“To astonishing music,” he toasted.
“Thank you, Third Cousin.”
“Elias. Please. Elias.” He took a small bite of the cheese and nearly gagged. “How did you get this assignment?”
“I came here a long time ago. I knew the previous owner.”
“You don’t look that old.”
But your lines sure are. “It was a good crowd tonight.”
Kenuda took in the youngish patrons, heartily and noisily drinking. “Must be the neighborhood.”
“I take it you don’t get down here often. I’m flattered.”
“After we met, I had to make sure you were who I thought you were.”
Mooshie tensed. “Who’s that?”
“An enchanting talent. What were those songs?”
“Middish 20th Century African American music. Motown.”
“Ah, yes,” he said enthusiastically.
“Never heard of it?”
“No idea what you’re talking about.” Kenuda smiled. “I prefer smarter music. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart. When the world had civilization.”
“I prefer fun.”
“Delighted to hear that.” Elias pushed aside the suspicious looking SC cold cuts. “You must do better than this, Dara.”
“They’re good people,” she said evenly.
“I’ve no doubt. There’s a wondrous energy afoot. But you are the performer, not them. You lead, not them.”
“Cousin talk?”
“Common sense. Loyalty is a building block, not a door. This owner…”
“Jimmy Monroe. The guy who found you a candleholder and a tablecloth.”
“Because I’m a Cousin.”
“But you’re not supposed to be shown favoritism.”
“Exactly. Still happens. Human nature.” Kenuda paused. “You need to play at better places for the sake of your career.”
“Enter Elias.”
He shrugged modestly. “It’s my job, Dara. Sports only goes so far. But entertainment has enormous possibilities. They’ve been, I feel,” he lowered his voice, “somewhat neglected. Understandable. All too often, art’s a stalking horse for propaganda and a free society needs to trust what they see. Grandma correctly wiped away all the entertainment parasites, the ones the Allahs didn’t nuke in LA. But it’s time to rethink its role. We need more opportunities for song, dance, movies. Athletics isn’t just hulking men and women. They’re balletic and the people love it. Why can’t they love real ballet?”
“What’s to ensure we don’t go back to those wild days when artists spoke and manipulated political ideas through their art?”
“The time of social media?”
Mooshie nodded. Maybe he could also think with his brain.
“We’re past that. Now the art, the accomplishments, even this wretched champagne and rancid cheese, speak for themselves. Not amplified into a million distortions of influencing, persuading, lobotomizing our free will into part of the smart set. I love your music because I do, not because someone said I’m a fool if I don’t. People have learned they can find truth on their own. Football players call their own plays. No one asks for my permission.”
“Baseball players call their own pitches.”
“Yes, sorry.” He sighed. “Puppy’s very enthusiastic and hopefully this last fling will be good for him. I’ll help him once the season’s over. But first you.” He stared. “Let me make some calls. No pressure.”
“You’re a Third Cousin.”
“Perhaps a little pressure.”
Mooshie smiled. “What do you get?”
“More time with you, Dara.”
“Who is engaged.”
“As am I.”
“To my fiance’s ex.”
“A nice girl. Loves her shoes.” Mooshe nearly poured her drink over his smirk. “I’m here simply as an admirer.” He waited anxiously until she clinked his offered glass. “Now promise after you’re done tonight, you’ll let me take you to this little place on Tremont which serves real Argentinian wine. Please. Or I’ll be forced to drink this urine and it will be on your conscience.”
• • • •
PABLO BRUSHED PAST without so much as a good morning or apology for waking Zelda at five-thirty.
“Don’t you answer your bell? I nearly froze on the damn bench.”
“You know I sleep soundly.”
They both blushed. He grudgingly dropped a bodega bag on the kitchen table. Zelda yawned and set out the coffee and donuts.
“I’m trying to lose weight.” She pleaded with the donuts to dance off the table, but they sat there smiling jelly smiles.
“Good idea.” He grunted at her belly flopping out of the robe. She angrily pulled it tighter and spitefully didn’t offer him any napkins or plate or utensils. He spilled coffee on the table and looked like he’d lap it up. Zelda grew more worried than annoyed.
“Is something wrong?”
“Because I woke you before the sunrise?”
“That’s one clue.”
He looked terrible. Handsome face unshaven, big eyes bleary. Worse, the way he grimaced as if in the middle of one hellacious inner argument which he kept losing.
She ate the donut, but slowly, in case someone talked her out of it. “So?”
Pablo stared hard. “I need your honesty.”
“Always.”
“Do you think I’m a passive observer of the world around me? That I live watching others live and feel my daily comments, inwardly and outwardly, on their lives really suffice for mine?”
Zelda took a long sip of the coffee to sort through Pablo Speak. “I think so.”
Pablo rubbed his stubble sadly.
“But you always have. At least after college.”
“When I changed?”
“When you thought you had to change. No more DV shit. Like you showered your soul or something.”
Pablo quietly repeated her words as if Grandma had added a new Insight.
“What’s happened, honey?”
“I can’t say.”
Zelda leaned her chin on her fist, staring. He sighed.
“It’s a Cousins issue. This is all internal. So that you can embrace externally.”
“Figuring out who the hell you are, simply.”
He cleared his throat. “I guess.”
“Are they dumping you?”
“No.” He frowned, suddenly alarmed. “I don’t think so. No one knows how it starts so how can you know if it ends. I imagine they’d stop coming.”
“People visit?”
Pablo hesitated, then nodded. “Or someone behaves oddly. I can’t say more.”
Zelda squeezed his hand. “This is what you wanted your whole life, Pab. You can do it. Whatever that is.”
“I’m not so sure, Zel.”
Last time she’d seen Pablo tear up was when they were fifteen and he knocked three Regs unconscious for calling them DV dogs because they’d wandered north of 167th Street. He kept kicking the kids, sobbing, until Puppy and Zelda dragged him away, where he trashed an alley full of garbage cans.
“You’re ashamed of what you were, baby. At some
