Inspired by The Merchant of Venice
Dahlia Adler
To bait fish withal. If it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies—and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison
us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.
—SHYLOCK, ACT 3, SCENE 1
“Dude, I am so goddamn depressed.”
“First of all, Tony, you are not depressed,” Sebastian Denunzio says without missing a beat as the two sidestep way too many overeager freshmen in the halls of Venice High. “Are you ugly? Yes. Are you broke? Also yes. Did you bomb the physics midterm? Absolutely.”
“You give the shittiest pep talks.”
“You don’t deserve a pep talk,” Bas tells his friend, and this time, he does stop. “Your dad gave you a Benz for your seventeenth birthday, and you already totaled it. You know what my pop got me for my seventeenth birthday? A phone call. In February.”
“Isn’t your birthday in June?”
“Yup.”
Tony is Bas’s best friend (by default, as their last names, Devenzano and Denunzio, have had them placed together for years), and Bas practically has a degree in listening to his crap, but he’s also a walking disaster, and sometimes Bas’s patience for it wears thin.
For once, Tony takes note of his friend’s annoyance, wrapping his arm around Bas’s shoulders and changing the subject. “Message received. Enough about my troubles. Tell me what’s going on with you, and specifically what’s going on with The Girl.”
Bas winces. “You know nothing’s going on with The Girl. The Girl requires some expensive appreciation, and I’m broker than you are right now. Speaking of which…”
Tony holds out his hands dramatically. “I’m sorry, man. I know I still owe you for those tickets, but my old man is up my ass about the car. I mean, why even give me the machine if you’re gonna make me spend the money to fix it myself, right? Shouldn’t that be, like, part of the gift?”
Had Bas actually expected anything else from Tony, he might’ve been pissed off, but as it is, he knows it’s pointless. “I figured. So, yeah, nothing happening with The Girl.”
“Are you even gonna tell me who she is? This secret’s getting old.” Tony coughs. “I mean, I could probably help you figure something out, if I knew who she was and what she likes and whatever.”
“And whatever.” Bas rolls his eyes as they turn the corner to English and glances at his phone. They still have two minutes, so, what the hell. “Promise you’ll keep your mouth shut? And don’t you dare mention Scout’s Honor.”
“Swear on my entire collection of—”
“Stop. I know where this is going, and hard pass.” He tugs Tony a few feet from the classroom door and looks over his shoulder. “It’s Persia, okay?”
Tony snorts. “Persia Belmont? Like, ‘my dad is a cop’ Persia Belmont? Good luck with that.”
“You see why I can’t exactly take her on a date under the pier. So, yeah, if you’ve got a surprise influx of cash coming and can pay me back, maybe I’ll have a shot. If not, you can chill on mocking me for not making a move.”
“Sorry, bro. But someone’s gotta have cash you can borrow.” Tony squints and scans the room, and Bas watches his eyes land on a slight, bespectacled boy and light up as if Tony’s seen God Himself throw down a spotlight. “Get some from the Heeb.”
“Who?”
“Lauchheimer. The Jewish kid who gets a nosebleed every time we play basketball in gym.”
“That’s because you throw the ball at his face every chance you get, you dick.”
Tony laughs. “Yeah, because it’s hilarious. Anyway, kid deserves it, hiding his horns under that little Jewfro, acting like he’s some poor ‘minority’ when he could probably buy and sell all of us.”
“Man, I think you might be spending too much time watching Fox News with your dad.” Bas looks at his phone again, wincing at the cracked screen he can’t afford to replace, and slides it back into the pocket of his shorts. “Come on, we’re gonna be late.”
It isn’t watching Fox News with his dad, is the thing. Well, he does that too, but mostly his dad sits and yells about how the Jews and the Chinese and the Mexicans are destroying the economy. He doesn’t do anything about it, though, and Tony’s tired of not doing anything. The White Knights—they do things. They understand the power of threats and violence, and the fact that they respect and embrace Tony in a way his father doesn’t makes him powerful too. That said, considering the last thing he did with them was scratch swastikas into Lauchheimer’s car, he knows it’s probably gonna require a gentle approach to get the Heeb to cough up some cash so he can finally pay Bas back.
