As soon as we got in the cab the Jew began to cry. Dana's poodle, who was about to curl up on his lap, leaped up and scuttled to the other side and cowered behind me. The cab driver didn't know what to do. Zelda told him not to mind him. "He has something in his eye," she said. In his heart more like it, thought the cab driver. She gave him an address, and away we went; then she turned to weeping Dan and said, "Try not to think too much." She put her hand on his shoulder; she adjusted his skullcap.
"I--I--lo-lo-ove--" he blubbered.
"Try to pray," she said, and this shut him up. He took out a tiny book--I mean seriously tiny, no bigger than your thumb--and began to mumble and sway, like the Jew in the jungle in that dream I had, who looked like he was making love to his book.
"So, sis," I said, again sarcastically since I was mad as hell and I wasn't going to let her pin her blindness on me, "when did you stop being blind?"
"Don't call me sis," she said. "It's retarded."
"Sis, sister, sibling, sib," I said.
"You're the blind one," she said.
"Yeah?" I said. "I don't go around pretending to be blind with dark glasses and a walking stick and a stupid seeing-eye dog."
"You don't know anything," she said. "That's what it means to be blind."
"Don't get metaphorical on me," I said.
"Whatever," she said. "You don't know anything."
"I know you're in trouble," I said, lowering my voice so the cab driver won't hear.
She rolled her eyes. "Deep," she said.
"Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?" I said.
"You know what's going on," she said. "You met Joe McCallister."
"Listen," I said, "you've got to get the hell away. Get on a plane. Leave town, leave the country."
"Not without the teeth," she said.
I was beginning to lose it. In a minute I was going to burst into tears too. I said, "Why are you doing this? Why did you have to get involved with these psychopaths? What do you care about Hitler's teeth? You've got to get away. This Joe guy's a lunatic. I know because I met him. He's going to kill you and he's going to kill me along with you, whether you get him those teeth or not."
This did nothing to her. She remained calm as a clam. "Don't worry about the government," she said.
"Huh?" I said.
"I said don't worry about the government," she said. "No one's going to kill you."
"They're going to kill you," I said.
"Louis," she said, "you really have to shut up. You have no idea what this is all about."
"You just said I did know," I said.
"You don't know anything," she said.
"Goddammit," I said. "Why don't you tell me what this is all about?"
She shut her lips tight, and began breathing loudly through her nose. I could see it coming. She was preparing an onslaught. I remember that time, subsequent to the Betsy debacle, when I asked Zelda why she had treated my special lady that way, and how quiet she was prior to her response, and then the long harangue, with the tears and the cussing and the punching and the pinching and the preposterous accusations, and not a word about Betsy or her gray hair. "This isn't some puzzle," she said, now, in the cab. "It's not about putting pieces together. It's about understanding; it's about vision and depth, and you have no depth, Louis, because your whole method is wrong, the way you think, the way you go about things, it's all wrong. You can't know anything and you can't see anything because all you do is make money. You go to work and then you go home, you go to work, you go home. You go to your stupid job in some stupid tall building, and you sit there in your cubicle making phone calls and appointments and typing shit up, and then you get your paycheck and you buy a new iPhone and a new tennis racket and a Ralph Lauren chalk-stripe suit and A. Testoni dress shoes and a dishwasher and a 7000-dollar mattress and a Turkish bathrobe and a 60-inch plasma TV and a Blu-Ray player and a GPS and binoculars and Bose speakers and an Xbox and a Cuisinart and a cashmere turtleneck and Prozac and a new microwave and a new toaster so you won't have to think about anything. What do you think this is? This isn't a video game you can play on your Xbox. This isn't some brainless movie. You can't watch this on Blu-Ray. You can't watch this on a plasma screen. Do you even know what the Nazis did to you, Louis? To you, personally. You have no idea what those teeth mean. You don't know Joe McCallister; you don't know these diamond cutters; you don't know what those people are doing. You don't know who you are. That's the problem. You don't know anything about pop's cousins and aunts and uncles and other relatives who were massacred in Europe like pigs, like Rosa, pop's cousin, who was six years old when the Nazis conquered Poland, and eight when she was carted away like an animal to the Warsaw Ghetto along with her parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters and cousins, and nine when the Nazis shut down the ghetto and packed her into a cattle car and transported her to Treblinka where she was gassed and incinerated along with the rest. Obviously you've never heard about Rosa and the rest because you're not in touch with your heritage because you go around buying Xboxes and Blu-Ray players, building a wall around you with that crap so you can conveniently ignore the simple truth that, being Jewish, you would have been exterminated along with Rosa and the rest had you been there or had the Nazis managed to take over the world as they were planning to do, and are still planning to do, but you don't know that because you're too busy buying Xboxes and playing those stupid games. Well, this is not a game. You can go on playing your stupid mind-numbing video games, but the world won't disappear and the Nazis won't stop being Nazis and they won't stop trying to reinstate the Nuremberg Laws just because you know nothing about it."
