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The Man from New York

Mitchell Waldman

    “Hey, hey, you made it!” His father was a smiling bear, descending upon Isaac as he entered the bar of the Lake Geneva Resort. Isaac didn’t know what to do — should he shake his hand, hug him, smile? — so he did nothing at all. Abe Hoffman clasped Isaac’s shoulder for an instant with one of his big claws, squeezing a little too tightly.
    “So, how’s life treating you?” he asked.
    “Fine, just fine,” Isaac replied, even though, in truth, it wasn’t. His life was, in fact, going nowhere. Ever since Sophie, his first love, died, had killed herself, six months before. She’d been on a trip to England with her family when it had happened. It had devastated Isaac. And ever since, he’d just been on this downward spiral. He couldn’t get a job in his field — sociology — and had just lost another meaningless job, this one in a warehouse. The week before he’d gone out on a bad second date (why bother?) with a girl he didn’t really like. He had about a hundred dollars left in his bank account. And he was back to living at home with his mom and stepdad, sleeping in the bedroom of his childhood. But he didn’t reveal any of this, just bit his lip, smiled, and asked, “How are things going for you?”
    “Couldn’t be better. Business is great. The family is great. Everything’s just. . . great!” The older man laughed. “You and I, we’ve got some catching up to do, don’t we? Buy you a beer?”
    “Sure.” Abe Hoffman made a show of it, waving a fifty in the air and yelling out “Bartender, a couple Michelobs down here for me and my boy, please! Pronto!”
    The bartender walked over, without much enthusiasm, and plucked the bill from Abe Hoffman’s fingers. Isaac and his father sat down on the black cushioned bar stools.
    “So, what have you been up to?” Abe said, redirecting his attention to Isaac.
    “Not much,” Isaac said, just as the bartender placed a beer in front of him. He stared down into the golden liquid, not knowing what to tell and what not to tell. He took a sip, considering, put his mug down, then picked it up again and, looking at his father, let it all spill out.
    “You know . . . I was in Dallas and Austin again. Worked in warehouses and restaurants. Nothing really panned out. Nothing really ever does. What am I going to do with my life? I’ve got a goddamned degree, and I don’t know what to do. Nothing seems to fit for me. I just want to do something I enjoy. Is there anything wrong with that? Is there anything wrong with trying to be happy?” He put his mug down.
    “Nope. Not a thing.” His father smiled.
    “The jobs, they were awful. I couldn’t work. I just couldn’t stop . . . couldn’t stop thinking . . . about her. About Sophie.”
    “Have you tried going out with any other girls?”
    Isaac picked up his beer again and stared at his father. “I went out with a couple, but it was no good. None of them are any good. They just don’t, can’t compare to Sophie. No one does. No one ever will.” He downed the rest of his beer, staring straight ahead at the mirror behind the bar. He could barely see himself through all the stemware and bottles.
    He put the mug down and slammed the bar top with his fist. Down at the other end, the bartender froze for an instant while pouring a drink and gazed through the smoke at Isaac. Then, apparently satisfied that there was no immediate danger, he went back to the business of pouring.
    
“Why’d she have to do it? Why’d she have to be so selfish and do it and leave me all alone? I was there, right there in Austin, waiting for her to come back. She knew that. I was waiting for her. Why?” He looked over at his father, eyes wide and moist. “Why?”
    Abe wasn’t looking at Isaac, but was staring straight ahead. He grabbed his beer and held it up in a sort of toast to himself.
    “Hey, there are a lot of fish in the sea.” He took a sip of the beer, put the mug down solidly on the walnut bar top and, turning his head, stared right at Isaac with a broad grin. “How about another?”
    Isaac didn’t answer. With his index finger he traced a line down through the foggy condensation on the side of his mug.

