Meyer.
“A dog is a dog,” Mrs. Kalushiner says. She slams down the pickles and sour cream, drops the basket of rolls, and then retreats to the back room with another clash of beads.
“So I need to ask you a favor,” Landsman says, his gaze on the dog, who has lowered himself to the stage on his arthritic knees and lies with his head on his forepaws. “And I’m hoping very much that you’ll say no.”
“Does this favor have anything to do with ‘effective resolution’?”
“Are you mocking the concept?”
“Not necessary,” Berko says. “The concept mocks itself.” He plucks a pickled tomato from the dish, dabs it in the sour cream, then pokes it neatly into his mouth with a forefinger. He screws up his face with pleasure at the resultant sour squirt of pulp and brine. “Bina looks good.”
“I thought she looked good.”
“A little butch.”
“So you always said.”
“Bina, Bina.” Berko gives his head a bleak shake, one that somehow manages at the same time to look fond. “In her last life, she must have been a weather vane.”
“I think you’re wrong,” Landsman says. “You’re right, but you’re wrong.”
“You’re saying Bina is not a careerist.”
“I’m not saying that.”
“She is, Meyer, and she always has been. That’s one of the things I have always most liked about her. Bina is a smart cookie. She is tough. She is political. She is viewed as loyal, and in two directions, up and down, and that is a hard trick to pull off. She is inspector material all around. In any police force, in any country in the world.”
“She was first in her class,” Landsman says. “At the academy.”
“But you scored higher on the entrance exam.”
“Why, yes,” Landsman says. “I did. Have I mentioned that before?”
“Even U.S. Marshals are smart enough to notice Bina Gelbfish,” Berko says. “If she is trying to make sure there’s a place for her in Sitka law enforcement after Reversion, I’m not going to blame her for that.”
“You make your point,” Landsman says. “Only I don’t buy it. That isn’t why she took this job. Or it’s not the only reason.”
“Why did she, then?”
Landsman shrugs. “I don’t know,” he admits. “Maybe she ran out of things to do that make sense.”
“I hope not. Or the next thing you know, she’ll be getting back together with you.”
“God forbid.”
“Horrors.”
Landsman pretends to spit three times over his shoulder. Then, right as he’s wondering if this custom has anything to do with the habit of chewing tobacco, Mrs. Kalushiner comes back, dragging the great leg iron of her life.
“I have hard-boiled eggs,” she says menacingly. “I have bagel. I have jellied leg.”
“Just a little something to drink, Mrs. K.,” Landsman says. “Berko?”
“Burp water,” Berko says. “With a twist of lime.”
“You want to eat,” she tells him. It isn’t a guess.
“Why not?” Berko says. “All right, bring me a couple of eggs.”
Mrs. Kalushiner turns to Landsman, and he feels Berko’s eyes on his, daring him and expecting him to order a slivovitz. Landsman can feel Berko’s fatigue, his impatience and irritation with Landsman and his problems. It’s about time he pulled himself together, isn’t it? Find something worth living his life for, and get on it with it.
“Coca-Cola,” Landsman says. “If you please.”
This may be the first thing that Landsman or anyone has ever done to surprise the widow of Nathan Kalushiner. She raises one steel-gray eyebrow, then turns away. Berko reaches for one of the pickled cucumbers, shaking off the peppercorns and cloves that stud its freckled green skin. He crunches it between his teeth and frowns happily.
“It takes a sour woman to make a good pickle,” he says, and then, as if offhand, teasing, “Sure you don’t want another beer?”
Landsman would love a beer. He can taste the bitter caramel of it on the back of his tongue. In the meantime, the one that Ester-Malke gave him has yet to leave his body, but Landsman is getting indications that it has its bags packed and is ready to go. The proposition or appeal that he has determined to make to his partner now strikes him as perhaps the stupidest idea he has ever had, certainly not worth living for. But it will have to do.
“Fuck you,” he says, getting up from the table. “I need to take a leak.”
In the men’s room, Landsman discovers the body of an electric guitarist. From a table at the back of the Vorsht, Landsman has often admired this yid and his playing. He was among the first to import the techniques and attitudes of American and British rock guitarists to the Bulgars and freylekhs of Jewish dance music. He is roughly the same age and background as Landsman, grew up in Halibut Point, and in moments of vainglory, Landsman has compared himself, or rather his detective work, to the intuitive and flashy playing of this man who appears to be dead or passed out in the stall with his money hand in the toilet bowl. The man is wearing a black leather three- piece suit and a red ribbon necktie. His celebrated fingers have been denuded of their rings, leaving ghostly indentations. A wallet lies on the tiled floor, looking empty and distended.
The musician snores once. Landsman employs those intuitive and flashy skills in feeling at the man’s carotid for a pulse. It’s steady. The air around the musician hums almost to burning with the radiance of alcohol. The wallet seems to have been rifled of its cash and identification. Landsman pats down the musician and finds a pint of Canadian vodka in the left hip pocket of his leather blazer. They got his cash but not his booze. Landsman doesn’t want a drink. In fact, he feels a lurch inside him at the idea of pouring this garbage into his belly, some kind of moral muscle that recoils. He chances a quick peek into the cobwebby root cellar of his soul. He can’t help noticing that this pulse of revulsion for what is, after all, a popular brand of Canadian vodka seems to have something to do with his ex-wife, with her being back in the Sitka again and looking so strong and juicy and Bina. The daily sight of her is going to be torment, like God torturing Moses with a glimpse of Zion from the top of Mount Pisgah every single day of his life.
Landsman uncaps the bottle of vodka and takes a long stiff pull. It burns like a compound of solvent and lye. Several inches remain in the bottle when he is through, but Landsman himself is filled top to bottom with nothing but the burn of remorse. All the old parallels it once pleased him to draw between the guitarist and himself are turned against him. After a brief but vigorous debate, Landsman decides not to throw the bottle in the trash, where it will be of no use to anyone. He transfers it to the snug hip pocket of his own decline. He drags the musician out of the stall and carefully dries his right hand. Last he takes the piss he came in here to take. The music of Landsman’s urine against porcelain and water lures the musician into opening his eyes.
“I’m fine,” he tells Landsman from the floor.
“Sure you are, sweetness,” Landsman says.
“Just don’t call my wife.”
“I won’t,” Landsman assures him, but the yid is already out again. Landsman drags the musician out into the back hallway and leaves him on the floor with a phone book under his head for a pillow. Then he goes back to the table and Berko Shemets and takes a well-behaved sip from his glass of bubbles and syrup.
“Mmm,” he says. “Coke.”
“So,” says Berko. “This favor of yours.”
“Yeah,” Landsman says. His resurgent confidence in himself and his intentions, the sense of well-being, is clearly an illusion produced by a snort of lousy vodka. He rationalizes this with the thought that from the point of view of, say, God, all human confidence is an illusion and every intention a joke. “Kind of a big one.”
Berko knows where Landsman is heading. But Landsman isn’t quite ready to go there yet.
“You and Ester-Malke,” Landsman says. “You guys applied for residency.”
“Is that your big question?”
“No, this is just the buildup.”
“We applied for green cards. Everybody in the District has applied for a residency card, unless they’re going to Canada or Argentina or wherever. Jesus, Meyer, didn’t you?”
