“Come on, Henry. You’re exhausted.” Josh looked at his parents. “You can’t let him go out at this hour. The roads are full of drunks.”
“Joshua,” his father began.
“Dad,” he said in a whine he must have perfected as a child. “It’s just a matter of common courtesy. Let him sleep on the couch down here. Mom?”
“Silver Lake is — far away,” she said, tentatively, looking at her husband. Then, more confidently she added, “The sofa folds out and there’s a bathroom down here.”
“Well, I’m going to bed,” Mr. Mandel said “You want to stay Henry, stay.”
“Thank you,” I said to his back.
Mrs. Mandel opened a closet and pulled out some sheets and blankets. She put them on the couch.
“It folds out,” she said.
“Thanks.”
We looked at each other, then she looked at Josh. “Go to bed, Josh.”
“In a minute, Mom,” he said. “I’ll just help Henry with the couch.”
Defeated, she murmured her good-nights and slipped out of the room. We listened to her footsteps as she climbed the stairs.
“What a little brat you are,” I said.
“It isn’t over yet, you know,” Josh said.
“I know. I know.”
“It might go on forever.”
“One day at a time,” I said and nuzzled him. “I’m really tired.”
“Do you mind us not sleeping together?”
“This is their house,” I said. “Let’s make it easy on them. They’re probably upstairs awake as it is.”
“How do you know that?” he asked, smiling.
“Years of legal training,” I replied and kissed him. He kept his lips closed. “Josh, that’s not how to kiss.”
“My saliva,” he said, biting his lower lip. “It might carry the virus.”
“In negligible amounts, if at all,” I replied. “Let’s not let this thing run our lives.”
We kissed again, properly.
“Go to bed, Josh, and let your parents get some sleep.”
He pulled himself up from the floor and said, “You know what’s really going to drive them crazy, is when it sinks in that you’re not Jewish.”
I smiled, then, remembering, asked, “Josh, the night Jim tried to kill himself and you called me, you didn’t actually speak to me, did you?”
He shook his head. “No, I hung up before you answered. Why?”
“Because someone else called, too,” I said, “and I now know who it was.”
“Is it important?”
“Could be,” I replied. “Good night, Josh.”
“I love you,” he said, and slipped quietly from the room. I watched the last embers spark and burn themselves out. When I finally arranged myself on the couch, my last conscious thought was not of Josh but of Jim Pears.
20
I heard someone rattling around in the next room and sat up on the couch. It was eight in the morning and I felt as close to hung- over as I had in two years. I put on my trousers and shirt and followed the noise into the kitchen where I found Mr. Mandel pouring himself a cup of coffee. He seemed startled to find me still there.
“You want a cup?” he asked.
“Thank you.” I studied him. Short and slender, he so resembled Josh that it was like looking forty years into the future.
“You want some cake?” Mr. Mandel asked, unwrapping a crumb cake.
“No thanks,” I replied. It made my teeth ache just to look at it.
He caught my expression. “I have a sweet tooth,” he said. “So does Joshua.”
“He likes chocolate,” I volunteered, remembering a box of chocolate cookies I’d seen at his apartment.
“Anything chocolate,” Mr. Mandel agreed. “And marzipan. He likes that.”
He brought two cups of coffee to the table and then went back to the counter for his piece of cake. We sat down. He blew over the top of his coffee before sipping it. I noticed the thin gold wedding band he wore. The kitchen was filled with light and papered in a light blue wallpaper with a pattern of daisies. Copper aspic molds decorated the walls. All the appliances — refrigerator, microwave, dishwasher, Cuisinart — were spotlessly clean and new- looking. We were sitting at a little pine table.
“Your house,” I said, tentatively, “is very nice.”
“Selma,” he replied, referring to his wife, “puts a lot of work into it. She wallpapered this room by herself.”
“It looks professional.”
“You sure you’re not hungry? There’s cereal, eggs.”
“No, I don’t eat much.”
He looked at me appraisingly. “You are on the thin side. So, you live up in San Francisco.”
“Not exactly. I live in a little town down the bay. It’s where Linden University is located.”
“Yes, Linden University,” he said, impressed. “You go to school there?”
“Law school.”
“Good,” he said, taking a bite of his cake. “I wish I could get Joshie interested in something like law school.”
“He’s still pretty young.”
This was the wrong thing to say. Mr. Mandel glared at me and then pressed the bottom of his fork into the little crumbs of sugar that had fallen from the cake to the plate.
“Mr. Mandel,” I began.
“Listen,” he said wearily. “We talked enough last night. We’ll talk again. For now, let’s just enjoy our coffee.”
“Sure.”
We enjoyed our coffee for five tense minutes. At the end of that time Mrs. Mandel came in, wearing a padded floral bathrobe and black Chinese slippers. She said her good-mornings and offered me breakfast.
“He doesn’t eat,” her husband informed her.
“But you should,” she said. “You’re so thin.”
Our discussion of my weight was cut short by Josh’s appearance. He was wearing a ratty plaid bathrobe, the original belt of which had apparently been lost and was replaced by a soiled necktie. His hair was completely disheveled, his glasses sat halfway down his nose and he cleared his throat loudly. Ignoring us, he poured himself a cup of coffee. He cut a piece of crumb cake which he ate at the counter, and then announced, “I’m starving.”
The rest of us, who had been watching him, transfixed, came back to life.
“Good morning, Josh,” his father said acerbically.
“Good morning,” he replied crankily.
“What do you want, Joshie?” his mother asked.
“Scrambled eggs,” he said, “with cheese. And matzoh brei. And sausage.”
“Sausage he wants with matzoh brei,” Mr. Mandel said, smiling at me. I smiled back, feeling like a complete intruder.
Josh smiled at me, too. That smile packed a lot of meaning and it was lost on no one. “How did you sleep, Henry?”
“Fine,” I replied.
“Not me,” he said. “I missed you.”
Mr. Mandel said, “You say this to hurt your mother.”
“Shut up, Sam,” Mrs. Mandel snapped. “Get me the eggs out of the refrigerator, Josh.” She turned to me and said, in a quavering voice, “You eat, too, Henry. You’re too thin.”
Mr. Mandel rose noisily from the table and left the room. Somewhere in the house a door slammed shut. Mrs. Mandel looked at us and said, “He’s — it’s going to take time.” Then she began to weep.
I called Tony Good, got his answering machine, and left a message that I wanted to see him. Josh came into the room and sat on the ottoman at the foot of my chair.
“Who was that?” he asked.
“Business,” I replied, not wanting to have to explain Tony Good to Josh. There were enough Tony’s in the world — Josh would encounter one of them eventually. “You’re full of little surprises,” I added.
“You mean about not sleeping well.”
I nodded.
“They have to get used to the idea,” he replied, but his eyes were uncertain.
“You’re right.” We looked at each other. “I have a confession to make “
“What?”
“I never told my parents.”
He cocked his head and stared at me. “You didn’t? Why not?”
“I guess the easy answer is that they died before I got around to it,” I replied. “But the honest answer is — I was afraid.”
He scooted forward on the ottoman so that our knees touched and said, “I can’t believe you’re afraid of anything.”