Aleksandar Hemon - The Making of Zombie Wars

“How was the cruise?” Joshua asked.

“Israel really is a promised land,” he said. Normally, Bernie looked bronze after returning from a cruise, but today he looked waxy.

“Did you stop anywhere else?”

“Oh, some sunny islands. I wasn’t feeling too well until we got to Haifa. Constance loved it!”

“And how’s Constance?”

“Great! Her boobs grow with age,” Bernie said, shaking his head in appalling admiration. “When she’s in the double Ds, I’ll be double dead.”

Kelly brought soup and Bernie emptied five little bags of crackers into the bowl. Will I be like this when I grow old? Joshua wondered. Will I turn into a man who eats as if hurrying to finish before the food is snatched away? Bernie cradled the bowl with his left hand, looming over it. He learned that from his parents, it was a habit they’d acquired in the camp. You had to eat quickly and there was no talking while food was being disposed of. Bernie slurped a few spoonfuls, but then stopped to clear his throat, as if about to say something important.

“How’s your mother?” he inquired.

“She seems fine,” Joshua said. “She asked about you too.”

“Did you tell her Connie and I went on a cruise?”

“She knew. She was hoping you were cruising on the Titanic .”

Bernie chortled: “A funny girl, she is, your mother.”

Kelly brought the rest of their lunch on a big tray, holding it high, so Joshua could see her nicely shaped biceps. Now that the food had arrived, the conversation was over for a while: Bernie cut into the lamb and it bled. Joshua watched Kelly swing her hips, slipping with ease between chairs, turning to push the kitchen door with her back. Women’s presence in the world, Joshua realized, reliably provided torment for him, for his fatigued, unyielding flesh. He couldn’t eat; he just sipped his rosé, far too dry, watching Bernie torture his undead meat. Normally, his father looked down on the plate while eating, as if any eye contact would slow down his chewing, his fists clenched around the knife and fork on either side of the plate, never letting them down. But this time he moved his jaw fitfully, glancing up at Joshua only to return his gaze to the lamb, presently swimming in its own blood. He stabbed a green bean, brought it to his mouth but didn’t take it. A single tear snowballed down his left cheek.

“Oh, man!” Joshua whimpered. He hadn’t anticipated this; this was supposed to be a routine Monday lunch with his father. “What is it now?”

“I don’t feel well,” his father said. “I haven’t been feeling well.”

Joshua had once watched Bush the Elder address the nation from the Oval Office. He was about to send our troops to some godforsaken place and highfalutin drivel was required to placate further the already indifferent American people. He was front-lit, the better to deliver the platitudes, so the Oval Office window behind him looked unreal, like a painted set. But then, in the middle of presidential bullshit, Joshua sensed a slight motion behind Bush and spotted a tree leaf falling, twirling through the frame of the backdrop window, which hence became real. The deciduous leaf suddenly made Bush look terribly old, and getting older by the instant. Mr. President was going to die and no troop deployment could ever stop that.

“What’s up, Bernie?”

Father pushed the bean across his plate, creating little blood waves.

“Nothing. Nothing really.” He put his fork down first, then his knife. Now he was unarmed. “It’s just that Constance was at a mall and some fat old geezer was throwing a penny into the fountain and just collapsed. He was so big they couldn’t get him out of the fountain. They had to bring in a forklift.”

“Did he die?” Joshua asked.

“I have no idea. If he didn’t, he will. Either way, Connie came back home to tell me she couldn’t stand to watch me perish. I assured her I wasn’t going to keel over anytime soon. She has a life coach now. She’s discovered she wants to live in Florida year-round. She wants to spend the rest of her life suntanning. She wants a new life, she says. The fact is, I don’t have much of it left.”

“Sturdy guys like you don’t keel over so easily, Bernie,” Joshua said. “You’ll be like Chaim. We’ll have to take you out to the woods, tie you to a tree, and leave you there for the wolves.”

Bernie wasn’t quite convinced. He finally put the blood-soaked bean into his mouth and chewed it listlessly. With another overloaded tray, Kelly flew out the swinging kitchen doors, as if about to break into song and dance. It was an entirely wrong time for her to be so young and merry. Script Idea #85: A mob informer, knowing that his lunch partners will take him out after dessert to clip him in a forest preserve, leaves a million-dollar cocaine package as a tip for the pretty waitress. She is forced to go on the run from the mob. Title: To Insure Promptness.

“I was taking so much Viagra, I was at constant risk of a heart attack,” Bernie said. “Lately I’ve been just eating her, and losing my breath at that.”

“Way too much information, Dad! You talking to me like that is too weird.” Joshua pushed his plate away. “Did something happen in Israel? Did you even go on a cruise?”

Bernie pressed the napkin into his face and shook his head. Joshua considered getting up and coming around the table to rub his back. Instead, he put his hand on his father’s forearm — his skin felt cold and clammy.

“Bernie! Goddamn it!” Joshua said. “Dad! Don’t.”

His father whimpered and sighed. He wiped his tears with his bloodstained napkin and stopped crying. Young and innocent, Kelly arrived with a pitcher of ice water.

“How are we doing?” she asked blithely, topping off their glasses.

“Fantastic!” Bernie said, wiping his mouth. “And I think I’m ready for my bread pudding.”

* * *

Joshua promised he’d pay back the two hundred dollars Bernie loaned him, but they both knew it would never happen. Outside Charlie’s Ale House, standing by the cruise-ship-sized Cadillac, they hugged, slapping each other’s back masculinely.

“We don’t spend enough time together,” Bernie said. “I like talking to you.”

“I like talking to you too.”

“I don’t know enough about your life. What you want, what you do. One day you left home and became a stranger.”

No, Joshua thought, one day Bernie left home and became a stranger. But this was no time for settling truth debts.

“I’m no stranger. I tell you stuff. I’m teaching, writing, hanging out. A simple life,” Joshua said. “And you’ll be okay. You’re a tough Hebrew, hard as a nail.”

“Sure. The Levins are survivors,” he said and squeezed Joshua’s face between his big palms, kissing his forehead, like the patriarch he wasn’t.

The car beeped and its doors unlocked, as in a dream. One leg inside, Bernie asked: “How’s Kimmy?”

“Fine,” Joshua said.

“Don’t screw that up. She’s a catch.”

Normally, Bernie would lean out of the window and wave at Joshua before he’d drive away, doing it exaggeratedly, as if he were about to go on a cross-country trip. Joshua waited for him to do so, unable to let go without the ritual, like a kid before sleep. But Bernie was taking his time playing with his phone and Joshua watched his hunched back, pathetically diminutive behind the wheel. On their family trips he’d loomed large, driving with blatant, if undeserved, confidence, complete with shouting along with the music from the radio and cursing at other drivers. “How’s it that I can remember things that took place fifty years ago,” Bernie had once asked him, “and I can’t remember what I did this morning?”