    He was ten years old, tracing a line through the cold haze of the front window, watching for his dad, just like every other Sunday. He had to stand on tiptoes to see out the window. The sun was shining bright. Staring at the off-white pavement made him squint.
    Isaac stared out the window, looking for his father. He normally came at three and it was already twenty minutes after. But the telephone hadn’t rung yet and Isaac knew he would show up. He probably just got held up in traffic.
    An hour later, Isaac was still standing by the window. His neck ached from looking out. He’d told his mother “No” when she’d suggested that he go out back and play with the other kids, that she’d call him when and if his dad came. But now his legs ached too and he had to sit down. He figured it wouldn’t be a problem if he were to do his waiting on the couch in the living room. He would just stretch out and relax. And, with his head on the arm rest, he could still see out the living room window.
    He could smell the pizza cooking. His stomach was growling. But, when his mother came to get him, he said he wasn’t hungry, and pressed his cheek against the smooth back of the couch. He thought about the rib place his father had taken him to, where they’d make glorious messes of themselves chewing the charred meat off the bone while sipping vanilla phosphates, the Italian restaurant where he always ordered the same thing —chicken cacciatore —or the place in downtown Chicago where they made the pizza burgers with the gooey cheesy white centers. Food eaten with his father was always better than anything his mother could offer. It just wasn’t the same.
    “Suit yourself,” she said, and left the room. He got off the couch and bounded up to his room. He closed the door behind him, dove onto his bed, and buried his head in his pillow.
    Lying there with tears on his pillow that evening, Isaac had no idea that three years later his weekly vigil by the window, waiting with hope for his father to appear, would end when Abe Hoffman would move from Chicago to New York for good.

    Abe slapped Isaac on the back. “You must be starved. Let’s go get you something to eat. My treat. What do you say?”
    Abe threw a couple of bills on the bar and started walking away before Isaac answered, apparently expecting his son to follow.

    
Isaac was sitting across the table from his father in the resort’s cafe. He was watching his father eat. The man’s full concentration seemed to be on the process of biting, chewing, salivating, and tasting, his eyes closed as he slowly processed the food. A thin line of hamburger grease ran down his lower lip, and dribbled down his chin, but he didn’t seem to notice, just chewed on. It was another thing Isaac remembered about his father — how he loved to eat. He closed his eyes and was sitting at his father’s kitchen table again on that trip to New York City. When Isaac had turned twenty-one he’d figured it was time for him to get to know the father he hadn’t seen since he was thirteen and had sent Abe Hoffman a letter. He saw Abe now like he’d been that day, sitting right before Isaac at the kitchen table, spooning chocolate ice cream out of a half gallon container until he’d polished off most of it by himself. Isaac hadn’t had any — he’d just watched his father eat. He’d been disappointed on that trip. But what had he really expected?
    “Hey, what’s the matter? You haven’t even touched your sandwich.” Isaac opened his eyes. He’d ordered a tuna on rye with chips on the side.
    “I guess I’m just not that hungry right now.” He picked up a ridged potato chip and broke it between his thumb and forefinger, staring at his father.
    “You don’t know what you’re missing.” Abe took another huge bite from what remained of his burger and, with his mouth half full, said, “Best resort food this side of the Mississippi.”
    “I’ll take your word for it.”
    Just then, three men in maroon-colored shirts, with the resort’s sailboat logo emblazoned on their left breast pockets, walked over from the salad bar and joined Isaac and his father, positioning themselves around the two men. Abe introduced his co-workers to Isaac and within a minute — a couple of smiles and a nod later — they turned back to Abe, talking to him like Isaac wasn’t even there, drilling Abe about various aspects of the outdoor spots to be shot the next day, and fretting about the latest weather reports, which called for rain. The man on the other side of Isaac’s father was the agency’s art director, a guy named Ted. He was about Isaac’s age, but was Hawaiian and wore heavy black-framed glasses. Occasionally, when asked a question by one of the other men, Abe would put his hand on Ted’s shoulder, in a fatherly manner, and say, “What do you think, Ted?”
    About five minutes into the discussion, Abe turned back to Isaac and suggested that maybe he’d like to be in a shot, “be part of the excitement,” was how Abe put it. “How about it, Bob?” Abe asked, turning to address the man next to Ted, a balding man with a small gray goatee and a beer gut. “We can still use some extras in that game room shot, can’t we?” And then, without missing a beat, Abe swiveled back around in his chair to face Isaac and said, flatly, “So, you’re smoking now.”
    Good of him to notice, Isaac thought, avoiding the older man’s eyes, but taking what he thought was a rebelliously long pull at the carcinogenic materials and then blowing the smoke out in a steady stream.
    “You’ve got to stay a couple of days, Isaac,” his father said, smiling,
head cocked to one side, looking straight into Isaac’s eyes. “What do you say? What kinds of plans do you have?”
    “Well, I was planning on going up to Madison to see a girl, but not until Saturday.”