But it’s either Lauchheimer or Tony himself, and since Tony just dropped a month’s worth of allowance at the Ink Parade, getting tatted up with the other Knights, it’s gotta be the Heeb. He knows the guy is loaded, not just because he’s a Jew and they all are, but because his parents are both doctors, which seems to be another thing they all are. Charlie, his favorite Knight who also scares him a little, says it’s because they want access to your organs so they can do weird medical stuff. Charlie’s the one who taught him Jews mess with vaccines, when it was way too late for him to stop him from getting his own. Now every time he can’t figure out the answer to a homework problem or the right way to talk to a girl, Tony knows exactly whose fault it is.
And he’s done everything in his power to make sure the Heeb knows it too.
Clearly, Bas is gonna have to be the face of this request.
Then again, maybe a threat is all that’s really needed here, and Tony definitely knows how to administer those. While Mr. Browning goes on with his useless lesson about whatever quadratic equations are, Tony rubs the new ink on his bicep through his shirt, his fingertips grazing the straight lines of numbers one and four, the smooth curves of the eighty-eight. For now, it’s easy enough to hide it or to pass it off as something sentimental when it’s found. Not like Charlie’s matching version, written right across his knuckles.
Clearly Charlie’s not planning on becoming an investment banker.
They’ll corner Lauchheimer at lunch. Tony knows exactly where he sits with his paper bag of Jew food, too good to eat the cafeteria food because it’s too “unclean” for his precious Chosen blood. Meanwhile, Tony’s stolen it enough times to know it’s just tuna sandwiches half the time like everybody else, and he’d laughed so hard and loud the first time he’d realized it.
Now he doesn’t even check—it just goes straight in the trash.
Come to think of it, he hasn’t seen Lauchheimer in the cafeteria in a while. Maybe he’s cowering in the bathroom to eat his sad sandwiches.
The thought makes Tony laugh his ass off. Wherever Shai is, he’ll find him.
Shai isn’t in fact in the bathroom. Nor is he in the cafeteria, because he learned his lesson about that a long time ago. It’s the library that’s his solace, and the librarian, Mx. Tubal, who provides his salvation in the form of an office to eat in every day. “It really never gets less brutal out there, does it?” was all they’d said the first time Shai had shown up with his bagel and cream cheese under the pretense of needing a quiet space to finish an assignment. Now the two have a nice thing going, and it almost enables Shai to forget why he’d had to seek refuge in the library in the first place.
Almost.
Still, it’s been protecting him well, which is why when he steps out from his lunchtime cocoon into the hallway, he feels a false sense of safety—disappearing from the cafeteria had become something of an invisibility cloak. But, no more than two minutes after emerging from the library, he hears his name called in a voice that is both unfamiliar and too familiar all at once.
He has never heard Tony Devenzano use his actual name before, and it’s what makes him halt in his tracks for just a moment, and it’s a moment too long.
“Lauchheimer!” Tony says again, clamping a meaty hand on Shai’s shoulder, and it’s all Shai can do not to violently twist out of his grip. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“I already ate my lunch,” Shai manages through gritted teeth.
Tony laughs, as if his continued trashing of Shai’s lunch is nothing more than a joke between friends. Never mind that if Shai’s mother knew of the food being wasted, she would unleash a firestorm of intergenerational trauma–induced rage that would burn Venice High to the ground. Never mind that it’s been mental torture for Shai every single day. Never mind that Shai’s been subsisting on vending machine fare and his belt can’t be cinched any tighter. “No, no, I’ve just got a small favor to ask. See, you know Bas, right? About yea high? Great basketball player? General lady-slayer?”
“If you mean Sebastian Denunzio, yes, I know him.” Not much more fondly than Tony. He never does the shoving, the yanking, the punching, but he’s always there, laughing.
“Bas is in a little bit of money trouble, and being the incredible friend that I am, I’ve agreed to help him out of this particular jam.” Tony begins steering him toward the corner by the garbage can, his grip tightening on Shai’s shoulders for their leisurely stroll. “Unfortunately, I’m a little tapped out, which is where you come in.”
Shai’s eyebrows shoot up. “You want money.”
“Yep.”
“And you think I’m just going to … give you money.”
Chutzpah isn’t a remotely strong enough word for what Shai’s hearing. It’s shocking enough to root him into place, even though the idea of entertaining Tony’s demand is so preposterous, it would make him laugh if he weren’t programmed to be utterly terrified of the boy standing in front of him.
“Not give—lend! Isn’t that what your people do? You lend money to poor suckers and then charge a million percent interest? That’s all I’m asking for here. You lend me … let’s say, three hundred bucks now, and I’ll pay it back with interest.”
