Lunch is day’s disputed territory. Is it the climax to the morning or the introduction to the afternoon? No one could agree on it, especially not in Little Aleppo. Lunch was factionalized in the neighborhood. Hard chargers forswore the meal as a waste of time, and for the weak, and they held to this belief right up to, and during, their first heart attacks at age 43. Drug dealers loved lunch, and often took it for five or six hours at a time. The Spanish gorged, then napped; the French nibbled, then argued; the Nepalese diaspora sucked down a coffee, then scampered up the side of a building.
It was sacred, though, lunch; all Little Aleppians knew that. (Except for those hard chargers, but fuck them.) Lunch had been won! Carved from the flanks of the bosses! Goons and Pinkertons had split open the heads of those who asked for lunch, never mind weekends. To not exercise your lunch franchise…that was akin to scabbery, and Little Aleppians liked scabs even less than they liked narcs. Snitches get stitches, but a scab gets the slab was how the local saying went. No, residents believed, lunch must never be ignored, lest our Wobbly ancestors be disrespected.
There was one thing Little Aleppians liked more than slacking off, and it was slacking off while being self-righteous about it.
“This is where deforestation comes from.”
“It’s eight napkins. Nine, ten. Ten napkins.”
“Entire woods. Gone,” Rabbi Levy said.
“If I have to choose between a tree and my suit, it’s always gonna be my suit,” the Reverend Arcade Jones answered, tucking another napkin into the waistband of his ketchup-red pants. There were four, overlapped and forming a Shakespearean ruff, flowing from his collar; another half-dozen decorating his shirtfront; his lap was double-ply defended. His jacket–the same red as the pants–was hanging off the back of the unused chair to his left. The Reverend never slung his coat behind him: first off, the lapels would wrinkle; second, Arcade had impeccable table manners, but an enthusiasm to his meal-taking that occasionally loosed flecks of this sauce or that gravy.
The Rabbi had, many Victory Diner meals ago, advised the Reverend to avail himself of the coat rack at the front of the restaurant by the toothpick dispenser and old-fashioned CHUNK KIH-CHACK credit card machine.
“They even got hangers,” he said. “Just like civilization.”
“Mm-hmm. Take my eyes off it for a minute and it disappears.”
“Disappear? It’s a stop-sign red 64 long. Can’t disappear.”
“Size doesn’t come into it,” the Reverend said. “Cars get stolen.”
“Sure, yeah, but cars have a general utility. Anyone can drive any car. Whereas, there’s a dozen guys in the neighborhood who your jacket would fit. And none of them could pull it off.”
“Style is 90% confidence.”
“The other ten?”
“Your pants gotta have a crease in ’em so sharp they could slice tomatoes.”
So Reverend Jones did not use the coat rack at the front of the Victory Diner, by the front door with the bell and the upright display case that dizzied cakes, and Rabbi Levy did not bring it up again.
After Torah, Torah, Torah burned, the Jews wandered briefly. They did not complain any more than they usually complained, which is to say there was an almost impossible amount of complaining. Taken in, moving on. The ancient rhythms of Jewish life. Of course, their two-month journey was entirely confined to Rose Street, which was better than 40 years in the desert, and also there were no pogroms. On the contrary, there were several interfaith dances thrown for the youth groups. It was almost certainly the chillest expulsion from a home the Jews had ever weathered, and soon they had a semi-permanent home at the First Church of the Infinite Christ when the Reverend Arcade Jones, while giving a sermon to the combined congregations, talked himself into Holy Ghost Mode and opened his doors to the Jews.
(The doors in question were not entirely his; the First Church has deacons and a lay board and an icon of Saint Michael with full voting rights.)
Mitzvah and sin. Just like yin and yang, but without the bitchin’ logo to doodle on your denim jacket. And they were, Rabbi Levy always recalled, presuppositionary. He had heard the terms referred to as such in rabbinical school by a student named Amos Varon, who was one of those types who would always choose a grad-school word over a factory-floor word. Couldn’t have secular mitzvah; no sin without the Lord. It was not the act that the words referred to, but God’s reaction to the act. Package deal sort of thing.