“Great. Then it’s settled. You’ll stick around here until then, no arguments please. I’ve got lots of time.”
    “Yeah, and we can talk.”
    “Sure. Anything you want. It’s really good to see you. Did I tell you that before?”
    As it turned out, Abe Hoffman did not have a lot of time for Isaac — he was always too busy with his work. Isaac watched a shoot one day, with Ted by his father’s side. Isaac felt invisible as his father, brows furrowed, clipboard in hand, moved toward the two actors sitting on the eighteenth green of the golf course, and said to the camera man behind him, making jabbing motions with his hands, “Why don’t we try one from this angle?” Then, on second thought, he turned to his right hand man and asked, “What do you think, Ted?” Isaac had slipped away after that and, despite his father’s invitation to watch more shoots or to, be in one of the commercials, which offer Isaac declined, spent most of his remaining time in the room, reading. Once in a while he’d break up the boredom by strolling around the resort grounds, looking for pretty women, and sitting at the bar, feeling somewhat jaded, sitting in the dark with his shades on, drinking beer after beer (all charged to his father’s room). At dinner time his father would return to the room to find Isaac lying on the bed in a beer stupor. Abe would collapse and the two of them would lie, side by side, father and son, and silent. The television would blare its constant sales pitch. And at eight o’clock sharp they’d go down to the Flamingo Room for dinner with Abe’s co-workers.
    Ted stayed in the room adjoining theirs and the door between was always left open. He’d pop into the room unannounced, his nearsightedness apparently not limited to his eyes, unaware of the silent curtain between the two figures that lay stonily, side by side, on the bed, staring at the television set.
    At dinner time on Thursday, Abe and Ted walked down to the dining room in matching brown sport jackets. Isaac, in his T-shirt, followed a couple steps behind.
    The Flamingo Room was dark and smoky when the three men walked in. The other agency men were already sitting at a table, sipping their drinks and smoking cigars. They welcomed the threesome with jokes, laughter, and raised glasses.
    
