Suppose 3

By S.R. Palumbo

Kopfelman, winded and slightly wary, his glasses fogged up from perspiration, had cast about through the growing dusk and dire portent of traffic lights to check out an old lady with a Dump Nixon button who had been doggedly trailing him from the subway stop on Sixth Avenue to the entrance-way of Horn and Hardart on West 57th Street.He was definitely sure he was being followed, though maybe through a system of relays, the old lady acting as an innocent decoy-Apple Annie.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524560003

S.R. Palumbo

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Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by S.R. Palumbo.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016919129

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5245-6001-0

   Softcover   978-1-5245-6002-7

   eBook   978-1-5245-6000-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 11/23/2016

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Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

ONE

KOPFELMAN, WINDED AND SLIGHTLY WARY, HIS GLASSES FOGGED UP from perspiration, had cast about through the growing dusk and dire portent of traffic lights to check out an old lady with a Dump Nixon button who had been doggedly trailing him from the subway stop on Sixth Avenue to the entranceway of Horn and Hardart on West Fifty-Seventh Street. He was definitely sure he was being followed, though maybe through a system of relays, the old lady acting as an innocent decoy Apple Annie.

The pains they went through!

He let her go by and slipped in through the revolving doors of the cafeteria. The sandwich machines were off to the right and conveniently placed near a winding stairwell that led to the restrooms. Everything had to be timed out perfectly. No false starts.

He seated himself at a corner table with a commanding street view and made out that he was waiting patiently, sizing up faces, but the old lady failed to materialize; and when no one else seemed to take up behind her, he made his way to the sandwich machines and mechanically searched for an empty slot and tapped at it as a girl’s face appeared at the other end of the glass-framed cubicle.

No more chicken pot pie, she responded.

You sure? he questioned softly but firmly.

We don’t have no more, the girl repeated. I guess you’ll have to try something else.

A change in plans! He would have to use force and get the car, or maybe this was just a test for him?

He made his way swiftly downstairs to the lounge and restrooms where a maintenance worker had cleverly posted himself by the weighing machine with a bucket of water.

Kopfelman stared at him meaningfully.

What’s new?

What?

Do they know I’m here?

Do who know you’re here? the colored man answered.

Just keep mopping in case I was followed and don’t start asking any questions.

Who are you, man?

Kopfelman didn’t have time to waste. He was into the men’s room and frantically looking for a means of egress. They mentioned the window.

An old man at the urinal bowl looked up at him.

What are you doing here? Kopfelman asked. Where is the window?

What window?

How did you get in here?

The maintenance worker peeked in the doorway.

Hey, man, are you crazy or something?

Kopfelman hiked up the radiator vent to a transom window that let out into a narrow causeway at the rear of an outdoor parking lot. An attendant with a huge mop of hair and filthy long sideburns came up to him and looked at him suspiciously.

Ticket?

Yes, I have my car here, but I can’t seem to find the stub that you gave me.

I need the ticket.

I knew there’d be trouble.

We don’t give out cars without a ticket. The attendant announced.

I had it just a moment ago.

Take another look.

This is very embarrassing.

Kopfelman feigned a search through his pockets, then delivered two quick blows behind his neck, and he dragged the attendant into an alley behind the lot, surprised that karate would work for him, that the neck would always betray you that way.

When he returned to the parking lot, he searched for the Caddy with the white vinyl top and the 6Q license plate number, which was the designated take car. The alternate plans were supposed to be in the glove compartment along with the registration papers, but Kopfelman had no time for that now. He gunned the motor and lurched out backward, weaving his way through the panicky flight of downtown traffic to Houston Street on the lower east side where he drove for some time distractedly, picking out side streets, veering off at the first traffic light to his old neighborhood.

Was he safer here? Had he no recollection of having spent half his life alone and running for cover, mimicking people?

Nobody loves a half-assed actor, his father had told him, a sufferer from the old Yiddish school who had been in the theater and afterward turned to upholstering furniture two flights above a Chinese restaurant in Little Italy. You can’t be a person by imitating, so look at me and maybe you’ll learn how to be a success by doing the opposite. Learn from your mother.

Kopfelman learned, and to please his mother, he registered as a half-assed student at NYU and majored in some commercial courses in business administration, with his heart secretly set on acting and practically spending every spare moment on casting calls and odd jobs to keep himself going in a furnished flat for ambitious failures on Essex Street, from which his wife had to rescue him (though in those days she was not his wife and Kopfelman had not thought of marriage, especially to her).

In these days, he remembered sadly, everything he had left undone had disappointed and displeased his father, whom Kopfelman loved but died of emphysema at fifty, coughing his brains out, giving out last-minute bits of advice.

Don’t get the idea that just because your whole life’s dishonest, it’s all your fault, he said and coughed into space. Don’t start feeling sorry for yourself.

I don’t feel sorry, Kopfelman promised.

Start reading books.

He’s reading, Kopfelman’s mother lied to take up the slack, but Kopfelman’s father had reached out toward them in accusation, seizing him by the shirt neck and collar.

Schmendrick, listen, if only you could read from Hegel five lines and understand it, he choked, but Kopfelman’s mother restrained him professionally.

Morris, please, you’re exciting yourself. She did part-time work in a nursing home and always had on her uniform before going on duty.

Marvin has always been slow starting out. She eased over lightly.

Don’t start making excuses for him.

He’s going to take some courses in college.

What kind of courses?

Some commercial courses in business administration.

He couldn’t administer a three-cent seltzer.

Morris, please.

Kopfelman’s father had worked himself up from the bed he was in and had half-risen violently, clasping his chest on the iron bed stand.

Open the windows!

Morris, it’s winter.

Don’t contradict me.

I’ll open the blinds.

I need air not light, he sputtered fitfully, glancing about for an object or cause to strike at blindly and finally fixing on Kopfelman’s face. You think because you look like Tony Curtis this is your passport?

Who says I look like Tony Curtis?

When was the last time you brushed your teeth?

This morning. Why?

Your breath is bad.

He needs dental work, came Kopfelman’s mother.

He has no sense of Talmud, nothing.

Morris, it’s raining.

Pull down the blinds. I don’t need to have a weather report.

I’ll get your pills.

No, get me the box, he ordered her when she came from the window. We may as well get this over with now.

Stop talking that way.

Will you do what I ask?

There was some confusion as Kopfelman’s mother searched the drawers and hallway closets, unconsciously dusting while zeroing in on a blue Barracini candy box from which she removed a circular canister, long since forgotten and darkly labeled Vladamirsky and the Rats.

My one true possession, his father had beckoned in solemn ritual, breathing unsteadily, rasping away on a Kent cigarette as a last and lethal reminder to them that nothing outside their lives was new, just dirtier, more treacherous—framed there beyond the unwholesome vista of gathering dusk like a wound in the sky.

"Here, take it, marook, and don’t lose this, please. His father had given it to him. Listen to what your mother tells you. Don’t get arrested."

Kopfelman, puzzled, had never given the matter much thought until sometime after his father’s death from whence among the other personal effects he discovered was a diary entry. He discovered, for instance, that Vladamirsky was a great Russian movie director who had disappeared during one of the innumerable purges