White Tiger on Snow Mountain (10 page)

“Don’t worry, I’ll spot you,” he’d say. “You’ll be ripped in no time.”

I’d laugh it off. No kidding, ripped! Merv’s crew cut and brush-stache were almost white, but his tattooed arms were the size of my legs, and what I pictured ripping if I lifted a weight was a testicle at least, or maybe a whole arm off at the socket. His nipples were pierced, and when I first moved in he scared me, but he let me slide on the rent, and if I didn’t go over for Christmas and Thanksgiving, he’d come and pound on my door.

The shul turned out to be just a few blocks from my place. It wasn’t what I expected. The building was plain stucco with arched doors and a few small Spanish windows. There was a tiny lawn and tinier parking lot divided into too-narrow spots. It lacked the haunted, chilly feeling I associated with holy places. In fact, I realized as I waited for the rabbi to unlock the door, I’d passed it before. It had been a Sikh yoga place then. I followed the rabbi around as he turned on the lights and air-conditioning so that when I did it later I could act like it was my idea. Apparently the deal they’d signed with God, all those
centuries ago, was so harsh that the only way to get by was outwitting the boss.

I promised to be back at ten and then rushed to Olga’s, but she was closed. That’s what I got for doing a good deed. Still missing lunch, I swung by the Chevron for a snack. I’d poured my coffee and was waiting by the microwave for my breakfast burrito (they’re good anytime) when she touched my elbow. The X.

“Larry, my God, it’s really you.”

“Hey, Claire. How are you?”

She opened her arms and we hugged, stiffly, in that awkward ex-fiancé way, me holding my coffee out to avoid splashing her white T-shirt and white jeans. Her sunglasses sparkled at me, and the fluorescent light purpled her dark hair.

“I’m good. What a coincidence. I just popped in to get some gas and some juice for the kids.”

“Kids? Plural?”

“Yeah, Jonah and Jack, they’re twins.” She tapped a nail on the window. I saw a black Mercedes with a strong-jawed male at the wheel. I assumed the twins were in the back, like little celebrities behind the tinted glass. “What about you?”

“Me? Triplets.”

“Ha-ha,” she said. “I meant like, girlfriend, job?”

“I’m kind of doing this freelance work now. For a rabbi.”

“A rabbi?” She brightened. “That’s amazing. We’re Buddhists, but I was thinking about taking a Kabbalah class.”

The microwave dinged. I opened the door, and she considered the ham and cheese melting from my burrito. “He’s Orthodox,” I said. “But I’m Reformed.”

“Anyway,” she said, shifting nervously, “I’ve been wanting to call you. I want to say how bad I feel, you know. About the way things turned out with us.”

“That’s OK,” I said. What else could I say? I took a bite of burrito to hide my sorrow. “Everything turned out for the best.”

“That’s so true,” she said. “It really did. You know, I went into therapy. You should try it.”

I remembered once suggesting therapy and getting a plate thrown at my head. But I let it go. “Well, you seem great,” I said and pretended to look at my watch. It said 11:20. I kept forgetting to get the battery changed. “I should go. Gotta get to temple.” I opened the door for her.

“Larry, I want you to know”—she squeezed my wrist and let go—“you’re a great guy. And I’m so happy that you’re getting in touch with your spirituality.”

“Thanks.” I followed her into the heat. She hustled over to the Mercedes and climbed in, talking to the rugged, sandy-haired driver. He waved and gave me a gracious winner’s smile. I toasted him with my cup. I had to admit, he did look like husband material. Joyful participation in the sufferings of the world. That was what Buddhists like Claire and Sandy believed in. I looked at my reflection in the glass door and saw through my transparent skin to the brightly colored products inside. A strand of melted cheese clung to my lip. Had I known true suffering and true joy? Maybe not enough or not at the same time. I finished the burrito and flip-flopped back to my lotus pad. I took a shower and washed my hair, but it just wasn’t the same.

When I got to the shul that night, yellow light was blurring the high windows and the blank building was hidden by two big
trees that I hadn’t seen before. I walked across the lawn and up the steps and pushed in the door. The place was packed. I had pictured a few old men like the rabbi, mumbling together, but there had to be a couple of hundred people in here. Where did they all come from? How come I had never noticed? They had to live within walking distance, I knew. It was as if these black-clad strangers had been hiding in the shadows of my neighborhood, like bats or dark butterflies, folded into leaves, motionless, invisible until, with the night, they swarmed. Except LA had no shadows. The sun laid this city bare.