After sitting a while and studying the menus, Isaac burrowing inside his own, the wine steward brought them a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, handed the wine cork to Isaac’s father, and poured a small amount of wine in Abe’s glass. Abe picked up the glass and took a sip, then nodded to the man, who smiled, said, “Very good,” and walked off.
    When the waiter came, Abe ordered steaks all around without protest. Isaac was not a fan of steak but didn’t say anything. The men at the table talked about what they knew best — the world of advertising. His father, the boss, spoke: “What commercial really stands out in your mind, Bob, not one that’s fashionable to like, but that really sticks out for you? Above the rest. Mr. Whipple.” A couple of the men laughed. “Now I know what you guys are thinking. You hate Mr. Whipple. I hate Mr. Whipple. Hell, anyone with a brain in his head hates Whipple, but that’s not the point! You hate him, but you remember him. We all remember him. And look what it’s done to sales of that toilet paper from number six nationwide to a dominating market leader in three short years!”
    Isaac felt sick. Maybe it was the wine, or maybe it was that recently diagnosed ulcer acting up, but in his silence his thoughts smoldered. He wanted to confront these men and their concerns. What did they really care about toilet paper? What importance did it really have (beside the obvious utilitarian purpose) or, for that matter, what significance did wine corks or bloodied slabs of beef have when half the world was starving to death, ridden in disease and poverty? These men were opportunists, making their livings off of other people’s insecurities, trying to convince everyone that they needed things — bigger, better, stronger, faster things — to be successful. It was all part of the game — always looking for a new mark, for another sale. Isaac felt warm and self-righteous, the anger washing over him.
    Or maybe, he thought, maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe it was just the man, Abe Hoffman.
    He excused himself from the table, telling the others that he didn’t feel well. His father looked concerned for about ten seconds, but turned back to the conversation the moment Isaac left the table. Isaac looked over his shoulder after about ten steps. Abe wasn’t looking after him, but was laughing and talking loudly to the group, chopping the air with his hands as he spoke, as if Isaac had never been there at all.
    Back in the room, Isaac fell heavily on the bed, where he lay for hours, staring at the television, the inane box, listening to the canned laughter as sitcom characters moved from room to room with no real purpose, no real connection to reality.
    It wasn’t until around midnight that Isaac heard the key turning in the lock, rolled to his side and closed his eyes, breathing the pretend breath of sleep. He heard his father move quietly to the bathroom, flip on the light switch, run the water, and brush his teeth. He heard his father spill the change from his pocket out on to the bureau, pull off his pants and then, with a sigh, slide into bed next to him.
    In their shared bed that night Isaac and his father slept back to back, cowering in their mutual corners. And, in the morning, Isaac feigned sleep while his father slipped into the shower and out, then dressed and softly closed the door behind him.
    In the middle of the afternoon Abe returned to the room, ecstatic that the shoot was finally over, trying to convince Isaac that they should celebrate somehow, spend some time together.
    As his father walked toward the bathroom, Isaac murmured, “We could talk,” but his father didn’t seem to hear. He ran the water, splashed some on his face, and when he came back out, towel in hand, said, “Anything you want to do. What’ll it be? It’s beautiful outside. Those weathermen called for rain, but they’re idiots. Just look at it out there!” he said, pulling the curtains open. Isaac, who was lying on the bed, his book planted at chest level, shaded his eyes with his left hand, and said weakly. “Bright, it’s too bright.”
    Abe grabbed the book out of Isaac’s hands. “A boy like you shouldn’t be cooped up in a room like this on such a beautiful day.” He paused for an instant, looking at his son, then said, “It’s not like you didn’t get enough sleep.”
Isaac watched his father closely. He was smiling, he seemed genuinely happy. “Come on! Don’t be such a dead head. How about canoeing? You used to love that when you were younger . . . There’s a river not far from here where we can rent them. How about it?”
    Isaac, still squinting and feeling lethargic, said, “Sure, anything you say.”
    At that moment Ted showed up at the door, smiling, his brown eyes wide behind the oversized black glasses, and said, “Hey, guys, what’s up?”
    It was a hot day, unseasonably so for the time of year. The trees were swaying in the breeze, some still bare, others painted with tiny buds of color that reached up toward the sky. The river was tucked away beneath this contrast of death and birth, beneath a sky filled with drifting powder puff clouds that would occasionally block the sun.
    The canoes were lined on the shore, their gray bottoms turned up. At his father’s insistence,
Isaac picked a boat (Number Nine) for his father and him while Ted examined the other canoes closely, running his hand along their bottoms until he finally grinned and announced, “This is the one.”
    A young Latino boy took their money and pushed them off the rocks into the cold green steam, mumbling something about staying to the right somewhere. Isaac didn’t really catch what he said, couldn’t get past the mumble. Ted rolled up his pant legs and pushed his boat alone, jumping into it with seeming glee. He quickly rowed ahead with sharp, controlled strokes while Number Nine struggle ahead with Isaac at the oar. There seemed to be some kind of trick to keeping the damned thing straight. Isaac paddled on one side of the boat, then the other, only to find the boat lurching
