The Place Will Comfort You (27 page)

What else to say? Eighteen years had elapsed since that day when she had barely known him and after which nothing had changed. She would have passed him on the block with even more haste than her disposition prescribed, a sneaking horror now, though by some tacit covenant of children she had never told her parents, and he had never reported, her lapse of judgment, his presence of mind.

“Do you still find yourself on twenty Mendeleh Shapira Street?” she asked.

“Nu sure,” he said. “Sabbaths and holidays. Supper sometimes.”

She supposed this meant his parents were still alive. She smiled. “Are the Livyatans still there?”

“No.”

“Handsome kids, the girls more than the boys, boys on the portly side. I liked their hair.”

“They moved,” he said. “A few years after you.”

“Lovely hair,” she said. “Each one of them, thick like honey. But that endless piano practice, all of the time the same mistakes, each sibling exactly as bad as the other. And that dog of theirs,” she said.
“Of.”

“A tan chow chow.”

“You remember!” she said. “That dog.”

“She made a lot of noise.”

“Nu sure,” she said. “With them leaving her so often on her own, the howling, but besides.”

“I don't know what else I would remember her for.”

“The tensions,” she said.

“Someone protested the howling?”

“No,” she said. “The waste. Mr. Tzadka.”

Behind Neer the repairman had stepped away from the pool table and affixed the implement with the coral handle to the underside of the jukebox where it projected like a lobster claw. The door of the jukebox cabinet was open now, the man concealed behind it. A nutmeg-colored sideburn remained visible through the window, a ruddy cheek and the sun-bleached fringe of a mustache, framed by the printed flames.

“The air traffic controller,” Neer said. “Seamstress wife, two girls, a boy my age, Oded. Iraqis.”

“That's right!” she said. “That's what he was. At Ben Gurion Airport. I had forgotten that. His ears were shot from the jets.”

“The howling wouldn't have bothered him then.”

“On the contrary!” she said. “His hearing came in and out and he hated noise I guess for both reasons. The wavering effect drove him
mad. I had forgotten that. When the Livyatans practiced the piano he would go berserk. He would shout down the dog. To me he was never anything but polite. I was very quiet. How could I have forgotten that? He lived on our floor. My mother did business with the wife. Their porch was next to ours. The dog was in the porch beneath, Three southwest.”

“We heard her very well on One. But the tensions you say concerned waste?”

“That's what I said. Now I don't know. How could the ears have fallen out? I remember knowing about them. His wife would have filled my mother in. My mother would have told our father and we'd have heard.”

“But the matter was the Livyatan dog waste and not her noise, this was your impression?”

“One day he smeared her shit on their flat door.”

Again Neer Shabazi rotated his bottle on the table. The repairman continued to fuss with the interior of the jukebox, his booted feet shifting as if he too were embarrassed. Why the bad language? Of all the anecdotes she could have chosen for a sentimental journey. A neighbor boy to whom she owes a debt of gratitude turns up for the first time in her adulthood and she talks shit, literal shit. Television may have influenced her. Another skit was wrapping up, the cast members endeavoring to sound much older than they were as well as drunk. The dialogue was thin and they had lost it for hysterics.

“Where had he collected the shit in order to smear it?” Neer said.

“How do you mean, where?”

“Dog shit in the hallways I would have thought would get around. I'd expect even downstairs occupants would have been aware of the infraction.”

“Outside. He collected it outside.”

“The dog was soiling the exterior common areas?”

“Dog shit on the street is enough of a problem. The path and garden I remember clean.”

“How then could he have attributed the waste with any certainty to the chow chow?”

“I don't know,” she said. She was growing sad. “Watching from the porch?”

“One way or another his behavior seems extreme.”

“Yes,” she said. “That's I suppose what I was getting at, extremely humorous, I must have thought.”

“Rather I'm puzzled that this story in particular should have come to mind.”

“I was puzzled before you,” she said.

