“I never asked about any license.”
“But Mikey,” Druff said, “there are all sorts of city ordinances. Restaurants have to be licensed to dispense food and drink. People are licensed to drive taxis, to sell newspapers from kiosks. Elevators are licensed. Souvenir vendors pay license fees before they’re permitted to hawk their wares outside stadiums — jerseys with the team logo emblazoned on the front, pennants for the home team, pennants for the visitors. My God, son, the man who sells you your hot dog from his little cart has to have a license. His ketchup is licensed, his mustard and napkins and piccalilli. These were rugs from the Middle East, Iran, from all those problematic, difficult trouble spots the gentleman from Delaware was telling you about that night. Why would the licensing requirement on a high-ticket item like a Persian carpet from a region of hot, intractable positions and insoluble problems be waived when a man selling pencils out of his cap or an organ grinder with a monkey dressed up like a bellboy has to go through City Hall before he’s allowed to hit the streets? Can you think of a reason?”
“No.”
“I mean, think about it, if you were in Su’ad’s position I should think you’d go around absolutely flaunting your license, waving it in front of you like someone surrendering on a battlefield with a white handkerchief.”
“I guess.”
“Well, of course,” said Druff. “So if you never asked to see it, and she never offered to show it to you, don’t you suppose it’s stretching things to say she was a rug merchant?”
“I guess.”
“Sure.”
“Su’ad smuggled rugs,” Mike said flatly, his face pale, his spirit without heft. His eyes were closed now. Squeezed tight. He seemed diminished in size to Druff, his very bulk deflated. Druff was as still as his son. He waited him out. When Mikey finally opened his eyes to look at his father, Druff simply stared at him. He offered no reassurances, and something new seemed gradually to creep across his son’s face like a shadow — bafflement, curiosity.
Because Druff was this hope pumper. It was his nature. He pumped hope for Mikey, for Rose Helen, even, as a politician, for his constituents, telling them their lives could be better, simpler, fixed like tickets, bargained for and traded up. It was not only his nature, it was his job. Maybe it had been his job even before it had become his nature. I have to be a hope pumper, Druff thought, it’s what I do. Nevertheless, the hope pumper wasn’t pumping no hope now. The well was dry. And he was waiting.
Then Mikey resumed explaining himself. Though he managed to follow him, Druff, distracted, was barely able to take it all in. He had to concentrate. Other things were on his mind, too.
“I don’t know what she wanted from me. When we got to the parking lot she was still bitching. It was that lecturer she was angry at, not me, the audience that hissed her and booed her when she made that remark. A few of them were trailing us, some of them were actually lined up along the path waiting for her as we went by. Their quarrel was with Su’ad, not with me. They made fun of the way she dressed. They passed remarks. I don’t think she even heard them, that she paid any attention. She was too busy complaining to me, arguing with me. As if I’d said those things. You’ve heard her. You know how she gets. She’s pretty hipped on this Palestine thing. They followed us to the parking lot. They milled around. I’m saying, ‘Look Su’ad, just get in the car. This isn’t any time to be standing out here.’ And she’s still lecturing me. About U.S. policy, the Israel lobby… Bitching at me as if I were responsible for what was happening over there. Finally I just had to shove her into the car. I mean, they were steamed.”
“Jews killed her? Jews ran her down?”
“No. I don’t even think they followed us. I could see them shaking their fists after us, though, as I drove off that lot.”
And Druff, stabbed by a sudden, astonished envy of the dead Lebanese woman, mildly contemplated the notion of enemies, entertained the thought of them, wondered, even momentarily wished that he’d had more in his life, people who would have pushed him in directions not of his choosing. If nothing happened to you you had to fall back on your character, spinning your life out of whole cloth, disaffiliate from the world. What he had had for an enemy had been merely his own body, his diseases, how they’d made him look in his suits. He wished now he had gone further in politics, drawn opponents from out of the woodwork, campaigners who might have gotten the goods on him, or even just slung a little mud. He’d been lazy with his life. Some stinginess of energy had stalled his heart, disengaged him and woken MacGuffins.
“What?” Druff asked. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I asked what she wanted me to do with that rug in the trunk.”
“You had a rug in your trunk?”
“In your trunk, Daddy. I was driving your car.”
“My car?”
“Don’t you remember? Mine was in the shop.”
“Well, what were you doing with a rug in the trunk?”
“Come on, Dad, I told you. I drove for her, Daddy. I was the wheelman.”
“The wheelman.”
“When she made her deliveries.”
“Of the smuggled rugs.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Jesus Christ, Mikey. Do you know what you’ve done?”
“Gone and gotten you in trouble?”
“Goddamn right.”
“Are we well off?”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“I’m sorry.”
“All right. What happened then?”
“Well,” Mikey said, “like I told you, she was bitching at me so bad it was hard for me to concentrate on my driving. It was your car, Dad. I didn’t want to smash it up in an accident. That’s why I told her that if she didn’t stop shouting and screaming at me I’d have to let her out at the light.”
In dread, the City Commissioner of Streets asked, “Which light?”
“Well, that push-button one on Kersh Boulevard,” his son said, his eyes shut, his own lights out. “Where they’re going to put that crosswalk.”
“Scene of the crime,” Druff said.
“Well, I pulled over. Well, I let her out at the curb.”
“Scene of the fucking crime.”
“Well, no,” his son said, “not exactly.”
“Near enough. Scene of the fucking crime.”
“No,” his son said. “Because after she got out of your car I drove another fifty or sixty feet before I remembered about the rug. That’s when I stopped and called out what did she want me to do with the rug in your trunk. She was still standing by that light.”
“Well, of course.”
“No,” Mikey said, “that’s just the thing. It was green. It had turned green in her favor.”
“Did anyone see you?” Druff said. “Did they hear you call her?”
“No. Absolutely not. Well, maybe whoever ran her down.”
“Someone was at the light?”
“In a car. Stopped in a car there, yes.”
“Sure,” Druff said. “Because the light was against him.” His heart was pounding furiously. He began to feel not angina but the conditions for angina, his heart tightening, circling his wagons. Sure, Druff thought, this happens too. Your mouth dries up, your tongue gets thick. You get nervous. You need your pills.
“Yes, but that’s just the thing, Daddy. Su’ad didn’t even answer when I called to her. She was staring so hard at the driver in that car stopped at that red light, it was as if she hadn’t even heard me.”
“Why didn’t she cross?” he asked slowly, as carefully as he could. So as not to spook the horses. To keep them from rearing, to keep their hooves from trampling his chest. (And this happens. You get too excited, too caught up in shit for your own good.)