“If you can afford to pay back a loan with interest, then why don’t you just lend Sebastian the money?”
“Well, I don’t have the money right now. But I will. I’ll get it.”
It’s then that Shai understands: he is in the position of power. It’s a position he’s never once held over Antonio Devenzano, and it’s exhilarating and daunting and makes his mind race with possibilities.
His heart pounds as he tests out this theory, sliding out from under Tony’s grip and facing him. It requires tilting his head up, confronting for the millionth time the fact that Tony looks like he could crush him with one hand and eat him for breakfast with room for a couple of waffles left over. But Tony doesn’t grab him back, doesn’t threaten him. He can’t, if he expects any cooperation.
For the first time between them, size doesn’t matter. And even though Shai knows he should tell Tony to eff off, that he doesn’t have the money and that he and Bas will have to go squeeze someone else for cash, he can’t bring himself to say the words. This is the kind of control he’s dreamed of for years. And while he knows there’s no way in hell Tony would respect any kind of financial arrangement, it occurs to him that maybe there’s a way to take this power a little further.
He conjures a silent prayer for the bar mitzvah money he’s been stashing away for college, for the favors he’ll have to call in for the plan taking a messy shape in his brain, and says, “Okay.”
Tony’s eyes widen in surprise, and it makes Shai feel a foot taller. “Okay? You’ll give me the money?”
“I’ll lend you the money,” says Shai. “I just need some time to draw up a contract.”
“A contract? What the hell? I just told you I’ll pay you back with interest.”
“Yeah, and what happens if you don’t?” Shai folds his arms over his chest. “I’ll write up the contract, complete with repayment terms, and when you sign, the money’s yours. Deal?”
Tony grins the careless grin of a boy who thinks he’s getting away with something, because he always has. “Deal.”
“‘If the Borrower should fail to deliver the promised sum by the appointed time, the Borrower shall forfeit the tattoo on his right biceps to the Lender, by surgical means to be agreed upon—’” Tony shoves the packet of paper away and glares down at Shai, who, much to his extreme irritation, doesn’t so much as blink. “This is insane. I’m not signing this.”
“Wait, what?” Bas reaches for the contract Shai took three days to draw up, but Tony slams down on his hand. “Ow! What the hell?”
Tony ignores him, fixing his ice-blue eyes on Shai’s calm brown ones. “You’re crazy. You’re literally crazy.”
“Not crazy enough to permanently scar myself with hate,” Shai replies with a calmness that feels like fire ants on Tony’s skin. “You want to borrow money? That’s the deal.”
“Okay, I have to see this.” Neither Tony nor Bas is quick enough to stop Persia from reaching for the papers. Of course, neither of them had wanted her to be aware of this deal to begin with, but naturally, Shai had come marching up just as all three of them were hanging out, and Tony had no doubt it was to make him look like a dick. “Well, that’s a first,” she says, her eyes scanning the pages. “So if you don’t pay the money back in a month…”
“I get to cut that 1488 out of his skin,” Shai confirms, as if it’s totally normal. As if he isn’t talking about mutilating Tony. “Seems fair to me.”
“I don’t get it,” says Persia, wrinkling her nose. She looks up at Bas as if he holds all the answers in the world. “What’s 1488?”
“Yeah, I actually don’t know either,” Bas admits slowly. “What am I missing?”
“Nothing.” Tony’s eyes flash danger at Shai, but the very same kid who used to tremble as he handed over brown paper bags of pita bread and homemade chocolate chip cookies is completely expressionless. Clearly the Heeb has forgotten who he’s dealing with, and there’s no way Tony would show an ounce of fear to that loser. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter, because you’ll have the money, and this stupid-ass contract will be completely irrelevant. But you know what? If I’m putting my body on the line, I want more money. Make it a thousand.”
“You’re gonna pay me back a thousand dollars? In a month?” Shai confirms.
“Hell, you said this is instead of interest, right? So, yeah, no big deal,” Tony says with a confidence he wishes he felt. He wants to think the White Knights would come to his rescue if push came to shove. He wants to be sure Bas would. But truly, he doesn’t know; he only knows that guys like him succeed and guys like Shai fail, and that’s going to have to be enough for now.
Shai shrugs, makes an addendum to the contract, and then hands Tony the pen. “Give me another day to get the money. Tomorrow, you officially become a thousandaire.”
