“He did not ask to be remunerated, if that is what you mean.”
“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t setting you up for some kind of scam,” I said. Then, gentle as I could: “What happened to Emil is a matter of public record. For all you know—”
“Yes, for all I know, this Hawley is a pranker. But he set a time, he was to pick me up at ten. I put on my suit, I told Nurse Rosa I was going to leave for the day. I waited at the door—early, but there was no such animal. Ten o’clock came and it went. I searched for this Hawley on the computer—I found the address of his shop, the telephone. I called many times. Nobody answers. Now? I cannot sleep. First I become enraged, then I am full with self-pity. In the night I beg the Almighty to have mercy and kill me off once and for all.” He shook his head. “Pardon my foolishness.”
“No, I get it, Mr. Elkaim—this guy made promises, it touched a nerve. But level with me, do you…like, have a lot of money? Would somebody…maybe somebody who knew about your condition…would somebody be interested in making a grab for what you’ve got?”
“I always saved.”
“Yes but…who would know about that?”
“Today? Anybody can know anything.”
I wrestled with the last bit of resistance surging in my chest.
“And you do understand,” I said, “I’m not a real licensed investigator.”
“Your credentials mean nothing to me. You are Herschel’s boy, and I always trusted you. Your uncle loved you too—even when he could not show it.”
“Okay but…” I raised pleading hands. “What is it you’d like me to do exactly?”
“Find this Hawley person. Do not scare him away. Just see who he is and talk to him. Something possessed him to visit—try to find out what changed his mind.”
“You say he was a big guy?” I was trying to be comical.
“But gentle,” Elkaim countered. “This man is not the warrior type.”
I took it in. Right then and there I told myself to be as blunt as possible. This was my last chance to slip out of the land of family obligation.
“Mr. Elkaim, I can look into this guy, I’m happy to. But I want you to know I’m pretty sure you’ve either been the victim of some kind of scam, or this guy is just some weirdo. I mean, even if he could prove Emil’s innocence…” I tried to weather my words with pleading eyes.
But Charles Elkaim wasn’t listening, he was already digging into the inside pocket of his old brown coat. He grabbed my hands and pressed a crisp fold of bills into my palm with fervor.
“One thousand. For an honest day’s work. Find him. Talk to him. One time. This is all I ask.”
“No, I don’t need this, I—”
“Please.” The confidence of his gesture made my heart sink—I made a mental note to deliver a full refund.
“I can’t promise anything, Mr. Elkaim, I…”
He took off his glasses and showed me his dark eyes, humbled by time.
Then you’ll help him, the ghost of Herschel whispered in my ear. God in heaven, I knew you would.
2
Clouds were moving in over the noisy street as I made my way back to the car. I shrouded my eyes from the last of the glare and walked to where I’d parked off Fairfax. Outside the musty womb of assisted living, here in the sunlight zone, the world suddenly seemed hypercharged—with false exuberance. Was there really any sense in this poor dying man dredging up the worst tragedy of his life? The thousand bucks stuffed into my jacket pocket said doubtful, but the daytime crowds with their counterfeit busyness screamed yes! why not? everything is possible!
I got into my dinged-up 2016 Jetta, hit the ignition and fired up Google Maps: Steam World Studios in the City of Commerce was forty-eight minutes away. Hawley sounded like a nice enough guy, but what I knew about him wasn’t much—he made miniature sets for the movies and freaked out old men in nursing homes with outrageous claims.
And it wasn’t like I could save Charles Elkaim. Nothing was going to save him—this creaking thing, the last friend Hersch ever had—Herschel, who adopted me at twelve, saved me from state proceedings—Herschel the Good. Even now, driving past Farmers Market and all the bus benches of my youth, the memory of Herschel’s disappointed gaze slaughtered me. Herschel who gave me everything so I could pay him back by flubbing college, botching a music career, messing up every job, every relationship.
But I never cried. Almost, which is worse.
Why couldn’t I?
Because in the debit column of the spirit, I knew I still owed him. Yup. Jewish guilt tax, unpaid.
Now in the midday gridlock on Wilshire heading east, I cursed my late uncle out loud—“Nice going, noodnik!” He was operating from the great beyond, dangling absolution like keys to the family car, but would I ever really be off the hook? The impossibleness of our bond followed me like a tracking device. I’d wanted to please him, wanted to be him, wanted to best him, I wanted…
Crossing Western, a ginormous SUV cut me off and I slammed the brakes.
“Go fuck yourself, doucheface!”
I was way too jumpy for 11:45 in the morn, crackling with burdens. Had I even loved my uncle? Probably, but the thicket of other complicated feelings camouflaged the love part, so that now, stuck on this godforsaken river of metal, even now, years after the funeral I didn’t attend, I couldn’t even just miss him without the tinted lens of failure—my failure, the failure to make him proud. No, I’d always be what he called me—“the king of jumping ship”—the picture of financial instability, rocky love affairs, crazy, grandiose dreams.
And in the end?
He was used to it already; he viewed me from the protected space of deep irony, but laced with a drop of pity, too. I was the shlumiel, the sad-sack bluffer who continuously promised to go straight and do better but always ended up in another situation, begging for a hand, and for forgiveness.
Traffic lurched and crawled. I dialed Steam World once, twice, three times. No answering machine—had to be a landline. Someone tried to make a left onto Sixth too late, setting off an orchestra of honking horns and public yelling, but this time I kept it zipped—agitation sent me inward. No, I couldn’t just mourn Herschel, just love him—not before getting past the traffic jam inside, bumper-to-bumper family shit. Seeing Elkaim brought it allllll back, full force, the unanswerables: Why couldn’t it have been different? Why couldn’t I have been different? Either/or. Why couldn’t he have gone easy on me or why couldn’t I have had the common sense to stop angling for the gold badge I’d never get? And why on earth didn’t I stop turning to him for money? For at the heart of our protracted battle was money, the stink of it: how to earn it, save it, not spend it. Depression-born Herschel was on a first-name basis with scarcity. Money gravity was the gravity—part of the way you stood right by God. Fair enough. But in the middle-of-the-middle-class safety zone he built for us, I seemed to come to the conclusion that money was a kind of kryptonite. Hold onto money and it could define you, envelop you, a fate worse than death.
I turned south on Vermont, remembering our last hours together but we didn’t know it—I’d changed batteries in the remote, put it in his hand.
“It smells of coffee,” he’d said, back hunched in his worn olive wingback chair.
“I made some.”