An old man greeted me silently at the door, finger to his lips, and handed me a yarmulke and prayer book. I was early, the services weren’t done, and I ducked into a pew in the back. The room was plain, just packed rows of wooden benches and a balcony running around three sides. The rabbi was in front, the Torah unscrolled on the lectern before him. He wore a white skullcap and a tallis. While the men around me rocked and muttered, the rabbi’s prayer climbed higher, twisting as it rose up past the balcony to the roof. That voice that had seemed out of place on the street, too high, too singsong, too foreign, now unfolded its gorgeous feathers. Like a stick-legged bird that plays the fool on land, his voice was made for music. It sounded out of tune in mere speech. My gaze drifted up with the floating prayer and lit on a pair of eyes.

Now, the balcony was covered with a wooden lattice, and I knew that the women were hidden back there, where they wouldn’t tempt the minds of men from God. So I really couldn’t see much, and to be honest, I pictured a bunch of ancient, storybook women, with witchy noses and hairy warts, with head scarves and old-world woolens over their lumpy
forms. I’d heard that they shaved their heads and wore wigs (or was that nuns?) and had sex through a hole in a sheet, like cartoon ghosts. Let’s just say, I wasn’t exactly scanning for hot prospects. But there, in the gap between two wooden slats, I thought I saw two eyes.

How? I don’t know, maybe I was imagining things. I couldn’t name their color or describe their shape, but my heart jumped and I gripped the prayer book like a believer. My vision narrowed to those twin points, and now it was I who was peeping through a crack in my cell, out on the world of light. The man beside me tapped my hand. I was on the wrong page. He pointed my finger to the correct line that I couldn’t read anyway. I nodded thanks, pretended to scrutinize it for a second, and then turned my face back to heaven, searching the walls and ceiling, as if looking for a star in the clouded sky, but my eyes were gone.

After the service ended, I had to wait until the last of the worshippers left to turn everything off and lock up. I stood under a tree and searched the departing faces for that face, those eyes. No luck. Was it oval or round? Was the skin dark or fair and freckled? I somehow had the impression of dark curls, but maybe I was wrong. Now, dressed as shadows and walking through shadows, everyone looked the same. Finally, as the last stragglers moved off in groups of two or three and disappeared into the street, I gave up and went in to find the rabbi. He walked out of the sanctuary, arm in arm with a girl in her twenties. Of course, you’ve already guessed it was her, but I didn’t notice at first. I was distracted by the limp.

She moved with a kind of up-and-down motion, her right
hip jutting sideways and her right foot turned out. She had those shoes where one is higher than the other, but not the big Frankenstein ones I’d seen before. These were subtler, like regular black leather ladies’ boots, but with a good inch of extra sole added to the bottom of the right one. Maybe one of her legs was too short? It was hard to see what was what. She wore an ankle-length dark skirt and a white blouse that came to her wrists and buttoned high around her neck. But even those modest garments couldn’t hide the fact that there was a live girl underneath: I sensed the spread of her hips, the tiny waist where the blouse tucked, the push of her breasts against the stiff fabric. A heart was beating in there. Her head was bowed demurely, with the hair piled on top, but I could see a graceful ear and part of a pale nape, like a slice of moon behind the cloud of lace.

“There you are,” the rabbi said, then, “This is my daughter Leah.”

“Nice to meet you.” I held out my hand. Leah glanced at her father quickly and then briefly touched my hand. I realized that maybe I’d made a mistake: She wasn’t supposed to touch a man but hadn’t wanted to be rude. Blushing, she looked up at me.

Her eyes were brown but darker than her father’s, less sad and with a gleam that, however shy the lashes, met and challenged my dim blues. There was a moment of awkward silence, and then the rabbi cleared his throat. He glanced around the foyer.

“Are you chilly?”

“What? Oh yeah,” I said. “Mind if I turn off the air conditioner? And the lights?”

The rabbi groaned and Leah laughed, a small wild giggle,
like a bird fluttering out of my hands. Her eyes flickered twice, between two beats of their lids. As I ran downstairs to the switches, I heard the rabbi shout good night.