Tony scrawls his signature on the appropriate line and then hands the pen to Bas to sign as a witness.
“Man, you seriously sure you wanna do this?” Bas asks, his hand hovering just over the paper.
“What’s the big deal?” Persia twirls a strand of dark hair around her finger, her gum cracking in the silent tension of the otherwise empty classroom. “He said he’ll pay it back.”
“How?” Bas asks. “How could you possibly pay back a thousand bucks in a month?”
“That’s my problem, not yours,” Tony says coolly. “Now sign the damn thing. Sorbello’s waiting for us in the gym.”
Bas sighs, but he does as Tony asks, his chicken scratch seeming weirdly out of place on such an official-looking document. “This is ridiculous, but okay. Let’s go.”
The boys amble out of the room without so much as a backward glance.
It feels like hours until the door finally closes behind them with a definitive click, but when it does, Persia picks up the pen, signs her name to the second witness line, and leaves.
Shai cannot believe it worked. He has utterly loathed that tattoo since he first spotted it on the home security tape that caught Tony and his Neanderthal friends defacing his car, arms bared by ribbed white tank tops.
It’s the tattoo that’s kept him in hiding, the knowledge that he walks the halls with a boy who holds enough hate in his heart to permanently scar himself with it.
It feels so fitting that it should be the beginning of the end of Tony’s reign of terror.
A thousand bucks goes fast. Bas insists that Tony keep all but what he owes him, and they compromise on splitting what’s left. Persia gets her nice, respectable dates at parentally approved movies, restaurants, and the Santa Monica pier. Tony fixes his car, drops some cash on White Knights dues. His new ink starts to itch as the deadline nears, the beginnings of a reddening infection from constantly forgetting to clean and moisturize it, but the Knights blame it on a Jewish curse and Tony is only too happy to agree.
Still, no one offers a solution—not a way to call off the curse nor a loan to tide him over.
They do offer to visit Shai at home again, do damage to more than his car, but Tony knows that means pipe bombs, and it’s a little hard to keep those quiet. Considering word of the loan has already spread around VHS, it’s not worth the speed with which he’ll become the number one suspect.
The skin festers, and one way or another, he will make the Jew pay for it.
He’ll have to, because the deadline is looming, his wallet is empty, and he is out of options.
Bas is the only one of their friends showing any concern for Tony, but then, it’s partly because of Bas that he’s in this situation in the first place. “Do you really think he’s gonna carve into your arm? Your dad would be all over him.”
“Yeah, and my dad would also tear me a new one for signing a contract with a shady Jew in the first place,” Tony spits back. “I knew it was a mistake to try to deal with one of them. You can’t trust ’em.”
Bas murmurs in silent agreement, biting his tongue so he won’t point out that the only one to violate trust in this agreement was Tony. He’s Bas’s friend, even if he makes some stupid choices. Shai’s just some dork with deep pockets. “We should just tell him to get off your dick because it’s not gonna happen,” Bas suggests. “Come on.”
“Hard pass,” says Tony. His infected tattoo seems to blaze at the mere suggestion. “I’m not letting him curse me again.”
“Dude, the curse is not real. Jews are cheap and sneaky, not magical.”
“Not worth the risk.” Tony digs his nails into his forearms, just barely avoiding the blistering red skin above.
It’s maybe the most ridiculous thing Bas has ever seen, and as much as he wants to stay out of Tony’s drama, this is just too much. “Okaaaay,” he says slowly. “Guess I’ll have to take care of this. You’re welcome, loser.”
He half expects Tony to catch up by the time he’s halfway down the hall, but there’s nothing other than the sound of his own sneakers squeaking on the floor.
It’s Shai’s bad luck that he stopped at a water fountain on the way to Mx. Tubal’s office, that he took thirty seconds longer to get to the safety of the library. There’s no chance Sebastian would’ve found him in there; Bas would probably burst into flames if he walked into a room with more than three books inside. But despite the relative calm that’d come into his life since Tony had stopped harassing him every day, choosing avoidance rather than looking his debtor in the eye, Shai knew it was bad news as soon as he saw Bas’s hulking form lumbering in his direction.
“My bank is closed,” he says to Bas, hoping that cuts matters off there. “It was a onetime loan. Unless you’re here to repay it on Tony’s behalf?”
“Man, why are you even bothering? You know Tony can’t pay you back. Who cares? You’ve probably got a billion dollars more where that came from.”
