by Dick Cluster
Meyer looked away quickly, but then looked back and spread his hands philosophically. He picked up the big shaker of sugar, cupped his hands around it, and put it down again. “Oh well,” he said finally. “So often the imagining is worse than the event.”
With an obvious effort he stood up again and, still nodding at Alex, crossed to the counter. He turned his back just long enough to place an order. Alex realized that Meyer had been as doubtful about finding him truly waiting as he had been about Meyer showing up. Meyer seemed concerned that Alex might prove to be an illusion, and disappear.
“Very nice place,” Meyer said as he sat gingerly back down. “Since you seem to have had dinner, I’ve ordered us Greek coffee and baklava for dessert. I’m Gerald Meyer, as you guessed. And you are?”
“Alex Glauberman.”
“I appreciate the favor you did me, Mr. Glauberman. And I wonder what you intended by inviting me here.” This time Meyer wagged a finger at Alex as he spoke. Again Alex noticed brown spots, age spots, standing out on the skin. “I assume a suppressed longing for adventure is what stands behind your note.”
“I don’t know,” Alex said. “When I see something, I like to understand it. I like to take things apart and figure out how they work.”
“Indeed,” Gerald Meyer said. “Do you mind telling me what you do for a living, then?”
“I fix cars.” Alex pulled out his wallet so he could hand Meyer a business card.
“‘Blond Beasts,’” Meyer read out loud. “‘Northern European Motors Repaired.’ Very clever, Mr. Glauberman. Tell me, how much do your patrons normally pay you for your time?”
“Thirty an hour. About what they’d pay a dealer, and half of what they pay their shrinks.”
At that rate, Alex made a decent living, and he liked being a self-employed sole proprietor. What had started as a paycheck and an introduction to a new field of knowledge had become a career. The revenue paid his health insurance as a business expense. There was no company pension plan, but these days he didn’t expect to need one.
“And I noticed you were mailing a letter to London,” Meyer said, with the eyebrow next to the bruise on his temple slightly raised. “I take it you have friends there?”
“Mm-hm,” Alex said. “Tell me, Mr. Meyer. Why all these questions for me?”
The waitress set down two coffees in small, attractive, rounded cups on matching saucers. She brought two helpings of pastry, and Alex asked for two glasses of water. He noticed that, for the moment, all of his nausea had gone.
“Well, Mr. Glauberman, I’m wondering whether you might be interested in doing one favor more. You see, that package you mailed for me— what I’d like now is to get that package back.”
“Get it back?” Alex asked. “Wouldn’t it be sent off by now? Property of the Postal Service, mountains of red tape?”
“Oh, even if he were still sitting behind his counter, that officious man wouldn’t return my mail. I mean I’d like you to get it from the person to whom it was addressed.”
“C. Meyer, Gasthaus Mockernstrasse, West Berlin?”
“My… my eldest daughter.” Meyer sipped the scalding coffee, winced, and added, “I’d pay you for your time and your travel, of course. You’re self-employed, and you could visit your friends in London on the way back.”
It was Alex’s turn to raise an eyebrow. Was Meyer serious? And did he read minds? Alex raised both brows and stroked his narrow, hairy chin. “What was in this package?” he asked.
“Pictures, mostly. Pictures of my daughter. A large collection of family pictures, baby pictures. The day she first sat up, her first solid food, that sort of thing. Do you have children, Mr. Glauberman?”
“One.”
“Ah.” Meyer frowned, which meant that the lines on his forehead changed their pattern. The bruise on his temple seemed to darken. His nostrils flared to give out a little snort. “And a wife?” he asked.
“Divorced.”
“Ah.” The frown abated. “Well. So am I. Twice, which was enough.” Meyer puffed up his throat and recited some lines with mock grandeur, lines that apparently were supposed to demonstrate the point. “‘Here I do disclaim all my paternal care,’” he quoted. “‘Propinquity and property of blood, and as a stranger to my heart and me hold thee from this forever.’”
“Did you make that up?” Alex asked. Shakespeare, he thought. Meredith would know it, but he did not.
“No, not I. King Lear spoke it first, to Cordelia. In my case, the result was not immediate tragedy. We just all went our separate ways.”