She considered coming clean about her state of being. Shorter shifts would help, a few more chances to clear the head. Could she raise this with her employers? A live-in position meant accessibility. And how to put across to them that, nearing his fourth decade, their son's mind no longer was infantile but rather that of a very old infant tired of pain and wanting a quiet corner, where he found lust continually new, with any source of friction? The ottoman today, yesterday the carpet, the giant exercise ball, and more and more household items as every day she generated less and less chatter, since he couldn't talk. They had trained her in a slew of rehabilitative drills but the man had been this way from birth. Joy came pouring out of him at the slightest prompt. His teeth were shortened from constant grinding.

Neer raised his bottle and drank.

“Not puzzled!” she said. “No, to think of it. In my line of work I deal on and off with anything that comes out of a living body. The friend I see most often does the same thing, my weekend relief. The worst cleanups are a natural part of the conversation. You could say we compete.”

“You're a nurse?”

“A live-in caretaker,” she said. “But you're not. I apologize.”

“No need,” he said. “I've considered secretions myself. You do lose sight of other sensibilities.” He drank thoughtfully. “But returning to our conversation I remain most puzzled that I don't remember the bad smell. It would have bothered me.” He set his bottle down, not rotating it this time. He seemed to expect them to return to the previous topic. It appeared he might stick to it as long as they had here, less than an hour left before each of them must resume his and her work.

“Good beer?” she said.

“It's fine.”

“I can recommend a local brew if it's just fine,” she said. “Let me buy you a drink.” She prepared to rise, turning one shoulder a little more towards him than away.

“Thank you,” he said. “This is fine.”

“Or one of these,” she said, brandishing her glass. “In honor of your accomplishment. What's your vodka?” She smiled again, thinking back to herself at seven years of age, when he had saved her. Instead of more demonstrative she grew violently shy, the smile stretching like a surgical mask. She looked to her drink, watery pink around the liquefying ice, ruby red elsewhere.

“Thank you,” he said. “I don't enjoy the juice other than medically.”

She returned her shoulders to where they had been. “The stuff has to be sweetened and they sweeten it too much.”

“On its own it's terrifically tart,” he said.

“You're the authority.” She tapped her drink to indicate again that she had chosen it in his honor. He would confirm this and she would confess.

“The tartness is not my finding,” he said. He shifted his elbow on the table by the lottery cards and clamped his narrow jaw between his thumb and pointer. “Unless you mean beyond the sensation, the underlying nature.”

“Exactly,” she said.

“The anti-adhesion properties in this particular astringency.”

“Yes.”

“Or rather what we found to be a very certain compound in the berry which inhibits the adhesions present on the pili of the surface of pathogens, effectively disabling their cling.”

“Yes!” she said.

“To one another as well as the teeth.”

“What they put in the new red toothpaste!”

He took a swig of beer, sitting nearly languorous, but the eyes prowling. “No paste yet,” he said. “So far just a dentist-administered glaze. The color soon fades.”

“I for one look forward to your product very much,” she said. “Red teeth or not.”

He held the bottleneck by his lips without drinking, head still propped as on a tripod, his small eyes darting to the chattering TV again and again. He loosened his lips and released the bottle. “The name on the final product you can be sure will not be mine.”

The old-seeming displeasure surfaced again, curling her nostrils. Did he take her for such a nitwit as to think his name would be the brand?
Shabazident!
on polka-dotted squeazy tubes, authorized by the ADA. The TV ad depicts knee-padded cyclists in a ruby-toothed stream, grinning, invigorated by the voices of a gospel chorus, thundering hope:
Bring out the Shabazi in your smile.

The man was simply unable to cull theories of personal intention from the length of sentences, not even as short as, I look forward to your product.
She says this to encourage me?
No, not
even, An interested consumer!
At the jukebox the repairman cranked the coral handle once, twice. Something clicked.