“I don’t, actually. Tony came begging—begging—for money he needed for a friend. This whole money-borrowing thing was supposed to be some sort of honorable mission. And he’s the one who’s always bragging about his car and his clothes, so honestly, isn’t it a little embarrassing that he can’t pay me back?” Shai shrugs as if it’s truly the most pitiful thing he’s ever heard. “I wouldn’t have thought he’d want the entire school knowing he’s completely broke, but what do I know?”
It’s accurate and brutal, and Shai knows it, knows from the way Bas winces that he’s hit his mark with his framing. “Christ, you really are a dick. Tony wasn’t kidding about Jews being shady, heartless pricks,” Bas mutters under his breath. “All that and you still want to carve him up. What are you even gonna do with that tat? You know you can’t just stick it on yourself, right?”
And just like that, Shai, who had never raised his voice within the walls of Venice High, who’s made himself so small that he can disappear into the confines of a librarian’s office and be entirely forgotten, who’s been riding the bus to school for weeks because he can’t bring himself to take his hatefully defaced car to the shop, whose wrist still aches when it rains because of the time Tony thought it would be hilarious to trip him down the stairs, whose brain still echoes with a thousand hurtful nicknames … cracks.
“You think,” he spits in a voice cold as steel, “that I want that hateful shit anywhere near me, let alone touching my body? You think he hasn’t already carved me up into a thousand little pieces? You think he hasn’t bled me dry? Broken me? Made me look and feel pathetic with whatever means he has? You think it’s nothing that he uses my faith against me, my religion, my trauma? You think you’re all better than me because what—I have a difficult name? A bump in my nose? That’s what makes it okay to push me and trip me and humiliate me and steal from me, even now, even when you sign your names to dotted lines as proof of your honor?”
“They’re just jokes, man.” Bas’s voice has never been so quiet.
“Well, fuck you, and fuck your jokes.” Shai’s dark eyes flash fire, and it gratifies him to see Bas recoil as if all his and Tony’s suspicions have been confirmed that he’s the devil himself. “I may not have your muscles and I may not have your ego, but as long as you’re rifling through your Jewish stereotypes, here’s one that’s true for me: my entire family is full of lawyers, all as sick of this anti-Semitic bullshit as I am and all prepared to help make sure that contract is executed to the fullest if Tony doesn’t pay up in three days, as promised. You might want to let him know.”
And then Shai steps around him like he’s nothing more than an inconvenient ant in the path of an elephant’s paw and lets himself into the library, where Mx. Tubal awaits with the shadow of a smile on their lips and ears full of earbuds that play nothing at all.
Deadline day comes and goes. The money doesn’t. A practical plan doesn’t. But a court summons does. Begrudgingly, Tony asks Persia to read and translate it, and Tony feels himself turning fifty shades of purple as she does.
“It’s definitely binding,” she says, handing the papers back with all the authority of a police chief’s daughter. “You’re out a lot more if you don’t show.”
“You can’t possibly think I should let this kid carve me up like a Thanksgiving turkey!”
“Hey, don’t yell at her,” snaps Bas, but Persia puts a restraining hand on his arm, her sharp, red nails leaving the slightest indentations.
“Of course I don’t,” Persia says with a calm that borders on irritating. “The contract is absurd. But it’s legal, and it’s signed, and right now the best thing you can do is just show up and deal with it in person.”
“So you’d go to court,” Tony confirms.
“Well, first I’d confront him. See if there’s another way. Court fees are a bitch.” The sympathy in her voice sounds real, at least.
Bas looks at her in surprise, probably hearing his precious angel swearing for the first time. But Tony nods, strokes the chin he’s neglected shaving for days. There has to be another way, and he will find it.
Shai glances at his watch then back at the front doors of the school. There’s a chance Tony would exit another way, but Shai has eyes on his car, and anyway, he’s confident Tony’s the one who’ll come looking for him, once he thinks out the publicity and expense of a lawsuit.
It takes another three minutes, but then, there he is, summons in hand. “I can’t go to court. This can’t be on my record. You know I can’t afford the fees.”
“That is extremely not my problem,” Shai says coolly. “You want to avoid court? We can take care of this at my house with my excellent plastic surgeon cousin. We both know you don’t have the money, so those are your options.”
“Fine. Your house,” Tony bites out. “And I’m gonna need to see your surgeon cousin’s credentials.”
“Of course.”
“And no one else comes. I don’t want an audience for this shit.”