“Gasthaus Mockernstrasse,” Alex said, emphasizing his German pronunciation. “Berlin.”
“Exactly. The Gasthaus is a sort of pension that my daughter from my first marriage runs.” He narrowed his eyes at Alex’s long, narrow face and profuse black hair. “I assume you’re Jewish, incidentally.”
“Lapsed Jewish, I suppose.”
Meyer nodded. “Well, in Germany that wouldn’t have made any difference. I was there just after the Nazi period, with the Occupation forces. When I came back home, I left a wife and child behind. The wife is dead. The daughter would be about your age.”
Something made Meyer’s lips twist then, some reflex emotion that he couldn’t control. He glanced down into his cup while it lasted, closing his hand into a fist beside his plate. That made the spots stand out sharply on the taut skin. Afterward he drank slowly. When he set the cup down, grains of coffee stuck to the scab forming on his lower lip. He pushed the empty cup aside, poking at the muddy residue with a spoon. Alex took both glasses of water and slid the second coffee across the table. He sliced off a piece of baklava with the edge of his fork.
“You’ll have to drink my coffee for me.” He pointed apologetically to his stomach. The pastry was too sweet, but he found himself taking another bite right away. During his weeks on drugs, his cravings were apt to be sudden, and odd. Grease and salt, often, and sugar as a result of the marijuana. He generally explained that he had the cravings of a pregnant woman.
“Ulcers?” Meyer inquired. His sparse eyebrows rose skeptically.
“Chemotherapy,” Alex said. He watched the man’s deep eyes take their time again over his tangled hair and beard. These had not thinned much with either the passing of his thirties or the coming of treatment. That little shine of appreciation was in Meyer’s eyes again.
“The treatment’s on the light side,” Alex explained. “As these things go. My hair’s not going to fall out on the table. I do worry about my kid pulling at it, having too much come out in her hands.” He felt sorry for Gerald Meyer, and thought someone else’s troubles might console him. And besides, he didn’t want Meyer to think he was incapacitated. He didn’t want anyone to think that.
“I see.” Meyer busied his hands centering the second cup in front of him. Alex worked at the baklava, paring off thin sticky slices with the edge of his fork and depositing them automatically in his mouth.
“How well do you know London, Mr. Glauberman?” Meyer asked finally, as if picking up where he bad left off.
“Tourist’s acquaintance, that’s all.”
“Well, there is a place called Threadneedle Street, in the City— the financial district, you know. On business days, there’s quite a crush. Otherwise I don’t think Jack would have recognized me.”
“Jack.”
“Yes, a man named Jack Mazelli. Or Moselle. He changed it. I don’t see what difference it made. We were both posted to Berlin during the Occupation and fell in together at the time. Meyer and Mazelli. Jerry and Jack. Berlin fascinated both of us, if for different reasons. Or the same reasons, God knows. He stayed, though, much longer than I.”
“Did he marry a German too?” Alex asked.
“Marry? Jack? Jack never thought of marrying. Jack only fucked. He was a black marketeer, a brilliant one. He didn’t waste time on nonessentials, luxuries. Food and building supplies, that was all. It was the perfect market. You had Berliner demand that could ne
ver be fully met, and army supply that never failed. Jack’s only weakness was a tendency to take sex as payment. But it wasn’t just sex. He liked keeping people on a string. I suppose that’s why he recognized me. This was many years after Berlin, but quite a few years ago, by the way. We went for drinks, caught up on our lives. He told me he was making deals, the same as always. His empire was rather broader, that’s all. In fact he buys quite a high class of friends, today. But be operates on the same old principles. Don’t we all, though?”
Alex assumed the question was rhetorical. He couldn’t begin to say what principles he was operating on, just now. He couldn’t say, either, why Meyer was telling him all this. So he shrugged, while Meyer picked up the second cup and drank. Meyer seemed more comfortable now.
“Very nice coffee,” he said. “Well, then he told me he had stayed in touch with my first wife and daughter, which I had not. ‘I fixed them up, Jerry,’ he said. ‘You weren’t going to do your duty, Jerry. I thought I should.’”