The harangue was over and I still didn't know anything. "What Nazis?" I said. "The Germans lost the war. Or haven't you heard?"
"Whatever," she said. "You have know idea what's going on."
I said, "Just so you know, I don't own an Xbox and I don't play video games, and I'm not Jewish and neither are you."
She shut her lips tight, then said, "Pop was Jewish."
"Pop was Catholic," I said. "His pop was Jewish, that's all, and that makes you a quarter-Jewish, not even, because Judaism is matrilineal and pop's mom was Catholic and so was mom, and anyway, according to the Nuremberg Laws, you had to have at least two Jewish grandparents to be exterminated as a Jew. Look it up."
"You look it up," she said. "They also exterminated people who belonged to a Jewish congregation, whether or not their parents or grandparents were Jews."
"We never belonged to any congregation," I said.
"You never belonged," she said.
I was beginning to suspect that she had converted to Judaism. "You converted?" I said.
"Yes, I converted," she said. "It's my heritage."
I shrugged my shoulders. It's all the same to me. I'm not into religion and I don't care. Still, I didn't like her joining some weirdo cult like ZANAZ. That's not healthy. I was going to ask her what denomination she had joined--but we had arrived. I paid the cab ride and gave the cabby a good tip due to the inconvenience. Zelda put the dog in her bag with the Uzi, and we walked down the Diamond District, heading east; we passed countless jewelry shops and pawn shops, till we came to a nondescript and shopless building where Zelda pressed a code and we went in. There was another door inside. Zelda pressed the buzzer. A voice came on the intercom and she said we were here to see Shmuel about the delivery. We were buzzed in. We walked down a dark narrow hallway that smelled like salami and old eggs. The elevator was so small we had to huddle, and the dog whined because it was being squeezed and wanted more oxygen. Zelda pressed number seven and up we went. And I don't know why but Betsy entered my mind again and I began to go over the whole story again. Betsy, with her red hair that turned out to be white and her giant breasts and her speckled skin, and how she and Zelda hated each other instantly, and how she was so disgusted with America and the Monica Lewinsky scandal that she went to live in Calcutta, and how I never got to say goodbye to her because I arrived a day late, and I began to cry, now, in the elevator, but silently, inwardly, not bawling and splattering all over the place like that crybaby Dan. We arrived, and came out onto another dark narrow corridor that smelled even more like salami and old eggs. We walked all the way down and buzzed at a heavy metal door. A slot in the door slid open and two old eyes peered out at us. Then the door opened automatically. An old lady was standing in the doorway, not so eager to let us in. She had a thick accent and heavy makeup; her baggy eyes were painted emerald green and her lips were bright red and her cheeks were pink, and she had on a bulky brown wig that looked like a hat. Dan spoke to her in Yiddish, and she kept looking at me and pointing at me as they talked. I asked him what the hell she wanted, and he said she didn't want to let me in because she didn't know me. Eventually he managed to convince her and she let us all in. This didn't look like a jewelry store. The walls were completely bare, and there were no windows; there were two old wooden desks and a cabinet and some lamps and papers and boxes. I didn't see a single jewel in the place.
