“So,” Yan said now. He’d gotten up off his stool the moment he saw Lenny arrive and started whipping together his usual preparation, hand-measuring something dried and wrinkled — bark shavings? slivers of aged roots? — into a paper plate from an apothecary jar. “How you feel?”
Lenny considered. Yan demanded honest answers from his patients.
“Doing my best.” He nodded at the paper plate. “I’m thinking I need a stronger blend this time around.”
Yan glanced at him over the frame of his eyeglasses.
“No,” he said.
“Come on, Yan. I’ve got serious stuff on my mind. Been extra nervous—”
A vehement head shake.
“You always tell me same thing,” Yan said. “This strong enough. Put half teaspoon in cup hot water. Three minutes. When water turn color of urine, you sip.”
“How about I let it sit a little longer—?”
“Three minutes. Urine color. Sip.”
Lenny gnawed the inside of his cheek. Wasn’t anybody willing to budge an inch for him today?
“There’s light urine and dark urine,” he said with a kind of childish defiance.
“Hmmm?” Yan scooped from a second deep glass jar, mixed.
“I’m just saying you never really told me how strong the brew should be.” Lenny already felt asinine. “What shade of urine to shoot for—”
“Healthy color urine.” Yan didn’t look a bit annoyed or distracted. He pulled another apothecary jar from the shelf, reached in for some brown powder, tossed it into the paper plate, added a tacky substance from a drawer below the counter top, stirred the entire preparation with his bare fingers, and then poured it into a Ziploc. “This only let you relax. Not forget.”
Lenny’s brow wrinkled as Yan passed the plastic bag over the counter.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.
“You have problem, better solve it,” Yan said.
Her phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Jesus Christ, it’s about time you picked up.”
“I wasn’t here. It makes me crazy, staying home. Staring at the four walls. Waiting. I had to do something.”
“Did you check your machine? I must’ve left half a dozen messages on it this morning.”
“I just walked in the door, Tony. I’ve still got my coat on—”
“You said you did something. Like what? What is it you finally went out and did?”
“Look, I wish you’d give me some breathing room. Maybe try to understand a little of what I’m going through.”
“Okay, okay. I didn’t meant to jump at you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“No, I mean it. Honestly. But you have to understand, Pat’s like my own brother—”
“That’s why you should understand my feelings. You of all people, Tony. None of this is my fault. I love him. I’ve got a daughter who’s asking where he’s gone. Try putting yourself in my shoes.”
“I’m trying.”
“Sure.”
“I am, believe me. But when you say you went out to do something, and then don’t bother explaining… ”
“God damn it, Tony. God damn it. Everything’s a vicious circle with you. It’s like, ‘I’m sorry, fuck you, I’m not sorry.’ All in one breath, it comes out of your mouth. You’ll say anything to me until you get what you want.”
“I’m only trying to find out if you went to the police.”
“No. I didn’t. Is that enough for you? So I can maybe take my coat off—”
“You need to talk to them.”
“Shit. Here we go again.”
“Just listen…”
“I have. A hundred times. And for the hundredth time, I’m telling you I can’t.”
“Then what’s your plan? To keep checking out that information about towed vehicles on the Internet? You’re even too afraid to dial that number where you get a real person on the line. I mean, it’s like a compulsion at this stage. The Internet. It doesn’t accomplish anything. Nobody’s claimed the fucking car after a week, a whole goddamn week, and you have to talk to somebody—”
“I did.”
“What?”
“That’s where I went, okay? To see someone who can help.”
“I… why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?”
“I would’ve. If you’d given me a chance. If you’d stopped pressing long enough for me to open the closet and hang my coat.”
“If you could manage to answer a simple question, I wouldn’t need to—”
“Go screw yourself, Tony.”
“What?”
“You heard me. I think you should stick it up your own—”
“Look, let’s not argue like a couple of teenagers. We’re in this together. We’d better remember it.”
“Why? So I can listen to more of your insults and accusations?”
“How about for Pat’s sake? So we can find him. You’re saying you didn’t go to the cops. Okay, fine. Just tell me who…”
“No. I won’t jump when you snap your fingers. Think whatever you want of me, I’m not going to stand for that treatment. I’m sick of it. I’ve decided to handle this my way. And right now that means I’m getting off the phone.”
“Hold it, you can’t—”
“Oh? Keep the receiver up to your ear another second and you’ll find out what I can do.”
“Wait—”
“My way, Tony. Good-bye.”
The receiver slammed down on the hook.
Some thirty minutes after he left Snow Mountain, Lenny Reisenberg found himself seated at the counter in the Second Avenue Delicatessen on East 10th Street, waiting for the corned beef sandwich and kasha varnishkes he’d ordered.
No one could have been more surprised by this than Lenny. His original plan had been to buzz over to Sword HQ, fulfill his promise to Mary Sullivan, grab some take-out on the way back to his office, and eat quickly at his desk. A burger and fries, or maybe a tuna salad from the corner luncheonette… bland filler food to carry him until dinner, in other words. Things obviously had not gone as intended. But while his detour to Chinatown may have been unforeseen, Lenny was at least clear about why he’d headed down there. It was simple cause-and-effect. His fast appointment with Noriko Cousins had left him a bundle of tension and he’d resolved to pick up something to help him unwind. Simple. Lenny’s peregrinations since that time were harder to explain, however. Those wandering feet of his had taken him crosstown into the East Village instead of uptown to his office, a long journey in the wrong direction. What was more, they’d brought him to a restaurant he only visited when in the mood to indulge his occasional craving for Jewish soul food with delightful abandon, not have an automatic midday fill up akin to putting gas in the car at some roadside service plaza. It seemed to Lenny he’d truly gone a little out of his head. Despite the stacks of paperwork awaiting him at the office, he’d stayed away from it for almost two hours, veering farther and farther off course on his supposed walk back. And although he hadn’t felt the slightest bit hungry as he’d left Snow Mountain, or as he hiked here along the Bowery in the cold, or even as his waitress had handed him a menu only two or three minutes earlier, he’d all at once become desperately impatient for a towering heap of cured beef, not to mention that side of pan-fried buckwheat groats and bow-tie noodles….