Imitating Mazelli-Moselle, Meyer assumed a nasal tone and a sneer. That wasn’t right, Alex guessed— the effect ought to be smoother, more buttery. Meyer respected Moselle’s abilities, clearly, but couldn’t relinquish a certain snobbery. Alex wondered how he handled it face to face.
“He told me my daughter had actually lived in the States for a while, but by this time she was back in Berlin. I was divorced again myself. I wasn’t much closer to my American daughter than my German one. So I was curious, when Jack picked me up in London, to get some news about Cynthia…”
Meyer’s lips twisted once more, again seeming to do it of their own accord.
“Not a very echt deutscher name, is it— Cynthia? A bit hard to pronounce, over there. Not ganz yiddishe, either, for that matter. Where did I think we were, naming her that? Some damn Walter Scott castle? Anyway, Jack said he kept tabs on her. ‘Regular wild oat she is,’ he said. ‘Quite a bombshell, and practically a commie, too.’ He said he’d be happy to keep me posted on her, in the future, ‘Now listen, Jerry,’ he said. ‘Can you do a favor for me?’
“So Jack and I became partners again, in a small way. Since that time Cynthia’s settled down a bit, I gather. That’s given me a certain settled feeling as well. Recently, though, Jack and I had a, well, a falling out. It looked as if our partnership were dissolving. And Jack, you know, wasn’t one to just let matters drop. No more quid, no more quo. And in touch with Cynthia as he was, I expected him to distort a good many things. I decided I’d better strike the first blow, so to speak.”
Alex had the distinct feeling that Meyer’s story was making less and less sense. “Which was?” he asked.
“When I left Germany, you see, I wasn’t intending a final break. Quite the contrary. I was planning, foolishly, on bringing my German wife and daughter home into the bosom of my Jewish family. So, among other things, I brought with me the photos I mentioned and some other mementos. I always thought she might resent my having, shall we say, stolen those moments away with me. Yesterday I gathered the things up and spent a long time deciding what sort of a note to include. Finally I put together some thoughts, some feelings, and sent off the package— today, you understand. But now— now I’ve changed my mind.”
Alex did not understand, and he doubted that he was supposed to. However, he saw that Meyer’s monologue had come full circle.
“And that’s why you want me to help you get it back.”
“Why, yes. I’d like you to get there before the package, if you can. And persuade my daughter that it would be better to let you bring the package back to me. Then we can leave our lives as separate as they have been, up until now.”
No one can will his life not to change, Alex thought. It doesn’t work that way. But Gerald Meyer truly wanted the package, perhaps even enough to send a random Alex Glauberman chasing across an ocean to get it. “You mean,” he asked, “you really do want to send me to Berlin?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Meyer snapped. “Mail won’t be moving very fast over the weekend, work incentives being what they are not, these days. Do you think you could arrange to be there by, let me think, Tuesday? I will pay for transportation and expenses plus, let’s say, an honorarium for the auto-repair business you’ll have to postpone while you’re away. I assume you’ll agree with me in costing that out at a total of two thousand five hundred? Dollars, that is, not marks or pounds.”
Could a person broadcast his fantasies, was that it? Alex thought. Broadcast them to someone who had the right antennae with which to pick them up? Separately, neither would amount to much. Together, like the twin windings of an ignition coil, they could pack a pretty big punch. Meyer’s offer still made very little sense, but Alex felt the jolt a spark plug must feel, on the receiving end of those quick ten thousand volts. He attempted, despite this jolt, not to translate it immediately into flame.
“Twenty-five hundred dollars for family pictures, Mr. Meyer? And those guys you left in the taxi with…”
“Family matters are not necessarily either simple or peaceful, Mr. Glauberman,” said Meyer sharply again. “I’ve made you an offer. Take it or leave it, as they say.”
Okay, thought Alex. Confession time is over. If I ask you more questions, you’ll tell me more lies. His thoughts raced until they came to rest on one thing he could do about that. He sliced baklava with the edge of his fork, lifted it, felt the heavy sweetness, and rested his head on his hands for a moment.
“Excuse me,” he said afterward. “Could you maybe tell me a little more about this Mazelli? Why does he care whether you send baby pictures back to your daughter?”
