Jay Fox - THE WALLS

“So I needed to find a roommate on account of Tommy's being abducted by his parents and subsequently sent to rehab. His dad dropped a month's rent to help me out, which I was certainly grateful for, but I had no idea how I was supposed to go about finding a roommate without getting stuck with some type of lunatic. These were the days before the Internet and Craigslist and all that; the only way to go about things was either word of mouth or classifieds. I asked around for a few days, but no one needed a place — that, or they needed a place but couldn't pay the rent. So I took out an ad in the Voice , and I ended up meeting with five or six people. There were a lot of personality clashes, though. Mordy was the only guy I got on with. There was an immediate rapport between the two of us. I told him he could move in the next day.”

“Where was he living prior to this?”

“He was living either on or nearby Avenue M. I know he lived close to the train stop over there — with his parents.”

“Why did he want to move out?”

“It's not that there was any type of animosity between him and his parents; he just thought it sad for a man of twenty-three to be living with his folks. Also, he had always wanted to move into Manhattan — you know, just to experience it.”

“What did he do?”

“What do you mean?”

“What did he do for a living?”

“Worked at the family store. They owned a deli somewhere by Prospect Park. Still owns it, so far as I know.”

“Could you be more specific?”

“About what?”

“Where it is.”

“I know it's somewhere in either Park Slope or that one place to the south.”

“Windsor Terrace?”

“Yeah. That one.”

“Does he still work there?”

Faxo is pensive. He clutches the water bottle tightly. It crinkles, cracks; a pop resonates throughout the room. Scooter looks to Faxo's with stupefied awe. “Are you guys talking about your old roommate with the uncle who sounded like Larry David?”

“Yeah. Mordecai,” Willis responds.

“Mordecai,” Scooter nods. “Dude, that guy puffed tough.”

“He puffed what?”

“Detroitism…”

“So do you know if he still works there?”

“I really couldn't tell you. I do know that he was working there the last time I saw him, but that was about four years ago.”

“Daphne mentioned that the two of you had a falling out.”

“No, we just kind of lost touch. A falling out seems to imply that a specific event caused a gradual decay of relations. That never happened. The simple truth of the matter is that it's difficult to keep up with a man who refuses to own a phone.” He pauses. “And it doesn't have anything to do with him being Orthodox or anything like that — even though, so far as I know, there is no telephone prohibition in the Torah. In fact, the Hasids down in Boro Park are on their cell phones about as often as Manhattan businessmen, fourteen-year-old girls, and lazy entrepreneurs from Harlem and the Bronx, who don't do anything all day besides mooch off their chickenhead girlfriends while telling everyone within earshot that they're 'entrepreneurs', or, worse, 'producers'.”

“So what is he?”

“What do you mean?”

“In terms of being Jewish.”

“He was Jewish,” slowly.

“Was he reform, was he—”

“Oh…that. Yeah, he probably fell in that group. He wasn’t even kosher.”

“Was he an atheist?”

“I don't think he would have ever called himself by that title. He certainly never practiced when I lived with him. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard him talk about the subject. He probably celebrates the high holidays with the family, and he may fast whenever it's required, but religion isn't a big part of his life — at least it wasn't when I knew him. With how many born-agains there are these days, though, I guess you never can tell. He always described himself as a…what'd he call it?” He pauses. “A curious theist: Feeling is all; the name is sound and smoke, beclouding Heaven's glow.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“It should. It was one of Mordy's favorite lines. He was a big fan of Faust , though he claimed that no English translation ever did the work justice.”

The work downstairs comes to a sudden stop. The apartment is silent. Scooter spouts out something unintelligible and chuckles to himself. When neither Faxo nor I respond with anything more than knitted brows, he rises and reaches for the iPod that is plugged into the stereo. As he plops back down on the couch, he mentions that the name of the band that we're suddenly hearing goes by the name the Gryphon Shepherds. The two of us shrug and compliment his choice, though I am less concerned with the exposure to a new band, and more interested in the connection between Coprolalia and the man sitting across from me. This is rather obvious even to Scooter.

“Come to think of it, Mordy's mother was religious. His dad wasn't. No, man, his dad…man, his dad was a fucking trip. He's one of those old school New York intellectuals. Kind of like my granddad in a way, though he, my granddad, was more of an academic than an intellectual.”

“How old is Mordy's dad?”

“Old. His name is Isaac. Mordy's mother was his second wife. She would be in her mid- to late-fifties now. Mr. Adelstein would probably be closer to seventy.”

“Adelstein?”

“Yeah.”

“What was he like?”

“I don't know. You know Saul Bellow?”

“I've certainly heard of him. He's kind of a family favorite.”

“Do you know the book Humboldt's Gift ?”

“I haven't read it, but I've heard a good deal about it.”

“Well, there's this one character in it, Humboldt, who reminds me a lot of Mr. Adelstein. To a degree, mind you. What I mean to say is that the man has read everything, can argue about anything, and will mention everything from Gilgamesh to the most recent Bond film in a five minute time-span.”

“I know the type,” I say dryly.

“I'm sorry if I digress. It's the whole lack-of-sleep thing. It makes you crazy.” He smiles. “So, about Mordy. Now, as I've said, Mordy only lived with me for a month or so because we were kicked out of our apartment. It was some bullshit, man. One day the landlord's son came by to tell us that the cops had come into the building to stop a domestic situation down the hall — something that was certainly not out of the ordinary back in those days — and that they had seen syringes in the stairwell. Now, by this point, Tommy has been out of the apartment for well over a month. I've never used. Mordy, so far as I know, never used. On top of that, when I looked for these alleged needles, all I saw was fucking rat turds and broken glass,” he laughs. “So, my conclusion was that either the cops had the landlord clean them up, which is the most likely scenario in hindsight, or they never were there in the first place, which is what I believed at the time, largely due to my situation as a young black man in America.

“Now, legally speaking, we weren't evicted. We made a deal with the landlord's son, Joe, who said he would allow us to break our lease — yeah, yeah, 'allow'—but that, should we stay, he would have no problem allowing the po-lease to search our apartment at random. 'I don't want no fucking junkies in my fucking building, alright,'” Faxo says in a thick Italian accent. “The ultimatum, in other words, was we either move out or live under constant surveillance. Now, a more conservative person would hardly see this the way I do. He would probably think, If you have nothing to hide, then you shouldn't have a problem with such an invasive policy — although this individual would probably use the euphemism 'a more transparent, secure policy', a positive, to describe the situation—, but what is there to stop someone from planting a bag in the apartment. The situation being what it was, we decided it was best to move.