Which maybe explains—though of course it doesn't excuse—the way I shouted at the poor stand-in postie this time round. He took three steps backwards and muttered some kind of apology, so of course I had to join in and explain I hadn't meant to yell.
Anyway, he was only the first. When it wasn't people collecting for charity—decent, kind, clean, well-spoken people, who didn't deserve to be glared at and sent away empty-handed—it was miserable, hopeless-looking young men trying to sell me ludicrously expensive low-grade dusters I didn't want. Or Jehovah's Witnesses. How was I supposed to flog my brain into producing light-hearted, witty sales copy with all this going on? I was ripe for murder, I can tell you.
And then there was the small man in decorator's overalls who had the cheek to ring my bell and tell me my neighbours had been complaining about my overhanging hedge. He offered to cut it back and take away the debris for some even more ludicrous sum. He got all the insults I'd been choking down all morning, and no apology, and I still think I was justified. Almost. At least I didn't lay a hand on him.
When I'd slammed the door in his face, I went back to my copy and re-read the pathetically little I'd managed to write. I had to delete the whole lot. You can imagine how I felt. I bolted some yogurt for lunch and spilled most of it down my T-shirt, so I had to change that and fling it in the washing machine, which wasted yet more time.
Then it was the end of the school day and there were shrieks from all the little darlings who'd been pent up in their classrooms for too long, and the exasperating heavy slap-slap of a football being kicked up and down the road. And chat from the little darlings’ attending adults, who all seemed to want to stand right outside my front windows, either talking to each other or jabbering into their mobiles.
When they'd all gone and the street was blessedly quiet once more, the doorbell went again. I shrieked out some filthy word or other (actually, I know quite well what it was, but I don't want to shock you) and ran to the door, wrenching it open and snarling, only to see my ten-year-old godson, looking absolutely terrified.
I apologised again, of course, and discovered he'd only come to return the tin in which I'd delivered his birthday cake. He's great, and on normal days I enjoy his company. He has an interesting, offbeat take on the world, and his talk of school and sports and music often gives me ideas I can use for work when we're pushing children's products. So I had to ask him in and offer him some Diet Coke, which was the only suitable thing I had in the house. Still looking scared, he shook his head and scuttled away like Hansel escaping from the wicked witch's gingerbread house.
I managed a quiet hour after that, and I had about twenty-five percent of the copy written when the early evening crowd started: the meter readers, more charity-collectors, and then the party canvassers. Apparently we were going to have a by-election the next week. I eventually got down to real work at about eight, which was the time I'd have got back from the office on an ordinary day. I was spitting.
Still, I got the copy finished in the end—and it had just the right edgy but funny tone for the product. I was pretty sure the clients would like it. But when I saw it was half eleven, I knew the poor designers weren't going to be happy. I'd kept them hanging on for hours. I hoped they wouldn't be so angry they screwed up. We needed the presentation to look brilliant as well as sound it.
So I e-mailed my text to them with a genuine apology, and asked them to get it back to me by eight the next morning with all the pix and whatever stylish tarting-up they could manage. Then I copied everything to my boss, with an e-mail to say I'd meet him at the clients’ at nine forty-five. That would give me plenty of time to have the crucial six hours’ sleep and get my hair sorted and pick the best clothes to say it all: cool; monied; efficient; sexy.
As you can imagine, I was pretty hyper by this time, so I took a couple of sleeping pills. Only over-the-counter herbal stuff. I think they're mainly lettuce, and the label on the packet always makes me laugh: “Warning: May Cause Drowsiness."
I was calming down a bit. I chased the pills with a glass of wine and a bit of bread and cream cheese with a smear of mango chutney, which reminds me of the sandwiches my mother used to make me when I was ill as a child.
So, fed, wined, and drugged to the eyeballs with lettuce, I took myself to bed. Just to be sure, I opened The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which hardly ever fails to send me to sleep. It did its stuff pretty soon. I ripped off my specs and turned out the light, to find myself in that state where you fall hundreds of feet through the air, while still being plastered to the mattress. Heaven, really.