“Well,” says Shai, his hand patting his messenger bag, “the witnesses to the original contract have to be there. But that’s it.”
Tony sets his jaw. “Witnesses? You mean Bas?”
“And Persia. I did need a second witness, after all.”
“I didn’t see her sign the contract.” Tony’s teeth are grinding now.
“There’s a lot you don’t see, apparently.” Shai pulls out his phone. “I’m texting my cousin to meet us at my house in half an hour. Considering you’ve already been in my driveway, I assume you know the way?”
He doesn’t wait for a response before walking off to his own car, leaving Tony visibly nauseated in his wake.
“You don’t have to do this, man. Don’t do this.” Bas’s mantra is practically background noise at this point, and the words take turns targeting both Tony and Shai. But neither one is listening; both of their eyes are fixed on Shai’s cousin Raphael, who’s laying out a terrifying, sharp, and gleaming array of instruments. Now it isn’t only Tony’s tattoo that’s itching; the feeling of his skin trying to burn itself from his bones is traveling to every limb. Sweat beads at his brow, and suddenly he has to pee worse than ever before in his life.
His eyes dart between the scalpel and Shai’s face, which shows no sign of fear or remorse. It hits Tony then that this is really going to happen, that he’s really going to be sliced open, that his very skin is going to be torn from his body, that there will be no last-minute rescue. His father isn’t going to charge in and stop this, and the Knights aren’t going to be his saviors. He has to get out of here, has to get out, has to get out—
Before he can move a muscle, a brown leather strap closes around his wrist, holding him fast. “What the—” Another joins it a moment later, circling his forearm. He hadn’t even seen these guys walk up, tall and lean and so much stronger than they look.
“You said no one else!”
“Don’t worry,” Shai says calmly. “They’re leaving.” He says something to them in Hebrew, and one ruffles Shai’s hair, nearly knocking his kippah to the ground, and walks off.
“I don’t want to do this.” The edges of fear lace Tony’s voice, and he hates himself for it. He tries to jerk his arm out of the strap, but it’s stuck tight. His left hand is useless at the complicated buckles. He’s well and truly trapped.
Raphael walks over and pushes up the sleeve of Tony’s shirt, his reaction to the ink a grimace that he quickly hides under a critical eye. “I was going to start with anesthesia, but maybe we should just go right in.”
“What! No! Fuck no!” Tony yanks harder at the straps, digging in with his left hand, praying for something to click under his increasingly useless fingers. “You’re a surgeon! Don’t you have to do no harm or some shit?”
“You’re not exactly a traditional patient.” Raphael has the same calm demeanor as his cousin, which is something Tony’s come to realize he has sorely misread as weakness. “Besides, I’m doing you a favor.”
“Like hell you are! Bas, help me!”
“You let him go, and I’ll sue you too, Sebastian,” Shai says coldly.
“You can’t do that.” The wavering in Bas’s voice suggests he isn’t completely sure about that, though, and neither is Tony.
“Pretty sure I can. You signed the contract. You’re a witness that he owes me this. And before you get high and mighty about it, why didn’t you just use your own money to take out Persia? I mean, it’s kind of your fault he’s in this position in the first place, isn’t it?”
“I’d have had money if he hadn’t ‘borrowed’ it from me for a concert ticket he couldn’t afford,” Bas snaps. “You’re not the only one he screwed over.”
Tony slumps where he stands, strapped to the table. So much for help. Sure enough, Bas rejoins Persia, who’s been sitting stone still on the padded bench on the side of the room in Shai’s enormous basement this entire time, every bit as cold and unmoved as the treacherous, devilish cousins about to massacre his flesh.
He takes one last look at the black ink upon his skin, the four numbers that mean nothing to some and everything to others, and both hates it and believes it with every fiber of his being. The fourteen words: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The eighty-eight, each one standing for an H, code for “Heil Hitler.” Part of him doesn’t know what he was thinking getting his body inscribed that way, and part of him feels more hate than ever, anger and rage at being bested and tortured. This tattoo was supposed to be proof of his supremacy, and he will leave here with a wound that will scar into proof he is no white king, not even a knight.
Then he closes his eyes, squeezes them shut against the tears that threaten to fall, and says, “Go.”
The scalpel is cold against his skin, and even before it takes its first cut, any bravery Tony felt slips away. His deep breaths devolve into panicked gulps, and the tears come freely. “Please don’t please don’t please don’t please don’t please please please please.” The room smells like sweat and fear and pee, and he cannot do this, cannot do this, will not survive it, will not—
“Stop.”
