A. Homes - May We Be Forgiven

I swerve to avoid hitting an enormous groundhog lumbering across the road. “Of course,” I say, “that’s my point. It’s a heck of a lot to deal with on your own, and there are medicines that can sometimes help us feel better. You have lots of potential, and medication might make life a little easier.”

“Is this about being smart? Everyone has always said I was dumb.”

“You’re not dumb. Who ever said you were dumb?”

“Dad,” she says. And there’s a long silence. “I don’t want to be a drug attic,” she says.

“I don’t want you to be a drug addict either,” I say.

“Isn’t this how it starts? I’m only eleven,” she says. “That’s still pretty young.”

We’re quiet for a while.

“I do want to get my ears pierced,” she says. “Mom said I could. Can I?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“Maybe.”

“This weekend?”

“We’ll see. I’m not sure I should be rewarding behavior like this.”

She twists my arm for the next three days: Can I, can I, can I? And on the weekend, I take her to the gift shop at the mall; it’s a cross between what we used to call a head shop, selling rolling papers, bongs, and Jimi Hendrix T-shirts, and a Hallmark store, but with a section of erotic novelties. The girl who waits on us is pierced up and down, through the nose, eyebrow, lip, and tongue. It is hard to understand her when she talks: her speech sounds lumpy and a little slurred.

While we’re waiting for her to find the ear-piercing gun, I whisper to Ashley: “See what you have to look forward to if you do all that self-decorating? When you grow up you can get a job working in a mall.”

Ashley looks at me as if to say, I don’t get it.

“I think it makes it hard to do other things, like get into college or have a real job, unless your application essay is about embracing your native culture and having a clitoridectomy.”

“A what?”

“Never mind.”

Walter Penny calls. “What the hell,” he demands, unpleasantly.

“Who the what?” I ask.

“Penny,” he says. “Walter Penny. Buddy, you have got yourself one big problem. I am about to crawl so far up your ass, you’re going to feel like you had sinus surgery.”

“I think you dialed the wrong number.”

“Why the hell would I dial the wrong number?” he shouts. “I’m goddamned calling to scream at you — you academically impaired idiot.”

“What seems to be the problem?”

“International arms dealing.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you have no idea, I wouldn’t expect you to have an idea. Let me be blunt, did you or did you not send your brother an iPad?”

“I did, as a birthday gift. I thought it would be nice to send pictures of the kids, or so he could map his way if he got lost in the woods, or stream movies on a cold winter night. It’s hard to think of what to get for a guy like George.”

“You provided the hardware for illegal commerce on an international scale. We could throw you in jail and lose the key.”

“That certainly wasn’t my intention,” I say.

“Open your e-mail — I sent you something.”

I go to the desk and, as instructed, open the mail; it’s a series of infrared aerial photos of George with the iPad in hand. There’s another guy peering over George’s shoulder.

“Is that your brother?”

“Sure looks like him. Who’s the other guy?”

“The Israeli arms dealer,” Walter Penny says.

“How did he get in the picture?”

“He’s one of our inmates from New Jersey.”

“But you said this program was only for hard-core types, not your average white-collar—”

“Quit whining. This guy is a former used-car dealer, Jersey Jewish mafioso, left his family for the Israeli army. When he came back, his wife had taken up with another man; he killed the guy point-blank at the dinner table, in front of everyone. Funny enough, we didn’t want to put some Israeli commando in one of our standard facilities. What the fuck made you think you could send your brother ‘presents’?”

“I didn’t think it was a big deal to send a birthday gift.”

“You opened a portal to the free world, asshole. These guys are on Amazon Prime and have stuff coming every day — food, clothing, pornography.” He stops screaming and then takes a long, thin sucking breath. “Where to begin?” Walter says. “This is now a federal incident, the purview of the Secret Service, ATF, FBI, and the CIA — that’s how big it gets. Can you imagine the number of eyes on my little pilot program that I worked so hard on, the one with the wood-grain logo, the one with the yellow, green, red, black — four-color printing! Can you imagine how fast they’d like to close me down? I’m disappointed in you, Silver. When we met, I thought you had some good ideas, a sense of justice. You presented yourself as a thinker, and it turns out you are just another idiot.”

“What can I do to fix it?” I ask.

“We’re gonna come up with a plan,” Walter says.

“It’s set up on auto-pay; I can cut it off. I’d be happy to do it right now, while we’re on the phone.”

“Don’t do anything — we don’t want to arouse suspicions. Let me liaise with the others and get back to you. But for now, one move without my approval and you will go to jail. Oh, and think of something George would like to have, something he can’t get on Amazon.”

Walter calls me again a few days later. “I have been in conversation with the related agencies: ATF, FBI, Secret Service, National Guard. We are going to use you as bait and bring the Israeli in.”

“I am at your disposal,” I say.

“You bet you are. E-mail George as per the address you got from Jason.”

“You know about Jason?”

“He’s a good boy,” Walter says.

“Is he in on this?”

“We’re using a range of assets.”

“Have you been in my e-mail?”

“First stop on the tour,” Walter says. “Tell George you’re driving up Friday night to get his signature on some paperwork.”

“But I’ve got company on Friday — Ricardo will be here for the weekend,” I say.

Walter Penny doesn’t even acknowledge what I’m saying. “Tell George you’re able to meet anytime after six on Friday through six on Saturday.”

I do as I’m told; George replies he can do it anytime before sundown on Friday or after sundown on Saturday. I call Walter.

“Crap,” Walter says, “this confirms my suspicion. Your brother is practicing Judaism. He and Lenny are observing the Sabbath; that’s what we’ve been seeing them doing on Friday nights. The feds couldn’t figure it out — said they were lighting some kind of ‘flares’ and then sitting dormant — as if waiting for something. The feds couldn’t crack it.”

“A Jersey used-car dealer got George hooked on religion?”

“Strange things happen when men are left to themselves.” In the background a phone rings. “That’s the big boys — do nothing further until you hear from me.”

Meanwhile, another message from George appears in my inbox: “When you come, bring my silk boxers — upstairs dresser on the left. And some cookware — pots, pans, a spatula, and a ladle — and maybe Mom’s old candlesticks, not the silver ones — glass?”

A little while later, the phone rings. “So what’s your special gift, something you can bring that he can’t get from Amazon?”

“Aunt Lillian’s chocolate-chip cookies,” I say, not telling him that (a) I’m not in possession of her actual cookies and (b) I don’t have the recipe to attempt re-creation.

“It’s like the frontier; your brother and this Lenny character are running a general store up there. The bad boys bring them a dead duck and get Hershey bars in return. They’ve used the Amazon boxes to build themselves some sort of fort in a fort, which at the moment our camera can’t penetrate — we’re thinking it’s made out of some kind of river mud.”