beat Julian.”

  That made the rest of us laugh.

  “Psych!” Eric yelled, which must’ve felt good after his race with her.

  But then Beverly glared at him, and he clammed up real fast.

  “What about you, Shlomo?” she said.

  Shlomo waved his hands in front of his face. “Uh-uh. No way. You’re faster.”

  That made the rest of us laugh harder, and it even made Beverly smile, so I thought for sure that would be the end of it and we could just get on with our morning. But then Howie stopped laughing and said, “I’ll race you.”