Rachel Cantor - Good on Paper

We talked about this for a while. Okay, more than a while. We wondered about the same things, then found additional things to wonder about.

At one point, Benny sent Marie to get vegan donuts from Cuppa Joe’s; she came back empty-handed: all out, she said, lacking the resources, apparently, to find an alternative.

We didn’t come to a satisfactory conclusion about the mysteries of Romei, but our discussion had been more than satisfactory. When I left, I promised to stay in touch. Benny bowed low to kiss me goodbye, his long beard tickling my neck.

I must be a freak, I thought as I started crossing the street: I’d found our conversation arousing. Had Benny felt it too, the bodily effect of two minds meeting?

Wait! he cried, and waved me back to the store. I blushed as he had Marie credit my card thirty percent. Gilgul alumna, he explained to Marie, whose fingernails, I noticed, were speckled green to match her hair and her eyes, which were empty and flat. She was not as young as I’d thought — in her mid-thirties, at least. I found myself wondering if Benny was seeing her, much as I’d wondered about Gilda, the tapestry artist who’d stolen his stock of erotica and the contents of his cash register when she’d left, or Yasmeen, the daughter of a sheikh, who wore a veil, though she hoped for a career on the stage.

I decided no, he couldn’t be involved with a sullen, drugged-out fraud of an artist. Who dressed like a child. And was willing to deface books. Could he?

We always dressed for Friday Night Dinner: on this evening, Ahmad wore the smoking jacket I’d gotten him at Goodwill, while Andi wore her Pretty Princess backpack and tutu. For my part, I’d brushed my hair and put on some Docksiders. Tonight, because we were celebrating, we went out. Andi requested the China Doll: she enjoyed practicing the Chinese she’d learned at Chinese-Spanish-French quadrilingual preschool. She also knew she could make an entire meal there out of pancakes.

You’re looking radiant, my dear, Ahmad said, as we walked over. I think the absence of Aurora-driving, gold-toothpick-toting flavor salesmen agrees with you.

That was six jobs ago, I said.

Still, he said.

It’s the glow of clean living, I said.

It’s a shtupping glow, he replied. Who is it?

Andi was a few steps ahead of us, skipping and singing a science song.

No one! I said. I’m not shtupping anyone!

Shira Greene, it is not acceptable to keep things from your oldest friend. You know I live vicariously through your adventures.

Ahmad sometimes said outrageous things, and sometimes he believed them: I had few adventures these days and rarely discussed them, whereas he had adventures galore.

No adventure, I said, but I did see Benny today — and I told him with increasing animation about the Great Wall of Poetry, the numb-nut salesgirl who couldn’t buy donuts, Benny’s incisive commentary, how fun it was to talk about books, and didn’t he think Benny cute in his own rabbinical way, for a guy with long legs and gray, patchy eyebrows?

Benny? he asked. Bookstore Benny? Careful! — and he grabbed my arm to stop me walking into traffic.

Oops, I said. Andi, of course, had crossed safely and was staring into the window of Cohn’s Cones.

When we arrived at the China Doll, Andi insisted on a toast, and a Shirley Temple.

Topeka! she cried, after we’d ordered and I’d explained why we were celebrating and answered Andi’s several questions (what’s a Dante, what’s a postmodernist canon) — Topeka being Andi’s version of Eureka, a term that referred not just to aha! moments but to any experience of fulfillment, wonder, gratitude, surprise. I get it! I’ve got it! Waffles for breakfast! Topeka! Then she sang a version of “For She’s a Jolly Good Translator,” which sounded very much like “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.”

Ahmad sang that I was jolly good, but he didn’t look so sure.

What is it? I said, moving my mom-bag off the table to make room for Peking duck and mooshu pork.

We don’t know much about this chap, do we?

What’s to know? I said, peeling off pancakes for Andi. Nobel Prize, college fund, braces, Barbie Dream Palace.

He gave me a look. For one thing, his university would cover Andi’s tuition; for another, Andi’s teeth were coming in and they were beautiful.

You hate literary translation! he said. You said it’s the last refuge of logical positivism!

I never! I don’t even know what that means! Pass the hoisin , please.

At our Halloween party you dressed as the traduttore/traditore and ranted about the untranslatability of all texts.

The what? my baby said.

The traitorous translator, Ahmad said.

That sounds like a dumb costume, she said.

Maybe I’ve seen the light, I said. What’s this about? Last night you said this was the most amazing job in the world.

I’ve been thinking — I do that sometimes. Why does he want to publish the translation before the original? I’ve never heard of that. Is he giving up on his traditional European audience?

The U.S. is a helluva market.

It doesn’t make sense, Shira.

Didn’t we have another dish?

Red bean paste, said Andi, for dessert. No! she said, pushing my hand away. I make my own pancakes, remember?

Why does he want a draft by the end of the year? Ahmad asked. Did he explain that?

You can’t ruin this for me, I said.

Who’s ruining anything? I’m asking questions!

No fighting, Andi said. I hereby forbid it.

Y2K poetry, I said. He wants a draft by the end of the year because he’s a millenarian. He wants his work to defend him come Judgment Day.

And Jesus the Judge reads only English? Ahmad asked, half smiling.

Stands to reason if God is an American, I said.

God is an American? Andi asked.

From that sublime height I managed to shift the conversation to millenarian madness (which Ahmad told Andi had something to do with hats): our favorite babysitter’s twelve-step program for Y2K readiness; Yeats’ “rough beast” slouching, even as we speak, toward Bethlehem; Dante’s mysterious messenger, identified by the number five-fifteen, ready to announce the end of days.

Andi had been playing with Mr. Fork and Mrs. Knife, putting them to bed between two chopsticks.

You know, she said, this isn’t the most fascinating conversation we’ve ever had.

Andi, I said, before she could elaborate, let the grown-ups finish their conversation, then we can find something you can talk about, okay?

It’s late, Ahmad said. I think it’s time.

He was right. Andi was tired, so Ahmad flew her home like a 767 jet.

It was a typical weekend. Ahmad took Andi to Coney Island to satisfy her ambition to ride the Cyclone six times without throwing up. The outcome of this venture was an Andi-Ahmad secret, but the stain on the front of her jumpsuit told all. Sunday, Andi and I went to the Natural History Museum to look at lizards, then had ice cream at Cohn’s Cones (my Cohn’s Cones koan: Does a hot dog have a Buddha nature? Hers: What is the sound of one cone dripping? ). Sunday night, Ahmad went for sushi with a clutch of conservatives, remnants of a once-powerful cabal of Republican advisers, displaced by the warming of the Cold War. They still got together to drink sake and make jokes about Nancy Reagan’s astrologer.