And there were levels. Shoving your slobbery leftovers into a bum’s hands on the way home from Nero’s? This was a mitzvah, but only in the way that plucking a quarter from behind a child’s ear is a magic trick. Buying the guy a whole meal was a higher mitzvah, but teaching him to fish was even better, and all mitzvot were improved by anonymity because to not sign your name is to credit God. Let Him take the bow. This is what Torah teaches.
Rabbi Levy didn’t know about that, though. Seemed complicated, and the human soul is not as complicated as holy books would have one believe. You need a place to stay? That right there, that simple question with so many side effects: that was the kindest one man could be to another.
So, if someone were to treat you and yours with such munificence, the least you could do was buy him an enormous lunch once a week.
“Rabbi, I’ve been thinking about the nature of intent.”
“Oh, it’s gonna be one of those lunches.”
“Would you rather we gossip?”
“Sew my lips shut before we do that.”
“Or we could talk about sports,” the Reverend said.
“You could.”
“I don’t just follow football, y’know. We could talk baseball.”
“What do I know about baseball?”
“You’re Jewish.”
“And?”
“Jews love baseball.”
“This belief you have is too silly to be offended by, but still: not true.”
Rabbi Levy did not take milk or sugar in his coffee at home or work, because he splurged on the fancy grounds. The Victory Diner bought their coffee in bulk from a guy named Rudy who never showed up in the same van twice, so the Rabbi took milk and sugar.
“I mean…it’s not entirely wrong.”
“There you go,” the Reverend said.
“What about intent?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Course it does,” the Rabbi answered quickly. “What you just said, the thing about Jews and baseball. Your intent mattered in my interpretation of the statement. You could have meant harm by it.”
“How can saying that Jews like baseball be harmful?”
The Reverend had a quarter-slice of club sandwich left. Half of a cheeseburger. Several remaining bites of a Spanish omelette with extra cheese, hold the mushrooms. He was 80% of the way to ordering a milkshake.
“In this neighborhood, someone would figure it out,” Rabbi Levy said. “I’ll tell you a story. This is maybe ten, fifteen years ago. No, I was still at Harper, so it was 15. Many years before you would grace us with your presence.”
“The Lord was toughening me up.”
“I have no doubt. So there’s these two Town Fathers. Billows and Hoy. Can’t tell ’em apart. Big dumb schmucks. Naturally, they hate each other.”
“As is tradition.”
“And at first, it’s funny. Whole neighborhood got in on it. Tee-shirts: Team Billows and Team Hoy. And none of this is political. Identical voting records. One was a developer, and the other owned construction firms. Their agendas were in complete lockstep. It was 100% personal.”
“I have a question that I am already quite sure of the answer to.”
“Yes?”
“Was the origin of these men’s feud ever discovered?”
“You’re really starting to get the hang of Little Aleppo.”
“Thank you,” Reverend Jones said. “Thank you? Is that a compliment?”
“Kind of. Anyway: no, of course no one ever found out why they hated each other. There were stories. I heard something about a parking spot or a parrot. Maybe it was a parking spot and a parrot.”
“A parrot?”
“Or a mynah. Cockatiel? A talking bird. I remember that it was important to the story that the bird could talk. Beyond that, I do not recall. It was most likely nonsense, anyhow. No one knew why Billlows and Hoy hated each other except Billows and Hoy, and neither of them ever gave it up.”
“Gotta admire their commitment, at least.”
“Sure. So, like I said: it’s funny at first. They’d be vulgar to each other at open meetings, and leak lies to the Cenotaph. And then the public fist-fights. started.”
“These are grown-ass men?”
“As grown-ass as you can get. In their 50’s, I would imagine.”
“That’s not all right,” the Reverend said.
“No. Especially when they became regular. You know Booty Palace?”
Booty Palace was Little Aleppo’s all-you-can-eat buffet, and it is named that because when Yahya Muqsaf opened it in the 70’s, he was in that slippery zone between fluent and idiomatic in his English acquisition, and he was into pirates. Row upon row of steamy chafing pans disappearing off in the distance, and enough sneeze-guards for a million cold-and-flu seasons. Sushi of a quality matching, but not exceeding, a supermarket. Piles of ripped-apart crabs, as though the crabs had been the occupants of a city which had displeased the Khan. Lamb done three ways (broasted, broiled, jerkied). Soup du jour, soup du semaine, and soup du mois. (Pass on the soup du mois after the 18th or so.) The mashed potatoes came pre-portioned into bowls; Little Aleppians could not resist the siren call of a serving tray full of creamy whipped taters, and they would plunge their faces SPLAP into the starchy side, or satisfy their buttholes’ curiosity with a deep squat into the tray.