When I got back to my village, Merv was out front. “Hey, Larry,” he yelled with a slightly drunken gaiety. “Have a beer.” He rustled his paper bag. “Shit. None left. How about a Coke?”

“Sure.” He went inside. His screen door banged, and the sky flapped above me like a dusty blanket. The stars shook out. Palm fronds scratched in the wind.

Later, Merv went out to a bar and I went home, but I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about those eyes through the lattice, as if seen through a veil or the filigreed wall of a harem. About that high shoe and the body hidden under those clothes. I flipped through Nietzsche, Hegel, Kant, but it was no use. I went out on the steps and felt my sweat dry and watched my smoke go up. Then I lay back down and read the Norton till dawn, Wordsworth to Keats straight through. When the sun lit my window, I went to the Chevron for a large coffee and a donut. On the way back I noticed two feet sticking out of the bushes next to Merv’s door. I parted the branches, and there he was, snoring away. He had his keys in his hand. Looked like he was coming home drunk and just missed by a few inches. I unlocked the door, and with a lot of prodding and pleading, he let me help him up. I got him onto the couch and covered him with a blanket. I noticed a pale band of skin around his wrist that used to be a watch. I wondered if they got his wallet too.

“Steve,” he mumbled.

“It’s Larry,” I said.

“Larry.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

“Of course not,” I whispered, gently shutting the door. Who would I tell?

I left early for shul. Lawn sprinklers were throwing a glow on the grass, but no wind moved the leaves and I could see it was going to be another killer day. I unlocked the door and turned on all the lights. I got the A/C going. Then I took my book and sat on the steps to make sure I wouldn’t miss Leah. But I couldn’t read. My racing mind surged ahead of the lines. At last she came rocking up the path, holding her bent father by the elbow. It was unclear who was supporting whom. I quickly kicked the mashed cigarette butts I’d accumulated into the shrubbery and smiled.

“Good morning,” I called.

“Shabbat shalom,” the rabbi answered. Leah said nothing, a punch in the heart, but when the rabbi went in, she loitered out front, turning her closed eyes to the sun. I grabbed the chance to study her face, trying to store up every detail for later, when she’d disappear again behind the screen. Her skin was astonishing. There were no splotches or marks, only a blending, from milk to pink to deep rose. Her hair was a liquidy black, and each curl seemed to be alive, growing, twisting right then. I realized how long it had to be, coiled up like that. If she let it down, how low would it fall? To the small of her back? To her hips? She opened her eyes and caught me staring. I fled back down to my book.

“What are you reading?”

“A poetry anthology. Keats, actually. I’m up to Keats.”

“Who’s Keats?”

“Who’s Keats?” I blurted loudly, then caught myself. In a rush, I told her everything I knew about Keats. How he was self-taught, really, working class, and died of TB at twenty-five, broke and bereft in Rome. How he wrote all his greatest works in only twelve months, and in that brief flash burned himself into the heart of English literature. He wrote some of the most beautiful love poems ever, yet some speculate that he may have died a virgin. Her throat bloomed red, and I realized that I’d said “virgin” to a rabbi’s daughter. I blushed back and tried to extricate myself by getting high-minded but only dug deeper.

“You know what Oscar Wilde said?”

She shook her head no. Of course not!

“Never mind,” I said. “Sorry.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that Keats’s grave was the holiest site in Rome.”

“That’s beautiful,” she said and smiled. It was the first smile. “I’d love to read him some time.”

“You can borrow this.” I offered her the book. “I mean I’ve read it.”

“No, I can’t. It’s so big.”

“Well, there’s just a few pages of Keats.”

“No, I mean because of my father.”

Just then the first worshippers appeared, coming up the block in their black, the young kids scampering ahead. One dropped his yarmulke and ran back. On an impulse, I opened the book to the page I’d turned down and ripped it out.

“Here.” I crushed the poem and pressed it into her palm. For a second, her eyes widened like a startled animal’s, mingling
fear and high spirits. Then she hurried in, pushing my paper rose under the sleeve of her blouse.

I sat through the whole service this time, eyes fixed on the higher realms. Again, I can’t really say what I saw through that screen, but I believe I found her in the diamond of a lattice. I believe that the prayer book she held before her face hid the “Ode on Melancholy.” I believe that when she looked up from the book and down into the congregation her eyes were searching for mine and that she found them, gazing up among the bowed heads, and that she looked right at me. And I believe she was crying.