Brodsky said, “I’ll make you a deal. If you promise to stop fighting, I’ll have Miss Pinge give you a copy of your file.”
Promising’s against the Law, I said. If I tell you I won’t fight anymore, that should be good enough.
“That is good enough,” he said. “You agree not to fight anymore?”
I said, No.
“You’re impossible!” he said. Now he was pissed at me.
I felt better and I egged him on. I said, My mom’ll get my record anyway.
“That’ll be up to her,” said Brodsky. He picked up the telephone and dialed. A few seconds later, he said, “I’d like to speak to Judah Maccabee…Yes, I’ll wait.”
Tamar Maccabee was my mother. Whereas Judah Maccabee was my father, whose voice was louder than anyone’s. You were not supposed to bother him at work, especially not in the middle of a trial, and he was at work, in the middle of a trial, representing Patrick Drucker, a local White Supremacist, in a case against the city of Wilmette, Illinois. My dad knew about my fight at King Middle School in Evanston, but he didn’t know about any of the ones at Aptakisic. My mom thought it was better if we didn’t mention those to him, and I agreed — I wanted to protect him from disappointment. I still remained calm though, for roughly three seconds, because I decided Brodsky had just made a mistake, and I was going to tell him that he must have dialed the wrong number, that he was supposed to dial the number for Tamar Maccabee, not Judah, but right when I opened my mouth to speak, Brodsky nodded at me, half-smiling, his eyebrows cranked up to what used to be his hairline = “Surprise, Gurion, it’s you who’s made the mistake.”
I saw my curved reflection in the bend of Brodsky’s handset, down by the mouthpiece. My neck was three or four times the width of my face in there, just bulging out — begging, it seemed, for a chop — and the hairs June had touched were glossy and sharp. When at last I found my eyes, just barely pinpoints, reflected blood-red by a trick of the light, I thought: I could take you. I could wipe you out, Gurion. I could end you, easy, with just these bare hands.
Then Brodsky moved the handset, held it out before me, and I was looking at the pattern of holes in the earpiece. Brodsky said, “Gurion.” So did my father. I rumbled some gooze, brought the thing to my face.
Hello, I said.
“Are you hurt?” said my father.
I said, There was a charleyhorse, but I fixed it.