Jay Fox - THE WALLS

The best thing to do is the simplest: Just go stand outside of the deli; wait there for either Isaac or Mordecai to come in. Even if they don't, there has to be someone who knows one of them. After all, there are always those few people who chat with the employees for at least six or seven hours a day; one of them would have to know where either Mordecai or Isaac lives.

This is something I can do tomorrow. Look at it out there. It's pouring. I really don't feel like standing in the rain. But how else can I find him? What about public records? What's a public record? What about deeds? Is there a way to look at those over the Internet? What if he rents? Well, he may have a lease for the store, but he probably owns his own home. Wait. What about the guy from the Ribs. Didn't he say he made copies of court cases?

The floodgates suddenly open once I hear the voice of Willis Faxo in my head: He wouldn't shut up about this lawsuit against his dad's store. Apparently, it was a slip and fall accident. The plaintiff and her husband were demanding something absurd…something like three million dollars. Would this suit be public record? Would it be filed in the court? Is there a record room or something? There has to be. That's what Rob does for a living. Maybe Isaac Adelstein's address will be in the file. They have to serve papers to him, right? Yes, they do. His address will be in there. It has to be.

The rain has subsided, but the sky is still the gray of cigarette ash. As the train begins its ascent into the landscape, I am welcomed to a neighborhood that is oddly reminiscent of Queens (perhaps it's not all that odd, as the two are parts of a greater whole — i.e. Long Island). Small, brick buildings flash by like frames painted on cellophane, the denizens of these structures hidden behind near-obsidian windows thick with generations of soot and dust. The train becomes saturated in the stunted light, in its shady optimism, and the faces of my fellow travelers begin to transform like Monet models.

I was amazed by the ease with which I retrieved the case file that contained all the information of the action against Mr. Adelstein. A man who sounded like Tone Lōc brought it to me. The case caption was:

Shannon Mason and Jeffrey Mason,

Plaintiffs,

V.

Isaac Adelstein, et al .,

Defendants

There was only a summons, a complaint, two affidavits, and a stipulation of discontinuance. On the summons, as well as one of the affidavits, was the address of Isaac Adelstein.

I look down to the copy of the summons in my hand. At the time of the purchase date, he lived three blocks away from the Avenue M stop on the Q — so much for Willis Faxo's complaint about Brooklyn natives' bizarre conception of space and time.

On the way there all of the various scenarios begin to play in my head. There's the one where Mr. Adelstein castigates me (“Do you know how many people have come here searching for that stupid artist? My son is not Coprolalia! Now get the fuck out of here before I call the police!”), and slams the door in my face. There's the one in which Mordecai's mother answers the door, and then does pretty much the same thing. There are other ones, too — positive ones. Mr. or Mrs. Adelstein could invite me inside to provide some background information on their son. One of them shows me Mordecai's old room, tells me about him, and then gives me his number. There's the one where Mordecai answers the door. There's also the one where someone named Jones or Goldstein or whatever opens the door, and then proceeds to inform me that the Adelsteins moved to Florida some time ago. Possibilities are limitless when one refuses to seek answers in earnest. Perhaps this is why I can conjure up so many.

I begin to walk up to the door, but feel guilty for smelling like smoke. I take another lap around the block (my seventh). I look at the clock upon my return. It's just half past five. Maybe no one's home. Maybe I should wait.

And yet I know this isn't the time for hesitation. This is it. This is either the last place I will have to go, the last place I will have to ask for information, or simply the end of this thread. I'm at the door, the chime of the bell fading as footsteps crescendo. A thin, older man opens the door. He has taupe-gray hair, thick brows, and crystalline eyes that are a glacial shade of blue. Stubble shadows his cheeks and neck. His nose has outgrown his face, but his ears are still relatively proportional to the rest of his head. He looks to me with his head slightly cocked. Debussy's “Clair de Lune” plays quietly in the house.

“Are you Isaac Adelstein?” I ask after a few moments of awkwardness.

“Yes.” He smiles curiously. “May I help you, son?”

“I–I'm here to see your son.”

“My son.”

“Yes, your son.” He is awaiting clarification. “Your son…Mordecai.”

“Mordecai,” he responds plainly. There is a certain patience in his voice, that slow determination that one has come to expect from older European men of the Greatest Generation — at least from those still lucid. “Come in, come in,” he says in a suddenly emphatic tone. The door opens wide.

I enter into his den, a warm space with abundant light. A piece in the style of Pollack catches my attention, as does a bookshelf that comprises an entire wall. The former is above the mantel; the latter is opposite the windows that look onto the street. He directs me to a chair as he walks to a desk that contains a lamp, an open book, and a legal pad. “You were a friend of his?” he asks as he closes the book and turns off the lamp. “You seem a bit young,” he adds.

“No, I've never met him,” I respond. “I would like to. That's what this is all about.”

He nods. I cannot see his expression because he begins looking through a vinyl collection that sits in a hollowed-out credenza adjacent to the bookshelf. “And by whom have you been sent?” he asks.

“No one. I'm here because I believe your son to be a famous artist.”

He laughs quietly as he pulls an album from the collection. “So you have come in search of Coprolalia, I presume.”

I return the quiet laugh. “Well…yes. I take it I'm not the first.”

“You're the first one to come to me.” I want to respond with something, but he begins anew before I have the opportunity with, “Sit down, please….” He turns to me with a raised brow. “My, you are a quiet one. Have you ever considered becoming an assassin? Perhaps a samurai?” He smiles again. He then pulls the needle before the last notes of the piece are played, removes the record from the turntable, places it into its jacket, and then reinserts the album back into the collection. “This is…this is never easy to say,” as he cuts the power of the player. He stares to the turntable as it loses speed: “I've grappled with it for nearly two months now.” He then turns, slowly, and begins in my direction. He sits upon a small sofa opposite me. A coffee table separates us. “Mordecai passed in April,” he says stoically. “He died in a car accident.”

The moment is suspended like a photographed gymnast. She strikes the trampoline, it recoils, and then shoots her into the air. In the photograph she remains meters above the trampoline, above the mats that have been carefully placed in strategic locations should the worst happen. She is the focal point, both of the photographer and the spectators (themselves just blurs and amorphous components of the necessarily amorphous crowd). It is irrelevant whether she is ascending, descending, at the apex of her parabola. It doesn't matter because we all assume that she will once again come back to the Earth.

“I'm so….”

He only raises his hand.