like a late night drunk staggering home from the bars. Abe sat in the front of the boat, smiling encouragement back at Isaac, throwing his rhetorical questions and statements out to the wind, things like “Isn’t this a glorious day, Isaac?” and “It’s so nice just to get out in the air, away from it all for a while.” The older man, oblivious to Isaac’s grunts, stretched his legs out on the canoe floor and propped his hands behind his head, as Isaac continued to struggle.
    The river was wide. Ted’s boat seemed like a knife that sliced it down the middle. Number Nine, on the other hand, continued to waver from shoreline to shoreline. Ted would make a quick little spurt, disappearing around a bend where he’d drift for a few minutes, patiently waiting for Number Nine; then, when Isaac had finally caught up, huffing and puffing and seeing Ted’s drifting as a welcome invitation to rest, the little smiling Hawaiian would be streaking out of sight — it seemed like a sadist’s game.
    After a while the sun got the better of Isaac. The skin across his face grew tight, his muscles ached, and his steering grew slower, more erratic. He wanted to offer his father a chance to row but was afraid to disturb him from his slumber, his body slumped forward on the front seat. Isaac regretted now that he’d ever come here and wished he was driving far away from this man, this scene, and this throbbing pain.
    He closed his eyes, and set the oar down on the floor of the canoe. He was giving up.
    The water flowed faster.
    In the heat Isaac felt himself sinking down into the canoe, drenched with sweat and exhausted. He blinked through the perspiration dripping down his face to look at the man in front of him. He looked so familiar but also like a total stranger to Isaac. He closed his eyes again, lulled to sleep by the flowing water, the rustling trees. He dreamt of the ballpark — Wrigley Field — sitting next to his dad like in the old days, watching the players on the field. Ernie Banks was at bat, swinging his bat a couple of times before setting. The hot dog vendor yelled “Get your red hots, get your red hots here!” The man at the organ in center field played the fight song to start a rally. The man on second base, Glenn Beckert, took a lead off the bag and crouched forward, his hands just touching his thighs. He seemed to hear the baseball announcer screaming “A crack into right. . . .” Then there was a sound like the roaring of the crowd.
    He was awakened by a jolt and crash (was it a nightmare?), and, for an instant, he was flying in the air, above the water. There were glimpses of light — the canoe crashing downstream, flipping like a child’s toy over what appeared to be a waterfall, his father’s face bobbing up, then down, up, then down again, reminding Isaac of the floats they had used when he was a kid, bobbing to signal a fish on the hook. The cold water was piercing Isaac’s body and he was gasping for breath, sinking for so long, down down down an eternity and finally, his weight reversed, the feel of the water rushing against his lifting body and sunlight, air, coughing, choking, then steady. Downstream his father was still bobbing, only down longer now, floating farther away, out of reach.
    With heavy hands Isaac swam, chopping through the waters. The image of his father was behind him, burning into the back of his skull, as he paddled onward, the shore in sight, in reach, his arms weary but suddenly pumping with new strength. The world around him was spinning, upside down, as he swam on and on, the shore, his survival, the only thing in his mind until he was there, crashing against the jagged rocks, scraping his chest against the edge and, with a last burst of energy, pulling himself up over the side, shaking, dripping, but triumphant.
    Sitting on the rocks, he watched his father bobbing downstream, as another man — Ted — made his approach, then, with smooth, compact strokes, grabbed Abe around the chest and pulled him slowly toward Isaac’s shore. The faces were slowly coming into view. Isaac was silent, not daring to move, thinking that to break his stillness, to flinch an inch, was to falter. Sitting that way, cross-legged, becoming a part of the rock, Isaac stared out at the violent flow, the waters crashing against rock and foaming, the trees shivering as the skies darkened with black thunderheads, and unseen birds chirping as if nothing in the world was awry at this moment, on this day.
    In the water, right before Isaac’s eyes, Ted, with all his might, strained with his arms and shoulders against Abe’s large backside to push him up over the edge of the bank, shouting to Isaac, who was solid now, impenetrable: “Help me, for Godsakes! What’s wrong with you?” Isaac’s body quaked, shattering the ice, and he reached down and tugged at his father’s limp arms, pulling him up and over the edge. Then he sat straight up again, shaking uncontrollably, while Ted lay Abe’s limp body out on the grass, and began the process of pumping on his chest and breathing into his mouth. Isaac watched, a spectator once again to the events occurring before him. Ted pumped and breathed rhythmically as Isaac shivered, his teeth chattering against one another. After about the third pump and breath, the man on the ground started coughing and spitting water out. His chest quivered violently, his arms rising, then falling with each cough, as Ted gently cradled the man’s head in his hands and murmured softly, “It’s gonna be all right, Abe, it’s gonna be all right.”
    A couple of minutes later, Abe Hoffman, still weak, opened his eyes to the daylight and for the first time since he was a child cried and prayed to God in thanks that he had been chosen to survive, to be saved — he was one of the lucky ones.
    And Isaac cried too, not knowing why, or for whom — for himself, for the emotionality of the scene, for fate, for life or death, or was it for the man from New York?




(This story was previously published in the now-defunct Five Fishes Journal.)

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