“I didn’t say he did, Mr. Glauberman. Also, I don’t think anyone would benefit by my telling Jack’s story out of school. If you’d like to approach him directly, you’re free to try it en route. He’s the president of an enterprise that he styles Interface, Incorporated. I believe his door in London would be opened by my name.”
“Interface,” Alex said. “Computers?” But Meyer only shook his head, flared his nostrils again, and blinked his sad eyes. Alex scooped up half the remaining pastry and swallowed it quickly, gagging at its heaviness. Then he let a pained look cross his face, bending over the table again, and pushed the remains of his pastry away.
“Well, Mr. Meyer,” he said. “That’s all very tempting. But I’m afraid I can’t make up my mind right away. You have my card. I’ll be working later tonight. Why don’t you give me a call there, say between ten and midnight? I’ll tell you then what I decide.”
“I suppose.” Meyer wet his lips and gave Alex another disapproving look. “Would you mind giving me your home number also, just in case?”
Alex was the only Glauberman in the telephone book. His name was a rare one, stemming— so family legend said— from the occupation of a particular ancestor back in Russia. So it could do no harm to tell Meyer what he could so easily find out. Alex shrugged, took out his pen, and began to add his address and phone to the ones on the card. When he got halfway through, he let another pained expression cross his face.
“Excuse me,” he said quickly. “But I’m afraid the Greeks haven’t got a bathroom for me. Would you mind waiting while I run to the place next door, where they do? I’m very glad to do business with you, Mr. Meyer. It’s just that I’d rather not vomit on what’s left of your suit.”
5. Stuck in His Thumb
The scent of hot Szechuan cuisine made Alex feel almost as faint as he had claimed, but he sprang in two strides to the pay phone, dropped in coins, and dialed Kim. He needed to know more about Gerald Meyer, and this was the only plan that had come to him. Luckily, this week, he was the boss.
“It’s Alex,” he said. “Look. I can’t explain this now, but I’m with a guy. An older guy in a dress shirt, no tie, face is a little banged up. At Petros’s. I’m going to hold him there as long as I can. I need for you to follow him.”
“Follow him?”
“Yeah. I’m not kidding, and I’m not feeling as crazy
as I sound. Don’t talk to him or anything, just see where he goes, and call me at home as soon as you get a chance. Get here as fast as you can. Let’s see. Drive. Double park, keys in the tray. I’ll pick it up and drive home. Okay? Kim?”
“Okay, Alex. I guess. Follow him. You bet.”
“Thanks. But look— one thing. If you see anybody else following him too, then forget it. Like two slick younger guys— or anybody.”
“Yes sir. Call me Girl Friday. No, Officer Friday. Just the facts, ma’am. Into the valley of death rode the six hundred. I’ll be there as soon as I can, Alex. I’ll see what I can do.”
From the phone, Alex could watch the street too. Meyer hadn’t left the coffee shop, but if his suspicions were aroused he might soon either split or follow. Alex gambled on the latter. He fled to the bathroom, leaving the door unlocked, and bent over the toilet.
The toilet was clean but stank faintly of disinfectant. Alex visualized hospitals. He visualized a particular hospital. He saw himself waiting for a CAT scan— chipper, knowledgeable, explaining medical facts to the relatives of confused, frightened patients. He remembered a particular patient, an older woman, clasping a hospital cloth to her throat. Her daughter, exasperated, said she was gagging on the dye she had just drunk. But Alex knew that she was gagging on helplessness and fear. If you didn’t speak the doctors’ language, no one told you shit.
Alex remembered the woman, unreachable, dribbling slowly and ceaselessly into the cloth. He pictured the bitter orange liquid filling her stomach and intestines; the needle in her arm, the cold, ghostly iodine creeping through her veins. For Alex she had represented, in external form, all the fears he had managed to comprehend and to master. Now he pictured her covering her face from the world, as alone as if she were already dead. This time, visualization did the trick. He was in a suitable condition a minute later, bent with his head in the toilet, sweating and retching to beat the band, when Gerald Meyer knocked. Getting no answer, Meyer walked in. Alex did not have to visualize anything anymore. He just let a wave of timeless helplessness wash over.
