The next night I went to visit Dad, as threatened, and the Reds were losing again. They had lost the night before, when all that had happened to Stephanie, but I refused to believe that when the Reds lose we all lose. As usual we didn’t do much talking and in fact we didn’t do any talking at all. I guess everything’s been said or that anything he had to say he’d already said to Mom. He had the scorecard on his lap but wasn’t keeping score as diligently as he used to. I could see it coming, as it had with Mom. One day you’re surrounded by family, friends, neighbors, children, pets, by photos, mementos, trophies, and the next day you’re in an empty room staring at the four walls of a nursing home.
I left after the sixth inning (he hardly noticed) and went out with Maishe to Maxy’s in Mount Adams fiercely determined to get drunk. I told him about Stephanie. He shrugged as only Maishe could shrug. When it came to NOT CARING Maishe was the original. He suggested we try New York again, just get in the car as we used to, and just GO, except for the fact, I said, that we were getting old, surely OLDER, and it simply wasn’t the same anymore. We were now MEN. That sounded strange to the ears, but we were. We were men.
Years before – when we were still GUYS – we’d jump in the car with Myron and a couple of others and agree to drive across the bridge to Covington, Kentucky, to pick up girls by shouting at them from the car, and not once, not one single time, did we ever pick up a girl that way, and yet, each Friday night we’d gather up and say, “Let’s go to Covington and pick up some girls.”
We were in our late teens or early 20s then, and though we had the regular crowd we lusted for those Kentucky girls.
“Strange pussy,” was the motivation.
Maishe was onto his seventh beer. Maishe was incapable of getting drunk or even high. He could drink and drink and drink to no effect. I got drunk just watching him. He kept shaking his head. We sometimes spent hours like this, me drooling about this and that and Maishe shaking his head. He had no complaints, nothing specific, but he was upset that I had again turned down New York.
“You’ve lost it,” he said.
“I haven’t even found it,” I said.
“You used to be ready for ANYTHING. You’ve gone stale.”
We batted around names from our past, of GUYS who had metamorphosed into MEN and out of 15 came up with three lawyers, one accountant, three in computers, and all the rest in marketing. No comment necessary. Except for Maishe to note: “It’s all marketing.”
“It’s all sales.”
“Stephanie,” he said. “Is that what’s keeping you here?”
“Maybe.”
“We’re only wasting our time here,” he said.
“Biding our time.”
“Don’t you know a person has to change his scenery once in a while? A change of place is a change of luck.”
Now he laughed, about my degree in drama, and all the good it did in a place like Cincinnati, where BOWLERS, and even recreational ARCHERS, far outnumbered theater-goers. At least he had a degree in medicine, or something. Maishe was something of a chameleon. When we used to double-date he’d tell one girl he was a writer, another that he was an actor…artist, diplomat, international businessman, all of it true or false. Once in a while he was a general, or an admiral. The girls believed every word. Even if they didn’t it still didn’t matter because Maishe, more than anybody, had this way with women. Back in high school the girls swooned for him. Maishe took it all in stride. Once in a while he played into it as when the three of us had that accident on a county highway outside Lexington, Myron driving my car into a ditch. Nobody got hurt but when we came back to Cincinnati, Maishe had his arm in a sling and that drove the girls crazy.
Who but Maishe would have thought of that – certainly not Myron. Myron had no magic with women. Even the un-pretty ones thought they were too good for him. I once fixed him up and there he was in the back seat with her making out like Rudolph Valentino. She gave him practically everything she had. Next day I told her how glad I was that she’d hit it off so well with Myron and she said, “What? I couldn’t stand that creep!” So like I always said, you just don’t figure women. But creep that he was to the opposite sex, it was a given that in the end Myron, more likely than Maishe or me, would have the wife and the picket fence and the kids and the station wagon and the dog.
As for Maishe, the only sure thing about Maishe was that he was the most popular guy in high school, Woodward High, and later at UC. Even the teachers were smitten. He was so good at being young that he forgot what came next. So he simply refused to grow up and kept two apartments, one here in Mount Adams and the other on campus, right next to a sorority house, so he could continue to be adored. He wasn’t getting older. He’d only submit that the girls were getting younger.
Maishe had money. Nobody knew where it came from. Nobody knew where HE came from.
Was he really Israeli? Where were his parents? WHO were his parents? Was his father really a general?
Maishe’s proper residence was in the Rosemont section with his aunt. Was she really his aunt?
Even back in high school there were questions about his age. Some said he was in his twenties. Others said he was actually in his thirties. The girls wouldn’t have cared either way, and nobody asked Maishe point blank about anything. At the outset, when he first came on the scene out of nowhere, maybe, maybe then a few questions were asked, but his responses were so vague that they satisfied everybody.