Thomas Pynchon - Bleeding Edge

Oof. Isn’t this the moment to go stomping out the door with a dignified yet unequivocal over-the-shoulder fuck-you? “Well. Let me think about that.”

Brooke and Avi finally show up back in the States looking like they’ve spent the year at some strange anti-kibbutz dedicated to screen-staring, keeping out of the sun, and not missing too many meals, Elaine taking one look at Brooke promptly conveys her over to Megareps, a neighborhood health club, and negotiates a trial membership while Brooke loiters at the snack bar on the ground floor, contemplating muffins, bagels, and smoothies in a less than objective way.

Maxine isn’t that eager to see her sister but figures she has to do at least a drop-by. Turns out at the moment Elaine and Brooke are down at the World Trade Center eyeballing the unexplored shopping potential of Century 21. Ernie is supposed to be at Lincoln Center watching some well-received Kyrgyz movie but has actually snuck over to The Fast and the Furious at the Sony multiplex, so Maxine finds herself for an enchanted hour and a half in the company of her brother-in-law, Avram Deschler, who is minding a Tongue Polonaise of Elaine’s, which has been slowly cooking all day in the kitchen, filling the place with a smell initially intriguing, soon compelling. The matter of the federal visits can’t help but come up.

“I think it’s only about my clearance.”

“Your…?”

“You heard of a computer-security firm called hashslingrz?”

A pointed look at the bottom of her shoe. “Dimly.”

“They get a lot of federal work, NSA and so forth, and they’ve offered me a job, and in fact I’m starting week after next.” Waiting for at least dazzled admiration.

That’s all the federal house calls were about? Sorry, somehow Maxine doubts it. Security clearances are routine low-level chores, and there is some deeper horseshit in progress here.

“So… you met the big guy, Gabriel Ice.”

“He actually showed up in person, in Haifa, to recruit me. We did breakfast at a falafel joint in Wadi Nisnas. He seemed to know the owner. I told him what I wanted for salary, benefits, and he said OK. No hondeling. Tahini all over his shirt.”

“Just a regular guy.”

“Exactly.”

As if only ditzing from topic to topic, “Avi, you know anything about a piece of software called Promis?”

A pause maybe a week or two further along than blue lines on a stick. “Kind of an old story in the business. The scheming and counterscheming at Inslaw, the court cases, the FBI stealing it away, and so forth. A cash cow for Mossad, however. From what people tell me.”

“And the rumor about a backdoor…”

“There wasn’t one originally, but certain customers insisted, so the program got modified. More than once. In fact, it’s an ongoing evolution. Today’s version, you wouldn’t recognize it. Or so I’m told.”

“Long as I’m picking your brain here, somebody also told me about a computer chip, some Israeli vendor, maybe you’ve run across it, sits quietly in a customer’s machine absorbing data, from time to time transmitting what it’s gathered out to interested parties?”

Not that he jumped or anything, but his eyes have begun to roam the room. “Elbit makes one that I know of.”

“Ever run across one, like, physically?”

He finally meets her gaze and then sits staring at her, as if she’s some kind of a screen, and she figures the point of diminishing returns has arrived.

Soon Brooke and Elaine come back from downtown with a number of Century 21 bags plus a strange vegan p’tcha into whose crystalline depths one can gaze with growing albeit perplexed fascination. “Lovely,” according to Elaine, “like a three-dimensional Kandinsky. Perfect with the tongue.”

Tongue Polonaise is a childhood favorite around here. Maxine used to think it meant some classical-piano novelty act. All day, a pickled beef tongue has been out in the kitchen simmering in an elaborate tsimmis of chopped apricots, mango puree, pineapple chunks, cherries with the pits out, grapefruit marmalade, two or three different varieties of raisin, orange juice, sugar and vinegar, mustard and lemon juice, and of the essence, for reasons lost in some snoozy nimbus of tradition, gingersnaps—Nabisco by default, since Keebler dropped the old Sunshine variety a couple of years back.

“She forgets the gingersnaps again,” Ernie likes to pretend to growl, “you’re gonna read about it in the Daily News. ”

The sisters warily exchange a hug. The conversation avoids all contact with the controversial until onto the living-room tube comes a Channel 13 yakker hosted by Beltway intellectual Richard Uckelmann called Thinking with Dick, whose guests today include an Israeli cabinet official Brooke and Avi used to run into at parties. Under discussion is the always-lively topic of West Bank settlements. After a minute and a half, though it seems longer, of government propaganda, Maxine blurts, “This guy didn’t try to sell you any real estate, I hope.”

Just what Brooke has been waiting for. “Miss Smartmouth,” a little screechy, “always with a remark. Try going out on night patrol sometime, arabushim throwing bombs at you, see how far that mouth gets you.”

“Girls, girls,” murmurs Ernie.

“You mean ‘girl, girl,’ I think,” Maxine sez, “I’m the one suddenly being trashed here.”

“Brooke only means she’s been to a kibbutz and you haven’t,” Elaine soothingly.

“Right, all day long at the Grand Canyon Mall in Haifa, spending her husband’s money, some kibbutz.”

“You, you don’t even have a husband.”

“Oh, look, a screamfest. Just what I came over here for.” She blows a kiss at the p’tcha, which seems to wobble in reply, and looks around for her purse. Brooke stomps off to the kitchen. Ernie goes after her, Elaine gazes sorrowfully at Maxine, Avi pretends to be absorbed in the television.

“All right, all right, Ma, I’ll behave, just… I was gonna say do something about Brooke, but I think that moment passed thirty years ago.” Presently, Ernie comes out of the kitchen eating a gingersnap, and Maxine goes in to find her sister shredding potatoes for latkes. Maxine finds a knife and starts chopping onions and for a while they prep in silence, neither willing to be the first to talk, God forbid it should be anything like “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, Brooke?” Maxine eventually. “Pick your brain a minute?”

A shrug, like, I’ve got a choice?

“I was out on a date with a guy who says he’s ex-Mossad. I couldn’t tell if he was bullshitting me or what.”

“Did he take off his right shoe and sock and—”

“Hey, how’d you know?”

“Any given night in any singles bar in Haifa, you can always find some loser who’s taken a Sharpie and put three dots on the bottom of his heel. Some old folklore about a secret tattoo, total bullshit.”

“And there are still girls who fall for it?”

“Didn’t you ever?”

“Come on, Jews and tattoos? I’m desperate, but not unobservant.”

Everybody makes nice for the rest of the evening. The Tongue Polonaise comes in on a Wedgwood platter Maxine only remembers seeing at seder. Ernie dramatically sharpens a knife and begins carving the tongue as ceremoniously as if it’s a Thanksgiving turkey.

“So?” inquires Elaine, after Ernie takes a bite.

“A time machine of the mouth, my darling, Proust Schmoust, this takes a man straight back to his bar mitzvah.” Singing a couple bars of “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena” just to prove it.

“It’s his mother’s recipe,” clarifies Elaine, “well, except for the mangoes, they hadn’t been invented yet.”