The sound of a girl’s voice is so unexpected in the stillness of the room that Tony wonders for a brief moment if he’s slipped into a hallucination. He’d completely forgotten Persia was there, having assumed no salvation would come from her corner, especially after finding out she’d signed the contract without his knowledge.
“What is it, Persia?” Shai asks, his voice matching the scalpel in its sharpness.
“The contract you had me sign—it says you get his tattoo. But if you cut him open, you’ll be getting more than that, won’t you? Think how much blood you’ll be spilling. Pretty sure that’ll qualify you for assault even if taking his tattoo doesn’t.” She turns to Raphael. “And that probably wouldn’t be conducive to keeping your license, would it?”
Raphael locks eyes with Shai, dark brown piercing dark brown, and for the world’s longest minute there is nothing in the air but stink and silence. “It would not.” He puts the scalpel down. “Sorry, cuz. You’re on your own for this tattoo removal, though I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Tony can hardly believe what he’s hearing. His face is so full of snot and tears that he actually isn’t sure he is hearing correctly, at least until Shai walks over and takes hold of one of the straps.
“You asshole,” Tony blubbers, because he wants to be triumphant in this moment but is still shaking. “You tried, but you’ll never—”
“I’ll never what?” Shai spits back. “I’ll never make you piss your pants in fear the same way I almost did when I came home to those swastikas? I’ll never make you cower, afraid you’re about to feel a world of pain, the way you’ve done to me a million times for no reason other than that I wear a kippah? I’ll never make you beg and plead the way you’ve had me do from inside my locker over and over again? I’ll never make you feel completely friendless and alone? I’ll never make you wish for death because you know it’ll be a lot more pleasant than whatever you’re about to endure?”
Shai unbuckles the first strap, and they both watch the blood flow back into Tony’s arm, though his face remains white. “I did it, Devenzano. I made you feel the way that brand on your arm is intended to make everyone like me feel—everyone with less power than you in a world that rewards you for being a blank slate. I want you to remember that every single time you look at that number in the mirror, every time you tag someone’s car. I want you to think about everyone you’ll be terrorizing with that tattoo, everyone you’ll be making feel the same panic you felt today, everyone who’s unsure just how deeply you mean what your skin says.”
The second one is unbuckled, but Tony is unable to move, unable to internalize that he’s actually free. Finally, he rasps, “So now what? You didn’t get my tattoo, and you didn’t get your money.”
“Now you go home and tell your dad. You show him your tattoo. You tell him you want it removed or covered—I don’t care which. And I won’t know which, because I never want to see you in my face again. Do not come near me. Do not say a word to me. If you do, I will tell everyone every single thing that happened here today, right down to you desperately needing a change of pants. You hear me?”
Tony nods, and finally pulls his arm back to himself.
Shai takes a deep breath. “Go.”
Tony runs, barely making it outside before he pukes in the grass.
It’s only after everyone else is gone that Persia stands from the bench, having watched Raphael wrap up his tools and Bas beg off to go hide in his house and play video games until this entire afternoon disappears. Her outside demeanor is calm as always, but Shai sees the storm still surging behind her dark eyes, knows a part of her feels sick about this but a bigger part is glad to have played a role after staying in the shadows for so long. “Well, that went about as well as it could have.”
Shai smiles wryly. “Got the job done, I think. Thank you for playing your part so well. Let no one say Jews do not excel at theatre.”
“Raph was pretty great too. You’re lucky to have such a talented stable of cousins,” she says with a curtsey. Then her face grows serious. “Listen, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t.” Shai squeezes her hand. “You’ve got your reasons for hiding your Jewishness, and I’ve got my reasons for wearing mine on my sleeve. Or, more literally, on my head, I guess. We both know the world isn’t exactly kind to us.”
“No, it’s really not. I hate how grateful I am that my dad has the least Jewish name ever.”
“Well, you made good use of that here, and it was cool and brave as hell.” Shai grins. “Mi yode’ah im la’et ka’zot higat l’malchut?” Who knows whether you came to the kingdom for a time such as this?
“Did you just quote Esther at me?”
“Good ear.”
“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,” says Persia, cracking her own smile. “Nice job, cuz.”
He doffs his kippah, and together they climb the stairs.
The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ’gainst the merchant there.
—PORTIA, ACT 4, SCENE 1