“My mistake,” she said. The repairman moved slowly back and emerged from behind the open jukebox, drawing out with him a wide cartridge, painted white but of metal, judging by the heavy scrape and slide of many coins against it from inside. She checked the time flashing, gold on blue on the Keno screen.

“Not on the pending patent,” Neer said. “Not even the latest grant proposal.” He squeezed his small eyes shut. He opened them. “I'm astonished I made it even to the local sheet.”

“Team Honored,” she said. “You're on the team.” She stared at the seat beside her. She was losing interest in this personality across, this Neer Shabazi of the cranberry dissection squad, zealously dry, maniacally factual and now revealing himself also a disgruntled employee. Altogether a joy. What had possessed her to arrange this? Perhaps this was the time to say, I owe you my life, and wrap things up. Neer remained silent, seemed not to mind that the conversation had died. She examined the black vinyl of her seat, then the chipboard wainscot, the different ways in which the chips had aged, the remnants of a bumper sticker, and in a rush returned to the vinyl. “My bag!”

Neer checked his own seat, hoisted her backpack by the hanging loop and passed it high over the table. The canvas bulged strangely where it stretched over the new orthosis, showing the one-of-a-kind outline of Clarence's calf and heel. She set the backpack by her hip and knocked through the canvas. The polymer responded with a hollow sound. The dread retreated. This wasn't the time to fail in the eyes of the mother. The mother was alert to a worker's fading investment. She was familiar with it, she could tell, therefore the mounting tests, antiseptics misplaced, the surgical gloves missing, ointments and powders gone, the electric toothbrush, the super calorific shakes. If Adi didn't ask for a replacement right away the mother would magically find what had been lost, and wonder how the aide could have done without.

“I don't need a little plaque for my office!” Neer said suddenly. “Only proper credit and accurate placement in the group. This is important much less to my pride and pocket than my lasting impact in the field!”

She watched the currents of emotion in his forehead.

“Along the way you must reflect on your engagement I suppose
in every human dealing,” he said. “I understand. I know. A scientist today must be not only a politician, but also a salesman and a lawyer as well. You are your handler. Any other setup is fantasy.” His gaze examined hers over a sharpening second, sought the television and returned, his small eyes large in their effect. Each time they came back solemn, solemnized, gems in skin settings. “I don't have the natural flair,” he said, his irises glistening, black as coal. Not black as coal. Converged on her, each bounced blue doorway shapes notched with dark cutouts of her skull. When his eyes flashed up, each mirrored the TV. “I also have no choice,” he said, “but to develop in this area. The research cannot lose my perspective because of a nature I can learn to flex.”

He looked at her again. A bus rolled by outside, judging by the action of the engine and the duration over which the doubled light of the door left Neer's eyes. He glanced up, eyes again mirroring the TV, down to her again. In the time before the light returned it dawned on her he could go on like this forever.

“I hated to sacrifice the focus of my research,” he said. “Of course it's just this maximizing notion which incites the peripheral unseens. I relied on my representation by others. I woke up to find I had been underrepresented. The fault is mine, I don't deny it. The self-promotion was my labor to carry out like any other assigned to my post.”

“You've had a regular place in my thoughts,” she said.

Neer recoiled in his seat. His knees knocked the underside of the table.

She said, “Thank you.”

“There is no need.”

“I have the need,” she said. “I won't make a big show, I'll say it once and with restraint but this is what I came here to say. The man in the white shirt took my hand, you took the other and he let go. If you hadn't passed by who knows what I'd be today. Because of this I will always think of you. You will always be in my thoughts.”

Neer took a long drink, swallowing three times. He returned the bottle to its place on the table, on a water ring. “I didn't take your hand,” he said. “I stood at a distance so I could run if I had to. I made it apparent that I was memorizing his face.”

“I don't remember his face,” she said.

“Nor I. Not back then, either. Seemed I'd retreated while maintaining the aspect of inspection. I had never been so frightened.”