Through the lovely muzzy feeling, I thought I heard the phone ring once or twice. I ignored it and it stopped long before the answering machine could've cut in.
The next thing I knew I was floating on twinkling turquoise waves in warm sunlight with dolphins leaping in the distance and a raucous London voice yelling, “Go, Go, Go.” I'd barely got my eyes open when there was this almighty crash downstairs and thundering feet and cracking wood as my bedroom door burst open, spraying splinters and bits of the lock all over the place. I got chips of wood in my hair and all over my face.
I'd always been a coward. But I'd never been afraid before. Not like this.
I couldn't breathe. It was as if I'd been hit in the throat. My heart was banging like a pneumatic drill. And I thought I'd throw up any minute. Or pee in my bed.
The worst of it was I couldn't see anything much. There seemed to be dozens of sturdy thighs in jeans at eye level and stubby black things that looked like gun barrels.
It seemed mad. But it's what they looked like. All I could hear was panting: heavy, angry panting. Whatever they were going to do, I knew I had to be able to see, so I reached for the specs on my bedside table. A voice yelled at me to f—ing stay where I was and not move. I couldn't. I mean, my arm was way too heavy. It crashed down on the table and knocked the specs to the floor with the lamp and my book. It made them jam one of the black things nearer my face and yell at me to stay still.
It really was a gun.
Then a hand came and grabbed the edge of the duvet. I hadn't got anything on under it, but that didn't strike me until they ripped the duvet off me and let the cold air in. I twitched. I couldn't help it, in spite of the guns. But nothing happened. Except that one of them swore. I don't know what he thought he'd see under my duvet except me.
"What?" said one of the others. He moved his head a bit. At least, I think it was his head. All I could see was a kind of furry pink mass where his face must be. He raised his voice: “What've you got?"
"Nothing,” called another man from further away. “There's no one else. Only a kind of study, with a computer and filing cabinets and magazines and things."
"Magazines? What magazines?"
"Women's stuff. Cosmo. Vogue. Things like that."
He came closer and bent right down into my face. That's when I saw he had a dark-blue peaked cap with a chequered headband and POLICE in neat white letters.
I began to breathe again.
"God, you scared me,” I said, and my voice was all high and quavery. I tried to toughen it. “Can I have my glasses, please? And a dressing gown?"
"Don't move.” Three gun barrels came even closer to my face. And I heard the scrunch of glass. I don't suppose they did it deliberately, but one of them mashed my new Armani specs under his heavy great feet.
That was enough to make me more cross than scared. Or maybe it was reaction. Shock or something. Anyway, whatever it was, I forgot their guns and not having any clothes on and I just yelled at them, in a voice even my grandmother would have admired. And no one was grander than my grandmother.
"Stop being so damned silly. You've got the wrong sodding address, like the sodding postman. You want the people in the flat across the road. Now let me get up and get my dressing gown. And stop playing silly buggers with those idiotic guns."
The nearest man took a step back and I knew I'd won. After a bit, another of them handed me my dre
ssing gown, smiling and nodding in a sloppy apologetic kind of way, like a bashful terrier. A minute ago he'd been holding a gun to my face; now he wanted to be friends? Mad.
Copyright © 2007 Natasha Cooper
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BOY INSIDE THE MAN by Sarah Weinman
Sarah Weinman is crime-fiction columnist for the Baltimore Sun and proprietor of the blog “Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind” (www.sarahweinman.com). In 2006, her short stories appeared in the anthologies Dublin Noir and Baltimore Noir from Akashic Books, in the anthology Damn Near Dead from Busted Flush Press, and in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.
This particular Saturday morning, Dovid Birnbaum woke up a little earlier than usual. It was a special day. Today, you are a man, said the voices of his mother, his rabbi, and his teachers. Other kids might have laughed it off, figuring correctly that there wasn't much different about the day before and the day after. Thirteen was still thirteen.
