Last Bender

9.2 Busted. I blushed. I stammered. Douglas Eakens saved me when he walked in blinking behind his thick lenses, wisps of hair floating over the imperfectly bald top of his head. He was breathing loudly and he rubbed his hands together. “What time do you leave, Alex?” “Eleven, tonight.” “What a shame. I’m just now [...]

9.1 One month later Sally graduated Summa Cum Laud. At first she announced she would not be attending the graduation but would instead have a party at the loft. We were seated in the kitchen out on the Island when Sally said, “I hate crowds and diplomas and honors are bullshit.” Cynthia was seated next [...]

8.5 I didn’t have grandparents. My father’s father disappeared in Poland in 1939. He was a Rabbi and a Zionist and a Bolshevik as well I’m sure, who was bringing money he had raised in the states to Poland for Jews to escape to Palestine or America. He had been discovered and murdered by Nazi [...]

8.4 We unloaded the car and she supervised the provisioning of the kitchen. “Those go over here, these go over there,” pointing at cabinets and the pantry. On the counter, next to the stove, was a giant leg of lamb lying in blood on an open piece of brown butcher paper. Next to it was [...]

8.3 Sally woke me up at 6. Christopher was asleep on the couch and Sylvio was buried in Lydia’s bed, gripping the pillow with his two hands and mashing his face into it so all you could see was his hair, which he had been growing out for some reason. The thing about Sylvio is [...]

8.2 Early next morning around 11 I was awakened by Joseph’s booming laugh (a rare sound at that hour), followed by Raph’s gentler, drier one. “Which way does it go?” Joseph asked. There was silence. I got out of bed, put on a robe and came out into the big room. By the door the [...]

8.1 The Phoenix Park Restaurant dinner was not the first time Roy told me to become a librarian. Once, when I was in high school he met me at the main branch of the Public Library and we walked over to Grand Central together. We were to meet our father there for dinner at the [...]

7.4 It was my day off and I had to meet my mother for lunch in the East Sixties. I had time to walk; I preferred it to watching Sally go to work on the Opus, which had swelled to 100 closely argued pages, half of the intended length. With only a month to go [...]

At home Joseph, Lou and Deb and Jayda were watching Straw Dogs and drinking frozen strawberry margaritas. Periodically there was a loud cracking of ice followed by a whine. Every time a gun went off they went, “Aw!!” and laughed. Joseph called out my name, waved with his cigarette and smiled. His hair was a [...]

An hour and a half later we sat in his living room on a couple of lawn chairs watching the southern skyline and sipping gin and tonics. “It’s just like being at dad’s, only the gin is better. No Gordon’s around here.” The view south was of buildings like foothills slowly mounting the Wall Street [...]