“I know Booty Palace each and every Wednesday night; yes, I do.”
“Half-price night, right. Well they did it back then, too, and Billows and Hoy were both cheap bastards, and neither of ’em would stop going. They’d throw pudding cups at each other, it was embarrassing. The other Town Fathers go to Yahya to see if he’ll make an exception, charge one of the two idiots half-price some other night.”
“Yahya said no.”
“Of course he did. The fights were drawing a crowd. It was the best thing to happen to him since the health inspector died. But, you know, it’s like I said: first, it was funny; then, it was embarrassing. Next step no one expected. It got dangerous and sad. Billows, this putz, he starts holding rallies.”
“Campaign rallies?”
“Like them. Very much like them,” the Rabbi said.
“Town Fathers don’t run for office.”
“No. That’s why I said they were like campaign rallies. Had all the mishegos–stage and flags and podiums and all that–but Billows wasn’t running for anything. He just wanted to–pardon my French–talk shit about Hoy in front of a crowd. He’d buy donuts and coffee, too, so people would show up.”
“That’s how we get folks into AA meetings.”
“It’s good bait.”
“This man’s setting up all kinds of whatnot just to–pardon your French–talk shit about this other dummy? Who’s paying for this?”
The Rabbi lifted his coffee cup, smiled. The Reverend picked up his Coke, tapped it against the mug.
“The very learned Hillel said that the two most important questions were If I am not for myself, then who will be? and If not now, then when? He did not grow up in Little Aleppo, or he would have realized there were two other vital questions: Where did all the money come from, and where did all the money go? Turns out Billows owned the production company that set up the stages, and paid himself out of the treasury.”
“This is my shocked face,” the Reverend said, and did not change his facial expression.
“So he’s having this dumb rallies and he calls Hoy all sorts of things. Communist, socialist, fascist, anarchist. And, you know, some of those terms are mutually exclusive. Accused him of engaging in pedagogy and practicing bilaterality, but that didn’t work. Little Aleppians have weirdly large vocabularies.”
“One can’t help but notice.”
“Finally, Billows finds something that the crowds go for. Hoy’s got manners like you wouldn’t believe. Old school. Please and Pardon me from morning til midnight. Stands up when women enter the room, pushes in their chairs. Handwritten thank-you notes. The man’s elbows had never touched a table!”
“I get it.”
“Not once!”
“I get it.”
The last quarter of the club sandwich disappeared into the Reverend’s mouth; he chased it with a handful of fries.
Tommy at the counter spoke Greek, but gestured in Italian, and cursed in Spanish; the man expressed himself expressively. Louie Bucca behind the grill had been sweating for nine years straight. No urination whatsoever. Louie had mentioned the fact to a nurse friend once, and she freaked out, so he didn’t tell anyone any more. Lunch rush, best rush according to the waitresses. Customers were cranky at breakfast, and there were too many of ’em at dinner, and the late-night crowd was full of hooch and sass. Lunch rush, though? Polite and predictable. Busy enough to fatten your pockets, but not so packed as to be frantic. Never had a table been thrown across the dining room during the lunch rush, which could not be said for the other rushes; the waitresses believed that fact to speak to a larger truth.
“So, Billows starts in on Hoy about the manners thing. Just hammering him. This guy, he tells the crowds. This guy thinks he’s better than you. He’s judging your fork use. That kind of shtick. Crowd goes wild. Billows even works up a whole impression. Does a silly voice, everything.”
“That’s just cruel.”
“And this is my point about intention. Billows intended to be cruel, so therefore the statement This man has wonderful manners became a weapon.”
The Reverend Arcade Jones took a second to think about that, but accidentally started thinking about the milkshake he wanted and just asked,
“How did it end?”
“How could it possibly end?”
“Murder/suicide?”
“What else?”
The Rabbi sipped his going-tepid coffee and said,
“But he left the loveliest note.”
The two men, both professionally holy, looked around for a waitress. Order 10 up! came the cry from inside the kitchen, and then a spatula rings a bell DING! and another lunch has been summoned in the Victory Diner on the Main Drag in Little Aleppo, which is a neighborhood in America.
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