The second the wigged lady locked the door behind us, Zelda pulled out her Uzi and aimed it at her. The lady started screaming and waving her arms. Then the dog came out and started barking. Zelda commanded the two to shut up and told the old lady to let us into the back room. The old lady grabbed her keys and conducted us through a narrow corridor till we came to another heavy metal door. She punched a code and the door opened automatically.
Now this was a jewelry store. The walls were lined with display cases crammed with sparkling gems and gold and diamonds and other precious metals and stones and swanky things. There were two guys hunching over a long table. They were wearing special loupes, strapped to their heads, and were so absorbed in their miniature work that they didn't notice our entrance and Zelda's Uzi pointed at them. One was an Orthodox Jew like Dan, with a beard and everything. The other was a kid, maybe nineteen years old, a skinhead in leather and tatters, with his lips and eyebrows all pierced and three inverted crosses tattooed on his shaved head. They were listening to the radio, or some spoken-word recording; a sermon it sounded like, and was accompanied by opera music. It was not in English; it sounded like a political rally, with ovations and cheers and everything. It was on very loud and the two workers grunted along with the cheers and the ovations and hummed along with the music. I couldn't tell exactly what they were working on, but next to the Jew there was a red velvet pillow and on it were teeth, all brownish-yellowish and ancient.
My sister shot in the air, two bullets in quick succession, to get their attention. They started and looked up. The kid was scared shitless. He leaped up and put his hand in the air. But the Jew remained where he was and smiled.
"Game's over, Hertzog," said Zelda. "Hand over those teeth."
The Jew continued to smile. "Zelda, my love," he said, "put the gun down." He took the teeth that were on the pillow and held them in his hand.
"I said give me the teeth," she said.
"What are you going to do?" he said. "Kill me? McCallister is dead. You can relax."
"That means nothing to me," she said. "I want the teeth." She shot again in the air, and the little dog, who had not minded the initial round, went berserk, hopping and yapping and peeing all over the place.
But Izzy just laughed, and started howling and screaming something unintelligible that sounded like "yalla walla yalla walla yalla walla," and then he put his hand in his mouth and began to swallow the teeth.
Seeing this, Zelda started shooting on automatic, not only in the air but everywhere. Glass was shattering and everyone was screaming. I ducked and Dan ducked and our heads knocked against each other as we went down, and as I landed I heard a mortal yelp and sensed something under me. It was the little dog. I screamed to Zelda to stop, she was going to kill us all; but she didn't hear me and continued shooting in every direction, till there were no more bullets in her magazine. All was quiet, except the glass that kept shattering and other things that were crashing down and breaking.
When the dust and the smoke and the particles had settled, we looked up, we got up, and only then did I notice that Dana's poodle was dead. I had crushed it. I had broken its back. I had killed it. The radio was shattered and there was no more sermon or music. Also, Izzy was gone. "Crap," said Zelda, "he got away." The skinhead had been wounded. We went up to him. He was lying against the wall with a bullet hole in his trachea, which was spitting out blood and breath.
"You killed this kid!" I cried. "You killed this poor kid! Why'd you have to go on a rampage like that?"
"Don't worry about him," said Zelda. "He'll live."
"What are we going to do now?" I said.
"You guys stay here and help the kid," she said. "I'll go get Izzy."
"Wait," I said. "Don't go." She was leaving again.
"Don't go," Dan also said.
"Shut up," she said. "Izzy's got the teeth."
"We're coming with you," said Dan.
"No," she said. "You stay here." And saying this, she stuck a new magazine in her Uzi and went out another door, not the big metal door we came in through but a back door.
The skinhead was wheezing something I couldn't understand, which sounded like "Mimi...mama...miri...mama...." I pressed my palm hard against the hole in him to stop the bleeding and told him not to worry, we were going to get him to a doctor.