But Dovid knew different. Today, he really was a man. Today would change his life.
He checked the clock. Was seven-thirty too early to put on his tefillin for the first time? He decided to do so anyway, carefully affixing the phylacteries as his rabbi had taught him, placing the boxes on his forearms and forehead and wrapping the strands round and round before tying them in knots. Dovid wondered if he'd done it right, but when he looked in the mirror, at the image reflected back, everything seemed to be okay. And it didn't really matter if he'd screwed something up. He was a man now; he could afford to make a mistake.
He kept an eye on the door as he went through the prayers, hoping there wouldn't be a knock on it. There always was this time of morning, and he dreaded it. His mother would be on the other side, ordering him to get up to go to school or do some sort of chore or favor or something. Dovid always wanted to be left alone. Always. But this time he got his wish. There was no knock. It definitely was a special day.
Dovid put his tefillin away, but the feeling of unease stayed with him. Normally if he had time to sleep in he'd read his comic books or play video games. But today was Shabbos, so no PS2 for him, and the comic books seemed suddenly unimportant. He had to focus. Today I am a man, he repeated to himself over and over, like a mantra. The more he did so, the more he believed it.
Eventually the clock struck eight, then eight-thirty, and Dovid couldn't procrastinate anymore. He had to get dressed, put on the special suit that had been a gift from his great-aunt Shelley on his mother's side. “Wear it well,” she'd said, “it belonged to your grandfather."
He didn't have to ask which one. Shelley worshipped her late brother, whom she kvelled about constantly for being the “former president of the RCA!” She refused to accept that he was anything less than a saint, and especially pooh-poohed any disparaging comments from Dovid's mother. But then Great-Aunt Shelley disparaged almost anything Dovid's mother said. When he was younger he'd hated that, but now he understood.
The suit was a bit long and a bit baggy, but it had been meant for a man at least three inches taller than Dovid was now. The first time he'd tried it on, he wondered if he was also trying on his grandfather's personality, or his ghost. When he'd told his mother, she'd gone pale. “Don't utter such a thing,” she'd snapped, “especially when it's for a simcha." After that, the suit had hung in Dovid's closet, almost forlornly. He'd finally pulled it out last night and was only mildly surprised to feel nothing. No ghost, no memories, just emptiness.
It would make things a whole lot easier.
Dovid dressed quickly, forgoing his usual shower because of the Sabbath. He examined himself in the mirror again and winced. Barely five foot four, with knobby knees that curved inward and unruly red hair that grew outward, Afro-style, he didn't look like any man he knew. He barely looked like the other kids who had been bar-mitzvahed this year, the ones he had been forced to invite because they had been forced to invite him to theirs. And as the youngest in his class, Dovid's bar mitzvah was the last one in the merry-go-round that was simcha season. He knew he wasn't the only one glad to see the whole business come to an end.
He checked himself one more time. The suit was on, the tzitzis were carefully affixed underneath, and his black shoes gleamed with the polish he'd given them the previous evening. There was only one last thing to put on, and he retrieved it from his underwear drawer. The good-luck charm. It had belonged to his grandfather, the one Great-Aunt Shelley had worshiped so much. He'd found it in the attic a few weeks ago when he was rummaging around for some comic books to read, and as soon as he saw it lying there, Dovid knew two things: It had to be his, and he had to make sure his mother didn't know he had it.
He'd worn it ever since, to school, to his bar-mitzvah lessons, even to shul. It gave him comfort and security, and today he needed it more than ever. Already he could feel his nerves calming down. It would make a special day even better.
Now he was ready.
When he ventured downstairs his mother was already at the kitchen table, eating more quickly than usual. She turned around at his approaching footsteps.
"Dovid, you're ready!” The strong tone she began with trailed off. Her eyes darted everywhere, left and right, but never on his face.
