Just outside the Office, sitting on a dolly, was the spotlight I’d seen in the parking lot. Inside, Brodsky’s door was closed. Empty ISS desks crowded the floor, and Pinge was smiling at a notepad. She wrote something down for a big, blushing roadie, who was leaning one-handed on the border of her blotter.
We sat in the waiting chairs we’d fallen in love in. June put my hand on the weapon in her pocket. She narrowed her eyes and bit on her lip, digging her nails in my wrist.
Miss Pinge slid the notepad across her desk.
The roadie pushed his bangs back and asked of her softly, “This your home or your celly, ladyfriend?”
“Shh,” she said, seeing us.
The roadie said, “What?”
Pinge chinned air in her own direction and the roadie leaned way over the desk. This blocked Pinge’s sightline, I saw my moment, and I kissed June’s neck and the kiss made her gasp.
I’d started by her ear and was going toward her shoulder, about to, with my free hand, squeeze her thigh so she’d gasp more, but a guy with a soulpatch was standing in the doorway.
He lifted one lip-corner and gave me the cockeye = “I can see what you’re doing, there, but I won’t tell.”
I liked him.
“The hell, Raymond,” he said to the one who loved Pinge called Raymond. “We’re chewed we don’t get a move on already.”
“Just a minute,” said Raymond.
“Are you the lighting guys?” June asked the soulpatch.
“We’re the lighting grunts, cutiepie.”
“Installation experts,” said Raymond.
“We push the lights on dollies, hoist the lights on guywires, secure the lights to their end-locales, and finally we plug them in. After that we go smoke in the truck.”
“We also gotta calibrate—”
“We don’t gotta calibrate nothing. The only other thing we do is what I already told you, but backward to the truck. That’s why you stay in school there, cutie. So’s when you meet someone you want to date with, you don’t feel pressured to prevaricate about calibrating when in fact there’s no calibrating you do.”
“Jeez, Tony,” said Raymond.
“Hey,” said the soulpatched Tony, chinning the air at Miss Pinge. “She cares about you don’t calibrate? Then pretty or no, she’s the wrong girl for you. Let me tell you, Miss: Raymond here is a progressive rock and roll musician of the temporarily defunct funk-metal genre. His talent is genius-par. World was fair, he’d be rich and famous already. We both would cause he’s my cousin and we got a band together, Blaine the Minority, and I’m not so bad at bass he’d ditch me once he made it, but even if I was that bad at bass, he wouldn’t ditch me, because he’s a good friend, and if you think that’s common in this world, you live a truly blessed life, but also you got another think coming, and you should think that think twice or even three times first.”
“Excuse me, sir,” said someone behind him. Tony moved and I saw it was Shpritzy.
Miss Pinge sent Raymond away with a hand-pat. Tony followed at his heels and made wet kissing sounds.
The Five had entered the Office with Berman.
The Levinson told me, “A friend of ours: Berman.”
Berman chinned air at June and gave her a wink. June chinned air back and did not give a wink, and that might have reassured me, but for all I knew June couldn’t wink — I knew I couldn’t wink — so for all I knew, she’d have winked were she able. It happened, however, that she was holding my hand, and she certainly could’ve given it a reassuring squeeze, but no squeeze came, and I wasn’t reassured. Reassured of what, though? That she didn’t still like him? Well… yes. Except why should I want reassurance of that? They’d broken up. They’d never kissed. They didn’t speak. Above all, June and I were in love. I wanted reassurance because she’d gotten winked at, but it wasn’t her fault that she’d gotten winked at. It was Berman’s fault. He shouldn’t have winked. He shouldn’t have gotten me wanting reassurance. Especially because there could be no reassurance. That’s what was chomsky. To think that a hand-squeeze would reassure was chomsky. Had June squeezed my hand, I wouldn’t feel reassured; I’d only wonder why she thought I wanted reassurance. I’d worry that she thought I wanted reassurance because Berman’s wink was, in fact, worth worrying about. = If June had squeezed my hand, I’d want more reassurance. And I saw it was good that she hadn’t squeezed my hand. Which isn’t to say I stopped wanting reassurance, but that all at once I saw what needed doing, not to me or for me, but by me: I had to tell Berman not to wink at my girlfriend. Had he not been an Israelite, I’d’ve thought of that sooner, gone straight to confrontation. Instead of burning sweaty seconds lamely sorting useless feelings, I’d have risen to my feet and said, Don’t you fucken wink at her.
And that is exactly what I was just about to do. I’d let go of June’s hand and planted mine on my chair-arms, but no sooner had I started leaning forward to rise than Josh Berman chinned air and winked at me, undermining my resolve, my whole sense of what was called for.
I leaned back, puzzled.
Berman opened his coat like a stranger-danger flasher to show me the pennygun riding at his flank — it was held to his fleece by a strip of velcro.
The unspoken subject at hand shifted quickly.
I shrugged and made my lips fat = Glad you have a weapon, but why not hide it in your pocket?
He clicked his tongue against his teeth = “Clever, my holster, I know.”
Then he closed up the coat and said, “Finally we meet.” He was acting as if we’d never laid eyes on each other. It didn’t seem possible that he wouldn’t remember — we were in the same place where we’d met the first time — but maybe he hadn’t noticed me there. Or maybe he was embarrassed for how he’d acted toward Ruth. He deserved to be embarrassed, and that was punishment itself, so I didn’t say anything; I channeled Ally Kravitz, attempted to give Berman the benefit of the doubt. My face must have, despite that, betrayed what I remembered.
“Wait a second!” said Berman. “I think I saw you right here on Tuesday. Crazy. Wow. No idea. I had no idea.”
That’s something, I said.
I didn’t like being so casual about it. Benefit of the doubt, I thought, benefit of the doubt… But he should have either said something, or he should have said nothing. He shouldn’t have said nothing and then said something, much less with fake surprise… Or maybe he should have? Maybe he was being just as human as anyone? Maybe I wanted to think he did something he shouldn’t have done because that would make it easier for me to believe I disliked him for being, in some objective way, a dickhead, rather than because he used to date June and I was petty and jealous? What worried me more? Not liking an Israelite for my own petty reasons, or liking a dislikable Israelite because he was an Israelite? I couldn’t tell. Meow meow, meow meow. I squeezed my own hand.
That’s something, I said.
He said, “Something is right. I got set straight. You saw it yourself.”
Yeah? I said.
“About the blankspot, I mean. That really got to me.”
Right, I said. I said, Ruth’s smart.
“Yeah,” he said. “She’s pretty smart.”
No, I said. Ruth’s really smart.
“I guess, you know, I don’t know. I guess I must not have come off so — you know, she and my brother had a really ugly break-up.” Was he being sincere? Was he truly apologetic? What did that even mean, truly apologetic? He was saying all the right things, things I didn’t want to hear. “I’m real tight with my brother and—”