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A GOOD ONE

Standing in the lobby of the Global Toys building was a young guy in a cheap suit. A pencil mustache rested not quite naturally above his open mouth, as if his upper lip were embarrassed about something and had decided to wear a toupee. Gershon wanted to ask him where the elevator was but, a second later, spotted it himself. He knew that Mr. Lipskar would consider him unprofessional because he had no brochures. He should have thought about that in advance and at least packed the presentation in his carry-on luggage. He probably would have if that annoying dream of his wife’s hadn’t been bouncing around in the space of his skull while he was packing. “I.D., please,” Mustache said, and Gershon replied, surprised, “Excuse me?” “An I.D.,” Mustache repeated, and said to the bald black guy in the gray jacket standing next to him, “You see the kind of characters we get here?”

Gershon went through his pockets slowly. In Israel he was used to always showing identification, but this was the first time someone outside the country had asked him for anything like that, and somehow, Mustache’s tough New York accent made it sound as if, in another second, he’d cuff him and read him his rights. “They take their time, don’t they?” Mustache said to the black guy in the jacket. “Why not?” Jacket smiled a soft, yellow smile. “We’re here anyway.” “What can I tell you, Patrick,” Mustache said, glancing at the passport Gershon handed him, “your mother didn’t name you Patrick for nothing. You’re a saint.” He handed the passport back to Gershon and mumbled something. Gershon nodded and started walking toward the elevator. “Hold on,” Mustache said, “where are you running to? Hey, you, don’t you understand English?” “Actually, I do understand English,” Gershon answered impatiently, “and if you don’t mind, I’m in a hurry to get to a meeting.” “I asked you to open your briefcase, Mr. Actually-I-Do-Understand-English,” Mustache said, imitating Gershon’s Israeli accent. “Will you do that for me?” And he said to Jacket, who was standing next to him, having the time of his life, trying not to smile, “I’m telling you, it’s a zoo in here.” Gershon thought about the half-eaten apple in his empty attaché case. He tried to imagine Mustache’s wiseass reaction when he saw it, and Jacket next to him losing the battle to control himself and bursting out laughing. “Well, open it already,” Mustache continued. “You know what open means, sir?” And he quickly spelled the word. “I know what open means,” Gershon replied, clutching the attaché case to his chest with both hands. “I also know what closed means, and nominal yield, and oxymoron. I even know the second law of thermodynamics and what Wittgenstein’s tractatus is. I know lots of things you’ll never know, you arrogant little nothing. And one of those amazing secrets you’ll never get to host under the very thin skin of your brain is what I have in my attaché case. Do you even know who I am? Why I came here today? Do you even know anything about existence? The world? Anything beyond the number of the bus that takes you here and home every day, beyond the names of the neighbors in that dark, crummy building you live in? “Sir …” Jacket tried to stop the flow with pragmatic politeness, but it was too late. “I look at you,” Gershon went on, “and in a second I see your whole life story. Everything’s written right there, on that receding hairline of yours. Everything. The best day of your life will be when the basketball team you root for wins the championship. The worst day will be when your fat wife dies of cancer because your medical insurance doesn’t cover the treatment. And everything that comes between those two moments will pass like a weak fart so that at the end of your life, when you try to look back, you won’t even be able to remember what it smells like …”

Gershon didn’t even have time to feel the fist connect with his face. When he came to, he found himself on the lobby’s elegant marble floor. What revived him was a series of kicks to the ribs and a deep, pleasant voice echoing in the space of the lobby that reminded him a little of a late-night radio announcer’s voice. “Let it go,” the voice repeated, “let it go, Jesus, he’s not worth it.”

He noticed now that embedded in the floor were small gold stones forming the letter G—the first letter of his first name. He could have chalked it up to coincidence, but Gershon chose to imagine that the construction workers who built this skyscraper knew that he’d come here one day and wanted to make some kind of gesture in his honor so he wouldn’t feel so alone and unwanted in this evil city. The kicks didn’t stop and they felt so real, just like his wife’s dream. Maybe the baby girl her father left in the carriage was actually her. Could be. After all, her father was kind of a shit. Maybe that’s why the dream was so important to her. And if she’d needed a hug in the dream, he could have hugged her. He could have taken a second’s break from his fucking struggle with the traitorous suitcase, which at this very moment was probably sniffing strangers’ ankles on a carousel in some tiny airport on the West Coast, hold her tightly in his arms, and tell her, “I’m here, sweetheart, I may be flying today but I’ll be back soon.”

The black guy in the gray jacket helped him up. “You okay, sir?” he asked, and he handed him his attaché case and a tissue. “You’re bleeding a little.” He said a little in a gentle, muted voice, as if he were trying to shrink it to the size of a drop. Mustache was sitting on a chair near the elevator, crying. “I apologize for him,” Jacket said, “he’s going through a tough time right now.” The word tough he enlarged. Almost shouted. “Don’t apologize,” Mustache said through his tears, “don’t say you’re sorry to that bastard.” Jacket began shrugging and sniffling helplessly. “His mother …” he tried to whisper to Gershon. “Don’t tell him,” Mustache wept, “don’t you say a word about my mother, you hear? Or I’ll let you have a good one too.”

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