He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. They both knew each was a disappointment to the other. In looks and demeanor, Dovid resembled his late father, whom others said was a “no-good bum” when they thought he wasn't listening. And until last night, Dovid would have done anything for his mother. She was his world, especially as there was so little family left. Only twenty relatives would be at the bar mitzvah. All from his mother's side.
She opened her mouth, probably to apologize, then seemed to think better of it. He silently thanked God not to have to hear her say she was sorry. It would be fake and hollow and would ruin his special day. Instead, she pasted on a smile and asked him what he wanted for breakfast.
"Nothing,” he said gravely, thinking it would make him sound more like a man. "Shul starts at nine and we shouldn't be late."
His mother drew back, startled, before regaining her composure. “You're right,” she said, “I guess you should have knocked on my door this time."
But they both knew that would have been a terrible idea. Then Dovid would have had to see what was on the other side.
His mother finished her breakfast and they began the walk to shul. It only took five minutes and usually felt shorter, but this time every step seemed to take an eternity. Dovid's mother turned to him expectantly. She couldn't be apologizing, not now. It wouldn't be fair.
"I hope you're not too nervous. Your speech will go just fine,” she said.
He relaxed slightly, confidence returning. “I feel pretty good about it."
"You should, Dovid. I'm—"
"Don't say it, Mother. Please."
He'd never seen her expression so bleak. “I never meant to hurt you,” she said quietly, as if each word stabbed her.
Involuntarily Dovid reached to his left side, holding on to his good-luck charm. Was he ever glad he had it, this day more than ever.
At the shul's entrance, the security guard bowed to him and his mother. “That's a good bar-mitzvah boy,” the guard said. At any other time, those words would have struck Dovid as being funny, as the guard wasn't Jewish and said it wrong. This time Dovid wondered why a security guard wasn't checking them out. It would be so easy to pass something through.
A hand clapped him on the back. “Dovid, you ready?"
He turned around and froze. Rabbi Drexler was grinning at him, trying too hard and bending too far backward. Dovid bit back the urge to return the back-clapping, or even better, slap the man's face. But he couldn't. The man was still a rabbi. His rabbi. And though he felt no respect, he had to put it on.
"I'm ready for anything,” Dovid said.
"Good, good.” If Rabbi Drexler caught Dovid's tone he decided to ignore it. “The speech will be, too."
Dovid's brain said thanks, but he did not. He had to make
one concession to anger.
He thought he'd remember every detail of the davening but was surprised to find it all went in a blur. He wasn't nervous when he went up to the bimah, and only stumbled once as he read through his entire Torah portion. He was so focused on the speech, on what he would say, that he passed through the Haftarah almost on autopilot and barely felt the blows to his head and body due to the hard candies thrown by the congregation.
A few prayers and many mazel-tovs later, it was time. One butterfly at a time had begun to occupy his stomach and now he had an entire symphony of queasiness. Dovid swallowed. He would be fine. He knew it. He had to be.
This was too important to screw up.
He stood up and surveyed the congregation. The seating was separate, so his mother sat in the front row of the women's section with his great-aunt Shelley on one side and her sister Pearl on the other. The other two women beamed. His mother did not. Could she have some inkling of what would happen? Dovid didn't think so. He'd made sure to hide his intentions.
The rabbi sat next to the ark. He seemed lost in thought, or at least that's how Dovid interpreted it. Then, and only then, did he allow himself to smile. It was good to see the man squirm.
Dovid took a deep breath and began. This week's Torah portion was Yitro, and he'd originally decided to talk about respecting your elders and what that entailed. He'd given a brief thought to changing his speech entirely but he wasn't very good at winging it. The end would require enough improvisation, and he had to concentrate on getting that right.
He could sense the congregation's approval and his mother's surprise. So she thought he didn't respect her anymore, and she was right to think so. He couldn't get a good look at the rabbi but found he didn't want to. He was close to the end.
Before he got there, Dovid gave the crowd one final glance. His mother's expression was pure fear. Now she knew he was up to something, but he couldn't let that dissuade him.
EQMM, May 2007 Page 4
